Good day Ladies and Gentlemen and welcome to the second part of our Rising Star Guide series.
If you are new to the game, please first refer to the first part of the guide:
@rakhmen/stairway-to-stardom-first-steps

I assume you are no longer lonely Buskers but have graduated from busking and are now at the very least consistently getting the Midweek Headline Slot.

This is good, you are slowly gathering fans and becoming well known in your Home Town.
Just a little bit more and you'll reach Saturday Support and after that Saturday Headline.
So far it's all been quite straightforward but the game would be too easy if that's all it was.
So while I tell you about what comes next, tune in to another song by Ylvis about a successful career:

Let's talk about the Ego System

Once you hit either 1000 fans or level 15 (whichever comes first), you unlock the Ego system.
This game is not only about gathering fans alone - it also teaches you that to retain the fans you have and be successful, you have to back it up with the appropriate amount of skill.

I believe you do, but do your cards tell the same tale?
We now have to balance out both the fans and the skill stats:

if you focus too much on fans and have too many, you will get less payout from your missions.
If you focus too much on skill, you will be wasting time because you're not earning Starbits.

How can we get more skill?

There are two ways of getting more skill:

getting cards that have skill value
Taking Music Lessons that permanently increase your skill value

Music Lessons.PNG

To take Music Lessons, you need to switch to Music Lessons in the mission tab and have at least one of the required instruments as a card.
The only exception to this is the Basic Singing Lesson which can also be done without having a microphone.

Are the other Music Lessons better than the basic singing lesson?

Yes and no, it depends what instruments you have as they give you a bonus to the amount of skill earned when finishing the lesson.
However, the lessons have different requirements to allow participation:

Lesson requirements.PNG

Currently I am level 21 so I do not know if my assumption is correct, but I feel that the road crew lesson for example would be taking into account the instruments/instrument types that your band members use which would multiply the awarded skill value bonus.

So what should I do if I have way too many fans?
Frankly, this depends on the reason of why you have so many fans:

Scenario 1 - You have just reached level 15 and have about 125 fans

In this case you have three choices:

Use some of your accumulated Starbits to buy cards that increase your skill.
Use some of your accumulated Starbits to buy a guitar/microphone to increase the amount of skill points earned from taking Music lessons
Save your Starbits and grind out the skill points with base Music Lesson payout.

I personally recommend the second option for a very simple reason:
As soon as you unlock the Ego System, you will also get Ego from completed missions; meaning that whatever you do, you WILL need to take Music Lessons every now and then.

it never let's go.gif

Scenario 2 - You have bought packs and have blasted way beyond your skill level

In this case you have three choices once again:

Buy some storage cards to store away and "deactivate" some of your cards.
Use the "Pro Gamer Move" to put some of your cards on the market for horrendous prizes to "deactivate" them <- !!USE WITH CAUTION!! There are people that have mistyped the price and have lost very valuable cards for an apple and an egg.
Grind it out with Music Lessons until you are able to earn Starbits again.

My recommendation is to do the first option as it allows you to continue grinding Starbits while doing some music lessons on the side and activating your cards based on what your skill level allows as it slowly rises.

music lesson.gif

Scenario 3 - Drunk Fans

Yes, you read correctly - as soon as the Ego System hits, you stop being happy to see this line:

Why would i not be happy to see it?
Because the cake is a LIE!

it's a lie.gif

It is absolutely possible - unless you have gone above and beyond on your skill value grind, these drunks will not increase your Starbit payout; they will DECREASE it!
The reason for that is very simple - drunks count as your fans, albeit only temporarily.
At the beginning you were happy because you could play higher missions for 12 hours; now you still can play higher missions if they were the fans that you were missing, but they also increase the Ego meter accordingly.

There is really only two things you can do in this scenario:

Use the time to grind some skill to reduce the penalty and combat future invasions of drunks.
Ignore the penalty and keep doing your missions.

If the ego push is very low, then I do the latter, however in most cases, the former option makes the most sense.

I thank you for taking the time to read the 2nd part of the Rising Star guide series.

Stay Tuned For Part 3: Moving out
@rakhmen/stairway-to-stardom-moving-out

The same raffles that apply to the first part of the Guide also apply to this one:

To increase the reach and enable as many Rising Star players to see this Guide as possible, after the curation period of 1 week, I will raffle away 2500 Starbits among everyone that has reblogged this post.
To help a lucky Busker along, I will raffle another 1k away among the Rising Star players that are below level 10, have less than 125 fans and comment on this post with their ign and a short description of how they like the game.