QSP Abandoned Jack-o-Nine-Tails [v2.2.3] [Old Huntsman + Community development]

[sarinee]

A gladiatrix contract slave with B+ endurance, C- empathy, S+ temper, S+ intellgence, A+ nature, B+ pride.
Day 9, her endurance fell back to C-, due to the wounds and 3 red energy stars from arena fight. She will refuse to take drugs and there was no much I can do.
Day 10, she was willing to tell her opinions on me, I gave my weapon to her, but winning the same tier sparring partner didn't improve her endurance, which makes me confused, it did for my strength.

And she can't easily defeat the Shinobi.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

Ok so I finally figured out a way out of the death spiral (Encourage & Explain her Situation 3 days in a row, make rules only for cooking, cleaning and orgasm denial, autocast buffs, buy her a sundress) but it's basically the same with every slave now which gets really repetitive. Fear approach would technically also work but tanks her motivation so much that training times go way up. And you don't have that time

Because now I'm running into trouble with upkeep. The upkeep is insanely high. I'm pumping out D Slaves like a madman (cant train anything else in 10 days) but I can only break even. The House costs 500 easy, plus food etc you end up with something like 700/2100$ costs per week/month.

Gotta do 3 C Slaves every month if you wanna beat that.

Again, why make the game that much harder? I wanna enjoy myself here, not become a "pro"-Jack-o-Nine-Tails-player or figure out the best min/max strategy. This is a singleplayer porn game for gods sake, we don't play these for the "challenge"

Edit: Also, I think this is a bug: The fiend from the Slums doesn't grow. Isabella has milked it every day for 60 days now and its still stage one

Edit 2: Uninstalled the Dev verison. It was getting absolutely ridiculous.

- I was savescumming constantly to get perfect traits (fit, intelligent, yet obedient,) since you just dont have the time to train anything but skills in 10 days
- Only using guild contracts because you can't afford auctions
- only training assistants and servants because anything else would take too long,
using every trick i know and then STILL barely getting by or actually still getting a gameover because for some unknown reason the guildmaster would not pay a quality bonus and you'd end up with 450 bucks instead of 750+

Eventually I realized that even in the best case scenario I was repeating a boring routine just to barely survive financially

Dude, you might be a master at this game now, know all the variables and tricks by heart and be bored by anything but perfect play, but most of us are not. There are characters for hard mode, make something even more punishing than Jonny if you like, but the base game shouldn't be almost impossible to beat even with good stats unless played in a very specific "right" way...

Thanks for trying the dev build and sharing your feedback.

Regarding the fiend, what was Isabella's skill level in fiend milking? It should grow to the second phase after around a dozen milkings if her skill level is D-, so if that's not happening then there's a bug. Puzzling, because in my current game the fiend is growing just fine. Edit: Just tested this with a new game. Isabella needs to be taught, otherwise when she milks the fiend it just rapes her and it won't grow from just that. Isabella won't accept the training if she's in the slave role but if you use train assistant -> sex training, she will accept it. Really, Isabella should be refusing to milk the fiend as an assistant also, because she's Proud and Willful and Lively and Clever and her obedience when you first get her is not very high. Fiend milking has a high obedience threshold, and Isabella is moronic so you can't frighten her, which means even after you lower her pride to Unashamed, you also need to raise her mood to at least Pleased before she'll agree to a fiend milking lesson as a slave. But the assistant role bypasses a lot of the obedience checks so it's a bit of a loophole at the moment.

Regarding upkeep. The costs are meant to be challenging but not so high that they force you to churn low-level slaves; your experience suggests that we might need to scale them down a bit. On the other hand, normal games start in the Slums, not in an apartment, and living in the Slums while you're working on your first few guild contracts can save you a lot of sparks. Do you think that the game should be easy if you immediately jump into an apartment rental and bypass the "slumming it" experience at the beginning?

