Princess & Conquest: Progeny Guide (How to Gain Good Growth fiGures)

I wrote the majority of this guide during the beta of v. 0.19.02. Naturally, the developer updated to v. 0.19.03 the day I finished the guide, so the findings and methods of this guide may be outdated in unexpected ways.

However, I did do some testing of mechanics from a fresh v. 0.19.03 save file by generating 2 new kobolds from skeletons, breeding 3 new generations of 10 kobolds each, and leveling a few subjects to compare their stats with data from the earlier version. I added a distinct new finding to the guide and modified related information accordingly, but otherwise what I looked at lined up with my past results. Given that the changelog did not mention any changes to stat balancing or breeding, I don’t believe the update seriously compromised this guide. Feel free to replicate the methods yourself and let me know of any inaccuracies between versions!

Before we get to how to get the best stats, I want to define the terms I’ll be relying on throughout the guide, starting with what I’m calling the stats. “Parent stats” refer to the four categories you can directly invest points into on leveling up. “Fighting stats” refer to the eight numbers that raise on leveling and that change with your equipment. A “stat distribution” refers to the form that the fighting stats take with different progeny. The distinction between “glitched” and “natural” stat distributions is the distinction between whether a glitch (detailed in the guide) has or has not been used to modify the whole stat distribution. You can glitch a distribution at a specific level and then level to gain points naturally, but for the purposes of the guide I only look either at when the glitch is performed at level 20 or if the glitch was never used when leveling.

For progeny, only one parent stat (power) raises fighting stats, and it only improves every fighting stat except for HP and MP by 25 points at max investment. Parent stat gains for progeny can be maxed with the right items or even with the aforementioned glitch. Fighting stat gains are far more complicated and, as will be made evident by the end of the guide, time-consuming. As such, the guide will focus on how to improve a progeny’s fighting stats.

I also need to define what I mean when I talk about different progeny. The term “progeny” may usually refer to any playable character that is housed in Dear’s storage, but for the purposes of the guide the term is limited to all non-unique characters (which excludes storable princesses and unique characters like Amelie). A “species” refers to the broad category of people associated with a princess, while a “body type” refers to a specific category within the species. For example, within the goblin species, there are body types including big boobs, small boobs, male, and bugbear. Body types determine basic stat distributions, so the distinction is important.

On a side note, many races have multiple clothing styles for particular body types; if you want to discern body types yourself, you can compare postures as a shorthand.

The way that I see this game, there are three approaches you can take to improve the stats of your progeny. I define these approaches as “cheating”, “glitching”, and “grinding”. The cheat method would use the in-game cheat engine to give stats to characters. Since that locks you out of achievements, I won’t go into that method. The glitch method involves using in-game items that mess with progeny fighting stats as a side effect to their intended purpose. The grinding method involves using in-game items and mechanics as intended, very gradually. These methods are not mutually exclusive, so enjoy the glitches while they’re still here.

There appears to be some fundamental programming issue that prevents a progeny’s fighting stats from being maintained when their gender or species is being transformed. Instead of having a stat layout similar to what they should naturally have at their level, the fighting stats instead change to set values that correspond to the species and body type it turns into. Usually, these numbers are quite a bit higher than what your progeny is capable of reaching naturally, so if you want quick stats here’s how to get them consistently!

The first step to performing the glitch is to choose your method of transformation. The quickest and most readily available transformation method is the Power Pearl in the Pool of Slime at the slime reign. You can expose any undead (skeleton, ghost, or golem) progeny to the pearl to turn them into a random living species. Getting an undead progeny requires either a special method or impregnating a princess. Recruiting Ghost Princess or Golem Princess can take some time, and you’ll want the Shorty Special from the backroom of the goblin reign Greenskin Brewery to get either of them pregnant consistently. Skeleton Princess cannot get pregnant, but her method of creating skeleton progeny through The Death Not (found in the skeleton reign’s Frozen Church) is very easy to get going, especially since you can collect many bones in the Huge Treasure Dungeon in the south kingdom. The progeny made with The Death Not will have the lowest possible stats, but these stats will still probably be better or at least comparable to what you’d get naturally.

