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

[Gunner Rey]

I started over again for the bazillionth time, this time determined to do a zero save scum, zero F5 game.

Since I know from previous games that tier 6 bounties are extremely questionable without save scumming my plan is to skip those entirely for this play through which means I don't ever need 4 top tier mercs for bounties. So starting from that premise I decided to see if I could get by with zero top tier mercs and still do the tier 5 bounties. First order of business was getting Doyle some duraplate so he can tank until I have the money to get all the health implants for my main so he can take over tanking duties. I suspect I will have to skip the tier 5 bounties until I can afford to boost health on my main to 200 because there's no way I'm going to be able to guarantee a kill on the plasma guy in the first round without Ayden. I can do the regular random arena battles with just rifles but Doyle takes a LOT of damage.

Second thing I'm noticing is where the true line is for the valkrie from Marston avenue in the arena. With no training she can't consistently beat either of the legendary opponents even with a weapon. She can beat them rarely but that's not good enough IMO. She can beat the heroic opponents bare handed some of the time but not all of the time, however she can beat them 100% of the time with a sledgehammer. So that's decent money and influence prior to training I think.

I plan on swapping her out soon for Rebecca so I can train up her melee stats. My arena results will get significantly worse for awhile with Rebecca in there, but I figure the valkrie with 100 melee should be able to dominate Raven with a weapon.

The last thing I've noticed so far is that with nobody using anything stronger than a rifle yet some of the random enemies around town are just not reliably beatable even with duraplate armor. So I'm not clearing the marston or stokke hills bosses for now. I usually get zero weapon drops anyway so I'm not missing that much other than influence.

Oh that brings up one last point and that's money from combat. Without F5 I make maybe 25% of the money I used to make with combat since I frequently get zero drops. So far it's day 15 and I've seen zero assault rifle drops and haven't even attempted any enemies with coil guns yet.

Definitely makes for a slower start, but I'm actually finding it more fun. There's no more frustration of using F5 til I get the result I want or reloading from fails. I do take rare stat losses if I happen to try a fight that's too hard but not very often.

So far Doyle and Dexter are both getting very reliable. I suspect it's going to be a long road for Bud though. My fourth is Loren for now but I think I'll swap her out for Aiko once I have time to convince Loren that being a whore would be more fun than getting shot at. I think once I have the money for a stealth suit I might just put my slaves on a permanent combat rotation with 1 slave always being part of my squad. So it'll be Doyle, Dexter, Bud, and 1 slave.

So far I'm at day 15 and the only thing I've bought besides a few house upgrades is a suit of duraplate for Doyle. Money is tight. I went with crafting as 1 of my starting perks this time so I should be able to get some of those crafting investments up and running a lot faster than normal though.

Edit: As luck would have it, I got my first tier 5 bounty on day 20 when I definitely wasn't ready for it. Decided to try it anyway so sold most of my stuff to buy the aim implant so I could at least have an auto hit with the assault rifle I finally found. Turned out to be one of the easier versions of the tier 5 (only 2 enemies) so I managed to do it and a plasma did drop. So the next one should be MUCH easier with an auto hit plasma shot now for my main.

I find I definitely get more satisfaction from my Grimdark run with no re-loading. It also means time passes faster so I get farther into it quicker. It's probably a wise move to steer away from the Tier-6s for now, it also seems Grimdark changed the odds of getting one as they're no longer the most likely bounty like they were for a while, seemingly two out of every three or so.

Give Bud that plasma gun and keep him happy by frequent 'carousing' sessions at Dockgrave. Poker is probably too rich for your blood (and skill) at that juncture but the carousing bonuses really add up with time. I ended up getting a 40 performance, the only universe in which I can sing on tune!

 

[khumak]

I find I definitely get more satisfaction from my Grimdark run with no re-loading. It also means time passes faster so I get farther into it quicker. It's probably a wise move to steer away from the Tier-6s for now, it also seems Grimdark changed the odds of getting one as they're no longer the most likely bounty like they were for a while, seemingly two out of every three or so.

