Where to spend your merits isn't as cut and dry as many other aspects of this game, but in general there are some universally useful areas, and typically people will follow one of a few paths. I am going to outline a few of these paths, as well as give an idea of how one might go about choosing which to follow.
It's worth noting that the more times you upgrade a specific bonus, the higher the cost of the next upgrade. Therefore, while the paths I outline here may be the suggested focus, there are some situations where it might be worth it to upgrade 2 different bonuses simultaneously simply to get the most out of your merits. I will try to make a note of these, but you should also use your own discretion. If you expect that it may be a while before you get another merit then it might be worth spending a few in lower-cost areas, rather than waiting around for the 10th one to be able to fully upgrade a bonus.
TLDR: The general upgrade path I would advise following if you're not certain what you want your game focus to be is the following:
Education Length -> Life Points -> Critical Hit Rate -> Weapon Mastery (Rifle) -> Passive Stats -> Bank Interest
However, this path will vary based on the individual so I would highly suggest looking below for more detailed information/advice.
Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, and I will either answer them myself or point you in the direction of someone more knowledgeable on the specific subject.
NOTE: I did not include Education Length in most of my paths because this will always be the suggested first upgrade to max.
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Universal Upgrades
Let's start with the upgrades that are always useful, for everyone. These are all worth getting at various points throughout your Torn career, and I will try to include my suggested timing within each specific path.
The main one is the Education Length upgrade, which (when maxed) reduces your education time by 20%. This should be the first merit maxed by every new player, and will be kept until you're (at least mostly) done with all the education courses. It is going to take a minimum of 6-7 years in real time, so unless you're an extremely old account that's been semi-active for years this should be the place you spend your first 55 merits.
Another universally useful upgrade is Life Points. While these are not always the best option to rush, they are useful for everyone whether your priority is warring, trading, etc, simply because it's the most reliable method to avoid losing fights.
The final "universal" merit upgrade is Bank Interest. This one is a bit more difficult, as it's only useful if you actually use the bank, and even then it's not the best method of passive income (there are multiple stock benefit blocks that provide more income/day than the bank interest does). Unless you've already got multiple other forms of passive income and an additional 2 billion to put into the bank these aren't worth rushing. If you do happen to have a significant amount of cash that you would like to invest then I would suggest upgrading these to max (or 9/10) immediately after Education Length.
War Focused
In terms of battle-focused merits there are numerous options, however there are a few that are worth prioritizing above others. The first two to prioritize should be Life Points and Critical Hit Rate. These are both general-purpose war upgrades that will help you with attacking and defending. Life Points are more reliable so I would suggesting focusing on them if you want to prioritize being able to win more fights, while Critical Hit Rate has less reliability but more potential benefit so I would suggesting focusing on these if you want prioritize being able to have a chance at winning harder fights.
Beyond those it becomes a bit less linear and depends on where you are in various other aspects of your game. Passive Stats can be extremely useful, but they aren't nearly as valuable early on when your battle stats are low. My personal suggestion is to use ~100m in a given stat as the cutoff point, below which you put at most 1-2 points in each. Weapon Mastery is also very good, but there are a number of merits associated with using different types of weapons, so if you're going for those merits it's not necessarily the best choice to prioritize this. In addition you have to take into account which specific weapons you use most often, as in the early game a Diamond Bladed Knife (DBK) is a good choice, but as you progress and obtain weapon modifiers the Armalite M-15A4 Rifle eventually surpasses. Therefore, my personal suggestion is to hold off on these until you've gotten a bit further into the game and have decided what your weapon of choice is going to be. Some people will prefer to stick with the DBK despite it's lower end-game power simply due to personal preference, in which case you'll want to max the Piercing Mastery rather than the Rifle Mastery.
There are also some upgrades which don't directly impact the outcome of your fight but instead impact its aftermath. These include the Masterful Looting, Hospitalizing, and Stealth upgrades. I will go into further detail on all 3 of these later as I feel like their main function relates more to making money than it does to engaging in war. However, there are some benefits to both the Stealth and Hospitalizing upgrades. The former increases your chances of stealthing any attack you make and therefore making it more difficult for the defender (or their faction) to retaliate if done while chaining, while the latter increases the amount of time the target is hospitalized for (assuming you select that option), thereby increasing the strain on their medical cooldown and making it more difficult for them to contribute to things like territory wars. None of these are particularly worth rushing points in (at least in my opinion), but they may be options you would like to consider later on. Note that if you choose to prioritize Stealth you're likely to want to use melee weapons as they have significantly higher stealth scores, and this might impact your decision of which Weapon Mastery you choose to go with.
