The equipment that you get is divided into a total of six tier. You have common, rare, epic, legendary, and ultimate equipment. Rare equipment has a green border, epic equipment has a purple border, legendary equipment has an orange border, and ultimate equipment has a red border.
Acquiring common, rare, and legendary equipment is a fairly straightforward process; simply open a box, or buy it from the merchant who sells you equipment in exchange for orange balls, and then equip it. The process is a little bit more complicated for legendary and ultimate equipment, though.
For both of these types of equipment, you will typically earn blueprints instead of the equipment itself, although legendary equipment does sometimes pop up when you open a big box. If you get the blue print for a legendary or ultimate piece of equipment, then you’re going to have to forge other, less rare pieces of equipment together in order to fulfill the requirements of the blueprint and earn the equipment.
To get all of that required equipment, of course, you’re going to have to open even more small boxes and big boxes. One big box contains as many items as three small boxes, and the average rarity of a big box is higher than a small box, so big boxes are your best bet here, even if it will take longer to save up the gems.
Unique equipment is equipment that comes only from limited time event. You can acquire this equipment while the event is still active, but once the equipment is gone, it’s gone for good, unless the developers decide to bring it back. At the time that the event is happening, though, this equipment can often be easier to acquire than ultimate equipment.
Try to avoid overly merging your equipment, so that you don’t accidentally get rid of some thing that you can forge. Merge away all of the common equipment that you want to, but save your rare and epic equipment, unless you are already satisfied with the legendary or ultimate equipment that you got earlier.
When you are looking at the secondary traits of your equipment, many of them will show that they give you a chance of earning perfect food. Perfect food appears as a gold version of other food when it’s cooked, and it’s worth far more money than the normal food that you make will be worth. if you have lots of equipment, then equip the stuff that gives you a good chance at perfect food, especially while you are playing actively, because while it won’t have an effect when you are offline, it will have a pronounced affect when you are currently online.
After you complete the final restaurant in your current city, you will move to a new city and start all over again, except that different restaurant types will be switched in and out depending on the city. Overall, though, many of the patterns that will be familiar from the first time will be familiar again, except that you will be able to complete stage is far more quickly, due to having higher profits from better equipment. After you complete San Francisco, New York will be your next city.
When you are looking for another player character to use as a helper, if you see one with a ultimate piece of equipment, then always pick them, even if you see someone with two legendary pieces of equipment. The mythic equipment will have better numbers than three legendary pieces of equipment combined, and will also have far stronger secondary traits to go with it.