RPGM Completed Star Knightess Aura [v1.2.1] [aura-dev]

[Senya_boy]

One important difference from what it sounds like you're describing is that SKA doesn't have the single/correct solutions that puzzle games do. There are different effective builds and different ways to take down the various enemies in the game, even if sometimes when you beat an enemy it will feel like you found the only way to do it.

Oh yeah, there's definitely a broad solution space to the game, it's part of what makes it so cool to me. Like, if you think about it, it's a pretty tough design balance to strike: if you make there be *too* many approaches that work, then you eventually reach a point where pretty much anything does, and you're back to there not being any challenge at all. This definitely avoids that, very much making you have to think about your approach, while still allowing for several diverse approaches to end up working.

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On a totally unrelated note: long shot, but does anyone happen to know if there's a 'boss' (as counted by the score calculator) in game that is more commonly missed? I'm coming up at the end of a playthrough where I've tried to be super thorough, and by my calculation am going to be two short. One I can see in my Compendium: Lorraine, which I assume is only fought on a more corrupt / Roland-aligned path. The other isn't even in my Compendium at all, though, unless I somehow missed it while looking through a couple times, and I've got no idea where there could be a monster that I've just missed coming across entirely.

Not a super big deal, obviously, but does make me curious enough to ask if there's maybe some common community knowledge like "oh yeah, folk always tend to miss so-and-so, since they're tucked away in this hidden corner".

 

[Sir Edward Ross]

Oh yeah, there's definitely a broad solution space to the game, it's part of what makes it so cool to me. Like, if you think about it, it's a pretty tough design balance to strike: if you make there be *too* many approaches that work, then you eventually reach a point where pretty much anything does, and you're back to there not being any challenge at all. This definitely avoids that, very much making you have to think about your approach, while still allowing for several diverse approaches to end up working.

-----------------------

On a totally unrelated note: long shot, but does anyone happen to know if there's a 'boss' (as counted by the score calculator) in game that is more commonly missed? I'm coming up at the end of a playthrough where I've tried to be super thorough, and by my calculation am going to be two short. One I can see in my Compendium: Lorraine, which I assume is only fought on a more corrupt / Roland-aligned path. The other isn't even in my Compendium at all, though, unless I somehow missed it while looking through a couple times, and I've got no idea where there could be a monster that I've just missed coming across entirely.

Not a super big deal, obviously, but does make me curious enough to ask if there's maybe some common community knowledge like "oh yeah, folk always tend to miss so-and-so, since they're tucked away in this hidden corner".

You don't need to kill Lorraine.

The ones that are the easiest to miss imo are the Drug Dealer in the Underground and the two bosses from Slay the Demon.

 

[ben akeba]

That's not correct. You can always work as a prostitute or at the blacksmith to earn gold and a good number of items are re-stocked at regular intervals.

At best you could say that you're limited by the corruption gain, being unable to work at the blacksmith for 1000 days straight for example,

But that's not the same as "finite gold".

you have to finish the game in a certain number of days if you want to see most events and reach a main ending ... so there is an upper limit making it definitional ^^ though you aren't completely wrong as if you discard the interest in seeing the events of the game and reach a main ending you aren't limited (much) but as a player you sure have some uncomon aim in a game >< finishing a game by reaching a dead end or the extreme lower criterion for an ending seem all kind of wrong to me :S
but you do you i'll go play puzzle with lots of text and drawing while you watch a thousand time the same art before reaching a bad end ^^ (because i'm wrong and you are correct ><)

 

[Zarkhy]

(because i'm wrong and you are correct ><)

Glad you're not one of those people who can't admit when they're wrong

Almost makes me want to read the rest of your post

 

[Sir Edward Ross]

you have to finish the game in a certain number of days if you want to see most events and reach a main ending ... so there is an upper limit making it definitional ^^ though you aren't completely wrong as if you discard the interest in seeing the events of the game and reach a main ending you aren't limited (much) but as a player you sure have some uncomon aim in a game >< finishing a game by reaching a dead end or the extreme lower criterion for an ending seem all kind of wrong to me :S
but you do you i'll go play puzzle with lots of text and drawing while you watch a thousand time the same art before reaching a bad end ^^ (because i'm wrong and you are correct ><)

You do not need to finish the game in a certain number of days. All that affects is the difficulty of some bosses and some minor rewards for completing certain quests.

