Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is a massive turn-based RPG filled with side activities and minigames. One of those side activities is Dondoko Island, which becomes available in chapter 5. This side activity is a surprisingly deep life sim game that combines aspects of Animal Crossing with management gameplay. The island needs to be cleaned up and rebuilt, tasking you with taking it from a dumping ground to a five-star island resort. Here are some tips to help you make the most of this island.
Have patience when cleaning up
One of the first tasks you will get on Dondoko Island in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth is to clean up specific sections of the island. As you clean up each section, which is done by breaking trash piles with a baseball bat, a meter will fill. This meter impacts the rating for the area, which decreases the cost of the final clean up. The final clean up requires you to pay the builder in the area, but each time the rank moves up, it lowers the cost by a significant amount. The downside here is that there is a limited amount of trash in each area every day, so it will take multiple days to get that rank maxed out. The amount of Dondoko Bucks you save is worth the wait.
Don’t sweat the day counter
Dondoko Island operates on its own clock, so each day on the island has a limited amount of time in it for you to do tasks. At the start of each day, a day counter ticks up, which might give you the impression that you have a limited amount of days to work, or have to meet certain milestones by a certain amount of days. The day counter has no impact on Dondoko Island in any way. It doesn’t affect progress, you don’t need to complete tasks in a timely fashion. The NPCs on the island don’t even comment on it. You can play this at your own pace without any reason to worry about the number of days.
Catch critters frequently, even ones you already have
One of the Animal Crossing-like aspects of Dondoko Island is the ability to catch fish and bugs and collect rare items. All of these items are meant to be sold or to be used in making souvenirs. The sale price for these is based on how common they are, but there is an incentive to gather the same kind repeatedly. There is a bar that fills each time you collect a specific critter and at certain milestones you get two things. The sell price of that critter increases and you get a boost to your popularity, which is one of the requirements for each new resort star rating. Every creature has its own meter, so the extra popularity really starts to add up.
Decorate your house
In addition to a whole island to decorate with the many DIY crafting recipes you can unlock, Ichiban also has his own house. The house starts pretty small, but you will want to fill it with different decorations pretty early on. While there is the satisfaction of decorating a space, there is a gameplay benefit too. On Dondoko Island, you have a health bar that functions separately from the rest of Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. Instead, you have a Zelda-like set of hearts. The only way to get more hearts is by improving the quality rating of Ichiban’s house, which can be done by decorating it with furniture. The better the furniture, the bigger the boost to the rating. Considering you start with only three hearts, you will want to do this pretty early on.
Defend your island
The reason Dondoko Island has become a trash pile is that the Swashbucklers have been dumping trash on the island. These enemies will show up pretty frequently and you will need to fight them off. The combat here doesn’t work the way it does in the rest of the game. Instead it is a real-time battle, where you must defeat them with the baseball bat you use to destroy trash. The combat is incredibly simple, with only one attack and a dodge roll, which makes it a bit harder. You will need to really maximize the dodge roll and make sure you upgrade your baseball bat whenever possible for faster attack speed.
Build new DIY project frequently
One of the more interesting parts of Dondoko Island is that the majority of furniture and buildings you will use to decorate needs to be made by hand. While the fact that everything is DIY doesn’t stop you from unlocking things like full-blown buildings and cabaret clubs to put around the island, it is a system you need to engage with as frequently as possible. You have a builder level on Dondoko Island, which can only be leveled by creating furniture. New furniture gives a boost, but any decoration will increase the level. Leveling up unlocks new recipes, which typically offer better stats for the island. Cleaning up each section of the island will also be locked behind a specific builder level, so you need to make sure you are building as frequently as possible.
Look for new blueprints in interesting places
While you do unlock a bunch of DIY recipes by leveling your builder level, there are other places to find them in Like A Dragon: Infinite Wealth. You can find rare and exclusive blueprints throughout the game. You can get free blueprints pretty easily by talking to various people. If someone has a speech bubble above their head indicating you can talk to them, there is a decent chance they might give you a recipe. You can also unlock blueprints from the many minigames and side activities that offer points with a store tied to them, like the Hawaii Dungeon and the Super Crazy Eats delivery minigame. None of these blueprints are necessary for progressing through Dondoko Island, but there are a ton of cool decorations you can find.
Save your money for high-quality lodging
Once you have your first resort star, you can build lodging on the island to let guests stay and earn some extra money. First, you have to build lodging, which you cannot craft yourself. Instead, you need to buy it from the builder and place it on the island. The lodging can be pretty expensive, and it’s in your best interest to buy the highest rated lodging you can. Each guest will have a minimum required lodging rating, but you can always put guests in better accommodations than they need. You can also only build a set number of lodgings, with one for each star rating.
Make sure you meet all guest requirements
Each guest will have four “requirements” they have for having a good stay at your island. You can invite guests without having all four met, but you will earn less money for their stay. Instead, you want to really focus on guests for whom you meet all requirements in order to maximize your income. The four requirements include minimum lodging ratings, a certain kind of item, having caught specific critters, and for your island to have a certain vibe. For the items and vibes, these come from the type of decorations you have set up. Most decorations have qualities, like sleezy or rustic, which impact the overall vibe of the island, if you have enough. Some guests only need one or two of these items, some need the overall vibe of the island to swing a certain way.
Get to the next star rating as fast as possible
While you certainly can take your time progressing through Dondoko Island, you might want to rush to meet the requirements for the next resort star rating. The reason for this is that there are massive rewards and new unlocks at each star rating. The reward is typically a nice chunk of cash, which is certainly helpful. The new unlocks are much more important, since these can speed up your work, increase the amount of resources you gather every day, or a brand new system like the Dondoko Farm. These new systems will make your time on Dondoko Island much smoother, so try and aim to reach the next resort star rating as quickly as you can.