TOA: An Elven Marriage release

[jack1974]

The game is officially out!
https://winter-wolves.itch.io/toa-an-elven-marriage

What's New in 1.0.6

- by mistake swapped Loren with Karen sprite in the ending if you choose to remain loyal to her
- if you tried to use Rei's Debilitating Strike skill without him having any melee weapons the game would crash. Now it works, albeit you'll do trivial damage

What's New in 1.0.5

- fixed an issue that would prevent getting past the level up screen if you went past level 34 (all skills learned, but still skill points awarded). Now you can still level up to 45 (level cap), but obviously you can't assign any more skill points past level 35 since all slots are full.

What's New in 1.0.4

- fixed a crash on Ahrka and Triberg introduced from previous vendor fix!

What's New in 1.0.3

- a bug was mirroring Ahrka's shop to Triberg and Riverside under certain conditions. This has been fixed!
- fixed several typos
- removed a scene with Nathir that involved a kiss that could play even if you were already in a romance. Now it will play only if you pick the romance option in that scene
- replaced the word "months" with seasons/weeks to correctly reflect the calendar system of Aravorn!

What's New in 1.0.2

- fixed a small plot hole if you get the happy ending, by trusting Apolimesho, Ashtran won't be questioned about the Black Death. So now a small scene in the camp triggers just before the final events to fix it

What's New in 1.0.1

- added last few missing backgrounds
- fixed a crash while using certain potions due to missing art files

What's New in 1.0.0

- changed how the final choice between Lydia and Nathir romance works. Now it will offer the choice to pick one if both have at least 80 relationship, otherwise will automatically pick the one with higher value. This fixes some issues like triggering the pin-up and maybe not the final romance scene with either, and people who wanted to keep relationship high to do the personal quests
- I've optimistically bumped version to 1.0.0 since I think we're at good point. There will likely be more updates though!

What's New in 0.8.8

- fixed a crash that was happening only if you had similar relationship between Lydia and Nathir and you needed to make a choice

What's New in 0.8.7

- fixed a crashing bug after Chzulu temple scene if you choose to continue a romance of a character NOT present in this story

What's New in 0.8.6

- lowered relationship needed for the happy ending to 90 for both King and Lamia (100 seems actually impossible to reach)
- increased relationship increase in several scenes with all party members and in particular Gruff, Rei and Nathir so it's easier to get their personal quests

What's New in 0.8.5

- fixed a bug that was causing Haste buff to disappear as soon as the buffed char was attacking, making it useless!

What's New in 0.8.4

- fixed several scenes with Nathir in which you could pick the (Romance) option even if you were already in a romance!
- fixed a wrong line referring to PC having accepted Ashtran deal to spy on Lydia, even if that never happened
- fixed various typos
- fixed a wrong Rei position in a scene towards the end

What's New in 0.8.3

- the EQUIPPED items weren't updating their stats based on level when loading a savegame, only the ones in inventory. This now should work

What's New in 0.8.2

- fixed again the plot not advancing after you spoke with both Aramas and Lamia enough to make a choice, this time should work in all cases

What's New in 0.8.1

- all the unique items you find during your travels are now scaled based on your party level and not level 1 anymore
- fixed some typos/wrong sentences

What's New in 0.8.0

- fixed a bug that was causing to force the dialogue choice in the achievement unlocked (ie if you unlocked "joking" you were always answering joking every time, and so on!)

