Basic gameplay

This page is intended to be an introduction to the basics of the game for those players who are not already familiar with other games made with the RPGMaker engine, or JRPGs in general. More detailed information is provided by the rest of the wiki: the Guides page has a list of guides for various aspects of the game, and the References category collects all the pages with in-depth information.

General advice

 * You have 99 save slots, so save often and avoid overwriting old saves.
 * A good point to save is when you arrive to a new city (Stineford, Ari-Yhilina), before or after a particular difficult dungeon, before a major decision or round of investments.

Game controls
The game is controlled with the keyboard, but like with most other RPGMaker games, you can also use a gamepad for most things.

Use the arrow keys to move around the maps (outside the combat screen). It's pretty straightforward and it shouldn't give you any kind of trouble. Use Space or Enter to interact with people and other map features, such as levers. The Escape key opens the in-game menu and cancels some actions.

More interesting are the less obvious controls:
 * F1: opens the standard RPGMaker configuration screen. It includes options for:
 * Muting the game's background music (BGM) and sound effects (SFX)
 * Starting the game in full screen.
 * Configuration of the keyboard controls and gamepad buttons
 * F5: enters or leaves full screen mode
 * F6: change size of windowed display
 * Alt+Enter: alternate full screen mode (F5 is advised)
 * Shift: Hold down to walk. (By default you run). Also scrolls party member list in equipment shops.
 * Control: Hold down to accelerate/skip dialog.
 * F12: Immediately restarts the game.
 * Q opens directly the Quest Journal.
 * Arrow keys: Scroll large text boxes during sex scenes.

You can change some behaviors with the "system" menu during play, such as: There you can also exit, return to the main menu, or quit the game among other things.
 * window color
 * music and sound effect volume
 * instant text display
 * whether battle animations play

Game menu
Pressing the Escape (Esc) key when not in combat will bring up the game menu screen. On the side are displayed the currently selected combat characters (up to four). In the bottom left corner a counter shows your current money. In the top left corner is the menu itself:


 * Items opens the inventory screen, listing the items carried by the party.
 * Skills allows you to view your characters' special skills (see below) and activate those of them that can be used outside of combat.
 * Equipment is the place to change the equipment currently worn by the characters.
 * Status displays each character's attributes, statistics and active status effects, as well as their current level and experience points.
 * Quests opens the Quest Journal that describes your current tasks and those that you have completed. The wiki has a list of all quests in the game, but beware of spoilers!
 * Formation allows you to pick the four active characters when more than four are available.
 * Save is the menu for saving and loading saved games. Be careful with deleting and overwriting saved games! Remember that you have 99 slots, not just 16.
 * System allows you to modify a few settings or exit the game:
 * Separate volume controls for background music, background sounds and sound effects.
 * If Auto-Dash is set to "Dash" (the default), you will constantly move at running speed and slow down only when you hold down the Shift key. "Walk" causes the opposite behavior.
 * If Instant Text is enabled, dialog text will appear instantly.
 * If Battle Animations is set to "Hide", no animations will be displayed for skills and attacks in combat - their effects will be instant.
 * Return to Title Screen and Shutdown Game are self-explanatory.

Inventory and equipment
One key issue in most RPGs games is an adequate management of your equipment, weapons and items. To help you with that task, we have a new page of the guides section, it's called Shopping and with most of the pages on the wiki, it contains spoilers, but it could be useful to check it if you have doubts about the wisdom of spending your hard-earned money in a particular shop/merchant. In any case, remember that the Sx is there to spend it and the PRoN to invest it.

Experience points (XP) and leveling
It's the variant that determines the level of of your party members (see the FAQ for more details). But if your party is split (like during the Simon's Daughter quest) only the members that you see in the Formation menu will receive it.

Try to get the new party members as soon as you can, to increase the amount of XP that they will receive. In most cases, they join the party at predetermined levels.

The level of your characters determines both their Attributes and their Skills. So its in your best interest to gain as much experience as you can, which is mostly from the combats. Resolving quests has other rewards but there is no experience gained from it.