Suggested Order:
Life Points and Critical Hit Rate (max simultaneously) -> Weapon Mastery (Rifle or Piercing) -> Passive Stats -> Hospitalizing
Crime Focused
There are a few merits that are focused on assisting players with committing crimes. While these may help slightly with Crime Experience (CE) gains, they are not really worth putting points into unless that is your sole focus in the game, since the benefit is extremely minimal compared to other merit upgrades. There are a number of common misconceptions surrounding these as well, which I will try to address.
Let's start with the Nerve Bar upgrade, which gives 1 extra point in your nerve bar for each level. Of the crime upgrades this is the one that's most "useful" simply because it allows you to take more time away from Torn (either by traveling or not being afk) without losing out on nerve gain, and it also gives you extra benefit from using Nerve Refills which cost 25 Points. However, even taking these benefits into account this upgrade is fairly low on the usefulness list, especially in a warring faction, since it doesn't actually provide any direct benefit to your CE. One common misconception is that your Nerve Bar (NB) is the same thing as your Natural Nerve Bar (NNB), which is used a gauge for a player's CE. This is not the case, and it can often lead to situations where a player may believe they have higher CE than they actually do and attempt to do more difficult crimes than they're able to. It can also be confusing when communicating with your faction's Organized Crime (OC) manager, as they need to know your NNB, not your effective NB.
The other merit upgrade for crimes is the Crime Experience upgrade. Note that this is not the same as the CE mentioned before, these upgrades increase your likelihood of succeeding at a crime but they don't actually increase the rate at which you earn CE. In addition, each crime has a maximum success rate, so once you reach that point naturally there's no benefit to having these, and there are other ways to boost your success rate such as Crime Enhancers which are specific to each crime. Finally, these merits are not believed to benefit your success rate in OC's. Because of all this, these upgrades are typically not worth putting points in since it's likely that you'll want to remove them fairly quickly, once you reach the success rate cap for the crimes you're doing (around 35 NNB for Arson-Warehouse, the most people CE-increasing crime).
Suggested Order:
Nerve Bar -> Crime Experience -> Life Points
Money Focused
This is a hybrid path that has multiple different ways to play, so instead of a Suggested Order I'm simply going to include all the various moneymaking upgrades here and outline some of the strategies one might take using them. This would be something you would likely combine with the War path if you were more interested in fighting for financial gain rather than faction growth.
Mugging to generate income means you may want to consider the Masterful Looting upgrades, which increase the percentage of your targets on-hand cash taken when you mug them. This would be most useful if you're the type that likes buy-mugging or things of that sort, as these are essentially useless unless you mug on a regular basis and for large sums of money. It's important to note that buy-mugging is frowned upon by many players and requires reasonably high stats in order to be able to beat your targets. While these upgrades are certainly fine to get later on, after you've completed all the main merits for the War path, I would personally suggest against getting these before then. Note that this pairs well with the Stealth upgrade due to the decrease in likelihood of being discovered and therefore blacklisted when buy-mugging.
If you really enjoy warring, to the point where you would rather hop from faction to faction and guest in territory wars, you might want to consider getting the Hospitalizing upgrades which increase the amount of time your target is hospitalized for (note: these only take effect if you choose to Hospitalize your target rather than Leaving them). Some factions will be inclined to hire and pay you to guest during contested territory wars, since your target will be required to use more medical items to get out of the hospital. That being said, in most cases you'll need decently high battle stats to be of value in this manner, so they're probably not worth rushing either way. As with the mugging upgrades, I would suggest focusing on these after completing the War path, as by that point it's likely that you'll have high enough battle stats to be of use and factions will be willing to pay you significant quantities of cash.
The Bank Interest upgrades which I mentioned before would also belong in this section. They are a significantly more reliable method of income than the mugging or hospitalization ones, and as I said before if you're at the point where you're considering investing 2 billion into the City Bank I would suggest maxing these upgrades.
The other type of upgrade that technically fits in this category is Awareness upgrades. However, while these do in theory increase your income, awareness as a whole has been nerfed so significantly that I would highly advise against investing at all in these. Unless this gets changed some time in the future it's not worth your merits.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is my first guide posted on the public forums, so please feel free to respond with any and all feedback. I have done a trial run of this guide within my faction, but I'm always looking to improve, so if there's anything you would suggest changing please let me know.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Credits: information for this has been collected from numerous resources, but in particular Alexstrasza [1825532], RGiskard [1953860], MolonLabe [2072034], and JinHoshi [2075624] all helped by providing significant amounts of advice over the past months. I would also like to thank my faction (and Red-Rabbit [2203961] in particular) for helping me with typos.
