Winged_Cougar: forum

Always remember, Torn is a *Marathon*, not a Sprint. You're either in this for the long term, or you're not in it at all.

This was originally intended as a list of tips and answers to questions I had as a new player which were not readily apparent, or did not appear in any of the guides I read. This list has grown quite long, and many of these points are in other guides. In any case, if they're here, it's because I felt like they fit well.

For the TL;DR version, read only the items in bold/bold.

Community:

1) Don't dwell on a mugger. If there's anything guaranteed in Torn City it's that you will be mugged, or hospitalized, or bountied, by a random stranger, eventually. Duke's missions are designed to sow discord into the City, and he's known to put hits out on people at random even when they don't owe him anything. If you get attacked by a random player, it's probably because Duke gave them an evil mission to do something specific to you, like hit you with a brick, for example. This is no longer true, as Duke's missions only target inactive players when they mention players by name, but the advice stands. Trying to self-destruct against someone else is probably more likely to be ruinous to you than it is to them.
2) Don't talk in Global Chat unless you're looking to get mugged or bountied. You might as well go into the chat settings(the gear in the bottom-right corner) and turn off Global Chat, permanently, or at least until you're ~level 100. No offense to those who hang out in Global Chat intended; you know what I'm talking about. Already got bountied? See this post on mitigating the effects of bounties, by Lvcy. She also elaborates on Global Chat. Be forewarned, it is a long read. The corollary to this is that complaining in Global Chat is a good way to get at least 10 "free" bounties if you're trying to trade from the hospital.
3) Don't advertise anything expensive(like Cesium) for sale in Trade Chat as a new player. Its a sure way to get mugged. Other players don't care that you *might not* have any cash. To them, it's just worth a try. Much better to find a reputable trader with a highly rated thread in the forums Trading Post section, and discreetly sell it to them. (Note that when I first wrote this, I was not a trader, rather I was selling stuff often to traders; I've since transitioned into more of a trader role myself, buying instead. This is not a shameless plug for my own trading business.)
4) If you have the ability to draw or do graphic design, you can sell that in Torn City. Players will pay you millions of dollars to design banners and signatures for them. You can also sell comics for points.
5) Don't Just join any faction as soon as you get a chance. If they're at war, it will cause you to be a good target for everyone they're at war with. If you're weak, and/or broke, being hospitalized often can make getting started very difficult. Maybe wait until you're ~level 15, so you can start travelling to avoid hospitalizations during your day. With Chaining 2.0, there's no longer any point to delaying getting into a faction. The only real consideration here is: Is the faction a good fit for you, for the long term? This is because of faction loyalty merits, which take (I think) 1000 days total to earn. It's a long time to be in one faction, so it's best to find one you like and/or fit well.  Activity is more important than stats or money; if you're going to be hitting Torn for more than 15 minutes over three sessions per day, you're an active player, and will usually qualify for an exception to join a stronger faction(think respect levels in the millions).  Good factions generally return strong profits to their members based on ranked wars and Organized Crime, so if your faction is using you as a slave/profit center, there are almost always better options available.
6) If you find yourself sitting around "playing" Torn with nothing else to do, join Torn IRC channels #luckylotto, #party, #purge, #noob_kingdom, and #duckpond. These channels host free lotteries, which can be a huge help to a new player. These channels still have free lotteries, but all of them have moved to Discord. You'll have to ask around to get invitations to the various Discord channels. Torn IRC no longer exists.  But there are some new Discord servers that do Giveaways.  Ask around, and search the forums.
7) Remember to have fun! If you're not enjoying this as a game, you're not really helping anyone. Grinding anything in a game is basically work, and too much work will burn you out(and there is a fair amount of grinding in Torn). You're not worth anything to anyone in this game as an ally if you can't be consistently active. Find some people you enjoy playing with, or recruit some friends and *create* people you enjoy playing with! Recruitment has additional bonuses beyond getting more in-game friends(which is far more valuable than the recruitment rewards, really).
8) Note that you are a member of a "protected" class of players when you are under 14 days old. This protection prevents anyone outside that age from attacking you *unless* you're in a faction(where your faction entering into any sort of conflict can allow any member of the opposing force(s) to attack you despite your newbie status).
9) Be respectful of players who are much older than you. Be mindful that: a) Torn has gotten far easier in many way as it has continued to develop. b) Xanax was a luxury item in the early days of Torn that only the richest players could afford. c) Getting into a faction with high Hermetic Drug Addiction Reduction and/or Steadfast + Gym Gains was much harder/rarer. d) Getting a faction started is tough, as weaker factions are *constantly* used as filler for other's wars(filler is no longer strictly necessary in Chaining 2.0). Newer players, are, in almost every case, standing on the shoulders of their hard work and/or research into game mechanics.
10) If you've ever felt like you're missing some of the flavor of Torn, it might be because you are. Turn on profile and bazaar signatures like so: Click the "Gear" icon at top right. Go to [Profile Signature], and check box that says, " Show other people's profile and bazaar signatures", click Change details. I turned this on once, and forgot about it. Thanks to bkoz [1842699].
11) Trust no one. There is a meta-game in Torn, which involves lies, and lots of them. One part of this is in-game scammers. Note that the rules of Torn do not explicitly prohibit in-game scams, relating to one player character stealing valuables from your player character. Staff will do little to nothing for you as concerns goods or money stolen in this way. The second part of this is a meta-game not endorsed or condoned by staff, which involves potential scammers with what may be multiple accounts, engaging in activities that could be seen by game staff and or real life authorities as against the rules and/or the law. Like a boxer, protect yourself at all times.