You were playing a normal start with M'lord, correct? Did you immediately rent an apartment in the Taurus distract? Did you immediately get Isabella? Did you make her do the accounting? Even if you don't train her at all, she'll be saving sparks after a few decades as her secretary skill levels up just from doing the accounting. Billing seems to be around (below) 600 sparks with just you and Isabella and no extra rentals, so your 700/decade sounds about right. M'lord starts with 2500$, so if he immediately gets an apartment, he can live on his savings for about 3 decades.

There's also supplemental income from arena battles (at a minimum, whichever slave you're currently training can go to the arena and bring in 50$ per decade, plus Isabella/your assistant can go also if you have at least B+ guild rep, and after becoming an arena champion your gladiatrix can bring in over 100 sparks, so that's 150-200$ per decade just from battles; add races [Isabella makes a great pony] and you have another 50$ to 150$). So in total you can get 200 - 250$ of guaranteed income from the arena every decade, with another 100$ or so from the races if you maintain a winning streak [which Isabella can do]. So an average bill of 700 is offset 25-33%.

How long does it usually take for you to train a C+ or a B+ slave?

On normal obedience difficulty, a slave with average attributes (B+ temperament/intellect/nature and C- pride "Proud") qualifies as D- with 2 B+ skills and 4 D- common skills, optimistic mood, no devotion, and no aura stats above two (2 fear/taming/habit, 1 awareness). If the slave has lower temperament/intellect/nature or pride, obedience will be higher. So save scumming for optimal attributes shouldn't be necessary, although avoiding above-average temperament and nature means you reach D- earlier.

Once you have positive obedience and mood, the slave begins passively gaining devotion. If you give her intimate rewards (spend time or erotic), and you're not doing something that slows progress (like forcing rules she hates, or she has despair or spoiling), she should reach 1 devotion 5-7 days after reaching positive obedience. It can be faster if you have access to techniques that require high master skills / prior investment, like using spells Adverto Servili and Delikacia that also raise devotion, or giving the slave a Philtre potion which requires S+ alchemy assistant and a fiend that has grown enough to produce some mucus. So if it takes you 5 days to get a slave to positive obedience (on normal difficulty, 5 days should be plenty), you can easily reach D+ within a decade.

Now to qualify for C- the slave just needs some sex skills (D- in petting and D- in demonstration is enough) and a few more D- common skills (2 B+ skills and 9 D- is enough, and you'll get one of those "for free" from the arena if you send the slave there: D- gladiatrix -- and you can raise pet skill passively by enabling the pet rule once the slave has positive obedience). All of this assumes the slave started as a blank slate, but mature and young slaves usually have some sex skills already, and slaves often start with some common skills too.

Now to reach C+ rank you need a bit more sex training (C- petting and C- demonstration is enough) and a bit more common skills (raising two of the D- skills to C- is enough).

You can focus on a narrower set of skills and raise them higher instead of spreading out and getting many to D-, but of course training slows down as you progress to higher ranks.

While it's not ideal, you can also take loans to buy yourself an extra decade now so you don't end up in a cycle of training bottom-tier slaves. A 500 spark loan gives you 30 days and you lose 100$ on the repayment. With 500 sparks you can easily afford to buy a cheap slave from the market and then you have almost three decades to train her before the debt is called in. After you've repaid your first 500$ loan, you can take a 1000 spark loan that gives you 40 days (losing 250$ on the repayment).

Guild auctions as an income source were a key factor that I looked at for the rental costs. A D+ slave at guild auction can bring in 1000 sparks. A C+ slave at guild auction can bring in 3500 sparks. A B+ slave can bring in 5000+. Etc. To get higher auction value, you can make a slave appealing to a wider range of aucton participants by training her in multiple specializations. Also, if you spruce her up before the auction (raise her charm), it can drive the bidding higher. After a sale like this, you have time for a longer project. And after a longer project, you have even more sparks. Once you've built up enough of a buffer to train high-tier slave, you should be able to easily stay ahead of the costs as long as you don't burn down your savings carelessly.

