This is an unfinished walkthrough for a pure run (0 lewdness/vice, 0 mental changes) on hard mode. My reason for doing and writing about this run was a change where hard mode was altered from giving +1 corruption every day to giving the same amount as normal but curses being twice as fast. It isn't meant to be a guide, since I was lucky in some places and unlucky in others, so it might not be easily repeatable, but I've mostly tried to avoid save scumming. My hope was to learn more about the game and to inspire discussion on various strategies and tactics.
The run is currently on-hold due to me losing motivation. Its gotten to day 79 and gone through about 90% of the content currently in the game.
The first day is probably fairly straightforward. I don't really think there are multiple viable choices here. I start by grabbing the money in the ancient shrine, then head to Trademond talk to everyone necessary for the quest Getting Started, start the quest Lack of Flavor to unlock the Forest of Runes, then do the medicine delivery quest. After doing that quest I head into the forest, get the 4 herbs for the quest, plus everything else you can get without helping Albrecht fight the goblins. The various apples, the energy potion, the bomb and the star metal and the ether that are in the hole in the ground in the bottom right.
After finishing up in the forest I turn in the herbs for the quest and sell the star metal to a merchant for 1000 gold, not to the workshop for 250. Using that gold I buy all 3 blessed waters that are in stock with the black priestess. (This seems to be an unmentioned nerf from there being 5 in stock previously. Then finally I end the day by signing up for the adventurers guild, finishing the quest Getting Started and leveling me up to level 2 for +1 health, mana, attack, magic attack, agility and luck, and +2 defense and magic defense.
On day 2 I get the spider infestation quest from the guild, get the ether from the chest above the mine entrance and the 25 gold on the body in the small room to the right inside the entrance, before fighting the spider queen. I light the torches without incident, but fail to get a surprise round. In the fight Aura and Paul spam attack (not pierce, since the queen's defense is reduced) while Charlotte uses heat up and John uses protect to keep her safe. The queen targets Charlotte in both the first two rounds, bringing John low enough that he can't protect her anymore. So in the third round Charlotte guards while everyone else attacks, killing the queen. She hit Aura before she died bringing her to half health. The spiderlings were only summoned in the same round the queen died and were effortlessly dispatched without her. Since Aura still has health I grab the ether near the center of the mine, before heading back to turn in the quest and accept spider cleanup.
Now I have to decide what I want to do to end the day. Specifically I need to decide whether to go with Charlotte, keeping her from being arrested. I need Charlotte to teach me fire 1, in order to go exploring places behind burnable plants, but is it worth spending an entire day to get that early? I don't know. In my last pure run I didn't, and I got by, but I felt like I was really running short on funds and productive things to do before she got free. However in the new patch I have about 400 more gold, since there were two less blessed waters for sale. I also don't know how the faster Womb of Lust progression will change the run.
My goals at the moment are:
Learning light 1 would allow me to start critting monsters, but I'm not sure that by itself would be enough to reliably beat the groups of spiders. Sharpening my sword would definitely allow me to beat Brawler Quentin. The stats that gives me should allow me to beat the goblins facing Albrecht and together with light 1 for crits let me finish the spider cleanup quest. So if I don't go with Charlotte I think I'd choose to sharpen my sword. In my run I choose to sharpen the sword, but I'm interested in what others would choose here.
On day 3 I start by defeating Brawler Quentin. I guard on the first turn, the use attack on the turns when he uses windup (2, 4, 6) and guard on the turns he attacks. I defeat him on the third windup with my health reduced to 8. Because of the stronger curses effect of hard difficulty in the new patch I'll be suffering cursed 1 already on day 4, so I want to do more with the day. Therefore I eat two apples to heal most of my missing health and head to the forest of runes to help Albrecht.
I lose the fight the first time around due to bad luck, with the goblin that the heroes attacked using guard and the other attacking, but the second time around it goes great with one goblin dying before they get to move. With the goblins defeated I run up to the boss arena, grab the four bombs from the chest and use one to blow my way into the northern Forest of Runes. There I grab what I can, including apples, the trail of gold leading towards the ogre ambush, the 100 gold from the chest down the vines, and the harvestable rope. In past patches you couldn't jump down the ledge here without getting stuck, but with the recall spell now always being available you can. I grab more apples, another rope, and the book Advanced Theory of Magic before running past the second goblin shaman and into the cave to the north. In the cave I grab the star metal and exit from the second exit, to the ledge above the northern Forest of Runes. I use a rope to climb down to the Ogre Commanders area and grab the 500 gold and the living heart from his chest before recalling out. I feel like this validates my choice of not keeping Charlotte out of Jail, since these are resources that would not be available to me at this point under the old patch.
I do not believe that there's any more useful combat to do at this point, so I end day 3 by learning light 1.
On day 4 I'm suffering cursed 1, and its the doubled effect version (-20% stats) from the new hard mode. This leaves me essentially incapable of combat until I use a blessed water, and I do not want to do that for a while yet. The new patch means that you have a lot more days to work with (since corruption rises slower) but a lot less combat capable days (since willpower sinks faster) making the willpower resetting aspect of blessed water much more precious of a resource. Despite my state I am able to kill one group of two spiderlings since they are so weak. They move much slower than the spiderling + mature spider groups so, to fight only spiderlings, I simply waited until a slow enemy was fast and both fast groups were far away to attack.
As for how I end the day I have multiple options:
I end up ending day 4 by selling the star metal to the workshop and sharpening my sword again, since it is the best upgrade that only takes a single day.
On day 5 I kill the second group of two spiderlings the same way I did the first. It took a couple of minutes of waiting, and while it costs nothing ingame I'm not sure spending the time to do this is actually worthwhile. In any case it will make it a bit easier to move through here later. I will now not have any more fighting I can do until I use a blessed water, no other enemies are anywhere close to weak enough for me to take on.
One thing that begins to bother me at this point is that there are six more groups of enemies I need to kill for the spider cleanup quest and using a blessed water will only give me 4 days in fighting shape. If I need to use light every combat then I will only be able to fight one group per day and won't get through them all. Because of this I decide to run through and get the star metal in the inner mine then recall out. I sell the star metal to a merchant for 1000 gold, then give an ether to the alchemist to make mana stones and use the discount to buy 4 of the 5 mana stones in his stock. This will let me cast light 1 three times per day. I then try to end the day by reading the magic attack book I found, only to discover that the game does check that you read them in the correct order. I buy the basic book from the bookstore and end the day by reading it instead.
On day 6 I finish reading the basic magic attack book.
On day 7 and 8 I have Paul teach me pierce 1.
On day 9 I have less than 10 willpower remaining, meaning that I will get the forced masturbation scene if I end the day without drinking blessed water. So I start the day with a shot of that. Afterwards I go killing spiders, taking out two groups of one spiderling and one mature spider, plus the group with 4 spiderlings and one mature. In each case I use light on a spiderling, killing it and then follow up by killing the mature spider with a single crit.
The question then becomes what do I want to do to end the day? The answer, I think, needs to be whatever helps me the most in cost effectively beating the low demon incarnation. I'm guessing the answer is either to buy and read the + defense book or read the + magic attack book I already have. But I'm really not sure what is best. In the end I decide to end day 9 by buying and reading the defense book. My reasoning is that I can get +3 magic attack from the magic shop once I've learned fire 1, which will give me the power to oneshot goblins more time-efficiently than spending two days on the book, and defense might help in more fights.
On day 10 I kill the two remaining groups of spiders in the cave in area, the one with two spiderlings and one mature spider first, and then after eating an apple to return to full health the group with 2 spiderlings and 2 mature spiders, the toughest group by far. I try a different approach here than I have in the past. I know that web is the greatest threat to me, and I realize that because it lowers my defense it increases the damage done by all enemies equally. That makes the difference in damage output between the spiderlings and the mature spiders lower and makes it more relatively more important to kill the spiderlings. So rather than focusing down the mature spiders first I go for a tactic where I cast light on one spiderling, killing it and then use the crit to kill a mature spider and repeat. The fight goes perfectly. I get the surprise round and kill a spiderling and in the first real round I kill a mature spider before it gets to move. Both the remaining enemies then miss on their attacks and I kill the remaining spiderling while the mature spider casts web. It doesn't blind me and I get to attack before it despite my lowered agility, critting it to death without having taken any damage at all.
Since I still had full health I feel confident taking the final spider group, one spiderling and one mature, even though I don't have any mana. This was probably a mistake. I lose half my health in the first two rounds, while I kill the spiderling and reduce the mature spiders health, then I get blinded by the spiders web. If it had attacked before me, or if I had missed my attack I would probably have died, but I go first and kill it before it can attack.
I turn in the quest, which means that the fight with the low demon incarnation will become available tomorrow. I make sure to not start the quest Winged Pig Thief since starting it while Charlotte is in jail means she will not join you in the quest, not even when she gets out. I don't have any fights available I can win with half health and no mana, and I don't have any I need to fight either, so I end the day by finishing the defense book.
On day 11 I have to look at how to beat the low demon incarnation. I have in the past used a blessed bomb to kill it, but that is quite a large permanent expenditure of resources. I had hoped that the extra mana would give me a chance of killing it without any help, but that hope is quickly dashed. However I remember that there is a vitality potion in the cave behind the northern forest if you bomb your way to the left and use a rope to climb down (its on a skeleton next to the chest with three blessed waters, which I also grabbed). Using this I try to fight the demon. In the first two turns, when the demon attacks, I have Aura use light and then pierce, while Edwin uses guard, since he does so little damage. Only one of the attacks targets him, but the one aimed at aura misses. In the third turn the demon casts Avaritas, and I have Aura use pierce and Edwin attack. Then I keep guarding until avaritas expires. When it does both my characters are at low hp, Aura drinks the vitality potion while Edwin gets killed. Then Aura is able to kill the demon with 2 times light plus pierce. At the end she had only 5 health remaining, and the demon missed with several attacks, so I do not believe that this is a reliable tactic. But it is possible that the one defense you can get from enhancing your gear with the inzectoid armor would have made it reliable.
Having defeated the incarnation unlocks the vault quest and the quest sick workers. I'll need another rope to descend into the mine, I used my last one to get the vitality potion, so I start by progressing the sick workers quest until I unlock the forest west of Riverflow in the hopes that there's a rope to be had there. Unfortunately there isn't, but I pick up some apples and an ether before recalling out.
Instead I buy a rope and descend into the mine. I figure that while Aura might have only 5 health and no mana (and cursed 1 from the vitality potion willpower effect) John and Paul are still fit to fight, and mostly I'm just looking to loot stuff without fighting. I open the way to the vault, while getting the vitality potion, mana stone and formula piece from the room to the right, and the stasis bombs from the bottom left. I have to skip the ether though, since I don't have the health to gather it. In the vault I grab the gold and formula piece lying on the floor in the first room, get the second mana stone from the room to the left and then activate the teleportation stone and leave.
I end the day by buying and reading the agility books, for reasons that can be seen on day 12.
