Vore Vendor - 0.095-2 : Mini Christmas Update (1/12/24)

[ShadowsSong]

I thought the patch would be bigger, but at least you didn't request a project.

Was intending it to be bigger tbh, but had a lot going on in life, combined with lack of motivation. Whilst I'm doing this this project for fun, I just don't feel enough interest in it at present to push out updates, and doing work on a game whilst unmotivated would result in it being pretty shit, tbh. If was collecting through SubStar or something, would definitely have put more effort in, but I don't want to fall into the issue lots of developers have where they ask for money, but then bring out sub-quality or too infrequent updates, upsetting fans and ultimately losing the support. That'd be bad for the project and suck for anyone who did sub.

On the upside, the next update should have quite a bit more content, though might take a whilst to get out as a result. The new lead-up quest for next system is turning into a bigger undertaking than intended, especially since it interacts with two other quests and that makes the processes a bit of a messy hassle. That quest will have quite a few scenes in itself, as well as unlocking a new area with repeatable scenes (and a sort of mini-game). Then there's one of the side quests tied into it, which is at least complete now (involving Ina, for those of you who were wondering how her quest would continue!)

Then going to add two new side quests, one for Siri (the cyclops who runs the item store) and one for Valerie (Kina's mother and town tailor), both of which will have scenes of their own. Also going to add a bit more to the Adventurer's Guild quest line, including some content with Eclair.

Overall, should be a decently big update to make up for what's lacking in last one. Hopefully it'll be worth the wait. Just need to finish up something on another project, then I'll dive back into this.

[Myna8888]

Well, it's too early for see what appening to the main character if she's don't pay the rent for the restaurant ?

[ShadowsSong]

Well, it's too early for see what appening to the main character if she's don't pay the rent for the restaurant ?

If understanding what you're saying correctly, then no, still don't have the scene that's meant to play out when you fail to keep up with the daily cost finished. I did start it briefly during a bored period, but not in a rush to finish it really.

Unless people are doing VERY badly or making poor decisions with their money, this scene isn't one most people are likely to see, so'd rather concentrate on the scenes people ARE likely to come upon.

[ShadowsSong]

v0.09D -
Given it's now getting closer to the October Halloween event date, I've done this small update to get rid of the 'cheat' that I added in back when there was a need for a forced restart, which allowed players to play through the Halloween event again. With event getting closer, it's no longer needed, and in fact it could cause issues if used, so removed the cheat. The Christmas event cheat will still be available for some time, until we get closer to December.

I've also added in a few minor changes that have been made during next update work - a destroyed sprite for the credits stone if you blow it up, a fix for an odd issue involving being able to run up the walls in the town hall, and a change I think some people will be glad to hear of, some moaning/gasping/sighing sound effects during sex and a lot of the vore scenes.

As an aside, work on next update is now proceeding (had to finish up some work on another project first). The new Adventurer's Guild content is all but finished, with you learning more about Eclair, and taking the D-Rank exam, which will increase rewards from guild quests. The major part of the next update, where Lissi has to do some prep work for the upcoming new system/minigame (depending on how you see it ) is about half way done, and has a fair bit of juicy content, including tieing in to another quest you may or may not have taken.

Beyond that, I haven't done much towards the two side quests planned apart from some loose planning, since the prior mentioned 'prep work' quest line will dwarf them both combined. I've settled for sure on Valerie and Siri as the focus of these quests now, and you'll be able to party up with both of them during their quests, though neither will be a permanent companion as of yet. Valerie's quest will have you learn a dark part of her bargain with her goddess, and seek to help her, whereas Siri's quest will have you tracking down a missing shipment - the guards of which are mysteriously drained of blood?

Going to be a whilst longer before I can get this update out, especially since working on two projects simultaenously, but I hope you'll think it'll be worth the wait once it's out

[anirishnirvana]

Did you just put the God Complex link in the OP?

[ShadowsSong]

Did you just put the God Complex link in the OP?

Oops, accidentally copied the wrong folder name over the default one when made output folder. Don't worry, it's not actually God Complex, that's just a file naming error on my part. Thanks for pointing that out. Will fix immediately.

