As he waits for the loan to be disbursed, Artabeles is left wondering for how long his little adoptee, who changes her last name, will remain an infant. He also realizes that his adoptee is starving because of her previous parents' actions.

"Damn... I can't breastfeed my new adoptee! I don't think you will have that option either with your baby!" Artabeles warns the streamer.

"First off, the stream will end when my trans male goes into labor. Second, I will host a sub-a-thon tomorrow, starting with my trans male giving birth to the alien baby!" Marjo makes her plans known for the rest of the day.

"And then I'll reveal what gyan-avspar are. I'll even bring my adoptee to the hospital to see your alien baby!"

Yes! This loan has been approved! I can finally get what I want for my gay couple's little girl! Starting with the crib, changing table, a supply of diapers, baby food and the highchair. Time to get the enfantillages started! Artabeles realizes that, by adopting the infant, he unlocks a new party. I really hope that the rewards from the baby shower party will help me repay the loan I took out to finance her equipment.

So as party invites are issued, he sees fit to invite even Sigrun's in-game family, in hopes that, in the future, she can invite him to higher-tier parties. Maybe even the same one as Marjo.

"A-ha! Baby shower!" Artabeles exclaims. "For those planning on playing, baby showers are available when you either have a baby three days old or younger, or a baby three days away or less!"

Obviously, he invites Gordon and Marjo, and other guests include other players of trans couples. So he treats the guests to a party into his home, decorated in Sassanid style, to the extent the game allowed for it. And his main wearing his signature gyan-avspar costume.

"Here's my little Tiffany, whom I adopted so I can experience parenting in this game!"

Given the limitations on when such a party can be hosted, both sides face fewer obstacles than in even other "entry-level" parties. I guess, I can see people abandoning children left and right just so they can host certain types of parties, including but not limited to baby showers, he sighs while the guests are coming into his home. Also I believe that, because the window is limited to host a baby shower, the game balances, for a given party tier, by it being easier and/or providing more rewards.

"That was a lot easier than a speed kisser run. It seems like the challenge of a baby shower is getting the right equipment and timing it properly! What I need to do is to show the baby and talk about her with guests five times each"

"Artabeles, why is it that you had me cook?" Marjo whines about her part in the baby shower. Can't I just watch the baby, or ask stuff about it?"

"Do you want to get the gold on it or not?" Artabeles asks her.

"I guess, I have no choice..."

Come on, Marjo, bake the tiered cake! That's a piece of cake to your character! Artabeles then gets bombarded by requests to watch, or play with, Tiffany.

With that said, a few of the guests feel underwhelmed by how fast their part of the party goes. And the hungrier ones might be willing to wait for the cake, but some of them are exasperated by how even a tier-1 house party might be more engaging, let alone higher-tier parties.

But Tiffany starts to cry and misbehave as Marjo's female cis character is cooking a two-tiered cake, which she hopes is large enough to serve everyone.

"No, Tiff! Don't grab the guests' clothes!" the host yells at the screen as he tries to prevent Tiffany from grabbing the clothes of Gordon's transfem.

The result is his actor character chasing his adoptee around his house as Tiffany is about to cause mayhem. And leave a messy trail, as much as the game allows for it. As she closes in on the hookah, threatening to topple it... he has his not-gyan-avspar grabs his adoptee.

"No, Tiff, you're going to break it!" he yells at the screen while he scolds her.

Now I have a better idea of what gender assignment at birth means in this game: fertility and one aspect of enfantillages. But so far, it seems like the player's parenting style is more important than the gender identity of the parents.

And, once every guest who wanted cake had it, he asks the in-game chat channel for the party whether their characters had a chance to see the baby.

Trans player: I didn't get to see the baby

"All right"

As soon as that final player got shown the baby, he then triggers the early ending, and every attendee gets the rewards. Curiously, while every attendee gets a brand new futuristic crib, by virtue of having filled a very easy-to-max out gauge, he could thank Marjorine for having filled the party-wide gauge and hence win the most expensive firework silo in the game, the Mk7 VLS (vertical launching system).

Yet, he is left wondering what use he could have for a silo holding seven of the largest and most expensive firework rockets in the game.

