I seem to have hit a wall...? I'm in the second brewery, with maxed out but original staff and maxed out equipment. My water's been cut in half. The only way for me to get out is to create 100 units of 1600 quality, but I can't currently hit either of those and the recipe required has no room for modifiers. If I train new staff now in the hopes of getting their bonuses, won't it take ages to level them up high enough to hit the above goals?
Spoiler How many are you making with that quality, though? The challenge was asking for over 1800 for me, which was the ridiculous part in my eyes. I could understand 500ish at that quality, but 1800? Doesn't seem realistic. Also, I figured out the double Gary thing after I posted, I couldn't get Gary+ in the game I had going, though.
Spoiler I'm able to create 1811 units with 8543 quality if I put all 40 craft points in quantity. You will probably need the top of the line equipment you get when you save the other guy though... @P00K: My experience with new staff is that the bonuses they give are so good, you get better quality/quantity brews even if your old staff had higher stats. Not sure if that's still the case when you maxed them out, but either way it shouldn't take too long to get better results with new staff. I think the dev mentioned somewhere you won't be able to complete the game using the original guys, as their bonuses are simply not good enough..
God Dam Der Vaterland..... Can I just say, awesome game, I'm addicted. I work for a brewery and I also own my own, and I love all the brewing puns you have included. I am stuck though, I cannot make 1 bloody cent at Der Vaterland, meaning the story just stops. I understand the seasons changing and everything and I have had every style lined up ready to go, but when I try and sell there, to be competitive and to get people to buy it, I have to sell it for a negative amount, meaning I'm going backwards. Currently 13k in the hole with them and I am scared to try anything else. Any help people? Is it a glitch? The only beer I have made money on was a german pilsner, and that made me 172 bucks.... My only other criticism is that the events give you no where near enough time to ever have beer ready for them before they close, the time frame NEEDS to be doubled if not trippled. I have missed nearly every timed event because of this, which pisses me off and makes the game sort of boring. More events that give you enough time to actually make the beer would keep the interest in this game for much longer. Any help would be appreciated.
Hello people! I'm kind of stuck with that Great White Ale event... People say I need to unlock a recipe from the Maneater event. Problem is, how do I get this Maneater event anyway? Does it have any unlock condition?
Wow, can't believe I haven't checked in for a week, sorry for the delay! The vital attributes for each job type are highlighted yellow during Step 2 of the Brew Menu, Job Assignment. If you tap on a job at the left (or start dragging it to assign it), the highlights on the right side will change. See below: The Mashing and Boiling Job is selected, and Intelligence and Dexterity are highlighted. So you should be able to see which job requires which in game, but just in case, here's the complete list of vital stats for the different jobs: Cleaning: Patience Mashing and Boiling: Intelligence and Dexterity Fermenting: Intelligence and Patience Packaging: Dexterity
Thanks for playing! And congrats on the great brewing too. What type of device and operating system are you playing with? Analytics doesn't reliably provide crash reports unfortunately, though it does provide other minor errors. If I know what operating system you're using I may be able to have you check for additional crash reports for me, I'd appreciate it! Definitely not intended, and an annoying bug. It's fixed in the next version but we're still testing that update. Look for it in a couple weeks. Sorry!
Hey aspeters, great questions! Thanks for playing. Responses below. A higher quality does indeed fetch a higher price (markup, specifically). When evaluating beers, customers check on a few factors, namely (in order of importance): Quality, Preferred Style Match, Markup. As far as Markup is concerned, customers react in varying degrees of severity to it (depending on the Marketplace -- customers at Haveford Downs don't care about markup as much as customers at Discount Mart do), but I would be surprised if your beer matched preferred Style, was substantially higher Quality, had only slightly higher markup, and was often rejected for a competitor beer. Could it be that there was more than one competitor and you didn't beat all of their Markups? Or perhaps the competitors changed midway through the sale and made that comment seem out of place upon later examination. See above for possible reasons why the lower markup and better quality may be losing out (more competitors than one, changing competitors, not matching preferred Style). I don't think it is important to know how the competitor is doing, though I do suppose it could be helpful in learning what works and what doesn't at that Marketplace -- but that's what you're supposed to figure out via experimentation with sales. Markup is the only thing Customers care about, not starting cost. In fact, the competitors don't even have a starting cost in the code, they only have a Markup. See here for more info on why that is. I thought about mini games but ultimately rejected the notion because I wanted to keep the game about business management. I consider tapping the mice to be a mini-mini game. I also manage sales and research during the brew process, personally. And you should be able to listen to your own music! I couldn't play without it. Just turn off the in-game music via Menu > Options > Music Volume. The game doesn't require exclusive audio from the device, so if you can't play your Music app or Spotify etc, that would be a bug. Please let me know. I agree, it is unrealistic. I originally planned on the game lasting 30 Years but when the story grew and the scope of the game increased with it, I didn't really want to go back and mess with the pacing which I was otherwise very happy with. You'll have a much shorter career the 2nd time around, I promise! Yikes! I just realized that recipe has 9 ingredients. You should be able to use a Doppelgänger Construct there -- I'll modify that Recipe in the next update, sorry! For now, hiring employees with decent Craft is your best bet -- or leveling up the Craft on others.
