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This is my first time playing the sequel, though I played and enjoyed the original Strive For Power.

Overall, I have a favorable impression. Though obviously still in early stages, I feel the core mechanics are improved from the first game. In particular, I find the class system more interesting and engaging, though it could use some filling out in terms of advanced classes.

I'll ignore direct bug reports here. The ones I've run across are obvious enough and have been reported elsewhere.

Some Issues:

• Buying additional quests is an anti-fun mechanic. Since quests are your only way of gaining reputation right now, the "optimal" way to play is to spend all your points unlocking new quests so you have more income later.
  • This delays any real engagement with the system until later. You can't unlock classes or better hirelings because you need to spend those points buying quests.
  • I would suggest making quests unlock automatically with reputation gain, without having to actually spend it buying them. This lets you gate the increase while still letting players use the rest of the system.
• On that note, I would suggest having a separate mechanic for "total quests" that grows more slowly than any individual guild's. It should start at 4 so you can have one of each, but after that should slowly increase so that you are encouraged to "specialize" in the guild that most interests you since you'll likely have more guild quests unlocked than the total number you can get.
  • Early upgrade costs are too steep. This is especially true of the first room upgrade. Between the hard coded loan cost, a max house size of five, and food usage, early players are going to have much more trouble getting upgrades running. Even the time spent on the upgrading job is significant when you only have a max of five people.
  • I would suggest adding a lower tier beneath the current ones for most of the basic upgrades. Room count, certainly, but also for each of the crafting stations. I'd suggest splitting the current first tier crafts in half and putting the more basic crafts into a more approachable initial upgrade. This lets players get access to the system much quicker.
• Profit in general is a bit wonky. With a hard coded 50% cut between buy and sell price, it's a bit hard to make serious money on anything but prostitution.
• I'd suggest adding some way to bridge the gap between sell and buy price. Whether this is based on some player attribute, or a class/job from the harem, there should be a way to bring the buy and sell prices closer together.

Random Content Suggestions:

• I think it would be nice to have a set of jobs that center around loaning out one of your slaves. In interface, this would look a lot like the current slave request task, except that instead of selling them off you temporarily loan them out for a period of time. On the interface, this would look and work very similar to the current travel mechanic.
  • This makes it more attractive to use well developed slaves with a lot of time invested in stats and classes, where the sell quests favor disposable slaves trained as quickly as possible.
  • This is especially useful for the servant guild. It would allow bringing back some of the old service jobs like cleaning, dancing, etc in the form of quests. Something might look like "Wealthy aristocrat needs additional servants for large gala: looking for female slave with 50+ charm and the maid class". Or someone hiring a dancer/bard for an event, etc.
  • Other guilds might have things like looking for a temporary lab assistant (apprentice class, sufficient wit). Or seeking a supervisor for an important dig site (foreman class).
• On the subject of cosmetic quest flavor, consider a line of fight quests where you are asked to be "champions" representing some faction or another in a judicial dispute. This would work more or less like the current vermin clearing quests, except that you would fight "civilized" enemies instead of monsters or bandits.
  • Ideally, this should be pass/fail over a single battle, with an instant forfeit if you lose. Perhaps party size could be capped as well depending on the quest parameters. So if you get a quest with max:4, you know you should be prepared to bring 4 fighters.

Thank you.

>Recomended use with LeLurker's body and portraits packs

Can anyone link to this? I've seen the portrait pack linked on the main download page, but I've never seen any body packs (besides this one).