HTML Masters of Raana [v0.8.3.3] [GrimDark]

[khumak]

You need Influence too, 10k or so for the Walton investment I think, Roo's might come sooner, I don't recall.

Aimee's shop opens up around day 40.

There's only 9 mid tier Arena specials, and only 9 of the lucrative top-tier ones. After those are gone you gotta make due on 6-700 money opponents, and while you'll still make a profit, the more that profit is the quicker you'll get the 75k up for Roo and the 200k for Walton.

I dunno about the implant, I don't have much trouble critting and training myself up to that level so I forgo it. I also don't like the idea of my poor eyeball being scooped out and some metal monstrosity put in its place. I loved the 'Six Million Dollar Man' when I was a kid, when I grew up I preferred the idea of having all my body parts intact!

Interesting. So it should be easier to hit the influence target with the high level mercs. Hard to say on the money target since arena will be less profitable with high level mercs, but low level mercs can't really handle duraplate wearing, coilgun wielding raider kings and such. So I would think if you include the sale of assault weapons and coilguns, the high tier mercs would come out ahead on money overall. The money does definitely taper off though for a bit once I initially wipe out everything. I decided against buying the aim implant for now and am still just training up melee on my main. His ranged is still 30 but his melee is 60 now.

I was going to hold off a bit on the classes, but since I didn't take any charm perks on my current build I really need Daria's Gift. So I went ahead and took 2 academy classes and read a bunch of books. It took me 3 weeks to get my first seduction far enough to get a blowjob with 25 charm. Definitely painful compared to taking Attractive or True Love early on but I do have Juno's happiness/affection high enough for free healing/showers though (sometimes with a blowjob included, sometimes not).

So day 22 my house upgrade status is better than it was in my previous game by day 50 but I don't have my aim implant yet. I'm making enough money that I think I will just go ahead and take all the classes and do a house upgrade here and there as money permits. The bedroom and yard are done but the rest of the rooms are only sitting at 2 upgrades each so far.

I haven't picked up Bud yet because I only have 3 coilguns so far so I gave one to the space marine. My main is still just using a regular dagger spending zero ammo and steadily training up his melee until I can get the aim implant and switch to guns.

Also on the subject of the arena, with the low tier mercs, I actually had to spend about a week fighting only the random easy fights that are only worth about $200 each because I couldn't beat the other ones reliably without some of my people getting critically wounded. With the high tier mercs I could clear out most of the mid range fights and then do the normal random fights after that. I also got access to the arena on day 7 with the high tier mercs. With the low tier mercs it took me about 13 days. It helps that the only person using any ammo is Doyle.

Edit: So just finished that second Academy class and took the ferry to go sell my loot and now I have $30k. Definitely making more with the high tier mercs once you take loot sales into consideration. So now I have my aim implant and am also ahead of where I was before on house upgrades. In between loot sales it's mostly a trickle though.

 

[Gunner Rey]

Interesting. So it should be easier to hit the influence target with the high level mercs. Hard to say on the money target since arena will be less profitable with high level mercs, but low level mercs can't really handle duraplate wearing, coilgun wielding raider kings and such. So I would think if you include the sale of assault weapons and coilguns, the high tier mercs would come out ahead on money overall. The money does definitely taper off though for a bit once I initially wipe out everything. I decided against buying the aim implant for now and am still just training up melee on my main. His ranged is still 30 but his melee is 60 now.

I was going to hold off a bit on the classes, but since I didn't take any charm perks on my current build I really need Daria's Gift. So I went ahead and took 2 academy classes and read a bunch of books. It took me 3 weeks to get my first seduction far enough to get a blowjob with 25 charm. Definitely painful compared to taking Attractive or True Love early on but I do have Juno's happiness/affection high enough for free healing/showers though (sometimes with a blowjob included, sometimes not).

So day 22 my house upgrade status is better than it was in my previous game by day 50 but I don't have my aim implant yet. I'm making enough money that I think I will just go ahead and take all the classes and do a house upgrade here and there as money permits. The bedroom and yard are done but the rest of the rooms are only sitting at 2 upgrades each so far.

I haven't picked up Bud yet because I only have 3 coilguns so far so I gave one to the space marine. My main is still just using a regular dagger spending zero ammo and steadily training up his melee until I can get the aim implant and switch to guns.

Also on the subject of the arena, with the low tier mercs, I actually had to spend about a week fighting only the random easy fights that are only worth about $200 each because I couldn't beat the other ones reliably without some of my people getting critically wounded. With the high tier mercs I could clear out most of the mid range fights and then do the normal random fights after that. I also got access to the arena on day 7 with the high tier mercs. With the low tier mercs it took me about 13 days. It helps that the only person using any ammo is Doyle.

