Dev's Notes: The Snake Agenda (Final)

Playtesting is continuing! I want to make sure that this updated demo is completely bug-free or as much as it can be while running on RPGMaker. It's been so long....

In the meanwhile, as perhaps one final Dev's Notes thing, I'd like to talk to you about recruitable characters! As mentioned previously in a post (months ago), recruits are temporary party members who can hire at the cost of Adventure Tickets, after which they will stay in your party until you next have reason to use an Inn.
Whether an NPC can be recruited or not depends on your actions. They often require you to have done something specific before you can even raise the subject of recruiting them and, depending on your choices, they are all completely missable.

As of the coming update, there are four potential recruits scattered around the game. In this little showcase, I'm going to discuss two.

Zaria, the Librarian

Oh look, there she is! People who played the initial demo might recognise Zaria as the librarian who runs the Book Raffle, from whom you can purchase Skill Tomes. As for what circumstances might force Zaria to abandon the Raffle and join your party...that's a secret! Though it's not a particularly hard secret.

As you might note from that screenshot, Zaria is purely a Weapon user. Namely, her weapons are her books. When she's hired to join the party, she comes in with two Weapon skills: Black Book and White Book. These twin tomes hold all the power of Zaria's much-reduced library within them!

Zaria might not be able to run the Book Raffle while she's a part of the party but the lottery spirit of the Raffle never quite leaves her. Simply spin up the Black Book, target an enemy with it and then let it loose! The Black Book can summon up any offensive skill that can be gained from the Book Raffle. So no chances of a King Winter or a Toxogenesis but it could be a Swordstripper or a Windup Punch or a Consuming Glory and so on.
The White Book is the same but in inverse, pulling up a random beneficial Tome Skill for the sake of the party, ranging from Physician to Cheerleader to TETRA.
Neither Book costs anything to use either! No MP, no HP, no TP. Their only cost is the lottery itself.

Like all recruitable hires, Zaria's level automatically updates to match the general party level whenever you hire her. This is particularly notable for her, as she has a secret Sealed Book that she can only unveil once her level is past a certain threshold. I don't have anything to say on that save that it plays well with the passive ability that she gets when knocked to half health or lower.


Tyrelia, the Fairy Knight

Standing at the impressive height of almost five feet tall, this sprite-knight is one of the largest and most potent sprites around! So much that she's likely to be mistaken for an elf if it weren't for her wings.

She's a sprite, with all that entails! Out of all the four possible recruits in the game, she's probably the hardest to get. I won't spoil how you can find her here save to say that there are actually two possible ways to make an ally of her, with...differing results.
Tyrelia isn't the world's strongest sprite but she's relatively close and she joins the party as a Magic/Weapon user. I won't go into much detail regarding her skills save to mention that she has a way to strip enemies of beneficial status effects, can taunt enemies much like Jameson can and has ways to both inflict Mini on herself and to take advantage of it when it's inflicted on an enemy.

As I said at the top of the page, playtesting is continuing. All of the dev work is done. Finished. I've learned not to give deadlines but I can say with confidence that this sucker is getting shipped Real Soon™.