What's New in 0.7.9

- fixed a crash bug when obtaining the attitude related achievements (joking, friendly, forceful 30 times)
- fixed various typos/grammar errors

What's New in 0.7.8

- fixed a bug during the final part of Nathir's romance because of wrong gender variable, now should work

What's New in 0.7.7

- fixed a blocking issue towards the end of the story. The way it worked was that it had to reach (internal value) day 17, but that probably happens only if you do everything correctly and unlock the happy end. If you don't, I now forced it when you reach the previously stuck point of the story. let me know if there seems to be plot holes or something since I didn't test carefully!
- fixed a bug in Jennis' quest, if you failed it won't correctly exit to the map causing other bugs
- fixed wrong messagebox appearing when you have no romance set, telling you that's this is the best moment to spend with "romance name"
- tweaked Jariel dialogue since this game happens AFTER Seasons Of The Wolf events, so some phrases didn't make sense

What's New in 0.7.6

- fixed a bug that was resetting the weapons/armors to the base level 1 (and the corresponding stats)
- unique items before were created using as base the current party level but still with level 1 stats. That's wrong and it has been fixed. Unique weapons, once upgraded, should be much more powerful now.
- increased the amount of sharpening stones, rune armor/jewelry so that you can always keep unique weapons updated if you have the money
- tweaked the difficulty of Hard/Nightmare levels to make them more challenging

What's New in 0.7.5

- reverted to previous Ren'py version to fix a strange load/save bug. I tested with saves and it seems to work fine
- fixed some typos and wrong character (referencing to Elenor/Saren in the wrong way)
- removed a Steam review button that by mistake was left in the gallery screen

What's New in 0.7.4

- fixed saving during combat, now it should bring you back close to the turn you saved (there might still be a few turns of differences but at least now works)
- hidden the "Try again" button if you lose a fight when the system can't find a pre-battle autosave (happens if you load saves from different battles mid-fight)
- removed the "not enough resources" button in alchemy screen since it was confusing
- fixed a small glitch line in Lydia's character sprite
- fixed text in a conversation with Nathir to reflect the events happening in Triberg regarding Marian (no spoilers!)
- fixed float division by zero error during the Perfumer Quest
- fixed a fun bug where Myrth was suddenly taking off her cloak and be in her "nature" outfit as soon as they entered Triberg :D
- fixed the chp13_king_talks bug that was skipping one scene for each character (you can visit only one that night though)
- slightly reduced the impact of Speed stat on battles (by 15% only)
- reduced the loot amount (items dropped by regular battles) by 20%, should still give enough money during the game

What's New in 0.7.3

- fixed wrong gallery replay buttons (making you chose Saren/Elenor even for Rei/Myrth)
- fixed an early crash in the first fight due to battle voice not having a default attitude

Here's some info you should probably know:
- background placeholders: I decided to not use them, instead I simply reused existing backgrounds. For example, Triberg city. There are various places (temple area, market, etc). I just reused the base Triberg background instead of using placeholders. In the final game there'll be appropriate backgrounds for the different areas. The same happens for other places like forests, hills, etc.
- adult content: this game is tame. Sorry if you expected more, but at the times the images were done (ahem, about 10 years ago ) Steam was even more restrictive than now (no adult section!). Besides, I really don't want this to go in adult only so I'm keeping it "safe". If you're looking for optional hot stuff no worries I'll have more in the next games

Getting all the different endings
In the game towards the end you must pick a side, or unlock a special happy end which is really difficult to obtain, since requires to have high relationship with both the two main enemies.

Below it's a spoiler for those stuck with that part, also if it's too difficult let me know, I might tweak this part.

Increase Relationship with Aramas

Spoiler:

1) If you do the big food heist quest given by Ellisar BEFORE you meet with the King for the first time, you’ll lose -10 points.
So you can still do the quest if you want, but only AFTER you’ve already met with King Aramas
2) On the contrary, if you didn’t do it the first time you met, you get +10 relationship (60)
3) Later when you speak again with him, pick the choice “Lamia claims you killed her and your wife” to gain another +10
(70)
4) Lastly, if you got the truth from Ashtran you can pick the choice “We know what you've done” and get another +20
reaching 90 necessary for the good ending
To get the truth from Ashtran, the easy way is to trust Apolimesho with Lamia’s information by picking “Trust Apolimesho”.
Alternatively, you need to pick the right answer when talking with Ashtran. The right answers are: “A memory crystal”,
”Lamia says that the king killed a lot of people” and “Anything, including covering the king?”