EDIT : Okay, sorted. Sorry for confusion. Was doing three different tasks on computer yesterday at same time, so wasn't paying enough attention.

[ShadowsSong]

v0.095 - Halloween Event Mini Update
This mini-update is pretty much just a bit of extra filler content to bridge the gap between updates, especially since the next one's going to be delayed (will explain in few). The main thing is a third ending route, this time involving Eclair, the Adventurer's Guild receptionist encountered when you join said guild. If you've completed that and have finished at least one request for the guild via Eclair, she'll appear inside the house, with two possible vore scenes.

I've also added a second hidden quest, for those who've finished the first one in old runs. Not going to spoil either quest here though, so I'm curious to see if anyone manages to find it

As a bit of background work, I've also made a few changes to the way quests and other 'daily' stuff resets. For those who understand the way RPG Maker games work, I've switched it from part of the event at end of day to a common event, to make it much easier to edit when add new content. I didn't use the common event originally when made game because I didn't even know about them then, but decided it was about time to get around to fixing that, since having to manually edit even instance of day reset when add new zones is a nightmare. It'll make future edits MUCH easier. There shouldn't be any noticeable difference to the game, since it's the same functions, just in a CE rather than per event, but if anyone notices any issues pop up, do mention them.

Now, on to that delay I mentioned. I've recently acquired something that will let me greatly improve the game with something people have mentioned before it's missing. But since I'd rather NOT use this game as a test to make sure I can make it work, I'm going to do a test run using my other project first. Which means I'm shifting to that for a bit. Once I've got a working version of that out and got some feedback on whether it works or not, I'm hoping to introduce it to this. But it might take a month or two (hopefully not much longer than that, god forbid), so going to put a pause on this whilst I do that. If it works out, hopefully people will find that it's worth the wait.

When it hits December, I'll at least do another mini-update for that too, especially since I found that particular event lacking in comparison to the Halloween one anyway.

[TheBlindSalmon]

I think that by implementing the changes to daily stuff, you broke the daily upkeep payments. I started a fresh save and so far I'm on day 3, should've paid 400, but I didn't lose any money.

Also I might have found an infinite healing exploit - once you have Rosa, her HP/MP resets everytime you move her out, then into party. If you can be bothered to go back to do it every few fights, you will never need potions to keep up for the regular hunts.

[ShadowsSong]

I think that by implementing the changes to daily stuff, you broke the daily upkeep payments. I started a fresh save and so far I'm on day 3, should've paid 400, but I didn't lose any money.

Also I might have found an infinite healing exploit - once you have Rosa, her HP/MP resets everytime you move her out, then into party. If you can be bothered to go back to do it every few fights, you will never need potions to keep up for the regular hunts.

Thanks for the report. Upkeep mess was result of me shifting it all over to a common event, then deciding to move the gold removal back to the main event because some of the resets post-quest don't take it (someone else paying it for you, usually). Problem was I removed it from CE then forgot to put it back in main event. " Fixed now.

As for the healing, glad you pointed out the exploit. Wasn't a bug, so to speak, because when first made it seemed to make sense to have them heal when re-recruited since they'd been resting at home in the interim. But true, it's exploitable, so I've switched it so that whilst adding a person to your team heals them, the heal on adding to team only works once a day now.

Also fixed a bug where the 'replay scene' for Eclair's new event via the book in Lissi's room was sending the player to the wrong event.

[Rasuno]

at the end of the quest, where you destroy the illegal hunters, there is a endless repeat of the end scene everytime you go out of your house

[ShadowsSong]

at the end of the quest, where you destroy the illegal hunters, there is a endless repeat of the end scene everytime you go out of your house

Odd that that's happening. Checked the event, and it's set up so that the event ends with disabling the trigger that allows event, so no reason that should be occuring. To safeguard against it, created a workaround by making the 'completed' switch blank out the event, so shouldn't happen with 0.095C.

If doesn't help, will have to take a closer look at event.