Unlike other games, there is no penalization to the party members that you choose not to use, so it could be natural to always use the more powerful ones, but it will be a more satisfactory game if you take the time to learn how to use all of them effectively (you can choose which three of them to accompany Simon in the Formation menu). The tactics section of each character could be helpful there.

We have mentioned before that Simon has the possibility to gain XP outside combat. There are various actions that you could do in the game to get it: visit various Incubus King caches or dominate orcs' minds are the two already in the game but it's foreseeable that if/when he absorbs another Soul Shard, he will get XP too. Other characters have this possibility too when doing important things to them.

Attributes
Characters have two (sometimes three) attributes that are subject to quick and frequent change in combat (and sometimes outside of it).

Health Points (HP) indicate the medical condition of a character. Characters lose HP when taking damage in combat and gain them by using healing skills (see below) or by consuming healing items. When not in battle, HP also can be recovered by resting (sleeping) in certain locations, e.g. inns (but they are not always available). If a character reaches 0 HP, they die, and if all four active characters die, you get the GAME OVER screen. A dead character can be revived with a suitable skill or an item, or simply by resting. So, if only one character survives a battle, you only have to rest to revive the whole group.

Mana Points (MP) are consumed by using a character's special skills. Unlike HP, running out of MP means only that the character can not use their skills. MP also can be recovered by resting or using mana items.

The maximum number of a character's HP and MP depends on the character and increases when the character levels up.

Sex Points (SP) are used only by a couple of characters - those who have lust-based magic powers (Simon and the succubi). Similar to MP, SP are spent by using lust-based skills, but they are different from MP in a number of ways. SP's maximum value is always 100, and the bar representing SP is visible only in combat. SP value is not normally preserved between battles - every time characters begin combat with a fixed, low starting value. Characters gain a small amount of SP every turn of combat. Larger amounts of SP can be gained by using the Masturbation skill or consuming lust-boosting items. A few succubus skills also give some SP to their targets, e.g. Arousing Kiss.

The combat screen
In games programmed in RPG Maker VX Ace, the combat is usually turn-based. For each of the party members (up to four per battle), you have to select one of the four possible actions:


 * Attack: the character executes its standard physical attack to a chosen target. The damage (if it happens) depends on your character's Attack stat and the enemy's Defense stat. Unsurprisingly, warrior-type characters do more damage with their standard attack than other characters, due to their high ATK values. This attack can cause a critical hit for triple damage.
 * Special (Special/Magic/Sex/Unskill): the character uses one of their special skills. There are a lot of different possibilities here, as each character has a unique set of special skills. Special skills cost mana points (MP) and/or sex points (SP) and can be used only if the character has enough points to use the skill. Unsurprisingly, mages usually deal more damage with their Magic spells than with their standard attack. Some physically based special attacks can inflict critical hits, but generally not if they inflict a state or debuff.
 * Guard: the character doesn't do any kind of action, but receives less damage if attacked.
 * Items: the character uses an item, e.g. a health potion, on a chosen target. See the Items page for a list of consumable items and their effect. As of version 0.21, there are only restorative consumables in the game.

You can escape some battles (typically those triggered by walking into a wandering monster) by pressing the Cancel key during combat until you see a small menu with options to "Fight" or "Escape". If the latter is grayed out, the fight cannot be escaped.

Stats
Each character has a basic value of each Stat according to his/her profile and with each level they increase a little, but the bigger changes to them come from the character's equipment (especially the high tier ones).

There are six:


 * 1) Attack (ATK) - Boosts your physical damage.
 * 2) Magic (MAG) - Boosts your magical damage (including healing strength).
 * 3) Defense (DEF) - Reduces physical damage.
 * 4) Magic Defense (MDF) - Reduces magical damage.
 * 5) Agility (AGI) - Increases order of attack.
 * 6) Luck (LUK) - It only changes the odds of suffering or causing status effects.

Skills
They are special actions that can be used instead of the regular Attack command. You can find a brief description (and the cost in both MP and/or SP) of each under the Skills menu, in a section called Special.

