Has anyone managed to finish a "pure" run on normal difficulty? I need tips cause I got frustrated mid way and went for a lewd run. Once I finish it, I want to attempt it again
I like psychological horror but even for me it's a bit too much. Aura being aware her mind is being messed up but still accepting it... and then that thing with Laura caused me a physical pain irl. Corruption path is not for the weak
Going in with a new game + with (relatively) high points helps you unlock various skills and/or start with some money which saves time. (very useful early on since there's a timer) You also want to do the Festival as quick as reasonably possible (ideally before day 20) and defeat all the Generals before day 100. (I think I beat the last one Pride on day 98)
After you've defeated all of them (including Pride and Lust) you have free time that doesn't count against you. Use that free time to learn new spells and skills, upgrade yours and your teams stats, and do side missions to help as many people as you can. (which helps in the final battle)
As long as you don't progress past the first room you're still "pure" so unlock what you have to keep your corruption manageable, using the Blessed water helps avoid game over. I would also avoid using the book corruptions as long as possible since that slows your reading speed and there's a ton of books that really help you out with skills and damage (Art of light and Tenacity being my favorite). Light 2 and 3 works great against most demons and Lightning works well against humans. Pierce 3, Slash 3, Light 3, Lightning Blade 2, Brittle 2, and Tenacity 2 are all skills I'd make sure I get before the end. Thunderbolt 3 or Fire 3 are good options depending on your personal playstyle. Tremor 3 is nice, but seems too expensive for it's cost. (It's great for low MD enemies but has little value against most strong foes)
Check the people you save, they can give you useful items or teach you spells/skills for free (Plus many will show up for the final battle). In the final battle having helped James and Lorraine, and kept Gabriel alive, is especially useful as they retain their strong skills.
Noon_Shadow
Newbie
- Nov 7, 2018
- 35
- 24
- 148
I played on hard until I got basically to the last dungeon, got like 150 NG+ score, and then did my pure run on explorer difficulty. Pure runs are very frustrating by design because of the extreme money crunch and difficulty with managing corruption. I think you can steer a middle path where you do a few of the early lewd scenes for value and then go pure after that.
Getting the discount from the alchemist is huge. I also just prefer not to deal with the full Curse of Greed, so you can do a lewd scene in the Festival of Greed scenario for the extra money and then get a couple of extra purifications in to purge the corruption.
OK, finally trying it out (bought the game).
I'm just past the prologue but I really like the atmosphere. I'vs sadly been spoiled a bit too much by reading this thread a bit, so I'm really hoping there are future updates to broaden some of the conceit of the game, however.
I'm really not a fan of the "you need to see every single scene of a tier before you can see something of the next tier" type of set up, especially as no one ever agrees on what counts as a higher tier, so there is always a last tier scene that I'd consider more vanilla than a much lower tier one. Or, you know, simply stuff that makes it impossible to want to continue.
REALLY hoping there will be more endings where you kill Richard than just the victory end, as well as more stuff with Alicia, and Rose, and George. I get that it's often the conceit that the loser asshole has to be the one the corrupted protag submit to, but it's imo very boring. I sadly don't expect the game to have a full corruption Aura Empress ending with George as her right hand butler toy, but one can dream.
I'm just past the prologue but I really like the atmosphere. I'vs sadly been spoiled a bit too much by reading this thread a bit, so I'm really hoping there are future updates to broaden some of the conceit of the game, however.
I'm really not a fan of the "you need to see every single scene of a tier before you can see something of the next tier" type of set up, especially as no one ever agrees on what counts as a higher tier, so there is always a last tier scene that I'd consider more vanilla than a much lower tier one. Or, you know, simply stuff that makes it impossible to want to continue.
REALLY hoping there will be more endings where you kill Richard than just the victory end, as well as more stuff with Alicia, and Rose, and George. I get that it's often the conceit that the loser asshole has to be the one the corrupted protag submit to, but it's imo very boring. I sadly don't expect the game to have a full corruption Aura Empress ending with George as her right hand butler toy, but one can dream.
