Other Literature Even Darker-er: The Re-Darkening: Zero

Uh, let's see.

One of their melee attacks is getting a flat damage increase, their bleeding melee attack applies a debuff to enemies that makes it even easier for them to bleed, their higher rank weapons deal more damage, and their melee attack that moves them forward also gives them "Riposte," which will make them do a retaliatory attack whenever they're hit in combat, and their base HP is getting increased.

So all around, they're going to be dealing a :red: ton more damage with melee attacks.

For anyone wondering, the Arbalest is getting their (camping) heal skill buffed, which is apparently the best healing skill you can use while camping.
 
Uh, let's see.

One of their melee attacks is getting a flat damage increase, their bleeding melee attack applies a debuff to enemies that makes it even easier for them to bleed, their higher rank weapons deal more damage, and their melee attack that moves them forward also gives them "Riposte," which will make them do a retaliatory attack whenever they're hit in combat, and their base HP is getting increased.

So all around, they're going to be dealing a :red: ton more damage with melee attacks.

For anyone wondering, the Arbalest is getting their (camping) heal skill buffed, which is apparently the best healing skill you can use while camping.
=w=
 
So this means you can exchange crests for something like portraits or deeds... finally, you always seem to have an excess of crests.
 
It appears that the dog treats got a huge nerf. It was +100% damage, +20 accuracy, and +5% critical hit. Now it's half that and no critical hit bonus. I suppose it was inevitable, those things were crazy.

Still want to be a hound master though.
 
Holy :red: it's been an entire month since last episode. I blame everything in life. But don't worry, I'm nearing completion on this episode (After putting it off over and over and over.)

Here, here's another filler spoiler. (it's actually a pretty big spoiler.)

Our team comes across a mysterious bounty hunter. He introduces himself as @Kelp

A bounty hunter, huh? What could he possibly be hunting? A rogue highwayman? A heretic crusader? Curious. He rallies a bunch of new recruits to explore a previously unexplored area, looking for his prey! How exciting! What a journey to glory, our party must have thought as they followed this courageous bounty hunter to lands unknown to them!

JoPELyB.jpg


No, Kelp. Bad Kelp. Stahp. You're going to get everyone killed. What's wrong with you?

Coming soon to a (probably) Tuesday morning near you.
 
Just saying...Matsu, Kelp, Crystal, and Tsuki need to run a mission together. Mod Squad 4 Lyfe.
 
Kelp needs to get on my level first. And by get on my level, I mean I don't even exist in the story because the game's not giving me any more Vestals. ;-;

I'm not even the main character in my own story, what's up with this?

Also minor spoiler, @Flan is an antiquarian, the new loot-y class.


Ninja Edit: My work schedule next week just got super screwed up, so my days off come at the end of the week, not the beginning, so won't be able to post it Tuesday Morning, probalby.
 
Last edited:
Didn't forget about it, just had a super rough month. Plus my work schedule was completely changed (as was my job position) so I didn't get as much time as I wanted to work on it. This week's work schedule is also messed up, I'm working a different job position than I was last week, and next week I'll be in a different department yet again.

So basically, in the past few weeks, I'll have worked in 4 different job positions / departments, with different schedules each time, with my days off being completely random.

But those are just excuses, and I'll work harder to focus on the story when I can / feeling up to it. They just keep messing up my days off and calling me in, so it's rough, but I definitely am still working on it, just super slowly.
 
@Tsuki I was looking forward to reading this but it seems like that's not happening now. I'm dissapointed.
 
Last edited:
@Tsuki I was looking forward to reading this but it seems like that's not happening now. I'm dissapointed.

I was actually going to make an announcement today or tomorrow regarding this.

Spoiler alert: It involves technological issues, time constraints, IRL stuff, and more.

However, it's not all bad news. There's good news and bad news. I'll be making an announcement in the next couple of days, when I sort out the details
 
Alright, alright. Super huge cool announcement time.