When you tap on a New Game Button in the title screen, it should prompt you to ask whether you want to start a regular new game or a New Game +, like this: If it doesn't, please email me at [email protected] as it could be a bug. Thanks!
No, each job requires different attributes. Please see this post for details. What are you stuck with specifically? Do you not have high enough Yield, or are you having trouble with the Quality?
Thank you! Very happy you enjoyed it. We might have to explore different packaging options in the sequel. I don't know if that would overcomplicate things or not -- I had toyed with the idea of a broker in Fiz who would (for a fee) sell beer on your behalf but ultimately found it too complicated. Nothing is off the table for the sequel though -- if we make one! Thanks! He is an ass, and isn't very redeemable. Spoiler But you might be surprised with him if you do end up saving him in the end. Try it out in NG+! Spoiler Good for you. >:] It's funny, 2 out of 3 people (with analytics enabled) choose to save him -- I had expected it to be the other way around. I don't save him either. I do suggest doing the opposite of your first choice in the 2nd playthrough though, if you play through again.
No -- the cost per unit is calculated without any sales knowledge, because any split batch that has been sold is a separate batch as far as the game is concerned. You may have seen the cost per unit change when you split a batch into different quantities, but that's because the quantity of Units is different, and that's the number used as the divisor in that calculation, so changing it will change the result. Keep in mind also that the Stock Fee applies each time as well, so if you have a 100 Unit batch split into 2 50 Unit batches, the cost per unit will be higher in the 50 Unit batches than it was in the 100 Unit batch because you're paying double the Stock Fee. That is a bug, sorry! It's fixed in the next update but we're still testing it, and I've been traveling for the holidays. Expect the next update no later than 2 weeks.
That is too difficult, I'll look into that as a bug. It should always be at least possible (if not always probable) that you can complete an Event in your current playthrough. Email me at [email protected] and I'll send you a promo code to retry that event with more realistic requirements. Maybe more info than you like, but the randomly assigned events, when opened, set their requirements based on your brewing history. Your best 6 batches are selected, with the bottom and top ones eliminated, and then the remaining 4 averaged to determine a base requirement value. That value is then multiplied by a multiplier that is defined per the Event. The idea of the system is that the requirements will be attainable, but challenging. A Beery Good Wedding is one of the more difficult ones because its multipliers are fairly high. Its Yield multiplier is 1, so it will always require the average Yield of your highest yielding batches. The quality multiplier is randomly selected as a number between .75 and 1.1, and in your case I suspect it landed closer to the 1.1. In that case, the Event would probably be too hard to complete in a New Game +, because there are enough outliers in the batch data to keep your average Yield and average Quality very high. Normally that isn't the case in a regular game. I'll see about adding a better check for making sure the selected Yield and Quality are fair. Perhaps I'll eliminate batches that lie outside standard deviation for the data set when determining the base requirement values. In the mean time to email me for a code if you want to try the Event again (or just have the reward for that event)!
It might take a little while to level them up, but you're going to have to do it because all employees have a limit as to how much they can grow (due to the level cap), and the original employees are most limited because they begin at level 1 with low values for the attributes. That said, you won't have to level them up all the way to pass that event. They start with higher attributes than the other employees start with, so you should be able to catch back up relatively quickly. Employee Special Abilities improve with the newer Employees as well, and that will aid you greatly. Check out Shiki Katagari for her Yield bonus to help pass the Great White Ale challenge. Hope that helps!
