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Plenty of factors are going into this:

1. I am just developing Core Act 1 Content - a lot of what is being produced is meant to carve out the pace of mandatory components of the game. As I continue to scope out the game, singular characters who don't interact outside of their independent questlines should help to fill out the cast of characters the MC can interact with, such as Den & Greyhaven characters. This will help balance the scale a bit away from Hunter focused content, but yes, Act 1's main story is Hunter's time to develop as a character.

2. Hunter + MC camp scenes and romance throughout Act 1 isn't implemented yet.

3. MC's design isn't finalized yet. We'll see more art and focus on him once the story reveals itself more.

Beyond all of this, I think there's also a subsection of people who will view sexually permissive acts that aren't explicitly involving or directed towards the main character as a negative. And honestly - I'd rather just write/create lewd content without the burden to always involve the MC - so I'm not sure if Aftersoul is ever going to be a game to accommodate the 'I only have eyes for you' mindset.

Genuinely one of my biggest regrets when writing Aftersoul is using a singular perspective and not treating ??? as one of many player characters in a cast ensemble. I did not expect people to get so hung up on the MC playing a more reserved role through Act 1 - I thought it would feel refreshing to build a world that doesnt feel like it revolves around the MC. Ah well, I'll keep these learning moments in mind for future projects.

I think in the current version its showing as active when it shouldn't be! This should be fixed in future versions.

I think in the current builds you have to clear every fight as you progress deeper - simply running away from fights resets your trek through the ancient glades. You have to fight each encounter and make it past several <!> progress deeper markers to reach the cultist encampment. This will be adjusted in future builds!

If you've gotten to the estate, you should have had to do the greyhaven questline where you sneak out of the inn to go to the Estate for the first time. I believe that is the requirement to finding Knave in the Forest - mainly by exploring the Forest. After that, he should be a person to find within the Forest! If this isn't the case, then this is a bug report - In which case, I'll look into why this is happening!

My goal is to simplify and streamline development to just windows while I focus on developing - my apologies! This might change in the future, but for now I will remain non-committal. 

You likely need to go to a certain wolven vendor shop and buy an amulet. Then head down to the Knave in the forest and have a chat. From there, you should be able to interact with the gilded barrier in the estate, and then head to the sanctum in Greyhaven. A lot of this specific portion of questing is something I just prepared an update for, so that the journal better directs players stuck at this specific questline. There's also a bug involving the mineshaft barrier that i just recently prepared a fix for. So next update, I hope all of these wrinkles should be smoothed over! Thank you for playing!

cog button at the bottom left!  - saves are mainly only available at major nav-sites like the camp, so not in moment-to-moment conversations. I've also identified a bug with renaming saves, so its probably best not to rename your saves at the current moment.

yep!

you are the fourth person to request such an issue. most have solved the issue by uninstalling/deleting aftersoul from their computer, downloading it again, and re-runnin  - for the sake of helping me debug, did you ever have a previous version of aftersoul installed?

every successful combat you get production equal to your production rank

Act 2 is not out yet. What you are playing is the definitive main story gameplay loop of Act. I am currently working on the finale of the Act 1 story, as well as preparing the epilogue that transitions into Act 2. 

I try not to place ratios entirely on things like 'top' or 'bottom' when I personally am not writing to the sate the needs of either role, at the moment. As such, I can't really give a solid answer to this question. Perhaps as the game expands I can give a better guesstimate than 'not a lot of either', but the 'goal' would be to supply a healthy mix of both.

the goal this year is to try and have 3 public updates -we'll see how well i can stick to that goal!

unreal engine 5, actually - mostly in widgets/blueprints

With the introduction of 'breakout scenes', at least two players have highlighted that their game won't load breakout scenes when going into the forest (instead staying blank). These players had older versions of the game downloaded before playing the game. The only known fix that has worked is to delete Aftersoul and redownload again, as this issue might stem from trying to update the game by replacing the newer version of the game into an existing directory. I currently am not sure why this softlock exists - sorry for the inconvenience.

fight in the glade > nav forward at landmarks

hiya - holding left click on the slot should enable/disable auto use, when selecting abilities.

