Capitalism, Ho! A Recettear Strategy Guide for Shop and Dungeon Mastery

Last Updated on 30 October, 2025

You just inherited a mountain of debt, and a tiny, demanding fairy named Tear has appeared to “help” you pay it off. This is Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale, a charming and surprisingly deep game that splits its time between two activities: running a fantasy item shop and delving into dangerous dungeons for new inventory. You will haggle with customers, manage a team of adventurers, and frantically try to meet your ever-growing weekly loan payments. This guide will teach you how to master both capitalism and combat, helping you pay off your debt and build an item shop empire.

Quick Fact: The game’s famous catchphrase, “Capitalism, Ho!,” was an invention of its English localization team, Carpe Fulgur. This one line is often credited with giving the game its memorable, quirky personality in the West.

Table of Contents

• The Core Loop: Time, Money, and Debt
• Phase 1: Your First Week (The 10k Pix Payment)
• Phase 2: The Mid-Game (The 30k and 80k Pix Payments)
• Phase 3: The Big Leagues (The 200k and 500k Pix Payments)
• Shopkeeping 101: The Art of the Deal
• Dungeon Crawling 101: How to Stock Your Shelves
• Meet the Adventurers: Your Hired Help
• After the Debt: New Game Plus and Endless Mode
• Conclusion: Your Adventure Begins

The Core Loop: Time, Money, and Debt

Recettear is a game about resource management. Your two most important resources are Time and Pix (the game’s currency).

The game divides every day into four time slots: Morning, Afternoon, Evening, and Night. Nearly every action you take consumes a time slot.

1. Opening your shop takes one slot.
2. Visiting the Market or Adventurer’s Guild takes one slot.
3. Going dungeon crawling with a hero takes two slots (e.g., Morning and Afternoon).

At the end of every week (Day 7, 14, 21, and 30), Tear demands a payment. You must have the required Pix on hand, or you lose the game.

The payment schedule is:

1. Day 7: 10,000 Pix
2. Day 14: 30,000 Pix
3. Day 21: 80,000 Pix
4. Day 30: 500,000 Pix

Your entire game revolves around using your limited time to earn enough Pix to meet these deadlines.

Heads-Up: Do not place your high-value boss drops or rare equipment in the vending machines outside your shop. They will always sell for 100% of their base value, completely wasting your profit potential.

Phase 1: Your First Week (The 10k Pix Payment)

The first week is your tutorial. Tear will guide you through the basics of running the shop and exploring dungeons.

1. Meet Louie: Your first adventurer, the “Fallen Swordsman” Louie, will visit your shop. He is a balanced fighter and will be your only dungeon-crawling partner for the first week. You hire him (for free at first) at the Adventurer’s Guild.
2. Unlock the Hall of Trials: This is your first dungeon. It is a 10-floor dungeon with a boss at the end. Your goal here is simple: gather loot. Pick up everything you see.
3. Visit the Town: You will unlock the Market and the Town Square.
   • Market: You can buy items here to stock your shop. Prices change daily. The key is to “buy low” when items are on sale (look for “cheap” or “falling” price indicators).
   • Adventurer’s Guild: You hire heroes here. The Guild Master also buys items from you at 100% of their base value. This is your safety net. If you cannot sell an item in your shop, you can always sell it to the Guild for no profit, but also no loss.
4. Run Your Shop: Open your shop in the remaining time slots. Place the items you found in the dungeon on your shelves. Customers will come in to buy them. For this first week, you can sell items for around 110-120% of their base value. We will cover advanced haggling later.
5. Pay the Debt: Your goal is 10,000 Pix. A few good runs in the Hall of Trials combined with a few days of shopkeeping should get you there easily.

Quick Reminder: You can only save your game by using the journal on your shop counter at the end of the day (during the Night time slot). You cannot save in dungeons or in the middle of the day.

Phase 2: The Mid-Game (The 30k and 80k Pix Payments)

The training wheels come off. The debt payments jump significantly, and you must become more efficient.

