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[EuchreJack]

I think, if I were playing (and maybe I shall have to purchase if possible), I would start with Insectoids or Reptiles, then transition to Carnivores after getting a more solid financial base.  Especially in this area, where insects seems to be the norm.

[IronyOwl]

I'm a bit astounded that you can apparently just, buy actual slaves in this game. I wonder if they can rebel or if they're just perfectly loyal like the monsters seem to be.

I've never had one rebel or run away, but the warning message for not having enough bedrooms mentions that it makes it "easier for slaves to escape."

I think, if I were playing (and maybe I shall have to purchase if possible), I would start with Insectoids or Reptiles, then transition to Carnivores after getting a more solid financial base.  Especially in this area, where insects seems to be the norm.

This is the smart (and presumably intended) move, though it does have its own problems. If there'd been a valid mate for that black varanus egg I'd probably have gone with that, but alas.

[nenjin]

Just wanted to say, I'm enjoying your narrative style.

[IronyOwl]

April to May of the Second Year

Spoiler: Update 4 (click to show/hide)

April of the Second Year



Selecting a warrior is easy- only one is willing to work for someone as... undistinguished as we are. Once we've built a name for ourselves, then they'll be beating down our door for a chance to die in our service.



There are a few more archers for hire, but not many.

Neither of these combatants are terribly skilled, but notice the cross-and-coin value halfway down the leftmost column- that's the compensation we'll have to pay to their families when they're eaten alive by giant spiders in front of cheering crowds.

If, I mean. If they're eaten.

Anyway, the point is that even a loss will be worth our while.

The other immediate concern is the red fist just below that- courage. That's the likelihood that they'll agree to fight a lethal battle. If they refuse, you simply can't use them as they're independent people and not mindless automatons to be thrown away for our riches and reputation you need to pay them 400 gold and they'll do it anyway.

Fortunately, these two are very brave, and neither demands a little extra this time around.



There are many options available for equipping our sacrifices brave champions, but we're an alchemist so we go with poison weapons. Only poison bows and poison blades can deliver poisons on strike, so we're stuck with those if we want to keep utilizing our prowess.





I also splurge a bit and spend our last 500 gold on a steel bracer for our warrior. It probably won't save him, but we'll be able to reuse it for our next warrior.



The announcers don't like our odds.



And then none of my careful equipment scheming matters because it's a standard-equip fight. Oops.



Oddly enough, the enemy team doesn't look all that imposing.



Their warrior is the sole exception- with that much skill in striking, parrying, and dodging, he can probably carve a path through our current roster without much fear of reprisal.

He only has two weaknesses- one, 22 health isn't terribly high. Two, ranged attacks cannot be dodged or parried, so it'll be up to Fat Everard to bring him down before he does too much damage.



So far so good.

The enemy closes, but only the spider has the AP to attack our creature. He dodges.



65% parry, 66% dodge. I sure hope those are tested sequentially rather than added together, or else we're stuck wearing down his energy or nothing.



Alternatively, we could just shoot him in the dick.



Our archer does so, but to no one's surprise he dodges both attacks from our monster and a single swipe from Roguelin the Lazy. You've got 13 health, Roguelin. I'm gonna let you decide if now's a great time to be procrastinating.



Their champion drinks two weak healing potions and regenerates most of his wounds, their spider webs down our hell panther so he can't fight back, and their wolf hybrid gnaws on his unprotected flank... taking almost as much damage from searing heat as ours does from the teeth.



Switching targets, Fat Everard hits the spider with his monster-slaying bow, dropping it to within dies-from-eating-a-hellhound range.



Their monster finishes itself off against ours.



Their champion then executes our very first mature hybrid with a brutal two-handed swing.



Their spider then moves in and begins savaging our archer. This leaves him wounded, but more importantly reduced to using a sword instead of his bow.

We have probably lost this.



Everard misses and pays for his failure.



Roguelin, meanwhile, it quite literally paralyzed with fear. The overloading from equipment he's not strong enough to move around in has reduced him to 6 AP max, while his fear of spiders is reducing that to 5. It costs 6 to attack, so...



So to his credit, he does survive a blow from that greatsword before being finished off by the spider.





Defeated and forced to pay compensation, we only make around 1800 from the deal. Minus the equipment we purchased, which we get to keep, and the monster we lost, which is genuinely unfortunate.

On the bright side, upkeep is down to 320 a month.


May of the Second Year



Since we've decided to specialize in carnivoras for the moment, this presents an intriguing opportunity.

