July Status Report 2026

To immediately get the most important part of this status report out of the way: the next MGD update will not happen until next month, as I'm not yet satisfied with what's in said update.

An unplanned amount of time was dedicated this month to the implementation of the Kunoichi Trainee CG, which ended up being more of an ordeal than expected... And I did expect that it would be no small amount of work, but a big factor was that it was the first CG to use the same stance for multiple enemies, which led to some all-new issues. In addition, I was knocked out for a while by sinus issues, and also spent some time working on conceptualizing, designing, and prototyping content for an event that I ultimately decided to put aside for the time being. On that note, I think this is the first time through the game's entire development that I've ever actually decided to shelf something for later mid-working on it, which is a surprising thing to think about. And to explain without getting too into the weeds or spoiling stuff, this content is primarily getting shelved due to a 'lack of preparation' for it, which would lead to a degree of quality I wouldn't be satisfied with... I think that works to describe it.

But that's not to say nothing's been done for the update. In fact, as it stands, I could probably post it and it'd be fine. The Kunoichi Trainee CG is fully implemented, along with a new loss scene for when you lose to two Kunoichis. In addition, there's also a number of QoL changes provided by feltcutemightcleanlater, and while the following is not ready yet, progress has been made towards Val's project, which may have turned out to be a smidge larger than we expected. There's also been a BUNCH of bug and typo fixing, and I've fiddled with a number of balance changes to status effects, which I'll go over below.

The potency of both Aphrodisiac and Sleep Skills now scales with the Skill's stat, relative to the Skill's base potency. So for example, if the Skill has 10 potency and the character has 100 in the related stat, then by default, the new potency will be 20. This isn't a huge buff for these status effects, but I want to be cautious so I don't upscale them out of control.

Additionally, to prevent Aphrodisiacs from getting out of hand, for every 50 potency applied to a character, that character now gains +25% resistance to further Aphrodisiacs. Moreover, a large number of enemy Aphrodisiac Skills have had their base status chance reduced from 150% to 100%, in addition to corner case changes. The idea here is that Aphrodisiacs will remain a threat, but a manageable one, and players building into Aphrodisiac resistance will see better effects.

Meanwhile, Charm Immune now actually applies to basically all applications of Charm. So far, it didn't protect from Charm applied through combat events, which confused people and made some interactions feel overly oppressive, such as the Club Mirage fight with Melody and Cadence. So this should help with that.

And finally, when an action is interrupted by Stun, it now ticks down Stun immediately, which means that Stun can no longer sometimes eat up two of your or an enemy's actions depending on Initiative, which should help make its balance a little healthier. Note that extra actions that some enemies might take, such as those triggered via CallMonsterAttack, will also tick down Stun, which means those enemies will be less affected by Stuns. 

Obviously, the month is not completely over yet, and more work will be done towards the update, but I do not want to rush or otherwise crunch to jam stuff into the update, hence the decision to keep at it over the coming month, until I'm satisfied with the amount and quality of content, so that there's enough for players to dig into and have fun with when it comes out. 

I hope everyone had a wonderful month, has an even better upcoming month, and is looking forward to the next update! :D