HuniePop 2: Double Date How the beat the game on Hard (Incel) difficulty

HuniePop 2: Double Date How the beat the game on Hard (Incel) difficulty 1 - steamsplay.com
HuniePop 2: Double Date How the beat the game on Hard (Incel) difficulty 1 - steamsplay.com
A brief guide outlining the builds I used to reach and then beat the Nymphojinn on hard difficulty.

 

Introduction & Progression System

I’ve completed the game on Incel (hard) difficulty on patch 1.02, this should make it possible for you to do so too.

The strategies & builds here should work for Easy / Normal mode, but as easy disables all “baggage” and normal only uses 1/3 of each girl’s baggage at random, YMMV.

The following guide explains the game’s progression system:

HuniePop 2: Double Date Girl and Stat Progression

Patch 1.03 should’ve made this a bit clearer, but if you still missed it or want a TL;DR:

Prioritise buying slushies and gifting them to girls whose preferred affection token matches the colour of the slushies.

This will improve your character’s stats and (eventually) give you more “Affection” per match of that colour.
Next prioritise giving Unique Gifts and Shoes.

If the store runs out of any of the above, then you need to talk to the girls to unlock their “baggage” and thus restock these progression items.

Often having all three baggage unlocked makes the game easier than dating with just one or two (for example Nora’s final baggage completely neutralises her second).

If you’re struggling to get currency and can’t beat the next puzzle – keep talking to the girls to unlock more of their personal info

 

You’ll get some berry currency for picking the “correct” answer to their questions; and you’ll get some berry currency for asking them for personal info which they share with their current date partner.
Once you’ve exhausted the couple’s stamina, just move onto the next couple (no need to waste berries on +stamina food).

By the time I had unlocked all of the personal info for all of the girls, I had well over a hundred of each different type of berry in my inventory. That’s plenty to get your stats upgraded and a decent set of inventory items, etc.

Basic Gameplay Strategy

 

 

The Shimmy

This guide isn’t meant for complete novices to connect-3 puzzles. However, if you don’t have a clue then you might not have worked out the most basic of techniques to employ: The Shimmy.
If you’ve got a token adjacent to a pair you want to match it with, rather than dragging and dropping it into alignment, pick the odd-one-out token next to it, and drag it along the length of the column/row and place it in an advantageous position (near to similar tokens). The rest of the tokens in that row / column will “shimmy” along the line to fill the empty space while you’re doing so, moving the original token you were going to match into the correct position for the match to occur. You can take this a step further, and drag tokens further down the row into advantageous positions to further open up your options and set up better matches.

How to handle your gals

As you progress the optimum playstyle will change, due to new baggage changing how the game plays and expanding your inventory possibilities; and new character match-ups confounding your builds.

The fundamental strategy is to use one character to farm Sentiment to power your inventory; and the other character to farm Passion to multiply the benefit of the matches you get. You alternate between the two to maintain Stamina.
This basic playstyle gets confounded very quickly by the Baggage system – which is where the fun and the challenge in the game comes from. Building around these limitations is how you make the final boss fight winnable.
Two alternative build strategies to employ when the baggage system (and item-limits) starts narrowing your choices are to focus on rewarding 4+ matches; or to focus on generating extra Moves via Joy tokens.

Exhaustion is a good thing?!?

 

The other basic tactic you need to employ is strategically “exhausting” (or, circumstantially, upsetting with broken hearts – but I prefer exhausting as you can still gain the full value of the moves you use to deplete the Stamina) one girl to temporarily disable her baggage so that you can take actions on the other gal which would otherwise be impossible.
An example of this would be exhausting Ashley so that you can activate a flower or candle date-gift on the gal she is partnered with – Ashley’s “Allergies” baggage would normally prevent this.

As long as you are keeping track of the other girl’s Stamina (and any baggage that might artificially limit this, for example Lillian’s Asthma, or Jessie’s Emphysema) and are especially careful not to trigger an “upset”, you won’t trigger the insta-lose condition of having both girls disabled.

Baggage and what to do about it pt.1

Here’s a break down of the gals and how they play, the section below these includes the builds I used on them.

