Dondoko Island is the cozy game portion of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth. You’ll naturally get to Dondoko Island by following the story in chapter six. While finishing the Dondoko Island event isn’t mandatory, it will give you a decent sum of money, plus it’s a lot of fun.
How to get five stars fast on Dondoko Island in Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth
Getting five stars on Infinite Wealth‘s Dondoko Island is going to take a while, but it’s worth it, especially during the early game. If you have the patience, I suggest you ditch the main story campaign for a while and focus on making your Island resort. If you do, you’ll not only get a cool new ultimate skill but close to $500,000 (Hawaiian dollars), which is a huge amount so early in the game.
To get that kind of money, you need to get your Star rating to five as soon as possible, and here’s how you can do that.
Clear out the polluted fields as soon as possible
This should be your number one priority. When you start Dondoko Island, every time you raise the star level, you get a new area polluted with garbage. To clear these areas, you need some Dondoko bucks, which you get by selling insects and fish and fighting enemies.
An interesting mechanic here is that the more garage you clear, the lower the price of clearing the field will be. So, if you spend three days clearing the field over and over again, you’ll pay a lot less Dondoko Bucks. This is a waste of time if you ask me. The second you have enough Dondoko Bucks, clear those fields. Seriously, don’t wait for the price to drop; just do it. Also, don’t worry about all the cool stuff you get from destroying garbage. After you clear a polluted field, all the collectible items you would have received from destroying garbage appear in the recycling center, next to the main plaza building.
Satisfaction means more buildings
For each star level you have to obtain, you need to meet a satisfaction quota. To raise this, you need to place items around your cleared areas. This brings us to the DIY station where you build items. Now, early on, the game doesn’t give you much, only a few chairs and ornaments. These are enough for maybe the first star, but after that, it’s going to take a bit more than that.
First, you don’t have to be a natural designer to get those satisfaction numbers up; as long as you place items next to roads so your resort guests can see them, that’s more than enough.
Here’s my secret: instead of building DIY things from the top of the list, start from the bottom. The more difficult things you make, the more satisfaction points you get. Always go for the harder things that you haven’t crafted before. In fact, once you craft your first building, I wouldn’t even bother making anything else. Just keep making new buildings, and you’ll see both your Workshop and Satisfaction levels skyrocket.
Only fishermen and bug catches are popular
The other thing you have to raise for star levels is your popularity. You’d think that popularity means impressing guests and maybe advertising your island. While you can do both of these things, to actually raise your popularity, you need to catch bugs and fish.
Simply put, each Dondoko Island day, when you finish your chores (clearing fields, placing buildings), go out and fish and catch bugs. Every time you catch a set number of the same bug or fish, you get a popularity boost. Don’t try to focus on the fish you have (or don’t have), just clear each fishing pool and catch all the bugs you come across, and you’ll be swimming in popularity before you know it.
You can also boost your popularity by paying for a TV and Online commercial, but that costs a lot of Dondoko bucks. Sure, you need this to get more guests to come to your resort, but if you simply want popularity, bugs and fish are the way to go.
Don’t rely too much on your Sujimon
Once you get three stars, you unlock a new portion of the island where you can employ your Sujimon to help you work. While you should definitely take advantage of this, it’s not really a huge benefit. What your Sujimon can do is pretty slow compared to what you can do on your own. By all means, employ a few Sujimon to earn you some Dondoko bucks, but don’t actually rely on that. Instead, use the Sujimon Island’s fishing spots, junk piles, and new bugs to boost your profits and popularity further.
Don’t worry about combat too much
After you get a few stars, you also need to defeat a large number of enemies in an area to fill one of the requirements. This sounds harder than it actually is. While you will get attacked by a bunch of enemies at once, combat on Dondoko Island isn’t difficult.
The combat is incredibly clunky, but also very exploitable. You don’t need to boost Kasuga’s hearts or power up the bat to finish any combat encounter. No, all you need is the dodge button. Simply hit enemies until they start playing their attack animation and roll around to dodge the attack. That’s all you need.
You can upgrade your bat if you want, but its not necessary. As for hearts, the maximum amount you can have is 10. However, I beat all the fights on Dondoko Island, including the last one, with five hearts or less. So remember, don’t worry, hit and roll, and you’ll be fine.
Your guests have money but don’t like to wander around the island
The ultimate goal of Dondoko Island is to make it the ultimate vacation hot spot. To do that, you need guests. Guests have money, and they want to spend it on everything Dondoko Island has to offer. With such a huge island, you’d think that you can place each time of building anywhere on the island, and guests will find them eventually.
Unfortunately, that couldn’t be further from the truth. The game doesn’t tell you this, but your guests are locked to the zone where you place their guest houses. This means your guests can only spend money on buildings in their zones. Your guests will ignore everything outside their zones.
This ultimately means that you only have two decent spots to place commercial buildings: the zone where the main plaza is and the large zone on the northwest corner of the island. I placed two guest houses near the plaza and three in the northwest zone. I filled both of these with commercial buildings. This made me the most money. In short, if you place a cabaret club in a zone with no guest houses, it’s as if it doesn’t exist.
Sell all your bugs and foraging items
You may be thinking about hoarding all your fish and bugs in case you need them later. Sure, you can do that when you reach level five, but until you do, sell everything. You’ll need Dondoko bucks to clear fields, build bridges, and improve your island. Don’t worry about giving gifts to your guests; just make money until you get to five stars.
Follow these few rules, and you’ll leave Dondoko Island with a ton of money. Don’t forget, you can exchange Dondoko Bucks at the dolphin that takes you back to Honolulu. Have fun.
