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Bards Guild

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Bards Guild — Complete Guide
Spoiler note: This guide covers mechanics and systems. Specific scene reveals are kept vague — discover those in-game.


What the Guild Is

The Bards Guild is a faction in the Medieval Era — a hall in the King's Demesne dedicated to musicians, storytellers, and performers. Open from 1 PM to midnight every day, its doors are open to everyone. What you earn is reputation (called clout) through composing original songs and performing them at venues around the kingdom.
Clout unlocks Violet's faction scenes and recruitment. The quest board itself is available without a clout requirement.

Getting Started — Skill Prerequisites

Before you can compose anything, you need two skills and a stat threshold:
Requirement Where to Get It
Song Writing skill Bards Guild action — costs $300, 220 min, −60 energy / −60 calm. Requires Creativity 25
Music Production skill Music Studio (Present Downtown) action — costs $500, 180 min, −50 energy / −50 calm. Requires Technology 25 and Creativity 50
Creativity 50 Build through Painting, Photography, performing arts, and other creative actions
Shortcut: Choosing the Musician proficiency at character creation grants Musical Virtuosity and Master Performer skills for free — both boost performance income later. You still need to learn Song Writing and Music Production separately, but the head start is significant.

Composing Songs

Once you have both skills and Creativity 50+, the Compose Song action becomes available at the Music Studio (Present Downtown, open 12 PM – 11 PM). Each composition costs $200, 30 min, −30 energy — charged for a committed quiz attempt, whether it succeeds or fails. Leaving the song-selection menu before selecting a subject does not commit the composition costs.
Composing is a quiz minigame. The studio shows a list of available song "experiences" you can write about — each tied to a character or moment. You pick one and answer 6 multiple-choice questions about the subject.

How the Quiz Works

Questions test your knowledge of the character or topic — their race, personality, profession, key relationships, signature traits, and associated places. The game pulls from your actual in-game experience. If you've talked to the character, completed their plots, and learned their backstory, the answers will feel natural. If you've barely met them, you'll struggle.
Practical tip: Before composing a song about a character, make sure you've actually talked to them at length and completed available plots. Songs about characters you've barely met are a gamble.

Failure Conditions

  • You can normally get only 1 question wrong before the composition fails.
  • The Storytelling skill bumps your tolerance to 2 wrong answers.
  • On failure you lose your $200, 30 minutes, and energy — but there is no permanent lockout. You can retry the same song on a later visit (full $200 cost each attempt).

Available Songs

The Music Studio only shows songs you are currently eligible to compose. Most require meeting or progressing with a specific character first. There are 10 composable songs:
Song Title How to Unlock
Same Song, Different Day Always available — about yourself before the adventure
Ballad of Bobo Bobo must be active in your dungeon
Empty Strings Sandra (Worker #4) must be recruited
Low End Reach Romantic stage with Talena
Still Waters Reach Romantic stage with Nerida
The Velvet Thief Vixen (Worker #19) must be recruited
I Cucked the Balrog Worker #28 active + you have the Sylph Crown key item
Muse and Her Lute Encounter Muse 5 times in the Medieval Dungeon (also rewards the Lute)
A Stage of My Own Complete Violet's backstory plot at the Bards Guild (25 clout required)
Vampires Bite Defeat the floor 25 miniboss in the Medieval Dungeon — the song becomes eligible once this guardian is defeated
Each composed song is permanent and reusable — compose it once, perform it forever.

The Lute

The Lute is a key item with major impact on your bardic career. It is the reward for completing Muse's full questline in the Medieval Dungeon — encounter her 5 times and complete her arc, and she gifts you the Lute, along with +1 to Creativity, Charm, Mystic, and Perception.

What the Lute Does

  • +50 gold flat per performance at any venue
  • +1 valuables per performance at any venue
  • +5% chance of triggering a random performance plot
  • +5ms timing tolerance in the Sandra rhythm minigame and other rhythm tests
  • Completing Muse's fifth encounter makes Muse and Her Lute eligible for composition; simply carrying the Lute is not the song's unlock check.
Across 4 daily performances, the Lute alone provides +200 gold and +4 valuables every single day for the rest of the game. It is one of the best passive bonuses in the game — prioritise getting it.

Performing — Where the Money Is

Once you have at least one composed song, the Perform Song action appears at four venues. Performing costs 60 min, −30 energy and can be done once per day per venue — meaning up to four performances per day total.

