Hi again, everyone!

This month's update is a bit smaller compared to the last couple of months, mainly because most of my focus went into creating more story content—which, of course, doesn’t make it into the demo. Still, I managed to add a few things that should hopefully improve the demo experience!

Golrab Joins the Demo

Golrab is a new monster that is mostly finished. He’s unique in that he functions as both a projectile-based DPS and a shield-wall tank, opening up a lot of potential strategies. He also comes with two new moves and a few new skills not found on other monsters.

Golrab is a somewhat common spawn in a later area that isn’t in the demo, but I’ve also added him as a rare spawn in the second half of the demo for anyone interested in trying him out.

Golcrab aberrant(shiny) form will be added in a small update in the next couple of weeks.

Battle System Adjustments

I made several tweaks to the battle system to improve balance and make combat more engaging:

• Stat Buff Stages: Buffs and debuffs can now have up to three stages. This makes stalling strategies more viable. I capped buffs at 3 stages maxing out at 175% of base stats, and debuffs at 3 stages maxing out at 50% to keep things balanced without making them overwhelming.

• Charge-Based Moves: Some moves were difficult to balance without making their MP cost extremely high, which hurt their usability—Barricade being a key example. These moves now have limited uses per battle but receive buffs to MP cost, speed, or damage to compensate. There are also new skills that increase the number of uses per battle, and in the future, I might add mechanics to refresh, steal, or otherwise interact with these uses.
• Move Reworks: A few moves have been adjusted to incorporate these new mechanics.

UI Improvements

I’ve been working on improving the game’s UI based on your feedback. This is an ongoing process, but here are some notable updates:

• Remade the grid UI in battle to properly display MP, making it much more useful. Also, I think it looks cooler now!

• Increased font and UI size for move, item, and skill descriptions in the pause menu for better readability.

Bug Fixes

• Fixed a bug that occasionally caused the game to get stuck in an attack animation when using self-damaging skills.
• Fixed a bug that caused spell glyphs to be lost when unequipping accessories that used to increase spell glyph slots.
• Fixed some issues that stopped saves from older versions from being loaded properly.
  
• Fixed several other minor bugs.

Thank you to everyone still following these devlogs and supporting the game! Ever since I started writing these, my productivity has shot up a lot.

As a final goodie, here’s a sneak peek at the 8th starter, which should (hopefully) be added to the demo next month: Sangolin!