Quick tips for some of the more 'annoying' mechanics of the game
'tldr' at the bottom of this post
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Getting Elisa to appear -
Don't waste food jumping between screens to try to get the no spawn Kyo screen as others have advised. That will only make another annoying mechanic (food) even more annoying.
As soon as you enter the area just click on Kyo and either pay her the debt (if its makeup, chocolate, balloons, teddies, fragrance) you only lose about $200 overall and money is vatly less important than food. Just remember to stock up on Wednesday from the market stall in town... carrying a stock of 20 of each is cheap and removes the annoyance of Kyo blocking Elisa
OR (
my preferred method)
Just say no to paying the debt. You lose 20 popularity. Elisa can then be clicked. If you have the slaves Vanessa and Tanya they can then be used twice a week to gain popularity (+100 popularity base, and +100 popularity if you have kept them in good condition from the Monday spa event). so you can get 400 popularity per week using the slaves in school and only lose 100 popularity per week just refusing to pay the tribute... so +300 popularity profit. This isn't a grinding punishment when done this way since you don't lose food and have a net gain of popularity over the week
And of course don't forget to send Elisa to the car wash.
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Ok now you are not wasting food to get rid of Kyo
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Everyday, use the workout option at breakfast. You will get +25 food and +50 strength and on weekends you get the bonus of +50 food and +50 speech as well since the girls get to stand around and chat after the workout (this is in effect the dev giving you a free spaghetti meal bonus at weekends since you cannot buy it at school on weekend)
Note - If you have willow or Elisa sleep at your house at the weekend you can't use this method, and you lose the option to take care of Karla.. so don't let Elisa or Willow sleep over at weekend unless you really want the sex scene and don't mind going to buy both the pizza and the gas station meal)
Weekdays - At school after both classes go to the cafeteria and choose the bottom option the "plate of spaghetti and vegetables" which is worth +50 food and +10 strength. You lose a little speech (-15) but no problem, you get free speech (+50) back at home talking to the mirror
Go the gas station and eat there for +70 food and no negative
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Most days this will give you about 210-245 food. That is enough to
Go the gym and collect revenue (and send willow home if you want that)
Go the car wash and set which slaves to work and also restock Mary if needed (important since some game progression is done at the car wash)
Go to the cave and do a perfect mining run hitting both mining spots
Go the headquaters and cash in the fame quest (providing you killed 5 spiders)
Go to the beach resort and hitup Lady X and be the little man whore you always wanted to be (you will lose fame each time tho so maybe try not to be that much of a man whore since money is easy to get) And go slam the blonde gal in the ocean and the two surfers in the changing room for 0 food loss, movment in this area is free
Go home and do your slave management
Go home and study or spend some time with the ladies
Note - What all that means is you can basically do EVERYTHING you need to do. so long as you target 210-245 food each day. Food is not a punishment as has been claimed through this whole thread
Occasionally you might misstep a little on food. NO problem, just go to the town centre and buy pizza if you got it wrong a little.
Note - You need about 20 food to be able to do this without fainting, so recogize you need the pizza before dip below that level. If you are too low to be able to go get pizza just go home and study, nail the fk out of your harem or sleep, it's all free
Note2 - If its Wednesday and you are going to buy Pizza do not stop at the market stall first to stock up. If you have less than 20 food before going to the market stall you will faint after purchase. Go get pizza first and then go the market stall.
To avoid misstepping, you need about 175 food to do perfect cave run. So don't start cave run with less. If you intend to do stuff after cave run then you are going to want
175 if you can still eat at gas station afterwards
Around 195-200 if you've already eaten at gas station but can still go mall and eat pizza afterwards
210 food should get you cash in fame reward also
Note1 - If you have less than 175 food you can just up the left mining spot on a perfect run and then get out of the cave and go do what you need to do
Note 2 - The right mining spot can give as little as 8 coal/carbon which barely covers the cost of the pickaxe, so its not neccessary you really don't need to min /max this game to get ahead. You can get by without hitting both spots so long as you only do the left spot. Though for fame you ideally want to hit up both mining spots if you did not RNG spiders on the way in or way out. Not doing the right mining spot lowers the cost by about 30 food and one pickaxe (for full disclosure tho, you can gain 5 silver or 3 gold. but fuck min maxing when you do not need to with save / reloads
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Oki doki now to the third annoying mechanic - keeping the slaves clean and relaxed
I don't know if this is intended or an exploit buttttttttttt even if you have slaves working at the car wash, they still appear at home.
Its not really practical having the car wash open on monday if you use the spa event and go to classes.. (if you do both classes and go to Spa event you can't collect car wash profit) so you only really use car wash on Tues, Weds, Thurs, Fri
So Sat, Sun, mon, let Karla stay home, and tell her to shower and go pool each day, put her on full defend Tues, Weds, Thurs, Fri.
Vanessa and Tanya go car wash Tuesday
Jaye wednesday
Vanessa and Tanya Thursday
Jaye friday
Use each day to go home and put the relevant slaves into shower and pool as needed.
Karla is easiest to find morning on her days off (C1 or C2)
Vanessa, Tanya and Jaye afternoon, just keep clicking between the sofa icon and the kitchen icon. They will move about randomly and you will get them all in either of those locations (uts the supermarket conundrum. if you go supermaket with a friend and you go to different aisles to get a product... then without a predefined meeting point, if you both go looking for each other you could spend eternity looking for each other. But if one of you just tops in one location the other will eventually find you)
It doesn't take a huge amount of management when you use the exploit of them being at home even when at work...it's literally a few clicks... but yeah... it would be better if this could be automated. Like i dunno, use Elisa or Sophie to set the slaves schedule..and..err.. let us automate into that schedule that they should go take shower and watch netflix and chill. They are slaves not pets. We shouldn't have to micro manage them)
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The three game mechanics i see people complain a lot about are pretty easy to get around so that they aren't an issue at all. And I kinda see why the dev put them in. Every game needs to balance the economy and stop you making ridiculous amounts of money... or karma or love or lust or whatever the dev has based his/hers/they/thems economy on....there simply has to be a sinkhole in a games economy or else its impossible to make an economy a mechanic. it shouldn't make the game grindy (when done correctly) but its a mechanic that is needed none the less. Yup i'll agree it could be more polished this is rough around the edges and makes it frustrating...but.... they aren't game breaking when the player handles them correctly
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The where the fk do i gotta be to trigger the next event mechanic I don't have a fix for sorry. I'm still dumbly running around trying to find out how to buy the private beach and wondering why the fk I trigger alexia in the art room and then the Library and then she just resets back to the art room
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Final note. You can rescue the librarian with level 11 Sophie using save reload a couple of times. You could probably rescue librarian witha lower level Sofia with a huge save and reload grind. I gave up on 10 times at level 10 and did it in 4 times on level 11.All the stuff I mentioned above has the additional benefit in that it removes the need for the save / reload grind, you don't need to mix/max every mining run to get the best result or 1st class to get the best result, you can just accept whatever the rng gives you and come out ahead)... but yeah there is a few moments where save // reload removes the grind.
TLDR
the grindy mechanics of this game aren't actually grindy at all
We all end up grinding the mechanics because we have so little indication of what to do to trigger progression
Solution - FIX YOUR TRIGGERS, FIX PROGRESSION
p.s. for those really struggling with money but you got your head around how easy it is to get food. do cave run left side only with Sophie. go hospital. heal her. eat pizza. go back to cave run and do left side only again. This is a little buggy for me sometimes it doesn't let me mine again. sometimes it does., but if you are save / load edge lord that's how to min/max mining