Update: September 15th 2025 - Added missing honor bar
INTRODUCTION
This guide aims to cover most of everything related to Hustling, the 8th crime in Torn's Crimes 2.0.
If you already know the basics just skip ahead, I'll try and keep everything organized for clarity's sake.
If you're just looking for advice on this crime, skip to the "Points Of Interest" section.
This is the eight of my series of guides on Crimes 2.0, all other guides released to date:
[Crimes 2.0] A Criminal Primer
[Crimes 2.0] Search For Cash: An in-depth guide
[Crimes 2.0] Bootlegging: An in-depth guide
[Crimes 2.0] Graffiti: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Shoplifting: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Card Skimming: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Pickpocketing: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Burglary: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Disposal: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Cracking: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Forgery: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Scamming: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Arson: An In-Depth Guide
GLOSSARY:
CS = Crime Skill, your skill at doing the crime, shown at the top of the crime page.
Unique = Unique find, marked with a star under the "ATTEMPT" button, can only be found once.
Crit = Critical failure, leads to loss of CS and sometimes items, sometimes life, sometimes prison time.
FIRST STEPS (What you need to start)
While this crime is very complex in its mechanics, the tools required are fairly simple. You only require one tool: A Megaphone
[image: drive.google.com]
The Megaphone is the enhancer for this crime, it increases CE&CS gains by 5%. It can also increase the amount of people attracted when gathering an audience. It can be found by pickpocketing a laborer.
GATHERING AN AUDIENCE (Hustling 101)
[image: drive.google.com]
Hustling, or grifting, consists of persuading naïve and/or overconfident individuals into betting on games where the odds are heavily stacked against them or the games are rigged in someone's favour (yours).
For that, you first need to gather an audience. Gathering an audience costs four nerve and gives a moderate amount of CS, you can gather 1-3+ members in one attempt depending on your skill level and whether you have a megaphone or not.
There appears to be a cap bound to skill level for maximum amount of audience members at a time, where further attempts at gathering once the cap has been reached will always result in failure.
Not much is known about this "maximum audience cap". Rule of thumb: Aim for four +1 for every 20 skill levels. You don't really need the maximum possible amount of audience members unless you're aiming for the Snake Oil honor bar.
Up to 10 audience members can be gathered in total at max skill.
THE AUDIENCE
Audience members have a set of characteristics relevant to this crime, ranging from how much they can bet to which game they prefer. Knowing these characteristics and how they affect the audience will help you significantly when performing this crime.
Beware: Audience members will leave after a while if they're not interacted with (i.e. a game is demonstrated, hyped or played). Conider keeping a good amount of nerve (40+ I'd say) before gathering an audience.
Audience will leave 1-3 minutes after last interaction.
ATTENTION / SUSPICION
Every audience member has an attention/suspicion gauge beneath their frame, these stats affect how likely they are to bet, how likely they are to leave, and how much they're willing to bet.
[image: drive.google.com]
Attention:
+ Increases by demonstrating and hyping games.
+ Increases by the player losing bets (both intentionally and unintentionally), with an increased impact if the game is the audience's favorite.
- Decreases by the player winning bets (both intentionally and unintentionally)
An audience member's likelyhood of participating increases the higher attention is.
If attention empties fully, the audience member will leave.
Suspicion:
+ Increases by the player winning bets (both intentionally and unintentionally)
An audience member's maximum attention is reduced by their current suspicion.
STATUS
Above an audience member's head, you'll be able to see their status, if any are present.
[image: drive.google.com] A money icon means the audience member is currently betting, increasing the bet pool.
[image: drive.google.com]A heart icon means the game currently being played is their favorite. Their attention will increase faster and they will keep betting as long as the game is being played, regardless of suspicion level.
Audience members' suspicion gain is not affected by whether they're betting or not.
WEALTH
An audience member's icon color varies in different shades of gray to green. It's been confirmed that each individual audience member has a "wealth" stat associated to them, with the greener the color representing higher wealth and thus, higher betting amounts.
