Merits?

Didn't see anything posted in the first couple of pages of "Tutorials" so I'll ask here.



What are the best things to spend your merits on?

I know my profile shows a lot of days but I only played for a day or two a whole year ago and now getting back into this. I haven't spent a merit yet.



Thanks!

Decrease Education time is usually a safe bet, since you'll spend a lot of your time doing courses.

Nerve bar + crime experience are good too.

Thanks for your input iPanda!

Best advice. Ever.

because no one mentioned it: you might wanna consider maxing bank as soon as you're closing in on 1b networth, as it takes some time to get the 55 merits once you have done the easy ones.

other than that i agree with bogie, take your time with spending them, you will like doing one thing or the other more and you should always invest them into something that fits your playstyle.

Crits health education nerve crime success weapon specials passives, theyre all good.

Figure out what you want out of the game first and specialise

why not have both..i quite enjoy my 90+ nerve bar ^^

I'm not going to recommend what you should use them on, but I do recommend not maxing anything in the beginning. New players are often told to max education and banking for instance, but 7/10 or 8/10 is enough in my opinion, the last few upgrades are too expensive.

And I thought bogie for sure has 10/10 nerve in merits. I have currently 8/10 and +11 from faction and +15 from a pub, so I could do those crimes faster and those refills are more worth it.

Life is the best option in my opinion do not do awareness it is a piece of shit

This



Maxing anything is a waste of merits.Don't go above 7/10 unless you are swimming in merits.



First of all decide what you want to do:

Personally i have merits in Crits,Life, Banking, 4x Passives, Weapon etc

the first thing I would do if I restarted would be raising 10/10 nerve merits. they are very useful especially if you travel a lot or if you use daily nerve refills.

I still have 10/10 nerve merits and I'm happy of my choice.

during war times (usually 1 week a month) most factions replace training branches (criminality) for offensive branches.

in that case I would end with just my nnb (35) which is not enough to do a travel in UK without losing any nerve points.

with 10/10 crime merits my total nerve bar is 45, allowing me to safely travel in UK without wasting nerve points.

I'll try to be as broad as possible. Bank and Edu are going to be your best options early on. These are the only 2 i would max. The reason for maxing Edu is that without any reduction all courses will take you over 3 years to complete. Merits reduce this by 20%. Once they're all done you can merit reset and spend them elsewhere. Banking will always be useful but is more so around 2b. Its a way to passively make money but if you're highly active then you may be able to forgo this completely. But just to give you an idea. Max bank merits with a 2b invest for 2 months yields 305M. Nothing to scoff at



Nerve is worthless imo, life is always a plus, crit isn't worth anything past 5/10, hosp is useless other than to be annoying, stealth is not needed, crime success may be helpful early on to avoid failing crimes. I wouldn't go more than 4/10 unless you're doing mayor kidnap which has a high fail rate but one of the best CE crimes. Mug amount could be useful if you're a buy/mugger and avoid awareness as its just bad at the moment.



Stat bonuses aren't worth it early on. 3% of 100k is very underwhelming but 3% of 10M is more worth while. You get get the idea



Weapon mastery. Lots of weapon merits so i wouldn't mess with this too much until those are completed. Also only pick 1 primary and 1 secondary.

I appreciate all the feedback! I will definitely take this all into consideration. The crimes seem to be my main go to for now, but I might wait to see if I can develop another style of play when I reach a higher level.

To me nerve isn't worthless, until I haven't reached max nervebar every bit of nerve counts and helps me.

Remember you can always reset merits, and if you are lucky you might get book as well to reset them for free.

As Bogie says, a decent faction will offer a sizable nerve increase.

Why waste precious merits on nerve when they could be spent elsewhere?

Besides, for what reason? I've got 3 on nerve, and apart from the beginning of the day or when I refill, I never get any use as I'm active. So these merits just give me 6 'extra' a day. Half a GTA...

Even if your NB is much lower than mine, and if you were less active/do long haul flights, I still can't see the reasoning behind wasting merits on nerve.