On day 12 I move on to the next duelist. With the extra health from the vitality potion I used and the defense from the book I believe that I'm strong enough to beat the Guard Lorentz. There are two possible strategies here, you can guard for nine turns until his defense is debuffed or you can use pierce to start attacking right away. The former strategy depends more on health (less so on defense since there is an anti-synergy between defense and the guard action. Guard reduces damage after defence has been applied to one quarter, so if your defense blocks 4 more points of damage 3 of those would have been negated by guard and only 1 would have gotten through). Using pierce is more dependent on attack, since pierce does less damage than normal attacks, but Aura's 13 attack is enough to beat him in 3 turns using pierce. That will cost 21 of her 51 health, and Lorentz does 12 damage per attack on average to her. So as long as she acts before him on the third turn she will win. The fight ends up going exactly as expected, but Lorentz acts first on the second turn, proving that this method is not entirely consistent.
Since I still have full mana I eat three apples to mostly restore my health and then teleport back into the mine. I start by getting the stuff in the room in the bottom left in the vault. You only have to fight one group of enemies here, the group of one scorpio and 3 gnomes patrolling vertically. I get the surprise round and the fight goes well, but Paul loses most of his health to a rock to the head. The other enemies can be snuck past. This gives me another formula piece, an inzectoid armor, a rope I'll use in just a moment, and 100 gold.
I then sneak up the path to the right, grabbing the gold as I go. I end up having to fight one of the groups of enemies. This brings me up to the spider queen area where I harvest the emerald leaf and grab the final formula piece. I then use the rope I just got to descend into the minotaur's area, grab the gold on the floor, open the gate and then recall out. I turn in the formula for the quest before sitting down to decide what to do next.
My goals at this point are:
In the end I decide to go with the living heart as an upgrade. Had I known that that is what I would choose I would have done that on day 11 instead of upgrading agility. I believe that would have made the fight against Lorentz more reliable than the +1 agility.
On day 13 Aura is cursed and not in shape to fight, however John and Paul are so I head back into the mine. There are two groups of enemies blocking the way to the slime boss. I think it might be possible to run past both, but I have never succeeded in doing that, so I want to kill one group off now. Both John and Paul go down, but by that point there's only one gnome left, who Aura can kill without problem.
Since I have a bunch of health now, but no ability to fight I harvest the two ether to the left of the vault entrance, plus the one I skipped earlier in the cave outside. Since I haven't spent any mana today I decide that I want to learn water skin now. The problem is that I don't have enough gold, even after selling all the books I'm finished reading. So I end up trecking all the way back up to the ledge above the northern Forest of Runes and stealing the mothercrows gold. The trick to doing this is to know that enemies cannot see you while there are dialogs open. So whenever you pick up gold you become invisible until you close the dialog window. Using this to wait for the boss to be both far away from me and from where I wanted to go next I was able to get all the gold, but it took a couple of minutes of waiting. With this gold I end the day by learning waterskin.
Day 14 I continue to learn waterskin.
On day 15 I read the advanced magic attack book. I mentioned earlier that I wanted to use the spellshop instead to get the magic attack I need to oneshot goblins, but I don't have the gold. And I want to make available the gold I can get by selling the book.
On day 16 I finish reading the book.
On day 17 Charlotte is released, which means that I can finally accept the Winged Pig Thief quest that has been waiting for me since day 10. I then go to the area south of Jakob's farm, grab the mana stone and the energy potion from the skeletons on each side and then steal all the avian's gold with the same strategy I used for the mothercrow (except with less waiting because I was luckier with the boss' movements and this boss arena has more stuff that blocks line of sight). I then end the day by finally learning fire 1.
On day 18 I start with only 4 willpower, so I need to use blessed water to avoid the compulsory masturbation scene. Then I go into the southern forest, which is available thanks to fire 1. After entering the southern forest I head down and to the right, grab the harvestable rope and the 50 gold on the skeleton just inside Whitefang's boss arena, before heading to the bottom right and bombing my way into where you can climb down into the bandit tunnel. I grab the two flash bombs in the tunnel and the 2 energy potions, the star metal, the vitality potion and the 10 apples in the store room behind the bandit leader before recalling out. I don't sell the star metal quite yet, since there is a small chance I want to sell it to the workshop to unlock sharpening my sword a third time.
I don't have a lot of gold at this point though, even after robbing the Avian and selling the book I finished, so I try to kill the minotaur next for that gourmet meat. The minotaur will start by attacking twice and I have aura use light plus pierce while everyone else guards. I thought Aura was tanky enough for that, but this was probably a mistake because Aura loses 26 health in one attack. In the next two turns the minotaur uses heat up and windup to prepare for a big rampage. I have aura use light and pierce again, Charlotte uses heat up twice, John attacks once and then uses a flash bomb on the second turn, and Paul uses pierce twice. On the rampage turn everyone guards except Charlotte who casts fire. If one of these attacks hits her she will die even with guard, so there's no point in wasting damage output. One of the attacks does target her, and two target Paul, but all three miss. After the rampage Aura uses a normal attack to gain tactical advantage (sine her health is fairly low), Charlotte uses heat up again, John uses protect to keep everyone else safe and Paul uses pierce. John succeeds in his task, but gets taken down in a single hit. In the next round Aura and Paul both pierce for critical hits dealing 700 damage between them and killing it before either it or Charlotte get to act.
I sell the meat, and, since I have a bit of left over mana, collect the blessed water near riverflow that you need to burn a plant to get to. I end the day by learning protect from John. I'm not sure how soon I can do the winged pig thief quest, but I want this skill ready when I do.
On day 19 I go to fight the goblin shaman. I only need 10 experience to level up, and I believe that this fight is the safest way to get it. I put on waterskin and get the surprise round against the goblins, which I use to kill one goblin with fire, setting me up to crit the shaman, then I kill another goblin with fire crit and kill the shaman and then finish off the last goblin. Even though I beat the fight on the first try I know that this was not safe or reliable. Several goblin attacks missed and I still almost died. Focusing the shaman early was a mistake. With water skin on it deals less damage than the normal goblins and is more tanky. I should have fired one goblin, critted a second, fired the third and then gone for the boss. And with the victory comes the ring which I give to Albrecht, taking me to level 3, giving an additional 3 health and 1 mana, 1 attack, defense and magic attack, 2 magic defense and 1 agility. Finishing the quest also allows me to learn the weakness of the forest wolf, which I sell for 100 gold to the lorist.
I want aura to have water skin on when I fight the slime boss, for when it transforms into a fire slime. So I eat four apples to restore almost all my health and go there. There are multiple spells I want to learn in the next days (open domain and tailwind) plus I will be fighting, so I don't want to waste mana on water skin longer than I have to. Apples are relatively more expendable than mana.
In the fight John protects Charlotte the first turn, while she and aura uses fire and Paul attacks. On the second turn Aura uses pierce, Charlotte fire and John (who now has less health than Charlotte and cannot protect her) and Paul attack. The slime attacks Charlotte, but misses. In the next turn everyone attacks except Charlotte who uses fire again. The slime uses windup, but changes color at the end of the turn so it won't benefit from the windup, nor will it use rampage. Against the red slime everyone attacks except Charlotte who uses heat up. The slime first burns Aura, but for only 21 damage thanks to the water skin and then John, knocking him out, before going down.
I believe that the extra health and defense from leveling up will allow me to beat Rainer now, so after beating the slime I deactivate water skin, eat three apples to fully heal and fight him. Rainer will attack once, then use windup, then rampage, then guard twice and then attack. You want to guard his first attack, then attack when he uses windup, guard when he uses rampage, then guard the first time he uses guard, attack on the second and pierce on the turn he attacks. The reason you need to not attack on the first turn he guards is that the way tactical advantage works means that you can only crit every other turn, you do not want to waste your crit on the second turn when he's guarding, you want to crit him on the turn he attacks. My crit ends up doing 181 damage to him, compared to the 150 health he starts with. There's a reason I said that beating Rainer is a matter of survivability, not damage. I ended up surviving the fight with 4 health left, I'm not sure if I was lucky to win, or unlucky to come so close to dying.
I'm not sure exactly what I want to do to end the day, but I settle on mana control 1, since it only costs 100 gold, and it will be useful against most bosses since I'll often use spells to set up critical hits. Especially against the mutated hydrangea in the sick workers quest it will be good.
On day 20 I go kill the ogre "ambush" in the northern forest of runes, allowing me to loot the 20 gold they were using as bait, plust the mana stone and 50 gold on the skeletons under the tree. I then eat four apples and go to fight the spider queen in the vault. Aura uses light and pierce, Charlotte uses heat up, John protects her and Paul uses pierce. The second turn sees the queen summon her minions as well as getting the plus attack minus defense state. Charlotte uses fire on one mature spider while John attacks the other, while Aura and Paul try to finish the queen off with pierce. This does not work out all that well. John is not able to kill the mature spider he attacks (he should probably have used slash instead to kill both spiderlings) and Charlotte acts last so the team gets double webbed. Still Paul finishes of the queen and Aura one of the spiderlings. The last two enemies only attack John, knocking him out, so the fight ends with Aura taking little damage, only reducing her to 64 health.
Having beaten both bosses and the minotaur I can now get to the demon's anchor, however I can't do anything with it, since I've not yet had the time to learn open domain. Heading back to town I luckily remember that today is the day that more blessed water comes in, so I go buy both. It costs a whooping 720 gold, but that adds effectively 4 days at the end of my run. At the end of the game 720 gold is probably not going to be that much. Of course that argument can only be taken so far, it breaks down if I spend so much money I can't actually get to the end game, but I don't think that's the case here. You have to remember that I also have a star metal in my pocket, which can help me through any emergency.
I don't think there are any fights that can be done profitably at this point so I have Nadia teach me tailwind with most of my mana, and use the last three to open the shortcut to where the goblin shaman used to be. Then I end the day by learning rampage. Rampage is an awkward skill to learn, since you need 16 attack you can't really learn it when you're cursed and unable to fight, but you also need more than 60 health, so you can't learn it after spending your health fighting.
Day 21 is my last day uncursed before the next time I drink a blessed water. I want to make some progress before then. I hope, but I'm not sure if I can beat the ogre commander. I'll definitely need the nasty oil coating if I am to succeed, so I should use the opportunity to kill Whitefang by exploiting his weakness to it. Unfortunately Whitefang moves too fast to get the surprise round against. I attack once to get tactical advantage and then kill him with a rampage crit. After killing him I grab the 50 gold and the bomb on skeleton's in his boss arena, and the apples that are lying around, plus the remaining harvestable rope, now that the wolves are gone.
