Cross of Auria News

I talked a lot in the previous few posts this week, so I'll keep this one as short as I can.

This patch sets up the background information for the Orc War to continue through Lvell. All of the data for the Lvell event is coded into the game, just not yet accessible pending final tests on the live branch with this patch.

Before reading the patch notes, how about some helpful hints!

Did you know that there's another character you can add to your team? Find him by exploring the Encampment area of Den An'ura!

There's a reason that electric power is displayed on the save screen. Has yours gotten high enough to figure it out?

During early development when I allowed viewers to redeem channel points on Twitch to add things to the game, tons of data for enemies was added and then they were hidden throughout the four kingdoms! Have you found Scorpio's Pupil in the Nexus Waterway? How about the recently added Scorpio's Image? Cleave wasn't always this easy to upgrade, you know...

The veil is effectively a mechanics playground. After testing, events will be adjusted then scattered into the real world. Ex: Snowdrift Village (formerly Yuelslain's Village) now appears on the World Map, but is not yet accessible directly.

6.8.0.10 [Build #175, Release Date: April 26, 2025] New:
- You can now rename the snake pet via the Shimmering Crystal key item.
- The treasure chest after acquiring Ares now contains a Recipe Book for creating Green Insect Weapon Parts and Green Insect Armor Parts more easily from the Crafting menu. These schematics and item activated combinations were left over from before Cross of Auria utilized the Crafting menu, but can't be removed due to overall functionality.

Fixes:
- Repaired the visual interaction during the Resurrection I discovery quest.
- Fixed an issue and added a debug for the Energy Bow during Search for the Strongest. This global debug will be removed in ~1month to allow players time to access it. It is accessed automatically upon opening the game if the requirements are met.

Updates & Changes:
- Changed spawn/despawn method for worldspawn Orcs.
- Sparkstrike, Lightningstrike, and Bolt Cutter no longer add equipment states to attacks.
- Adjusted tooltip for Galebrand.
- Lightning Rage now has a max mastery of 50 and reduces TP cost by 1 per level.
- If Ruby is under level 15 when trying to initiate the push into Lvell, Captain Reynolds will mention the orc battlegroup in Alpha Ruins. This event is not tied to any quest and is missable if the Orc War ends before they are encountered.
- Cure, Regeneration, Remedy, First Aid, and Stitch no longer require specific weapon types equipped to be cast.
- Arcane, Energy, Flame, and Frost Shock now cost 0 MP / 0 TP, have max mastery level of 10, grant 10% damage per level, generate 10 TP per hit, and have a 1 turn cooldown. Tier 2 and 3 Shock spells have a 1 turn increased cooldown per tier.
- Removed level display from Vine Snappers and upgraded them to 2nd gen character sheets with +2 levels. This change reduces the three headed variant's HP by ~8000.
- Adjusted dialogue from the An'ura Researcher in Port Reception to be conditional on the Ares right.
- Additionally adjusted the dialogue to make more sense.
- Short Sticks no longer respawn near Ares.
- Removed the additional Insecticide Quiver.
- Barricade, Spellshield, and Resurrection are now considered Magick.
- Adjusted disassembly pool for some low level armor, including those which could be disassembled but the pool was empty.
- Added Leather Strips to many disassembly pools.

Notes, Known Issues & Other:
- We are on the whole abandoning the concept of required equipped weapon to use certain spells. There is not enough room in ability tooltips to include all the special things about them, and "Requires: Wands" for example is just too many extra letters to add.
- The issue behind the Arcane Shock II cooldown has been discovered, so I reverted MP/TP cost/generation changes to those spells. However, all tier 1 shocks now have a 1 turn CD.

So far this week after 6.800 rolled out, I've been making rapid fire edits to mitigate the damage done by the loss of the ArmorScaling plugin. This mostly includes direct changes to damage formulas to enemy skills. Below are all patch notes from the updates this week, separated by launch group.

