Tales Around Blue Blossom

Hey all! Maid Adventures has just received its biggest update yet. There are two brand new Houses, a new kind of maid, a new stat, and a whole new way of running an estate with specialty staff who are sworn to your household rather than assigned to its work. There have also been some balancing fixes to!

Fixes & Balancing

The Houses have been rebalanced.

Looking at the data from the game as it has been going, the House's bonus against the missions that actually exist, and the old numbers were all over the place. Nevakev and Irisik were quietly doing a lot more than Avernell and Tavik, and I didn't think that was fair. The new bonuses are:

• Nevakev — +15% Diligence, +5% Endurance
• Avernell — +25% Eloquence, +10% Discretion
• Tavik — +20% Prowess, +15% Endurance
• Irisik — +5% to all six stats
• Brevet — +20% Discretion, +10% Endurance
• Rikin — +25% Analytical, +15% Eloquence

I'll say it plainly: Irisik took the biggest cut, going from +10% on everything to +5%. Nevakev also lost a little Endurance. If that changes how you feel about your estate, read on, because this update comes with a free way to switch Houses.

Analytical has been added to everything that already existed.

A new stat joins the five you already know (more on it below). I didn't want any of your current maids to be behind the eight ball, so every maid and every Directorate candidate has been given an Analytical score based on how methodical and careful she already was. A good housekeeper is now a decent analyst, and nobody starts at zero.

I also went through the existing missions and moved the beats that were really about reasoning over to Analytical. Tracing a leaking pipe, reconciling a ledger, auditing a window latch, working out who took the silverware: those now test Analytical instead of plain Diligence. A few missions, including The Missing Inventory, now prefer it as well.

New Features

Two New Houses: Brevet and Rikin

House Brevet stands for Duty. Steady, silent, always at post. Its maids lean on Discretion and Endurance.

House Rikin stands for Ambition. Sharp minds and persuasive tongues, with a bonus to the new Analytical stat and to Eloquence.

Both are now choices when you found a new estate, with their own colors on the leaderboard, the Registry, your plaque and everywhere else Houses show up.

A One-Time Free House Change

Since I changed the numbers and added two Houses, every existing estate gets one free chance to switch Houses. You can pick any House, old or new, and you can even decide to stay where you are. Your maids, prestige, and balance all stay exactly as they are. Only the stat bonuses change.

When you log in you'll see a popup on the dashboard and a gold banner pointing you to it. The option itself lives on your Estate page. Once you've used it, it goes away. Brand new estates don't get one, since they already chose from the full list.

The Analytical Stat and Inventory Maids

Analytical is the sixth maid stat. It covers reasoning and record-keeping: inspections, audits, inventories, and tracing a problem back to where it started.

Inventory is a brand new maid type, trained for exactly that work. They're the Reserve Legion's people: quartermasters, stock clerks, registrars and auditors. Ten new Inventory maids have been added to the Directorate pool, spread across Common to Elite and across all three bonding types, so you'll find Unbonded, Half Bond and Full Bond among them. Their Analytical is their signature stat.

They also come with fifteen new Inventory missions, from a Routine Weekly Pantry Count up to Notable negotiations like The Short Shipment, Prestigious jobs like The Two Ledgers, Sovereign audits, and one Momentous mission I'll let you discover. Several are shared with Estate, Custodial, Emissary or Harvester maids, so they can lend a hand without penalty, and on the rest any other maid takes the usual out-of-specialty penalty. Inventory maids are the ones who will really shine.

The Retinue: Courtesans and Concubines

This is the big one. Some people in a household aren't workers. They're sworn to the lord rather than assigned to the estate's tasks, and now your estate can have them. Specialty staff never go out on normal missions, they don't take a roster slot, and each costs 25 ℰ/day to keep. You manage them all from the new Retinue page in the nav, and your Estate page now has a “Retinue at a glance” card with a circle for every slot, so you can see at a glance what's filled, what's open, and what's waiting on you.

The Courtesan

You can have one, and she isn't hired. You have to petition the Scarlet Order of House Aldinav for her, and that opens up at tier 3 (Established). The fee grows with your standing: 400 ℰ at tier 3, 650 ℰ at tier 4, 1,000 ℰ at tier 5, and 1,500 ℰ at tier 6.

The Order decides whether your household is a good fit, and it isn't going to tell you how. A bigger, steadier, better-run estate has better odds, and I've made sure the lower tiers aren't shut out. If you're turned down, half the fee comes back and you'll get a hint about what the assessor found lacking. It won't hand you a number, but it will point you in a direction. You can petition again after five days.

Once she arrives, you can send her to call on another estate for about six hours and learn about its finances, its staff and who leads them, or its current assignments. It costs 40 to 130 ℰ depending on your tier. She comes back and tells you what she found, if she wasn't noticed. And the target estate gets a check:

• Unnoticed — she brings home the full report.
• A close call — full report, but the household may have felt something was off.
• Talked her way out — she was questioned and charmed her way out, with part of the report.
• Caught — nothing learned. She lies low for three days, and the household learns her name and House.
• Exposed — nothing learned, she is named in front of the entire household, and she is too mortified to be sent anywhere for a week. The household also learns which estate sent her. Courtesans are trained to be unremarkable, so being seen like that is about as embarrassing as it gets.

How watchful a household is depends on its staff, especially the Discretion and Analytical of its best maids, along with a Head of Staff, Arch Maids, Emissaries, and a courtesan of its own. Any household, courtesan or not, can pay 50 to 140 ℰ on the Retinue page to set a decoy for two days, so a visitor who isn't caught carries away the wrong picture.

Because I don't want this to become a competition: it's information only. Nothing is stolen, nothing is sabotaged, and getting caught costs you ℰ and time, never prestige, so it can't touch the rankings. You can call on any one household once a week, and on no more than three households a week.

Concubines

A concubine is a tie between Houses and a mark of standing, not a worker. Other Houses will send word from time to time with an offer of one of theirs. You've got three days to accept or politely decline. Offers can come from any House in the Empire, so you'll meet names and families you haven't heard of.

• Each concubine adds +1 prestige a day while she's kept.
• Each costs 25 ℰ/day in upkeep.
• You can keep one at tiers 1 to 4, two at tier 5, and three at tier 6.
• Sending one home early insults her House and costs you 10 prestige.

Standing matters. If your estate falls a tier, concubines beyond your new limit are recalled by their Houses, a courtesan is reassigned if you drop below Established, and there's a chance one more member of your retinue is withdrawn. Take care of your estate and they'll stay.

More in the Rumor Mill

Their comings and goings are public knowledge, naturally. The Rumor Mill now reports a courtesan being placed, questioned, caught, exposed, released, or recalled, and a concubine being accepted, politely declined, sent home, or withdrawn. The Houses are named, but never the estate and never the person, so the mystery stays intact.

That's everything for this update! As always, if you find bugs you can reach me at luckyfoot@beloved-universe.net. The Rules page has been updated to cover all of this if you want the full breakdown, including a whole new section on the Retinue.

Thanks for playing. Take care of your maids out there, and maybe keep a closer eye on your guests.