[image: drive.google.com]
(Audience members with different shades of gray and green indicating wealth, with a shill and a pickpocket to the right)
SKILL LEVEL INFLUENCE
Skill gain for this subcrime is intermediate, but for a four nerve subcrime it's fairly inefficient. Keeping the audience engaged as much as possible will lead to better gains, in essence.
Higher skill level will increase the maximum amount of simultaneous audience members. Exact values remain to be confirmed.
THE GAMES
[image: drive.google.com]
There's four games available when hustling, each of them with their independent technique level. Mechanically, they're all the same, with the big difference being the risk level, betting ranges and technique levels.
TECHNIQUE
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Technique is how skilled you are in a particular game. It increases the value of bets for said game.
Each game has it's own technique level, with more levels for the more advanced games.
- 7 levels for Cornhole
- 9 levels for Snail Racing
- 11 levels for Find the Lady
- 12 levels for Shell Game
Technique increases when winning/losing intentionally, increasing more when winning.
Amount of audience members, people gambling or people who's favorite game is ongoing has no bearing on technique increases.
ACTIONS
There are four actions which can be performed while playing games.
[image: drive.google.com]
Demonstrate the game, showing how it's played and fooling the audience in what's called a confidence trick.
Low CS gain, but necessary for betting to take place.
[image: drive.google.com]
Hype the game up, persuading people into playing. This will increase audience attention, and can lead to audience members to start betting.
Will only appear if demonstration doesn't immediately lead to betting.
Low CS gain, but necessary for betting to take place.
[image: drive.google.com]
Betting. Here you have two options: Attempt to lose, or attempt to win.
To the left is the amount bet, on a loss the player will lose that amount of money, while on a win the player will obtain it.
You cannot bet with no money on hand. Make sure to always keep money on hand for this crime, as small of an amount as it may be.
CS gain for losing is intermediate, while winning gives the most.
SKILL LEVEL GAIN
CS gain for this crime focuses on these subcrimes, this is where the most efficient gain lies.
CS gain for demo and hype is the same, half that of losing.
CS gain for losing intentionally is the same as that of gathering a crowd, roughly 2/3rds that of winning.
Winning gives the most CS, x2.25 that of demo/hype, x1.5 that of losing. Rates aren't exact but rather an approximation based on limited data.
RECRUITING A SHILL
[image: drive.google.com]
At skill level 60, a shill can be recruited. The shill will reduce the losses incurred by intentionally losing bets, they'll keep a portion of the money lost and return the rest.
[image: drive.google.com]
Only one shill can be recruited at a time, and they take a slot amongst the audience, distinguished by the color blue.
[image: drive.google.com]
Recruiting a shill costs four nerve, after which they'll position themselves amongst the crowd and will start collecting and returning a portion of money lost.
Recruited shills will leave after some time has passed (10min)
[image: drive.google.com]
Collecting costs two nerve and returns a portion of the money lost from intentional losses. The exact rate of return remains to be determined.
All money held by the shill will be lost if not collected before they leave.
One may critically fail when collecting from the shill. This can either lead to jail, or nothing. In either case, all the money held by the shill will be lost, and the shill will be removed from the audience.
RECRUITING A PICKPOCKET
[image: drive.google.com]
At skill level 80, a pickpocket can be recruited. The pickpocket will stand alongside the audience and randomly steal a sum of cash for every attempt done, exact conditions to be determined.
[image: drive.google.com]
Only one pickpocket can be recruited at a time, and they take a slot amongst the audience, distinguished by a reddish brown color.
[image: drive.google.com]
Recruiting a pickpocket costs four nerve, after which they'll position themselves amongst the crowd and will start stealing money from the audience whenever a game is played or promoted.
[image: drive.google.com]
Just like the shill, collecting costs two nerve and returns half of all the money stolen by the pickpocket. The pickpocket may attempt to steal from the audience whenever an action is taken, whether that's hyping a game, or winning/losing a bet. The number of audience members and their attention will affect how likely the pickpocket is to attempt to steal.
Similar to the shill, it's possible to critically fail at collecting from the pickpocket, in which case all the money held by the pickpocket will be lost,
POINTS OF INTEREST
For starters, this crime has no uniques, just like card skimming, and rewards are exclusively money.
