Hi again, everyone!

This month's update is pretty big, bringing major additions such as the Quest System, Echo Battles (optional difficult encounters with great rewards and increased Aberrant Monster spawn rate), as well as general improvements to the game's playability and much more.

Major Improvements

Quest System

• You can now keep track of the quests you're doing! I've added a Quest Tab to the journal menu, which tracks your current Main Quest and its different phases.
• It also keeps track of Side Quests, though there aren't many in the prologue/demo yet.
• Quest markers have been added to the map to guide you, but I plan to make them optional eventually since not everyone likes them.
• The current quest descriptions are placeholders and will likely change in the future. Also The system will function better with new saves, since some triggers have been added to old cutscenes.

Echo Battles

• A new type of battle can now randomly spawn in place of normal encounters.

• These are difficult, handmade encounters where, lore-wise, you battle the teams of fallen Beacons (tamers)—which means you can still recruit them most of the time. Lots of them are built around certain team ideas I either came up with while going through the game or noticed some of the testers employing.
• You can spot them via their map indicator and their unique visual effect in the game world when you get close.
• New saves will naturally introduce Echo Battles through a cutscene that sets their trigger. Old saves can unlock them by revisiting the forest and triggering the same cutscene at the entrance of the small maze west of the map.
• Echo Battles are completely optional and vary in difficulty. Some are challenging encounters that require a well-built team, while others are the hardest content in the game, designed for those who want to push the game's mechanics to their limits.
  
• Due to their difficulty, they offer great rewards:
  • Every monster in an Echo Battle spawns at a higher level than the area's usual encounters.
  • A 1/25 chance of spawning as an Aberrant (shiny).
  • Echo Battles drop a new consumable item called Essence, which works similarly to a Rare Candy but up to a certain level cap based on rarity.
  • Additional and occasionally unique Accessories and Spell Glyphs can be found as drops.
  • In the future, rare monsters (including other starters) will have an increased chance of spawning in Echo Battles.
• There are about 1-3 potential Echo Battles per map. Each time the player rests, one of them could spawn. And they are all repeatable.
• The main goal of Echo Battles is to give players a reason to revisit explored areas, provide an alternative to tedious grinding for levels or aberrant forms, and test player skill. The high rewards and Aberrant spawn rate make them worthwhile, while the level cap on Essence ensures that new team members can be leveled up quickly without overleveling the game's content. Let me know if you think they need an adjustement one way or the other

Day/Night Cycle

• Added a day and night cycle, which can be changed by resting at Disciple Statues. (Resting is now optional rather than automatic when interacting with a statue.)
• For now, different monsters may spawn depending on the time of day.
• In the future, certain quests and interactions may require it to be day or night.
• Added Aegle, a new bird monster that can serve as a tank, support, or DPS. It spawns during the day, replacing Eyebats who only appear at night now.

Reworked Map System

• The old system had many issues:
  • Bugs when saving and loading the fog of war, causing it to recheck explored areas incorrectly.
  • Save file size increased exponentially (from a few KB to MB) due to how fog of war data was stored.
  • The mostly black map in newly explored areas made it less useful, especially with Quest and Echo Battle indicators now present.
• The new system:
  • Reveals entire portions of the map as soon as the player enters an area, maintaining gradual exploration while providing more useful information.
  • Fixes fog of war issues and significantly reduces save file size back to KB levels.

A lot of new moves and skills

• I added around 30 new skills, mostly signature and high-level moves for different monsters, along with a few additional attacks. Some monsters now have a large portion of their current moveset and skill grid implemented, so I’ll try to start reporting balance changes in future updates. I hadn’t done so before because many monsters still had placeholder skills and moves, but with more of their intended abilities in place, balance adjustments will become more relevant moving forward.

Minor Additions

• Added a continue option to the main menu and the gameover screen that laods the latest save. Also added Checkpoints for the AutoSave in front of Echo Battles.
• Fixed a ton of bugs involving the pause menu, as well as the pvp menus.
• Reworked the input system, controls should feel a bit smoother now.
• Added a hint system in battle to notify the player why they can't use certain moves. For now it only notifies of 'Not enough MP', in the future it'll notify of being silenced, wrong targets etc.
• Merged Training Points Up Skills with the FatePath/FateGate skills. TPUP skills were kinda boring and both of the other skills mentioned felt a bit bad to pick since they allow a monster to progress the skillgrid faster but don't give any benefits in combat. Merging both together makes them hopefully a worthwhile option.
• Added and improved a few tutorials, especially to the new systems.
• Increase the Font size on a lot of the UI to help with readability, especially on the Steam Deck, but probablly could still work on it more.
• Replaced some in-game music with more tone fitting tracks.
• Added some dialogue and a cutscene to the ruins area (second half of the demo)
• Swapped RuinClaw's Aberrand and regular colors around, as the old Aberrant fit its base concept better.

With this update, Am raising the demo version to 0.2.0 as most systems are at least partially implemented and I don't want to get pulled into scope creep by constantly adding new ones, instead i'll focus on actually making more content and getting closer making the game. There are still a few sub-systems to finish, (add online to PVP, Selling to merchants etc) but they are secondary in importance. This version of the demo also feels far better playability and fun wise if I say so myself and as such I feel happy focusing more on the full game, as I work towards getting the demo on Steam as well. I'll still update the demo with fixes and additions as I make them though, so see you next month!