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There's a lot of good in life. You just have to look for it.

Kyme's searching for a fresh start in the city of Province. Will he find it among the eccentric residents and their whimsical adventures? Or will he get lost chasing his personal villain, a grand thief capable of stealing the blue from the sky, the voice of a singer, and even the very memory of what he stole, leaving you with nothing but an empty feeling?

Notes From Province is an Open World RPG focused on exploration and meeting people.

Recipe
Start with a solid RPG, simmer lightly
  • Open world - no dead ends, only new things to see and treasure to find
  • Character driven story - even the battles have a story to tell
  • Crafting, cooking, fishing, dancing, finding a strange rat-loving man living in a hole under your neighbor's house

Mix in 2 cups tactical combat
  • 7 characters - with distinct styles and roles, swap-able mid combat
  • Equipment based customization - abilities and passives come from equipment that can be freely swapped to redefine characters
  • Enemies worth reacting to - each encounter has a plan to crush you unless you spot the weakness and counter

And season with a hint of Animal Crossing
  • Decorate and expand your house - a straight-faced, no nonsense man with rabbit ears will judge your furniture arrangement and award you accordingly
  • NPCs with lives - each villager has their own daily agenda, situational dialog, and a story to tell the more you get to know them


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Latest Blog

Patch Notes v1.1.5

v1.1.5

  • Black Powder now correctly does 200 damage on critical hits
  • Fixed a crash and other wacky behaviors that happened during tournaments, if you had previously failed the tournament but not yet reloaded the game
  • Rat Man will no longer crash the game when confused and fully charged
  • Obsessive Slither is now less obsessive (won't cause an infinite loop when up against taunt/cover)
  • Zombies now only revive other Zombies in tournament matches
  • The Sanctuary skill is now disabled in Challenge Battles that don't allow Invincible
  • Kyme can no longer walk through the walls of Bree Tree Ruins


v1.1.6
  • Fixed an issue where the rocks in Lamia's Lair can get permanently stuck. Stuck rocks will now reset when leaving the central room
  • Rick has overcome his shyness and will now properly flirt with Rachelle, even after Kyme has already talked to her about the Grand Thief
  • Fixed a crash in the VP and General Store, caused by the first party member having an unused extra accessory slot earned through a passive skill
  • Fixed a crash when unequiping multiple Belt Pouches
  • Fixed an issue where the BGS volume setting didn't affect the sound of rain
  • Sever Artery now properly applies Bleed and extra ticks of Bleed damage when used during Counter


v1.1.7
Patch Notes

v1.1.8
Patch Notes
  • Completed
  • Ramshackin
  • RPG Maker VX Ace
  • RPG
  • 04/27/2016 03:35 AM
  • 01/06/2023 07:23 PM
  • 10/31/2021
  • 164193
  • 51
  • 1500

Tags

Posts

Okay, I finished the game and my thoughts are about the same as Frejo's. The ending could be a little longer. Also, it was never explained who the Masked Stranger was and what happened to Cyl. There's also a ghost at the eastern end of the map next to the watermill and a descending cave where we go down by fixing the elevator and each floor has a letter (related to the ghost outside I think) with the last letter next to a skeleton (the ghost's wife I presume) being empty. That part feels kinda incomplete. Other than that, I liked how the game makes the player to think outside the box with puzzles and such and the idea of decorating your home. Btw, I almost filled the entire journal but I'm missing the profiles of Chuck and Bernardo. How do I get them before confronting Redd?
Chuck's note
You need to craft everything. There's an exact number of materials in the game, so it can be difficult to find them all.


Bernardo's note
Find him in Zephyre, the Harp Sanctuary. One of the dialog options there will give his note.


The Stranger had a bigger role, but that part never made it into the game. Maybe I'll add it as a patch someday.

For the ghost husband story, I'll see if there's anything to add to make it feel complete.
I'm planning a balance patch, though I won't be able to work on it for a couple weeks.

Send suggestions my way. Characters/equipment that were overpowered, what was too weak, how you broke the game to be able to beat the Harp Matriarch challenge battle with only 1 party member.

Also, an indepth response to Frejo's suggestions:

**
My thoughts are inline, in italics.
**


Accessories
Mostly just pointing out some Accessories that could be buffed:
-Black Powder: 100 damage is just too low by the time you get it. Probably either increase it to 500 fixed damage, or make it scale with COND (either 2.5x or 3x).
-Quartz Charm: a little bit more crit chance when at full HP is just too small and rng of an effect to be worth it. Maybe just change it to buff the user's PATK every turn.
-Lady Luck: same as above, could maybe make it give a big evasion boost (30-50%) when below half HP.
-Junior Assassin Badge: same as above. Maybe have it give guaranteed crits against enemies below 35% HP?
-Ruby Gem/Lost Ruby Necklace: could maybe buff the healing up to 20-25%.

