Hopslam [795412] —
Original article
Who is chasing the top busting spot? What happens when you give out free stuff? And which honor only had five recipients? Read on to find out all this and the winner of February's HOP prize.
February was a busy month in Torn. I was glad to see a huge increase in the number of Achievement threads posted compared to prior months, with the varying categories of unique accomplishments catching me by surprise.
First, let me remind you how to become eligible for the monthly Hopslam's Outstanding Player Award. If you have done something you feel good about and want to share it, then please create an Achievement thread - that's it! I look at all the achievements posted and note those which stand out. The winner could be an up and coming star, or a long time veteran, it really doesn't matter. What attracts me most are the stories behind the achievements, as knowing someone's journey makes the achievement seem more special.
BATTLE STAT WARS
ZOMB13 of Natural Selection reached the 4b battle stat milestone in February, and what better way to keep yourself going then to be chased down by a rival. Chit of 39th Street Killers reached 4b shortly afterwards and announced via the forum that his goal was to post a 5b thread before ZOMB13 does. Another player in this fight is Josephine of PT who reached 4b at the end of February.
Josephine was ranked at 1486 in the Battle Stats HoF when she reached her milestone, compared to ZOMB13's rank of 1439 and Chit's rank of 1475. All three will be desperate to beat each other, and while we await the outcome of this fight, their subsequent forum threads and meme wars will provide us onlookers with some glorious entertainment.
Hedas has all three of these players in his rearview mirror, as he recently surpassed 5b battle stats. He acknowledged it took him way too long to achieve though, as he is now only a semi-active player. Nevertheless, Hedas' achievement goes to show that you can still chug along and continue to improve even during periods of low activity.
Foe and Rob_Snow both reached 1b stats in February. Foe hit 500m at 609 days and gained the other half 204 days, finally getting to 1b total at the ripe age of 813 days. But it was Rob_Snow who excelled by hitting the 1b mark at 495 days. I don’t know what the new normal is for reaching this milestone, he definitely crushed it either way.
And if any new players need encouragement, Rob_Snow managed to achieve this despite admitting he didn’t do much in the first 30 days and was a lost little noob. Rob_Snow was nice enough to provide some credits and references in his achievement thread for others out there that want to follow a similar path.
VALENTINES MASSACRES
The Love Juice event resulted in a huge amount of activity in Torn City, with many factions using the event to chain. Numerous factions reached 25,000 and 5,000 chains among the chaos, but there were a couple of outstanding individual achievements to point out too.
An exhausted Beer_Bear, posted an achievement titled “Most Hits EVER in a single Chain” after making 1,120 attacks in a single 25,000 chain. We don't know if this is a record, but it is certainly damn well impressive, especially since there were some technical obstacles to overcome during the Valentine's Day event. Another member of the PT-Family, Dutchguem, also posted 929 attacks during the same chain, using the Ugly Energy book, their 10* Farm job and Love Juice to great effect.
Another Love Juice hero was damaster, who managed to get 12 honors in 2 days. Damaster did not plan any of this, it just turned out that way, and while he acknowledged that he is not always aware of all the events going on, he sure knows how to turn on the fun. Damaster used to the Wiki page to learn about both Love Juice and the Valentine's event, and as soon as he was up to speed he set about claiming those honors.
The first honor was for logging in on Valentine’s Day. He then got the Miracle Worker honor by doing 10 revives in 10 minutes, before undoing all his good work by hitting 110 victims in 48 hours - he even went as far as waking up in the middle of the night both days to use the Love Juice appropriately. Damaster hit a faction member for the Friendly Fire honor, and then equipped a machine gun to riddle an unarmored guy, achieving both the over 5,000 damage Devastation honor and the honor for firing 25,000 rounds.
Next up, Damaster accidentally assisted an attack while going after a bounty for Double Dragon. He quickly equipped a pillow and beat some poor sap with it to get the Riddled honor. The Orange Camo honor came next for winning 4,000 attacks. He also got Phoenix for defeating someone after losing to them within 10 minutes.
