Thinkin' about restarting a game, my last one was 2 or 3 versions prior, where you had to max INT on your char, and have manip/seduction traits, but there were changes since in stats and traits, what should I pick now ?
Traits. Manhunter and Massive Load are top tier picks in my opinion.
Massive Load costs nothing so it is nice but it can also be a bit of a problem early game when your girls are not really keen on swallowing your load. So oral can be tricky.
Manhunter is great. Now even when using a greatsword, your capture chances are higher. Whipping cane is a sure capture unless the enemy is non-capturable and combat staff is damn near guaranteed. The second component is even better now that male slaves are a thing. A 15% boost to sell price is always welcome since you capture so many male slaves and auction them off for quick and easy money.
Debt is the least painful negative trait to pick so you can have 15 more points to spend.
Party Animal was a well regarded trait but the pool was nerfed in 0.8.3.1. Its affection gain is capped to Loving. Used to be, it could reach undying. I do think now that male slaves is a thing, gaining +2 affection instead of +1 means your male slaves get out of the Despising affection into neutral quicker. So it lost some value but found some back.
Deadly Strike is great. It scales hard into the latter portion of the game but the cost might be too high depending on your playstyle. Crackshot is the ranged equivalent. A tiny bit less useful later on in my opinion unless melee combat gets nerfed.
Intelligence is still a good stat because it is the hardest to increase outside of very limited resources. But it is no longer as dominant as before.
Brainy helps makes the most use of limited books and courses. You do run out of books and courses so you cannot make use of its passive effect forever. Pros and cons. The pros outweigh the cons for me but you only have so much points to spend so pick wisely.
Expert traits can be very expensive but they all provide pretty good perks. Academic Retainer is probably the least useful since it falls off in scaling, Expert Slaver, well, outside of the special quest Adora has when you pick this expert trait, you can eventually get Adora without this trait. No quest and she has no guaranteed perfectionist and workaholic traits but she can still develop those traits later on. I do not know what her personal quest entails though. Ask around what rewards does it give. Expert soldier benefits is great early on but can fall of. But if you are going for deadly strike, you were picking at least two levels in the soldier background anyway. Also, being able to recruit Einar Corso and at a much reduced salary is going to be very useful for clearing the map early game. Business Expert scales the hardest but it does not sound useful early on. Since the early game is the most hectic and late game income gets easier, you might prefer traits that are more useful early. Expert Doctor is very useful, especially early on and can still benefit you later on. I have not tried hunting backgrounds so I will not speak for that. Paired with wild-born trait though, it can prove very useful early game.
Of course, do go for the playstyle you want. A lot more builds are viable now.
How you make money in this game?
I`ve read some posts and they say just buy a workshop and sell guns...
HOW you get money to buy that and pay workers DAILY + having surplus of rations?
You capture and auction guys, maybe some random girl with non-unique models if you need an injection of cash. You can capture a maximum of 1 guy and 1 gal per battle. Using whipping cane (either sold in the market or general store) or combat staff (sold in weapon store) as the last hit nearly guarantees a capture. The only time I saw a whipping cane fail to incapacitate is when the target is scripted to not be capturable (or you already incapacitated someone else in the fight and hit the incapacitation limit). Buy and bring rope. Not having rope means you cannot capture anyone. A full party of 5 means you can capture and hold 6 people. A party of 4 can capture 5 people, and so on.
To sell them, you must have visited and entered either the slave market in Watery Eyes or Crystal Heights. You process the captured slave from the handcuffs icon in the lower left of your screen, add them to your household. You then go to the NPC Menu in your house, click the NPC you wish to sell, click the Actions tab, and select Watery Eyes or Crystal Heights. Any generic guy with an Addiction trait, sell them. I do not think the unique male captures (Cultist Monk, Truls Baardson, Cassius, and Tuner Jackson) gets Addiction. I heard for selling generic girl captures, you wait for around 4 days before auctioning them. They can run a pretty price depending on their beauty, low willpower, and other factors. My mostly untrained girl captures have ranged from 6k to 19k.
If your stamina holds and your girls gain 2+ defiance, you can sneak in some bondage training via the proclaim punishment option. It is a guaranteed. The tip to raising corruption quickly is to do purely oral. You get her into bondage, you get her arousal into 9 using the stimulate and then caress pussy , you choose the fuck girl option, pick oral, pick deepthroat. She will orgasm and you will see Affection +1, Corruption +2. You pull out and repeat the process to arousal 9. If her arousal goes into the negative, stop. When her corruption reaches 20+, just moving around in the menu raises arousal to 8 so you can just click stimulate but never pick any option and just cancel, letting the arousal build up. Then you pick caress pussy once to reach arousal 9. Make sure her oral wear is low to 0 before auction by using a healing salve bought from the general store below your house. To apply, go to her inventory, click accessories, click applicants, and click on the salve.
Alternatively, you can hunt for wild animals (they have the deer head or beaver icon). Bring an NPC with wild-born trait (or Jaeger, a trait unique to Loren who you can hire from Sloppy Moe's). Loren has upkeep. Laika, one of the urchins you rescue, comes with Wild-born. Use a hunting rifle. The crossbow, while more useful in the long run (since it allows for more pelt yield) has hunting roll penalties. Once your survival stat is high enough, feel free to switch to using crossbows. You process meat through your facilities menu in your house and cook them into rations to sell during low prosperity or when the price of rations go up in the market.
And try to do bounties from the Town Hall in Hamilton Square daily. Some bounty levels will not be possible early on so you can ignore them. But levels 1 to 3 is possible. If the location is not stated in the bounty, just do normal stuff you do until 6pm. You can then go to Furry's Tavern to ask for where your bounty is. Use the "fast travel" option to move around. In your overworld menu, there is a globe icon on the lower left. Use it to move around locations that are available to get there so you can shave off time and make it back to the Town Hall before closing time (9pm). The town hall also has four unique bounties early on. All the guys there are capturable. Three you can sell. Tuner Jackson you can keep. He has high performance stats and is useful later on. Normal daily random bounties also have capturable guys. The ones not on position 1 are capturable. Position 1 is not for normal random bounties. Capture and auction.
Males without the addiction trait can be pressed into workshop labor. Their salary is $0. They start with a despising affection though. A pool party every past midnight means you can slowly raise their affection.
