How to Have an Efficient Save File in Love & Sex: Second Base

Starting a new game in L&SSB can be a daunting task, especially if you’re a perfectionist or minmaxer. This guide will hopefully tell you everything that you would need to know to make the beginning of the game – normally a daunting task that can trip up a lot of players trying to get started without wasting time or losing stats – and steer you towards the opening choices that will work the best for you.

Preamble

This guide assumes that you are playing on Normal difficulty with Randomness set to Off. Easy difficulty doubles all non-character exclusive stat changes (LP, KP and so on, but not Kylie’s YP or Morgan’s MP), all needs gain (drinking a coffee restores 2 Energy normally, up to 4 on Easy) and makes money less of an issue with increased earnings from working and halved weekly rent cost. As a result of Difficult mode being the inverse of this, it adds quite a lot of extra time to any playthrough and you will very likely miss on date-specific milestones the first chance you would otherwise get due to simply being unable to get a girl’s LP high enough the first time around.

For example, Bree’s second event that lifts the cap on her maximum LP from 20 up to 30 must be done in the Arcade on a Saturday afternoon and Difficult mode makes it extremely hard – if not impossible – to reach that 20 LP threshold in time for the first Saturday. The same goes for bible study with Harmony and many other characters. However, the benefit to this is that you are much less likely to run into so many different character events happening at around the same time as they can chain into one another and cause Mike to go through two or more character events with different girls without the player intending to. As with everything else in this guide, it’s up to you.

The randomness setting dictates two things based on its setting. If randomness is set to Schedule, then all of the girls in the game have an equal chance to be in one of several alternate locations during each hour of the day. If it’s set to Full then this is in effect as well as an element of chance to all of Mike’s need gains. It’s hard to explain via text but these comparison screenshots should give an idea of it.

With randomness set to Off, taking a bath on Normal does this:

But on Full, you instead get this:

It does add an element of unpredictability to the game so if you’re playing casually it can be fun by mixing things up a bit. If you have any kind of objective in mind such as an achievement, speedrun or anything that these two elements of randomness might mess with then it’s best to set it to Off. There is no randomness setting that keeps the girls’ schedules fixed while also adding randomness to Mike’s needs gain, there’s only neither, schedule or both.

It’s worth mentioning that you generally should not use the in-game cheats. Enabling them will lock you out of being able to earn achievements as well as unlock the gallery or use that save file for new game plus. They’re good for testing and messing around but you shouldn’t ever need them.

Finally, there will be spoilers aplenty. Of course, I would hope that since you’re reading a guide then you already don’t care about that, but it doesn’t hurt to mention just in case.

Name & Date

As soon as you hit “Start” on the main menu, you’ll be asked to pick a character. Choose Mike here, as a lot of aspects of character creation are different here and BreeMC does not have as much content as of now.

For first and last name, those don’t matter and you can pick whatever you like. The game even accepts symbols, adding some extra humour potential should some of the characters later formally address you as, say, “Mr. :P”.

You will then be prompted to enter your birthday by clicking on both the day and season that you want to set it to, then clicking Done. Repeat this process to set your starting day and if you don’t click anything on each screen then they will be set randomly. True to real life, the game cycles between spring, summer, autumn and winter in that order, but each season in this game lasts exactly 31 days giving you 124 days each in-game year.

Personally, I recommend starting on Spring 1, or perhaps a bit sooner such as Winter 15. The reason I choose that general area is because it lets you start gaining some momentum working to earn promotions and build up some savings, or use the pool location to sunbathe to start building Charm right away on top of partying or get some other helpful boons before going through character storylines.

The First Question

You will begin this short section on Monday at 10am on whatever date you chose with 10 across all four of your needs, 0 on all three of your stats and $500. Your first choice will be from Bree asking you this:

“Do you like sports?”

Your possible answers are in the table below and I’ll be grading them on a scale of one to three hearts. Of course, these rating are highly subjective and you may prefer something else instead, in which case, go nuts. My choices here are the ones I’ve come to vastly prefer after many restarts and hours spent figuring out how the game works and wanting to smooth out the beginning of each new game for myself.

I strongly recommend taking Martial Arts here. If you don’t, then the process to learn it requires Mike to go to the beach during Summer, which at minimum will require an investment of $100 for each lesson, $200 to buy the swimsuit and you can buy the bicycle for an extra $500 to even access the beach, as well as Mike to burn almost all of his needs across five separate days to learn the skill in 20% increments with each training session. It’s not uncommon to have to completely alter your entire routine for the explicit purpose of learning this skill since it’s just that demanding. Furthermore, having to use the bicycle to get there means that simply going to the beach and back will eat up four hours if you don’t at least have the regular car, although picking Cars in question #2 lets you trade the time loss for another much more manageable drawback but I’ll cover that later.

