Two Point Hospital – Duckworth Upon Bilge

What is with this level!?

Don’t worry, you’ll learn to appreciate the change in pace and challenge. Eventually. Maybe.
Well, I did.

So, Duckworth Upon Bilge is an especially unique level because it is a public hospital. This means patients will not pay you for their diagnosis and treatment.

Instead, you will earn money in three ways. Sit down, you at the back, and etch these directly into your skin. This is for your benefit!

• Completeing Tarquin’s Objectives
• Handling Emergencies
• Research Money

For those of you confused by number three, yes, you can flat out order your Researchers to research you some dosh. And I strongly recommend you do.

Figuring out how to get income is critical in this level. If it is not going to get you income, don’t build it, don’t hire it, kick it out the door.

Getting Started

Hello, I am Dr Majora. But that sounds a bit threatening so call me Madge. Madge is the least threatening name of all time, right? Someone called Madge wouldn’t rule an empire of hospitals while slowly injecting demonic DNA into the populace.

So, you’ve probably developed some good habits from your previous, private hospitals. You like to bling up your rooms. Promote your staff. Expand nice and rapidly on a schedule that suits you…

Well that’s all wrong and you’re going to have to abandon some habits.

• Don’t upgrade your machines unless you’re asked to.
• Don’t train staff unless you’re asked to.
• Don’t promote your staff unless you have to.
• Don’t build anything unless you’re asked to.

Why? You won’t be seeing any profit off these investments, because you aren’t being paid to cure people. You’re being paid to satisfy Tarquin. If you upgrade a machine for no reason, you’re taking food out of your own mouth later. Because Tarquin loves to ask you to upgrade a machine just after you upgraded a machine.

Wait. Be patient. Be stingy.

Well, except in the beginning. Because we have some setup to do.

First Fifteen Minutes

Buy a plot of land while you can. Money management woes can really slow your expansion when you need it most, so just purchase somewhere to expand now. I like the plot that’s behind the main hospital entrance.

Build a research lab. This is going to be an extremely important room. In other words, pretty much the only room that will be consistently earning you money. Add any and all items that will speed research. Also add a coffee machine and something to snack on. Sweet dispensers are small and cheap.

Obviously, you need a research doctor to go with your room. Preferably two. Ideally, you do not want someone over-qualified, because any extra qualifications mean higher wages for no return. Except of course for Motivation, Stamina and Emotional Intelligence, which are highly desireable.

By the way, you know how to assign more than one staff member to a room, right? The research lab needs two “desks” to acommodate both researchers. Then click on the room’s door. Click that handy plus button so that the room accepts an additional staff member.

Build a training room. Now really, you don’t want to be extravagantly training your staff. The ungrateful beasts will only start demanding pay rises and such. However, for some reason Tarquin is extremely keen on “maximising staff potential” so I guess you should go ahead and build this room now. You’ll be given frequent objectives to train your staff members.

Also as a heads-up: There are no fire extinguishers placed when you start this hospital. Your Cardio and General Diag are at risk of fire. You may not have had a fire yet in any of your hospitals, because you are a sensible person who hires a lot of janitors. Unfortunately, you don’t have that luxury here.

A fire extinguisher is a one-use item. A janitor will pick one up and use it to put out the fire. That uses up the fire extinguisher and you will have to place a new one. If the janitor can’t find an extinguisher in the building, they will just stand there and shrug while the inferno rages.

Your staff’s wages are a big problem. A very big problem, because you don’t have a monthly income. Just monthly outgoings.

I already told you, don’t promote or train or staff. Don’t hire overqualified people. Fire anyone who’s uppity or expensive.

That said, you still do want to train your staff. However, I recommend holding off until you get an actual objective for it. Tarquin has an adorable habit of asking me to train a nurse, directly after I’ve just finished giving a lecture to a class of nurses.

You probably already have a good idea of what qualifications you like in your staff. So I’ll just briefly go over my own preferences:

Janitors: I like every one to be qualified in Maintenance and Ghost Capture. I strongly favour Motivation as well. Obviously, at least one janitor among the staff needs to have Mechanics.

Assistants: Don’t need to be qualified. However, if Tarquin is banging on about “raising all staff to their true potential” then go for something like Emotional Intelligence.

Of course, the game changes if you think a Cafe or gift shop might be a good earner for you. I personally find Cafes to be very underperforming, but feel free to have a go.

Doctors: Obviously, General Practice is the eternal bottleneck of every hospital. So I favour the GP qualification strongly in all my doctors. You’re also going to need at least two psychiatrists in this level.