[anirishnirvana]

Had a bit of time before the Halloween event went out. Seems like the city's filling up nicely. Haven't gone far, so it was funny doing the Halloween event before meeting the sort of paladin. Hopefully will get time to check the rest out.

[ShadowsSong]

As mentioned in main post, the promised Christmas event update is now live. Not much of a difference, just a new ending route, but hopefully it'll do. Won't bother with much info here since the main post says it all, only adding this forum reply to highlight the new update.

To avoid wasting this post entirely though, will add a bit of info about next update, which will will allow you to advance to a D-rank adventurer, increasing the amount of gold you get per request completed.. It's turned into a much bigger thing than expected, mostly due to the new Adventurer's Guild event having a pretty brutal amount of variations based on prior interactions during the quest to join the guild. Plus I'm concentrating on God Complex Regurgitated for the moment, because I want to get out a working build for that that includes Ruvkus and Earkl forest. Hopefully I'll get through that as soon as possible, because I do want to get back onto this update soon.

[GeisKhan]

Hey Shadowsong, when I go to dismiss Rosa while Lissi is KO'ed from battle it gives a Game Over. Might be worth putting in a failsafe for that like preventing dismissal with a message, or have the game automatically move to resting and wake up the next day in Lissi's room.

Do you think you could increase the drops of monsters, specifically slimes? Since you don't get XP or gold from combat, if nothing drops it's a pure loss of wasted HP, MP, and potions. Have to save scum each fight two or three times usually just to get any drop from the two slime encounters, usually twice for the three slime encounters. It may be bad luck but it feels like the drop rate is under 50%. Alrunes seem to have a 50% drop rate though, so don't have to grind them as much.

Also do monsters level with the player? I reached level 2 and now slimes take more damage to defeat than they did at level 1. Just a quick test, level 1 killed a slime with 229 damage, level 2 failed to kill a slime with 251 damage.

I haven't seen it in the posts, how do you use the spirits Glory frees? Speaking of, looks like the "Criminal Voraciousness" quest didn't get marked as complete and is stuck in my current main quests.

Just found a small bug with the Christmas event. I chose the puppet show last time and chose the Hannah and Greg story, then went back to a previous save to see the other, but it doesn't give the option to choose and instead auto-plays the Hannah and Greg one. Also feel like the puppet show shouldn't be the ending of the event, since the roast ending gets you the rings. I understand if it's that way so people can avoid the roast if that's not their thing though (it's not mine either, but gamer urge to explore everything). Maybe put a warning and skip there like the Mayor quest?

EDIT: went through the posts and saw Alrune is indeed 1 in 2, and Slimes are 1 in 3, and enemies level with the player (which means one level has an immediately noticeable affect on combat difficulty). That means with two slimes there's a 44.9% probability of no slime drops, 44.2% probability of 1 slime drop, and 10.9% probability of two slime drops. With three slimes that's 29.6% probability of no slime drops, 44.4% probability of one slime drop, 25.9% probability of 2 slime drops, and 3.7% probability of all 3 slime drops. Does RPG maker only allow "1 in X" settings? if you could set it to 2 in 5 (40%), then the probability of no drops from two slimes is lowered to 36%, and is lowered to 21.6% probability of no drops from three slimes.

[ShadowsSong]

Hey Shadowsong, when I go to dismiss Rosa while Lissi is KO'ed from battle it gives a Game Over. Might be worth putting in a failsafe for that like preventing dismissal with a message, or have the game automatically move to resting and wake up the next day in Lissi's room.

Do you think you could increase the drops of monsters, specifically slimes? Since you don't get XP or gold from combat, if nothing drops it's a pure loss of wasted HP, MP, and potions. Have to save scum each fight two or three times usually just to get any drop from the two slime encounters, usually twice for the three slime encounters. It may be bad luck but it feels like the drop rate is under 50%. Alrunes seem to have a 50% drop rate though, so don't have to grind them as much.

Also do monsters level with the player? I reached level 2 and now slimes take more damage to defeat than they did at level 1. Just a quick test, level 1 killed a slime with 229 damage, level 2 failed to kill a slime with 251 damage.