Damaster found 3 more easy targets to snap up the honor for achieving 100 finishing hits with fists or kick. In doing so, he reached 1,000 critical hits and the 50 Cal honor, quickly followed by the Unarmed honor. His last achievement came when he traveled to Argentina for trip number 50 and nabbed the Maradona honor, thus ending his run of 12 honors in 2 days with a lovely trip to Buenos Aires.
FRESH FACES
Our first HOP showcased mostly long-term achievements from some of our older players. However, what I like about posts from newbies is they often demonstrate a real sense of gratitude, a thirst for learning, and an awareness of the impact the community has had on their time here.
Meckie93 hit 100 awards in 80 days and is now on a total of 132 on his 124th day. Such an aggressive approach to award hunting can lead to long term success as one continues to strive for more as they progress. And if he keeps up the pace, he'll mimic RedOriley, who got the Seeker honor for achieving 250 awards at just 276 days.
DedeSilver has made herself known in the forums and has jumped into the community aspect of the game here, and in just 3 months, she has accumulated over 1b in networth - and she's even written a few guides too!
MORE CASINO FUN
February was a game-defining month for Assassin_007, as one day he woke up and decided to gamble it all. He made the decision to take 65% of his networth - roughly $13b in cash - and risk it at the Oligarch Poker table, where the blinds are $50m and $100m. If he lost, he said he would quit for some time. If he won, he'd stay. So what happened?
Assassin_007 said he played poker for an hour a half versus two well known players, and ended up with over $17b in profit, almost doubling his networth. He also climbed to third place in the overall poker winnings table. He reported that the individual bets in this game were so high that the system stopped registering the amounts above $2.147b! Thankfully, the correct funds were paid out in the end, and Assassin_007 left the Oligarch Poker table with a smile on his face, and billions in the bank.
But what will he do the next time he gets bored?
AWARDS, AWARDS, AWARDS!
If it wasn't for awards, some of us would not be here. Many of us live for the thrill of the hunt, and reaching certain award milestones has always been a notable topic in the achievements forum, with honor bars now awarded for 100, 250, and 500 awards.
For any player, reaching an official or unofficial award milestone shows commitment and longevity. cooksie is under two years old and managed to reach 300 awards in 573 days - they gave a shoutout to YATA for making this much easier to plan out.
ChillySpunc reached 400 awards in Feb, doing so in a little over 1,800 days. He said friends and the achievements have kept him going despite thoughts of hanging up the towel and checking out of town. nintendofan1 is a little older at over 4,200 days, but they will feel just as much pride at having managed to reach one of their personal goals of 400 awards in February.
Metapod is even older still, as he was aged over 5,000 when he reached 400 awards, but again, this remains a monumental achievement regardless of how old you are. Nevertheless, it appears that 500 is the new sought after milestone, and by the end of February, there were fewer than 40 players with the "Honored" honor for achieving this.
At the time of critch's post in early February, he was just the 33rd player to hold the "Honored" honor. critch was bored that very morning and noticed he was only 5 short of 500. After conducting a little research and securing the help of a few faction friends, he knocked down the target of 500 in no time. critch treated himself with a stat enhancer as a reward. This is the kind of stuff I like to see from others. Do something noteworthy and treat yoself!
A TRUE WAR MACHINE
If you thought the Honored award was rare, then check out the stats for War Machine. This honor was added in February, and it is presented to those who have achieved 1,000 finishing hits in every weapon category. I think only five players had achieved this by mid-February, with Josephine being one of them.
"I have to say, I love weird merits like these because it feels like it makes award-hunting spicier. Easy merits are cool and all but these are so much better to have."
Josephine said that long ago she felt inspired to go after the "pointless" finishing hits with different weapon types after seeing Chigurh post about his 1k finishing hits in the different weapon categories even longer ago. Now that there is an actual merit for this, I suspect a lot more players will be putting effort into their finishing hits with the various weapon types. Well done to all those trailblazers who already dealt 1000 finishing blows with tasers and temps and fists.
