In the latest viral simulator, fans of trading card games can now run their own local game store in TCG Card Shop Simulator. The release offers fantastic immersion, allowing you to organize shelves and sell booster packs to make as much money as possible. However, this early access game can be a bit light on the instructions, leading to easy misunderstandings, missed opportunities, and wasted cash.
Once you get started, there are several basic features that might be missed, as well as other tips and tricks that improve the enjoyment of the game. Here are some beginner tips to make the game easier, and help you pace out your business without wasting too much money early on. If you're a new player just starting out, there's plenty of mistakes to avoid when diving in for the first time.
10 Lower Your Light Bill
Let Sunlight Do The Work
Next to the door of your shop is a light switch, which is surprisingly easy to miss. I managed to get through an entire week after opening my shop before I realized I could have turned the lights on! However, turning the lights on runs up your electricity bill, so make sure to only turn them on after 4:00-5:00PM or so.
There’s a huge variety of simulation games available that cover all types of genres, and this set of time focuses on the most relaxing among them.
Keep in mind that, although the clock stops at 9:00PM, the timer keeps running, so any late-night tasks requiring light will still count towards your electricity bill. Instead of staying late to open packs, start the next day and do any store maintenance, orders, and organizing under the light of the rising sun.
9 Spraying Stinky Customers
Put The Cleanser To Use, Early
If you're like me, you likely unlocked the Cleanser product and immediately stocked it from the box to the shelf. Due to its high cost and low amount per delivery, I rarely had any leftovers to store. You'll also see there are Auto Scent machines, so many players start to save up to purchase one to deodorize those stinky, review-crashing customers.
However, you can actually pick up a Cleanser off the shelf or box and spray smelly customers directly. With keyboard and mouse, hit R to pull up the Cleanser and left-click to spray. I didn't know this for hours, and my poor reviews tanked until I could eventually purchase an Auto Scent machine. Don't be like me, just spray the stink away!
8 Advanced Stink Removal
Corralling Customers For Convenience
Once you purchase an Auto Scent machine, you'll likely place one near your door to catch the smelly customers before they hardly make it into the store. However, despite their best efforts, the machines can sometimes miss customers if they take just the right angle when coming through the door. Thanks to a tip from 2CentsPlus in the video above, there's a pretty foolproof plan to fix this.
To lower the chances of a stinker slipping by, you can guide customers through a hall-like entryway by using shelves and furniture to create a narrow walkway. At the end of the walkway, place at least two Auto Scent machines on each side to spray customers as they pass through. While there may still be one or two slipping past during a perfect storm of customers, you'll likely rarely have to manually intervene to clean up the clientele.
7 Buying in Bulk Doesn't Save Bucks
Stick With Smaller Orders Until The Cash Is Flowing
Despite what common sense would say, purchasing the license to order larger amounts of products does not reduce the individual cost of those items. A box of eight cleansers is priced at the same cost-per-item as the box of sixteen cleansers, for example.
There are
delivery fees
that apply to orders, and the
fee will increase
with more items in your cart. This does mean a bulk purchase could have a lower fee than smaller boxes, but
delivery fees are mostly negligible
and are around $10 or less.
While it may seem more convenient to order and store more, you'll really want to save your money for larger purchases or new items first. Once you've got a larger fund and can afford employees to help you restock, it's then more worth purchasing the bulk licenses.
6 You Have To Pay More When Hiring Employees
Don't Fire Unless You're Going Under
Hiring your first employee is unlocked after reaching level 10, and it seems like a pretty great investment. I saved up to hire Zackery as the processing fee was $500, which wasn't exactly cheap! However, I was personally dissatisfied with his work speed, and checking out customers was atrociously slow. Unfortunately, I made the misguided decision to fire him as I was simply outpacing him at restocking and running the cash register.
Free-to-play games incentivize logging in every day and reward repetitive daily activities. Daily attendance turns playing games into going to work.
What I didn't think of, though, was that the processing fee alone was over a week's worth of paychecks for him. I could have easily kept Zack on with very little money lost, and eventually he would have been worth the investment. Instead, I lost out on half a grand, and now have to pay that again to get the slowpoke back. Don't fire an employee unless you're going to go bankrupt, which is nearly impossible to do because of a small $50 charge per day.
5 Storing Bundled Boxes at the Workbench
Not Just For Packaging
The Workbench is one of the most underutilized features of the game. I, myself, ignored it for quite a while due to the upfront cost of the bench, at a whopping $1000! However, not only can you use the workbench to repackage cards into bundles to resell your cheap cards, but you can also store the bundled boxes directly on the bench.
You can easily put up to 21 boxes of bundled cards on the bench, preventing you from taking up precious space on storage racks. Whenever your shelves are empty, all you have to do is walk over and restock from the bench itself. However, it does not seem like restocking employees are able to access boxes from the Workbench, so you'll have to restock those products yourself.
4 Only Expand When You Need The Space
Keep Just Enough Room For Activities
While it might be tempting to start purchasing expansions for your shop's footprint, it's advised to hold off until you actually need the floor space. Despite the expansions not being very expensive, each increase in shop size raises your daily rent.
Frankly, your starter store can hold a lot more furniture than you'd think, and with careful placement, you're not likely to run out of space any time soon. However, if you want to prioritize playing tables for customers to play matches at, you'll possibly need to expand earlier.
3 Card Displays Are Not Worth It
Save Your Money Until You're Ready To Show Off
Once you start opening packs, you'll begin to grow your card collection and potentially pull very expensive cards. While some players may want to hold onto these, many will instead prefer to sell these cards and grow their store. This can be done by purchasing a Card Table, where you can store individual cards and list them for sale.
I also saw the Card Display and mistakenly assumed it was a vertical, more attractive version of the Card Table. With very little money, I went ahead and purchased one with the intention of listing more cards for sale. However, Card Displays are just that: displays. You can put your personal collection of cards into these furniture pieces, but you cannot sell cards from them.
While you
can sell furniture back
, you only get
half of the value refunded.
Early on, be very careful about what you purchase!
While this is no big deal later on, and many players actively want to display their prized cards, I didn't have the cash to spare and regretted my decision immediately. Make sure you wait until you have cards worth displaying before buying this item.
2 Open Card Packs
Open, Sell, Repeat
Despite it being in the name, it's surprisingly easy to forget that this game is truly a Trading Card Game simulator, including opening packs, finding foil cards, and selling singles to customers. While consistent stock on your shelves is always a primary moneymaker, don't forget to open packs to really find the expensive cards.
Using the Workbench, you can repackage any basic cards back into boxes to sell again, so you don't have to worry about your binder becoming flooded with too many cheap cards. With luck, you can even find cards valued at over $10,000, so keep looking!
1 Just Have Fun
Take Your Time & Enjoy The Game
While this may sound cliché, it's surprisingly easy to get caught up in the hustle of searching for the next, most expensive card. While opening packs and growing your collection is fun, don't spend all day opening card packs. Take your time to rearrange your furniture, organize your stock, and checkout customers.
If you're feeling burnt-out, try rearranging your store or focusing on another mechanic you normally don't, such as card tournaments. You could also consider
trying out some new mods
to mix things up!
If you only focus on automating your store, you're missing out on the journey. While hunting for the rarest foils and first editions is still fun and exciting, it's very easy to burn out and find the game stressful due to rushing. Take your time and enjoy all that TCG Card Shop Simulator has to offer!
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