Hi I've been having fun playing v5.16 and have the following suggestions
The tutorial could be a lot better and that would get more players past the point where they go out of the city, get beaten up by bandits, and log off. The two inventories, four people in a party, resting with supplies; all things players need to know.
I would put a basic alchemy lab in the mansion that can create beauty and hair potions then remove those goods from normal vendors. Thematically, nobody is going to pay a lot for slaves if anyone can just buy cheap potions from stalls to make their own custom slave. In terms of gameplay it gets players interested in potion making sooner.
I don't feel that the low level combat skills suit lower level play. Most skills are designed for fighting life or death battles, which are rare, and at lower levels it seems more important to conserve energy and stress. For low level skills I'd suggest putting in: basic combat training which lets a slave permanently fight as if they were a level higher -a passive skill that gives a 25% chance after each melee strike for a hit bonus for next round - passive skills that gives a 50% chance of restoring health (or stress, energy) upon killing an enemy.
It feels like money is constraining everything too heavily so that all choices boil down to money whether it's grades or facilities, clothes or rooms, training or potion components, specializations or quest requirements, and so on . Also, the constraint on expanding the manion based contract completion seems odd, no theme at all. The change I'd suggest would be to make the major guild services (like specialization) cost points that can be gained by completing guild contracts and let the mansion be built just from money.
The main story seems to progess too fast (30-40 days) so that high level captured combat characters are too useful. Training up a quality low level character takes too long not just from xp grinding but also unavailability during specialiazation or grade improvements. The storyline characters only arrive as level 1. Economic specializations have no time to pay off.
UI requests -
Guidance to be an option on the exploration screen along with currently available paths.
The daily updates tab could have a list of slave contracts available in friendly cities. It would cut out some of the running about when looking for contracts, looking for slaves, shopping for things to upgrade slaves, delivering slaves, and so on. It makes thematic sense for a slaver mage to have this.
Put an indicator on the inventory screen to show which slaves are in the travelling party. Will stop mishaps in sending out wrong people with wrong gear.
I continually bought ropes and then went exploring without knowing the ropes were in the mansion instead of the backpack. I knew full well there was a toggle in the top left corner but I still always forgot and did this. I'm sure other players do the same thing and it will need a better UI or maybe .... is there any need to have rope and supplies as inventory items at all? If all you do with supplies is put same number in your backpack each day, what's the point? Could you have an automatic resupply from stores when you leave home town?