What if you take the fear route instead? You can't reach C+ rank without at least one star of devotion, but you can substitute 4 fear in the aura for 1 devotion to qualify for C-. You can sell a C- slave for 850 sparks to various NPCs, or turn in for guild contract for 425 sparks plus speed award [which for a C- contract can be up to 500 sparks if you take contract and turn in slave same day, for a total of 925 sparks, plus the prepayment of 100 sparks], or sell at auction for considerably more.

So far, we're still considering that you're focusing all of your attention on training one slave at a time (with an assistant). If you start to train multiple slaves at once, you can rapidly increase your income. The "pig" slot in the barn and the dungeon require no special training to place a slave there, so at a minimum, you can train 1-2 extra slaves every day (using school/tutors/assistant to augment master's energy for common skills training). In my view, that's min/maxing and shouldn't be necessary to manage costs, but if you find yourself short, this is another way to get back on track.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

Day 9, her endurance fell back to C-, due to the wounds and 3 red energy stars from arena fight. She will refuse to take drugs and there was no much I can do.

You could go to Technosphere medical center if her endurance was so close to the edge.

Re Shinobi difficulty, what weapon did you give her and what was her gladiatrix skill level? As for raising endurance, it is different between slaves and master, slaves need to defeat higher tier to raise endurance, master can defeat same tier to raise strength. Originally I wanted it to be the same but it's a lot faster for slaves to gain endurance in other ways than it is for the master, so it was a balance concession we made. Conceptually, master strength is not equivalent to slave endurance.

The reason for requiring higher tier for slaves is to have a reward for sparring against the top-tier opponents. For master, fighting at top tier is rewarded by raising domination up to B+.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

Is the farm still under development? Far as I can tell the farmhand doesn't play much of a role. Cows degrade quickly unless you are doing a lot of slave swapping which feels a bit intense for a slaver trying to make a passive income.

Farmhand slows the rate that cow nature and temperament attributes decline. If you have an S+ cow and take her out for arena battles every decade, you can hold those attributes steady if not improve them (orgasms also boost temperament). Intellect and endurance will decline regardless, but are not important for a cow (assuming you plan to sell her as a cow or just keep her for milk). If you want to maintain or raise those, take her out once or twice per decade for a bit of focused training in athletics/gladiatrix/something intellectual. You can increase those attributes faster than they drop.

Farmhand reduces food bill for the farm, increases output and allows some automation (see farmhand orders in business menu -> barn from main screen). She canautomatically slaughter pigs when fat enough, automatically take prisoner as new pig after slaughter, and overfeed egglayer to increase production.

 

[ceigepup]

Farmhand slows the rate that cow nature and temperament attributes decline. If you have an S+ cow and take her out for arena battles every decade, you can hold those attributes steady if not improve them (orgasms also boost temperament). Intellect and endurance will decline regardless, but are not important for a cow (assuming you plan to sell her as a cow or just keep her for milk). If you want to maintain or raise those, take her out once or twice per decade for a bit of focused training in athletics/gladiatrix/something intellectual. You can increase those attributes faster than they drop.

Farmhand reduces food bill for the farm, increases output and allows some automation (see farmhand orders in business menu -> barn from main screen). She canautomatically slaughter pigs when fat enough, automatically take prisoner as new pig after slaughter, and overfeed egglayer to increase production.

Ah! I was ignorant of the farmhand options.

On cow endurance, does it really not matter? Have a cow I've let go too long. Super low endurance. She's happy about it, not mind broken, four stars devotion, and the outcast animal farm is refusing her.

Thanks for the reply. Really grateful to see the work that is still going into this game. Really isn't anything else quite like it.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

Ah! I was ignorant of the farmhand options.

On cow endurance, does it really not matter? Have a cow I've let go too long. Super low endurance. She's happy about it, not mind broken, four stars devotion, and the outcast animal farm is refusing her.