 

[ben akeba]

Glad you're not one of those people who can't admit when they're wrong

Almost makes me want to read the rest of your post

not much worth in my comment, just my view that as you have time constraint every ressource is finite and make the game a puzzle more than a rpg ( as a man of culture i'm here for the text and fine art so no problem for me ^^)

 

[ben akeba]

You do not need to finish the game in a certain number of days. All that affects is the difficulty of some bosses and some minor rewards for completing certain quests.

not too sure you have much choice in the ending if you go for a thoussand hooker/smithy days run (pretty sure you also miss some text variation as there is some for being fast but none for being a slow ass mother fucker -_-)

 

[Yellowie The Goldie]

you have to finish the game in a certain number of days if you want to see most events and reach a main ending ... so there is an upper limit making it definitional ^^ though you aren't completely wrong as if you discard the interest in seeing the events of the game and reach a main ending you aren't limited (much) but as a player you sure have some uncomon aim in a game >< finishing a game by reaching a dead end or the extreme lower criterion for an ending seem all kind of wrong to me :S
but you do you i'll go play puzzle with lots of text and drawing while you watch a thousand time the same art before reaching a bad end ^^ (because i'm wrong and you are correct ><)

If you don't kill all the Demon Generals by day 100, they'll have regenerated all of their full power that they lost in the prologue. The ones that are the hardest to kill because of it, are the Demon Generals of Wrath (Sathanas, castle to the west), Gluttony and Envy. (Beelzebub and Leviathan.) The others are harder but totally doable without massively farming for everything.

In general, you're able to do ALL of the content with no day limit. You don't lose any specific content, at worst just a few less opportunities for small bonuses like money or vitality potions.

The 'no day limit' part is relative, since you still have to fight against corruption and avoid getting too much of it or else you go poof. You gain 1 corruption per two days.

 

[Senya_boy]

You don't need to kill Lorraine.

The ones that are the easiest to miss imo are the Drug Dealer in the Underground and the two bosses from Slay the Demon.

Thanks! Yeah it was the Slay the Demon ones; I actually ended up finding that out not too long after making my post, but I appreciate the answer regardless. I had wanted to beat that little mini-game regardless, since it was the one thing I hadn't managed to do before, but somehow it never crossed my mind that they would count.

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While I'm tossing random thoughts / questions out there: is there a generally accepted understanding of what the limitations of Dolus' power is meant to be, either from an in-universe or from a game mechanics point of view?

For the former, the scene that sticks with me is in the Festival, where one of his lies fails to work on Aura, and he says something to the effect of "oh yeah, I forgot about that limitation". It's actually not entirely clear to me whether his powers are supposed to be able to work directly on her or if she has some degree of immunity, so maybe it's as simple as that?

For the latter, his fight was one I had always used collar on, but I used a guide on another run-through to see what the fight was like without using it, and was really caught off guard when his lies failed to become true and therefore backfired on him. Seemed like a really cool mechanic, but I have absolutely no idea what it was about what I did that actually caused that to happen, since I could swear I'd had previous attempts before pulling my collar where they became true.

 

[Yellowie The Goldie]

Thanks! Yeah it was the Slay the Demon ones; I actually ended up finding that out not too long after making my post, but I appreciate the answer regardless. I had wanted to beat that little mini-game regardless, since it was the one thing I hadn't managed to do before, but somehow it never crossed my mind that they would count.

------------------------------------

While I'm tossing random thoughts / questions out there: is there a generally accepted understanding of what the limitations of Dolus' power is meant to be, either from an in-universe or from a game mechanics point of view?

For the former, the scene that sticks with me is in the Festival, where one of his lies fails to work on Aura, and he says something to the effect of "oh yeah, I forgot about that limitation". It's actually not entirely clear to me whether his powers are supposed to be able to work directly on her or if she has some degree of immunity, so maybe it's as simple as that?

For the latter, his fight was one I had always used collar on, but I used a guide on another run-through to see what the fight was like without using it, and was really caught off guard when his lies failed to become true and therefore backfired on him. Seemed like a really cool mechanic, but I have absolutely no idea what it was about what I did that actually caused that to happen, since I could swear I'd had previous attempts before pulling my collar where they became true.

Dolus's power is basically "I'm going to tell you this thing, and you will believe it whether or not it's true.". That's how he got inside of the festival, y'know? His name wasn't on the list but he used his Divine Gift to implant that thought in her head, and it simply worked. Because she believed it to be true.