I haven't seen it in the posts, how do you use the spirits Glory frees? Speaking of, looks like the "Criminal Voraciousness" quest didn't get marked as complete and is stuck in my current main quests.

Just found a small bug with the Christmas event. I chose the puppet show last time and chose the Hannah and Greg story, then went back to a previous save to see the other, but it doesn't give the option to choose and instead auto-plays the Hannah and Greg one. Also feel like the puppet show shouldn't be the ending of the event, since the roast ending gets you the rings. I understand if it's that way so people can avoid the roast if that's not their thing though (it's not mine either, but gamer urge to explore everything). Maybe put a warning and skip there like the Mayor quest?

EDIT: went through the posts and saw Alrune is indeed 1 in 2, and Slimes are 1 in 3, and enemies level with the player (which means one level has an immediately noticeable affect on combat difficulty). That means with two slimes there's a 44.9% probability of no slime drops, 44.2% probability of 1 slime drop, and 10.9% probability of two slime drops. With three slimes that's 29.6% probability of no slime drops, 44.4% probability of one slime drop, 25.9% probability of 2 slime drops, and 3.7% probability of all 3 slime drops. Does RPG maker only allow "1 in X" settings? if you could set it to 2 in 5 (40%), then the probability of no drops from two slimes is lowered to 36%, and is lowered to 21.6% probability of no drops from three slimes.

Can see how dismissing Rosa, or indeed other party members leaving only knocked out ones, would result in game over. Should be able to create a workaround that'll restore Lissi to 1 health if no other party members are around.

The spirits are accessible by interacting the items where they're displayed in Lissi's house front room.

Odd that that happened with Criminal Voraciousness quest. I've checked both possible endings, and they both have the correct plugin command to complete quest. I've just run through both quickly without encountering that issue, so unless more people have same problem, not sure what to tell you.

Since there are no conditions on letting you choose which play to watch, there's no reason you should be locked into one or the other. Aren't even any variables or switches involved that could be glitching. Christmas event ended yesterday, so guess it's not something I'll need to worry about urgently, but will take a quick look at some point.

The ghost rings are more of an extra bonus for those who complete the route. It might be a bit unfair not having a bonus on the other route, but realistically, there's no logical sense to having something like that on the play route. After all, no one dies. Might add a small bonus to play routes next (this?) year, but not really an urgent concern. After all, you can miss plenty of other trophy items just playing the main game and not taking certain paths. The ghosts are mostly just fun extras, with the one exception.

And then the elephant in the room, drops. As I've said many a time (not trying to be rude, just fact - had a lot of this conversation when first posted game), this is unfortunately something that cannot be really resolved. RPG Maker only lets you set it at a 1/whatever drop rate, and whilst you might be able to modify it with plugins, none of the ones currently using can, and frankly I don't want to bloat the game with plugins, especially since too many causes conflict problems. Setting it any higher than it already is will make farming WAY too easy. Whilst a means of capturing via item/skill was suggested once before, it'd still ultimately come down to chance, because having a 100% capture rate would result in same problem as high drop rate. There isn't really a solution to this, so I'm having to leave things as they are. There is one potential solution I've considered, but there's a LOT going on in the next update as is, so I don't want to add more to my plate for it right now. Once this update is ready, I'll take a brief break before next update to test the idea out, as well as get a bit of God Complex Regurgitated out.

[GeisKhan]

Can see how dismissing Rosa, or indeed other party members leaving only knocked out ones, would result in game over. Should be able to create a workaround that'll restore Lissi to 1 health if no other party members are around.

The spirits are accessible by interacting the items where they're displayed in Lissi's house front room.

Odd that that happened with Criminal Voraciousness quest. I've checked both possible endings, and they both have the correct plugin command to complete quest. I've just run through both quickly without encountering that issue, so unless more people have same problem, not sure what to tell you.

Since there are no conditions on letting you choose which play to watch, there's no reason you should be locked into one or the other. Aren't even any variables or switches involved that could be glitching. Christmas event ended yesterday, so guess it's not something I'll need to worry about urgently, but will take a quick look at some point.