Unlocking New Heroes and Dungeons

1. Charme the Thief: Visit the Pub at night. You will eventually meet Charme. After her event, she becomes available to hire at the Guild. She is fast and can open locked treasure chests in dungeons.
2. Caillou the Water Mage: Visit the Town Square. You will see a young boy who loses his wallet. After you complete this event chain, Caillou becomes hirable. He is a mage who can hit multiple enemies.
3. Jade Way & Amber Garden: As you level up your Merchant Level and clear the Hall of Trials, you will unlock new dungeons. These are longer, tougher, and contain much more valuable loot.

Upgrading Your Shop

As your Merchant Level (your “shop XP”) increases, you will get opportunities to upgrade your shop.

1. Shop Expansions: A carpenter will offer to expand your shop for a fee. Always accept this. A bigger shop allows more customers inside at once and gives you more shelf space.
2. Atmosphere: As you sell items, your shop’s atmosphere will change. Selling lots of “dark” items like skulls and crystals will create a Dark Atmosphere, attracting customers who like those items. Selling “light” items like food and flowers creates a Light Atmosphere.
3. Customer Friendship: Every customer who visits has a friendship level. Selling to them (especially at a good price) increases this level. Higher friendship means they will trust you more, spend more money, and start placing special orders.

Your goal for these weeks is to balance dungeon runs in Jade Way with shopkeeping. You need to learn the art of buying low at the Market and selling high in your shop.

Practical Tip: When Charme the thief visits your shop as a customer, watch her closely. If she tries to steal an item, you must quickly run into her (tackle her) before she reaches the door to get your item back.

Phase 3: The Big Leagues (The 200k and 500k Pix Payments)

This is the final stretch. The 200k payment is tough, and the 500k payment is a massive wall. You cannot beat this with simple grinding, you must master the game’s systems.

1. Obsidian Tower: You will unlock the final dungeon, a 50-floor gauntlet. The loot here is incredibly valuable. Bosses drop items that can sell for 50,000 Pix or more.
2. High-Tier Adventurers: You can now unlock Tielle, Nagi, and Griff. Griff, the final adventurer, is very powerful but costs a fortune to hire. He is an investment.
3. The 500k Strategy: You must play like a true merchant.
   • Dungeon Diving: Spend a few full days doing deep runs into the Obsidian Tower with your strongest adventurer. Your goal is to get 5-10 extremely rare boss drops or high-tier weapons.
   • Market Speculation: Spend your mornings at the Market. Buy out the entire stock of any expensive item that is “on sale.”
   • Shop Dominance: Spend the rest of your time in the shop. Your goal now is to sell your ultra-expensive items to the few customers who can afford them.
4. Target Your Customers: You must build friendship with your high-budget customers.
   • Alouette: The little rich girl. She starts with a low budget but has the highest potential. Sell her items she likes (even at a loss) to raise her friendship. Once her level is high, she will come in and buy your 80,000 Pix items without batting an eye.
   • Euria: The woman in the fancy dress. She has a high budget and loves clothes, accessories, and art.

You must haggle effectively and aim for “Near Pin” bonuses to maximize profit from these high-value sales.

Combat Tip: Many adventurer skills, like Louie’s Burning Slash or Charme’s Vanish, grant invincibility frames during their animation. You can use these skills defensively to pass straight through projectiles or boss attacks.

Shopkeeping 101: The Art of the Deal

This is the most important part of the game.

The Pricing System

Every item has a base value. This is what the Guild pays you. Customers will pay more than this.

1. Customer Budget: Each customer has a maximum price they are willing to pay, which is a percentage of the base value. This percentage increases as their friendship with you grows.
2. Haggling: When a customer wants to buy, you suggest a price.
   • A good starting point is 130% to 140% of the base value.
   • The customer will accept, reject, or make a counter-offer.
   • If they counter, you can accept or make your own counter-offer. Be careful. If you offer a price they refuse twice, they will storm out, and you lose the sale.

Near Pin and Just Bonus

These are the keys to leveling up your Merchant Level.

1. Near Pin: When you sell an item for a price that is very close to (but not over) the customer’s maximum budget. You will see a “Near Pin!” message. This gives you bonus shop XP and greatly increases customer friendship.
2. Just Bonus: When you sell an item for exactly what the customer was willing to pay (their “true value,” which is hidden). This is hard to hit, but it gives a massive XP bonus. You will often hit this by accepting a customer’s first counter-offer.

