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Dream of running your own item shop and up charging heroes every chance you get? This is possible with the free to play simulation game Shop Titans. However, Shop Titans, made by Kabam, is a game that has in-app purchases so do you really have a full range over your item shop? Let’s explore and see just how free Shop Titans actually is.
The Merchant
When you start the game, you get to customize your merchant. You start with the basics:
- Hair
- Gender
- Skin Tone
- color of clothes
- facial hair
- hat or no hat
When you unlock the avatar editor, you get more options. However, most of the options require the special currency, gems, to purchase them.
There are Guilds in Shop Titans
The Shop Titans game will show you how to join a guild. Guilds can be beneficial if you join a good one. You can dust each others’ stores to gain energy. Everyone can help out and invest in buildings in the town to raise the level of the building.
You can help other guild members out by speeding up their upgrades but it usually requires gems. Figures don’t it?
Goals
There are tasks and bounties that you can complete. Bounties count toward your weekly renown in the Guild and earn you guild medals. You can buy a grab bag with a random item for 100 guild medals.
Tasks reward you with tickets that you can use in the fortune zone. There is a slot machine that spins when you use a ticket and you win medals. These medals can be used to buy gems, wooden keys, and components.
Customers in Shop Titans
Customers are going to be the primary source of income for your merchant in Shop Titans. Thankfully, there isn’t a customer limit. Interactions with customers can increase or decrease your energy depending on the situation.
Energy
Think of energy like stamina. However, you don’t need to worry if you run out of energy because selling wares restores some of your energy. Energy is used to surcharge your customers or to suggest a different item if you do not have the requested one in stock.
To recover energy, you need to sell wares, discount wares or have a successful small talk. A backfired small talk loses energy. To increase the maximum energy you need to build tables, racks, and mannequins and upgrade those.
Wares
In order to be a merchant, you need wares to sell to your customers, right? So how do you get your items? Well, you need several things actually. You need resources, the discovered blueprints and the correct worker to make items.
When you have met the requirements, you can have the item crafted. It takes time to craft and the time required depends on the item and its blueprint level.
Once it is crafted, it either goes on display, if you have the room, or it goes into your trunk.
Prestige in Shop Titans
You can decorate your shop with flooring, wallpapers, chairs, fireplaces, plants and other items. Using decorations raises your prestige.
Prestige is a measurement of how nice your shop is. What does this have to do with the gameplay? According to the game itself, nothing. That’s right, nothing except to place in the leaderboards. And the best part, the high prestige items can only be bought by, you guessed it, gems.
Not really worth it in my opinion. However, some items require gold. Use those to decorate your shop. The only benefit I have seen to decorating your shop with items is that the customers will comment on how much they like it and gives you energy in turn.
Workers
Workers craft wares related to their field. For instance, the carpenter makes the staves, bows and other wood related products whereas the blacksmith makes the swords, helmets and other metal related items.
In order to have a worker craft for you, you need to pay the one-time hire fee and boy can they be expensive. In some cases, they also require certain buildings to be at a high enough for them to be available. For example, the jeweler’s building isn’t built until the tailor’s building at level 5.
However, there are workers that you can only get by spending real money to get. The crafty engineer is around $30 and the wise scholar is around $20.That’s $50 for just 2 workers, 4 exclusive blueprints and 2 special bonuses. That’s a lot of money!
Resources in Shop Titans
4 resources automatically refill. This is due to certain buildings in the city like the lumberyard, for example. These are wood, lumber, leather, and herbs. The listed resources are the basic resources and all blueprints require at least 1 type of these resources in order to be made.
Higher tier blueprints also require more advanced resources. These are acquired by sending a champion and 1 to 2 heroes out on a quest. You get different resources based on what level and dungeon you choose. If you are lucky enough to get a chest, you can score a lot of the advanced resources but you need a key or gems to open the chest.
Dungeons
Dungeons are places you send your champions and warriors to in order to receive components to craft better wares to sell. However, in the beginning, you can only retrieve 2 to 5 components due to the level difficulty on easy. When you have access to the medium difficulty, you can gain more components.
Not only do your warriors earn experience after completing a level in the dungeon but the dungeon gains experience too. Enough experience grants you access to the next level of the dungeon, then to the dungeon boss and eventually to a new dungeon. Different levels and different dungeons offer different components as rewards. The dungeon bosses offer a chance to earn keys to unlock chests, otherwise, you would have to spend gems to open them.
Quests in Shop Titans
You are given 1 quest slot and these are needed to send the champion and heroes on a quest. Quests take time and when the quests are completed, your warriors need time to rest. That’s why it is beneficial to spend gold on more slots.
Champions
Champions are more powerful than heroes and more efficient on a quest. The game gives you one at the beginning of the game, however, you need coins for the others. For instance, you need 50 Yumi coins to recruit Yumi. The game throws ”special offers” at you, trying to get you to spend money on the champions’ coins.
Once a day, the champions will want to buy certain items. Fulfill their request and they will reward you with 3 of their coins. This will take time to recruit the champions, especially since the more powerful ones require more coins. If you are lucky enough to get a chest from a quest, you may receive coins.
No Ads But Their Own
Shop Titans have no ads but their own, meaning there are no ads to watch to earn rewards and gems. Instead, the game advertises a “special offer” every day. The king comes into your shop and announces this “special offer”.
Also, they have a monthly subscription that seems to be mentioned every time you complete a quest, ascend blueprints and redeem medals. A lot of times, if you earn a treasure chest from the dungeon you cannot collect it unless you are a royal merchant. (That’s the title you earn when you subscribe.)
That’s why I keep saying if you are lucky enough to get a chest. Of course, you can buy one from the marketplace from other players but expect the chests to be expensive.
What this subscription does for you will allow you to collect all the rewards from the dungeon, spend fewer medals in the fortune zone and gain more benefits when you ascend blueprints. I do not believe the special workers are even part of this subscription.
So How Free Is Shop Titans?
There are enough free features to enjoy the game but remember you will never have those exclusive workers and their blueprints. You will also have to grind for chests and components since you cannot collect everything without the subscription.
If you want to see a visual aspect of the gameplay, there is a video below.
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Amber Borden
Amber is an avid gamer. The first game she ever played was Super Mario Bros on the NES. She has seen many genres of videos games due to her 30 years of gaming. However, Amber typically sticks to RPGs, Sandbox and Simulation.
Since she loves gaming, her first job was at a Gamestop. Also, she has written guides for Gamefaqs. Amber was a full time worker in the retail world, but now she is working on this site from home. No matter what, however, she still plays her video games.