Have you been making babies???

Now might be a good time to get on the child-rearing grind! In the next update, you'll finally be able to "equip" (still working on the verb here) spirit kin! Spirit kin will grant you stat boosts based on their colors and auto-inflict auras on you or enemies at the end of every combat round based on their types.

You'll be able to equip up to three spirit kin at a time. Kins of the same types and colors will be subject to diminishing returns. Still, you may find focusing on a specific color or type to be valuable, but I expect most players and builds to favor a mix of different types and colors of kin to maximize bonuses.

I'm still finalizing which specific auras each type of kin will inflict, but they'll inflict a base of 1-3 per combat round, with an additional 0-1 per round per extra kin of the same type (e.g., for two kin of the same type, it'll be 1-4 stacks, while for three it'll be 1-5 stacks).

For the colors, kin will provide 10 MP or HP per level, 3 Attack or Defense per level, or 2 Finesse per level. Finesse is a stat that was previously hidden (alongside the Speed stat) since it's just always been 100 for every actor in the game and never changes from leveling, but it'll be visible now that it can be changed. Finesse influences your accuracy and critical hit rate. All of these bonuses assume an A-rank kin, but the stat bonus is modified by a kin's rank too. These aren't huge bonuses, but because of how damage is calculated, they should at least be noticeable at higher levels. I'm open to boosting them too if they do end up feeling too weak.

In the future, gem dust gained for releasing kin you don't want/need will be used to upgrade a kin's rank. Going from A to S will be insanely expensive, but do keep in mind that upgrades will be possible eventually.

SPPEEEDD!?!?!?

Like I mentioned, there is another stat called speed that never changes. It just compares the speed of the combatants and grants characters with higher speed a bonus turn every so many rounds. For example if you had ten more speed than the enemy, you'd get an extra turn every 6 rounds; but if you had 33 more speed, it grants an extra turn every 3 rounds.

But alas, I felt it was too complicated and annoying to reason about, so everyone in the game just has 100 speed now, functionally turning the system off. The Haste aura doesn't interact with speed directly, but it does use the same system as speed does to grant extra turns, but uses a flag to do it instead. Just some cutting room floor stuff in case you were interested, as unlike finesse, I doubt speed will ever become something the game actually uses.