In Star Knightess Aura you play as both Aura (in Roya) and as Luciela (in Aura's mental world). This page is written around the assumption that when playing as Luciela you are genuinely trying to succeed as Luciela, that is to say corrupt Aura before Aura wins in Roya. This means that Luciela has two goals: to generate more corruption to corrupt Aura with and to slow down Aura's progress in Roya.
Every corruption that Aura holds and that isn't spent reduces Auras willpower by 1 at the start of the day. Low willpower will reduce Auras stats, and can make lewd scenes pink, doubling the negative effects. Keeping Aura at constantly low willpower is the strongest way to slow her progress through the game, and force her to spend gold and generate corruption. As such, Luciela should generally not spend corruption unless there is a risk of getting the soul break ending, or there is a clear and affordable path to a mental change with a negative effect in Roya.
The need to reset this curse will eventually force Aura to use lewd actions, which will generate more corruption for Luciela to spend. In order to maximize the benefit Luciela gains from this asset Luciela wants Aura to have to reset the curse as often as possible.
The main reason for Aura to need to reset the curse is to avoid triggering forced masturbation, which will happen whenever she starts the day with 0 or less willpower. At the start of the game that means Aura has to reset the curse every 19 days on normal difficulty (on the 19th day after resetting the curse the curse is at -95 and next day it would be at -100) and every 9th day on hard difficulty (on the 9th day the curse is at -90 and on the 10th day it would be at -100). The number of days between resets is reduced by Aura's corruption (because it decreases willpower) with every 5 points on normal or 10 points on hard. Remember that it is the number on the day she has to reset the curse that matters and time your spending of corruption points around that. For example at the start of the game on normal you want to have 25 points saved up on the day that Aura has to reset the curse since that means she would have to reset the curse when it is at -70, because at -75 it will trigger force masturbation, while if only 24 points were saved up then Aura would have 1 willpower when the curse is at -75 and could reset the curse on that day instead. When Aura's willpower is reduced to 99 (after killing the low-demon incarnation) only 24 corruption would be needed on the relevant day. On the other hand when both the low-demon core and Mammon are killed, bringing Aura's maximum corruption to 30 (with max willpower still at 99), Luciela would want to have 29 corruption saved up on the day that the curse is at -65, forcing Aura to reset the curse on that day.
Another factor that affects when Aura will/has to reset the curse is her wanting to avoid pink scenes (which would result in double corruption, lewdness, fetishes and sensitivity, all of which benefit Luciela). Consider a time relatively early in the game on normal, where Aura has 99 max willpower, 27 max corruption, and 3 lewdness. As long as her corruption is 24 or more she has to reset the curse on the day where the curse is at -70 to avoid triggering forced masturbation the next day, but what if Aura wants or needs to use a lewd action to reset the curse? If her corruption is 27 then her willpower on that day will be 99 - 70 - 27 = 2. That's less than her lewdness and if she used a lewd action on this day it would trigger a pink scene. To reset the curse with a lewd action without triggering a pink scene Aura would need to reset the curse two days before she would trigger forced masturbation, rather than one day before.
A third way that Luciela can use the Womb of Lust is the cursed status, which is her only way early on to slow down Aura's progression in Roya. Cursed 1 triggers when Aura has 60 or less willpower (not less than 60) and in order for Aura to have as few uncursed days as possible Luciela wants to ensure that she's saved up the corruption necessary to make sure that this breakpoint is reached on the earliest day possible. On hard Aura is pretty much combat ineffective even at cursed 1, but on normal Luciela might also want to ensure that cursed 2 happens on the earliest possible day.
