I haven't updated this guide since the CE loss update on 20th Oct 2020.
The recent CE loss update is an absolute game changer and is very welcome in my opinion.
Hacking can now be considered "safe" as long as you have enough crime success modifiers to set your average empirical success rate higher than 95.24%.
Some of this guide may still be useful.
Updating this guide would take a huge amount of work which I don't have time for these days - I'll leave the analysis of the new crime meta to others. Good luck!
---
Version 2.5
This guide is intended as an unofficial supplement to the brilliant Crime Guide - Start to End, which the reader should be familiar with first.
I am writing this post to share some observations about 35 NNB, which I call the Sweet Spot for unsafe crimes. By "unsafe" crimes I refer to crimes that can potentially land you in jail and damage your CE. The only unsafe crimes worth any attention are:
-8 Nerve, Transport a truck full of cocaine
-18 Nerve, Hack the FBI mainframe
I call 35 NNB the Sweet Spot because it is the best NNB for having some fun with unsafe crimes, with zero risk to damaging your NNB.
If you are a completionist, 35 NNB is the best time to get the drug merits. If you want to increase your networth, you can earn millions every day from hacking and in my opinion, 35 NNB is the best time to do this.
At 35 NNB you have a one-time opportunity to pause your NNB journey for an amount of time that suits you, earn some rare merits and $$$, before you commit to safe crimes *forever* and spend many months grinding Warehouse Arsons up to the esteemed 60 NNB.
Performing unsafe crimes is relatively uncommon, as most players prefer to hit 60 NNB as fast as possible. Because of this trend, the perceived risks of doing unsafe crimes have been inflated and myths have spread exaggerating how damaging they really are. With this guide I hope to correct that.
In any case the pursuit of unsafe crimes should be a temporary venture. Decide how many of the drug crime merits you want. If you are going to do hacking, set a networth goal or an age deadline. After that, grind safe crimes like everyone else to 60 NNB. Players will need to measure the pros and cons against their current situation to set these goals. I'm writing this guide to help them make an informed decision.
Drug Crimes
The general view of drug crimes is that working towards the drug crime merits will always damage your NNB. This is not the case if you have 35 NNB and the following perks,
-Faction perk: Crimes XXV, +25% crime success rate.
-10/10 in the Crime success merit upgrade, +30% crime success rate.
-Federal Judge starter job, +10% crime success rate (You do not need to stay in the job, just reach the promotion once).
-PSY3690: Bachelor of Psychological Sciences. +10% crime success rate.
-Advanced Driving Tactics enhancer. Reportedly +2% drug crime success rate.
With the above perks and at 35 NNB, you can do the "Transport a truck of cocaine" crime until the cows come home and your NNB will neither rise nor fall. Your CE loss for all the times you are sent to jail will be roughly equal to the CE gains from your successes. In other words, 35 NNB is something of an equilibrium state. If your NNB were any higher (40+), your CE losses for being jailed, which are proportional to your total CE, will exceed your CE gains from your successes from these crimes and your NNB will most likely drop back toward 35 unless you sprinkle your jailtime with some safe crimes.
It's possible that the 35 NNB equilibrium may apply without all of the perks listed above e.g. for a younger player to do it without PSY3690: Bachelor of Psychological Sciences. I'd guess there is indeed an equilibrium point within the 35 NNB total CE range, just with a lower total CE within that range. I don't have the data to confirm this but would welcome it if anyone has done so. I retained 35 NNB throughout the 10k and my jail rate was about 3%. If you get similar results, your NNB should be safe. If you get jailed more often, add some safe crimes to your repertoire.
It'd be prudent to mention that if you are committed to going for the drug crime merits, the following tips will accelerate the journey:
-The +X% success rate perks mentioned above will give you more green results, and therefore fewer blue and red results, meaning you will get your merits faster and with fewer Nerve points gone to waste.
-Consider working in a 10* Pub. The specials are excellent for crimes and combo very well with the following tips. Note that 10* Pubs do not normally pay a salary so you will need an income from elsewhere. Your job choice should consider all aspects of gameplay including earnings, gym gains, and many other things to suit your playstyle. Other companies can also help with crimes.
-If you can afford to use Nerve refills, use them! Consider also increasing your Nerve bar via the merit upgrade and find a faction with a decent Nerve bar bonus to get access to more Nerve per day. Setting your total to a multiple of 8 is a good time.