So a lot of people probably assumed I just forgot about this project of mine...well, that's not exactly the case. I could blame depression for most of the inactivity, but I'd only really be partially telling the truth. Yes, the depression played a huge part of it, but at the same time, I'm not going to throw that as an excuse. The reality is that, for awhile, I thought my work life was going to get easier. It actually got the opposite. I went from doing more work, for more money, to being demoted for stupid reasons, and then working even harder, for less money.

Combined with other troubles I don't want to get into, too much, I began to gravitate towards devoting myself to my girlfriends more than anything, to try and make sure they're all happy with me. Now, I'm not saying "Oh, I don't have any time to write at all!" Because that's not true. I love writing and I love every moment I spend doing it. But a big part of this "series," has been that sometimes...nothing happens. It's a game involving a huge amount of grind, and I'm trying to base an entire story around the fact that sometimes, nothing interesting happens at all.

I'm not saying this is a fundamentally terrible idea...but I think I slightly approached it the wrong way. In a way that I'd spend hours trying to concoct something from nothing, trying to drag out every turn of combat into a masterpiece. Mind you, I can easily do that...but it takes so long. And the missions can sorta blur together, causing me to exert a lot of energy just to make a mundane fight seem interesting. That accounted for the lull in activity. But it doesn't end there. In my efforts to spice things up, I opted into the beta version of the game, to play with updates before they came out...and I experienced a large amount of technical difficulties resulting in a lot of wasted effort. Okay, yeah, whatever.

After being largely unsuccessful, I decided to rethink how I was going about the playthrough and try to fix it on the fly...but then I got my new computer, and being the pleb I am, I thought that my game would be saved on the Cloud, so I didn't back up my data. So now I'm on a new computer with no real data of the old playthrough. Which is why I decided to end the playthrough, disheartened...

But that didn't last long. Rather than just ending the playthrough, I realized that I once said "This is a highly experimental sort of thing" and I meant it. So rather than just kill a good idea, I thought of how to salvage it. And before I got my computer, the updates that I was testing on the unstable branch got pushed to live. Which got me thinking of a few ways to improve the series as a hole.

Well...for one, having a new kickass computer means I could do a few things I couldn't do too readily, before. Such as recording videos, often. Before, I thought "Hey, I'll record big boss fights and whatever. It'll be pretty cool." But now that I have this computer, I can record all episodes. What does this mean for me? Well, before, I would take a couple turns in combat, and then write about any potential interesting things that happen, while simultaneously trying to grab screenshots of the action. It's extremely tedious, made even worse by my limited computer. But with this new setup...I can record entire missions / sessions, and review them as I write and jot down notes, grabbing screenshots at will, from any point, and get the best action possible with them. This will make it so doing episodes would be much less tedious as it is, since I'll have much more information available at my fingertips while I write.

No more would I have to be restricted by how much I remember from a boring mission, or if I miss a screenshot opportunity, there goes my only chance of getting it. With recording every session on video, I can easily pull as much data and screenshots as I can from it, whenever I want. No alt tabbing after literally every single turn of combat to jot down notes. This overall would make for quicker and more engaging episodes, as I can record a session and then edit and write later. Much more efficient. And the best part? If I think a mission is garbage and not worth writing about...I can just upload the video. It's cheap, it's easy, it's lazy, and I don't have to write a novel about how my characters defeated the same pack of spiders for the 500th time, in graphic detail.

This doesn't mean I'm going to really cut down on the writing or anything, I'm just going to take a different course of action. I was writing too much by the game before, and not enough by me. Can't pull a proper novel out of a series of turn-based battles. In this revamp, I may create stories completely and utterly unrelated to the actual gameplay, while addressing boring missions briefly, or just by lazily throwing up a video. Also, judging from interest and my own ability to do it, I may stream sessions of importance, like bosses / final dungeons, so you guys can see your dudes die live.

So what's the TL;DR here?

I'm relaunching the series with new tricks to help me better handle it. I'll be worrying a lot less on making every turn of combat a massive paragraph, and focus more on character progression and development, while highlighting particularly intense combats. The video system will make this all so much easier. I may upload videos in place of writing narratives, if the mission is boring. What does this mean for your characters? Well, none of the characters are too highly developed at the moment. I could do a full relaunch of all characters and storylines, or I can try to figure out a way to reboot the series while keeping some of the more important character progression there.

