.

I genuinely appreciate you taking the time to explain all that. There’s a lot of solid advice there, especially about planning, timing, and thinking long-term.

 I understand why joining a larger faction makes sense from a competitive and efficiency standpoint.

That said, for now I want to grow strong with my current faction. We may not have all the perks yet, and we’re still building, but I value the process of developing together.

I’m not really looking for shortcuts or instant advantages  I’d rather improve step by step alongside the people who welcomed me in.

I know it might take longer, and I’m okay with that. Torn is a marathon, like you said. If one day my goals shift fully toward high-level competitive play, I’ll reassess. But at this stage, I’m focused on steady growth, loyalty, and helping build something instead of just joining something already established.

Still, I respect your perspective and the insight you shared. It’s helpful for newer players like me to hear both sides.

Definitely. I try to travel to the far away lands only when I am stacking energy for ranked wars. Nerve loss can also be a problem, especially early on. You need to spend nerve and grow your NNB (natural nerve bar), until you have a big enough nerve bar to not lose nerve while traveling far away. Those SA and UAE merits can wait, you will get them eventually.

Just to point out, if you want to stay in your faction that's fine, I'm in no real position to judge, as I said above I've been in the same faction 4 years, besides some quick time in 39th Healers for a war or two, and a stretch in our old RW shell.

This isn't just making your early game harder though, it also drastically effects your late game. Specifically, lower nerve and crime xp slowing down your progress on OCs and Crimes 2.0, and no drug perks increasing your rehab bills an insane amount. Its nothing you'll feel now, but you definitely will eventually. I'm up to around 12-14m a week way faster than I should be.

You're having a rational discussion, so I feel like its worth making sure you're fully informed.

I really appreciate you explaining it in detail like that. That actually helps put things into perspective, especially the late-game effects like nerve, crime XP, and rehab costs. Those aren’t things newer players immediately feel, so it’s good to hear it from someone further ahead.

I understand that staying in a smaller faction might slow certain aspects of progress, especially long term. I’m not ignoring that — I just feel like at this stage, I want to focus on growing alongside my faction and building something together. Even if it’s slower, I’m okay with that for now.

If later on I feel like my goals shift more toward maximizing efficiency and late-game optimization, I’ll definitely reassess with everything you’ve said in mind. For now, I’m choosing the steady route and the community aspect.

But genuinely, I do appreciate you laying it out clearly instead of just dismissing it. It’s helpful.

Not from when I started traveling, but stopping traveling, while great, is not advisable. If you can keep it up its a good amount of extra income to stack on top of everything else even in the end game 

edit for a note, I havent flown anywhere other than switz and definitely havent flown for profit since this update. I imagine its still viable to make more than 2m a day, just requires a bit more thought 

New players overcoming the challenges of having a clueless faction leader is no small feat. I'm sure they've done many great things in spite of your limited contribution to their growth.

4 hits per day cripples nothing if you're 1,137 days old and have ~9m total battlestats. You have year 1 stats and you're 3 years old, what do you know about energy besides how to waste it?

This 100% .... I helped build a faction from 100k to about 700k when I left, they're finally about to break 1m respect. For over a year we didn't have toleration and now as a result of that each rehab trip I take costs me about 7 mil. I'm able to push just past one trip a week, so it's every 7-10 days depending on if I'm sitting stacked for a war during that time, and compared to my peers I have a lower CPR in OCs. I'm still doing 7's while they're doing 8's.

I'm not saying leave your faction...... But I am saying the effect is real.

If you're in a faction that makes playing Torn fun then that is where you should be.

My only advice is that you read the Torn guides in the "Tutorials and Guides" forums. Not all of them are up-to-date because Torn is always changing in small ways and the community is always trying to find new ways to min/max functionality or push the rules of the game and then documenting their discoveries for karma gains and faction vault access BUT the guides will have insight into many of Torn's features and might help you find things to min/max yourself.

Things like racing skill, hunting skill, and many merits (like busts) take a long time. Learning how to do them efficiently through the guides can save you a lot of time and energy.

Reading OP's replies feels like listening to a robot.

Haha nah, just trying to keep it clear and respectful.

4 hits is one natural non subscriber bar - does not involve xanax or require xanax.

This has severe LinkedIn energy…

Well, English is not my first language,  so to express my self properly i need to use translator. I can only speak a little bit.

Kind of random but, after the travel buff that was the introduction of arrowheads and Contraband, I was pleasantly surprised to also see cheap Xan prices in Japan. Japan seems to be an under publicized destination at the moment, to me. 

Nice work on level 15

Imma be honest with you, you’re gonna get bored of flying after a year or less. Here’s what I’m doing rn:

-3 trips to Hawaii daily minimum, buy shark fins / turtle shells (since both have pretty decent profits AND doesnt require more than 2.6m to buy 29 of them per trip). Occasionally you’ll find shark fins are out of stocks, which is why turtle shell is a good alternative. Anything else is just not worth it

-Avoid xan trip to make a profit early on, or possibly, forever. You can do xan trip to save money for personal use. But running xan trips to sell for profits are risky (since you can get mugged), requires planning (seriously, the prices fluctuate and you have to see which place sells xan for the cheapest price) and sometimes the cheapest place is in South Africa (this will lose you your natural energy)

The goal is to be financially independent, that means your passive income monthly can cover the cost of your 3 xanax/ day, your donator pack, your PI rent and your daily refills. For that you’ll need a combination of bank investment and stock dividends, possibly a company when you’ve been playing long enough. After that, you can start enjoying the game and not relying on flying trips (like me lol) anymore.

P/S: You can also make money fast by flipping the market (buy low sell high), becoming a RW dealer. But those require you to be very active :CC Good luck thooo

Whatever you do, Do NOT level hold at level 17 like a beer person >.>

Flying sucks. You can’t casino while flying.

Here comes the salty leader.

You do realize Ranked War give bonus respect on top too, it's more efficient and economical to do RWs. You can pay your members to do hits rather than having them slave away for you daily. RW are also better in the sense you just need to do 1-2 day of attacking at your level and then enjoy the rest of the week to do whatever you want.

I took a look at your chains, they net around 650 respect on average daily, so you made about 4.5k respect in a week, you made your members spend energy and probably didn't pay them anything for it.

In contrast let's look at this faction - Magic and Chaos Crew, this is a totally random faction I selected near your respect range, they have 11 fewer members than you, they did an RW last week, their chains gave them around 700 Respect and the RW bonus respect gave them 2.5k respect, so they made 3.2k respect in a week and their members got paid for their hits. This number could easily reach your weekly gain if they had 29 members like you.

I never claimed the accomplishments of my faction, I just had the sense to join a faction that helps me grow (and this one is still a retirement faction), there are so many bigger factions that will take in hungry noobs. I appreciate that you want to build something yourself but you are just making your noobs slave away for something which you will probably sell off in the future and benefit entirely from it.

Get off your high horse and acknowledge that you're crippling your members.