-Consider putting aside a daily budget for premium alcohol. Note that Nerve from any alcohol other than beer is generally more expensive than the daily refill, depending on your perks.
-Make the most of St. Patrick's Day and International Beer Day!
I managed a rate of about 1k drug crimes per month. I've heard of people doing it faster than this, achieving the 10k in about 200 days in total, who made optimal use of alcohol and job specials. For a more comprehensive guide to Drug crimes, check out Who_knows_who's guide here.
Hacking
Hacking is an often overlooked way of making money, earning you ~$300k for 18 Nerve and provides the highest $ per Nerve compared to all other crimes. Whether Hacking is right for you depends on your networth and how quickly you want to grow your NNB. Some (rich) players will argue that the associated delay in joining a PA team is not worth the money. It's a little known fact that hacking earnings are comparable with PA earnings, and on top of that, the investment opportunity for earning millions through hacking today, and applying a measured delay to reaching 60 NNB, may be worth it for players with low to mid networth. When you first reach 35 NNB, you probably could do with this extra income stream.
I personally collected the data in the table below to present how much money we're talking about.
(Data collected at 40 NNB and with the perks listed at the end of this section. Success rates will be a little lower at 35 NNB. Note that the daily earnings are for 17 attempts per day, and not for the "one jail per day" rule which I discuss later. The latter will have lower daily earnings BUT is guaranteed to keep your NNB safe.)
Something that has been a point of discussion in the comments - I believe hacking the FBI is better than Hacking a bank, based on the data I've personally collected in the table above. Despite occasionally paying under 200k, the FBI average payout is clearly higher than the bank. I'm aware some hackers report higher success rates with the bank, though even if the RNG was being a bit trolly while I collected the data, I'd guess that the true success rates are close enough that the FBI should still be picked for the higher payout. I appreciate that 100 attempts of each isn't necessarily a representative sample size. It takes a lot of Nerve to study this, so please collect and share data if you can. I have personally retired from hacking now so I will not be collecting more data myself.
The following simple rule will ensure you not only retain your CE while earning money through hacking but, what's more, you can actually increase it.
Hack the FBI until you get jailed once. Then spend the rest of your Nerve on the same day on 9+ Nerve safe crimes - Stealth Virus/ Assassinate mob boss/ Warehouse Arson/ Steal a parked car/ Kidnap Mayor (keep cash on hand to avoid getting jailed). Make sure you use all your Nerve every day. Don't hack again until the next day. On some days you won't get caught at all, less often you will get caught straight away. Just stick to the rule and don't get greedy.
If you want to max out your earnings, kidnap the mayor with your residual Nerve. Check out 177013's guide. Otherwise, pick whichever crime merit you want to contribute toward.
Your NNB will be safe if you follow this rule.
Here's the logic to back this up. While doing drug crimes I would get jailed around 3% of the time, and I would generally get through ~320 Nerve per day with negligible expense (24 beers and natural Nerve). This equates to 40 drug crime attempts, of which on average 33 would succeed, 6 would be blues and 1 would put me in jail. I know, from the Drugs section above, that this pattern safely keeps me on 35 NNB.
Hacking greens are worth far more than drug crime greens. By Hacking until I hit the jail, and then *only* doing safe crimes (9+ Nerve only) for the rest of that day, I can be sure than my net CE change is positive rather than negative. I'd still be getting the same 1 red result each day, but the sum of my greens would be worth more CE than what I was gaining during drug crimes.
(If you are less active and use less than 320 Nerve per day, you'll have to scale the jail frequency to once per however long it takes you to use 320 Nerve)
You can further optimise this rule if you can do a bit of maths and can be bothered to track your successes and failures as the days go by, but as a general rule, hacking at 35 NNB is safe if you only risk getting jailed once per day.
(One assumption I've made is that going to jail brings the same % CE loss, no matter what crime it is you get caught doing. I can't find any sources saying otherwise. If someone could confirm this in the comments, that'd be super.)
I can confirm that under the "one jail per day" rule, I actually increased my NNB to 40 while earning as much as $6m on a good day. In other words, under that rule I had a net CE gain, and could have got away with earning more and risking more jailtime while remaining at 35 NNB if I wanted. The NNB equilibrium for one jail per day lies somewhere within the 40 NNB CE range, if you have the perks listed below.
