megalomaniacal [1542618] —
Original article
There are many paths for one to take in this great city. Some work to amass a fortune by buying and selling goods. Others spend every last dollar raising battle stats. And a select few dolts thrive on eating alphabet spaghettios and vomiting the results all over the forums.
Then there are those, such as yours truly, who concentrate on hunting for merits. Yes, I am a merit hunter. This is my story.
The motivation for playing Torn differs greatly from person to person. For me, Torn has served as a respite from the real world. It has helped me escape from the stress of obtaining two college degrees, starting a family, studying for and taking (and passing, yay me) a state licensing exam, struggling to find a job I was not overqualified for and everything else life has thrown at me. With all this chaos going on in the background, tasks as menial as training and performing crimes were quite cathartic. But this relief is only temporary, and it was merit hunting which helped me set goals in order to keep me interested.
I made many mistakes in my early days. I initially had no interest in playing Torn but was convinced to join so an acquaintance could get a merit when I reached level 10. At that time, I had no idea how important merits would become to me. Unfortunately for my friend, once I hit level 10, I realised I did not use the correct referral link, and he didn't get squat. Sucker.
As for my own journey, there were no guides for younger players back when I started in 2011. I was completely on my own. Through learning what I could, I realized that you could magically find items in the city, items that could be worth lots of cash. This discovery pushed me towards gaining merits to increase my awareness.
I was lucky enough to find a stat enhancer early on. The most glaring mistake I made was switching from Ecstasy and going straight to Xanax - I didn't do my battle stats any favors there. These days there are no excuses for not using happy to boost low-level stats efficiently; the Tutorials and Guides subforum has become an invaluable resource for helping younger players get the most bang for their buck.
But any thoughts of training soon gave way to the hunt. I realized merithunting was actually pretty fun in of itself, so I decided I was going to collect as many as I could. There were a ton of easy ones to go after; some of which, like traveling, actually made me money! One that I struggled with was the Affronted honor, which you gain for annoying all the starter job interviewers. Luckily, this was one of the few tasks which had its own forum guide, and today you can find detailed instructions on how to achieve almost every merit available. Everything from racing merits and crime merits through to that pesky high low merit and the Socialist merit are now easily acquired if you're willing to put in the time.
Guides are useful for the niche merits like the aforementioned socialist reward, but many are easy to get while going about your daily routine. I found chaining to be quite exciting, so I naturally started racking up respect, attacks won, critical hits and finishing hits with different weapons. This meant I achieved a collection of attacking merits without really thinking. Of course, none of this would've been possible had I not joined a faction, which I did as soon as I hit level 15 - I waited until then so I could fly and avoid being a sitting target.
Flying had other benefits besides merits, as I used it to hide from vengeful faction enemies as well as making some money running flowers. At the time, flower stocks were infinite, so no matter where I went I could make a few bucks. This made it incredibly easy to achieve the merit given for making 50 trips to any one destination. A list of similarly easy-to-acquire merits can be found here within Tempest's Guide, with expanded lists available via the Torncity Wiki, Accurate's Guide and Tornstats.com
It should be noted that most guides require frequent updates due to the ever-changing nature of the merit system and Torn itself. For example, the Loan Shark merit once required you to use points to increase your maximum loan amount, but today it is awarded randomly to those who take out loans. Also, while the Wholesaler honor could and can still be achieved by buying 1k points at the Points Market and reselling them, things have changed since I acquired it with the abolition of the 50k per-point price ceiling. Back then it was scarce to see points listed. That is not the case today.
A fair few merits can also be achieved by just sitting there and doing nothing - if you're lucky. My spouse went inactive, so I didn't have to worry about him getting uppity and divorcing me, which meant I'd easily acquire the marriage commitment honors and medals. I also loved the faction I was in, so the 1,000-day Faction Loyalty medal was another easy merit. As I was racking up attacks and defends won, finishing hits, critical hits, doing crimes, using medical items and travelling, the merits continued to flow in. But this couldn't last forever.
The easy merits soon dried up. I realized that resources had to be sacrificed. I still was working on increasing my battle stats at the time, but my energy was diverted to things like serious hunting and busting. I did over 10k busts back when they required energy. Thinking about that stings badly. I was lucky enough to find a few players willing to trade runaways with me, which at least saved me a little bit of money. I also spent over four years level-holding at level 40, and therefore achieved several merits due to regular defends I received (with a few paid ones thrown in for good measure).
Often you will have to pay good money to achieve a certain merit, with the Luxury Real Estate Honor proving particularly expensive unless you can obtain a rental. Again, this is another merit which has changed, as while it once required just the ownership of a Private Island, it now must come fitted with an airstrip to achieve the honor - another merit, High Life, requires a combination of PI and a yacht. Yet even before these additional requirements, the honor came at a price. At the time I was living in a mere Castle, so I had to put up collateral and pay a now-former staff member to let me use her PI temporarily. I was never forgiven for that mattress stain.
