TCG Card Shop Simulator Customers: Caps & Wallets
Customer throughput is the ceiling on everything else: new shoppers only spawn when existing ones leave, so a jammed checkout costs you the whole day's tail.
How many shoppers can be in the store
| Hard cap | 28 shoppers in the store at once |
|---|---|
| Floor | 3 |
| What raises it | Shop level, unlocked rooms, and half of the customers seated at play tables |
| What lowers it in practice | Queue length. Shoppers stuck at a register still count against the cap. |
How much money they carry
| Shopper type | Spawn chance | Money they can be holding |
|---|---|---|
| Regular | ≈95% | $20 up to the shop's wallet cap |
| Rich | 4.7% | $40 up to double the cap |
| Very rich | 0.3% | $300 up to four times the cap |
Cap = 100 + (main-room expansions × 250) + (shop level × 100), plus 500 + (Lot B expansions × 400) once Lot B is open, and the whole thing tops out at $30,000. A very rich shopper at the ceiling is carrying up to $120,000.
This is the answer to "why is nobody buying my expensive cards". A $20,000 single needs a shopper who spawned with $20,000, and that only happens once the wallet ceiling has been raised by expansions and levels.
Which register they pick
- A shopper prefers a register you are standing at with nobody queued.
- Failing that, an NPC-manned register with nobody queued.
- Failing that, the shortest queue.
- If all queues are equal, they pick one at random — and they will swap lines if another gets shorter.
A shopper who is currently paying no longer counts as queueing. Standing at a register yourself is the strongest pull in the list, which is why manual checkout during a rush clears a jam faster than adding stock.
The shopping list system
- Some shoppers spawn with a target list of 1 to 4 items.
- The list is rebuilt weekly: part of it from what is actually on your shelves, part of it from items your level could unlock whether you own the license or not.
- If the item is not out for sale, they walk to a random shelf and give up. Stocked shelves are what convert the list into a sale.
Because part of the weekly list is drawn from lines you could unlock but have not, buying a license can raise demand for that line before you even stock it — and leaving a licensed line unstocked wastes list slots.
Store rating levers
| Lever | What it does |
|---|---|
| Smell | Cleansers and Auto Scent units head off odour complaints. Auto Scent M100 holds 2, G500 holds 4, T100 holds 7. |
| Bulk Donation Box | Added in 0.65. Shoppers grab from it on the way past and have a high chance of leaving a good review. |
| Lighting | 0.65 added customer reviews that reference shop lighting at night. |
| Display | Certain shelves and visibly valuable cards on show raise the maximum customer count. |
Rating is not cosmetic: a shop under roughly 4.7 stars struggles to fill a tournament bracket, and an unfilled bracket pays the same prizes against fewer fees.
Footfall milestones
| Achievement | Requirement | Share of owners |
|---|---|---|
| Cozy Card Shop | 100 customers played in the shop | 81.5% |
| Popular Card Shop | 1,500 customers played | 34.4% |
| THE Card Shop | 5,000 customers played | 11.2% |
| Who you gonna call? | Cleaned 100 smelly customers | 73.0% |
| BO Buster! | Cleaned 500 smelly customers | 43.7% |
| I LOVE Working In Retail | Manually check out 1,000 customers | 32.5% |
Customer data checked: