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Hi to all Dealers!
Today I will talk about strategy. That’s it: you need strategy to win this game.
Dealer’s Life may seem a straight simple game at first but I can tell you it’s not. You can’t just buy and sell stuff hoping to make money from it, you have to fight for every cent you make and be wise enough to not waste money by taking bad decisions about new shops, tasks or employees.
The talk could be quite huge here, so let’s go fast and begin!
Golden Rule #1 – Haggling is not an option
First things first: haggling. Since the beginning of time, humankind has based it own prosperity on exchanging goods between each other… Ok maybe I’ve started from too far, let’s cut some boring introduction and say this: if you want to be a real Hardcore Dealer you will never let your customer go away without having spilled every single blood drop you can from him: if he wants to sell you something you estimate, say, $150 and he asks you $100, you will still offer him less. No fair business? Who cares, but you want to get rich, right?
If he accepts your offer it means you got what you wanted at a good price, and that’s good, but you know what? You still failed to make a really good haggle, sir. If a customer accepts your first counteroffer it means you could have been gone lower and probably he would have followed you. With a few more relaunches you could have reached an even better price.
On the other hand if you go too low with the counter offer your customer won’t follow you: he will get angry and stick to his offer, obliging you to come closer to him and making you lose a chance to lower the price.

So this is the difficult part: every customer has his own “window of acceptance”. If you go below that window you won’t get anything useful, if you go too high in that window you won’t get the best price possible. How to know the boundaries of this window, then? This brings us to the next golden rule…
Golden Rule #2 – Know your customers
Every customer is different and there is no fixed path of actions that makes you always get the best deal from every customer. You have to adapt the bargaining process to your customer. A good way to do this is stare at him and get some clues about his personality. Your Insight skill does help in this but keep in mind that your customer’s appearance isn’t just there so you can look at it for pleasure. If you’re smart enough you could eventually understand that certain details in appearance reflect in specific psychological traits, so one day you could end up recognizing them by merely looking at your customer! That will be a pleasure!
Ok, now you know your customer’s personality… but what for? How can it help you in haggling with him? Well, this is also a tricky part as you’ll have to figure it out. You will never get told that your customer’s lowest limit of acceptance for your offers is a certain amount, but you can get an average idea by knowing that:
- greedy customers won’t move too far from their starting offer, and usually tend to be… well, greedier than other customers.
- competent customers will look for the real price of the item they came to buy or sell, while not competent customers will easily shot a random price. This second case could lead to impossible haggling fights as well as epic deals. If you encounter a really not competent customer that is also not greedy at all, you could probably make one of the best deals you ever made if you push it well!
- impatient customers have no time to waste and should you start from a too low offer they will easily quit the haggle and go away. You should be quite careful with them and do not exaggerate.
- collectors are what you dream to have as buyers and what you’d happily avoid as sellers. They do not seem to have a sober idea of value for the items they own or desire, as they always overestimate every single thing.

This four points lead us to some clear conclusions: if you encounter a really greedy seller which is not competent at all and also an impatient collector you should check your real life luck, man, because you got the worst case ever. On the other hand, if you get a buyer which is a calm, not greedy and not competent collector you can prepare to shot ridiculous offers!
Golden Rule #3 – Employees are not shoes…
… That means you should not keep changing them all the time. There are tons of useful employees out there that could really help you out getting the most from your deals, but every one of them has a price that you pay every week and every time you hire a new one. That could lead to some serious problems especially in early game, when you don’t have much money to trash in bad decisions and second thoughts. Good experienced employees are expensive and not always available though, so it’s up to you to decide if and when to hire someone. Do not haste the decision, take your time to think about two or three employees that could help you most and look for them in the Daily Journal.
Here are a couple of tips you could find useful:
- employees that passively provide some kind of bonuses may not seem as attractive as other employees like the restorer or the expert but the true thing is that, no matter what, they’ll always be “on duty” and provide their bonuses. The restorer could become idle if he doesn’t have items to repair, and the expert… well, the expert is actually useful even if he’s idle, so go for experts! XD
- if you’re in early game think about hiring employees with a few experience: they may not excel in their job but hey, they’re damn cheap and are better than nothing, right?
Golden Rule #4 – The right shop at the right time
Shops are great: they provide you a big inventory, a bunch of working locations, they can even influence the amount of customers you can receive every day! The problem is their cost. They’re really expensive. If you move to a new shop too early you will sure have a new shiny look for your interiors and some more space to fill, but you could end up with no more money to invest in new items. Without them and without a good amount of items to sell in your inventory… let’s be honest: you’re ready to bankrupt.
Golden Rule #5 – Go with the flow
Last but not least, my favourite rule! XD
In Dealer’s Life you often cannot have what you want when you want it. To tell the truth, you more often get what you do not want right in the most irritating time. The Daily Journal is a damn paper thing that pops out mostly useless to bad news (this is a simulation game, we couldn’t make it any different, sorry for that…) and a far lot of sellers out there are eager to bring you their embarrassingly ugly and crappy trash with no value at all, just to make you waste your time. And what about those hatred accidents that happen too often and make you lose your only and most valuable item you just repaired in a week of hard work? That’s really bad… but that’s how life could be and how Dealer’s Life is: though! If you dream of your best game ever with that great shop and those fantastic, top experienced employees and all those legendary items to repair for ridiculous deals… well, you’ll probably be disappointed. My suggestion here, as many good dudes before me already said in far and near pasts, is to abide. Accept what comes and adapt. Take every little chance you get and try to make the best gain possible from it. If you look only for the best item you could ever encounter and ignore the “trash tide” of less valuable items you are actually losing money, because even from the littlest item could come a gain, if you perform well. That could sound like a lesson of life… and maybe it is, my friends, maybe it is…
Finally, let me give you a last tip: infinite mode is fun, but if you ask me, making a new game from scratch is surely better. Procedural generation is a wild thing: sometimes the game is way too easy and forgiving, some other times it brings you more than a trouble. If you found your game quite easy and fast to win (or too difficult and apparently impossible to win) I encourage you to give another try. I cannot assure you it will be that easy (or that hard) next time but surely it will be different! ;D
Thank you for reading all this, I hope you found some useful hints to better enjoy Dealer’s Life! And don’t forget to comment with your favourite strategy and your tips!
See you on our next update for the upcoming release and keep up the good deals!
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