**
I'm actually fine with some accessories being bad, especially ones you get towards the beginning.

Black Powder will get buffed. Not sure what the final numbers will be, as it can be potent on a Sita/Rick crit spam build.

I'll try out the other ideas. The crit chance accessories are tricky to balance. Since crits do double damage, if you do the expected value calculation over 100 turns, each +1% crit chance is +1% in damage. There's just a lot more rng in what the player actually gets.
**


Weapons
I feel like other than Kyme, weapon variety was a bit lacking. Kyme gets lots of weapons with different special effects (the early ones have 1 out of 3 different effects, and the later ones mix and match the previous effects). Emith gets 2 different effects depending on the staff, and everyone else gets no special effects at all from their weapons.
It'd be nice if the other players also had more choices when picking their weapons (and more unique Bead options for Ezekiel). Some potential special effects suggestions:
-Emith: Absorb Magic lasts 1 more turn. Slicing Gale hits two times. +1 Wet duration.
-Brave Wind: Non-damage skills gain "start of turn". Critical Hits do 25% more damage. Pin Down also debuffs DEF by 30%.
-Umbra: Self-sacrifice skills have their HP cost reduced by 20% (i.e. Epidemic would cost 40% max HP). Borrowed Blood skills have their HP cost reduced by 20%. +30% damage to targets with a status condition. Life Syphon becomes aoe.
-Sita: Start Battles with +25% Adrenaline. Attack buff limit goes up to 100%. 20% crit chance when above 90% HP.
-Rick: Stealth also gives +15% Evasion. Reload also buffs Attack by 75%. Crippling Shot can be used twice before needing to Reload. Backstab no longer removes Stealth. Twisting Fangs hits one more time if target is Poisoned. Throw Torch deals Explosion damage. Vial of Poison gives Opening Strike.
-Ezekiel: Sanctuary Bead (Aegis affects all allies, CD+3), Purification Bead (Heal Others also removes the latest one status condition), Crusade Bead (Smite deals 25% more damage to enemies with Holy weakness), Punishment Bead (Bludgeon has no CD, but no longer debuffs ATK/DEF)

**
These ideas are all great!

Ezekiel's beads are the easiest to add to the game. The others are a bit tricky, as they require a lot more weapons + ways to acquire them. Wish I had these ideas earlier in development to plan for them better.

Sita was going to have 100% buff limit as a passive, but the way the script worked, it was actually tricky to implement, so I scrapped it.
**


Other
While accessories give you a wide array of possible builds, I think other equipment should also have a wider variety of special effects. Armor/Robe/Head/Arm/Ring equipment are kinda dull since a lot of them just increase defensive stats and nothing else, so it just feels kinda samey. I think it's fine for more generic equipment to just give stat boosts, but anything more unique it'd be nice if they had special effects. Lategame armors do have a bunch of unique effects, but there still are a bunch like the Lamia Armor, Snake Skin Armor and Mother/Father Robe where it'd make sense to give some other bonuses. Also stuff you get from some of the tougher endgame bosses like the Gloves of the Swordman, Stranger's Mask or Moon Raven's Boots, it's bit disappointing because they just give a couple points extra stats compared to the next best option and that's it.
For Rings too, I think it's fine for the "main line" of rings (Common, Uncommon, Rare, Miracle) to just give a generic boost to all stats, but it'd be nice if the other rings either gave more special effects or simply boosted a single stat a lot (or give a % bonus to said stat). Some random suggestions:
-Armor: Snake Skin Suit (Bleed Immunity), Vladio's Suit (+5 to all stats), Lamia Skin Armor (Paralysis immunity)
-Robe: Mother's Robe (Confuse Immunity), Father's Robe (Blind Immunity), Phoenix Robe (Burn/Wildfire Immunity), Celestial Robe (+5% Evasion)
-Head: Flame Seer's Headband (Freeze Immunity), Nefermaat's Crown (Poison/Disease Immunity), Sinister Mask (COND +10%), Stranger's Mask (+10% Evasion)
-Arm: Aa Ba Goop (Wet Immunity), Gloves of the Swordsman (PATK +10%), King's Gauntlet (75% ATK buff on battle start)
-Legs: Moon Raven's Boots (Second Chance)
-Ring: Shadow Claw's Ring (MDEF +50), Chronomancer's Ring (AGIL +100), Rooftop's Ring (PDEF +50)

**
One thing that frustrates me is not being able to use new, higher stat gear because it doesn't have the passive I need. That's why most gear upgrades are simple stat buffs, while the max stat armors are filled with passives.