Edit: So just finished that second Academy class and took the ferry to go sell my loot and now I have $30k. Definitely making more with the high tier mercs once you take loot sales into consideration. So now I have my aim implant and am also ahead of where I was before on house upgrades. In between loot sales it's mostly a trickle though.

Yes, the higher level mercs will allow you to gain influence faster, notably by ensuring you'll never have a problem bagging your bounty or taking down the Ceilor Forest Raiders which are a major source of influence in the beginning. You'll also become the Champion of the Mastersphere faster as that last combat is a killer but the influence gain enormous over time. The trick though is finding 'what you can get away with' as firing four or five coilguns at many targets is really a waste after a while. The other consideration is mercs increase their Ranged Combat with crits, and once they get to ~100 Ranged Combat they'll hit every time, so in the long run the most significant difference between them is their cost.

My Ansel now has ~110 Ranged Combat and is a sure hit with a coilgun, just as effective as the Space Marine but at a fraction of the cost, even considering ammo costs. My Bud, who I got late as he wasn't available when I started this run, is now at 80 Ranged Combat and will soon be pretty much a duplicate of the Space Marine but at a tiny fraction of the cost. As I envision spending a lot of time at Dockgrave Tavern I won't have much difficulty keeping the Budman happy. Now all I gotta do is find him a girl, Ansel has Mae to keep him happy.

I think you're probably right to do the Academy classes ASAP if you start with high INT. You might as well leverage the strengths you paid for. I can't help but wonder though if accepting a lower INT like 60 or so and raising it up with the RPG campaigns and some Carousing at Dockgrave before doing the courses and instead starting with high Ranged Combat might be better in the beginning and eventually the long term as well.

When I first started I made a 'minigame' out of the first thirty days. My goal was to get Aria and have the entire house upgraded and all the lesser investments done at the end of the thirty days. Back then there were no bounties and less income opportunities so you had to hope for a famine, that might not be the case nowadays. I only gave myself 25 days if I started as soldier/embraced/sharpshooter as that made it so much easier in the beginning.

 

[khumak]

I could see using the cheap mercs longer if I bought them good armor. I may try that next time since I think I've decided I don't like starting without any initial charm perk. It takes too long to boost it via caress which impacts how fast I can seduce the girls and also how effective I am at building influence via socializing in the bars. Combat armor seems like it has the best mix of decent defense and reasonable repair costs. Weave is nice for the low dex penalty but it costs almost 10x as much to repair. Haven't tried the Durasteel armor yet. I suspect it's not worth getting that until you have the right quartermaster to fix that stuff on the cheap, I forget the name. I imagine boosting dex might also help but I haven't tried that yet.

In my current game I never bothered giving them better than leather since I figured I was just going to replace them. Combat armor is probably good enough to take out the normal random arena opponents consistently with rifles but not the mid tier non random guys with duraplate and coilguns. I think I'd probably have to hand out assault rifles and/or coilguns though and just pay for the ammo if I was going up against some of the high level raiders with coilguns though. The 3 blackguards guarding that bunker in particular are really nasty even with the high level mercs.

Maybe it would work better to do that until you really have your investments squared away. So far I haven't made it far enough to clear out all the docks thugs reducing my investment income either. So the most investment income I've seen so far is around $150 a day. Bud is an obvious long term pick with his cheap salary and free ammo. Ayden is a bit odd since he's the best merc of all initially with his bonus damage on his first shot but since you can't change his gear that means you also can't ever give him a plasma gun. So he eventually gets eclipsed by Bud, Space Marine, and the Blackguard. Maybe even Doyle if you're willing to pay for plasma ammo for him.

You probably don't really need 4 mercs with plasma guns anyway though unless maybe for some of those creatures in the forest. I tried one of those and a coilgun barely scratches them.

Plus Doyle is the only low tier merc who has good health (150). The others are all 75. Rifle Savant is fun for the first day or 2 but I make him a scavenger after that since 25 health means pretty much anyone can 1 shot him with a crit. I've had a lot of fights where Loren, Ansel, or Peasant gets taken down early on even with good armor because of their relatively low health, but Doyle is a badass early on.

One other thing I should probably start doing is the "investigate the area" thing to find some of those bounties. I think that's based on survival skill and I don't have much of that with my current build. I imagine hunting for game could build that up but haven't really tried that yet. It sounded like stealth might also be involved as well but I'm not sure. The best option I saw for stealth was the criminal parents background. If you do criminal parents/rebel, you get 10 stealth out of it and still get 5 int and 5 willpower and you aren't locked out of the army like the criminal/embrace option. I have no idea if that matters later.

I may play around with the stat boosting drugs a bit too and see how that works. I suspect it's too expensive to be worth it.

I've also been meaning to try hunting for game and then selling the food during a famine for money. Sounds like that could be lucrative.