The Skills could be applied to:
 * Self: you are selected, can't select others, just have to validate.
 * Single target: can be an ally or an enemy. You select the target.
 * Group: commonly known as AoE (Area of Effect) skills can be the whole group or some random targets. In any case, you don't have to select either.

By their effects:
 * Buff: it gives a positive bonus to the target(s) stats, shown by a stat symbol with arrow(s) pointing upwards. They can be stacked twice (sometimes with the same Skill). Since the 0.17.x versions, you can now see a number that indicates the number of turns that this effect will remain.
 * Debuff: it gives a negative bonus to the target(s) stats, shown by a stat symbol with arrow(s) pointing downwards. They can be stacked twice (sometimes with the same Skill). Since the 0.17.x versions, you can now see a number that indicates the number of turns that this effect will remain.
 * Add status: if it's directed at the enemies, not only gives your(s) target(s) one or more negative status but also deals some damage . If the targets are your own party you receive a positive status plus some minor healing.
 * Remove status: so far there are only examples of skills of this kind when the targets are the active party . It removes some negative statuses and recovers some hit points.

Speed of Skills
Healing skills (of any type: arcane, divine or sexual) and buff skills are faster than your normal speed value. Debuff and attack skills do not have this bonus.

Negative status
You can reduce the probability of acquiring one of these statuses or even get immunity to them, by equipping the characters present in your formation with Charms and Pins (see here to discover how to get some of them). Another way to get rid of them is to use the Antidote potion (for poison) or the Serum (for most of the rest). Blind: lowers drastically your accuracy (you miss more frequently) with physical attacks. Poison: lose 10% of your maximum HP points, but you don't die from it, you stay at 1 HP. Silence: can't use any Skills during a variable number of turns. Sexbind: blocks Sex Skills. Simon is immune. Confusion: will auto-attack themselves, allies, or enemies (unless stunned or otherwise unable to act). Paralysis: can't act for several turns. Stun: incapacitates for one turn, sometimes more. Lust Stun: incapacitates the target to do anything in one or various turns. Lust Mad: will auto-attack themselves or their allies (unless stunned or otherwise unable to act). Drunk: icon is similar to poison but effect is like confusion. Simon is immune.

Resistances, Weaknesses and Immunity
Some creatures are more resistant to certain elements and some are more vulnerable to others. Try to use different type of attacks to learn which elements work with certain enemies and which don't, specially if your active party is heavily magic-oriented.

Some monsters can be resistant or weak against physical attacks so magic is not always the solution.

Some monsters can be immune to some attacks. Change your strategy accordingly.

Another consideration is that your own characters have some resistances and weaknesses  so the same attack can have drastic different results. You can buy items that gives resistance and immunity to your characters. The same resistances from items do not stack with natural ones or with different items.

Combat difficulty
Some of the players of this game have expressed their feelings towards the difficulty.

Due to the decision of the designer of this game to exclude grinding, each combat that you missed hurts you in the long term, because it's experience that you won't have the opportunity to get later. But on the other hand you will see most of the enemies (there are some invisible, but only in some optional zones) before they will see you, so usually you will have time to prepare your party for them.

So take all the combats seriously and don't try to run, because in general you won't be able to return to previous regions (and if you do, most of the enemies won't be there any more).

Having said all these generalities, lets review some general advice and recommendations.


 * First and foremost, save in different slots and save often. If you're really stuck in some part of the game you should always have the opportunity to start from a safe point and try other strategies to get there.
 * Try to get the best gear that you can get. You have three ways to get it: with the money that you already have, or investigate how to get it for free or as a part of a quest. It's especially relevant in the case of Charms and Pins.
 * If you're having higher difficulties in one particular area and you have other options (in Stineford for example) try to get more experience and see if the increase of your stats or your new skills (if you got any) helps.
 * Analyze the weakness of the enemies to the different elements: Ice, Fire or Lightning or if they are vulnerable to Poison.
 * Try to change the Formation to see if different characters are more or less useful.