Last release (except the obligatory hotfix x_X) for the year! Man, 5 week updates are a hell of drug. I totally forgot the Roland 7-8 H-CGs only got added during the prerelease-1 week and various other stuff that apparantly got added this month and honestly thought had been in the game for a while now until I read my own changelog :'D

Alright, you know the usual game. The detailed reports you can find in my prerelease posts. The release post focuses on summarizing the main additions and changes. And as always, we start off with a summary in numbers. This time we have 1 new H-CG, variations to 1 older H-CG, 2 new character art pieces, 1 new quest, 2 new dungeon areas, 6 new corruption scenes, 3 new lewd scenes (1 of them being a corruption scene), 7 new mental changes (1 of them being an appearance change),  5 new boss fights and lots more!

Okay, that list got a bit longer than expected. :'D Let's try to jump into some more details!

Lots of stuff going on in the mental and real world. You can now corrupt a bunch of value orbs and the most important mental change of this update is that we finally got a new appearance mental change for Aura to get a side tail. In the real world, corrupting the second Character orb will trigger a new cheerleading game scene with a h-scene with a certain popular basketball player who... will be getting more than he can chew off. :'D And on the corruption of the second Hardworking Orb corruption line, you can unlock the side tail including a continuation of the Wanting to be a Model storyline which leads into new events with Richard!

Then, also in the real world - and it took quite a bit more effort than expected but this week I finished off the integration of the character art for Veronica and Patricia. Damn, Patricia is running around in so many scenes, adding her character art everywhere was quite the effort and I'm sure I still overlooked some places. With this, the major character missing character art is Laura!

OBJECTIOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONNN!N!!!!!!!!!!!!! Moving back to Roya we have several pieces of new content. First, let's start with the Roland related content. Trihan finished the second half of the quest Nothing But The Truth enabling you to play the trial segment. Furthermore, the Roland If you have acted against Roland in all quests before you battle with him, I implemented this week that if you get his Popularity < 50, you will be able to kill him in the Reverse Summoning Ritual. I also updated the world state to reflect his death, although I most likely overlooked a couple of things as I only did that just today.

One caveat: I had to adjust some of the popularity logic, for example Roland no longer generates +10 Popularity when he raids the poisoners but only does so when you hand in the quest without finishing Something Is Fishy. I didn't implement a data migrator for this as the flags are a bit iffy and I was scared of breaking more than fixing it. 

Finally, the last addition to the Roland content is that the remaining H-CGs got added for his scenes. With this, the Roland quests and H-content is complete! He will get one final appearance in the Pride related demon general quest, so there will be a second chance to kill him there but outside of that, Roland is now done!

Staying at the topic of H-CGs, Emubi also finished yesterday the variations for the Slime Bonding 2 and 3 events which I integrated yesterday evening as well! This completes another event H-event chain. :) If you check out the recollection, you will notice that all scenes now that all Roya scenes currently in the game are either illustrated or planned to be text only for 1.0 anyways. A rare sight! Who knows how long it will remain.

Moving on to the next part! We have also new content at the Maid Academy! The first two maid trainings, which constitute the two new lewd scenes in Roya. In addition to that, the Maid Academy dungeon with it's boss fights has also been added in the Catacombs below the Maid Academy.  One of the bosses in the Maid Academy dungeons also has a very powerful material that I hope will be game changing for the one or other player.

Not related to the Maid Academy at all, but I will also put it under this paragraph, is the dungeon work in the Crystal Mines! No longer will you be greeted with the placeholder map, instead it has been replaced with a proper (optional) dungeon! Lots of new loot and materials to gather here, and a new environment effect to deal with.

Okaaaay, I think that covers most of the new content. Besides the content additions we also have quite a lot of minor technical improvements. Different BGMs when you start a battle in back attack/normal/ambush so you don't have to remember if you did a successful back attack or not. New options for customizing your auto save behavior. Standing images may now have dynamic y offsets, which for Aura now changes when she obtains heels to make her taller. The Eyes of Greed curse now prominently features in the Shop menu when you are at 0 willpower (see picture). Instead of Equipment the Status Menu now shows your loadout of Enhance/Stance/Autoskills. And I dunno I think that covers most of it but there probably a couple other things here and there I forgot. I will just defer to the changelog at this point. :'D

Also there is a new option called Analytics, please consider turning it on to send me data like which bosses you are losing to! It would greatly help me balance the game!

Okay, but that's really it for now. Enjoy the update, I hope there isn't too much jank, if there is, I will try to create a hotfix before the 31st, if critical stuff drops on that day though I won't be here but with friends so you will need to wait a day. I will already use this post to wish everyone a happy new year. :) As mentioned above and as usual, for the full list of changes, please check out the changelog below.

