...even when I was using them it was still earning me a profit of 5-10 gold a day.
Yeah, but using a cheaper option would have given you even better profits and quicker access to the second homunculus. The mod turns TfD into a resource management game, so squeezing every extra bit out of your activities is a given.
And since you cant get minions until medium size (since tiny/small are too small to overpower peasant girls)
Goblins aren't minions now?
And even peasant minions can be had as a tiny dragon. Just pick your first evolution wisely and get a power-1 farmgirl. The lonely farms are full of them. It might take a little longer to level those up, but at least all the time you're still tiny/small will be put to good use that way.
How long does it take for the smugglers to rob the knight? I just paid 96 gold and it said they would leave him naked as a babe...
Right now, it's instant. I have a version with a delay planned, but it's not released yet. But this 'naked as a babe' is ruffians bragging about themselves, they take only
one item off of him and he can just level up again. Robbing is really not a remedy against maxed knights.
For the hatcheries, how do I find dwarves, efreet, or jotuns? Ive spent weeks wandering around the mountains and sky and have never seen a single one of these guys.
The dwarven home and hatchery are hidden. Look around in certain shady places to get access. But this is
the hatchery, the endgame one, so I doubt you could actually fight your way through to it right now.
Efreeti are quite rare. Jötuns are as well, but there are three places they can occur so maybe a little more accessible. Keep wandering, you'll run into them sometime.
Do I just have to wait a few years for the poverty to finally go down or what?
Yes, there's no magical 'poverty go away' option. If you devastate the Kingdom, you have to live with the consequences. Time is the only cure here.
...100 poverty and every single village is abandoned now so I have no easy way to get food or maidens.
The Sea has several food encounters, and you still have the animal herds. Although these do increase poverty again.
I suppose hunting bears/boar might work for a while, plus you
really should have the lizardman village unlocked by now. And the Capital always has maidens, although the fights can get really tough. Or you can fish for mermaids.
And Hakim is your 'emergency' source of girls. Did you unlock him yet?
Just got a quest to send a total of *1000* minions to the army. That is absolutely insane. How many centuries of in game time does that take?
I don't know, no-one's who's actually tried has ever said a peep about it. But this is one of the endgame quests, you can have quite a baby factory set up by then.
Would be nice, sure. I haven't actually seen a Ren'Py game use drag'n'drop and while it's supposed to be possible, I'd rather do everything else with a better gameplay impact first rather than bang my head against this UI headache. If I really get everything else finished, I might take a look. But definitely not in the near future unless someone more or less points me to a working example that's similar to the current game.
Something else that is becoming a problem is the demon seals. ... How do I deal with this problem?
Welcome to the main challenge of the game. The warning Mom gives you at the start of the game isn't there for flavour, you know.
It's there precisely because people have been running head-first into the demon invasion and then acting surprised that demons are tough.
Also if demon encounters are becoming commonplace in the land, you should really make it so that the dragon can encounter some!
I have some plans along these lines, but it takes time to do this, time I don't have ATM.
...sacrificial alter, but the problem there is it only gives 4-6 seals
A solid peasant should give about 9, actually. Are you sacrificing good-quality virgins? As long as you only have one altar, you really need to pick and choose.
...can only be used once a month, so Im still losing progress. Am I just fucked or is there some other way to deal with this?
You should get multiple altars as soon as you can afford them. Two are barely sufficient with savescumming, three are more or less okay. BTW, these 'useless' nobles make for quite nice sacrifices, ~19 seals as an average for a virgin.
Its really urgent cause Im down to 46 seals.
If your seals go below 30, you get an 'emergency mode' where you can use your altar repeatedly but with halved results until they rise above 30 again.
How do I fight them when they are 90% resistant to everything but magic, and none my minions are able to do magic?
I guess you don't. I'm going to replace the 'projections' with something a little less resistant in the future.
I lost and I dont know if I have it in me to start all over again.
It's fine if you take a break and come back to the game another time, now equipped with better knowledge of game systems.
Or you can play on easy and/or one of the larger starting sizes. Even modify your copy of the mod to your liking, as several people have done.
The target audience of this mod is me
, and I'm a sucker for punishment and a serial savescummer. I'm willing to accommodate
some changes that make sense to me as well, but in the end, the final advice if you think the game is too tough is 'play on easy'. If that looks too, well, easy, then you can propose an intermediate difficulty and I can add that.
There is no way to stop them from happening.
Just last week I showed that it
is possible to handle the seals even on 'impossible', if you savescum like a maniac and are focused on it.
...at that point you arent doing anything to progress the game and its going to happen eventually anyway.
It's entirely possible to 'build up' the seals again while evolving your dragon so he can beat them.
...enemies that literally cannot be beaten.
There needs to be *some* way of actually dealing with these assholes.
Not quite unbeatable.
Rainbow or shadow heads and elven minions are possible options even during mid-game. But as I said, the projections are actually meant for the 'boss' fight with Architot, and there's going to be a slightly weaker opponent guarding the gates.
But the main gameplay loop is about
not letting the demons invade rather than beating them. The invasion is supposed to be something you
really don't want to happen. This seems to be the case right now, doesn't it?
Edit:
Gee thanks for the totally useful reply instead of actually adressing my questions/issues
No, that's a perfectly valid answer. If you want a game tailored to your playstyle, you have to do it yourself. If you are unwilling to do that, you have to live with what others provide.
Ive never done modding or programming of any kind and would have no clue where to start
No modder or programmer
ever emerged from the womb ready to code. Everyone starts somewhere. I'm willing to tell you how to achieve your goals if you're serious about it.
I want the game to actually be winnable at its base design.
Nothing you've said indicates the game actually
is unwinnable. All you've shown this far that it's
unwinnable on normal with a moderately wasteful strategy.
...any way to balance your food needs with the resulting poverty from raiding villages...
The lizardman village. The Sea. The Forest. Big fights. Eating Hakim's merchandise, in a pinch.
...a quest that requires decades if not centuries of in game grinding...
Even if true, this doesn't make the game unwinnable, merely tedious. And I'm not convinced that it actually
takes decades with a high-level dragon.
...this horrible demon problem Ive already mentioned above. Demons are an unavoidable time bomb that means game over when they happen.
The demons are a 'time bomb'
and difficult
by design, to introduce a sense of urgency and limited resources. And to encourage you to play the game normally and not just go for the demon ending all the time.