Though this can tie directly into the Power Pearl transformations, the alternate methods for making ghost and golem progeny are transformation methods in and of themselves. After you help fertilize Frog Princess’ eggs, you can rest at night at a lily pad in the pond to transform an insect, moth, or drider progeny into a ghost or skeleton. Additionally, you can obtain the “Clockwork Core” dowry to turn any living progeny into a golem. I haven’t tested these methods specifically, but I have used the “Lapin Headband” dowry to execute the glitch by turning a progeny into a rabbit. Said item reverts once you unequip it, making it less reliable than the clockwork core or lily pad. If there are other species transformation options I am not aware of them.

Probably the most straightforward transformation method is the “Cardinal Bell” dowry that allows you to change any progeny’s gender at will. You can get it either from Harvest Princess’ questline or buying it from Pruna in the Kingdom Below after planting a Buddy’s Bud in harvest reign. The fighting stat change with the cardinal bell is so shockingly apparent that I have no clue why this glitch hasn’t been dealt with earlier. Regardless, keep in mind that the glitch will occur every time you use the bell, reverting any fighting stat increases that may have occurred on the progeny since the last use of the glitch.

The rest of the steps for the glitch are more streamlined. Second, you’ll have to raise your progeny’s level. Getting to level 20 requires 87,710 swirlies from level 1, but you can perform the glitch at whatever level is most convenient for you. I haven’t tested to see if the glitch resets progress to the next level, but there’s no mechanical reason to spend more than the exact amount of swirlies to level anyways.

Third, you need to drop your progeny off with Dear in storage. This is the most crucial step of the process, as the programming of the game currently does not save your progeny’s level unless they are deposited first. If you perform the glitch without depositing first, your progeny will revert to the last saved level (which defaults to level 1 if you never deposited the progeny in the first place). The upside is that you’ll keep all the parent stat points you gained from leveling; the downside is that your fighting stats change to the old level’s glitched stat distribution, and that any investment in power is undone. (The points will still be invested in power, but the fighting stats will not be increased as they should be, rendering them as actively detrimental.) From what I understand about previous versions, this glitch used to keep the power investment, allowing for quickly maxing out stats; as it stands now, reverting your level is largely wasting your swirlies.

Finally, withdraw your progeny and transform them. You’ll be able to see consistent stat distributions that align with specific species and body types. This is not the place to get into what every stat distribution is, but you’ll find that progeny that were strong naturally are almost twice as strong following the glitch. As will become unfortunately clear in the bulk of the guide, this glitch is by far the quickest stat boost you can give your progeny outside of cheating.

I’ll start this section with my findings of what does work, and use the rest of the guide to discuss how I learned what doesn’t work. Unfortunately, the list of game mechanics that improve progeny fighting stats are very limited. The most direct method is through the use of stat-increasing stones, such as the Aleph Stones needed to complete the quest to improve golem reign affinity. You get these stones either randomly through breaking rocks, or at 1,000 swirlies each from the second kobold merchant you can designate in Kobold Princess’ route. You can improve the effect of the stones using the golem Feather in the basement to Crowley’s Lab (inspect the empty bookshelf) during and following completion of the rank 5 quest “Two Birds with One Stone” (provided you don’t kill the villain). These stat gains are limited to five stats, revertible if you use the glitch, and not involved with progeny stat gain calculations. Despite this, they will be the only grindy way to raise progeny stats once you have prepared your best progeny with the other mechanic: its starting modifier.

The starting modifier of a progeny is the number of stat points it has increased at level 1 compared to its base stat distribution. Starting modifiers are assigned at birth and persist between transformations. From my research, the highest starting modifier is 10; this manifests as +10 to both HP and MP, and +5 to every other fighting stat. If the modifier is odd, the halved bonus to most of the fighting stats rounds down. You can find the level 1 stat distribution of nearly every body type by combining use of the Death Not and the Power Pearl; all skeletons generated by necromancy have a starting modifier of 0, and this carries over to whatever body type the Power Pearl transforms the skeleton into.