The limitation regarding that I believe, is that he can't use it against "The Hero" (Demon King). As for the case with Aura...It's possibly because of the Collar of Corruption. You see, that collar is how Aura is able to gain more power by consuming a demon's essence or whatever, right? It's possible that the same collar is also the reason WHY she is able to resist it: his Divine Gift can't work on other Demons.

Which is why when Aura uses her Divine Gift to fight him and beat him...Those lies work because the collar is off temporarily, and she's no longer bound by (limited) demonic possession...until the fight is over.

This is of course, just my interpretation of it.

 

[hollowmosquito]

Do we ever get to corrupt jon or desmond like paul and charlotte?

 

[Yellowie The Goldie]

Do we ever get to corrupt jon or desmond like paul and charlotte?

No. John and Desmond are both of pure heart, with great conviction. They both come from different walks of life, but they incorruptible and completely set in their ways to fighting against pure evil.

Charlotte is naive and impressionable, meaning she's able to be corrupted more easily. And Paul was inflicted with a curse, which if you further worsened it: he would do a complete 180, since (s)he'd also be overtaken by the Curse of Lust.

 

[Sir Edward Ross]

Dolus's power is basically "I'm going to tell you this thing, and you will believe it whether or not it's true.". That's how he got inside of the festival, y'know? His name wasn't on the list but he used his Divine Gift to implant that thought in her head, and it simply worked. Because she believed it to be true.

The limitation regarding that I believe, is that he can't use it against "The Hero" (Demon King). As for the case with Aura...It's possibly because of the Collar of Corruption. You see, that collar is how Aura is able to gain more power by consuming a demon's essence or whatever, right? It's possible that the same collar is also the reason WHY she is able to resist it: his Divine Gift can't work on other Demons.

Which is why when Aura uses her Divine Gift to fight him and beat him...Those lies work because the collar is off temporarily, and she's no longer bound by (limited) demonic possession...until the fight is over.

This is of course, just my interpretation of it.

Another possibility is that there's a distinction between Dolus' lies in and out of combat - specifically, who he's lying to. Maybe when he fights Aura, it's not that Aura believes his lies, but that he's lying to himself, so he doesn't need her to believe him.

That doesn't explain the backfire mechanic, but it seems reasonable to assume that Dolus doesn't often encounter situations where he tries to lie to someone but tells the truth instead. So possibly that's just how it always works and it hasn't come up before.

 

[ben akeba]

If you don't kill all the Demon Generals by day 100, they'll have regenerated all of their full power that they lost in the prologue. The ones that are the hardest to kill because of it, are the Demon Generals of Wrath (Sathanas, castle to the west), Gluttony and Envy. (Beelzebub and Leviathan.) The others are harder but totally doable without massively farming for everything.

In general, you're able to do ALL of the content with no day limit. You don't lose any specific content, at worst just a few less opportunities for small bonuses like money or vitality potions.

The 'no day limit' part is relative, since you still have to fight against corruption and avoid getting too much of it or else you go poof. You gain 1 corruption per two days.

did i mistook for another game then ?
i thought i remembered there to be multiple events that had time limit one around 45 and another around 90 and both had impact on the content of the ending and it's direction (i play a lot so i may have mixed more than one game in it and remembered poorly -_-)

 

[Zarkhy]

did i mistook for another game then ?
i thought i remembered there to be multiple events that had time limit one around 45 and another around 90 and both had impact on the content of the ending and it's direction (i play a lot so i may have mixed more than one game in it and remembered poorly -_-)

Seems like you've mixed something up.

As far as the "good" ending goes, there are variations/extras based on Aura's level of corruption, but that's more or less it.

For the "bad" ending the variations are more about the things you did/didn't do, such as if Paul(a) is still an adventurer or not.

 

[ddjn]

okay, i wanted to ask something: is there some area that can only be accessed via airship ? There is still some masked areas near my end game with Richard.

 

[username1234!]

aura-dev, please read this feedback for the ending for v1.1.1

Spoiler: Issues with v1.1 ending

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

 

[Senya_boy]

okay, i wanted to ask something: is there some area that can only be accessed via airship ? There is still some masked areas near my end game with Richard.

