Java Corrupted Saviors [Release 61b] [CSDev]

[Yddrasil]

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i was reading through my forsaken and i noticed i have a demon knight but the defiler says "Rampage (none)"? what is that (none) part about?

It is the damage type the defiler move will do; since Rampage doesn't actually do damage, it's marked as none.

 

[CSdev]

I don't know if this is in any way worth doing, but especially on later loops with a bunch of forsaken bonuses and Chosen effect, it is incredibly hard to even guess at what damage you would do. I would love to know the base damage taken by each Chosen, their break modifiers, the action factor, the Forsaken factor, etc. in the form of an equation during the action resolution screen so I could better judge what to do by something other than trial and error over and over again. Like right now I have no clue where the trauma damage my Forsakens actually deal comes from, and if there is something I can do to increase or decrease it.

Based on what I have seen of the code, it probably would be a pain in the ass (or more precisely, I thought about modding it in and realised I'm not capable of doing that), but just having a Forsaken damage summary and a base damage (and adjusted base damage) for the Chosens would eliminate a lot of the guesswork.

This is something I'd like to implement as well. There are two main obstacles that have to be dealt with in order to do so.

1) Refactor the code for damage calculations so that it tracks each individual multiplier and outputs a textual description of what's providing that multiplier. This is the easy part.
2) Design the UI for the player to be able to request a multiplier summary and get something useful and relevant to what they want to see in return. This is the hard part.

At any given time, there can be multipliers which apply only to some of the 8 damage types, multipliers which apply only to some of the 3 Chosen, multipliers which apply only in certain combat situations (surrounded, captured, neither, or depending on whether an ally is surrounded or captured), and so on. Showing all of them at once would often fill up the entire screen. That's fine for a debug tool, but not for something that's meant to be used by the general playerbase. I'm completely at a loss for how it should look.

Twisted Reward is the most salient example, but to deal with high damage mitigation loops with angels, I feel like you would need to get full length double orgies to approach the trauma levels needed to get get the later (or if the damage mitigation is high enough, even first) T3 breaks, and aversion can really mess that up. Even ignoring Twisted Reward I would still prefer not having the aversion achievement in most cases. It feels bad not being to get a "perfect" loop even with (what I would think is) good play, although you could argue that not getting the achievement and extra breaks are just the cost of getting an averted Forsaken and there is no reason to have to have a "perfect" loop every time, since at least at loop 25 out of 35 I feel like I am snowballing out of control even with the occasional slip ups.

I think the best solution for Aversion as a whole is to rework its bonus. The other Distortions are all basically triggered on the player's demand, with the exception of Rampancy, whose entire gimmick is basically "You get more EE, but the Chosen become harder to deal with." Aversion either needs to remove the downside for triggering (maybe by having fleeing Chosen still count for turning Defiler/Defiler+ actions into Defiler+/Orgy actions), or else provide a much stronger bonus in exchange for removing the subject from the battle early. Player input is very welcome here.

Also I'm sure I am not the only one, but I really appreciate CSDev regularly checking in on the thread and answering question about not just the mechanics but the design philosophy itself. Although if you don't mind me asking, are there plans for us to fight all of Reason/Wisdom/Basis/Balance/Crown (and I guess Reign, once her final defeat mechanics are in) in the final 10 loops? The idea of a boss rush sounds fun, but the tidbits of Reign's narrative does seem to hint at otherwise.

I really enjoy talking about game design philosophy. I could ramble at length, but I always feel like the time is better spent actually developing the game.

Regarding boss fights specifically, everything currently in campaign mode is part of the "Reign route," which will just have the regular individual boss fights right up to Loop 35. But each of the boss Chosen are planned to have their own route, and those will switch things up a bit. For example, Splendor's route will be possible to trigger when you've used Despair to defeat her, Victory, and Judgment, meaning that they've been neutralized without actually being "broken." At the end of the route, the three of them will escape your dungeon and fight you as a team, with Splendor also being in "serious mode" rather than intentionally losing. It should be a pretty fun fight.

1. can we please have cheat items to significantly (*10) increase evac & exterm requirements?
2. make it possible to override current break of a chosen by repeatedly subjecting to new break's way?
3. it is really annoying to lose commanders so easily to detonation (on the same turn capture is preformed, no less!) delay / nerf it / cheat to add commander's captures?

Adding logic to override breaks might be tricky, but I'll make a note to add some cheats for just directly increasing your evac/exterm/captures/etc. Maybe something like "infinite resources" so that you can keep the battle going for basically as long as you want.

All the dialogue for the commander humanoid form makes me think that if this was a actual Magical Girl TV show, there would be a whole ass arc side-plot where one of the girls ends up finding out that a schoolmate of hers is actually just a human form of the demon lord or something and then they fight and she feels betrayed and stuff. After all, you can make your commander look entirely human...

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2012 had a similar plot to this I think.

The idea of personally messing with the Chosen during their civilian lives is one that has come up a lot. I like the concept, it's just hard to fit it into a gameplay niche, which is why it's only appeared in the form of a couple of static vignettes at this point. Eventually, I'd like to add a way to use the Approach system to interact with the Chosen in human form without them knowing that you're the Demon Lord, which might fit better with that sort of thing.

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Comma, space, comma, space.

Thanks for catching this. It'll be fixed in the next release.

Am I the only one that thinks that kissing is a bit annoying? The girls are always trying to kiss us which always muffles their dialogue (It's not like I didn't see it before, but it's still a bit annoying).