Thanks for the reply. Really grateful to see the work that is still going into this game. Really isn't anything else quite like it.

A cow with S+ endurance is worth an extra 225$ compared to a cow with C- endurance. Worth the effort to maintain? You decide. It does not affect lactation.

If you are using the cow as a gladiatrix regularly, she regains 10 endurance points per battle; she also gains 1 point each time you "impregnate" her; she loses 2 per night in the barn. So if you impregnate her every other day and she fights in the arena every decade, her endurance will hold steady. If you impregnate her more frequently, or take her out for other training, she can gain.

Her attitude about being a cow depends on her cow skill level, which also rises on its own when she lives in the barn. Her attributes will degrade faster the lower her cow skill, so ideally you would train her to S+ cow skill before you leave her in the barn, but in practice if you put her in at B+ then she'll probably reach S+ on her own before her attributes drop, if they were average at the start. Especially if you're taking her out periodically for training and having her fight in the arena. Be careful with the cow training and impregnations too, they also degrade her stats.

 

[sarinee]

Day1,bought all things I needed, livery, wizard robe, aketon,stiletto for sparring fight, a whip for slave fight, an Aramid Suit as armor.
maid suit, leotard, rubber gloves, soft slippers, sneakers, a hijab, and a lether collar, 10 faeri's pollens(25 in total, during the whole game)
A gladiatrix contract slave with B+ endurance, C- empathy, S+ temper, S+ intellgence, A+ nature, B+ pride.

Day 1-6, Asking, then psycological pressure punishing from intensity 1 to 5

Day 7, First arena fight won, she was slightly wounded, with red energy stars, they drain a lot of strength rates in the following 3 days. She got merit for the first time, 5 merit, rewarded by a mini pony to keep her in good mood, proved useless because she was wearing soft slippers.

Day 9, Her endurance fell back to C-. She will refuse to take drugs and there was already no much I can do.

Day 10, She was willing to tell her opinions on me, I gave my weapon to her, but winning the same tier sparring partner didn't improve her endurance, which makes me confused, it did for my strength.

Day 11, I have to keep my promise, to torture her, I faced her resisting fight, defeated her, then beated her(=4), her mood fell to the bottom.

Day 12, She flee, but arrested and taken back because of lether collar and guild brand. Fearness is increased to 4, despair 1. I had no enough energy by accident, the first 10 pollens ran out, so I decided not to punish her.

Day 13, The indulgence ended up with 1 spoiling. And she is still feeling guilt, punished by a promise to torture her.

Day 14, Fearness is hard to increase further, at a level of 4, so I defeated her and raped her. Despair is further increased, but sopiling disappeared.

Day 15-16, I felt something wrong with the fight setup section.


As intended, she should have 2 x 10 = 20 health
2 x 5 +50 = 60 stamina
10 x 4 + 10 x 3 = 70 spirit.

That means I always ended up with a red enegy star. Then punish her cost one more. Which turns a decreasing in her endurance and I have to spend another day to give her a break.

Day 17, Anena fight won again, I instantly went to the medical center to cure her. The 5 merit was rewarded with a warm plaid, I mistaked it for the toy which improve her sleeping quality, I couldn't find any information of them except where in the codes.

Day 18, I checked her aura, 4 fearness, 0 despair, 2 haibt, 2 awareness, 0 taming, 0 spoil, 0 devotion. obedience -4, I need to keep on punishing her with higher intensity measures to further increase her fearness, I chosed the painful bondage, keeping using a painful way to train her taming.

Day 21, She finally told me her dislikes, it's a pity that she is not afraid of anything.

Day 22, the high intensity punishment increased her despair to 2 again, obedience -3, She finally started to accept housekeeping training, which means I can speed up her auras training. A new rule increased: Act as maid.

Day 23, Repayment date is approaching, I have to compete more in colosseum to increase my strength, because she can't, I have to teach her myself, or using lessons and tutors which was not affordable.

