Crime Guide - Start to End

This is a rehash of Alexstrasza's guide as it is pretty much accurate(where law of large numbers allows it to be). While I agree with their standpoint in removing their guide (as well as the others that have followed this path haha) I don't believe that people who have yet to read it or were following it to be the ones who are truly punished.


What is CE?

Your 'Nerve Bar' is based on your Crime Experience (CE) in the game. Any crime you do, and anyone you bust, adds a static amount to your CE. This is a hidden stat, and the only way to 'view' your back-end CE is your 'natural nerve bar' value. This is the amount of nerve you'd have before accounting for any merits or faction boosts. Natural Nerve Bar (NNB) goes up by values of 5 each time you hit the hidden levels of CE in the back end of Torn. It starts at 10(until you click crimes and it gives you 15) and caps out at 60. Any time you get jailed doing a nerve costing crime, your CE is reduced by a PERCENTAGE, not a static amount. What this means is that 1 or 2 failures of a crime with a high nerve bar can take a massive chunk of your CE. Which can take forever to get back. Unsafe crimes are now not so much of a big deal, however if you want to build your NNB fast for PA OC's then you'd avoid them until later.

CE affects your chance of success on any particular crime. The higher your CE, the better chance you have of performing a crime (to a point). You need to have a certain CE before some crimes will be able to be successful. If you attempt a crime that is too hard for your particular level of CE, you'll either fail it (blue result) or get jailed (red result). Hence, you should only progress to harder crimes as your natural nerve bar rises (the only way to tell whereabouts your CE is at). You can also improve this success rate by merits, happiness, Federal Judge rank in the Law city job, Bachelor of Psychological Sciences(education) and by the faction upgrade tree 'Criminality'. Also, each crime has a crime enhancer item you can buy to improve the chance of success slightly (2%). There are 17 crime enhancer items in total, as there are 17 types of crimes. If you can afford it, is to get the enhancer for any crime you are performing as early as possible. Since you do thousands of crimes, 2% will add a LOT of successes you wouldn't normally get.

There are a few job specials that increase CE as well, but the general opinion of these is that they only give tiny amounts of CE, so aren't worth wasting the valuable job points on. (Feel free to disagree if you've experimented and had different results!)

There are a few crimes that HOSPITALIZE you, rather than jail you. Getting burnt doing Arson, or mauled by a guard dog, for example. These do reduce your crime experience, however shouldn't negate the gain. Counter-intuitively however, getting caught while trying to bust someone out of jail DOES NOT reduce your crime experience.

Some crimes such as hacking and shoplifting are effected by your account stats (Jobstat Intelligence and Battlestat Speed respectively), by the time you are accessing these crimes it shouldn't impose a large impact on the success rate.

So what crimes should I do?

There are 3 pathways to take with crimes. The first is achieving a 60 NNB, to participate in Political Assassination Organized Crimes (PA), and gain a high CE. The second is to achieve all crime merits, which means you sacrifice your crime experience gain for merits, as some merits require you to do crimes that send you to jail, but you do not have to come back and complete these merits later, when the cost is much greater of failing a crime(lol). Lastly, you can sit at around 40nnb and do the 18 nerve FBI hack crime for an average payout of $272,500, there is red outcome meaning you will get jailed, damaging your current crime experience. This is the alternative of doing the Political Assassination organised crime.

You can gain almost all the merits based on crimes by doing 'safe' crimes. Ones that you will only be hospitalized or fail (blue result), and not get jailed at all.

You cannot complete the drug crime merits without doing transport drug crimes, which mean you will get jailed. More on this is written below. The guide will focus on the first path initially, and branch out with more information later about merits and the 2nd path.

