Icon indicating hired friends on Home Desktop
In addition to sending your friends gifts, and visiting them each day, you can also hire your friends in order to help you play pictures and puzzles. When you hire a friend you will get a benefit for the next picture/puzzle you play. The benefit depends on the profession of the friend you hired. Your friends are not notified if you hire them, and they receive no benefit from being hired by you. Hiring is an action you do for your own benefit alone and not for the benefit of your friends.
Each hire only lasts for one play, and you can only hire each friend once a day, but you may hire more than one friend at a time. You are limited to how many friends you can hire at one time or in total in a single day, and this limit depends on your current reputation level.
How to Hire a Friend
SSwikia's friend entry. The camera icon in the top right hand corner of SSwikia's avatar indicates that he is a Sleuth. The entry is currently highlighted, and the 'hire' button under SSwikia's avatar is currently grey as SSwikia has been hired by the player. Once the player plays a picture or a puzzle, the entry will go back to normal colouring and the Hire button will turn green again, but the player will not be able to Hire SSwikia again until the following day.
Open Friends Section by pressing the friends icon on the lower right hand side of your Home Desktop. The default open tab in the Friends Section is your list of friends.
Every friend has an entry in your friends list. This entry gives basic information about the player including their game level and current number of experience points. Under their game info are two options: 'send a gift' and 'visit', which allow you to gift or visit your friend. Above their game info their avatar is displayed. Pressing the Avatar will bring up a more detailed information box about that friend, including how many friends they have and how much strength/energy they currently have.
In the top right hand corner of the friend's avatar is a symbol representing their player profession. Their player profession alone determines what bonus you will receive for hiring that friend. The friend's game and reputation levels have no impact on the amount of the bonus. Every player of each profession will give the same bonus when hired.
Under the friend's avatar is a third button to press - hire. Tapping the 'hire' button will hire that friend for the next picture/puzzle investigation. Once hired, the friend's entry in your friends list will be highlighted until you play a picture or puzzle. An icon will appear on the right hand side of your Home Desktop (where talismans and gifts show) indicating that you currently have a friend hired. The icon will show the player's avatar and their profession symbol.
If you hire more than one friend at a time, you may not see an individual icon for each one on your Home Desktop. Only a maximum of 3 icons will display, and depending on how many other notifications you have on that side of your screen you may only see 1-2 icons for hired friends. However, the extra friends whose icons do not show on your Home Desktop are still hired, and their entries will still be highlighted in your friends list to indicate that they are hired. You will still receive the benefit of hiring that friend when you play a picture or puzzle, even though their icon does not appear on your Home Desktop.
The Hire will only last for one play, after which the Home Desktop icon will disappear and the friend's entry in your friends list will go back to normal. You will not be able to hire that friend again until the next day.
You can hire up to 5 friends at any one time, depending on your current Reputation Level. You are limited to how many friends you can hire in total in one day, also based on your Reputation Level. The maximum friends you can hire in a day is equal to your current Reputation Level.
Choosing a Player Profession to Hire
Hiring a sleuth
See Player Professions article for full details of Player Professions.
Each player profession gives you a different benefit when you hire a friend of that profession. This is the exact same benefit as you would receive if a friend with that profession visited you and charged a picture or puzzle.
The advantage of hiring over having pictures charged by visiting friends is that when you hire a friend you choose which picture/puzzle to play to get the benefit, whereas the friend chooses when they visit you. You can also accumulate the benefit, so if a player charges a picture/puzzle and you hire that friend/a different friend, you get both benefits when you play that picture/puzzle, even if both actions are by a player of the same profession.
You can also accumulate the benefits when hiring multiple friends. If you hire one merchant, you will receive 10% extra coins for the next picture/puzzle you play (if you win). If you hire 3 merchants, you will receive 30% instead. And if a merchant also charged that picture before as well as you hiring 3 merchants you will receive 40% extra coins (30% from the hired friends and 10% from the charge by the visiting friend).
You cannot hire the same friend twice, but you can hire the same friend that has just charged the picture/puzzle you want to play.
Unlike having pictures charged by visiting friends, you can also mix and match which friends you hire. This means you can hire different types of professions at the same time, and receive the benefit from each type simultaneously the next time you play a picture/puzzle.
The table below shows the 4 player professions available in the game, the symbols used to represent those professions in your friends list and the benefit of hiring a friend with that profession:
Hiring Limits
See Reputation Levels article for full details on reputation and how it impacts what you can and can't do in the game.
Your ability to hire is directly related to your Reputation level in the game. A player's reputation level is different than their game level, and is advanced by visiting friends and using strength points to charge items on their Home Desktops.
You can see your current reputation level by visiting a friend and looking in the top left hand corner of the screen, where your game level would appear on your own Home Desktop. The meter above your Reputation level will show how many reputation points you currently have and how many reputation points you will need to earn to reach the next Reputation Level. Your reputation level determines:
- How many friends you can hire at one time
- How many friends you can hire total in one day
1. How many friends at a time
New players will only be able to hire 1 friend at a time, but as their reputation level increases so will the number of friends that can be hired at one time. The current maximum number of friends that can be hired at one time is 5. This number is supposed to increase further with increasing reputation level; however, a current glitch in the game stops the limit from increasing after 5.
| Reputation Levels | Limit of Hires at One Time |
|---|---|
| 1-10 | 1 |
| 11-20 | 2 |
| 21-30 | 3 |
| 31-40 | 4 |
| 41+ | 5 |
2. How many friends total in one day
The maximum number of friends total that you can hire in one day is your current Reputation Level. For example, if your reputation level is 23 you can hire up to 23 friends total each day and can hire 3 friends at a time to get there.
Since you cannot hire the same friend more than once a day, if your reputation level is more than your current number of friends you will not be able to use all of your possible hires for that day.
Problems and Glitches with Hiring
Only 5 friends are currently hired (see highlighted friends in background); however, when attempting to hire a 6th friend at the same time an error message appears stating that the player can only hire 7 friends at one time, and the attempt to hire that friend fails!
The max number of hires per single play of a picture or puzzle maxes out at 5 friends; however, the game claims it can increase further than this. Once you reach higher reputation levels, you will see an error message when you try and hire a 6th friend saying that you have reached your maximum, but the maximum stated (that you have apparently already reached) could be higher than 6.
So even though a player should be able to hire 6 or 7 or more friends at one time, the game will not let them hire more than 5, regardless of what their current reputation level is.
| Reputation Levels | Expected Limit of Hires at One Time | Actual Limit of Hires at One Time |
|---|---|---|
| 1-10 | 1 | 1 |
| 11-20 | 2 | 2 |
| 21-30 | 3 | 3 |
| 31-40 | 4 | 4 |
| 41-50 | 5 | 5 |
| 51-60 | 6 | 5 |
| 61-70 | 7 | 5 |
| 71-80 | 8 | 5 |
| 81-90 | 9 | 5 |
| 91-100 | 10 | 5 |
Hints and Tips
- You can hire more than one Friend of one profession type at one time. The percentage bonus that profession offers you when hired will accumulate with each friend of that profession you hire. So if you hire 5 sages, you will gain 50% more experience points for the next picture/puzzle you win.
- You can hire friends of different professions at the same time. For example you can hire a sleuth and a magician at the same time and get both the reduction in energy cost to play and increase in the rewards for winning a picture/puzzle at the same time.
- The percentage increases/decreases gained/reduced by hiring friends are always rounded down.