Is it possible to beat claw in the first fight?
Definitely, but it may be complicated for a new player as it's the first time they come accross a fight. Simple guidelines to win: focus on training either agility and physique and use kick/staff swipe/bold jab, or train intelligence and will and use freeze feet, your first goal is making sure that Claw has little to no control, then either get Nash to pin her down or do it yourself, focusing as much damage as possible against her. If Nash is the one holding Claw down, focus on damaging Valtan's control. If you want that event to be resolved without any consequences, even if Claw wins, you can temporarily disable both servitude relationships and sex demands from battle in the settings, and Claw will only demand humilliation.
To give you some context, my understanding is that the "merit" feature isn't the fully implemented thing yet that it will be once we get closer to a more stable end-game. There is no point for me to try to earn some, as there are no consequences yet if I lose some.
Pretty much, which is why I'm not worried about the player taking a huge merit lead in the current version. Two mid-term plans: the Candidates with the highest merit may use their position as leverage to lead other characters into resolving story conflicts their own way (like the ones that are being introduced in v0.3.1 and v0.3.2), and, if the Candidate with the highest merit has a lead too large, other ambition-oriented Candidates may ally to curb down their progress.
However, I think that the relationships and discussions *specifically* involving the PC should play out differently. Going back to the scenario I've described above, Claw should have to assault my character to get a chance at having sex with her, otherwise my PC would never agree to it.
Claw starts the game with a domination drive far larger than her pleasure drive, which means that she
is more likely to seek demanding sex through battle seeking sex through conversation than other characters. But this doesn't mean that she will necessarily reject sex if it's offered to her, especially if she has had none for a few days already.
I'm fairly certain that NPCs prioritize characters they like to propose sex to during conversation (I'll check this however and will update the algorithm if I'm wrong). Wanting NPCs to propose exclusive sex is a conflicting solution: third characters getting invited was a way to solve player characters being left behind when the character they were talking to was invited to bed by someone else, and making NPCs propose exclusive sex returns us back to that problem. If a NPC A proposes sex to NPC B and your character shouldn't join because she doesn't like NPC B, that's a conflict that forms part of a roleplaying game. Still, you have ways to play around this: speak ill of Claw to make other characters look down on her, use hostile interactions with Claw during conversation to get her angry, and (like
manscout suggested) get characters to follow you to a private room.
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