Here are the key notes so far:
- Enemies on the whole are more difficult to defeat & Piercing skills are necessary.
- Leveling up certain skills via repeat usage is critical for mid to late game success.
- Weird scenarios might happen due to the addition of the Snake Pet.
- Colosseum and Veil event difficulty is exponential due to the armorscaling change. It'll be a few more days before I can get to downscaling those (if necessary).
- Not everything is currently functioning as intended. Ex: Eurus in Singlehand Stance can cast Arcane Shock II without a cooldown, in spite of it explicitly having a cooldown programmed in the back end. When the dust settles, I'm going to have to adjust based on what's possible rather than what was originally intended.
- More rapid fire changes are to come, and I likely won't post an update here on Steam about what they are until Sunday. If you want updates before then, join us on Discord and select the option for CoA in the roles channel - https://discord.gg/Ur4GdaKxPD

6.8.0.8 [Build #173, Release Date: April 23, 2025] Fixes:
- Fixed the tiles in Black Forest responsible for re-adding SnakePet to the party.
- Fixed a broken interaction at the Inn due to the new Snake pet.
Updates & Changes:
- Additional damage added to Throw.
- Updated Werewolf, Oros Scout, Snowball, Eyes of Ullr, Ice Construct, Yeti, Froomba, Spawn of Ullr, and Snowman to 2nd generation character sheets.
- Market Town vendor no longer sells Mech Blades after quest is completed and 10x increase to item price before that.
- Changed Blitz damage formula.
- Additional damage per level for Uppercut.
- Additional damage per level for Arcane Shock & Arcane Shock II.
- Additional damage and percentage damage per level for Sparkstrike line skills. Increased mastery to 20.
- Increased Tail Strike mastery to 10, changed EXP required to level it.
- Minor changes to group Inn scene dialogue and Veil 3 autoplay functionality.
- Added a separate quest indicating to spend the night at the Inn on the Castle Grounds North exit tile with an additional parallel debug on the world map for players who missed it. This quest does not pop up prompt, but will appear in the quest log under both of those conditions. Additionally, if this part of the game has already been passed, it will add to the quest log and mark itself completed from the world map.

6.8.0.6 [Build #172, Release Date: April 22, 2025] Fixes:
- Fixed an issue where Quest 204 would not properly add to the Quest Log (RF: A1).
- Fixed an issue where the exit tile of Alpha Ruins would lead to a Timelost version of Black Forest.
Updates & Changes:
- Adjusted the Toxic Crystal fieldspawn unit.
- Adjusted the damage formula for Bloodfeast (werewolf attack).
Notes, Known Issues & Other:
- Due to the changes with ArmorScaling, the game starts to build up a "desire to crash", which will ultimately result in a game crash if you continue to play without restarting the exe. Estimated time from first notice of laggy interaction to crash is roughly 1 hour.

6.8.0.5 [Build #171, Release Date: April 22, 2025] Updates & Changes:
- Added a new custom status for the Scarlet Boss battle to adjust for the Armor Scaling change.
- Removed Piercing from Sparkstrike, Lightningstrike, Bolt Cutter.
- Blitz now has +2 Damage Per Level & +3% Damage Per Level, with a level cap of 50.
- Fixed An'ura Mantis attack animation.
- Absorb now pierces 20.
- Flame Titan gains +2 MDF, +1 MAT, -3 LUK.

[6.804] - Fixed a pathing issue in Passage 5 to reconnect it to the main section of Nexus Waterway as part of the Shoreline/Port Reception opional questline.
[6.804-1] - Fixed the turn in step of the above quest.