Give Bud that plasma gun and keep him happy by frequent 'carousing' sessions at Dockgrave. Poker is probably too rich for your blood (and skill) at that juncture but the carousing bonuses really add up with time. I ended up getting a 40 performance, the only universe in which I can sing on tune!

I just ignore Bud's attention whore trait and let him get pissed. I do train him though. He's still got a ways to go but he's currently sitting at 80 aim and using a plasma gun even though he misses a fair amount of time with it still. I may do some poker after I take the classes that give gambling bonuses but I haven't started on that yet.

For the tier 5 bounties I give one to Doyle as well and use one on my main. At some point Grim changed it so that you actually get a small amount of ammo with a gun drop so I've actually never had to buy any plasma ammo. I just randomly find a bit here and there. So if I only use them on the hard fights I'm not really missing the free ammo of the top tiers. Too bad Dexter won't give up that pistol but he's pretty good with it, and Aiko is closing in on high enough aim to be able to use a plasma in a pinch as well.

I do find that money is WAY more scarce now though. It's about day 30 now and I've only bought basic upgrades for my house (maxed out bedroom and garden, 1 upgrade in all the other rooms, plus gazebo and a level 3 shrine. I've also only bought the aim implant, the healing implant, and duraplate for myself and only 1 suit of duraplate for my mercs (Doyle is still my tank). In addition to the fact that I'm doing more tier 1-4 bounties than I am tier 5 so far, it's pretty common for combat to have zero weapon drops. I've had decent luck on the tier 5s so far though and have gotten 3 plasma guns so far.

In addition to the combat, the no F5 thing also means I decided to wait longer to seduce any of the girls. So instead I'm training up stamina on Mae, the valkrie, and Rebecca and those are currently my only girls. I have Mae and Rebecca at 80 now and the valkrie is up next so Rebecca is going to head back to the arena again for a bit, but without F5 Rebecca can only reliably do the $50 ordinary opponents with a weapon reliably. She can't beat anyone with fists. So I don't plan on having her do the arena very long. Trying to scrounge up enough money to buy Aria now so I can alternate between the valkrie and Aria in there while I train them up to be combat monsters. The valkrie can beat the heroic opponents with a sledgehammer 100% of the time but not the legendary. I haven't found a way to use the power katana in the arena. Do you have to give the girl a power katana before you send her to the arena for that to work? I do have a couple.

I can't do the stokke hills or marston ave bosses yet since they randomly hit anyone and me and Doyle are the only ones with armor so far. I also took the crafting perk this time since grinding out crafting increases annoys me. The crafting perk starts me off with enough that I can at least make swords/crossbows/pistols that actually count towards faction donations instead of dozens of daggers.

I'm definitely going to want to spend some quality time training melee with the valkrie soon, both for her arena benefit and also for my ability to capture slaves. Since I didn't start with melee master this time I'm capturing a LOT less slaves. It's pretty common for me to miss with that cane so unless it's an important capture like the valkrie I only try once or twice before just giving up and shooting them.

 

[khumak]

So the tier 5 bounties are definitely quite doable without any top tiers but I was finding that I was burning through stims so fast that I think it might be cheaper to hire 1 top tier so I can save on stims. Broke down and sold most of my weapons across the ferry to buy duraplate and as luck would have it Space Marine was there so I picked him up and bought duraplate for everyone. Aiko is a guard for now and Loren is captain of the guard until I can convince them that whoring might be more fun. Once I get Bud trained up a bit more I'll work on convincing both of them to become whores but that will take awhile. Fucked Loren several times already but have so far had zero luck getting her corruption up.

I think my next priority will be health implants for my main because that would further save on stims if I can have my main tank and rely mostly on the healing implant for heals instead of stims. It's going to be awhile before I can really get much in the way of investments going. Up until now I've been barely making more than it costs to buy ammo and stims, although I'm making steady progress training up melee on myself and Aria as well as training Ranged on Bud. Unfortunately Aria has zero combat perks except for Steel Maiden so she's going to be a downgrade in arena performance when I swap her in to train Valkrie again.

 

[Fauno36]

I downloaded it and started playing it. I find it amazing!!! I thank the developer from there for bringing us this game, very innovative, conceptually speaking.

