Pocket Clothier Cheats, Tips, Tricks

Extended Idea Room Research Time

Strategy A)

Have only one register at the top floor (or whichever floor is least convenient for your poor shoppers). This will result in less "style" points for each shopper because most will have to wait longer to be checked out, but it will greatly increase the amount of time your employees work overtime.

(This is so conceptually evil TT.)

Unlike Cafeteria Nipponica, where customers automatically leave at the close of business, time in Pocket Clothier will freeze at 22:00 until the last customer leaves.

Strategy B)

Have two registers in your store. At 22:00, when there are still customers in your store about to check out, delete one of the registers after one of the customers holding a green basket enters the elevator.

When the customer(s) exits the elevator, they will keep walking in place in front of the elevator for a long long time. This allows your employees to keep researching well past when the last customer should have left.

Strategy B is best used when there are almost no customers left to check out, since I don't think those customers ever get checked out. 

(Don't do this if you work retail in real life please! D: )

Drastically Increase Revenue

After unlocking the Large Register, place the register and two employees with speed over 900 (not 9000) on a sparsely furnished floor to ensure the two employees will be the only two to constantly work the register (as to spending more of their time restocking etc).

After some time, you will get a notice saying customers really like the employees working behind the large cash register and are paying much more! You should then see customers paying, surprise, many times (not sure how to verify an exact increase) for their purchases.

Keep Employee Salaries Low

Early on, when an employee asks for a raise, you can turn that offer down at the cost of a loyalty point. You can earn that loyalty back using A) a loyalty manual you get from the Idea Room or B) agreeing to a raise later when the employee asks for a raise.

This means if you're at 10/10 hearts, you can reject a raise, lose a heart, and earn it back later. If you agree to the raise, you won't gain over 10 hearts anyway.

(This is such a terrible guide for real life managers-to-be. :sniffle: )

Elevator

In my opinion, the purchase of an elevator, if you don't care for using strategy B above, actually slows customers down, rather than make it faster. I've seen crowds stand in front of elevators for game-hours while the elevator ferries people to and from other floors.

More to come as I discover...

Other Tips

I'm not going to reinvent the wheel -- namely, I'm not going to write a guide for this when others have already done so, so I am going to redirect this section to Happy Enna's blog.

Sneak preview of Happy Enna's pocket clothier posts!

"Those are all the useful links related to Pocket Clothier on Happy Enna's blog.
Compatibility Guide - A spreadsheet and an image to help you match the clothes

Fixtures - Some fixtures unlock special items, some give good boost.
Shelves and Racks - The requirement and best position for shelves and racks.

Job List - You get some bonus if a matching outfit is recommended to your customer for their job interview.
Carry Over - Always good to know what gets carried over to your next playthrough so you can plan ahead.

Trophy List - Have you got all of them?
12 Month Sales Record - It's easy to make a profit but it requires a bit of planning to increase your profit every month for a year.

How to Earn Heaps - If you have trouble keeping up with the tax, then you want to read this. It's not about avoiding tax. It tells you the tricks to make lots of money easily.  :)

Enna's Thoughts - Auto Stock is Not Perfect - I just had to complain a bit when I had trouble dealing with tax. But, it's true, it doesn't make sense.  :p"  - Enna

Cafeteria Nipponica Cheats, Tips, Tricks, Recipes

Using Filters

Using filters can help you easily find the highest-stat-yielding ingredient/combos to help you max out dishes most efficiently. Using filters also easily allows you to sort by recipes based on dish, ingredients used, price and stats -- all on one page! You can use filters on this spreadsheet.

How to use filters: To sort by highest price or highest total stat,
select the dropdown arrow under the category and "Sort Z --> A"

How to use filters: To see dishes created only from Curry n' Rice,
"Clear" the selections and check Curry n' Rice, or sort alphabetically.

"Instantly" Max out Floor Employee Job

Change the target's job to a level 5 Chef of any kind and wait for two or three months to pass. Then, change the target's job to Performer. Within the next month, the target will rapidly max out the Performer job.

To make the most of this, switch the person's profession back to the same level 5 Chef position, and repeat to achieve your target job (for instance, Popular Staff or Kairo Staff).

