Basic gameplay

Most of the info in this game is meant to be pretty basic and it's only intended for those players not already familiarized with the RPG Maker VX Ace engine, combat or games.

General advice

 * You have 16 save slots, so save often and use different slots.
 * A good point to save is when you arrive to a new city (Stine, Ari-Yhilina) or after a particular difficult dungeon.

Game controls
To move around the world (outside the combat screen) you have to use the arrow keys. It's pretty straightforward and it shouldn't give you any kind of trouble.

More interesting are the less obvious controls:
 * F1: Options, remap keys.
 * Control: Hides or shows the text box.
 * Alt+Enter: Enters or leaves full screen mode.
 * F12: Immediately restarts game.
 * Shift: Hold to run.
 * Arrow keys: Scroll large text boxes during sex scenes.

Managing your Inventory
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 (XP)
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. 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 only possible 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.

Attributes
HP: indicates the physical stamina of a character. Physical fighters have usually higher levels than magical ones. It decreases with the damage received and increases by resting, using healing spells or healing potions.

MP: represents the energy levels of a character (and not the magic levels as it happens in other games). Among the formation, so far only Yarra has no MP bar (all her skills are Lust dependent). It decreases when you use the character Skills and increases by resting or using mana potions.

SP: represents the lust levels and it's bar level cannot be seen outside of the combat screen. Only some of the characters (the succubi and Simon) have this bar. It decreases when you use the character lust-driven Skills (for some unknown reason) and increases by resting, using some buffer spells or using Lust Draught potions. By default, it's value at the start of the combat is zero for Simon and 10 for the Succubi. It also increases naturally every round by 1 for Simon at the start of the game and more later, by 5 for succubi. It also increases if you do a normal attack (not with special ones) or a "Guard".

The combat screen


In the games programmed with the RPG Maker's various versions, the combat is turn-based. For each of the party members (up to four per battle), you have to select one of the four possible actions:


 * Attack: you execute a single attack to a single target. The damage (if it happens) depends of your character's Attack stat and the enemy's Defense stat. Normally, you will only use this one with your warrior-type characters.
 * Special: use one of your skills. As we will see later, there are a lot of different possibilities here, but most of the magical-type characters will use this one (the warriors too, but not always only most of the time).
 * Guard: your character doesn't do any kind of offensive action, but receives less physical damage if attacked. The characters with the Lust (SP attribute, see above) will recover 4 points.
 * Items: see here for more details but there aren't so far any item with offensive capabilities, only defensive.

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 on them come from the Weapons and Equipment (specially the high tier ones).

There are six:


 * 1) Attack (ATK) - Boosts your physical damage.
 * 2) Magic (MAT) - Boosts your magical damage.
 * 3) Defense (DEF) - Reduces physical damage.
 * 4) Resist (MDF) - Reduces magical damage.
 * 5) Agility (AGI) - Increases accuracy, evasion, and 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).
 * 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).
 * 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.

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 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: you lose 10% of your actual HP points, but you don't die from it.
 * Silence: you can't use any of your Skills during a variable number of turns.
 * Sexbind: blocks the lust based Skills.
 * Confusion: Confused people can strike themselves or their allies if they are able to act.
 * Paralysis: can't act for several turns. Sometimes if resisted you can only be stunned.
 * Stun: it incapacitates the target to do anything in one turn sometimes more.
 * Lust stun: it incapacitates the target to do anything in one or various turns.
 * Lust Mad: Lust Mad people can strike themselves or their allies if they are able to act.
 * Drunk: icon is similar to poison but effect is different (no HP loss). As far as I can tell immunity to poison gives immunity to Drunk status too.

Resistances and Weaknesses
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. Another consideration is that your own characters have some resistances and weaknesses  so the same attack can have drastic different results.

The enemies
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 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.