Thank you very much for the extremely helpful info in this thread, especially on when the treasures appear and on how to move the boxes correctly.
The job progression depending on the various stats posed a very interesting optimization problem for me, so I crunched the numbers and created a nice spreadsheet for calculating everything properly (attached). I also "reverse engineered" the progression of the money increase and required energy with increasing stats, resulting in the formulas on the first page for properly calculating the required energy for working.
View attachment Calculation & log.zip
Turns out that intelligence with work in IT support is by far the most effective upgrade path for getting more money ASAP.
The only problem is that you have to get both the driving and the working energy cost down quickly for being able to work the IT support at normal days with 100 energy.
The treasures help a lot with that, on day 2 you can already buy the turbocharger (-10 driving energy cost).
For achieving this you need to spend the whole first day studying for a +6 in intelligence and buy the cinnamon & a wrench.
With this you can get both the treasure from the parent's bathroom by repairing the water filter and the treasure from the basement because of the cinnamon.
Remember to get the room key from the lockbox in the parent's bathroom immediately (code 863).
Keep the panties from the first days so that you can get Molly's phone with 5 panties (worth 200$ and acquired without spending money) instead of paying 500$.
It's extremely important what happens on day two, if none of the following options match, restart the game:
- Day 2 has extra energy (150) as described in my log. Then you can use the extra energy for another studying, working in IT and for talking & gifting Molly. I was lucky and had 2 high energy days immediately.
- You catch your mother masturbating on day 2 so that you get the treasure from the other (your) bathroom. In this case buy the gold library card early and spend day 2 and possibly 3 studying again for getting the required working energy low enough that it matches the driving energy cost.
You can easily calculate this with the spreadsheet.
Either way use the earned money to further bring down the driving energy cost as this is a constant daily cost, preventing you from doing more useful activities.
Continue to study whenever you can besides charming Molly for getting the first heart treasure (and later the treasure from Molly's room) and saving for the shoes needed for the garage treasure.
The charisma will grow with the flirting anyways and strength is only needed for Mom's third quest which was on day 21 for me and then on the very end where the other stats are maxed out anyway.
It's sufficient when you start training in the gym shortly before Mom's third quest, after the red wine game with Mom.
So nearly max out intelligence first, you can keep it some points short of 100% for properly using the +1 intelligence you get for working sometimes.
You should try to do all activities that affect intelligence or charisma before working in IT support for getting the optimum pay at optimum energy cost each day.
So study, watch the movies and flirt / gift the girls before driving to work as far as possible, meaning that you should buy the presents the day before you plan to gift them as far as possible.
Whenever you flirt / gift the girls, check if you got an additional heart afterwards. If so, you can stop any additional talks & gifts this day because the next day you have to do the quest for the next level, meaning that any talking or gift won't matter before that anymore.
But also buy a gift on the day you finish the quest so that you can gift the girl in the next morning (if you have the money for this of course).
Otherwise the 0.81 guide is already pretty good.
Two improvements:
- Pay dad 3500$ instead of 3000$, then he is back on 0% anger and won't bother you with pool cleaning, lawn mowing etc. These chores seem to come when Dad's anger go above 25% or so.
- When you get caught with Molly in the basement by Dad with the Dildo you can actually intercept dad so that you don't need to pay the 3500 for calming him down after destroying his TV. Instead you have a quite normal conversation with minimum anger increase. Still, this is not easy to achieve, I wasn't able to repeat that with 2 tries later. It seems that you have to stand directly in the way of Dad for this, if you are above of below he will get past you causing your emergency action with the TV.
Update 2024-01-02: Finally played it again and found how to reliably intercept dad, you have to put yourself exactly in this spot:
The last quest for Mom missing in the guide is very straightforward, so you should really be able to do this without guide. Just talk to Mom & Dad and do what they say.
I was finished with everything (including all stats at 100%) but the last treasure on day 38 (=98%), this last treasure only appears on day 49.
Update 2024-01-02: I tried a more normal playthrough with less luck, loosing a couple of days for chores and not progressing as quickly as possible due to mostly normal (=100 point) days but was still finished with everything on day 42 except for that last treasure. You just have to stretch the progress on the spreadsheet a bit and invest the first normal days for studying until you the points needed for working IT get low enough for doing it even on a normal day. And you have to spend all your first earnings for the car except when you have some chores to do where you need some better equipment, delaying the gifts a bit.
Besides I also found a harmless bug when Dad requires you to clean the pool and instead of cleaning it you buy the pool cleaning robot.
When you return home, your avatar appears over the screen without saying anything and is stuck there until you grab the pool net in the backyard.
As soon as you grab the net, it says that no cleaning is needed and everything is back to normal.