6.8.0.3 [Build #169, Release Date: April 21, 2025] Updates & Changes:
- Updated Disassembly Pool for several low level weapons. This change is only reflected in newly acquired gear. Previously obtained gear retains the previous Disassembly Pool.
- Ankleblazer, Spiderling & Molten Bubble (Scarlet Group) +3 LV.
- Scarlet Toad, Scarlet Bull, Living Flame, Scarlet Lava Spawn, Moomba, Scarlet Gazer, Egg, & Drahkin (Scarlet Group) +4 LV.
- Toxic Slime, Toxic Gazer, Toxic Bubble, Frostbrood Slime, Frostbrood Gazer, Frostbrood Bubble, Gazer, Weed, Frosty Slime, Icy Gazer, Frozen Bubble (Frostbrood Group) +4 LV.
- Ankleblazer, Molten Bubble, Scarlet Toad, Scarlet Bull, Living Flame, Scarlet Lava Spawn, Moomba, Scarlet Gazer and Golem now correctly have fire-type defenses according to the type resistances chart. Golem and Scarlet Lava Spawn take additional damage beyond that from Electric attacks.
- Mend now has a maximum mastery level of 5, reduces MP cost by 1 per level, increases healing output by a fixed value of 25 per level, and has increased priority in the turn order. However, it can no longer be used out of combat. The MP Cost reduction per level may not function on current save files, but an event later in the game addresses this.
- Sparkstrike line skills now have Piercing in response to the Golem battle. This may be changed at a later date with a different fix.

6.8.0.2 [Build #168, Release Date: April 21, 2025] Updates & Changes:
- Fury Strikes now grants +5 Damage Per Level.
- Seahorse, Rock Crawler, Seagull, Spidercrab, & Urchin (Shoreline group) +3 LV.
- Slimeye & Rat (Worldspawn group) +2 LV.
- Adjusted text for Escape Start and Escape Failure.
- Minor exterior changes to The Phoenix Ash.
- Minor exterior changes to Cafe Lvellan.
- Minor interior changes to the Elcott Mansion.
- Cockatrice Minion +3 LV.
- Cockatrice Menace +4 LV.

6.801 [Build #167, Release Date: April 20, 2025] Updates & Changes:
The change to ArmorScaling made An'ura and other low level units too easy to kill and be too little of a threat to the party, so some skills have been adjusted.
- Shot now pierces 7.
- Cut now pierces 50.
- Slash now pierces 25.
- Chop now pierces 10.
- Poison Chop now pierces 10.
- Wing Slap now pierces 6.
- Ground Smash now pierces 10.
- An'ura Warrior, Archer, Knight, Seraph, Brute, and Hive Mind all gain +1 Attack & +1 M.Attack.
- Slice now has Piercing.
- Lvell Gazers leveled up to 3 with custom stats.
- Curious Bats updated to 2nd Gen stat sheets and have Level + 3.
- Bite now pierces 5.

Sometime last month, I launched 6.700-6.703 into the development build of the game. These updates focused mostly on updating skills and states. At some point in one of those four tests, the ArmorScaling plugin which handles ability damage calculations became unstable and started throwing errors. Since I don't know how to resolve the core issue, I've disabled the plugin and had to go back through every single Skill programmed into the game and add a subtractive half of the damage formula.

For example, where A is the attacker and B is the defender, most skills use something like this:
(a.atk * 4) - (b.def * 2) = damageOutput
But with the ArmorScaling plugin, the -(b.def) part didn't need to be included, because it did some internal magic using defense and other things like that. Since it's broken, the latter half of all damage calculations has been manually re-added to most abilities. The ones that do not take the target's defense into account are now considered as Piercing.

There are four key takeaways from this change:
- It is now possible for attacks to do 0, if the result of the damage calculation is less than or equal to 0. (Ex: ((a.atk * 4) - (b.def * 2) - It is now possible for attacks to do fixed damage regardless of the target's defense. (Ex: 20)
- It is now possible for attacks to do fixed additional damage if the first half of the damage calculation results in Partial Piercing) (Ex: (((a.atk * 4) - (b.def * 2) + (a.luk) will always do at least the attacker's Luck worth of damage, with that amount considered as Luck Piercer.)
- It is now possible for attacks to do damage without regard for the defender's defense. (Ex: (a.atk * 4) = damageOutput, where this entire value is considered Piercing.

Because of this, Piercing and Stat Piercer are new key terms shown in ability tooltips. Additionally, Partial Piercing may be noted in patch notes but is typically not visible in tooltips. - It's simply too many characters to display on screen. Because of the character limit, some skills may not reflect that they have Piercing or Stat Piercing, but updates to the game (like these patch notes right here will always include specific changes to ability damage formulas.