Trading/Money:

1) When mugged, you automatically gain mug-protection for the amount you had on-hand at the moment you were mugged, regardless of how much you lost to the mugger. Full protection for 2 hours, decreasing linearly to $0 over the next 10 hours, becoming no protection after 12 hours. If you would lose more than the cost of a Can, you can pay someone one Can to mug you and return the money. You should only do this with someone you trust completely. As of November 2019, mug protection ends the moment you manipulate the protected cash, greatly reducing the exploitable value of mug protection. Mug protection only applies to the lowest amount you have had on hand following your last mug.
2) When you start travelling, running flowers, plushies, drugs, or whatever else, either get a bazaar as soon as you can, or find a reliable trader to sell to in bulk.
3) Never leave your bazaar open with high dollar items in it if you're just sitting around. Either close it, hospitalize yourself, or travel to protect yourself from buy-muggers.
4) Early on, keep from having too much cash on hand by buying medical items, xanax, and eDVDs. Favor buying Xanax and eDVDs. You'll use the eDVDs when you start happy jumping(see this guide; steps 2-8), you should be using Xanax regularly, and you'll use the medical items eventually. Better yet, find a trader who doesn't mind paying you in eDVDs and/or Xanax when you trade them flowers/plushies.
5) A good alternative to mug-protection is the ability to self-hospitalize(You can still trade while in the hospital). The two most popular ways to do this are 1) using an incompatible Blood-Bag(you'll have to complete Intravenous Therapy education first), and 2) Asking a friend to place a bounty on you, and then calling attention to your own bounty in Trade chat(this one requires nothing other than a friend who doesn't mind placing a bounty on you).
6) Also, use the Bookie to store spare cash for up to several days most of the time, or several weeks occasionally. No casino tokens needed, no fees associated(unless you lose track and let the bet go through, in which case you stand a pretty good chance of winning more money anyway). Credit to Vladar for this suggestion. I've been doing it for a while now. Not sure why I hadn't put it in here yet. The bookie is deprecated for cash storage, all bets will ride. See this guide for alternative cash storage options.
7) Although battle stats are critically important in this game, making money is second in line, because training gets very expensive in the late game. Always be looking to slowly but surely increase your networth. This should allow you to gradually afford better and better training as you Age.
8) Always buy 100 items a day from Bob's or Big Al's. Good things to buy include Beer, Plushies, and Bricks from Bits and Bob's, or Pepper Spray from Big Al's, and those are listed in order from most to least valuable. (Probably best not to sell your Beer though, as you should really be drinking ~24 beers every day to boost your crime experience gains, at least until you can afford to start slamming Cans daily.) You can actually buy 100 every 12 hours, apparently. Now, because of this asshat, you really can only buy 100 items per day, and it resets at midnight every day instead. Feel free to thank him with some bounties.
9) If you're thinking about investing in the bank, read up on how banking interest and merits work.

