To do well at Fairy Godmother Tycoon, you'll have to master the concepts of supply and demand, and of buying low and selling high. The in-game tutorial does a pretty good job of explaining the basics of how to play, but if you want to win then check out our tips & tricks: The First Turn You start each level with a small amount of money. Before your first turn begins, here's how you should spend it: 1. Buy 15-20 of each available ingredient. 2. Upg…
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To do well at Fairy Godmother Tycoon, you’ll have to master the concepts of supply and demand, and of buying low and selling high. The in-game tutorial does a pretty good job of explaining the basics of how to play, but if you want to win then check out our tips & tricks:
The First Turn
You start each level with a small amount of money. Before your first turn begins, here’s how you should spend it:
1. Buy 15-20 of each available ingredient.
2. Upgrade your storefront once (This is the equivalent to free advertising, and also makes peasants slightly happier to be there).
3. Pay for the third tier of advertising: Flying Monkeys (Anything less won’t really get you the foot traffic you need).
4. Invest enough money in research so that you have between 10 and 15 days left to your next potion discovery.
Managing inventory
To avoid running out of potions during the day, keep a base level of ingredients stocked at all times. This should be around 20 during the early part of the game, but as you start to earn more customers and research new potions you’ll find that it needs to increase to 60, 80, 100 or more to keep up with demand.
Be smart about restocking. If each potion calls for 1 Fish Head and 2 Eyes of Newt and you estimate needing 20 potions in total, then you need to stock 20 Fish Heads and 40 Eyes of Newt. If you can only afford to buy 20 Eyes of Newt, there’s no point in buying more than 10 Fish Heads because the extras won’t be usable.
The exception to the above rules is when potions go on sale. When a potion’s price appears in green, it has been significantly reduced. You should stock up on reduced price potions whenever they appear – don’t worry about all the money you’re spending up front because you’ll make it back by not having to restock the potion (and pay full price) for several subsequent turns.
Maintaining a minimum stock of ingredients and splurging on reduced price ingredients when they pop up means you’ll hopefully never find yourself in the position of having to pay for ingredients when they’re overpriced (indicated by a price in red).
Research
Deciding how much to spend on research is a tricky balancing act. If competing stores discover a spell before you do, then they have a significant advantage because they can now provide a service to customers that you can’t. You’ll have to turn away customers who want the new potion, losing money and customer satisfaction in the process.
On the other hand, spending too much on research early on can quickly sink your business because it’s a daily expense that generates no daily income in return (unlike advertising, which brings new customers, or ingredients which create potions to sell).
It will typically take the competition 12-15 days to research a new spell, so adjust your spending to match that. Ideally you should spend between $20 to $50 per day on research – certainly no less, and perhaps slightly more only if you can afford it after you’ve spend a few turns establishing an ebb and flow of steady income.
Pricing
At the beginning of the game, it’s more important to make money to invest back into the business rather than making customers like you, so don’t lowball yourself when it comes to setting prices for potions. (At the same time, don’t make your prices so insultingly high that customers storm off in a huff.)
To that end, never sell potions for less than the minimum recommended price, which is found on the Pricing tab. When you scroll over a potion in the Pricing tab, the TIP window below will display the recommended market value as something like $40 – $70. This means to sell at $40 when demand is low, and crank the price up to a maximum of $70 when demand is high.
Lost sales and how to avoid them
Customers will storm out of your store for three possible reasons:
1.Your potions cost too much.
Solution: Pay close attention to the curse forecast, and adjust your prices accordingly using the recommended selling range in the TIP window of the Pricing tab. The lower the demand is for a potion on a given day, the lower you should set the price.
2. You run out of ingredients for a potion that people want.
Solution: Make sure your warehouse is well-stocked with ingredients at all times, and check the forecasts to anticipate approximately how many ingredients to purchase for the next day. If the forecast is only 10% then you won’t need many of that type of ingredient, but if the forecast is 85% then you’d better stock up.
Don’t forget that some potions use more than one of a given ingredient at a time, and that one ingredient might be used in multiple potions, which alters demand.
Purchase the Flying Elephant spell, which will let you send an emergency delivery of ingredients to the shop during the day.
3. Customers get fed up with standing in line.
Solution: Upgrade to a faster potion maker and/or upgrade the in-store entertainment.
Upgrading
Aside from upgrading your storefront once or twice if you can afford it, you shouldn’t do a lot of upgrading until you’ve finished researching all available potions – make research your first priority.
Each new potion you discover will take a little longer to make than the one before it, so you should upgrade your potion maker immediately after discovering the second potion, and then again after discovering the third potion to make sure the counter staff can keep up with the demand of making them.
After research is completed, storefronts, potion makers and warehouse upgrades should be the top priority, followed by in-store entertainment and spells, followed by spy devices. (Spy devices aren’t really necessary to do well in the game, so consider those upgrades optional.)
The Competition
Although many of the level goals involve eliminating all competing stores, don’t actually worry about taking out your competition until later in the game. They’re too powerful at the beginning, and your meagre funds are better spent on research, ingredients and upgrading rather than hiring goons.
Once your net worth is close to that of your competition, it’s a good time to start think about taking them out. Here are some techniques for doing so:
1. Lower your prices. At this stage in the game, we’re going to assume you’ve amassed a pretty good stash of money and that your business is solvent, which means that now’s the time to price gouge the competition by offering your potions at prices that are at the low end of the recommended selling price, regardless of the demand. If you really want to make customers love you, offer extremely low prices when demand is at its peak (90% or higher).
2. Pay for more advertising – now’s the time to go for the Brainwashing and Non-stop infomercials.
3. Hire some goons. Quite frankly, you don’t ever really need to use the goons that increase your popularity. However, the punitive goons are quite useful (not to mention a lot of fun) in discouraging peasants from visiting your competition. Try putting some Persuasion Trolls on the paths leading towards a rival’s store, or stick a Giant Lazy Baby right in front of his door.
NOTE: If there is more than one rival business to contend with in the same town, don’t take them all on at once. Pick them off one at a time, focusing on the weakest one first (the one with the lowest net worth).
Final Tip
The most crucial part of the game is the first 20 turns or so. Don’t try to do anything fancy here. Just maintain the status quo and slowly build up your net worth, buying the occasional upgrade, and focusing on researching all available potions. Fairy Godmother Tycoon is not a game of grand gestures, and is best played with patience and a mentality of slowly chipping away at the competition.
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