To generate a progeny with a starting modifier of 10, the most direct method is to impregnate a princess and use the “Queen’s Milk” food (found from trading the “Queen’s Praline” item at the Queen’s Spire in the kingdom above); the promise of improved stat growth corresponds to a higher likelihood that the progeny will have a high starting mod. Additionally, you can put two compatible living progeny in the Bunny Garderie to breed children with a low chance of a modifier increase; this method is less reliable than queen’s milk, but since the method requires resources you can utilize by the third day (when Dear spawns and the Garderie opens), this is the earliest method to gain high starting modifiers. You can use transformations to bring this modifier to other species, though you’ll need to breed new children if you don’t want the glitched stat distribution.

You’ll find that, if you use the glitch on a level 20 progeny at starting mod +10, they will have 1,000 more fighting stat points than a glitched level 20 progeny at starting mod 0! The bonus manifests as 200 more HP and MP, and 100 more points in every other fighting stat. Each point of the starting modifier grants 20 HP and MP to the glitched distribution, and every two points increases the rest of the fighting stats by 20 each.

So, those are my findings! I trust you’ll find them to work out for you in the current version of Princess & Conquest. However, there are many questions left unanswered by what I’ve written above. How did I come to these findings? What about mechanics that would logically improve stats, such as progressive breeding and parent stat gains? Why can’t my optimized mouse compare with the dual-katana-wielding dragon I bought from the slave market without spending a million swirlies on rocks? I hope to answer these questions with a report of the research I made into this topic. Since I’m not being paid for this, my research is not completely rigorous, and there were many times where I stopped my investigation based on a reasonable assumption or inference. I can pick research back up if there is reason enough to spend more time grinding. As it stands, I hope my methodology will be sufficiently convincing.

To begin my research, I needed to choose a species from which to make my sample. I went with kobolds, as you get access to Kobold Princess right away and can quickly gain access to her route, which gives you a space for sex and delivering children outside of camp. My assumption here is that any findings I get from the kobold population will generalize to any other species.

Using the power pearl and cardinal bell, I collected information for the four kobold body types, which I designated as BigChest, MidChest, SmallChest, and Drakebold. Aside from the obvious physical descriptions, what set mid apart from the other body types was a more forward-leaning stance with thicker limbs compared with the other two body types. Male kobolds can only have mid or small body types, with the stance and limbs being the same between genders even if the chest was different. Limb arrangement between big and small types is also subtly different and hard to describe, but you can see it. Obtaining the drakebold body type required some extra steps and was not necessary to track, so I did not include that body type in my research.

Here is the level 1 stat distribution for the four kobold body types, starting mod 0:

From this baseline, I was able to match every progeny to a body type and compare within body types, since these distributions are the baseline for both glitched and natural distributions. Big and small have the same total of 474 stat points, while mid has 475. Over the course of the research, I leveled the first three body types, starting mod 0, to level 20, after which I performed the glitch. Their glitched stat distributions at mod 0 are as follows:

These were the stat distributions to which I compared every fully-leveled kobold. What’s interesting here is that, while HP and MP increase by a factor of 20 at max level, the other six fighting stats appear to double at max level, after rounding down to the nearest multiple of 5. The only exception is DEF, which increases to 105 instead of the 110 expected from the rest of the stats; perhaps kobold stat growth calculation is biased against physical defense.

In addition to generating the distribution, I wanted the skeleton-born kobolds to serve as constants for some of the research hypotheses; as such, I needed to breed together two constants at level 20 to produce the third. The parents were a female big and a male small, producing a male mid with starting mod 0. The stats of all three at level 20 aligned with the table above. This gave me two null hypotheses to dispute: that parent level had no effect on child stat growth, and that progressive breeding had no effect on child stat growth.

In many games that include a breeding mechanic, parents of higher level or stats would produce children with higher base stats. There are plenty of monster fighting games that keep children at similar base stats for means of competitive balance, but more single-player games tend to use a system that grants a fraction of the parent’s current stats to their child.