Unfortunately, going solo against a bear is no small feat, so we likely won't have the power to pull it off.





Our other monster is mature. Unfortunately, he lacks the fiery hide that served his brother so well.



The Guild's Fair is back and it has so, so many things we need but cannot yet afford.



Runestones carry what might be called utility effects- boosting indirect stats like litter size or the likelihood and strength of inheriting elemental effects.



Scrolls are raw power- they increase the basic stats of a creature.

Both require a hatchling's cabin (2000 gold, 4 months) to use, and only work on juveniles. But the changes they make aren't just permanent, they're heritable. Each generation becomes more powerful than the last!

The only downside, other than the staggering cost, is that they also boost abomination illness. But since that can be cured using a different runestone, it's hardly a reason to fret.



The other major necessity are crossbreed potions, necessary to produce the next generation of savage killers. Obviously we'll be able to brew those ourselves in time, but...



But for now we're dependent on the Guild's Fair.



On that note, our prospects for an arena battle are limited and most of the hirelings are cowards. It's like somebody got all the brave ones killed or something.

The Hunt fight is nonlethal and could be accomplished with three archers (against three monsters, so probably a loss), but three archers isn't an ideal setup for most fights.

Open Game (lethal, standard equipment) is back, but obviously risking our last hybrid would be unwise. Not that we couldn't recover, but we'd be starting from scratch as far as monsters go.

We could hire nothing but human goons for it, but there's only one available warrior again. Two archers and a warrior would either be real good, as they use monsterslaying bows to drop enemy creatures before they reach, or real bad, as they plink away at the enemy while our sole frontliner gets overwhelmed.

Finally, we could sit this one out and hope for a more convenient setup or available hirelings later, but obviously we're going to slowly bleed cash while that happens.

[EuchreJack]

Cool update!
I think we need to at least pimp out our creature before sending them out to their death.

Also, related to the first theme not covered by this game, I'll just make one reference to Portals of Phereon. It's an adult game, but a well-made one.

[Sirus]

The "first theme"?

[King Zultan]

I'll just make one reference to Portals of Phereon. It's an adult game, but a well-made one.

What makes it an adult game, is it porn?

[EuchreJack]

I'll just make one reference to Portals of Phereon. It's an adult game, but a well-made one.

What makes it an adult game, is it porn?

Yes

[IronyOwl]

May of the Second Year to May of the Third Year

Spoiler: Update 5 (click to show/hide)

May of the Second Year



We quickly assemble a team of nobodies from the local tavern and equip them with poisoned bows.



On the other side, we have... whatever this expression is.





Our champions miss a lot, don't do much damage when they hit, quickly get engaged in melee, and the poison can't burn through enough energy to make a difference.



Since this is nonlethal combat, the penalty for failure is twofold: One, we do not receive any additional funds for victory.

Two, we have to keep these fools throughout their entire six month minimum service term. They're mostly cowards as well, so disposing of them in lethal combat will cost us around 1100 gold apiece.


June of the Second Year



Another month, another tournament. I'm tempted to hire a warrior and participate in the free composition fight, but none of the warriors (or the gear we could give them) are any good either, so it'd probably be another mouth to feed without any real increase in success.



There's no need to watch the spectacle unfold, but despite appearances we are accumulating wealth now.


July of the Second Year



I hope you're all noticing a pattern here. We're stuck making money the (relatively) slow way, but relying on human gladiators is a completely valid strategy for a monster breeder. If these were better we could even try to build a proper team and win sometimes, but alas.


November of the Second Year



The Merchant's Caravan is here, and that can only mean one thing.



An important thing to note here is their intelligence (brain on the upper left side), as this determines how quickly they will improve their stats. This is of little concern for temporary meatshields, but if you intend to keep a man around for a while the difference can really add up. We've already seen an example of this with ourselves- while hardly meteoric, our progress in alchemical skill is steady enough to have confidence in its end result.

On that note, all of these buffoons but one are as stupid as the cattle they're being sold next to. On the other hand, their starting skills and stats are actually above those of the available freemen:





Incidentally, note the green numbers in parentheses and the sliders below the panel. Those numbers are the expected gains from training over a year, while the sliders determine their priority. As you can see, the potential improvement is actually quite high! Nonetheless, it can take years to overcome a discrepancy in starting values, so getting good stats from the beginning is still important.





I grab the two sword-and-shield warriors (yes, the one with 10 int) and pair them with our best archer in an attempt to actually win an arena bout for once.



