Memoirs of a Battle Brothel – The Facilitator’s Guide to Contracts
A quick(start) guide to the contracts system in “Memoirs of a Battle Brothel” to quickly accumulate credits, esteem, and do so with minimal trial, error, or frustration.
Foreword
Memoirs of a Battle Brothel is right up my alley. It’s an H-game/RPG, which, depending on how you play, can have very little “H” at all. I love a good H-game, but have a certain weakness for H-games in particular that have the quality about them to play against their content or forego/forestall said poontang hunts. There’s a wonderful narrative attached and you can solely engage with that if that’s your ball. There’s reward enough n playing a good game yeah? And, when a game is good enough, especially an H-game, that someone wonders why it even needs the erotic elements; I thoroughly enjoy that experience. Because, why not? An H-game isn’t precluded from having fantastic or immersive elements. It’s more of a boon to them to defy expectations of being simple Gallery Collection games. So, kudos to our solodev.
Think that’s it for the effusive praise. Anywho…
Okay, Actual Guide Now…
Contracts in MoaBB come in multiple forms. All kinds, really.
We’ve got Vandalize, Hack, Protect, Blackmail, Delivery, to name a few. Plus, the Hosting and Faction specific contracts (for each of the major factions) respectively. Now, I haven’t (at the time of this guide) tested them all. I’ve played through the game twice, and am by no means an expert (it’s also my first guide), but, I know enough to get you started and getting the necessary currencies fast. And, that’s really what you want, right?
So, tl;dr?
Hosting contracts.
Yep, that’s it. Well, not really, but, close enough.
See, that’s the big secret to the guide, right here in this first section. Hosting contracts are the fastest means of building both types of capital – both hard credits and esteem. First go through the game, I thought esteem might play into the story or lore in some way, allowing me to use my reputation (as MoonFall itself apparently holds us in “esteem”) to finagle my way out of tight situations. Now, I haven’t OBSERVED anything like that myself. Not for lack of trying, but, it’s very likely that esteem works as intended and has no drastically divergent gameplay benefit; OR, it is planned for a later content update. Either way, esteem largely factors, dear Facilitator, into your income – i.e. Salary. And, it does this through your upgrades. Specifically?
The Blood Pit.
The Blood Pit
The Blood Pit is the fight simulator. Six levels of encounters, usable free of charge (aside from the upgrade costs), and valuable early game and late to get your numerous party members leveled. I highly recommend spending some time there. But, the main feature, as it relates to this guide, is the Level Three upgrade, which grants “Esteem Revenue” – which grants “pay equal to your esteem per pay period.” Basically, it converts whatever your esteem is and turns it into bonus cash every twenty-four hours (roughly). Good deal!
Now, with every building upgraded to level three, you’ll pull in about… 3,250 to 4,000 credits, give or take. That’s just eyeballing my endgame save. I had about… 213 esteem by that point, so…
3,250 + 213 = 3,463 creds. Cool, cool. Not an astronomical amount, but, helpful nonetheless. That’s an extra healing item from the shop. Now, I do NOT recommend, unless you’re a mad lad, that you grind out to 500 or 1000 esteem, but, feel free to ignore me. You do you. But, that is, as of now, the primary reason to boost your esteem.
The Contracts Themselves…
So, to bring this back around to the point. If you are the sort to min/max, in the sense that you want the maximum income for the minimal effort, Hosting contracts are the way to go. As the game itself warns, there can be unforeseen and unresolved issues/bugs on the overworld map, which is where you’ll be doing all your business. Now, this easy enough to find on your own, sure, but, hey, there weren’t any guides up when I wrote this. And, I want to be helpful.
A standard or “General” contract, such as vandalize or delivery will direct you to one of the major city centers on the world map, or, an NPC/interactive location on the map that has been spawned in for THAT specific contract. So, a Blackmail General contract might give you an NPC that is described as being “near Civic.” Civic is in the north by northeast of the map. So, if you get that contract from say… The Stormbreakers (the western edge of the map), you have quite a walk between there and Civic. Factor in that each contract relies on certain stats as well as a dice roll.
Vandalize uses Athletics, Hack uses Tech, Delivery uses Charisma, Protect uses Charisma, Intimidate uses Athletics, and the task, something like Survey or Relic? It uses knowledge, which, to my… knowledge, you can’t raise (as of now).
