Hey, Adventurers! I hope your No Nut November is going great, because that's about to be over ;)

v0.1.8 is now live for $10+ Patrons. The download links are available in this post -> https://www.patreon.com/posts/92426375

Public Release Date: November 21st

This is another rather massive update. The Heist arc is here, Chris joins the party, lots of technical improvements, new regions to adventure through, quests have been revamped... You know the drill, lots of new stuff.

Check out the new screenshots and consider signing up to get access! The full changelog for v0.1.8 is available here: https://pastebin.com/QAhg3cbq and below:

v0.1.8

Story:

- +12k words, totaling 113k

- +451 images, totaling 4628

- +19 animations, totaling 89

- Added the Heist event chain + quest + 2 cinematics

- +1 Main Event

- +1 Chris H-scene

- +1 Yunyun Event

- +1 Succubi Dream H-scene (rat-themed)

- +1 Gabriel Event

- +1 Vanir Event

- +1 Roxy Event

Technical:

- Upgraded to Ren'Py 8.1.2, bringing enhanced performance and numerous bug fixes

- Added a rudimentary lighting system for adventuring. Units will now get lit up and cast shadows during certain interactions or when AOE abilities are being cast

- The choice screen can now appear in different locations depending on the scene. This is to ensure it doesn't cover characters' faces in some cases

- H-scenes buttons now have their own style and are transparent

- Performance improvements % graphical updates for city & mansion screens

- General UI revamps & improvements

- You can now make "inventions" to sell to Vanir. Each product will generate a small amount of income every morning

- You can now feed Chomusuke in exchange for affection points and random rewards

- The Dreams in Succubi Cafe will now have "Ero Event" markers when available. After purchase you'll be able to rewatch them for free (and not just from the gallery)

- Work at the guild option will now have a quest marker if there are any plot-relevant jobs available

- Added a new book: In The Veil of Night

- Added a new Feat: Vampire Seducer. Now we just need some vampires

Adventuring:

- Added Chris

- Added new enemies: Brigand Lieutenant, City Guard, City Guard Sergeant

- Added new bosses: Brigand Boss, Shadow of Joy, *REDACTED*

- New visuals for the brigands camp location

- You can now venture to the deep forest to fight the birdheads

- Added a new class of abilities with variable effects. They function similarly to how you switch weapons in combat: you can cycle through possible effects and choose one you need most

- Added a new ability for Kazuma, "Create Element". It contains 4 different abilities (Create Water, Create Fire, Create Air, Create Earth) each of which can be used. Learn it from Roxy so she has reason to exist

- Added a new AbilityChain class for abilities that can (wait for it) chain effects.

- Added Drain Touch ability for Kazuma that can drain HP away from enemies in return for mana/health. That said, we won't see it in action yet

- Added a Wet status effect. Units affected by it take extra damage from Lightning attacks.

- Added a Frozen status effect. Frozen units receive penalties to their speed and dodge

- Added a new Riposte effect. Units with Riposte will counter-attack upon being hit.
- Added a Fear effect. Characters affected by fear might skip their turn

- Added a Hunting/Tracking effect. Units affected by it gain bonuses when attacking Marked enemies

- Added a Weaken effect. The next hit Weakened units receive is guaranteed to be critical

- Added a Confused effect. Confused units will choose their targets at random

- The initiative queue is now dynamic and can change mid-combat with speed boosts or penalties.

- You can now use the mousewheel to increase/decrease boost

- Successful attacks will now shake the screen lightly to provide feedback.

- Missed attacks will not show graphical effects of the attack on the target

- Added Traps that will damage the party if they're not disarmed

- Added Time Limited Battles (one in the Heist quest). You will need to last a certain amount of turns in order to win

Balancing:

- Balancing changes to monsters across the board

- Portable Toilet now applies Wet effect. Now there's a line I never thought I'd write
- "Blessed Restoration" and "Divine Heal" upgrades of Aqua's Heal ability now stack correctly
- "Blessed Restoration" heal percent amount decreased from 50% to 40%

- Aqua's "Blessing" now applies a +10 buff to speed

- Darkness' "Intimidate" now applies a -7 penalty to speed

- Added Fearless Feat to Darkness, rendering her immune to Fear effects

- Darkness' Bolster Ranks and Intimidate received some skill upgrades

- You will now receive a Power Gem every time you level up. This change is applied retroactively

- Buffed "Blinding Strike" upgrade for Turn Undead to further reduce accuracy (20->40) and dodge (10->20)

- Balanced Sword now adds a flat +10 bonus accuracy instead of a +10% modifier (which makes it rather useless for Darkness)

- Increased accuracy for Steal ability
- Darkness's strength gain increased to 9

- Kazuma's HP gain reduced from 14 to 12

- Kazuma's strength gain reduced from 7 to 6

- Aqua's Blessing duration from 2 -> 4

- Megumin's Concussive effect chance 30%->50%

- Jibril's Cleanse ability will now correctly cleanse most dispellable status effects that are positive

Minor changes:

- You can now end the workday early when working at the guild. You should still work the entire day, of course. Your corporate overlords demand it.

