HTML Masters of Raana [v0.8.3.8 public] [GrimDark]

[MrFingers]

That same ferry has been such a constant source of inspiration to me for endless months as I have spent my MC:s and his chosen beauties time on that vessel of wonder.
Just to amuse myself -and hopefully one or two other players here - I reveal one suspicious observation and several deranged hypotheses my MC has invented to explain it off. TLDR BS-warning:

The trip to there ALWAYS seems to take exactly same time and an hour or so longer (but still precisely same again) time back no matter the weather!
This is the first pelagic phenomenon of this type I have ever met during my long and boring life - part of it happened at sea.
Hypotheses:
- Gulnar's ferry has some ultramodern technology assembled. (My MC would love to hijack that boat, but that at least is not possible. Fortunate, probably.)
- there is a very, very constant sea current going on that pushes Gulnar's ferry in one direction and hampers it's return considerably.
- the crew, maybe passengers too, just like to fish on return trip, so it takes longer. The drag from the baited lines and so on. That kind of thing is so usual that there is no need to mention about it, everybody on Raana knows about it and accepts the unavoidable.
- there might be gravitational anomalies involved, so the trip from Darkmere to Hamah happens downhill and return is uphill. This is a common thing on sea. Nothing peculiar with that.
- clocks on Raana are 'directional'. They work differently when one moves west than when going east.
- seawater on Raana behaves quite differently on Raana than, lets say, on Earth. No storm there causes waves. (That might also derive from non existent winds at Ikaanian sea. The storms are extra problematic and truly shocking just because at sea there are absolutely no winds involved.) The good thing is that even bad weather doesn't really affect ferries in any noticeable way.
- physics work differently on Raana than here on Earth. Quite possible. That might actually happen everywhere and probably will. We just don't know the back-laying reason for it yet. Two Moons have hit scientists with lunacy anyway. Shit happens but nobody cares.

I'm glad that speculation came with a warning. Please send me three of whatever you took to tap into that DeepDive pontification. cheers.

 

[MrFingers]

That's not customized, it's the portrait of the Rise from the Ashes character. He's supposed to look a little beaten up by the world and life in general as he's had a rough go of it and is (initially at least) a born idiot.

I see. I thought there were just three age -young- middle age - old portraits in all.

 

[khumak]

It also suggests that Intelligence is not quite as necessary as I originally presumed and Khumak seems to believe.

You can succeed with low INT characters, it just takes a while.

I didn't realize at first that there were ways to train intelligence endlessly just like there is for physical stats. I initially thought your only choices were the books, and the classes, with a 75 minimum requirement in academics or science being needed to actually teach a class. That was where my concern was. But if you just buy the ENSYS living room upgrade for your home, you can get a 20% chance of an INT increase every day if you want. So that resolves that issue. I tried the RPG campaign but I didn't have any luck gaining int from that. Maybe it's a long campaign that has to actually complete over several nights? Not sure. I didn't have hardly any upgrades yet when I tried it so I was getting pretty minimal benefits from it. Decided to try it later after I had more upgrades and some more slaves to use as servants, etc.

Charisma is fixable as well when you get to Crystal Hills but it's really expensive. Finally got there today. I tried some fights with Enya using her power katana and she's definitely a lot less effective than the space marine or the blackguard with a coilgun despite her relatively high melee skill. I imagine she'll be fine with some better armor though. I've spent most of my money on house upgrades and hiring mercs/slaves so far so I've bought zero armor. I tried fighting one of those monsters in the wilderness and got absolutely wrecked so I definitely need to boost some combat skills. Even a hit with a coilgun barely scratches those things.

 

[Gunner Rey]

I see. I thought there were just three age -young- middle age - old portraits in all.

The Tier 4 characters have different portraits. The 'Silver Tongue' one looks like a young Bradd Pitt circa "Ocean's Eleven."