Pro-tip. Never eat gravy in bed.
Around this time I realised that the whole of my gameplay had become devoted to catching those pesky merits. I joined a fitness center (I believe at the time it was a sports team) to knock time off my education to get all the bachelor degrees. I took on those obnoxious drug trafficking crimes. I used my casino tokens every day either spinning the slots (for the Jackpot honor) or buying lottery tickets (for the Lucky Break honor).
As I strove for ever more merits I was indebted to TCBasic.com, as this site truly was an invaluable resource which allowed me to see which merits eluded me and what I must do to achieve them. Doing all of these random tasks really allowed me to get a taste for all aspects of the game. For this reason, merit hunting may be the most fulfilling way to experience what Torn has to offer.
But even with knowledge, time and skills at your disposal, it is often fortune which will decide whether your merit hunt is successful. I have been quite lucky in my merit hunting career, having overdosed on cannabis at number 860 (for the Spaced Out honor), hit the slots jackpot on a $10 spin and won the Daily Dime when it first came into existence. I was even able to convince a few real-life acquaintances to join, with my incessant prodding enough to persuade them to hit level 10 (for the referral merits).
On the internet, nobody knows you is animals.
I also had my share of bad luck along the way too. It took me no less than 1874 games to get that damned high low merit. The Kill Streaker 3 had a few heartbreaking close calls too before I finally achieved it during a Torn of the Dead competition. And I spent months buying and selling small blocks of stocks before getting the Stock Analyst Honor (for buying and selling shares actively in the stock market, how wonderfully vague).
It wasn't always fun, and knowing what I know now I would have done things differently. The aforementioned switch in the busting mechanic from utilizing energy to nerve certainly comes to mind. The change in the way net worth is calculated certainly did not make me very happy either. I, like many others, spent time buying flamethrowers and donator packs as close to shop sell price as possible before selling them back to the game. I had also managed to find a few car sellers who would sell to me in bulk for less than or right at shop sell. Their loss.
The important thing is I was kept engaged. I had set out towards my goal and kept with it. While there were varying degrees of craziness going on in my real life, I could still escape to Torn to keep chugging along. Eventually, though, I quickly ran out of the easy merits and even the mildly challenging ones. So unless a batch of new merits are released, there are not too many more for me to achieve.
The ones that are left, however, mostly consist of far-off goals that will take me many years of play to acquire. Some will come with time, such as the years spent in Torn medals and the last respect gained merit. I am also hoping to guest for a faction that does a 100k chain. There are just a few I need to buy left in the token shop. But most of the merits I have left have me scratching my head trying to figure out how I will ever achieve them.
I am perhaps the most creatively inept player in all of Torn, which will make the Champion (winning a creative event) and Velutinous (have a comic strip accepted) merits pretty difficult. Unless I can find someone to lend me $70b for the next few months that last net-worth award will also be out of reach for quite some time. With that kind of scratch, I could buy a dirty bomb and scoop up the two merits associated with radioactive destruction.
Regardless of their difficulty, I am actively working on all the remaining merits while slowly hunting and playing low stakes poker for those merits (I am scared to lose what scant liquid cash I have as those charlatans in Switzerland constantly demand it). The important part for me is to keep on keeping on, as once I lose hope of achieving my goals, I will probably lose interest and give up the one small stress relief I have.
There have been talks in the forums about new merits in the works. This, of course, excites me greatly. I remember the last mass release of merits quite well. I believe it was in the Fall of 2011. I was particularly stressed as I had just started work on a new degree. Working toward those new merits really helped my morale while on the train to and from school, doing what I could to achieve as many as quickly as I could, as quickly as I could.
It is my hope that Torn keeps up the tradition of having the vast majority or the merits, if not all, achievable by all. When I had joined, there were merits for voting for Torn on external websites, but it was no longer possible to do so. I was slightly annoyed that I could not get those medals, but fortunately, they have since been replaced by medals for donator days. I was also lucky enough to have gained the Time Traveler honor, as the reset that prompted it was a severely isolated incident, at least in Torn's recent history.
Many new players complain that Torn is a very slow game to start. This is very true, but with so many features and opportunities for abuse from multis, it is better to ensure a new player becomes properly acquainted with the different aspects of gameplay. It also allows time to formulate goals. There are many paths to take in Torn; the important thing is to find your niche and plough ahead full steam. Torn is a long-term game and without goals, it is impossible to keep interest, much less thrive.
That is where the beauty of the game lies; although it may seem that those with the highest battle stats are the most successful, it is not necessarily the case. Traders, graphics artists, racers, directors, faction leaders, those who indulge in the social aspect of the game and dare I say even the merit hunters can be respected just as much as the stat beasts. Torn is an analogue to life; do what you find fun and do it to the best of your ability, and you will find success.