 

[khumak]

I never realized how big of a bonus you can get for seduction if you really get set up before you start in on the girls. It makes seducing really easy even at 20 charm. I picked the Teen Subduer perk so +30 with teens. Maxed out bedroom and living room gives another +30 with all girls. Daria's Gift gives +20 with any girl who's not a brainiac (less than 50 int).

Stack all that up and after gimping my charm down to 20 by buying the aim implant I still effectively have 90 charm for my first session with Rebecca, Mae, and the valkrie. Non teens are a bit harder for me but if I caress my way to some charm upgrades with the teens I can move on to the non teens later. Much cheaper than spending money on the charm surgery at the hospital but it does take a bit of set up time.

I didn't even do anything to boost happiness or affection with anyone before I started seducing. It helps if you manage to get one of them to shower with you first but not required.

 

[DaedusWolfe]

I have a couple of questions about The Retreat. Is this simply a holding pen? Are the slaves living there going to be assignable to jobs in the city or at the academy? Mainly I'm concerned about the slaves being idle. They all have maintenance costs associated with them but it does not look like they can be assigned a job to bring in income to cover it.

edit: Oh .. and is it possible to get the manipulation buttons for the active slaves while in The Retreat so that we can cycle through the slaves to select one we want to switch out?

 

[Gunner Rey]

I just ignore Bud's attention whore trait and let him get pissed. I do train him though. He's still got a ways to go but he's currently sitting at 80 aim and using a plasma gun even though he misses a fair amount of time with it still. I may do some poker after I take the classes that give gambling bonuses but I haven't started on that yet.

For the tier 5 bounties I give one to Doyle as well and use one on my main. At some point Grim changed it so that you actually get a small amount of ammo with a gun drop so I've actually never had to buy any plasma ammo. I just randomly find a bit here and there. So if I only use them on the hard fights I'm not really missing the free ammo of the top tiers. Too bad Dexter won't give up that pistol but he's pretty good with it, and Aiko is closing in on high enough aim to be able to use a plasma in a pinch as well.

I do find that money is WAY more scarce now though. It's about day 30 now and I've only bought basic upgrades for my house (maxed out bedroom and garden, 1 upgrade in all the other rooms, plus gazebo and a level 3 shrine. I've also only bought the aim implant, the healing implant, and duraplate for myself and only 1 suit of duraplate for my mercs (Doyle is still my tank). In addition to the fact that I'm doing more tier 1-4 bounties than I am tier 5 so far, it's pretty common for combat to have zero weapon drops. I've had decent luck on the tier 5s so far though and have gotten 3 plasma guns so far.

In addition to the combat, the no F5 thing also means I decided to wait longer to seduce any of the girls. So instead I'm training up stamina on Mae, the valkrie, and Rebecca and those are currently my only girls. I have Mae and Rebecca at 80 now and the valkrie is up next so Rebecca is going to head back to the arena again for a bit, but without F5 Rebecca can only reliably do the $50 ordinary opponents with a weapon reliably. She can't beat anyone with fists. So I don't plan on having her do the arena very long. Trying to scrounge up enough money to buy Aria now so I can alternate between the valkrie and Aria in there while I train them up to be combat monsters. The valkrie can beat the heroic opponents with a sledgehammer 100% of the time but not the legendary. I haven't found a way to use the power katana in the arena. Do you have to give the girl a power katana before you send her to the arena for that to work? I do have a couple.

I can't do the stokke hills or marston ave bosses yet since they randomly hit anyone and me and Doyle are the only ones with armor so far. I also took the crafting perk this time since grinding out crafting increases annoys me. The crafting perk starts me off with enough that I can at least make swords/crossbows/pistols that actually count towards faction donations instead of dozens of daggers.

I'm definitely going to want to spend some quality time training melee with the valkrie soon, both for her arena benefit and also for my ability to capture slaves. Since I didn't start with melee master this time I'm capturing a LOT less slaves. It's pretty common for me to miss with that cane so unless it's an important capture like the valkrie I only try once or twice before just giving up and shooting them.

