Welcome to the first post in Restaurant City Tips & Tricks 2010!
It serves to provide Updated Tips on this fabulous game called Restaurant City (RC) from Playfish so everyone can get more fun out of it.
This post (and this whole blog)
- assumes you're using little or no PF Cash
- assumes you have a life of some sort that doesn't make 30 minute shifts ideal for you
- aims to help you make more money out of Restaurant City (RC), especially after the changes made.
- in fact, you can easily make $25,000-$30,000 Profit a day!
And here are the General How-Tos covered in this Post
- Best Value Shift for Money ($)
- Best Value Shift for Gourmet Points (GP)
- Using Popularity to maximise 24 hour Shifts
- Leaving Restaurant City running in the Background
Some Edits made on 22 Oct in Bold and Italics.
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1. Best Value Shift for Money ($)
Using a 70-80 popularity Restaurant, with 3 sets of 3 workers (2 cooks 1 waiter handling 8-9 tables), and no drink bar, I get roughly
- 4 hour shift : cost $800, earns $4800, profit $4000
- 6 hour shift : cost $2500, earns $6900, profit $4400 - Edited on August 18
- 8 hour shift : cost $4900, earns $7800, profit $2900
So realistically (ie excluding 30 min, 1 hr, 2 hr shifts) the best value-for-money shift is 6 hours. - Edited on August 18
If you have time (ie able to get back in less than 6 hours), go for 4 hours, but best to avoid 8 hour and more, as you may actually make less money.
A final note is not to worry about the bonus. It only grants Gourmet Points (GP), and there's no more grumbling (yay!) so don't worry about it.
Hence, 6-hour Shifts are Best for Money, so long you can access more than twice a day.
PS : I have tried to figure out the formulation of the prices for RC shifts before, but with relatively little success. Any takers?
=======================================2. Best Value Shift for Gourmet Points (GP)
This is for those willing to make a little less money to get more Gourmet Points (GP). Typically used when levelling a new Restaurant.
We observe that :
- Longer Shift = More GP
- Longer Shift = More time to collect Bonus 2000 GP
That said, Bonus 2000 GP means "free working time."
The 2000 GP bonus, divided by 5.5 GP (amt of GP earned for each level 10 dish), is about 360+ customers, roughly 30-45 mins worth of "free working time".
Note the "free working time" is worth more at lower levels, as you have less workers, possibly not serving only level 10 dishes, hence may it take you 60-120 minutes to make 2000 GP.
Hence : Pick the Shortest Shift so that once the Shift ends, within LESS than 30-45 minutes (ie. the "free working time") you can get the bonus and start a new Shift
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3. Using Popularity to maximise 24 hour Shifts
This may be new to some, and is more for Money purposes. For GP you don't really need to do this. This idea is built on the fact that when you have high Popularity, you pay more per shift, especially the 24 hour shift.
You will need about 75-90 minutes to execute this effectively, for most people evening time 10pm - 12 mn would be good.
Three Simple Steps
A) In the last 30-35 minutes of a Shift, drop your Popularity to 35-40.
Do this by switching to a BLANK layout.
- During this time, every 20 Popularity you lose, the game will irritatingly show a Warning and freeze your Popularity Loss. Your time continues ticking though.
- Just save and refresh to let the Popularity Loss continue.
- At Max Popularity 82-87, the first Warning usually happens after about 7-9 minutes, and the second Warning at 12-18 minutes after your first Refresh.
- You can also prevent Warnings, by Saving/Refreshing after you lose 16-19 Popularity.
B) Switch Back to your Usual Layout, start a new 24 hour Shift.
At low popularity of 35-40, you can get away paying about $7,500-$10,000 for 24 hour shift. Normally, it would cost you close to $19,000.
C) Increase Popularity back to Max, takes about 40-60 minutes
During this time, keep your toilets clean, which helps to improve your Popularity faster. If your layout is good, it will increase even if your toilets are choked, just that it'll take longer, meaning you make less money.
