The Maid's Story Hint Guide

Contributed by J. Sarunski aka Unicorn

Unicorns tips on how to raise maids:

Instead of a detailed guide (which would only spoil this game and not help very much) I will give some hints for developing a strategy.

Also, by dicussing the complexity of winning the game, it might be more understandable, why I am this fond of a game, which seems this inferior to all other bishoujo games, if you have read my review.

First of all, I may summarize the existing goals with decreasing priority:

a) Raise the skill levels of the maids in all chores to 3 or better
b) Don't let them collapse under to much assigned work
c) Raise the experience of the maids in the night-service as high as possible
d) Keep the mansion clean
e) (Raise the efficiency of the maids at work with appliances)
f) (Decorate the mansion with interiors)

The goals a) and d) seem to be two birds that will be killed with one stone. In fact, they would be, if it were not at least 3 different chores to keep the mansion in perfect state (cleaning, washing and shopping) and just 3 maids to do all the work. This may sound just fine, but since a good recovery is vital for keeping the maids working the next day (especially if one of the maids will be called in for night-service lesson and such further exhausted before already getting sleep), it is my base-strategy that at every time, someone has to be cooking (which raises the recovery efficiency), leaving 2 maids for 3 chores.

Next, the efficiency of learning is higher, if the same chore is done repeatedly by the same maid. The efficiency may be pushed higher, if the maid is told to put more effort into this work (meaning: selecting an higher level in the schedule, as the maid has already achieved), but this means also a higher exhaustion.

Also, if a maid is sent shopping, she will always spend money. As long as the shopping-level of the maid is low, she will spend more money (which is just likely, because an higher level of shopping might mean practise in haggling and finding discounts). You see, shopping is one tricky key-matter because at start, money will run very quickly short, but without money, the maids will be unable to by any food and the food-storage will according to this run dry.

It may be a good strategy to let the maids specialise, one in cooking, one in cleaning and the last in shopping and washing. The advantages of the first two maids is obvious: Since they do nothing but their one assigned chore, they would very fast achieve higher levels of their chores. The third maid is left a little behind regarding her levels, because she has to switch between chores, but achieves a higher skill in shopping, which will be vital, if money and food start to run short, altogether with a higher level of the last chore, needed to keep the mansion clean.

This works all fine, until guests arrive. One of the maids has to serve them, which means, she has to break her streak of equal chores at this day right at noon, dropping her learning efficiency in the primary assigned chore/chores. Since it is also important to raise the skills in service and the only opportunity to do so is, when a guest arrives, it would be best to let the maids take turns in serving the guests, because most of the guests seem to appear at random. Only Mr. Nagayamas visits follow a straight schedule.

If you get the maids working in this manner, one thing shall at least never be a problem: Since the in cleaning specialising maid may only stop her cleaning activities at noon, if she has to service a guest, she will alway be cleaning at the mornings of the days, when the garbage will be taken, so the trash will be no problem at all.

Also, since she is cleaning all the time (if she is not servicing), the mansion will be kept quite shiny. On the other hand, the shopping/washing maid will at least go shopping frequent enough to keep the amout of food in storage o.k. (as far as the money lasts). At this rate, you have simply to wait until the maids have achieved the magical level 3 of their specialised chores and then switch the specialization between them.

So, of all of the critical tasks is taken care, right?
Well, this is o.k. as long as we regard only goals a) and d).
Now, we have to consider goal b) and c) which contradict each other because night-service-lessons (c) will put additional exhaustion on the maid. In fact, you might say, b) contradicts all other goals, because achieving it means to let each of the maids take breaks by resting, which of cause will decrease the efficiency of learning and worsen the state of the mansion since the maid does not continue with the same chore and does at this time no work at all. If the resting maid is the maid specialising in cooking, b) will even contradict itself, because the resting maid recovers a little while resting, but the recovery of all maids while sleeping the following night will not be as effective as can be (that is, if not one of the other maids steps in for the resting maid and does the cooking for her, neglecting her own specialised chore and leaving this work undone, not to mention, decreasing her own efficiency of learning).

