The Beginning of the Quest

The first things you’ll see after pressing “start” are a prompt to choose your name, which, of course, can’t be changed later; then, some general advice, just in case you haven’t checked the “help” section (but you did, RIGHT?), and, now, an RPG classic: choose your stats! Every stat (except for corruption) starts at 3, and you are given 9 points to use as you please (but you cannot exceed 10 in a stat for now) and no, you can’t save them to allocate them later! But hey, nobody will stop you if you want a bigger challenge.
You will be able to level up later on (defeating enemies… in any way 😉 and completing quests, of course).
Note: trying to set a name of a few existing characters will have them deny it to you with a secret line of dialogue. As of 0.34, these “easter egg” names are: Caro, Libra (being the main two behind the development of the game), Hakan, Witer, Chet and Selye.

Oh, also, under the text box, you will see some useful buttons to save, quick save and quick load, “history” and “preferences”, a toggle to auto-forward or even skip dialogue (you can also hold CTRL) and “roll back”, which lets you go back and try other choices or actions in combat. Each stat has its purpose:

• STR (Strength) : Deal more damage with regular attacks and physical skills (Leaping slash at lv 3, Sweep at level 12, as of 0.32); 1 STR converts to exactly 5 ATK points
• AGI (Agility) : Higher agility makes it more likely to dodge enemy attacks, crit with normal attacks and run away; 1 AGI converts to 2 ATK, 2% crit chance and 2% dodge chance
• INT (Intelligence) : Heal AND deal more damage with magic skills; 1 INT is worth 10 MP (you need those to use magic, haven’t you played other RPGs??) and 3 MATK points
• END (Endurance) : 1 point gives you 20 HP and 1 DEF point (do I need to explain what happens if you lose all HP? What? Die? Well, no ;p except for a few cases, but we will get to them later).
• CHA (Charisma) : Some NPCs may treat you better if you have a certain amount of charisma; you also deal more lust damage; since xxxxxx, also makes you less likely to be hit by lust attacks and you take less lust damage from them.
• COR (Corruption) : You start at 0, marking you as a pure, innocent pup ;p but losing to some monsters can make your corruption go up, with the max being 100; your COR will be relevant for various interactions, but there will be ways to cleanse your soul later on… if you still want to pretend to be pure (you’ll probably have a handful of CGs by that point, so who are you kidding?)

Note:

• The damage and lust dealt aren’t fixed, as well as the amount healed*, it’s all in a range, what kind of RPG would it be without some old good RNG? *”bind up” takes into account INT, (mostly) END (from 0.19 onwards) and max HP (from xxxxxx), healing way more, but costs 30 MP and has 3 turns of cooldown.
• “Defense” was implemented in 0.19, it currently triples your defense for the current turn, making it useful to stall (usually to tank strong hits or waiting for cooldowns).
• In most fights, losing will set your HP to 1 and lust to 0, so run somewhere safe to rest or sleep before you come across someone else!

0.27 introduced an item that will let you re-stat freely (for a high price, but buyable infinite times; see the bathhouse opens for business for more info).

Aside from their actual use, all those stats (except COR) are used here and there for “stat checks”: if your stat is high enough, you may see variations of some dialogues and find out more about chars or what’s going on around you, or even variations of CG scenes, and more. This is why balanced builds are generally bad, unless you don’t really care, but the game will be built in a way that encourages you to play more than once to get the full experience anyway, don’t be sad if you missed something during your first playthrough, or you can also try more builds in different saves 😉.
Will you be a sturdy and strong warrior? A mage who also studied how to impress sexy men? An assassin that moves like a bolt and strikes like thunder? (when it doesn’t miss ;p). Whatever you choose, it’s time to begin your quest.
Note: since 0.11, an anvil can be used to power up your sword in the barn (after asking Snow for permission), for info on the materials check the tab in the spoiler section.