 

[khumak]

If you charm Rebecca enough you'll get the option to make her your Skuldugery girl and she'll tweak your incomes nicely. You don't want her as Head Maid anyways as she's a bitch (Malevolent trait) and will bully your other girls horribly. That might be fun to watch, but it hurts their happiness noticeably.

I think my next character will go for Arouser and the Teen Subduer as I think in the long run I can get the other stats where I want them but eventually I'd like to fill out the Dockgrave Tavern Quest and I think those will help most.

I was curious about the Teen Subduer option so I decided to try that and was able to start fucking Rebecca on day 6 even with only 5 respect which is pretty nice (was using an all merc party while trying to clear some of the tougher bandits). I actually found her easier to seduce than Juno despite having a lower starting Happiness and only having 5 respect vs 20 for Juno. I think you'll like Arouser. It really seems to help with pretty much everything sex related so once you boost your stats a little it just seems superior to any other choice for a sex perk since you can't duplicate it later.

To maximize my investment in Teen Subduer and Arouser I decided to also take Attractive instead of Melee Master so my starting charm vs teens is 75 which is pretty nice. That's almost high enough to progress to a sex scene on your first try with Rebecca. Maybe if you got lucky with a few sweet talks and kisses it would be. It's only 45 for non teens but that's still reasonable. The downside is I got ridiculously unlucky with melee skill ups in combat and actually had to spend 8 days training melee to unlock the arena. I got zero skill increases in combat despite mostly using melee (which is not normal, but I guess sometimes the RNG just hates you).

It was especially annoying since it seemed like every day was extremely hot so my energy levels were terrible after spending most of it training melee every day. Had to go get a massage every day to avoid having to just end the day at like 3pm. Attractive helped there as well since I usually succeeded at my socializing as well for a little extra stamina regen.

I think True Love is probably better than Teen Subduer if you don't also take Attractive or if you are playing a high int build that can use books to counteract the manipulation penalty pretty quickly. If you do take attractive and/or you're playing a low to mid int build I think Teen Subduer is probably better since you get just as much charm vs teens and don't take the manipulation penalty. It would take longer to progress with non teens, but you can just focus on the teens first and grind out some charm increases with them.

I think I might try it with Melee Master and Teen Subduer so I can guarantee that I don't need to bother training melee and can instead focus on books or stamina early on which are a lot more useful. Teen Subduer should still give enough of a boost with teens to make grinding out some charm increases on those reasonable before moving on to the non teens. I also might put some more focus on kissing since that seems like it's trivial to increase. Could be a reliable way to boost arousal on the tougher girls if I grind out like 60 kissing skill early on. It seems like it's pretty easy to gain 5-10 kissing skill per session if you're focusing on it.

Edit: Tried it with Melee Master + Teen Subduer and with 20 respect I was able to fuck Rebecca on day 10 after focusing a bit more on taking her out to dinner first every night (I picked her up on day 2 I think). Haven't done anything with Juno yet.

 

[user85]

For those like me who are too lazy to manually click the attack button, I made an autohotkey script which automates battles.

All you need to do is hover over the enemy to hit them.

This makes battles much faster and less carpal tunnel inducing.

You need

You must be registered to see the links

installed for this to work.

Either download zip or save this code to a .ahk file.

Wall of Code - Edit v1.1 fixed unnecessary charge bug

Spoiler

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[Sick&Alone]

Grim linked to it in his update post but for the sake of convenience, here's the text dump from the wiki:

Spoiler: Changelog

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Thanks.

Quick look told me nothing he'd added would DROP/raise WP everyday;

[hey I was only 1 ver behind lol!]

 

[Gunner Rey]

anged Combat with crits, and once they get to ~100 Ranged Combat they'll hit every time, so in the long run the most significant difference between them is their cost.

My Ansel now has ~110 Ranged Combat and is a sure hit with a coilgun, just as effective as the Space Marine but at a fraction of the cost, even considering ammo costs. My Bud, who I got late as he wasn't available when I started this run, is now at 80 Ranged Combat and will soon be pretty much a duplicate of the Space Marine but at a tiny fraction of the cost. As I envision spending a lot of time at Dockgrave Tavern I won't have much difficulty keeping the Budman happy. Now all I gotta do is find him a girl, Ansel has Mae to keep him happy.

I could see using the cheap mercs longer if I bought them good armor. I may try that next time since I think I've decided I don't like starting without any initial charm perk. It takes too long to boost it via caress which impacts how fast I can seduce the girls and also how effective I am at building influence via socializing in the bars. Combat armor seems like it has the best mix of decent defense and reasonable repair costs. Weave is nice for the low dex penalty but it costs almost 10x as much to repair. Haven't tried the Durasteel armor yet. I suspect it's not worth getting that until you have the right quartermaster to fix that stuff on the cheap, I forget the name. I imagine boosting dex might also help but I haven't tried that yet.

