itch.io

Yeah, turns out the thieve's guild is a bit bigger than I thought.  I was kind of under the impression this was a smalltime joint and not The Thieve's Guild (tm), since there's not too many people visible onscreen when you walk in, and the fight looks winnable until more enemies teleport in.

Personally, I thought it'd be funny if you got some sort of joke ending for killing enough of the bandits.  ie, a very tongue in cheek story where you heroically kill each and every bandit in the city and save the world (tm), complete with a CG drawn with the artist's off hand in crayon depicting people celebrating you as the legendary bandit killer.

... or just give the player an instant game over, like if they try to immediately expose Lady Wolf to Sa'id.

I got to the sixth wave.  Almost every tile has an enemy, including the tile I'm standing in (sometimes they glitch and have multiple things in one tile).  The game lags even when idling.  I think I'll stop this here.

Fifth wave.  Almost every tile is covered by a bandit.  I hope I get some sort of reward for getting through all these.  Like, obviously this isn't how you're supposed to resolve the quest, but some sort of easter egg would be nice.  XD

There's a FOURTH wave.  Itch.io won't let me post screenshots for some reason, but each wave gets more enemies, and now more than half the tiles are filled by enemies.  I feel like this might be intended to be unwinnable.  :P

Trying this game out, pretty good so far, but I'm stuck on a quest.  I'm trying to recover an amulet for the naga priestess, but I can't win the fight at the Thieves' Den.  I thought I was doing good, but then a second wave came... I eventually managed to defeat the second wave after several tries (after figuring out that I could bring Samara along), but then there was a THIRD wave.  This fight is ludicrously difficult for something this early in the game... I know there's a non-violent solution to the quest, but I want the exp, damnit!

Damn, I check back on the game (haven't played for several months) and this is the first thing I see, lol.

It's too bad how things turned out.  I would probably have liked the sexual content had Aura been older and the villains been less blatantly evil, but with the way things are, I always felt obligated to do a zero-lewdness run when playing this game, so it sucks that that's becoming less viable.

The open world aspect is a good thing in some regards but a weakness in others.  You pretty much have to have a guide to know who to talk to if you don't want to miss things, or else just make a point of regularly talking to every NPC in the world just in case they have something new (a task made even more tedious by the fact that in this game, some things are different based on time of day).  It's difficult to do well, I don't think I've seen anyone pull it off perfectly.

The story itself is alright, but feels a bit short once you account for the fact that most of the game is spent on things entirely unrelated to the main plot.  It would also have been nice if the sex scenes tied into it somehow, ie, if you brought your partner(s) with you on expeditions to temples or supported your quest in some way (or, alternatively, indirectly undermined your quest, which is what I expected from, say, the Queen of Hearts or the Zanti), but that would get very difficult with the number of potential partners the game has.  Many scenes are great individually, but the characters don't get developed - some characters seem to exist basically solely for their sex scenes.  It would have been nice to see the characters interact with each other more (ie, you'd think people would notice Sonya bimbofying you, and that some people would have something to say about it - an amusing example I just thought of is a hypothetical arms race between Sonya and Professor Selina as the latter continually tries to re-brain you because she wants you to do well in her class).

That reminds me, some lore thoughts I had on the Queen of Hearts, now that I've finished their content after the main quest... how does their business model work?  We're explicitly NOT granting men release there, so why are they spending all their money there and not just going to the brothel, which is much cheaper?  We were able to convince that one green-haired woman to join us, but given how well Sonya pays her workers (significantly more than "normal" jobs like the bakery, at least), we can't do that with EVERYONE's wives.  And what do we do when we get too old for most people to find attractive (I'm assuming that eternal youth magic either doesn't exist or is economically inviable, since old people exist in this world)?  Sonya presumably makes enough money to retire comfortably, but what about her bunnies?  Does she care enough about them to make sure they're alright after they're no longer fit to hop for her?  I never could get a good read on Sonya, if she's like Hanatora and just wants to use Erica or if she genuinely thinks that her bunnies are happier being dumb (which is probably true, based on Erica's reaction to her).  (Some dialogue implies the former, but if she's really only in it for the money, there's surely a better way to exploit a famous countess than just having her work as a waitress/stripper, right?)

Ah, yeah, so the consumables were the unique items.  I thought they meant unique GEAR or magical artifacts or somesuch.  I definitely wouldn't have had just some extra consumables be a point in favor of the Merchant Guild had I known, though Kira's panties might have still been enough of a winning argument anyways.

Okej, wow, finished it more quickly than I expected.  Chapters 5 and 6 definitely felt shorter than the ones before them.