Then comes the fateful moment, facing the ogre commander. Unfortunately I learn that I cannot consistently beat it. The boss will use smash, then attack, smash, then windup, smash, attack, smash, attack, smash, windup and repeat. You want to attack when he uses smash (since it does less damage and you shouldn't be defense debuffed) and guard when he uses attack (it does more damage and your attack is debuffed). When has used windup you should use one of the stasis bombs from the caves to stop his attack and then follow up with a normal attack crit. Also when he uses smash before using windup use light and crit him when he uses windup. Use healing items when necessary instead of attacking on turns where he uses smash. Unfortunately this strategy does not work consistently, because having two more agility than the Ogre Commander does not guarantee you will go first. This has two problems. Normally on the second turn after he uses smash you will act, the debuff will expire and then he uses smash to reapply it. But if he acts first instead his smash will deal a bunch of extra damage and he'll apply the doubled debuff instead. This is bad, but it only means you need more healing, it will not lose you the fight. However if you try to use stasis bomb on his wound up attack and he acts first he will kill you from full health in one attack. I'm not sure what the alternative would be here. It's possible to instead guard through his windup attack, but that would cut your damage by a lot and make you take many extra hits so you would need a lot more healing items. Its also possible you could try to use tailwind to guarantee you go first on those turns, but that would also massively cut into your damage output. In any case I win the fight having to use a single vitality potion.
After the fight I recall out and turn in the bounty for 500 gold and 10 experience. I also unlock the refugee camp and do the talky bits there, but suffering from crused 1 due to the vitality potion I can't do any fighting there. I believe I would have the stats at this point to beat Duelist Ray were it not for that. Since I have half my health and 4 mana left I do kill two groups of goblins in the forest. I only intended to do one, burning one and critting the other, but it missed its attack against me and it looked like I could oneshot them without crits so I took on another and almost died after reducing the second goblin to 1 hp.
I sell Whitefang's meat and end the day by learning mana capacity 1.
On day 22 Aura once again starts the day cursed. However I believe that I'm now powerful enough that even under cursed 1 I can kill groups of two goblins by surprsing them, burning one and critting the other. I end up being able to kill all the ones in the central forest of runes, although I was quite lucky to do so, a lot of their attacks missed. I even had enough health left to kill the first two goblin groups in the northern forest of runes, and I used my final mana to burn open the path to the mine there. I end the day by learning mana control 2. I believe that especially against the mutated hydrangea I'm going to need it.
On day 23 I'm still only under cursed 1, so I go kill the final two groups of two goblins in the northern forest. I lose almost half my health doing so though, proving just how lucky I was yesterday. This leaves me with 26 mana, so I go into the spider mine, light two of the torches, grab the two ether from the skeleton and recall out. This leaves me exactly 20 mana, so I can end the day by learning open domain.
On day 24 I'm suffering cursed 2, which makes Aura almost completely combat ineffective. However I would like to be able to use her mana, and in the forest west of Riverflow there is a bush that you can burn with 200 gold behind it. The problem is that there is a patrolling group of two wolves guarding it. I believe that even with Aura in her current state she and John can beat two wolves between them if they get the surprise round. It turns out to work fine, with us killing one wolf in the surprise round and the other after it only got to attack Aura once.
To continue using the mana efficiently I go into the mines and open the low demon's domain. Since I'm there I clean out the shadows (without Aura using any health or mana) to make things simpler for myself later and collect the ether. With my remaining 12 mana I light the remaining two torches in the spider mine (which involves waiting a long time with the dialogue window open for the queen to move away), then make my all the way up through the cave and down into the Ogre commander's area and open the shortcut to the overmap there. I've been there several times before but this is the first time I have both the spell and mana to spare. The final 3 mana I spent to open up the path to the eastern forest. Since I now have a lot of extra gold I sell the star metal to the workshop and end the day by sharpening my sword a third time. There are several bosses coming up, like the mutated hydrangea or the low-demon core where I believe more damage output will be important.
On day 25 I use a bit of mana burning open the path in the southern forest to the back of the bandit camp and in the eastern forest of runes clearing the path to the mutated hydrangea there, picking up the ether along the way. Then I end the day by having Jakob teach me defensive stance. I hope to use this along with protect to let Charlotte kill the young Avian.
Day 26 is a bit of a milestone. I have 11 willpower at the start of the day, but tomorrow corruption will increase by 1, meaning that unless I use blessed water today I will get the masturbation scene tomorrow. This means that I've now reached the point where I can go one less day between blessed water uses, which is also the point where I get only 3 uncursed days when I drink a blessed water rather than 4.
In any case I start the day by drinking one, since I have to. Then I beat Duelist Ray. She will attack once, then switch to offensive stance, attack for two turns then use windup. I guard the first turn, attack when she changes stance, guard twice while she attacks in offensive stance then use rampage on the turn she uses windup, finishing the fight.
This leaves me with only 17 health but I eat apples to heal myself to basically full, activate defensive stance and go Avian hunting. The fine goes almost fine, but Charlotte runs out of mana just before the Avian runs out of life and Aura has to step in with one final fire. This does mess up my plans though, as I had intended to learn summon slime at the end of the day, but now I only have 29 mana, not the 30 required.
Since I now need to do something else with my mana I eat a couple of apples for health, activate water skin and go kill the group of enemies at the rear entrance to the bandit camp. I then open the shortcut to the overworld, loot the two chests with bombs in them and the vitality potion from the body in front of the bandit leader.
I then eat a few more apples and kill the second goblin shaman. I then remember to deactivate water skin before I end the day by enhancing with the goblin teeth. I know I will need a nasty oil coating when fighting the low-demon, so I give an ether to the alchemist to make into mana stones and buy three of them plus the coating. Then I remember to turn off water skin and end the day by enhancing with the goblin teeth.
On day 27 I fight the low-demon core. On the first turn the demon will use attack. Aura uses light to gain tactical advantage, Charlotte uses heat up, John protects to defend Charlotte (who has very low physical defense) and Paul uses pierce. The demon turns out to attack Aura. On the next turn the demon uses cupiditas. Aura uses pierce to crit the demon, Charlotte keeps using heat up, but this time John and Paul guard, since their poor magical defense woud have them take massive damage. The demon targets John, but thanks to guard only deals 13 damage. On the third turn the demon will cast Averitia. Aura uses tailwind, because that will be vital in a little while, Charlotte throws our last flash bomb, John eats an apple to fully heal himself and Paul uses pierce. After using Averitia the demon attacks to give itself tactical advantage. Aura uses light, Charlotte heat up and John and Paul guard (I thought it would use cupiditas). Luckily the demon's attack misses. On the next turn I feel confident that the demon will use attack, since this is when it would have tactical advantage if it didn't miss. Because of this I go full offense Aura and Paul use pierce, John attacks and Charlotte uses fire. The demon attacks Aura and misses again, while our attacks cause its health to go low enough that it summons four illusions. Thankfully I have tailwind up, so John should be able to use slash before the illusions can act. Aura uses light, Charlotte tops up heat up and Paul uses pierce on the main demon. One of the illusions does act before John, and knocks Paul out, but all four are killed before the rest can act. The demon itself uses cupiditas on Aura, dealing only 8 damage. The next turn Aura uses rampage, to try to finish the fight, Charlotte fire and John attacks. Unfortunately Aura misses one of her attacks and the demon is not killed. It attacks and knocks out John. On the next turn (when the demon prepares the curse) Aura attacks while Charlotte tops off heat up. Then in the last turn before the demon unleashes the curse Aura attacks again and Charlotte uses fire. Aura's attack fails to kill the demon, but Charlotte's 17 damage from fire does. That was too close. I think using rampage was a mistake, I didn't know exactly how much defense the demon has and even if all the attacks hit it would have done no more damage than a normal pierce, and finishing of the demon would be much easier were I not exhausted.
Killing the demon allows me to absorb its power, bringing me to level 4 and significantly boosting my stats. Since I still have 21 mana, and I have the oil coating active that I don't want to waste I go to kill the mutated hydrangea together with John, who thanks to turning in the demon quest is now level 3. This fight is very difficult and in my experience very luck dependent in terms of what abilities the enemies use and who they target. The reason I wanted to learn summon slime earlier is to use it to tank in this fight. In the fight John guards while Aura deals the damage with a combination of fire and pierce. I have to use a vitality potion and still end the battle with no mana and less than 10 health on each character.
Now suffering from cursed 1 and with no health or mana I can't fight any more, but I have to do the papertrail fetchquest befre I can end the day, and I do so by enhancing with the ogre bones. I don't like the -2 agility, but I will now be facing some really tough fights against a lot of physical damage that I simply have to survive through, the worshipers in the caves behind the refugee camp, the bandit leader, Darry and Barry and most of the fights in the festival of greed. I do not believe I can succed without that defense.
Day 28 is the last day where I'm not cursed before the next time I use a blessed water. That means that if I don't start the three day wait for Desmond to investigate now I will have to wait a lot longer. And I'm not sure its possible to start it now, since I don't remember exactly when in the quest that happens. If it involves having to beat Barry and Darry then it's definitely beyond me.
In any case I start out by going for the alchemist worshipper, going into the caves and activating water skin. Against the groups of two neophytes, a water and a wind mage I kill the water mage first then the wind mage, guarding whenever someone would crit me. The defense from the ogre bones makes a massive difference in reducing the damage I take here. I need two apples to fully heal for the alchemist fight, forcing me to buy an apple for the first time this game. The alchemist fight is much the same, target the neophytes first and guard whenever someone would crit. The alchemist deals damage with bombs, so with water skin active he deals less damage than his followers. Once I've killed the neophytes I begin guarding on the turns where the alchemist throws a bomb and only attacking on the turns when he doesn't. He is a monsterously big sack of hit points though and despite his low damage output I'm forced to use my last vitality potion. Once he gets low enough he starts using vitality potions, at that point I have to switch to pierce since he heals 50 per turn on average and I only do about 40 with a normal attack. Eventually he goes back to throwing bombs though and I take him out.
With only 18 health left and cursed 1 thanks to the vitality potion I can't do any more fighting, but I instead head into the eastern Forest of Runes. Just down and to the right of the entrance is a small cul-de-sac with a hole you can climb down. By aggroing the enemy guarding this area you can slip around it and down the hole. You can also grab 55 gold from the skeleton next to the hole. The hole leads to a small tunnel, leading past the Whiteoak side boss (who is super insanely powerful) to the rest of the eastern forest. I activate the teleportation stone, gather the apples lying around (I was totally out before this) and sneak north to grab the star metal before recalling out.
For ending the day I think I'm actually going to be enhancing with mutated spores. I think that with the slower corruption gain I might actually get to the point of learning open domain 2, and without the 40% alchemist discount it would take an eternity for mana stones to become more cost efficient than enhancing in this manner. I'm also kinda tired of not being able to learn summon slime due to not having 30 mana, like today, when I only have 29 due to using water skin.
On day 29 I'm suffering from cursed 1, but I think I could still defeat some bandits. With water skin killing three bandits takes more than half my health, so it ends up being just the one group, but its better than nothing. I end the day by finally learning summon slime, paying the three ether.
