A quick guide on how to survive your first 10 days as a Don. Please take note that this guide and gameplay was made on April 24, 2023. I most likely won’t update this guide as it is only for the demo of the game.
THE BEST START
DO NOT START THE GAME LIKE THIS. Why? Starting the game with these cards means you’ll have 1 random chef, 1 random waiter, and 2 random gangsters. Oh, did I forget to mention you also don’t get a free oven that costs 1000 clean cash aside from being rare to draw? You’ll also get 3 starting customers from the tutorial, so that’s definitely something! Also, from my experience, GOLDEN CARDS ARE ONLY 1 USE, or that they are just that rare.
So, what do you do?
Go to settings, then check the “Replay Tutorial” option.
You might have to do this every run. But it’s worth it. Having the best of starts is one of the perks you’ll get from doing this. How does it give the best start? Well, first of all, you get to choose all your people, get a free oven, and finish 3 customers (earning you some decent cash) early on, in fact way too early that the game hasn’t actually started. How???
Let’s start by playing. This will be the first scene you’ll see.
After some time, you’ll be getting your clean and dirty cash. Then, you’ll be forced to buy the oven and table. After this is where things will start to be different. You’ll be forced to hire a waiter, so we do just that. Due to the current state of the game, most customers will favor sitting furthest from the waiters, losing you customers more often than not. Although Darrel (Persuader) and Caldwell (Pretty Eyes) look tempting, you must absolutely only take in Speedy waiters! John and Bob are your friends!
B-b-but the three choices from the card doesn’t have them? No problems! Just close the selection menu and click on the waiter card again to re-roll the choices!
After this, you’ll be forced to hire a cook. And again, who’s the best cook you ask? That depends, but at the very least you’ll need both of these guys:
If you were to ask me, I’d start off with Terry. He’ll give you VIP customers, meaning more clean cash! Only get 1 Terry, then the rest should be Neds.
After this, you’ll be forced to discard a cook card since you don’t have enough cash anyways. Then we’ll be moving on to hiring 2 gangsters. You’ll only ever have to look at two Ls, Brother B Luigi & Leon. You can pick two of someone or one of each.
These two are Lucky Boys, and lucky boys will give you high success chance in criminal activities, meaning less chance to add on to crime rate.
You’ll then be forced to rob a store with these two dweebs, earning you some dirty cash. And now, for the most important part of the tutorial, after clicking on “Advertising on Newspaper”, you’ll start to get customers.
DO NOT SKIP THE DIALOGUES. DON’T EVEN PROGRESS IT. JUST KEEP IT AS IT IS UNTIL ALL 3 OF YOUR FIRST CUSTOMERS HAVE PAYED UP!
You should have around near 800 or even more clean cash to start with! That concludes our start. You can finish the dialogues now and start with the game.
THE GAMEPLAY
The first day is usually easy. You’ll never be able to hire extra cooks on this day, but you might be able to max out the tables, waiters, and gangsters already. The days that follow up are the tricky ones. That’s because that’s where the RNG starts to turn. Each day will have a random set of few cards, don’t expect to draw something different if you’ve been discarding a lot for that day. And because we know that there’s only a few cards per day, that’s where we’ll base our tactics from.
The red event cards are the only actual enemies here, as you cannot discard them unless you use a “Avoid Random Event” card. As much as possible we will want to avoid these, and to do that we must remember which cards in the deck have bells. By knowing this, we can avoid getting bells and activating the red event cards by not discarding or using the cards with bells as much as possible. Why? From my experience, you can only have one red event card in your hand at once. So, if we keep the cards with the bells in our hands then that means we won’t be drawing them, meaning we can make it impossible to activate the red event cards! Also I forgot to say, discarding any card (if I recall correctly) will give you 15 dirty cash, meaning you can just keep discarding cards and easily gain dirty cash! DISCARD IS THE GAMEPLAY!
As much as possible, NEVER discard the following unless absolutely needed:
“Rob The Store” has too low of a payout and will be the one to actually give you the most bells if you don’t keep it in your hand.
“Hire Gangsters” you’ll want to max out your gangsters (5) as quick as possible so as to remove it from the deck.
“Buy xxxxx” These are straightforward upgrades to making clean cash, and are pretty cheap so get them ASAP and avoid discarding it so as to not get bells. (Don’t worry, if you accidentally discarded them you can still draw them since they’ll just be in that day’s deck.)
Note: If you have a red event card that’s 1 bell away from activating, absolutely do not discard any card with a bell until you get to use a “Avoid Random Event” card unless the red event card is just a “Quarantine” or “Checkout Thief” card. These are the only 2 cards that are acceptable to be activated. Any other events will cripple you.
Yes. These are the only cards. 1 of these, you’ll always see in a day’s deck. It will never be not there. That is “Steal a Car”, the absolute savior of your run. Paired with a Lucky Boy, you’ll be like CJ from Grove Street, effortlessly acquiring cars as if you owned them in the first place. You’ll most likely have 95% success rate with this card (I made an educated guess that Lucky Boy gives +5% chance).
For the other 3 cards, These are the miracle cards that will help you become the Don Discarde. These 3 cards will lower your crime rate on success. So pray that you get at least one of these cards somewhere on your 3rd-5th day. You’ll most likely not get to day 6 without doing one of these. In terms of priority, always go for “Scare the Cop”. Only go for “Bribing the Police Officer” if you don’t have the scare. “Get Out of Prison” is your last resort, only take this if your crime rate is really on the dangerous side.
So, what do you do with the other criminal activity cards? DISCARD THEM. They belong in the trash. Do not forget to keep “Rob The Store” in your hand though, you wouldn’t want bells in your reds would ya?
Now that we’ve handled all the dirty stuff, you’ll want to know how to progress with the clean stuff. Its’s very easy, honestly.
1) Have 3 Tables
2) Have 2 Waiters
3) Have 4 Tables
4) Have 3 Waiters
5) Have 2-3 Cooks
6) Have 5 Tables
7) Have 4-5 Waiters
8) Have 3 Cooks
9) Have 5 Waiters
10) Upgrade Tables
11) Buying Stuff that unlocks more expensive dishes take priority over table upgrading, otherwise make sure to max out the numbers first.
Now, most of the time you don’t actually have to follow the order of getting waiters/cooks. In most of my runs, in day 1, I already max out tables and waiters, while still only having 1 cook. Although it’s not the most efficient, it also means that I only have to max out the cooks on the next day.
you’ll be able to adjust how much the laundry rate is. This part is pretty easy to be honest. Just look at your current crime rate and dirty cash. If you have:
a) High crime rate — Lower your laundry rate to something like 20-50%.
b) Low crime rate, high dirty cash — Bring your laundry rate to as much as 200%, depending on how much dirty cash you have.
if you at least have 2-3 cooks, use an “Advertising on Newspaper” card or any other card that instantly brings in customers. Although there are many of these cards, I only recommend the newspaper or radio, as you’ll already get enough customers for your 5 tables restaurant to handle.
If I’ve missed something, then check out the recording of my gameplay where I apply most of this knowledge, and show some mistakes made along the way (which was corrected and is probably included in the guide). It also includes a bonus exploit that makes the tutorial even more of a beast than I make it out to be. And with that, I officially name you a Don Discarde, you should now be able to discard as if you were breathing!
GAMEPLAY AND EXPLOIT
Thanks to Paper-sama#0104 for his great guide, all credit to his effort. you can also read the original guide from Steam Community. enjoy the game.