Noon_Shadow
Newbie
- Nov 7, 2018
- 35
- 24
- 148
It's in Mt. Firestorm. I no longer have a save file where I can get a screencap, but it's in Mount Firestorm Caves 3, which is the cave past the Hi-Aethon. There's a skeleton guarded by 2 mutated pyroflowers at the south end of that cave.
Iexist
Engaged Member
- Jul 20, 2018
- 2,356
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Welp, I'm finally done with my first playthrough of Star Knightess Aura, on Normal, because I ain't no masochist. Surprisingly, I still got Ending variant A, even though it felt like I had gone quite deep into the Main room between Lewdness 32 and Vice 10 at 321 days... but I guess Aura hadn't fucked anyone else except George. (Apparently, the poor slimie during bonding 3 doesn't count?) Poor Gooey, he was a good boy, did so much for Aura, and yet he couldn't be her cheating partner. How sad. Slimies deserve more love.
Anyway, this is my Ending Room after the 1st playthrough. No idea if this is the best it can be or not. Wasn't too concerned about purity specifically.
Leaving that aside for now... time for my usual talk about the game that most sane people won't care about~
I'll start by saying that I kept an eye on this game for quite a while now. I don't remember exactly when I noticed it, but some peeks into its changelogs and plans made me think that it'd be quite interesting. I decided that this would be one of those games that I wouldn't touch until it was actually complete, and I'm honestly glad that I did it like that. Regardless of what kind of ending you end up at, this game is absolutely better as a story with a beginning and an ending, and I think playing incomplete versions of it would have soured the experience (especially since games aren't quite as convenient as e-books where you can read a chapter and wait for the next patiently knowing that 90% of the time, the content you've read won't change).
There's also the fact that this game isn't what I'd call an H-game exactly. I can already here people going "But Ixy, there's all sorts of smut in this game! How can it not be an H-game?"
Well, the answer to that is related to the fact that, regardless of what the dev's intent might have been (I honestly don't know...)... the fact of the matter is that the sexy stuff is always secondary to... just about everything else. The story, the combat... and most important of all, the corruption. Star Knightess Aura is one of those extremely rare games that actually does corruption, rather than just slutification. The sexy stuff starts very slow, with only some exposure, and it takes quite a while, or deliberate effort on the player's part, to get to even basic stuff like hand-jobs and blowjobs. Outside of intentionally messing around with low Willpower stuff, it'll take more than half of Aura's total possible Lewdness value to get her to have sex. (Again, apparently the poor slimie doesn't count.... Booo...)
On top of that, it's really easy to lock yourself out of smut events, sometimes without even realizing it. Arwin's events aren't available anymore after Festival of Greed. Liliana's peeping event only happens once. The Maid Academy stuff becomes inaccessible after you kill Asmodeus. Roland's stuff becomes inaccessible if you kill him. Hermann becomes inaccessible if you kill him during Judgment of Pride... If you're playing in a way where you intentionally follow Aura's character, odds are that you won't be looking for lewd stuff until a lot of it is already no longer available.
I imagine that the easier difficulties make it simpler to just collect scenes in some aspects, since you don't have to worry as much about Aura soulsploding from too much corruption... but this still means that the "intended" difficulty is designed to focus on other things and not specifically on the lewd stuff.
Beyond that, there's the fact that even a number of the H-scenes themselves are, to an extent, focused on the corruption aspect before the sexiness itself. Notable are Luciela's interventions, especially in the later slime bonding scenes, but also Roland's... everything. XD
This is not a bad thing, btw. But it definitely should be noted that SKA is not the kind of game you pick-up for a quick fap even with a full save. You'll miss a metric ton of context if you just go for the sexy bits in someone else's gallery, even though all the Earth-side interactions are in the gallery, they're not organized in any sort of order that's actually related to how they're unlocked.
Moving on, I'll talk about some of these other things that take center stage over the H.