For a long time Bud was part of the 'crew' which went out to Dockgraves with me along with the Space Marine, Ansel and Rebecca, so he has an 'Attention' score of 61 still as a legacy. Thus yes you can exceed the max with him in that score and it will stay with you. You don't need to play poker to 'Carouse' and get those benefits and they're very much worth getting. INT, WP, and Sci up to a decent cap, well worth it even if you don't have the money to play poker or whip little Kasey.

Yes, we have ammo drops now and I love them too. If you're judicious in your use of plasma guns like I am you might not ever have to buy another energy cell.

Get that Duraplate everywhere and you can use the easy ones like the two in the lower left corner of Stokke Hills as melee practice. Just have everyone close and use whips, they'll miss most of the time to start with but since rifles can barely scratch Duraplate you don't have to worry much about it. You won't do much damage, except on crits, but that means you're likely to get a few crits for every win there. Keep at it and it definitely adds up. In many combats my MC barely fights, it's the ones with me that need the points so I let them get them.

 

[Gunner Rey]

I have a couple of questions about The Retreat. Is this simply a holding pen? Are the slaves living there going to be assignable to jobs in the city or at the academy? Mainly I'm concerned about the slaves being idle. They all have maintenance costs associated with them but it does not look like they can be assigned a job to bring in income to cover it.

edit: Oh .. and is it possible to get the manipulation buttons for the active slaves while in The Retreat so that we can cycle through the slaves to select one we want to switch out?

I just read that there's more planned for The Retreat but for now it really is just a holding pen. They don't work jobs nor go to the Stables either I think.

 

[khumak]

For a long time Bud was part of the 'crew' which went out to Dockgraves with me along with the Space Marine, Ansel and Rebecca, so he has an 'Attention' score of 61 still as a legacy. Thus yes you can exceed the max with him in that score and it will stay with you. You don't need to play poker to 'Carouse' and get those benefits and they're very much worth getting. INT, WP, and Sci up to a decent cap, well worth it even if you don't have the money to play poker or whip little Kasey.

Yes, we have ammo drops now and I love them too. If you're judicious in your use of plasma guns like I am you might not ever have to buy another energy cell.

Get that Duraplate everywhere and you can use the easy ones like the two in the lower left corner of Stokke Hills as melee practice. Just have everyone close and use whips, they'll miss most of the time to start with but since rifles can barely scratch Duraplate you don't have to worry much about it. You won't do much damage, except on crits, but that means you're likely to get a few crits for every win there. Keep at it and it definitely adds up. In many combats my MC barely fights, it's the ones with me that need the points so I let them get them.

I might try Dockgraves again sometime but I was kind of underwhelmed by Carousing. I would definitely do it in a rise from the ashes start where I needed a way to randomly raise int to a usable threshold before taking classes/reading books, but I usually go with a scientist start so I don't need the int and I can eventually get WP to 100 with Atheism.

You can gain int by teaching classes at the academy. I got a point doing that in my latest Atheism start, but it's rare. You can also unfortunately LOSE stats teaching classes. I lost a willpower that way. From what I could tell you do always get 1 point of standing with the academy per class but you don't always gain devotion. I'm not clear if that's the same as the standing you get from donating stuff to the historical society when it comes to making them a vassal or whether that's just for salary progression for your professor job. The more classes you teach, the more you earn from it. If it also counts for vassal status then that's probably the fastest way to get a vassal. 100 classes taught and you're done.

Bud does become pretty useful if you get his ranged up above 80 even if you ignore his attention whore trait. My problem with him is his health though. Same with Space Marine. In my latest game, as soon as I picked up Space Marine for some reason he became my tank even though Doyle has more health. And although he hits like a truck, he folds like a wet paper bag when facing plasma/coil gun wielding opponents. A plasma crit can almost 1 shot someone with 100 health. Someone with 150 can almost always survive 2 plasma hits.

I have definitely gained a new appreciation for crafting in my latest game as well. By about day 30 I had used up all my stims and new ones cost $2100 per pack vs $200 per pack if I just buy empty syringes and craft them myself. The problem is you need significant crafting skill to make them and while the crafting perk is convenient, I really think the melee master perk is better to start with due to the huge income boost from selling slaves.

