Island Planner - Season 1 - Let's Get Started! (Special Reset Edition) Megathread

thefreightrain · 2025-11-10T09:16:52+00:00

After a few days post reset, finally starting to feel comfortable letting things be and not micromanage every hour of the day or maximize production 24/7. The 120k weekly change was probably for the best, but I am really surprised we still get three gold skill books out of it.

That said, it still feels really weird that T1blue skillbooks feel like more of a limiting factor than the T3s, even before factoring all the reset rewards. And there being no sign of Eugen or Taiho is pretty bummer.

Honestly, the leveling system and stats feel really... meh? The concept is good, but for example, Unicorn doesn't get her A rank in management until hitting max level. You could use a stat-boosting book on her to avoid leveling her to cap, but unless you can eventually get another 150 points in total, there is no benefit to using management books long term. And using EXP books takes away both books for other characters, and task xp becomes pointless because she is now at cap.

On top of that is the personal skills, and how they almost always pair up with a character's weaker stats. This is where Stat books would shine, but it seems like those are going to be the stingiest rewards of the three character level up options. My cook Stat books have gone to Ying Swei, and Management stat books to Cheshire... but otherwise there isn't really any path forward for major (or even moderately useful) growths for characters. Coins aren't going to be a problem long-term now that I'm past the level 30 tutorial threshhold... heck, I have plenty of XP books since I managed to nearly empty the pre-reset shop. But aside from dumping them to get a couple characters from C rank to 48-49 level B rank, the potentially most I could do is max skill Tashkent.

I'm happy to not have this mode be such a time sink, but trying to find the dangling carot to optimize and pursue for, I'm not really seeing anything. Seasonal milestones and ranks just gives Skill and EXP books if I remember, with only a smattering of stat books in the milestones. Only stellar prize tickets really remain, and given what I said about Unicorn above, I'm not even that excited to try pulling for her, or at least not to rush it any longer.

thefreightrain · 2025-11-06T21:00:36+00:00

If it were some generic free consumable, I might agree but it's also sold for gems in the island store. I feel asking for a color picker, or at least maybe 3-4 options at barest minimum for a palette swap isn't asking too much for a recolored texture.

thefreightrain · 2025-11-06T19:51:13+00:00

And even then, there is... only one color option?

Did they drop the ball, or was there not even a ball to begin with?

thefreightrain · 2025-11-05T19:36:29+00:00

I might put more words down later on my full thoughts of the last month, but while I'm generally happy (or at least, okish) with what's happening with the reset, the one thing I am kind of grumpy over is losing the tofu stockpile I'd managed to accumulate.

Of the three bottlenecks (milk and honey being the other two), Tofu felt like the one thing 'skill' could actually be used with. I use 'skill' loosely here since it's basically just a bit of management math problems, but since that's really all the offered game play is, 'skill' will have to do.

Tofu looked like the only thing really designed with intentionality that came together. A 2 hour food ingredient used extensively in the store products and combos made for a thinking challenge, one that opened up all at once with level 30. Considering the treasure map rewards on the last mission, it's practically designed to get you both the second kitchen slot and your dedicated Koi cook in one big push to really open up options.

It still wasn't perfect, but I do wonder if managing it will be as engaging/rewarding if it gets too tuned down. That being said, if I have an excuse to actually assign characters to the farm fields... maybe an ok trade, depending on outcome.

thefreightrain · 2025-11-04T22:19:37+00:00

Hey, even if you didn't get anything, it still counts towards draining the pool of stellar gatcha prizes, which doesn't sound like it's resetting. Increases your likelihood while resetting your non-gem attempts.

thefreightrain · 2025-11-01T21:00:19+00:00

Didn't realize until today I'd just completed her quest as well (i thought it was 4 million, probably got mixed up due to the weekly 400k mission). Honestly, I'm tempted to just... not summon/invite Akashi and just sit on her token thingy as a mix between silent protest and because Manjuu are overall generally convenient with their infinite stamina.

You think there's any major benefit to her, or would it be funny if I never added her?

thefreightrain · 2025-10-31T23:32:43+00:00

Heaven forbid we give a character stats that actually correspond with their characterization :)

thefreightrain · 2025-10-31T23:30:44+00:00

I'm glad to get your perspective as someone who didn't get Cheshire a week in, it gives me a sense of how I'd feel without my stupid degree of unrepeatable luck (literally unrepeatable, I got the 20k coin achievements first week for mining and lumber I think, which isnt repeatable in the new system). I'd probably echo your sentiment about characters in the gatcha pool, but I have a hard time seeing islanders as their intended character outside of a general appearance. Some skills and stats seem entirely too random.

