TCG Card Shop Simulator – Getting Started Guide

Getting Started

General Tips

Card packs and boxes are useful for building your store early on:

• Selling card packs is a good way to earn experience.
• Selling boxes is a good source of money.
• Opening packs is a very good source of experience.
• Pack Opening Machines (POMs) can help with opening packs once they are unlocked.
• Play tables can provide useful experience as long as you maintain a good store rating. It takes some levels for this to scale up.
• Selling singles from opened packs can provide additional income, although higher-value cards may take some time to sell.
• Expensive cards with high grades can take even longer to sell and may require the Collector bonus.
• Keep up with daily costs and fees. If they are left unpaid for too long, the game will automatically pay two weeks’ worth at once.
• You do not need to expand the store immediately, although expansion can help.

Pricing

A common rule of thumb is to mark up items and cards by around 20% and round the prices. Markups between 10% and 20% can also work.

The markup percentage affects customers’ chances of buying an item.

Licenses, Expansions, and Rent

You do not need to rush to unlock additional licenses. If there is a particular selection of items you enjoy selling, you can continue focusing on those.

Store expansion can provide useful benefits:

• Expanding Shop A increases maximum store capacity and improves spawn timers for visits.
• Expanding both Shop A and Lot B increases possible customer wallet sizes.
• Additional space can provide more room and potentially allow you to sell more.

However, expansions also increase rent, so expand within your means.

Decorations and Store Capacity

Decorations are not purely cosmetic. Some decorations provide a hidden bonus to store capacity, allowing more customers to be in the store at the same time.

The following can contribute to this bonus:

• Statues
• Posters
• Signs
• Plants from the Deco app
• Some items from the DIY app
• Displayed cards

The decoration bonus provides up to 20 additional capacity.

Walls, floors, and ceiling options are cosmetic only and do not provide this capacity bonus.

Pack Opening Machines

Pack Opening Machines, commonly called POMs, come in three different sizes.

POMs can open packs for you while you handle other tasks, helping you grow your card collection.

However, you receive approximately 42.7% of the experience you would get from opening those packs yourself.

The value of the cards remains unchanged.

Spray Machines

Smelly customers can lower your store rating, so keeping an eye on them is important. Spray machines can help deal with them.

M100 Spray Machines

The initial M100 models require two machines placed side by side to clean a customer effectively.

• An M100 needs to spray a customer twice to remove the green cloud.
• All sprayers have a 3-second cooldown.
• Because the M100 takes too long to spray again during its cooldown, a second M100 is needed to provide the second spray.

G500 and T100 Spray Machines

The later G500 and T100 models only require one spray to clean a customer.

It is advisable to have two of these later models so they can cover each other during their cooldowns. A third one can also be placed nearby.

This is useful when multiple smelly customers enter the store, as one spray may not be enough to deal with all of them.

Setting Up a Tournament

You can set up a tournament after reaching level 25, which unlocks the tournament shelf in the DIY app.

Tournament Setup

1. Reach level 25 to unlock the tournament shelf.
2. Place the tournament shelf somewhere in your store.
3. Stock the shelf with the items and/or cards you want to offer as prizes. Both ungraded and graded cards can be used.
4. Designate the prizes on the tournament screen to determine the prize pool value.
5. Select the number of players.
6. Set the entry fee.

Tournaments can be a way to offload expensive cards or bulk boxes that are difficult to sell.

Prize Pool

The prize pool is the sum of the market value of all selected prize items.

Ideally, the prize pool should be at least 2000.01 due to the tournament’s calculations.

The base entry fee is calculated as:

Prize Pool ÷ Player Count

This is the break-even amount.

The higher the entry fee, the harder it can be to fill the tournament. Lower player counts can also make it more difficult to fill the tournament when the entry fee is 1,000 or more.

Tournament Shelf Requirements

The “Top 8” position actually covers 4th through 8th place. Therefore, whatever is assigned to this position needs a copy for each placement when stocking the tournament shelf.

Play Tables

You must have enough play tables for the selected number of players. Players cannot rotate or share play tables.

The maximum player count is 32, which requires 16 play tables.

The play tables must also be labeled before the tournament starts. Otherwise, issues can occur and customers may complain.

To label a play table, interact with it after placing it. This brings up the numbering screen instead of the event screen.

Starting the Tournament

The tournament will start at the beginning of the next day after it fills up.

It will not actually start until you open the store for that day. Until then, the tournament crowd will mill around while the morning rush eventually disappears.