Starter guide: your first days Community-sourced
A source-linked route through your first days: what to buy, how to stock your first shelves, and the habits that keep the shop alive. Every claim below links its source — nothing here comes from "trust me".
ℹ️ How to read this page
This page is built from named community sources (linked below), collected 2026-10-01, against game version 1.0 (launched 2026-09-15). Two caveats: 1.0 changed Tetramon card values, so dollar figures quoted from Early-Access footage are ballparks; and no one on this team has played 1.0 yet — where a number matters to you, spot-check it in your own shop and tell us what changed.
Before you spend anything
The tutorial forces a few purchases on you. Community reports put what's left in your wallet afterwards at roughly $1,000–$1,500 (single-source reports — treat as a ballpark, not a fact). Either way the rule for day one is the same: every dollar should be working — on shelves or in stock — not sitting in your pocket.
Your first stock-up: packs
The community's standard opening move: get a card stand, buy 32–64 booster packs, and open them. Opening gives you singles to shelve and XP while you do it (Steam Starter Deck Guide). One well-known aggressive variant: keep opening until you reach level 4 before opening the shop on day one, so booster boxes are on your buy list immediately (YouTube route — single-source, optional).
Whether opening beats selling sealed is its own question — we keep the expected-value framework on the open vs. sealed page.
The $150 shelf upgrade
Small but repeatedly recommended: the $150 shelf holds more than the shelf the game makes you buy at the start (r/TCGCardShopSim). Early shop capacity is money.
Price from market, every morning
Price from the market price you see in game — a modest markup (+10–20% is the community's usual range) with clean rounding beats gut feeling. The full mechanics live on the pricing page; the arithmetic lives in the pricing calculator.
One habit worth building on day one: restock and reprice each morning before you open. Market prices recalculate overnight (see the pricing page), so yesterday's price tags age whether you touch them or not.
What NOT to buy early
- Play tables — a money guide calls them a trap early: they take space and cash, and can even cut into pack sales until your shop is established (money guide, Early-Access footage).
- Staff — you are the best employee until level 10 at the earliest, and the good hires start at level 25. Break-even math lives on the hiring page.
- Empty shelves — not a purchase, the most common one: restock what sells before you buy anything new.
Your first week, as a loop
- Morning: restock what sold, reprice from the fresh market prices.
- Open. Watch which products move and which sit.
- Evening: buy restock from the distributor; cull slow lines.
- Bank early profits toward the first storage/stockroom upgrades, not furniture.
Sources & version notes
- Game version: 1.0, launched 2026-09-15 (SteamDB patch notes; see our changelog).
- wiki.gg — TCG Price: overnight market recalculation (documented during Early Access, page edited Oct 2024).
- Steam — Starter Deck Guide and r/TCGCardShopSim — early money thread: day-one buying moves (community, single-source each).
- Money guide: play-table caution and Early-Access dollar figures (1.0 changed card values — treat as ballparks).
Unofficial fan page. Not affiliated with OPNeon Games. Spotted something that changed in 1.0? Tell us — corrections are logged publicly.