When you begin, you obviously stick to doing the easiest crimes in each category until you see your nerve bar rise to the next increment of 5. You should get up to 15 nerve pretty quickly with the starter refills by doing the bootlegging crime and stealing jackets from the clothes shop. (If you get caught at these early levels, it isn't such a big problem, as the % taken from your CE is not damaging long-term. No longer matters.) Once you hit 20 nnb however, you should try to only do safe crimes, which will be outlined in the next section.



Advice for beginners

You should have a 100% success rate on the 2 nerve crimes. Do 30 of these and move onto the selling illegal products (3 nerve) crime. Do the last one in the list. There is a chance you will get jailed, doing 30 of Search for Cash will minimise greatly if not remove this, and then move onto the theft (4 nerve) crime after you have 140-150 bootlegging crimes. Do the steal jacket from the clothing store. It's got the highest success rate. Early in the game, when your CE is low, you will get jailed doing this crime if you don't buffer your crime experience with bootlegging, but it doesn't matter, as the hit is very small, so just keep stealing jackets until you hit 15/20 nnb and you are ready to start doing pickpockets.

You can, however, just keep doing jacket thefts all the way up to 25/30 nnb if you wish. It will help you get more merits (and thus ranks, too), and is only slightly slower in CE gain than moving onto the pickpocket and robbery crimes. However, if you wish to gain CE fastest, keep reading!



Post 15NNB/George's Tutorial

15-20 NNB: Perform the 5 nerve crime - 'Pickpocket Someone'

Kid
Old Woman
Businessman

Start with the Kid, and then after 50-100, start on the old woman, and again, after 50-100, move to the businessman. If you start failing more than 1 in 3, go back to the previous one until you are succeeding at least 4 out of 5. You may get jailed a couple of times mugging the businessman. Don't worry - this doesn't seem to affect CE too badly early on, so jump back to mugging the old lady for 50-100 mugs, and then keep doing the businessman until you either get jailed again, or hit 20 nnb. Don't ever bother pickpocketing the loan shark.


Once you hit 20 NNB: Perform the 7 nerve crime - 'Thorough Robbery'.

Perform the 'Thorough Robbery' armed robbery crime. This gives great experience, and you jailed rarely, and you will probably get a number of unsuccessful attempts, where you hear police sirens and what not. You may have to do this crime over 1000 times to move to 25 NNB. Some people report that they have trouble with this crime immediately after they hit 20 NNB, so if you do, just go back to mugging the businessman for 50-100 and then try again.


Once you hit 25 NNB: Perform the 9 nerve crime - 'Stealth Virus' (see first sentence though)

If you have no merits in crime success %, continue doing the 7 nerve 'Thorough Robbery' for 200-300 more. You will need to get your CE up a little higher if you have no merits or specials in the faction to be successful with Stealth Virus.

If you have merits in crime success %, start doing the 9 nerve crime: 'Stealth Virus'. If you aren't in a faction with criminality branch upgrades to crime success % as well, stay with Armed Robbery for even longer, but you can see how you go and switch back if you get too many failures.

You need to buy a personal computer, and a stealth virus from the market before doing this crime. I would also highly recommend an ergonomic keyboard, because this crime has a massively high unsuccessful rate. You WILL fail this crime a HUGE amount of times. It's frustrating, but it gives excellent CE on success, so stick with it. You should get to 30 NNB by about 500 to 1000 successes.

IMPORTANT! Start your general education course, Drivers License here, as you will need it in a few weeks time when you get to 30 NNB.


Once you hit 30 NNB: Perform the 11 nerve crime - 'Warehouse Arson'

Hopefully you've got your drivers license now, so it's time to get a gas can from the market (cheaper than spending points on it).

Warehouse Arson has a really really high success rate, so you're able to start doing it as soon as you hit 30 NNB as long as you have some merits in Crime Success and the Criminality Faction upgrades for crime success. You will get hospitalized in something like 1 in 30 attempts, so keep some morphine(blood bags if you have the intravenous therapy education) on you.

Now, get settled in, because you'll be doing a lot of Arson.


