For ITRTG players who don't really like this game but want to rush to unlock Gold Dragon in ITRTG.

The wiki is not very up to date, so I was a bit lost when attempting this run.
I gleaned some tips from reading the other guides and reading posts on Shugasu's Discord.

Starting notes:
- If you have completed UBC in ITRTG, go to Stats -> Statistics -> Check ITRTG points to get a free magic token. Use this to purchase the light fairy to increase your pupil rebirth multipliers. The run is a bit slower if you don't have her, with lower rebirth gains, but the core strategy does not change.

- Have the wiki page for Areas open to keep track of what dish to research for the upcoming area: If you don't feel like you need more research for current area (waiting on money for stats), you can start working on the next area's research.

- The wiki page has a link to the spreadsheet for optimal recipes. You can import a recipe through your clipboard even if you don't have its ingredients, although you are still limited by your max ingredients stat.

- Secrets: Secrets are slowly accumulated over time by fighting challengers and by waiting. This is not explained well in game, but your total secrets stat is distributed between all your recipes, so you should not save more than 13 recipes, one for each food type. Secrets, after distribution, add 0.5 quality per recipe, which becomes more and more valuable as high level research times get longer.

- You keep a boss's recipes the first time you beat them. But probably the only one you need to keep is Pancakes from Area 11 (Park District), these are extremely good and will be used to beat the final 2 areas.

- Stats and research levels are by far the most important factors in winning battles. The relative stat difference between you and the boss will skew the final scores greatly; recipe's quality research helps compensate for this. I read that recipe's speed research helps in fights too, but not certain by how much. Clicking "Defend" helps a bit but you still need to overcome the stat and quality gap. All the other judge factors don't really matter.

- Challenger level 0 can always be beaten without clicking defend (at least with +Battle fairy?) so feel free to tab out when you start a challenger fight. You don't need to beat Lv 1 or higher challengers.

- The auto hire staff option is perfectly fine, turn it on. You can ignore staff training, it is not needed.

- I have no idea how well the offline calculation works, YMMV. I ran it overnight in AFK mode most of the time.

Early game (before beating Area 12)
Goal: Gather cooking medals through shorter rebirths to accumulate permanent upgrades.

Training to 300% (probably don't need more than this due to training slowdown)
Research to 300%
Concurrent researches 2

- It's fine to do runs up to Area 8 or 9 to farm medals even if you lose a bit of rebirth multiplier, since the gap to go from Area 9 to Area 12 is very large and can only be crossed by stacking high research levels on your battle recipe(s).

- USEFUL TIP: There's a brief window after you beat a fight and return to the game where the game has not calculated offline ticks (during your battle). If you quickly move to the next area and click Explore, you can count as having been exploring that area when the offline ticks kick in and you won't have to wait as long for Exploration 100 before you challenge the next boss. Very handy during this stage of the game. Later on your stat multipliers are big enough to barrel through the early bosses at Exploration 0 anyways so this doesn't matter as much.

Mid game (can easily beat Area 12)
Goal: Progress through areas to accumulate pupil rebirth multipliers. Upgrade priority shifts toward income.

Income to 325%
Research to 400%
Cheap ingredient quality/freshness upgrade for value
Income to 425% if you have enough medals

- Beating Area 12, Office District, unlocks training upgrades, which finally allows you to convert useless money into stats.

- As a result, you now want to keep advertising up whenever possible. I think 30% boost is a good compromise between effect and cost but 20% is fine too.

- You should also spend a little bit on your restaurants' interior levels (Customize -> Upgrades) to increase their sell prices. The early restaurants can be kept at Lv 1-2, but scale the later ones up to Lv 4, 5, 6 as their income increases.

- Max ingredients 5 is needed by Area 14 (theme of Curry).

- Now the goal to push into new areas is to wait enough time for income to accumulate, then spread stat upgrades and try to tackle the next boss. Generally I found I needed 50-60% of the boss' stats to win, although this went up or down if the boss' recipe was weak or my recipe quality was high.

- Research levels are no longer your limiting factor, but the cost of doing them is negligible by now so keep them going at all times, adjusting Next Ats as you need. You may want to invest a bit into Theme research and Speed research on the recipes that get used most often (Pancake, Optimal Drink recipe, I think Optimal Flour recipe but check) to increase your restaurant income too.

- Important: It's very worth to spend 3 or sometimes even 6 medals for a temporary injection of money that pumps your stats up enough to beat the next boss before you rebirth. The value of permanent upgrades has started to fall off by now. You might want to do a local save before you spend the medals in case you want to take them back, you'll feel better about it.

- It's fairly practical to go for ~2x your current rebirth multiplier each rebirth if you spend medals in this way and use income from overnight to push an extra boss or two. (Multiplier may have to be a little lower if you don't have light fairy)

- ALTERNATIVE PLAY: I saw someone on Discord who got Gold Dragon with 8 pupils in ~8 days, final pupil multipliers of 100k%, probably by playing more passively and letting research stack up higher. If you have this sort of patience/less time, it's okay to aim for longer pupil runs and higher rebirth pupil multipliers (maybe 3x or 5x?) for the entire game too.

Last push
Stop spending cooking medals on permanent upgrades, save them for one last big push.

- Once you reach Area 28 or 29 on your previous rebirth and have around the rebirth multipliers listed below (or better), you're probably ready to make a final push. You may need to bank some cooking medals as well. I had ~45 after using lucky draws.

- Feel free to use any training or research potions on this pupil as well.

- After beating Area 28, you probably need a little extra income to push through Area 29. After doing so (setting Auto recipes, removing bad boss recipes, upgrading the restaurant interior), your income rate is as high as it's going to get, and you're ready to dump medals into money. Do a local save, open lucky draws (sometimes these give income), then mash money and then stat upgrades.

- Good luck.


Final stats

Steam playtime: 170.2 hrs
Time total: 7 days 10 hrs
Last retirement length: 20:10 hrs
Pupils: 22
Medals spent: 444
Secrets gained total: 1263

Total stats: 4.628 million
Upgrade multipliers (from spending income): Lv 2000 = 10000% per stat

Current pupil bonuses of the final pupil: ~68,209% for stats, 140% for research, 94,735% for fame
Winning recipe: Pancakes 196/181
Fairies:
Fire fairy lv 447, battle boost 133.34%
Light fairy lv 447, pupil boost 133.34%

Final permanent upgrades:
Training speed 400%
Research speed 400%
Income boost 425%
Max ingredients 5
Max concurrent researches 2
Ingredient quality/freshness: both 21 (+1 for each)