The ghost rings are more of an extra bonus for those who complete the route. It might be a bit unfair not having a bonus on the other route, but realistically, there's no logical sense to having something like that on the play route. After all, no one dies. Might add a small bonus to play routes next (this?) year, but not really an urgent concern. After all, you can miss plenty of other trophy items just playing the main game and not taking certain paths. The ghosts are mostly just fun extras, with the one exception.

And then the elephant in the room, drops. As I've said many a time (not trying to be rude, just fact - had a lot of this conversation when first posted game), this is unfortunately something that cannot be really resolved. RPG Maker only lets you set it at a 1/whatever drop rate, and whilst you might be able to modify it with plugins, none of the ones currently using can, and frankly I don't want to bloat the game with plugins, especially since too many causes conflict problems. Setting it any higher than it already is will make farming WAY too easy. Whilst a means of capturing via item/skill was suggested once before, it'd still ultimately come down to chance, because having a 100% capture rate would result in same problem as high drop rate. There isn't really a solution to this, so I'm having to leave things as they are. There is one potential solution I've considered, but there's a LOT going on in the next update as is, so I don't want to add more to my plate for it right now. Once this update is ready, I'll take a brief break before next update to test the idea out, as well as get a bit of God Complex Regurgitated out.

Thanks for the answers, would not have noticed the shelves for the spirit items. Only the hair is there though, the rings aren't there even though Glory has already done her thing with them. If you can look at save variables or just if playing the save helps debug, Save 10 is in the house when the rings should appear. Save 9 is made before the Christmas event, changing the system date lets me replay it, and it no longer has the choice to choose which play to watch. Save 8 is before the mayor fight, hair taken and running NPCs knocked out already, the quests stays no matter what choice I make after the fight. https://www.mediafire.com/file/t5kv7eg5yburqkk/Mayor_Fight%252C_Christmas%252C_Twin_Rings_Saves.zip/file

Also minor grammar nitpick now that I found the spirit items, I've noticed you use "whilst" where "while" would make more sense, like "Should I let her ghost out a while?" (basically anywhere it's used referring to time).

I understand about the monster drops and only being able to do 1-in-X now. Theoretically at least 1 slime should drop 65% of the time, more than the Alrune, but maybe RPG maker doesn't have a good random number generator based on how many people have been having low drops rates (or it's just only the ones who have problems say anything). The one who had 3 out of 50 had it worse than me. It mostly sucks for the first few days solo before you earn enough to buy more than a few potions, but now that I'm level 2 I've noticed everything takes an extra turn to kill, which means an extra turn to take damage and heal from, so the level up doesn't make you feel stronger and you still have to buy the same number of potions to complete jobs, or have to buy more if you have bad luck with drop rates. Not to mention spells are just plain better than using weapons, since they don't miss and do the damage of two attacks, so I always need mana potions.

You probably already have something like it planned for next update since I saw you talked about having to program in equipment, or maybe you already have stuff later in the other ring and level 3 that I haven't reached yet, but it it would be nice to get new equipment to offset enemies leveling and getting stat increases faster than the player. Lissi and Rosa can't use the iron armor the blacksmith sells, and the iron weapons all lower Defense with only the axe giving +1 attack and the spear giving +2 agility, so sticking with Etyr is the best option. Or is there a party member I haven't met who can use the iron armor?

[ShadowsSong]

Can see how dismissing Rosa, or indeed other party members leaving only knocked out ones, would result in game over. Should be able to create a workaround that'll restore Lissi to 1 health if no other party members are around.

The spirits are accessible by interacting the items where they're displayed in Lissi's house front room.

Odd that that happened with Criminal Voraciousness quest. I've checked both possible endings, and they both have the correct plugin command to complete quest. I've just run through both quickly without encountering that issue, so unless more people have same problem, not sure what to tell you.

Since there are no conditions on letting you choose which play to watch, there's no reason you should be locked into one or the other. Aren't even any variables or switches involved that could be glitching. Christmas event ended yesterday, so guess it's not something I'll need to worry about urgently, but will take a quick look at some point.