Abia

Baggage
One Pump Chump: Drains half her sentiment on *her* 4+ matches.
Self-Effacing: Won’t accept gifts until her date has received one.
S*x Addict: All s*xuality matches go through her, and she’ll randomly absorb one s*xuality token from the board when she moves.

Baggage is arguably a net-gain or neutral. One Pump Chump can be somewhat sidestepped by L*be and not doing any 4+ matches on her until she’s spent her Sentiment.
Self-Effacing is a bit of a pain and reduces the benefit of L*be to the tune on one item, but just having the other gal grab early sentiment and an item negates this (and if its a 0-sentiment item like the Ceramic Fish you’re not even losing any benefit from L*be).
S*x Addict can be downright useful if Abia’s at high passion and thus using the other gal’s Stamina to effectively feed her her favourite tokens – especially if you use the appropriate candle to improve the drop-rate.

Ashley

Baggage
Easily Bored: Matching the same tokens twice in succession costs an extra move, unless it’s part of a multi-match (which resets this).
Commitment Issues: The 4th move in succession on Ashley makes her “uncomfortable”. When “uncomfortable” all matches will have a negative effect.
Allergies: Disables Flower and Candle date-gifts.

Ashley’s baggage is daunting at first, but straight-forward to play around if you keep track of it. The tooltip for Easily Bored will tell you the last match-type (if applicable), so you can just match a different token-type. The tooltip for Commitment Issues will tell you how many turns are left before Ashley becomes uncomfortable, so you can just switch out to the other girl as soon as Ashley becomes uncomfortable, take a move, and thus reset it.
Allergies isn’t too problematic, as Candles aren’t the most useful of gifts, and Flowers are very circumstantial. You can just exhaust Ashley to enable these on her partner, although exhausting Ashley before her Commitment Issues triggers can be challenging if there aren’t a lot of multi-matches / 4+ matches available. Upsetting her might circumstantially be preferable.

Brooke

Baggage
Unsentimental: Reduces Sentiment token drop rate by 20%
Expensive Tastes: Disables Plushie or Souvenir date-gifts.
Gold Digger: Consumes 1 Move if you give a date-gift to her partner.

Brooke’s baggage is tricky, and can really amplify problems with other gals’ baggage (especially Polly’s). Exhausting Brooke so that you can give date-gifts is prudent (if you don’t end up squandering more moves on weak matches than you’d lose just giving the gifts outright); and is crucial if those date-gifts happen to be Souvenirs or Plushies.
Finding a way for Brooke to generate Sentiment without relying on Sentiment tokens being on the field is recommended.

Candy

Baggage
Forgetful: 1/20 chance of removing a beneficial item from her or her date
Intellectually Challenged: Big moves cost extra Moves instead of extra Stamina
Hypersensitive: Drains 30% passion from herself and her date if Upset.

The severity of her baggage is really RNG dependent. On average you’d expect to lose one item per game, which isn’t that debilitating (particularly if you’d gotten all the use out of it you wanted to by that point: There’s generally no point in keeping Eyelash Curlers once you’ve bought all the date-gifts). However, as you can lose a vital item nearly immediately, or lose several items in quick succession, you can be very unlucky.
Early on Intellectually Challenged can be a real pain – causing you to lose Moves for little benefit. Later on it can circumstantially be beneficial (if Candy’s full of Passion and you want to knock out as many high-value matches in quick succession to maximise incoming Affection).
Hypersensitive’s a bit of a non-issue as you can usually avoid inflicting upset on a gal unless you’re particularly unlucky or careless.

Jessie:

Baggage
Emphysema: 1/5 chance she won’t recover stamina on her date’s move.
Depression: -1 Sentiment every 5 moves.
Busted Vadge: No benefit to S*xuality matches unless 4+

Jessie’s baggage is pretty easy to play around as long as you don’t forget about it: Make sure you don’t run down her partner’s stamina while Jessie is exhausted or upset, and that you’ve got some Stamina tokens ready for you to match if you want to take some stamina-intensive moves.
Depression can be dodged by only grabbing sentiment when you’re about to use it (and if you have to bank it, check the Depression tooltip to see how many turns you have to activate a date-gift before you lose sentiment and thus potentially the ability to activate the item).
Busted Vadge can be a real pain, but only if you forget about it, as you’ll end up wasting moves for no benefit.

