Punch Club 2: Fast Forward – Useful Tips and Tricks

Tips and Tricks for New Players

The game doesn’t tell you very obviously that you should hyperfocus. The first game did have a guidebook that suggested it, but the truth is if you don’t follow this advice… you’re gonna have a bad (or at least less good) time.

Hyperfocus on a Skill Path

Jack of all trades is a master of none, but often better than a master of one. Doesn’t apply here, be a master of one, it’s cool…

• Look far down the skill tree to see what makes the most sense to you.
• If you like dodging/blocking/high dmg/high dmg for sta efficiency etc, look at which skills work for that.
• Try going further down a skill path horizontally rather than getting all the skills vertically.

Hyperfocus on Stats

• Choose your primary stat you’re always working on
• Choose your secondary stat that you work on sometimes
• Choose a stat to ignore/only work on by accident

Stat Builds

(Order below is primary, secondary, ignored).

AGI - AGI, STA, STR
STR - STR, STA, AGI
STA - STA, STR, AGI

You might notice most of your opponents follow these patterns.

Starting Tips

Invest into a strength + endurance build. Only train these 2 stats.

Early game you cycle like this:

• Work for mafia – buy the healthy meal – eat the meal before 8:30 right after work – sleep. Repeat until you have atleast 4 meals as leftovers.
• Take every fight to keep him happy. The first few until the fat one are beatable on your first try.
• Now you have the opportunity for training/fight days. Train throughout the day until night – work at night – repeat.
• Or you work during the day for bobo and mafia at night until you get the promotion.
• Safe money by not buying candy or pet food and invest in the benchpress and treadmill.
• Get strong. Invest early into endurance-tree “double breath” and str. Path is up to you.
• Now you have stamina for strong punches.

General Tips

Bobo is your best friend, grind his work fast to get access to the Double Bobo sandwich in his store (requires 50 Reputation, i.e. 2 Promotions or 1 Promotion + Chip). 2 Double Bobos is about the same price as 2 Cooking Kits, but you save 3 hours of time; in this 3 hours, with the Work upgrades from Henry’s Tapes, you’ll complete a work action and make half your money back. At 75 Reputation with him (3 Promotions or 2 + Chip) he’ll also sell an Energy providing smoothie; by Act 2 you can make enough money to not need to sleep or cook again. The time saved allows for radical training and work.

If you’re at Hunger 0, and cannot proc one of the free food events (Mother/Henry/Apu), you probably have food in your inventory. Check your first tab in your character menu.

When planning routes: these roads look like roads, but do not function. Your character takes a longer path- so for example, if going from your house to Bobo’s, you’ll take a longer route wrapping around Henry’s House, or from the Lab to Bobo’s, you go the longer curved route to the north.

If you forget how to do a quest, go back to the questgiver. Usually you get an “About X…” prompt that reminds you where to go. Also check your quest tree (Inventory Tab 4) and click on the objective, sometimes it reminds you by listing a location.

Having trouble with happiness? Raise Rep at the Noodle Shop to 75. The shop then sells sugar sticks, relatively inexpensive, that raise happiness by 20. I believe Happiness starts 100/100, I don’t know if this max value changes at any point. If you want something quicker and cheaper, at the cost of HP/Energy, sparring Silver counts as a fight for happiness purposes, and removes Low Rage.

If an ability references targeting an enemy’s leg or arm, the ability will only proc if that enemy uses a kick or punch respectively (for moves like Grapple or Death Grip).

Time for “bar-filling” minigames (exercise, training, police study etc) is always spent in increments of 20. Keep an eye on this or you may miss fights because the game rolls over despite you stopping in time.

Always get your “social bar” full when doing activities like Police Work or Training (talking to colleagues or students). You gain a lot more progress overall this way. Refill it whenever it drops to yellow.

Important Note: Sleep at the end of Act 2/start of Act 3 til full energy. At a certain point around this time, major side quest progress occurs that you miss if you do not sleep.

In the beginning, it may seem overwhelming to work in the police department, or to train students at Mick’s. Sometimes it feels like there is not enough time. Well, the tip here is: if you keep the mood of your students or co-workers high, you are working more efficiently! So, the same shift you weren’t able to finish after deciding to “not waste time on raising the morale of the students” can be finished if you do just that!

Extreme Neurotraining Tip

It looks like the emojis in the extreme neurotraining machine are related to the debuff you get.

• Even though they say they all give 25 (brain lightning icon?), I’ve noticed that I can use the different levels of training consecutively without triggering the brain overload debuff.
• But if you use the same one repeatedly (even if it’s after 24h) then it starts triggering every time you use it.
• So the brain lightning icon seems like it might be a % chance to activate the debuff. I assume the same applies for the boosters.
• You can use different levels of extreme neurotraining over and over. sometimes the debuff triggers after one use, sometimes it triggers after 4.
• So with that in ming it can’t be some kind of invisible bar being filled, it must be a percentage.
• With that being said, it’s probably most worthwhile to use the highest level of extreme neurotraining to get the most exp for the 25% chance to trigger the debuff.