Been a busy, busy week here! The next big beta release should come by April, depending on how well event hacking goes. For now, here's what's new.

- Celestia now learns natural magic. She picks up Fire spells while Twi gets Bolt and Cadance gets Ice.
- The alicorns are able to equip equipment by pony type. Celestia gets unicorn stuff, Luna gets earth pony stuff, and Cadance gets pegasus stuff
- Celestia and Luna's base stats are reversed back to the original; Celestia has higher magical aptitude while Luna is more physically inclined
- Luna's ultimate Blitz now deals physical damage. Moonbolt, Fire Dance, and Air Blade are still magical.
- Applejack's SwdTech attacks are now all physical.
- Pinkie's Dances are now elemental, one for each element.
- Some of Scootaloo's Rages now use two special attacks. Sometimes this is to make them more reliable (ie, one has Fire and Blaze), and it also encourages farming of new Rages later in the game (stronger enemies are more likely to have two special attacks.
- The levels at which natural magic, SwdTech, and Blitzes are learned, are lower.
- Numerous equipment tweaks. Ultimate weapons have had their effects improved and they are now noted in the menu, several equipment pieces give larger stat boosts than before, and Twi now has a Relic that lets her equip alicorn-class equipment.
- Enemies on Mt. Kolts and the Lete River were made stronger as Celestia now has natural magic.
- Some new attacks made and integrated into enemy attack scripts.
- The glitches as reported in the Bug Report thread are fixed. Dialogue typos are also being stamped out as they're seen.

I'm thinking more major gameplay changes are done. However, I'm still open to ideas on new Blitzes, SwdTechs, and Lores. In particular with Rarity, ForceField and Reflect??? have always been a bit useless and could be swapped out. Two ideas I've had were Death Claw (sap enemy HP to 1) and Fire Bomb (Fire damage to a single target). If you've any, feel free to post them. And of course, please keep posting those bug reports.

Would you mind clarifying something for me? Take atlas armlet (Steel shoe in this hack I think) and hero ring, they increase fight/magic damage. Does that bonus apply just to the Fight/Magic commands, or physical/magical attacks in general? So Luna for example, could benefit from the hero ring.

Luna get's Earth pony stuff? That kind of sucks but then you went and changed her Eclipse ability which makes her kind of difficult to plan out for Esper bonuses. Also when you say you reversed them back, do you mean they are completely back to the first Beta form or you reversed what you had swapped them to, considering that those were slightly different? Speaking of which, her Fire Dance feels particularly nerfed as it is (since I've been using her pre-swapped stats) so I don't know if this change would seriously hurt those abilities unless you give her lots of magic bonuses with Espers. But then, does this new calculation for her Eclipse make it a lot weaker considering that Vigor effects stats so much less than Magic? (I'm overthinking this aren't I? I'm so particular about stat bonuses.)

Considering that Cadence already started a little above mediocre in the magic stat category, that kind hurts her too, especially considering you don't really have a lot of Pegasus specific armor's early on. The double up with the Earth ponies in the beginning. Does that mean Cadence get's spears?

Weren't AJ's Swdtech's already physical? Or do you mean just the one that wasn't physical before, Stunner?

With the several pieces of equipment getting stat boosts, are Katanas getting any stat boosts? Because as it stands they are always weaker than whatever other weapons AJ has available at the time making them completely useless.

Forcefield was the key to defeating the Czar Dragon at low levels in Pony Fantasy VI. Depending on what you planned for that super boss, it could be incredibly beneficial there too. I assume Death Claw would work similarly to Cyclonic as far as whether an enemy is immune or not? (I like the sound of that one better since the bomb ability sounds redundant to teaching her Flare except maybe less cost.)

5116464 They boost all physical or magical abilities.

5116490 The intent is to make Luna more focused on physical stats overall. I mean that now, she is physically inclined and Celestia is magically inclined. Yes, it means Cadance gets spears. And I'll be making a couple more Pegasus things for the early game.

Also, I'd considered making all of Luna's Blitzes physical, but my thoughts there are "so, the attack where she blasts enemies with moonlight is based on strength?"

With SwdTech, Retort, Empowerer, and Stunner were magical. Now they're physical.

Katanas now give a slight boost to Strength, as do Claws. They also tend to have a slight edge in power over Swords. Spears, on the other hand, give a bonus to Evasion.

Yes, Death Claw would work like Cyclonic.

5116519
I never realized Retort was magical. Did you boost it's power then because its base power is actually pretty bad and it might be a pretty dismal ability if it calculates vigor which is always bad compared to magic calculations. Or maybe it's not that different all the same? It only did decent damage before because it ignored defense. Speaking of that one, maybe it could stay in effect as long as she doesn't use a different tech or use fight or any other command, if that's possible to do without a lot of difficulty. Heck, if not, maybe her Katanas could have an auto counter at the same rate as the blackbelt just to make them more viable. I might even put her in the front row for something like that. In which case you could also do what many modders besides Pony have also done and make them power gripped when not with a shield.

I completely forgot about Empowerer since I never use it.

5116734

Yup, it got a damage buff. It's now at 180 power, double that of Dispatch. Subject to fixing, of course - if it suddenly does 1000 damage a hit, that's not gonna fly.

An auto-counter for her Katanas is something I've considered, too, and I may go with that. I like the idea of the unique weapons having more unique effects - brushes, for instance, may automatically boost Sketch success rate. Actually, yeah, gonna do that.

With it's boosted success rate, is sketch worth using? I admit I never used it past the one time when it's introduced. Did I miss out on a useful skill?

With Celestia having natural magic now, will the small scene at the beginning of the game when Twilight uses magic with Flash and Celestia be changed?

5117811 Well, it's circumstantial. It's kinda like Rage, with its random attack. The problem with Sketch IMO is really that Control is just so much more useful.

Yes, I'll probably be taking out that entire scene.

5117811
Sketch is really only useful in a select few instances, mostly for drawing instant death. The problem with Sketch is that it takes monster stats into account and monsters have terrible stats. Nearly all monsters and bosses in the game have a magic stat of 10, for example.
The only other reason to use Sketch is it makes learning some hard to get Lores much easier.