Once you hit 40 NNB:

Warehouse arson ad infinitum

ARSON is the best crime overall for increasing CE, based on its super high success rate compared to Kidnap the Mayor.

NOTE: There is crime experience value numbers further down in the thread if you want to know just how much better Kidnapping is for gaining CE.


SO, Once you hit 45 NNB... how do you keep it safe? With the recent changes to nerve bar, you should just continue doing the safe crimes that you were doing at 40nnb. (more Arson)

If, however, you'd like to stop pushing your CE and try to go for some merits, there are some you can achieve with zero risk. This guide is useful for anyone chasing merits relative to nerve spent to merits, otherwise below is a list of safe crimes with their relative success rates. They are:


For the thefts merit: Do the 4 nerve, Shoplift, Steal From Clothes Shop, Jacket crime. Jacket success percentage is 100%.
For the computer crimes merit: Do the 9 nerve, Stealth Virus crime. No jailings, but plenty of failures. Computer crime success percentage is around 75%.
For the murder merit: Do the 10 nerve, Assassinate a Mob Boss crime. Many people agree that 'Assassinate a Mob Boss' is the easiest to do. This crime does not have a chance to get jailed. Instead, just like Arson, you'll only go to hospital if you fail. Assassination crime success is around 75%
For the fraud merit: Do the 11 nerve, Warehouse Arson crime. Pretty straightforward. No need to do any other fraud crimes. Arson crime success rate is about 95%, with 4% chance to get hospitalized, and 1% chance to fail.
For the GTA merit: Do the 12 nerve, Steal a Parked Car crime. You never get jailed doing this one, only failures. People always try to steal a car from a showroom or hijack a car. IT IS NOT WORTH IT!! Just steal the parked cars. You get about 23k to 32k net worth from each car you steal with this crime, and it's not worth risking the CE loss to try to steal a more expensive car(if you want to continue increasing your CE then don't do showroom). Grand Theft Auto crime success rate is around 75%. Selling the cars to the docks is recommended.

OK, now comes the tricky bit. This is path #2 when it comes to developing your nerve bar. Obviously some of the merits are impossible to achieve without getting jailed. These are the drug crimes merits. There are a couple of theories on how to minimize the amount of times you get jailed. Every crime has a chance of failure, and a chance of jailing. This is random, and sometimes you'll get caught twice in a row, sometimes you'll do hundreds of successes in a row.

For the 8 nerve, Transport Drugs crime, Transport Cocaine is the highest success %. This merit is a complete bastard, and you won't be able to avoid getting jailed. It's around a 2% chance to get jailed, and around 95% chance of success. It actually gives reasonable CE, so whilst you do lose a % each time from jailing, the successes can keep your NNB relatively steady around 40-45 nnb whilst you're completing the 10,000 merit. You can now also instead go straight to 60 NNB and go back to do these later, as being the CE loss is now negligible and gain an extra 1% or so success rate (green).

Because it's almost guaranteed that you'll kill your CE by trying to get these merits, a lot of people argue that it's better to start doing the 10,000 drug merits early on, around 30 natural nerve. That way, if you get caught, the percentage loss isn't high enough to keep dropping natural nerve levels, and you maintain a 30-45 nnb the whole way through. After you've completed the 10,000 drug merits, you can then move back to the safe crimes and push your way back up to 60 nnb (Arson Warehouse).

ITS UP TO YOU! If you choose to try and get up to 60nnb, and then start doing drug crimes, you WILL lose nerve bar levels, and have to re-attain them later. If you do the drug crimes first, then they are done, and you'll (hopefully) never have to worry about them again. lol



Summary of Crimes

That pretty much sums it up. There is a form of financial reward for doing 18 nerve Hacking FBI, however you will not be able to get to 60nnb doing this. It's advised to just stick to the safe crimes until you really need the merits for the ones that aren't. Arms Trafficking, Bombings, Pawn Shop and Counterfeiting just aren't worth getting caught. You are your own boss, but it's important to stay at either 45nnb or 60nnb if at all possible depending on which path you take, as you just never know when Ched will change something around, and it will be super important to have it.

