This thread is by Kefo and Day (who mainly helped with writing the FAQandA section) 0 - Table of Contents: 0 - Table of Contents 1 - Tl;Dr 2 - Scope of the knowledge base on PIMD and extension reading to recommend to players. 3 - Introduction 4 - General knowledge 5 - How to find players to help 6 - Some approaches to helping new players 7 - Helping the helpers 1 - (T)oo (l)ong; (D)idn’t (r)read. Spoiler Nobody on PIMD knows everything about PIMD. If you want to be very helpful, learn some general knowledge, and specialize and refer people to other experts. Try to read between the lines and see if people need more help than can be answered from their question. 2 - Scope of THE INFORMATION Spoiler The hyperlinks go to relevant threads. The purple text contain other sources. There is a lot to know on PIMD. For example, if someone wants to know how to efficiently allocate their resources in order to upgrade and arm themselves quickly and efficiently, they can read my slightly decrepit guide entitled Spending priorities guide or they could read about any of the following topics in a relevant guide. Information about attaining/able stuff: Origins of all showcase items. Box Database Guide |||||| BFF combos |||||| PIMD crates You can also check hunt announcement threads, and order showcase items chronologically in showcase to gain a sense for their age Worth of showcase items. Really Rough item price guide ||||||| About box trading List of all showcase items, what kind of item they are, where they came from, what hunt, and when they're from. List of all showcase items (last updated: November, 2017) Origins of all furniture. Answered by the Box Database Guide, as well as by checking the contents of boxes Worth of all furniture. Check the furniture trading thread Stats of all furniture. Mostly irrelevant as furniture carry a hefty premium as fashion accessories, however their stats do correspond to the slot they go in. How to upgrade furniture. Furniture Guide Origins and stats of avatars. The Avatar Database Guide Information about Clubs: Their types, features, and abilities. Guide to Clubs How to run a club. No guide yet but one would be cool. Ask club owners and admins. Iconic versions of each club type. Not many threads written about clubs except ones involved in sfw. How some clubs changed over time. How clubs find the party of the day. Parties of the Day Key members, their alliances and relationships with other clubs. Mostly left unchronicled Official business: App policy and rules. PIMD ToS The history of game updates to mechanics, features, rules, etc. The PIMD Timeline Mods, Honor Students, and Developers. List of Mods/HS/Devs Social: How to RP. Kefo’s Guide to RP How to find friends. Ask your friends How to get along with other people. How not to argue in PIMD How to find out if your eGF/eBF is cheating on you. Good Luck! eSafety. Online Safety Rules VIP players, dramatic players, players with high cultural influence, pub famous people, different networks of friends. Use your lurking and sleuthing skills PvP: How to organize, start, or participate in a war. Guide to Wars Tactics used in Club war and SFW. Join an SFW club. These are usually strategic secrets as they give clubs an edge. Perhaps try asking your club’s allies or players who have been involved. Ways to deal with a 1 vs 1. Guide to pvp and your own conflict resolution skills. How to choose the right avatar. Guide to the right avatar How to avoid enemies and victimization? How to find enemies and victims! It would be very cool to see guides on these last two Game mechanics and features: Jobs. Guide to all the jobs if PIMD Parties. Guide to all PIMD parties Battle list. Guide to the battle list Chat channels. Guide to chat channels PvP. Guide to pvp Lurking. Thread remains unwritten but the tactics are deep and evolved. Would be awesome to see one on this. Social features: blocking, following, walling. Mostly covered in tutorial but also very simple and easy to pick up. Pets. Pet Guide DvP. Guide to Drop Volley Profit Extra Credits and how to get them. Guide to extra credit Hit range. How to find your hit range Stat weightings Needs more research and to be written about more often however this series of posts by @Benzophenone does a good job of exploring the numbers: Let’s talk numbers. RS. Relationships Tutors. Mostly talked about in a round about way through their uses Dorms. Guide to the dorm tower Plunder. Plunder Guide Account Builds. Guide for Builds Strategies used by players to achieve different goals: Looking for players. to lurk, befriend, trade with, farm, ask a favour, demand from, etc. Broadcasting a message. To make lots of friends. To become rich in items. trade tactics To become rich in PIMDbucks. To become rich in extra credits. To climb the VIP list. To overcome a single opponents. To overcome many people in an SFW. To protect your wealth. To make someone’s day. To ruin someone’s day. To upgrade efficiently. Spending Priorities Guide ||||| Guide to the dorm tower To farm efficiently Guide to PvP To get along with other people To become famous To be dignified Guide to dignity To become infamous To disappear and be forgotten To help other