Basic Elements
Torn User Interface Elements & Much more
If you’re a new player, I highly recommend reading the game rules before you begin playing. Breaking the rules may result in a warning or temporary ban, and repeated violations can lead to permanent account suspension. Click here to read the rules.
After familiarizing yourself with the rules, you can proceed to read the rest of this page.
Sidebar Top
The sidebar displays icons for money, points, merits, and bars for energy, nerve, happiness, and more. It also provides easy access to quick links for the city and various locations within it.
Icons
Icons are an essential part of the sidebar since they display all the status’s of your character, for example if your under drug cooldown or booster cooldown the Icons will display it. You can edit their positioning here. Make sure you pay close attention to your Icons.
Money
The Amount displayed is cash on Hand, It can be used to make purchases in the city shops and Item Market, it can also be stolen by other players by attacking and mugging you. If you come across substantial amount of money you should get it to safety as soon as possible to avoid losing it to mugs. There are multiple ways to safely store cash, I have a guide up here.
I have a money making guide that you can read here
Level
Every action in torn results in gain of experience most of them give very little amount but Attacking and leaving players in the streets give the most, the experience gained is also based on level of the opponent so If you attack and leave a level 100 you’d gain much more compared to leaving a random level 1 noob.
It is Recommended that you hit level 15 as soon as possible to unlock Travelling which enables you to earn a lot of money. The next page is a level 15 guide.
Points
Points can be used to purchase energy/nerve refills (usable once per day) and also to unlock Bazaar, Stock Market and much more permanently. Points are purchasable from the points market
Merits
Merits are like skill in other games, they can be used to better a particular skill of your character. As a new player it is recommended to Spend your merits on Education Length reduction.
Energy
Energy is a valuable resource, it can be used to attack (25 per) or trained in the gym to gain stats (which allows you to attack and win against more players). This is why buying a Donator Pack as soon as possible is recommended. Some other ways to get energy is by using Drugs ( LSD, Xanax) which have drug cooldown or by using Energy Drinks and Feathery Hotel Coupons (they contribute towards Booster cooldown). As a new player you should avoid using energy drinks and FHCs they are very expensive instead use LSD or Xanax.
Nerve
Nerve enables you to commit crimes, you should never let it fill up to max, keep doing crimes whenever you can. drink beers to gain nerve they are incredibly cheap and give 1 Nerve per use. Crimes 2.0 overview can be found here.
Happiness
Happiness should not be ignored the more ‘Happy’ you have the more stats that you gain from training in the gym. You can gain happiness from eating candies and increase the ‘Happy’ limit by moving into a better property.
Life
Life is considered as the 5th stat, Life depends on your level, it regenerates by 5% of total life every 5mins You can also regenrate it by using Medical Items like Small First Aid Kit, First Aid Kit, Morphines or a compatible blood bag.
Chain
Chain bar only shows after you join a faction since its related to the faction, chain can be built to earn bonus respect from attacking before the timer runs out. Bonuses give the faction additional respect which can be used to unlock factional upgrades.
You will need to do 10 hits in 5 minutes to start a chain once the chain is started you can make a single hit before the timer runs out so it doesn’t break.
Mail Events & Awards
Torn is a social game, while there’s a chat system there’s also a mail system you can use to mail other people. Chats in their current form are kind of unreliable filled with some bugs so mail is a solid alternative if you do not want the person to miss your message. Factions also send newsletters (they may contain updates or instructions) via mail.
Events display everything that happens to you in chronological order, there used to be a 2,500 limit on events but now they are just saved forever.
The awards button take you to the awards page that display Honorbars, Medals and Merits allocation. play around with different honorbars choose the one you like, other players can see the equipped honorbar only, while Medals are public information
Areas
Home
You can think of home like an overview of everything thats happening with your account, Its a nice dashboard that will display your working stats, Skills, battle stats, your criminal records, latest attacks, weapons you have equipped and much more.
