Dave the Diver: The best tips for diving and sushi

A successful sushi restaurant starts with successful diving expeditions. Here are some tips on how to get the most out of your dives in the Blue Hole:

• Focus on upgrades first: At the beginning of Dave the Diver, you may not know what to do with all the gold you earn. There are many ways to spend your gold as the game progresses, but in the beginning, you should invest your money in upgrades for Dave’s diving equipment to make your dives more effective. There are four pieces of equipment you can upgrade: buoyancy, suit, harpoon, and oxygen tank. Focus on buoyancy and the oxygen tank first so you can stay underwater longer and bring more fish back up. If you exceed your weight limit, your movement will be restricted, making it harder to reach the surface.
• Explore the width first: The Blue Hole is much deeper than it is wide, but you can’t dive deep at the beginning of the game. Fortunately, there are plenty of fish to catch above 50 meters, so you can get a lot out of your dives even without upgrades for your suit. However, the fish are scattered far and wide. You won’t find them all on the left side of the Blue Hole map, where you start your dives. It’s worth swimming to the opposite side of the map to discover new species of fish you haven’t encountered before.
• Collect everything: In addition to fish, there is a lot of trash in the shallow areas of the Blue Hole: glass, rope, and scrap metal, among many other materials. Most of these items weigh less than a pound, so you can take them with you on every dive without weighing you down. If you exceed your weight limit after catching some fish, you can easily drop these items. These seemingly random items have several functions. First, you can sell them to Cobra once you’ve unlocked Cobra’s Premium Shop. This is a great way to earn extra gold before a shift at Bancho’s sushi restaurant to buy new furnishings and hire new employees. You can also use these items to craft new weapons and complete tasks in the Ecowatcher app. In addition to items, you’ll find chests in the Blue Hole. Some of these chests contain items or ingredients, while others contain weapons that will help you unlock new blueprints at Duff’s.
• Watch out for aggressive species: Fish with a small red diamond above their heads will attack you if they spot you. You can still catch these aggressive fish species, either by killing them or using non-lethal means such as the net gun or tranquilizer dart. However, they will continue to chase you until you are either far enough away from them or you catch them. Aggressive species can provide some good dishes, but you should avoid being hit by them, especially early in the game. Your oxygen tank serves as your health bar in Dave the Diver. If you get hit, your oxygen will be depleted and your dive will be shortened.
• Keep the dishes in mind: It is difficult to keep track of the ingredients for specific dishes in Dave the Diver, as there are a large number of ingredients and recipes. However, you can steer your dive in a specific direction. For example, catching multiple specimens of the same fish species will improve the quality of the dish in the evening. The most important thing is how you catch the fish. Dave the Diver includes a star rating for each fish you catch, which refers to how much meat you get from the fish. Here’s how it works: One star: You killed the fish. Two stars: You damaged the fish but caught it before it died. Three stars: You caught the fish without damaging it. At the beginning, your standard harpoon causes some damage to the fish, so you will initially get a lot of two-star catches. As you progress through the game, you can unlock non-lethal catching methods such as the net gun and tranquilizer dart, which will allow you to achieve a three-star rating. A higher star rating yields more meat, allowing you to upgrade your dishes for more flavor.

In the evening, you open Bancho’s Sushi Bar to serve dishes and earn money. Here are some tips on how to get the most out of each evening:

• Focus on taste rather than price: There are two main characteristics of a dish: taste and price. It’s important to earn gold from your sushi restaurant, but when you’re starting out, you should focus on getting the best taste out of your food. Better taste leads to happier customers, but more importantly, it increases your rating in the Cooksta app. Increasing your rating in the Cooksta app unlocks new sushi recipes, more menu slots, and more space for employees. It’s the essential way to improve your sushi restaurant. So always keep the customer experience in mind to increase your Cooksta rating.
• Improve simple dishes: As your carrying capacity increases, you can bring back many simple fish from each dive. These are not worthless, even if you already have some sophisticated dishes on the menu. You can improve the taste of a dish by sacrificing some of your ingredients. That’s why it’s important to focus on catching a large number of a specific fish species during your early dives. These upgraded dishes cost more, bring in more revenue, and taste better, leading to higher customer satisfaction. Even if they’re not the star of your menu, upgraded simple dishes can fill the gaps on your menu. Even better, upgrading a dish is permanent. Whenever possible, try to upgrade dishes on your menu, even if it means sacrificing some ingredients. Over time, you’ll be able to profit from high-end dishes as you expand your fish farm and catch rarer fish in the depths.
• Fill up your menu: Before you open the sushi bar each evening, you must set the menu. It’s important to create a compelling menu from the start that takes into account both the price and taste of each dish, and to fill the menu with dishes throughout the evening. At any time, you can open the menu while the sushi bar is open and swap out dishes for which you have run out of ingredients. This will pause the shift, so you don’t have to rush.
• Hire staff to help Early in the game, you will unlock the ability to hire staff for your sushi bar. Your first employee will be a waiter, and shortly after they join the team, you’ll start seeing a lot more customers. Post ads for new staff as often as possible and try to have employees in both the kitchen and the dining room. Dividing up your staff is key to running your sushi restaurant efficiently. If you have two employees in the dining room but none in the kitchen, you will create a bottleneck where customers will not receive their meals on time.