Example of optimal employee rotation:

Rookie Chef Lv5
Trainee (Instant Lv5)
Chinese Chef Lv5
Manager (Instant Lv5)
Japanese Chef Lv5
Service Master (Instant Lv5)
Western Chef Lv5
Performer (Instant Lv5)
Expert Chef Lv5
Recipe Master, Popular Staff, Roller Skater, Musician or Ninja (Instant Lv5)
5-Star Chef Lv5
Recipe Master, Popular Staff, Roller Skater, Musician or Ninja (Instant Lv5)
5-Star Chef Lv5
Possibly ~ Kairo Staff Lv5

If you want to keep your costs down, and don't care to promote the employee past Performer, simply alternate only between your level 5 Rookie Chef and the Floor job.

This works because kitchen employees level up a lot more quickly than Floor employees.

Perfect or Near-Perfect Dishes

First, to understand how ingredients affect dishes, read Happy Enna's well-written post. In a nutshell, dish quality are determined two ways.

1) Price, Taste, Appeal  -- Depending on the dish, these usually have a cap, meaning some dishes cannot be better than grade A, B, C .. etc.

2) Health, Brain (Brilliance), Texture, Aroma, Appearance, Volume, Rarity, Charisma -- Increasing these generally increases Taste and Appeal EXCEPT when the ingredients used are incompatible with the dish.

A good way to max all stats is to go to this Ingredient Effects page where I've summed the totals, and use ingredients with the greatest total stat gain to boost up the lowest stats. Be sure not to leave Aroma and Appearance for last, as these are the most difficult to raise! When everything is mostly in or around the 90s, use Aged Cheese to top off the dish.

Starting the Second Game with High Income

Since dish stats and prices carry over, near mid to end-game, it may be a good idea to level up one of the starting dishes in prep for the next game -- if you think you might play a second game.

Price of Dishes
65 Chicken Bowl
65 Karaage
62 Veggie Stir Fry
55 Fried Rice
55 Shumai
52 Omelette
45Toast
42 Spaghetti
35 Seafood Soup
35 Udon
30 Salad
25 Rice

All dishes and their max price/scores can be found on this page highlighted in blue. Leveling a starting dish up to high price ensures that you can quickly start a new game with a lot of money coming in, provided you select the theme with the dish you leveled up.

Lower Stocking Costs Each Month

If you're going for a high score or just love making money, serve just one high-quality, high-priced dish, the monthly stocking cost of the dish is usually negligible so long as you're making more money per serving than the dish with a lower stocking cost. Customers do not care if you serve just one dish and will buy just as much food.

Conclusion

Kairosoft has not offered official "cheats", but I'm not sure these were intended to work the way they do - so tricks or cheats, whatever you want to call them.

If you don't mind registering for yet another website, a good beginner's guide is this one by Arcfox.
If you do mind registering, visit Enna's blog for more regarding Cafeteria Nipponica.

Questions? Other tips / tricks? Let me know!

Hot Springs Story Layouts: Improved Based on Popular Layouts

Intro

Began: 2 years ago
Love: Pixel art style, attention to detail, content, control, world.
Comment: The company's games truly follow guidelines set up in its first game Game Dev Story!

About this Build

This layout is intended for the first playthrough in which Large Baths are available before the game ends, and sets us up for the future games. At the end of the game, your two Large Baths will:

1) Have the most effects it can carry over to the next game - see below.
2) Have some of the difficult-to-obtain effects - ones that require a large amount of space.
3) Emphasize Large Male Bath quality because:
        a) Chimpan Z and Kairobot, the hard-to-satisfy characters, are male.
        b) Female baths are easier to upgrade in each game, with less space requirements for more effects and Milk for extra Spa each game.
4) Maximize surrounding room bonuses with spread-out shops/facilities
5) Minimize spa-goer walking time to shops/facilities/baths.

Effects to be carried over at the end of the game:

Large Male Bath (+6)
+1 Senior (Jacuzzi; 2 stone, 1 vending )
+2 Youth (In-Crowd; 4 souv, 4 azalea )
+1 Adult, Senior (Forever Young; 2 fortune, 2 plum, 1 pond )
+2 Male (Springerade; 4 cafe, 4 vending, 2 bamboo )

Large Female Bath (+8)
+2 Senior (Jacuzzi; 4 stone, 2 vending )
+2 Women (Silky Smooth; 2 salon, 2 azalea, 2 stone, includes + milk )
+2 Groups (Fast Friends; 4 karaoke, 2 pingpong )
+1 Youth (In-Crowd; 2 souv, 2 azalea )
+1 Adult, Senior (Forever Young; 2 fortune, 2 plum, 1 pond  )

Fame Pill adds 3 additional effects, depending on which bath you use it on (not included above).