It's worth noting that the more times you upgrade a specific bonus, the higher the cost of the next upgrade. Therefore, while the paths I outline here may be the suggested focus, there are some situations where it might be worth it to upgrade 2 different bonuses simultaneously simply to get the most out of your merits. I will try to make a note of these, but you should also use your own discretion. If you expect that it may be a while before you get another merit then it might be worth spending a few in lower-cost areas, rather than waiting around for the 10th one to be able to fully upgrade a bonus.
TLDR: The general upgrade path I would advise following if you're not certain what you want your game focus to be is the following:
Education Length -> Life Points -> Critical Hit Rate -> Weapon Mastery (Rifle) -> Passive Stats -> Bank Interest
However, this path will vary based on the individual so I would highly suggest looking below for more detailed information/advice.
Feel free to reach out to me if you have any questions, and I will either answer them myself or point you in the direction of someone more knowledgeable on the specific subject.
NOTE: I did not include Education Length in most of my paths because this will always be the suggested first upgrade to max.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Universal Upgrades
Let's start with the upgrades that are always useful, for everyone. These are all worth getting at various points throughout your Torn career, and I will try to include my suggested timing within each specific path.
The main one is the Education Length upgrade, which (when maxed) reduces your education time by 20%. This should be the first merit maxed by every new player, and will be kept until you're (at least mostly) done with all the education courses. It is going to take a minimum of 6-7 years in real time, so unless you're an extremely old account that's been semi-active for years this should be the place you spend your first 55 merits.
Another universally useful upgrade is Life Points. While these are not always the best option to rush, they are useful for everyone whether your priority is warring, trading, etc, simply because it's the most reliable method to avoid losing fights.
The final "universal" merit upgrade is Bank Interest. This one is a bit more difficult, as it's only useful if you actually use the bank, and even then it's not the best method of passive income (there are multiple stock benefit blocks that provide more income/day than the bank interest does). Unless you've already got multiple other forms of passive income and an additional 2 billion to put into the bank these aren't worth rushing. If you do happen to have a significant amount of cash that you would like to invest then I would suggest upgrading these to max (or 9/10) immediately after Education Length.
War Focused
In terms of battle-focused merits there are numerous options, however there are a few that are worth prioritizing above others. The first two to prioritize should be Life Points and Critical Hit Rate. These are both general-purpose war upgrades that will help you with attacking and defending. Life Points are more reliable so I would suggesting focusing on them if you want to prioritize being able to win more fights, while Critical Hit Rate has less reliability but more potential benefit so I would suggesting focusing on these if you want prioritize being able to have a chance at winning harder fights.
Beyond those it becomes a bit less linear and depends on where you are in various other aspects of your game. Passive Stats can be extremely useful, but they aren't nearly as valuable early on when your battle stats are low. My personal suggestion is to use ~100m in a given stat as the cutoff point, below which you put at most 1-2 points in each. Weapon Mastery is also very good, but there are a number of merits associated with using different types of weapons, so if you're going for those merits it's not necessarily the best choice to prioritize this. In addition you have to take into account which specific weapons you use most often, as in the early game a Diamond Bladed Knife (DBK) is a good choice, but as you progress and obtain weapon modifiers the Armalite M-15A4 Rifle eventually surpasses. Therefore, my personal suggestion is to hold off on these until you've gotten a bit further into the game and have decided what your weapon of choice is going to be. Some people will prefer to stick with the DBK despite it's lower end-game power simply due to personal preference, in which case you'll want to max the Piercing Mastery rather than the Rifle Mastery.
There are also some upgrades which don't directly impact the outcome of your fight but instead impact its aftermath. These include the Masterful Looting, Hospitalizing, and Stealth upgrades. I will go into further detail on all 3 of these later as I feel like their main function relates more to making money than it does to engaging in war. However, there are some benefits to both the Stealth and Hospitalizing upgrades. The former increases your chances of stealthing any attack you make and therefore making it more difficult for the defender (or their faction) to retaliate if done while chaining, while the latter increases the amount of time the target is hospitalized for (assuming you select that option), thereby increasing the strain on their medical cooldown and making it more difficult for them to contribute to things like territory wars. None of these are particularly worth rushing points in (at least in my opinion), but they may be options you would like to consider later on. Note that if you choose to prioritize Stealth you're likely to want to use melee weapons as they have significantly higher stealth scores, and this might impact your decision of which Weapon Mastery you choose to go with.
