Happy late Halloween everyone! This update report is coming in later then I would have liked so I'm sorry about that. For this one I'll be talking about the Berserker's encounter and his subjugation as one of the focus points of the upcoming build.

I'll start with his combat encounter.

I'm sure I must have mentioned it before but the Berserker is probably the most upgraded enemy in the game since his original inclusion. He initially started as just a super mob for the demon faction.

Ari then suggested he should have an h-battle of his own which I definitely agreed with. That prompted me to make him a more individualistic mob that would take you for himself if given the chance.

That brings us to his final upgrade, as a roaming boss like the Dithonion.

I talked about and demonstrated his severe grab now using the difficulty varied QTE.

Most of the Berserker's attacks will be heavy hitting, powerful, but mostly single target with one or two AOE attacks.

However, if he is successful in severe grabbing one of your characters he'll begin to cast powerful spells that are mostly AOE in nature.

Using his fragmented power of Precendance, The Berserker will empower himself with the captured character. Knocking the Berserker off balance won't be sufficient to free the character, he will have to be defeated outright.

If the battle is escaped with a character mounted, he'll subjugate them back to his lair as well. Additionally if he defeats the rest of your party, everyone will be taken by him.

With that I'd like to talk about how his subjugation will actually work from here.

The method of escaping The Berserker's subjugation will be more involved when compared to escaping The Goblin den for reference.

Firstly, combat will not be possible due to a restriction The Berserker imposes on you. The player will have to navigate an ancient fort abandoned since the time of the 14th Claymore wielder. The Berserker has made the fort his lair and will constantly patrol, occasionally appearing in the same room as you.

While oppressed by The Berserker's Precedance power, you'll be able to use hiding spots and holes to evade capture.

You will have to explore The Fort in search of Lucifer Flames. With three at least being needed to unseal the gate and escape. At the same time, any actions such as opening shortcuts or struggling against the fort's guards will cause the Berserker's detection to increase, which increase his chances of searching the room you're in and when filled will cause him to constantly pursue you through the fort.

This cat and mouse loop also prompted me to add a plugin that fixed an odd default engine behavior were enemies can see you through walls. This has been corrected thanks to the plugin so avoiding the Berserker or anything else in the fort should feel more intuitive.

Rescuing other characters won't be as direct here either. The same Lucifer flames needed to escape are also expended to free other characters, with one being used per character freed. These flames will also be usable to break the seal on your character and return their strength so you can fight enemies directly.

More then 3 flames will spawn during any instance around the castle but it may not be enough for all of your needs. The only way to break all of the Fort's seals immediately is to defeat The Berserker.

 If all of the Lucifer Flames are used without unsealing the gate, you'll have to use a much noisier method to gather certain materials needed to escape by water.

Now while a character is subjugated and you may be off adventuring in the dungeons, The Berserker will use the time to further ravish and study the captured character(s). This will give him more powerful attacks to use in battle if he's encountered later.

For November's test build I should have just enough time to finish my remaining tasks and pending to-draw-list if all goes well. This initial build will have Grace, Treu and Dr.Midday included for testing.

That about covers this progress report, apologies I feel like this one was on the shorter side.
At the bottom of this post there'll be a small video to show a bit of the Berserker's subjugation area in progress.
By the end of this month I'm hoping I'll be getting ready to put the next build out to test! In the meantime take care, and thank you sincerely for your support and motivation everyone!

(づ｡ ◕ u◕｡) づ