Organized Crimes - They generally aren't big respect or money earners, but over time, they can provide a decent boost to a factions coffers and respect. A lot of the lower ones don't give much benefit. But they DO increase your crime experience on top of the normal nerve bar crimes, at no cost to the players, so I think it's important to participate.

However, the political assassination organized crime IS one of the biggest money earners in Torn. The requirements for the Political Assassination OC, are 2 very very very high Crime Experience players for positions #1 and #2 (in the realm of 10x the CE requirement of base 60 nnb, very hard to achieve without having done pre-nerf busting), and good 60 nnb CE ratings for players #3 and #4. This requirement restricts newer players from participating, but even a low 60 nnb CE can participate these days if the #1 and #2 players are extremely strong. Something to strive for once you get 60 nnb.

tl;dr do Arsons to 60nnb, get into a PA team and do 18 nerve Hacking: FBI for more money since being jailed doesn't mean shit anymore


Data

The following numbers are from 55nnb -> 60nnb, deriving crime experience per crime to show which is the best to persue from an efficiency standpoint, with Arson taking around 150 successes to return to 60nnb from a jailed result (transport drugs)

Stealing jackets: ~1350 required to regain 60 nnb = 1/9x Arson CE
Kidnap the mayor (you MUST hold 75k while attempting otherwise a fail will lead to a jail): ~66 required to regain 60 nnb = 2.25x Arson CE
Assassinate mob boss: ~225 required to regain 60 nnb = 2/3x Arson CE
Stealth virus: ~300 required to regain 60 nnb = 1/2 Arson CE
Steal a parked car: ~225 required to regain 60 nnb = 2/3 Arson CE
Thorough Robbery: ~450 required to regain 60 nnb = 1/3 Arson CE

Below are an estimated value of raw crime experience gained from (successful) organised crimes at 100% OC activity

Taking over a Cruise Liner: ~73 arsons CE
Hijacking a Plane: ~144 arsons CE
Political Assassination: ~652 arsons CE


Cloudjumper's preliminary testing has shown that any (except federal judge because of limitation) increase to crime success rate has no effect after 45nnb

Organised crime success rate is only affected by NNB(raw ce) and the player owned company Law Firm 7* special which gives 20% increased OC skill

Unsafe crimes now remove 20x their CE gain instead of a % of total CE from being jailed

Non-jail reds reduce crime experience, presumably and similarly to that of being jailed

Stats play a role in some crime success rates

It's likely that during the introduction of crimes 2.0 all of the data here will become irrelevant, at that point it will be removed as the guide will become redundant

One thing I'd like to point out. Skip Thorough Robbery completely. Do jacket theft till you're about 1600 total robberies then hop over to warehouse arson. Stealth virus/thorough just aren't worth the time invested.

Edit: Alexstrasza disliked your post
Guess I better kill myself :(


Edit: After some further testing we've decided 2500 is actually a better place to stop doing jacket thefts. On the test dummies they've had Great success with starting arsons this way where as we found with the 1600 it was super dependent on the first couple successes. And the ~12 day difference wasn't that big of a deal for a better starting success chance.

Note: thorough robbiers are on the table as well, but it'll take longer.

Excellent guide, and excellent timing on posting it too! I've hit 55nnb a couple of days back so was wondering if there's any estimates of how many arsons I might need to hit 60nnb, but that merit guide was exactly what I came on here looking for and you've just knocked it out the park! Thanks!

Thank you for your this guide Owen!