On day 30 I kill another group consisting of two bandits and a corrupt guard. I'm a bit luckier with the damage numbers this time and only lose about a third of my health. Still I don't want to chance another fight today. But since I have more than 50 hit points I can make 200 gold modelling for the artist in Riverflow. I end the day by learning slash from John, not so much because I want slash (although I do) but because I really need him to have the extra defense for the Festival of Greed.
On day 31 I'm suffering from cursed 2, so I cannot do any fighting at all. I end the day by enhancing with the goblin teeth. My thinking is that I'm coming up on the festival of greed, and I will be sorely needing the ability to quickly burst down Mammon before she wipes out the entire team.
On day 32 I have to confront the fact that I really don't have a lot of day ending activities to engage in. The fact that the new womb of lust mechanic gives so many fewer combat days and so many more non-combat days is changing things significantly. The +1 attack book that takes four days to read is usually such a bad return, but I really feel like I'm scratching the bottom of the barrel here, so I buy and read it.
On day 33 I keep reading the book.
On day 34 I have to drink a blessed water to keep from getting forced masturbation, so I do so and head back into the caves behind the refugee camp. I don't summon the slime, since I believe based on previous experience that it will quickly die to the wind mage. I kill the three groups of enemies necessary to complete the missing food quest easily, again killing the water mage first then the neophytes and guarding whenever someone would crit me. All in all it only costs me a little more than half of my health. The last fight, the group leading to the back of the caves, is more difficult though, since you can't get the surprise round against them. So I use apples to heal to almost full. I have a fair bit of luck with RNG but still lose almost half my health to this single fight.
This gives me access to the first fight against Demonic Knight Robert. I don't think I can win this one. Even critting with pierce is only going to do a little over 100 damage, and he has 1000 health to go through. I simply don't have the damage output for that. So I'll have to lose the first fight and take him on with the duelists instead.
I want to make use of the day before I do that though, so I summon the slime and climb up to the ledge above the northern Forest of Runes to kill the mothercrow. I get the surprise round and use fire on her to give myself tactical advantage, which I use to crit all the crows to death with a slash.
Killing the mothercrow and getting the nearby harvestable rope reduced my health to 52. I need 30 to be able to jump down into Robert's house, so I don't think I can do any more fighting today. I feed a sweet memories drug to the slime (I think I got this from killing the alchemist worshipper) and then go through the caves to Roberts house, harvesting the ether along the way. I end the day by charging in and getting instantly annihilated.
Day 35: I need full health and mana for the fight with Demon Knight Robert, so I immediately go back to his house, grab the 800 gold and the clue to where they went and go fight. In the fight you need to address the fact that all of the duelists have very poor magic defence. The wind mage's area of attack ability will deal a lot of damage to all of them. Until he is dead the duelists need to keep using guard. I make one exception on the first turn, having Rainer pierce the corrupt guard. Rainer is faster than Aura and this will make the guard have less hit points than the two mages and so if he uses protect it won't help them. Aura kills the water mage. Robert uses windup on the first turn (in my testing he sometimes attacks once first) and Aura has to guard against his rampage, then kills the wind mage on the turn after. At that point Aura and Rainer use pierce to take down his health when he is exhausted and guard when he's not, while the two others permanently guard. Robert attacks a few times between exhaustion ending and using windup, so I could probably have made the fight go better by using light plus pierce there, but I'm unsure of how he will act and don't. Generally I would probably advice having Ray kill the guard when he has become exhausted by his armor, but in my game Rainer happened to be alive at too low health to use pierce at that point and did it. I ended up finishing the fight with only Aura and Ray and both having less than 10 health, although if I had had one or more vitality potions the fight could have become a lot more consistent.
Day 36 is the last day before becoming cursed. I start the day by finishing the impostor refugees quest, which lets me level up to level 5. I gain 6 health, 2 mana, 1 defense, 1 magic attack, 2 magic defense and 1 agility. I then progress the Find the Abductees quest to the point where you have to wait 3 days for Desmond to investigate (I give the avian feather to the maid). Now the only thing standing between me and the Festival of Greed is beating Barry and Darry. I would like to do that today if possible, but I don't know if it is.
Fighting Barry and Darry is insanely hard, and before I go I give a mutated spores to the alchemist to make vitality potions and buy the three he has and two nasty oil coatings. One I apply now and the other is for the festival.
I go into the caves behind the bandit leader, use a bomb to get past the stationary bandits, sneak past the patrolling ones and summon a slime to fight the twins. I want Aura to be at full health, and she's not due to the level up, so I harvest the ether in the side chamber and eat an apple. For a bit of extra help I give the slime two sweet memories before the fight, and give it two apple to heal it up to its new max health.
Aura starts out attacking Darry, since he does the most damage. The slime permanently guards, its job is to die as slowly as possible and divert as much damage as possible away from Aura. Whenever Barry has tactical advantage or Darry has used wind up Aura also guards. When Darry is exhausted from using rampage I attack him to get tactical advantage and then crit him with pierce (unless Barry is about to throw a static bomb). In the end his health is low enough that he switches to offensive stance and I crit him to death on the same turn. Dealing with Barry alone is a lot easier and once his health is low enough that he switches to defensive stance the fight is essentially over. The slime ends up dying just before Barry does and I have to use two of the three vitality potions in the fight.
After the fight I investigate the bridge, grab the gold from the chest in the central room and recall out. At that point I'm suffering cursed 2 due to the vitality potions. That means no more fighting, so I end the day by continuing to read the attack book. I'm going to need to start worrying about the 2000 gold to invest in Edwin at this point, but it shouldn't be any stress I have 1950 right now and a star metal in my inventory.
On day 37 I'm cursed, but I still manage to kill one corrupt guard + 2 bandit group. All the gold I can get is good at this point. I end the day by finishing the attack book. I also make sure to deactivate water skin before I end the day. The reason I deactivate waterskin is that I realized that it is probably a lot easier to kill ogres than bandits, especially if I summon the slime.
On day 38 I'm able to kill every remaining group of two goblins and one ogre this way. In the surprise round Aura uses fire on one goblin while the slime attacks the ogre to soften it up for Aura to oneshot (only one required an extra attack), then the slime guards while aura crits the ogre to death and then kills the other goblin with a normal attack.
This is a nice infusion of cash and I invest 2000 gold in Edwin's workshop. I also feed the slime a living heart. I want it to learn protect, and health is the most important stat for a sword sponge. I end the day by buying and reading the magic defense book. More because I don't have better options than because I believe I will need magic defense soon.
On day 39 the waiting for Desmond is over and I set everything up for going to the festival, but I don't start it yet, since I have a few days before I need to use blessed water. I end the day by finishing reading the book.
On day 40 I go into the caves behind the refugee camp and grab the pyromantium there. While I'm there I also jump down from the watchtower and burn through the two plants to get the two apples lying on the ground. I would have gotten those apples earlier if I had remembered. Then I go into the northern mine and bomb my way to the pyromantium there. I then sell to a merchant my remaining sweet memories drug, three inzectoid armors and four ethers. I have 1 more magic defense than defense and most enemies don't target magic defense, which makes the +1 defense +2 magic defense from the armors less appealing and ethers are the most abundant material. Using the money I turn the three pyromantiums into a pyro plating and enhance with it to end the day. I absolutely need attack for the festival, in order to burst down Mammon.
On day 41 I start with 14 willpower, which means that I will need to use a blessed water tomorrow. So I end the day by asking Edwin to take me to the festival.
Day 42 is festival day. I start the day by using a blessed water, activating water skin and using the nasty oil coating. This is probably the single day in the game with the largest amount of difficult fights, so its the best day to use it. I start by killing the first two group of enemies, targeting the neophyte first, then the fire mages and the guard last.
After I open the way for my team I go into the tunnel, harvest the emerald leaf and heal up with apples to fight the venom scorio. Or rather I intend to, but I forget, so Aura starts the fight at 36 health. This is actually a good thing though, since it means that she has less health than John and his protect can protect her. I get the surprise round, during which Aura uses light on one normal scorpio, Paul kills the other with pierce and Charlotte uses heat up. On the first real combat turn John uses protect, Charlotte heat up again, Paul kills the scorpio that Aura hit with light with a normal attack and Aura crits the venom scorpio with pierce. She ends up acting after Charlotte and so does massive damage, causing the boss to curl up into a defensive stance. John takes the boss' attack and becomes poisoned. In the next turn aura uses light, Charlotte fire and Paul poison and they finish the venom scorpio off. I harvest the pyromantium and heal Aura, John and Paul up with apples. For real this time.
After looting the two chests on the way we fight the slime summoner boss. I start with Aura and Paul using pierce, John attack and Charlotte heat up. On the second turn Aura uses fire on the slime, Charlotte heat up again, John protects her and Paul uses pierce on the summoner. Unfortunately the slime used protect and the summoner has less health than it, so Paul hit it instead. On the next turn Charlotte uses fire on the slime, Aura crits the summoner with a pierce, and John and Paul do the same again. This allowed the summoner to be killed before he summoned the third slime (tailwind would have been smart to ensure this happened, but I had forgotten to activate it). After that the fight was straight forward, I had John and Paul attack the red slime, used fire on the blue to set Aura up for critical hits, and guarded against rampage. Everyone but Aura went down, but she handled the fight fine.
I don't give a vitality potion to the dying slave trader, since this is a pure run. If you have vice you'd be able to shake him down for 1000 gold if you save him, but we won't have that so there's no point for us. Instead I open the domain and head in. After Aura gets cursed I go open the chest with Arwin's emergency supply (the code is 0001), then go to the human derby. I pay off the debts of refugee 2 and 3, since theirs are cheaper, and bet on refugee 1.
After the human derby I head to the combat gauntlet to the west. I start by using money magic to heal everyone, since everyone but Aura is on 1 hitpoint. I burn through the plants to attack the enemy to the right from behind. Charlotte uses heat up, John does what little damage he can with his attacks, Aura and Paul use attack to gain tactical advantage and pierce to crit for big damage, focusing on the pent up angers. I think you need to beat the rapidly turning enemy in the middle to get to that chest, so I attack him from behind using the same tactic. I blow open the way to the two chests behind boulders, dodge the slowly patrolling enemy and then choose to fight the last enemy group rather than use a bomb. I only care about John (who took no damage) and Aura's health at this point, and she might need one extra apple to recover. After the gauntlet I eat three apples to fully recover Aura and switch the blackjack to always let the player win.
After the blackjack, and paying off the gamler's debt I go to fight the duel together with John. There are two adventurers, one man and one woman. The man has more health but less defense and the other way around. Since both have enough defense that you really want to use pierce that makes it an obvious choice to focus on the woman with less health. On the first turn I have Aura invest in attack and John in counter. On the next turn both invest in attack. Then both hit the woman, Aura with pierce and John with normal attacks. Its important to kill her before she uses invest in health, but I'm not entirely sure when she does that. I think it might be when she reaches less than 200 health, so you might want to adjust your attacks to leave her just above this. A big advantage of taking her out first is that rampage is great at taking out not-that-high defense lone enemies. With double invest attack in effect my rampage dealt 450 damage to the remaining adventurer, allowing him to be defeated from much higher health than his threshold for using invest health. I do have to use invest health once during the fight.