Thanks! Glad you enjoy it. Ouch, $13K in the hole is a tough one to climb out of, but I can help. Der Vaterland is perhaps the toughest marketplace in the game. Here are some tips: Spoiler I think the easiest way to make profit there is to ignore most of the changing seasons, and just pick one season and sell for it. The easiest one is probably the Winter season, because it lasts the longest. Spend the rest of the year brewing the types of beer popular for the Winter season. Brew at least one of each, and hold them in storage until Winter starts. Then, whichever customer preferred style is missing from the competitor's list, sell that style batch you have in storage first, because it will be the most likely to succeed. Der Vaterland punishes you if you try and make a large profit on each batch, so you have to go slowly. Aim for 600-900 profit per sale, sometimes lower if your Quality is getting matched or beaten by the competitors. After that batch sells out, sell the next best one, and repeat until the Winter season ends. Then keep replenishing your storage stock for the upcoming Winter season. You aren't meant to always be able to finish the randomly assigned Events, but it definitely shouldn't be so hard that you miss most of them. I'll look into adding more time to them.
You're close... Spoiler There is no Maneater Event -- Maneater is the name of the Recipe for the beer required by the captain for the Great White Ale event.
Thanks, I'm way beyond 4000 quality now, that stuff is child's play Just wondering, were you ever able to top 10000 quality in your testing? I think I can reach 10000 with a bit more leveling of my main character but going beyond that seems hard, if not impossible. I'm playing on an iPhone 5 with iOS 7.0.4, do let me know if I can help you out in any way with crash reports, I would be happy to. The bug with the main characters was not much of a problem, I figured it out pretty quickly and just started another NG+. Turns out you can make enough profit to keep one maxed out employee (with salary) when you start a NG+, if you're a bit careful at the start. One minor suggestion, I went through the main story rather fast in NG+, and would like to finish all events to get the last one or two achievements I need. However, they don't happen all that often so I'm more or less waiting for time to pass with my maxed out employees, loads of $ and maxed out equipment. Maybe the frequency of events could be raised once you have completed the main story? Just a thought. Thanks again for the great game, do let me know if I can help.
Question 2! Thanks for the help! I managed to surpass the water shortage requirement by levelin up my lumberjack and happened to hit a 1600 batch. It took a while but in the meantime I sold a hell of a lot of wit to Flynn's place! So here's the part I'm stuck on and it's an old quest, but the Victor and the VSHC party mission is killing me! It appears to want a 600 batch on the nose. I've made the Russian imperial with a quality of 1000 and was rejected. I tried my IPA that had a limit of 600 on it also with no luck. I tried a ton of stinky cheese and still couldn't hit 600 on the nose. Is there some obvious thing I'm missing? All of what I tried had enough quantity and at least 600 quality. The IPA was questionable but the only that I get to 600. Technically it's has a higher abv. Thanks
This is a really fun game and I spent about 10 hours continuously playing it yesterday. Its probably one of my late picks for GOTY for last year, and I think its as good as any of Kairosoft's management games (I prefer it to gamedevstory). That said, its a bit rough around the edges and there quite a few changes that would improve it imo. These basically revolve around the way the difficulty ramps up, and the amount of micromanagement the player has to do. I think the difficulty related issues are the most major problems, and correcting these would improve the game drastically: 1) The start of the game is just too hard; it is very difficult to earn money unless you know what you're doing. Specifically, its easy to fall into a trap where you can't afford to pay employees which causes them to leave. This is the reason why the game was scored so badly by pocketgamer, and I was inclined to agree when I first started playing. I actually deleted my save game out of frustration around 20 minutes in and restarted, and it was a lot easier on the 2nd attempt since I knew what I was doing. Basically, it should be a lot easier to get money during the first 10 minutes or so of play, because a lot of people will just get frustrated and delete the game. I was lucky that I chose to restart rather than deleting, or I'd have missed out on a great game. 2) While the start of the game is too hard, I think the endgame is too easy and drags on a bit long. Longer games aren't necessarily better, and once the player has fully grasped the game mechanics there is no reason for the game to outstay its welcome. I would probably (e.g.) reduce the number of stores you have to compete in during the 'beat BlauBlau' challenge from 4 down to 2, and maybe also reduce the length of time it gets to complete the Fiz-related challenges. Making the player earn 50,000 in one marketplace in the endgame is dull - most people will have understood the mechanics by then, so it just reduces to making the same beer 6-7 times in a row and waiting. That isn't much fun in my opinion. 