After reading this guide I still wondering why am I keep failing to pickpocket from a kid... not getting jailed, just failed. apparently I just need to keep doing it a little more..
thank you~

For anyone at 25NNB for the life of me i couldn’t do stealth virus. I have 5/10 CE merits perks 17% faction crime experience boost but still couldn’t do it. If you have Similar CE stats go straight to arson. I did around 150 or so i haven’t checked i only failed twice so far and i hit 30NNB in about a week

@OP Although I do want to say thanks for putting an archived copy of the guide here for new players please take the time to edit it as again any guide is always a work in progress. I'll even provide you an example of what I mean below in pictures so it is even easier for you to do in the long run.

Again, please for the love of god edit and condense the original wall of text down.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I've waited a while and from the looks of things it looks like this thread will probably be the main temporary point on the forums at least for new players to go to, so I am posting this here.

Request: I probably won't be making any edits to this post/thread for a long time so prefer if someone copy info below, clean it up, and make it their own. It's a lot to ask, but someone who is still passionate about this part of the game should be writing the guide for it. I am not active nor do I plan to be with current update schedule, so I do not want to start a guide.


That being said, I'm looking for constructive criticism for sample images below. Please be frank. Also the new guide should aim to be as brief as possible, clear (even to non-native English speakers), have a mobile friendly layout, and honestly somewhat graphical in nature so people can literally look at it in 30 seconds to pick out what they need. Originally, info below was going to be posted over 2 years ago however Nash's/Alextraza's guide was already out so this was kept out of public (albeit sent to all crime guide posters and always public in my comments) to collect dust because noobs do not need multiple places to go to for information just to get confused as that is counterproductive to what a guide is originally for.

Again, I would be more than happy to talk with anyone directly (preferably discord @maledict#5475 because of chat history) if the original poster here does nothing with this guide other than to copy and paste it here.

[image: cdn.discordapp.com][image: media.discordapp.net]
[image: cdn.discordapp.com]

Link to the full google doc (refer to First Page/Tab)

My experience is not rich, but i have impression that 30-35 nnb is too early for transporting drugs?
I was trying to start with them at 30, 35, but success rates looked much smaller than supposed 75% (on small data thou).
Lastly, when I gained 40 nnb I tried them again but i quickly finished in jail twice.

I am having maxed crime merits, faction crime exp bonus, enhancer, but I don't have federal judge nor psychology.

30-35 NNB is the best time for transporting drugs. The CE lost from jailing will be compensated by CE gained from drug crimes, essentially locking your NNB firmly at 30-35 NNB.

My experience:
Current NNB: 30
Drug deals: 4,076
Times jailed (since starting drug crimes): 105
So that's 1 jail time for every 38.8 successful drug crimes.

I have some crime success merits, faction perks & enhancer.

Thanks, that means I just had bad luck and have up too easily.

Is this really a good way to go? I am now at 20nnb and dont know what to do. Steal Jacket or Through Robbery?

So while the popular opinion is against this, I believe in it. I got a buddy of mine to do it and he went from 1600 jacket thefts 20 nnb to 30 nnb @ 600-800 (I'll contact him and see if he's still got his screenshot) Arson. Took about three weeks.

No merits in crime success, he wasn't using Cannabis, he didn't have a windproof lighter.

Wow thats cool. Is he and and old player? I am pretty sure some stuff changes over the time. Things that works back then may not as effective nowadays. Probably

I would to know more about "do 1600 jacket" stuff

Cheers :)

He's younger then I am. Let me grab his crime stats since I have a moment.

Age: 235
Jailing's: 42
Theft: 1,383
Drug Deals: 91
Arson: 529

He was convinced Drug dealing was the best option, it took a long time to have him understand that the jailing isn't worth it.

Great tip. Definitely going to give this a bash

probably off topic but still related to nnb though

do you lose CE when you fail an attempt to escape jail?

Awesome guide thank you! I do however suggest for new players to wait until they hit about 150-200 bootlegs to move up to Jackets. I moved up early (100) and was jailed a lot resulting in losing 15 and going to 10. I bootlegged 100 times, and now I never fail jackets.