Surgery is an interesting question here. Tarquin is really keen on me building a Surgery for some reason. So I indulge him. I have a very nice and sparkly surgery suite, sitting closed. Oh, you do know you can close rooms, right? Click on the door and there’s a close room button.

Anyhow, the operating theatre and the DNA clinic require qualifications. Read: expensive staff. The operating theatre also steals a precious nurse. These rooms are simply not worth it. Build one to satisfy the objective, but don’t actually use them. Also, feel free to sell them later.

Nurses: Dontcha love them. The worker bees of a good hospital. Anyhow, you won’t be needing qualified nurses. Nah. Instead you should focus on having sufficient nurses. Of course, Motivation and Ward Management are always handy to have. And indeed, Bedside Manner can come in handy when you’re running a barebones hospital with few luxuries.

Keep your staff happy by ensuring they have food, drink and toilets nearby. Doesn’t matter about the patients, they aren’t paying us or anything. Your expensive staff however will be more productive if they don’t have to cross the hospital grounds to go to the loo.

Emergencies

Hooray! Someone else’s misfortune is your cash windfall.

I will often hold off on building treatment rooms until I have emergency patients show up for that room.

Why? Am I being paid to cure those other people? Heck no.

I get paid for emergency cases. Now this is the time to take out a loan. Get a treatment room built and reap the windfall.

Remember to assign a staff member, too. Make the room high priority and, in rooms like Wards, assign an additional nurse to share the load.

It’s often a good idea to place some toilets next door as well. Emergency patients take positive pride in tottering all the way across the map to the most distant loos possible.

Food and Drink

Utilise all the vending machines. Everywhere.

ALL the vending machines. See this projection screen? What are these? VENDING MACHINES.

Not only do vending machines keep your staff happy, they can get you a bit of cash. Not enough to be a game changer, but still. They also keep the patients happy if for some reason you care about that too.

The adventurous might like to experiment with cafes and gift shops. I am dubious about anything that requires a staff member to man it. Wages are your number one enemy.

Level Four Rooms

So Tarquin keeps asking me to make a level four room. Fine.

Make one level four room. The pillage its contents the next time Tarquin wants a high level room.

Just move the furniture around, yo. Also the starting staff room has some nice furnishings to steal.

If you’re having trouble breaking into level four despite ludicrous bling, the room is too small. It’s usually essential that the room be bigger than its minimum size.

Actually Winning the Game

Oh right, that’s what we’re actually here for. Moving on…

You need to research a Resolution treatment room. Chances are you were sensible and had your hardworking researchers already solve this, in one of the periods where you had plenty of cash and time to do so.

The harder issues are staff morale and hospital attractiveness.

Hospital attractiveness does basically come down to placing plants everywhere. You’d be forgiven for wondering if this is a hospital or a tropical hothouse. It’s smart to combine this with staff happiness. You need to get their morale up with some nice rooms.

I’ve been telling you not to promote your staff. That’s excellent advice for not being seventy feet in debt. However, to complete the level, you are going to have to make up for it. Once you feel you have a handle on the cash situation, start promoting everyone.

If a nice room and a pay rise still doesn’t cut it, have you considered Emotional Intelligence? Training improves morale by itself. However, in my hospital I happened to have a lot of staff who were inherently Grumpy, thus dragging my morale down. Some Emotional Intelligence training solved that.

Or, y’know…. You can also just fire them.

Oh you weren’t having enough fun? That’s alright, one of my demon DNA viral strains needs in the wild testing.

To handle an epidemic, you need to vaccinate all infected persons. This can mean both staff and patients.

Infected persons give themselves away through their behaviour. I recommend abusing the pause button while you scan your hospital. Pause, scan, vaccinate, unpause, repeat.

What do you mean, “Dr Madge, I can’t manipulate time and space?”
Just use the cosmic spacebar like a normal demigod would.

If a patient leaves your hospital while infected, you lose the challenge. For this reason, I recommend frequently lurking around the exits. Like a hawk waiting to swoop.

Chances are, you’ll be left at the end wondering who could possibly be left. You’re certain all the patients are clean….

It’s the receptionist. Staff who spend very long periods sitting down do not give their infected status away. You can give them a speculative vaccine shot. But if you are really conscious of your money, send the suspicious staff member on a break and watch them. Psychiatrists and some machine operators tend to be secret reservoirs too.

Dr Cox, I am not teaching you how to use the cosmic spacebar. Sit down.