 

[Gunner Rey]

I didn't realize at first that there were ways to train intelligence endlessly just like there is for physical stats. I initially thought your only choices were the books, and the classes, with a 75 minimum requirement in academics or science being needed to actually teach a class. That was where my concern was. But if you just buy the ENSYS living room upgrade for your home, you can get a 20% chance of an INT increase every day if you want. So that resolves that issue. I tried the RPG campaign but I didn't have any luck gaining int from that. Maybe it's a long campaign that has to actually complete over several nights? Not sure. I didn't have hardly any upgrades yet when I tried it so I was getting pretty minimal benefits from it. Decided to try it later after I had more upgrades and some more slaves to use as servants, etc.

Charisma is fixable as well when you get to Crystal Hills but it's really expensive. Finally got there today. I tried some fights with Enya using her power katana and she's definitely a lot less effective than the space marine or the blackguard with a coilgun despite her relatively high melee skill. I imagine she'll be fine with some better armor though. I've spent most of my money on house upgrades and hiring mercs/slaves so far so I've bought zero armor. I tried fighting one of those monsters in the wilderness and got absolutely wrecked so I definitely need to boost some combat skills. Even a hit with a coilgun barely scratches those things.

I've not yet figured out how to get INT from the ENSYS event, it never triggers for me despite dozens of attempts. If you figure it out please let me know.

Yes the RPG campaign is several nights, I think it was about five. You can't repeat it to my knowledge at this juncture. There's another one (RPG campaign) when you spend time with Ayden as well, but that's a one-shot also.

Get combat armor (for your whole crew) ASAP, it's a real difference maker.

Have Enya fire a rifle instead until she gets up to about 70 where you give her an autorifle. Coilguns are exclusively for those with Ranged Combat of 85 or so, maybe 80 in the very beginning, in my army.

 

[Dixon Butz]

In my army, Enya and Loren stay home "polishing guns"

 

[khumak]

I've not yet figured out how to get INT from the ENSYS event, it never triggers for me despite dozens of attempts. If you figure it out please let me know.

Yes the RPG campaign is several nights, I think it was about five. You can't repeat it to my knowledge at this juncture. There's another one (RPG campaign) when you spend time with Ayden as well, but that's a one-shot also.

Get combat armor (for your whole crew) ASAP, it's a real difference maker.

Have Enya fire a rifle instead until she gets up to about 70 where you give her an autorifle. Coilguns are exclusively for those with Ranged Combat of 85 or so, maybe 80 in the very beginning, in my army.

I'm not sure how repeatable it is, but the wiki says it's a 20% chance for the int increase. I got an int increase on the first try. I think 70 is the cap for it though so if you have more than that it probably will never give you one. Tried reloading and retrying a few times and didn't always get it but 20% is probably about right. I did buy the living room upgrade for it. I'm not sure if that's required or if it just makes it more likely. I'm hoping it's endlessly repeatable but I guess I'll find out. That was my plan for eventually getting to 70. Planning to raise my int to 70 via ENSYS exclusively if it's possible. Then I'll take the academy classes and read the books in case there's any benefit to having more than 70.

In my case I invited all 4 of my mercs to participate, bought all the refreshments available, had my 2 main slaves participate, and 1 or 2 other slaves work as servants. I didn't have anyone with low enough willpower to have them provide sex so I didn't do that.

Good to know the rpg events are 1 time only. I guess I'll save that for when I've got some girls trained up and all the house upgrades bought.

I had a feeling combat armor might be a significant difference. Planning on getting that soon. I started over with a soldier build to try a low int combat monster build. It's a lot of fun so far. Both ranged attacks and melee attacks are pretty effective since I have more than 60 of both in the first week without having to train it. Also seems like I gain melee and ranged skill more frequently during fights than the pure scientist build did.

