This is a tutorial and guide of sorts for the Vanilla game. Some things will differ from the mod (edit: now known as Lab Rats 2: Reformulated), so if you're finding something is different than I describe here and you're playing with the mod, you should ask about it in the mod's Discord channel, posted in the OP under "other links"
Main Stats, aka Characteristics on the women's sheet
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- Charisma: primary stat for HR and Sales, and secondary stat for Supply. This is the stat that most influences the MC's effectiveness with social actions when interacting with women. I recommend raising the MC's Charisma first through the Main Stats goals, after earning at least 1 point in each stat for the skills you use because otherwise that portion of the formula is 0, and the main stat of each department has the largest multiplier
- Intelligence: primary stat for R&D, and secondary stat for HR and Production. This is the stat that increases the MC's chance to win at euchre once Wednesday game nights begin (after Rebecca moves into her own place)
- Focus: primary stat for Supply and Production, and secondary stat for R&D and Sales. This is the stat that increases the MC's chance to delay cumming or cum early. It also improves the MC's chance to get away with watching an employee's butt while she's doing the looking for files event (iirc)
with no hiring policies these will range between 1 and 5 and may be increased through the trance system
Work Skills
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- Work Experience: This is a new-to-0.50 mechanic. It decides how many duties an employee may be given, and also influences her pay. Low levels are paid less than baseline, while high levels demand higher pay. Employees gain exp and will eventually request a promotion
- HR, Marketing, R&D, Production, Supply: the respective skills for their jobs. With no hiring policies these will range between 1 and 5 and may be increased through the trance system and a fairly frequent (ime) "training seminar" event which targets a random employee and costs $500
- Raise whichever of the MC's skills you want with the Work Skills goals. I usually raise Supply and Production, but I recommend at least 1 point in each skill you use at all, because otherwise that part of the multiplier for working is 0
Sex Skills
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- Stamina/Energy: limits the actions that can be taken in a turn. Normally recharges by 20 points each turn. I recommend raising the MC's stamina first with the sex goals
- Foreplay: the MC's skill with groping and fingering, and women's skill with hand and tit jobs. Raises the arousal gained by women when he molests them with the "grope her" action or during night-creeping on Lily and Jennifer. I recommend beginning with this maxed at character creation and raising it after your Stamina is maxed
- Oral: the MC's skill with cunnilingus, and women's skill with blowjob/deepthroat/skullfuck. Another good skill to max early. Cunnilingus is more effective than fingering at the same skill, but requires a higher (though still not very high) sluttiness threshhold
- Vaginal: MC's and women's skill at vaginal sex
- Anal: MC's and women's skill at anal sex. I typically raise this before Vaginal, because it's a more extreme sex act (and so increases sluttiness longer) but has a lower threshhold than raw sex with a woman off birth control
all skills are partially two-way even when the sex action is one-way. For instance, if the MC has high Foreplay skill, the girl gets off a little bit more giving him a handjob even though she's doing all the work
Other Stats
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- Arousal: how horny the MC or a woman is. Usually maxes at 100, which initiates an orgasm and loss of arousal. Women lose half their arousal on their first cum, and less each subsequent time (making rolling climaxes easier), while MC loses all his arousal, goes soft, and must reach 10 arousal before hardening again, making multiple orgasms during a session rare for the MC. If a woman has higher than half her max arousal at day change, she'll masturbate upon waking, potentially raising her sluttiness if it's low. Has a very large influence on effective sluttiness
- Clarity: MC only stat. As the MC witnesses sexy things or has lewd thoughts, he will generate Locked Clarity. Locked Clarity is unlocked by the MC cumming, and the more invasive the cumshot the higher the multiplier will be. It's a good practice to build up Locked Clarity before having sex through frequent flirting, groping, stripping, sexting, and social media, and then trying to choose the best cumshot available in order to convert as much Clarity as possible. Cumming wholly inside a girl is the best, with "down her throat" (though careful with this - skullfuck is the only guaranteed way to get this. If she's too low sluttiness when trying it during deepthroat, she'll gag and you'll be forced into "on her face"), and vaginal & anal cumshots giving 2x Clarity, "in her mouth" and various on her body shots give 1.5-1.25, and cumming on the floor or masturbating giving a mere 0.75-0.50