Performance Venues

Venue Location Notes
Performance Stage Grand Bazaar (Demesne) Open-air bazaar crowd
Bards Guild King's Demesne The guild's own hall
Rowdy Alehouse King's Demesne Tavern crowd, late-night atmosphere
Brothel Bar Inside your brothel Available once you own the brothel
Performing at all four venues gives the widest variety of bonus story scenes. NPCs only appear if they're active in your current game (recruited workers/maids, characters you've met, etc.).

What You Earn Per Performance

Reward How It's Calculated
Gold Random between Creativity ÷ 2 and Creativity × 2
Bards Guild Clout +1 guaranteed for the first time you perform a specific song at a specific venue. After that, 10% chance per performance (20% with Master Performer skill)
Valuables Random 0–5 per performance (+1 if you have the Lute key item)

Bonus Performance Scenes

Every performance also has a chance to trigger a random story scene with an audience member: base 25%, +5% per performance skill you know (Master Performer, Stage Presence, Musical Virtuosity, Storytelling), +5% with the Lute — capped at 50%.

Skill and Item Bonuses

Bonus Effect
Stage Presence skill Gold reward ×2
Musical Virtuosity skill Gold reward ×2 (stacks with Stage Presence for ×4 total)
Master Performer skill Repeat-performance clout chance: 10% → 20%
Lute key item +50 gold per performance, +1 valuables per performance, +5% plot chance

Strategy: First-Time Combos Are King

Because you get a guaranteed +1 clout for the first time you perform a specific song at a specific venue, the most efficient early clout farming is to rotate songs across venues. With 10 songs and 4 venues, you have 40 guaranteed first-time clout opportunities — enough to reach Violet's 50-clout recruitment threshold with quest board completions on top.

Clout and Why It Matters

Bards Guild clout works like every other faction's reputation track — earned through several activities, never spent. There are five ways to gain it:
  • Performing composed songs at venues (main source). First time performing a specific song at a specific venue: guaranteed +1 clout. Repeat performances: 10% chance of +1 (20% with Master Performer skill).
  • Bards Guild Quest Board. Six sequential quests at the guild, awarding a total of 10 clout when fully completed.
  • Sandra's Singing Timing Test minigame. 25% chance per attempt to earn +1 clout.
  • Bard search encounter. When you meet a bard during a search action and choose to play music with her, a successful music roll awards +1 clout.
  • Lily the Bard (dungeon scenario). Encounter Lily in the medieval dungeon, succeed at the music match, and complete her scene for +1 clout.
Key thresholds:
Clout Unlock
25 Violet's backstory plot "A Stage of Her Own" auto-triggers on your next visit to the Bards Guild. Completing it unlocks the song "A Stage of My Own" in the Music Studio.
50 Violet's recruitment plot "The Standing Ovation" auto-triggers on your next visit. Violet joins the brothel as Maid #1 (Air element).

The Quest Board

The Quest Board action is available at the Bards Guild from 1 PM onward. It offers six progressive contracts, each unlocked sequentially. Each quest asks you to perform a number of different songs across a number of different venues — designed to push you to write more material and rotate your setlist.
Quest Name Task Reward
1 Opening Act Perform 2 different songs at 2 different venues +1 Crystal, +1 clout
2 Touring Troubadour Perform 3 different songs at 3 different venues Worker Pin, +1 clout
3 Crowd Favourite Perform 4 different songs at 3 different venues +10 Valuables, +1 clout
4 Rising Star Perform 5 different songs at 3 different venues +1 Crystal, +2 clout
5 Legendary Bard Perform 6 different songs at all 4 venues Dirt Trap Carpet (maid item), +2 clout
6 Maestro Perform 7 different songs at all 4 venues +1 Crystal, +3 clout
== How Quest Progress Is Counted ==
The board reads your lifetime performance record. Its two objectives are counted separately: distinct songs performed anywhere and distinct venues used by any song. You do not have to perform every required song at every required venue.
For example, Opening Act is satisfied by performing song A at the Performance Stage and song B at the Bards Guild: two different songs and two different venues. Maestro requires seven different songs in your record and visits to all four venues, not 28 performances.
Earlier performances still count for later contracts. Return to the board and claim each completed reward in sequence; the next contract may already qualify from the same lifetime record. The board does not reset your song or venue history.
The Brothel Bar is one of the four required venues, so brothel access is needed for the final two contracts. The earlier contracts can be completed using the three public venues.
The full quest board awards 10 clout across all six quests, plus 3 Crystals, a Worker Pin, 10 Valuables, and a Dirt Trap Carpet maid item. Completing the board gets you 20% of the way to Violet's recruitment threshold on its own — combine with performance rotations to fill the rest.