- Slightly adjusted monsters' death visual effect

- Removed some buttons from the game menu and the quick menu during replay mode cause some of y'all get overwhelmed by buttons too quickly

- Darkness's Headpat invitation will be inaccessible once complete. For now.

- Animation enhancements for screens when working at the guild and receiving results

- Added a tint effect to units when affected by Burn

- Adjusted the collectibles' glint additive quality to 0.5 so that it doesnt stand out as much

- Adjusted colors of the tray icon for Eris's boons

- Percent-based Heal skills will now show their percentages in the Skill Upgrade menu instead of flat numerical amount

- Auto-battle hotkey is now hidden on mobile devices

- Slightly adjusted the notification popup animation

- "Retake the Library" guild job will now only appear if "Investigate the Farm" is completed

- "Investigate the Farm" progress per day upped from 25 to 35

- Updated the first background in "Investigate the Tomb" quest

- Converted adventuring backgrounds to webp, saving on space

- Quick menu is now properly centered on the screen

- Replaced the city day BGM with a different track that I feel fits better

- Slight changes in library background visuals in adventuring mode

- Slightly adjusted Kazuma and Darkness sprites when attacking with a sword

- The menu dropdown in top-left corner now activates upon hover

- Equipped items in the inventory screen will no longer show their full attributes, but instead only a summary

- Included a language override for people that used to play on translated builds (which sometimes results in no text displayed in main build)

- Added an animated pointer to options in Jibril fight to make it more obvious that they're interactive

- Unlocking chests will now spawn a floating message to indicate success

- Jibril's chess minigame is now replayable from the Replay screen

- Reduced the reward from working at the construction site from 75 to 25

- Added on-screen controls to abandon lockpicking when possible

Fixes:

- FINALLY FIXED THE ITEM DUPE BUG WOOOOO, thanks M-L for the help in troubleshooting this menace

- Fixed the bug preventing Luna's "Greg" event from triggering. Thanks Leon for the report

- Fixed the bug causing an uncaught exception when using Auto-Battle option with Steph in the party

- Fixed the bug preventing the "Festival of Fortune" achievement from being granted

- Fixed the bug causing positive accuracy modifiers to further reduce Darkness's accuracy. Thanks TheRapist for the report

- Fixed Snipe not applying +50% damage to Marked targets. Those stinky ToDos... Thanks M-L for the report.

- Fixed a bug that resulted in PerfectFit label be cut off when working at the guild

- Fixed a bug with animations being interrupted when shown results of working at the guild

- Fixed a bug preventing players from seeing locked characters when unlocking the gallery via a cheat. Thanks Chamnyne for the report

- Fixed an issue with custom names showing up as None in Replays (Replays now have their own canonized placeholders)

- Fixed an issue with some names going out of namebox bounds in the festival events

- Fixed some clipping visuals in the last cuscene of Investigate the Tomb

- Fixed the issue with freezing animation when opening a shop menu

- Fixed an issue that would result in a bug where it appears as if mana was used when a hero is attacked by a monster

- Fixed a bug that would result in some Status Effects not clearing properly at the end of combat

- Fixed a bug where Knocked Out status effect would stay applied to Megumin after casting Explosion, rendering her useless at the start of the next fight

- Fixed the bug causing an uncaught exception sometimes during the fight with Jibril. Thanks billyjoebobmartin for the report

- Fixed inconsistent text colors in item attributes

- Fixed an issue which could result in some status effects description displaying "0 Turns Remaining"

- Fixed some hints that could mislead players into thinking they had highlightable elements, thanks dragon++ for the report

- Fixed inaccurate description of Aqua's Sacred Turn Undead upgrade, thanks dragon++ for the report

- Fixed an issue where a feat description was cut off in the feats section

- Fixed a bug with Bosses portraits having a blue (allied) background

- Fixed a bug where using Steal (or any other non-damaging ability) could trigger the Fickle Fate status effect

- Fixed an issue where skills could apply Fickle Fate to party members

- Fixed a bug which prevented Lucky Boost from increasing crit chance