I guess lack of tips really make this game difficult. So here's a few.
1. In the beginning of the game, I'm talking about the home scene with your grandma and grandpa, your choices matter as they will determine your perks. For example, telling Elly you look Handsome will grant you charisma perk, choosing looking like a child will give you innocent perk (less suspicious), looking at happy families will give you Voyeur perk to make sneaking and peeking easier. If you choose you like to swim, you'll beat Elly in swimming later. And all those early choices are important in determining your strength and story progression. So choose wisely.
2. Your companion is crucial, Marika and Genni are both good companion to fight with in your journey but Kelly is entirely useless.
3. Prepare as much as possible before going on your journey, learn burglary and then steal as much valuables in the village to sell to Kelly and buy sword and potions. Rather than looking at the girls when they went to bath, go to their home and steal things, because you need to sleep at night.
4. The inventory is clunky, but usable, more of a renpy limitation if anything. Pay attention to the + and - sign between the name. You can shuffle between yourself, your companion and the elf to move possession around after you drop them to the ground.
5. My best advice, but also the worst, the management is quite tight so use console to control day and tweak your stats. You can one punch orcs to death, but being too strong will make you skip/bug out (if not fixed yet) some naughty scenes as they are a part of the player's training process.
Coz many ppl ask for a WT, I will write about my findings (in addition to the useful text above).
As for point 5 (the worst advice imo), I do not recommend cheating. I personally like to review variables, but not to change them.
Prolog (Grandparents, young Elly)
Yes, as mentioned in point 1 above, choices are very important. See also my post #178.
My favorites are
- “ability to ear raw fish” for not starving so easily.
- “Eyes of tiger” (e.g. to get rid of this slimy cavalier)
Least popular for me is “curious”: Forces you to look into Elly's parcel, which cost you some relationship points with her. Not sure if there are advantages later.
Some stats are good only for the first part (life on the farm – Elly /Village), while other stats are (also) useful with fighting and later.
And some of the stats may not have any advantages, or have them later in the (future) game.
High fishing skill is quite tempting (fish is easily to sell for lots of money). But 30 seems to be enough, with 40 your strength and constitution will be too low.
Reading elvish books with young Elly seems to be useful in your relationship with the princess, but this also means less strength.
I guess one needs quite a few playthroughs to see all the consequences of the early decisions.
Part I
After the prolog, the farm life starts.
I found out that it is useful to start with proceeding the stories in the next village ASAP. After washing face at the pond and having first breakfast with Elly, go to the village meet the mature lady and start the quest with her - flirt with her.
Then you are right in time to meet the sword lady and make an appointment for training for the next morning.
In the afternoon, meet the thief girl and learn from her.
At 17:00 there is still one hour for hunting, fishing, farming. If you are tired, take a nap in your bed.
Better don’t miss the lunchtime with Elly at 18:00. Use possibilities to talk to her after lunch (or on other times of the day).
After dark, you can and should read books. I am not sure but I suspect that your success with reading is dependent on your mental fitness. Therefor I preferred to sleep early and get up at 2 or 3 a.m. for reading.
Later in the game, it makes sense to go to the village in the evening /night and continue your quests there.
After you finished the quest “collecting winter stock”, still collect food for the journey and for money at Kelly’s shop (like mentioned in text above: 3).
Take your time to do your preparations for the journey. Enter the princess room as late as possible, but not too late (see my other post #187).