Thanks for the info on Kasey. Just had my first session with her. $1500 is kind of steep for a 1 point flagellation bump but if that's what it takes...You can access Kasey just by going into the Annex. She's the most expensive at ~1700 which happens to be what you get for a big poker win so I tend to make sure I'm still making money on the day by getting some poker winnings first.
I've picked up about three or four points of INT from Carousing so far, along with at least two points of WP and a few more Science points. I've also gotten 50 whole points of influence which you don't notice much when you get past 100k Influence like I have.
I use the Swampmen up north to build respect. They're so easy to beat you can take four untrained girls and as long as they have combat armor and a rifle (regardless of how low their Ranged is always use a rifle to start with) you can beat those swampers with ease and get lots of easy respect and some Ranged Combat from crits. There's lots of targets you can take out with two barely trained girls and two decent mercs too, provided you make sure everyone has at least combat armor.
I'm not sure if there's any maluses or bonuses of that sort for melee combat. I get myself some combat armor and a rifle and I crit myself up to over 100 Ranged Combat pretty damn quick even if I start with 30 Ranged Combat. I'll train at Walton's (usually with Rebecca) after I train my stamina up to ~80-100, to get Ranged Combat up to 80 or so, but usually that doesn't take that long as I'll get 20-30 from crits along the way. Only later do I start using Melee combat regularly, mostly to save money, and I find that goes up so fast I don't find it necessary to start with much of it except for roleplay purposes. My current character now has 310 melee combat.
I haven't used Rebecca in the Arena much as it used to screw up her business bonus. That might have changed, but I can't recall for sure. This past run I used the Tier 2 slave as a fatherly combat slave and sent her to the arena, now I have Aria there. I don't like losing access to them for so long thus I sometimes don't have anyone there after I get the Walton investment.
I don't think you get stat bonuses for melee combat outside Melee Combat itself. I seem to recall some slavegirls getting some STR bonuses from winning Arena fights, but can't remember getting any recently so that might have changed--or I might have stopped looking as much.
Do you know if the results in poker get better as your gambling skill goes up? With save scumming, it's a huge money maker but without save scumming I think it would mostly be a time waster. I think I'd have to fold probably 80% of the time if I wanted to make money at it long term without save scumming. My gambling skill is only around 60 though. I find that if my starting hand is less than about 700 I will almost always lose. I'm hoping that if I boost my gambling skill that it will put the thumb on the scale a bit in my favor with the rolls but I guess I'll find out eventually.
I haven't done much in the swamp area yet, will definitely check that out for slave training. I'm assuming I probably won't ever actually need to train ranged combat if I get the aim implant. With 30ish aim plus the aim implant I almost always hit with a rifle. So I would think I'd get enough random skill increases for that to be all I need for that. Bud needs some training though if I'm going to give him anything but a rifle.
I'm a bit torn on the arena so far. I put Rebecca in there based on a newbie guide recommendation but she seems a lot less effective in there than the guide implies. If I don't save scum, she can't reliably beat anyone worth more than about $500 at about 50 melee, 80 stamina, and high enough happiness/affection/respect to consistently get bonuses from me encouraging her. So I will frequently just put her up against a $100 opponent for the frequent melee skill increases she gets there. I haven't messed around with her passive income boost yet so I have no idea how that works. Haven't actually invested in much of anything yet since I'm still doing house upgrades and buying armor/implants. It does sound like that will eventually be nice though.
I'm starting to think the wiki might be wrong about the possibility of strength increases during combat. I've never seen one personally and I've done a lot of it. So unless there's a prerequisite for it that I don't know about, it's so rare that it might as well not exist. I do think it might be possible that you have to use a sledgehammer to get one, so it might be worth boosting strength a bit and testing out people using sledgehammers for awhile since I definitely have seen strength increases for smashing down the tunnel entrance with a sledgehammer. At my base strength of less than 50 I have never seen one while using a sledgehammer in combat, but there might be some minimum threshold for it. If you give one to a slave girl with low strength it gives you some warning message about it not being effective.
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