V0.11.0 of Legend of the Psyons is now live on the tester link. This is a pretty large update, roughly split between combat and game engine enhancements and town content. Originally, I planned to have this update split between forest and town content, but with picture uploads wonky on Milovana for a few weeks, I focused on engine upgrades instead of the forest, as it wasn't picture intensive.
Summary of biggest changes: Support for escort quests and companions was added to the core engine. Combat now features class specific special abilities and lingering afflictions. Combat movement and attack roll failure now triggers a roll advantage aid that makes very long failure streaks far less common. (May need more tweaking, please give feedback.) Six new town location were added (not all fully implemented yet), two existing NPCs were significantly enhanced and expanded and three new NPCs were added, including a major romanceable/trainer.
-----> Release Notes <-----
--- New Content ---
* Redesign of two NPCs (Penelope and the mysterious rogue that sends you on the royal panties quest, now named Owl.) *
- Introducing the new and improved Penelope: The original Penelope was underwhelming, and for such a hard quest, I wanted to flesh out the character. She has been converted to the new type of NPC and features a lot of pictures, rewritten and expanded dialog and so forth. A third way to solve her rescue quest was added, using the new escort system to bring her through the tunnels and back to the well. As an escort, you can interact with her a bit both in and out of combat and she will offer some random banter (disposition and dominance based) and comment on a few special locations. Depending on her disposition once rescued, she has a chance to gift you a powerful artifact that reduces your special ability cool-down. After rescue, you may encounter her locked in chastity, which triggers a quest with a few ways to complete it. In future updates, you'll then be able to visit her house and encounter her around town.
- Introducing the new and improved "Owl", probably an alias: In preparation for some future side stories, the mysterious rogue that sends you on a quest to get a used pair of panties from the queen has been reworked a bit like Penelope. I'm curious to see if anyone can pick up on some of the subtle hints as to her big "secret". She no longer just disappears if you decide to report her plan to the queen.
* Three brand new NPCs (Amber, Hestia, and Barbara) *
- Amber (Amber from Genshin Impact) is a sexy and playful scout and fire archer that you first encounter during a rescue quest around level 6 or 7. You then see her in a scene with Mya and then gain the ability to visit her house in the new residential area. She is an important balance for the rogue class as she can be paid for ranged attack training. The training progresses through different scenes. She also has several types of punishments that have different odds to trigger depending on her disposition and dominance. She will be a full romanceable NPC like Jean and Kendall and she has some interesting gifting options/scenes with many more coming in the next minor update. She'll also be getting a bunch of town scenes of course, like bathhouse encounters.
- Hestia is a top-heavy priestess that offers a bit of dialog and eye candy. She is a minor character. She'll get a few town encounters in future updates.
- Barbara (Barbara from Genshin Impact) is the energetic and very horny head priestess at the Church of Milovana. She has an extensive intro scene with branching dialog options. She features several different punishments based on her disposition and dominance. She sells a new type of potion called holy water that can be used to heal lingering afflictions when out in the field. She is very moody and will be getting some town content in future updates. Her upcoming "sin confession" content will send you to the inquisitors. This will feature the sort of brutal pain content that some of my masochistic testers have been waiting for.
It will work a bit like tavern work, in which you go through a series of randomly selected scenes that will last for some total span of time. But instead of humiliation, the focus will be on relentless pain. The worst punishments will be reserved for those that commit too many "sins" without voluntary confession. This will make naughty or disrespectful decisions more impactful. Confession extraction torture will be the one area of content that can slowly push past the maximum punishment calibration. (I may make that a game setting option. I welcome feedback before I start work on this.)
* New town locations *
- The Church of Milovana is the primary location of Barbara. You can pray at the altar to rid yourself of afflictions.
- The Shrine of Milovana is just north of the church. You can make a gold tribute to the goddess to gain some xp, positive goddess disposition (a hidden mechanic that is also based on Milovana dialog options with big consequences), and a long-lasting temporary boost to your health.
- The residential district is in the northwest. The next minor update will add "peeping" that will work a lot like the changing room mechanic in the bathhouse. It will also be where you go to visit the house of NPCs that give you their address. While several give you their address as various prerequisites unfold, only Amber's house can be visited at this time.
- The garden is largely a placeholder right now. Eventually, some interesting random encounters and scenes will take place here.
- The guild hall can be seen but not entered. The addition of hired companions and all of the content that they will bring will require several updates and probably won't be ready for the next update. I'm really excited about this though, and it will open up a lot of combat options, like what class of companion you decide to pair with. Unlike escorts, companions will play a bigger role in combat. Healing, tanking, buffing, attacking for you and so forth.
* New mechanics *
- Escorts and (Companions)!