Baggage and what to do about it pt.2

 

 

Lailani

Baggage
Low Self-Esteem: Power tokens in a match negate the benefits of that match unless it’s an Affection token match.
Old Fashioned: If Lailani matches S*xuality tokens, she’ll become upset unless 15 moves have passed.
Sheepish: Blocks her and her partner from using S*x Toy or Hygeine Gifts

Lailani’s baggage is some of the most disruptive in the game:
S*x Toys are the most powerful item-type in the game (Butt Plug, Egg Vibrator, Magic Wand); Hygeine items are circumstantially useful for blocking especially annoying baggage.
Completely disabling one of the core token-types for 2/3rds of a date with the penalty of Upset is very limiting.
Losing access to nearly all Power token matches makes it very hard to pull out high-value combos in the late game.

It’s not really easy to play around these; exhausting Lailani early so her partner can trigger any s*x-toys / Hygeine items they have is usually crucial. Aside from that, using Lailani as a support to set up later combos and give her partner time to replenish stamina is the best bet.

Lillian

Baggage
Teen Angst: Joy token matches cost you moves instead of adding to them
Asthma: 4+ matches cost 1 extra Stamina
The Darkness: The effects of Passion and Broken Heart tokens is reversed.

Lillian’s baggage represents a net gain. The Darkness effectively doubles the number of passion tokens available to both gals and lets you clear dangerous Upset risks off the board. Super useful.
Teen Angst is only a problem if you forget about it or get very unlucky with a blind-drop, just use her partner to clear up Joy tokens.
Asthma is awkward, but can be played around by just keeping track of Stamina matches and switching out to another gal.

Lola:

Baggage
Miss Independent: Refuses gifts unless passion is at 30%+
Busy Schedule: Consumes 1 extra move after every 10.
Caffeine Junkie: Steals Stamina-token matches off her partner.

On a regular date, using food to get her to 30% passion is very beneficial in speeding up her item progression.
Busy Schedule can largely be disregarded, as you’re only going to typically see one proc of it on a hard date unless you’re dating a +Move build gal, and even then 2 moves wasted is pretty inconsequential compared to how much you’re gaining.
Caffeine Junkie is useful for keeping Lola fuelled for big high-value multi-match combos, although it’s not how I ended up building her (see Builds section below).

I usually rush to get 30% Passion on her and then work through her item build as normal.

Nora

Baggage
Abandonment Issues: Drains 5% of accumulated Affection every time you switch off of her
Vindictive: Removes a date gift from her and her partner if she becomes Upset
Emotionally Guarded: Immune to Broken Heart matches, doubles the amount of Broken Heart tokens that drop.

Abandonment Issues is a real pain when you’ve only progressed a little into the game, draining more affection than your can generally hope to recover with low-value matches. This forces you to either negate it with a hygiene item as a priority, or else exhaust Nora in order to access her partner. When you’ve maxed out your stats and you’re looking at 5k date goals, this baggage is far less of a problem, because 5% of your accumulated affection is chicken-feed compared to 100% passion 4+ Power token matches that will generate 10% of the total Affection you need in one go.
Vindictive is completely neutralised by Emotionally Guarded.
Emotionally Guarded is the most beneficial baggage in the game – used with Joy token farming build it can generate an insane number of extra Moves.

Polly

Baggage
Jealousy: Polly will drain 5% of *total affection goal* of the date whenever her partner receives a date-gift.
Brand Loyalist: Disables Jewellery or Cosmetic gifts
Drama Queen: Drains 4 Sentiment from both her and her date when she becomes Upset.

Jealousy has a really painful cost attached to it, so timing it right / exhausting Polly when you give date gifts is vitally important if you don’t want to undo a big heap of progress, this is also true of timing Brand Loyalist gifts to coincide with Polly being exhausted.
Drama Queen is a bit of a non-issue, as you can generally avoid Upset unless you are very unlucky or careless, and in this case you’re even less likely to trigger upset whilst you’re banking substantial amounts of Sentiment.

Sarah

Baggage
Attention ♥♥♥♥♥: 15% chance to steal focus right before a move procs
Annoying as ♥♥♥♥: 15% chance for her matches to leave behind a broken heart token
Smelly ♥♥♥♥♥: 20% fewer passion tokens drop.

