RPGM Star Knightess Aura [v0.44.0] [aura-dev]

[Pretentious Goblin]

Does anyone know what sensitivities and festishes actually do? Like what does cheating 1 mean compared to cheating 0?

I think it lowers the effective willpower you have for associated scenes. E.g. if you have 8 current willpower and 8 Cheating and you go to start one of Hermann's dates, you'll get the pink version. Also Lewd Knowledge can increase your MATK once you have a read a certain book, and you need a certain amount of Exhib for specific things, including a mental change.

 

[subli]

I knew about the book. Hope someone knows with more certainty. If its only 1 effective willpower then its a bit underwhelming, one willpower is very little.

Edit: Usually we only talk about Roya strategy, but here's a little strategic tidbit for Alicia: Useless Knowledge (+1 progress required for non-lewd books, requires two study books to be removed) can be activated very early. The bottleneck is that 7 days need to pass after the first book has been removed until the second book is removed, so for the fastest speed you have to unlock the interests room and remove a study book on the first two opportunities that you get. Then you have seven days to unlock the relationships room, improve disposition towards Alicia once, insert Alicia into the tutor slot, wait two days after starting tutoring for the fashion magazine interest to materialize, and finally insert the interest. That means that you can waste no more than one day if you want to remove the second study book, and activate the skill on the first day it becomes possible.

If I've calculated correctly the skill can be active on day 12 at the earliest, which puts a significant pressure on Aura to spend her early days reading, to get through as many books as possible before then.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

I knew about the book. Hope someone knows with more certainty. If its only 1 effective willpower then its a bit underwhelming, one willpower is very little

It seems each scene can have a fetish and a sensitivity lowering effective willpower (among other things like Withdrawal). E.g. the guard breast flashing scene: I have 50 willpower after Corruption. I go to the guard and see the option to start the scene or decline. I see that Leave shows 41 willpower. Why not 50? I'm pretty sure because of my 5 exhib and 4 breast sensitivity. I go to the other guard for pussy-flashing and what do I see? 39, which makes perfect sense given my vag sensitivity of 6.

 

[subli]

Yep, seems like you've figured it out. I would have wished the effect was more pronounced though, 10 or 11 willpower is not a big difference.

 

[Zarkhy]

There is also the new fulfillment passive from the latest update to consider. Based on sensitivity of body part you'll gain a stat boost for doing h-scenes.

Other than that, I'll have to assume there will be more scenes and mental changes that require a certain amount of a fetish or sensitivity.

 

[subli]

Ok, so I've given it some thought and I've decided that I actually have multiple issues with the way that the willpower check to resist lewd actions currently work.

The first is that it appears that the difficulty is always the same: willpower < lewdness + sensitivity + fetish. This doesn't really make sense, because it ought to be easier to resist having sex with a stranger in public than to resist pretending to be someone's girlfriend. A simple way to address this might be to have the check only look at lewdness beyond the minimum lewdness for the action.

The second is that it is far too lenient. I have to ask what kind of player/playthrough is the mechanic meant for. I would say that someone doing a high lewdness run is going to seek out lewd scenes anyway, so the mechanic is not very important for them, it should be a challenge for someone trying to do a low lewdness run to overcome. But currently it presents no obstacle at all. With 10 lewdness, 5 sensitivity and 5 fetish, which is a lot, especially for a low lewdness run, but even then you would need willpower to be less than 20 to be forced into the action, which is extremely low. I would suggest tying it to difficulty, each point increasing the minimum willpower by 1 on easy, by 2 on normal and by 5 on hard. If not combined with my first suggestion, or something like it, then 5 on hard might be a bit much, maybe drop it down to 3 in that case.

And finally the game very rarely forces you to engage in conversations where a lewd option is offered, so it generally doesn't matter how the willpower works out because you can simply choose not to engage in the scene. The only cases I can think of off the top of my head are John asking for alternative payment for teaching protect, peeking in the shed in the refugee camp, saving the slave girl in the festival and talking to the bandits on the bridge. The demon cultist prisoner in the jail in Trademond has to be talked to, but Aura doesn't need to answer his request unless you talk to him again for instance.

 

[aura-dev]

Ok, so I've given it some thought and I've decided that I actually have multiple issues with the way that the willpower check to resist lewd actions currently work.

The first is that it appears that the difficulty is always the same: willpower < lewdness + sensitivity + fetish. This doesn't really make sense, because it ought to be easier to resist having sex with a stranger in public than to resist pretending to be someone's girlfriend. A simple way to address this might be to have the check only look at lewdness beyond the minimum lewdness for the action.

