Beginner's Guide to Tiny Death Star | Tips and Tricks (Part 1)

Tiny Tower gets a re-skin and a licensed Star Wars tie-in to become Tiny Death Star, the free to play sensation that is sweeping the mobile nation. Let's dig into this game and outline the general strategies. We'll get into some tips, tricks, and strategies as we go, to best optimize your Tiny Death Star and wreak Tiny Havok on the Tiny Rebels. Well, at least until Tiny X-Wings blow you into Tiny Bits.

Tiny Death Star Basics

The basic loop of this game is:

Staff and stock floors to earn credits. Use credits to buy more floors.

Thus, your primary motivations are:

And repeat on into infinity. There's a fair bit of waiting involved, since:

You've also got to keep an eye on your Death Star's levels, since only one good can be stocked at a time, and once it has completed stocking you'll have to tap the level in order to ready the goods for sale.

Levels and Stocking

There are 6 types of levels in Tiny Death Star:

The first four are all types of levels that stock goods and make money for your Death Star. The last two are special, and we'll cover them in other sections.

Levels that can be stocked will always feature up to three goods. In order to sell goods, they must be worked by Bitizens. The first Bitizen enables selling the first good, the second Bitizen enables selling the second good, and as you might expect, the third Bitizen enables selling the third good.

The first good on a level sells for one credit each, and generally is the fastest to stock but has the lowest overall stock level. That means it will stock quickly, but it will sell quickly and not make you that much money.

The second and third goods sell for 2 and 3 credits, respectively. They also tend to take more time to stock and the stock lasts longer. Thus, they are longer time investments but they end up paying out more credits with less effort.

Pro Tip So what's the best order for stocking goods? My suggestion would be to stock as much as you can with the amount of time you plan to play and how frequently you plan to check the game. For instance, if you think you'll be playing for more than a few minutes, start by stocking goods that take just a couple of minutes. When you're going to leave the game alone for a while, start stocking something that will take longer. That way, you're set up for restocking your high value items the next time you check in.

Bitizens, aka People

The people who live in your Death Star are called "Bitizens" since that's what Mobage calls its people in every game they make, for whatever reason.

Bitizens have a set of statistics (called skills) which determine how good they are at working at each level type, and they've also got a Dream Job they they'd really like to work at. The Dream Job is a specific kind of level of a given type.

Pro Tip So what do the numbers mean? The Bitizen's skill level helps when you're restocking - all the skills of the workers on the level are summed to give a discount on the amount of time it takes to stock all goods on that floor. So if 3 Bitizens on a single floor all have a skill level of 9 for working that floor type, they will combine to discount the stocking time by roughly 27%.

Every Bitizen also has a Dream Job. If a Bitizen works their Dream Job, they will double the amount of one good stocked on that level. Regardless of which slot they fill in the level, the first Dream Job worker will always double the stock on the first good on the level, the second Dream Job worker the second good, and so on. Thus, having 1 Dream Job worker isn't as awesome as having 3, as that will double the stock level of your most valuable good.

Pro Tip So which is better, a 9 in a job, or a Dream Job worker? Well, the Dream Job worker doubles the amount of time it takes to clear out the stock, which means you're working and producing credits on that floor for twice as long. The 9 in a job worker removes 9% of the restock time, which is kind of puny by comparison. Obviously, having both a 9 and a Dream Job on the same Bitizen is ideal. However, if you have to choose, pick the Dream Job guy until a better worker comes along.

Bitizens need a place to live before they will move into your tower. Residential floors provide space for 5 Bitizens to live. They won't move in unless you take them in the Elevator to a Residential level with an empty slot, but we'll cover the Elevator and how to use it later on.

Bitizens can also be evicted from your Death Star, and you'd want to do this if:

Really, you only want to evict Bitizens if you have excess workers. It's almost always better to have someone stocking a level, even if they're bad at it, rather than let the level sit empty or have fewer product options.

It's also very useful to have extra Residential capacity, so that you can bring in new people who might have Dream Jobs you can already fill, or who might have better Skill levels than Bitizens you're already employing.

The Elevator

The elevator is really the main "interactive" element in your Tiny Death Star. Using the elevator, you'll choose where to send the occasional random Bitizen. When someone is in the elevator, you'll see a red icon in the lower left.

Usually this is a two-arrow icon, which just means you've got to take a Bitizen to the floor they want to go to. However, occasionally something else happens:

If you take a normal Bitizen to the floor they want, they will get off and:

Before you take a Bitizen to a level, you should start a stocking operation if you can. If you catch it just right, you can actually deliver a Bitizen and then quickly tap and start stocking a good before they fully get off the elevator. This can be useful if you didn't realize you didn't have anything stocking before then.

Now, Bitizens will also get off at any Imperial floor, even if that's not the floor they wanted to go to. You'll lose your tip, but they will still deduct a minute from any running timers.

Pro Tip Why would you take a Bitizen to an Imperial level against their will? Well, if there aren't any timers on the floor they want to go to, but there is a timer on an Imperial level, it might be a better idea to take a minute off the Imperial level timer rather than take the tiny credit tip. Full Residential levels are prime examples of levels where it's worthless to take further Bitizens to.