With v0.16 well underway, I'm finally starting to dig into making some of the content that's been swimming around in my head for months. While I have been ideating and iterating on exactly what to do with Archibald since the very start of the game when I first had him walk into your Estate and try to take it from you, there's a lot more than that long-overdue confrontation to this update.
There's plenty I could say about where I want the story to go, or that some of you might be disappointed by the lack of certain more violent options (no, I'm not letting you kick his door in and stab him to death), or that Lalita might finally get to show of some of the "dere" side of tsundere, what I'm gonna focus on for this post is the city side of the Estate that you've been able to see just inside the outer-most wall.
When you first enter the Estate, rather than being immediately confronted by hostile Servants or being presented with Archibald's front gate, you'll instead enter Ambrose City. While, yes, nearly everything is going to have "Ambrose" stapled to the front of it, and sure, most things are going to cost you far more than they would if I made gold a currency in the game, there are actually going to be shops in this city. Not just traders, where you give them one item and get another - actual spend-your-Silcrow shops.
Now, there are a few things to keep in mind. These shops all work more like real life shops. That means you can't walk in and sell off 70 of the 99 Potions you've been sitting on since the start of Act 2, go back to your Estate to finally pick up the other 50 that have been sitting in their box in Emily's shop, then come back and sell those, then do that with all your other items before sitting back and enjoying having broken the game economy. These are almost exclusively purchase-only shops. If you spend all your Silcrow, you can't just get it back where you spent it.
That said, I'm sure there are a lot of you out there that will be especially relieved at being able to buy a piece of equipment on demand, doubly so for the equipment that's still relevant or that you haven't gotten your hands on a Supply Contract for yet. Same goes for those of you that somehow manage to find yourselves constantly out of Potions and you haven't been able to clear the arena yet because of it. To those of you out there - you're welcome.
I've also included a few shops that will sell you Estate customizations (which is something I've been itching to implement for a long, long time). One set of these even comes with it's own sub-system. It's fairly simple in terms of how to use it and what you get out of it (spoiler, it's Maid renders), but the dingus that I am wanted to actually check if you had these things put down in the different places it was possible to put them down in so that when you checked the system, you wouldn't get a render randomly selected from all possible renders. Instead, a location is randomly selected (and a new one is selected if the location doesn't have the right decoration for the system until you land on a location that does have the proper decoration), then you get a random render from that location. Most locations only have a few renders, but there are 8 possible locations (including new styles for your front gate, and finally something you can put in your Master bedroom), so there's still a ton of variety.
There are also a handful of "shops" that don't just sell things. For example, there's the Ambrose Restaurant, where - once you spend probably too much Silcrow buying yourself a premium membership just so you have the privilege of being able to sit at a table and pay yet more Silcrow for the food - you can buy yourself and one (or maybe even two, you sly dog) of your Maids a fancy dinner (chosen at random, but there might be a trophy you can get that'll change that eventually). These shops are considerably less common, but I had fun making them (the restaurant in particular even has special dialogue about you trying to run out on the bill if you're broke, and it's different for each Maid), and I think it adds a bit of depth to the city so it isn't just a giant money-sink to distract you before you're able to afford Emily's Contract once you get into the desert and find her Master.
There are eight shops to explore in the main city so far (plus a non-shop you've already been in), with another ten (possibly more; it's still in development as I'm writing this) in the shopping district you gain access to after progressing a bit into the story. It'll be a bit of a squeeze, but VIP Patrons will get a test build this Friday, and regular Patrons will get details on each shop with the patch notes, so if this sounds like fun to you, maybe go give my Patreon page a look.
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