With that possibility in mind, I set up four breeding pairs. One half of each pair was a direct progeny borne of Kobold Princess, while the other half consisted of random kobolds recruited with the hero banner. To test parent level on stat growth, each pair would need to have different levels. Pair 1 consisted of two level 20 progeny. Pair 2 consisted of a level 20 heir and a level 1 recruit. Pair 3 consisted of a level 1 heir and a level 20 recruit. Pair 4 consisted of two level 1 progeny. With this setup, I bred two children for each pair and compared them with their parents. All the children assessed were transformed to mid body type, giving them glitched stat distributions.

With Pair 1, the recruit had a mid body type and starting modifier +1 while the heir was mid and +6. The first child had a starting mod of +4 and the second had +6. Their level 20 stats ended up like this:

The most striking thing about this result is that the heir parent and the second child had identical stats following the glitch. As they both had the same starting modifier, you can infer from here that progressive breeding has no effect on stat growth; we’ll put a pin in that inference and add more observations in the next part.

Something else of note is that the starting modifier appears to have a linear effect on the final potential stat growth. The stat difference between HP and MP appears to be 20 stat points for every modifier point, while the other stats appear to gain 20 stat points for every 2 modifier points. Odd modifier values appear to not give additional stat points to most fighting stats.

Pair 2 had a small recruit with starting mod 0* and a mid heir with starting mod +5. The children had starting mod 0 and +5 respectively. Below are the stats for the level 20 progeny:

The stat distributions here are consistent with the observations made from Pair 1, which would indicate that the level of the recruit had no effect on the stat growth of the progeny. Additionally, the first child’s stats are identical to the mid constant, which is further evidence against the existence of a progressive breeding effect on stat growth.

The results of the last pair made me not want to fully assess the next two pairs. Though Pair 4 was important, I assumed that Pair 3 would be identical to Pair 2 on the grounds that there have been no real difference between born and recruited progeny up to this point. For the sake of complete reporting, here is the stat distribution of the third recruit, mid body type, starting mod +3:

This stat distribution remains consistent with earlier observations, effectively filling a gap in the starting mod progression seen above.

Pair 4 consisted of a small +1 and a big +4. The children had mods +1 and +4 respectively. I only leveled the second child to directly compare with the first child of Pair 1. Here is the result:

This comparison fully demonstrates the lack of effect that parent level has on child stat growth. On the plus side, it means that you can save time by breeding progeny at level 1 without worrying about missing out on stat gains.

These comparisons also show a relationship between the starting modifiers of parent and child: these mods may decrease, but they haven’t increased above the highest-modded parent. In the next part I’ll cover a side experiment under the umbrella of progressive breeding, but here I’ll just say that the odds of getting a child with a starting mod higher than both parents appears to be fairly low.

I did not look at natural fighting stat growth, or at improving parent stats, to see if child stat growth changes. For natural stat growth, the next part should clarify why I feel that avenue is a dead end. For parent stats, I think the mechanic would be too obtuse for current documentation to have not mentioned a relationship at all, and I’m a bit too burnt out from grinding to breed 8 more pairs of kobolds (4 with the mother having a maxed out parent stat, 4 with the father having thus). So let’s move on to the next logical means of stat growth: progressive breeding.

* The recruit of Pair 2 actually had some stat bonuses that were a fraction of a point; as I was not leveling that progeny, no other progeny I worked with had fractions in their stats, and the fractional modifier appeared to have no effect, I chose to describe this recruit as having starting mod 0.

Another mechanic that is present in some monster-raising games is a cumulative buff that gets added to children through the act of being born through multiple generations. It may show up as a flat stat bonus, a bonus to stat growth, or an increase to a generational stat that has its own effect on progeny.

In Part 2, when we compared parent modifiers to children, I mentioned an inference that this mechanic may not be present in the sense that neither the modifier nor the fighting stats increased between generations. There’s also something to be said comparing the recruits, who can act as a generation 0, to their children, which by virtue of being born of a progeny of Kobold Princess can be considered part of generation 2. The fact that the recruits fit the modifier progression cleanly would indicate that a random recruit has the same potential as a second-generation heir if their starting modifiers are the same.