With all that being said, here are the two major patch notes from 6.7 and 6.8, with additional data from 6.701-6.703. Note: in the 6.8 notes there's several mentions of 1:1 or 2:1 damage formulas, this is effectively (a.atk - b.def) vs ((a.atk * 2) - (b.def)). tldr; higher number on the left does more damage.

This update will release on the public branch later today and will more than likely result in some things breaking. Please report any issues ASAP as a response to this post. Any battle that has suddenly become insurmountable due to formula changes will need to be addressed independently.

6.700 [Build #162, Release Date: March ???, 2025] Updates & Changes:
- Arcane Shock II now hits twice.
- Double Magick Shock -> Magick Shock II
- Triple Magick Shock -> Magick Shock III
- Sharpgusts -> Shear
- Poisoning -> Poison
- Confusion -> Confu.
- Fascination -> Fascin.
- Petrified -> Petrify
- New icon for Stun.
- Modified icon for Petrify.
- Poison, Burn, Bleed, Heal, Shear, Air Current, Soak, Stun, Rage, Confu., Fascin., Sleep, Silence, and Blind now reset turns to a fixed turn amount when reapplied instead of adding varied turns.
- Soulbroken, Disable, Poisonfear, Blizzard, Thunderstorm, and Arcstorm now reset turns to their variance when reapplied instead of additing turns.
- Blind's turn variance is now 2-3, down from 3-5.
- Barrier is now added with a fixed 20 turns, up from 5.
- MP & TP Degeneration states are now fixed at 3 turns, changed from 2-4, and now reset when reapplied.
- Shear III now causes immunity to Air Current and chance to reapply Shear III is set to 250%, down from 500%.
- Shear now increases the chance of Shear II to be applied by 500%, up from 200%.
- Shear II now increases the chance of Shear III to be applied by 500%, up from 300%.
- Shear and Shear II no longer increase the chance for Air Current to be reapplied.
- All classes can now equip General Armor. They retain their previous additional equipment restrictions from first generation armors.
- Updated tooltips for Wind & Poison skills.
- Updated tooltips for Zephyrite & Reaver.
- Data added for Faithless General Armor set.
- Leather Strips -> Leather Scraps
- Fixed disassemble and synthesis pool for Anemo Plague set.
- Tattered set now can also disassemble into Leather Scraps (30%).
- Tattered Gray set now can also disassemble into Leather Scraps (40%).
- Torn set can now disassemble into Leather Scraps (40%).
Notes, Known Issues & Other:
- On March 2, 2025, the Cross of Auria official facebook was deleted due to lack of use.

[6.700] Full Patch Notes posted.
[6.701] Fixed passability, added battleback, and added custom bgm to Mountainside area.
[6.702] ArmorScaling set to OFF - game crashes when Eurus is hit at low level when it's on.
[6.703] All skills require the addition of -b.def due to ArmorScaling turn off.

