Over 3,000 years of work later, the update is finally out. Sam gets her romance going hard with a titfuck CG, Metatron continues to be incredibly cute, the equipment system is actually functional, and the game is now marginally less ugly!

Changelog;

• Sam has a new sprite, courtesy of Coubalt, going from 8 to ~35 expressions! It can also get naked, which features in her first lewd scene. She also got a titfuck CG with 9ish variations, also provided by Coubalt!
• Metatron's romance also moved forward; she'll get her first lewd scene with a CG of her own next update~
• Ina gets a pretty chunky camp scene, showcasing her character much better, dropping some lore, and setting up next update's plot progression.
• Sarah got a new conversation and 6 trust scene, Maya got 4 affection and 4 trust scenes, Ashley got a 6 trust, and Celica got a 4 trust. I'd summarize them, but these patch notes are already too large.
• Celica now has a phenomenal new camp theme, and Ashley got a dope new battle theme, both courtesy of the talented Ubercrow! Some other characters, like Sam and Metatron, also gained noncustom music for various scenes.
• The equip menu is finally functional, allowing you to change your weapon, bring up to two weapons with you and switch in battle, and learn the abilities of any weapon you're carrying with you without needing traits. More weapons will be added later.
• The game's music has been streamlined and converted to a more efficient format, cutting the game's overall filesize down by ~40%. I also equalized some of the louder songs, so hopefully audio will be more consistent.
• Camp and adventure transitions are now a little less clunky, ditto with some character appearances/disappearances.
• Allies now gain masteries, which work about the same as yours, except they pick theirs from a curated list.
• Several allies gained unique traits, and some had their abilities switched around to better fit their character.
• In general, allies should be MUCH more potent now.
• Unique and unlock traits are now color-coded, and ally trait lists are now ordered, so it should be easier to parse them.
• Abilities now have a dedicated custom tooltip screen in battle, which shows projected damage/healing to target, requirements (color-coded in case any are missing), and remaining cooldown.
• Damage and healing numbers are now displayed in battle. It's a little chunky right now admittedly, but at least you have some idea of what your abilities are actually doing.
• Identical enemies now get identifiers to better tell them apart.
• I'm gonna be honest here, I know I added some new abilities, but I forgot what they were. Good luck finding them!

With that done, I think the camp is in a good enough position that I can focus on moving the plot forward after a detour that admittedly took longer than I had expected. I'll still continue doing camp stuff, of course, but doing each romance from scratch was incredibly consuming, whereas now I have a strong foundation for the girls.

My tentative plans for the next update are to add Metatron and Celica lewds, introduce the Knight-Commander and push the Sahuagin plot forward, and include the Deepwoods combat area/side plot (full thing or first area - not sure yet). Hopefully Metatron and maybe Ashley martial arts as well, Sam's shenanigans took a lot more time than I expected in this update.