3) The markup vs price issue is weird and counterintuitive as others have said. While I agree that this can just be considered a game mechanic, there is no way for the player to know that he is competing with competitors based on markup rather than price (I only found out by reading your post earlier in this thread). Having more ingame information here would help a lot, because at the moment until you discover that only markup matters, it feels almost random whether a batch will sell or not. ----- Aside from these dificulty-related issues, I think there are several micromanagement issues in the game which are frustrating and pointless rather than fun: 1) There shouldn't be a limit on the number of batches you can sell in a market place. This leads to too much boring micromanagement; if I get a yield of 600, then I have to sell the first 250, then store the other 350 and wait till the sale is finished, then go back and sell 250 more, wait for the sale to be finished, then sell the last 100. This is tedious. 2) There are too many marketplaces imo, reducing them by half wouldn't hurt 3) The player shouldn't feel so abandoned during the 'water shortage' challenge. Its meant to last for 4 years, but I lost track of time and thought the game had forgotten about it and wasn't ever going to restore my supply. Maybe put a timer in the corner saying how long is left (and have the sailor appear faster…) 4) More automation would be nice; there is a "Reassign employees to the same jobs as before" button, but why isn't there a "reassign craft points the same way as before" option? Even better; allow the player to have 'favourite' recipes which consist of a type of beer, an employee/job assignment, and a craft point assignment, and be able to brew these with one button press. Again, this would reduce the amount of micromanagement. 5) Related to the above, the "Reassign employees to the same jobs" button should really be in the game from the beginning. Yes, the way its introduced is clever but by that time you have already frustrated the player for 10 minutes by making them perform a menial task over and over. First impressions count; imo a well-designed game shouldn't ever force the player to do boring things because of interface issues. 6) Fiz uses the Kairosoft game mechanic where new employees are universally better than old ones, no matter how much you have upgraded the old ones. This may just be my personal taste but I don't like it - it stops people getting attached to their employees, and its a shame having to replace someone you 'liked' just to minimax things. I would allow old employees to be more upgradable so they can compete with unlocked ones; e.g., remove the level cap, and allow the player to change the bonus skill of each employee ("+50% yield" etc). But again, Kairosoft do things your way and people don't seem to mind, so maybe its just me. 7) The 'squash the mice' mini game is silly, and not fun. I think it makes the game look bad initially because its like you're admitting that the brewing process is so boring that the player needs something else to occupy them during it. Thankfully this issue disappears by the mid game since there is so much to do that you will be deep inside the menus planing your next batch while the current one is brewing. But I think the early-game solution is to either give the player more to do, or reduce the amount of real-time it takes to brew a batch, rather than having the unrelated mice game. Also, having the mice be a useful source of income at the start of the game seems to be an admission that the beginning is too difficult/unbalanced. I would remove the mice, and make it easier to get money from brewing beer, from the outset. 8) If the game really must have permanently missable events, then having a timer in the corner counting down the deadline to each open event would cause them to be less frustrating, since it protects the player from accidentally missing them. I missed too many events at the start because it wasn't clear exactly when they finished; some seemed like they were permanent, but ended up closing unexpectedly 9) Having permanently missable challenges come up during the 'water shortage' period is super-frustrating because I felt that I was missing out on them through no fault of my own Anyway despite all these issues the game is great, and I really enjoyed it. I hope you continue to make more games!
First off, thanks seandanger for participating here. That said, and I know others have said it, but I think that idea of "markup" is just broken. My yields are so high that sometimes I have to sell my beer for a few dollars or the markup skyrockets and nobody will buy it. I can have beer that's way beyond anyone else's quality, selling for peanuts, and they won't buy it because of the markup. I'm not sure what the mechanism was intended to do... stop me from making too much money with a 1000 unit yield? Personally I'd just as soon rip markup out completely and let things ride on quality x cost. Hasn't stopped me from playing overall, but I've put my iPad down in frustration more than once.