players To sabotage other players 3 - Introduction Spoiler I would like to start this thread by voicing a concern that is held among the community: that helping players is becoming rarer. When I started playing the game, I heard about older players who helped players out and knew everything there was to know about PIMD, and who could answer any question with ease. A myth that the past was better. Fallacious! Ignorant! I think perhaps they had more confidence in what they were doing: were unaware of how much they didn’t know, perhaps because the game was simpler back then. Then, and now, you will have to specialize unless you are a super geek but knowing other experts and being able to refer players to them can help greatly. It is not a cop-out. When I started out, I had many questions and would go to all the experience players I knew, chasing answers, but nothing ever game. People I was referred to said they didn’t know, or it was some deep trade secret. It was clear that much had never been known. There was lots of misinterpretation, and hear-say, and it is clear that today, there is still much for us to discover for ourselves. It is fair to say that nobody is expert enough on everything on PIMD to be able to help everyone out with everything, and as time progresses, the game becomes more complex so it is even more important to be able to refer people to those who know more. In this thread, I want to show the scope of what is known by our community and describe some ways to spread and improve that knowledge, meaningfully. I think there is some general knowledge that everyone should have, and I’ll set that out, first, then proceed to the strategies that can be used to find players, and then to strategies of how to help them once you’ve engaged them. Before you back out from this thread, I implore all readers to write their own areas of expertise in the comments so that people can find you and refer new players to you. 4 - General knowledge Spoiler The bulk of your general knowledge can be sourced from two places. 1: The FAQandA 2: The PIMD dictionary You can also read a General FAQ thread; here, and the Official Game FAQ; here. T͙͔̭͕̱̫̮̦̝́͋̑̒͝ͅĤ̜̪̠̦̣͑̒͊́̇̓̈̓E̵̛̦͈̬̩͉̦͐̊̃̂̽̃̿͌ F̢̨͕̝̫͚͇̤̎̋̀̓͋͐͛͡A̸̡̦͔̝͛͗̽̇̇̏͑̓͢Q̷̢͕̥̱̜̪̥͍̻͗͋̄́̐̋̈́͘̚͞a͚̥̙͇͓̩̭̼̒̔̽̾̍n̸̢̹͇̰̱̗̻͒͒̏́̑̔̍͘͟d͔̩̯̺̺͂͒̈͗̂̃͠͠Å̶̛̠̞͔͔͕͈͙̫̈́̀̒͐͑͟͢͠͡ Q1) How do I get a 999? Spoiler 999s can be purchased for EC in the store, or can be exchanged for various items with other players. Q1a) I don’t have enough bentos and I need a 999. How can I get one? Spoiler Save and trade up for it. Save the items you earn through hunts, spinner, etc. and trade what you have for other, more valuable items until you can afford it. Q2) How do I upgrade faster? Spoiler Make sure you have invested enough money into tutors to receive max plunder (15m per 1000 stats in both your intelligence and strength). Hire cheap tutors for cash on the side. You make money when they are hired from you. Skip tiers of dorm mates. If they are too affordable, skip to avoid the cost of exchanging them. Q3) What’s a bento? Spoiler A bento is a showcase item that is commonly used as currency among players. Bentos can be obtained by combining 40 spinner chibis (10 of each type), or by trading with other players. Chibis are also considered currency, and item values are often described in terms of bentos and chibis. Q4) (Any question about lingo) Spoiler Refer to the 2020 PIMD Dictionary, and show them where to find it. Q5) What are pets? Spoiler Pets are obtainable from Pet Capsules and Mini Pet Capsules that both have a chance to drop from parties. Pets can offer different percentage based stat bonuses and come in a variety of styles. Pet Capsules will also drop necessary upgrading material, so be sure to keep opening them as you go! For additional information on pets, check out @-PA_KaramelApples- guide here. Q6) What are Extra Credits and how do I get them? Spoiler Extra Credits, or EC are a form of in-game currency. They can be used to purchase many in-game items such as Hypnocats, Furniture and even Cash. Additionally, EC can be purchased in the Store, the Spinner, Jobs and the Offer Wall. Check out @Muschi’s guide here for additional information. Q7) What is a hunt? And why do I need drops? Spoiler Hunts are in-game events that are put on by the developers of the game. All hunts have a basic theme, with matching items, avatars and furniture that can be obtained from various boxes or as a reward from Stories. With Stories, you’ll need Drops, or special items that drop from both parties and boxes. They range in duration typically being 1 to 2 weeks long. Q8) I keep getting hit by someone. How can I get them to stop? Spoiler PVP is an active part of gameplay and is not against ToU. If you are being farmed, you are typically given the option to pay a Cease Fire or CF, which are terms set by the farmer. If a player is asking for Furniture, VIP items, or other items purchasable with EC or IRL currency, this is against ToU and can be reported via Support. Alternatively, you can choose to ask friends and clubmates for help or block the player and move on. Note that blocking does not stop hits or tutors from being hired from