The ghost rings are more of an extra bonus for those who complete the route. It might be a bit unfair not having a bonus on the other route, but realistically, there's no logical sense to having something like that on the play route. After all, no one dies. Might add a small bonus to play routes next (this?) year, but not really an urgent concern. After all, you can miss plenty of other trophy items just playing the main game and not taking certain paths. The ghosts are mostly just fun extras, with the one exception.

And then the elephant in the room, drops. As I've said many a time (not trying to be rude, just fact - had a lot of this conversation when first posted game), this is unfortunately something that cannot be really resolved. RPG Maker only lets you set it at a 1/whatever drop rate, and whilst you might be able to modify it with plugins, none of the ones currently using can, and frankly I don't want to bloat the game with plugins, especially since too many causes conflict problems. Setting it any higher than it already is will make farming WAY too easy. Whilst a means of capturing via item/skill was suggested once before, it'd still ultimately come down to chance, because having a 100% capture rate would result in same problem as high drop rate. There isn't really a solution to this, so I'm having to leave things as they are. There is one potential solution I've considered, but there's a LOT going on in the next update as is, so I don't want to add more to my plate for it right now. Once this update is ready, I'll take a brief break before next update to test the idea out, as well as get a bit of God Complex Regurgitated out.

Thanks for the answers, would not have noticed the shelves for the spirit items. Only the hair is there though, the rings aren't there even though Glory has already done her thing with them. If you can look at save variables or just if playing the save helps debug, Save 10 is in the house when the rings should appear. Save 9 is made before the Christmas event, changing the system date lets me replay it, and it no longer has the choice to choose which play to watch. Save 8 is before the mayor fight, hair taken and running NPCs knocked out already, the quests stays no matter what choice I make after the fight. https://www.mediafire.com/file/t5kv7eg5yburqkk/Mayor_Fight%252C_Christmas%252C_Twin_Rings_Saves.zip/file

Also minor grammar nitpick now that I found the spirit items, I've noticed you use "whilst" where "while" would make more sense, like "Should I let her ghost out a while?" (basically anywhere it's used referring to time).

I understand about the monster drops and only being able to do 1-in-X now. Theoretically at least 1 slime should drop 65% of the time, more than the Alrune, but maybe RPG maker doesn't have a good random number generator based on how many people have been having low drops rates (or it's just only the ones who have problems say anything). The one who had 3 out of 50 had it worse than me. It mostly sucks for the first few days solo before you earn enough to buy more than a few potions, but now that I'm level 2 I've noticed everything takes an extra turn to kill, which means an extra turn to take damage and heal from, so the level up doesn't make you feel stronger and you still have to buy the same number of potions to complete jobs, or have to buy more if you have bad luck with drop rates. Not to mention spells are just plain better than using weapons, since they don't miss and do the damage of two attacks, so I always need mana potions.

You probably already have something like it planned for next update since I saw you talked about having to program in equipment, or maybe you already have stuff later in the other ring and level 3 that I haven't reached yet, but it it would be nice to get new equipment to offset enemies leveling and getting stat increases faster than the player. Lissi and Rosa can't use the iron armor the blacksmith sells, and the iron weapons all lower Defense with only the axe giving +1 attack and the spear giving +2 agility, so sticking with Etyr is the best option. Or is there a party member I haven't met who can use the iron armor?

Had a look at your saves. The quest log thing I'm taking a look at, because I see what you meant about it not completing, though I've checked the trigger and there isn't anything wrong with it, so I've no idea why this is happening. Ran through the quest on a new save, and didn't encounter this issue, so... yeah, I've no idea. I'll take a deeper look at the quest processes and see if I can't nix this.

The Christmas thing is odd, because I didn't have same issue when tried it using your save. Though admittedly testing it by turning clock back isn't the best idea, since it does cause issues due to the way the date calculation works.

As for the rings, they ARE there on your save. I'm taking a bit of a leap of logic here, but are you looking in right place? You said you missed others, so you might not have noticed but the christmas ones appear on a shelf just below kitchen area instead.

Whilst use is a result of me copying over a typo when copying the spirit events to reuse for new trophies. My bad " Have fixed for next version.