I've gotten feedback like this before. When adding new custom sex scene actions, I always want to make sure they show up often enough that players can see the new stuff without needing to jump through too many hoops. But sometimes I go a bit overboard. I'll make a note to tweak it back down to a more reasonable level.

don't sure bug or i just don't understood condition right
fulfilling despair on last day (day 20 on first loop), don't acctualy make them fall into despair
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I've been trying to figure out how this could happen, and I haven't managed to reproduce it yet. If you (or somebody else) can provide a save from the last day before the deadline where you can fulfill the condition but still have it end up like this, I'd greatly appreciate being able to take a look at it.

I'm a decent chunk through my current run (about to fight Love), and will probably have more thoughts when done as I've decided to do a few things different this run: I've focused on creating a bunch of Succubi from Lillith's Awakening, which had its own complications of delaying distortions until after T4 INN in most cases, but mechanically: MegaloSplendor (which is a hilarious fight with new despair condition), Despair (with breaks) Victory, MegaloReign (although letting her run free to see how bad her loop 21+ fights are) and soon to be MegaloLove to finally kick Splendor from the position. I haven't skipped any loops.

But here's a lot of rambling for now:

1. I didn't go into the run with the intention to use it, but I've had fun with Mobile Dungeon and an Aversion Undead.

I use Day 1 to train the "virgin" Undead with Drain Soul, leading to a gain of 75 or so EE which is enough to buy 'Networked Consciousness' and deploy a Tempt forsaken for Day 2. Then reset her memories if I want to train again for a bunch more EE OR need to do a Raid to inflict billions of ANGST in order to get a good baseline of damage, lock chosen into higher downtime actions or get enough to Negotiate to counter annoying Angels stealing it.

It's also the first time I realised what Strategic Advantage does when you let the chosen get the buff.

This is the first I've seen somebody report using the Mobile Dungeon like that, so I'm happy to see that it's being appreciated! Any sort of corruption reversing effect is strong when you can get a "bonus from increasing corruption" effect at the same time. Though, the one from Aversion Undead might be so free that it's actually too powerful.

2. Despair Victory is working decently, although I do wish I could make her more expensive. The base price is 17 EE after breaking T4 DIG for the +trauma buff, but I could/would easily pay more in almost all cases. With that punisher effect, INJU/EXPO feels the best style as PLEA/INJU/EXPO seems a bit weak. Doesn't lead to the longest second surround, but tends to hit 7/10 or so which is decent enough. The first chosen captured has the MegaloReign buff and future ones have the first chosen's EXPO levels.

I haven't had much use for her defiler 'Regroup', but having 1400 extermination with no items and only a bunch of spared is kinda nice as a passive.

This is basically the use case for the Forsaken Punishers that result in a lower corruption level. It still probably isn't strong enough to compete with the +trauma buff, though.

Oh speaking of her defiler, it doesn't have an actual name in the forsaken list - Just repeats her style instead.

Thank you for catching this! It'll be fixed in the next version.

I believe she'll end up as a vastly superior Second-In-Command than if you simply put her there via Megalomaniac, as the passive and option to buff her trauma damage feels better than +50% to bosses. I'll see when fighting 21+ Loop Reign I guess, but I don't have prior experience to compare to.

3. Splendor is a jerk as always when you leave her as the Second-in-Command, but she has been fairly good at keeping the spot warm. She's my go-to forsaken to farm Devil punisher progress and she's also fun to send at Victory just to hear them bicker at each other.

Writing those lines was fun. That's the other big reason I'm looking forward to adding the ability to take them both on at once.

CSdev loving the game! reporting some really bad wording here.

Mating Dance here says other Chosen can only be targeted by Forsaken for 3 turns. This wording is way too confusing.
Maybe something like "Other Chosen cannot be targeted for 3 turns except by Forsaken." would be better

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This probably could be improved. I'll take a look at it.

During customization does the "shoot" weapon category include thrown weapons, or only those actually shooting some form of ammo?
Asking since I noticed the pre-created shurikens fall under it, and I´d like to make someone throwing vials of poison around, but I´m not sure if it´d fit with the "shoot" lines.

Currently, shurikens are considered a special case, and there isn't a custom option that will give you throwing weapons. It wouldn't be too hard to add some more custom weapon types, so if anybody else has a request, now's a good time to let me know!

 

[Nightclaw]

This is the first I've seen somebody report using the Mobile Dungeon like that, so I'm happy to see that it's being appreciated! Any sort of corruption reversing effect is strong when you can get a "bonus from increasing corruption" effect at the same time. Though, the one from Aversion Undead might be so free that it's actually too powerful.

I initially did think the Aversion Undead is a bit too powerful in this niche scenario, although after thinking about it some more: It does require a heavyweight item to work as an cost and until I started using the undead for that purpose, I would use one of the previous loop's forsaken before I spared/sacrificed them to offset Splendor's shenanigans. The undead just allowed me to repeat the usage more efficiently. Raid training is the only one I'd ever repeat in a single loop, which is easy enough to use a throwaway for.

So I'm undecided if it's too powerful or just a better option for a specific niche.

This is basically the use case for the Forsaken Punishers that result in a lower corruption level. It still probably isn't strong enough to compete with the +trauma buff, though.

Speaking of Aversion Undead and another niche that needs a heavyweight item: My hope was that I'd also get Velvet Key and be able to sacrifice an Aversion Undead onto Victory in order to give her a better defiler (either Tempt or Orgy, I hadn't decided), alongside a lower Disgrace, but I hadn't yet had the option to pick the precursor item let alone Velvet Key itself.

Writing those lines was fun. That's the other big reason I'm looking forward to adding the ability to take them both on at once.

Yeah, it's certainly fun to throw each of the various bosses against each other for their interactions. I personally like Splendor's most, but the others are still good. In any case, I've probably said it before but all the little tidbits about future plans for routes/fights/etc are very much something I'm looking forward to.