You can just about make a profit from 25 point Nerve refills if your total Nerve bar is 72 or higher (based on current cheap af points). Hacking is a viable way of funding the "You've got some Nerve" merit for 250 Nerve refills.
Don't use premium alcohol if you want to make money. This will net a loss. Beer is great.
The following perks will increase your hacking success rate and therefore your daily earnings. You do not need all of them to keep your NNB safe. If you don't have them all, under the "one jail per day" rule you will simply earn less per day on average as you will get caught sooner, but will still only have 1 red result per day.
-Faction perk: Crimes XXV, +25% crime success rate.
-10/10 in the Crime success merit upgrade, +30% crime success rate.
[background color=#ffffff]-Federal Judge starter job, +10% crime success rate (You do not need to stay in the job, just reach the promotion once).[/background]
-PSY3690: Bachelor of Psychological Sciences. +10% crime success rate.
-CMT2610: Networking. +10% hacking crime success rate.
-Wireless Dongle enhancer. Reportedly +2% hacking crime success rate.
Summary
I recommend that all players who are on 35 NNB, or are working towards 35 NNB, should consider "pausing" their journey to 60 NNB in order to:
-Get the drug merits, the last of which is for 10k drug crimes. You don't have to get all of the drug merits e.g. a popular choice is to stop at 1k or 2k drug crimes.
AND/OR
-Enjoy earning a few $mill per day through Hacking crimes. This will also contribute toward the computer crime merits. If you go down the hacking route, I recommend you set a networth goal or age deadline, after which you should retire from hacking.
Your NNB should be safe, "paused" at 35 NNB, or indeed grow very slowly, if you follow the guidelines above. You can pick up Arsons again whenever you want and the delay to joining a PA team is pretty much equal to the amount of time you spend having fun with unsafe crimes. Don't let anyone scare you with falsehoods about trashing your NNB.
I hope this opens a few people's minds up to doing something other than arsons, and is informative about the robustness of mid-level NNB.
Please post any feedback or suggestions below. If you enjoyed this guide, be a pal, go to jail and bust someone who got caught with a truck full of cocaine or is being questioned by the FBI for suspicious online activity.
The recent CE loss update is an absolute game changer and is very welcome in my opinion.
Hacking can now be considered "safe" as long as you have enough crime success modifiers to set your average empirical success rate higher than 95.24%.
Some of this guide may still be useful.
Updating this guide would take a huge amount of work which I don't have time for these days - I'll leave the analysis of the new crime meta to others. Good luck!
---
Version 2.5
This guide is intended as an unofficial supplement to the brilliant Crime Guide - Start to End, which the reader should be familiar with first.
I am writing this post to share some observations about 35 NNB, which I call the Sweet Spot for unsafe crimes. By "unsafe" crimes I refer to crimes that can potentially land you in jail and damage your CE. The only unsafe crimes worth any attention are:
-8 Nerve, Transport a truck full of cocaine
-18 Nerve, Hack the FBI mainframe
I call 35 NNB the Sweet Spot because it is the best NNB for having some fun with unsafe crimes, with zero risk to damaging your NNB.
If you are a completionist, 35 NNB is the best time to get the drug merits. If you want to increase your networth, you can earn millions every day from hacking and in my opinion, 35 NNB is the best time to do this.
At 35 NNB you have a one-time opportunity to pause your NNB journey for an amount of time that suits you, earn some rare merits and $$$, before you commit to safe crimes *forever* and spend many months grinding Warehouse Arsons up to the esteemed 60 NNB.
Performing unsafe crimes is relatively uncommon, as most players prefer to hit 60 NNB as fast as possible. Because of this trend, the perceived risks of doing unsafe crimes have been inflated and myths have spread exaggerating how damaging they really are. With this guide I hope to correct that.
In any case the pursuit of unsafe crimes should be a temporary venture. Decide how many of the drug crime merits you want. If you are going to do hacking, set a networth goal or an age deadline. After that, grind safe crimes like everyone else to 60 NNB. Players will need to measure the pros and cons against their current situation to set these goals. I'm writing this guide to help them make an informed decision.
Drug Crimes
The general view of drug crimes is that working towards the drug crime merits will always damage your NNB. This is not the case if you have 35 NNB and the following perks,
-Faction perk: Crimes XXV, +25% crime success rate.
-10/10 in the Crime success merit upgrade, +30% crime success rate.