One thing I'm also testing out that I'm not sure if it will work is a bit of a cheese strategy on the books. I'm buying up all the books and reading them til they only need 1 more session to complete and then saving them until I get my intelligence boosted. I'm hoping it does the int check on the last read but I guess I'll find out. I definitely got a message that I wasn't able to extract the full benefit from the book when I tried completing it with only 32 int.

I'm also finding manipulation an interesting option in place of charm. I started with 50ish manipulation but only 15 charm. So my charm pretty much always fails, but my manipulation succeeds pretty often and I get skill increases some of the time when it does. I can use that to reduce my slaves willpower on certain interactions. Probably not as effective as bondage but I haven't trained that up yet.

Once I get to crystal hills I can fix my charm but it's really expensive so I don't plan on using charm for quite awhile.

 

[Gunner Rey]

I'm not sure how repeatable it is, but the wiki says it's a 20% chance for the int increase. I got an int increase on the first try. I think 70 is the cap for it though so if you have more than that it probably will never give you one. Tried reloading and retrying a few times and didn't always get it but 20% is probably about right. I did buy the living room upgrade for it. I'm not sure if that's required or if it just makes it more likely. I'm hoping it's endlessly repeatable but I guess I'll find out. That was my plan for eventually getting to 70. Planning to raise my int to 70 via ENSYS exclusively if it's possible. Then I'll take the academy classes and read the books in case there's any benefit to having more than 70.

In my case I invited all 4 of my mercs to participate, bought all the refreshments available, had my 2 main slaves participate, and 1 or 2 other slaves work as servants. I didn't have anyone with low enough willpower to have them provide sex so I didn't do that.

Good to know the rpg events are 1 time only. I guess I'll save that for when I've got some girls trained up and all the house upgrades bought.

I had a feeling combat armor might be a significant difference. Planning on getting that soon. I started over with a soldier build to try a low int combat monster build. It's a lot of fun so far. Both ranged attacks and melee attacks are pretty effective since I have more than 60 of both in the first week without having to train it. Also seems like I gain melee and ranged skill more frequently during fights than the pure scientist build did.

One thing I'm also testing out that I'm not sure if it will work is a bit of a cheese strategy on the books. I'm buying up all the books and reading them til they only need 1 more session to complete and then saving them until I get my intelligence boosted. I'm hoping it does the int check on the last read but I guess I'll find out. I definitely got a message that I wasn't able to extract the full benefit from the book when I tried completing it with only 32 int.

I'm also finding manipulation an interesting option in place of charm. I started with 50ish manipulation but only 15 charm. So my charm pretty much always fails, but my manipulation succeeds pretty often and I get skill increases some of the time when it does. I can use that to reduce my slaves willpower on certain interactions. Probably not as effective as bondage but I haven't trained that up yet.

Once I get to crystal hills I can fix my charm but it's really expensive so I don't plan on using charm for quite awhile.

Thanks for the info regarding ENSYS. You have your slaves as participants? That might be my mistake, I always have them 'participate' by crawling around on the floor pleasing us. I'll try it with them as guests too.

You'd be better off doing something else with your training time now than reading books you don't plan to finish. Get your stamina up instead, then dex and strength.

You can raise Charm up to 70 by 'Caressing' during seduction. Do full two hour sessions 'caressing' until it greys out, then a kissing or 'aggressive petting' and back to 'Caress' until it greys out and do it again until the two hour warning.

 

[khumak]

Thanks for the info regarding ENSYS. You have your slaves as participants? That might be my mistake, I always have them 'participate' by crawling around on the floor pleasing us. I'll try it with them as guests too.

You'd be better off doing something else with your training time now than reading books you don't plan to finish. Get your stamina up instead, then dex and strength.

You can raise Charm up to 70 by 'Caressing' during seduction. Do full two hour sessions 'caressing' until it greys out, then a kissing or 'aggressive petting' and back to 'Caress' until it greys out and do it again until the two hour warning.