Nope, no such thing. Have you reached Expert Rank Adventurer yet? Off the top of my head, that seems like the most likely thing to be blocking your access to an area when you're otherwise at the end game. (Secondary guess: fight your way out of Winterfell and leave by land, if you haven't already).

aura-dev, please read this feedback for the ending for v1.1.1

[SNIP]

I'll admit I actually had some thoughts along similar lines as yours when I hit the Maid Ending, but one core point of disagreement: a story can't spoil itself. You getting context-less bits of character introductions or development or what have you is just the story setting you up to wonder how they play into things, or how it ends up making sense, etc., and you get to mull that over until you get there.

Also, to answer your game mechanics question, since it's not unique to the ending at all: in order to have the option to turn down any Lewd action, your Lewdness has to be less than (or equal to?) your current effective Will. Your effective Will is whatever your actual current Will score is, plus (or, more likely, minus) any special modifiers you may have. (As an example, the Obedient Maid 'skill' you get from earlier Arwin events lowers your effective Will when doing checks involving influential people, such as Arwin himself).

Going through the 3 Day path definitely stacks a ton of these modifiers on you, so I'm not actually sure if it's possible to still win afterwards, though I'm guessing it is. At the very least, though, you'd definitely want to make sure your Will power was maxed out going into the encounter (pretty sure you can buy Emerald Teas in the Festival to bump it up to max).

 

[smkey21]

aura-dev, please read this feedback for the ending for v1.1.1

Spoiler: Issues with v1.1 ending

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

I'm not going to cover all of your post, but I can answer a couple things. Working the extra days isn't a forced game over, but depending on your choices you can end up in a state where you can't possibly pass the willpower check. This isn't the only time you'll run into this sort of situation in the game. Richard's behavior is because he bets on Aura winning her fight against Arwin, which ends up benefiting him quite a bit in the other endings, but backfires in the new ending. I wouldn't call the ending bits that address unvisited areas spoilers, for one thing, those scenes only occur during the maid ending.

I'll agree it could be jarring to have a bunch of unknown characters and locations thrown at you in an epilogue, but removing those scenes isn't the solution. There isn't a big red warning sign for that ending, but there are pretty blatant clues that Aura returning to Arwin will end up being bad for her. It's even still possible to escape that route. The game gives you way more freedom than most games, and one downside of that freedom is that the order in which players gain access to the game's lore can vary quite a bit. Here's an example, it's possible to access an extremely late game area before the festival of greed, and if you use remove collar to brute force your way through a bunch of obstacles and tough enemies you can encounter a major spoiler. It would be extremely odd behavior for a first playthrough, but it's possible on story difficulty, so I could see a completionist ignoring the obvious difficulty spike and pushing through to that point. Also, there are both lore scenes that trigger while Aura is getting corrupted by Alicia and optional pieces of lore in Roya, so there's no special "intended order" to encounter the game's plot.

 

[Sir Edward Ross]

I'm not going to cover all of your post, but I can answer a couple things. Working the extra days isn't a forced game over, but depending on your choices you can end up in a state where you can't possibly pass the willpower check. This isn't the only time you'll run into this sort of situation in the game. Richard's behavior is because he bets on Aura winning her fight against Arwin, which ends up benefiting him quite a bit in the other endings, but backfires in the new ending. I wouldn't call the ending bits that address unvisited areas spoilers, for one thing, those scenes only occur during the maid ending.

I'll agree it could be jarring to have a bunch of unknown characters and locations thrown at you in an epilogue, but removing those scenes isn't the solution. There isn't a big red warning sign for that ending, but there are pretty blatant clues that Aura returning to Arwin will end up being bad for her. It's even still possible to escape that route. The game gives you way more freedom than most games, and one downside of that freedom is that the order in which players gain access to the game's lore can vary quite a bit. Here's an example, it's possible to access an extremely late game area before the festival of greed, and if you use remove collar to brute force your way through a bunch of obstacles and tough enemies you can encounter a major spoiler. It would be extremely odd behavior for a first playthrough, but it's possible on story difficulty, so I could see a completionist ignoring the obvious difficulty spike and pushing through to that point. Also, there are both lore scenes that trigger while Aura is getting corrupted by Alicia and optional pieces of lore in Roya, so there's no special "intended order" to encounter the game's plot.

I'm curious what late game area you're referring to. A lot of areas are unlocked via quests that aren't available until after the Festival. The only thing I can think of is the chronicle fragments in the far eastern exit caves, but I wouldn't really call that an extremely late game area.