Frequently Asked Questions File

CONTACTS:

Q. How do I get my contacts?

     You get contacts by solving favours. Instead of the usual gift at the end of the favour, the townie will tell you they are becoming your contact.

    Contacts are allocated randomly; you get two in each city. One will be an evidence contact (Tailor, Podiatrist, Librarian, Barber, or their equivalent in other cities), The other will come from the remaining townies.

Q. Can I choose which contact I get?

     Technically, no you can't. However, you can quit all favours that are not for your chosen townie and eventually your chosen townie will become your contact. Be warned, this can take an extraordinarily long time.

Q. How long to get all my contacts?

    Oh dear, how long is a piece of string? Sadly, we cannot answer this one. Contacts are allocated randomly and may come at any time. Some people get them really quickly whilst others have to wait a lot longer. As long as you're correctly solving favours for the town's people your doing all that you can, they will come eventually. The last contact (your eighth) usually takes the longest to get, it is wise to ensure this last contact is not a PE one.

FAVOURS:

Q. How often will I get a favour?

     You should get a favour every fourth case you successfully solve. So if you solved your last favour, you only need to solve another 3 daily cases to get your next one. If you failed to solve your last favour, you'll need to solve 4 daily cases to get your next one.

Q. Can I choose who I do a favour for?

     No, favours are randomly allocated. If, for some reason you don't want to do a favour for a particular townie, you'll have to quit any that you get.

Q. How do I hold a favour?

     Once you have been told that a particular townie has a favour for you, you can chose not to play it right away and simply carry on playing your daily cases. However, whilst you are holding that favour you cannot get another one. Holding favours is therefore only useful if you're in an agency. 

SKILLS:

Q. What skill should I get next?

      We recommend you get the following key skills first:

1) Smart skills: advanced hair analysis, advanced thread analysis, handwriting analysis, footprint analysis and research. 

2) Interview skills:

·        Tough detectives: advanced intimidation and advanced interrogation.

·        Charming detectives: advanced sweet talking and advanced rule bending.

We suggest you concentrate on getting one set of interview skills at first, either tough or charming. Concentrating on one set means your detective will gain the advanced skills quicker which, in turn, means they will find it easier to solve the harder cases.

Once you have these key skills it's really up to you what skill to get next, although pugilism (for tough detectives) or flirting (for charming detectives) are a good bet if your suspects still clam regularly.

If you really can't decide then take a look at your recent cases and think about what has hindered you the most. Generally this will indicate which skill will be of the most benefit.

Q. What's wrong with getting tough and charm skills?

     There's nothing wrong with this in the long run, you'll find having both sets comes in very useful when you play the almost impossible cases. However, people start to clam up very quickly in the higher level cases and a detective with advanced skills in one set (either tough or charming) will have more luck making them talk than a detective with intermediate levels in both.

Remember that skills become increasingly harder to earn as your experience grows so get the essential ones first. If you already have a mix of the two it's not a disaster just concentrate on one set from now on.

Q. I'm a tough detective can I get charm skills instead?

     Yes you can but they'll take longer to acquire because the price of each skill is determined by the archetype of your detective. The table below shows the discount each archetype receives.