- Happiness: Women only stat. Influences effective sluttiness during sex, and increases employee chance to quit if it's very low
- Suggestibility: Women only stat. Increases her chance to enter a trance on orgasm by 1:1. Usually baselines at 0. Most frequently raised through serums, but may be increased permanently through the trance system, or temporarily by making a woman cum multiple times during a session, especially in a way she enjoys. This is cumulative, so making a girl who loves vaginal, condomless, missionary, and being submissive cum through piledriver sex raises trance chance by a lot each time she cums during a session
- Sluttiness: Women only stat. Decides what she's okay doing or watching you do with another girl in the same room. Effective sluttiness is raised by arousal and subject to many other modifiers during sex depending on her likes and dislikes. Increases chance to open social media accounts, though personality is a great factor
- Love: Women only stat. How much she's invested in her relationship with the MC. Required to get a woman to volunteer her phone number and social media accounts, and agree to go on dates with MC. Influences effective sluttiness +/-
- Obedience: Women only stat. How willing she is to do as MC says even if she doesn't want to. At high levels, MC may demand she drop birth control, strip, blow him (if that taboo has been broken), change how she addresses him (121 is "Sir" btw), and other demands like going raw against her wishes, etc.
- Novelty: Women and masturbation stat. Lower novelty reduces how much Clarity is converted. Novelty is gained when breaking a taboo with a woman, and lost each time MC cums the same way with her
- Fertility: Women only stat. How likely she is to get pregnant. May be influenced by serum, and gets a large boost on her peak day and a few days before and after it
Serum Traits
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- Mental, Physical, Sexual, Medical, Flaws, & Attention Aspects: Serum stat. All serum traits, including negative traits, have one or more aspects related to its effects. Sluttiness increasing traits will have a high Sexual aspect score, and might also have higher Attention, which represents how much the city is noticing it, which is a bad thing early on. All aspects in a serum are cumulative except Attention, which is equal to the highest Attention score among a serum's traits
- Mastery: how much beyond researching a trait you've gone. Reduces the chance to generate negative traits (i.e., side-effects) in a serum. Raised by directly researching it in R&D (pathetic) or by interacting with Make Small Talk, Compliment Her, or Flirt With Her with a woman under the effects of a serum with that trait. Multiple traits (and in fact multiple serums, even containing the same trait) can be researched at once through this method
Alright, I *think* that's all the stats. On to the game
As I said above, at character creation I recommend maxing Foreplay. Besides that, I don't recommend spending much on Main Stats, since they cost the most points at 3:1. I usually max Foreplay, give myself 1 Charisma, and then high Supply and Production skills and 1 in most of the other skills
I recommend playing the tutorial once to get the beginning story, then restarting the game and skip the tutorial if you're obsessed with efficiency. I like playing the tutorial every game, but it might not be the *most optimal* beginning. My goal with this guide is to show you that max efficiency isn't necessary though, and that you can do as you like
At no point is it necessary to "savescum" by quicksaving and quickloading for random events, but I will try to tell you when it might benefit you the most or just be convenient. If you're so inclined, you can savescum any random event including at the end of a woman's climax in order to get a trance every time even with only a 10 suggestibility serum. I don't recommend trying it without a serum though unless you're
very patient
First thing, first time you see Steph at work choose Set Her Work Duties and give her the Heavy Workload duty. This will cause her to generate more research at the expense of her Happiness, so we're only going to keep that on until her Happiness is down to around 80. If you see her Happiness dip below 80, open Set Her Work Duties again, choose Heavy Workload and then Remove Duty and close with the Return button. That will remove it *on the next turn.* On the next day (since you can only change duties once per day), open it again and give her Mandatory Breaks to raise her Happiness again. You may also offset some of her Happiness loss by choosing Compliment Her Work (more effective with higher MC Charisma) or Pay Her a Bonus once a day, and you may also generically Compliment Her for a minor gain. Making her cum may also raise her happiness, but that might not be available for a little while
