Beginners Guide. Part II. Building your Fortune.

This is the second chapter of my guide and deals with getting rich as fast as possible. To read the first part which deals with character creation. Go here.

Just like before, this guide is meant to provide the most efficient way to accomplish a goal, not claim to be the only way to do so. If you'd rather work as a factory worker for 2 weeks in order to be able to afford a clean bedroom because you think it's more fun from a roleplaying perspective, feel free to do so.

First things first

Combat is the fastest, most efficient, most lucrative way to make money, without question. Specially early game. There's no way around it. If you want to make money fast, you are going to have to go into the slums and unalive some raiders. Other forms of income can also be lucrative, but they'll take time to set up.

If you followed the previous part of the guide, you'll notice, however, that the character isn't build for combat. That's alright. Your character's combat skill isn't actually that important. This is because currently each character, no matter how powerful, only gets one attack per turn. Thus, it's far better to have a full party of decent fighters (5 attacks per turn) than one combat monster (1 attack per turn), making a combat build unnecessary.

While this isn't a combat guide, because money is inevitably tied to combat, we'll go into some aspects of the combat system in order to make things as profitable as possible.

The basics

First of all, you should use guns. Every single member of your party should use guns. Melee weapons are terrible, the most powerful of them, the power katana only outperforms crossbows and handguns.

If you like Melee weapons, the good news is that a future update will revamp the combat system and possibly make swords and daggers more worthwhile. But for now, it's a waste of time.

Secondly, despite the importance of ranged combat, don't waste your time actually training it. Once you can access crystal hills, it's possible and relatively cheap to get a cybernetic implant that gives you +75 chance to hit, making you basically infallible.

Should you hire mercenaries?

Answer: YES. 

Mercenaries are an essential part of making money through combat. While slaves can be taught combat, none of them except Aria and Rebecca are built for it. And even if you happen to roll a slave with the Steel Maiden trait, it will take you a while to train her to proficiency, which is the opposite of what we want.

Additionally, the main advantage of having slave fighters, which was the money you saved due to them using their own infinite companion ammo instead of depleting the MC's reserves, has been removed from the game. So hire mercenaries for combat and don't waste your time teaching slaves to use a handgun.

While keeping several mercenaries on your payroll will increase costs, there's no need to be scared. Think of it as an investment. The only part that matters is, are you making enough money each day to justify the expense?

Which mercenaries should you hire?

It used to be possible to put together a powerful party for a very efficient cost. However with update 0.8.1.1, most mercenaries were (temporarily) removed from the game, and currently, your only choice are the extremely cheap but terrible ones, or the extremely good but expensive ones.

Because of this, there isn't currently much strategy involved. Hire the cheap ones for the first few days, switch to the good ones as soon as possible.

Equipment

Early game, the rifle is the best possible weapon. It's decently powerful and relatively cheap and provides a bonus chance to hit. This is the weapon your MC should carry until you're able to access Crystal Hills and get the accuracy implant.

Update 8.1.1 made it possible to change equipment used by followers, both armaments and armor. However, slaves and most followers now require you to provide them with ammo, so you should never give them anything better than an assault rifle, and certainly not to more than two of them, or your ammo reserves and your wallet will suffer. Give them rifles instead. This is one of the reasons why you'll want to switch to the top tier mercenaries, since they do provide their own ammunition, which makes up for their cost.

When it comes to weapons, equipment should be looted, not bought. The only exception being the plasma rifle as you won't find it in any enemy. However, because of the outrageously expensive ammunition, never use the plasma rifle yourself, give it to the Black Guard instead.

Kill, loot, sell, profit

Unless you are completely new to games, you know that you make money by selling what you loot.

However, while it may be tempting DO NOT sell your equipment in the RedHaven market. Take the Ferry from Darkmere to Hamah Bay and sell in the local market instead. It's considerably more profitable to do so. Although, do note that not everything can be sold in the Hamah Bay market.