First of all, the combat system. SKA at first glance seems to be your usual RPGM combat, and the short prologue is extremely misleading about things. The combat system is designed to actually force you to think about what and where you use and it does its best to ensure that there's no such thing as useless skills. Enemies have resistances and weaknesses that you need to figure out and exploit. Items are a limited resource and so is gold. Stats grow slowly and you have to think your choices carefully... It's not necessarily THE most complex combat system I've seen done in RPGM, but it's definitely one which had a lot of love and care put into its balancing.
It's one of very few RPGM combat systems where the game actually gives you situations where most skills can be useful in some fashion. Even the silly Tailwind spell has its utility for a while, and you can keep making use of the spell later if 1st turn advantage is a priority for your playstyle. There were only a few skills that I didn't find much use for in the long-run, though in a couple of those cases, it was because of accessibility issues. (Aka, it takes too damn long to get them...) Other skills are so ridiculously good that you'll use them more often than not when you get them. (Bless Item is absurd. Radiance is also absurd. Do I need to mention Shadowcloak too?)
About the only skill that I think needs some more love or a re-work or something is Assassinate. In theory, that skill can reach some impressive damage numbers... In practice, it's held back by the fact that you can use it ONLY ONCE in an entire fight and only when you can back-stab. (And there's a good number of important fights where you absolutely can't back-stab, which makes it useless...) Unless the 3rd level of the skill changes something and I don't know about it (only got it to level 2 and then stopped trying since I was more focused on MAtk in my playthrough...), the fact of the matter is that it will never outperform stupid mixes like Stone Mind (2 in particular but 1 is good too) and any number of spells. Especially since that combo will usually be viable for 2 turns or more of ungodly damage depending on how you invested in Agility. (Honestly, 60+ Agility is a must... 70 is ideal because that covers most jumps one seriously cares about, but more is always better.)
In any case, combat was mostly fun and figuring out how to beat some fights and bosses without resorting to collar break was interesting. (Not any of the generals though. I didn't know about the 100 day thing, so yeah... Good luck beating any of those twats when they're at full power without the collar...) Sadly, the game kiiiiiiiiiiiind of incentivizes a lot of save-scumming... Now, this isn't about figuring out strengths and weaknesses in monsters. That's ok. A bit annoying at times, but ultimately ok. No. The problem is about group composition. Encounters on the map don't really tell you anything about what's in the group, and that's a problem, because one single monster that's extra or different can completely change the way you approach the fight, if you even want to approach it at all. Since resources are limited in this game, picking your fights is important, and unfortunately, that's difficult to do without save scumming.
The fact that monsters are, for the most part, super fast and never stop chasing you unless you change map and whatnot even if you can escape the encounter with a flash bomb... that further increases the need to save-scum. And that goes even higher given that there are some monsters that make escape impossible. Richard's domain was very frustrating... though the Sloth domain and those damn zombies was by far the absolute worst. Holy crap I hated that place. Not doing that again any time soon if ever... I intentionally took a break to do the bloody Clockwork place first and only then did I come back to that mess.
Also, is it me, or is it much easier to build-up M.Atack rather than Attack? Like, Rampage 3 needs 80 Attack, but I have no idea how the hell you'd reach that value without some dubious expenses... even with the bonus from the duelists...
Oh well.
Moving on.
I'll comment on the thing that's the core of this game. The Corruption System.
SKA has THE most complex corruption set-up I've ever seen in a game of this type. While genuine corruption pops up in adult games in various ways here and there, I've never seen such a complex and detailed approach to it. The work on Aura and the exploration of her mind and the things that can be done to it is absolutely amazing. There was so much that was tackled, and I didn't even get past George in my 1st playthrough. I'm not sure what's past that point, but however little or much there is, it can only make things better.
The system is in everything. It affects everything. It's not just story. Aura's increasing corruption can affect her stats, her gameplay options and even combat in a variety of ways. Making progress through her mind changes all sorts of things and the game does an amazing job of showing how she steadily becomes a monster under the curse's influence.
There's honestly a lot I could talk about when it comes to this system, but it'd be difficult to do without going way too deep in spoiler territory, and I honestly think that everyone should explore it in their own way.
