Guide to 6 run away merits

There are 6 merits to gain from running away. The good thing about these merits is that they are doable from a very early age, since they can be done for free (you only need energy). I did my first 50 within my first 50 days in the game.

The prerequisites are tabluated below, together with the minimum energy you will have to spend to get the merits.

		Energy used
Ego Smashing	50 enemies run away	1250	Close escape	Run away from 50 enemies
Underestatimated	250 enemies run away	5000	Blind Jugdement	Run away from 250 enemies
Run Forest Run	1,000 enemies run away	18750	Overzealous	Run away from 1,000 enemies

Total energy used for 1k runaways: 25,000

To nail both the running away from enemy merits, and the enmey runs away from you merits, you should team up with a partner, so you do not have to spend millions paying someone to run away from you. Your dexterity should be higher than your partner's speed and vice versa. The higher your dex is versus his speed, the better. Equal dex and speed works OK.
How to:

Simply attack your partner, then run away. You do NOT have to make a hit with a weapon/temp before you run away. Take turns running away, so you both get all merits. 

NB! Update on March 14th: If you do little damage (i.e. your strength is relatively low compared to your partner's defense), you can equip a pillow (or other weapon) and get some "free" critical hits before you run away. If you have completed the combat training education beforehand, you will also get some weapon experience here :) It's a nice way to gain W.E on 1-hitters like the flame thrower.

If you die too frequently, you can

1) Find a partner with lower speed (AND raise your own DEX)
2) Or, modify your and your partner's stats using drugs and temporary weapons (flash bangs and tear gas).
3) and/or get a job where you get the perk where running away is a lot easier (imho not necessary for most players)

If you choose the second route, here are some modifications:

1. Take drugs:

Several drugs, most notably xanax, will lower your partner's skills by 35 % if he is using them. Also, if you are the one with too high speed, you can leave your dexterity unchanged, but reduce your speed by 35 % by taking cannabis. It's cheap, and it has 1h cooldown only

Hint: If you are a new player, vicodin is affordable. So is cannabis. Taking drugs while running away can be a good way to clear the drug merits while you are at it! 

2. Use temporary weapons to modify your partner's speed:

FLash Bang (FB) : Reduces your opponent's speed by 75 %, for 15-20 seconds. If you are fast enough, you can do two run aways using only one FB (for a cost of 60k credits per attack).

If F Bis not sufficient, you can throw a Tear Gas in the first attack. It lasts 120-150 seconds. If you follow up on the second attack with FB, you will have a strong, combined speed reducing effect. (This worked well for me)

3. Car Dealership

If none of the above works for you, the third way is to join a Car Dealership, which has the following relevant perk:

10 star: Getaway car -  guaranteed runaway



This guide will be updated. Please point out unclear descriptions, or let me know what information you'd like to be added below. Thanks.

I read somewhere that tear gas reduces dexterity, while you write that it reduces speed. correct me if I'm wrong.

this is the information I have:

smoke/flash grenade reduce opponents speed by 22.7/30.2% for 126-169/16-20 seconds
tear gas/pepper spray reduce opponents dexterity by 21.8/18.3% for 135-175/14-20 seconds

I went for these merits, now I am forever branded a coward.

Good guide though, rated +

too bad haha.

I also thought this was the case before I started trying out different combos. I have done a lot of runaways with the fb+tear gas combo, and it works. The experiment conducted in another thread recently does not have enough data to conclude anything.

What I know:
Pepper spray definitely reduces opponent's dex for 14-20 s
Flash grenade definitely reduces opponent's speed for 15-20 s

I'd like to see more data on smoke/tear before I conclude with anything, but I am 99,99 % sure that tear gas reduces opponent's speed, otherwise I wouldn't be able to run away so much (before, when I used only fb on my partner, I died 1 out of 5. WIth tear gas + fb in effect, I never died).

Or work in 10* car dealerships that will provide 95% chance of runaway. It has been quite successful for me. My speed and dexterity are together below 500k. I ran successfully 56 times from 200m speed. And 180 times out of 196 tries from 1 billion speed. I used temporary items at first but then quit using them.

very useful info ty

I agree, that's very useful info. Althouh you wont know for sure I reckon that your runaways even worked well against players who have the Health & Fitness Bachelor (reduce opponent's (you) chance of running away by 50%). I imagine that if you were dealing with players with stats as high as the ones you quoted they are probably players who have been around a while and so are likely to have held this bachelor.

All the same it would be nice to know for sure how that job special and that bachelor perk affect each other.

Meanwhile, while most players are happy in their current jobs I wonder if there is an opportunity here for someone in the company type you mention would be prepared to do a job swap plus payment (?) for a few days with players going for these merits.

You should look into drawing up a Tradeable service for this, especially if you can advise on the relevant things to consider in addition to just offerng a job swap. *EDIT* My bad, in following posts I have been reminded of the energy costs of these merits which render the idea of a brief job swap redundant.

Might be worth mentioning that Ego Smashing, Underestimated and Run Forest Run should probably obtained before the Health and Fitness Bachelor is achieved becauses it reduces opponents abilities to run away by 50%.

If players have already obtained it then, as discussed in the couple of posts above, there may be a way to reduce the affect of the bachelor by encouraging your 'runaway' into getting a job in a 10* car dealership in order to get those 3 merits.

your talking 25000 e here that be a helluva long switch

Ah, yeah that would tricksy the whole deal.

So instead of the switch it would mean becoming an employee for a substantial period.

I forgot to review what Chigurh had said about the energy requiremements. I only skim-read it before reading the thread and for some reason was operating on some vague idea that the whole deal could be done in a cuppla weeks. Shame there is no option to 'always run' in the Attack preferences. That would speed things up a tad.

Both my targets have health bachelor. You also can get paid for this. From job and from running away. Also 250 runaways you can do in a week and so 1 month and 1000 runaways are done.

OK. Nicely tidied up. I would be prepared to swap jobs for a month but it might seem too lomng for some players.

The company I am in has a 'system' set up to enable employees to take sabbaticals in order to complete a city career or two (which is one reason I developed the city career fast tracking guide) and that often means someone is gone for over a month. It doesn't cause difficulties so long as everyone knows not to leave until a replacement has been found etc and they keep the Director informed in advance as to when they are thinking of coming back.

that a month of natural e or with drugs and refills etc?

With natural energy and xanax, average 48 runaways a day.

720 natural E + 750 from xanax = 1470/25 = ~58; that is 17.1 days
720 natural + 750 from xanax + 150 from refill = 1620/25 = ~64; that is 15.6 days
720 natural + 750 from xanax + 600 FHC = 2070/25 = ~82; that is 12.1 days
720 natural + 750 from xanax + 600 FHC + 150 refill = 2220 / 25 = ~88; that is 11.3 days

That is when you don't overdose and manage to log in exactly on right times.

I have added this info to the guide. Thank you.

bump this nice guide

Update that 10* car dealership now has the special as "escape is always available" I don't think it's 95% chance to escape anymore

There are two components to escaping.

The first is the enabling of the escape button. This is only enabled if your opponent misses you on the previous turn or you work in a 10 star car dealership.

The second is the actual escape attempt. It is based on whether your opponent hits you on the turn in which you are attempting to escape. This is where it comes down to dex v speed. The book 'running away from trouble' guarantees success of the escape attempt. 

Rightly put. I'd like to add that it helps if the  player you are trying to running away from have a Rusty Sword equipped. It nearly always misses, even if the skill difference between player A and B is large.