Thanks
@redle for a thorough reply.
Would you happen to know what are the best race+trait+specialization+job combos?
For the most part the game is heavily, heavily skewed towards the sex related occupations. There is only one specialization, geisha, that benefits sex jobs. So that's the way to go. (Well, there is Nympho also, but 2 of the 3 boosts have nothing to do with jobs, and the third only affects the fucktoy job. Personally I tend to play with positive reputations with the various towns, so that is not a useful job to boost). The races with sex job bonuses are Fox, Nereid, and Bunny (although bunny's bonus of half-stress tends to be a short-lived bonus, it does not take long for people to seem to become accustomed to sex related jobs and dissipate stress fast enough without this bonus). There is no real time aspect to the game though (doesn't matter if it is story mode or sandbox). Either your income and food are growing or shrinking. So long as your net income is positive, how much income one earns simply changes how many times one needs to click the end-day button to gain "X" pieces of gold.
In short, yeah, a Beautiful Fox Geisha with a Pretty Voice working as an Escort is likely to be as good as one can get.
The only real exception I've found where a non-sex job can earn a decent wage is the mage academy. This requires a rather high magic score though. My favorite character in the game is a nicely upgraded Drow. They have the highest max magic (up to 6) and add to that the "responsive" trait (+2 to magic), and if it is your starting servant you can even give them another +2 to magic as their starting "Strength" and raising the base magic up to a massive 10. Not only does this Drow earn a really good income from the job (she pulls in more than 200g per day for me), but they are also amazing at fighting. Magic of 10 (before even potential mods or gear bonuses) is insane in combat. Acid Spit is, by far, the best attack that exists in the game. It is the only spell or special attack that uses zero energy (game skills at one point did not drain energy and the game was better for it, but at some point in the versioning process this changed). Other attacks one needs to conserve so as not to exhaust your team before you get back home, or to save energy in case one runs into a stronger foe later. So long as one keeps a decent size mana pool, acid spit can be thrown every fight without feeling the need to hold back (and with 10 magic is a 1-hit kill to most things in the game). So this character easily becomes the best job earner and the most powerful fighter.
The maid specialization can be worth while, as it can keep your mansion clean without wasting a person in the task or spending the gold to have outside cleaners do it. Basically it is a 1-time fee to have an always clean mansion. Other than that I only really make use of fighting/adventuring related specializations. Actually, I did make my own specialization for my Drow. I call it the "Jeweler." (Tried to keep it inline with most other specializations, so like those it is not very much of a boost. Basically it just means a few more items I find are magical)
In truth though the specialization I find to be rather pointless. First, characters beg for it far too often as a level-up requirement, even though they meet basically none of the requirements to actual specialize, and the only way to improve enough to qualify is to level-up. So basically it is a self-blocking circle (it just means one needs to save scum a lot in the early stages of the game, which is terrible game design, or later one can unlock and brew oblivion potions to somewhat duplicate save-scumming "legally," but this isn't even slightly available in early stages of story mode). The only specialization that most people qualify for is Maid. While 1 Maid can be useful, more than that is pointless (unless/until one's mansion becomes really populous then maybe one needs a 2nd). By the time someone qualifies for a specialization, they really don't need it anymore and it does not provide much of a boost.
What you should go for depends somewhat on whether this game feels more like a fighting/adventuring/collecting game to you, or whether it is more of a buy/sell/train/manage game.