Some of the suggestions are small enough effects. They give the items more flavor without being overpowered.

Gear rewards from the tougher endgame bosses are weird, because there are no enemies left to use them against. There more like trophies at that point. I could throw some extra effects on them since it won't hurt the balance.
**


Kyme
Kyme overall feels like the character whose kit works the best together. Inflict Bleed and tank, which accelerates Bleed damage; simple but effective. The only change I would suggest is making Sever Artery do one additional tick of Bleed when used on a Bleeding enemy, because Kyme will probably mainly be built for COND and defensive stats, so one more tick of Bleed will generally be better than just +25% damage on an attack that scales with PATK.

**
I like the idea of Sever Artery doing an additional Bleed tick. The +25% boost came from an earlier time when Kyme wasn't rewarded for doing more Bleed ticks.
**


Umbra
Overall a fantastic support character, mainly for spreading/maintaining status conditions. I think it'd be nice if she got a passive that makes her inflict Life Syphon on her first attack, also maybe make Life Syphon do something else if she uses it on a target that's already inflicted. I do think that Descending Darkness doesn't make too much sense with the rest of her kit, since she's probably not going to be built very offensively most of the time; maybe give her a spell that drains HP equal to damage dealt instead, and deals more damage the lower her HP is, this gives her a bit of extra self-sustain when she needs it.
I also feel like Brave Wind's Borrowed Blood is a bit on the weaker side, maybe have it grant Opening Strike to all frontliners and make it cost 50% HP?

**
Will take a second look at Life Siphon and Descending Darkness.

Your suggestion for Brave Wind's Borrowed Blood is solid. Will implement that. Brave Wind used to be able to crit on his support skills, so giving only him a guaranteed crit was pretty good back then. It's definitely weaker now.
**


Ezekiel
Jack of all trades, can heal and also deal damage (particularly considering Smite is one of only 2 aoes you get). I do feel that Prayer increasing item cooldowns by 1 is a bit harsh, it should only increase cd of skills that use MP (Bludgeon and Smite).

**
Ezekiel is one of my favorites. Prayer does feel a bit rough to use.
**


Rick
Has probably the most interesting kit imo, with 3 skillsets and some fairly synergistic passives, can do a bit of everything depending on how you build him. I would make it so Death Blossom only hits one target instead of being random though, it's really expensive at 5 Adrenaline, and it's honestly only good if all hits land on the same target for the instant 75% DEF down (its damage isn't even that good either at 125%). Also Vial of Poison feels like it isn't really strong enough to warrant costing 1 Adrenaline.

**
I'm always relieved when battling only 1 enemy, because then Death Blossom is guaranteed to land on all hits on the same target. Probably makes most sense to be a single target skill to being with.
**


Emith
Probably the best/most consistent damage dealer, by virtue of not being limited by CDs or Adrenaline, and Wet+Thunder deals a lot of damage. I do feel like a lot of his kit ends up being redundant as the game goes on, and he ends up just being reduced to Wet+Thunder spam. While he has multiple passives that give MP recovery, they all give too little to really bother with them, so you kinda just use Recovery anyway.
-Flame Lance: damage increased to 100% from 75%.
-Slicing Gale: I feel like its whole spreading Burn gimmick falls off flat once Umbra joins the party. I'd suggest changing its special effect to "if the target has burn/wildfire, deal one tick of burn/wildfire damage", this way it can piggyback off someone else's Burn/Wildfire.
-Absorb Magic: now affects the entire party.
-Healing Waves: Emith passively recovers 5% max HP and 3% max MP each turn for every unit in the field with Wet.
-Fire Attunement: change effect to "when attacking an enemy with Burn/Wildfire, inflict Burn/Wildfire".
-Staves: instead of the Fire staves only increasing Wildfire duration, they instead increase both Burn and Wildfire duration.
-Water Attunement: change effect to "when using Sea's Sorrow on a Wet target, inflicts Wet to all enemies".
-Elemental Balance: whenever Scalding Steam is cast, Flame Lance and Sea's Sorrow gain a permanent flat 50% damage increase (i.e. 100%->150%->200%, etc) and +15 MP cost.
-Elemental Recycling: recover 10% MP whenever Emith uses a spell that the target resists.
The general idea is to give him some alternative build options, and a more clear cut path to MP recovery. The basic Wet+Thunder combo is still there and is mostly unaltered. The changes give two alternative strategies, first is to focus on spamming Slicing Gale to deal extra Burn damage, ideally you'd have someone with higher COND inflict Burn/Wildfire, then everytime Emith uses Slicing Gale he'll refresh the duration of Burn/Wildfire thanks to Fire Attunement, while dealing extra tics of Burn/Wildfire damage. The other path is to ramp up damage from Fire Lance/Sea's Sorrow by repeatedly triggering Scalding Steam, which thanks to Elemental Balance will make the 2 spells stronger each time (albeit it also makes them cost more MP each time). Water Attunement+Healing Waves allows Emith to quickly regenerate HP/MP if he spreads Wet to the entire enemy party.

