sugarvalves [1963573] —
Original article
Find out whether JFK and R are about to war, how one player lost $1.5bn in an auction, why two vault thieves regret their actions, and who lost $5bn on the sale of a pair of Sports Sneakers.
This month we've had all sorts of shenanigans take place, from vault thieves returning the dough and auctions going awry, through to faction takeovers and major powers going toe to toe. Find out what's been happening in Torn this month in our latest roundup of the local news.
JFK / RELENTLESS WAR IMMINENT?
A formal war between JFK and Relentless seemed imminent earlier this week after the two sides were seen hospitalising each other en masse. My insider within JFK claimed that the fight began when Relentless started a chain just a few hours before their own. JFK noticed an above-average number of hits were soon coming from Relentless, and this continued even after their chain had finished.
My source added that R appeared to be hitting JFK as if the two sides were warring, but that nothing official had been declared, describing the situation as "just cold war tensions brewing."
"I don't think Z wants to get into the thick of a war unless the war is brought to us. If it's brought to us, we have a tendency of drawing it out until it hurts their NW enough that they back down."
When I checked in a day later, I was told that JFK leadership had instructed their members to "All out hosp on R1... put literally every single hit on Relentless." It has been reported from within Relentless that the same order has been given to their troops. A betting man would wager it's only a matter of time before this fight is made official, with a territorial war deemed likely given the proximity of the two sides.
Pictured: Bosom buddies, or brutal enemies?
Our source told us that relations between the two factions remain friendly, despite the happenings of the past week. And according to JFK leader Z_junior, a war has not and will not happen.
"It wasn't a war. Both factions were chaining. Regular hits were exchanged. That led to retaliations. Retaliations led to hospitalizations. It carried over to the next chain with full on hospitalizations. There is no bad blood between our factions, wars of the past are in the past and these things happen, and will keep on happening, especially with active warring factions like R1 and JFK are. Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theory lovers but that really is all there is to it."
OKAY, WE WON'T ASK
RARE ITEM DRAMA
It's nearly a month since our rare item giveaway took place, and based on new information we've received, we can finally clear up the fate of two more of the expensive items that were pilfered from The_Hamster. First up, the Dual P90's which were given to Lohzean were quickly sent on to Queen_Chyna, Lohzean's in-game spouse. Eyebrows were immediately raised at this behaviour, but an investigation discovered that his motive was really quite sweet.
"We're married IRL so I asked him to send them to me so I could sell them and then I sent them back to him since he found a seller first." - QueenChyna
Lohzean says that there was a lot of competition for the Dual P90's, but they were eventually sold on to Pokey477 for $22bn. This money was then used to purchase stock bonuses and upgrade QueenChyna's business. How delightful.
Less delightful is the sorry story of what happened to Sugarhigh, who tried to bid on Duke's Dual TMPs, only to lose the auction in the last few seconds. And to make matters worse, just as he was preparing a final winning bid, he was mugged by Untouchable for $1.5bn - the 64th biggest mug in Torn history. Ouch. There's losing, and then there's this.
"He was the highest bidder up until the last 30ish seconds of the auction. I was planning to outbid him and wait a couple seconds then mug hoping he would withdraw and try to outbid because I actually wanted the TMPs to go with my Bushmasters. Jas beat me to the punch and bid higher than I was willing to, so I went straight for the mug, and walked away 1.5b."
"I kept his name out of the thread in achievements until yesterday, but seeing as the bounties hadn't stopped since the mug, I felt no obligation. I spoke with him yesterday and he told me that the bounties aren't him, his personal stats confirm this, although its easy to have someone else place anonymous bounties for you. He says he's not doing that either, so who the mysterious bountier is will remain a mystery." - Untouchable
And finally, Chohivzla's set of Sports Sneakers also managed to make some good money for two different players. VitaGreta told me that the Sneakers sold for $7bn to a friend of hers, who then resold them to someone else two days later for $12bn - that's some nice flipping right there. In a message to the TCT, Mightygoober outed himself as the new owner of these sneakers.
