Main Game Guides/Walkthrough

This guide is intended to inform you of Areas that have major issues and how to bypass them, as well as prepare you for upcoming walls and inform you of very useful strategies.

Area 1 & general strategies
When you first start the game, you're in Area 1. The first thing you do is click the Chinese Laundry to generate cash. After you do that twice, you can use the cash to level it up, which will increase the cash earned per cycle. Keep repeating this, and you'll eventually get it to level 10, which increases the cash earned by a significant amount. You can then open other businesses, but Chinese Laundry is the best in the early game. Some level bonuses increase the profit of a different business instead of the same one, and occasionally all businesses (often on multiples of 1,000 and 1,111), and those are definitely worth looking out for. For example, the first level bonus for Saloon applies a +400% (x5) boost to the profit of Chinese Laundry.

After you earn enough cash, you will start to earn pioneers & settlers. Each one increases the profit you earn from all businesses and pioneers can be used to buy additional upgrades as well. The more money you get, the more pioneers & settlers you'll earn. In order to claim them and get their benefits, you must perform a reset or go west, which results in the loss of all businesses (including level bonuses), upgrades, and cash. If this is done at the right time, it is absolutely worth it, and required to progress in the game. For those who want to get into the specifics, the pioneers + settlers earned after a reset or go west is calculated using this formula: ((((net worth + current town earnings)/1 million)^0.4375) - (pioneers + settlers + total spent pioneers at the start of the town)) - 2 * (pioneers + settlers gained from resets in the current town), where net worth = ((pioneers + settlers + total spent pioneers at the start of the town)^(1/0.4375)) * 1 million, and is capped at 7.5 * (what the target was before any resets on that town) + 6.5 * (sum of pioneers, settlers, and total spent pioneers on the beginning of that town) - 2 * (sum of pioneers and settlers claimed from resets in the current town). Whether to go west as soon as you can or when pioneers & settlers are capped is up to you. The benefits of waiting until pioneers & settlers are capped is that you will get more patent cards, which will help prepare you for walls in later Areas, and will allow you to complete more deeds. The downside to this is that it can take a lot longer, but this can be mitigated by resetting when close to the target. My recommendation is to reset when close to the target and then go west when pioneers & settlers are capped. Using this strategy, it is very rarely difficult to reach the cap on any given town.

As you progress through the Area, you'll start getting access to pioneer outlaws. The first one gives you the option to buy all affordable cash upgrades and all pioneer upgrades that cost less than 0.1% of your pioneers, but all the others reduce the cost of a business, but also slow down its speed. This may or may not be worth it depending on the upcoming level bonuses and how fast that business increases in cost. A good strategy to use is to not hire pioneer outlaws for the most profitable business until everything is built up to where level bonuses & upgrades take a while to afford, then hire its pioneer outlaw (if both are affordable, hire the more expensive one unless it costs too large of a fraction of your pioneers), buy as many level bonuses for it as possible, then fire it. This strategy hugely speeds up progress in the later stages of this Area, and all other Areas for that matter. You can determine which business is the most profitable by hiring all pioneer outlaws that cost 888 ac and less before resetting or going west, or by seeing how much the hourly income increases by when getting an upgrade or level bonus for a specific business.

Pioneer upgrades also have a strategy. Sometimes, it is worth buying one even if the game asks if you are sure to do so. Specifically, large multipliers for all profits or your best business may be worth spending up to half of your pioneers on, and up to 25% for small multipliers.

After completing 60 towns on any Area, you will be able to proceed to the next one!

Area 2
Advancing to a new Area resets your pioneers & settlers in addition to everything going west would normally reset. However, you will keep your gold coins, event progress, patent cards, deeds, and family. Each Area has a different set of businesses, upgrades, and level bonuses.

The strategy that works in Area 1 works just as well in Area 2. However, unlike Area 1, this Area contains walls: a point in the game where progress is significantly slower than usual. You'll notice the first wall occur pretty quickly, just a few towns into the Area, and it stays like that for a while. Once you get the cash upgrade for $37 al that multiplies all profit by 3.33, the wall ends and progress speeds up for a while, especially if you use the outlaw strategy. Another brief wall occurs when you reach the ar pioneer range, but the outlaw strategy allows you to pass it easily.

Area 3
Areas starting with 3 are balanced around gathering lots of discount cards, which you can do by claiming the daily reward and buying the 150 gold coin unique patent card every day. If you haven't been doing these things and will continue to not do so, expect to struggle with the beginning of every Area starting now. The first level of the Barber Shop beyond the free one and the one offered in the cash upgrade menu costs $1.1 b before discount. If you haven't been putting much effort into collecting discount cards, you may only have 75% discount for this business, to give an example, which will make the cost $275 m, which can prove challenging to afford, especially if your profit bonuses from cards are not well above average. This is why it's so important to get as many discount cards as you can, as the starting cost of businesses increases with each Area.

The special thing about Area 3 is that it has far more level bonuses that boost the profit of a different business than Areas 1 and 2. To be more specific, the level bonuses after the initial few alternate between the same business, then a different one, then back to itself, then the next one after the previous different business, and so on. The pattern for all profit & speed level bonuses remain the same, however. This puts further emphasis on the outlaw strategy, because with this system for level bonuses, it is almost always harmful for that particular business to hire a pioneer outlaw, but it may be beneficial for another business, which could be your best one, hence why it's even more beneficial to use the strategy mentioned earlier.

Area 3 has a wall in the beginning, which lasts until around the $35 am all profit x4 cash upgrade if not slightly longer. After that, progress speeds up.