6.800 [Build #166, Release Date: April 20, 2024] Updates & Changes:
- During update 6.702, we discovered an issue where the Armor Scaling plugin no longer functioned at low levels - sometimes causing outright crashes. To address this, the plugin has been disabled and most skills and abilities have been manually given a subtractive half of their damage formula. However, I've decided to change how some of these skills functioned and have them effectively ignore target defenses. Skills that do not have subtractions in their damage formula now have the keyword "Piercing" in their tooltips. Piercing skills cannot do 0 damage.
- New concept: Stat Piercer. The previous benefit from the stat in the damage formula now comes after defenses are factored in, preventing an ability from doing 0 damage. Stat Piercing percentages are not shown in the tooltips, but will be reflected here in patch notes and future updates. Stat Piercing abilities are guaranteed to do some percentage of the attacker's stat as the final damage number, so increasing that stat is effectively a permanent increase to that ability's damage, whereas increasing your attack may not be enough to overcome the target's defense.
- Cleave+ now has an additional partial piercing effect.
- Swift Kick now has Luck Piercer (12.5%).
- Heart Strike now has Luck Piercer (100%).
- Fury Strikes now has Piercing.
- Blitz now has Luck Piercer (25%) instead of +25% Luck to attack.
- Shatter now has Piercing.
- Prime Shot, Shoot, Arcane Shot, Rapid Shot, Volley Shot, Multi-Shot, Impact Shot, Poison Shot, Fire Shot, Ignition Shot, Lifelink Shot, and Beast Shot are now Certain Hits.
- Volley Shot now has Piercing.
- Cure and Regeneration line abilities now factor in target magic defense.
- Cure III, IV, and V have an additional 500 flat piercing effect not reflected in the tooltips.
- Remedy, First Aid, and Stitch now deal a flat 20 in healing in addition to other effects.
- Healing Wind, Healing Wind II, and Resurrection have Piercing without tooltip mention.
- Magick Siphon now is a 1 to 1 magick attack that absorbs MP when the users MAT is stronger than the defender's.
- Backstab and Knife Twist now has Piercing.
- Energy Shock now has Piercing.
- Prepare Sacrifice now is a 2 to 1 magick HP Drain attack, as opposed to 2x Piercing.
- Bite damage formula reconfigured.
- Chomp now pierces 10.
- Lick now pierces 5.
- Burst Shot now has Piercing.
- Removed "Gains damage and TP cost per Mastery Level" from Tail Strike tooltip. It now has Piercing in addition to those hidden perks.
- Lucky Strike now has Luck Piercer (100%) and its overall damage formula has been reconfigured.
- Breath of the Dying now pierces 200.
- Hailstorm now has Piercing, but is not displayed in the tooltip.
- All primary elemental Skills (Emberstrike, Vaporstrike, etc) now have damage mitigated by 1x enemy defense and 1x enemy magic defense instead of 2x enemy defense alone.
- Icefall line damage formula reworked.
- Swarm and Infect now have Piercing, but is not displayed in the tooltip.
- Gust damage formula reworked.
- Venom-Coated Strikes now has 10 piercing per hit with a 1:1 damage formula.
- Kinetics now has 5 piercing per hit with a 1:1 damage formula.

So two nights ago I posted a very sad goodbye from the concept of working on the game project, and then all of a sudden we had support the likes of which we haven't had legitimately since 2018 when the game first launched.

Let's just be so open and honest about everything right now. My thoughts about shutting down the project absolutely have to do with how it hasn't generated any kind of income in years. But then all of a sudden after our dying breath's message, something crazy like 65 of you went on to buy the paid DLCs. And this is so important because the base game is free. People being interested enough to support via paid DLC purchase is really the only metric I have to be able to tell that anyone still cares about what we've been doing.

So can we get a showing of hands here please, because I can't express enough how much this information matters.

Is there anyone here reading this today who still wants this project to continue through to the goals I originally set for it? If you've been following these announcements over the last few months, you know what I mean by that.

Are there any questions that you as players have for me about what to expect moving forward if we were to continue? I feel it's important to reiterate that I'm not some studio - I'm just one dude who made this as a portfolio piece when I was getting my degree in game design. I then continued it way past its original ending adding at least 10 more hours worth of side content. So the decision to stop or continue really falls on me alone - there is no team here. Which also means, you can talk to me like a person, not like a studio. I want to know what you like and didn't like, what you want to see, what you expect, etc.

So tldr; should we give up, or is this something you wanted to see continue?

Hello, as many of you may be aware I no longer have the time to dedicate to continued development on the game. It has been a few years now since I originally announced an end of service, but today I must officially announce the game's retirement. Some day very soon, Cross of Auria and all associated DLCs will be pulled from the Steam store. I thank everyone for the support we've had since initial release on 01/01/2018. It's been over 7 years since release, and I am happy with the journey we shared together. However, this project must end to give way to new life.

Hopefully I see some of you out in the gaming world! I am known by this name - Hardytier - on Discord and YouTube so if we cross paths again, remind me of your favorite time in Revan!

Thanks for reading, see you out there.
// Hardytier