INCREASING SKILL LEVEL
Borrowing a page from the pickpocketing guide, CS gain rates are as follows
100% (lowest)
- Demo (2N)
- Hype (2N)
150% (intermediate)
- Gather (4N)
- Lose (2N)
200% (high)
- Recruit Shill (4N)
- Recruit Pickpocket (4N)
- Collect from Shill (2N)
- Collect from Pickpocket (2N)
225% (highest)
- Win (2N)
With gather costing more nerve than demo, hype and lose, gathering an audience is the most inefficient ways of gaining CS, and as such must be avoided whenever possible. Keeping hold of your audience by increasing attention or only focusing on people with hearts above their heads is one way to do it.
Recruiting a shill is an option if the main goal is limiting financial loss.
Exact game played, number of audience members, money gambled, presence of shills and technique level have no bearing on skill level gain, only action performed.
So, with all of this established, what's the best way to increase skill level? There's two paths
PATH 1: The efficient route
It relies on finding audience's favorite game. Attention increases faster when the game played is the audience's favorite, plus a single demo will usually be enough to have them start gambling.
Works as follows: Get a handful of audience members and demo each game until at least one audience member has a heart above their portrait, then lose 2-3 times to max their attention, then win until attention is low BUT DON'T EMPTY IT, rinse and repeat until the target leaves due to excessively high suspicion.
After you unlock the shill, getting one and collecting after every loss is an option if you're sitting on a lot of nerve or about to use a refill.
PATH 2: The spamming route
It relies on completely ignoring moneymaking and just burning cash by losing constantly.
This completely disregards suspicion and attention, with the sole goal of increasing skill level with the least amount of complex thought. No need for shills, no need to think about audience stats, just gather one audience member and spam lose until your nerve is empty.
After you unlock the shill, getting one and collecting every so often can soften the blow from constant losses while letting your CS growth continue.
This path is fairly efficient for what it is, by greatly reducing the amount of audience gatherings required, but conversely your technique growth will slow down, since losses give less enhancement.
If you'd rather spam click to empty your nerve and don't care for the money spent, this is an alternative.
THE MERITS
Just like all other crimes so far, this crime has three honor bars native to it, and all the medals pertaining its category.
Reaching CS100 will grant one the Crowd Teaser honor bar.
[image: drive.google.com]
Maxing technique on every game will give you the Tekkers honor bar.
[image: drive.google.com]
Information on how to get this honor bar can be found further down.
Winning $100,000 from a single bet will grant one the Snake Oil honor bar
Information on how to get this honor bar can be found further down.
Finally, all attempts at this crime are considered fraud crimes in regards of Fraud medals.
It is the same category as Card Skimming and Scamming, being the second fraud crime in 2.0, and it's also significantly more efficient for chasing medals if you haven't gotten 10k fraud crimes completed yet from all the warehouses burned in 1.0.
INCREASING TECHNIQUE
I posted about this in a different thread, you can find the reason for these suggestions there.
- Gather audience once, maybe twice
- Demo each game until one with a heart turns up, start from the bottom then move up from there. If you maxed a game you can just skip it, in which case you'll be forced to introduce games 'til someone wants to play, which is less than ideal.
- If someone with a heart turns up
|- Lose until their attention is maxed, you can ignore everyone else, only the guy with the heart matters.
|- Win once or twice, enough to lower attention but not enough to empty it completely, then lose to top it off again. Repeat until suspicion gets to 80-90% of max, then just win until they leave. You can expect roughly 10-15 games with 1.5:1 win/loss ratio this way.
- If no hearts turn up
|- Lose until someone's attention is maxed or overall attention is over 60%
|- Win until attention is around 40%, then lose. Repeat win/lose until people stop gambling and start leaving. Once suspicion gets to 60%, you can just keep winning to force the audience to leave. If you're lucky you're looking at a 1:1 win/loss ratio this way.
- Completely ignore shills and pickpockets, they're good for money and for CS gain, but worthless if you only want technique.
If done right, you should be maxing skill and technique roughly at the same time.
OBTAINING SNAKE OIL
Start by gathering an audience as many times as you need to reach the cap. At max level, this is ten audience members.
