Unironically, I encourage people to make their own game if they want something that caters to them. Not in a dismissive way, but like, Divine Dawn started off as me thinking "man I wish there was a vanilla-focused VNRPG" and just kinda kept going from there. I don't think it's *better* than games like Corruption of Champions or Monster Girl Dreams, I just wanted a different flavor.
I hope that doesn't come off as me dismissing anyone's desires, it's totally fine to wish a game had more of the stuff you like in it. I just want to be encouraging, even if making these games is kind of a rough experience.
I think it's the 2nd real combat area (Expanse) that gives you a copyright-free Estus Flask with a few charges each run, which will be upgradeable soon when the alchemy update hits. You can also put 5-10 points into Vitality to get access to some really good traits for bonus health and health regen. Most party members have some form of healing support, whether for themselves or you, though some like Maya are definitely harder to run if you can't help with that.
Tiger stance also has a trait that gives AOE heal to party under certain circumstances, and some of the shouts can help with that if you have Charisma.
Yeah Greataxe is fantastic if you want to see your health constantly going up and down lmao, mostly hitting equilibrium around 40% hp.
Plenty of people have done a lot without much healing. You can kill faster or safer. From what I've heard in the discord, most don't use the potions much, they're just there as a backup for if you don't build sustainability at all.
That's not to say the game is perfectly balanced, it isn't, just that you don't really need to go hard on sustain to do fine. 5-10 points on vitality and 1-2 traits from it is enough to cruise through a lot of stuff, various channels can do it as well, and most party members have some form of sustain (healing, regen, lifesteal) to where you have plenty of options to build a viable party. Some party members also get choices/upgrades later that can significantly affect what they do; you can turn Sam into a mage, melee, or hybrid, depending on what you need.
The game isn't hard enough to require GOOD builds, but I try to encourage working some synergy into a build. If that was a good design decision is another question.
Glad to hear it! It's been a learning experience for sure, but I always felt that sexual relationships had more meaning if you also had an emotional connection, so that's been a significant focus of the game. There is a lot of sex overall (I think 30-something scenes atm), but a lot more buildup to make the relationships feel more earned and real-ish. Should be another update in 2 weeks or so, so hopefully not too long to wait.