With melee master I would usually capture at least 6 slaves per day. With the crafting perk I would frequently capture zero slaves in a day. Occasionally I would get one but most fights I wouldn't unless I was willing to sit there and wait for my main to whiff over and over again with the cane until he finally hit something. With melee master it's one and done.

Bounties have become a lot less important to me if I'm not save scumming since they frequently drop nothing. So once I hit 10k influence I frequently skip them unless it's a tier 5.

For comparison sake between the crafting perk start vs the melee master start, with melee master I was able to hire Doyle, Dexter, and Felix on day 1 and also buy combat armor for myself. With the crafting perk I could barely afford Dexter.

 

[Gunner Rey]

I might try Dockgraves again sometime but I was kind of underwhelmed by Carousing. I would definitely do it in a rise from the ashes start where I needed a way to randomly raise int to a usable threshold before taking classes/reading books, but I usually go with a scientist start so I don't need the int and I can eventually get WP to 100 with Atheism.

You can gain int by teaching classes at the academy. I got a point doing that in my latest Atheism start, but it's rare. You can also unfortunately LOSE stats teaching classes. I lost a willpower that way. From what I could tell you do always get 1 point of standing with the academy per class but you don't always gain devotion. I'm not clear if that's the same as the standing you get from donating stuff to the historical society when it comes to making them a vassal or whether that's just for salary progression for your professor job. The more classes you teach, the more you earn from it. If it also counts for vassal status then that's probably the fastest way to get a vassal. 100 classes taught and you're done.

Bud does become pretty useful if you get his ranged up above 80 even if you ignore his attention whore trait. My problem with him is his health though. Same with Space Marine. In my latest game, as soon as I picked up Space Marine for some reason he became my tank even though Doyle has more health. And although he hits like a truck, he folds like a wet paper bag when facing plasma/coil gun wielding opponents. A plasma crit can almost 1 shot someone with 100 health. Someone with 150 can almost always survive 2 plasma hits.

I have definitely gained a new appreciation for crafting in my latest game as well. By about day 30 I had used up all my stims and new ones cost $2100 per pack vs $200 per pack if I just buy empty syringes and craft them myself. The problem is you need significant crafting skill to make them and while the crafting perk is convenient, I really think the melee master perk is better to start with due to the huge income boost from selling slaves.

With melee master I would usually capture at least 6 slaves per day. With the crafting perk I would frequently capture zero slaves in a day. Occasionally I would get one but most fights I wouldn't unless I was willing to sit there and wait for my main to whiff over and over again with the cane until he finally hit something. With melee master it's one and done.

Bounties have become a lot less important to me if I'm not save scumming since they frequently drop nothing. So once I hit 10k influence I just skip them unless it's a tier 5.

For comparison sake between the crafting perk start vs the melee master start, with melee master I was able to hire Doyle, Dexter, and Felix on day 1 and also buy combat armor for myself. With the crafting perk I could barely afford Dexter.

I find the Health of my mercs doesn't matter as much anymore. There's damned few instances where someone will be firing a Plasma gun at Bud, nor the Space Marine if I've got all the goodies and I will soon enough. I forgo the aim implant and Melee Master as I know I can crit myself up there fast enough with all the recurrings and the Arena and a bounty most everyday.

I have finally managed to get to 84 Blacksmithing. This took longer than Juno getting to 130 Gardening or even Laika getting to age 18! I am one point away from being able to repair my beloved Duraplate by myself! Hundreds of combat knives live today to get me to this point.

I find I can just about always capture a slave. All you have to do is make the last hit be with a whipping cane. That will capture without killing roughly 90-95% of the time. If you have Duraplate and they have a rifle or worse you get pretty much all day to administer that hit. Even five melee newbies will hit often enough you can get that one hit, sometimes I'll just do the last one exclusively with whips to get more points from crits for me and my crew.

I've not noticed bounties dropping less than others, but I do recall Grim saying he was reducing the weapon drops on Grimdark and I can believe it as I seldom get a two plasma gun drop anymore and seem to be shut out more often these days.