The second is that it is far too lenient. I have to ask what kind of player/playthrough is the mechanic meant for. I would say that someone doing a high lewdness run is going to seek out lewd scenes anyway, so the mechanic is not very important for them, it should be a challenge for someone trying to do a low lewdness run to overcome. But currently it presents no obstacle at all. With 10 lewdness, 5 sensitivity and 5 fetish, which is a lot, especially for a low lewdness run, but even then you would need willpower to be less than 20 to be forced into the action, which is extremely low. I would suggest tying it to difficulty, each point increasing the minimum willpower by 1 on easy, by 2 on normal and by 5 on hard. If not combined with my first suggestion, or something like it, then 5 on hard might be a bit much, maybe drop it down to 3 in that case.

And finally the game very rarely forces you to engage in conversations where a lewd option is offered, so it generally doesn't matter how the willpower works out because you can simply choose not to engage in the scene. The only cases I can think of off the top of my head are John asking for alternative payment for teaching protect, peeking in the shed in the refugee camp, saving the slave girl in the festival and talking to the bandits on the bridge. The demon cultist prisoner in the jail in Trademond has to be talked to, but Aura doesn't need to answer his request unless you talk to him again for instance.

I don't want to tie the check to difficulty since that could lead people actively looking for triggering pink content starting on Hard mode or something like when I added womb of lust. In general, the checks are made up through the accumulation of all effects, lewdness, secondary lewd stats, willpower reduction through passives, willpower reduction through corruption, max willpower reductions, etc.

The system is mostly fixed at this point of development and I would a very, very convincing argument to a system that's guaranteed to be better. The time budget allocated to refining is pretty much done by now.

 

[subli]

That's disappointing. I would have that we could have a system where it is possible for Aura to be forced into lewd content by Luciela's brainwashing, but I can't see how that could possibly happen under this system. And once it could happen under this system she could be forced into anything and everything, no slippery slope, just a cliff.

 

[aura-dev]

That's disappointing. I would have that we could have a system where it is possible for Aura to be forced into lewd content by Luciela's brainwashing, but I can't see how that could possibly happen under this system. And once it could happen under this system she could be forced into anything and everything, no slippery slope, just a cliff.

Is this a confirmed fact or a worry?

Minimum lewdness is also added on the resistance side, making Aura more resistant to higher checks. Also the passive effects such as Withdrawal make it easy to get Aura into taking drugs but not anything else, time also causes a sort of oscilatory behavior due to womb of lust and its resets with the frequency increasing as the game progresses.

 

[subli]

Is this a confirmed fact or a worry?

Worry, but a fairly well grounded worry I feel.

Minimum lewdness is also added on the resistance side, making Aura more resistant to higher checks.

My impression was that it did not. One of my suggestions was that it should be.

Also the passive effects such as Withdrawal make it easy to get Aura into taking drugs but not anything else, time also causes a sort of oscilatory behavior due to womb of lust and its resets with the frequency increasing as the game progresses.

There are a few limited exceptions like drugs and the But Its So Cute skill that's true. I don't think the womb of lust cycle has much of an impact here. The story generally advances when you've beaten some boss, and you can usually only beat a boss you previously couldn't when you're not cursed, meaning you have high willpower.

 

[subli]

I've found a decent and somewhat surprising strategy for fighting the first minotaur: learning protect and defensive stance with aura and having her tank everything up to and including the first rampage, allowing the others to start doing damage immediately.

 

[bryan1dragneel]

is anyone else having problems on their third date with hermann? the meeting starts but gets stuck when the event starts.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

is anyone else having problems on their third date with hermann? the meeting starts but gets stuck when the event starts.

Yeah, apparently that's an issue in the leaked 0.20.0. You may have to wait 8 days or so for the official public release of 0.20, which fixes some gamebreaking bugs.

 

[BigMistake69]

UPDATE: Not a bug

Build: 0.20.0

I've encountered a bug where my Lewdness won't rise above a certain value (19) despite committing actions that should raise my Lewdness by +1 (such as reading lewd skill books). I understand there is a maximum, but I was under the impression that value is above 19. Experimenting with an earlier save, I was unable to get my Lewdness value above 18 with any activity except for the toll bandit blowjob, which raised it to 19. All other actions raised Corruption/Lewd Knowledge but didn't add any Lewd points.

file8.zip: Earliest save I have Lewdness 18 before bridge BJ raising it to 19.
file10.zip: After getting my Lewdness to 19, last lewd action was giving a blowjob to the highwayman on the bridge leading south.

 

[Pretentious Goblin]

Build: 0.20.0

I've encountered a bug where my Lewdness won't rise above a certain value (19) despite committing actions that should raise my Lewdness by +1 (such as reading lewd skill books). I understand there is a maximum, but I was under the impression that value is above 19. Experimenting with an earlier save, I was unable to get my Lewdness value above 18 with any activity except for the toll bandit blowjob, which raised it to 19. All other actions raised Corruption/Lewd Knowledge but didn't add any Lewd points.

file8.zip: Earliest save I have Lewdness 18 before bridge BJ raising it to 19.
file10.zip: After getting my Lewdness to 19, last lewd action was giving a blowjob to the highwayman on the bridge leading south.