**
Lot of interesting ideas here. I've had a lot of fun playing the Burn/Wildfire build, and definitely want it to be viable.
**


Brave Wind
Brave Wind is supposed to be a support/damage hybrid that build up Adrenaline with his support skills and then consumes it for his damage skills, but I feel like that concept doesn't really work out mainly because his support skills are too spammable, and his damage is just not that great, so he just ends up being pure support.
-Support skills: I think Antidote Signet/Nature's Blessing/Energizing Wind should get cds to make them less spammable (1 turn for Antidote, 2 turns for the others). However, Brave Wind also gets a Passive skill (probably replacing Infectious Serenity) that makes the effects of said skills apply on himself when used on an ally (Antidote Signet and Nature's Blessing extra Adrenaline conditions can apply twice accordingly, while Energizing Wind still only generates 2 even if it affects 2 targets)
-Pin Down: now gives +1 Adrenaline instead of costing 3, but has a 5 turn cd.
-Gentle Soul: remove or change its effect, Brave Wind really doesn't need a crit debuff.
-Marked Shot: I'd suggest giving Brave Wind a passive that makes Marked targets receive 10% more damage from all sources (including status damage), however, the status now only lasts 3 turns and needs to be reapplied. Since the cumulative damage bonus will also be reset if the status fades, could also make it stack faster (10% damage per use), but cap at 100%.
-Coyote's Fury: I think instead of its current effect, you could make it so it can only be used when Brave Wind is at full Adrenaline, it consumes all his Adrenaline and gives him one extra action per 2 Adrenaline. Brave Wind can't use items/swap equipment during these extra actions, but can otherwise use all his skills.
-Coyote's Fury+: change effect to make Brave Wind gain crit rate equal to the extra damage bonus when attacking a Marked target during Coyote's Fury.
With these changes, you can no longer spam his support skills repeatedly, but in exchange, the fact they can simultaneously target Brave Wind and a selected ally makes them a bit stronger. Marked targets receiving more damage from all sources heavily encourages you to keep reapplying the Marked status whenever it's going to run out. So now you have a cycle where you apply Marked, then use your support skills, now your support skills are on cd so you use the turn to reapply Marked, and now your support skills are off cd and so on. Once your Adrenaline fills to full, you can use Coyote's Fury, which turns all your accumulated Adrenaline into extra turns for a big damage turn where you just get to spam Market Shot (it also comes with a big crit rate buff against marked targets); while you can't use items, you can still throw a few support skills in if you want to (for reference, Coyote's Fury would consume all the Adrenaline and grant the extra turns on use, so getting extra Adrenaline during Coyote's Fury will not affect the number of extra turns you get).

**
I want to try out your idea for Coyote's Fury. I'm a bit hesitant to make such a large change, as with the game as big as it is, I'll undoubtedly cause some random bug or completely throw off the balance.

Gentle Soul was added from a pure numbers perspective. When building him for damage, and spamming Marked Shot, he had higher damage per turn than the actual damage characters.
**


Sita
I feel like Sita is probably by far the worst character, she's wholly focused on damage with almost no support but her damage is kinda just okay, and is far more dependant on Adrenaline than Rick/Brave Wind are while also having a harder time gaining it.
-Critical Artist: replace with a passive that gives her 1 Adrenaline when dodging, this helps her build Adrenaline faster.
-Critical Success: change effect to gaining +1% critical damage permanently every time Sita crits for the rest of the battle.
-Spin Heel Kick: special effect changed to 15% DEF debuff before damage.
-Perfect Finish: base damage increased to 200%. Special effect changed to just deal 50% extra damage at 0 Adrenaline.
-Jump Front Kick: base damage increased to 200%. Now gives 5% to crit rate instead of 1%.
-Her combos now no longer increase Adrenaline cost each time a new move is added to the combo, but are capped at 6 attacks. The finisher moves can only be used if the combo is at least 3 attacks long.
-Taunt: now only generates 2 Adrenaline, but can be used again, with a 2 turn cd.
-Recover: now recovers extra HP when used below half max Adrenaline.
Thus the general idea is for Sita to keep using Taunt to draw enemy aggroo, then for every attack she evades she gets Adrenaline she can then use on her combos, then once she runs low on Adrenaline she can benefit from the extra heal on Recovery, then she uses Taunt again and the cycle begins anew.
The increased Adrenaline cost on her combos is removed since it was very limiting, and made Hundred Punches a better option any time there is only one enemy. So the idea is to give more of an incentive to using her combos.