And now, with my article completed, I look forward to receiving my reward: the Reporter merit.
Then there are those, such as yours truly, who concentrate on hunting for merits. Yes, I am a merit hunter. This is my story.
The motivation for playing Torn differs greatly from person to person. For me, Torn has served as a respite from the real world. It has helped me escape from the stress of obtaining two college degrees, starting a family, studying for and taking (and passing, yay me) a state licensing exam, struggling to find a job I was not overqualified for and everything else life has thrown at me. With all this chaos going on in the background, tasks as menial as training and performing crimes were quite cathartic. But this relief is only temporary, and it was merit hunting which helped me set goals in order to keep me interested.
I made many mistakes in my early days. I initially had no interest in playing Torn but was convinced to join so an acquaintance could get a merit when I reached level 10. At that time, I had no idea how important merits would become to me. Unfortunately for my friend, once I hit level 10, I realised I did not use the correct referral link, and he didn't get squat. Sucker.
As for my own journey, there were no guides for younger players back when I started in 2011. I was completely on my own. Through learning what I could, I realized that you could magically find items in the city, items that could be worth lots of cash. This discovery pushed me towards gaining merits to increase my awareness.
I was lucky enough to find a stat enhancer early on. The most glaring mistake I made was switching from Ecstasy and going straight to Xanax - I didn't do my battle stats any favors there. These days there are no excuses for not using happy to boost low-level stats efficiently; the Tutorials and Guides subforum has become an invaluable resource for helping younger players get the most bang for their buck.
But any thoughts of training soon gave way to the hunt. I realized merithunting was actually pretty fun in of itself, so I decided I was going to collect as many as I could. There were a ton of easy ones to go after; some of which, like traveling, actually made me money! One that I struggled with was the Affronted honor, which you gain for annoying all the starter job interviewers. Luckily, this was one of the few tasks which had its own forum guide, and today you can find detailed instructions on how to achieve almost every merit available. Everything from racing merits and crime merits through to that pesky high low merit and the Socialist merit are now easily acquired if you're willing to put in the time.
Guides are useful for the niche merits like the aforementioned socialist reward, but many are easy to get while going about your daily routine. I found chaining to be quite exciting, so I naturally started racking up respect, attacks won, critical hits and finishing hits with different weapons. This meant I achieved a collection of attacking merits without really thinking. Of course, none of this would've been possible had I not joined a faction, which I did as soon as I hit level 15 - I waited until then so I could fly and avoid being a sitting target.
Flying had other benefits besides merits, as I used it to hide from vengeful faction enemies as well as making some money running flowers. At the time, flower stocks were infinite, so no matter where I went I could make a few bucks. This made it incredibly easy to achieve the merit given for making 50 trips to any one destination. A list of similarly easy-to-acquire merits can be found here within Tempest's Guide, with expanded lists available via the Torncity Wiki, Accurate's Guide and Tornstats.com
It should be noted that most guides require frequent updates due to the ever-changing nature of the merit system and Torn itself. For example, the Loan Shark merit once required you to use points to increase your maximum loan amount, but today it is awarded randomly to those who take out loans. Also, while the Wholesaler honor could and can still be achieved by buying 1k points at the Points Market and reselling them, things have changed since I acquired it with the abolition of the 50k per-point price ceiling. Back then it was scarce to see points listed. That is not the case today.
A fair few merits can also be achieved by just sitting there and doing nothing - if you're lucky. My spouse went inactive, so I didn't have to worry about him getting uppity and divorcing me, which meant I'd easily acquire the marriage commitment honors and medals. I also loved the faction I was in, so the 1,000-day Faction Loyalty medal was another easy merit. As I was racking up attacks and defends won, finishing hits, critical hits, doing crimes, using medical items and travelling, the merits continued to flow in. But this couldn't last forever.
The easy merits soon dried up. I realized that resources had to be sacrificed. I still was working on increasing my battle stats at the time, but my energy was diverted to things like serious hunting and busting. I did over 10k busts back when they required energy. Thinking about that stings badly. I was lucky enough to find a few players willing to trade runaways with me, which at least saved me a little bit of money. I also spent over four years level-holding at level 40, and therefore achieved several merits due to regular defends I received (with a few paid ones thrown in for good measure).
Often you will have to pay good money to achieve a certain merit, with the Luxury Real Estate Honor proving particularly expensive unless you can obtain a rental. Again, this is another merit which has changed, as while it once required just the ownership of a Private Island, it now must come fitted with an airstrip to achieve the honor - another merit, High Life, requires a combination of PI and a yacht. Yet even before these additional requirements, the honor came at a price. At the time I was living in a mere Castle, so I had to put up collateral and pay a now-former staff member to let me use her PI temporarily. I was never forgiven for that mattress stain.