In my current game I never bothered giving them better than leather since I figured I was just going to replace them. Combat armor is probably good enough to take out the normal random arena opponents consistently with rifles but not the mid tier non random guys with duraplate and coilguns. I think I'd probably have to hand out assault rifles and/or coilguns though and just pay for the ammo if I was going up against some of the high level raiders with coilguns though. The 3 blackguards guarding that bunker in particular are really nasty even with the high level mercs.

Maybe it would work better to do that until you really have your investments squared away. So far I haven't made it far enough to clear out all the docks thugs reducing my investment income either. So the most investment income I've seen so far is around $150 a day. Bud is an obvious long term pick with his cheap salary and free ammo. Ayden is a bit odd since he's the best merc of all initially with his bonus damage on his first shot but since you can't change his gear that means you also can't ever give him a plasma gun. So he eventually gets eclipsed by Bud, Space Marine, and the Blackguard. Maybe even Doyle if you're willing to pay for plasma ammo for him.

You probably don't really need 4 mercs with plasma guns anyway though unless maybe for some of those creatures in the forest. I tried one of those and a coilgun barely scratches them.

Plus Doyle is the only low tier merc who has good health (150). The others are all 75. Rifle Savant is fun for the first day or 2 but I make him a scavenger after that since 25 health means pretty much anyone can 1 shot him with a crit. I've had a lot of fights where Loren, Ansel, or Peasant gets taken down early on even with good armor because of their relatively low health, but Doyle is a badass early on.

One other thing I should probably start doing is the "investigate the area" thing to find some of those bounties. I think that's based on survival skill and I don't have much of that with my current build. I imagine hunting for game could build that up but haven't really tried that yet. It sounded like stealth might also be involved as well but I'm not sure. The best option I saw for stealth was the criminal parents background. If you do criminal parents/rebel, you get 10 stealth out of it and still get 5 int and 5 willpower and you aren't locked out of the army like the criminal/embrace option. I have no idea if that matters later.

I may play around with the stat boosting drugs a bit too and see how that works. I suspect it's too expensive to be worth it.

I've also been meaning to try hunting for game and then selling the food during a famine for money. Sounds like that could be lucrative.

Getting Combat armor for everyone is my first priority, then shortly thereafter, Durasteel. Armor saves you loads in tendstims if you go full combat in the beginning.

I agree early Charm makes the game go so much better in the beginning; I know you can get away with not having it but in some respects it's cutting your nose to spite your face. The same is true of starting with good Ranged Combat, I've had many characters start with 30 RC and do fine, it'll eventually be well over a hundred anyway, but starting with ~60+ RC basically means you don't have to hire more than one top-tier merc at first which means you'll get to the Walton investment that much faster, and that means you can hire the other good ones and still maintain a healthy surplus. I hate bleeding cash.

I have everyone use a rifle up to about 70 RC, then switch to auto-rifles. It takes 80-85 RC to get a coilgun in my army and 100 to be using a plasma gun if I'm paying for the ammo.

I agree the two Black Guardsman and the Black Gunner guarding the mind-thingy are hazardous, however there are only three of them. Now that we no longer have to worry about our mercs dying you can probably take them out earlier as it doesn't matter all that much if one of yours goes down.

I have buried the poor Rifle Savant so many times I couldn't count them all. I actually save-scummed one game to keep him (and Bud who also had a low life expectancy) alive as long as I played it, I felt so bad about it.

Those Charucks (sp?) are what plasma guns were invented to fight in my opinion. Doyle is a great pick too, I end up buying more mercs than I can use so I can experience all the quests and whatnot, plus I like to think I'm building a cadre for my eventual army that will make me a real Master of Raana someday, thus I might well need more than four fighters in the very long run.

I go to Divine Juices in Watery Eyes to get my bounty's location, that way I can always do one per day. Plus I can take out the recurring freebooter and snag his rifle. I don't think survival helps with finding bounties but yes you can build it up by hunting and it goes extra quick up until about 50 Survival.

Hunting for game and waiting on the famine was my first strategy to jump ahead quickly. I sometimes suspect the reason we now have a 7500 limit is due to my reporting my gains doing that in this thread.

I've never tried the drugs, I train pretty much every day and my stats get up to the stratosphere quick enough for me.

 

[mrttao]

I have everyone use a rifle up to about 70 RC, then switch to auto-rifles. It takes 80-85 RC to get a coilgun in my army and 100 to be using a plasma gun if I'm paying for the ammo.

Plasma is not an upgrade.
Plasma gun is worse than coilgun.
The only advantage it has is no recoil debuff. which is eliminated by high enough ranged combat skill.

If you are super rich, you can start your girls out on plasma guns until they get good and then swap to coilgun.
but realistically... you don't.

