Where to start?
As you log on for the first time, you need to do some basic work to start out to do crimes successfully.
The first thing would be to train Dexterity, and only train on full Energy Points (EP), the second thing would be to go to crimes and do the simple crimes.
Three Shells Con Game 1
Two Dice Con Game 1
Following a simple target 1
Note that the two first crimes are a tad harder to pull off, but they give cash, whereas Following a simple target is mostly used to level up from level 1-2. When you�ve trained dex for a bit then, Three shells are easier.
After both Energy Points (EP) and Action Points (AP) are spent, the best thing now would be to go to Explore --> City bank, and open a bank account, it costs 50 to open, but well worth the investment. Remember to put cash in bank often so that you don't lose too much if you get mugged.
If you have trained Dexterity a lot and done money wielding crimes with success, then you will reach the amount 1000$, which is exactly what you need to get your first house upgrade. Houses upgrade Happiness, and Happiness increases you're Gym Point gain
Doing Crimes
Do the 1ap crimes to begin with, when you succeed alot on those, begin to do 2ap and then 3ap pickpocketting
There are a wide arrange of crimes that rely on dexterity, but pickpocketting seems to be the most reliable ones, so sticking to them until you have enough dexterity to do GTA is probably a wise move.
When you get up to level 4dexterity, begin doing 4action point Pickpocketting, when you begin to succeed around 80-90% of the attempts, advance and start doing higher pickpockettings. 5ap piclpock, 6ap pickpock etc
On level 8-9 dexterity you can begin doing 9AP GTA, Steal a clunker. This is the start of the High Cash Crimes.
On a side note, there are some crimes that rely on full happiness for you too be more successful. So you don't always need to train before crimes, although in the start you're skills are too low to guarantee success in anything. I would suggest that you start experimenting with crimes on full happiness and low happiness once you have begun getting bigger houses.
And another factor in doing crimes are levels, the higher level you are the better you will do things.
Some crimes are intelligence based and if you have enough intelligence stats you can do them pretty safe at an astonishingly early point in the game. Like if you have level 7-10 Intelligence you can start doing the 22ap meth crime that has a gain roof on approx 1500$.
Leveling up!
I cannot stress enough how important this is, once you've gotten a weapon, and have trained up accuracy and dexterity, begin attacking A LOT. Do not attack online people, do not attack the same people over and over. But attack everyone you can beat. The common courtesy rule is to wait at least 20minutes after last action of the player, attack before and you might end up gaining enemies at an early stage of the game, which isn't beneficiary for anyone.
Once you level up, every few levels increase your Energy Point gain, your Action Point gain.
And levels hold the mystic benefits of improving your battle stats, improving how well you do in crimes, giving you EP and AP faster, allowing you to do bigger gym trains, allowing you to do bigger trains. So training a bit less to attack more will pay off. So don't hesitate to attack more. Just remember to use the "Leave People In Shame" option when attacking.
Just don't forget to stop up and trains every other level, cause stats decide a lot more who wins a fight then levels do. Levels gives you the tools to train harder and do more crimes, stats makes you fight better and gives a bigger chance at doing successful crimes. So you gotta keep those two things balanced.
Jobs aka Careers
This is important now, get a career of your choosing as fast as possible, get the 8hour plus overtime done as fast as possible when you log on each day, just so that you don't forget.
To level up in the career, you will need to gather �Career� points, which if you want you can convert to get stat increase.
Point conversion rate is on:
http://www.bottledbrainsdirect.com/careers.htm courtesy of Yoda.
However I would suggest that you don't use any of the points at least until you have leveled the career 2-3times, since each level you gain you get more points from each hour you work. The point conversion rate stays the same but you will have a lot more points to spend, plus special skills/items that you can sell to people or make yourself useful/indispensable for the gang.
School
To take a school course you will need the cash and a full bar of Energy, you you cant start a course its because your level is too low and you don't have enough EP or that you don't have enough cash.
My suggestion for classes to take would be PE courses. To get enough Intelligence to get jobs, either take the Beginning Computer or buy credits on credit market and convert them into intelligence.