Right now exposed is a debuff that removes a % of the enemy's 'defense' stat, so a single move hits harder.  10 stacks should equate to 100% of the enemy's defense, but i don't remember off the top of my head. it will have a dedicated portion inside of a menu alongside all of the other buffs / debuffs once I've created that. the numbers being used aren't final, and are expected to change! additionally, a lot of early enemies don't have a lot of defense to cut through, so it wont always feel consistently powerful in Act 1.

Hiya - that Delve option is not in this current build. The first layer of the cave will be in the next public release!

hiya - this would be the second time this bug is mentioned, and the first who ran into this fixed it with a fresh install after deleting all prior versions they had installed

Hiya - one of the goals I started with when making Aftersoul was to try and create some fleshed out, slow burned party members. It's simply beyond my scope for the game to try and handle all the iterations of scenes w/ any number of party members present or excluded - but I agree that it would be nice to see such a system. Regardless, I hope you understand that a main goal of mine in regards to this game's development is to focus on a cast of characters. Act 1's focus is on Hunter. Act 2 will have a different crew member take the majority of screentime, and so on.

Yep - Act 1 is primarily focused on Hunter's narrative. There will definitely be a shift in screentime as we move towards Act 2. 

necessary? no - optional? yes. I believe the requirements are flirting with Shade and then taking her up on the offer in the hot springs. i am unsure how else i could have properly gated that content, beyond some sort of content flagging system which I have not yet built. hope you enjoyed the game beyond that!

Hiya - check the discord for guides and help. I've tried to minimize the amount of content that you can 'miss out on' outside of the prologue!

good news - there is a way to change text speed within the game already - including the ability to skip it going line, by, line altogether! simply click the eye indicator to open up additional controls (infinity icon to speed it up to instant)

double good news - I have just recently implemented a speed-adjustment system for combat that will be in the next major update!

Surely they're still in the Den - I'm sure Boss might know!

only windows for the time being!

there is no exact date scheduled - but yes. at my current speed: yearly or bi-yearly

major updates like 0.4.0 are all uploaded here - I will consider a need for a 'midpoint' release as I progress!

I will consider a long term solution for something like a gallery, but it is not a focus of my development goals right now - thank you for the kind words!

sadly, no!

carp's explanation is of production - it's a resource other than ether that builds up with each successful fight you win. you gain more production based on the amount of 'production rank' you have. you also gain more production rank each time you build!

- you dont particularly get to do more with boss than you're already doing, for the time being
- yep! offhand, I believe that new training opens up based on your character level
- nope, knave can kind of join at any timeframe for a lot of the content you're seeing so far, so he's not that involved. once he's required to progress the story, you'll see a lot more of him.

-mines aren't implemented yet!

-boss getting ether is his intended path! he just gets bigger

-arson will not bulk up in his next installment - that will have to wait for a future date

-yeah, there are scenes that don't repeat. I'm still considering a way for people to see existing scenes again, but I have no plans of adding that scope in yet

-i believe wolven guard has more training scenes later on beyond that first intimate scene

yeah, being high enough level to avoid the one shots is important - check the wolven vendor shop to buy a piece of jewelry if you haven't already - then go pay a visit to knave and have a chat! that might help you out a bit.

plantwolf is a tough final fight, and intended to be the 'hardest fight' at this stage of development - nothing more behind him than a teaser for what is to come for folks who do want to challenge him.

each form has an alternate best strat. typically, you need some form of sustain and a looooot of levels to keep up. again - it isn't intended to be beaten by players at this stage of development, so don't feel too pressured!

winning a fight should give you production resource equal to your production rank! building things increases your rank! hope that helps!

Yeah, no character customization - MC is a fixed perspective. I'm mainly sticking to dudes n' gayness, and attempting to tell a story from a fixed character background. Additionally there's only one female character right now. Audio will come along as I continue to develop - looking forward to when I get to tackle that! I'll be keeping my eye out on how to streamline 'explore' prompts to be less grindy.

Major character customization isn't a high priority for this game, to help limit scope. I look forward to future projects where more of my time can be put into that. For now, our MC primarily has one trajectory, with a handful of 'flavors' - none of which are incorporated as of yet!

Agreed that it needs some help smoothing over - too many things need to occur in specific order without wiggle room. I will attempt to smooth this over in time!