Also, auto-rifle is not an economically sound choice. It deals less damage for more money than coilgun. it is for someone who is rich, but whose reputation is too low to access the rich section of town and thus cannot buy a coilgun.

Basically, equip everyone with rifle. Then upgrade to coilgun when their ranged combat skill is high enough to eliminate the coilgun recoil.

 

[khumak]

Getting Combat armor for everyone is my first priority, then shortly thereafter, Durasteel. Armor saves you loads in tendstims if you go full combat in the beginning.

For me the top priority is max bedroom upgrade for the stamina. Then hiring Doyle. Then I work on combat armor. I need Doyle to take on any group that includes an assault rifle or worse.

I agree early Charm makes the game go so much better in the beginning; I know you can get away with not having it but in some respects it's cutting your nose to spite your face. The same is true of starting with good Ranged Combat, I've had many characters start with 30 RC and do fine, it'll eventually be well over a hundred anyway, but starting with ~60+ RC basically means you don't have to hire more than one top-tier merc at first which means you'll get to the Walton investment that much faster, and that means you can hire the other good ones and still maintain a healthy surplus. I hate bleeding cash.

True, but you can get that 30 ranged to 105 instantly for 15k so it's really only a temporary annoyance starting with crappy ranged. Crappy melee is mostly only annoying if you have to actually devote training sessions to it to unlock the arena. With a starting melee of 25 I usually have to, but that's a maximum of 8 days of training so that's still only a minor annoyance. I ended up deciding I'd rather have the charm boost from Attractive even if it means I have to spend up to 8 days training melee for the arena. It would take a lot longer than 8 days to grind out 20 charm and 5 manipulation.

I have buried the poor Rifle Savant so many times I couldn't count them all. I actually save-scummed one game to keep him (and Bud who also had a low life expectancy) alive as long as I played it, I felt so bad about it.

I actually use Rifle Savant for the first day or 2 before I have spare rifles to give to Ansen and Bud, at which point Rifle Savant and Peasant both become scavengers along with the 2 kids. In my games, Loren is the one who seems to have a bullesye on her forehead. She always gets the first armor upgrade after my main, other than a suit of leather that I buy for my rotating string of slaves on respect training duty.

Those Charucks (sp?) are what plasma guns were invented to fight in my opinion. Doyle is a great pick too, I end up buying more mercs than I can use so I can experience all the quests and whatnot, plus I like to think I'm building a cadre for my eventual army that will make me a real Master of Raana someday, thus I might well need more than four fighters in the very long run.

I've always been a bit of a completionist as well so I almost always feel compelled to grab every companion that might have a quest even if I don't intend to keep them long term.

I go to Divine Juices in Watery Eyes to get my bounty's location, that way I can always do one per day. Plus I can take out the recurring freebooter and snag his rifle. I don't think survival helps with finding bounties but yes you can build it up by hunting and it goes extra quick up until about 50 Survival.

I need to pay more attention to the bounties if you can get a new one every day. I was getting hung up on the fact that I almost always fail when I ask about bounties but I guess I could just pay the bribe and still make a profit on it.

Hunting for game and waiting on the famine was my first strategy to jump ahead quickly. I sometimes suspect the reason we now have a 7500 limit is due to my reporting my gains doing that in this thread.

I still haven't tried it yet. Will have to make a point of it this time, along with fishing.

I've never tried the drugs, I train pretty much every day and my stats get up to the stratosphere quick enough for me.

Yeah I prioritize getting 2 training sessions per day of some sort in most of the time. Books are easy to squeeze in at night if you're low on stamina since they basically require zero stamina to read. You can also preread them without actually finishing until you have enough intelligence to get a reasonable reward for it. I find that training stamina early in the game is a massive help. Books are obviously the biggest gain per session, but if you have low intel it might not be worth losing out on a big chunk of the potential reward for it.

 

[Gunner Rey]

I was curious about the Teen Subduer option so I decided to try that and was able to start fucking Rebecca on day 6 even with only 5 respect which is pretty nice (was using an all merc party while trying to clear some of the tougher bandits). I actually found her easier to seduce than Juno despite having a lower starting Happiness and only having 5 respect vs 20 for Juno. I think you'll like Arouser. It really seems to help with pretty much everything sex related so once you boost your stats a little it just seems superior to any other choice for a sex perk since you can't duplicate it later.

To maximize my investment in Teen Subduer and Arouser I decided to also take Attractive instead of Melee Master so my starting charm vs teens is 75 which is pretty nice. That's almost high enough to progress to a sex scene on your first try with Rebecca. Maybe if you got lucky with a few sweet talks and kisses it would be. It's only 45 for non teens but that's still reasonable. The downside is I got ridiculously unlucky with melee skill ups in combat and actually had to spend 8 days training melee to unlock the arena. I got zero skill increases in combat despite mostly using melee (which is not normal, but I guess sometimes the RNG just hates you).