you. Q9) I want an avatar but I can’t afford the shards. How can I get one for myself? Spoiler Shards are expensive, and those avatars are hard to earn for any player. If you really want one, you have to trade things you have for more valuable things to increase the value of your possessions to such a point where you might then want to trade everything for the avatar. If you are around at the start of a shard event, you can open shard boxes for ecs and get a lot which will help you earn the avatar. If you just want a new avatar to distinguish yourself, you can join a B2B POTD club, progress in the current hunt, and if you get enough drops by the end of it, you’ll have a brand new avatar. Q10) What is the point of this game? I do not get it. Spoiler PIMD is like a ‘traditional college’ simulator. The core idea is that everyone is in a popularity contest. You can find friends, join clubs, and fight, eavesdrop on, prank, and dance off against other people. You can hire people with PIMD bucks to train your strength and intelligence allowing you to best other people. Or you can just hang out with other people. Don’t worry about being strong or smart, and just make friends, party, and chat. It is up to you what you want to do, and who you want to be at PIMD university. You will get these questions a lot so to save yourself from looking like this, practice your answers and make them quick and direct. 5 - How to find players to help Spoiler Club hopping. Can be done in new clubs or large clubs. Some players with very high stats are unsure of some basic facts about the game, and while they can be more stubborn and defensive about their ignorance, it is still very important to offer help to anyone, and be open to them. It is important to point out that many players do get things wrong, and even their own mentor and their mentor’s mentor may have been ignorant, and that that’s very common. Answer questions posted in the help! forum. Keep your left eye on campus, and your right eye on pub. There’s an almost constant stream of people in both chats asking questions about the game. It is also possible to help some people who never asked for help, but they may be insulted. If you notice people saying really dumb stuff, or if they complain about how long it takes to upgrade, or any other aspect of the game, you can suggest ways for them to do their best in that regard. A lot of this just involves looking at chats. Make it known that you are helping, advertise yourself in this thread, relevant guides, pub, walls, your status, your wall, etc. 6 - Some approaches to helping new players Spoiler Spoiler: General tips Don’t judge the people who ask you questions: unless you suspect they are an account trader. I’ve personally been asked what max plunder was by someone who was 80mcs and I reported their account to be investigated. If you find a new player who is asking basic questions and doesn’t seem to know a lot of things, point them towards the FAQ, and guides for beginners. Spoiler: Quick and Easy Q&A This is the simplest, and easiest method. Often employed by mods who get swamped by requests for help, they ask the person for their question, answer it as best they can and move on. This can be done well or poorly. Make sure you understand the question, clarify any ambiguities, answer them, ask if they are happy with the answer, move on to the next person. Analogy Trying to present PIMD as a college simulator, and explain how like fighting, dancing, pranking, and eavesdropping all do different things. How when you are more tired, you fail more hits. How you make money from jobs and parties Explain how when you hire crew, by living with them, your own stats because you become familiar with them. Describe how being in a club with people means they’ll have your back, and how trust is built. Not everything will work, and it’s an ongoing but fun process to compare the game’s mechanics to the real world. It helps to make sense of the game and criticize the developers. You can use it to easily explain that your rs helps you in battle. A helpful Copypasta! You can just copy and paste this or some variation of it to people who are starting out and want to get their bearings on the whole PIMD thing. Your first 10 pimd tips (Fits in pm's) 0🔞 PIMD is 17+ 1🍄⬆️ Improve the crew in your dorms. Rent new rooms and replace weak crew mates. Skip tiers when possible and focus on building EITHER strength💪 OR intelligence🧠 2💲 Ask people to hire you until your hire value is above 1b. This will make you lots of money, fast. 💲 Hire active people so they can upgrade. 3🔐 Save your doctors notes (Dns) 4💡 cs stands for combined stats. 💪strength + intelligence🧠 5💲 Hire tutors worth 15m for every 1,000cs (1kcs) in your base stats / 15b for every 1Mcs. You will make ~2.4x the amount of money from parties and pvp. 6💗 Go club-shopping. Visit some clubs and find some that you like. 7💲 Use your energy to hit other people, parties, or jobs. Try not to let it stay full. 8⛓️ Link your account to an email address. This will let you log in to your account. 9🤝 Trade items that you are familiar with. PIMD has a free market. 