MUCH RESPECT
There's another kind of war machine out there, a boss among bosses, the boss of all bosses who has achieved 100,000 respect for their faction. Ohadik reached this milestone at the end of February, and had JFK to thank for their recent battles.
easye is the king when it comes to earning respect for their faction - over 300k at the last count - and there may be a couple of hundred players out there who have surpassed 100,000 too. However, this is no easy task, and many dedicated faction members strive for it for years. For someone as decorated as Ohadik with over 500 total awards and in the top 25 in the rankings for awards, anything he achieves at this point almost certainly has to be a big-time accomplishment. Though he still has some work to do on his jail busts count, I am sure he will pursue checking that stat off the list at some point in his future.
One player who is well on his way to reaching the Boss of All Bosses milestone is King, who has passed the halfway point at just 615 days and with 5,146 attacks! With 50,000 of the 100,000 respect achieved, he should have the full total well within the next couple of years, and I look forward to seeing how quickly he progresses.
FREE STUFF!
There are plenty of people out there who perform deeds or tasks without the incentive of an in-game reward. MaryPoppins is one such person, as she has been giving out candy at an alarming rate, often lurking in global chat and sending treats to anyone chatting. She began this as a way to try to change the attitude in global and thinks she has had an impact with her candy deliveries.
The result of a changing attitude among a community can't easily be measured, but the number of item sends can be. MaryPoppins started out in January with just over 300 items sent. By the end of February, she had gifted over 4,500 items, with MaryPoppins looking to hit 5,000 by the end of March and 10,000 by the end of the year.
It’s not the most glorious of achievements, but for anyone who has tried their hand at sending out 1000s of items to friends and strangers, they know it is no easy task. Have you received a Lollipop from MaryPoppins yet? If you dare to enter global chat you may find one pop up in your events.
THE CHASERS
Once you get higher in the HOF rankings in one of the main leaderboard categories, the gap between players widens. To reach the top requires time and effort - and given how much Torn has changed over the years, you'll often need to put in more than those who you're trying to overtake.
David is currently third in the Hof for total Jail Busts. Busts are far and away one of the more difficult stats to accumulate quickly these days, as while many veteran players have lots of nerve at their disposal, they simply cannot use it to perform busts all day long. There are only so many times in a day that you can break a friend or another out of jail before the Torn jail takes note of your antics and catches you.
But that hasn't deterred David from striving for the top spot. 5 years ago in March 2015, David had 33,804 jail busts. At the end of February this year, David had over 49,200 busts - he currently has 49,832. David will surely overtake the #2 spot in the HOF later this year, which is held by Jenova with 50,017 busts - they are presently in federal jail with their last action over 400 days ago.
David has also narrowed the gap in the last year and a half between himself and the #1 ranked buster Boxcar182, but there are still over 9,000 jail busts between the two. Will David keep on the chase? He says he will, and when he reaches the top spot, he says even that is not the final stop.
THIS MONTH'S HOP
In February, we saw Medic, our #1 HOF reviver reach the 50,000 mark. This is an outstanding achievement, being as it is over 6,000 revives beyond the second-placed reviver. Medic says they have no plans to stop or slow down, and in his achievement post he simply said: “See you at 100,000 :)”.
It would take some serious dedication and time for anyone to catch Medic, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. The revive race was historically between Leafeh and RX8; when you look back at the 5 year stat graphs for these three, you can see that on July 1, 2017, Medic had a mere 1,300 revives, compared to Leafeh’s 12,492, and RX’s 13,371.
RX8 held the #1 spot for several months back then before Leafeh regained it. Fast forward to July 1, 2018 and RX had 17,713, Medic had 18,574, and Leafeh 22,196 revives. Medic would then move on to pass Leafeh in total revives sometime in September 2019 and has since widened the gap. It took Medic a little less than 2 and a half years to add 50,000 revives to their total back in July 2017.
Reaching 50,000 revives before any other in Torn, overhauling the two big dogs, and being completely dedicated to reviving makes Medic more than worthy of our outstanding achievement award. Congratulations Medic!
MARCH'S HOP
We'll post the list of March's achievements sometime during April - apologies on this one being slightly late! But in the spirit of tardiness for all, please don't feel that if your achievement is old it shouldn't be posted. If something you achieved last month or the month before makes you proud, then please share it in the Achievements forum! We will consider all awards posted, regardless of when the achievement was actually performed.