Training/Drug Use:

1) Use *all* of your energy at the gym after you reach level 15. Exceptions include chaining for your faction, trying for easy merits, and missions, in that order.
2) As you can afford it, take at least one Xanax per day, and train it at the gym. It's highly unlikely to reach education kick with only one Xanax per day, but watch your addiction icon. When you have reached level 15, you can safely increase this to 3 Xanax per day, because you can Rehab.
3) Rehab early and often. I always rehab as soon as my addiction level reaches -4%. (The little grey or reddish brain status icon.) Overdosing on Xanax at or beyond -4% addiction can result in an education course kick, which is bad. As an additional reason to rehab early and often, having a high addiction level will cause your work effectiveness to decrease, which could cause your Director to fire you. Having too much addiction level can also result in being unable to train at the gym if you are not under the effects of a drug. Credit to UNCCH.
4) Refill empty Happy after an overdose at Rehab. Another good reason to get to level 15 as soon as possible. Fly to Switzerland the first chance you get after you overdose. Bring minimum ~$350,000(one unit of rehab is $250k) to also buy flowers or plushies while you're there, and you can actually turn a small profit on the trip, at least until your rehab bills get a bit higher.
5) Get 10/10 Education merits before any others. You won't need them after you finish all education courses, but by then** you should have enough $$$ to reset your merits anyway. This decreases your education time by a large amount, and gets you all those sweet bonuses that much faster. **Theoretical minimum of ~628 days, with all possible reductions known to this author.
6) Assuming you are not able to actually donate(real life can be pretty mean sometimes): Buying a Donator Pack once a month for ~25 mil is the single best way to spend your in-game cash as concerns gaining additional energy. If you manage to use all your energy every 31 days, including two points energy refills from the 50 points, it's ~$3230 per unit energy, which is hands down better than Xanax at ~$860k(~$3440 per unit energy), even ignoring negative aspects of Xanax. The future accuracy of this statement is of course subject to changing item values, but after you include the negative aspects of Xanax(battle stat reduction, overdose, and rehab costs), DPs should continue to be a better deal even as prices for DPs rise past ~30mil, assuming the price of Xanax stays at ~860k.
6b) If you are able to donate real $$, subscribing is far better than buying Donator Packs, unless of course, you happen to be a whale, in which case you can subscribe *and* buy Donator Packs, but if you're doing that, you probably don't need to be reading this, because in Torn City, cash is king, and you can just buy what ever you need. For the rest of us, subscribing instead of buying Donator Packs with real money grants an additional subscriber reward every month.
7) I recommend joining the Army immediately upon starting out in Torn. This thread seems to be accurate in stating joining the Army for the exclusive purpose of training defense is not ideal. However, choosing from the three starter jobs you can join at 0 working stats, Army is best. Upon reaching level 3, it is a good idea to begin searching for player-owned employment, but until you have an actual job lined up, stay in the Army and advance as far as possible. Do not use a single job point except for upgrading rank, and use all your remaining job points at once to train Defense prior to leaving, or Strength if Defense is not available. Reference this thread regarding city-career fast tracking.
8)  You may run into folks who insist that you should "whore" one stat or another(favoring one stat above all others). The combat stats formula requires you to have 14x the stat(Def/Dex) of your attacker's(Str/Spd) in order to guarantee or nearly guarantee 0 damage or 0 hits. As an example, consider that although whoring Defense up to 50 billion could allow you to take zero damage from all players with about 3.5 billion or less Strength, a balanced player with 12.5 billion in each stat instead of 50 billion in one stat is still going to utterly crush you.  There are increased gains to be had by whoring a stat, but the overall advantage from doing so is relatively low.