It was especially annoying since it seemed like every day was extremely hot so my energy levels were terrible after spending most of it training melee every day. Had to go get a massage every day to avoid having to just end the day at like 3pm. Attractive helped there as well since I usually succeeded at my socializing as well for a little extra stamina regen.

I think True Love is probably better than Teen Subduer if you don't also take Attractive or if you are playing a high int build that can use books to counteract the manipulation penalty pretty quickly. If you do take attractive and/or you're playing a low to mid int build I think Teen Subduer is probably better since you get just as much charm vs teens and don't take the manipulation penalty. It would take longer to progress with non teens, but you can just focus on the teens first and grind out some charm increases with them.

I think I might try it with Melee Master and Teen Subduer so I can guarantee that I don't need to bother training melee and can instead focus on books or stamina early on which are a lot more useful. Teen Subduer should still give enough of a boost with teens to make grinding out some charm increases on those reasonable before moving on to the non teens. I also might put some more focus on kissing since that seems like it's trivial to increase. Could be a reliable way to boost arousal on the tougher girls if I grind out like 60 kissing skill early on. It seems like it's pretty easy to gain 5-10 kissing skill per session if you're focusing on it.

Edit: Tried it with Melee Master + Teen Subduer and with 20 respect I was able to fuck Rebecca on day 10 after focusing a bit more on taking her out to dinner first every night (I picked her up on day 2 I think). Haven't done anything with Juno yet.

I get a lot of massages from Hope Laurel in the very beginning. Basically at one point I figured out that training stamina and replacing the stamina lost from that by getting multiple massages from Hope Laurel paid for itself and in short order you wouldn't have to worry about it anymore. That's why I always start training stamina (day one usually) and do so until I get to somewhere around 80-100 before moving on to Ranged Combat if it started low.

My thought on Teen Subduer is that no matter what I'm eventually going to have a Charm of a little over 85, but Teen Subduer allows me to exceed that max with the ones I'll probably do more training with in order to fill out the Dockside Tavern quest. Plus it will help in the beginning with Rebecca, Lovisa and Michelle who are invariably amongst the first slaves I will get.

 

[Gunner Rey]

Plasma is not an upgrade.
Plasma gun is worse than coilgun.
The only advantage it has is no recoil debuff. which is eliminated by high enough ranged combat skill.

If you are super rich, you can start your girls out on plasma guns until they get good and then swap to coilgun.
but realistically... you don't.

Also, auto-rifle is not an economically sound choice. It deals less damage for more money than coilgun. it is for someone who is rich, but whose reputation is too low to access the rich section of town and thus cannot buy a coilgun.

Basically, equip everyone with rifle. Then upgrade to coilgun when their ranged combat skill is high enough to eliminate the coilgun recoil.

Plasma guns hit harder than coilguns, there's no doubt about that. 7.62 mm is cheaper than coilgun ammo and for many of your targets you don't need the extra damage the coil gun dishes out. Also that ammo is not limited.

That being said the coilgun is my weapon of choice for many targets, it's the best overall gun in my opinion. You don't always need the best gun though, and sometimes you do need the extra punch a plasma gun dishes out. Note that armor piercing is not applied to 100% of the armor, it's more like 20% effective.

 

[Gunner Rey]

For me the top priority is max bedroom upgrade for the stamina. Then hiring Doyle. Then I work on combat armor. I need Doyle to take on any group that includes an assault rifle or worse.



True, but you can get that 30 ranged to 105 instantly for 15k so it's really only a temporary annoyance starting with crappy ranged. Crappy melee is mostly only annoying if you have to actually devote training sessions to it to unlock the arena. With a starting melee of 25 I usually have to, but that's a maximum of 8 days of training so that's still only a minor annoyance. I ended up deciding I'd rather have the charm boost from Attractive even if it means I have to spend up to 8 days training melee for the arena. It would take a lot longer than 8 days to grind out 20 charm and 5 manipulation.



I actually use Rifle Savant for the first day or 2 before I have spare rifles to give to Ansen and Bud, at which point Rifle Savant and Peasant both become scavengers along with the 2 kids. In my games, Loren is the one who seems to have a bullesye on her forehead. She always gets the first armor upgrade after my main, other than a suit of leather that I buy for my rotating string of slaves on respect training duty.



I've always been a bit of a completionist as well so I almost always feel compelled to grab every companion that might have a quest even if I don't intend to keep them long term.



I need to pay more attention to the bounties if you can get a new one every day. I was getting hung up on the fact that I almost always fail when I ask about bounties but I guess I could just pay the bribe and still make a profit on it.



I still haven't tried it yet. Will have to make a point of it this time, along with fishing.



