So, here is a little guide of the "early game" for the people struggling to get started, since there are none.
It only cover until you unlock mixing for now, since that's where I'm at (loop 3 day 74). There is also a fair share of speculation on my part, so don't take everything at face value.
I'll start with the most non intuitive mechanic of the game, the crafting:
Do not depend on dispatch requests to get money. They are finite and won't be enough at all for your needs. They can still help you to kickstart your shop in the early days (there are some juicy ones that will give you a lot early in the game), but their main use is to unlock new ingredients.
The delivery requests are repeatable, but slow and not that lucrative compared to selling items. Just keep them as a side income and to occupy your supply workers.
To increase your pool of dispatch requests, you need to invest in organizations. The higher their level, the more quests they can give you, but you can only complete each quest once. Increasing the rank of an organization also increase the types ingredients they can sell to you.
With all these ingredients, you need the recipes to do something with them. You can get the recipes by investing in cooking/blacksmithing/mixing.
Now you can go to the production screen and make new products. For each ingredients, you have the choice between similar ones of different rank, always choose the best, it will increase the price of the product a lot. Once you have all your ingredients, don't forget to increase the price, five time the price of the material give you good benefits and still sell well.
For this part, it's entirely specualtion on my part:
I believe that the customers try to buy items the same rank as them if they can, so better rank doesn't mean better item. Many recipes, when they use the same ingredients, sell at the same price despite being of different ranks.
So a customer that is rank H will buy things that are rank H, no matter the ingredients used. At least that's why I believe we can use high grade ingredients on low level recipes.
That's why there are still some rank H recipes I haven't unlocked yet even though I can make D rank items.
That's also why I don't recommend removing lower rank recipes, but instead to remove the ones that sell for too cheap no matter the rank.
Anyway, using better ingredients dramatically increase income, and removing the recipes that sell for less increase it even more.
Yeah, a few customers don't buy anything because there was not what they needed, but I think many more buy something pricier instead, or else it would not increase the income.
Once you have somes recipes with higher level ingredients, the money stop being a problem and you can buy all the upgrades as soon as you unlock them. Oh, and you should try to increase visits as much as possible too, since without customers, you can't sell anything.
For the requests themselves, forget about the ranks, what matter are the stats. The rank does not seem to change the chances of completion as much as it should, beside the fact that higher ranks have better stats. I did a three stars quest with three rank H and a rank F that had just the right stats for it, and failed a few one star quests with A ranks in them before understanding how it work. But still try to get high ranks if you can, it's very probable to have some influence on the outcome. Anyway, later you'll just ignore anyone under a certain rank because their stats are not enough.
There are two types of stats that affect requests, skills and traits.
The skills on the left represent the capabilities requiered for the completion. When you start a quest, the skills that affect the quest will be in pink. If they are in light blue, it's either negative or too low to complete. If they are in pink, it could be better but you still have some chances of completion. If they are in yellow, you have enough and a high chance of completion. Remember that all the skills need to be high enough, two yellow and a blue have a low chances of completion, if any.
The traits on the right represent the chances for the party to have bad outcome event if they have all the required skills. My speculation on what they do is that loyal represent the chances for the adventurers to go in another guild, ethic the chances for him to run with the money, action the chances for him to be too lazy to finish the request and libido the chances to get a positive/negative trait (not sure for the this one, it appear only in quests asking for a specific gender). I have never seen look and sales, so I'm not sure if they do anything or appear later. You can still complete a quest with only one member left after the end, but I believe that having the traits in the positive improve the chances of completion.
All these skills/traits are cumulative for the whole party, so even if you have an adventurer that have the skills to make the request by himself but terribles traits, you can balance it with characters with good traits of any rank. And even if he has good traits too, fill all the slots with adventurers you want to level up, because if there is not the required amount of adventurer too, it increase the chances of failure.
For the medals, your best way of collecting them is the dungeons, but for that you need a thriving shop because the time spent in the dungeon is time not spent gaining money. Still, with how many you need to increase the ranks of your characters, you will probably have to do it a little. When the story require you to clear a dungeon, don't rush, kill the mobs on every floors and recolt the ressources, it increase the number of medals you get at the end. Since you will return just before the night anyway, no matter the hour you stop at, you may as well farm the medals while you are a it.
Also, don't bother upgrading your non uniques characters, it's more efficient to employ someone better and dismiss them, since the money is easier to get than the medals. For now anyway. Maybe later it's different.
You may also be tempted to spend all you gains in the prostitute dream in medals, but it's a trap. When you buy something, it gain a level in price, which more than double it. Every item lose a level in price the next time you come in the dream. So if you purchased ten time something, the price will be as if you purchased it nine times the next time, so it will take nine other visits for the item to be at its base price again. The most efficient way is to buy a little of each per visits. The point are also better spent for elements, which seems much harder to find outside, the only other source being the dungeon which give low level ones.
For the dream prostitution, the higher level the play, the better the reward. Non uniques characters give lower rewards, since they have much worse stats, so prioritise uniques characters for high ranks customers.
You male workers also come in the dream (they are even the ones that will visit the most), so a rank A with bad stats can still be useful since they reward better, just like a rank A female worker with bad stats can be a good prostitute.
There are mentions to venerial diseases and impregnation chances, but I have yet to see it happen, the pregnants girls already where before arriving and I have only seen males with venerial diseases. Maybe later? Anyway, it probably only concern non uniques characters, since they are the only one that keep the dream stats outside of it. Or it could concern the others if there is prostitution outside the dream? Maybe someone further in the game can tell us, for all I know it could be unlocked at loop 7 day 150...
Not much to say about the combats, they are very easy so far (I hope it get harder later, because it has been the most boring part of the game). I have yet to craft a single piece of equipment beside an armor for the priest. Every girl beside the succubus has sexual skills, which don't gave anything in combats, and I have 800+ undistributed point to on every characters.
For the buildings, I'm just getting at the part of the game where I have to choose which one to keep, so I'm not really sure which ones are better. I don't think we need every resting place for the staff, and the bath seem good because the customers can use it too to generate medals, but the male baths seem always empty while the female bath is always full, even thought I have both gender equally as visitors and employee. I think only the basic playroom is necessary, since you can unlock all the locked plays in it with a girl if she does it with a customer in the dream.
For the management of your workers, I prefer to keep the reception and production to the minimum to make sur the right characters use them, so I don't put anyone on copy because they tend to steal their jobs.
A good amount of cleaner and security prevent pollution and crime to increase, and you need a many people on purchase if you want to make money by selling.
I'm not sure how the workers choose which production job they will do, but it seem random, I often have my blacksmiths peeling potatoes in the kitchen and my cook hitting the anvil. Since they can't make anything above their rank, it's pretty annoying, but bearable for now since I'm making 5-10 million a day. Or only the rank matter, not in what. Maybe a legendary blacksmisth can forge legendary ice creams...
Others random tips:
Alt+enter for fullscreen
F8 to accelerate the game
F7 to slow down
If you get a game over no matter what, it's normal, that's part of the story, you carry over almost everything in the next loop.
Don't bother hiring only males adventurer on requests to prevent the females from levelling and avoid high level rivals prostitutes, it does not work. I tried.
It's probably a bug, but you can put inexperienced girls in mastery and bewitching in the prostitution dream. to do that, you only have to exchange her with a girl already in the category, but you have to do it by selecting the other girl.