Either way, at one point I was thinking about killing the series, but I decided to turn my misfortunes around, and use that as a vehicle to make the series even better than before. So it will come back, better than ever. When? I have no idea. Sooner rather than later, probably. I think it might be better to start fresh, and anew, while keeping the hero roster untouched for the most part, though the stories I tell about your characters may not always be relevant to the actual gameplay. I tried way too hard before to make everything match up to the turn-based combat, and looking back on it now, I think that was a major mistake. As I said, this is a very experimental form of story telling, and I believe the knowledge I learned from this "prototype" will help me when I relaunch it.

So, yeah. There you have it. Old version of the story is dead, relaunch is coming.
 
Alright, alright. Super huge cool announcement time.

So a lot of people probably assumed I just forgot about this project of mine...well, that's not exactly the case. I could blame depression for most of the inactivity, but I'd only really be partially telling the truth. Yes, the depression played a huge part of it, but at the same time, I'm not going to throw that as an excuse. The reality is that, for awhile, I thought my work life was going to get easier. It actually got the opposite. I went from doing more work, for more money, to being demoted for stupid reasons, and then working even harder, for less money.

Combined with other troubles I don't want to get into, too much, I began to gravitate towards devoting myself to my girlfriends more than anything, to try and make sure they're all happy with me. Now, I'm not saying "Oh, I don't have any time to write at all!" Because that's not true. I love writing and I love every moment I spend doing it. But a big part of this "series," has been that sometimes...nothing happens. It's a game involving a huge amount of grind, and I'm trying to base an entire story around the fact that sometimes, nothing interesting happens at all.

I'm not saying this is a fundamentally terrible idea...but I think I slightly approached it the wrong way. In a way that I'd spend hours trying to concoct something from nothing, trying to drag out every turn of combat into a masterpiece. Mind you, I can easily do that...but it takes so long. And the missions can sorta blur together, causing me to exert a lot of energy just to make a mundane fight seem interesting. That accounted for the lull in activity. But it doesn't end there. In my efforts to spice things up, I opted into the beta version of the game, to play with updates before they came out...and I experienced a large amount of technical difficulties resulting in a lot of wasted effort. Okay, yeah, whatever.

After being largely unsuccessful, I decided to rethink how I was going about the playthrough and try to fix it on the fly...but then I got my new computer, and being the pleb I am, I thought that my game would be saved on the Cloud, so I didn't back up my data. So now I'm on a new computer with no real data of the old playthrough. Which is why I decided to end the playthrough, disheartened...

But that didn't last long. Rather than just ending the playthrough, I realized that I once said "This is a highly experimental sort of thing" and I meant it. So rather than just kill a good idea, I thought of how to salvage it. And before I got my computer, the updates that I was testing on the unstable branch got pushed to live. Which got me thinking of a few ways to improve the series as a hole.

Well...for one, having a new kickass computer means I could do a few things I couldn't do too readily, before. Such as recording videos, often. Before, I thought "Hey, I'll record big boss fights and whatever. It'll be pretty cool." But now that I have this computer, I can record all episodes. What does this mean for me? Well, before, I would take a couple turns in combat, and then write about any potential interesting things that happen, while simultaneously trying to grab screenshots of the action. It's extremely tedious, made even worse by my limited computer. But with this new setup...I can record entire missions / sessions, and review them as I write and jot down notes, grabbing screenshots at will, from any point, and get the best action possible with them. This will make it so doing episodes would be much less tedious as it is, since I'll have much more information available at my fingertips while I write.

No more would I have to be restricted by how much I remember from a boring mission, or if I miss a screenshot opportunity, there goes my only chance of getting it. With recording every session on video, I can easily pull as much data and screenshots as I can from it, whenever I want. No alt tabbing after literally every single turn of combat to jot down notes. This overall would make for quicker and more engaging episodes, as I can record a session and then edit and write later. Much more efficient. And the best part? If I think a mission is garbage and not worth writing about...I can just upload the video. It's cheap, it's easy, it's lazy, and I don't have to write a novel about how my characters defeated the same pack of spiders for the 500th time, in graphic detail.