Futile as always, but still sufficient to afford the one "good" slave, albeit as yet another archer:



You can select a slave's class when recruiting him: Warrior, Archer, or Sorcerer. This choice needn't reflect their actual skills, but obviously an archer with poor bow skill is generally going to be a poor archer.

Sorcerers, for the curious, are essentially worthless early on; their elemental staff attacks deal very little damage, and they need to gain levels to learn (and improve) spells. Even then, it can be difficult to justify a well-timed spell in place of a flaming axe to the face each and every round.

In any case, we now have a viable three-man slave arena team.


December of the Second Year

Needless to say, we kick off the winter festivities by firing our three paid archers. This turns out to be some kind of morality play, because the usual Open Game fight requires five combatants, and we don't qualify for anything else except a deathmatch.



We can't afford to lose out on nearly 2000 gold from the arena this month, so we're forced to hire another archer (oh the irony) and two-handed warrior, then take out a loan to equip them.



Strategic loans are nothing to be afraid of, as there's a flat 20% interest charge to the sum and nothing else. Repayment is over anywhere from 3 to 24 months, and there's no downside to taking your sweet time. I only opt to repay over six months because I'd rather it be over and done with; the smarter move would have been to pay a mere 50 gold per month over the next two years.



Evenly matched, eh? That's promising. We'll let them handle this themselves.



Curses. Still, our team is no longer completely awful.


April of the Third Year



Victory at last! Both our coinpurse and prestige grow noticeably.


May of the Third Year



We're in a good mood today.



Our minions are in a good mood today.



For you see, it's the Guild's Fair yet again. But this time, we're finally wealthy enough to make the necessary purchases.

Did I mention our hatchling's cabin finishes construction this month?



Abomination illness is a side effect of magical augmentation, including crossbreeding, and like most stats it is heritable. This makes it imperative to cure at some point, lest your lineage become sterile and short-lived. That said, it has no immediate downsides, so letting it accumulate a bit isn't terrible.

A word of warning: Carnivoras specifically possess very low tolerance for magical treatments, and will therefore accumulate abomination illness much faster than other monster classes.



Being fully tame allows a monster to participate in nonlethal combat, allowing us to use it in arena matches without fear of losing it. Growing monsters gain some tameness each month, but it's hard to increase beyond that point, and a monster at 99 tameness and one at 0 are both Untamed and therefore fit only for blood sport. This makes it something of an all or nothing stat.



Scrolls increase a monster's value in the chosen stat. Like runestones, scrolls are permanent; we will only ever need to buy one. Of each type.

Strength increases melee damage (as a rough guess from what I've seen, final damage is 1/4 of the sum of strength and weapon damage)
Agility increases all combat odds (as a rough guess from what I've seen, every 4 points gives +1% hit/dodge) and AP totals (no idea by how much)
Endurance increases energy regen (no idea how much)
Energy increases maximum energy (no idea how much)
Health is HP, as you'd expect



Crossbreed potions are necessary for each litter of hybrids we wish to create. We'll need at least one, naturally.


Other things of note:

Blood Infusion Tool is used to more effectively administer potions, as well as boost a creature's lifespan and moisture/temperature tolerance, by injecting it with blood from a better monster (it's complicated).

Oracular Crystals give us an exact read on Abomination Illness in juveniles; not just current, but gain/loss each turn. This makes it important for fine measurements, but unimportant to just kinda not turn it into a cancer ball on the first try.

We'll want both of those eventually (and the infusion tool has upgrades), but they're not nearly as important right now.



So! What should we buy?

[EuchreJack]

Runestone of Taming, and if possible that Strength thingy.

Personal Update: Have purchased and downloaded. About to boot up for the first time. Hype!
Edit: I seem to have successfully Jinxed myself. Game crashed horribly upon my attempt to run the first tutorial. And I was just thinking how tutorials were invented by the Devil...

[IronyOwl]

Aw

[King Zultan]

Strength and taming sound like the best ones for us right now.

[EuchreJack]

Aw

Don't worry, I eventually bargained with Unity and got the game running for a few hours. Then memory leaks told me it was time to go to bed. I had a lot of fun with Rodent's Revenge: Killing hapless criminals with a swarm of rats.

[Rockeater]

Strength and taming sound like the best ones for us right now.

Yeah, we are only one generation in so we shouldn't be hit too hard by the abomination deasise, I think?

[nenjin]

Depends on what the average lifespan is. 6% of 60 months isn't too bad.

I'd probably say Purity and Taming. Those sound like two things to knock out early.