Dave the Diver places you in the shoes of a restaurant owner who has to dive to the ocean’s depths to ensure his business’ survival. Maintaining a steady income is the key to progress, so anything that helps you make money fast is super important.
Quick ways to make money in Dave the Diver
Making money can be quite a grind in the early stages of Dave the Diver, especially with the lack of multiplayer features necessitating you grind solo. Due to this, the early stages may seem slow but worry not. With these five tips—and one bonus tip at the end—you’ll be running a thriving business in no time.
1) Selling items
Whenever you come across an excess of items in Dave the Diver, the game offers you opportunities to sell them for money. While most items you acquire can be used for some purpose or another, others offer very little in terms of utility, and selling them is the best option.
Some of the better items to sell are the rarer and more expensive fish you can breed on your fish farm. Even though most of them can be used in meal preparation, at times you might find yourself with an abundance of fish, some of which can be sold to make a quick profit. Just ensure you don’t deplete your entire stock of fish in doing so.
As tempting as it may be, make sure to avoid selling ingredients or higher-level meals because they can be better used to run your restaurant. While selling items is a quick way of making money, in the long run, a well-run restaurant is what will keep your revenue afloat.
2) Optimizing service
Since the restaurant is your primary means of making money, ensuring its smooth operation is key to quickly generating revenue. To do this, you need to have a thriving menu with different food types. Variety is the key to keeping your customers happy. Just remember your best dishes are better off saved for events as they pop up in the story.
Hiring the right staff is also key to ensuring your restaurant runs optimally. As your restaurant upgrades, you will see an influx of customers who will want their orders on time. The faster you serve their orders, the better income you will see through tips. The customer demand will eventually become more than Dave can handle solo, which is why you will need staff.
Maintaining a healthy balance of customers coming in with a variety of meals and a staff on top of all the orders is the key to optimizing service. Just ensure your profits more than cover your gradually increasing operating costs.
3) Creating the best meals
Creating a variety of meals is an integral part of maintaining the customer base in your restaurant. However, there are moments where simple meals won’t cut it. Certain events in the game’s story will progress better if you have specific meals on hand. Creating these meals will require ingredients that aren’t so commonly available.
You will need two features unlocked to procure these ingredients: The Fish Farm and the Vegetable Farm. The easiest one is the Tropical Fish Platter. Enhance the recipe as much as you can to maximize profits before moving on to newer dishes. Follow this step for the meals you will create later on as well.
As you progress through the game, focusing on new dishes like the Deep Sea Tempura would be ideal. Following that up with rarer meals like the Batfish Ricebowl will increase your restaurant’s customer base quickly.
4) Upgrading weapons
A key component to creating the best meals is having a constant supply of fish. Weapons help you do that, and the better they become, the easier it will be to catch the rarer fish in the Blue Hole. You start with a simple Harpoon Gun and a Dive Knife, but you will quickly need to make upgrades if you want to keep up with the demand in your restaurant.
Duff is responsible for weapon upgrades and doing so will require crafting materials. These materials can be acquired throughout the Blue Hole as well as other spots you explore. The best upgrade you can get early would be the Tranquilizer Rifle. Having the ability to put fish to sleep will enable you to capture bigger fish that you would have trouble getting normally.
Additionally, get the Death Rifle to grant you a chance to kill bigger fish instantly. These two upgrades should net you great profits early in the game.
5) Avoid ranking up too fast
This one might not be a direct way of making money, but following this rule will prevent you from losing too much money in the earlier stages. Ranking up through Cooksta will increase your potential clientele, but after a certain point, it won’t be worth it. Taking your ranking up through Bronze and Silver, and stopping at Gold is the most optimal course of action.
This is because the ranks following Gold, Platinum and Diamond, will increase your operating costs beyond what you could sustain at the early levels. Platinum increases your costs to 2,000 per day while Diamond increases them to 4,000. An expense like that will only slow your progress, so bide your time and ensure revenue is smooth before upgrading.
Once your profits increase far beyond your operating costs, considering a future upgrade would seem worthwhile. Make sure you have the best staff on hand when you do so.
Bonus Tip: Party events
Think of this tip as an extension of the restaurant management tips so far. On certain days, there will be party events that have themes. The first theme is the Jellyfish party that starts in October, followed by Tuna, Marlin, Shark, Cucumber, Curry, Shrimp, and Lobster. Every theme symbolizes a dish that has to be created during the event using an ingredient related to the theme.
These seasonal events are calendar-based and will appear regardless of progression or where you are in the story. You will be notified of these events a few days in advance, so make sure you are prepared with the required ingredients.
Completing these themed events successfully will greatly improve the revenue you generate, making them worthwhile additions to your financial progress.
