Mythic leather is obtained from dungeons. It's an occasional drop off enemies but is more reliably obtained by gathering after completing a dungeon. The jungle dungeon with the ants & centipedes is best place, but it is possible get a few pieces from the grove dungeon IIRC.
It takes a while for wits to naturally climb, so selecting slaves with high factor for fishing isn't important for the first 2 weeks. They won't reach the skill cap before you can buy the wood/cloth for upgrading the mansion. Upgrading the mansion to have 5 additional hands will do more than dropping dosh on rods that early in the game. That said, I do generally buy a rod for main character at the init girl. There's a lot of wiggle room for the day 14 & day 28 payments. It's only if you get unlucky quest generation that you really need to worry about cash generation for day 50, and even then the 10k is easily scrapped together with a dozen girls fishing.
As for mithril taking a while to mine, that's really only applicable for the first 50 or so ingots. After you've gotten that many, you have enough to outfit entire work camp with mithril pick axes, which greatly increases their efficiency. That said, mithril and other high end materials are where you do want to stack efficiencies. Worker outfits, collars, and the foreman class skill help a lot. So while mithril initially comes in at a crawl, it's possible to ramp up production quickly.
>Quest generation: far as I know, you can increase difficulty, but NOT # of quests, right
Number of quests does increase, but this occurs automatically as you complete quests. If I recall correctly, it stages up every 500 points to a max of 3 requests per guild.
Dominator is 1500; it's Archmage that's 1000. Though I would agree with the sentiment that the rep rewards are all overcosted. In my most recently playthrough, I edited the worldgen doc (*/assets/data/worlddata.db) to bring them down by an order of magnitude and while I think I went a tad too far and undercosted them, it's still much closer to what feels appropriate.
>Upgrading is great----problem is, *VERY* EXPENSIVE! (both gold & hard to mine resources)
800 gold, 10 rough wood, 10 magic wood, and 10 iron wood is all you need to bring your sex factor up from Terrible to Good, allowing you to unlock Aire's and Xari's events. The gold cost is inconsequential, and the materials are easily obtained by sending girls to the lumber camp. In fact, magic wood in particular is high prices and quickly chopped, making it a good 2nd tier to move into after fishing for making money. Higher tier mats may take longer to gather per piece, but they also sell for significantly more.
>Are you saying you've gotten 500 w all 4 Guilds *BEFORE* D28?!?
Yes, once before, but most runs are off by a couple days because the final quest was a long assignment and I forgot to send a girl out until it was too late to make the d28 deadline lol. The 4k paid off by 28 is pocket change in the grand scheme, and even the 10k needed on day 50 is only a big deal if you haven't been upgrading the mansion to add bedrooms. If you've gotten production to the point where you can make the day 50 payment, you shouldn't have a problem paying off the full loan on 100.
>So options: Avoid fighting in 1st 14 days???
I usually avoid fighting until my init girl gets druid for overgrowth & mass heal. It can be a bit too much of a slog going in early with just mind blast and a couple unarmed frontline girls. Caster for main character also helps, since blizzard can be used to stunlock enemies, and Necromancer is similarly useful with its AOE dark spell. If you're doing study dates each day with your init elf/dryad slave you will quickly reach the 75 wits for the higher tier class unlocks.
>Servant Guild----since as mentioned *NEVER* got 500 rep [b4 D28] I'm learning to avoid them unless they pay good gold. Almost always take a big loss on any slave you buy/sell.
Worrying about money is for poor people; just eat the gold loss. You're receiving compensation in rep, and the gold needed to repay the loan is better obtained through gathering. Sex toy is a rep class, that comes in at 750. You can use dancer in the meantime (performance skill is also site wide effect).
>I agree w training---1 more thing I've learned----problem is, getting someone far away back home! (can't have dates away from home----very costly in time [or do you cheat? ]
If a girl needs to be dated, I'd do that before sending her to work camp. But the mining/lumber slaves usually don't require that treatment. Watchdog class allows for a slave to improve submission of other slaves; pet and maid allows them to increase loyalty. So it might take a while for them to reach max relations, but as long as their obedience is in the green, they'll do as they're told--which is the important thing. This is also why the obedience tax when slaves travel long distances is unimportant. It only becomes an issue if they're already close to making a runaway attempt, and even then if you have someone use an obedience skill on them on the hour that they make it to their new destination, they'll be fine.
>Daisy----so you never have her be a Worker/Hunter/farmer etc [anything practical] ---even cooks need hi wits or they don't work as good.
No worker, hunter or farmer, but I'll give her chef, alchemist, and headgirl. Whether or not she's the most efficient at the task isn't a big deal. If I need the cooking done quickly, I'll just assign more slaves to the task. As you pointed out she can be used for servant guild assignments, but I don't trust Amelia with any slave that I like, so I usually refrain from sending her in favor of another girl. Or more likely no one at all; I'm not exactly worried about getting the 500 rep across all four guilds before day 28. Even if I'm rushing to get Anastasia, each day that passes means more exp, more gathered materials, and probably more upgrades to the mansion.
>Besides, *STAFFS* are *VERY* expensive (usually 1,000 gold +) to buy, & takes quite a while before you can make them.
You need to zoom out your perspective. 1000 gold is approx 1 day's worth of entry level fishing. It's pocket change. That said, you can get a decent staff by siding with mage's guild at start, and they're a relatively common reward from mage requests. There's enough wiggle room in the first 14 days to pay off the 1k, buy an exotic on day 7, upgrade the mansion to 10 beds, and buy miscellaneous items.
>I mostly look for high Physics for 1st 5-7 char
My #4 (after MC, init, and Daisy) is also a high physics character, picked to potentially be worker or fighter depending on the first round of exotics look like. Ideally, I can score a seraph (Valkyrie is great racial class), but honestly, I tend to be somewhat picky and prioritize virginal girls with nice assets. If there are no girls on offer who enflame my passions, I'll usually wait. This is the sort of game where you're supposed to think with your dick ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
>What about you MC?
Usually it's human, but I've also gone with slime. The normal damage resist and not having to worry about knocking up the fighter are both nice perks, but even so I still find myself using human more often than not if for no other reason than that I am human.