Top Courses to take are PE40, Beginning Computer in the start. PE courses will give Endurance which is pretty nice for training gains, computer classes gives Intelligence which helps on intelligence based crimes.
Combat
As you progress in levels and start to earn more Energy points each 5min, you will see that EP goes up faster then Happiness, and to keep training on full happiness you will need to start attacking people. So first get the 5000 house and then go for a 2500 gun. Now you can start attacking people, and when you start doing that, train up Accuracy 2-3 levels before training up Dexterity again.
Strapping on Melee's would mean you have to divert effort into also training up strength, so stick to Accuracy and dexterity in the beginning to make the best of the weapons you have.
Important things in Combat are Accuracy, Dexterity in the beginning, and later when damages from hits have begun to get higher, Resistance.
At 8 Dexterity you can avoid most hits from lower ranked people, so begin working on Accuracy, your goal is to bring it up to skill level 12, where you can equip a T-250, which is the best weapon in the early game for non donators.
Attack people below you in level, don't attack online people. And if you can attack people without losing too much life, try attack people higher up in level.
And when you begin to approach level 10, get Resistance, and get armor. You will now get attacked by some high leveled people, and they will deal heavy damages to you and having armor with a good Resistance skill will help A LOT.
The weapon you wanna save up to is the Armalite PeaceKeeper and the T-250 since these are the best weapons that doesn't need endurance
The "Best Way" To Do Combat (in my opinion)
Now, there might not be a �best� way, although this can be explained better like this: Every players stats are gathered togheter in 1 bar, so your Acc/Dex/Res/Str and Endurance/Intelligence/Work EXP/reputation, are put togheter in one major bar, and thats your power bar, now that you attack other people, if your Power Bar is much larger then theirs, then the xp you gain from attacking them will be a lot smaller.
Once you start to attack more you should start keeping track of who gives you the most exp, and theres no shame in losing a fight, so try to beat people that might be too hard. Worst thing is that you lose and give them xp, and that should make them quite happy. But in the long run it pays off to be daring.
After you hit level 20, you will start to meet more and more people with Cyber Implants bought from Explore --> Cyberware Chop Shop, these enhance a skill by a level, but doesn't show up in pantheon, so they might be alot stronger then you think when you attack them.
Cyber Implants, the use of them
You now know how to get them, but is there a downside to them? Yes, you lose humanity, and humanity gives a greater regeneration rate on happiness. Humanity doesnt do that much of a difference now, but think of it in a long run. When you start to reach 20-25 in humanity you will start to regenerate happiness so fast you can go on prolonged training spree's without having to divert into combat.
Although Cyber implants enhance the skill you want by 1 level, and this mean that you can easily enhance a skill by 5-6 level and become an ultimate killing machine without no one knowing, unless you end up in pantheon as a cyborg.
Keep in mind, implants does not help you get any items in the game, they are strictly here for combat.
Humanity
Another important note:
Humanity affects happiness refresh and every 5 mins as per the following formula:
your level / 2 (rounded up*) + your humanity score (rounded down**) is what you will refresh
* rounded up means lvl 5 / 2 = 2.5 so = 3
** rounded down means 5.05 humanity = 5 and 5.95 humanity also = 5
(formula courtesy of Hydro9226
)
It also affects health regeneration, probably by the same rate as happiness.What this means is that in the long run people with humanity can probably out gain those without. Both in fighting and in training.
Happiness
Try to find a pattern of Attacking and Training that keeps Happiness as close as possible to full. Happiness is the slowest refreshing stat, so jail time will injure it, find friends that will liberate you early during a jail time.
If you can donate and do happiness refreshes to train all the time, i would rather advice you to buy endurance, since you have endurance forever.
The only way to increase Happiness is to get a bigger house, so thats probably the most important part in the game. And helping friends to get their house in return for help with yours would probably be a nice idea, also, there are gangs that help out with house upgrades. So be careful when joining gangs.