Faction contracts are twofers – comprising a planning and execution phase. You can use up SP or credits to add to your rolls later in the mission, the execution phase. Buy tools, scout the area, coordinate with your allies. You can do other things like call in favors, but, I haven’t messed with that. During missions, there will be random events that will test, guess what? Random attributes. But, not SO random. This largely depends on your approach taken in the planning phase. Choosing “Alert” for instance, gives perception checks. Defensive and others change what is used, so play to your strengths. There’s usually an option to do a frontal assault or bumrush your objective, which leads to an immediate battle, but, you miss out on any bonuses (such as wounding enemies during Hunts).
Hosting contracts forego much of that, however. And, are undeniably faster to complete. Like with Faction contracts, you will be tested using a dice roll. For Hosting, the necessary attribute will be random based on the events firing. So, you will get different clients – “a blade of a woman with an entourage around the same age” or “a balding middle-aged man with muscular bodyguards.” They are, lorewise, spending time at your guild hall, at the behest of a major faction. The objective is to keep them satisfied and all that. So, randomly, the lights might go out, the guest might get rowdy, what-have-you. You could get a charisma check a perception check, a technology check. It’s randomized.
But, here’s the kicker, the whole reason I wrote this guide.
Once you’ve picked your faction to take a hosting contract from. Let’s say… the Iron Cartel and Dockside – a good distance from your HQ in Saint Gorfu – you do not have to walk all the way back to the Saint. You will be given the option to, or to immediately be teleported just outside of the city. Save yourself the trek! And, on occassion, when you’re given a mission, the preamble dialogue will tell you to go to one location; but, upon arrival you’ll find no target objective on sight – either in the form of an NPC or newly spawned building. This can even happen with deliveries. Reloading an earlier save can fix that particular bug, but, in my experience, when in doubt… The Spire. Yeah, just walk over (or ride the train and go back into the overworld) to the Spire. Chances are, the event simply told you to go to “Industrial” but meant The Spire. I digress… Hosting contracts mitigate the need for this tomfoolery and searching missions for your quest objective. Once you choose to teleport to Saint Gorfu, that’s all she wrote.
Add to that, the fact that you don’t instantly start the Hosting event, but have to walk four steps to the city… Well, this gives you the chance to save. Hey! Now, I’m not advocating save-scumming. But, it can be helpful if you get an event for a skill you didn’t intend or haven’t buffed, such as in the early game. Maybe you have three Charisma from character creation and built the Security office and spoke to the Athletics trainer there for a boost. That won’t help you if you get a perception check though. You might get a lucky six on a roll, but, if you get a one, and don’t have an attribute modifier to bring it up? You could fail the event and lose faction reputation. Bad. Sad.
Generally speaking, for all contracts, you need at LEAST a roll of four – either flat out or with attribute scores making up the difference, to pass. The game states this. However, in the case of the Blackmail quest, be advised OPFOR, the bodyguards overseeing your target, will spot you and initiate combat, even on a passing score of four or five. It’s only at scores of six or above that you can complete Bodyguard scot-free of battle. Otherwise, getting a six or higher on any contract usually just leads to a better outcome. Like… an extra twenty credits on a delivery job. Not really great, sure, but, you could get nothing on a four aside from a “Job well done!”
Normally, you won’t EVER make more than 1000 credits. And by that, I mean 900 and some change. You’ll also gain faction reputation, usually +1, or, in the case of Faction specific quests for the Mandate, Stormbreakers, Three Moons, and Cartel, +3. The Board, the shadow council of MoonFall can also have their reputation improved. Simply head on over to The Constabulary building due east of Cellerdown and take a hosting contract (or general contract, if you prefer) as per normal. Either way, utilizing the hosting contract is one of the most cost-efficient ways of boosting your rep to the nice “Associate” threshold of 10 points and factors into late-game decisions to boot. No reason not to.
Wrap Up and Recap
That’s about it. As the game is updated or as I play more, I’ll update the guide. But, this is a good baseline, I think. The contracts system isn’t difficult, and I could have “said less” but, I’m the type who starts explaining something I know or am interested in and just go off to the races. Anyway, there’s the quick and dirty of it. Thassia would approve. Maybe.
My recommendation stands. Hosting is the way to go. Bing bang boom. Done in a hurry, like Zafra kicking troublemakers out of the guild hall. You can get a number of hosting contracts done speedily and get every major faction, barring The Board, to 10 reputation. Which, just so happens to be threshold at which they consider you an “Associate” – an ally in all but name. Which, of course, affects the ending in big and small ways. Wundebar!
Anything over ten is just icing. Believe me, I tested that quite thoroughly with the Guild factions, Stormbreakers, and Old Watch. So, you don’t NEED to push the Stormbreakers to +30 rep doing deliveries and hosting random, grizzled (young) veterans. Just get it to ten, then go do the main quests.
Okay, I think that’s everything. Have at em’, Facilitator(s).