Let’s say that you’re on Normal difficulty and are going to learn Martial Arts in the game. This is what it takes by going to train once:

Then there’s Difficult, which you thankfully don’t have to meet these needs for; this is merely how much it will reduce your needs by:

I have randomness set to off here, so the Fitness gain has been cut down to so little that the game has just decided to give me a coin flip to earn a single point of it.

Do that five times, then meet The Master one final time at the beach and you will then learn Martial Arts. Fortunately, this sixth meeting does not tank your needs anywhere near as much as the five training sessions and the dialogue during events is certainly amusing enough to see at least once. But if you’re after a pragmatic playthrough, Martial Arts is easily the best choice here so you can skip all of this, especially since it can only be learned during Summer.

As for everything else, Golf doesn’t do anything at all so I don’t advise that. Discreet isn’t going to come into play very often unless you peek on your roommates a lot after Minami moves in. Shooting comes into play during one of Aletta’s events and ensures that her KP does not drop; without it you will take a major hit if you’re trying to keep her submissive but you can easily bounce back from it once you’ve made it to a fairly early point in her series of events and can start eating her out in the office. It also gives you a slight boost to Camila’s LP but it’s a very small amount and has no other in-game benefits. Dancing is similarly niche, only offering a change in dialogue during one event in Palla’s storyline and it can also be learned right after said event.

Cooking can be learned in-game via a skill book and while the frequency that it takes effect bumps its rating up so much to put it firmly in second place, I believe that Martial Arts is still the number one pick since Cooking can be easily learned since the skill book can easily be bought on any Wednesday. It may be good for those who are playing on Difficult mode and wish to still gain 1 LP from eating with your roommates in the kitchen rather than half of an LP.

Finally, choosing “No, I don’t” will add an even spread of stats to Mike for the beginning of the game. All things considered, if you don’t mind not starting with Martial Arts or Cooking then this isn’t a terrible jack-of-all-trades backup choice.

The Second Question

“Do you have a hobby to relax with?”

There are a few good options here but my preferred choice here by a landslide is Cars. The Sports Car is the single most expensive item in the game costing a whopping $20,000 if you buy it normally, but having it right off the bat is an enormous help. It completely circumvents any need to pick up the bicycle and the downside to picking Cars is only going to cut into your starting cash before you have the income outpace the increased weekly debt which doesn’t take long to gain momentum on. In new game plus all of your items are wiped but your money remains, so it’s far better to buy the sports car normally for $20,000 which you really should have by the end of any new game if you’re going to new game plus. Without choosing Cars, you’ll more than likely have to buy the bicycle to go to the beach or forest at some point and if the bicycle is all you have then merely going to or coming back from either will cause two in-game hours to pass.

As a whole, the weekly debt is completely manageable and even if you are unable to pay when it’s due you’ll only take an LP hit with Bree and Sasha which can easily be made up for. Furthermore, the debt will stop completely once you have paid a total of $10,000 through it, which takes 50 in-game weeks and the end result is that you have the most expensive item in the game at half the price it would otherwise cost and spread out thinly enough to still be easily workable. It’s also well worth noting that if you intend on going into new game plus then all of your items will be wiped, but your money, skills and stats carry over so if you’ve saved up enough – which you very likely will due to money mostly existing as an early game limiter – then you can just pick something that isn’t Cars and buy the sports car normally on your second cycle. Also, having the sports car is necessary to be able to raise Kleio’s KP cap to 100 but that’s a minor benefit among the slew of other, major benefits that picking this trait provides.

Choosing Food will boost your maximum Hunger from 10 to 15 which is a lot more useful than its relative simplicity may suggest. On Normal, having a meal in your kitchen restores 9.2 Hunger, meaning that unless you can manage to bring it all the way down to zero which locks out all other activities besides eating, then you’re wasting a tiny amount of that Hunger gain at least on Normal and my brain doesn’t like that. Hunger is the only need that doesn’t get gradually boosted to a cap of 15 by working on Mike’s stats; it can only be instantly and permanently raised to 15 by picking it here or in new game plus unlike all of the others. The extra freedom that Food provides by potentially allowing you to, for example, work three times a day without having to eat again until 20:00 is quite nice. On Difficult where eating increases your Hunger by 4.6 then Food can come in even more handy since you can then space out four to six meals a day to keep your Hunger comfortably in check.