Sarah’s baggage is annoying but not game-changing. Her stealing the occasional proc isn’t usually the end of the world (although partnered with Lillian or Zoey can add extra risk of upset if she steals Broken Heart matches). Extra Broken Heart tokens on the field can be a pain, but can be used to fuel Lillian or Zoey or Amethyst Necklaces, etc.
Smelly ♥♥♥♥♥ is a smell penalty that can be sidestepped on Sarah by using Lipstick.

Zoey

Baggage
Tinnitus: Prevents Joy tokens from spawning whilst Zoey is active
Kinda Crazy: Shatters a random row of Tokens after every move Zoey makes
Aquaphobic: The effects of Sentiment and Broken Heart tokens is reversed

Another gal whose baggage is a net gain. Aquaphobic effectively doubles your access to Sentiment, which is super-useful.
Kinda Crazy is a great way of “refreshing” the board and keeping it well-populated with a variety of tokens, you can avoid its effects just by switching off to the other gal. Just remember to complete any high-value matches (4+ / Power Token, etc) before completing Zoey’s move or you run the risk of losing access to them.
Joy tokens aren’t super useful unless you’re building specifically to maximise your benefit from them or are matching them as part of a multi-match.

Winning Builds (Nymphojinn and explanation).

The builds below are those I used to win the Nymphojinn boss-battle, but they should also work fine for regular dates too. That said, they are complete builds, so if you have limited inventory slots then they might be useless (no point in a slot #1 sentiment farming item if you have no slot #2 item to spend that sentiment on, for example.)

I’ll’ explain my rationale behind each build, and offer some thoughts on refinements I’ve made since winning, or alternatives for non-Nymphojinn dates or fine-tuning to other playstyles.

Abia

L*be, Magic Wand, Cinnamon Cider, Ladybug Plush

Pretty self-explanatory build: Abia squirts out sentiment, so L*be saves you from having to bank as much; she eats S*xuality tokens like there’s no tomorrow, so the rest of the items capitalise on that. Ladybug Plush – like all broken-heart eating items – is less useful on Nymphojinn battles where you’ll routinely find Nora, Zoey, and Lillian all fighting to make use of them.

Ashley

Eyelash Kit, Lipstick, Hair Brush, Makeup Palette

Because Ashley punishes you for having 4 consecutive turns on her, using up her excess Stamina with big 4+ matches is a great way of getting value out of her, as such I find Powder Brush to be redundant on her. Hair Brush can easily be swapped out for Blow Dryer or ideally Exfoliating Scrub.

Brooke

Eyelash Kit, Hair Brush, Blow Dryer, Makeup Palette

Brooke’s baggage starves the board of Sentiment tokens, Eyelash kit lets you sidestep this. The rest is a 4+ combo build – the Makeup Palette’s ability to save you moves is crucial, I’d consider dropping out Hair Brush and Blow Dryer for Powder Brush + Exfoliating Scrub if you can come up with a good way to plug the gaps that creates in other gals’ inventories.

Candy

Turquoise Tulip, Diamond Tiara, Pig Plush, Pink Cosmos

With Candy I wanted to avoid any items that conveyed a persistent buff, as her baggage would just end up removing at least one buff anyway. Because she loses Moves when making big matches, I wanted to sidestep this with items that consume tokens. The Pig Plush is probably sub-optimal, given that Nora, Zoey, and Lillian all want Broken Hearts on the field to fuel their builds. Swapping the Pink Cosmos for the Magic Wand is a solid option if you don’t mind risking it being consumed by her baggage and don’t mind using up extra moves on her whilst saving Stamina.

Jessie

L*be, Egg Vibrator, Beachball, Red Rose

L*be’s a must on Jessie, because her Depression baggage will drain away any sentiment you’re trying to bank for later. Red Rose isn’t essential and could be swapped out – it’s only there to make use of S*xuality tokens you might otherwise be dodging due to her Bust Vadge baggage, but Pinwheel’s a fine choice too.
I didn’t find Br*ast-Pump or Powder Brush to be essential on her, but they’re options if you’re struggling with her Emphysema.

