Prison Simulator: Beginner Tips
General Info
This guide was first published on Steam, but I'm the author.
These are some assorted beginner tips that I wish I knew before playing, as clickbaity as that sounds. But unlike articles by useless game journalists those things here are stuff you don't actually figure out in the first 5 minutes.
General Tips
- The types of illegal contraband just determine their value. Not confiscating items that can be used as weapons does not actually increase any danger level, not confiscating files does not lead to escapes. Treat all illegal contraband you find like weird shaped cigarettes.
- Whenever you find cookies (legal contraband), take them for yourself. You'll find out why.
- Many free time activities give you 1% respect for both prisoners and guards (until some prisoners are above 99%), this is overall respect (respect for every prisoner), not single prisoner respect. I'd focus on increasing your stats first, those activities should give you both respects as well. All those activities are in the yard or near to it. Stamina at the bench press bench, speed is the package delivery on the short outside part on the way to death row (not always there but visible from the yard), strength and defense are the dudes in the basketball court with a shield or an arm symbol under the play symbol, also not always there.
- A good way to get prison money is buying cells in block A and block C. A cell costs just $200 and once you're at the top of the ratings, a single prisoner gets you $35 grant, so you start turning a profit after a week. Also, block A and C are not those you have to worry about. I'd recommend not buying block B cells tho or you invite a new low respect prisoner.
- Upgrades. Negotiator and eagle eye aren't really worth it, you only seldomly get bribes and the eagle eye comparator is so slow you're faster manually. The Trust and Funny Feeling upgrades are very useful. The former lets you reverse bribe prisoners, so to speak, for respect, and the latter makes finding illegal contraband much easier/faster. As for passive ones, besides stamina and movement speed they aren't worth it. You can already easily tank several prisoners without any upgrades.
- The day end summary is a bit buggy. If you bought/sold anything between the last activity and the briefing, this will influence the summary. So say you bought $600 worth of prison supplies early in the day. This will not influence end day summary. But if you bought that same amount after the last activity, it will be subtracted from what it shows you earning. At least I think that's how it works. Anyway, if you want an accurate day summary screen, just don't buy/sell anything that day.
- Upgrading workshops does give you more money per day, even with no workshop activity. It's not too much. Upgrading screw gives you about $27 more per day, for example.
Respect
- Prisoner respect is the cumulative of every singe prisoner's respect. Most things that give you respect give you respect for that specific prisoner. For example, not confiscating (leaving) illegal contraband from a prisoners cell gives you 50 respect points, or 0.5% for that specific prisoner. If he's already at 100% respect you're wasting your time. Technically guard respect works the same way, but unless you beat up a guard, all guards should be at the same level.
- Confiscating illegal contraband off of prisoners will lower their respect, finding it but not taking it will increase respect, but make sure you don't have a blue eye on you if you plan to leave it behind. As prisoner respect is hard to come by, just leave them all behind, you can find illegal contraband in other places than prisoner's cells.
- Do not worry to much about guard respect. Guard respect is very easy to gain. Easiest by just securing illegal contraband (1% overall guard respect per piece)
- The death row is the ideal place to get illegal contraband to sell or to report for guard respect. In the story line there's (nearly) never anyone there, so you will not lose any respect by taking the item, yet reporting it gives you guard respect. And each day, new items appear. You can easily gain 12% guard respect a day from death row alone.
- Never beat prisoners and never discipline prisoners that do not have the orange fist symbol (started the fight) over their head or you lose respect of all prisoners, as far as I could evaluate. Also beware that if you beat one unconscious and he wakes up, the game often forgets that he started the fight and he loses the symbol. Do not discipline him, your eyes and your bruises lie, he's perfectly innocent now. I think this is the reason I lost 10% respect in a day, two times. Personally I went over to simply never discipline them.
- Every day, give (not sell) 2 items to a prisoner with the $ symbol over the head (need to unlock that ability first). This will increase that prisoners respect greatly. If he's already at or near 100, give to someone else, you can only give two a day. If all prisoners with $ are at 100, keep your stuff.
- The real way to get prisoner respect is skins. As soon as you unlock prison upgrades (warden's computer) you can purchase skins for beds, etc. Now the game doesn't let you click on those you can't afford making it look like a single click would buy those you can afford, and skins always sounds cosmetic so why waste your money. This is incorrect - clicking on one you can afford actually shows you the real effect it has without automatically buying. So save some prison money ($1-2k) and have a look around. I recommend checking toilet skins first. As far as I remember the golden toilet was a whopping 15% overall prisoner respect. Before buying I'd note down which ones you want before buying one because you can't see the effects any more once you don't have the money.
- Beware of job tasks like prisoner applications. Rejecting an application will not cost you respect with that prisoner alone but with all of them, and multiple percents to boot (possibly only when you falsely reject it)
Jobs
- Do all jobs that let you (Prison Yard, TV room, Workshop, Canteen) to the max possible time. Note that overtiming workshop lowers your respect with the attendees a bit.
- Showers: Whack the night stick on the shower door and the prisoner hurries up (time remaining is reduced by 4-5 seconds). This can be done several times in a row.
- Showers: Broken showers can be repaired while in that activity, not just during free roam.
- Camera: Don't bother searching around yourself. Wait for the "suspicious behavior" notification and then go to the place mentioned. If you see someone sneaking , sick a guard on em, he's gonna go start a fire. If you can't see anything, make sure to have a view around (click+drag) or go to another camera in the room, there is something somewhere. What I had a hard time finding most often were passed out prisoners behind pillars in cell block B
- Cell shakedown, attendance check, evening head count, prison yard etc: Just ignore fighting prisoners. Intervening will just give you negative respect. You'd think other prisoners would respect you more to take care of the attacker but nope. You may lose some guard respect but that is easily regained.
- Execution: There is no bucket like instructed by the game and the poster on the wall, use the sink. Yeah, it's supposed to be salt water because that conducts electricity better, but screw it, we like to have some torture with our executions.