And even if you don't make a post, make sure above all that you keep up the fun and continue working towards your goals, whatever they may be.
First, let me remind you how to become eligible for the monthly Hopslam's Outstanding Player Award. If you have done something you feel good about and want to share it, then please create an Achievement thread - that's it! I look at all the achievements posted and note those which stand out. The winner could be an up and coming star, or a long time veteran, it really doesn't matter. What attracts me most are the stories behind the achievements, as knowing someone's journey makes the achievement seem more special.
BATTLE STAT WARS
ZOMB13 of Natural Selection reached the 4b battle stat milestone in February, and what better way to keep yourself going then to be chased down by a rival. Chit of 39th Street Killers reached 4b shortly afterwards and announced via the forum that his goal was to post a 5b thread before ZOMB13 does. Another player in this fight is Josephine of PT who reached 4b at the end of February.
Josephine was ranked at 1486 in the Battle Stats HoF when she reached her milestone, compared to ZOMB13's rank of 1439 and Chit's rank of 1475. All three will be desperate to beat each other, and while we await the outcome of this fight, their subsequent forum threads and meme wars will provide us onlookers with some glorious entertainment.
Hedas has all three of these players in his rearview mirror, as he recently surpassed 5b battle stats. He acknowledged it took him way too long to achieve though, as he is now only a semi-active player. Nevertheless, Hedas' achievement goes to show that you can still chug along and continue to improve even during periods of low activity.
Foe and Rob_Snow both reached 1b stats in February. Foe hit 500m at 609 days and gained the other half 204 days, finally getting to 1b total at the ripe age of 813 days. But it was Rob_Snow who excelled by hitting the 1b mark at 495 days. I don’t know what the new normal is for reaching this milestone, he definitely crushed it either way.
And if any new players need encouragement, Rob_Snow managed to achieve this despite admitting he didn’t do much in the first 30 days and was a lost little noob. Rob_Snow was nice enough to provide some credits and references in his achievement thread for others out there that want to follow a similar path.
VALENTINES MASSACRES
The Love Juice event resulted in a huge amount of activity in Torn City, with many factions using the event to chain. Numerous factions reached 25,000 and 5,000 chains among the chaos, but there were a couple of outstanding individual achievements to point out too.
An exhausted Beer_Bear, posted an achievement titled “Most Hits EVER in a single Chain” after making 1,120 attacks in a single 25,000 chain. We don't know if this is a record, but it is certainly damn well impressive, especially since there were some technical obstacles to overcome during the Valentine's Day event. Another member of the PT-Family, Dutchguem, also posted 929 attacks during the same chain, using the Ugly Energy book, their 10* Farm job and Love Juice to great effect.
Another Love Juice hero was damaster, who managed to get 12 honors in 2 days. Damaster did not plan any of this, it just turned out that way, and while he acknowledged that he is not always aware of all the events going on, he sure knows how to turn on the fun. Damaster used to the Wiki page to learn about both Love Juice and the Valentine's event, and as soon as he was up to speed he set about claiming those honors.
The first honor was for logging in on Valentine’s Day. He then got the Miracle Worker honor by doing 10 revives in 10 minutes, before undoing all his good work by hitting 110 victims in 48 hours - he even went as far as waking up in the middle of the night both days to use the Love Juice appropriately. Damaster hit a faction member for the Friendly Fire honor, and then equipped a machine gun to riddle an unarmored guy, achieving both the over 5,000 damage Devastation honor and the honor for firing 25,000 rounds.
Next up, Damaster accidentally assisted an attack while going after a bounty for Double Dragon. He quickly equipped a pillow and beat some poor sap with it to get the Riddled honor. The Orange Camo honor came next for winning 4,000 attacks. He also got Phoenix for defeating someone after losing to them within 10 minutes.
Damaster found 3 more easy targets to snap up the honor for achieving 100 finishing hits with fists or kick. In doing so, he reached 1,000 critical hits and the 50 Cal honor, quickly followed by the Unarmed honor. His last achievement came when he traveled to Argentina for trip number 50 and nabbed the Maradona honor, thus ending his run of 12 honors in 2 days with a lovely trip to Buenos Aires.
