Here's a tip on increasing stats of your companions!
> For princesses: Strawberry Creampie is your friend. It increases Lust by 1 point, so with 10 pieces you can spend 10 more points on other aspects of your princesses. If you don't have enough swirlies, Fuzzy Inferno Nip (get your hands on 1 and you will have an unlimited amount of Nips) takes 1 Love and gives 2 Lust points, so you still have 5 extra points comparing to allocating points normally.
> For progenies: Sadly, Strawberry Creampie has no effect on your progeny, so you can only apply FIN to them. Still, it's still 5 points better than leveling up the stats the usual way.
*EDIT: I have found a very peculiar way of stat leveling that can make your favourite companion a God. Once you've increased the stats like how I described above, Mary-Annete can return all the points allocated - which mean you can do the process again to get another 5 or 10 more points.
Example on a progeny with 22 points on level 20: Start with 5-0-10-7 > 0-10-10-7 > MA (get back 27 points) > 7-0-10-10 > 2-10-10-10 > MA (get back 32 points) > 10-2-10-10 > 6-10-10-10 > ...
Example on a princess with 22 points on level 20, using only Strawberry Creampies: Start with 10-0-10-2 > 10-10-10-2 > MA (get back 32 points) > 10-2-10-10 > 10-10-10-10
The downside of this method is that the price at Mary-Annete ramps up very fast as you loops more and more, and progeny can only get so far as 10-9-10-10 (I suggest putting 10 points on Love instead of Lust, as some equipments benefit from full Love stat) instead of full 10-10-10-10 of princesses. I'd like to give some advices:
- Focus on your Heirs more than Princesses. Their stats are carried over to NG+, while princesses' does not.
- If you're raising your progeny to be a mighty Warrior, you actually don't need the 4th stat (the Golden Coin one, which affects their profit at The Stone Knife brothel), so a progeny at level 20 only needs to have his/her stats restarted twice. That means you can upgrade more heirs in one playthrough before the price at MA becomes uncontrollable.