**
One of the earlier testers built Sita into a damage machine, and since then I've been playtesting with a similar setup. It's probably thrown off my sense of how good she is without specific accessories.
**


So, I didn't realize I can't go back inside the Bree Tree Ruins. I skipped a chest because I wasn't able to figure it out how to get to it, so I just exited without ever grabbing it, but now I'm permanently locked out from ever getting it D:
On that note, a change I think would also be cool is if the enemy color changes (that indicate how much HP they have) were spaced out more evenly. If an enemy has a white name, their HP can be anywhere between 90% to 35%, which just isn't very helpful. I think it'd be best if it just changed colors every 25% HP (so Yellow is between 100-75, then White 75-50, Orange 50-25, Red 25-0). I honestly also feel like Yellow for high HP wasn't the best choice, since the most common sequence is White->Yellow->Orange->Red (took me a while to get used to Yellow meaning almost full instead of at around half HP).

Also, it'd be nice if the Music Heart allowed you to select how many Music Notes you want to invest into a particular stat, instead of having you choose one by one. Once you get 12 it becomes a bit tedious if you want to redistribute its stats.

Finally, some clarifications and follow-up suggestions:

The crit chance accessories are tricky to balance. Since crits do double damage, if you do the expected value calculation over 100 turns, each +1% crit chance is +1% in damage. There's just a lot more rng in what the player actually gets.
I feel like the problem with that is that battles don't tend to last that many turns, so you're less likely to approach the average. You also have to take into account that in a real situation, a character won't be dealing their maximum amount of damage each turn, both because skills have CDs or resource requirements, and because buffs/debuffs fade over time; a random crit on the turn you're unleashing a big attack can be very helpful, a random crit on the turn you're using a basic attack not so much. This is compounded by the Magnifying Glass, which allows you to ensure your big damage turns will be crits anyway.

On a related note, it'd be nice if there was an Accessori that inflicted Bleed on first attack, I feel that currently you just default to Kyme for statuses because no one else can inflict Bleed. That'd make COND Ricky or Umbra more appealing imo.

Some of the suggestions are small enough effects. They give the items more flavor without being overpowered.
Personally, the thing I think would be most helpful would be the Chronomancer's Ring giving more AGIL. In some setups I needed the characters to act in a specific turn order and with the Gold Star alone that turned out to be impossible (I needed both Brave Wind and Umbra to act before Rick, but with only the Gold Star that couldn't be done).

Will take a second look at Life Siphon and Descending Darkness.
For Life Syphon, the suggestion to give a passive that inflicts it on first attack is to make it more practical, since a lot of times Umbra can be busy casting Epidemic even on turn 1 and she may not have a spare turn to use Life Syphon. The other thing is that it currently does nothing if the target already has Life Syphon, so it would be nice if it had at least some kind of effect when used on them (some random suggestions: instantly deals 2-3 ticks of Lyfe Syphon damage, removes Life Syphon but deals ticks of damage equal to the turns it has been on the enemy, increases Life Syphon's COND damage by 0.3 stacking up to 3x COND damage, makes the enemy take 25% more damage from all status conditions for one turn).

For Descending Darkness, it's kinda difficult to find a use for it currently, since unless you're fighting enemies you vastly overlevel, chaining it is near impossible; even more so when Umbra will probably not have Accessories that give her extra damage or MAG. So replacing it for a spell that has some kind of utility or can deal a crapton of damage if you set it up properly seems good.

Lot of interesting ideas here. I've had a lot of fun playing the Burn/Wildfire build, and definitely want it to be viable.
I personally used Emith for Burn/Wildfire early on, but once I obtained the Accessories that give Burn/Wildfire on first hit I switched to Thunder/Wet. Mainly because it makes more sense to build Kyme full COND and have him inflict the statuses instead since it results in more damage. That's why the suggestions for the Burn/Wildfire build focus on Emith being able to exploit the statuses even if he didn't inflict them; also, a lot of lategame bosses have enough resistance to Burn/Wildfire where they run out in just 1 turn and can't be maintained, which is why I suggested Emith being able to reapply them, since with his Fire Staves, he gets +1 duration, so he can help maintain a Burn/Wildfire that'd have otherwise run out.

Scalding Steam just kinda doesn't do much currently (50% MAG damage and recover 10 MP), which is why I suggested the ramping up damage thing to make triggering it more desirable.

