Just a quick follow up on what I've been learning about Cafe World. These include friend visits, renovations, and use of friend gifts.
Friendship Has Its Limits
I mentioned before that friend visits will allow you to earn xp points and coins at least once a day. But I thought back then that the xp and coins you will earn will depend on the level of your friend. Turns out it's a random thing. Even a level 1 friend can give you 5 xp and 20 coins, the highest I have seen so far. The reverse can happen as well, with a high level friend only giving you 1 xp and 5 coins. Looks reasonable to me, otherwise you will end up leveling primarily because of your friends' efforts. I think it's also one way to remedy the abuse of adding "temp" friends like what people have been doing at Restaurant City. If somehow you end up getting only a limited number of maximum rewards for friend visits, it doesn't really pay to add too many people when you will only earn 1xp every visit.
Renovate Carefully
Be careful in renovating when the equipment you are about to remove from your resto has something on it or you are using it. I lost an entire batch of one day's worth of cooking totaling 4,000 servings (or 16,000 coins @ 4 coins per serving) when I removed the serving table carrying the serving and replaced it with an upgraded serving table. All the while I thought the servings will be retained, since when I replaced a dirty stove with a higher model stove, the new one also ended up being dirty. I guess that's not the way the game is designed, where you lose valuable things without even being prompted. But since the game is in beta, it's really a case of renovate at your own risk. Also, try to minimize going in and out of the renovate mode, since it appears that the customers you have are reset when you go out of renovate mode, which means you lose out on those that were seated when you started renovating.
Maximize Your Gifts
You can maximize the use of friend gifts (those drinks they send you) if you use them when your tables are all full. However, if you happen to be like me who visit Cafe World only once a day, you may not expect to see a high popularity rating when you log in because the servings by then and it would have been a waste of resources to invest in so many tables and chairs when I know many of them will be non-earning perhaps half of the time. However, I am reserving the gifts for that golden moment when I can be online when my popularity is going up and I can supply as much tables and chairs as needed to keep up with the demand. Then I should use those gifts when I perceive that the maximum number of diners possible has been reached. Hopefully the waiting would be worth it. And hopefully that day would come.
The chick has grown up, and it's a hen now! And it already laid a bunch of eggs. Might be I am doing the right thing giving it care and feeding it well. I still have to wait for sometime before I find out what will happen next, which I expect to be a bunch of more chicks.
While waiting for that, now is a good time as ever to talk about Friendship Points. As I posted earlier here in my intro post about Country Story, having friends play a role in the game. Aside from the 3 random gifts that you get for the first time you visit your friend, additional interaction with friends are also done through Friendship Points (FP).
You start off with 75 FPs to each of your friends (you can click on the pic to enlarge and see better). How do you use those points? Well, for one you can automatically ask friends to help protect your crops from being stolen (by other friends or by themselves, ironically). You either go to your friend's farm, and click on the Friendship I
con (the one with the heart on the upper left of the pic; it would be on the lower panel of your screen if you are on your friend's farm). You can also do that right in your farm by calling up the screen on the left and clicking "Get Help". You can then proceed to assign a plot of unharvested crop to your friend. It will protect the crop from being stolen, and it will also automate the harvesting. Of course, this is not without a price. Each time you assign a friend to give you help, the FP goes down. Sounds like a typical relationship where you can't get too cozy long enough.
Now, your FP with your friend won't get up if he also asked you to do something for him. He will only end up losing FP on you as well. The only way you or him can get it up is to send gifts to your friends. Each item you send as a gift from the shop that is worth 1,000 coins, it will increase your FP with that friend by 10. Any item sent for less than 1,000 won't have any effect. Also, you can only increase your FP to your friend by a maximum of 10 per day. Take note that if you received an item worth 1,000 from the shop and you "re-gift" it, it won't be counted as gifting something worth 1,000 since the resale price (which becomes the reference price of the gift) is much much lower.
By the way, "asking" help from a friend does not require that they accept it too. Just like in Restaurant City, it's only a concept in the game and the accepting is done automatically.
If that is the only u
se of FP, you may think you would want to maximize your friends' help and ensure that you get your full harvest early on in the game. It turns out being friendly (and generous) can have long-term benefits. If you have at least 15 friends playing CS, you can get yourself a dog if you can get your FP with each of them up to 100. That's basically spending 3,000 coins to each of them (30 FP total, since an amount less than 1,000 gets you nowhere), for a total of 45,000 coins. If you think that's a steep price for getting a pet, you can view that dog as an investment, since it can prevent others from stealing from you. Saves you a lot of FPs and harvest in the long run, not to mention time spent on assigning plots to friends.
That's quite a lot for a post already. Back to the farm and remember what it's all about: having fun!
Leveling up the menu you serve in your Restaurant is crucial in maximizing the time you spend progressing in the game, because it affects your gourmet points. Gourmet points (GPs) are earned everytime you served a successful order (meaning, the customer doesn't get up before he gets served because it took you a great deal of time to serve him). A certain number of GPs is needed to level up, which could mean an expansion of your restaurant or option to hire additional employees. A high-level menu (at least level 7, I think), gets you more GPs per serving, up to 2.8 GPs. Hence, you could be leveling up almost as much as 3x faster with a level 7 or higher menu. With a decent popularity (around 30.0), a few hours online already gives you quite an earnings and progress in leveling.
1. Choose a dish and stick with it. Personally, I stick with a dish up to level 10, since it also gives a reward item that you can display in your resto. At least one level 10 dish gives you a reward, which you can upgrade when you level up a total of 5 dishes. A total of 20 dishes at level 10 gives you the rank of a Gourmet Chef. Don't just level up a dish because you happen to have the ingredients at that time. You might need that ingredient to trade so you can level up your primary dishes. Concentrate on getting one dish from each category to a high level first.
4. Dishes that require one of each ingredient may make life easier for you, rather than leveling up dishes that require two (even three!) of the same ingredients. Randomness will come into play so that you get an average number of each items. But of course, if it's your goal to level up a cheese board dessert requiring 3 cheeses per level, be my guest :)
Resto City made an update lately. A new feature allows you to broadcast to your friends at least three ingredients you need, so they can be guided on what to trade you. That also means a complete list of ingredients is now more readily available. I'll update on that next time when the servers are up.
That's it for now. Happy playing!
I tried Restaurant City out of curiosity and simply because I haven't been playing any other game at the moment. It's a SIMs-type game that you can access through Facebook. The concept of the game is to manage a restaurant by hiring employees, learning menus, and improving the overall look and feel of your restaurant by buying new equipment such as tables, chairs, etc. The game is still in beta, but I have to say I am loving it. For the totally new to the game, here's a quick rundown of the main features of the game:
That's it for now. I am also just starting to understand the game, so I will be sharing my experiences on this game as I move on. I will also devote a post for a specific area of RC.