This doesn't mean I'm going to really cut down on the writing or anything, I'm just going to take a different course of action. I was writing too much by the game before, and not enough by me. Can't pull a proper novel out of a series of turn-based battles. In this revamp, I may create stories completely and utterly unrelated to the actual gameplay, while addressing boring missions briefly, or just by lazily throwing up a video. Also, judging from interest and my own ability to do it, I may stream sessions of importance, like bosses / final dungeons, so you guys can see your dudes die live.

So what's the TL;DR here?

I'm relaunching the series with new tricks to help me better handle it. I'll be worrying a lot less on making every turn of combat a massive paragraph, and focus more on character progression and development, while highlighting particularly intense combats. The video system will make this all so much easier. I may upload videos in place of writing narratives, if the mission is boring. What does this mean for your characters? Well, none of the characters are too highly developed at the moment. I could do a full relaunch of all characters and storylines, or I can try to figure out a way to reboot the series while keeping some of the more important character progression there.

Either way, at one point I was thinking about killing the series, but I decided to turn my misfortunes around, and use that as a vehicle to make the series even better than before. So it will come back, better than ever. When? I have no idea. Sooner rather than later, probably. I think it might be better to start fresh, and anew, while keeping the hero roster untouched for the most part, though the stories I tell about your characters may not always be relevant to the actual gameplay. I tried way too hard before to make everything match up to the turn-based combat, and looking back on it now, I think that was a major mistake. As I said, this is a very experimental form of story telling, and I believe the knowledge I learned from this "prototype" will help me when I relaunch it.

So, yeah. There you have it. Old version of the story is dead, relaunch is coming.
Well if it is going to be easier for you then some good came out of it.
 
So I've just finished "Recording" the first episode, and I have a couple things to prattle on about for a little bit.

So in the interest of....some semblance of continuity, I'm trying to link my previous save's story with this one in some way. And I've just the way to do that, I think.

The very last battle I had on my other save, was against some big, nasty boss in some void. I did not lose that battle, nor did I win that battle. Essentially, my new save file if going to pick up where that left on...in a sense.

Reynauld and Dismas were the first characters in my first save, and will be the first characters in my second save, too. "But Tsuki, how is this possible if you intend to keep continuity!?" Well, simple. Essentially, when I fought the Void-Boss, I'm going to be writing the story as if Reynauld and Dismas got thrust through a spooky wormhole, with no memories of previous events, yet they're in a different town, with different characters, and different stories.

This new save file is basically seeing them as wracked with Deja Vu, and memories they can't explain. Basically, for the first part of this new save file, it's gonna be Reynauld and Dismas new adventures in this new town, with heroes we haven't seen yet. Meaning if your character appeared in-game in the previous save, you won't immediately be re-featured. This lets people who haven't had their characters in-game yet get a chance, as new members. HOWEVER, if your character appeared in game and didn't die, you will re-enter once a certain event is completed. A certain storyline event.

So, Recapping on what I said:

  • If you were part of last savefile, you're not going to be starting this savefile. (This doesn't include people who were waiting to appear, but didn't.)
  • This savefile is going to be people that haven't appeared in game yet (Besides Reynauld and Dismas)
  • Reynauld and Dismas will be the "main" protagonists for the first few episodes.
  • Once a certain event happens, the characters from "Season 1" and the characters from "Season 2" will all be together.
  • This lets new people join for Season 2, without completely killing off the people from Season 1

____________________

So that's the rough storyline so far. That being said, I need to get some new heroes for Season 2. So if anyone wants to have a character named after them, now's the time again. If you have a surviving character from Season 1, you can have a new character for Season 2. I need to go through the thread and re-complile the waiting list of people who need characters named after them, too, so that might take some time, to re-situate this thread.

Also, for those of you who were interested, this is how Season 1 basically "ended." Kelp's character was basically a bounty hunter who was going after this Void-beast. He led a team of newbies, who were completely unable to quell the void-beast's power. One of the newbies, Grym, collapsed inside the void, not to be seen again. (Or so we think.) While Kelp escaped with the remaining members, and abandoned the mission. That's how the final "Mission" went.

