Hopefully I'm not letting any cats out of a bag right now, but are piercings supposed to be free on Mike's side of the fence?
Figured I'd just ask that before going into full bug-report mode. With my tendency to jump in & out of the thread for months at a time, I accept that I may have missed this being addressed and mentioned as intended behaviour or having being fixed already (as I'm rarely on the latest version).
Also, anyone happen to know if there's a safe way to remove a skill for an ensuing play-through? I'm curious if setting 'DATA_SKILLS > skillname' to zero before ending a run will do the trick safely, but I'm also wondering if having a bunch of skill entries listed at zero is why my current NG+ save is broken in places. I'm just hoping it's less time consuming to take a full-save and dial it back a bit, than it is to take a new save and bump it up.
Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to rampage through town like Oprah who's just been handed a pair of piercing guns, yippee ki yay!