FRESH FACES
Our first HOP showcased mostly long-term achievements from some of our older players. However, what I like about posts from newbies is they often demonstrate a real sense of gratitude, a thirst for learning, and an awareness of the impact the community has had on their time here.
Meckie93 hit 100 awards in 80 days and is now on a total of 132 on his 124th day. Such an aggressive approach to award hunting can lead to long term success as one continues to strive for more as they progress. And if he keeps up the pace, he'll mimic RedOriley, who got the Seeker honor for achieving 250 awards at just 276 days.
DedeSilver has made herself known in the forums and has jumped into the community aspect of the game here, and in just 3 months, she has accumulated over 1b in networth - and she's even written a few guides too!
MORE CASINO FUN
February was a game-defining month for Assassin_007, as one day he woke up and decided to gamble it all. He made the decision to take 65% of his networth - roughly $13b in cash - and risk it at the Oligarch Poker table, where the blinds are $50m and $100m. If he lost, he said he would quit for some time. If he won, he'd stay. So what happened?
Assassin_007 said he played poker for an hour a half versus two well known players, and ended up with over $17b in profit, almost doubling his networth. He also climbed to third place in the overall poker winnings table. He reported that the individual bets in this game were so high that the system stopped registering the amounts above $2.147b! Thankfully, the correct funds were paid out in the end, and Assassin_007 left the Oligarch Poker table with a smile on his face, and billions in the bank.
But what will he do the next time he gets bored?
AWARDS, AWARDS, AWARDS!
If it wasn't for awards, some of us would not be here. Many of us live for the thrill of the hunt, and reaching certain award milestones has always been a notable topic in the achievements forum, with honor bars now awarded for 100, 250, and 500 awards.
For any player, reaching an official or unofficial award milestone shows commitment and longevity. cooksie is under two years old and managed to reach 300 awards in 573 days - they gave a shoutout to YATA for making this much easier to plan out.
ChillySpunc reached 400 awards in Feb, doing so in a little over 1,800 days. He said friends and the achievements have kept him going despite thoughts of hanging up the towel and checking out of town. nintendofan1 is a little older at over 4,200 days, but they will feel just as much pride at having managed to reach one of their personal goals of 400 awards in February.
Metapod is even older still, as he was aged over 5,000 when he reached 400 awards, but again, this remains a monumental achievement regardless of how old you are. Nevertheless, it appears that 500 is the new sought after milestone, and by the end of February, there were fewer than 40 players with the "Honored" honor for achieving this.
At the time of critch's post in early February, he was just the 33rd player to hold the "Honored" honor. critch was bored that very morning and noticed he was only 5 short of 500. After conducting a little research and securing the help of a few faction friends, he knocked down the target of 500 in no time. critch treated himself with a stat enhancer as a reward. This is the kind of stuff I like to see from others. Do something noteworthy and treat yoself!
A TRUE WAR MACHINE
If you thought the Honored award was rare, then check out the stats for War Machine. This honor was added in February, and it is presented to those who have achieved 1,000 finishing hits in every weapon category. I think only five players had achieved this by mid-February, with Josephine being one of them.
"I have to say, I love weird merits like these because it feels like it makes award-hunting spicier. Easy merits are cool and all but these are so much better to have."
Josephine said that long ago she felt inspired to go after the "pointless" finishing hits with different weapon types after seeing Chigurh post about his 1k finishing hits in the different weapon categories even longer ago. Now that there is an actual merit for this, I suspect a lot more players will be putting effort into their finishing hits with the various weapon types. Well done to all those trailblazers who already dealt 1000 finishing blows with tasers and temps and fists.
MUCH RESPECT
There's another kind of war machine out there, a boss among bosses, the boss of all bosses who has achieved 100,000 respect for their faction. Ohadik reached this milestone at the end of February, and had JFK to thank for their recent battles.
easye is the king when it comes to earning respect for their faction - over 300k at the last count - and there may be a couple of hundred players out there who have surpassed 100,000 too. However, this is no easy task, and many dedicated faction members strive for it for years. For someone as decorated as Ohadik with over 500 total awards and in the top 25 in the rankings for awards, anything he achieves at this point almost certainly has to be a big-time accomplishment. Though he still has some work to do on his jail busts count, I am sure he will pursue checking that stat off the list at some point in his future.