You can also view all perks your faction along with all perks you currently have activated under Personal Perks section.
Items / Inventory
Items page show all the items you currently own you can use them, send them to others or trash them.
there’s also a filter by category functionality, if you feel like your items have disappeared its possible you might have this turned on
Ammo Locker can also be accessed on the items page, make sure head over there when you need to buy ammo for your primary or secondary weapons. Melee weapons do not consume ammo.
City
There are 2 views available for the City, Quick Links and City Map
Items spawn on the City Map, they stay there indefinitely till they are claimed if your lucky you might find big ticket items like Stat Enhancers, Cesiums or Hazmat Suits. Check their value in the Item Market and sell them to a trader, Please do not use Stat Enhancers (dumbbells, boxing gloves, skateboard, parachutes) you’d be essentially throwing away a $450.000.000 item.
Quick Links can be used to quickly open a place in the city. feel free to spend some time exploring the city.
Job
There are 2 paths you can take with Job, you can either work with the city jobs/NPC jobs or work at a player owned company
City jobs pay really less, but they give you work stats, a bunch of merits are also available to be unlocked in a city job and they also are a stepping stone to unlocking passives like reviving, spying etc and then moving over to a company once you have good work stats
Directors may message you to join their Companies, well congrats on getting an invite but dont forget to enquire about the pay and specials before you join them. If you like what they offer apply to their company, otherwise you can also post on This Thread to receive offers from directors.
I said 2 options but there’s the third option to run a company its not really gucci, the management of company itself is a PIA and can quickly turn into a money sink if you don’t know what you’re doing, before you even start a company its recommended that you buy both the company stocks TGP and TCP and also complete Business course. There’s always the gratification of building up a company yourself… the bootstraps yada yada thingy but generally its not worth it you’d be better off just buying an existing company and running it.
Gym
Gym is where you train your stats, it costs energy and a small amount of happiness to train them, the more happy you have the more you gain per energy so moving over to a better property that gives much more happy is essential. you can rent properties from the rental market. Please avoid buying them since you will need a Private Island rental when you hit level 15 anyways and this guide will help you get there quickly!
Properties
This is the page where you will manage the properties that you and your spouse own or rent. As a beginner it is recommended that you rent properties rather than out right buying them, before level 15 it may be a good idea to rent anything upto a palace or castle ofcourse if you can afford an Island then sure go for it
Once you hit level 15, living in a Private island is highly recommended, as with the “Air Strip and Pilot” upgrade, you would be able to travel to destinations, 30% faster and bring back 10 extra items, translating to more profit for you
Path to rental market: City -> Estate Agents -> Rental Market
Education
Education helps you to unlock passive perks as well as gain a bunch of merits, currently Education has 12 Bachelors which take around 6.6 years or so total to complete without any perks. One of the biggest mistakes people make is ignoring education in their early days.
You can reduce the time by buying West Side University Stock which reduces by 10%, Jobs at Fitness Centres or Hair Salon have specials that help you to reduce by 30 minutes per job point, Becoming a Principal in Education NPC job reduces it by 10% and ofcourse merits 2% per level for a total of 20% with 55 merits. All of these help you to reduce education time by a considerable amount, It is recommended that you complete all educations as soon as possible.
DrVoid has a good education guide here
Crimes
Crimes use up Nerve which regenerates 1 per 5 minutes, so keep doing as many as you can every bit adds up start with the small easy ones then slowly move up. You can also Drink Beer which is very cheap and can be bought from City -> Bits N Bobs, If they run out you can pay a bit more to buy them from Item Market
Getting jailed for fails used to be a lot more devastating in the past but now its been changed you still wouldn’t want to fail them tho.
You can read crimes 2.0 beta guide here
Missions
Do your George Missions they are quite straight forward If you have any questions feel free to ask in the new players chat.
