I think I've already mentioned this somewhere in a previous Devlog already, but just in case I haven't, here's the deal with Chapter 6: The foundation for where this game would be going - in terms of story, chapters, and how much content such dungeons and boss fights there would be per chapter - have already been set in stone as early as the start of 2017. (I could be off, but I've been working on this fangame for a long time after all.) But what I really mean by that is everything except for Chapter 6.

For whatever reason, I've had a hard time bridging the gap between Chapter 5 and 7 in just about every aspect, story, dungeons and all. I've had a rough draft/summary of the entire story from start to finish written in a doc which I think I've even shared in the Neptunia subreddit. One thing that stood out to me was how clunky my plans for Chapter 6 were and how nothing seemed to come together nicely. It was when I was working on 1.9.0 that saw the completion of the Chapter 5 storyline where I decided to back out of my initial plans for Chapter 6 and do a rewrite. As of early August this year, my new plans for Chapter 6 are now finalized.

The only issue now is that my revision ended up making Chapter 6 just as long as, if not longer than Chapter 5. This brings us to present day where I am not only working on Guild functionality, a long overdue feature that should've been added 2 years ago, but also working on a Chapter that has essentially doubled in size. Had I went with my original plans, I think the story would have suffered greatly so I feel that this was the correct course of action, but obviously this isn't doing me any favors in terms of getting a new release out in a timely manner.

So now you may have two questions after reading this.

1. Why *did* it take you so long to work on the next update/get this Chapter straightened out?

   Unfortunately, the answer to this isn't that satisfying. I simply got very lazy. My obligations to the project I mentioned in a previous Devlog started in Janurary, but ended back in June so there's no reason for this 3 month delay. I just ended up not working on the game immediately after.

2. This means you're officially working on Chapter 6 now, correct? Will you be creating a Progress Meter like with the previous update?

   Yes, work is now starting on Chapter 6! The old progress meter was nice, but I felt that the contents were far too vague. I may instead take a different approach where I list out exactly what needs to be accomplished such as how many dungeons, puzzles and boss fights need to be completed. This has the downside of lightly spoiling the contents of the upcoming Chapter, so I will need to think on it more.