Tips

Here is a place to share tips. Please keep them brief and to a couple sentences.

Please don't edit other people's tips unless you make them more concise or more accurate. If you can, try to group them in like categories.

Tips

1. Meat is the most cost effective food for hunger at the grocery store. However, mood and health benefit from more small meals.
2. Shrimp pizza is the best early food for mood. If time's not a factor, rest or TV are your other options.
3. Money may seem like a hindrance early on, but by end game, you'll have plenty.
4. If you're not in a rush to beat the game, it's easy enough to earn money. So don't worry about spending it as long as you save some for food.
5. You can collect the reward from Mickey at the trailer park twice.
6. Later in the game, just take the bus everywhere.
7. Try to do hand pads training with Silver every day to get unlock skills asap. Once you have close to 15 total in stats and some good abilities it's worth switching to sparring fights. You can also spar with Roy and do bar fights for more skill points.
8. There is a free burger in the trash outside the bar. It's 40 free food but hurts your health and mood. Try eating it when one of those stats is near 0 and you wont need them for the rest of the day. I.e. when you're about to work or sleep.
9. Rookie League & Ultimate Fights will teleport you to their locations with out taking time. Use this free travel to your advantage.
10. If you're close to leveling up a stat but it's almost the end of the day, switch exercise to a different stat until the day changes. You lose 9 points for each level of your stat each day. So waiting until the next day will save you those 9 extra points.
11. There is no limit to how many perks you can have active, unlike skills. This makes them extra valuable unlocks.
12. You can have 5 skill slots for fighting, meaning you need 3 slot unlocks. There are 2 slot unlocks in basic tree and 1 unlock in each "Way of..." tree. Plan ahead.
13. Many skills don't need their lower version as a prerequisite. For example, you can get Meat Runner I and Meat Runner III, saving an unlock by skipping Meat Runner II. Also, you don't need to unlock Punch to unlock Boxing Punch (even though it says "replaces punch").
14. It takes about 5 hours to get Roy's attention: 2 hours working on his car and 3 hours chilling. But a change of day will reset the timer if you're mid-task.
15. Start the gym exercises that you have at home first, then do the unique ones (if you have time for both). That way your home exercises will be ready to use when you go there afterwards.
16. Chilling with Roy can be a great way to recover from a bad position money-wise, food-wise, happiness-wise, etc. as long as time isn't a concern.
17. If healing time/money is not a concern you may choose to take a certain risk of injuring yourself in an Ultimate Fight you are not ready for in return for possible monetary reward and a couple of guaranteed skill points.
18. Din Kong offers upgrades. Don't buy the "Show off" or "Awards" if they will use up a large portion of your money or fame, because you'll still need to buy Kong's other options to make use of their bonuses.
19. No matter what build you choose, you will always need stamina to restore enough energy. If you can't restore enough energy, then you will be knocked down frequently and take a lot of extra damage.
20. Once you sign your professional contract, hire Din Kong as your agent, and move into the mansion, you no longer need to waste time sleeping. The large amount of money you have, and can gain, from this point on in the game means you can rely exclusively on coffee, and even more so energy drinks, to replenish your energy.

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General Tips for speedrunners/replayers or achievements. SPOILERS

21. You can only unlock the special potion if you lose some rookie league fights. 2 in a row was my experience but it may differ

22. Chinatown acupuncture only unlocks if you receive an injury (like a broken leg or arm). This will usually come from ultimate fights.

23. You can glitch the tasks when you've joined the gang/mansion. If you set it up in a way where the task is force stopped before finishing (for example, running out of energy/hunger or having the day end) when you go back to finish the task, a new bar will start which can be completed. This will yield two rewards for the price of one.

24. When you have enough money, giving Adrian two presents in a row will always allow you to "fall in love" with her.

25. The hardest achievements are associated with Bobo. The first achievement is "Triple B," which you get by beating him in a fight. You can fight Bobo in two ways. One is through Mickey, and the other is through beating criminals. To get this achievement, YOU MUST GO THROUGH CRIMINALS. Once you beat three criminals (which are encountered when you are carrying large amounts of money, about 200+ dollars), they will bring you to their leader, Bobo. You only get one chance at this fight, so if you're losing, exit the game and reload. It is important to not finish all five street fights, as this disables criminals from robbing you. After "Triple B," finish the street fights and meet Mickey at the trailer. Beat Bobo once again, and when he asks for a hearing aid, agree to help him get it from Mr. Clean at the sports store. After you deliver the hearing aid, he'll ask you to join his gang, giving you the last achievement.

25b. Bobo won't let you work for him anymore after the travel phase of the game (prison/Russia)

26. Many achievements are one or the other. Broadly speaking, you can't get the "good achievements" if you go down the bad route and vice versa. The other set is beating your brother vs the ninja. The opportunity for the brother only comes if you go down the good route and the opportunity for the ninja only comes from the bad route.