It's not perfect (nothing is), and I can think of several ways to expand it even more... but for the story and characters it was made for, it's as close to perfect as something made by humans can get tbh.
You can really see the passion that was put into it all.
That's all for now.
I could honestly keep typing a lot about this game... but I honestly feel like this is one of those games that people really should go into blind and just work their way through it to whatever ending they can get at least one time.
Anyway, this is my Ending Room after the 1st playthrough. No idea if this is the best it can be or not. Wasn't too concerned about purity specifically.
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Leaving that aside for now... time for my usual talk about the game that most sane people won't care about~
I'll start by saying that I kept an eye on this game for quite a while now. I don't remember exactly when I noticed it, but some peeks into its changelogs and plans made me think that it'd be quite interesting. I decided that this would be one of those games that I wouldn't touch until it was actually complete, and I'm honestly glad that I did it like that. Regardless of what kind of ending you end up at, this game is absolutely better as a story with a beginning and an ending, and I think playing incomplete versions of it would have soured the experience (especially since games aren't quite as convenient as e-books where you can read a chapter and wait for the next patiently knowing that 90% of the time, the content you've read won't change).
There's also the fact that this game isn't what I'd call an H-game exactly. I can already here people going "But Ixy, there's all sorts of smut in this game! How can it not be an H-game?"
Well, the answer to that is related to the fact that, regardless of what the dev's intent might have been (I honestly don't know...)... the fact of the matter is that the sexy stuff is always secondary to... just about everything else. The story, the combat... and most important of all, the corruption. Star Knightess Aura is one of those extremely rare games that actually does corruption, rather than just slutification. The sexy stuff starts very slow, with only some exposure, and it takes quite a while, or deliberate effort on the player's part, to get to even basic stuff like hand-jobs and blowjobs. Outside of intentionally messing around with low Willpower stuff, it'll take more than half of Aura's total possible Lewdness value to get her to have sex. (Again, apparently the poor slimie doesn't count.... Booo...)
On top of that, it's really easy to lock yourself out of smut events, sometimes without even realizing it. Arwin's events aren't available anymore after Festival of Greed. Liliana's peeping event only happens once. The Maid Academy stuff becomes inaccessible after you kill Asmodeus. Roland's stuff becomes inaccessible if you kill him. Hermann becomes inaccessible if you kill him during Judgment of Pride... If you're playing in a way where you intentionally follow Aura's character, odds are that you won't be looking for lewd stuff until a lot of it is already no longer available.
I imagine that the easier difficulties make it simpler to just collect scenes in some aspects, since you don't have to worry as much about Aura soulsploding from too much corruption... but this still means that the "intended" difficulty is designed to focus on other things and not specifically on the lewd stuff.
Beyond that, there's the fact that even a number of the H-scenes themselves are, to an extent, focused on the corruption aspect before the sexiness itself. Notable are Luciela's interventions, especially in the later slime bonding scenes, but also Roland's... everything. XD
This is not a bad thing, btw. But it definitely should be noted that SKA is not the kind of game you pick-up for a quick fap even with a full save. You'll miss a metric ton of context if you just go for the sexy bits in someone else's gallery, even though all the Earth-side interactions are in the gallery, they're not organized in any sort of order that's actually related to how they're unlocked.
Moving on, I'll talk about some of these other things that take center stage over the H.
First of all, the combat system. SKA at first glance seems to be your usual RPGM combat, and the short prologue is extremely misleading about things. The combat system is designed to actually force you to think about what and where you use and it does its best to ensure that there's no such thing as useless skills. Enemies have resistances and weaknesses that you need to figure out and exploit. Items are a limited resource and so is gold. Stats grow slowly and you have to think your choices carefully... It's not necessarily THE most complex combat system I've seen done in RPGM, but it's definitely one which had a lot of love and care put into its balancing.