 

[khumak]

I find the Health of my mercs doesn't matter as much anymore. There's damned few instances where someone will be firing a Plasma gun at Bud, nor the Space Marine if I've got all the goodies and I will soon enough. I forgo the aim implant and Melee Master as I know I can crit myself up there fast enough with all the recurrings and the Arena and a bounty most everyday.

For me it's the non bounty, non arena fights where health matters. Things like the marston avenue and stokke hills fights where everyone has a power katana or you have a coil gun plus 3 rifles to deal with. I don't bother with the highwaymen. With the stealth mechanic that one is even worse than the bounties since they always get to go first. So I lose someone before I even get to fire a shot pretty often.

I have finally managed to get to 84 Blacksmithing. This took longer than Juno getting to 130 Gardening or even Laika getting to age 18! I am one point away from being able to repair my beloved Duraplate by myself! Hundreds of combat knives live today to get me to this point.

My plan for crafting is go nuts on combat knives til I hit 30 blacksmithing, then start making swords/pistols/crossbows/etc for faction donations. Once I hit 40 I can start making my own stims. Not planning on reading the crafting books til I reach at least 60 blacksmithing. I do think the combat knives seem to give the best skill gains. Stims can be crafted faster but I have never gotten a skill increase from them. Not sure if that's just bad luck or if it's guaranteed. It seems like the higher value items that take longer to craft should have a better chance for a skill increase but in my experience they don't.

I find I can just about always capture a slave. All you have to do is make the last hit be with a whipping cane. That will capture without killing roughly 90-95% of the time. If you have Duraplate and they have a rifle or worse you get pretty much all day to administer that hit. Even five melee newbies will hit often enough you can get that one hit, sometimes I'll just do the last one exclusively with whips to get more points from crits for me and my crew.

I actually hadn't considered giving everyone a cane. That's a great idea. Just tried it and it works a lot better.

I've not noticed bounties dropping less than others, but I do recall Grim saying he was reducing the weapon drops on Grimdark and I can believe it as I seldom get a two plasma gun drop anymore and seem to be shut out more often these days.

Yeah it can be streaky. My last game I had good luck initially on plasma drops with my first 3 tier 5 bounties all dropping 1. Then zero plasma drops for more than a month. My luck tends to be the worst on coil guns. In 3 months I got 1 coil gun, 3 plasma guns, and 10 assault rifles. I get lots of rifle drops but that's about the only common drop for me.

 

[Haamster]

How long until the public release of 8.2? I last played build 8.16 and with the new slave generation it seems like a great time to get back in.

 

[Kavalor]

the last I heard the Tier 3+ release should be this weekend, that would makle the public release one week later.

 

[McLOVINu]

I've not noticed bounties dropping less than others, but I do recall Grim saying he was reducing the weapon drops on Grimdark and I can believe it as I seldom get a two plasma gun drop anymore and seem to be shut out more often these days.

Wait, do the weapons somehow get destroyed at the moment a person dies?

In my normal difficulty play through, some times my team of 5 dumbasses can't find a single weapon 5 other dead people where just using in front of their very eyes!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since this game takes place in a non-magic world, each piece of gear a person was using when they die, should show up as loot.

I hope the coding would be simple to edit 100% drop rate. [unsure if we can get it to drop both melee+ranged from single mob... IF they are equiped with both]

 

[mrttao]

I notice religion says you can convert your slaves. what effects does this have on them? do the slaves get bonuses?

 

[Deviton123]

Any character creation tips for a new player?

 

[Gunner Rey]

For me it's the non bounty, non arena fights where health matters. Things like the marston avenue and stokke hills fights where everyone has a power katana or you have a coil gun plus 3 rifles to deal with. I don't bother with the highwaymen. With the stealth mechanic that one is even worse than the bounties since they always get to go first. So I lose someone before I even get to fire a shot pretty often.

I've not seen the Highwaymen of Darkmere in a long time. Once they started firing first I became a little more wary about going up there, but eventually they disappeared entirely. I don't know if it's related to the bandit count or what, but eventually I stopped even looking for them.