Before you choose your first research topic, you should go to the Marketing department and choose Sell Serum, then New Contracts. Do not accept the contracts, but make a note of the aspects asked for. Those are going to be your goal aspects for your first research. I have found that there will be very few contracts that are impossible*, but there will still be difficult ones or ones where the required combination of traits won't be obvious to a new player, so feel free to ask (or just restart) if you're stumped. *(I was saying "none", but then I got an impossible contract in my current game so I can't say that any more. I'd still say it's 8-9/10 possible, and hopefully future tuning by Vren improves that)
Once you have your goal aspects, go to R&D and choose Assign Research Project. If you played the tutorial, Steph should have laid this out for you and you may have even chosen to masturbate for your first Clarity conversion. You can sort your available traits with buttons on the bottom by the aspects you want. If you can satisfy a contract with one trait, research it. If not, you'll need to research multiple traits and the High Capacity Design trait in order to combine them until you've raised your research tier, which I do not recommend rushing
If you're going for super-max efficiency, small talk Steph until you can flirt. Flirt until you're half energy, and then choose Primitive Serum Production as her assigned research. This is so you can Wander the Streets downtown in the morning, afternoon and evening and potentially find some wallets or a prostitute. If you don't find a prostitute to unlock Clarity with through sex, go to the strip club at night and watch a few shows to build up locked clarity and then masturbate upon waking on day two. Then assign Steph her real first research. I don't usually hire many other employees on the first week unless I get back-to-back Fresh Blood goals. Any new employees are assigned to R&D until we have our first serum, even if they're meant for other departments. You may be tempted to help Steph research. Don't. You're worth more hunting wallets downtown during Morning, Afternoon, and Evening timeslots, and which can be savescummed if you're inclined. I usually end the first week with $1500-$2000 from camping downtown
Once you have the traits you need to fulfill your first contract, put them together in R&D with Create a New Serum Design. If you need to use High Capacity Design, it will likely have one or more negative traits. You may savescum on the turn in which research on the serum is finished to reroll the negatives, but it's not necessary unless you'll go above the max flaws or attention for the contract. Contracts are a fixed payout, not influenced by flaws like selling serums manually. After a week and a bit, Lily will approach you to ask if there's some way she can earn money. You can talk her into testing serums for you for $50 a dose, which is an easy early way to research trait mastery. I recommend doing so at Evening, because you can come back at Night and use whatever stamina recharged between turns getting a few more mastery points
During your first week, I recommend doing what you can to raise your Locked Clarity and then unlocking it when you need it to unlock research. You'll need Clarity to unlock each trait, and then again to research the serum after creating it
I recommend keeping Jennifer's sluttiness below 15 until you can flirt her all the way to 20 in one go, then wait until the "found serums" event fires and suggest she test one. *That night* go talk to her in her room (waking her up after you molest her if you find her asleep and that's your jam) and the first promotion event should fire if you've raised her Love enough, which should be fine if you've Small Talked and Flirted with her daily. That will give you a great deal of max sluttiness to work with on her promotion outfit. Dress her to your tastes, but sluttier is better. No actual NTR takes place until you have had multiple chances to nix it if that's not your bag, and these are easy ways to raise her sluttiness. She'll also break her underwear and nudity taboos during the scene, which will be refreshed on the next day but that's an easy quest. Her sluttiness will drop back down after the serum wears off, but that's okay too. Take the quest on the next day with "convince her" and then spend the next day doing the chores in the various rooms at home, but don't report back in with her until you've flirted (or otherwised) her permanent sluttiness (so not raised by serum) back up to or above 20. When you report back in, it will re-break the taboos that were restored, plus add 10 sluttiness, so this is an easy way to skip from 20-30 sluttiness with her and unlock further actions