We see, b) is a troublesome goal. Nonetheless, it is important, because if the maid collapses under her work because of to less rest, she will be sick the next day, leaving the whole system of specialised maids keeping the mansion in a good state to collapse as well, because she is unable to do anything for the whole day. (In addition to it, the sick maid will lose confidence in her teacher, because he irresposibly pushed her to far and thus abused her obidience. This causes a loss at her love-meter, which of cause can be fixed by treating the maid more kindly later on. But since this only affects the maids attitude in the dialogues and the probability of getting this maids good ending, the loss of confidence may be ignored for the strategy. (No, not really my opinion, because I strive for raising perfect and motivated maids. An empty love-meter because of sickness means to me also a very low motivation because the maid is lost, drowning in work and no one caring about it. The lesson, this maid has learned is to never go near her limits in order to keep her health. What kind of motivation this may be is obvious).

On top of it, we have goal c) putting additional stress on the maids. The basic strategy on giving night-service-lessons itself is quite easy. The more a maid has done a specialty before, the less her resentment against it will become until at last she will even like it. The lesser her resentment is, the lesser the exhaustion it will cause. As I said, quite easy, but it means that in the beginning any specialty will exhaust any maid a lot (and this is the cause, why I put goal c) behind goal b) in spite of the fact, that the main objective of the game is to bring up the maids). So, caution is required to not push the maids literally into the hospital. (Aaargh, dirty joke, slapping myself 5 times on the cheeks.)

Well I think that was it for the goals a) - d) at the start of the game. If the maids learn by specialising, they will as quick as possible raise their chore-skills to level 3. After level 3, any further advance will go very slowly plus the guests will not require a level beyond 3, so this is the cause, why I drew the magical limit for switching the line of learning at 3. After all maids have reached this point.

Goals e) and f) may as well be ignored until this point, because they require (much) money which may only be saved, if the shopping skills of the maids have improved. Also, there are only 2 occasions during the game, when something can be done about this goal, because the according kinds of items (appliances and interior) are both sold by the same travelling merchant and this guy will only ring the doorbell twice. I am not quite sure about this, but I think it will be simply impossible to save that much money in order to achieve these goals perfectly (meaning to buy all of the appliances and interior). Of both goals, I put e) over f) because the appliances help to achieve goal d) if something goes wrong.

Since the maids have reached level 3 in each chore, they have to even more concentrate on specialising in order to ascend at last to level 5. Also, forcing the efforts by working on a higher level than already achieved will be necessary. Further, there are more specialties to learn at the night lessons in order to reach experience 99%. And never forget goal b). Also, time is running short, since at the 90th day, the finishing exam will be.

Well, at this point, there will no simple strategy help at all. You have to balance on a highwire connecting all goals. This highwire will snap, if you leave one goal too far behind in order to reach another goal.

On the other hand, a maid, that has reacher level 3 in all chores will probably pass the final exam. So if all the maids have reached level 3 in all chores, it may be also smooth sailing from here on, using just the developed skills of the maids in order to keep the mansion in a clean state and waiting for some advances to level 4 in the chores which may occur as a bonus. I have never tried to let a maid with all chores at level 3 to participate in the final exam, so I am not really positive about this. Oh, I see! To do this means to stay at the center of the highwire, mentioned above, taking no risks, but to develop the maids not as good as they could be.

Ok, these two paragraphs may as well be taken as bases for strategies, how to move on after this point. They point out, what makes the difference between raising an acceptable and a perfect maid.

And this leads to the conclusion of this first so-called tips, which turned to be a kind of dissertation about a game. I will at this point say nothing about the endings, the special events, how to reach them and how they are connected because this would spoil the small storylines tha are hidden within the game. If really required, I may write about them at another time, but I doubt, that very many would be interested into this because of my review.