Regarding power katanas, I forgot to add something about them and the arena upthread when you asked. You do need to equip your girl with one when you send her to the Arena. Then she will have one available. Most of my girls fight with fists outside the beginning matches. I usually start with one that yields 400-600 and see how close the score is, then play around with the weapons and a higher-tiered opponent to get an autowin with about a 10 point cushion. I've found you can still lose even if the numbers add up to 100 so you need a little extra over that, about 10 points is enough in my experience.

My plan for crafting is go nuts on combat knives til I hit 30 blacksmithing, then start making swords/pistols/crossbows/etc for faction donations. Once I hit 40 I can start making my own stims. Not planning on reading the crafting books til I reach at least 60 blacksmithing. I do think the combat knives seem to give the best skill gains. Stims can be crafted faster but I have never gotten a skill increase from them. Not sure if that's just bad luck or if it's guaranteed. It seems like the higher value items that take longer to craft should have a better chance for a skill increase but in my experience they don't.

I drown the market in combat knives, then I build rifles and finally auto-rifles because they're useful. I've never tried a stim, it seems odd you wouldn't get any increase chance from them, I hope that's just bad luck.

I actually hadn't considered giving everyone a cane. That's a great idea. Just tried it and it works a lot better.

Yeah, both my teams carry whipping canes, I have a whole pile of unused power katanas now. I have been known to forget Ayden will never carry a whipping stick and that works out badly for the poor person who gets his sword instead of the stick. Incidentally, this might just be some bizarre random luck but I've found my MC's Great Sword captures far more often than you'd guess it would.

Yeah it can be streaky. My last game I had good luck initially on plasma drops with my first 3 tier 5 bounties all dropping 1. Then zero plasma drops for more than a month. My luck tends to be the worst on coil guns. In 3 months I got 1 coil gun, 3 plasma guns, and 10 assault rifles. I get lots of rifle drops but that's about the only common drop for me.

I hardly ever get a coilgun anymore. Remember back when I told you I was jealous of your plasma drops because I'd only gotten 15 but had over a hundred coilguns? Now I have 314 Plasma Rifles and 226 Coilguns.

 

[Gunner Rey]

Wait, do the weapons somehow get destroyed at the moment a person dies?

In my normal difficulty play through, some times my team of 5 dumbasses can't find a single weapon 5 other dead people where just using in front of their very eyes!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Since this game takes place in a non-magic world, each piece of gear a person was using when they die, should show up as loot.

I hope the coding would be simple to edit 100% drop rate. [unsure if we can get it to drop both melee+ranged from single mob... IF they are equiped with both]

I've no idea about coding, I can't help with that.

The drop chance is basically to balance the game a little as always getting a gun to drop makes it way too easy. Perhaps a 100% drop chance would be a good idea for sandbox mode though.

Otherwise I just figure the gun got destroyed in combat or was such a piece of poorly maintained shit it wasn't worth keeping.

 

[Gunner Rey]

Any character creation tips for a new player?

The first one is the most important: you can make anything work these days. Play what you really want to play because you don't have to pick anything in particular to succeed.

That being said, some choices will give benefits you might find more useful when you first start. INT determines what you get from courses and reading books so having a starting INT of 60-70 (the latter being all that's needed to get the max from most all of them) allows you to get those improvement points earlier. However 'Carousing' at Dockgraves will give an INT point sometimes as will RPG sessions during an event or with Ayden and there's a chance of getting at least one point playing 'Spaceball' with the event engine as well. Thus you can forgo INT a little at the start and grind it up to 70 and then do the books and courses. This allows you to get off to a better start financially as you won't have so much of your time in the beginning dedicated to books and courses.

If you start out fighting by clearing the board (of all you plan to kill, I let some live), doing two Arena battles once that opens up for you and a bounty every day odds are your Ranged Combat will increase to over 100 in pretty short order, meaning you can start with a 30 Ranged Combat and eventually get to 100 where you're an auto-hit. However if you do it that way odds are you're going to want another top-tier mercenary (Space Marine, Felix, Black Guardsman, Ayden) with you early on to make the combats winnable/easier. If you start with a high ranged combat you can forgo that expense in the beginning and perhaps just get by with Doyle and yourself as the top hitters with Bud (who has an ammo pack so you want to train him up quickly), Loren and perhaps a slave or Ansel to make for a very economic team in the very beginning.