Day 27, She was willing to tell me her affinities, she loves being a pet. And on the same day, I inscreased my strength to B+.

Day 28-30, 3 days before repayment. I keep on training her sports, with proper wearings and good mood form faeri's spa, she is always doing well.

Day 30, bill day, 4 sparks left.

Day 31, Her endurance is trained to B+, 5 fearness, 0 despair, 3 haibt, 3 awareness, 1 taming, 0 obedience. Still 1 obedience to D- rank. I rudely punished her for 3 times. She is D- rank now.
I turned her in, 250+100-50 = 300, not enough to repay.

Day 32-37, Guess what, I didn't die of the moneylender, I found another bug!

Suggestion: items effects which benefits her moods no longer stack, that means the mini pony nearly became an expensive garbage.
Gift items with specific effects should provide more descriptions.
Prevent players from sparring when the only have half an energy star. Or they need to exit to check energy then enter repeatedly.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

Day1,bought all things I needed, livery, wizard robe, aketon,stiletto for sparring fight, a whip for slave fight, an Aramid Suit as armor.

Was this a zero-skills start? Normal difficulty? How many starting sparks? This is a lot of unnecessary expenses before you have steady income.

Putting the rest in a spoiler...

Spoiler

You don't have permission to view the spoiler content. Log in or register now.

 

[jokez80]

After playing through the dev version with the increased costs, here are my thoughts:


While adding challenge to the game is a good idea, the increased rent costs are way too excessive. The main issue is that it forces you to play a min-max playstyle, having to carefully plan out your training weeks in advance, otherwise you risk running out of money halfway through. You CANNOT casually play through this game as a result.

I also found myself having to churn out D-/D+ ranks just to stay afloat, which by itself is not a fun gameplay loop. With such high rental costs, I found myself with close to 0 sparks often. As a result I HAD to churn out low rank slaves since I wouldn’t have any time to invest in better slaves. It seems like loans and guild contracts were nerfed as well since they only bought time for a decade or two until I was even more screwed when I needed to pay back.

Also, I had to savescum to make sure I had the perfect high endurance/easy to train slaves that were cheap to stand any chance, otherwise I would spend too much time training their endurance and obedience. I couldn’t waste a single day trying to reroll at the slave market. A newer player who doesn’t understand how to pick the right slave would have no chance.

I consider myself a pretty experienced player, as I had beaten the game multiple times in previous versions. However I tried playing Johny on normal and literally stood no chance. I’m assuming only the devs if any could beat it. I had to switch to an easier character on easy, and even then I had to cheat in 1-2k sparks when I had no other option.

Lastly it further dis-incentivizes the player from moving to a more expensive house. Why would I pay an extra 550 sparks per week for 1 moodlet buff? The only feasible option was to just stay in Outcasts and try to minimize the loss with the free farm. It’s just too expensive to move up, even for roleplaying purposes.

Rental costs and the value of higher-ranked slaves were increased in dev build to make cashflow management an ongoing challenge. Selling a single high-ranked slave can give you enough sparks for several decades at the increased rates to buy time for a longer project. Guild contracts give prepayments which also help somewhat. You can train multiple slaves at once, with dungeon and barn slots having their energy refreshed each day. You can use tutors and school to augment master's energy, especially for cheap low-level training. Guild auctions with slaves trained in multiple specializations and decent charm rating can be a good source of income between other projects. Even a D+ slave trained in multiple specializations can bring in over 1000 sparks at auction. And a D+ slave like that can be trained in less than a decade. Raise guild reputation to at least B+ and you can have 2 arena battles + race each decade for additional income (~300 sparks with champions). Use a trained secretary to reduce your billing, too. If all else fails, go back to the slums to reduce your costs.

This issue is that this is assuming:

1: The player as the knowledge to take advantage of these streams of income

2: Their character has a capability to actually obtain this income

3: It is late enough in the game that the character has all this set up properly.