Lailani

Turqoise Tulip, Diamond Tiara, Hemp Bracelet, Tiki Head Charm

Lailani’s aversion to s*x-toys really limits her ability to farm passion or sentiment. Tulip + Diamond Tiara lets you sidestep this, and on Nymphojinn the extra moves from Hemp Bracelet and Tiki Head Charm are both super useful. On regular dating I’d generally prefer to swap out both of these for a Pumpkin Spice candle and maybe the Ruby Ring.

Lillian

Violet Pansey, Spinel Necklace, Topaz Earrings, Pinwheel

Quirky passion-farming build – efficient because you’re not taking passion tokens you could be using from the other gal. Spinel Necklace is to make use of all those passion tokens you’re not collecting with Lillian, Topaz Earrings are to make use of all those Joy tokens you’re not consuming thanks to Lillian’s baggage. Pinwheel is self-explanatory for a passion build. Topaz Earrings is probably the most circumstantial (chances are you’ll have Nora clear the board of Joy tokens before Lillian match comes up, for example), but can also be super-useful if the timing is right.
Br*ast Pump or Powder Brush are both options to counteract her Asthma if you’re having trouble playing around it.

Lola

Butt Plug, Glass Dolphin, Tropical Lei, Exfoliating Scrub

Lola I found particularly hard to build. Her requirement for +30% passion to activate items was really awkward on the Nymphojinn battle where you can’t use food to pre-buff her passion up to that amount.
I wanted to give her a +passion build as you’ve already got to have a 30% passion head-start before you can activate any build; but the fact that she’s consuming half-a-dozen passion tokens *before* she can activate any items actually makes date-gifts like the Egg Vibrator less efficient than on the alternative options. I settled on this just because all the non-standard passion-farming items were better used elsewhere. Moving Scrub to Brooke and working out some sort of alternative passion-generating build for Lola is probably smoother.

Nora

Spring Rain, Amethyst Necklace, Chicken Plush, Topaz Earrings

Nora’s build is all about turning the absolute ton of broken-heart tokens she generates into Joy and thus moves. She is *the* Nymphojinn destroyer if you can get a full item combo out effectively, because she buys you SOOOOO many turns to win the game with. The downside is that she struggles with Sentiment generation. The Spring Rain candle is an attempt to mitigate this; but circumstantially it can be a non-issue (other gal has Glass Dolphin, for example). Her kit’s pretty expensive, so Buttplug’s an option if you have one free.

Polly

Ceramic Fish, Egg Vibrator, Beach Ball, Pinwheel

Standard passion-farming build. I don’t really like Ceramic Fish, although if she pairs with Abia it’s a quick way of getting started on Abia’s inventory. Because Polly hates the other gal getting date-gifts, it was a convenient way of getting Polly a head-start on Egg Vibrator and thus Passion farming, at which point you can exhaust her and start working through the other gal’s inventory. It’s a strong candidate to swap out for a better sentiment generation item, though.

Sarah

Butt Plug, Lipstick, Magic Wand, Beach Towel

This build is a bit of a mishmash. The Lipstick’s essential for farming passion despite her Smelly P baggage. The rest is about getting enough sentiment to get Magic Wand out and power Beach Towel to fill up passion in lieu of tokens.

In regular dating I went with Spring Rain, Lipstick, An*l Beads, Amethyst Necklace which packs a bit less punch but plays pretty smoothly. Amethyst Necklace synergises well with the Nora build, but will fight Zoey and Lillian for Broken Heart tokens.

Zoey

Violet Pansey, Aquamarine Earrings, Glass Dolphin, Exfoliating Scrub

Quirky sentiment-farming build, again self-explanatory. Dropping the Scrub for a Beachtowel is fine if you want to synergise the Scrub with Eyelash Curlers on another gal.

Nymphojinn tips

Really, this is a tough fight and will probably require a lot of first-round forfeits if you’re getting griefed by particularly bad boards of first-round pairings.

One thing to bear in mind is that, between each round, the bottom few rows are trashed. It can be a prudent strategy to consider leaving the top half of the board stocked with power / passion / sentiment tokens ready for the next round.

Getting Nora or Lailani’s +move combos out efficiently is really important in generating the extra moves you need to power up the gals’ inventories and close out the final rounds with high-value high-passion matches.

Written by Ace42

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