I know I'm all over the place with this. I'm sorry. I'm kind of writing this stream of conscousness >_<
On the first Saturday, if you've kept Jennifer's permanent sluttiness below 20, you'll get her first "help with bills" request, which is an easy kiss taboo break or an obedience boost. Take whichever you want, but the kiss one is a loss of 10 sluttiness on the next day when she restores that taboo. If her sluttiness is at or above 20 on Saturday, she'll offer to do favors, which can lead to strip-dances. They can be expensive, but are a way to raise her sluttiness and obedience at the expense of cash. I don't personally like them because I think they cost far too much energy for very little gain. I'm hoping to convince Vren to tune them better in the future
If you didn't finish researching your first serum(s) on your first week and complete the contract(s), make sure you accept the available contracts on Sunday or they'll be lost to the new pair on Monday. You'll still have a few days to complete them if you haven't already, plus I don't think they actually expire? (a bug I've reported to Vren, so it'll hopefully be fixed next release)
HIRING
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As I said above, unless I get Fresh Blood goal I save my hiring until I have a serum for production. I savescum when I'm at the "pay $50" during the Hire Someone New dialog because I'm not only finicky about their appearance, but I prefer a high love/likes over dislikes/hates ratio, plus decent skills. But it's not necessary. I do recommend getting women with over 25 in their relevant Expected Production scores (or above 150 for Marketing), seen only on the hiring page. This is a QoL thing I'm recommending Vren add to the Review Staff screen, if not also each woman's character sheet. inb4 someone chimes in that the mod already has that ^_^
Before beginning production on serums, I like to buy the Batch Size Improvement 1 business policy under the serum policies tab. While you're there, take note of the Tier 1 Serum Production policy. You'll need to buy that before you can produce any serum you research with Tier 1 traits. That's why I recommended against rushing Ask About Advancing Your Research with Steph. Once you do have the money to unlock that policy, you can choose that option with Steph, which will lead to a scene where she asks if you're okay with testing a suggestion serum on her. You must have a serum with a suggestion trait in your inventory and SHE must not be under the effects of suggestion at the time or it will fail. Once those conditions are met, you'll get your "first" trance scene, along with some free unlocked Clarity to train her with. I recommend adding a sexy opinion. Something like "drinking cum" will raise her sluttiness every time she does it, and Steph has a high chance of rolling with likes giving blowjobs already (and has a scene where she offers to blow you if she runs out of research) so that's a good fit for her character if she doesn't already have it. If she does already have it she'll say something like "suchandsuch? oh yeah, I have some thoughts about that" so that's your cue to roll back to your choices again and take something else or the trance will be wasted
Keep taking contracts on Sundays (or earlier if you can fill them) and raise your research tier along with your production tier policy carefully, and play around with other policies that look fun. Higher production tiers come with additional maintenance costs. If you get low on money, sell a few serums manually, but make sure you put an employee in Marketing to increase reach. If you take note when you sell serums (including through contracts) the Aspect Desire drops, which in turn lowers Aspect Value. Manual sales depend on those values (remember, contracts DO NOT), and at the beginning of the game when your Market Reach is a mere 100 people, that's a sharp dive with every serum sold. As your reach increases, that drop is less severe until eventually it hardly makes a dent. This is one of the most common pitfalls new players or old players who are new to the new Marketing mechanics are falling into. They're setting their serums to auto-sell in Production (don't do that, btw) or selling their serums manually all at once without having a girl in Marketing to increase Reach. If the serums have a high Attention value, this can also bring the city rep, which in the early game is a very bad thing
I'm going to stop here for a breather and to allow questions from anyone, and additional input and advice from the other experienced players. I'm positive I'm missing a ton of stuff but hopefully my wall of text isn't as incomprehensible as it feels to me rereading it >_<
edit: thus ends my first draft. I'll post my first week guide tomorrow (or so)
