Overview
I beat Manager Mania in about an hour with the help of 85 gold. Here’s how — you don’t need to spend any gold, but it’ll make this fun little event a million times less arduous.
This is a very short guide
tl;dr I beat Manager Mania in about an hour by spending 95 gold (1-12x multiplier and 3 flux capitalisers). You don’t need to spend gold, but given you don’t have the benefit of either investors or managers, doing so will prevent you from getting RSI.
In short: after the second upgrade, each character has a negative effect on each other. You should always prioritise getting the upgrades over levelling either character.
You can get Heisenbird to 99 and Pollo to 221 before either has an impact on the other. The first thing you should do is alternate between the two, levelling Heisenbird first until you can start levelling Pollo. You’ll probably get Heisenbird to 51 and Pollo to 111 pretty quickly — after you get Pollo’s second unlock, stop upgrading Heisenbird as his usefulness drops dramatically once you start getting upgrades.
I unfortunately don’t remember what the upgrades were or what they cost, but always prioritise upgrades over levelling either character.
Once you get about half the upgrades, things become a bit easier. Pollo brings in mad bank while Heisebenbird just does… Not much at all. It’s worth noting, the downgrades Pollo brings to Heisenbird are minor — 0.8x speed decrease versus Heisenbird’s 0.5x profit decrease. However, the second you put Heisenbird over 99, Pollo’s profit it effectively cut in half and you won’t really get back to the levels you would if you just let Heisenbird bird.
Keep buying upgrades, max Pollo. Keep alternating between the two until you can max Heisenbird in one go. You’re done!
Other tips:
– Use the “Max” buy function to get a sense of how many levels you can buy at one time. I didn’t put Pollo above 221 until I could buy 223 levels in one go, but then again, I was using gold and the slowdown to Heisenbird *might* be worth it if the proportional increase to Pollo means you profit faster.