I think leaving him with just the shield would be pretty funny. It could also have some interesting abilities like in the Shield Hero.
As for the adventuring system, I think changing it to in-game time would work slightly better.
I've come up with a system, I don't know whether you'll like it but I'll try to explain what I have in mind, maybe you'll find some of the ideas helpful. It's kind of complicated but very promising to me.
It could be made in the following way.
Let's introduce some basic concepts, rules and standards first. I suggest:
1] Dividing the 24hour day into 6 parts :
DAWN/SUNRISE 2h [6:00-8:00],
MORNING 4h [8:00-12:00],
DAYTIME 4h [12:00-16:00],
EVENING 4h [16:00-20:00],
DUSK/SUNSET 2h [20:00-22:00],
NIGHT 8h [22:00-6:00];
Then make it so that:
2] Girls in the guild have the following attributes:
--[TYPE] - what kind of jobs they can do
--[TIER] - what tier of jobs they can do
--[STAMINA] - for how long each day they can work for, maybe (optional, base 8h) increased with Tiers, skills or items and consumables, for example 8h/day on Tier ★ & Tier ★★, 10h/d on Tier ★★★. You cannot interact with the girl if she's on a task though.
--[TIME FRAME] - during which ours the girl can work, which basicly translates to setting when she sleeps
--[WORK DAYS] - which days will be work days for her, our girls need some time for themselves. I suggest having Sunday free from work for all girls, and one additional day for each girl depending on her personal needs (lore).
--[XP] - xp required to lvlup to next tier
--[SKILLS AND ABILITIES] - unlocked through adventuring, quests or items skills allowing her to do certain jobs or do it better, expanding the time frame, boosting xp gain, etc
--[BASE GEAR] - base gear required to do jobs of X Tier. If you want your girl to be able to do ★★Tier jobs, you need to upgrade her gear.
--[SIDE TOOLS/GEAR] - (optional but I think I'd introduce more depth) additional gear, trinkets and tools that buff her or allow her to do certain side jobs like gather specific materials or buff the speed of questing (-2h/-4h to the task length), changing the time frame or -2h to the length of required sleep
3] Tasks - They have the following attributes:
--[TYPE] - for what kind of girl the task is, a tinkerer (fix something), a fighter, a fisher etc
--[LENGTH] - for how many hours the task needs to be worked on to finish it
--[TIER] - How difficult the task is - it can only be attempted by a girl who has reached that tier of proficiency in her field of expertise, AND has the base gear required to do it. I suggest having at least 3, max 5 tiers(represented by stars for example).
--[SIDE TOOLS/GEAR] - special tasks requiring special tools, like a special pickaxe or something to do.
--[TIME FRAME] - during which day parts the task can be worked on, for example a day task 10:00-18:00, an early task 6:00-12:00, or a night task 22:00-4:00 (for our cat and demon ladies).
--[GIRL XP] - how much XP it will give to the girl upon finishing
--[HERO XP] - how much XP it will give to the hero (if you want our hero to lvlup this way)
--[TIME LIMIT] - how much time does the guild have to finish the task upon accepting it. Tasks could be stopped, making the girl come back to guild or wherever she hangs out at the time so you can interact with her, but if you dillydally for too long you can fail the task
--[PENALTY] - money penalty for failing or canceling the task, no penalty if cancelled on the same day or next day.
--[MONEY REWARD] - How much money for the task would be rewarded, if any (could be an item-only task), scaling with tier ofc
--[ITEM REWARDS] - Type, amount of items rewarded, if any, scaling with tier
--[ABILITY REWARD] - (OPTIONAL, but I think very interesting) Special, rare jobs, possibly unlocked with main storyline quests or personal storyline for particular girls. They could allow the girls to do new types of work or just provide passive buffs for them like +20% money earned or an ability to mine particular types of minerals or gather other types of loot.
Tasks would refresh once or twice a week (every Monday or Monday&Thursday) , with some more important tasks staying up for longer or quest tasks being permanently up until finished.
So let's have an example to better imagine how it would work:
[★] ROCKSHELL CRAB HUNTING
It's Monday Morning. (8:00). We have a Tier ★ task, for a girl with a hammer.
The length is 16h, you can work on it from 12:00 to 20:00. The task doesn't require any additional tools.
It will reward you with 60 copper coins, and rockshells 1-3 (optional, material for crafting or for selling if you ever want to implement crafting to the game). It will give the girl 30XP, and 10XP to the hero(optional, look up). The task has to be finished within 7 days after accepting. The penalty for failing the quest would be 20 copper coins.
This is a job for Evie. She has a hammer and accepts work between 8:00 - 20:00. We click on a task that has an icon and short summary on it, then a big window pops up. We can read the whole details about the task, and we can select a girl we want to do the task by clicking on her icon. Below we have a calendar with all 7 days in the week, and hours settings for each day. The yellow bar below hours is a girls working range and will change depending on girl, and the crosed out day will also differ. By default, the game will suggest the fastest solution, 8 hours in the Monday and 8 hours in the Wednesday, but we want to spend some time with her on Wednesday so we go for 4h in the Wednesday during Daytime (12-16) and for 4 hours on Friday for also 4 hours in the Evening.
The remaining hours need to be exactly 0 for the Accept button to work, we can't work overtime and work not long enough.
The UI could look like this:
So here it is, what I imagined could be a cool system.
I know it'd take a while to code and seems a bit complicated at first, though.
But it has a lot of pros for the game.
Standarization of time would allow you to better control when things happen and the progress of time during fishing and other Hero's activities. Tiers of gear upgrades etc would make a fun, grindable economy that players would have to invest into. (proficiency)Tiers of girls could unlock additional quests and love scenes. It could also leave a lot of room for future content, be it crafting, loot, skills, leveling etc.
If I forgot about something I'll reply later, I didn't sleep almost at all today so my mind's not clear to be honest so I could've miscalculated something or forgot to mention a thing or two, please bear with me