It's one of very few RPGM combat systems where the game actually gives you situations where most skills can be useful in some fashion. Even the silly Tailwind spell has its utility for a while, and you can keep making use of the spell later if 1st turn advantage is a priority for your playstyle. There were only a few skills that I didn't find much use for in the long-run, though in a couple of those cases, it was because of accessibility issues. (Aka, it takes too damn long to get them...) Other skills are so ridiculously good that you'll use them more often than not when you get them. (Bless Item is absurd. Radiance is also absurd. Do I need to mention Shadowcloak too?)
About the only skill that I think needs some more love or a re-work or something is Assassinate. In theory, that skill can reach some impressive damage numbers... In practice, it's held back by the fact that you can use it ONLY ONCE in an entire fight and only when you can back-stab. (And there's a good number of important fights where you absolutely can't back-stab, which makes it useless...) Unless the 3rd level of the skill changes something and I don't know about it (only got it to level 2 and then stopped trying since I was more focused on MAtk in my playthrough...), the fact of the matter is that it will never outperform stupid mixes like Stone Mind (2 in particular but 1 is good too) and any number of spells. Especially since that combo will usually be viable for 2 turns or more of ungodly damage depending on how you invested in Agility. (Honestly, 60+ Agility is a must... 70 is ideal because that covers most jumps one seriously cares about, but more is always better.)
In any case, combat was mostly fun and figuring out how to beat some fights and bosses without resorting to collar break was interesting. (Not any of the generals though. I didn't know about the 100 day thing, so yeah... Good luck beating any of those twats when they're at full power without the collar...) Sadly, the game kiiiiiiiiiiiind of incentivizes a lot of save-scumming... Now, this isn't about figuring out strengths and weaknesses in monsters. That's ok. A bit annoying at times, but ultimately ok. No. The problem is about group composition. Encounters on the map don't really tell you anything about what's in the group, and that's a problem, because one single monster that's extra or different can completely change the way you approach the fight, if you even want to approach it at all. Since resources are limited in this game, picking your fights is important, and unfortunately, that's difficult to do without save scumming.
The fact that monsters are, for the most part, super fast and never stop chasing you unless you change map and whatnot even if you can escape the encounter with a flash bomb... that further increases the need to save-scum. And that goes even higher given that there are some monsters that make escape impossible. Richard's domain was very frustrating... though the Sloth domain and those damn zombies was by far the absolute worst. Holy crap I hated that place. Not doing that again any time soon if ever... I intentionally took a break to do the bloody Clockwork place first and only then did I come back to that mess.
Also, is it me, or is it much easier to build-up M.Atack rather than Attack? Like, Rampage 3 needs 80 Attack, but I have no idea how the hell you'd reach that value without some dubious expenses... even with the bonus from the duelists...
Oh well.
Moving on.
I'll comment on the thing that's the core of this game. The Corruption System.
SKA has THE most complex corruption set-up I've ever seen in a game of this type. While genuine corruption pops up in adult games in various ways here and there, I've never seen such a complex and detailed approach to it. The work on Aura and the exploration of her mind and the things that can be done to it is absolutely amazing. There was so much that was tackled, and I didn't even get past George in my 1st playthrough. I'm not sure what's past that point, but however little or much there is, it can only make things better.
The system is in everything. It affects everything. It's not just story. Aura's increasing corruption can affect her stats, her gameplay options and even combat in a variety of ways. Making progress through her mind changes all sorts of things and the game does an amazing job of showing how she steadily becomes a monster under the curse's influence.
There's honestly a lot I could talk about when it comes to this system, but it'd be difficult to do without going way too deep in spoiler territory, and I honestly think that everyone should explore it in their own way.
It's not perfect (nothing is), and I can think of several ways to expand it even more... but for the story and characters it was made for, it's as close to perfect as something made by humans can get tbh.
You can really see the passion that was put into it all.
That's all for now.
I could honestly keep typing a lot about this game... but I honestly feel like this is one of those games that people really should go into blind and just work their way through it to whatever ending they can get at least one time.
Good to know, thanks! Planning to tackle Mount Firestorm fairly soon, so that's good timing.
So just starting out in the game.