Video Games is what I used to pick when I was new to the game but I quickly realised that it’s usually not a good pick. While having the Video Games skill is necessary to be able to go down the Gamer Bree path rather than defaulting to the Maid Bree path, it’s very easy to learn by buying the Z-box yourself and playing it 100 times yourself, plus the Gamer Bree path locks her maximum KP at 50 which prevents you from being able to collar her since her KP must be 75 or higher to accept it. On top of that, Gamer Bree’s halved KP cap only means that you can form the Home Harem with her and not collar her ever. Having said that, if you want to go down the Gamer Bree path quickly then it’s a good choice, but you would be better off buying the Z-box yourself and using it as often as you can before Bree’s LP hits 40 to trigger an event that splits her two potential story paths.

There’s not much to say about Fitness and Partying. Neither of them provide any kind of skill, only a bump to one of Mike’s stats so you should pick something else.

Working sounds like a good idea on paper, but money becomes easily sustainable once the important initial expenses are taken care of (luxury bed, guitar skill book etc.) and even without Lucky, weekly expenses just mean that you won’t be able to afford much right from the start. The increased promotions cap is nice, but by the time you get to it then money shouldn’t be a problem at all. The increased speed of your promotions means that Lavish, Cassidy and Alexis will be introduced to the game sooner but it’s better to get your stats up so you can breeze through other events instead. Charm and Knowledge influence how much you earn by working and the latter increases your chances of the “work hard -> work fast” option succeeding for a huge boost in cash and promotion score so that’s better to aim for instead.

Reading has a similar issue where it comes in very handy saving time using the many books in the game, mostly the skill books that rotate daily in the book store, but you have no more use for it as soon as you’ve gone through all of the skill books. Granted, it does save you time if you’re trying to blitz through some of the skills that you may want early, including Guitar for the Band Harem, Cooking for the doubled LP gain from eating in your kitchen with the roommates and so on, but without it – and doubly so without Lucky in conjunction with it for the starting cash boost to be able to afford mass buying the skill books on week one – then you’re better off only picking up the ones that you need first and reading those when you’ve got a few hours to kill. As a side note, taking Reading gives you the single largest stat boost in the entire opening sequence of the game, giving you either 8, 15 or a whopping 30 Knowledge based on your chosen difficulty as well as an immediate slight boost to Bree’s LP.

Guitar is also not a good choice since its skill book is available on day two and can easily be learned well before it comes into play at Sasha’s branching path at her 30 LP event.

As before, there’s another chance to not pick any skill and instead gain another stat boost across the board which I definitely don’t recommend.

The Third Question

“Can you tell us something bad or shameful about you?”

As always, there’s an option to pick nothing again but this time doing so will cost you the ability to choose a third positive perk from another unique set which is well worth choosing something here for. If there’s ever a time to not pick this, it’s now.

Unlucky is undoubtedly the least ideal choice here. Unlocking Emma requires the player to have increased luck and having the Unlucky trait means that you will have to get both boosts to your luck that are available in the game, namely obtaining Lavish’s lucky panties from her storyline and using a lucky clover which can be found by searching the park during the early hours of the morning and only lasts the remainder of the day that it’s used. It also reduces your chances of winning the lottery at the pub by quite a lot.

Debt will saddle you with the same debt – that being $200 each in-game week until $10k has been paid off – that picking Cars does. This actually isn’t too bad a downside and keep in mind that picking the Cars trait from the previous question makes the debt option unavailable here. Generally, I’d recommend picking debt if you don’t pick cars, don’t want your manhood to start out defective and want something positive from question four, but your mileage (no pun intended) may vary.

For the last two choices that have to do with Mike’s ding-a-ling, the winner for me is small penis as in my opinion, it’s the least damaging negative trait overall that even has the upside of reducing the threshold at which Emma’s various sex scenes are available. It’s unlikely that you will make it to the point that she has been unlocked without getting Mike’s dipstick wet at all and taking the DP hit that a below average yoghurt cannon will hit you with during the hot coffee scenes with most others. Your penis size can also be modified by using the smaller/bigger staff pills that are available from the drug store for $5,000 each so if you save up enough then the DP you gain from doing the nasty with a dagger instead of a longsword can eventually be avoided.

The last option is low libido which causes Mike’s sexual stamina to recover more slowly and this trait causes it to take so long that at the beginning of the game you might be unable to engage in the three pump crotch tango even if a good two weeks has passed between sessions. While you can buy and use the blue pill from the drug store to instantly get your stamina back, using one also leaves you with a permanent invisible debuff to your tallywhacker’s natural recovery speed and using too many of them can actually net you a unique game over. The best way to counteract low libido’s effect if you do pick it is to do the nasty as often as possible as well as use sexperience books which are sold at the book store every Thursday but that’s about all you can do.

