Guide Mission:
 
Numerous newbies' questions have compelled me to write this detailed Guide to Virtonomics, in which I'm going to tell you how to build a successful company step-by-step, starting from the very beginning.
 
Guide expertly written by VLLord
Edited by Ihop

 
1. Find Virtonomics on http://virtonomics.com ... .
 
2. Press the Sign in! button to create an account.
 
3. After you've successfully completed the registration form, you will be directed to the page where you must choose which realm to play in.
 
There are 3 realms which support the English language (Mary, Lien and Anna), while only 2 of them (Mary and Anna) are available in Spanish, French and German. There are two other realms for Russian speaking players.
 
Anna is a subscriber's realm and it costs ~$18 per month, but all other in-game operations are free. This world is characterized by a small core of active players, easy playing, and less-developed markets.
 
Mary and Lien are free-to-play realms, but some of the preferential services must be purchased. Mary contains the larger number of players and the markets are better developed. However, new players may find it more difficult to start there due to strong competition among the established players.
 
4. The next step is your virtual company creation. Here you are presented with the offer to take one of your rich uncle's gifts or to start with the single office only. The choices available to you are: production gift (provides +1 to qualification in production) and retail gift (provides +1 to qualification in commerce). In addition, you inherit several businesses in both cases, however these business are not particularly valuable.
 
As establishing factory production requires higher initial investments than starting up a retail store, I'd suggest that you start with retail and choose one of the the retail gifts. And remember, +1 bonus to qualification is a real value at the beginning!

Top manager qualifications
 
As a company manager, you are endowed with "qualifications" (also called top manager qualifications or simply top) in different fields, which you can check at My office -> Qualification. At start-up, all of your qualifications are equal to 1. The number of employees you are able to manage, your advertising dubget, etc., depend on your qualifications, which increase with each simulated week that you are successful in the corresponding field.
 
The Virto World
 
And now a couple of words about the virto world. Mary consists of 18 countries which you can find on the world map (Game world -> World map), along with information about taxes, city populations, etc. Pay close attention to the education and wealth levels of the different cities, as they will have a bearing on where you build subdivisions.
 
As in the real world, there are two absolutely different markets: wholesale and retail goods.
 
Wholesale market:
 

 
Sellers: real companies (players)
Buyers: real companies (players)
 
Subdivisions involved in wholesale market operations:
Sellers: factories, farms, etc., and warehouses
Buyers: stores, factories, warehouses
 
The pricing:
The price is determined by players, falling in the range of $0.01 to IP*30 for low-quality goods and IP*300 for high-quality ones. To get more info on this visit Game world -> World map -> Click any country -> Customs duties.

Retail market
 

 
Sellers: real companies (players)
Buyers: virtual population of the cities
 
Subdivisions involved in retail market operations:
Sellers: stores
Buyers: -
 
The pricing:
The price is determined by players and can take any value. However the players' prices are influenced by the prices of goods sold by local suppliers, which are computer controlled, and which cause extreme values to not sell well.
 
I've mentioned only two main types of markets above, but there are several more types of them:
 
- licenses market;
- enterprise market;
- state enterprise market.
 
Arm yourself with patience for now; we will talk about those markets a bit later.
 
 
Subdivisions
 
These are the types of the subdivisions that you can build, buy, run, and use in Virtonomics:
 
Factories - Here you can produce semi-products or final goods. Check Game world -> Production, Game world -> Goods.
 
Stores - Used to sell goods in the retail market.
 
Laboratories - These are scientific senters in Virtonomics, where new technologies can be developed.
 
Warehouses - Different goods can be stored here.
 
Offices - Administrative units in Virtonomics.
 
Animal farms - Involved in the breeding of animals for raw goods.
 
Sawmills, agricultural farms and plantations - Produce natural resources and agricultural products. However, they require real money purchases to get them.
 

Efficiency
 
You already know about the top manager qualifications, so now let's talk about subdivision efficiency - another significant setting that a successful company manager must master.
 
The efficiency of a subdivision is an indicator that shows how successful a subdivision is at whatever its task may be. It can be from 0% (absolutely unsuccessful) to 100% (perfect!). The efficiency of every subdivision is shown on the right (see the screen shot from the next post) or at the foot of the page (see the following screen shot).
 

 
Work efficiency is calculated differently for the various subdivisions.
 