Recruiting Violet

Violet is Maid #1 at your brothel — the Air element maid. She was trained for eight years by Madame Crescendo (a retired opera diva) in the "Performance Arts of Domestic Excellence" and works as the Bards Guild's cleaning girl.
Her recruitment is a two-stage process tied to clout thresholds:

Stage 1 — The Backstory (25 clout)

Visit the Bards Guild with 25 clout. The plot "A Stage of Her Own" auto-triggers. Violet sits with you in the empty hall after a performance and shares her story — how Madame Crescendo found her, what she learned, and what she's never been able to do.
Rewards: +10 Violet relationship, choice bonus (+4 caring / +3 funny / +5 flirty), and the song "A Stage of My Own" unlocks in the Music Studio.

Stage 2 — The Recruitment (50 clout)

Visit the Bards Guild again with 50 clout. The plot "The Standing Ovation" auto-triggers. Violet approaches you in person, explains that she's been watching your performances, and asks to come work at your brothel.
Rewards: +15 Violet relationship, choice bonus (+5 caring / +3 funny / +4 flirty), and Violet joins the brothel as Maid #1.

Note: Sandra is Worker, Violet is Maid

Worth keeping straight — there are two recruitable women connected to the Bards Guild:
  • Sandra is Worker #4 — a brothel worker, recruited through her own separate plot chain (not through the Bards Guild faction system). She performs at the Bards Guild and is the subject of the song "Empty Strings."
  • Violet is Maid #1 — a brothel maid (Air element, cleaning/maintenance role), recruited through this Bards Guild faction system at 50 clout.

Practical Progression and Troubleshooting

  1. Learn Song Writing at the guild and Music Production at the Present Music Studio; reach Creativity 50.
  2. Compose Same Song, Different Day and any other eligible subjects you know well. Each attempt costs $200, so leave money for retries.
  3. Rotate songs across the three public venues. Each new song/venue pairing guarantees +1 clout; only one performance per venue is allowed each in-game day.
  4. Claim board rewards as your lifetime totals qualify. Use the Brothel Bar once accessible to reach all four venues.
  5. At 25 clout, revisit the guild for Violet's backstory. Complete it to unlock A Stage of My Own for composition.
  6. Keep rotating and claiming contracts to reach 50 clout, then revisit the guild for Violet's recruitment.
With all ten songs at all four venues, the first-time pairings award 40 clout; the six board contracts award another 10. Other bard activities or repeat performances can fill any gap when not all songs or venues are accessible yet.
Repeat performances remain useful: gold and valuables still pay, and repeat clout has a 10% chance, or 20% with Master Performer. A song's first use at one venue does not consume its first-time bonus at the other three.
Income example: at Creativity 50, base gold is 25–100. Stage Presence and Musical Virtuosity together multiply that by four to 100–400; the Lute adds 50 afterward, producing 150–450. Valuables are rolled separately.

If an action or reward is missing

* Compose Song absent: check both required skills, Creativity 50, and the Music Studio's 12:00–23:00 hours.
* A song is absent: it may already be composed, or its specific worker, relationship, encounter or item condition is unmet. For the Balrog song, the required item is Sylph Crown, not Cherub Crown.
* Composition fails: failure occurs after exceeding one wrong answer, or two with Storytelling. Questions are not a stat roll; familiarity with the subject matters.
* Perform Song absent: own at least one composed song, check venue access, and confirm that venue has not already been used today.
* A quest appears complete but has not paid: use the board's reward/complete control. Revisit it for the next contract; progress is not cleared between quests.
* Violet's scene has not appeared: verify the relevant 25/50 clout total and enter the Bards Guild again. The scene is an automatic guild visit trigger.
Costs in this guide are base action costs. Performance scenes and rewards have their own random rolls; a scene is not guaranteed merely because the performance paid gold.

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Text adapted from the community-maintained Chronoromancer Wiki under CC BY-SA 4.0.