Characters in the game.
Doctor
If you are mugged on your travels, shot by the police or dont pay your loan shark on time, you lose health points. If you have less than 80% health for 5 days you develop an infection and things get worse. If you have no health its game over. For varying amounts of cash the doctor can fix you. He can also rip you off and steal your kidneys. So never take any drugs into his surgery. Sell them at any price and buy them back as soon as you are out, you incur no loss. If you lose a kidney or two and have 100,000 cash you will be randomly offered a dialysis machine, this will stop your health flowing away.
Officer Hardass
When confronted with Officer Hardass you have certain options. If you are not carrying drugs you can stay and walk away. If you are carrying drugs and want to be caught you can stay and be arrested. If you have weapons but no drugs you can assault them and stay and be arrested. You will have your drugs and weapons confiscated and lose a days trading but may or may not hear about a drugs bust the following day. Losing a days trading is less and less important, because of bank interest, as you reach the final day. If you have drugs and dont want to be caught you can either dump them and stay or try to run away and risk being killed. Lastly you can fight your way out, this is the best method. If you lose you will still be killed but if you get away Officer Hardass drops some cash before fleeing you.
Loan Sharks
Sandy Schwing will offer you 20x your cash. Tank Noneck 30x cash. Bulbous Bertha 50x cash. Midget Mickey 100x cash. Honest Harry 10x cash. They all offer loans with different interest rates for different amounts of time. Loans for a next day bust are best taken from people with low lengths like BB and MM. Loans in the hope of a bust should be taken from people like SS and TN. If you dont have an option take what you can. Pay back your loans only when you have enough to fill your pockets first.
Your Mother
She loves to make delicious chocolate brownies from your hash so dont carry any around with you for any great length of time.
Playing the Game
Old Lady
The old lady will occasionally meet up with you and give a drug bust prediction. She is usually right so go along with her. She will sometimes predict an air raid, this is meaningless.
Game play
The Old Lady occasionally spouts some random stuff. If you look in the Dopewars directory, you can edit oldlady.txt and make her spout your random stuff. Use the numerical accelerators to get through the games faster, more games played = better scores. Also double click on drugs to buy and sell, cash to deposit and bank to withdraw, weapons to buy and loan sharks to borrow/payback. Always bank your cash but leave out 500 to buy extra pockets. Your money will earn interest and be safe from muggers.
Starting the Game
The aim is to fill all your pockets with coke and get a bust before day 10. If there are no busts restart the game and try again until you do. You can do this by taking the first loan offered to you, the next day take another loan and you should have the maximum of 1,000,000. If a loan shark is not released the next day pay back Honest Harry and take another loan from him. The start is the only time to mess around with the smaller drugs.
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Acid |
These drugs are offered without warning at extremely cheap prices. They can help you to get a maximum loan or be able to fill up on coke. Be careful using all your cash to buy these, if you get a coke prediction and the drug is not on the market to sell you cant just dump them for the pocket space as you wont be able to get a loan to buy the coke. |
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Crack |
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Ecstasy |
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Hashish |
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Weed |
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Coke |
These drugs bust and then have massive price tags. They are 5 times the price of what they would normally be without a bust. Coke and heroin are where you make the serious money. The old lady may or may not tell you they are about to bust. Though opium and special k are only worth buying if you have nothing better to do. |
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Heroin |
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MDA |
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Opium |
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Special K |
Strategy
Dont buy 50 coke and 50 heroin to cover the eventuality of either busting. You need to maximise all the busts. You will miss some but make more money in the end. Always buy more pockets when offered. The only exception to this rule would be at the beginning when you have a Coke/Heroin prediction and cant fill your pockets anyway and need the cash to get a larger loan. To maximise your cash you need to buy and sell between coke and heroin. Only deviate from this if you get a MDA prediction. Towards the end of a good game you can make in interest every day the equivalent of a coke bust so trading becomes less important. If you carry one ecstasy pill and then you give yourself up to Officer Hardass you may get a prediction. You still get your interest when youre banged up for the night.
Weapons
The handbag uses no ammo and is cheap but is useless. The Rubber Chicken Launcher is effective but very expensive. The rest are in between this. I believe the monkey is the perfect balance. If you do want the RCL it is worth buying a monkey to finish off Hardass to save on expensive ammo.
Statistics
These are worth checking out at the end of your games to spot patterns and trends. You should quickly spot which parts of your game could improve by comparing good game stats and bad game stats.
Myths
Run lots of background programmes to slow your processor and watch for a flicker, which briefly tells you to do something. Then the opposite happens.
Buy 500 bananas.
Air Raid guarantees that no bust will happen the next day.
On unfinished games if coke busts heroin will bust the next day, and vice versa.
Play with your feet in a bowl of custard.
Top tip: Play the game all the time. The more you play the better your scores will be!
