In the incremental card-opening indie title Crack the Pack by developer Doigt, clicking every booster and flipping individual cards eventually becomes overwhelming. As your card collection expands toward the 1,001 total cards and rare variants, manual management slows down progression. This is where the employee mechanic comes into play.
Unlocking employees transitions your session from active clicking to an automated factory. However, staff members require ongoing wages, and hiring them too early can easily drain your funds. Here is a complete breakdown of how employees work in Crack the Pack, how to unlock them, and how to balance their wages.
How to Unlock Employees in Crack the Pack
According to official Steam information, Crack the Pack features over 60 upgrades across an expansive skill tree. The ability to hire staff is located in the mid-game portion of the tree.
In playthroughs observed from early players, the node labeled Allows you to hire employees becomes accessible once your bank capacity reaches around $50,000 to $100,000. This section of the tree sits near major expansion milestones, such as adding 210 new collectible cards, enabling God Packs, and opening up advanced facilities like the Big Box Store and development modules.
Once you purchase the hiring upgrade, the employee management interface becomes accessible, allowing you to recruit workers for distinct stations across your board.
Employee Types and Automation Roles
Rather than a generic passive multiplier, employees in Crack the Pack perform physical automated tasks that mimic player inputs. During gameplay runs, three distinct worker roles can be unlocked and hired:
- Delivery Driver: Automatically orders and delivers new booster packs to your table when shop packs come off their cooldown timers.
- Card Opener: Applies damage to booster packs on the table and automatically flips unopened cards once packs break.
- Salesperson: Automatically collects duplicate cards from your inventory pool and sells them for cash, preventing your storage space from bottlenecking.
Hiring one of each role creates a self-sustaining loop: the driver stocks packs, the opener breaks and flips them, and the salesperson clears out duplicates to refund your bank account.
Managing Wages, Breaks, and Bankruptcy
While automation saves your fingers from thousands of clicks, employees do not work for free. Understanding their financial impact is vital to keeping your run profitable.
Continuous Wage Drain
Every active employee draws a regular wage, costing cash per second (starting around $50 per second in observed mid-game builds). If you do not produce enough card sales to outpace this burn rate, your funds will rapidly drop to zero.
Running Out of Funds
If your money hits zero, employees automatically halt their work. When this happens, automation stops entirely until you step in, manually open packs, and sell cards to generate operating cash.
The Employee Break Feature
To prevent accidental bankruptcy when setting up expensive purchases or saving for higher-tier pack cooldowns, the game allows you to put employees on break. Setting staff to take a break suspends their wages immediately. Experienced players frequently toggle workers on break when their bankroll dips low, turning them back on once high-value variant cards—such as metallic, gold, or holographic pulls—replenish the treasury.
| Employee Role | Primary Automated Task | Key Management Consideration |
|---|---|---|
| Delivery Driver | Purchases and delivers packs onto table | Requires table space and available shop packs |
| Card Opener | Deals pack damage and flips face-down cards | Work speed can be upgraded; flips duplicate cards fast |
| Salesperson | Sells duplicate pulls automatically | Relies on batch selling and card resale value upgrades |
Upgrades: The Whip, Wage Adjustments, and Work Speed
Hiring staff is only the baseline. As you move toward the late game, several nodes on the upgrade tree enhance employee performance:
- Work Speed Upgrades: Increase how fast card openers crack packs and flip cards.
- The Whip / Adjusted Wages: Unlocked around the $500,000 tier, this feature allows you to increase worker productivity. However, pushing your workers to operate faster increases their ongoing wage expense.
- Duplicate Batch Selling: Pairing employees with duplicate batch-selling upgrades ensures salespeople liquidate overflowing cards instantly rather than trickling them out one by one.
If you push work speed too high without sufficient multipliers on card resale values (such as one-star, metallic, or glitched card value nodes), your wage bill can overwhelm your profits.
Best Strategy for Using Employees
Players testing early builds recommend waiting until your passive duplicate income easily covers several hundred dollars per second before hiring all three employee types. If you recruit them immediately upon unlocking the 50k–100k tier, manual clicking may still be required to cover dry spells between rare variant drops.
Once your triple booster chances, holographic unlock rates, and resale multipliers are stable, running a full staff allows you to accumulate millions passively while focusing on mini-games, the Museum, and collection hunting.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can employees open God Packs or special boosters?
Yes. Once unlocked, card openers target any booster packs delivered to the table, including Mega Packs, polarized packs, and God Packs.
What should I do if employees drain my money to zero?
Immediately toggle them to take a break. Open a few packs manually, sell high-tier duplicates or variant cards to rebuild your cash buffer, and verify your card resale value upgrades before turning the employees back on.
Is employee automation required to beat Crack the Pack?
No official source states that employees are strictly required to reach the end credits. However, fully completing the 1,01-card collection and reaching the $100B milestone without employee automation would require tens of thousands of additional manual mouse clicks.