"Chohivzla was screwed over in a trade. Giving them up for only ~6.7b to a 'friend', even though I already had a 10b offer in for them. Why this new player accepted 6.7b when I had tried to chat/mail them offering 10b is beyond me. I then messaged the person who got them for dirt cheap, we worked out a deal and I now own them."
THAT'S ONE WAY TO ENTERTAIN YOURSELF
BODYBAGGER'S NEW RETREAT?
Last month the Torn City Times heard that Bodybagger was planning to purchase a high respect faction with the aim of creating a faction of giants. Bodybagger, Torn's strongest player, later purchased the Scorched Earth faction from Realist, renamed it to Guerilla Warfare, and installed himself as leader - Realist is now co-leader.
But this isn't how things were supposed to turn out. Scorched Earth was originally going to be sold to Killer-For-Hire and Pokey477 for $22.5bn. Sadly, the deal fell apart late last month when KFH pulled out, which is when BB swooped in to acquire the faction.
"I initially turned him [BB] down on the sale (as the first deal had already been 'agreed'). He was interested in buying the place and when he found out mine was to be sold soon, He invited me to join his group. As I had spent 2.5 years at the top of mine, I agreed and was going to go play with them after the sale."
"When the original deal fell through, I messaged BB and negotiated a second deal with the man himself (a bit over the 22bil you were told). Me being co-leader wasn't part of negotiations, Just a circumstantial thing. I wanted to step away from the complexities and responsibility of leadership within a partially democratic system (complex = awesome... but time!!)." - Realist
Realist told me that the original deal with KFH was cheaper as it involved assurances for their members. However, with BB paying slightly more and gaining 100% ownership of the faction, it remains to be seen what the future holds for those who chose to remain. The old members of SE are being allowed to stay for the time being, and the faction has completed two +1,000 chains of late under their new leader. But with rumours swirling that an alliance has been struck with a major power, nobody is quite sure what this faction will look like in a few months time.
THE REGRETFUL THIEF PART I
Earlier this year, we reported how a player called Deimos stole over $10 billion from Unrelenting, just before the faction was deleted. Our interview with Deimos revealed his motive was to get back at the faction for deceiving him, after he had spent upwards of 16 hours a day "busting his ass" for UR, only to discover his work was all for nothing.
We attempted to convince Deimos to return the money he'd stolen, given that it belonged to UR's members. We felt he could restore his reputation given that his actions had actually saved UR's members a great deal of money, money which might've been lost with the faction's deletion had he not stolen it. Deimos was having none of this, however, and when our conversation ended it appeared he was going to keep the money and join up with DUDE... of all people.
But in late May, Deimos, now known as Tik_Toc, got in touch to inform me that he had returned $3.8bn of his ill-gotten gains to its rightful owners.
Bish was one of the players he repaid, and this led him to create a forum thread praising Deimos for his actions. Fellow UR members Jiren and Gadzt were also reportedly repaid the money they had stored in the faction vault. We don't know what happened to the rest of UR's vault money because sadly, Deimos, aka Tik_Toc, would not talk to the Times for reasons we cannot discern. Our best guess is that we accidentally accused him of containing Chinese spyware.
PLAYING GOD?
FASTEST REVIVES?
Reviving has been in the news lately after Chedburn's recent announcement, with many healers now worried as to where their next paycheck will come from. But amid all this negativity, WhiteRabbit of Health-Hare United (nice name) got in contact with the Torn City Times to ask a more positive question.
"I need to know... what is the fastest that a faction reached 10k revives from 0. Our faction - if all goes well - will be there in 3 months. We only have 7 revivers so far and a 250 chain unlocked, and with that we want to get there in 13 to 15 weeks max."
So what say you, stat-geeks of Torn? Does anyone know how long it usually takes a faction to rack up 10k revives? What is the existing record? Contact the Torn City Times to let us know.
HT SELL HT-X
Did you know that HT has sold HT-X to Malcky_420 for $18 billion? We didn't
until an anonymous player tipped us off. The faction is now known as Ruthless Reborn, and I have heard that many of its original members were both uninformed and unhappy about the sale.
"I know a lot of HTx was upset about the sudden sale, they were not given any advance notice and simply told to move to HT and HTO. Many did not. Several bigger hitters joined Malcky_420’s faction and based on the name it looks like an attempt to rebuild a former faction, though nobody I have spoken to has heard of Ruthless before."