When you’re just starting off, you don’t have access to any of this income, and so you’re just completely screwed with the weekly costs.


My suggestions:

• The increased difficulty with weekly costs has to be a toggle-able option at least. If these costs made it into the base game most players would give up and quit a few decades in. Would it be possible to create a ‘challenge mode’ button in new game or options so people can choose enable it if they want a challenge? Ideally you can toggle it on/off at any time in options.

• Instead of allocating the increased costs to the rent, could you instead create a weekly money sink like a debt you have to pay off every week? Just like the loan gameplay mechanic in Recettear or Club Bifrost. That way not only can you create a ramping challenge based on how much time has passed for people who want a challenge, but you can even attach a story element to justify why you’re paying extra money. I’m not familiar with the coding side but I’m assuming you it would be easier to edit one variable instead of multiple house costs.

• Is it in the plans to create a more detailed guide on the game concepts in-game? I’ve realized that the most of the complex concepts I learned only through the wiki or scouring the forum. IMO a newer player who didn’t want to check external resources would not be able to use many mechanics of the game because they are just not explained clearly enough in game (ie the effects of rules, armour stats, women’s clothing & gift effects). I was thinking you could receive a slave training guide that goes into more detail, like the wiki. You either get it from the slaver’s guild at the beginning or it gets unlocked later on.

Otherwise, I’ve been really impressed by all the new features and quality of life upgrades that have been implemented! The devs have been doing a great job.

 

[sarinee]

...

Oh I forgot to say, it's a hardcore zero start with 200 sparks in 2.2.2 dev version. So encourage, threat, magic, and most punishment is ineffective. My supermancy is definitely weaker.



And I didn't tried a lot of times to get an ideal contract slave.

 

[sarinee]

Then for the second try, I need to consider reducing daily money uses.
Increasing magic ability when your first slave has a strong will is a mistake decision.
Smelling pollen for training in the colosseum is not that worthy, it's too inefficient.
An armor may not be needed.
Bathing too frequently, maybe no need to bath everyday, especially living in slum.
Choose a slave whose temper and nature stays at B+ or C-, the rebell of psy-status with S+ temper and A+ nature restrained a lot.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

After playing through the dev version with the increased costs, here are my thoughts:


While adding challenge to the game is a good idea, the increased rent costs are way too excessive. The main issue is that it forces you to play a min-max playstyle, having to carefully plan out your training weeks in advance, otherwise you risk running out of money halfway through. You CANNOT casually play through this game as a result.

Clearly, for normal difficulty, I'll have to tone down the challenge a bit. Alas.

I also found myself having to churn out D-/D+ ranks just to stay afloat, which by itself is not a fun gameplay loop. With such high rental costs, I found myself with close to 0 sparks often. As a result I HAD to churn out low rank slaves since I wouldn’t have any time to invest in better slaves. It seems like loans and guild contracts were nerfed as well since they only bought time for a decade or two until I was even more screwed when I needed to pay back.

Discussed at length in my earlier post: https://f95zone.to/threads/jack-o-n...ntsman-community-development.390/post-7608858

But if I reduce the costs a bit for normal, you'll have an easier time of it anyway.

Also, I had to savescum to make sure I had the perfect high endurance/easy to train slaves that were cheap to stand any chance, otherwise I would spend too much time training their endurance and obedience. I couldn’t waste a single day trying to reroll at the slave market. A newer player who doesn’t understand how to pick the right slave would have no chance.

Also discussed in the previous post. Also, there is an easy obedience difficulty setting, which you can toggle at any time from the game options menu, which significantly reduces the amount of time/effort to train an obedient slave.

I consider myself a pretty experienced player, as I had beaten the game multiple times in previous versions. However I tried playing Johny on normal and literally stood no chance. I’m assuming only the devs if any could beat it. I had to switch to an easier character on easy, and even then I had to cheat in 1-2k sparks when I had no other option.