One player who is well on his way to reaching the Boss of All Bosses milestone is King, who has passed the halfway point at just 615 days and with 5,146 attacks! With 50,000 of the 100,000 respect achieved, he should have the full total well within the next couple of years, and I look forward to seeing how quickly he progresses.
FREE STUFF!
There are plenty of people out there who perform deeds or tasks without the incentive of an in-game reward. MaryPoppins is one such person, as she has been giving out candy at an alarming rate, often lurking in global chat and sending treats to anyone chatting. She began this as a way to try to change the attitude in global and thinks she has had an impact with her candy deliveries.
The result of a changing attitude among a community can't easily be measured, but the number of item sends can be. MaryPoppins started out in January with just over 300 items sent. By the end of February, she had gifted over 4,500 items, with MaryPoppins looking to hit 5,000 by the end of March and 10,000 by the end of the year.
It’s not the most glorious of achievements, but for anyone who has tried their hand at sending out 1000s of items to friends and strangers, they know it is no easy task. Have you received a Lollipop from MaryPoppins yet? If you dare to enter global chat you may find one pop up in your events.
THE CHASERS
Once you get higher in the HOF rankings in one of the main leaderboard categories, the gap between players widens. To reach the top requires time and effort - and given how much Torn has changed over the years, you'll often need to put in more than those who you're trying to overtake.
David is currently third in the Hof for total Jail Busts. Busts are far and away one of the more difficult stats to accumulate quickly these days, as while many veteran players have lots of nerve at their disposal, they simply cannot use it to perform busts all day long. There are only so many times in a day that you can break a friend or another out of jail before the Torn jail takes note of your antics and catches you.
But that hasn't deterred David from striving for the top spot. 5 years ago in March 2015, David had 33,804 jail busts. At the end of February this year, David had over 49,200 busts - he currently has 49,832. David will surely overtake the #2 spot in the HOF later this year, which is held by Jenova with 50,017 busts - they are presently in federal jail with their last action over 400 days ago.
David has also narrowed the gap in the last year and a half between himself and the #1 ranked buster Boxcar182, but there are still over 9,000 jail busts between the two. Will David keep on the chase? He says he will, and when he reaches the top spot, he says even that is not the final stop.
THIS MONTH'S HOP
In February, we saw Medic, our #1 HOF reviver reach the 50,000 mark. This is an outstanding achievement, being as it is over 6,000 revives beyond the second-placed reviver. Medic says they have no plans to stop or slow down, and in his achievement post he simply said: “See you at 100,000 :)”.
It would take some serious dedication and time for anyone to catch Medic, but that doesn't mean it won't happen. The revive race was historically between Leafeh and RX8; when you look back at the 5 year stat graphs for these three, you can see that on July 1, 2017, Medic had a mere 1,300 revives, compared to Leafeh’s 12,492, and RX’s 13,371.
RX8 held the #1 spot for several months back then before Leafeh regained it. Fast forward to July 1, 2018 and RX had 17,713, Medic had 18,574, and Leafeh 22,196 revives. Medic would then move on to pass Leafeh in total revives sometime in September 2019 and has since widened the gap. It took Medic a little less than 2 and a half years to add 50,000 revives to their total back in July 2017.
Reaching 50,000 revives before any other in Torn, overhauling the two big dogs, and being completely dedicated to reviving makes Medic more than worthy of our outstanding achievement award. Congratulations Medic!
MARCH'S HOP
We'll post the list of March's achievements sometime during April - apologies on this one being slightly late! But in the spirit of tardiness for all, please don't feel that if your achievement is old it shouldn't be posted. If something you achieved last month or the month before makes you proud, then please share it in the Achievements forum! We will consider all awards posted, regardless of when the achievement was actually performed.
And even if you don't make a post, make sure above all that you keep up the fun and continue working towards your goals, whatever they may be.
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