Pro-tip. Never eat gravy in bed.
Around this time I realised that the whole of my gameplay had become devoted to catching those pesky merits. I joined a fitness center (I believe at the time it was a sports team) to knock time off my education to get all the bachelor degrees. I took on those obnoxious drug trafficking crimes. I used my casino tokens every day either spinning the slots (for the Jackpot honor) or buying lottery tickets (for the Lucky Break honor).
As I strove for ever more merits I was indebted to TCBasic.com, as this site truly was an invaluable resource which allowed me to see which merits eluded me and what I must do to achieve them. Doing all of these random tasks really allowed me to get a taste for all aspects of the game. For this reason, merit hunting may be the most fulfilling way to experience what Torn has to offer.
But even with knowledge, time and skills at your disposal, it is often fortune which will decide whether your merit hunt is successful. I have been quite lucky in my merit hunting career, having overdosed on cannabis at number 860 (for the Spaced Out honor), hit the slots jackpot on a $10 spin and won the Daily Dime when it first came into existence. I was even able to convince a few real-life acquaintances to join, with my incessant prodding enough to persuade them to hit level 10 (for the referral merits).
On the internet, nobody knows you is animals.
I also had my share of bad luck along the way too. It took me no less than 1874 games to get that damned high low merit. The Kill Streaker 3 had a few heartbreaking close calls too before I finally achieved it during a Torn of the Dead competition. And I spent months buying and selling small blocks of stocks before getting the Stock Analyst Honor (for buying and selling shares actively in the stock market, how wonderfully vague).
It wasn't always fun, and knowing what I know now I would have done things differently. The aforementioned switch in the busting mechanic from utilizing energy to nerve certainly comes to mind. The change in the way net worth is calculated certainly did not make me very happy either. I, like many others, spent time buying flamethrowers and donator packs as close to shop sell price as possible before selling them back to the game. I had also managed to find a few car sellers who would sell to me in bulk for less than or right at shop sell. Their loss.
The important thing is I was kept engaged. I had set out towards my goal and kept with it. While there were varying degrees of craziness going on in my real life, I could still escape to Torn to keep chugging along. Eventually, though, I quickly ran out of the easy merits and even the mildly challenging ones. So unless a batch of new merits are released, there are not too many more for me to achieve.
The ones that are left, however, mostly consist of far-off goals that will take me many years of play to acquire. Some will come with time, such as the years spent in Torn medals and the last respect gained merit. I am also hoping to guest for a faction that does a 100k chain. There are just a few I need to buy left in the token shop. But most of the merits I have left have me scratching my head trying to figure out how I will ever achieve them.
I am perhaps the most creatively inept player in all of Torn, which will make the Champion (winning a creative event) and Velutinous (have a comic strip accepted) merits pretty difficult. Unless I can find someone to lend me $70b for the next few months that last net-worth award will also be out of reach for quite some time. With that kind of scratch, I could buy a dirty bomb and scoop up the two merits associated with radioactive destruction.
Regardless of their difficulty, I am actively working on all the remaining merits while slowly hunting and playing low stakes poker for those merits (I am scared to lose what scant liquid cash I have as those charlatans in Switzerland constantly demand it). The important part for me is to keep on keeping on, as once I lose hope of achieving my goals, I will probably lose interest and give up the one small stress relief I have.
There have been talks in the forums about new merits in the works. This, of course, excites me greatly. I remember the last mass release of merits quite well. I believe it was in the Fall of 2011. I was particularly stressed as I had just started work on a new degree. Working toward those new merits really helped my morale while on the train to and from school, doing what I could to achieve as many as quickly as I could, as quickly as I could.
It is my hope that Torn keeps up the tradition of having the vast majority or the merits, if not all, achievable by all. When I had joined, there were merits for voting for Torn on external websites, but it was no longer possible to do so. I was slightly annoyed that I could not get those medals, but fortunately, they have since been replaced by medals for donator days. I was also lucky enough to have gained the Time Traveler honor, as the reset that prompted it was a severely isolated incident, at least in Torn's recent history.
Many new players complain that Torn is a very slow game to start. This is very true, but with so many features and opportunities for abuse from multis, it is better to ensure a new player becomes properly acquainted with the different aspects of gameplay. It also allows time to formulate goals. There are many paths to take in Torn; the important thing is to find your niche and plough ahead full steam. Torn is a long-term game and without goals, it is impossible to keep interest, much less thrive.
That is where the beauty of the game lies; although it may seem that those with the highest battle stats are the most successful, it is not necessarily the case. Traders, graphics artists, racers, directors, faction leaders, those who indulge in the social aspect of the game and dare I say even the merit hunters can be respected just as much as the stat beasts. Torn is an analogue to life; do what you find fun and do it to the best of your ability, and you will find success.
And now, with my article completed, I look forward to receiving my reward: the Reporter merit.
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