Your goal now is reaching max attention for all audience members, or just as high as possible. Lose a couple games, if there's audience members with hearts it'll be easier to do. Once you're in a comfortable spot just keep switching games back and forth until you get a bet for 100k, this is easier on shell game and find the lady.
There's still a certain level of randomness to this: Remember audience wealth? Depending on how vibrant the green color of an audience member is, the more they'll be able to bet. People with hearts also seem to bet past their wealth limit.
If you fill your audience row but find all audience members having a dull green or straight up gray color, then it might be an option to just let them walk away and try again in a couple minutes.
These steps are only necessary if you intend on maximizing nerve efficiency and lower money loss. Alternatively, you can just wing it, fill the audience row, then keep losing games until you reach 100k bets. You may need a full bar of nerve for this and a couple mil in hand, but you'll still get it without much difficulty so long as you have CS and techniques maxed.
MONEYMAKING
Profits on this crime are pretty interesting, mostly since a lot of players are actually in the negative. Carelessly losing games and not paying attention to your public can lead to losing significant amounts of money while doing this crime.
If you want to make a profit while doing this crime, consider the following tips:
- People with hearts are your greatest source of income, so aiming for them by demonstrating each game and sticking with the one that has the most hearts is your best bet.
- If there's no hearts, then at least make sure your audience has attention over half and there's at least five people betting before you start cashing in. Also, make sure you're not losing dozens of thousands with each loss. If bets are reaching the 30, 40, 50k range, then it's a good place to start winning some games.
- A shill and a pickpocket are ridiculously effective at making money, one based on how much you lose, and the other based on how many audience members you have and their attention. If you're gonna run a lot of games, make sure to have both of them active, since they'll help mitigate your losses further.
THE NUMBERS
GAME RISK BREAKDOWN
As can be expected, each action done has different success rates, with more advanced games having lower odds of succeeding. The following is a breakdown of these success rates.
[image: drive.google.com]
Things to note:
- While success rates do seem to go lower and lower the more advanced a game is, the difference is minuscule, barely a percentage point.
- Skill level and technique are not considered on this particular breakdown, though it is planned to cover it in due time.
- Pickpockets appear to be the most risky investment, but likewise they're the most effective one, giving a very significant sum of money at a very low nerve cost, making them a terrible option for increasing skill level, but an excellent one for obtaining money.
TECHNIQUE INCREASE BREAKDOWN
As technique increases, higher bets become available, and maxing technique for all games gives one an honor bar as well. This makes increasing technique as quickly as possible a goal for many players.
The following is a rough breakdown on technique increases and expected attempts to reach max technique.
[image: drive.google.com]
Things to note:
- Audience was not considered for this breakdown, even though it should be. Observation shows that audience should have no bearing on technique increases, but hard evidence remains to be properly analyzed.
- "Chance of increase" is the chance of the technique bar increasing by 1% of completion. All wins and losses will increase technique by a certain amount, but this breakdown uses the percentage of completion as unit of measurement, so values might not be entirely accurate, but are still a good representation on how winning tends to give more technique XP compared to losing, and how demonstrating and hyping give no technique whatsoever.
- "Expected attempts" are simply based on chance of increase over 100%. The values, compared to my own experience, are remarkably accurate, with each success being worth roughly two failures.
In a nutshell, losing to increase one technique will require twice the attempts compared to winning constantly, so trying to win as much as possible will lead to maximizing technique faster.
FINAL THOUGHTSStupid idiot forgot to finish this section 'cause he's stupid
I really like this crime, it has a very strategic layer that other crimes don't quite have. It's interesting in how it features some parts from others crimes in one way or another, like Graffiti's subcrime-bound internal levels for technique, a mix of Burglary's confidence and Shoplifting's notoriety as audience's attention and suspicion respectively, not to mention its own audience system with the capacity to add plants with a set purpose (shills and pickpockets).
Mechanically, this crime is pretty up there, requiring some thought process if income is the goal, and with the theorized bets reaching the hundreds of thousands, this could become a fairly profitable crime at later skill levels and with higher technique.