Enemies may take slightly longer or sometimes less time to kill as you level. They level with you to avoid earlier areas becoming redundant, and it'd be nightmarishly hard to get the balance between player and enemy stat raising right. When first allowed player to reach level 4, caused most of the fights to become WAY too easy, so had to rebalance somewhat. The two ways to get ahead of the curve are to use equipment and party members. Early on you won't have much of either, but they do become available later on. Rosa is the first and easiest to get, meant to just give you an early companion, but there are currently enough potential party members to unlock that party can be filled (though since this is a vore game, obviously if you eat the wrong people or make other similarly bad choices, you can lock yourself out of party members). There's two potential new weapons you can unlock after the mermaid quest, again depending on choices, and more gear unlocks in the shops after you reach Yorine's Lake and Storm's Eye (mostly new rings at Kina for former, new weapons and armour for latter). The difference with early weapons isn't about the stats so much as the skills, since you get different skills depending on chosen weapon.

The heavy armour items are used by other characters, only one of which is a potential permanent companion at present.

[GeisKhan]

Had a look at your saves. The quest log thing I'm taking a look at, because I see what you meant about it not completing, though I've checked the trigger and there isn't anything wrong with it, so I've no idea why this is happening. Ran through the quest on a new save, and didn't encounter this issue, so... yeah, I've no idea. I'll take a deeper look at the quest processes and see if I can't nix this.

The Christmas thing is odd, because I didn't have same issue when tried it using your save. Though admittedly testing it by turning clock back isn't the best idea, since it does cause issues due to the way the date calculation works.

As for the rings, they ARE there on your save. I'm taking a bit of a leap of logic here, but are you looking in right place? You said you missed others, so you might not have noticed but the christmas ones appear on a shelf just below kitchen area instead.

Whilst use is a result of me copying over a typo when copying the spirit events to reuse for new trophies. My bad " Have fixed for next version.

Enemies may take slightly longer or sometimes less time to kill as you level. They level with you to avoid earlier areas becoming redundant, and it'd be nightmarishly hard to get the balance between player and enemy stat raising right. When first allowed player to reach level 4, caused most of the fights to become WAY too easy, so had to rebalance somewhat. The two ways to get ahead of the curve are to use equipment and party members. Early on you won't have much of either, but they do become available later on. Rosa is the first and easiest to get, meant to just give you an early companion, but there are currently enough potential party members to unlock that party can be filled (though since this is a vore game, obviously if you eat the wrong people or make other similarly bad choices, you can lock yourself out of party members). There's two potential new weapons you can unlock after the mermaid quest, again depending on choices, and more gear unlocks in the shops after you reach Yorine's Lake and Storm's Eye (mostly new rings at Kina for former, new weapons and armour for latter). The difference with early weapons isn't about the stats so much as the skills, since you get different skills depending on chosen weapon.

The heavy armour items are used by other characters, only one of which is a potential permanent companion at present.

Weird about the bugs. I started new saves with 0.09D because my old ones were before 0.08, so maybe some thing changed in 0.095.

Wow yep, ran right past the rings so many times, thanks!

Sounds like I just need to keep progressing. I just unlocked Yorine's Lake Cavern and died in by the coffin due to some unlucky Frost Fox crits. I'm really curious if that coffin comes in play later. Also the cracks on the floor in front of it have collision if they are supposed to be traversable.

[GeisKhan]

Alright, I know you're tired of hearing people beat on a dead horse, but hear me out.
I know you don't want to do guaranteed drops because it would mess with the early game progression, but have you considered that you can change the progression rate by changing the required number of creatures for shop requests and/or limiting how many creatures are available to fight (no creature respawns)? If you remove randomness, you have a fixed number of fights players can complete before they run out of resources in the early game, and later the requests are for more creatures or stronger creatures that require more resources to get.
Maybe that's the "one potential solution" you alluded to before?