Gentle Soul was added from a pure numbers perspective. When building him for damage, and spamming Marked Shot, he had higher damage per turn than the actual damage characters.
I think a somewhat prevalent problem with using Brave Wind as a damage dealer is that he's the only character with a spammable ATK buff, so if he's on offense you're basically losing out on a bunch of damage, since buffing yourself costs a turn and means you lose out on 25% of the buff. A possible solution to that would be making Zack's Battle Medallion a targetable ATK buff instead of self-only (with maybe 1-2 turns of CD, 9 turns of CD is too much even for its current effect).

One of the earlier testers built Sita into a damage machine, and since then I've been playtesting with a similar setup. It's probably thrown off my sense of how good she is without specific accessories.
I think I basically have 3 main complaints about Sita.

1) Her combo system is extremely inefficient Adrenaline wise. If you have 12 max Adrenaline, you can execute a 5-hit combo for 500-550% damage, if you instead use Hundred Punches you're getting 1200% damage for the same amount of Adrenaline. The more hits your combo has, the more inefficent it becomes in terms of damage to Adrenaline ratio, so there's no point in doing longer combos (unless you really need to do as much damage as possible and you're fightning multiple enemies so Hundred Punches is unreliable).

2)In any boss where the enemy isn't alone her DPT is worse than Emith's:
-Sita against a single enemy: spam a basic Punch combo 4 times to reach 12 Adrenaline, then use Hundred Punches. So you get ((100x4)+1200)/5 = 320% damage per turn.
-Sita against multiple enemies: Hundred Punches is unreliable, so it's better to just use a basic 2 hit combo each turn for 200% damage per turn.
-Emith Thunder/Wet build: use Sky's Rage 3 turns in a row for 375% damage each and then use Recover, with someone else inflicting Wet with Hydra's Spit. So you get (375x3)/4 = 281% damage per turn. With the Thunder staff you also never run out of MP with this loop. If you replace Recover with Sea's Sorrow you can also temporarily reach even higher DPT, but this cannot be maintained since you'll run out of MP eventually.

3)Sita pretty much lacks any kind of utility. Which is why I suggested the changes to Taunt so that she can at least work as a sort of Evade-tank while still being able to do damage.

author=sushiman345
So, I didn't realize I can't go back inside the Bree Tree Ruins. I skipped a chest because I wasn't able to figure it out how to get to it, so I just exited without ever grabbing it, but now I'm permanently locked out from ever getting it D:


There's nothing important in there, since those are some of the few chests that can be permanently missed. There's some consumables and sellable loot. The only notable item is a furniture book that unlocks some of the Furniture Catalog, if you were looking to 100% that, and that treasure is in one of the more straightforward chests.

author=Frejo
On that note, a change I think would also be cool is if the enemy color changes (that indicate how much HP they have) were spaced out more evenly. If an enemy has a white name, their HP can be anywhere between 90% to 35%, which just isn't very helpful. I think it'd be best if it just changed colors every 25% HP (so Yellow is between 100-75, then White 75-50, Orange 50-25, Red 25-0). I honestly also feel like Yellow for high HP wasn't the best choice, since the most common sequence is White->Yellow->Orange->Red (took me a while to get used to Yellow meaning almost full instead of at around half HP).


The colored names are actually meant to make it easy to tell which HP threshold abilities will trigger, which is why they are at weird increments, since 90% and 35% thresholds made for more interesting gameplay. Though it makes sense that yellow coming first was confusing.
hello.
how do you kill the chronomancer got the time bomb but run out of time.
The Chronomancer is tricky. The damage you do is carried over between time loops. Ideally, you want to be efficient enough to reach him on 3 different loops, and have the time bomb each time. That should be enough damage to defeat him.
hello.
thanks for getting back to me.
now where is lamia's lair where in mount verner.
Someone had a similar question earlier, so I'll quote the answer:

author=Frejo
Lamia's Cavern is in Mount Verner, one screen right of the entrance (you need to push a rock from the cliff to open the cave).
hello.
i did that but can't get in there some thing in the way.
half of a stone can see the entrance.
Once you break the pillar, you can jump over the broken part into the cave.
hello.
thanks for your help.
now how do you kill the magician's apprentice spider.
Magician's apprentice is balanced for level 42+ parties. You may just need to level up more by doing other stuff in the game.

The spider can be beaten at a lower level with careful strategy. He uses the same 8 moves in the same order each time, making the battle easier to predict and counter. If you haven't been to the graveyard at night, you can pick up some Zombie Flesh that helps counter the spider's healing.
I just finished (except for extra optional boss fights.) I did get stuck at the same point as one or two other folks


Waiting for the event that would trigger the path riddle. It’s unintuitive since I personally figured it out, and kept on looking for some way to get past the harpy. I would have gotten stuck if I hadn’t come here and found the comment thread - I was pretty far along and only had a few things left to add progress points.