Customer Orders

Sometimes, a customer will ask you to find a specific item for them. Always accept these orders. Fulfilling an order gives a huge friendship boost. You can get the items from dungeons or by buying them at the Market or Guild.

Quest Tip: Your adventurers will occasionally visit the shop and personally request a specific item. Prioritize these requests above all others, as fulfilling them is the only way to advance that adventurer’s personal story events.

Dungeon Crawling 101: How to Stock Your Shelves

This is the action-RPG half of the game.

Recette’s Role

You do not fight. You are an item-picker-upper. Your adventurer does all the work.

1. Health: Recette has her own HP. If she gets hit, she might drop items from her inventory. If her HP hits zero, she faints.
2. Fainting: If Recette faints, you are kicked out of the dungeon and lose all the items you gathered on that run. Your adventurer is sent back to town.
3. Your Job: Stay behind your adventurer. Let them clear the room, then run in and grab the loot.

The Adventurer’s Role

You hire adventurers at the Guild for a fee.

1. Levels: Adventurers have their own character level. They gain XP by killing monsters. Their level persists between dungeon runs.
2. Equipment: You can equip your adventurers with weapons and armor you find or buy. This makes them much stronger.
3. Skills: As they level up, adventurers learn powerful special moves. You control when they use them.

Loot and Bosses

1. Floors: Dungeons are divided into floors. Every 5 or 10 floors, you will fight a boss.
2. Bosses: Bosses are tough, but they drop the best loot. They drop materials you can use to craft powerful equipment (at the Guild) or sell for high prices.
3. Inventory: You have a 20-slot inventory. It fills up fast. You must learn to prioritize. A stack of 5 Slime Livers (Base Value: 10 Pix) is less valuable than one piece of Iron Ore (Base Value: 200 Pix). Drop the cheap stuff to make room for treasure.

Survival Tip: When Recette gets hit in a dungeon, she drops the last item she picked up. If your inventory is full, try to keep your most valuable items (like boss drops) from being in that last picked up slot.

Meet the Adventurers: Your Hired Help

You will unlock several adventurers. Each has a unique playstyle.

1. Louie: The starter. A balanced swordsman. He is reliable and cheap.
2. Charme: A thief. Very fast, high critical hit rate, but low defense. She can open locked chests for free.
3. Caillou: A water mage. His attacks are slow but can hit multiple enemies or in a wide area.
4. Tielle: An archer. She attacks from a distance, which helps keep Recette safe. You must protect her from enemies that rush her.
5. Nagi: A lancer. She has powerful, linear attacks that pierce through enemies.
6. Griff: A “secret” adventurer. He is an old, powerful brawler. He has very high damage and defense but costs the most to hire.

Pro Tip: You can trigger a Market Boom on purpose. Go to the Market and buy their entire stock of a specific item. This scarcity will often cause the item’s price to skyrocket, letting you sell your new stockpile for massive profits.

After the Debt: New Game Plus and Endless Mode

So, you paid the 500,000 Pix debt. What now?

1. Endless Mode: After Day 30, you can choose to continue playing. The debt payments stop, and you are free to run your shop and dungeon crawl forever.
2. New Game Plus (NG+): You can also choose to start the 30-day loop over again. When you do, you keep everything:
   • Your Merchant Level.
   • All Adventurer levels and equipment.
   • All your items in storage.
   • All your Pix.
   • Your Item Encyclopedia.

This makes the subsequent loops trivial. The real goal of New Game Plus is to see all the story events for every character, max out all your adventurers, and unlock the game’s True Ending, which requires 100% completion.

Boss Tip: Once you defeat a dungeon’s main boss, you unlock a Boss Loop. This allows you to re-enter the dungeon and go directly to the boss floor, making it much easier to farm them for their rare and valuable drops.

Conclusion: Your Adventure Begins

Recettear: An Item Shop’s Tale is a game of two halves, but your success depends on mastering both. You must be a ruthless dungeoneer and a savvy shopkeeper. Use this guide to survive your first month, but do not stop there. The real joy of Recettear comes after you pay the debt, when you are free to build the ultimate item shop. Now, get out there and make some Pix. Capitalism, ho!