10💡 If you need more info, there are 2 main sources. Experienced players👨🎓 Players can be misinformed so be sceptical. Forums📑 'Pinned' threads and the 'Guides' sub-forum are trustworthy. Teach a newb to fish This can be done well or poorly as well but does tend to be on the quick side. If a player has a question for you, you can refer them to the guide that answers their question, or even quickly send them a link with the answer. Just try to give them an adequate information-base so they do not come back like a stray dog for more lasagne. But if they do, take it as a compliment that they prefer the lasagne you made than the one you recommended they try. The secret is carrot. The Cold Approach This is best done to strangers who have NOT asked for help. To start, go through a player’s profile and check for weakness. You can check their tutor list. If they have no tutors, post on their wall, gift, or follow them to tell them that they have to get max plunder (15m worth of tutors for every 1000cs in their base stats) Hit them a few times and see if they have any pots. If they do not have any, tell them to get more pots to help with defence. If they don’t have many friends in their friends list, tell them to join an RP club to make more friends. If they have too many friends in their friends list, ask them how many of their friends they know by face, and whether their parents would be okay seeing how many complete strangers they’ve been fraternizing with. If they are any build except the one you prefer, tell them to start using their head! If they complain about how the game is unfair, tell them the game is a game and to get a life. Check on their RS and, if their avatars are the same sex, ask them if they’re homosexual. If their avatar is really hot, send them nice gifts and start flirting. The world is your oyster, and it’s time for some oyster to get forked. If their avatar is not hot; call them a witch/Voldemort. If their only friend is their RS, tell them to stop simping and leave that abusive relationship. Check their fight losses, and if they’re too low hit them to make them look tougher. The more fight losses someone has, the tougher they’ll look to people, and the less people will mess with them. Spoiler: Hard and Vigorous These can be done by anyone, but they may require a bit more time and knowledge QAQ Question, Answer, Question is about taking the questions you’ve been asked and providing the people you’re helping with better questions because it takes experience to know how to ask the right question. QAQ If you find that a player’s question might not be the best for them to be asking, such as “how do you earn extra credits?”, answer briefly ‘they can be bought for real money, rewarded from the offer wall, or earnt as rare drops’ but ask a penetrating question such as ‘do you want an avatar?’. If they want an avatar, they may want to know that it is easier and cheaper to earn an avatar by completing a hunt. Or give more general advice like “This game takes months and years to play. You’ll become bored if you’re too impatient for everything.” Try to get deeper and understand why they have the questions they do, and flip it to make helpful suggestions for how they can achieve their goals: When you go deeper like this, you can recognize that most players have core goals that define how they play PIMD: To show off their interior decorating skills To show people how they look To outsmart people To upgrade quickly To RP with Jersey Sunshine To make friends and meet people To find a good club/community To pass level 70 at RP QAQ can be done on its own to just be a bit more helpful than a simple QA method, without taking too much longer, or it can be included in a longer problem-solving method. (Image is not relevant) 🌟 Follow a Problem-Solving Method 1. Understand their question deeply. If you have any uncertainty about what you’re being asked, try to rephrase the question they’ve asked you, and ask if that’s what they’re asking. New players often lack the technical language of PIMD so it’s important to make sure you’re not being dogged by language. Be careful of ambiguous language. e.g. “Upgrade dorm” – Furniture or crew? Questions that people pose to you are also often subsumed by a deeper goal such as general curiosity or how they want to play the game, or by a root problem such as that they are unsure of how to solve a conflict with words and are scrambling to defend themselves. You can ask further, deeper questions to get to the core of their problem, in a QAQ (Question, answer, question) process e.g. if someone comes to you asking for pvp tips, it may be because of some conflict that they’re experiencing that could be easily resolved with an apology. 2. Think of possible solutions, Draw on your own knowledge to find solutions to those problems, think about other experts who may be able to help better, or think of guides to provide the person. You may have to check forums, google conflict resolution strategies, question relevant parties, or become involved to help the person out. Sometimes when I’m lazy, at this stage, I recommend that people start using forums to look for guides and solve any problems they have but it’s always helpful to, after suggesting a solution, drop a hint or suggestion for how they can help themselves, later, so they don’t have to always have to interact people in order to learn 🤮. It may also be helpful to let the person you’re helping know how/where you look for the solutions so they can do it themselves. Say “I’m going to check this thread in forums to find the answer”, or “I’ll have to check with Bandersnatch Cucumber”. Let them in on the magic, and this casually invites them to, and informs them of how to find the answers for themselves. 