Eighth guide, we've come a long way since. Had quite a lot of fun researching this crime and making this guide in particular, feel like, same as pickpocketing, I'll struggle gathering data for the first few weeks, but it should get better with time. Really interested in seeing how technique affects betting ranges exactly.
DATA GATHERING (DONE!)
Data gathering for this crime has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed their logs!
CREDITS
Finally, a shoutout to all who contributed in the making of this guide, as well as those who financed this and previous projects.
Providers of research funds:
kelfi: 16x Donator Pack
onlelonely: 10x FHC
MrFancyPants: $100,000,000
Maks: $100,000,000
MonChoon: 100x Xanax
Hamid448: $60,000,000, 3x E-DVDs, 1x Drug Pack, 1x Six Pack of Alcohol
Jefersonakl: 5x FHC
hugeknight: 60x Lottery Voucher
Gem: 25x Bottle of Moonshine
Kamkool: $50,000,000
FractalPariah: $50,000,000
BigDaddyLuvsU: $38,000,000, 3x Drug Pack
Invert: $13,000,000, 1x Xanax, 1x FHC, 20x Bottle of Mistletoe Madness
Sinvetic: $10,000,000, 2x FHC, Quran Script : Ubay Ibn Ka'b
RatstaR: 1x Donator Pack
L4suicide: 1x Donator Pack
Jackass_420: $20,000,000
Lidia: $20,000,000
illum: 1x FHC
Gandalf: 1x FHC, 20x Bottle of Stinky Swamp Punch
Skulll: 1x Drug Pack, 1x Six-Pack of Alcohol, 1x Bottle of Mistletoe Madness, 1x Bottle of Stinky Swamp Punch, 1x Can of Rockstar Rudolph, 1x Can of X-MASS
maimunah: $10,000,000
Paul_Atreides: $10,000,000
RipTheJacker: $800,000, 4x Can of Santa Shooters
Lexcifer: 10x Xanax
BurningWinters: 5x Six-Pack of Alcohol
something: $7,500,000
Bssteig: 1x E-DVD, 1x Can of Rockstar Rudolph, 1x Xanax, 1x Certificate of Awesome
Giovanni: 3x Six-Pack of Alcohol
MissMary: $1,000,000, 1x Drug Pack
Dr_Thycreator: 1x Six-Pack of Energy Drink, 3x Can of Santa Shooters
Tuit: $5,000,000
Chimken: 1x Drug Pack
Rizzzz: $4,000,000
Dapper_Tramp: 10x Bottle of Wicked Witch
-Behemoth: 3x Xanax
Timoteo32: 1x Six-Pack of Alcohol
badmagicks: 1x High-Speed Drive
Green_Babz: 1x Can of Santa Shooters
TheBonebreaker: $1,000,000
Mr_Bendix: $1,000,000
bcla7: 1x Lottery Voucher
Anonymous: $29,000,000
Research collaborators:
Fetheryhorse6
Tuit
NyanMango
Scripting and materials used
Silmaril (Logging userscript)
Skeletron (torn.report log export)
All contributors:
Acarya, Baxia, D3XU5, the people of Omni and HeLa, the torn.report team, and the people on the wiki thread for Hustling, as well as everyone who I might've missed. My apologies in advance.
All in the name of science.
Mentions: [Crimes 2.0] A Criminal Primer · [Crimes 2.0] Arson: An In-Depth Guide · [Crimes 2.0] Bootlegging: An in-depth guide · [Crimes 2.0] Burglary: An In-Depth Guide · [Crimes 2.0] Card Skimming: An In-Depth Guide · [Crimes 2.0] Cracking: An In-Depth Guide · [Crimes 2.0] Disposal: An In-Depth Guide · [Crimes 2.0] Forgery: An In-Depth Guide · [Crimes 2.0] Graffiti: An In-Depth Guide · [Crimes 2.0] Pickpocketing: An In-Depth Guide · [Crimes 2.0] Scamming: An In-Depth Guide · [Crimes 2.0] Search For Cash: An In-Depth Guide · [Crimes 2.0] Shoplifting: An In-Depth Guide · Wiki : Hustling
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