Continuing the same game, I took a guild contract, D- artist. Challenging in a different way. Feeble and almost broken psychologically.
Looking at her starting condition, if I want to maintain her sanity, I will need to keep her pride from dropping until I raise her temperament or nature. Given a choice between raising temperament or nature, raising temperament is slightly preferable when the master is weak, because higher nature makes it harder to build up her taming, while higher temperament means she spoils faster. Spoiling can be useful and also self-corrects quickly when she has a bad mood. Arena wins raise temperament, nature and pride, so after two battles her temperament would rise and it would be safe to reduce her pride. I could use the pet rule (enforced with a petsuit, which I would need to buy for her) to suppress (lower again) her nature after arena wins. When it is safe to reduce her pride, I could add the deny toileting rule, also enforced.
The immediate problem is her low endurance. She needs rest and calories. Supplements and nutritionist would help, but the next arena battle is in 5 days. Can she be Weakened by then with just rest and diet? She can recover faster if she is well rested, some from metabolism (if she has a positive calorie count at the end of the day), plus supplements and nutritionist (if needed - depending on her metabolism, she might recover quickly enough without it). So yes, in 5 days she can reach Weakened without any shortcuts (e.g., Vesturian Ambrosia or massages at the spa), although it will be more expensive if she has a weak metabolism and needs the nutritionist (extra 5$/day). This means I can plan to train her using the normal approach, building up her fear and aura until she is obedient, then transitioning to devotion, without missing a decade of income from the arena. That's probably the better strategy, but...
She is so close to being broken that I considered allowing her to break intentionally (by enforcing pet, silence and deny toileting rule to quickly lower her pride), which would make her obedient immediately, bypassing the initial training. This would let me immediately delegate cleaning duties to her and begin training her (slowly) in various skills (including sexual). I could rebuild her nature with the arena (battles and sparring) and then follow the normal training process after that. She would have a head-start with maxed habit but would have no other aura development. However, to do this, I would need to raise her nature to Independent/B+ to un-break her. I would not be able to build her devotion until then, which is needed to avoid her being freed after becoming an arena champion.
She doesn't need to become an arena champion, but I'm aiming for her to reach B+ (because she's Pretty), which means I expect to be training her for at least four decades/battles. If she isn't devoted for the championship battle, I could freeze her temporarily and acquire a new slave for the arena, but that would be suboptimal (adding 10 sparks/decade billing cost for a slave that I'm not able to train yet).
She would regain Cowardly/D- nature after the arena battle in 5 days. If she does nothing except sparring once a day starting after the next battle, she would reach Uncertain/C- nature around the time of the following battle (contract day 16 or so). B+ nature would then require another two decades of once-a-day spars and arena wins, but she'd have to be kept away from the arena for that final decade to avoid being set free.
I could recover her faster by having her spar regularly and/or by sending her to the Garden of Gethsemane, (free) the Hot Springs (2$) and the Golden Cage. Golden Cage (5$) can raise nature all the way to S+ for slaves who have enough energy, and a broken slave can be sent there daily without concern for spoiling. But the cost does add up. Garden of Gethsemane can raise nature up to Uncertain/C- nature and is free (just uses energy). Spending time with other slaves in the women's section at the Hot Springs, which is useful also for hygiene, can raise nature until Determined/A+.
I have enough sparks saved up (468$ debt-free) to take a risk on the mindbreak strategy taking longer, so I'll give it a try.
Contract day 27, after arena battle, she has recovered her sanity. I overlooked that recovering her temperament to D- would mean she didn't need B+ nature, just C-.
Contract day 32, she is D- again:
She reverted to F- again (spoiled) but on contract day 36 she was back to D- ... it's debatable whether the mindbreak detour saved or added time, but it helped the master.
