Maximizing Resources by 2095conash

This page is about some tips, not a day-by-day guide, as to how to get the most out of your resources. This is intended to be an alternative to a guide for if a player doesn't want to follow a walkthrough but wants some tips or at least a better understanding of how to get the most out of whatever they're doing. Various resources include: Time (without dev items), Money, Experience, and Trophies. (While satisfaction is a limited resource and can be extremely useful, there isn't a lot to say aside from don't miss porn and spend satisfaction wisely)

This page is currently based off of information available in the October 2014 public release.

Time

Time is THE most limiting resource in the game thus far. So it's important to optimize how many days that you get if you don't want to use the timetuner. The only ways to advance the day that you might miss out on are those connected to relationship points, so here I'll list out all the characters who currently give quests/scenes that can advance the day and talk about the relationship constraints they impose.

1. Penelope- Here will be your biggest constraint. Penelope takes 60 relationship points to get her love quest, has no 'generic quest' endings, but you can praise her after manor invasion without penalty (since she was protecting the kitchen it seems)! She will need 18 days of lovely flowers and one other gift to get her love quest if you praise her, and since you can't give her flowers after her love quest to unlock her love quest and recruiting her ends a day, that lowers the days she can be gifted by two.
2. Elaiya- She faces the same constraints as Penelope, needing 60 relationship points, you can praise her no problem, and no generic quest ending scenes. If you praise her she'll need at least 18 days of her favorite item and a 19th gift.
3. Yamamaya- This girl is chalk full of time it seems. Recruiting her, H-ing her (which seems that if you do it in a certain order, you can do it in both ways to get two days out of it), and her love quest. She requires a total of 40 relationship points and can be praised after the mansion invasion. This means that you only need 12/14 days to get her love quest, and considering that she's a party member wouldn't be a bad idea to try to get her earlier on.
4. Chimei- Not a lot of time out of this one since recruiting her doesn't pass a day. H-ing her the first time will, but that requires 40 relationship points. She can be praised after the mansion invasion, and while she does have an generic quest end scene (that includes Lilac) you can't get that until you've already gotten her first H-scene. Like Yamamaya she takes 12/14 days.
5. Meline- Ah the loyal little sister. She takes 40 relationship points and while you might be able to praise her during the mansion invasion, I would advice not doing so as she has TWO generic quest ending scenes (though in one of them you can choose to give the relationship points to a different girl, which might be a better idea since she's rather constrained on relationship points). This means that she could potentially go as low as 25 points needed, but it's probably better to just go for 35 as offered by her solo generic quest ending scene. Because of these various 5 point bonuses she might need 8/10/12/14 days depending on where you put her.
6. Lilac and Violet- You have to get both of these girls another 40 relationship points to pass this day.... But they share a lot of stuff together so as long as you're trying it shouldn't be too hard. They share a generic quest scene that gives them both 5 points, and Lilac has one that she shares with Chimei and Doll but since Violet still needs to gain those 40 points as well that scene isn't going to help you too much for this. It will take 12/14 days to get their scene.

Money

It is a good idea to take out a loan on day one. Not only will it give you some working capital if you wish to gamble, since it has an interest rate of 5% (meaning you owe another 5% of whatever is unpaid after every day) investing your money into operations that give a return higher than 5% will earn you more money. This is because if we assume that you WOULD invest into these businesses eventually (which you should because they will more than pay for themselves) then you're GOING to spend the money needed for them and since the bank will never change the initial amount that you owe, so every day you will be charged 5% on what you owe and you will earn 10% on what you spent, earning a net profit of 5%. After the lucrative investments have been acquired, the next priority should go to paying off your loan since it will increase your profits with smaller investments (every 20 sil payed off of your loan increases profits by 1 sil per day) and once you start 'A forge too far' you cannot pay off your loan until you have collected all three 'payments'.

Now, what about those 5% return investments? They're actually a bit tricky. Since the bank gives a 1% investment that means that if you had 23,500 sil (for the four cheaper 5% investments) the next day you'd either gain 235 sil or 1,175 sil, so it's only a comparative profit of 4% (940 sil), which if we JUST used that would take 25 days to regain the 23,500 sil meaning since there are only 26 days that you can gain money from investments, would mean that you could not take longer than day 2 to invest in these businesses. However the issue gets a bit more complicated, see if you used that 23,500 sil on day 1 through these methods, you'd gain 235 or 1,175 sil on day two. But you'll probably be reinvesting that money into the bank (let's just say that you do), which means that the next day you'd gain 237 or 1,186 sil (949 more), the next day would be 239 or 1,197 (958 more). While this 1% on 1%/5% doesn't seem like a lot, if you do the math, if you bought the 5% investments on day 3 (so 24 days of investments left) taking into account that you can't bank one day's returns (the manor invasion money won't leave your wallet) you'll earn over 2,500 sil MORE from banking the money from investments rather than the money from the bank (so that's the 1% interest you gain off of the 4% extra you'd earn per day!), meaning that you'd get your money back a bit sooner (it takes at least 23 days of having the investments and putting the returns into the bank for investing to yield a comparative profit of about 500, so keep that in mind). At the end of the day, if you're just trying to get money the 5% investments will pay out even in the current game, but if you want to use that money for something before the end of the game (like maybe buying Chimei) then not investing in the 5% businesses could actually be better since you'll have access to the initial investment, the 23,500 much sooner (so if we're looking at say Chimei where that's over 1/3rd of her cost it would be better to save it if she's more important to you than the money, but if we're looking at say the orange kid where you need to save up 150,000 you'd probably rather invest it as it take about 7x the time it takes to get 23,500 so investing would probably get you closer to it sooner). However as the game continues to gain new content and more days are accessible without the timeturner, be aware that the 5% businesses are already profitable (as long as gotten within the first few days) and will only grow in profitability. Also note that my assessments of the interest the bank gives might be a bit off as I'm not fully sure how it rounds (if it always rounds up, always rounds down, if it evaluates if it's above/below half way there, or if it stores the decimal that we just never see it), however I always assumed the lowest possible interest as any other situation would not lead to significant profits (as it would only lead to at most 1 more sil a day, and 30 sil compared to 23,500 is relatively nothing). Ah the complexities of investing.....