Janitors will help you speed this up by Cleaning Toilets for you.
Note : I do not advise dropping Popularity below 35 as it takes a very long time to decrease and increase. Its up to the player, though.
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4. Leaving Restaurant City running in the Background
Probably not new to RC veterans, but its a good idea to leave your RC running in the background.
I'm not sure how the game calculates, but if RC is not on, you make about 35-50% less Money and GP.
For example, on a 24 hour shift, if I do not leave it running, I only make about $25,000 or so. Currently, I leave the game running about 12-18 hours a day. At the end of my shift, I earn about $36,000-$44,000 (I check on my bar before it expires).
With Popularity control mentioned earlier, that's $25,000-$30,000 Profit a day!
Plus, that is also excluding the last 35 minutes or so (since that is the time that I use to adjust my popularity), and inclusive the first 45-60 minutes when is the time when earnings are reduced due to fewer customers coming in.
Note that if you have no Janitor, you don't have to worry about cleaning your Toilets. If its Maxed and you have a good Layout, Popularity will not drop. Watch out for Trash though.
If Popularity drops more than 1.0 from the Max, start looking for Trash to clean. Normally this is only an issue at about the 10+ hours or so.
For more info on Layouts, see my upcoming post on Layouts.
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I hope these tips help to increase your Money in RC so you can have more fun :) Feel free to post comments / tips, and hope I didn't make too many mistakes on the figures.
PS :
I also start my blog with this post as I understand some RC players are upset that as compared to the previous system, we are actually making less money now in RC. Personally, I beg to differ :)
Since Staff behaviour is now consistent for the entire shift, we can stand to get more money with less micromanagement. This makes RC more accessible to working adults, I feel.
( Yes, I used to be one of the people topping up my Staff's Clock every 1 hour during my leisure time, LOL. )
Slight edit on the Shifts. 6 hour shift should net you about $400-800 more than a 4 hour shift :)
ReplyDeleteSorry for the inconvenience caused
What level are you at right now? What is your popularity number?
ReplyDeleteI'm actually level 85 now with 95 Popularity. I know, I know, I shouldn't have bought the 2 Obelisks and the Soup but hey, they were cool.. lol.
ReplyDeleteFrankly Mariachi Band, Bubble Drink Tower, Sphinx are all more impt ;) at least IF I am leaving the game running
I can't get my pop to fall more than 20 points. At level 34, pop of 78, it falls to 58, I get a warning and that's all it falls. It's still a cost savings but I wonder if there's a way to further drop another 10 or 20 points?
ReplyDeleteAs per the topic...
ReplyDelete- During this time, every 20 Popularity you lose, the game will irritatingly show a Warning and freeze your Popularity Loss. Your time continues ticking though.
- Just save and refresh to let the Popularity Loss continue.
Trust this helps :)
I disagree about the 6 hour shift being the best value for money. It nets $4400, which is $733.33 per hour. The 4 hour shift nets $4000, which is $1000 per hour. That's $266.67 more per hour than the 6 hour shift.
ReplyDeleteThink of it this way. At the end of a 6 hour shift, I net $4400. But, at the end of a 4 hour shift, and then 2 hours into a second 4 hour shift (ie a total of 6 hours), I'm netting $6000. The same amount of time has passed, but I've made an extra $1600.
You need to compare profits over an equal amount of time (ie per hour) rather than over the whole length of the shift in order to get an accurate idea of which shift is better value.
Yep, but not everyone can access the RC every 4 hours :) When comparing effectiveness, rather than counting based on RC time, one should compare based on Real Time because that is the constraint most of us face.
ReplyDeleteSome people like me just want the shift that gives them most coins, especially when we only access our RC twice max three times a day. As I wrote in my post...
"If you have time (ie able to get back in less than 6 hours), go for 4 hours "
Some Edits made :) to
ReplyDelete"3. Using Popularity to maximise 24 hour Shifts"
in Bold and Italics.
Its much faster Switching Layouts :) rather than moving Furniture.