Suggested Order:
Life Points and Critical Hit Rate (max simultaneously) -> Weapon Mastery (Rifle or Piercing) -> Passive Stats -> Hospitalizing
Crime Focused
There are a few merits that are focused on assisting players with committing crimes. While these may help slightly with Crime Experience (CE) gains, they are not really worth putting points into unless that is your sole focus in the game, since the benefit is extremely minimal compared to other merit upgrades. There are a number of common misconceptions surrounding these as well, which I will try to address.
Let's start with the Nerve Bar upgrade, which gives 1 extra point in your nerve bar for each level. Of the crime upgrades this is the one that's most "useful" simply because it allows you to take more time away from Torn (either by traveling or not being afk) without losing out on nerve gain, and it also gives you extra benefit from using Nerve Refills which cost 25 Points. However, even taking these benefits into account this upgrade is fairly low on the usefulness list, especially in a warring faction, since it doesn't actually provide any direct benefit to your CE. One common misconception is that your Nerve Bar (NB) is the same thing as your Natural Nerve Bar (NNB), which is used a gauge for a player's CE. This is not the case, and it can often lead to situations where a player may believe they have higher CE than they actually do and attempt to do more difficult crimes than they're able to. It can also be confusing when communicating with your faction's Organized Crime (OC) manager, as they need to know your NNB, not your effective NB.
The other merit upgrade for crimes is the Crime Experience upgrade. Note that this is not the same as the CE mentioned before, these upgrades increase your likelihood of succeeding at a crime but they don't actually increase the rate at which you earn CE. In addition, each crime has a maximum success rate, so once you reach that point naturally there's no benefit to having these, and there are other ways to boost your success rate such as Crime Enhancers which are specific to each crime. Finally, these merits are not believed to benefit your success rate in OC's. Because of all this, these upgrades are typically not worth putting points in since it's likely that you'll want to remove them fairly quickly, once you reach the success rate cap for the crimes you're doing (around 35 NNB for Arson-Warehouse, the most people CE-increasing crime).
Suggested Order:
Nerve Bar -> Crime Experience -> Life Points
Money Focused
This is a hybrid path that has multiple different ways to play, so instead of a Suggested Order I'm simply going to include all the various moneymaking upgrades here and outline some of the strategies one might take using them. This would be something you would likely combine with the War path if you were more interested in fighting for financial gain rather than faction growth.
Mugging to generate income means you may want to consider the Masterful Looting upgrades, which increase the percentage of your targets on-hand cash taken when you mug them. This would be most useful if you're the type that likes buy-mugging or things of that sort, as these are essentially useless unless you mug on a regular basis and for large sums of money. It's important to note that buy-mugging is frowned upon by many players and requires reasonably high stats in order to be able to beat your targets. While these upgrades are certainly fine to get later on, after you've completed all the main merits for the War path, I would personally suggest against getting these before then. Note that this pairs well with the Stealth upgrade due to the decrease in likelihood of being discovered and therefore blacklisted when buy-mugging.
If you really enjoy warring, to the point where you would rather hop from faction to faction and guest in territory wars, you might want to consider getting the Hospitalizing upgrades which increase the amount of time your target is hospitalized for (note: these only take effect if you choose to Hospitalize your target rather than Leaving them). Some factions will be inclined to hire and pay you to guest during contested territory wars, since your target will be required to use more medical items to get out of the hospital. That being said, in most cases you'll need decently high battle stats to be of value in this manner, so they're probably not worth rushing either way. As with the mugging upgrades, I would suggest focusing on these after completing the War path, as by that point it's likely that you'll have high enough battle stats to be of use and factions will be willing to pay you significant quantities of cash.
The Bank Interest upgrades which I mentioned before would also belong in this section. They are a significantly more reliable method of income than the mugging or hospitalization ones, and as I said before if you're at the point where you're considering investing 2 billion into the City Bank I would suggest maxing these upgrades.
The other type of upgrade that technically fits in this category is Awareness upgrades. However, while these do in theory increase your income, awareness as a whole has been nerfed so significantly that I would highly advise against investing at all in these. Unless this gets changed some time in the future it's not worth your merits.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
This is my first guide posted on the public forums, so please feel free to respond with any and all feedback. I have done a trial run of this guide within my faction, but I'm always looking to improve, so if there's anything you would suggest changing please let me know.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Credits: information for this has been collected from numerous resources, but in particular Alexstrasza [1825532], RGiskard [1953860], MolonLabe [2072034], and JinHoshi [2075624] all helped by providing significant amounts of advice over the past months. I would also like to thank my faction (and Red-Rabbit [2203961] in particular) for helping me with typos.
Mentions: Alexstrasza [1825532] · Plunderpants [2072034] · RED-RABBIT [2203961] · RGiskard [1953860]