Hrrm.  Overall, I'd say probably a solid 4/5.  It's sort of an inversion of The Last Sovereign, where I'm very invested in the overarching plot to the point where I found myself getting annoyed at the sex scenes ("blah blah blah tits blah blah blah pussy, tell me how the economy is doing!") - here, there are many great scenes, but they don't come together particularly well as a story.  The whole is less than the sum of its parts.  Still a fun experience for me, but I'd only be able to recommend it for others if they had the same kinks.

Also, it's sometimes very difficult to find things without the guide.  

Btw, question - I never tried altering my body because I liked Erica the way she started, does stuff like tattoos, body piercing, and changes to butt/breast size show up in the CGs?

(btw, for any bystanders reading this, spoilers below)

Also, I kinda want to see the "bad" ending where I side with Hanatora, but I dunno if I want to put in the effort to re-find all those statues from before (I specifically avoided them and reloaded upon reading their text because they sounded sinister)... I guess the deciding question is, does she have an actual ending, or is it just a nonstandard game over, like becoming a tentacle mommy or fornicating with the men in the cursed/blessed village too many times?

Finally, minor quibble - I was told that siding with the Merchant Guild regarding the expansion of Golden Leaf would grant access to unique items, but I never saw these.  Their only operation in the area seemed to be a store selling consumables.

Cool to see that this is still being worked on.  I've been holding off on finishing it for a while, because I'm waiting for it to be complete before I reach a dead end.  :)

The only real criticism I have is that it's basically impossible to keep Erica's free will and brain intact without a guide.  A lot of times, you get thrown into fun fetishy mind control content without any reasonable way to know it's about to happen.  You decide to take up what looks like a simple farmhand job?  Congrats, you're a cow now.  You're doing a quest, and do the sensible thing of reporting to the local authority figure?  Surprise, she's secretly been brainwashed by the bad guys and now she's brainwashed you (unlike many such instances, you don't get an option to resist with high enough willpower).  You talk to the lonely-looking person in the bar?  Enjoy the vampire route!  

At least in most cases, it's thematic (it's not like the guys drugging and kidnapping girls are going to give you the chance to consent).  There's also some exceptions where you're given ample opportunity to reverse course before the point of no return, like the Queen of Hearts turning you into a bimbo, which I like.  Luckily, my compulsive saving makes this not too much of an issue, but I could see it annoying some people.

Anyways, when I went to type the above, itch.io popped up with the draft I had from last time.  I was trying to report a bug, but couldn't post it because for some reason itch.io wouldn't let me attach the screenshots.  You may have already fixed this by now, but just in case, here's what I was going to say more than half a year ago...

The schedule system sometimes breaks cutscenes.  For example, I was doing the quest to investigate the Zanti Farm, and decided to help the farmer investigate the vandalism in his barn.  The time cut to night.  However, because I was scheduled to do a shift at the Queen of Hearts at night, it instead teleported me there, but it's still playing out the dialogue of the cutscene...

It was probably written with the assumption that one was taking it on at the correct time, and not prior to when you even got the quest telling you what it was (and not on nightmare difficulty).  XD

The difficulty with taking a break is that once I take a break from a game, I tend not to come back for a very long time, if ever.

Ugh, this game is infuriating.  Currently stuck on the Lilim.  I don't remember struggling much with it last time, but this time it's just absurd.  The fight is just blatant RNG that's slanted against the player.  It's just a matter of trying over and over again, hoping that the Lilim doesn't use the attacks that one-shot people for long enough to allow you to use Rampage (after two heat ups and a tactical advantage after an acid bomb has taken out its armor), and then for none of the three rampage hits to miss.  This isn't fun.

I'm not sure what it was then, but it's currently 26 (without the coating) and I don't think it's changed since then.

Okej, for future reference, here's the strategy on nightmare mode that eventually worked for me:

(first thing is what Aura does, second thing is what Slimey does)

(this is with nasty weapon coating on, unsure if it's necessary)

Turn 1:  Heat Up, attack phantom.

Turn 2:  Heat Up, attack phantom.

Turn 3:  Light I on phantom, attack phantom.  Lamia will switch to Offensive Stance.

Turn 4:  Attack Lamia, throw Flash Bomb.  The attack on Lamia should do roughly 500-550 damage.  (The flash bomb isn't strictly necessary but makes the RNG for the remaining steps less hellish - the Lamia needs to NOT hit Aura, and Slimey won't last long enough if she hits every time)

Turn 5:  Heat Up, Protect (or defend if you're feeling lucky and want to leave it to RNG whether Lamia attacks Slimey or Aura, with the benefit that Slimey would survive at least one hit).