Johny on normal is still easier than a hard custom game with zero stats, and that's still doable, but it's definitely a challenge mode.

Lastly it further dis-incentivizes the player from moving to a more expensive house. Why would I pay an extra 550 sparks per week for 1 moodlet buff? The only feasible option was to just stay in Outcasts and try to minimize the loss with the free farm. It’s just too expensive to move up, even for roleplaying purposes.

The main cost increase is moving out of the slums. The relative cost from Camira to Serpentine is small. Living in each district has some advantages.

Free farm in Camira helps with developing some extra income streams to build up some savings.

Living in Serpentine gives energy-free access to cryo storage and medical center and the "spend time at the beach" reward uses only half an energy star [for the slave - for master with bull ring, it's energy-free] when you live there, which is handy for taking obedient slaves on cheap dates to raise their devotion.

Living in Bull district allows you to reach Respectable living standard which is necessary to join the gentlemen's club, which lets you reach S+ brand reputation sooner and boosts master's strength up to A+ and helps keep his mood up, which helps with training.

Living in Necropolis or White Town is a luxury, as the benefits by that point aren't really significant (eliminate negative moodlet, easier to keep personality stat maxed, zero-energy access to theater date in Necropolis). But the relative cost increase of Necropolis compared to Bull is not that high, and by the time you can afford to live there, you'll be swimming in sparks anyway. Necropolis has an "included" boudoir; in the Bull district, it's an add-on. By the time you can live in White Town, you're already a patrician and almost certainly have the bull ring, so energy-free access to white town isn't important.

This issue is that this is assuming:

1: The player as the knowledge to take advantage of these streams of income

2: Their character has a capability to actually obtain this income

3: It is late enough in the game that the character has all this set up properly.

When you’re just starting off, you don’t have access to any of this income, and so you’re just completely screwed with the weekly costs.

No one forces you to rent an expensive apartment before you're able to afford it. Yes, it's a change from how things used to be, but it's a logical one. The game makes clear that living in the city is a privilege, not a right. The original rental costs were a joke. I'm sure we can find a middle ground where it's still something that requires consideration but not to the point where it feels like it's forcing you to min-max or churn low-tier slaves.

My suggestions:

• The increased difficulty with weekly costs has to be a toggle-able option at least. If these costs made it into the base game most players would give up and quit a few decades in. Would it be possible to create a ‘challenge mode’ button in new game or options so people can choose enable it if they want a challenge? Ideally you can toggle it on/off at any time in options.

I'm thinking it should be based on the game difficulty. Normal can be, say, 1/2 what it is now.

• Instead of allocating the increased costs to the rent, could you instead create a weekly money sink like a debt you have to pay off every week? Just like the loan gameplay mechanic in Recettear or Club Bifrost. That way not only can you create a ramping challenge based on how much time has passed for people who want a challenge, but you can even attach a story element to justify why you’re paying extra money. I’m not familiar with the coding side but I’m assuming you it would be easier to edit one variable instead of multiple house costs.

Cost of living already adds a variable amount of "other costs" to the decade billing. Depending where you live, you have a choice between the base cost of living or one level higher.

• Is it in the plans to create a more detailed guide on the game concepts in-game? I’ve realized that the most of the complex concepts I learned only through the wiki or scouring the forum. IMO a newer player who didn’t want to check external resources would not be able to use many mechanics of the game because they are just not explained clearly enough in game (ie the effects of rules, armour stats, women’s clothing & gift effects). I was thinking you could receive a slave training guide that goes into more detail, like the wiki. You either get it from the slaver’s guild at the beginning or it gets unlocked later on.

Tutorial texts are updated with more info. Various in-game help texts have been updated/added also. There's more that can be done in this area, no doubt.

Otherwise, I’ve been really impressed by all the new features and quality of life upgrades that have been implemented! The devs have been doing a great job.

Thanks!

