Grue

IIRC by mid-game (and certainly late-game) I don't think Cleanse And Rework should be needed to successfully pop a Create Formal Invitation. Especially if you're focusing on completing as many of those adventure chains as you can manage and building up your attributes. Though I think I used Master (and Sing Song both to repair rep damage, open up more student adventures etc or Party) as well. Another thing I like to use Controlled students on is on your clique as well to Train your Company for some bonus skill ups or at least to improve the skills of your clique overall. I didn't really think I lost too much opportunity cost in a time management game given the final result (attached save file if interested). There's room for a little improvement and I used a few actions to goof around\test some options but my last run from....2018...sigh...I managed to complete all but 1 student adventure (I think I closed out Philip's by doing his girlfriend's student adventure), and anything that wasn't locked behind a character creation selection (house, perk, classes). Pretty sure I got a lot of mileage out of mind controlling my clique to Train your Company as well. Still relatively pleased with the final result at least to satisfy my OCD/completionist heart...though this was using the Touch of Summer DLC. I don't know what Summer Blush adds but unless it's significant I think I'll just leave it at that and maintain my forlorn hope that we'll eventually see Y2 in our lifetimes;-). Last Day.ams

It's been some time since I've finished A Touch of Summer game but figured to check the forums on the forlorn hope of real Y2 news and noticed a smidge of information on 'Summer's Touch'. Scanning around (checking steam forum as well as the wiki) and I can't find any dlc\patch notes on what changed with Summer's Blush.... so anybody know?

Or you could just pray at the Temple of Rostra twice to get Prayer up enough to inform Durand's Prayer Grove. Taking an action at Durand's Prayer Grove will inform you of all the Religion subskills, allowing you to just Train up Theology to level 1 to inform the Temple of Iudocia. I generally do a lot of adventures and Insight is one of the more common stat boosts so I'm a bit meh on Dialectic Study Level 10s reward.

Ooooh...yeah that could be wildly unbalanced. Even if you gave the blood hound the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch to try to even things up how would it pull the pin?

I don't think I saw a mention of detention and how to avoid it or get out of it. It's a bit inter-related with skipping classes as well, and considering this a time management game, a basic strategy guide on how to avoid the drags (or fix them) concerning stress, vitality, or bullying issues might be helpful.

I seem to remember Theory of Incantation giving me trouble as well at times. Observation is just so common in a lot of adventures that I can't see how it would be hard to be informed of it by the early game (just do an adventure and fail the roll...assuming it doesn't end the adventure). On CoS, yeah the mechanics are fairly opaque, but iirc I monkeyed around with it somewhere between DLC 14-15 by doing one run with as many global percentile increases as I could and one without. The one without just seemed a bit harder to get off the ground and I suspect they're more valuable as your attributes and skills get into the teens and twenties range (outpacing the bonus from a flat +1 or 2). Granted it could have just been worse luck on the one without and the CoS %+ increase doesn't work well but I suspect it does;-).

Yup, it's helpful but just chiming in with a few suggestions from my own experience. I remember my first start resulted in a lot of time in the infirmary because of a combination of bullying and not being able to manage the stress. Even for a new player I'd always recommend Apprentice: Page for Elegant Service to obtain Favors and getting information on a student is always useful no matter skill level (and it's a pain in the butt discovering that you have to be informed on the target before using certain abilities, and it's always helpful to know where you have to be at to counter bullying). Likewise on backgrounds that provide a general percentile bonus...always useful no matter what. I'm not sure anymore if having a high relationship by sucking up to the profs helps with CoD and\or detention but if it does that's just icing on the cake. For a newbie, I'm of the opinion if they are not prepping for or doing Adventures they are missing a huge portion of the game (a study worm builds for latter runs). Pointing out Cleanse and Remake and Seven Favors are great earlier game tools for completing adventures (and bumping success odds), it's just that given the low requirement to discover the Temple of Iudocia (Theology 1) makes Family: Religious background easy to pass up (just use the ability Pray at the Temple of Rostra twice to discover Durand's Prayer Grove, then do any action\ability at Durand's to inform about all the Religion skills, and use a 4th time slot to Train Theology once to discover the Temple of Iudocia...easily achieved by the third day of the first week). On a related note, using location passives to inform on entire suites of subskills is something I would have liked to have known as a noob myself. Likewise, getting informed on the Observation skill (given how common that roll is in events and adventures) has never been a noticeable problem...so for a newbie I'd recommend spending the background point elsewhere unless a RP choice. Unlocking skills to 11 is something that is a bit more intermediate (as is Mastery & Gates), but even neophytes might hit upon by the midpoint of their first game. While spellcasting itself is pretty much an intermediate skill level thing except for a handful of spells, a primer explanation on how to build a spell with phemes might be helpful. Clique building in the early part of the game is something I'd double highlight to someone new to the game even if they only plan on maintaining a small clique. Hermit runs, while easily doable, just miss out on quick and easy boni;-).

