What is CE?

Nerve bar is based on your Crime Experience (CE) in the game. Any crime you do, and anyone you bust, adds a static amount to your CE. This is a hidden stat, and the only way to 'view' your back-end CE is your natural nerve bar value. This is the amount of nerve you'd have before accounting for any merits or faction boosts. Natural Nerve Bar (NNB) goes up by values of 5 each time you hit the hidden levels of CE in the back end of Torn. It starts at 10 and caps out at 45 Now 60!. Any time you get jailed doing a crime or organized crime, your CE is reduced by a PERCENTAGE, not a static amount. What this means is that 1 or 2 failures of a crime with a high nerve bar can take a massive chunk of your CE. Which can take forever to get back.

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

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

There are a few crimes that HOSPITALIZE you, rather than jail you. Getting burnt doing Arson, or mauled by a guard dog, for example. These DO NOT reduce your crime experience. Similarly, and counter-intuitively, getting caught while trying to bust someone out of jail DOES NOT reduce your crime experience. I have extensively tested this.

So what crimes should I do?

There are 2 paths to take with crimes. The first is achieving 60 natural nerve bar, to participate in Political Assassination Organized Crimes, and gain a high CE. The second is to achieve all crime merits, which means you sacrifice your nerve bar/crime experience gain for merits, as some merits require you to do crimes that send you to jail, but you do not have to come back and complete these merits later, when the cost is much greater of failing a crime.

You can gain almost all the merits based on crimes by doing 'safe' crimes. Ones that you will only be hospitalized or fail (blue/brown result), and not get jailed at all, speeding your way up to the maximum 60 natural nerve.

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

When you begin, you obviously stick to doing the easiest crimes in each category until you see your nerve bar rise to the next increment of 5. You should get up to 15 nerve pretty quickly with the starter refills by doing the bootlegging crime and stealing jackets from the clothes shop. If you get caught at these early levels, it isn't such a big problem, as the % taken from your CE is not damaging long-term. Once you hit 20 nnb however, you should try to only do safe crimes, which will be outlined in the next section.

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

Kid Old Woman Businessman

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

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

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

Edit: Someone mentioned it's not a bad idea to just do thousands of steal jackets to proceed up to 25 and 30 NNB, as you get 2 merits every 2500 theft crimes. This is good for merits, but I don't think it's the quickest way to improve your CE. Again, up to each individual what they prefer!

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

- If you have no merits in crime success %, continue doing the 7 nerve 'Thorough Robbery' for 200-300 more. You will need to get your CE up a little higher if you have no merits or specials in the faction to be successful with Stealth Virus. - If you have merits in crime success %, start doing the 9 nerve crime: 'Stealth Virus'. If you aren't in a faction with Enormity V or higher to increase to crime success % as well, I would recommend staying with Armed Robbery for even longer, but you can start doing stealth virus at this point just because of the faction special, and it helps to have merits as well. (I had 5 points in crime success by this time)

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

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

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

Hopefully you've got your drivers license now, so it's time to get a gas can from the market (cheaper than spending points on it). Warehouse Arson has a really really high success rate, so you're able to start doing it as soon as you hit 30 NNB as long as you have some merits in Crime Success and the Criminality Faction upgrades for crime success. You will get hospitalized in something like 1 in 30 attempts, so keep some morphine on you. Now, get settled in, because you'll be doing a lot of Arson. It's a decent bit of income, and is such a high success rate you should do this almost all the way up to 45 NNB. Some people recommend keeping doing it past 40 NNB, just because of its super high success rate.

Once you hit 40 NNB:

Perform the 10 nerve crime - 'Mob Boss' Perform the 11 nerve crime - 'Warehouse Arson' Perform the 15 nerve crime - 'Kidnap the Mayor' The 15 nerve crime, 'Kidnap the Mayor', is the highest CE crime. However, this crime has a penalty of $75,000 if you fail it (which happens regularly), and if you don't have this amount of cash on your person, you will get jailed and lose CE. So keep some cash on you. The cash reward for this crime is quite nice, but it also has only a ~60% success rate. Lower than Stealth Virus. So if you got frustrated there, you will lose your bananas doing Kidnap the Mayor. At times, you can use a nerve refill for ~45 nerve, or nerve boosters, and do 3x Kidnap the Mayor, and fail each and every one. I once failed 11 in a row. Super frustrating...