The Fourth Question

“Do anything of note, or is corporate lackey all there is to you?”

*Lucky can be earned in a sense during normal gameplay, but via earning Lavish’s lucky panties by doing the event where she gives them to you. This requires her LP and KP to be at least 50, the date to be either Mike’s birthday or Christmas and already received Lavish’s tie and once you’ve completed this event, you will receive +1 to your luck until the next new game cycle.

My choice here – as well as my single favourite starting trait in the entire game – is Lucky due to three effects in ascending order of importance: One, it allows you to unlock Emma which would otherwise require obtaining Lavish’s lucky panties and if you picked Unlucky at the beginning of the game, using a four leaf clover which can be found by searching the park in the early hours of the morning and is only temporary. Two, it increases your chances of winning the lottery at the pub and it can come in handy in a pinch if you ever desperately need to win a potential maximum of $10,000.

Most importantly, you begin the game with an additional $2,500 which gives you a huge boost in financial freedom from the start. By picking Lucky, you can buy the luxury bed, all of the best items in the clothing shop and one copy of each of the book store’s daily books with enough to spare to cover a handful of visits to the nightclub to pump Charm or Knowledge. Even if you picked Cars or debt, you’re in little danger of actually running out of money with this although there are exceptions such as the three stat machines at the electronics store or run into an event that causes a loss of money like Lexi’s two initial events. As a general guideline, stay above $800 after you’ve picked this trait and you’ll generally be fine.

The slowed down Hunger drain from picking eating contest isn’t bad, but if you want easier Hunger management then picking Food allows it to hit 15 along with your other needs once your stats are all maxed for a nice even fifteen across the board. If you want easier Hunger management, that’s a better choice.

“I don’t sleep” is a decent runner-up for my choice of perk here. What it does is reduce the amount of sleep Mike needs to get by one hour. Normally there is a warmup period which requires Mike to sleep for two hours before each hour of sleep past that gives 1 Energy. The luxury bed reduces this warmup period to one hour and it stacks with “I don’t sleep”, eliminating the warmup completely and allowing Mike to restore 1 Energy for each hour he sleeps. This will save a lot of time in the long term, but your maximum Energy increases alongside your Fitness which gives you plenty of flexibility for when and how long to sleep anyway as long as you remember to adjust your alarm clock so it’s ultimately not great.

Finally, high libido isn’t a good choice because its effect on Mike’s boner toner reload speed can be replicated simply by accumulating sexperience and that’s easy enough to do without picking this, if a bit time-consuming. However, I can imagine it being useful on Easy difficulty where all non-character unique stat gain is doubled so you’ll be flying through events quite often and most of the later ones will involve sex in some form.

My Four Choices

For the beginning of a fresh game, my choices are usually the following:

1. Martial Arts
2. Cars
3. Small penis
4. Lucky

Helping Sasha Move In

Once you’ve finished picking all of that, you’ll be thrown directly into a brief event with Sasha where you’ll give her a hand moving in and encounter two points where different options can be picked. Additional options will be available based on your stats at this point and any undesirable outcome here can easily be made up for later.

Weird how “Help her” and “Take the boxes from her” have the best effect but only the latter has a stat requirement, isn’t it?

In my case, the choices I made result in 0 Charm, 10 Fitness and 0 Knowledge on Normal so I’m always hit with a small DP gain here, which results in the events that I usually like to go for such as Sasha’s boobjob taking a bit longer to get to. All things considered though, this is my overall preferred start in most circumstances while I’m playing L&SSB.

The End of the Beginning

The game begins proper at 11am on a Monday with your choices reflected in your traits and stats. I advise buying the luxury bed on day one and setting your alarm for 6am so you can immediately hit the shower have a meal at 7 and then do as you will at 8am. In the long term, I would recommend only buying skill books that you need early such as guitar so you can get the Band Harem and sexperience because the earlier you get them the more useful they can be. I also generally don’t recommend buying the three stat machines available in the electronics store, with the sole exception being the charm machine if you got Lucky’s starting cash boost and have bought the essentials already.

Stats-wise, I like to grind Charm first because getting the hypnosis book as early as possible by your Charm hitting 100 – even if you hit 100 artificially by wearing the fancy clothes and luxury watch for +20 – is incredibly helpful for faster stat manipulation and each use of it passes one hour if you ever need to kill time. Generally, I like to prioritise Charm while also bouncing between Fitness and Knowledge to increase the maximum cap of each of their corresponding needs to help with flexibility and they both come in handy for certain events.

That’s it! Hopefully you now have a highly overthought but very efficient long-term save file started.