Travel Running(level 15+):

1) Unless you plan on getting up in the middle of your night to buy and fly a return leg: Never travel before you go to bed. It's likely you'll get mugged while you're there, *and* you'll wake up hospitalized, because someone will have tracked you down in the night just to get a hit in for a war, and they can make a few bucks while they're there buying stuff as a bonus. This has a negative impact on your capital from getting mugged, your travelling profits, and your training. Just stay at home when you go to sleep. You can med out of the hospital, train, and then fly immediately.
2) When you travel run and you're still training, make sure your round trip travel time is *less than* 5 hours. You can still make a decent profit on all locations which fit into this category. When you stack Xanax in preparation for [following Hank's Training Guide for Druggies, defunct] a Happy Jump, you can extend this round trip travel time limit out to your remaining drug cooldown(6-8 hours) after each dosage. This is a perfect opportunity to make a few of those longer trips you normally shouldn't waste energy on.
3) Rent a Private Island with an airstrip. This is by far the cheapest way to obtain access to a private airstrip. Usually, the cheapest way to do this is to "cohabitate" with another player, and split the rental cost with them. This brings UK, Switzerland, and Argentina down under a 5 hour round trip, adds 10 items to your travel capacity, and grants free fares everywhere. It also gets you a higher max happy for training purposes.
4) Use Swatsicle's #runners IRC channel to find the best deals on flower/plushie running at any given moment. The command !bb 5:00 will return the most time/profit efficient deal for travel time under 5 hours round trip. There are still tools around that do this, but I'm not currently using any, ask around, or search the forums.
5) Buy a stock-ticker(20 Points) and a laptop(~1mil). It can be an invaluable tool for securing funds while in flight if you have anything for sale, be it in bazaar or imarket. You can buy stock in flight, and you can list stock for sale in flight, but you can only cash out sold stock when you're free in Torn City(although the cashier's checks will automatically clear the bank and go into your wallet after 24 hours). *Never* invest in TCSE stock. The system doesn't buy it, and neither do most players since there's no benefit to owning it, so it can border on impossible to sell. Take a look at my suggestion to improve the stock market(or at least make TCSE a meaningful stock).
6) When you start travel running, familiarize yourself with alternatives to buy while abroad. Many players will buy souvenirs from you, and while they may not bring as much profit as flowers or plushies, they're still better to buy than leaving a country empty handed. Also watch for Flash Grenades, Smoke Grenades, and Tear Gas. All three of those items are decent long term investments, as their pricing(especially Smoke Bombs) goes up during competitions like the dog tag competition, where defending yourself while offline is a top priority. It may take a while to realize the gains, but saving them to sell during such a competition, in your bazaar, while you're still flying constantly: it's a good move.

Miscellaneous:

1) Selling losses is *not* a sustainable career path, because it cheats you out of Energy for training. While you *can* gain more in the short term by selling losses to afford happy jumps more often, it keeps you at a lower gym level longer, which affects your long term gains, and ultimately hurts you. But hey, if you like getting beat up, do what you want.
2) Always keep ~10-20 Morphine, Small First Aid Kit, First Aid Kit, and at least 1 Opium in your inventory. Restock when any of the first three falls below ~5 each. Later, you can replace Morphine, with the much cheaper Blood Bags after you complete Intravenous Therapy. Never get stuck in the hospital if you don't want to be there. Later on, I plan to add ~3 Neumune Tablets to my stock of these items.
3) If you have a question about it; there's probably a guide for it. Search Google for, "Torn City [topic] Guide", where [topic] is something like Gym, Casino, Crime, Travel, Weapon, Armor, etc. The forums are almost as good as the Torn City Wiki for looking this stuff up, but Google indexes both of them. There are also third party sites with some excellent(if a bit outdated) guides on them(Looking at you Torn To Shreds). Always pay attention to the time/date stamp on what you're reading, as it may have changed in the live game.
4) Be extremely careful if you see any mention of a Torn Application on a third party site; it is likely the creators of any such app are simply trying to steal your login credentials. There are only two legitimate Torn applications as of this posting, and This is wrong, I was ignorant and uninformed. Only one Torn App is officially sanctioned(City Watch). The Android CityWatch App, DocTorn, Torn Tools, and Torn Stats are very good alternatives developed by third party developers(although at least one of them is the pet project of a staff member if I'm not mistaken). While this does *not* mean any of them are inherently malicious(in fact all four currently appear to be safe, by all accounts), they carry an inherent risk, in that the developers could decide to do something nefarious without warning, and Chedburn+Staff could not necessarily stop them without disabling accounts and/or API keys, at least temporarily. Android City Watch uses your login credentials, as of last I checked, and the other three use only your API key, which can be changed/revoked at will in your account preferences. Torn Stats requires a login, but it correctly advises you to come up with a different password than what you use for Torn for security. There is an official Torn application on the Google Play store now. There are still some third party browser extensions, but all of them use the API.
5) A Private Island is considered by many players to be the only property worth using, especially for new players. This very thread has received a comment that it's better to simply rent a mid-range Private Island than it is to attempt to buy other properties between the Shack and the Private Island. It's a point I would not dispute.