Turn 6:  Light I on Lamia, Protect (or defend, etc)

Turn 7:  Rampage I on Lamia, and what slimey doesn't doesn't matter because either this will finish off the Lamia (dealing 1500ish damage), or it won't (because the Lamia randomly used guard or because you missed due to RNG) in which case you have to reload

In any circumstance, the Lamia choosing to attack Aura is basically instant death.  It spends the first four turns powering up, but after that it's basically RNG whether it chooses to attack Aura or Slimey (or, sometimes, it randomly guards for seemingly no reason).  If you deal enough damage (I think about half health), it will summon its snake friends, which is also basically instant death.  Do NOT use Offensive Stance as the pure run walkthrough suggests, as it doesn't work here (you can do steps 1-4 if the phantoms randomly choose to not attack Aura, but if you attack the Lamia with double-boosted attack with tactical advatange, it deals around 1000 damage, which isn't enough to finish off the lamia but does bring it below the point where it summons its friends).

Ugh, the Lamia fight is such bullshit.  Imo, any fight in which the outcome is purely RNG (in this case, hoping the boss is dumb enough to repeatedly attack the slime instead of Aura) is badly designed.  Also, how does it always know to guard as I'm about to use rampage?!

Weirdly, it didn't give me anywhere near this much trouble in my last playthrough...

So now in my New Game +, I've just finished the Money Festival at Day 58.  Corruption currently 19/32.  And I've got a slime at level 5, with Morph: Fire unlocked.  Also, less notable but still helpful, this time I've bought a bunch of apples BEFORE getting the curse of greed, I picked up a couple emerald teas from the festival, and I've been buying the blessed waters as they become available so I'm saving money there in the long run.  Overall not amazing, but significantly better than my first run.

... Oh, it just occurred to me, I've had the Potentia Rune for a while.  I should have thought to use that earlier (and also unlock the area in the forest to get that star metal).  Bleh.

Oh, that's clever.  So that leaves me at four Star Metals, what's the fifth?

Hrrm, even getting to the festival by Day 30 will be tough.  Currently it's Day 18 and I'm attempting to take out the Low-Demon (doing this prior to the Young Avian, Ogre Commander, and Bandit Leader may not be plausible, I'm not sure what the intended order is).

I was able to take out the goblin shaman fairly early, but I don't think it was Day 2 (I remember having to at least learn Fire first, and I think I got at least one equipment upgrade).  That'd be pretty impressive without Water Skin.

Last time I tried, I can't even take on the regular bandits from behind, which I believe I would need to do to get through the tunnel (could be mistaken).  I think I need Thunderbolt first before I have any hope of taking on them or the Ogre Commander, which I should be able to get now (trying to take on the Low-Demon first).

As it happens, Charlotte is a very important buff monkey, since she's the one with Heat Up, which makes everyone else a lot more useful.

In general I try to avoid using consumables unless I have a specific need for them, since I might need them later.  For my New Game + run, I intend on going 0 Lewdness and ideally no mental changes.

I already restarted earlier with +3 ATK/MATK, +3 DEF/MDEF, +3 AGI/LUK, and +2 bombs.  Damn, I should have thought of your idea, I had several holy waters left.  Anyways, I breezed past the first few days but as of Day 10, I am currently stuck trying to beat one of the Young Avian, Ogre Commander, Bandit Leader, or Reiner.

Keeping Charlotte out of jail only takes one evening, that doesn't seem like that big of a burden to me.  Also, how are you getting to the refugee camp on day 1?  It doesn't open until you get one of the bounties, which I'm pretty sure you need to have finished the spider quests to get.  And where are you finding five star metals at this point in the game?  I know of two that I can get on Day 1 (in the hole in the forest with the mushrooms, and to the north past the goblins and stuff), and a third that I can theoretically get on Day 2 (with the spiders you have to kill in the following quest after you kill the queen).

Hrrm, Desmond teaches the item skills, I thought?  I try to avoid using consumables as much as possible, so I don't know how much mileage I'll get out of him...

I know of this one, but it assumes you're playing on Normal difficulty:  https://docs.google.com/document/d/1BRbh0wyLr_qQMP_ARxsZdfS5SGjUO09AFQZYz97eAwY/... 

The wiki is also a helpful resource:  https://wiki.starknightessaura.com/ 

Rene does allow spells, yes, but he has a lot more firepower than I do.  I don't have the money to learn Rock Armor anytime soon, and I don't think I have access to Lightning Jam coating (I did take out the Lamia, so I may have just missed it).