Early charm really makes the beginning go easier with the girls. You can also increase Charm up to 70 by repeatedly 'Caressing' during seduction attempts and get a point roughly once every other two-hour slut-cuddling session. 'Caress' until it greys out, then kiss once, go back to 'Caress' and keep at that until Grimdark yells at you for taking too much time in foreplay. Then you can go to the Doctor's Hall and get Charm increased to 85 by paying for plastic surgery. Starting with high Charm is easier and quicker though.

The toughest stat to increase that I know of now (outside of Performance which doesn't do anything yet) is Flagellation which used to be very tough to get in the Dungeon ('Training Room') but he may have changed that fairly recently and I've been over the cap and wouldn't notice. If not the best way to get that is by getting 'Rougher' with Kasey in the Dockgrave Dungeon and that's awfully expensive for new players. You can get some points from the classes at Devious Tools and some from books, but you'll still want more than that eventually if you plan on whipping naughty little sluts regularly so you could be tempted to start with it.

Gambling is a good one to start with a high score as you can really make a living at it---once you're over a hundred. You can grind yourself up there but it takes a lot of time and money so starting with the highest gambling you can is best if you plan to do it regularly.

All your physical stats you can train pretty easily so it's less important to take the ones that benefit those if you plan to play for a while. You'll want to start training Stamina on you and a girl from the beginning as it makes the game so much easier at the start, so keep in mind you can train Stamina, Dex and Strength much easier than INT, WP or Charm/Manip etc.

 

[khumak]

I've not seen the Highwaymen of Darkmere in a long time. Once they started firing first I became a little more wary about going up there, but eventually they disappeared entirely. I don't know if it's related to the bandit count or what, but eventually I stopped even looking for them.

Regarding power katanas, I forgot to add something about them and the arena upthread when you asked. You do need to equip your girl with one when you send her to the Arena. Then she will have one available. Most of my girls fight with fists outside the beginning matches. I usually start with one that yields 400-600 and see how close the score is, then play around with the weapons and a higher-tiered opponent to get an autowin with about a 10 point cushion. I've found you can still lose even if the numbers add up to 100 so you need a little extra over that, about 10 points is enough in my experience.

Yeah I went and tried the highwaymen once in my previous game and with that stealth mechanic I was like, nope that ain't happening. Maybe if you can eventually gain enough stealth to reliably go first, but other than some very rare encounters where I randomly get lucky, like picking the lock on the door in that first town hall quest, I have never seen a stealth increase.

I played around quite a bit with different options in the arena and yeah I did eventually figure out the power katana secret. I think you can also have your slave use one in the arena even if you don't give her one as long as you have one in your inventory that isn't equipped but I could be mistaken on that. I'm not willing to take stat losses in the arena so if she has less than a 100% win rate I pick a different opponent.

I find that the valkrie can consistently always beat all of the heroic opponents with a weapon right from the start with no training. She seems to always have at least 2 combat relevant perks in my game. Unfortunately Rebecca can't consisistently beat anyone including the $100 ordinary opponents with fists in my game. So if I put her in there all she does is beat up the ordinary opponents with a weapon for $50 which is actually a loss when you count the entry fee, although you do still get influence.

So what I do now is grab the Valkrie as soon as I unlock Crystal Hills and put her in there doing the heroic opponents until I unlock Aria. Aria is almost always weaker than the valkrie in my games due to bad luck on perks but she can consistently beat the veterans with a weapon in all of the games I've tried so far. So once I get Aria I alternate between Aria and the Valkrie in the arena and whichever one of them is not in there gets daily training in strength/dex/melee. The goal being to eventually get the valkrie trained up to where she can always beat raven with a weapon. Not sure if it's possible to get her to where she can always do it with fists (she can some of the time without any training but not consistently).