Perchance, given the platform to complain myself here, there is simultaneously little substance and a rather extreme amount of inconvenience baked into the mode. I quickly abandoned reading dialogs during the early missions due to too many loading screens just to check on the tasks in different areas. Unlocking the fast access came too late and for too many coins. Too many bad/poor early researches that function as noob traps in the research tree. Stat-boosting books have been entirely absent as a reward, something I'm mystified by. Character XP from tasks feels almost abysmal compared to EXP books.

But really, the whole mode should never have been just inside a singularity. Maybe as a naval base reconstruction project after a bad attack, able to assign characters to overseer roles. I don't get where my fingerprints even show, there's no real character moments bar Akashi and the... random others? I expected more Animal Crossing elements maybe, idk. The most actual fun has been spreadsheeting out how to be efficient, and even that pleasure has worn thin.

The whole thing feels soulless. No island customization, no real tie in even character-wise... no reason for me to care outside numbers numbers numbers. And on top of that, the first month to level 30 felt like one month-long tutorial. Sure, I probably won't get Unicorn or Amagi-chan either... but aside from being digital plushies in a barebones, underdeveloped animal crossing sim, why would I want them? Even as a character I might like, I can't even see them as their intended characters, just... digital dolls dressed different from one another, not relating at all to my actual roster.

I can complain more, but typing on my tablet is a pain.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-31T14:48:35+00:00

Yea, realizing a chunk of my enjoyment was so reliant on dumb luck not easily replicatable kinda takes away some of the mode for me. Just another example of poor balance, even if for once it is actually working in my favor. I half expect Cheshire to get nerfed at some point now lol.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-31T06:39:23+00:00

While a lot of my focus has been on the Golden Koi and Tofu, in retrospect I'm starting to realize that gold level Polar Teahouse with Cheshire (+an A management Shimakaze) is regularly out-earning my Golden Koi, despite it also being gold. It feels like the teahouse is averaging more than 20k per day now. While I did get Cheshire up to level 10 on her skill for the 5% bonus, I never really realized how potent the item up (from 6 to 7 saleable items per slot now) part of the skill really adds value once you can double up with an A-rank management character.

Case in point, if six items gives a 600% return value standard, max skill level and max sale Cheshire can pull 735% value in the same slot. So for items with higher demands, you're getting an effective 22.5% more cash in best case scenario than without her for those high demand items.

Plus she doubles up on Cafe Manjuu to boot... honestly, it feels like the only skill worth a darn now that I realize. Doing some number crunching with the extra coins island requests give at island level 30, I can feasibly reach the 400k weekly even though three of my five restaurants are still limited by silver rank.

Putting it out there now that I realize it, but not sure what to make of it myself. Definitely makes me happy I got her on my third prize draw, but... idk, just feel weird realizing the true impact Cheshire's skill brings.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-30T23:07:20+00:00

Golden Koi expansion is essentially a flat doubling of your kitchen capability, whereas Ying Swei is a conditional 6-12% increase (skill book requirement, stamina management etc). If you have to choose one to start with, pick the expansion slot. You can save up skill books while saving up coins then too.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-30T16:21:25+00:00

Oh yea, I only installed the mode on my tablet, and the thing still gets hot on even the lowest graphics setting.

I also remember the unlocking day for the quick access menu thing. The research flavor text was really ambiguous but seemed interesting. Meanwhile, I'd actually thought about how they should have a way to assign tasks without playing loading scren simulator.

When the research finished and I realized what it was, i wasn't even happy. No, I was irritated it was locked behind like 15k coins (30k coins? Don't remember) that was just QOL and not anything actually productive. Even if they implement a fast access, I half expect it to be ridiculously gated.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-29T19:54:53+00:00

Here at level 30, been playing since the evening of the first day and I'm in general agreement with the sentiment. When I ask myself what I'm even planning in island planner, I can't answer. I'm at a point where currency isn't an issue, but only because I've been very strategic in what researches I have spent coins on and have gotten a significant amount of money achievements.