There are some gaps in this assessment. The primary gap is a potential effect on a greater progression of generations than I’ve observed. To assess for a long-term generation effect, I took two progeny with mod +8 that I generated before I started my more rigorous research (no idea what generation they are, but I made about 25 progeny with at least 5 different breeding pairs) and had them generate 15 children, which I called Group A. I took two children from Group A with mod +8 and had them generate the 15 members of Group B, then taking the mother mod +7 and the father mod +8 from them to make 15 more children for group C.

Group A contained 14 progeny mod +8 and 1 progeny mod +1. Group B contained 1 progeny mod +10, 11 progeny mod +8, 2 progeny mod +7, and 1 progeny mod +1. Group C contained 5 progeny mod +8, 9 progeny mod +7, and 1 progeny mod +1.

From this sample, it appears that progressive breeding does not directly affect starting modifiers. Only one progeny had a higher modifier than both their parents, and he showed up in the middle group. Following the update to version 0.19.03, I decided to do a broad test of my findings in this version by generating three new groups of 10 progeny. Group D was borne from two progeny mod 0 transformed from skeletons by the power pearl. Group E was a father mod +6 and a mother mod 0 taken from Group D. Group F came from a father mod +10 and a mother mod +6 from Group E.

The results were thus: Group D consisted of 1 mod +6, 1 mod +2, and 8 mod 0; Group E consisted of 1 mod +10, 2 mod +6, 1 mod +4, 1 mod +3, and 4 mod 0; Group F consisted of 5 mod +10, 2 mod +6, 1 mod +4, 1 mod +3, and 1 mod 0.

This round of breeding in the current version of the game has significantly more variability than the breeding in the previous version, despite the smaller size of each group. Of particular note is the jump in modifier by six points in one child in Group D, which didn’t have a chance to occur in the first test due to the parents starting at a high mod. Given the small sample size, it is difficult to determine what chance you would get of generating a high-mod progeny through breeding, but it does appear to be a possible avenue to generate high mod progeny from the start of the game.

Additionally, we should assess if later generations have better natural stat growth. To assess this, we need to avoid using the cardinal bell once leveling begins. To this end I raised 4 more kobolds to level 20. The first two kobolds I had borne directly from Kobold Princess, using queen’s milk and ensuring they both had mod +10; the first child was big body type and the second was small. The third kobold was their child, born small with mod +10. The fourth was the final kobold born of Group C, small type with mod +8. Below are my findings:

From these results, it’s pretty clear that even natural stat growth is unaffected by progressive generation. Max 2 and Max 3, father and child, have the exact same stats. C 15, who is several generations above either of them, has worse stats only by virtue of his lower starting modifier.

I also decided to record the stats of these progeny at each level and calculate the slope of the line of each stat increase. The result should not be surprising:

Not only do these slopes show that progressive generation has no effect on stat growth, it demonstrates that the starting modifier also has no effect on stat growth beyond the initial modification at level 1. Stat growth appears to be tied to the original value in the base stat distribution, as big and small body types increase DEF and M ATK at the same rate.

So, neither parent fighting stats or level, nor progressive breeding, have any effect on progeny stat growth. As such, creating the progeny with the highest stats relies mostly on choosing the strongest species/body type and investing as many upgrade stones as possible into one of the available stats you want to increase. No wonder the mouse reign is so obsessed with taxation and tinkering.

And yet, after we found the most logically-sound means of stat growth were lacking to nonexistent, we can reasonably doubt the potential effects of the items explicitly stated to improve progeny. So I’ll close out this guide discussing the effects of every item I have found that are supposed to make progeny stronger than their peers.

Talmud, Aleph, Mem, Tav, Ayin. These five stones are the only legitimate means by which a character can gain maximum fighting stats. The merchant that improves them can only double their effective value, and the added waiting time between doing the upgrade and grinding for the crystal materials may negate the time saved entirely. However, these stones may have a prolonged effect on progeny that other methods lack. Let’s find out!

The first step I took was to determine if using the stones influenced a progeny’s glitched distribution. This involved using a few talmud stones on a level 1 mid progeny, mod +5, and using the cardinal bell on it after it reached level 20. This is how it ended up:

As its stats are the same as Heir 2 and Heir 2-2 above, it’s clear that the cardinal bell reverted the ATK increase made by the talmud stones. So, once you dedicate a progeny to getting buffed, you’re locking in their species and gender.