I'll have to play around with the seduction a bit. I didn't know that could give charm increases. I suspect 15 charm might be too low of a starting value for that to work though unless I get lucky several times to get the ball rolling. Ironically, Amelia has low enough willpower that she's fine with blowjobs and sex as long as I'm aggressive/manipulative about it. Caressing/kissing/massaging though? Nope. Fails every time.

 

[OmegaZero21]

I've not yet figured out how to get INT from the ENSYS event, it never triggers for me despite dozens of attempts. If you figure it out please let me know.

Yes the RPG campaign is several nights, I think it was about five. You can't repeat it to my knowledge at this juncture. There's another one (RPG campaign) when you spend time with Ayden as well, but that's a one-shot also.

See there's like literally no reason why these things are one and done. Pretty sure people who are into D&D don't like that notion either.

 

[JaxMan]

Yeah I haven't tried it yet but just started a low int build to test it out. Will see how it goes.

View attachment 2477637

That's kind of a "rise from the ashes" build. Good Luck!

I see. I thought there were just three age -young- middle age - old portraits in all.

One of Grim's goals is to have a selection of portraits for each setting. On the discord there was a couple comments that explained how to replace the MC avatar by replacing the ageX.png and ageX.jpg in the Pics/Player folder and the jpgs in the Pic/ch folder. Just make sure to keep the same proportions/size. It was from last November, but I am sure it hasn't changed.

 

[Gunner Rey]

I'll have to play around with the seduction a bit. I didn't know that could give charm increases. I suspect 15 charm might be too low of a starting value for that to work though unless I get lucky several times to get the ball rolling. Ironically, Amelia has low enough willpower that she's fine with blowjobs and sex as long as I'm aggressive/manipulative about it. Caressing/kissing/massaging though? Nope. Fails every time.

Some girls you can't seduce, I haven't had one of those in a while though, I thought he'd changed that.

Find the ones who'll let you fondle them and you can easily 'Caress' yourself from 15 to 70 Charm, that's more or less what I did with my Rise from the Ashes character. It takes a while though, you won't necessarily get a point each time, it's an average of about one point every two full sessions or so. Every so often you'll get two in the same session, but that's rare.

 

[khumak]

Some girls you can't seduce, I haven't had one of those in a while though, I thought he'd changed that.

Find the ones who'll let you fondle them and you can easily 'Caress' yourself from 15 to 70 Charm, that's more or less what I did with my Rise from the Ashes character. It takes a while though, you won't necessarily get a point each time, it's an average of about one point every two full sessions or so. Every so often you'll get two in the same session, but that's rare.

Yeah I started a game on easy level just to play around with the seduction and I do get charm increases that way now. It does seem like a decent way to improve affection and happiness prior to getting enough skill at bondage for that to be a good option. Whenever I tried bondage so far the girl ends up despising me, presumably because I'm not good enough at it to get her aroused so it's basically just rape plus pain. Seduction allows progress without her hating you.

Oddly enough now that I tried the ENSYS thing again I can't get it to give me any INT increases so I'm not sure that would be a reliable way to ever get to 70. Maybe there's some specific requirements for it to work that I accidently managed to meet before. Not sure. Will have to test that out more later. I think I'll stick to a science build until then. Or maybe figure out the minimum combination of int/science/academics I need to be able to teach classes even with only partial rewards from books and courses. Teaching classes would presumably allow me to still fix my int/science/academics even if I got below average rewards as long as I was able to eventually reach 75 science or academics.

Hopefully he adds some more stealth content in a future update. I tend to like stealthy builds in RPGs but it doesn't seem like there's much you can do with that yet.

 

[OmegaZero21]

Can anyone actually confirm ever getting any Intel gain from teaching at the academy? I know I got a willpower increase once.

 

[Caesariuz]

Can anyone actually confirm ever getting any Intel gain from teaching at the academy? I know I got a willpower increase once.

Long time teacher here, no INT gains there for me, some WP (more than once) but probably capped.
Nowadays on the latest alphas I got some fresh new WPs playing poker at the Docks.

