How to even play it? I already replayed coulntless times, I read all the tutorial, guids and tips on the internet, wiki, and still I can't do anything and can't even complete the tutorial on easy mode. Tried both tutorial and normal game.
No matter what I do and what methods I use, I never was able to maintain a balance, it's always depression, apathy, despair, fear, disobey or other things, no matter what I do. And my character is also always depressed.
And stamina, it's especially confusing. It's always not enough stamina. I remember one time I freed a slave from every possible duty so she literally didn't do anything. And the next day it's still less stamina. They always fainting from doing literally almost nothing. And the worst thing is... exhausting rest. Like how it did developers came to conclusion that rest should reduce stamina? A slave too exhausted to rest. A slave fall in a week-long coma from resting. What the hell? How? I understand that the rest reducing the time left for the slave to do things, but it definetly shouldn't reduce stamina for a slave to fall in a week-long coma (why there is even week-long comas from doing literally almost nothing?).
I seen there is players that is actually able to play it, but I just don't understand a secret formula of playing it, cause all the tutorial, wiki, tips and guids is still not enough. Just how to train at least one (1) slave without breaking it in 1001 possible way?
I played a lot of difficult games, but in most of them the difficulty is understandable and fair. You can play them and even if you fail (even when you are angry) you mostly can understand why. And there I just don't understand what's wrong and can't succeed even a single time even in a tutorial despited reading everything looking at all the information. It's simply frustrating and for me it's unplayable despite how interesting and promising it looks.
Here's a few early game tips;
- For stamina issues, try not to ever let the stars go red. If it does, you'll not only end up with negative stam the next day, you'll slowly drain your strength. Low strength = not good.
- Punishment and rewards should follow the appropriate levels. Going higher on punishment (especially physical ones) will not give better results, makes both sides depressed, and drains stam.
- Choose your slave wisely. Try to find slaves with high endurance, low nature (maybe C-, not too low but certainly not above that), and pride > D-, in that order. I find low nature slaves easier to train in the early game.
- In the early game, always start the day by explaning her position. Then do whatever punishment you have to do, then use encourage (once a day only) to get her mood back up. Low mood for slaves mean they'll be very less likely to obey. An easy way to get her mood up is to put some clothes on her.
- The key here to to get the slave to do things willingly so you dont have to resort to punishment too often. In most cases I'd put a leotard on her and get her to do gymnastics. If this doesn't work, just try other stuff until you find something that clicks.
- Use auspex. Check on obedience level, it should be at least a readable number. If not then you need to get her fear up. An easy way to do this is to lock her in the dungeon for a couple of days. Just make sure her stam is green, not red. And dont resort to punishment higher than her guilt levels.
- Fear increases obedience, but also increase despair. In the early stages you'll want to keep at least some fear on your slave. Dont let despair go above 2, and keep fear below 3 at all times. How to do that? Well, every player has different ways of doing it, you'll need to find yours out.
- If you dont know what youre doing, play that tutorial with Helen until you can get her to D+. In fact, dont bother going into the game until you can do this, because if you cant then you'll likely not be able to do anything useful in the real game.
- And above all dont get discouraged. Work on the tutorials until it clicks.
This is obviously not an exhaustive list of early game tips. Go through the wiki here:
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Yes, do your homework. This is not a casual game.