3. Ask them to try solutions, Ask them to try the solution and come back to you with any questions if they are unsure of how to proceed and ask them to also tell you how it goes/ if it works. 4. Check results. You can check the results for yourself by lurking or talking to their contacts. I find the best way is to ask them to get back to you if things get hairy, because if you feel confident in your solution, things should go well. 5. Repeat if needed. If things do go wrong, you may need to repeat the entire process again to see where things went wrong. Spoiler: Bose-Einstein Condensate! Spoiler: Go subatomic to fit between the atoms! *really, really, really, really, really small ant* Psycho-analysis This method is the slowest and requires the most attention. It involves critically evaluating their account, requires them to be online as you interview them, and get to the root of what they want to do, what their desires are and what holds them back. People probably don’t want this help, but some will come to you and ironically ask a stranger to help them with the knot in their chakras. You have to either have their consent and patience and try for a long time to find out what’s wrong with them, or you have to be very lucky, smart, critical, logical, and fast to try and determine what ails them most deeply before they can complain about how redesigning their personality without them ever thinking anything was wrong. Ask them questions that either directly or indirectly suggest what may be wrong, such as what foods they crave. They may think it is insignificant, but it may mean they have elevated levels of certain hormones and neurotransmitters, and you can quickly recommend they smile more, release the tension in their shoulders, and drink more water. Do they think that farming is mean, violent and ‘reflects poorly on those who do it’? Perhaps they never learned to play-fight and fear their own shadow? Teach them to have fun and get over their vaginismus. Do they want an avatar so people know what they look like? Remind them that they can pretend to be whoever they want to be, and that they are not so interesting, otherwise talking about themselves all the time would have netted them more friends. Another example is that if they like country music, they may need to start wearing a mask. Just be quick with it! The ultimate goal of taking this approach is to show them that no questions need answering because they don’t need to want anything outside of themselves. If they are truly at peace with themselves, then they will have no desire for knowledge or material things and will be content in their own company. They will just be in a state of constant, unwavering, and intense bliss. 7 - Helping the helpers Spoiler There are 2 main ways to do this right now. The research side if the least active and needs the most work. Most of the knowledge available on PIMD is already included in guides. Writing Write about the information we have so that it can be easily understood and gathered by players, so that helpers can read and refer other players to read them. Research Assist in answering the unanswered questions on PIMD and providing evidence for your answers. A great difficulty with both is that they often require third party apps to be used and built collaboratively, and the terms of has reportedly been used to impede this process, however I haven’t seen it get in the way too badly. I would, personally, only use anonymous accounts to engage off app because of privacy and safety concerns. Collaborative Google Sheets and Google Forms are very useful for these, however a bit can be done in forums. These are often done collaboratively in google documents however most guides, if they’re specific enough, can be done individually and don’t require collaboration. People mainly use others to proofread the documents, but this can be but this is easy enough to do yourself. There has been a great effort to try and find out the drop rates for various spinner items, because the values of items are heavily influenced by perceptions of their availability. One day that might be included in a guide about spinner items prices, or you can use them when helping players to figure out whether an item’s worth buying in the current market. If you want to know what unanswered questions are out there, you can check out this thread or refer back to the scope of information part of this thread, where there are gaps, that means either there isn’t enough information about it out yet, or nobody’s written a guide to it yet. That’s where work needs to be done.
Try posting it here to test if it’ll work, if you use the link I gave you it should post :^) @-_-Divesh-_-