-Federal Judge starter job, +10% crime success rate (You do not need to stay in the job, just reach the promotion once).
-PSY3690: Bachelor of Psychological Sciences. +10% crime success rate.
-Advanced Driving Tactics enhancer. Reportedly +2% drug crime success rate.
With the above perks and at 35 NNB, you can do the "Transport a truck of cocaine" crime until the cows come home and your NNB will neither rise nor fall. Your CE loss for all the times you are sent to jail will be roughly equal to the CE gains from your successes. In other words, 35 NNB is something of an equilibrium state. If your NNB were any higher (40+), your CE losses for being jailed, which are proportional to your total CE, will exceed your CE gains from your successes from these crimes and your NNB will most likely drop back toward 35 unless you sprinkle your jailtime with some safe crimes.
It's possible that the 35 NNB equilibrium may apply without all of the perks listed above e.g. for a younger player to do it without PSY3690: Bachelor of Psychological Sciences. I'd guess there is indeed an equilibrium point within the 35 NNB total CE range, just with a lower total CE within that range. I don't have the data to confirm this but would welcome it if anyone has done so. I retained 35 NNB throughout the 10k and my jail rate was about 3%. If you get similar results, your NNB should be safe. If you get jailed more often, add some safe crimes to your repertoire.
It'd be prudent to mention that if you are committed to going for the drug crime merits, the following tips will accelerate the journey:
-The +X% success rate perks mentioned above will give you more green results, and therefore fewer blue and red results, meaning you will get your merits faster and with fewer Nerve points gone to waste.
-Consider working in a 10* Pub. The specials are excellent for crimes and combo very well with the following tips. Note that 10* Pubs do not normally pay a salary so you will need an income from elsewhere. Your job choice should consider all aspects of gameplay including earnings, gym gains, and many other things to suit your playstyle. Other companies can also help with crimes.
-If you can afford to use Nerve refills, use them! Consider also increasing your Nerve bar via the merit upgrade and find a faction with a decent Nerve bar bonus to get access to more Nerve per day. Setting your total to a multiple of 8 is a good time.
-Consider putting aside a daily budget for premium alcohol. Note that Nerve from any alcohol other than beer is generally more expensive than the daily refill, depending on your perks.
-Make the most of St. Patrick's Day and International Beer Day!
I managed a rate of about 1k drug crimes per month. I've heard of people doing it faster than this, achieving the 10k in about 200 days in total, who made optimal use of alcohol and job specials. For a more comprehensive guide to Drug crimes, check out Who_knows_who's guide here.
Hacking
Hacking is an often overlooked way of making money, earning you ~$300k for 18 Nerve and provides the highest $ per Nerve compared to all other crimes. Whether Hacking is right for you depends on your networth and how quickly you want to grow your NNB. Some (rich) players will argue that the associated delay in joining a PA team is not worth the money. It's a little known fact that hacking earnings are comparable with PA earnings, and on top of that, the investment opportunity for earning millions through hacking today, and applying a measured delay to reaching 60 NNB, may be worth it for players with low to mid networth. When you first reach 35 NNB, you probably could do with this extra income stream.
I personally collected the data in the table below to present how much money we're talking about.
| Bank | FBI | |
| Attempts | 103 | 101 |
| Fail count | 6 | 3 |
| Success rate | 94.2% | 97.0% |
| Lowest payout (not counting failures) | $202,709 | $111,230 |
| Highest payout | $395,353 | $440,442 |
| Average payout (not counting failures) | $292,957 | $342,956 |
| Average payout (counting $0 for failures) | $276,055 | $335,229 |
| Average earnings per day (17 attempts, 306 Nerve used) | $4,692,943 | $5,698,901 |
Something that has been a point of discussion in the comments - I believe hacking the FBI is better than Hacking a bank, based on the data I've personally collected in the table above. Despite occasionally paying under 200k, the FBI average payout is clearly higher than the bank. I'm aware some hackers report higher success rates with the bank, though even if the RNG was being a bit trolly while I collected the data, I'd guess that the true success rates are close enough that the FBI should still be picked for the higher payout. I appreciate that 100 attempts of each isn't necessarily a representative sample size. It takes a lot of Nerve to study this, so please collect and share data if you can. I have personally retired from hacking now so I will not be collecting more data myself.
The following simple rule will ensure you not only retain your CE while earning money through hacking but, what's more, you can actually increase it.