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

Oh I forgot to say, it's a hardcore zero start with 200 sparks in 2.2.2 dev version. So encourage, threat, magic, and most punishment is ineffective. My supermancy is definitely weaker.

And I didn't tried a lot of times to get an ideal contract slave.

Fair enough. It's a challenge start, so use every possible advantage you can and conserve sparks as much as possible, but consider that training delays are a cost too. Passive taming from items like steel collar, crown of thorns, nipple chain, even steel ring piercings, can offset the extra difficulty of a slave with above-average attributes. Strategic over-punishment (intentionally inducing despair) can be useful at times. Every slave is different, and picking an optimal strategy is important when you have barely any margin of error.

Then for the second try, I need to consider reducing daily money uses.
Increasing magic ability when your first slave has a strong will is a mistake decision.
Smelling pollen for training in the colosseum is not that worthy, it's too inefficient.
An armor may not be needed.
Bathing too frequently, maybe no need to bath everyday, especially living in slum.
Choose a slave whose temper and nature stays at B+ or C-, the rebell of psy-status with S+ temper and A+ nature restrained a lot.

Agree with your conclusions here, though again, it's possible to succeed with a difficult slave too, just reduces margin of error more.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

Updated dev build with reduced rental prices for normal and easy game difficulty. This is game difficulty, based on the start you picked, not obedience difficulty, the menu option.

Also, the debt collector strike has ended.

 

[sarinee]

The second zero-start try, day 24, already meet the demands of a ponypet girl contract.

This time she begins with A+ temper and endurance, but low empathy and intelligence.
I still bought an armor. To increase my flagelation ability, in order to train her in ponyplay.

Metal collar, thorns headwear and nipple chain helped a lot in improving taming.
But they kept her unhappy for most of the time.
When she started became obedient, her psy-status changed from resisting into frightened.

The long-lasting low mood status ended with a murder attempt with 1 despair.
She get injured, leaving B+ bruises, but gain a lot of obedience through fear, instinct and despair.

I started to take off her wearings which do bad to her moods, but the most efficient way is to train her and reward her at a high merit. That takes time to go through.
Unfortunately, soon she tried to murder me for a second time, I didn't want to harm her severely again, so I loaded the save, giving her a mini pony reward with no merit. At a cost of 1 spoil, it was finally getting better and better.

Now I'm rewarding her with Gethsemane and Golden Cage to clear her spoil.

It took long to train her obedience, and if I turn her in now, I still don't have enough money to repay. There's 13 days left before repayment date, and 23 days before contract deadline. Let me have a try to see how further can she go.


Edit: Day 30, 30 sparks left, she is ranking C-, with 4 fearness, 0 despair, 3 habit, 3 awareness, 3 instinct, 1 spoil (don't know why, because of 2 rewards a day?), 1 devotion. obedience over 10, 7 days before repayment date.

I turned her in, 250 + quality175 + speed110 = 535 in total. Then I have 555$, not enough for the repayment, but I can take another contract to get some prepayment.

 

[Ronnual]

Hey guys, could somebody please give me a link to dev version 2.2.2?I think i only found beta version of 2.2.1, but i'm not really sure..

 

[sarinee]

I took the second contract slave, then found that, all clothes were missing, I didn't send any cloth for gift. Is it designed to be like this?

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

I took the second contract slave, then found that, all clothes were missing, I didn't send any cloth for gift. Is it designed to be like this?

Yes, by design clothes once worn are bound to the slave and cannot be transferred.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

Hey guys, could somebody please give me a link to dev version 2.2.2?I think i only found beta version of 2.2.1, but i'm not really sure..

You must be registered to see the links

Links in Dev version section on main page.

 

[ImperatorAugustusTertius]

Now I'm rewarding her with Gethsemane and Golden Cage to clear her spoil.

Golden cage increases spoil a bit along with devotion. Massages at the spa increase spoil a bit too. If she is already spoiled, these may make her stay spoiled longer.