Changelog 0.38.0 (29.12.2023)

• Added Roland 7-8 H-CGs 
• Added Slime Bonding 2-3 H-CGs 
• Added character art Veronica 
• Added character art Patricia
• Added new Roya Aura standing image lewd expressions
• Implemented quest Nothing But The Truth Trial Segment 
• Added area Crystal Caverns: Vault
• Added area Maid Academy Catacombs 
• Added mental change removing Injustice Hate 2 and add it as condition for advanced Chapter 2 bullying events
• Added mental change Remove Self-Acknowledgement 3 
• Added mental change corrupt Hardworking 2 Orb 
• Added mental change implant Influential Orb 2 
• Added mental change corrupt Character 2 Orb 
• Added mental change implant Appearance 2 Orb 
• Added mental change Side Tail 
• Added lewd scene Maid Training 1 
• Added lewd scene Maid Training 2 
• Added lewd scene Cheerleading Game 3 
• Added scene Wanting To Be A Model 2 
• Added scene Wanting To Be A Model 3 
• Added scene Wanting To Be A Model 4 
• Added scene Wanting To Be A Model 5 
• Added scene Pretend Dating Richard 1 
• Added boss Crystal Ogre 
• Added boss Brightmane 
• Added boss Spirit Fox 
• Added boss Queen Slime 
• Added boss Thralled Expert Adventurer 
• Added formula Anti-Magic Coating+ 
• Added formula Acid Bomb+ 
• Moved Interface options into new Interface Options Category
• Added day to save file info as in mockup (Thanks to Gaurav)
• Added analytics with gameanalytics.com (Thanks to Gaurav)
• Applied refactoring pass to UI plugins 
• Replaced Status Window Equipment Area with Auto/Enhance/Stat Window (Thanks to Gaurav)
• Implemented support for yOffset in standing images plugin 
• Gave most characters except Richard a minor yOffset for better relative sizes 
• Implemented yOffset turning to 0 for Aura when obtaining heels 
• Implemented passive Obedient Maid x X 
• Implemented plugin for conditional (battle) bgm 
• Implemented Pressing <- and -> buttons to navigate through circle sub menus (Thanks to Gaurav)
• Implemented Eyes of Greed Lock mode in Shop Menu (Thanks to Gaurav)
• Configured rules to play different BGMs when being ambushed or doing an ambush 
• Moved Injustice Hate 2 to trigger cheating on george 3 
• Added pom-poms to pixel sprites during Cheerleading Game scenes 
• Implemented Autosave Options Submenu (Thanks to Gaurav)
• Integrated Knight's Stride BGM 
• Implemented option to kill Roland during Reverse Summoning Ritual 
• Updated world state after Roland death 
• Increased max killed bosses to 111
• Increased max mental changes to 141 

Balancing

• Adapted Roland Popularity changes so that doing all negative changes makes it <50 
• Increased blessed water effectiveness in Story/Explorer difficulties (Thanks to Gaurav)

Bugfixes

• Fixed typos
• Fixed missing sex variable increases in Cheerleading Game 3
• Fixed incorrect recollection variable for Wanting To Be A Model 4 
• Fixed James base form not getting skill to use corrupted humanitas rune 
• Fixed possibility to softlock by inserting injustice hate 2 removal before Popularity III
• Fixed Wanting To Be a Model 2 triggering in Chapter 2
• Fixed incompatibility of save menu plugin with encryption
• Fixed conditional bgms not being protected 
• Fixed incorrect direction variable name in checkEventTriggerThere
• Fixed richard bond vice boost not working sometimes 
• Fixed George Bond resetting on a day multiple of 5 regardless of when last cheating action was
• Fixed recollection room glitches #5173
• Fixed map hud being under general options 
• Fixed trait errors in Armor*2+Passion troop 
• Fixed Dark Queen Slime missing num tag and compendium entry 
• Fixed Thrall Expert Adventurer missing fire weakness 
• Fixed Thunderbolt III cost being the same as rank II 
• Fixed Tap to Confirm option being in General Category 
• Fixed chase events on develop again without breaking doors 
• Fixed workshop enhance item does not end day on explorer 
• Added post-recess intro that factors in the "Back Down" option into Nothing But The Truth 
• Fixed Autosaving on menu exit when that isn't selected 

Stats

• Estimated play time: 31-41h
• Word Count: 643k
• Lewd Scenes: 93
• Real World Scenes: 250
• CGs: 40 (+1 Bonus CG)