It's been a while since I did my DLC 16 run through (with the class skipping bug patched iirc for that game), but from looking over that end save calendar and from memory I have a suggestion or two. I view the 'Adventure' action of the game as its meat & potatoes so my build was geared towards doing\unlocking as many adventures as possible (incidentally with that run I got all but Joana's student adventure done since I did Philippe's, the college specific adventures but iirc did weasel into one outside of Aranaz, I think I snagged at least one or maybe two outside Class adventures in as well, did the Trio's adventure for the main quest, and swapped familiars a number of times to do 7 of the familiar/master adventures as well but not any of the familiar only adventures). Offhand I'm sure I didn't focus on attributes but instead looked for anything that gave either a generic percentile bump to Chance of Success [CoS] or helped decrease the odds for Chance of Detection [CoD]. Any attribute bumps in character creation were incidental like Luck with Astrology:The Comet. Past that I don't think I took anything just for a skill point, to inform a skill, or that granted a flat bonus to a subset of rolls (like a +1 to all hostile type actions or dueling) just for itself. IIRC unlocking the Temple of Iudocia wasn't too hard (checking...yup unlocked with Religion-Theology 1...and you can get that by Religion/Prayer 2 which discovers Durand's Prayer Grove which should get you to Theology) so I'd probably give Family: Religious a pass except for rp purposes. Observation and most of the Blackmail skills also were not too hard to be informed about so I'd lean towards not taking a background strictly to open it up in character creation. Money as well wasn't too hard to come by if needed. I found Elegant Service from under the Apprenticeship: Page background a real workhorse ability for most of the game. Getting a 10 relationship with a professor allows you to trade it in with the Favor action...which is in turn useful to unlock certain skills to 11 or to obtain other goodies. It also informs you about one student which is a requirement for certain spells and actions iirc (and it'll easily ensure that you are informed about the entire student body by game's end). I'm not entirely sure but iirc I also think high professor relationships also help you avoid detection or at least help get you out of detention a little earlier. From looking at the calendar, the first phase of the game I would spend building your clique (sniping them before someone beats you to it or they form their own cliques) and building a baseline to increase odds of success for the early events and the mentor chain adventure. After building a foundation, obtaining Cleanse and Remake shouldn't be too hard and that should allow carry you into mid-game as mentioned and you probably won't need the crutch for the second half of the game. Endgame of course is round out what your goal for the character was...unlocking skills to 11 (in my DLC 16 building Zoology to 11 in order to unlock more adventures via Exchange Familiar and improving student relationships to do those as well), finishing key adventures, or maxing out your pillars. As a side note if you go the Mastery route I found the background Academy: Safaviore Officer's School for the Train at the Safaviore ability or History: Famous Campaigners for Study Battles as I think those are one of the few routes to War/Manner of a Champion that is not entirely random (just a random bump of 1 or 2 War skills). Manner of a Champion 6 gives the Train your Company action which you can then train your clique in and then Master them into training everyone in the clique one random skill.