'''Important: it is imperative that you do not exceed 1 ba pioneers in this Area until at least town 55! This is because after 1 ba pioneers, it takes exponentially longer to complete each town (on average) compared to the last, due to an issue with the balancing. If you are at 1 ba pioneers or less by the time you reach town 55, it should not slow down so much to prevent you from completing town 60 in a reasonable amount of time.'''

'''If you think you can safely ignore this warning and beat this wall with the outlaw strategy and good patent card bonuses, you are wrong. Even players who use the outlaw strategy and have good bonuses from patent cards will get stuck at tens of bf pioneers, which is several letters under the highest amount you could get by going west when pioneers & settlers are capped on every town. Nobody can get to hundreds of bf pioneers or more without waiting for absurd amounts of time, farming loot bags for an absurd amount of time, spending absurd amounts of real money, or cheating, and it only gets worse the further beyond that you get.'''

Area 4
Area 4 uses a similar template as Area 3. Like Area 3, lots of level bonuses increase the profit of a different business. However, the third business in this Area (Livery) never boosts a different business or all businesses except for its first level bonus.

After a certain point, the first 5 businesses generally make little income compared to the last 5, which occurs slightly before the wall in this Area, starting in the ao pioneer range. It speeds up again at the as pioneer range. Once you get to the at pioneer range, progress speeds up massively and you should be able to go west at 5 (6 if you've bought the extra card per town from the shop) patent cards as soon as you have everything built up if you use the outlaw strategy. If you don't, it will take longer, but should still be pretty quick. Progress slows back down to normal once you reach the bd pioneer range, and maintains that steady pace until you finish the Area, if you haven't already done so before getting this far.

Area 5
Area 5 has a fast beginning due to the high speed multipliers from early level bonuses for the first 5 businesses. Other than 6,000 Blacksmith Shop in Area 3 and 2 Outhouse in Area 4, this is the first Area to have speed bonuses higher than 50%. Once you get to the aa or ab pioneer range, progress slows back down to normal. There are no walls in this Area, and progress is fairly consistent after the fast beginning.

Area 6
Area 6 has a somewhat fast beginning, but not very fast, despite there being large speed bonuses for early level bonuses like Area 5. This Area has 2 small walls, one is in the bn cash range and the other is in the by cash range. A bigger wall occurs at the cq cash range, and speeds back up at cs.

Area 7
Area 7 is a huge jump in difficulty from previous Areas, so if you had major trouble with the walls in Area 6, expect to struggle with almost the entirety of Area 7.

This Area has a very hard beginning for players who are behind on discount cards, since the initial cash upgrades to add levels for businesses don't add very many levels. Even after getting 100 of every business, which will be a massive struggle with a low discount, it will only get a little faster.

This Area has lower targets than previous Areas (relative to starting pioneers per town), and later towns that are a multiple of 6 give almost entirely settlers and barely any pioneers. This makes it understandable to not reset without going west, and to go west ASAP on those towns, since the settlers give a much smaller bonus than pioneers in later towns, but still count in the formula for the amount of pioneers + settlers gained after a go west, which can slow progress a bit in the next town. However, if you really want to hit the cap for pioneers & settlers on every town, you can still do so, but it will be harder. You should expect to see towns where the cap is well over 10 times the target.

The biggest wall in this Area is at the bb cash range, due to an upgrade gap of over 1,000x. A smaller wall exists at the al cash range.

If you manage to reach 1 aw pioneers before finishing the Area, the remaining towns will become faster & faster to complete, eventually getting to the point where you can go west for 5 (6) cards as soon as you have everything built up without using the outlaw strategy, basically the opposite as late Area 3. It will take a lot of patience in earlier towns to get this far before finishing the Area.

Area 8
The beginning of this Area is almost impossible to get past without a discount of at least 99.99% for the last 2 businesses, preferably more. Of course more discount will always help, and it's likely that this Area expects an even larger discount than that.

Like Area 7, this Area has increasing percentages of settlers compared to pioneers for later towns that are a multiple of 6 compared to earlier ones, and the targets (relative to starting pioneers) are also low. However, both of these are not as extreme as in Area 7.

Area 8 has a huge wall in the high ab to low ac pioneer range; by far the biggest wall in the game except the broken part of Area 3. This wall can potentially take weeks if not longer to get past if your card bonuses are behind.

After this wall, progress gets faster, but is still pretty slow compared to Areas 1-6. However, if you get to the aw to ax range of pioneers, progress speeds up a lot until you finish the Area. However, it doesn't get faster and faster, unlike Area 7. You're unlikely to reach a point where you can quickly go west for 5 (6) cards without a reset in the current town, but it's definitely much faster than earlier stages of the Area.

Area 9
Area 9 has a somewhat slow beginning, but then it speeds up a lot and tends to get faster as you progress up until a certain point, where it maintains a consistent, fast speed, until after the ba pioneer range, when it slows down slightly.

'''Important: This Area needs a special strategy to complete and is explained below. If you do not use it, the game will show you an error well before town 60!'''

Click the reset button right before you reach your target population.

'''When the "!" appears on the go west, click yes to confirm the reset.'''

'''Spend as many pioneers as you possibly can. You may need to buy the upgrades out of order and you may end up with 0.1% of the pioneers you had before or maybe even fewer.'''

'''Go west. Your target for the next town will not take the spent pioneers into consideration, so the target will be much lower than if you haven't spent them.'''

You will need to do this many times throughout the Area, not just a few times.