DAVE THE DIVER Staff Hiring & Configuration Guide

So hi divers, good to see you here. Before you read any further, please be advised that the guide contains minor spoilers of a feature that is unlocked during late game.
If you are not comfortable with any spoilers, you can still read this section, which is spoiler-free, to get some ideas on early-game staff hiring. I will tell you when the spoiler-free part ends. If you have reached late game or you are fine with minor spoilers, then no problem.

For early game, my hiring recommendations are:

• Kitchen: James, Raul, Yone, Yusuke, Charlie, Maki
• Dining Area: El Nino, Drae, Raptor, Billy, Kyoko, Cohh, Itsuki

*The underlined ones are must-haves, but the others are also decent.

Also, here’s a brief overview of what each stat does:

• Cooking: decreases the time needed to prepare a dish
• Serving: increases movement speed, but does not affect drink serving speed
• Procure: increases the number of items obtained when dispatched
• Appeal: increases the chance of getting random bonus items when dispatched, but does not affect the amount of tips received (which is always 10% of the dish price)

And hence ends the spoiler-free part. If you don’t want any spoilers, I suggest stop reading now.

Don’t sweat if these folks don’t show up in your applicant list. The kitchen part is quite chill and basically couldn’t go wrong. Anyone with high enough cooking stat will suffice.

Skills:
• Maki: Cooking+, Cooking++
• Charlie and Yusuke: Cooking+, Prep Expert (5% chance of making an additional plate)
• Yone : Cooking++, Prep Expert (5%)
• James: Cooking+, Prep Master (10%)
• Raul: Master Drink Maker, Prep Master (10%)

What’s worth mentioning about Raul is that when he’s in the kitchen, you get an extra 10g for every drink (including cocktail) sold. Consider hiring Raul if you are fine with his slightly lower (but still good enough) cooking stat.

1. If you want a hands-free combination:
   • Main store: El Nino, Raptor
   • Branch: Drae (manager), Billy, Itsuki/Kyoko

   The downside with this combination is that you might lose 1-5 customers each night when it gets busy, but everything runs automatically. You can just sit back and watch.

2. If you are fine with some wasabi grinding, consider this combination:
   • Main store: El Nino, Drae
   • Branch: Kyoko/Raul (manager), Billy, Raptor

   Here you almost always get all customers served, with only a very slim chance of missing one or two. All you need to do is stand by the wasabi machine and grind wasabi when it gets low. You can certainly help out if you want to, but just grinding wasabi is enough.

Skills:
• El Nino: Cleaning+, Drink Serving+ (cocktail not included)
• Raptor: Wasabi Refill, Cocktail Serving
• Drae: Cleaning, Cocktail Serving
• Billy: Cleaning+, Tip Master (always get tips)
• Itsuki: Drink Serving, Appeal stat+
• Kyoko: Drink Serving, Tip Master
• Raul: Master Drink Maker, Prep Master (10% chance of making an additional plate)

The dining area, however, doesn’t provide much freedom as the kitchen does. As of the current version of the game (1.0.0), how much money you make depends almost exclusively on how many dishes you can serve. Cooking is never the problem.

With that being said, the set-up of the dining area is essential to high profits. I would really suggest hiring staff members as suggested above, which probably means you need to send out multiple recruitment ads, but it is worth the effort. Or, at least hire El Nino, Drae, Billy and Raptor whenever they show up in the application list, because they are simply good. You will never regret hiring them.

On a side note, since the word manager has been mentioned a few times in the guide, I will say a few things about it just in case you are curious:

Once someone is designated as the manager, they become (well, at least within the game’s context) omnipotent. They can do everything like cleaning, drink serving, wasabi grinding, etc with or without corresponding skills. They do, however, tend to prioritize those work they have the skills with. I guess that’s how the role is programmed to be.

Also, the cooking stat of the manager determines the rank of your branch. And this rank caps the rank of ingredients you can send to the branch (yes, these are two different ranks).
For example, if your branch has a rank of 7, then you will not be able to send any ingredient of rank 8 or higher to the branch, thus limiting menu variety.

The rank of your branch can be viewed under the staff tab when you are at the branch, and the ranks of ingredients can be viewed under the ingredients tab when you are at the main store or the branch.

Without making things more complicated, just make sure the cooking stat of your branch manager is above 500, so all ingredients can be used at the branch. If you are following this guide and your manager is maxed out, you should be fine.

• Q: Is any staff member missable?
  A: No.
  All recruitable staff members are available from start to finish, and you can hire them as long as they show up in your application list.
  The only exception is that when you are playing an Early Access save, you might run into a bug where you can’t hire all staff members (there are 21 in total). In that case, my best solution is, try firing one or two members, hire again, and see if it fixes the problem. If it does, great. If it doesn’t, just wait until the bug is fixed.
• Q: Should I max out my staff members to level 20?
  A: It depends, but usually level 15 is enough.
  Having a higher level certainly means having better stat, but it would also mean some sort of grinding is required.
  For the most cases, 15 is the ideal level. At this level, your employees’ hidden recipe will be unlocked, and your staff members have high stat, and the training cost is acceptable (it costs 53,600g from level 1 to 15, and 274,000g from 15 to 20).
  If you are using the second combination for the dining area mentioned in this guide, you might want to level up Kyoko/Raul, the branch manager, to level 18 or sometimes 20 to ensure your branch reaches rank 9, so all ingredients can be used. The number is not fixed because there is some variation in their stat.
• Q: How is wage calculated?
  A: It depends solely on your staff members’ levels. The higher their levels are, the more you pay.
  Even if they are just idling, you still need to pay them, since they’re already hired.
  The maximum wage is about 300g/day per person, at level 20. Plan accordingly.