The arena

The Arena (located in Crystal Hills) is a moneymaker and the reason we want to unlock Crystal Hills as soon as possible. You can compete there personally, which is quite lucrative, but even if you're not inclined to do so, you should always assign a slave there as a gladiatrix, as this will make you between 1500 and 2000 dollars a day.

The best candidates for this job are either Rebecca or Aria.

With her initial stats, Rebecca can defeat mid tier fighters right off the bat and should be bought and put into the arena immediately after reaching 1500 influence (tested with normal dice). DO NOT give her a weapon, as she's capable of winning the fights using only her fists and this will boost the reward.

Aria is an excellent fighter and can defeat both Black Pearl and Raven, even without any additional training (though some save scumming might be needed).

Once you have access to them both, it's better to keep Aria in the Arena, as Rebecca is currently more developed (full story + full renders + reward).

Other ways to make wealth

While combat is very powerful, you shouldn't limit yourself to just bashing raiders. There are other ways to make money and combining them all is important to build your income. You may (and should) engage in one or however many you want, just don't rely on any of them exclusively, as they all have some downside.

Rebecca Higgs

A happy, loving Rebecca increases your business income between 30 to 50%. Though business income is nothing to write home about, it's a good way to ameliorate your daily costs, and if you're going to have passive income anyways, you might as well have more of it, so it's worhtwhile to keep a good relationship with her. Not to mention her quest provides a good amount of treasure.

The main downside here is that Rebecca is one of the more difficult slaves to train due to her high willpower, and even a decently competent master will have a hard time getting her to do anything.

It's recomended to buy Rebecca only after you're able to access Crystal Hills and enroll her in the Arena immediately. It's easier to raise her affection this way and she won't be negatively affecting the rest of the girls in your household.

Slave trading

Slave trading is the most lucrative actvity in terms of how much money you can make in one go and the main reason why Bondage is so crucial. Not only because obedient girls will fetch higher prices but because teaching them any skill (which you want to do in order to maximize the selling price) is best done once they're already broken, otherwise they'll learn slower, and resent discipline.

The problem with this is that it requires you to spend time developing your character and teaching the slave, so it's not viable as a regular, steady source of income.

Also, keep in mind that there's good reason to keep slaves around, specially the cheaper ones you find, as not only will they bring in money or provide some other bonus, but a happy and loving slave will give you a powerful reward (as long as it's implemented), so choose wisely which ones you sell.

Prostitution

Very lucrative, as one might expect, but requires girls to be well broken (either very low willpower or high corruption) or they will refuse, and it takes time before the girls will make a name for themselves and start bringing in considerable cash. It also works best with several different slaves, instead of just one, so it's generally not recommended for the early game.

Business

There are several opportunities to invest in (generally illegal) business ventures. Afterwards, they continue to pay a small daily trickle of money.

The main advantage here is that it takes no effort on your part. The main problem is that the business oportunities currently avaliable are limited and rather unprofitable, so becoming a business mogul, at least with joint ventures, isn't viable just yet.

Despite its limitations, it is still recommended that you invest, as this provides you with a way to ammeliorate your daily costs, just don't rely on your investments to build you a fortune.

Crafting

The crafting system is one of the most interesting and it's expected to become extremely powerful as the game develops. Currently, with enough investment, it can become quite lucrative late game and allow you to become fully independent from merchants. However, the limited options to raise the required skills and the amount of time investment it requires means that at this stage, much like prostitution, it's not a viable option to build a fortune, specially not early game, and it's best aproached as something you delve into once you have a steady flow of cash.

Simple work

Working 9-5 is never going to get you a fortune, that should be clear enough. With the current selection of jobs, you will get at most 100 bucks and spend most of your day, which is time you need.

It can be worth it, if not as a way to build a fortune then at least as a way to reduce costs, to put your slaves to work in one of the $100+ jobs (like the Golden Dragon or the Academy) during the day, as long as you're busy with some other activity, or training a different slave. As for the main character, making him work a regular job only makes sense as a roleplay scenario, not as a strategy to make money, because just about doing anything else will make you more those $100 faster.