Yeah I prioritize getting 2 training sessions per day of some sort in most of the time. Books are easy to squeeze in at night if you're low on stamina since they basically require zero stamina to read. You can also preread them without actually finishing until you have enough intelligence to get a reasonable reward for it. I find that training stamina early in the game is a massive help. Books are obviously the biggest gain per session, but if you have low intel it might not be worth losing out on a big chunk of the potential reward for it.

The bedroom is the first one I max, then the bathroom. Doyle is a sound investment.

That 15k you're spending on your getting your eye gouged out is pretty much what Combat Armor costs for the entire team. I'll save my money (and my poor eye!) and get there the old-fashioned way.

A bounty a day is a damned fine income. Sometimes you make 150 less is how I look at it.

 

[mrttao]

Plasma guns hit harder than coilguns, there's no doubt about that.

No, it doesn't.
Plasma has base damage of 100
Coil gun has base damage of 92 damage +50% armor penetrate.
That armor penetration is hugely important and results in coilgun dealing more damage.

The only benefit plasma has is no recoil. which is only relevant for those with low ranged combat skill (at low ranged combat you recieve a penalty to ranged combat when using a gun with recoil that is too high for your skill level)

 

[Gunner Rey]

No, it doesn't.
Plasma has base damage of 100
Coil gun has base damage of 92 damage +50% armor penetrate.
That armor penetration is hugely important and results in coilgun dealing more damage.

The only benefit plasma has is no recoil. which is only relevant for those with low ranged combat skill (at low ranged combat you recieve a penalty to ranged combat when using a gun with recoil that is too high for your skill level)

That's not correct. The plasma gun does 15 more damage and the armor penetrated by the coilgun is more like 20%. From literally thousands of combats it's obvious to me that the plasma gun hits harder. The no recoil penalty is just icing on the cake.

 

[khumak]

The bedroom is the first one I max, then the bathroom. Doyle is a sound investment.

That 15k you're spending on your getting your eye gouged out is pretty much what Combat Armor costs for the entire team. I'll save my money (and my poor eye!) and get there the old-fashioned way.

A bounty a day is a damned fine income. Sometimes you make 150 less is how I look at it.

Ok yeah those bounties are nice and I can see why you like a combat build now. My first bounty was 2 guys in combat armor with assault rifles. Ouch.

This was day 1 so I had Loren, Ansen, Peasant, and Rifle Savant all with rifles and my main with... a dagger. All of us wearing leather armor. First round we take one of them down to about half and Rifle Savant takes a dirt nap. Second round we kill 1 and Ansen goes down. Third round I actually don't lose anyone but everyone is almost dead now. Fourth round I finally kill the other one. Was definitely wishing I had a combat build for that one. If I remember right, it paid $1500 plus they actually dropped about $700 cash and an assault rifle on top of that.

That could bring in some serious cash, although not all of them pay that much. Now I'm going to have to try a combat build again

Edit: So I started a soldier build, starting ranged skill of around 60 and clearing the map was definitely a lot easier even with a slave taking up a slot to build respect most of the time. Only had to go full merc for the big fights like multiple assault rifles in the same group. Unlocked Crystal hills on day 10 with everyone already wearing combat armor, my bedroom, bathroom, and yard fully upgraded, Rebecca maxed out on respect and willing to fuck, Juno maxed on respect and not willing to fuck yet, and Michelle just picked up 1 day ago and ready to fuck already.

The only mercs I hired so far are Ansen, Peasant, Loren, Rifle Savant, Bud, and Doyle. So my salary cost is still low, and the normal random arena fights are so far not a problem with just rifles and combat armor. Currently using Ansen, Loren, Bud, and Doyle for the tough fights and swapping in Michelle to build respect the rest of the time.

I went with Teen Subduer as my only charm perk. Only had to break out the dagger for a few fights on 1 day to gain the 1 melee skill I needed to hit 40 for the arena. My intelligence is 49 so I did preread several books on the days I was doing house upgrades, but didn't finish any of them. Will have to see how long it takes me to get some Int from carousing and poker, but the girls seem plenty manageable so far at 25 charm with teen subduer.

Just realized I haven't sold anything yet either so I should be able to take the ferry and cash in for a bunch of money soon. So I'm definitely way behind in skills progress compared to a science build, but I'm way ahead in money and influence, and progress with the girls is roughly equivalent except that I haven't unlocked the ones that require taking classes.

I think a science build would pull ahead if you kept to the low level mercs and made sure to keep 15k ready to drop on that aim implant as soon as you unlock Crystal Hills. Then you'd have 105 aim without having to put any character creation points into it. It would take you longer to get there though with your main character contributing basically nothing to any of the fights for the first week and a half or so.

 

[JaxMan]

Early game I don't always take the Hard+ bounties until I'm better prepared and equipped. They change each day if you don't accept them. Yes, pay the bribe if you fail the manipulation roll. Even the lowest ($400) one is profitable as you will usually get a nice amount of cash and sometimes equipment to sell when looting, as well.