Hack the FBI until you get jailed once. Then spend the rest of your Nerve on the same day on 9+ Nerve safe crimes - Stealth Virus/ Assassinate mob boss/ Warehouse Arson/ Steal a parked car/ Kidnap Mayor (keep cash on hand to avoid getting jailed). Make sure you use all your Nerve every day. Don't hack again until the next day. On some days you won't get caught at all, less often you will get caught straight away. Just stick to the rule and don't get greedy.
If you want to max out your earnings, kidnap the mayor with your residual Nerve. Check out 177013's guide. Otherwise, pick whichever crime merit you want to contribute toward.
Your NNB will be safe if you follow this rule.
Here's the logic to back this up. While doing drug crimes I would get jailed around 3% of the time, and I would generally get through ~320 Nerve per day with negligible expense (24 beers and natural Nerve). This equates to 40 drug crime attempts, of which on average 33 would succeed, 6 would be blues and 1 would put me in jail. I know, from the Drugs section above, that this pattern safely keeps me on 35 NNB.
Hacking greens are worth far more than drug crime greens. By Hacking until I hit the jail, and then *only* doing safe crimes (9+ Nerve only) for the rest of that day, I can be sure than my net CE change is positive rather than negative. I'd still be getting the same 1 red result each day, but the sum of my greens would be worth more CE than what I was gaining during drug crimes.
(If you are less active and use less than 320 Nerve per day, you'll have to scale the jail frequency to once per however long it takes you to use 320 Nerve)
You can further optimise this rule if you can do a bit of maths and can be bothered to track your successes and failures as the days go by, but as a general rule, hacking at 35 NNB is safe if you only risk getting jailed once per day.
(One assumption I've made is that going to jail brings the same % CE loss, no matter what crime it is you get caught doing. I can't find any sources saying otherwise. If someone could confirm this in the comments, that'd be super.)
I can confirm that under the "one jail per day" rule, I actually increased my NNB to 40 while earning as much as $6m on a good day. In other words, under that rule I had a net CE gain, and could have got away with earning more and risking more jailtime while remaining at 35 NNB if I wanted. The NNB equilibrium for one jail per day lies somewhere within the 40 NNB CE range, if you have the perks listed below.
You can just about make a profit from 25 point Nerve refills if your total Nerve bar is 72 or higher (based on current cheap af points). Hacking is a viable way of funding the "You've got some Nerve" merit for 250 Nerve refills.
Don't use premium alcohol if you want to make money. This will net a loss. Beer is great.
The following perks will increase your hacking success rate and therefore your daily earnings. You do not need all of them to keep your NNB safe. If you don't have them all, under the "one jail per day" rule you will simply earn less per day on average as you will get caught sooner, but will still only have 1 red result per day.
-Faction perk: Crimes XXV, +25% crime success rate.
-10/10 in the Crime success merit upgrade, +30% crime success rate.
[background color=#ffffff]-Federal Judge starter job, +10% crime success rate (You do not need to stay in the job, just reach the promotion once).[/background]
-PSY3690: Bachelor of Psychological Sciences. +10% crime success rate.
-CMT2610: Networking. +10% hacking crime success rate.
-Wireless Dongle enhancer. Reportedly +2% hacking crime success rate.
Summary
I recommend that all players who are on 35 NNB, or are working towards 35 NNB, should consider "pausing" their journey to 60 NNB in order to:
-Get the drug merits, the last of which is for 10k drug crimes. You don't have to get all of the drug merits e.g. a popular choice is to stop at 1k or 2k drug crimes.
AND/OR
-Enjoy earning a few $mill per day through Hacking crimes. This will also contribute toward the computer crime merits. If you go down the hacking route, I recommend you set a networth goal or age deadline, after which you should retire from hacking.
Your NNB should be safe, "paused" at 35 NNB, or indeed grow very slowly, if you follow the guidelines above. You can pick up Arsons again whenever you want and the delay to joining a PA team is pretty much equal to the amount of time you spend having fun with unsafe crimes. Don't let anyone scare you with falsehoods about trashing your NNB.
I hope this opens a few people's minds up to doing something other than arsons, and is informative about the robustness of mid-level NNB.
Please post any feedback or suggestions below. If you enjoyed this guide, be a pal, go to jail and bust someone who got caught with a truck full of cocaine or is being questioned by the FBI for suspicious online activity.