I think this playthrough might be screwed.  I'm at Day 141 with 30/34 corruption and several mental changes, and am blocked on basically every quest.  First I cleared out the phantoms, and after some difficulty made it through the Lamia and the big shark-like thing I forgot the name from... only to find that I needed Open Domain II to proceed with the quest.  I finally got to 50 Trust with the demon cult people, but other than being able to learn Shadowcloak for 500g instead of 3500g, nothing has been gained, and it seems that it will take 80 trust to get the leader to see me.  I visited Mountainreach, and found the person who could teach me Open Domain II, but I need 100 mana for that - I'm at 97 without any enhancement spells on, but don't have a way of raising it easily (I'm out of Ethers after upgrading my slimes - I guess I could buy some, but fuck that's expensive).  I then tried visiting the big city in the south, and was able to beat Lara, but the other Duelists beat the shit out of me in my current condition even if I'm using poisoned blades.  Roland gave me a quest to take care of a golem, but the academy headmaster mentioned that I'd need Brittle II to have any hope of taking it on, and I would need to be an academy member to get this, which requires 20,000g (I'm not even sure if this is intended to be possible lol).  Finally I decided to try to head to the Fortress of Wrath (which I originally assumed was something to do AFTER all this other stuff), and with some effort made my way through to the adventurers holed up there... and discovered that I would need a blessed energy potion+, which is totally inaccessible (I would need to get the recipe, which I think is the book for 5000g, then learn Bless I for 2300g).  I currently have only 3,475g and don't have a good way of getting more aside from working at the workshop for 230g, which can be done at most every other day.  Meanwhile, corruption is constantly growing, I think it's +1 every other day.

EDIT:  I realized based on what the wiki said that I could use the Clear Gem instead of waiting to die, so I've checked out the room and apparently I would have 46 points to spend on a New Game+ if I wanted to end it now.  ... If I'm reading this formula correctly, apparently ending the game with the gem is considered a Victory?  That doesn't make sense... I had assumed I would need to have, you know, won the game, in order to have a Victory.  Regardless... with 46, I could start with +3 AGI/LUCK, +3 DEF/MDEF, and +3 ATK/MATK (or, instead of the ATK/MATK, go for +750g and +15 HP/MP, which would probably help more early game but be worth less than the ATK/MATK later on) (EDIT2:  oh, found the part that sells spells... hrrm.  Starting with Thunderbolt for 14 points might help - would save me 1200g... or if I was willing to part with one of the other stat upgrades, I could do Shadowcloak for 20 points).

Eh, the trouble with anime girls is that basically everything between 15 and 25 can look more or less the same, depending on the artist.  I'd be fine with the way she looks, if she hadn't been explicitly said to be in high school.  Hell, even a college student of the same age would be better - she's definitely smart enough to have gone to college early.  Also, more importantly, while being hypnotized and brainwashed can be hot, being hypnotized and brainwashed by a man like Roland is squick.

I'm at a brick wall with these duelists.  I was able to take down Fire Duelist Lara with poison weapon coating, but the others kill me far too quickly for that to be viable.  Item Duelist Clemence's bombs kill me instantly even with anti-magic armor coating (and take out more than a third of my health if I guard), and Thunder Duelist Rene takes me out extremely easily as well (it doesn't help that Aura is weak to thunder and there doesn't seem to be a way of changing this).  I even tried just guarding the entire fight (with defensive stance II) to see if Rene would eventually run out of mana, and that didn't work either.

EDIT:  Also, of COURSE the special enrollment program to the academy is a brainwashing scheme.  Guess I'll have to somehow scrounge up 20,000g if there's anything important there.  A pity, I get the feeling that the scene would have been really hot had it not involved the unlikable sexist prick and if Aura had been, oh, 5-10 years older than she is now.

Oh, well damn.  I have been specifically going for 0 Vice.

What do I need to do to be eligible to learn Acedia?  The wiki and the guide don't say the requirements, they just say that the demonologist teaches it, but when I go to him (after having done the demonic knowledge quiz), he just says "However, I cannot feel the negative energy required to cast a demonic spell residing within you.  I'm afraid you are not compatible with demonic spells."

Ah, shit, I had already gotten the requisite 20 points.  It turns out you can get like 15 of them from giving some materials to a drug guy in the tavern, which for some reason isn't considered an immoral action by the game (as I'm assuming giving them the formulas would be).

By the way, for future reference in case anyone reads this, it appears that Blessed Water starts at 200g and increases by 8g per day (ie, currently I'm on day 113 and the price is 1104g).  I have no idea how I'm going to afford this stuff in the late game.  D:

So I'm at a point where I'm supposed to make the demon worshippers trust me so I can infiltrate their underground lair and stuff... but as far as I can tell, the only way to increase their trust without doing either lewd stuff or evil stuff is to work as a waitress, at +1 trust each day.  This will take a very long time, if that's the only way to get trust...