After wining the duel I buy the VIP pass and pay off everyone's debt. This leaves me with 1700 perika to fight Arwin and Mammon. I wish it was a little more. I debate buying emerald tea in the store, since I'm struggling with lack of days where I'm not cursed and can fight. Everything else in the store is overcosted though and I'm afraid the tea is too. I will soon reach Mountainreach where they're sold, but I don't know the price or how many are in stock.
With everything prepared I go to fight Arwin and have my health set to 1 by Lysander on the way. Thanks jerk. The strategy for the fight is that Aura uses light on Mammon to get tactical advantage, Charlotte uses heat up, John uses invest:counter and Paul invest:health. Then Aura uses pierce on Mammon, Charlotte invest: concentrate and Paul invest:attack to stack with heat up and extend its duration to 10 turns, John uses defend. After this Aura alternates between fire on the slime to get tactical advantage and pierce on Mammon, Charlotte spams fire on Mammon and Paul does the same with pierce. The goal is to kill Mammon before she can use averitia, get tactical advantage and kill everyone with a crit slash. It's not a reliable strategy though, there's too much that can go wrong. Counter is only a percentage chance, or John can get hit by cupiditas and be too low health to protect the others, or you could straight up miss Mammon. It's the best I've got but I don't think I had more than a 1 in 3 chance of winning.
Mammon is the greatest threat by far, so after she is dead you want to make the fight go long to drain Arwin's perika. So keep killing the slimes, but don't attack him. Eventually he stops using perika and then you can kill him. Remember that you can eat apples while he is summoning a new slime to improve your staying power, I ended up using all of mine.
I end up having to fight the pair two times, and end the second fight with 825 perika. Being able to use invest health 4 times should make the game easy, and John survived the last fight with a bit more than half health. My strategy is to generally send Charlotte out for 2 turns when I get to choose. Against the jellyfish she will just use fire, against the Avian fire then defend and against the Hydrangea just defend. For longer fights or against the hydrangea I send John due to his higher defense. Against the Avian John can sometimes attack before it uses flight, otherwise just guard. The stratgy changes a little once the jellyfish gets low enough to get boosted damage. Charlotte cannot fight it at this point, so until it is dead I start sending out John instead.
After beating Arwin at his own game Aura uses star knightess to fight Mammon in Hi-Demon form, and gets 10 000 perika. I use the attack debuffing skill, then the defense boosting one. I then use invest: purification twice. After that it's a long grinding slugfest against Mammon. I debuff her attack, buff my own defense, buff my own damage and use light to give tactical advantage to crit with charge of the oxen.
All in all the festival gave me -2 corruption (2 from absorbing Mammon, 4 from using star knightess, -8 from invest: purification), and enough experience to level up to level up twice, from level 5 to level 7.
Now that the festival is over there are many new quests available, so I go and start the quests at both adventurers guilds. I also pick up the 100 gold in a chest among the trees left of the entrance to Nephlune, and from the underground I pick up the art of fire and the mana stone from the bodies near the lower left entrance.
The first of the new quests I attempt is What is it With Birds and Stealing, fighting the empowered Avian. I activate tailwind, to mostly be able to act before any crows I can't avoid and kill them in one slash before they take flight, and manage to get to its nest. Then I have to steal all the gold, in one of the most frustrating moments in the game. Generally having to do precise movement in the RPG maker engine is not fun, and trying to pick up gold only to be told that the game moved you out of that square a moment prior, or moving straight past what you want to pick up resulted in more than a few frustrated yells. But eventually I got all the gold, allowing me to kill the avian in a similar manner as the first one. I used apples to heal up, then activated defensive stance and used protect to keep Desmond safe while he killed the boss.
Next I head towards the eastern forest. I want to cast open domain on the demon's anchor and I harvest an ether on the way along with picking up some gold from a skeleton near the hydrangea. I make it to the anchor and cast open domain, then go inside. There I harvest the ether and the maleficum. Getting to the latter takes all my health, so I need to use an apple to be able to actually harvest it. That's why I'm doing this today and not when I'm acutally going to fight the boss.
I go to the caves north of the northern forest, use a rope to get down to the deepest bit and harvest the ether and emerald leaf there. Then I process three of the latter into an emerald plating and enhance with it. I'm worried about the low-demon's illusions. They have agility 15 and I have 12, so currently even with tailwind I would only equal them. I'm hoping the emerald plating's +2 will help a little.
Day 44: My next goal is to beat the demon in the eastern forest, in order to unlock intermediate quests, and I would also like to beat the duelists in Nephlune for the stat boost. Unfortunately I'm too weak to do either.
Fleura has 23 attack. She uses attack and windup plus pierce 2. The latter will on average deal about 50 damage to me. That means two of these attacks would take away all but 45 of my health, which is too little to work with. It cannot be decreased by defense (it takes 8 points of defense to decrease the damage by 1), and I can't massively increase my health so I need to beat her before the second pierce. She will attack twice, windup, pierce, attack, windup, pierce, so I have to beat her in 5 attacks. She has 500 health so I need to be dealing 100 damage per attack on average. Her 39 defense means that it would take 34 attack to deal an average of 100 damage using pierce 1, with the slightly reduced defense when using windup giving a bit of safety margin. That is 6 more attack than I currently have.
She has 23 attack and at my current current defense of 32 that means she does an average of 28 damage on a normal attack. Three of these, plus 35 healt from using pierce 5 times, plus 50 from her pierce is 169 damage, so I won't survive long enough currently. Four more defense would allow me to take 25 less damage, barely surviving on average rolls. However there is a source of a bit of safety margin, with her defense decreased on windup its possible that I could get away with only using an attack on the last turn, and since it is the last turn I won't have to commit to it before I see if I can afford the health to use pierce.
I might like to have even better stats, but this is a plan for now. So I need 6 attack, which I can get from upgrading with pyroplating and using a nasty oil coating, and 4 defense that I can get from enhancing with two scorpio claws. I currently have one. I need to make the plating today, since paying 1000 gold will decrease my willpower by 60 and tomorrow that means reducing my willpower to 0 and leave me unable to end the day by doing anything that costs money.
To set the plan into action I head into the caves behind the refugee camp and summon my slime. First I go for the minotaur, because this is going to take quite a bit of gold. To Aura uses light then attack while the slime attacks. Both guard against the rampage and when the Minotaur is exhausted Aura also switches to using just attack.
Next I go to the venom scorpio in the top left. This requires a rope and after a bit of looking I determine that I'll need to buy one. I manage to get the surprise round against it by using the fact that the AI tends to walk in straight lines and hiding behind the stalagmite in the top of the boss arena to jump it when it ran by from right to left. The strategy was to have Aura use light on one scorpio (either killing it or nearly killing it) and the slime to attack the same scorpio to finish it off if Aura didn't and then for Aura to crit the venom scorpio with pierce, then repeat. Once Aura's hitpoints gets below that of the slime it begins to use protect and when the venom scorpio enters defensive stance Aura switches to only casting light. After the fight I grab the star metal and recall out.
Now all I need is to get the pyromantium. There's a big deposit in the cave north of the northern forest, so I go and harvest both. Since I have a bit health and mana left I put on water skin and go to the bandit camp, intending to maybe kill one group. But it turns out that the slime now has enough attack to oneshot a forest bandit so we kill all of them, usually without even taking damage. I even go down into the bandit tunnel and kill the ones there, but not the bandit leader (obviously) or the tougher bandits beyond him.
Finally I make the pyroplating and end the day by enhancing with it.
On day 45 I'm suffering cursed 1, but I still clear out all the bandit groups in the deeper part of the lair that you can get the surprise round against with the help of the slime. The problem with using the slime against bandits is usually that he is weak to bombs and sets Aura up to get critted, but being able to kill both normal bandits in the surprise round takes care of that problem.
I give a slimy fluid to the alchemist to make nasty oil coatings and buy 2 plus the mana stone that's still in stock. I sell one of my star metals to a merchant and buy 50 apples. I can't just buy what I want when I want now, due to eyes of greed. So I need to stock up when I can spare the willpower. Finally I end the day by enhancing with one of the scorpio claws.
On day 46 I kill the remaining ogre groups in the northern forest of runes. The ones that you can ambush (all but one) I could just attack. They always use smash after they stop being paralyzed, it does no damage and they die before they can follow it up. Against the one group you can't ambush I have aura cast light on one and the slime attack the same, and then Aura kills the uninjured one with a crit while the slime finish off the first.
After that I kill the spider queen in the small mine. Aura casts light for tactical advantage and then delete it with rampage. And finally I kill the spider queen in the bandit tunnel. Aura casts light, crits with pierce, casts fire on one of the summoned mature spiders and finishes of the spiders. For most of this fight Aura had less health than the slime, so it spammed protect.
I have a choice to make for how to end the day. I can learn either thunderbolt (from the rescued adventurer) or heat up, but I don't have time to learn both before I need to use a blessed water to reset the curse. I have to choose today because I need enough magic attack to learn heat up. Thunderbolt would be a massive help in clearing both the bandit leader and the bandits on the bridge. In fact I don't think I could ever clear the bridge without it. On the other hand I've been toying with the idea of using double heat up to get a crit rampage on the low-demon core powerful enough to kill it before it summons the illusions. However I don't know if I could win the fight without this, I don't know how it works, whether the illusions still get summoned if it dies, and I don't know at what health it summons them. Because of all this I decide to end the day by learning thunderbolt.
Day 47 is spent learning thunderbolt.
On day 48 I do a bit of harvesting to use some of my health, getting the big emerald leaf deposit in the eastern forest of runes, the pyromantium in the bandit tunnels and the ether in the cave north of the forest. Then I sell an inzectoid armor and an ether and use the money to enhance with a scorpio claw.
Day 49 is the last day before I need to use blessed water. I use it reading the art of fire, more because its free than any other reason.
On day 50 I need to drink a blessed water, so I do that, and then go to fight Fleura. The fight goes exactly according to plan and even after using the last pierce I even had 7 health left over. I realize just after the fight that I don't know if enemies pay health costs for martials, if so I would have needed 30 less damage and could more safely used attack instead of pierce at the end if I have to.
After fighting Fleura I heal up with apples and fight trickster Ralph. He has almost no damage, but his attacks will poison you and on the second turn he switches to using defensive stance on turn two, hoping to stay in the fight long enough for the poison to win it. The tactic to counter this is to start with rampage on turn one, (he does not have great defense) getting all that damage in before he goes defensive. The weakness to physical from being exhausted makes absolutely no difference, Ralph still only does 1 damage per attack even on a crit.