One small side note/response from reading the earlier comments:


I liked the ghost husband as is. Not everything needs to be a quest resolved by the player, and it was nice for it to just be there. But I do get folks reactions too…maybe umbra could make a dismissive comment to indicate there’s nothing to do?


Rather than give feedback, though, I just wanted to say that this was a terrific game, in so many ways. It looks like you have other projects but I really hope you do put it on Steam (could perhaps even do it as early access and continue both adding to it and improving it based on feedback.)
Thanks for the comments! I hope to put the game on Steam once it reaches $100 in donations over an itch.io to cover the Steam fee. It's surprisingly close!

Any thoughts on how to improve the path riddle so it's less likely to get stuck?
Made an account on the site to give some feedback.

tl;dr: The puzzles are awesome, the battles are great, the characters are mostly good, but the story not so much.

Overall, great game. I don't play a lot of RPGMaker games, since there are so many that are a waste of time, but this one is one of the best. I completed most of the game (some end-game stuff left) over the course of a few weeks when I had time to play.

Gameplay:
While the difficulty balance of battles was a bit uneven at times, it's good on the whole. In the beginning some areas were pretty hard or downright impossible, but once I got towards the middle of the game it started getting easy enough that battles are over before any gimmicks or special enemy mechanics have time to make a difference.

I should not that I didn't use any consumables at all, since I didn't feel it was necessary to use them for most battles, and while it could've made the harder battles completable earlier on, there was always something else to do instead, and I didn't want to get too strong for those quests/dungeons to lose their challenge.

The variation in the battles made it feel fresh and unique as long as the balance was roughly appropriate. This made the battles never feel boring, and there was never any need for grinding.

The most fun battle was against the eight when the usual suspect finally had collected her seven friends. At that point it was a bit easy, though (I was at 50-60 or something I believe).

The best part of the gameplay is the puzzles. There are a lot of them, they're creative rather than complex, and they have a difficulty ranging from learning basic controls to stumpers. It's amazing how just a simple jump action can be used for so much. I also very much like the push-back against walls in the pushing puzzles, since that both removes the likelihood of having to reset puzzles, and adds one more mechanic you can, and sometimes have to, use to solve the puzzles.

The minigames weren't generally good, though. I'm not sure I enjoyed any of them. Long-winded pattern repetition gets boring, rhythm game style circles that have uneven speed and dubious hit timing are more of a chore to learn, and direction combinations doesn't work as well with tringles that are slower to interpret than clear arrows make me want to stop playing.

On the other hand, fishing and shooting worked, and the dungeon defence was a bit frustrating but was otherwise a good challenge that required thought. The card game and slime avoidance felt more random than skill-based, but weren't so hard they took away from the game. The reaction game doesn't work with a controller, since some inputs are left and right at the same time. I think, anyway, was a while ago.

The sun-moon path riddle didn't have any place to look up what the riddle was so I forgot what it actually was, and by the time I could even access the area, Cyl showed up which also seemed to close the ability to solve it myself (if that was an option). It wasn't much of a riddle once I actually saw the location, though.


Story:
The weakest part of the game. I didn't feel it made much of a point finishing the game for the story, since the final confrontation didn't add much depth, closure, or change. It felt weird when Kyme started complaining about no one asking about his past, since he didn't want to talk about it anyway when Sita asked. The theme of starting a new life didn't mesh well with the whole stealing theme. The implication of the final love interest felt like it ignored most of it. Sita said like two lines when she got her memory back, which was all of it for her part of the entire story, while some of the rest of them had a story beat or another earlier on that might have indicated their story was done.

The spider cave was a railroad that assumed the same outcome regardless of what you did. I can understand missing it being possible or being restricted in having a different outcome, but it breaks immersion when it happens.


Characters:
The different characters do provide different ways of playing, which is always good. I'm not sure how well the other characters played if you focus on them, but I mainly had Sita and Emith do damage, Rick debuff, and Kyme protecting and countering everything. It worked for pretty much the entire game, with Ezekiel supporting with both healing and damage, and Brave Wind with healing and the occasional stun.

Kyme worked well as a tank, sometimes too well as the counter + cover combo killed a lot of things with no risk. Especially the Obsessive(?) snake which killed itself after quite a few attacks. It was fun seeing that tactic as the penultimate boss, though. However, Sita didn't gain crit% from dodging the counters.

Sita in particular worked well with the accessories giving her def buffs when she gets attack buffs, and healing when she gets either, meaning she'd rarely need healing herself (and thus could attack without pause). However, her combos felt a bit awkward as any finisher requires a set-up of a turn of doing nothing special. The small fight-permanent bonuses never added up to anything noticeable since fights didn't last that long. She was probably my most used character, though, so it still worked.