These screenshots aren't completely accurate / final products. There needs to be an extra Karaoke room, and some other things. See the diagram below for a more accurate diagram.

Most Updated Diagram - Fixed some errors. 5/1/2013

* Four souvenir stands in a row. If you want people to access the two in the middle, read Shops and Facilities below. Maintenance isn't high for two inaccessible stands, and you can make much more use of an entire row of path space to make money back. If this bothers you like it initially bothered me, just think of it as a very large souvenir store. ; )

** Flexible - Start the road right outside the cafe and souv. stands or boost their satisfaction by adding scenery. Since the rooms are directly opposite the path above, I emphasized quality of visit over quantity of visits here.

! Move scenery around any of the free spaces on respective sides of the two rows between the baths.

*** Ping pong rooms stick out like the souvenir stands stick out.

**** Optionally add inaccessible facilities in the free spaces to boost effects before the end of the game.


Where most layouts position similar facilities and stores right next to each other, I position mine apart from each other to allow spa-goers to walk the shortest path to their desired destination. 

I chose this slightly awkward build so that I wouldn't have to worry about squeezing 6 souvenir stands and 4 ping pong tables into my builds in later games. With some luck, the Fame Seed would make it easier for me to max my facilities (to be honest, I may not get around to future games, but I like to be prepared ^^ ).

Entrances and Rooms

I made a impromptu layout to demonstrate the logic behind my placements. For the second diagram at the bottom, grey arrows show people checking into their rooms. Teal arrows show them walking to facilities. This layout minimizes the time it takes for people to walk to their rooms and then to facilities. This usually generally allows late-comers to visit at least one facility before going to bed, increasing the rate of satisfaction and income by a lot over the course of the entire game.

Chimpan Z and Kairobot: I personally opt for quality over quantity. I tweaked the townhouse-style rooms many popular layouts use - the top right western room was where both Chimpan Z and Kairobot stayed. I boosted the Large Men's bath and surrounding facilities with a bit of popularity seeds and I was able to pass. 

At the start of the game, I carefully counted out the location of where I'll be placing my baths, so that I wouldn't have to waste money later rebuilding everything. The receptionist has only been shifted back a tile or two after I unlocked it to make room for the Men's cafes. 

The placement of scenery helps direct where people stay. If you want people to prioritize areas near baths for easier access, place your best scenery items near rooms there. This ensures that people won't leave rooms there empty and opt for an obscure corner room (as with the bamboo and rock above).

Green knobs show bath entrances. Spa-goers don't have to walk far between shop/facility visits, allowing for them to visit more places before going to bed (or going broke... I always feel bad when old couples go broke. Hope social security works in their world TT ).

Other Shops and Facilities

I began to build the Large Baths area after I purchased all the land deeds, made enough money, and unlocked enough shops/facilities. But I began with normal baths (below). Having rooms place directly before bath entrances maximizes satisfaction and income from spa-goers living there. After some deliberation, I decided I would rather have two inaccessible souvenir stands than forsake this row of rooms.

The bottom cluster of baths were the ones I used at the beginning of the game.  

The only changes I made after building the large baths was remove some facilities that gave effects to the smaller women's bath. However, having the souvenir stands placed right above gave both baths the Youth Up effect! This way, we make the most of the large stands.

Effects on smaller baths:

Women's Bath

+2 Senior

+1 Adult

+3 Women (with Milk)

+1 Youth

Men's Bath

+2 Senior

+1 Adults

+2 Men

In the top left corner, I added a men's bath since the male baths were least accessible there. 

I chose to maximize the number of effects, since I couldn't control who would visit which bath anyway, instead of target just one age group.

Improve this Build!

Have a better layout? Think you can improve this one? This is a copy of the spreadsheet I used to create this build - you may use it to plan your own layout and share with everyone!

Some sources I used to give me ideas for my personal build:

GameFAQs : Most complete guide I've come across to date. Has easy-to-ctrl-f format all on one page. Has some good layout ideas.
Videogameholic : Has layouts only. Liked this cause it has screenshots from actual game.