After beating the duelists I heal up again, summon the slime and fight the low-demon core. This fight ends up being a bit luck based, especially since, in my experience, you tend to miss this boss a lot more than other enemies. In one of my attempts now I missed with pierce 4 times in a row. But there are some useful things to know. The insecurities that accompany the boss are weak to physical damage, so you can pierce one to crit the other and oneshot it. The demon itself isn't really scary when you're not affected by cupiditas. Weakness and crits multiply damage after defense, and Aura has enough defense to cancel all the demon's attack, so as long as its not reduced she can attack with impunity. That also means its important to make sure the illusions are summoned when she's not affected by cupiditas, but you still want to use tailwind and try to kill them first with slash. If nothing else it helps protect your slime. Speaking of slime. It's job is to guard permanently, soak shots and especially to make it so that cupiditas only hits Aura half the time.
I haven't had to use any vitality potions, so I'm not cursed and I actually have enough health and mana after the fight to beat the bandit leader without any healing, so I do that. We take down the two normal bandits in the surprise round, then the slime begins guarding, Aura takes out the guard, then uses thunderbolt to gain tactical advantage and finish him off with a rampage.
This worked so well that I wanted to try the same against the bridge bandits. I heal up, activate water skin and drink two energy potions for mana. Against the first two groups Aura uses thunderbolt on one city thug, uses slash to kill everyone except the other city thug, and then she and the slime (who has until that point been guarding) finish him off. Against the third group Aura starts by thunderbolting one city thug and slashing, then she thunderbolts the other city thug and use rampage. And it doesn't kill the boss. Oops. Luckily he uses throw bomb the next turn and Aura finishes him off with normal attacks before he can make use of her exhaustion. I believe the idea is sound, but he'd need to be softened up with an attack or two before the rampage.
A big question at this point is what I want to do tomorrow. I hate giving up a combat capable day, but I believe I have to rank up to an intermediate rank adventurer. After today I've basically exhausted the content available before doing so. As for the current day, I think I'm going to do take a bit of a risk, and sell the star metal to the workshop and sharpen my sword again. I enough gold, 3000 before selling the metal, that it ought to be ok.
Day 51 is spent ranking up with the adventurer's guild.
On day 52 I'm an intermediate adventurer, so I can get the quest to go into the mountains with Paul. This is an area that I'm much less familiar with (I've only gotten this far once before), so its much more likely that I'll miss things or do things suboptimally here. I start by grabbing the rope to the left and sneaking by the first enemy.
Going down and to the right there is a slowly moving enemy and past that a vine you can climb down to an area where an enemy is patrolling very quickly around a small path. If you climb down onto the vine at all you will be spotted. The best way is to wait at the top for him to turn left, then run down and to the left. The upper two rows of tiles here are safe as long as you're not standing straight below the vine, but the most useful spot to stand is one to the left and one away from the wall. Here you can go down after him when he begins moving down, which gives you the most time to get path. You can either go straight down to a hole in the ground, or to the right and up another vine to a body on a mesa. Down the hole there are a harvestable pyromantium and emerald leaf and two chests with a formula for acid bombs and 400 gold. The body has a skillbook for bomb proficiency 2.
Going up instead of down and right there are several enemies hidden in the trees. The trick here is to not go up but left, there's a vine that lets you climb up and jump down past the enemies. Look out for the enemy looking straight north as you proceed. On the skeleton under the tree is a mana stone, and then I go down the stairs and up the two vines to a boss arena. The boss consists of a mothercrow and an Avian, and I don't think its possible to beat at this point. It moves really fast, but moves quite far out to the sides, so its possible to run past when its far to the left or right.
Past the boss arena is a sneaky enemy hiding behind a tree and looking south. Watch out. Down the vine is an enemy patrolling in a fairly complex pattern. There's a surprising safespot, one space down from the wall and one to the right of the vine. The enemy will go all around you, but never see you. Going right past another enemy is a path down to the boss area. There are two entrances here, one straight down and one to the right past a bush and down. On the path to the right there's a chest with 800 gold, but in either case there is a group of 2 ogre elites and 2 hobgoblins facing away from you. This is a good place to look at where the demon will look as she teleports around the arena.
I engage one of the two groups. The hobgoblins will switch to offensive stance and then attack, the ogres will use prepare mass smash and then smash. I focused on bringing down the hobgoblins first. When they're in offensive stance aura can kill them both with a single slash that crits. They need to be killed three times before they stay dead thanks to the demon's magic. The first offensive stance attack the slime absorbed with protect. After killing the hobgoblins I focused down one ogre elite, then used light to gain tactical advantage and deleted the other with a rampage crit. Both the slime and Paul were knocked out , but Aura survived with almost full health.
By using my knowledge of the demon's positions I sneak over to the right of the anchor. There is a ogre commander plus more patrolling around it, so I ran in cast the spell and then barely managed to press escape and recall out. The spell animation is, I believe, too long to avoid being spotted.
Going back to the anchor (getting past the avian is frustrating) I find that getting in once the spell has been cast is instantaneous, so at least that's nice. I tried fighting a group of enemies in the domain, who turned out to be a craving and an obsession, who both seem to be powerful spellcasters with low defense and health. And the entire area is covered in an irremovable blind effect. Great combination. The craving especially has 63 magic defense and really can only be attacked by physical damage. I tested later and even thunderbolt, which reduces enemy magic defense only does 28 damage. This is looking like its going to be an rng-fest. In the fight I managed to hit, and killed the craving in the surprise round (I think both my characters hit). Aura got oneshotted by the other enemy, but Paul killed it despite being at 1 health.
The advantage of having both characters reduced to one health is that I can freely walk around the demonic goop and explore the area. In the bottom right is some maleficium and in the top right some ether, behind a jump that requires 16 agility. In the bottom right is a red light that aura can dispell for 5 mana. I had hoped that this would reduce the magic attack granting effect of the pollen, but no luck. The cravings still oneshot Aura right through the +4 magic defense from water skin. In the top right is a similar light behind a stationary enemy, a craving and an insecurity. Hopefully removing both lights will disempower the pollen for the bossfight. Oh, and the boss is in the upper center.
My goal for tomorrow will have to be to beat that enemy to get to the other red light. The craving will delete one character each round, and as long as the insecurity has higher health it can protect her with protect. My plan is that every character hits the insecurity on the first turn (Aura with light), hoping to bring its health low enough that it can't protect the craving and then everyone hit the craving on the second turn, trying to take it down, parhaps with a crit from whoever hit the insecurity. It's going to be super rng-heavy, but I don't see an alternative.
For now I wade over to the malificium, eat an apple to have some health, harvest it and recall out. Since I'm out of combat power I go to Draknor Fortress, to use some of my resistance to pick up some of the loot. I loot the two bodies near the start, the two in the next area, go up to the cave and place the rope to get up there easier. I also check and find that you need 16 agility to jump the gap in the cave.
To end the day I make an emerald plating and enhance with it. The agility should allow me to more often move before the cravings, and allow me to jump both the cap in the domain and in the cave above Draknor
Day 53: I'm suffering from cursed 1, so I take the time to clear out the crows near the avian nest. Lilim's empowerment does not keep them from being killed in one hit by slash in the surprise round. This should make it much easier to move through the area, and also allows me to loot the Avian's gold. I also summon a slime and kill all the remaining bandits in the hideout. Finally I return to Draknor, pay 70 health to jump down to the lower area and loot the two bodies there. To end the day I learn mana control 3. Currently light will only barely bring an insecurity's health below that of a craving, I want a bit of safety margin.
On day 54 I just read art of fire.
Day 55 is another shitty milestone, I now have enough corruption and max willpower reduction that I have another day less between having to used blessed water, and I now only get two combat capable days when I do. But for the day I just read art of fire.
Day 56 keep reading art of fire.
On day 57 I have to use blessed water, so its time to try to fight in Lilim's domain. I start by drinking a blessed water and summoning the slime, before going to fight the enemies blocking the way to the other red orb. Then I spam reload until I can kill the craving without missing before my team is oneshoted. Fun. I do a quick test and find that removing the orbs removes the magic attack increasing effect, but not the permanent blind. Just right of the entrance to the domain is a place with two stationary enemies that are almost impossible to avoid. To clear the way for tomorrow I walk through the goop to get behind the upper one and barely take it down, with Aura and the slime going down before Paul finished the enemy. This should leave me a path to the boss that goes through only a single tile of demonic goop. Once that was done, with no health left, I simply walked through the goop to get past the enemies over to the ether, ate an apple to get the health to harvest it and recalled out. I end the day by finishing the art of fire.
Lilim is an insane boss fight. You're permanently blinded, protecting her from physical attacks and her magic defense is a staggering 88, meaning she blocks 176 damage from each magical attack. The strategy I (with some advice from the game's developer after throwing a fit in frustration) landed on was to reduce the magical damage with an acid bomb and then have Aura spam fire and Paul help with bombs + and try for pierce crits.
I started the battle by having my slime throw an acid bomb while Aura and Paul used guard. The slime died right after, but oh well. Aura and Paul then guarded until the acid reduced Lilim's defense and then Paul (who's faster than Aura) used the potentia rune and Aura started casting fire. With the potentia rune up she did about 150 damage per turn. On later turns Paul would alternatingly throw bombs and use pierce. He only managed to throw two bombs though before being mindcontrolled by Lilim. Luckily he was already reduced to 4 health, so he couldn't use pierce and just hit Aura uselessly. When Lilim is sufficiently hurt she uses Draw Power: Earth, healing her for 150 health per turn, but thanks to Paul's help she was low enough that once the effect wore off she died before she could recast it.
When you beat Lilim the curse traps deactivate and I did a bit of looting, gathering up a living heart from a chest and a harvestable rope and 3 blessed waters from a cul-de-sac to the north. Then I recalled out. Being at cursed 2 from Lilim's mind polination and low on health I can only end the day. Which I do by buying and starting to read the +10 max willpower book. With my corruption increasing I'm getting fewer and fewer uncursed days and I believe I need to do something about that. Plus I don't have any upgrades available that I can both afford and really want. I'm a bit shorter on gold than I would have liked.
Day 59: Suffering from cursed I can't really progress on any new content. I want to go to Draknor next, but I can't jump the gap in the caves without my full agility. So instead I go clear out some of the monsters in the northern mountains, now that Lilim is no longer empowering them. I start with the mothercrow + Avian boss. I summon the slime (which might have been a mistake, since it loses half its life to the Avian's autospell), use slash to clear out the crows before they can take off, then fire on the mothercrow to crit the avian with a normal attack and then fire on the mothercrow again, killing her so I try to finish the Avian off with a rampage. This turns out to be a mistake and it survives, but Aura and the slime both attack it and it dies before it can attack more than once.
Exploring the camp where Lilim's anchor was I find another harvestable rope and that the enemy that seems to be guarding the lower right exit from the camp can be avoided by going through the trees. In addition to some apples I find a body with some gold, a way back to the northern forest of runes (near the ogre commander) and a vine up to a cliff where a skeleton almost completely hidden behidn a tree holds some more gold. Going down the other vine lets me burn through a path going left that leads me behind the goblin shaman in the camp, where there is an almost completely hidden chest with 4 mana stones. This is a big find, as it brings me up to 78 max mana. Only 22 away from being able to learn open domain 2. Going back to the vines I climb down to the lowest levels and blast my way past the rock to find an etherplating. I have fairly low health at this point, so I end the day by continuing to read the book.