Emith worked well enough. A bit more of a spin on the standard black magician with the element interactions, but on the whole I found the resistances and vulnerabilities on enemies didn't matter as much as just spamming wet + lightning or poison + holy.

Rick in hindsight should've gotten better priority on his agility from my part, since he was sometimes slower than Sita and therefore didn't debuff the enemies in time. Overall I liked his kits (mostly only used dagger + gun, though). He's a bit fragile but can hide, does a bit of condition damage as well as regular damage, so I never had any problems.

Ezekiel probably works a lot better if you actually use healing items (which I didn't), although later when you get more abilities and the last team mates it's less of an issue. A bit basic, but works.

Umbra felt a bit too gimmicky, and I didn't get her to work well enough. Might work for someone who focuses more on condition damage, but I didn't go there.

Brave Wind was for the most part not necessary in his support capacity, and was too weak as an attacker.

As far as the personality of the characters goes, they're fairly basic and don't have that much dialogue, except maybe Kyme and Sita. It works for the game, so it's not bad, but could be expanded upon. I did like several of them, as well as many NPCs. There were a few less interesting ones, like Brave Wind, and I didn't like Cyl. I didn't like Sita in the beginning, but she got a lot better with time, and had the most impact out of any single character.
Thanks for the detailed feedback!

It's great to get your thoughts on the characters and how you used them in battle, especially since it's quite different from some of the others who posted here.

The game is balanced for players who fight 80% of the battles. So if you're thorough and find everything there is to do, you'll be a bit over-leveled by the end, but there's some super bosses to make up for it.

author=AnotherDuck
The spider cave was a railroad that assumed the same outcome regardless of what you did. I can understand missing it being possible or being restricted in having a different outcome, but it breaks immersion when it happens.


Never even crossed my mind that someone would do a pacifist run through that dungeon and completely break the story :o

author=AnotherDuck
As far as the personality of the characters goes, they're fairly basic and don't have that much dialogue, except maybe Kyme and Sita. It works for the game, so it's not bad, but could be expanded upon. I did like several of them, as well as many NPCs.


Which characters and NPCs did you end up liking?
author=Ramshackin
It's great to get your thoughts on the characters and how you used them in battle, especially since it's quite different from some of the others who posted here.

That's one reason I posted that. I always find it interesting in how people play games so differently, and what combinations they find. I usually focus more on having fun and playing with the characters I like than who's the optimal choice, but it's not like I don't try to optimize after that.

As I said, the combat system is overall fun since you have a lot of different options that work, and a lot of different combat encounters to encourage different strategies. For instance how some completely stop Sita's and Rick's multi-attacks with recoil damage, while others make it the optimal choice with armour reducing everything to 1 damage.

author=Ramshackin
Never even crossed my mind that someone would do a pacifist run through that dungeon and completely break the story :o

Mostly because I'm a bit trope savvy. I figured there was at least a 50% chance it was a fakeout and her actually not speaking in munching metaphors. And it would ruin Sita's plan to hook Kyme up with Arana! Besides, there were friendly spiders who brought you treasures. Except that one that was missing, so you had to do it yourself...

author=Ramshackin
Which characters and NPCs did you end up liking?

Kyme is okay other than his past issues, which I mentioned. Sita has the most involvement, which helps making her a great character, and it helps Kyme as well. They come off as the good friends they become. She's got better chemistry with him than the other girls, even if it's not romantic.

Ezekiel and Rick do work as contrasts, and their adventure in the ruins does well highlighting that. Sure, it's a bit of a stereotype, but considering there's not a whole lot of text it's still not bad.

Emith isn't particularly interesting, but he's got a good personality so he's still fine.

Umbra has an interesting personality, so her story part works rather well. Even if I'm not that fond of Brave Wind, his involvement in that isn't bad. Otherwise he's a bit of a one-note character with an odd laugh.

As for the NPCs, Ryoma's nice and provides some development for Kyme. Bolinda is fun in her persistance. Rooftop's one of those who seem like a moneygrubber but is actually kind of nice. And a moneygrubber. Gespucci is horrible which is entirely the point. Some people like Marionette have some quirk that makes them feel a little bit more interesting than a button to activate a minigame. There are also some, like the other necromancer that feel like they could've added more, but on the other hand it makes it feel more like a "real" world than a setting for the PC to act his story in, since there are things that happen without him and things he doesn't know.
Had to make an account just to be able to comment lmao.. Is the way to pass the demon claw swamp another puzzle? or does it require progress in west dungeons?

Possibly arena rank matters? so far I can only summon one of those undead bringing plank guys and I'm going crazy looking for a way to cross the swamp. There are probably two main areas I know but haven't entered yet which is that crystal cave thing in the middle of old western road and harpy sanctuary. HEEEEEELP