A bit of a smaller update this week. First of all, let's greet the bald, fat ugly bastard archetype represented by the ruler of our starting city Trademond entering the game!

After you went through the trouble of getting the Letter of Recommendation... the final barrier into Richard's Domain is buying the rune to cancel his barrier - for a super cheap price of 20000 Gold! :'D

Of course, he also offers Aura a separate way to buy it by providing sexual service as his maid. An Aura that's lewded too much and can't help but stare at what's between Lord Trademond's pants won't be able to pay full attention to the whole thing and maybe get some bad working conditions.

For the lewd scene itself, I didn't quite get as far as I wanted to, sadly. Originally, I wanted to have 2 scenes + 1 repeat version but I didn't quite like the concept. Since this scene follows up on the Maid Academy, rather than being progressive, I think it's better for it to focus more on reactivity to Aura's training. So instead I decided to change it to 1 scene with 2 major variations + repeat version (with major variation).

This week, I wrote the version where Aura enters into the Working Contract in a non-pink way. NOTE: If you trigger the pink version, you will be greeted with an [NOT IMPLEMENTED]! You can still view the non-pink version from the recollection room even if you trigger the pink version!

There will be a vastly different version if Aura has at least 10 Maid Obedience PLUS if she triggers the scene in pink. Having high obedience but not triggering the interaction in pink is treated by the game as Aura's willpower being strong enough to overcome the conditioning.

I'm not yet sure if pink and <10 obedience will fall into the case of the scene I added this week, in which case I would extend it with a couple of minor pink variations as usual, or if it belongs into the different major case of >= 10 obedience where Aura's conditioning activates. Figuring that out and creating the >= 10 obedience version is then basically the big thing for next week. And then also extracting a repeat version. Finally I hope to have enough time to implement some of the new Brothel Customers.

On the art side, as you may have seen in latest Patreon posts, art production has finally resumed starting this week. I prepared a brief for all 4 scenes for Paulina. The complexity here is pretty high, especially because of the whole transition from stoic to lewd expressions. Even after our artist Emubi gave me a bit of a discount, it's still at a 1000 USD for the full CG set, with about 500 USD for the 30 expressions (10x stoic, 10x ditzy, 10x heart-pupil lewd) alone :'D

Aaaand that's it for the week! As I mentioned above, the plan next week is to finish up Lord Trademond and then the Brothel! For those wanting to enjoy the lewd content here, I recommend waiting until next week. For those who want to try and challenge the first levels of the final dungeon without being forced to use the Star Knightess just to enter can do that now.

Changelog 0.40.0-prerelease-2 (08.03.2024)

• Integrate Lord Trademond maps 
• Added Humilitas Rune 
• Implemented Lord Trademond Work Contract 
• Added lewd scene non-pink version of Lord Tademond 1 
• Added dialogue to mental world relationship dolls for other value thresholds
• Minor refactoring on battle logic into reusable plugins
• Minor reusability refactorings for Skill Selection, Compendium and Character Make plugins 

Balancing

• Lowered slime starting and level up stats

Bugfixes

• Fixed lag caused by CP large sprite fix plugin
• Fixed incorrect line when ending Paulina's patronage
• Fixed Mastercloak:Wind having the wrong icon
• Fixed some Slime classes being unable to use Break Bondage Fibers due to incorrect skill type
• Fixed Aura facing wrong direction in ritual jump point
• Fixed Aura portrait persisting in maid academy dialogue
• Fixed Fast Items Stance doubling skill MP costs
• Fixed impassable tile in northern mine
• Fixed skill book crash from Fast Items Stance causing nonconsumable items to execute twice
• Fixed Black Priestess still offering discount on learning Light I if you already have it
• Fixed slimes in troop 258 transforming into the wrong Small Fire Slime