On day 60 I'm still under cursed 1. I start by attacking the enemy guarding the top right exit out of Lilim's encampment. This fight teaches me something interesting, the hobgoblins coming back to life is not a result of Lilim's empowerment as I always thought. I have Aura use magic to set up crits and use slash until the hobgoblins die for real and then switch to attacks to deal with the ogres. The skeleton beyond has some more gold and then I can enter the upper part of the caves.
Inside the cave I'm right next to a minotaur. I avoid it for the moment. To the left I find the area above where I was earlier, I could lower a rope here if I wanted, but I don't. Going left and up instead of down brings me to another cave exit/entrance. Leaving through it has me immediately attacked by three goblin rogues. Aura kills one with fire and the other two with slash, but the slime goes down and she is reduced to only 24 health. There's a body here, with 4 energy potion+ on it and a place where I could have roped down from above. The place above is where I was just before I got to Lilim's camp originally. I noticed the opportunity to rope down to a cave entrance, but I new from a previous run that I could get here through the caves instead so I saved the rope. With so little health left I recall and end the day finishing the book, but before I do I go to the hermit and have him teach me stone mind. Against any enemies in the future that require magic to defeat, like Lilim, it will be very useful. Always prepare for the last war.
Thanks to the book I'm still only cursed 1 on day 61 and I go back to keep exploring the caves. Beyond what I found yesterday there's only a star metal, guarded by a spider queen who turns out to be mature. I avoid her and grab the metal before recalling away. I then go to fleura and have her promise to teach me pierce 2. I need to do it today because with a worse cursed status I would not have the attack to learn it. The skill seems to be better than I first got the impression of. Her description, that it no longer sacrifices attack power, makes it sound like it does as much damage as a normal attack. But pierce 1 is close to that already, at Aura's current 36 attack pierce only does 18 less damage than a normal attack. But I believe, from the fight against Fleura and her attack stat that it actually does 5 damage per attack rather than a normal attack's 4, which is 54 more damage. After that I end the day by having Julian teach me tenacity. I don't know if I'm going to benefit from it, but its free and it might be useful in some close fights. It can let Aura go all out on the offensive even if it means she'll die afterwards, or it can give her time to drink a vitality potion.
On day 62 I'm learning pierce 2.
On day 63 I'm learning pierce 2.
I don't have to use a blessed water on day 64, but I do it anyway. I'm not entirely sure what I want to upgrade so I want to start progressing and maybe I'll see. After drinking the water I go to Draknor Fortress, up the rope I let down earlier and jump the cap inside the cave. By waiting for a long time to jump until the venom scorpio is down in the bottom area I'm able to avoid it. Above is a medium slime boss and a star metal behind a boulder that requires 5 bombs or 1 bomb+ to remove. I don't have any bomb+ so I leave it for now. The exit requires the same, but not knowing any options I blast through. This brings me right into a mother crows nest. She spots me but I'm able to run away to the bottom left where I can let down a rope to bring me down to the fortress.
On the fortress roof there's a place where I can let down a rope to the fortress ramparts where there is a spot to let down a further rope to the ground outside near the area entrance. There's also a boulder that can be bombed with a single bomb and a door. I start by placing the ropes to allow easier access in the future. On the fortress ramparts I find a scorpio claw, some gold and a bit of mana I can absorb. Now I only need 19 max mana to learn open domain 2.
After that I try the door. This brought me just behind a group of enemies that turned out to consist of one insecurity, one earth mage, one fire mage, one magic fighter and one fighter. Aura started by thunderbolting the magic figher, killing him thanks to the power of concentration, the slime meanwhile attacked the earth mage to break her concentration. In the first non-surprise round Aura killed the insecurity (to keep it from protecting the others) while the slime again attacked the earth mage to break her concentration again if she recast stonemind (she did). Then Aura cast thunderbolt on the fighter and then used slash killing both mages. At this point the slime switched to using protect and Aura killed the remaining fighter. Whether through good or bad luck the slime was not targeted much and lost almost no health while Aura lost most of hers.
Inside is some gold, two pyromantium and a ladder blocked by rubble. I assume that if I used the bomb this is where I would come down. I know that demons respawn in this area, but do the cursed human enemies too? If not then this was definitely worth it to save a bomb, but if they do then it wasn't. Finally to the left there is a gap that requires 19 agility to jump. That means I need a slimy fluid, that would give exactly the 3 agility I need. Good thing I didn't spend all my money before going here.
I go to the cave in area in the northern mines, use my last bomb to blow up the wall and kill the slime. Aura uses magic and attack to hit it while the slime uses protect, until the enemy slime changes color and both switch to attack. The enemy ends up killing them both, but Aura comes back thanks to tanacity and kills it on the next attack. I end the day by upgrading with the slimy fluid.
On day 65 I return to Draknor. I manage to get spotted on the field and simply run for it. Almost every enemy along the way ends up chasing me, but I make it through the door without them catching me and find that no enemies have respawned. I guess the demonic respawning doesn't even affect fragments. Good to know. I jump the gap, grab some gold on a body and head down the stairs to what I believe is the inside of the main gates. The landing halfway down the stairs gives a good spot to familiarize myself with the enemy paths. The armory to the right has a poison coating, some energy potion+ and 3 vitality potions. There is a ladder up that the game says is blocked by some rubble. This might actually have been where I came down if I bombed the rocks outside, and a ladder down that is blocked by a curse trap.
After this I go up the stairs on the other side (the downstairs patrol pattern on the left seems too difficult). There turn out to only be some bodies with gold on them, the way forward is blocked by a curse trap. Going down to the downstairs right area I do manage to get past the enemies, to find some bodies with a small amount of gold on them, a chest with 400 and two survivors. One of them will teach me a spell to protect against curse traps, if I bring her a blessed energy potion+. With nothing left to do here, and almost no resistance left, I recall out.
I have plenty of energy potion+ (7 currently) so the question is getting it blessed. There are two ways to do this. I can either get the church to bless it, which would cost 500 gold. Or I could learn bless item, which would let me do it myself, but cost 2300. The tavern master in Nephlune will pay 300 gold for 10 blessed apples, which I could do if I knew the spell. That means I could save 800 gold by learning the spell, cutting the effective cost down to 1500. If I knew the spell I could make blessed bombs, which could be a strong weapon against powerful demons (especially once I get bombs+ to bless) and I could bless apples to make them last longer and vitality potions to get better in combat healing. I think learning the spell myself is the better option.
While I spent all my resistance at the Fortress I spent no health or mana, since I never got in a fight. A good way to earn some gold to pay for the spell would be to kill the minotaur for its meat, so I head to the caves. The fight goes very well, starting with concentration allows me to kill the venom scorpio in the surprise + first round with light and pierce, and I have enough magic attack at this point to oneshot normal scorpios with light 1. Both me and the slime lose about a third of our health, but overall the fight is fairly simple. I have enough health and mana left that I decide to kill another ogre group in Lilim's encampment for some more gold. The fight goes ok, but the slime dies and Aura loses most of her health, bringing an end to the days fighting.
I accidentally found out this day, while walking around and checking stuff out, that a merchant at the congregation will pay me 200 gold as a reward for beating Mammon. That's nice it means that I have enough gold to pay for the bless item spell. However I don't want to learn it today, because tomorrow is another uncursed day and I want to spend it on fighting. So instead I go to the refugee camp and learn offensive stance from Ray. I'm hoping it ends up like defensive stance, which I've only used for two fights but am still really glad I learned (I totally should have used it against Lilim, but I forgot I had it).
On day 66 I go to the northern mountains and fight the goblin king. I use fire on him and then slash to clear out his subordinates, until its just him and a hobgoblin left. At that point I fire the hobgoblin to kill it and finish the king off with a rampage. That nets me 700 gold and three sets of goblin teeth. Today I do end the day by learning bless item, having to drink an energy potion first.
I spend day 67 learning bless item.
Its a day earlier than I need to use blessed water but I do so anyway, because I want to make progress. I bless an energy potion+ and make my way to Mira and learn that I misunderstood, she applies the curse trap negating effeect to you, she doesn't teach you the spell. I now have three places I can go. On the roof (just next to where I originally came down from the cliff above) there is a demonic domain behind a curse trap. Then there is the curse trap in the basement below the armory, and finally there is the curse trap blocking my progress upstairs.
At this point I do some save scumming to find out what I'm choosing. The curse trap upstairs leads to a demonic incarnation (Kerberos a threeheaded demonic dog) blocking the path to the next floor, in addition there is a body with a key. In the basement is Kerberos' anchor, accessible either by using 5 bombs or 1 bomb+ to blow up a rock, or with the key from up above. The demonic anchor on the roof belongs to Aamon a chimera demon whose incarnation is outside the main gate of the fortress (I haven't mentioned it so far because it wasn't relevant, it can't be opened from outside without 25 bombs, and once you have another way in it isn't much faster).
There is some stuff on the next floor, but not a lot, so I'm more focused on the demons for now. Aamon and Kerberos both have sensitive nose, making them permanently exhausted if I'm using nasty oil coating. Aamon is not too bad, he has a lot of hitpoints and he hits fairly hard, but I can probably beat him right now. Kerberos is a different matter. He attacks three times per turn and starts the fight with a +25% attack buff, which means he can kill me in one turn. And he has 29 agility, so he will do it before I can take a single move. I believe that pacify, - attack debuff, will be crucial to winning this. He has 23 attack, meaning that at base attack power he deals 108 damage, and a + or -25% modifier is 27 damage. I have 38 defense, meaning I block 76 damage. With the attack debuff he deals 59 damage per attack on average, which isn't survivable. If I could use pacify to remove it that would be reduced to 32. 32*3 is 96 damage, which I can survive. If I were to actually debuff his attack by 25% that damage would go all the way down to 5, which is entirely fine. The next problem is his agility. He has 29 to my 19. I can't actually reach 29 agility, I don't have the gold or materials. However there is the spell storm, which is an auto spell, the one that Avians and windmages have been using, which lowers agility. For Kerberos that would mean -7 or maybe -8, I don't know how the rounding works, bringing him to 22 or 21. I only really need to be able to act first on the first two turns, after that the debuffs should be in place, and I can even double up on the storm to bring his agility down to 14 or 15. Enhancing with a slime fluid would bring my agility up to equal his, which is not enough, I don't think even getting 25 agility by enhancing twice would make it certain, but at least it would improve the odds.
So that's the plan for now. Learn pacify, learn storm, enhance with slime fluid, enhance with slime fluid.