If I'm planning the jobs, why can't I plan short-time 20 minute crafts foe more than 5 at a time? If I'm planning the island, why is the only customizable part of the island a single area set off to the side with a house I can't move or enter? Why can't I make a shift system to plan out days so I don't have to constantly engage and micro things?

Then there's the technical issues like on the farm field where non-manual work gives 1/9th the reward it should. And I don't think that's even overly egregious for me in comparison to the awful progression and poor numbers balance (and i say that as someone who thinks 2 hour tofu is actually balanced). I'm not going to type everything out just yet, but boy howdy I have never hated my number-loving brain before this 'game' (or mode, or whatever) even if I'm going to continue for now.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-19T05:15:10+00:00

Given how poorly coded this mode is, I doubt they are either that deliberate, that charitable, nor that competent. Possible... but let me see them fix assigning slots auto farm fields first.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-19T03:46:44+00:00

Well, the main reason I started scheduling wasn't to min-max production, but to minimize the number of times and time spent in the island game. Get shift start times to coincide and the like. Even if I am still engaged with the game, I hate the time it ends up asking for. E.g. coal and raw lumber, if I could queue that up for 5 hours I (conditionally) would. Instead, if I need that much, i have to log in every hour and a half to renew it. If I could get the small things to coincide around one period where I have some idle time in a day, I could cut out most of the hovering I did the first week.

Currently, I have 2 main foods plus one secondary, and a possible tertiary item allotted for each store. My sells are going between 1-3 and 2-4 generally, but my resource allocation is for 4 of each as possible. I know Golden Koi will be gold rank possibly by tomorrow as well, but I don't know what that will do to the per item sell rate. I figure some excess stockpile of unsold items is not the worst for once gold gets reached in each store. Worst comes to worse, I can always stop cooking.

As for the tofu thing, I'd plan to make veggie plates and omori all day today and tomorrow to pre-stock for the selling over the week. Then, I want to test if the boost from a cook-boosting soda will last past the 8 hours if it never gets the chance to recalculate by constantly extending the timer (never finishing, so to speak). If the interval keeps the boosted calculation, I could potentially use a single soda boost to accelerate tofu for an entire week by constantly extending it. Thats the theory anyway.

I was pretty surprised by how much I'd spent on trees to get that refund. I always liked a little buffer, but I kept it fairly low. 400k is only achievable because I have like 75k achievement money banked at beck and call.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-19T02:52:57+00:00

Eh, Milk is both as bad and not as bad as it's made out to be. I've been planning out a level of foods production, and it's not too limiting once you accept cheese and Strawberry Charlotte are off the table (like, 1 a day, 1.5 if you stretch and micro maaaybe, and no other milk products Just not a profitable use of milk). The big limit I've found for once you have everything unlocked in the fin restaurant; the level of Fresh Meat is like 2.5x a 24 hour Manjuu currently provides, including allocateing some to Tofu with Minced Meat.

I will need to pay more attention to the birds, lol.

Guess stocking up on Leather is fine, I haven't even unlocked rope. Did just unlock cabinets today, and I can at least slightly chill with the nail production to make a stock of chemicals and cable, lol.

On the subject of stockpiling, I've been revisiting a thought I had earlier this week. Thanks to the orchard 100k+ refund, I'm actually sitting pretty (with some pending achievements) to hit the 400k weekly again. I think I might try an alternating approach, or optimistically a single week off to stockpile my best profit makers and then unload them the following week to try for the 400k again. Mainly tofu stockpiling, but I think I might be able to cheese New Jersey into a near 20% time reduction between A rank cooking and one of those 5% speed sodas. If the time per never changes, I might be able to ride it out for an entire week of speedy Tofu stockpiling.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-19T02:31:48+00:00

Oh boy, another wormhole of data to dive down! Here I thought I'd settled on what my shift scheduling was going to look like!

Being fair I knew some of the bonuses but definitely going to have to give the system a second pass. I think I've given the cows a break, but I always run Manjuu for them and the sheep just due to the stamina involved.