Any advice on raising corruption for Aura. What ways can I do it?. Want to aim to make her corrupted as hell
Any advice on raising corruption for Aura. What ways can I do it?. Want to aim to make her corrupted as hell
Just do lewd stuff and progress with the story. This game is kinda balanced around to deny you the progress and favor corrupting her imo.So just starting out in the game.
Any advice on raising corruption for Aura. What ways can I do it?. Want to aim to make her corrupted as hell
And it's still better if you learn how combat works in this game. If you are not choosing easy difficulty then you are risking Game Over from corruption overflow (getting corruption from lewd scenes and overpowered collar removal much faster than spending corruption on mental changes). So be careful with the amount of corruption, learn about non-corruption game mechanics, and have fun.So just starting out in the game.
Any advice on raising corruption for Aura. What ways can I do it?. Want to aim to make her corrupted as hell
Yellowie The Goldie
Active Member
- May 8, 2022
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Corruption isn't as big of a deal as money is. Early on it's fine, but later on when things REALLY cost a lot...You need to be VERY careful with your spending habits.
I think that the player asking how to corrupt Aura as much as possible wouldn't have problems with money (unless it's Nightmare). Money is the problem for good Aura, not totally corrupted.
Anyone has some tips on how to get more life in a efficient manner? experience seems to level you incredibly slowly, and while I'm seeing one specific work option and one specific potion that can help I'm kinda wary of the costs with those considering I'm trying for a pure run.
I'm still at the very beginning (normal, pure run, just beat the avian boss at like level 2 because I'm a dumbass who bought a flash bomb even though I'll regret it) and yeah I can see how my spending habits are going to screw me over.
Or at least I hope so, because one of the big weakness of the this genre's games is when we are told money is hard to get and it's not.
I am also really liking the relationships between Aura/George and Aura/Rose so far, though I suspect George trying to protect Aura is going to frustrate me soon. I'm also really really weary of another of this genre's weakness, E.G "after the prologue everything about why the corruption is corrupting matters disappear, because the wholesome scenes disappears even when not corrupted, so for all intent and purpose they are corrupted by default".
... My weariness is I think a product of how high quality the game appear so far, so I'm expecting the other shoe to drop soon.
I'm still at the very beginning (normal, pure run, just beat the avian boss at like level 2 because I'm a dumbass who bought a flash bomb even though I'll regret it) and yeah I can see how my spending habits are going to screw me over.
Or at least I hope so, because one of the big weakness of the this genre's games is when we are told money is hard to get and it's not.
I am also really liking the relationships between Aura/George and Aura/Rose so far, though I suspect George trying to protect Aura is going to frustrate me soon. I'm also really really weary of another of this genre's weakness, E.G "after the prologue everything about why the corruption is corrupting matters disappear, because the wholesome scenes disappears even when not corrupted, so for all intent and purpose they are corrupted by default".
... My weariness is I think a product of how high quality the game appear so far, so I'm expecting the other shoe to drop soon.
Yellowie The Goldie
Active Member
- May 8, 2022
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More HP in an efficient manner? Honestly, at the very beginning of the game...You don't need HP that much, you need some magic defence and physical defence.
Trust me when I say this. by late game, my characters had hundreds of HP but nowhere near thousands until during the confrontation with the big bad super villain.
First things first, be aware of the weaknesses of your enemies and exploit them. Particularly magic in many instances. For instance: you use fire on a Goblin, strike the Ogre and then slay the other goblin. Northern Forest part ofc. Just as an example.
I'm also unsure how to get those tbh. I guess the books? The weaponsmith might have something with enhancement but everyone is saying that early enhancement items are not worth it, and I'm actually unsure if any gives a lot of pdef/mdef.
There is a material named Living Heart that you could use in Workshop to increase max HP. The easiest to get at the start of the game is in the chests near Ogre-Commander in the Northern Forest.
Also winning duels slightly increases max HP. There are 4 duelists before Festival of Greed.
Other options are not available before the Festival of Greed so I wouldn'tspend time on them.
But I agree that HP is not the main way to overcome struggles. There are more important matters