Main Walkthrough

Guide is a work in progress.

Early on in Yog-Sothoth's Yard you'll make the majority of your money from renting out rooms to Guests. Eventually you may want to diversify your income streams, however, and one way to do that is to own and operate a Restaurant. Doing so is a bit tricky, and requires more micromanaging than the hotel rooms, but those who delve into the Restaurant business will find it quite lucrative - and fun.

In order to unlock the Restaurant in Yog-Sothoth's Yard you first need to take on Haa Lou Ling as a Staff Member. Once you've refurbished a room for her on the ground floor of the hotel you can unlock the Restaurant, which appears in the bottom-right room on the ground floor. Haa Lou Ling serves as your head chef, and will help I with all food preparation.

Restaurant Basics

The purpose of the Restaurant is to serve food to your Guests in exchange for gold. Not every Guest is interested in food, but those who are will happily plop down in the Restaurant and eat a meal. You can increase the number of Guests who can fit in the Restaurant by upgrading the room. There are several ways to increase the number of Guests who want to eat at the Restaurant:

  • Raise your Hotel Star Rating
  • Change your Strategy so Guests with more money visit your hotel
  • Adopt Oracles related to the Restaurant
The earnings you make from the restaurant go into your coffers at the end of each day. Alas, you need to keep the Restaurant stocked with food in order to feed people, and that's where the micromanaging comes in.


Today's Menu

If you inspect the Restaurant menu (under Operation) you'll see several menu tabs. The first is Today's Menu. This is where you set up the food items that you want to serve to your Guests. There are four potential Shelves where you can set up the food that Haa Lou Ling will serve to the Guests. You'll need to expend resources to unlock all four Shelves, and they get progressively more expensive.

Each Shelf has three options:
  • Change Menu. Here you can decide which food item you want available on that Shelf. You need at least one of that item to switch to a particular food item.
  • Restock. Here you can add more of the food item if you run out. You'll need to Cook more to use the Restock option, which we'll get to in a moment.
  • Menu. Here you can upgrade the Shelf, allowing you to store more of the selected menu item at any one time. This means more available food and less time spent Restocking.
You can Upgrade each of the Shelves to hold more food. Upgrade a Shelf even once and you'll also unlock the ability for the shelf to auto-restock itself, which you normally need to do manually. You'll still need to prepare food manually for this option to work, however, so don't neglect the Restaurant. A notice in the upper-left corner of the screen will alert you when the Restaurant's Shelves need to be Restocked.

At the bottom of this menu you'll also see how much money you're estimated to make off of the food you've stocked for the day. You won't make anything if you don't have any food on your Shelves, however.


Cooking

The second tab under the Restaurant menu is Cooking. Here you can use the ingredients you've procured to create dishes for your Guests. Choose a recipe from the list and the game will display the ingredients needed to create the food on the right side of the screen. If you don't have enough of a particular ingredient you can buy more from this menu. (You can also get them from Hoshino, though this method is faster.)

Click the Cooking option in the bottom-right corner of the screen to begin the process. You can make as few or as many of the item as you like, so long as you have enough ingredients in stock. Note that you need to Restock a menu item for the food to be available to the customers. Cooking does not require any AP, so you can do it as many times as you like.

By this point you're probably wondering where you get your recipes. The answer is both simple and complex, but it boils down to one word: Cookbooks.


Cookbooks

The final tab under the Restaurant menu (aside from Inventory, though that's self-explanatory) is Cookbooks. Here you'll find the literal meat and potatoes of the cooking process, as you need to acquire and puzzle out Cookbooks in order to add dishes to your Restaurant. Cookbooks can be acquired in a number of ways:
  • Upgrade Haa Lou Ling's room
  • Complete Main or Side Tasks
  • Speak to specific Special Guests, out in the Yard
  • Fully unlock the recipe for another Cookbook

Regardless of how you acquire a Cookbook, your job doesn't end there. The Cookbooks only hint at the ingredients you need via their name, and tell you how many different types of ingredients you need to prepare the food. There are two ways to uncover the ingredients needed to discover a Cookbook's recipe:

  • Test. Once you've chosen a Cookbook you can apply ingredients, based largely on the description of the Cookbook, and see if you find the correct combination. Any correctly-guessed ingredients will remain visible, but until you find the correct combination to complete the Cookbook you'll just keep failing. Performing a Test doesn't use up AP, but it does use up your stock of ingredients, and whether you succeed or not you'll be charged a fee for trying.
  • Research. For 1 AP you can uncover an ingredient in the recipe. Again, this only reveals one ingredient, so you may want to save this option if you're down to a single ingredient and desperate for an answer. Note that you still need to Test to add the recipe to your repertoire - you just know what you need to test at this point.

Once you've unlocked all of the ingredients needed to create a recipe the food item will be added to the Cooking menu. This does not guarantee that you will have the ingredient in stock, however, which brings us to the final step in the cooking process: Locating ingredients.

Forest Exploration

Although you will likely pick up new ingredients by completing Tasks, by far the best way to pad out your inventory is to do some Forest Exploration. This option is unlocked around the same time as the Restaurant, and it allows you to send a shadowy version of I into the woods to explore. Once it comes back the shadow will bring items with it, including ingredients.

The forest is split into quadrants, each containing different potential ingredients. Rather than choosing which quadrant the shadow explores manually, you'll need to choose a Main Dish for it to focus on. The shadow will then use the scent to pick a quadrant and go hunting for a few days. Note that you need to sacrifice one of your prepared meals as a Main Dish before the shadow will leave the hotel.

We'll look at Forest Exploration in greater detail in its own section of the guide. If you're not a fan of it, just keep in mind that once the shadow find an ingredient in the forest, that ingredient will be available for purchase in Hoshino's shop.

Cookbooks

Below is a listing of Cookbooks available in Yog-Sothoth's Yard. Beside the name is how you acquire the Cookbook, and beneath the name are the ingredients needed to make the dish. Using this list will allow you to get the results you want through Testing, and save some AP. 

Occasionally you'll need to use an Ancient Pheromone to complete a Cookbook. You'll only need to use the Pheromone while Testing the Cookbook. Once you've completed the recipe and it is available for Cooking the Pheromone will either be replaced with another ingredient, or you'll just need to use fewer ingredients.

It's important to note that the Cookbooks associated with the Special Guests - particularly Orange Ginger - appear to be time-limited. They may disappear and not come back after certain points in the game. To avoid this you should deal with the Special Guests and claim their Cookbooks as quickly as you can.