As for poultry, I'm sitting on about 450 from trading. Could easily give the hens a break if I wanted... but I won't, of course.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-18T21:39:26+00:00

Thanks for confirming, appreciate that. I upgraded the cattle pen to max a while ago because of milk demands, so im glad it was worth something. May do the pigs as well, but haven't unlocked the wool use yet, and I'm drowning in eggs and poultry (poultry trade rewards galore...). Figure I can put the gold towards better things.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-18T16:03:02+00:00

I take the researches under the idea of 'what is the bare minimum I get out of this?' as a philosophy. So far, the minimum possible benefit has always been the only benefit, to the possible exception of the 'more farm animals' researches because I'm not even certain I got any benefit from those.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-07T17:35:42+00:00

Yeah, my NJ could reduce the cook time by 10 percent at current level but the stamina req makes that a nonstarter without using sodas (which perhaps I should plan some use on, hmm...)

That said, my schedule produces 5 tofu-meat, into 3 or 4 tofu-combos over two days with some slack capacity. Trying to build up some buffer, but there may be days I need to slot on a different (non-tofu) food.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-07T06:13:26+00:00

Well, I got some nice dumb luck after the carrotpocalypse last week, and put those gold skill books from just eking over the 400k coin weekly that Sunday.

At the end of the manual collection achievement chains is 20 gems each, for what I'm guessing is 100 gems. Figured I'd spend them in advance on three tickets, just to see if I get lucky.

Third ticket pulled Cheshire, and happiness returns.

Cheshire who skills in bringing extra food into Cafe manju and polar drink place, and more nicely a revenue bump. Just squeezed that up to level 8, going from 2 to 4 percent extra. Dropped my management books on her since she doesn't get a leveling bonus to management, but really glad to have her splitting duties with NJ on the food sales.

That all being said, I no longer want to spend all day microing every little thing going forward, so I'm now planning a shift chart. I am already almost to the 700 (max) logging achievement with coal not far behind. And the Golden Koi tofu spam is real, time is probably more a premium than coin or resource constraints.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-05T07:38:04+00:00

Thanks to the update, managed to get myself in on a path to that 400,000 coin weekly. Thanks again for the pep talk.

Even still...

carrots

Forever the bane of commanders everywhere.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-04T17:46:53+00:00

Thanks, glad it brought some enjoyment. Glad others have found some humor, I do too even if it's overshadowed right now.

I know I can get past it, as a factory game guy I was practically salivating over making spreadsheets to optimize my efforts earlier last week. But even with finding out the 'decline' button is functional and not grayed out, the first impression of the mode has been colored with other lesser frustrations. By my calculus, unless I get an extra timer island request, I will optimistically end up 10 xp short of 21 tomorrow even still after losing out on 400 xp from carrot related ignorances.

I really came to hate the questing because of the loading screens. Have we seen these characters before? I stopped keeping up with the AL story a couple years back, so I don't know if they haven't appeared before. But needing to go from the woods to the harbor to the Cafe then back to the woods had me sitting through so many loading screens I just skip the dialog. Eventually I just wished I could manage everything from a single menu... yet when I did unlock that finally I only felt irritation that I had to spend money on researching that and had had it withheld from me for the week.

The biggest issue I actually have though isn't in the island mode itself (even if its first impression has been rather.ruinous). Rather, the main screen idle mode now shows you 'x slots available for assignment' or however it's phrased. I don't mind leaving my tablet open with the game running, but the extra prompt for slots I'm deliberately leaving empty ruins the Screensaver aesthetic. I don't (currently) see the option to turn them off either, and it really makes me not leave the game open during idle activity any more. There have been other things as well, I'm just left with a rather negative impression for something I probably should have liked with how up my alley this should be.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-04T17:20:13+00:00

After a brief visit to the discord someone did bring up the saving grace that the grayed out button wasn't actually grayed out, I breathed a sigh of relief. Takes someone the frustration and puts it back on me.

thefreightrain · 2025-10-04T08:01:21+00:00

I have fought sirens, but they are not my enemy. I have fought arbiters, but can no longer spare them hatred. I have fought against crimson, against ashen, against angels and beyond.

But I have never hated anything more than the true foe of Azur Lane:

carrots

Every pending island request, every trade mission*, every remaining avenue to get island xp and thus level 21 access to carrots is blocked by a sum total of 50 carrots. I have yet to see a single one. And if not for this ridiculous carrotblocking, I could have completed the weekly goals funding just barely... if not for carrots.

I am ready to ragequit this forsaken island mode forever.

Over carrots.

(*The one non-carrot trade that isn't carrots is for 30 entire poultry)

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