"Ermahgerd!" Artabeles gasps in a Persian accent, while his gay couple cleans up the home of the messes left behind by Tiffany. "Why do they give us such an expensive firework silo for... perfectly hosting the easiest party in the game? What secret condition did I meet to get this firework silo?"

"Speaking of fireworks, where do I see the available silos?" Marjo asks, feeling that maybe she could make some headway into getting the down payment for her new house.

"Yeah, show us the cost of both the silo and the rockets that go into it!" Gordon asks him, before Artabeles leaves haunting mode.

He installs his brand new Mk7 VLS, taking up four times as much space as other models of firework silos, and costs many more times more than the next-most-expensive one. My guess is that I might need fireworks for some very high-end party that I have yet to unlock. However, by selling the Mk7 VLS on the Haunted Bazaar, I will definitely be able to pay back the loan I took out to even get Tiffany what she needs! A whopping 15k piastres just for the silo if I sell it to NPCs. Rockets cost 100 piastres each, he then shows what he can do with these rockets. Choosing the color and shape of the blast prior to launch, and hence the payment.

"Marjo, throw a baby shower when able, please! We need to test whether it's random or certain conditions need to be met!" Artabeles feels like he might find a bug as he sells off the old crib.

"Who should I invite, other than you two?" Marjo asks her chat, realizing that her male trans character is on his seventh day of pregnancy.

This time around, Marjo invites, to her own baby shower, Manolia and the other alien abductee of her own wave, along with Artabeles and Gordon. However, the prenatal version of the baby shower asks hosts to have the guests touch the pregnant character's belly five times rather than to be shown the baby.

"Marjo! Spam the dialogues about the baby!" he yells at her, while her cisfem bakes another cake.

For that specific part of the party, with only 4 players invited, she has her cis male do just that. And her transfem, as soon as she's done sewing yet another copy of the black-and-red dress, makes the final request to touch the trans male's belly. And this is happening faster than last time. I can see from here cash-strapped people adopting an infant specifically to throw baby showers over and over, selling off the Mk7 VLSs, along with the cribs, and abandon the infant, or have it taken away by CPS, when the infant is no longer eligible. Or perhaps get pregnant over and over, with adopted children within the first six in-game days of the cycle.

The faux gyan-avspar asks in the party's in-game chat channel whether everyone has gotten the attendee's gold. The party is almost over when the cake is served to the attendees, with one last instruction for Marjo:

"Now that everyone got gold, end the party! Now!" Artabeles yells at Marjo on VC, who then stops the party without understanding why.

"That was the fastest party I ever attended in the game!" Gordon comments on the speed at which this baby shower took place, after the party ends, less than a minute after it started.

Which makes Artabeles post in the global in-game chat the following request: LFM baby shower farm. Given that not many players know what the shower farm even drops, or even have babies/pregnant characters at this stage, he is met by crickets for a bit.

Meanwhile, somewhere in Grenaa, a city in northeast Denmark, Sigrun hastily begins the in-game process of adopting an infant, sensing an opportunity to make bank by chain-adopting infants. Artabeles? He found a new exploit? I'll farm whatever the baby shower drops!

By doing so, he issues her an invitation to Marjo's Discord server, feeling like farming a specific party requires a coordinated team to achieve the best yields.

"Take the baby shower, as many runs as we can get!" Artabeles instructs Marjo and Sigrun. "However, I believe the bottleneck will be our characters' need for sleep!"

Sigrun goes last since she needs to wait on the arrival of her infant adoptee, and hence can't host a baby shower. With Artabeles and Sigrun being more disciplined as players than Marjo is, however, the latter starts questioning whether she's ok with spending three in-game days throwing baby shower after baby shower.

Why did Artabeles drag me into repeatedly hosting baby showers? What do I have to gain from doing so? Marjo struggles to understand the point of farming baby showers, even though baby showers can be completed in about thirty seconds with a few players who know what they're doing. Namely, baking the cake as an opening move, but only have the hungriest characters eat it.

"Now, Marjo knows the true meaning of optimizing the fun out of the game!" Sigrun exclaims in a Danish accent.

"What do you mean, optimizing the fun out of the game?" a confused Marjo rolls her eyes.