If you have anything to add that a new player should know, which either isn't in any of the various guides, or isn't fully explained in the guide it's mentioned in, please feel free to put it here. I'll try to keep the original post up to date as people add things.



"There are two rules for success. 1) Never reveal everything you know." - Roger H. Lincoln

Foreword: This is not the only way to get started in Torn City. There are plenty of other ways. This is one way to do it. This method allows you to excel in Battle Stats, while still ultimately building Networth. Focusing on your Battle Stats allows you to join a stronger Faction sooner, which will get you better Faction perks sooner, making you that much stronger than you would otherwise be for each day spent playing. The point isn't to become stronger than older players. The point is to be stronger than everyone who joined on the same day you did, without spending RL cash, or No-Lifeing the game to get there. This guide is basically a reiteration of the method that I used to start Torn city, written almost entirely from memory(with me filling in the rest with math from the wiki and spreadsheets I've created on my own), but it is not my own invention. I am very much a product of the existing Torn community at the time I started playing, and this guide is, at it's core, the product of others' hard work(Hank, et. al.). My goal here is to preserve this method for future generations of Torn players without infringing on Hank's right to have done what he did with his own guide, by shamelessly attempting to repost it. But, since I can no longer refer people to Hank's guide, I'm rewriting a new one from scratch as well as I can.

Color guide: CRITICAL // Warning // Important // Core Info // Benign Notes

Please read the entire guide before you begin. Doing otherwise can end up wasting resources due to the timing involved.

There are two major barriers to performing what is known variously as "Happy Jumping" or "Premium Training".

One is Donator Status.  The other is cash to acquire some items.

The only "freemium" method to obtain both is to sell losses until you can afford the materials to complete STACKING and JUMPING(about $19 million), plus one Donator Pack from the Item Market or Bazaars(~23 million).  Total cost is about $42 million.  Usually, you can expect to sell losses between $200k-$300k.  Sometimes you'll find players paying more, and you'll also most likely find some players who will refuse to pay you after you've lost fights to them.

Selling losses is generally ill-advised, but for the purpose of this guide only, if you're unable to spend any real cash on Torn, it's the best way to do this guide.  It is not the best way to get money in Torn, and should never be used if you're not following this guide.

Subscribe if you can:
If you can afford $4.84 monthly to subscribe, do it from day one. Buying Donator Packs in-game is the cheapest way to gain more Energy(critical for gym gains), but having that all taken care of in the first place frees up your in-game cash for other things, and makes everything else that much easier. https://www.torn.com/donator.php As an added bonus, you can potentially get books as a monthly subscriber reward.

The only way remaining for a new player to do this solo, is to buy two Donator Packs with real money from https://www.torn.com/donator.php. Only one Donator Pack($5 USD) sold to another player should suffice to get you started, beware of buy-muggers and trade-muggers(people who mug you directly after buying something from you). Syrup of Ipecac is cheap, and should be used before trading for anything over about 15 mil. You'll want to use the second Donator Pack yourself for the Donator Status extra energy.