If you're thinking of save-scumming your way to riches, you'll still want to take out a loan and go and invest in the Bitches Sixth-teet (the pub that was the gambling den). Then leave and go to the pub with Sally, you should see an old man and a merchant sitting at a table, currently this is the best gambling spot. You save, talk to them, try to win, reload if you lose (since you pay 300 on loss and win 270, it's faster to just reload). It can be a good idea after a win to take a step away from the table as you'll have to anyways and it can just make the process smoother. If you're planning on getting just OBSCENE amounts of cash, like enough to invest in the slave trade, pay off your loan, invest in all the really good businesses, AND buy Chimei (a total cost of about 87,000 since you already spent the 2,000 needed for the pub) it would be a good idea to take breaks. I found that earning 5,000-10,000 and then taking a break to be rather effective. For some things that you can do in between gambling try looking in secrets and collectibles section. I personally split up the various tasks into four sections that I did in the following order: East (Lumberhill, Eastfort, and distant farm), North (this should come after the East section so that you have enough dark seeds to get the potion of the beast), South (Huntervale and Southport), and West (this wasn't a very fun part because that I did was dig up a rejuvenation potion).

Experience

• Note: This section is intended to give both a fair amount of information and utility from me without going too greatly into length. For a more in-depth and up to date information including some very good tips on soloing, players would be advised to check out the EXP maximization guide.
• NOTE: As of the March 2015 version 3 release soloing offers no in-game advantages to players. Players playing this or a later version of the game are advised to NOT solo.

First off, it's important to understand how experience works. All encounters will give you a base amount of experience based on the enemies killed, obviously, this is the 'base experience' per battle, it will be displayed in the dialogue box upon victory right before the items are listed. However the more participants in a battle the less experience every individual character will receive, so winning a battle that awards 20 base experience with two active party members will award each party member 10 experience. Be aware that non-active party members will receive the same amount of experience as active party members, but will not reduce the experience received. Thus, every party member (active or not) will receive base experience/active party members. This means that winning a battle with just the main character will yield 4x the experience for everyone then winning the same battle with four party members. As a result, it can be a good idea to early on deck out the main character so that they can solo the early dungeons and even take on one of the random daily quests themselves.

It should also be noted what level party members will join at. They will always join 1 level below the main character at the lowest xp requirement. So for example, after acquiring the mansion, the hero cannot have less than 115 experience (it takes 101 experience to get to level 3), so if you go to recruit any characters before leveling up they will have 30 experience (what is needed to get to level 2) putting them at 85 experience below the hero. If you go and fight a bear alone (30 experience, putting your hero at 145 experience) and then recruit them they will still have 30 experience (now 115 experience below the hero). This is important to note because enemies DO NOT respawn, so there is a finite amount of experience in the world (it will fluctuate because of random daily quests, but they will only add a finite amount of experience no matter which one it is). It can be a good idea to kill a few enemies or get some lore experience before recruiting an ally if it will gain you a level, but since with each level characters will lose out on more and more experience (if you are at level 3 with 101, characters will lose 71 experience, if you're at 4 you must have at least 234, meaning they will lose 133 experience, this gap will continue to grow with the levels) the best approach is to maximize on experience that you will miss out on (such as: if you're going to recruit Elayai you are going to be fighting 5 slime battles before she is forced into your party and given a level, they give a total of 339 base experience, fighting with two party members, reducing it to 113, will just make you lose out on experience) while trying to recruit party members quickly.

Trophies

Trophies are Shiny bits, Monster Fangs, and Pocket Tomes. These cannot be bought (though for a fee you can trade them for one another) but they can be found on several enemies as well as commonly in the random daily quests. However there is no way to consistently obtain them which can put players into a tight spot since several slaves have these items as their favorite gifts. As a result players might feel inclined to do a bit of save-scumming to stock up on some of these items from enemies that can drop them to ensure a healthy supply.

Shiny bits- Thugs drop these. A really good time to try to get these would be when you go to raid the gambling den with Therese before you get the manor. ALL the enemies (except maybe the boss) in here have a chance, but no guarantee, to drop lo-potions and shiny bits. Since you cannot save in between fights, there is a lot of dialogue, and your resources are pretty much set in stone (save lo-potion drops) don't kill yourself trying to get too many shiny bits, given the number of enemies (about 15) a good 3 shiny bits should be enough to hold you over (especially since of the two characters that like them one of them can actually have all their relationship bonuses acquired without giving them a gift). While orc raiders can give shiny bits too, due to how common thugs are it's just not worth it to try to get them from orcs.

Monster Fangs- Animals drop these. A good place to try to get these would probably be Elvo's manor with all the spiders he keeps there (and the frost imps too). You can also get a lot from giant's pass but since those enemies won't respawn you might want to avoid killing those out quickly. Orc brutes can also give them, but it is better to save those for a different trophy if you really want to be particular.

Pocket Tomes- Cultists seem to drop these. Orc shamans can drop these as well but you can get all trophies from orcs. So if you want an early supply of pocket tomes, save before you attack the orc camp and make sure to get a few from there. If players really want to stock up (since the orc quest can only give up to 3) the Manor Invasion actually has quite a few enemies who drop pocket tomes, so that's a really good opportunity to get a few.