Once your done with George missions you need to hit level 5 and then wait for a day to unlock and receive the Next agents Anonymous and Duke, at the moment Anonymous has 1 single mission and Duke will keep regenerating the same ones. New Mission Agent Amanda may be released some time in the future.
Newspaper
Torn runs its own Newspaper providing you with updates, reports, drama and interesting articles on the regular. You can also place personals, explore banner ads, bounties, job listings, comics and read the chronicles (there is a single merit attached to reading this)
Interesting articles are always welcome from players so If you have an article worthy Idea simply send a mail to sugarvalves.
Jail
If you fail a crime and get jailed you get sent to the city jail don’t worry about it though the chances are you will quickly be out, busted by a player. Why? because there are merits attached to busting & Bailing players out of jail. You can also use the Lawyer Business Card item to instantly get out of jail (adds one hour of booster cooldown)
My personal suggestion is to avoid busting other players till your atleast 30 or 35 NNB since thats when your success rate starts to go up, another thing to note is failing a bust removes a tiny amount of CE so don’t worry about failing busts. There is also a cooldown attached to busting I will list a decent guide below to further read on this topic.
Advanced Jail Bust Guide by Nosy
Hospital
Being attacked by other players or losing to them gets you sent to the hospital, you can use Medical Items like Small First Aid Kit, First Aid Kit, Morphine apart from these also Blood Bags which require Intro to Biochemistry -> Intravenous Therapy education to unlock. Make sure you stock up on some of them because you cannot access Item Market from the hospital.
Small First Aid Kits remove 20 minutes of hospital time. First Aid Kits remove 40 minutes of hospital time. Morphines remove 70 minutes of hospital time. Blood bags remove 2 hours.
Medical Items also restore life, Small first aid kits restores 5%, First aid kits restores 10%, Morphines restores 15%, and finally blood bags restores 30% of life, this is why I’d highly recommend you do the Intravenous Therapy course.
Using wrong/incompatible blood bag allows you to self hosp, basically hide in the hospital for upto 1 and half hour at a time. This is the cheapest method to do so. Players with AB+ blood type previously were unable to self hosp, but now they can use Ipecaf syrup to self hosp.
blood bags usage guide
You can also be revived by other players it generally costs a xanax or 1 million dollars to be revived but some do it for free (to get 1,000 revives merit) you can request a “freevive” in Trade chat.
Casino
Casino has 11 Games available, fell free to have fun with them but It is generally recommended to stay away from the casino if you suck at it. If you are good with poker then feel free to give it a try. If you struggle from addiction or wish to take a break from the casino get yourself an exclusion.
If you still wish to spend your 75 tokens daily I will suggest first spinning the $1,000 and $50,000 spin the wheel they have been proven to be generally net positive, then buy a single lottery ticket hey who knows you might get lucky! Then spend the remaining of your tokens on Slots $10 - $10,000 fingers crossed you win the jackpot!
Hall Of Fame
Hall of Fame displays your ranking relative to others, there is a merit attached to being top 250 in any of the personal categories this is a end game merit so dont worry you’ll likely not achieve it as a new player without considerable amount of efforts.
Factions / My Faction
The way factions are displayed on the factions tab is by battle stats once you gain more battle stats better factions will be displayed. Ofcourse you can choose to not join any of the factions on the list you can make a post on this thread and get messages from leaders that will accept you.
Once you join a faction it takes 3 days for you to receive perks make sure you read all newsletters sent by the faction and follow any instructions or rules to not get kicked. I have a list of Factions Accepting New Players Here
To join or not to join a faction
Sure you could be spending your first week not in a faction not getting any of the benefits they offer and do your own thing, but in my opinion If you receive an invite or find a decent faction above 600k respect willing to take you in you should apply and join them because missing out on important training perks, ability to borrow faction armor/weapons, advice from leaders and fun may not be worth it. Just ensure that the leadership is actively and proactively doing their best to provide you with a good experience and that you are not being taken advantage of.