Weirdly, it turns out that while she's vehemently against the use of dishonorable tactics such as using poisoned weapons, she is apparently just fine with the even more overpowered use of slime armor coating.  :)

Is it supposed to be possible to defeat Knightess Fleura without using poison?  I feel bad for "cheating" in the fight (even though it's within the rules).

I did eventually kill the Low-Demon boss in its domain in the forest, only to realize afterwards that I had totally wasted my poison weapon coating because demons are immune to poison.  >_<

Still no idea how to kill Whiteoak, or what the reward might be for doing so...

It's discussed in Darkness in the Woods.  I'm pretty sure I technically only have to kill the Low-Demon for the quest, and already found the way around Whiteoak ages ago, but if I can't take out the "pathetically easy" gatekeeper how am I going to take on the Low-Demon?  (I'm still trying to do the Low-Demon at the moment anyways since the Whiteoak is a dead end for me)

Now that I've gotten the quest to deal with Whiteoak, I'm trying to kill it again, and it's still going poorly.  What's worse, the guide specifically describes it as "pathetically easy", but it wrecks me with Tremor every time (I can't stop either it from casting Tremor or the saplings from weakening my magic defense with rocks)...

EDIT:  I've noticed that the Whiteoak only casts Tremor if it gets Concentration up first, but since I go before it (even if I use Defensive Stance to cut my agility in half), I can't prevent this (the AI will choose to use Tremor and one-shot me with it even if I break concentration before it strikes).

So I'm at the Money Domain, and have no idea what to do.  I start with -1000 Perika with no clear way to get more - I could do the gambling tables, but they're explicitly said to be rigged, and I can't do the duel because everyone is still at basically no hit points from the fight earlier (Aura was healed but no one else was).  Also, what did the NPC near the arena mean by using an item before the fight???

EDIT:  Nvm, found the tunnel which inexplicably has chests of Perika stored around, at the end of which was instructions for how to rig the blackjack game.  Why did they even build that switch?  lol

EDIT2:  I seem to have collected all the sources of Perika, but I can't find all the refugees.  I've found the three in the center that I saved from the Eyes of Greed, the three at the human derby, and the two at the arena, but there's supposed to be two more, and I know they aren't in the VIP area because the game asks me if I want to give up if I try to proceed there...

EDIT3:  Found another refugee at the gambling area... one more...

EDIT4:  There, it's the one being groped by two men, I had to talk to one of the men instead of her.  Now hopefully I have enough Perika left for whatever's in the VIP area...

EDIT5:  Huh, the final fight with Mammon was a bit anti-climactic lol.  Good thing that increased my corruption limit, I was worried that I had accidentally softlocked myself since the fight automatically turned on Star Knightess (bringing my corruption up to 27/27).

EDIT6:  Well, shit, I guess all that Perika is useless now.  I still had that 4000 from beating Arwin.  Maybe I should have liquidated a couple stats during the fight so I could cast the purification spell.  ... Yup, reloaded and did that.  20 max hp for -3 corruption seems like a pretty good trade to me.

Neato, I've progressed some... oh, lovely, a new curse.  Eyes of Greed... hits willpower whenever I spend money, for 2% of the amount I spend.  Well shit, that's pretty devastating.  This on top of the +4 corruption.  I hope saving those refugees was worth it.  

I haven't gotten that quest yet, I was just trying to explore side areas before progressing with the main quest.  Good instinct as it turns out, I found another star metal.  I don't think I can take on the demon or the tree yet, though... is there anything else I need to do before crossing the big scary point that says "This will irreversibly progress the story"?

So I'm trying to take care of these giant tree things in the eastern forest before proceeding with the main quest, and it's going... poorly.  I have yet to have an encounter in which the tree doesn't one-shot me with Tremor I, even if I take down his Concentration buff first.

EDIT:  Found a way to approach the tree from behind, which helps, but still doesn't solve the problem with them one-shotting me... :/

EDIT2:  WTF, it regenerates its saplings?!  AND heals every turn?!

I finally finished reading Luck Is Also A Skill!  ... "Aura learned absolutely nothing from this!"  D:

I can't even resell it!  Guess its only use is to be a quest item.  RIP.

Ah, well, shit, I've spent most of those things on Aura.  Hopefully I'll find more.  >_<

At long last, on day 73, I've killed the Low-Demon.

Also, the Alchemist Worshipper was made trivial by the Water Skin spell.  Hopefully that wasn't a wasted purchase in the long run.