As you can see above, the Work efficiency of an office consists of the following parts:
 
1. Staff efficiency shows whether staff are able to accomplish their required job or not. To make this 100%, hire at least the required number (marked with orange) of employees (press Employees and salary link) or increase their qualification level by raising their salaries. But don't increase their qualification level too far ... this can cause a drop in your Top manager efficiency, because you can handle more low-qualification workers than high-qualification workers.
 
2. The level of administrative load demonstrates the workload of the office and should remain at a value below 100%. If it exceeds 100%, then you need to hire more employees or increase their qualification.
 
3. Computarization level represents the office workers' access to quality computers. A value below than 100% forces you to buy additional computers immediately (equipment such as computers does not require any time to deliver).
 
4. Computers (or equipment) wear and tear. Keep this value below 1% for offices and below 3% for other subdivisions. Otherwise the efficiency of the subdivions will drop a little. To repair equipment, press Equipment -> Repear equipment.
 
5. Equipment efficiency indicates whether the equipment quality is high enough for the equipment efficiency to be 100%. If it isn't, you must buy higher quality equipment.
 
6. Advertising efficiency. If your qualification level in marketing is enough for the stated advertising budget, then advertising efficiency will be 100%. Otherwise, you need to lower your advertising budget.
 
7. Top manager efficiency is equal to 100% as long as your current qualification in the appropriate field (for example, "commerce" for stores) is higher than required under top1 and top3 for this subdivision. I will explain about top1 and top3 in a bit.
 
8. Work efficiency. The resulting factor of the all previous efficiencies.
 
Note #1: the efficiency of the warehouse is equal to the efficiency of the office in the appropriate region.
 
Note #2: the efficiency of any subdivision (other than an office) is always equal to, or lower than, the efficiency of its regional office. Make sure you keep your office efficiencies high.

Note #3: after you made some changes in office settings the efficiency for tomorrow will gain a new value. To check it press Work efficiency link at the foot of the page.
 

 
What is the result of low efficiency?
 
- Low efficiency of an office results in correspondingly low efficiency of all subdivisions in that office's region;
 
- profile qualification growth slows down;
 
- stores' sales decrease;
 
- prime cost of produced goods rises significantly, while the produced volume drops down;
 
- warehouse expenses rise significantly.
 
 
Player Qualifications: top1 and top3
 
Like in real life, every subdivision has employees (except warehouses) and all subdivisions are distributed under profile qualifications (for more info see Office -> Qualifications). For example, all stores belong to the commerce qualification. The number of employees you can handle at one subdivision (top1) and the total number of employees under that profile qualification (top3) are limited by the top manager qualification. Let's consider the following example:
 
You've just started and your qualification in commerce is 1. This means:
 
- you can handle up to 40 employees that fall under that profile qualification (the total number of employees in stores shouldn't exceed 40), or else the Top manager efficiency will drop and cause a drop in Work efficiency;
 
- at every store, you can handle up to 10 employees of qualification 0-3 or 5 employees of qualification 3-5 (other combinations are possible, too).
 
For more info read this thread.  
 
Qualification growth
 
Your qualifications show growth whenever you're successful in the appropriate field. For more info read this and this. You should work hard to maintain the maximum growth possible due to the condition I've mentioned before: the number of employees you're able to manage, the advertising dubget, etc., depend on your qualifications.
 
Example of how to maximize the top growth in management:
 
Assume your current qualification in management is 1 and you've just started. If you make any changes in your office, then your qualification will increase by about 10% for tomorrow. However, you can make certain changes and increase the growth to 100%! Let's learn how to do this.
 
First, follow this link and find the table. From this table you can learn the maximum possible growth for your current qualification and, as you can see for qualification 1, it's equal to 1.00 or 100%. Second, follow this link and find the top3 table. According to this table, the total number of employees in offices to max the top growth in management should be equal to 8. Then move to the top1 table for offices and find "1" or the closest number to it in the middle of the table. Ok, the closest number is "2" which is reached in the office with 5 employees of qualification 1.00. From my own experience to maximize the top load having qualification 1 in management you should have 4 employees of qualification 1.00.
 
To recap:
- to maximize growth by top3 you should have 8 employees at all offices;
- to maximize growth by top1 you should have 4 employees of qualification 1 at each office;
 
So to maximixe qualification growth you should build two offices and hire 4 employees of qualification 1.00 at each.