Organized Crimes
OCs are part of faction crimes system, it is performed by multiple people. This is a question that gets asked a lot but No You don’t actually have to do anything (other than being in Torn City and not travelling or in hospital when OC is up) it is a automated process. Leaders just select and create the crime which results in you receiving an event like this
Then once the time is up Leaders will initiate it and it will either result in a success (the faction will gain tiny amounts of money and you will receive crime xp) or it results in a fail (in this case you lose very tiny amount of CE its such small amount I thought I might not even mention it here at first.)
Organized crimes money usually goes to the faction to be spent on armory or supplies because its such tiny amount except for Political Assassination which can generate anywhere from 150M to 300M which is then split between the members and faction. Political Assassinations ofcourse require a large amount of crime experience to be regularly successful and may take ages before your part of one. So keep doing those crimes every bit adds up.
Recruit Citizens
You can share your referral link with your friends and bring them into the game to receive 250 Points + 31 Donator Days + 2 Special Items for every 10 levels they gain. there are also merits associated with this.
Calendar
Calendar neatly displays all events and competitions during the year. make sure you check it out and plan accordingly to make the most out of them.
Community Events
Community Events are run by staff or admin mostly during the holiday seasons there are baking, memes, poems, card design and many other contests. Rewards are HUGE and anyone can participate regardless of age or level. If you feel like any of them are for you send in your entries.
Lists
There are 2 lists available - Friends and Enemies they are pretty much self explaintatory you can add anyone you want into them by using these action buttons on their profiles. You can add 10 spots to them by upgrading them from the points building for 25 points each.
Friends List
Add your friends into this one, you can also use it to track and see if they’re online (so you can chat them or whatever) and also to see their forum posts which shows up on the friends feed in forums.
Enemies List
Add your enemies into this one, you can also block all exchanges (Bazaar, Item Market etc) by clicking on the disallow exchanges button
Chats
Torn being a social game there’s absolutely no surprise that a chat system exists, there are some weird bugs that appear sometimes but apart from that its an intuitive chat system. There are bunch of chats some are seasonal (Elimination, Christmas Town) and others are generally available.
Chats Settings Panel
Chats settings panel displays options to enable/disable chats
New Player Chat
New player chats is only accessible by new players that are below level 13 and have played for less than 14 days. If you have any questions you can ask them in this chat. This chat is available to all Torn City Staff and I’ve heard that they usually provide helpful advice in there.
Global
Once you lose access to the new players chat, global chat opens up, you can use it to make friends, get to know each other or just to discuss something.
Trade Chat
Trade chat is used to advertise any service or item your selling or read advertisements posted by other players.
Faction
This will show up after you join a faction. only the members of the faction can access it.
Company
This will show up after you join a Company. only the employees of the company can access it.
Hospital / Jail / Travel
These chats only show up when your in hospital, jailed or travelling. I personally consider them useless and keep them disabled but hey you can use it grief or something lol.
Misc
Time - TCT
Torn City Time or TCT is same as UTC / GMT +0. you can find a decent converter on this page
Time can be found on 2 places in Torn, below the friends/enemy lists and also on the top menu - near the logs icon
NPC Looting
NPCs can be hit and looted for rewards these can be absolute crap to sometimes a weapon worth 3b. Its not just a bad idea but a horrible idea to hit them till you get your stats up, atleast 1m.
The NPCs have loot levels attached to them, ranging from 1 to 5, they are hit by players once they reach loot level 4. Once your in the attack only hit them when everyone else is hitting so you can avoid being hit by the NPCs due to distraction being activated. Once they are defeated/looted their level resets to 1 again.
Currently there are 5 lootable NPCs,
- Duke [4]
- Leslie [15]
- Jimmy [19]
- Fernando [20]
- Tiny [21]
There are also seasonal NPCs, Easter Bunny for example will be available during April and Scrooge during Christmas.
You can join the loot ranger discord to participate in them, all planning and co-ordination is done there.
Read Level 15 Guide Next.