Having determined that I'm not going to be doing any further fighting for now I take out the patrolling enemy that is so difficult to get past to reach the survivors. The fight is against two obsessions, mage fragments that cast stone mind (gives concentrate) and lightning bolt, and two cursed soldiers (who spam protect, then switch to defensive stance and continue to cast protect). In the surprise round aura uses pierce on one obsession, killing it, while the slime attacks the other to remove its concentration. On the first real turn aura is set up to crit, so she uses pierce on one soldier to kill him. The slime meanwhile attacks the obsession again in case the other soldier doesn't use protect, and he doesn't. The obsession renewed its concentration and then immediately lost it. Next turn Aura pierces the remaining soldier who then uses defensive stance while the slime finishes of the obsession. After that killing the one remaining soldier is easy.
I then go up the stairs, past the curse trap and get the key, then recall out. One thing I really don't know is whether curse traps reset at the end of the day. If they do then this would be a lot more expensive than I hope it will be.
Since I still have a lot of health and mana left I go to the northern mountains to get some gold. After I finish I realize that I want to end the day by upgrading with slime fluid, since I've used most my mana, and it will potentially be useful in fighting before I get around to killing the demons. However I also realize that I don't have any slime fluids. Fortunately it turns out that 42 health, 8 mana and a 51 health slime turn out to be enough to kill the small slime small fire slime duo in the bandit hideout, leaving Aura alone surviving at 10 health and 2 mana.
I spend the two mana blessing two apples (very good use of small amounts of remaining mana) and end the day by enhancing with a slime fluid.
On day 69, since you can only get the curse trap protecting spell once per day I need to go back to Draknor Fortress. After a quick detour to confirm that the traps do not rearm I bless an energy potion+ and trade it for another protection. I go into the basement, where the key I got before opens a cell with a body with 420 gold on it, and another that gets me to Kerberos' anchor. I use open domain on the anchor and go in. There's a single resource here, a malificium, which I grab and then recall out. There are those negative energy spots that boost enemy magic attack, but sensitive nose will keep Kerberos from using abilities, so I don't worry about them.
I have used a bit more than half my mana, but not much of my health, so I summon the slime and go back to the northern mountains to get more gold. By this point I've killed most of the enemies there. I have 17 mana left, which I use to bless apples. After that I go refine 3 maleficium into a maleficium plating. I've been thinking about this for a bit and I've decided that while 4 corruption is a lot it is definitely worth it. I'm not looking like I'm short on days, but I am short on gold and things to upgrade with. +4 attack +4 magic attack and +2 agility is a lot, and it should give me enough agility to have a good chance of acting before Kerberos. I sell a star metal to afford to enhance with it, and since I had 16 willpower left after making the plating I buy 50 apples, taking me down to exactly 1 willpower. Then I end the day by enhancing with the Maleficium plating.
On day 70 I cheese Old Man Olaf. I'm not proud of it, but he chooses random moves, which makes it too luck dependent to fight him normally. Instead I apply a poison coating and activate defensive mode before fighting him. I attack until he becomes poisoned and then guard until it ends, then when he's in serious mode I guard except when he's exhausted after using rampage (at which point he will always guard). I beat him with a single attack once he goes back to non-serious.
Next I go to fight the Ogre King. The Ogre King has a rediculous amount of health, 3750. That is part of the reason why I used poison coating against Olaf. I think I need it to beat the King. Poison coating does (when it triggers) 30% of max health over three turns. Against the Ogre King that's a wooping 1125 damage. I can't do that kind of damage with normal attacks.
For the fight I disable defensive stance, summon the slime, fully heal with blessed apples . I start the fight by focusing on the Ogre Commander with light and the slime while Aura uses her crits to slash, to get as many chances as possible to activate poison. Once its just the Ogre King left (and at that point he's been poisoned twice), I try to finish him off with a rampage crit. It fails, but he uses windup and I'm able to finish him off with a normal attack before he attacks again.
Day 70 is one of the days when the drug dealer is available so I go there next. I heal up with blessed apples before the fight, and set stone mind as my auto spell. This allows me to oneshot the earth mage with thunderbolt before anyone can move. Next I kill the city thug with pierce. I then thunderbolt the corrupt guard (probably overkill) and kill the final enemy in a few attacks.
I then bless one apple and spend my final 15 mana ending the day by learning pacify.
Day 71 is spent learning pacify.
On day 72 I go back to Draknor, get another trap barrier and go open Aamon's domain. Inside is an ether and a maleficium which I harvest before recalling out. Getting to them cost most of my health, so I bless an energy potion+ and 6 apples and then end the day by learning storm, selling an avian feather to afford it.
On day 73 I'm learning storm.
Day 74 is the last day until I have to use blessed water. Thanks to the maleficium i've now reached the point where I only have two combat capable days each time I use one. I believe I now have all the tools I'll need to beat the demons, but I would like a little more defense. Currently when affected by -25% attack Kerberos will deal 5 damage per attack or 15 per turn. If I enhance with a scorpio claw that should be reduced to 1 per attack or 3 per turn, making me need far less healing during the battle. Delaying the fight until tomorrow will also give me an extra turn worth of item blessing to do. I use that to bless a vitality potion and 19 apples. I then sell another Avian Feather and end the day by enhancing with the scorpio claw.
On day 75 I go demon slaying. First I drink a blessed water, then I go for Aemon. I use a nasty oil, to trigger sensitive nose. Aamon toggles through 4 heads, one is dominant for three turns before switching to the next. First is fire, then water, then dark, then physical. Fire and dark have more attack and less defense than water, while physical has more of both. They also have different abilities, the nasty oil disables those. I start by using pacify, the attack debuff should last until the water head, which has less attack to begin with. Then I alternate attack to get tactical advantage and pierce to make use of it. I end up defeating Aamon with 12 health left. This gives me a level up, giving me +11 max health, +4 mana, 1 attack, defense and magic attack, and 2 magic defense. I grab the mana left behind by the collapsing domain, eat blessed apples to fully heal and then head for Kerberos.
My strategy against Kerberos was to have storm as auto spell. The first two turns I used pacify to bring his damage down, then I drank a vitality potion to restore the health I lost before I could do that. Then I recast storm. After this I would cast pacify, then have two turns where I could attack or use recovery items, then I used pacify and storm again. This ensured that he was permanently at -50% agility and at least -25% attack. I also made sure that I triggered the reinforcements he gets after taking around 700 damage with the first of my two attacks so I could kill them all with a crit slash the turn after they appeared. Once he changed to his focused form I simply went all in on offense, and he died.
After the fight I used my small amount of remaining resistance to go open the main gate from the inside (the one that Aamon's incarnation previously blocked) and loot the two bodies to the left outside (giving about 130 gold). I end the day by teaching pierce 1 to John, since I don't have a lot of money or good stuff to do.
On day 76 I go into the Nephlune underground from the top right entrance. I light some torches, kill some phantoms and loot about 400 gold, a vitality potion and a rope and harvest an ether. This costs most of my health, but, because this is the last day before I get cursed and I'm lacking in good end day option, I heal up with blessed apples and return to Draknor Fortress.
Going up to the floor that was blocked by Kerberos' incarnation there is an unavoidable fight immediately. I have Aura pierce the insecurity in the surprise round, to keep it from using protect and to gain tactical advantage, while the slime hit the earth mage to break her concentration. Then Aura killed everyone with a slash.
There is another enemy that is impossible to avoid getting spotted by, but I was able to run around and prevent it from catching me. Looting this floor gave me 6 extra max mana, a book to increase it by 4 (giving me more than the 100 needed for mountainreach) and a skillbook for tanacity 2, as well as some hundred gold. I then recalled out.
I have three places I can go from here. I can keep working on Draknor Fortress, where I am currently blocked from proceeding to the next floor by a bossfight consisting of Cursed Expert Adventurer Siegfried (who has 1000 health and casts thunderbolt and attacks with lightning sword, an enhancement spell that turns attacks into lightning damage), Cursed Fortress Commander Jonas who is even tankier at 1350 health, uses protect and defensive stance and attacks. Alongside them are a cursed fire mage and a resentment. The alternative is to go for the vault in the Nephlune underground, which is guarded by a Lamia. She does a lot of attacks, has heat up and lightning sword. The final option is to go to mountain reach and progress the quest there, which I don't yet know what entails.
For both of the first two fights I mentioned rock armor, which gives resistance to lightning damage, seems perfect, but it cost a rediculous amount of gold, almost four thousand. In order to afford it I go hunting for some mutated hydrangea, since their mutated spores sell for a lot. I start with the one down the hole in the central forest and then the one near the entrance to the eastern forest. While trying to remember where the next one is I remember that I should grab the loot that's down from the entrance to the eastern forest, which turns out to be 80 gold. I then remember that the last hydrangea are in the eastern forest too, near where the low-demon was. One of them hits me with mind pollination though, giving me cursed 1, so that's all the fighting I get to do today. I bless an energy potion+ and an apple to use my remaining mana and then I end the day by reading the mana book.
Day 77 I go to the cliff above Fortress Draknor and kill the mothercrow, and then into the cave north of the northern forest and kill the jellyfish. I then sell two living hearts, 5 mutated spores and an ether to afford to learn rock armor. I then end the day by teaching John mana capacity 1.
On day 78 I drink a blessed water and go to fight the Lamia. The Lamia herself would not be so hard to fight, but the three cobras that she eventually spawn are more of a problem. I summon the slime and have it kill the phantoms during the turns where she buffs herself while Aura uses pacify to undo her attack self-buffs. Then I used light and attack, with the occational pacify when it had been a few turns since she used heat up, to negate hers if she did put it up. When the cobras appeared I took them down with fire and attacks before setting up a crit rampage on the Lamia to finish her off. I doubt this fight would have been consistent, since I avoided being poisoned by the cobras on their first turn and I still only barely survived the fight.
After this I went inside the vault, saved the dying fire mage and started looting everything I could by sneaking past the enemies. I got a piece of a new formula, 5 nasty oil coatings, 700 gold, a pyro plating by going left. Then I recalled out and tried again by going down and found a mana stone, a rope and four energy potions+. I also found an area in the bottom right that I believe will either require 25 agility or 5 bombs/1 bomb+ and a rope.
After I've explored the Vault I give the mana stone to John, sell the gourmet meat and finish the day by enhancing with the pyroplate I just found.
On day 79 I kill Sahaking, the boss guarding the gate in the Vault. He summons four Sahuagin when he gets low on health, who are probably more dangerous than him, but did you know that enemies don't spawn if you finish the fight in a single attack. The boss is weak to wind allowing me to use storm to start with tactical advantage. I used this to crit the first turn, attack the second and then guard as he used rampage. After his rampage I attacked to gain tactical advantage and then finished him with a rampage that dealt around 1800 damage, ending the fight before he could summon his brood, who would have torn me to shreds.
After that I go kill the Jellyfish boss, focusing on using fire and attack on the jellyfish first and then light and pierce on the sahuagin after the jellyfish are dead. I grab the star metal and the orb and recall out. At this point I go kill the small fire slime in the eastern forest of runes, because I just remembered that it exists.