Increase Relationship with Lamia

Spoiler:

Getting on her good side is easier than with the King. Pick the following dialogue choices during the first encounter and the
subsequent ones: “That's not so bad, all things considered”, “As you wish”, “We have a witness who saw something” and
lastly “If you hadn't interevened...”.
Each of those will grant you +10 relationship with her, bringing the total to 90, necessary to be on her good side!
To be able to pick the “We have a witness who saw something” choice, you need to defeat the Tomas Jingoli boss fight. This
is important since you can lose and it won’t be a game over, but you won’t be able to unlock several endings this way
(including the good ending).

[Franka]

I probably shouldn't be saving in combat, but since I did (to game the loot drops), strange things are happening. Loading a combat save sets me back a number of turns, but loading, fighting some more, and then saving, lets me load the exact turn I saved... It's weird behaviour.

Anyway, gaming the loot drops, to get the best/priciest stuff, makes a huge difference early on.

As always, going Rogue and dumping all stats into speed and dual wield is super easy mode.

[jack1974]

Thanks, yes I got the weird combat saving issue reported already, will check to see what it is
Maybe I should put a max amount of loot drop, not sure ? same for the speed trick haha
In general being Loren spin-off I wanted to follow as much as possible the original game, and I remember that even back then the "speed cheat" was very powerful. But maybe I'll wait to see when you reach some boss fights later.

I played it myself in Hard mode and for me was easy, but even Loren was very easy to me as well...

[jack1974]

OK the save issues it's something Ren'Py related since before it was working (when I started coding the game) but now I have the same issue. I save mid-fight but whenever I reload the save it goes back to the beginning of the fight, odd. I asked Ren'Py coder hopefully he can tell me what changed

[Franka]

There is also something wrong with the items. I just obtained a a Dagger+10 drop. However, when I click it, it's a Dagger (+0). When I equip it, it's a Dagger (+0). In fact, all the Daggers+? have turned into Daggers (+0) even though they say +4, 5, 9, etc. Just now a Dagger+10 dropped, and it is in fact +10 to complete the confusion.

Also, the Padded Armor+6 I had equipped earlier has now turned into +0.

I don't know if this is related to the save issue, I did reload to get the latest Dagger+10.

This is unplayable when my items just randomly turn into useless level 0 items.

[jack1974]

Wow weird. I never experienced this issue, but also I never got +10 dagger drop. Do you have some saves when the bug is present ? like before the drop. The +10 thing is just a text so the dagger should actually be powerful even if they say +0

[jack1974]

The saves are really screwed... since I updated to latest ren'py version I saved AFTER a fight, and when I reload, I resume the last turn of the fight WTF! this of course never happened before with 6 games using this system and even while I was beta-testing it. I'll need to ask Ren'Py coder what changed because something DEFINITELY changed regarding how save/load is done...

However I tried and I never got your bug, but I also never got Dagger +10 to be honest! the + is level, so +10 should be level 10, my idea is that it goes over 10 and restart from 0 maybe. But with a save game I could know exactly thanks

[jack1974]

I reverted toRen'Py 8.1 released in June 7, 2023 and all bugs are solved. Load / save works just fine, no crashes, etc. So the issue is definitely between 8.1 and 8.1.2 releases of Ren'Py.
I would still like your save when you have time, since on next update will revert to this Ren'Py version it might be already fixed

[jack1974]

Thanks for the saves, very useful to identify that items level bugs. I realized now that I played the whole game at a much higher difficulty since I wasn't using the full potential of the unique weapons
Because of that I increased the hard/nightmare difficulty only, since I think it might be really too easy now!

[jack1974]

Added a spoiler on the first post for those having trouble reaching / unlocking all the different endings, especially the "happy ending" which is really difficult to get unless you know what you're doing! Also let me know if you think it's too hard, might make it easier.