And how I'm picking up the story, is the void-beast essentially thrust the entire town into the void, which had unknown, but terrible consequences. Dismas and Reynauld ended up memory-less in another town, while the other heroes fates are unknown. What happened to Kelp after he failed to kill the Void-beast is unknown, and whether Grym survived in the void is unknown, and all the other heroes are unknown.

__________________

So that's just how things are gonna be going from here on out. Like I said, the first "episode" has been recorded. I still have a few things I need to do before It'll be posted. I need to re-acquire my Photoshop and Video Editor, for minor functions, then I'll need to clean up the thread, and other housekeeping things.

Lastly, I have a few more things I need to discuss.

Mods: Is this a thing you guys are interested in seeing? Mods like new classes and new enemies and stuff, etc. Or a vanilla run? There's a few interesting classes available, but not sure how much work it is to implement. Also new enemies and tweaks, too.

Player created characters: You guys like characters named after you, because it's fun to watch them die (or not so fun.) But do you guys like that, or when I create stories based around random characters, more? With you guys, you can create your own stories, but with my own characters, I can take more artistic liberties with them. It's not a huge issue in the meantime, since I have a lot of characters, but in the future, I may need more forum-goer-based characters. So basically, for the time being it's fine, but I'll need to get more coverage and a broader array of heroes as time goes on, so if you have a friend that would be interested in this, point them in this direction.

Anyway, that's about it for this informative post! I can already see the boons of this new system, and the preliminary video recording tests have been phenomenal. Very excited about rebooting this, but there's still a lot of stupid housekeeping stuff I need to worry about. Not going to give an estimate of when it'll come out, since I'm not going to hold myself to it. But as soon as I clean up the thread, get my software, and then actually edit the episode, it'll be ready.
 
So I've just finished "Recording" the first episode, and I have a couple things to prattle on about for a little bit.

So in the interest of....some semblance of continuity, I'm trying to link my previous save's story with this one in some way. And I've just the way to do that, I think.

The very last battle I had on my other save, was against some big, nasty boss in some void. I did not lose that battle, nor did I win that battle. Essentially, my new save file if going to pick up where that left on...in a sense.

Reynauld and Dismas were the first characters in my first save, and will be the first characters in my second save, too. "But Tsuki, how is this possible if you intend to keep continuity!?" Well, simple. Essentially, when I fought the Void-Boss, I'm going to be writing the story as if Reynauld and Dismas got thrust through a spooky wormhole, with no memories of previous events, yet they're in a different town, with different characters, and different stories.

This new save file is basically seeing them as wracked with Deja Vu, and memories they can't explain. Basically, for the first part of this new save file, it's gonna be Reynauld and Dismas new adventures in this new town, with heroes we haven't seen yet. Meaning if your character appeared in-game in the previous save, you won't immediately be re-featured. This lets people who haven't had their characters in-game yet get a chance, as new members. HOWEVER, if your character appeared in game and didn't die, you will re-enter once a certain event is completed. A certain storyline event.

So, Recapping on what I said:

  • If you were part of last savefile, you're not going to be starting this savefile. (This doesn't include people who were waiting to appear, but didn't.)
  • This savefile is going to be people that haven't appeared in game yet (Besides Reynauld and Dismas)
  • Reynauld and Dismas will be the "main" protagonists for the first few episodes.
  • Once a certain event happens, the characters from "Season 1" and the characters from "Season 2" will all be together.
  • This lets new people join for Season 2, without completely killing off the people from Season 1

____________________

So that's the rough storyline so far. That being said, I need to get some new heroes for Season 2. So if anyone wants to have a character named after them, now's the time again. If you have a surviving character from Season 1, you can have a new character for Season 2. I need to go through the thread and re-complile the waiting list of people who need characters named after them, too, so that might take some time, to re-situate this thread.

