Minimalism [Vonne's Route Spoilers]

[4Dam-Ghost-Nappa]

I've tried several times to get this achievement and I'm having difficulties beating Talmage.

• Althea xor Thais must be the mole.
• You must choose Vonne as your queen and make her crazy jealous (see the Yandere Principle).
• Because you will be relying so much on Vonne, you need to get her to 45 loyalty. I know there's an option in her dialogue that allows her to hit 50 loyalty, but I don't know if you can also get the Yandere ending alongside it.
• Giving Vonne Charm or Stealth points is wasteful. Give them to Mallory and Rowan respectively.
• You can give points for Observation to Vonne or Rowan, but splitting between them is wasteful.
• At first glance, the best target for loyalty after Vonne is the sister you keep, but expelling the other sister for being the mole seems to lead to a drop in the one who stays, so that their loyalty becomes 25. This means they will not stick around when Talmage begins making threats.
• If you cannot make the surviving sister stay, you should block with her every turn in the first round Vs. Talmage.

So far, I've only made Thais the traitor (Althea is superior as a harasser and for having a generally more useful skill allocation than Thais). The first time I maxed Althea's loyalty before expelling Thais (which then reduced her to 25 loyalty, leading her to bail after Talmage's first round) and the second time I maxed Thais hoping that doing so would lower Althea's penalty when you expelled Thais...and it did: in the sense that Althea wasn't maxed so she lost less, but still wound up at the dreadful 25.

The issue is, giving points to Vonne for intimidation is less efficient than giving them to the sister you've kept.
Vonne taking over Mallory's Charm, and Rowan's Stealth and Observation is super handy because it means you have a super minion for Questioning, Stalking, Gossiping, Misdirecting, etc... but when the other sister bails Vs. Talmage in the second round, Vonne's low Intimidation score is going to hurt whenever Talmage makes a Charm attack. You are utterly reliant on items it seems, and I don't know if there's a way to circumvent the issue of going into the Talmage fight with someone who isn't going to bail on you and is good at Intimidation.

[phoenixgirl]

I have been able to do this although I have to admit that it is difficult to beat Talmage. What I usually do is make Althea the mole and while getting to know the girls, I max out Vonne's and Thais' loyalty. Thais' loyalty won't decrease if you expel Althea. Then I split any remaining loyalty points between Rowan and Mallory. I plan ahead on this so I gave intimidation points to Thais while the rest of the points I gave to Vonne. I never bothered to improve Rowan's or Mallory's skills and found that it wasn't necessary to do so. I did have to use items in the final battle (getting that sedative helps) and whenever I could counterattack, then I chose that option.

I've never tried to do this with Thais as the traitor, though, since I know that Althea's loyalty decreases a lot if you expel Thais.

[4Dam-Ghost-Nappa]

I have been able to do this although I have to admit that it is difficult to beat Talmage. What I usually do is make Althea the mole and while getting to know the girls, I max out Vonne's and Thais' loyalty. Thais' loyalty won't decrease if you expel Althea. Then I split any remaining loyalty points between Rowan and Mallory. I plan ahead on this so I gave intimidation points to Thais while the rest of the points I gave to Vonne. I never bothered to improve Rowan's or Mallory's skills and found that it wasn't necessary to do so. I did have to use items in the final battle (getting that sedative helps) and whenever I could counterattack, then I chose that option.

I've never tried to do this with Thais as the traitor, though, since I know that Althea's loyalty decreases a lot if you expel Thais.

I was afraid of that. I'd been avoiding making Althea the traitor because Thais' stats don't really stand out in relation to Vonne. Thais has good Observation and the best Intimidate, but there aren't a lot of moments where you need to Guard, and I've found that Stake Outs are better.

Thais is just in general one of my least favorite characters to use because Intimidation doesn't really blend with much in a useful manner outside of Harassment, and Althea is a stronger candidate for it. She feels a bit underpowered from the lack of good constant solo actions where she doesn't compete with anyone. Detention is undoubtedly one of the strongest actions in the game because of the number of cases it closes, but a lot of the work before that is better suited to the other characters and it's often required to make Detention even an option.

Rowan, Althea and Mallory are all really easy to use because of how Versatile they are. Vonne and Thais come off as more of specialists, but Vonne is serviceable for Questioning and Inspections before her promotion to Super-stalker.


Meanwhile, I can't figure out how to use Thais.

[Darksilverhawk]

I've never had luck with traitor Thais- Traitor Althea tends to do better for me. My strategy is similar to phoenixgirl's- Max Vonne and Thais's loyalty and expel Althea (Thais doesn't care). Put whatever loyalty is left on Rowan and never add to Rowan or Mallory's skills. You don't need them. They're do fine with most tasks on their own, and either Vonne or Thais can handle anything else once you're done buffing them. Build Vonne's observation and stealth to make her a replacement for Rowan early on, and put the rest into Thais's intimidation so she can handle any harass checks by herself. Mentally come to terms with the fact that persuasion is never going to be something your team excels in, but even an untrained Mallory (and later on Vonne with her boost) can actually handle most social checks in the game provided you're using loaded dice.

Join the Red Mask- you need those big boost items. Try to save the really big bonuses for the final battle. Unless you have several sedatives, those slots are probably better served with a 15 point boost to something you're low in (probably social). Get as big a karma/reputation cushion as you can before Valentine's Day, but with two girls that excel at what they do and two reasonably talented back-ups, you should be alright up to that point; with 80+ in each you can coast to the end losing several cases unless you get absolutely horrible case luck.

(Funnily enough, I've always seen Vonne as a jack-of-all-trades, master of none sort- her strong stat is observation, but everything else is only mediocre and her stealth isn't good enough to make her a decent searcher without Mallory's help or a bunch of skill points. She's actually one of my favorite traitors to get because you don't lose anything hard to replace if you expel her, like you do if you lose Rowan, Mallory, or Thais. (I refuse to acknowledge that Althea is useful.))

[Franka]

Traitor Althea is much, much easier than traitor Thaïs. I've done Minimalism with both, but Althea can't keep her loyalty up, so Vonne has to go mostly solo on the boss, which is preeetty tough. Thaïs will stick around, so while her stats are initially lower, she's a safe bet, and once you hit a certain point, you're cruising through.

It's not awfully hard to get Thaïs to 60/60 Charm/Intimidation, and Rowan/Vonne to at least 60/60 Observation/Stealth too, if you're good at solving cases, and aiming for nothing but that. With a few more stat increases, and five +15 items, you don't need all that much luck to defeat Talmage - I can consistently do it with 71/61 on both girls.