A couple of things to know about lewdness:

1. Each scene has a "pink" version that potentially doubles the lewdness increase as well as secondary lewd stat increase (Exhibitionism, breast sensitivity etc.). This happens when Aura's effective willpower is 0 during the decision whether to start the scene or not. Right now it's mostly a matter of drinking Vitality Potions/Sweet Memories before starting a scene, though a few other things can lower effective willpower as well, as discussed above.

2. Each scene has a range it is able to raise lewdness. It depends on the minimum lewdness of the scene. So e.g. reading books has no Lewdness requirement, but that means it can only raise lewdness to about 10. The slime scene has minimum lewdness 5, so I think it can only raise lewdness as far as 15.

3. Yeah, the +1 Lewdness in the book's description is misleading. It can increase lewdness, but only if you have <10 to start with.

Current max lewdness is 33 (you can see this in the NG+ room), which requires doing the scenes in an ideal order and with the "pink" version.

 

[BigMistake69]

A couple of things to know about lewdness:

1. Each scene has a "pink" version that potentially doubles the lewdness increase as well as secondary lewd stat increase (Exhibitionism, breast sensitivity etc.). This happens when Aura's effective willpower is 0 during the decision whether to start the scene or not. Right now it's mostly a matter of drinking Vitality Potions/Sweet Memories before starting a scene, though a few other things can lower effective willpower as well, as discussed above.

2. Each scene has a range it is able to raise lewdness. It depends on the minimum lewdness of the scene. So e.g. reading books has no Lewdness requirement, but that means it can only raise lewdness to about 10. The slime scene has minimum lewdness 5, so I think it can only raise lewdness as far as 15.

3. Yeah, the +1 Lewdness in the book's description is misleading. It can increase lewdness, but only if you have <10 to start with.

Current max lewdness is 33 (you can see this in the NG+ room), which requires doing the scenes in an ideal order and with the "pink" version.

Appreciate the knowledgeable response! I've noticed the pink scenes and double stat bonuses but had no idea about the effective range it can influence. Sorry for the "Boy who cried wolf" bug report.

So is everything basically +10 range from its minimum requirement? Also, is there a Max Lewdness (33) Guide anywhere?

The lewdness range could use more in-game display or hints in order to avoid confusion, IMO. Seems like a nice hidden-mechanic to promote repeat playthroughs for min-maxers not unlike other RPGs. However, it might be too-well-hidden for some (aka me).

Sorry again for the false bug report alarm.

 

[Zarkhy]

Also, is there a Max Lewdness (33) Guide anywhere?

There is a Max Lewdness guide linked in the OP.

The guide does get updated, but I'm not sure if it's been updated for the latest version (0.20.0) yet.

 

[aura-dev]

Another "getting stuck in Trademond" bug, this time after paying the formula peddler on the Save the Crops quest. Also some typos.

artifical -> artificial
schlick -> schtick
change -> chance
reigns -> reins
opportunity -> opportunities

Thanks for the reports! Fixed.

 

[Radbug]

The no art yet scenes, generally slow progression, impossible enemies without transform/combat balance issues, progression/corruption point system makes this one of the worst games to play mid development, specially if you hope to continue to play from a save.
Before all cp dump elements are implemented it's really annoying to play, the points build up and you have nothing to use them on so might as well stop playing.

Same here. I really hope the next update will be fully focused on mental changes and ways to reduce corruption. I'm in a situation (normal mode and I DON'T want to switch to easy) where I can do literally just one new thing (I reached my cp cap limit already) play for 10 minutes and need to wait another whole month to next update. New system which allows you to reduce your stats for lewd knowledge or fetish is a huge disappointment for me because I don't trust magic damage from "lewdness". Also I do not focus on MATK for now and I have a little mana points, so switching to mage will be problematic half game.

2. Each scene has a range it is able to raise lewdness. It depends on the minimum lewdness of the scene. So e.g. reading books has no Lewdness requirement, but that means it can only raise lewdness to about 10. The slime scene has minimum lewdness 5, so I think it can only raise lewdness as far as 15.

I don't know about this after 25+ hours of playing! Why it wasn't mentioned at any point in the game? That's another unnecessary difficulty raising feature. Why? Just why?

 

[subli]

One positive aspect of the minimum willpower system that I hadn't considered earlier is that it does limit Aura's ability to use lewd abilities very sparingly to reset womb of lust. The minimum willpower increases how low she can allow her willpower to go before resetting it this way if she doesn't want to get the pink version.