What is Dondoko Island in Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth? The Yakuza / Like a Dragon series is renowned for its bumper side activities, and the latest release doubles down on that effort with Dondoko Island. We’ve played the minigame extensively and have all you need to know on how to maximize your output.
Dondoko Island is an Animal Crossing-inspired resort that arrives during chapter six of Like a Dragon Infinite Wealth and has the potential to eat up plenty of your precious downtime outside of the main story. As you clear away bad guys – and trash – you need the best Infinite Wealth weapons, and preparing yourself with the best Infinite Wealth jobs will help you earn some valuable, well, wealth.
How to increase your star level on Dondoko Island
The Dondoko Island substory starts with a three-day tutorial that runs you through the basics of island rehabilitation – though afterwards, you may be left wondering where to start. The cornerstone of the Dondoko Island quest line is the star-rating system that, through plenty of graft, takes your trash haven from rags to riches and delivers some tasty rewards along the way.
To raise the star rating, you’ll need to complete a series of objectives, namely raising your Satisfaction and Popularity levels as well as clearing out dilapidated areas on the map. In this process, you’ll also face off in brawler style against the Dondoko Island antagonists, the Washbucklers, trashy pirates hell-bent on littering the island with garbage.
How to clear out areas in Dondoko Island
Clearing out areas in Dondoko Island requires fighting off intruders in a trash-filled location and smashing all the piles of rubbish until the space is ready to be cleared. An on-screen notification will let you know when this is possible. From here, you can head to the sign at the entrance of the location and pay the allotted fee to clear it so you can place structures and items there.
One caveat to this is the high cost associated with clearing areas, which can make a dent in your Dondokobucks savings account. However, there is a way to remedy this — as you clear out areas, the rating of the zone will change, moving from an F-rating backwards to an A as rubbish is removed. Until the area is cleared out, the rubbish and bad guys will return each day, though this can be used to your advantage. If you’re low on cash and keen on collecting materials for crafting, removing all the rubbish a few days in a row will lower the cost of the clearing process and give you plenty of time to stockpile important crafting materials.
Alternatively, if you don’t want to keep clearing every day, you can craft buildings and cars at the crafting bench and sell them in the main hub building to line your pockets and afford the price tag.
How to increase your Popularity in Dondoko Island
A pink thumbs-up icon denotes your resort’s popularity; this currency is often the bottleneck to upgrading your star rating and can be earned in various ways across Dondoko Island. However, we found that fishing and bug-catching are the most efficient ways to earn Popularity. Every time you catch a new bug or fish to add to your Dokopedia, you’ll earn +20 popularity, and if you grab the same fauna in larger sums, you’ll earn greater chunks of popularity.
In the early hours, it’s wise to just run around fishing and bug-catching as much as possible in the limited areas available to you until you meet the popularity criteria to upgrade your island. It’s worth noting that the popularity reward system also applies to items like fruits, vegetables, and plants, so make sure you’re picking up and farming as much as possible if you’re struggling. You can also earn popularity by crafting souvenirs with Subaru at the fishing hut on Dondoko Beach.
Upgrading the fishing spear and bug net by speaking to Kenzo in the main hub will also make the process more efficient. And if you want to check how close you are to a popularity boost to find something to focus on, you can use the Dokopedia, accessible from the Dondoko Island Menu, when you pause.
How to increase your Satisfaction in Dondoko Island
Satisfaction is the second metric gating star ratings and can be earned by making the resort more appealing to guests. As you’ve been crafting, you may have noticed each item has a popularity and satisfaction number attached. While the popularity gains are negligible from placing structures, choosing to craft large buildings and assets can result in a hefty boost to your satisfaction rating.
Early on in Dondoko Island, there aren’t huge areas to manipulate, so you want to make the most of the real estate on offer to you. Try not to place things haphazardly – create a system so you can place as many structures as possible and reap the most satisfaction with the space available to you. You can filter by satisfaction to see which structures will provide the most meaningful buffs at the crafting bench next to Kasuga’s island house.
Crafting hefty structures will also help raise your Building Talent level, providing you access to even more high-satisfaction options at the crafting table. Crafting recipes aren’t just tied to Building Talent alone, though, with plenty hidden in Honolulu shops and connected to NPCs out in the real world. And, in a quirky nod to Animal Crossing, recipes can also be found in glass bottles washed up on the island’s beaches.
How to increase your Livability in Dondoko Island
Kasuga’s health in Dondoko Island works differently from his health in Honolulu – it’s displayed as a series of pixelated hearts in the top corner and can be reduced in battle. Kasuga’s health is called Livability in Dondoko Island, and improving it is pretty easy if you know what you’re doing.
As we’ve established, placing high-quality crafted items in the resort’s livable spaces results in a higher satisfaction rating. However, inside Kasuga’s house on the island, items with high satisfaction buff your livability, which will provide you with more hearts to play with.
Technically, you’re meant to make a house a home here, but if you’re not bothered about how it looks, placing a bunch of pianos or other high-satisfaction items can boost your health at the cost of living space.
At the crafting bench, you can toggle to see the high-satisfaction items that would fit in your home. In our case, we crafted multiple white vans and placed them carefully in Kasuga’s abode. Resting at the end of a Dondoko Island day is done via the calendar in the entrance area of Kasuga’s house, so you don’t need to get into his bedroom at all, allowing maximum reward without needing to expand your house.
However, if you do eventually end up striving for aesthetic ascendancy, you can upgrade the size of Kasuga’s living space via Kenzo in the main hub for a hefty sum of Dokobucks.
How to make the most of Dondoko Farm in Dondoko Island
A two-star resort opens up a whole new area in the Dondoko Island substory called Dondoko Farm, which can be used to boost your cash flow and train your Sujimon in tandem. A raft on Mukku Beach behind Kasuga’s home allows you to travel to Dondoko Farm and access special facilities to flesh out your island experience.
There are four main facilities available on Dondoko Farm:
- Workshop – Earns you Dokobucks
- Training Spot – Increases Sujimon XP gain at a small cost
- Crop Patches – For harvesting fruits and vegetables
- Recycling Center – Collects selected crafting materials
To use these systems, you’ll need to employ the Sujimon you’ve collected back in the main game, so we recommend heading out and gathering and levelling a few varieties of sickos to flesh out your workforce.
After selecting your chosen facility, you only need to slot in your chosen Sujimon to get things started. You can put up to three Sujimon in a facility, though we recommend always using three with the highest friendship to enable a ‘Chance of Huge Gains’ reward at the end of the time-based activity.
‘Huge Gains’ equate to increased returns from your chosen facility. For example, a normal harvest of 20 tomatoes can be boosted to 30 or 40 if this buff triggers.
It’s worth noting that Dondoko Farm works in real-time and not island time, so the clock set for your activities will match the time you spend in the game, and this includes your time back in Honolulu. You can check the facility timers from the Dondoko Island Menu under Dondoko Farm.
Also, don’t forget to run around collecting all the rare fish, bugs and plants on Dondoko Island to help boost the rest of your metrics while you wait for your farm facilities to complete their tasks.
Now that you’ve mastered the Infinite Wealth Dondoko Island minigame, why not read our Like A Dragon Infinite Wealth review? Harry puts it as one of the best RPGs to ever exist – do you agree?