Please note, that due to testing real CE values in 2018, I have determined that ARSON is still the best crime overall for increasing CE, based on its super high success rate compared to Kidnap the Mayor. So what has been said above is actually wrong, and there is actually no great reason to perform the Kidnapping crime, ever. Jacket theft will earn you the theft merits faster, and arsons will get you the most CE for nerve spent, so I want to apologize to all that have followed this advice in the past.

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

SO, Once you hit 45 NNB... how do you keep it safe? Onwards to 60nnb! With the recent changes to nerve bar, you should just continue doing the safe crimes that you were doing at 40nnb.

If, however, you'd like to stop pushing your CE and try to go for some merits, there are some you can achieve with zero risk. I have listed these below, with their relative success rates. They are:

For the thefts merit: Do the 4 nerve, Shoplift, Steal From Clothes Shop, Jacket crime. Jacket success percentage is 100%. If you ever steal a jacket and get a blue failure, please screenshot and let me know.

For the computer crimes merit: Do the 9 nerve, Stealth Virus crime. No jailings, but plenty of failures. Computer crime success percentage is around 75%.

For the Murder merit: Do the 10 nerve, Assassinate a Mob Boss crime. Many people agree that 'Assassinate a Mob Boss' is the easiest to do. This crime does not have a chance to get jailed. Instead, just like Arson, you'll only go to hospital if you fail. Assassination crime success is around 75%

For the fraud merit: Do the 11 nerve, Warehouse Arson crime. Pretty straightforward. No need to do any other fraud crimes. Arson crime success rate is about 95%, with 4% chance to get hospitalized, and 1% chance to fail.

For the GTA merit: Do the 12 nerve, Steal a Parked Car crime. You never get jailed doing this one, only failures. People always try to steal a car from a showroom or hijack a car. IT IS NOT WORTH IT, TRUST ME!! Just steal the parked cars. You get about 23k to 32k net worth from each car you steal with this crime, and it's not worth risking the CE loss to try to steal a more expensive car. Grand Theft Auto crime success rate is around 75%.

OK, now comes the tricky bit. This is path #2 when it comes to developing your nerve bar. Obviously some of the merits are impossible to achieve without getting jailed. These are the drug crimes merits. There are a couple of theories on how to minimize the amount of times you get jailed. Every crime has a chance of failure, and a chance of jailing. This is random, and sometimes you'll get caught twice in a row, sometimes you'll do hundreds of successes in a row. Over years of testing and tracking, there are no great theories on how to avoid getting jailed, it's just pure randomness.

For the 8 nerve, Transport Drugs crime, many people agree that the 'Transport Cocaine' crime is the highest success %. This merit is a complete bastard, and you won't be able to avoid getting jailed. It's around a 2% chance to get jailed, and around 83% chance of success. It actually gives reasonable CE, so whilst you do lose a % each time from jailing, the successes can keep your NNB relatively steady around 40-45 nnb whilst you're completing the 10,000 merit.

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

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

For anyone choosing to go onwards towards 60nnb first, here is an achievement thread from someone who did the drug crime merits LAST, and still managed to retain his 60nnb - https://www.torn.com/forums.php?p=threads&f=16&t=15984832&b=0&a=0. Please bear in mind that this person had a CE rating many multiples past 60 nnb, due to being able to use pre-nerf busting to boost this to an extremely high level. Nobody will be able to replicate this that is just starting the game, so if you want the drug crime merits, do them early on.

Summary of Crimes

That pretty much sums it up. There is not a really big financial reward for doing crimes, and that's why my advice is just to stick to the safe crimes until you really need the merits for the ones that aren't. I've tried Hacking, and Arms Trafficking, and Bombings, and Pawn Shop, and Counterfeiting, and they really just aren't worth getting caught. A couple of times when we needed casino tokens, we Counterfeited, but I lost my 45nnb very very quickly by getting caught about 3 times within 10 crimes. Clearly you are your own boss, but I think it's important to keep a 45nnb 60nnb if at all possible, as you just never know when the Ched-meister will change something around, and it will be super important to have it.

BUSTING! I forgot to mention busting. Busting people from the jail WILL increase your CE by a little bit. It used to be a massive amount, but Ched nerfed it hard very recently, and now you can only bust 4-6 people PER DAY from the jail before the chance of getting caught is almost 100%. I can't recommend busting people any more simply for CE. The failure rate is too high, it costs nerve that you could be using for a good CE crime, and it just takes too long to get merits. Do them once you've hit 60nnb. It's important to mention that it is almost impossible to bust someone of a higher level than you, so just concentrate on busting people of a lower level than you.

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

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