Also, for those of you who were interested, this is how Season 1 basically "ended." Kelp's character was basically a bounty hunter who was going after this Void-beast. He led a team of newbies, who were completely unable to quell the void-beast's power. One of the newbies, Grym, collapsed inside the void, not to be seen again. (Or so we think.) While Kelp escaped with the remaining members, and abandoned the mission. That's how the final "Mission" went.

And how I'm picking up the story, is the void-beast essentially thrust the entire town into the void, which had unknown, but terrible consequences. Dismas and Reynauld ended up memory-less in another town, while the other heroes fates are unknown. What happened to Kelp after he failed to kill the Void-beast is unknown, and whether Grym survived in the void is unknown, and all the other heroes are unknown.

__________________

So that's just how things are gonna be going from here on out. Like I said, the first "episode" has been recorded. I still have a few things I need to do before It'll be posted. I need to re-acquire my Photoshop and Video Editor, for minor functions, then I'll need to clean up the thread, and other housekeeping things.

Lastly, I have a few more things I need to discuss.

Mods: Is this a thing you guys are interested in seeing? Mods like new classes and new enemies and stuff, etc. Or a vanilla run? There's a few interesting classes available, but not sure how much work it is to implement. Also new enemies and tweaks, too.

Player created characters: You guys like characters named after you, because it's fun to watch them die (or not so fun.) But do you guys like that, or when I create stories based around random characters, more? With you guys, you can create your own stories, but with my own characters, I can take more artistic liberties with them. It's not a huge issue in the meantime, since I have a lot of characters, but in the future, I may need more forum-goer-based characters. So basically, for the time being it's fine, but I'll need to get more coverage and a broader array of heroes as time goes on, so if you have a friend that would be interested in this, point them in this direction.

Anyway, that's about it for this informative post! I can already see the boons of this new system, and the preliminary video recording tests have been phenomenal. Very excited about rebooting this, but there's still a lot of stupid housekeeping stuff I need to worry about. Not going to give an estimate of when it'll come out, since I'm not going to hold myself to it. But as soon as I clean up the thread, get my software, and then actually edit the episode, it'll be ready.


I'm really looking forward to reading/watching this reboot of your series. I've been a fan of your projects and works of writing that I've seen as one can tell a lot of heart is put into writing and weaving a story that's pleasing to read.

For those last things you needed to discuss, on the subject of mods, I think they can add an extra bit of spice that, while unneeded given the usual quality of your work, would be a good supplement and give you more options to work with.

For characters, I must say I love when you make stories about them. It makes the characters much more likeable, and after learning about their backstories and personalities and such one can grow to love them overtime, leading to a much larger effect on the reader should they meet their end. When I read writing that makes me feel, makes me smile when the characters do something funny, or cry when something bad happens, it's usually because it's damn good writing.

It looks like you've done and will be doing lots of planning and preparing for this project and all I can say is keep up the good work, I'll be reading/watching every episode.
 
Clancy's back online! And it seems I'm just in time. Is the Deadeye highwayman finally going to enter the story?
 
Not promising anything, but I have 3 days off this week (Unless something changes at last minute) and I'm finally back at my old job position and old schedule, after months of being pushed around to other departments.

As such, it is my intent to post the first chapter of "Season 2" Soon after, or over the weekend.

Our starting crew is Reynauld and Dismas, as discussed. Then it is Arpiter the Plague Doctor, and Tsuki, the Vestal. (Sister to Haru the Vestal.)

To accompany this release, I will be posting the "raw missions" on a new youtube channel, if anyone would rather watch it instead of read it. Note, this isn't me trying to plug my youtube for whatever, but I think it will be a good idea to upload each and every mission alongside writing about it.

So yeah. This weekend, or shortly after. I have my secretaries pushing it to the top of my schedule to ensure I get it done. Youtube details forthcoming, the videos will likely go up after the writing.


I still need to get my photoshop and other programs installed, or find equivalents, but I have faith it'll be done at a decent time. Again, this isn't a promise, but it is a heads up. The first episode is already recorded as of this moment, so it's already underway.

Sorry for all the non-content updates about me discussing the state of the project.
 
Back
Top Bottom