The second step using the stones is to see if the stones affect natural stat growth. Our next subject is mid type, mod +5, with an additional 5 points in ATK from using stones. The results:

The results are consistent with earlier observations and indicates the talmud stones had no effect on ATK. Not only is the ATK slope identical with Max 2 and Max 3 (both of which start with the same base ATK), but the final stat is only two points higher than Max 2 and Max 3; as both of them are mod +10, the difference is due to Stone 2’s mod going over the bonus from the stones.

The last step is to see if the stones transfer to progeny. I bred father Stone 1 and mother Stone 2 together and am looking at their child Stone 3’s ATK. She was born mid type, mod +7. Here’s their stats:

The ATK is consistent with the mid type’s base stat distribution, so we can conclude that the bonus from the stones did not transfer to offspring. Perhaps giving both parents the same number of upgrade stones would have an effect on the child, but the effort would not be worth it in the slightest, so I won’t research the possibility.

As stated before, queen’s milk ostensibly improves children by increasing the chance by which they obtain a high starting modifier. Given that I’ve made a lot of children through Kobold Princess, and the only time I’ve gotten +10 progeny from her was after using queen’s milk, I’m willing to assume that this was the intended effect without further research. However, stat growth of the progeny has yet to be addressed.

During Part 3 of the guide, I coincidentally covered all the questions about the lasting effects of queen’s milk, since Max 1 and Max 2 were both conceived from it. Using the earlier data from Part 3, we can conclude that the food does not improve natural stat distribution and does not improve the stats of their offspring even if both parents were born under the queen’t milk buff. This leaves the question of glitched stat growth to be covered.

I took another offspring made with the milk buff and performed the glitch after leveling it to 20. This offspring was mid type with mod +8. Here are the results:

The stats of this progeny increased in line with earlier findings. As such, it’s clear that the food does not impact stat growth of children beyond a higher chance of gaining a large starting modifier.

Ready for shiny hunting in a lewd game? I count this as an item effect because the “Starjewel Hairclips” accessory, obtained from the chest on the path returning from the kingdom below, increases the odds of getting a shiny progeny. In kobolds, this trait manifests as a transparent green overlay on the entire character portrait and a star next to their name in storage. The last thing we’ll cover in this guide is the effect of the shiny status on stat growth.

Over the course of my research I was able to generate two shiny kobolds: one of them was a member of Group B (who ended up being the father of Group C), and the other was Max 3. Due to these coincidences, I can say that the shiny status does not affect natural stat growth (as Max 3 was identical to Max 2), the modifier bonus of offspring (as Group C did not produce any better starting mods than the other groups), or the natural stat growth of the offspring of a shiny parent (as C-15 grew at the same rate as Max 2 and Max 3).

All that’s left is determining the effect of the shiny status on glitched stat growth. Using the cardinal bell on Max 3 (making her big type) gives these stats:

These stats are in line with earlier observations, as compared with the big type constant, HP and MP are increased by 200 each while the other six stats are increased by 100 each. So, as with the other items covered here, shiny status has no effect on stat growth either.

On a side note, transforming a shiny progeny retains its shiny status.

To reiterate my earlier findings, the only way to grind fighting stats is by breeding a mod +10 progeny and stuffing it full of stones. No other intended mechanics in the game will produce progeny with higher stats in either the short or the long term. On top of that, a glitch involved with transforming progeny will give you a one-time boost in stats higher than any of the intended methods can match in hours of grinding, so use that while you can.

I often referred to means of obtaining items and dowries necessary to pull off the methods I outlined in the guide. Most if not all of these items can be obtained via random grind by getting Drider Princess out of the Golem Tower and into the Grim Forest to become a magic silk smith. You can also use Pruna when the Rose Caravan is in the kingdom below to buy dowries associated with the reigns in which you planted her buddy’s buds; I called out the cardinal bell in particular as it allows you to complete Harvest Princess’ quest while keeping the most useful tool for the glitch. Hope this helps with getting all your grinding or research needs!