If you're not a new player, the good news is that you can shift gears and begin this guide today without any negative impact. Torn is a Marathon, not a Sprint. Starting today is better than restarting today(though the developers have provided a method for you to restart your account from 0-day, should you wish to do so; I will not be providing instructions to that effect).

PREPARATION AND ITEMS:
Prior to the moment you begin "stacking* Xanax below, you want to keep spending all your E in the gym.  Generally speaking, you'll want to train in whatever stat your current gym has the best * rating in, but during this guide, you want to try to keep your stats roughly equal.

Required supplies: (>3 day 2700 Happy Castle Rental), ~100 boxes of tissue(purchase from Bits and Bobs), 3 Xanax, 5 Erotic DVDs, 1 Ecstasy, 25 points, ~$2,000 cash, and 20 new player refills New player refills no longer exist.(Approximate total cost is $19,000,000).
Note 1) Since Battle Stats are a core focus of this guide, this is the first major step toward that goal. This training method is known variously as Premium Training, or a Happy Jump. This is not the last time you will do this.
Note 2) If you're new, find this guide valuable, reply to this thread, like the thread, rent a Castle, and send me that log, I will send you some money to cover a few days of your Castle rent.

After you get your new place rented, move in, and have all of the items above, go ahead and use Box of Tissue until your happiness stops increasing or you run out of tissues.

STACKING (takes 18-32 hours)
1) Ensure your Booster Cooldown(orange beer bottle icon) is less than 18 hours(you want it to be zero before you begin the Happy Jump; all this is still just preparation).
2) With your Energy at max, take a Xanax(400 Energy)(from this point until your training, do not use Energy for anything(No praying, no dump searching, no selling losses, no missions, etc).
3) Let your Drug Cooldown run out, and then take another Xanax(650 Energy).
4) Repeat #3(900 Energy). Some guides will recommend stacking four Xanax from 0 E instead of three Xanax from 150 E. Both are valid methods. Each drug you take carries with it an inherent risk of overdose, and a Xanax OD will zero your E and Happy, rendering your happy jump null and void. It's up to you to decide if the extra 100 E is worth the risk.  Stacking 3 Xanax in a row and getting lucky with your cooldown all three times means you'd be ready to jump after 18 hours.  Stacking 4 Xanax in a row and getting unlucky with your cooldown all four times means you'd be ready to jump after 32 hours.  Average time for 3 Xanax would end up being 21 hours, average for 4 Xanax would be 28 hours(7 hour cooldown is average).

JUMPING (should take you no more than a few minutes; you have a 15 minute deadline under ideal circumstances)
5) Ensure your Drug Cooldown and Booster Cooldown are both at 0.
6) Ensure the minutes on the Torn Clock are just after the :15 minute mark(:00, :15, :30, :45). Happiness resets at these times. You want to start just after the reset, to give yourself as much time as possible.
7) Use 5 Erotic DVDs, followed immediately by 1 Ecstasy.
8) Train all your Energy at the gym.
9) Use a points refill, and train all that too.

The goal here is to keep your stats roughly balanced with each other for a time. This keeps you at your most effective for battle for the next step. You should have little trouble taking out targets with anything less than about 7,000 total battle stats.

POWER-LEVELING!
LEAVE your targets on the street. This allows you to attack them again in 20-30 minutes.
With ~7k Battle Stats, it should be a simple matter for you to find your own power-leveling targets. With Donator Status, you also have access to advanced player search. Buy a Macana from the item market, as it is the cheapest, most effective weapon you can obtain at this point. Here's a public list someone else made with more potential leveling targets. Make sure to check activity before assuming these are "safe" targets.
Here's one way to find other potential targets worthy of further consideration:
Using Advanced Search(binoculars; top right), look for targets from Level 20 to 30, Aged 4600 to 11000 days, with 0 to 200 offences, who are Offline. Feel free to release the stops from there to widen or change your result pool.
Basically, what you're looking for is a higher level combined with a very low User Activity score. This will indicate a relatively weak target.
Further considerations: Low total Awards(indicates low activity), High Total Attacks won/lost/stalemated, high Hunting skill, lots of travel to China, UAE, or South Africa(all represent Energy wasted or not spent training), low networth, low or no Xanax taken, low or no Donator days, low or no LSD taken, low or no Ecstasy taken, low or no refills used. Taken all together, these indicators can give you a rough indicator of your target's relative strength.
Be sure to buy some Pepper Spray from Big Al's Gun Shop to give yourself an extra edge against these targets. These purchases share the same 100 item limit as other NPC stores.