Try to spend 1/3 of EP bar as you train, since most people have low endurance the training gain each EP will go down with 0.04-0-06 in large trains. And by training only with 1/3 of EP bar you will have an overall higher Happiness as you do crimes, that will result in more Successes in crimes that require happiness
Item Market
Here is the place players auction out they're old weapons and armors. Some sell them at really low prices and some just wants to rob you. So click on weapons to see how much they cost on purchase.
If you wanna sell items you have bought, sell them at minimum 80% of the original price, if you aren't out for a quick sale. You will sell most items if you post them for 90% of the original price, but 80% will ensure they go faster. Everyone wants to save a dollar
Gangs
There are two ways to be in a gang, make a gang or join a gang. First time i would consider to join a gang, just to have someone to ask for help, someone to defend you if anyone else is attacking you too much and someone to help you get those high priced houses.
When you make a gang, you only have 3 slots and to make it bigger you will have to buy upgrades, which after a couple times becomes increasingly more expensive. So be sure to get active members, and kick the ones that aren't, because a major part of the gang economy is fueled by Organized Crime. And to succeed there you need to have been active on the game.
The gangs are about having respect, its how we rank the gangs, so when you begin to get a bit up, try to start a war with other low powered gangs. Its a chance to gain both respect and EXP. And you might push your gang a step or two closer to the top.
How To Make A Gang More Successful
Talk with your members, hopefully you can make most of them use MSN or any other chat program so that you can get to know them better. Once everyone in the gang goes along well it�s easier to ask them to donate up to 50% of what they make from crimes.
And heres what makes a gang go well, use the money people donate, and hopefully they donate a nice bundle, then you start buying people better houses. And once people start getting houses they will train better and can start doing higher level crimes faster and then donate more. Plus loyalty to the gang goes up once you start dealing out houses.
And if anyone in you gang donates cash to the gang offer him to sell the credits to the gang for 215-225 each credit, so that you can hand out donation day packs to the gang. Basically the more gang activities that are co-ordinated, like donation day packs/housing, the more loyal people will be. Because in the end they wanna keep gaining the benefits, and the more loyal people are the more you can demand from them.
Gang Warfare
If you have a plan to be successful in warfare, these days MSN is a must. And you gotta be good at choosing who to fight, choose the wrong opponent and there can be consequences. Cause with new fighting system small gangs can beat bigger gangs if the smaller gangs have dedication and are co-ordinated to fight at the same time, so that they gang you declare don't have time to respond.
It�s hard to point a formula to how to get the most points from gang wars, but hospitalizing the opposing gangs members to stop them from doing damage to your headquarters will have a major impact on the Gang War Points gained. So it�s actually better to repair hideout instead of hospitalizing the opposing gain, at least if you wanna gain the most points. But try to pick gangs to war that you can beat in a normal war, so that if you start to lose the consequences isn't too harsh.
How to get Credits
The referral system can be a lucrative income for some people. So the ones that can send out their referral link to a lot of people and get people to join the game will benefit a lot from it. And if you are fortunate enough to get a lot of people to join, help them out, talk to them and explain them the basics to keep them in game. The longer they stay in game, the more you will gain from them.
But for non-donators you will only gain 50% of what donators get from referrals, so for those that will put a lot of effort into referring people into the game might consider donating 5 bux to get the most out of the referring system. But even without donating, the referring system will ensure you a lot of donating days if you put work into recruiting people.
If you intend to donate, do it early, and get donator days, they're of so much help for people. Credits will help you in a lot of ways, to get cash, buy endurance, intelligence, happiness and energy refresh. But aren't in anyway needed to play and enjoy the game.
And lastly, when you start earning a lot from crimes, run to credit market and buy credits, the faster you can start to buy credits from credit market to get donator days, the better off you will be. Any credit cheaper then 500 is worth buying, and sometimes you will find credits under 250. So waiting for the right credit bulk to buy wouldn't be that half bad
And the most important Tip, use the forum, use the mail system.
Go to Explore -> Recently Active Users, find people over level 10 and ask them about things you're wondering about. It never hurts to ask if you're wondering, and it just might go faster then posting in the forum. And who knows you might get to know one of the swell people playing.
Best Regards and Good Luck,
Druchii
~
Re-vised playing guide for �bernoobs
