My game settings say classic/Normal and since I am failing the normal difficulty tutorial character, it makes sense that I am also failing in sandbox mode as well. Either I take too long to gain a profit or I can't train them and I lose money. Some characters are fine though. My assistant was pretty easy to break. I suppose I could set the game to easy mode but I feel kinda bad that I can't even play it on normal mode after the amount of time I have spent on it. Just seems beyond me. I may try easy mode or keep experimenting with the normal difficulty tutorial character to see if I can squeeze out any further efficiency from my training methods. Though, I'm completely lost on how I would do that.
The game is not easy. It took my a long time to learn how to train a decent slave in a short to moderate amount of time.
I'd suggest you start with either Blade or Robespierre as character. They both start out with a lot of money, which means you can afford to rent a house, and I would NOT suggest trying to live in the Slums on your first playthroughs.
When you get your first slave, you can check in the Slaver's Guild for Contract Work, but if the slave you need to train has Pink endurance, temperament, nature or pride, you're probably better off buying a slave at the slave market.
When I shop for new slaves, I check the price of course. I try to keep the spending to less than 50 on a new slave. Then of course check her stats. If you have high Medic skill, it's easier to increase their endurance and physique because you can control their calories completely, and supplements make it fairly easy to get endurance to B+.
Then I check their Nature, Temperament and Pride. Of Nature and Temperament, I personally thing Nature is the hardest one to get back up if it gets low. You'll either want them to be Purple or Dark Blue, and you want pride to be purple or better. If Nature and Temperament are too high (light blue or green), the slave will be very difficult to deal with because she rebels a lot. Not impossible to take care of, but can be very tricky, and beating her in fights regularly will absolutely tank her Endurance. Like, she can go from B+ Endurance to Dying (Red) in just a few fights, and that means you'll need a lot of time to get her back up.
The reason why you don't want her nature and temperament to be too low is, that if she starts despairing, those stats can drop quickly and you end up with a mentally broken slave that you can't really use. It's not impossible to repair her mental state, but I'd suggest you try and keep her from ending there in the first place.
When you do end up buying a slave you think you can train it's important to:
- Get her a collar (either from Steel Rose or Ashure's Treasure). A collar increases Taming every day and if she runs away she will be returned. - Just a normal leather collar will do, it's the cheapest option. Don't use Steel Collars unless you want her mood to be low. But if you want, you could invest in an ornamented collar, because that will also increase her Style and Exoticism (which are factors when you are trying to sell her).
- Check her health in the Medical Center (Serpentine -> Technosphere) and cure her if she has rotphilis or if she is pregnant
- Get her a Brand Tattoo at Uncle Bo's (unless you're doing Contract work in which case she is already branded)
- Optionally I usually get my new slaves soft slippers and a sundress to help with their mood, but you can also wait with these clothings if you want to give them as rewards. If you do wait, it's very effective to give a Sundress as reward as soon as possible (if she has 2 merit of course) because she goes from naked (mood debuff) to wearing something she likes (mood buff).
- The first 3 days: Explain her position. I'm not entirely certain what this affects, but it does seem to have an effect. Maybe it affects her taming/awareness/habit or something - and these aura stats are important for obedience
- If her mood is very low, you can use Encourage to try and increase it, but beware you can only use this option a limited amount of times (the amount varies depending on certain factors) so try to only use it when you really need to increase her mood.
- On day 2 or 3, ask her "What do you think of me" (you can also check her aura. If she has too many red spikes of rebellion, she may not want to talk to you at all in which case you have to punish her). When she tells you that she doesn't mind doing a bit of housework, you can either train her in the Maid skill or simply ask her to clean the house, and in many cases, this will give her a feeling of merit which you can reward.
These really are the basics to get started. For rules, you need to check 2 of them to avoid spoilage. I usually start out with No Masturbation and Deny Orgasm, because they are pretty much free at the beginning of every slave. They're not interested in masturbating until their sexual arousal increases to 4 or 5. But if you need an excuse to spank her every day (to increase her fear of you) you could check Behave: Humility. In the first few days she will most likely break that rule, and you can either spank her or you can use a Shaming punishment to lower her pride faster.
After a few decades of training, you will most likely have trained your slave to get one specialization and be D+, then you can increase her style and exoticism with certain clothing (check the wiki's Items page to see what clothing gives style and exoticism), and you can either get her some piercings or tattoos if you want. It'll increase her value. On the day you're selling her, make sure her mood is good, go to the Salon Elven Laid in White Town and give her the Full Beauty Treatment. This way she will be presentable and increase her "Charm" stat, which can affect the price you'll get for her. I usually sell slaves to the various residents. So find one that wants a slave with the specialization you trained and sell her. Bargain for a better price, and often you can get more than they offer.
I'm pretty sure there's also guides on the wiki btw. But this is how I start out most of my games.