  • All Boiled - Complete Stuffed Chicken with Pig Cookbook
    • Chicken, Pork, Fish, Ancient Pheromone VIII, Duck
  • Ants Climbing A Tree - Explore the East Plains
    • Rice, Pork
  • Bobo Chicken - Complete the Poached Chicken Cookbook
    • Chicken, Pepper
  • Boiled Sliced Pork - Complete the Hot Pot Cookbook
    • Strange Meat, Pepper, Sichuan
  • Boiled Water Cabbage - Complete the National Dish Cookbook
    • Green Vegetables, Chicken, Pork, Ancient Pheromone VII, Duck
  • Camphor Tea Duck - Complete Roast Meat Double Combo
    • Duck, Rice, Sichuan, Salt
  • Cheung Fun - Purchase from Hoshino
    • Rice
  • Claypot Rice - Complete Graduation Congee Cookbook
    • Rice, Pork, Green Vegetables, Ancient Pheromone III
  • Chaozhou Frozen - Upgrade Haa Lou Ling's Room (I think - if not it's a storyline item)
    • Crab, Strange Meat, Shrimp
  • Cold Dish - Explore the East Plains
    • Strange Meat, Pepper
  • Deep Ones Noodle - Complete Snail Noodle
    • Snail, Rice, Bamboo, Ancient Pheromone VII, Fish
  • Dongpo Pork Knuckle - Purchase from Hoshino
    • Pork
  • Eight Treasures - Complete the Sesame Sauce Lettuce Cookbook
    • Green Vegetables, Bamboo
  • Fish Boat Congee - Special Guest (Jiabai)
    • Rice, Shrimp, Fish, Strange Meat
  • Fish-Flavored Shredded Pork- Complete the Spicy Fish Cookbook
    • Strange Meat, Green Pepper, Bamboo, Sugar
  • Flower Tofu - Complete Stuffed Tofu Cookbook
    • Tofu, Strange Meat, Chicken
  • Fried Crab Tower - Complete Chaozhou Frozen Cookbook
    • Crab
  • Gongbao Chicken - Explore the South Blacklands
    • Chicken, Green Pepper, Pepper
  • Graduation Congee - Complete Ants Climbing A Tree Cookbook
    • Rice, Pork, Salt
  • Hot Pot - Purchase from Hoshino
    • Strange Meat
  • Looking Up At The Stars - Complete Steamed Pork Cookbook
    • Fish, Crab, Ancient Pheromone I
  • Mapo Tofu - Explore the South Blacklands
    • Tofu, Strange Meat, Sichuan
  • National Dish - Complete Eight Treasure Cookbook
    • Green Vegetables, Pork, Chicken
  • Octopus Balls - Explore the North Mountains
    • Fish, Snail, Ancient Pheromone IX
  • Octopus Lemon Juice - Blue-Ringed Octopus (Special Guest)
    • Strange Meat, Sugar
  • Pickled Vegetables Pork - Explore the West Woodland
    • Green Vegetables, Fish
  • Poached Chicken - Unlock the Restaurant
    • Chicken
  • Preserved Vegetables Pork - Explore the West Woodland
    • Pork, Green Vegetables
  • Raw Fish Slices - Purchase from Hoshino
    • Fish
  • Raw Pickling - Explore the North Mountains
    • Crab, Shrimp, Snail, Ancient Pheromone IV, Salt
  • Roasted Sea Snails - Orange Ginger (Special Guest - Complete Snowflake Chicken Stew)
    • Snail
  • Roast Meat Double Combo - Complete Roasted Suckling Pig Cookbook
    • Pork, Duck, Sugar
  • Roasted Suckling Pig - Orange Ginger (Special Guest - Complete Stuffed Tofu)
    • Pork, Sugar
  • Salt-Baked Chicken - Tooth (Special Guest)
    • Chicken, Salt
  • Sesame Sauce Lettuce - Upgrade Haa Lou Ling's Room
    • Green Vegetables
  • Snail Noodle - Complete Roasted Sea Snails (I think)
    • Snail, Bamboo, Rice
  • Spicy Beef Blood
    • Duck, Strange Meat, Tofu, Pepper
  • Snowflake Chicken Stew - Orange Ginger (Special Guest)
    • Chicken, Strange Meat
  • Spicy and Sour Trotters - Complete Cold Dish Cookbook
    • Pork, Green Pepper, Pepper
  • Spicy Chicken - Complete Bobo Chicken Cookbook
    • Chicken, Pepper, Sichuan
  • Spicy Fish - Complete the Raw Fish Slices Cookbook
    • Fish, Pepper
  • Spicy Hot Pot - Complete Boiled Sliced Pork Cookbook
    • Strange Meat, Pepper, Sichuan, Ancient Pheromone II / Green Vegetables, Bamboo
  • Spicy Pork Kidneys - Complete Twice-Cooked Pork Cookbook
    • Pork, Green Pepper, Pepper, Bamboo Shoots
  • Squid Stew - Complete Fish Boat Congee Cookbook
    • Strange Meat, Crab, Fish, Ancient Pheromone X, Snail
  • Steamed Pork - Abdul Alhazred (Special Guest)
    • Rice, Strange Meat, Pork
  • Stir-Fried Rice Noodles - Complete Cheung Fun Cookbook
    • Rice, Strange Meat
  • Stuffed Chicken with Pig - Complete the Snowflake Chicken Stew Cookbook
    • Pork, Chicken, Sichuan, Bamboo
  • Stuffed Tofu - Orange Ginger (Special Guest - Complete Roasted Sea Snails)
    • Tofu, Strange Meat
  • Twice-Cooked Pork - Complete the Dongpo Pork Knuckle Cookbook
    • Pork, Green Pepper