"You see, Marjo, if, for getting a certain thing done, it's found that a particular method is optimal, you must be ready to follow it to the letter, and often do it over and over!"

Time to pull the rug from under these folks who fight each other over infants to adopt, in hopes of cashing in on the Mk7 VLS drops! Artabeles then files a bug report about how he claims that the value of the Mk7 VLS made players farm baby showers to the exclusion of all else, while Futuristic Cribs are only worth 1/30 of a Mk7 VLS.

"Time is up for me, Tiffany is no longer eligible!" Artabeles signals to his fellow farmers.

"Go forth and adopt another infant! A single crib will pay for a maid for a day, and a second adoptee can cost less than a VLS!" Sigrun argues with him.

The key word here is "can". I must then buy the items that will make toddlers work on their skills, of which I only have the potty. Unlike Sigrun, for whom children are clearly a means to an end, I know parenting is for the long haul, so what children I do have must be well-treated, Artabeles muses as he purchases all the toddler items he deems necessary in one go, while selling off his cribs and VLS, except for one of each.

"You never told me what a gyan-avspar is!" Marjo loudly complains.

"There are two definitions. Did you play MAA? Massacre à l'Alcool, if you will"

"No, why?" She sells off her VLS except for 1.

"In MAA, gyan-avspars were Perseria's city hall guards, twelve elite infantry guards. They were loosely based on the Sassanid ones, in that the Sassanid gyan-avspars were elite heavy cavalry instead, but wore the same armor, and wielded the same bows and swords; pikes were impractical to use indoors!"

Or more specifically the best 100 cataphracts in Sassanid service. The Sassanid gyan-avspars were called the "sacrificers of their lives" because they were sworn to do everything in their power to protect the Shahanshah, even lay down their lives for him, Artabeles sighs, while not telling Marjo's chat more about historical gyan-avspars.

"My trans male is going into labor, have a good day, I'm signing off!" Marjo then gets to work editing her guide on baby showers as she logs off the game, along with alien pregnancy.

But then, Artabeles is dragged into playing the court hearing minigame against Sigrun when she sets her sights on the same infant boy to adopt so they can keep farming Mk7 VLSs. That is, until the devs take action.

However, while players are sworn to tell "the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth" at the start of the minigame, it seems like the judge presiding over their case knows about both players' track records as adopters.

Because of that, it's clear that Sigrun's credibility as an adopter, to the eyes of the game's judiciary, took a hit. If I want to keep farming VLSs until I feel confident that I have enough money to build a home capable of hosting every party in the game, I hope never again to face the court hearing minigame for future adoptions. Especially since I let my first adoptee run away from home right after I threw a birthday party, Sigrun feels like she must readjust her approach to farming VLS.

Even when she openly advises new players low on cash to borrow enough money to cover the costs of adopting an infant, and then spam the baby shower.

By doing so, however, some of these players don't even realize that they're making her own life miserable as she's forced into a continuous loop of court hearings, hence losing money with each new attempt at adopting an infant. And dashing her hopes of adopting infant without facing the court hearing minigame.

"Why? Why is it that I can't even adopt another infant? For the three in-game days I get the infant, spamming baby showers will enable me to pay for a lifetime's care many, many times over!" Sigrun laments, in a Danish accent, while facing yet another court hearing.

"Just treat your existing adoptees better until this gets fixed, and then you might have a better chance at getting a third adoptee!" Artabeles scolds her.

"I just want to get the most out of my adoptees when I still can!"

I don't care, if neglecting earlier adoptees is the price to pay to get rich in this game, so be it! VLS farming yields most with fewer players, but spamming it in solo play with NPC guests is actually less efficient than spamming baby showers with another player. However, it goes without saying that spamming baby showers with more than two players requires all of them to take turns hosting these, and hence reduce the yield in VLS, Sigrun starts thinking about how she would go around doing nothing but throwing baby showers for the next 3 in-game days after she adopts another infant, with almost a million piastres at stake.

But after the newest failure in this string of misfortunes in the courtroom, Sigrun is now crying in her room. The in-game judgment is handed down to her:

"What?" she gasps in horror as she laments her fate. "I'm barred from adopting children for three real-world days? I'll never be able to throw the parties I want!"