The reason I bring it up again is I just quit the game in frustration (again) after going through 10 fights in a row against 3 forest slimes with no drops. The random drops are not a sufficient progression rate balance, because I (and many RPG players) will just save scum a fight 10 times rather than accept zero loot for my time and effort, which makes it no different than giving everything a near 100% drop rate (I'll take 2 out of 3 on the slime fights, but not 1).
I had 5,000 gold by the time I unlocked the underground lake in the well. It makes no difference in time played to get enough creatures to complete all requests, the only difference is you expect players to spend more resources doing so because drops aren't guaranteed, while we can play differently and choose not to spend as many resources by save scumming. Either way is just a different type of time sink and grind.

Please don't take this text as being angry or accusatory; that's not my intended tone. I'm frustrated but I see this as something to troubleshoot and am stating how I play to bypass the problem and how I see it could be fixed.
I'm an engineer, I like troubleshooting and problem solving, maybe too much and I make more work for myself (and others) by finding things to fix or addressing employee complaints. I just spent my Sunday afternoon helping my dad make his Windows 11 laptop look and work like Windows 7 because he complained about them changing the right-click menu and removing the old File Explorer ribbon, when I could have been playing video games instead.

[ShadowsSong]

Alright, I know you're tired of hearing people beat on a dead horse, but hear me out.
I know you don't want to do guaranteed drops because it would mess with the early game progression, but have you considered that you can change the progression rate by changing the required number of creatures for shop requests and/or limiting how many creatures are available to fight (no creature respawns)? If you remove randomness, you have a fixed number of fights players can complete before they run out of resources in the early game, and later the requests are for more creatures or stronger creatures that require more resources to get.
Maybe that's the "one potential solution" you alluded to before?

The reason I bring it up again is I just quit the game in frustration (again) after going through 10 fights in a row against 3 forest slimes with no drops. The random drops are not a sufficient progression rate balance, because I (and many RPG players) will just save scum a fight 10 times rather than accept zero loot for my time and effort, which makes it no different than giving everything a near 100% drop rate (I'll take 2 out of 3 on the slime fights, but not 1).
I had 5,000 gold by the time I unlocked the underground lake in the well. It makes no difference in time played to get enough creatures to complete all requests, the only difference is you expect players to spend more resources doing so because drops aren't guaranteed, while we can play differently and choose not to spend as many resources by save scumming. Either way is just a different type of time sink and grind.

Please don't take this text as being angry or accusatory; that's not my intended tone. I'm frustrated but I see this as something to troubleshoot and am stating how I play to bypass the problem and how I see it could be fixed.
I'm an engineer, I like troubleshooting and problem solving, maybe too much and I make more work for myself (and others) by finding things to fix or addressing employee complaints. I just spent my Sunday afternoon helping my dad make his Windows 11 laptop look and work like Windows 7 because he complained about them changing the right-click menu and removing the old File Explorer ribbon, when I could have been playing video games instead.

While I get where you're coming from with the idea, just bumping up the required number of creatures would result in some very odd lore-related logic. At a 100% rate, you could get, for example, 16 green slimes from a single run of the forest. With numbers like that, I'd have to MASSIVELY boost the amount required for quests, to the point it'd honestly come off pretty ridiculous. The required numbers have always been on the lower side because, from a lore standpoint, no one's going to go about consistently ordering numbers THAT high consistently. And consistent orders is precisely what those orders on board are.

Okay, maybe the slime example is a bad one because the slime fetishist absolutely WOULD order that many, but you get my point Most orders don't make sense with high numbers.

Comes down to an argument between lore and gameplay. Whilst I'd generally favour gameplay, when it makes lore THAT absurd, do have an issue with it. Plus it'd complicate quests like Valerie's one, since you'd be guaranteed an Alraune straight off and there's literally no sense in that requiring multiples.

One potential solution I HAVE been looking into is to give a guaranteed drop after you fail to get one so many times, but having trouble designing a method to allow that. Can't seem to find a way to get whether you get a drop or not to register and thus alter the variable/counter for 'time not earned'. It seems the best solution, but the mechanics of the design have me stuck. I've got an idea I'm looking to test, but it's difficult to 'test' something like that since no way of telling whether or not the resulting earned drop is from would be natural or not.