And about the ENSYS event, I didnt get any INT out of it.

Anyway actually Im blocked into the Performance slave skill, at 4% chance while on course Im gonna need 2 whole years to deliver my first slave to the Docks.

 

[khumak]

Intel vs combat is an interesting tradeoff as far as starting conditions. I definitely find the first month easier with a combat build, but then I get bogged down trying to raise non combat stats without being able to get the full benefit from books or courses. So I find it harder to train up my slaves.

With an intel start money is a lot tighter at first and I take a lot longer to clear out all the enemies that start off on the map, but I have 70 intel the first week so I can start burning through all of the books and classes getting maximum benefit from all of them. My main sucks at combat the first month, but with mercs it's not a big deal. I've only found 3 mercs that supply their own ammo so far. Not sure if there's a 4th in this version or not. I have the blackguard, the space marine, and Ayden all set up with coilguns. My main and Loren are my only people who use ammo so they're still using rifles.

 

[Dixon Butz]

I think Bud will sort of have an ammo pack in the next version. From the comments on Discord, it sounds like it's only active if you spend your time making him happy. Not sure though.

 

[Caesariuz]

Yeah, Bud provides its own ammo, but having 3 ammo carriers (2 plasma + 1 coilgun who crits every 1st round) on durasteel is enough for me to bring a slave and do some katana.

 

[khumak]

I think Bud will sort of have an ammo pack in the next version. From the comments on Discord, it sounds like it's only active if you spend your time making him happy. Not sure though.

Nice to know there's an option coming for that. I think initially it might make sense to keep the early mercs long enough to build relationship with them anyway and complete any quests they have, especially since with their low salaries you can afford to spend time taking classes/training/etc without needing your time to be generating a significant amount of income to counteract high merc salaries. If you go hire all the badasses right off the bat then you pretty much have to spend a good chunk of time fighting every day to counteract their high salaries. Some of the socializing options in the bars take a lot of time as well that doesn't generate much money (even if you win at gambling).

I would imagine it helps to actually get to where you can have some slaves trained up to the point where they generate a useful income before then as well, but I don't know how long that takes. Training up charm is proving to be pretty easy now that I started with a more reasonable amount to begin with. I can usually gain more than 1 charm per day with seduction just switching back and forth between kissing and caressing and then end her session with a blowjob. With minimal starting charm she will usually get pissed and end the session early unless I spend most of my time trying (and usually failing) to sweet talk her first. But with starting charm of more like 30-40 I'm pretty much guaranteed to be able to get her to do at least a blowjob every day without being forceful or demanding.

I figure if I can get charm, manipulation, bondage, and flagellation all bumped up to around 80 or so the first month then I can have free reign with the girls while I work on the rest of the skills.

 

[khumak]

Something I just noticed that I hadn't paid any attention to before is the respect stat on slaves. From the wiki it sounds like it's effect is similar to affection, making it easier for you to do most things with her regardless of your stats. Turns out it's easy to raise by just having her as a witness during combat while you kill stuff. I raised Juno's respect to good in 1 day.

I'll be curious to see how much difference it makes. I decided to start over with some points in melee anyway so I could work towards boosting melee high enough to fight in the arena when I unlock Crystal Hills without having to actually train it. So far it's more effective than I thought it would be but I'm still just fighting raiders and punks. So squashing one of them with a sledgehammer isn't that impressive.

Edit: Played around a bit more with respect and with Juno now "Impressed" with me she's pretty easy to persuade to do things even with zero arousal and less than 30 charm and manipulation. So it does seem to make a significant difference. My first seduction session with her had a 100% success rate for all of my charm checks which I'm definitely not used to. I'm thinking it might well be worth cycling most if not all of your slaves in for a few days of combat with the main character and mercs carrying all of the burden of actually killing stuff. I don't think Juno has hit anything even once so far, but that's fine.