Corruption is the resource that Luciela needs in order to corrupt Aura's mind. There are four primary ways to generate corruption, passive generation over time, lewd or vicious scenes, killing demons or using Star Knightess. Aura killing demons or using Star Knightess is not something Luciela can influence, but the other two she does have some indirect control over. The passive generation of corruption can be increased once Luciela reaches the second chamber in Aura's mind, but even before then if Luciela can in any way delay Aura, setting back Aura's progress, it will essentially be like extra passive corruption generation. When it comes to lewd scenes, the primary reason for Aura to use lewd scenes is to reset the womb of lust, if Luciela can make Aura need to reset the curse more often then she will gain more corruption from lewd scenes.
At the start of the day Aura needs to reset the womb of lust every 9 days on hard and every 19 days on normal. In the following calculations I will be looking at hard, because on normal the deck is stacked too far to Aura's advantage for this to matter. Almost all the lewd actions generate 1 corruption, so we can assume that as a base line. What we see (table below) is that reducing the time between each lewd action by 1 day becomes more worthwhile the lower the time between lewd actions are. Going from a lewd action every 9 days to one every 8 days means an extra lewd action every 72 days (9 lewd actions instead of 8) while going from a lewd actions every 3 days to every 2 days would generate an extra corruption every 6 days (3 lewd actions instead of 2). Generally what we see though is that lewd actions will generally produce relatively little corruption compared to the passive generation over time.
| Aura resets the curse every: | Days to generate 1 more corruption than if Aura could wait 1 extra day between resets |
| 9 days | 90 |
| 8 days | 72 |
| 7 days | 56 |
| 6 days | 42 |
| 5 days | 30 |
| 4 days | 20 |
| 3 days | 12 |
| 2 days | 6 |
| 1 days | 2 |
Some mental changes unlock skills that hinder Aura in Roya.
Useless knowledge is a skill unlocked by removing two studying books from the interest room. It increases the progress required to finish any non-lewd book by 1, and also halving the benefit of reading skills. Its impact is entirely dependent on Aura actually reading books. If Aura does read books it's very valuable, but if Aura wouldn't be reading books anyway then it will not do anything. Aura will typically want to read at least a few books during the game, so if this skill can be unlocked before she has time to read too many books it can be a good target, as it only costs about 20 total corruption to unlock.
Increasing Auras fetish or sensitivity values provides a willpower penalty on those declining those events. This can be useful if Aura already has low willpower due to lots of stacked corruption, combined with higher lewdness values. It is not worth taking early on as a result.
Lewd knowledge and exhibitionism are both stats that provide a benefit to Aura, and so Luciela should not help her raise them, especially the former.
But It's So Cute! is a skill unlocked by removing two interest books from the interest room (unlike useless knowledge it will take several days to unlock though). It decreases effective willpower on lewd actions involving costume changes by 25. As there are not that many such scenes it has relatively low impact.
Unlocking chapter 2 requires spending about 100 corruption total. It opens up a lot of strong options for slowing Aura and increasing corruption generation. It also enables Aura do do vice actions, which provide her a boost. However, most easily accessible vice actions are not very valuable. Consequently, Luciela should delay boosting vice and unlocking theft II for as long as possible.
For each lewdness point Aura has gained, one stat can be traded for a fetish or sensitivity point. The best stats to remove are ATK and MATK (depending on which one Aura is focusing on), as well as LUCK. It is best to avoid raising Lewd knowledge and exhibitionism.
By spending 5 corruption, the daily corruption gain can be increased from 0.5 to 1. This is extremely powerful, and should be unlocked as soon as it is feasible. Luciela can also spend 5 corruption to increase collar cost by 2 corruption, which is also strong if Aura relies on removing the collar.
By siphoning novel knowledge the time required to finish books increase by 1, adds progressively worse headache debuffs, and eventually leads into a massive +5 time increase, and not being to read while Aura has a headache. Once this is finished, it becomes effectively impossible for Aura to read books.
By getting appearance competitiveness and maxing popularity happiness, the final tier of heels can be unlocked. This gives aura -30 agility unless she has seductive stance II. This is very deep in chapter 2 and so can be hard to acquire, but -30 agility is a severe penalty, especially if aura does not have an easy way to acquire the stance.