After reaching level 15:

Use Yet Another Torn Application to find flowers and plushies in stock overseas.
1) Fly.
2) Buy Plushies or Flowers. Try to find work in a Flower Shop.
3) Sell them to other players.
3a) Repeat steps 1-3.
4) Obtain a Large Suitcase.
4a) Rent a Private Island, or find cheap co-habitation in one.
5) Repeat steps 1-3.
6) Buy a Bazaar.
8) Buy a Laptop.
9) Buy a Stock Ticker.
10) Repeat steps 1-3.
11) Find and join the best faction you can(more total respect is better). Preferably, one that grants + travel items and/or + gym gains.
12) Use this profit to buy more EDVDs, Xanax, Ecstasy, etc, and continue training hard. Be sure to satisfy your faction's minimum requirements at all times, so you can keep those awesome perks. Be sure to make some friends in the process.

Use your Bazaar to sell your plushies and flowers while you fly. Use your Laptop and Stock Ticker to stash profits in the Stock Market(remember to buy low) while you're in the air, so people can't mug you as soon as you land. Sell the Stocks either immediately while you're still in flight(kind of risky), or wait for it to increase a bit(potentially more risky). Remember to save a reserve of cash so you'll have cash to buy when you arrive at your overseas destinations. Stock sales award cash via a cashier's check, which you can only withdraw from the bank when you're Okay in Torn City. This is no longer recommended. It's no longer possible to buy or sell stocks while flying, and selling stocks doesn't send you a cashier's check anyway. The best way to sell your plushies/flowers using this method is to find a reputable buyer in the Trading Post forum and sell your stuff to them. This is the best way to keep yourself safe from muggers. You *can* still use a Bazaar to sell your stuff, but doing so includes the inherent risk of being buy mugged.
Another alternative is to get with a faction with members who are willing to trade in sets for you. Trading sets in for points is almost always a profitable action, and factions are the only way to trade points without using the Points Market. Still, selling points on the market after your trade-in still carries the inherent risk of being buy mugged.

Storing your spare cash in stocks is still a great idea. There are lots of profitable stocks available at different price points.  LSC and THS are two great beginner stocks to buy.  Use the proceeds to afford more Happy Jumps, or reinvest with the primary goal of eventually maxing out your Torn City Bank and buying your first SYM block(I always sell my Drug Packs, but if you like gambling, you can open them instead, and just sell most of your Vicodin).

Eventually, and it won't take long, you'll reach a point where you are financially self-sufficient. Aim to use the EDVD + ecstasy training method until ~180,000 total in each stat. Whenever you aren't able to Happy Jump, use as much natural Energy in the gym as you are able.

Reference my New Player Tips and Answers Guide for more great advice for new players.

If you ever want advice, or have questions about anything in Torn, you're more than welcome to look me up in-game. If, as a result of this paragraph, I get too many people contacting me, I may simply ignore your request, but unless and until that happens, I am more than willing to take the time to explain something to you, or refer you to a guide for it if one exists. Remember: Never ask to ask a question! If you contact me, just ask your question. If you ask to ask me a question, I'll probably either ignore you, or give you a snarky response/ask you a silly question right back.

If you found this guide helpful, please reply to it to share it with others by keeping it at or near the top of the thread list.

Winged_Cougar

It's not as big of a deal as it used to be.

Battlestats are not nearly as valuable as they were years ago, for several reasons.

And until you've got so much Torn cashflow that you no longer need to pay for Donator Packs with real money, you'll always need more cash.

But, travelling to buy things overseas is still fairly profitable(focus on the items that can be traded in for points at the Museum, mostly flowers and plushies), and costs you even less energy than selling losses does.

So my general advice is to only sell as many losses as you absolutely must.