I have long dreamed of upgrading the engine to handle escorts and companions. It was a daunting task to pull off in Eos, but it is now complete. This feature is currently only used in escort mode as an option to rescue Penelope in the well tunnels. It is a fairly robust system for future content, allowing interaction with your travel partner(s) both in and out of combat. It also provides random banter, specific location dialog triggers and so forth. Escorts are much like companions, only teleport potions can't be used while escorting and companions will have more combat options. I'll probably be adding companions for hire a few updates down the road, but most of the infrastructure is in place. There will also be a few more escort quests at some point. You will be allowed to have one escort and one companion at a time for a total of two travel partners.
- Afflictions: Most combat injuries heal once combat ends. Now, a new type of lingering injury can be triggered by a critical hit or an existing affliction can be made more severe. This makes critical hits a little more interesting and makes combat feel a bit more impactful in my opinion. Afflictions have varied special negative impacts, some painful, and will slowly get worse over time, depending on your game difficulty. They can only be healed using holy water (a potion sold by priestess Barbara) or praying at certain locations. There are three types of afflictions in the game right now, with more coming. You can also cause afflictions on your enemies, although it affects them less as they are unlikely to survive the battle.
- Special Abilities: There are now six special abilities in the game to add a bit of combat flair. Each class can pick one of two starting special abilities. Each class can pick from a defensive or offensive leaning ability. So a mage with a defensive special ability could play a bit like a battle mage with increased survivability, while a mage with an offensive ability could really dial up the damage. In this way, they almost serve like subclasses. Every five levels, the player can either add a new ability, or make an existing ability more powerful. These have very special combat effects like a mana shield or healing over time and so forth. Much like the special attack, they take time out of combat to recharge. Special abilities are painful to use (like a power up) and higher ranks of an ability get more painful.
- Bad luck streak modifiers: Any stat based roll playing game can sometimes result in long streaks of unlucky rolls. While missing and failing to move is an important part of the way skills impact your experiences, it can be frustrating to miss or fail too many times in a row. This new mechanic adds a hidden advantage to your next attack or move attempt every time you fail, making long unlucky streaks much less probable. Once you make a successful move or attack, the advantage resets to zero. This is a fine balance, as I want consequences for say, having a low speed skill, and may still need some refinement based on feedback. You have three levels to choose from in the game settings. By default, your enemies get the same advantage as you, but this changes based on combat difficulty settings.
* Miscellaneous *
- A few new kinky inventory items were added. Some of these will soon trigger special scenes when gifted to the right NPC.
--- Tweaks ---
* Town map updated. This will probably be the final town map and it shows future locations that will be added like the academy. I made the font larger based on feedback so that it is more legible. (I usually play on a huge monitor so I didn't realize that it was so hard to read.)
* Furta fruit effects buffed.
* Well water effect nurfed. It was overpowered.
* Mya's tips were expanded.
* Combat movement AP cost is now variable and thus now displays during combat.
* Fully blocked attacks (that normally do damage) can no longer trigger DOTs, add effects or do crit damage.
* Temple prayer moved inside of the temple and now comes with an eStim effect. The buffed skills were altered and it can also remove afflictions.
* Item rarity is now displayed for inventory items when details are viewed.
* Added player stink for Mya's special dirty panties punishment. This was just an oversight.
* Added a boob flash scene that can trigger for Ariel.
* Equipment and items can now have an ability cooldown bonus as an enchantment option.
--- Bug Fixes ---
* There was a bug related to leveling up with voxian artifacts in inventory during a special Milovana trigger.
* There was a chance Mya could think you stole her magic wand when you did not.
* The skill book "Dance and Combat" did not apply skill boost.
* Kendall's combat training cost was accidentally adjusted using Jean's disposition instead of Kendall's.
* Several typos were corrected. Please feel free to report typos.
--- Plans ---
Upcoming plans are always subject to change.
I'll try to put out a minor update in about two weeks that (hopefully) won't break existing saved data. It will add new gifting scene triggers for Amber, town encounters with some of the new NPCs, at least some residential peeping content, and perhaps another house or two.
The next two big updates will focus on a few new quests, another category of tavern jobs, brothel content including Miko's special endurance test, and perhaps the church inquisition. A major shift in plans is that before I continue work on the forest, I'm first going to flesh out the graveyard zone, which is largely empty at the moment. I plan to add many new locations/images and random NPC encounters and a few more quests. The graveyard was the first zone that I made and was just a sort of early test of my game engine that ended up being the starter zone. I fear that some testers don't realize that this is a work in progress and that a lot of other locations already have richer content with more coming all the time. So the graveyard is overdue for some development. The forest enhancements and then the caves and forest temple zones will be added after that, probably in that order.
I was starting to wonder if nearly three years of work was down the drain. So glad to see the site back up and running. Anyway, obviously I haven't been able to work on the minor V0.11.1 release, so that will be delayed a bit, but I'll get back to it. Please continue to test V0.11.0 for now, especially the new mechanics and offer feedback/suggestion and report any bugs.