 

[khumak]

I think with an int build, melee master is probably the best option to make the MC relevant in combat for the first couple of weeks. That boosts his melee to 43 all by itself which makes MC able to do a meaningful amount of damage with a sword or a sledgehammer until he can get that aim implant while also working up his melee skill for free. It's not as good as a rifle with good aim early on, but it's enough to make a significant difference. It also completely eliminates the need to do any melee training to unlock the arena.

Sharpshooter would be another option but 45 aim plus a rifle doesn't seem good enough to me considering the fact that I would then also have to waste 8 days training melee for the arena. This assumes an eventual plan to take the aim implant though. If you plan on not taking that then I would say Sharpshooter is better.

You will still fall behind where a pure combat build would be in money and influence the first couple of weeks, but with the aim implant you'll be more than caught up on aim by week 2 and able to take full advantage of classes and books already.

I played around with hunting and fishing a little and it seems like that's going to be a huge grind to get survival skill high enough for it to be relevant. Tried a hunter/max survival build to see what fishing was like with that and still failed every survival check at 55 survival so doesn't seem worth it to start with survival if you need to boost it to like 80+ to be relevant. I didn't try hunting with the 55 survival build. I did get some successes at hunting with more like 30 survival so maybe that's the way to go for that. I was completely clueless on whether the weapon or hunting technique mattered though. Does it give you a hint if you pass a survival check? I would think from the perspective of damage to the carcass, crossbows should have the best yield, shotguns the worst, and rifles maybe a better chance of getting an actual kill, but yielding less meat/skins.

I think 1 charm perk of some sort is pretty much required if you don't want progress with the girls to be a huge grind, but 2 is unnecessary if you max out their respect. Teen Subduer is pretty nice for making progress with teens without the manipulation penalty of True Love so I think I like that one better if I'm only taking 1 charm perk, although the manipulation penalty is fixable with books/classes. Also, if there's a soft cap where skills get harder to raise at 80 or whatever then Teen Subduer should let you bypass that for teens since it doesn't raise your actual charm stat.

Maintaining good progress on building money and influence with an int build also kind of requires running a full merc squad even with the melee master perk until you at least have combat armor for everyone so progress with my slaves is falling behind a bit initially. I can still take down bounties that include assault rifle equipped opponents with an int build, but not with a slave tagging along, and I do take more damage than I would have with a combat build since I'm not dealing as much damage with melee as a combat build would with a rifle.

I think the best solution to the lack of slave progress would probably be to go ahead and buy all the apartment upgrades for Michelle right away and pick her up. That would give me a fuckable slave right from the get go who could also do heals and stuff without having to build respect first. Then once I get my money/influence/combat armor/aim implant in place I could start cycling the girls in to build respect.

Edit: Also if you give your slave girl some combat armor you can muddle through the tougher bounties and raider battles even with a slave tagging along as dead weight for respect building. You just take a bit more damage and had to spend a bit more on armor. Juno actually got my first suit of combat armor in my current game since she's the only person who started with nothing. That was enough for me to take out assault rifle wielding chieftains and bounties and avoid Juno getting 1 shot if someone happened to target her.

Managed to unlock Crystal Hills on day 8 with a full science/int build with melee master giving me access to the arena and having gotten both Juno and Michelle up close to max respect. Low salary mercs only (Ansel, Peasant, Bud, Loren, Rifle Savant, and Doyle).

Didn't bother buying Rebecca yet. Everyone (meaning the 4 mercs I'm actually using plus 1 slave) has combat armor but house upgrades are only sitting at level 1 with the exception of my maxed out bedroom. Day 9 took the ferry and sold all my junk and made enough to grab the aim implant so now I effectively have 105 aim. So now my combat capabilities are comparable to a pure combat build without having fallen that far behind where I could be in money and influence. Took me 1 day longer to unlock Crystal Hills and had to spend 15k on the aim implant that I wouldn't need as the combat build.

With such high aim I might actually switch my main to an assault rifle and see if the improved damage is enough to offset the higher ammo cost. I haven't seen a coil gun drop yet but will probably switch to that asap. Bud will probably stick with a rifle til his aim gets better, he's still sitting at 50.

 

[Professor_Morde]

It should already have the harem tag because all the slaves know that you are having sex with each of them and even though there slaves they still like the MC.
I hope we can have 3-4 wives in the future.
[/QUOTE]
the tag is missing if this is the case but having multiple wives would be a great addition to this game

 

[MixMatch]

Is there cheats in the game I can use to upgrade levels? I grinded out to a high level but then my computer crashed now all my files are gone. I don't want to have to restart all over again.

 

[a1fox3]

Is there cheats in the game I can use to upgrade levels? I grinded out to a high level but then my computer crashed now all my files are gone. I don't want to have to restart all over again.

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