Later on, you can sell revives or war hits instead, and earn far more anyway.

Well, I'm not sure what else the patch notes would be referencing when they mention Dog Tags, but draw your own conclusions I guess.  I assumed it was still in development.

Also, as an anti-inflationary measure, anything is better than nothing.  If Dirty Bombs are the only other method for players to remove respect, then it remains a valuable tool for that reason alone.

And you're probably ignoring the respect not earned in your calculation.  Every attack in a raid doesn't just destroy respect from the target, it also doesn't earn 10+ respect as any regular war hit would.  So maybe double your numbers.  I don't know.  The only time my faction has raided is to destroy an idle faction in hopes of mugging the value from it's owner.

But don't get me wrong.  I'm not trying to defend raiding necessarily.  Just pointing out that this suggestion won't be implemented as such simply because a mechanic like raiding must exist, absent any other accessible route than Dirty Bombs.

D3vl is a bag of hot air.

Honestly the whole, "my dad can beat up your dad" mentality of faction conflict in Torn was already worn-out by the time I made it into highschool, and faction raiding and bringing in allies for warring, generally speaking, are both simply an extension of that brain-dead thought process.

The only meaningful PvP in Torn right now is Elimination and Dog Tags, *primarily* because these things exist as their own factionless events.

The only other meaningful PvP we've even seen in the last several years was the fighting over the island when territories were released.

None of which has anything to do with Raiding.

So I rather doubt removing Raiding will change anything in that regard.  If Dirty Bombs weren't already severely supply-limited, I'm sure it would increase their use.

Aside from that, Raiding is a valuable anti-inflationary tool for the game itself to slow down faction respect progression, so removing it without adding some other respect sink to the game is unlikely at best.

https://www.torn.com/forums.php#/p=threads&f=1&t=16605223&b=0&a=0

Base battle stat is 10 anyway, not 0.  I'm not aware of a method to permanently reduce battle stats below 10 at this stage of the game, though that used to be possible for some battle stats.

Is it RMT if I send you my feet pics in exchange for Donator Packs?

How many Donator Packs is one feet pics worth?

At absolute maximum, selling losses to a friend, maybe, you could expect to get a Xanax for two attacks, maybe, and then only if you agreed to sell several hundred losses in bulk, I suspect.

But not 1 or 2 Xanax per attack.

I can't imagine any scenario where someone would ever offer that, but if it ever did happen, it definitely would not be someone who has bought losses before for 200k each, and not to a mere acquaintance.

The suggestion is absurd.  Which means either you misunderstood something, or you're lying about it.

I'd refuse to believe someone would go on the forums and report their own multi for scamming them, but I've seen people do way dumber shit in this game than that.

There's a few shit heads who base their whole personality around their Karma in Torn.

There's also an upvote threshhold on Suggestions beyond which the devs have pledged to consider ideas(and these thread upvotes correlate to Karma).

Aside from that, and the few other things already mentioned above, Karma is completely meaningless.

The flat math also doesn't add up.  1 upvote/1 downvote doesn't always equal 1 Karma gained/lost, ostensibly because of past "abuses" of the Karma system, so depending on how you look at that, listed Karma on a player's profile isn't a true reflection.  Someone did a full on evaluation of this difference a while back, after the forums API released.  I think the long and short of it is that bursts of activity don't matter as much as sustained long-term activity.

You can go to the link provided, or you can hope that someone rewrites the guide for you here(unlikely).

Either way, you're going to have to read.

Jokes on you, I haven't paid Torn a dime in years. 

When I realized I could stop paying a monthly subscription and still have Donator status, three Xanax a day, an Energy and Nerve Refill everyday, and still have positive cashflow.

Poison Mistletoe is also an option.

Steal half of someone's happy while they're already at 99k. Use one Ecstasy.

Done.

All of these are expensive options.  Usually if you're in line to steal half of someone's happiness with Poison Mistletoe, it's because you paid them to be in line.

Bump

I like free stuff. 

I like free stuff.

Didn't you quit, like... 6 months ago?

Added a line item for addiction decay.

Good riddance.

Bump