HT leader D3vl reportedly emptied and sold the faction while it was in the midst of a chain, according to a thread posted by Champion late last month. This makes it all the stranger that he criticised HT-X for failing to chain properly after the sale was completed. As my anonymous source suggests, some players promptly left the HT family by staying with the faction when it was rebranded as Ruthless Reborn.
It will be interesting to see if HT comes into conflict with RR given how close they are on the territorial map. My source tells me that HTX only dropped one racket, which Yakuza then took in order to hold for HT main while they resorted their territories. D3vl claimed he was going to use his profits from HT-X to buy a new HT faction, but nobody is quite sure where this faction will fit in their local area - it may be that Ruthless Reborn may be impolitely asked to leave.
POINTLESS
Two weeks ago, a player called _Santa_Claus_ (Not Santa_Claus) got in touch with The Times to let us in on a dastardly scheme he'd cooked up. He was known as CountShankalots at the time, and he thought he'd come up with a brilliant plan to make money from the points market - a plan nobody had ever thought of ever, ever, before.
"I've got a story for you. I'm amassing an army, after we raise the price of points up enough we will sell them for massive profits. Imagine... ALL of Torn, everyone one of us, raising the price of points to 100k then selling our hoards to Felix at the pawn shop."
_Santa_Claus_ even posted about his magnificent achievement in the Achievement forum before he'd even achieved it. The only trouble is, his plan was utter bo***cks. For a start, the pawn shop price doesn't automatically rise or fall based on the price at which points are listed, but on the price they sell at. You can list a bunch of points at extortionate prices if you want, but this will do diddly squat to what Felix the pawn shop guy pays - he's no fool you know.
Furthermore, a recent patch note indicated that pawn prices will now be changed manually by Chedburn and the Economist, and not rely on previous point sale prices and quantities. This is how Donator Pack pawn prices are currently adjusted, which in turn affects the price Donator Packs go for on the item market. Now that the pawn shop point price is also fixed by the Economist, we may see a more stable and predictable price graph in future.
Sorry Santa, Christmas hasn't come early this year.
THE REGRETFUL THIEF PART II
Deimos / Tik_Toc isn't the only vault thief who regrets his actions. In our article on vault thieves, we covered the tale of a player called Shminiganz, who stole $13 billion from ELITE back in late May. We noted how he was still without a faction when we reported on him in June, and this remains the case to this day. In response to our highlighting of his case, Shminiganz sent us an explanation as to why he stole all those sweet billions from his own faction.
"I became absolutely bored of being ELITE, I didn't intend to inflict anything onto ELITE members but obv I know what problem was caused with doing what I did. I was as loyal as they come when it came to ELITE but leadership and bad choice after bad choice and the loss of all our best guys and no effort made to get them back, from being kicked off the island leadership was too late to react."
Shminiganz's list of excuses continued, and he went on to say that ELITE was an insular faction, and that their leader Kitman gave empty promises to its members. Regardless of whether any of this is true, Shminiganz's reasons are similar to those of Deimos and other vault thieves, who seem to profess loyalty to their faction on the one hand, while using the other to raid the pockets of its members in response to a disagreement with leadership.
"I metaphorically tried to put a rocket up ELITE's arse but clearly a bad move but i'll be the one to take the brunt in an effort that ELITE would show the same pride that I felt. I'd rather leave than just click my gains day to day i'd rather work for it and respect my team doing the same... I've only ever believed ur as strong as who u know and if to get ELITE back on track it was me who had to be the bad person despite the hate that would be inflicted on me."
I cannot fathom how one can "take the brunt" and "respect my team" while stealing from them, thus reducing their months of hard work to ashes in an instant. This kind of self-righteous attitude seems to be prevalent among vault thieves, so faction leaders would be wise to use the forthcoming permissions update to keep such people away from the faction vault.
As for the money itself, Shminiganz claims they "flipped it into a crap stock but it was sent back." That doesn't seem to explain why Shminiganz's networth never went up due to the $13 billion he stole. If you know what happened to this missing money, contact The Times today.
JFK / RELENTLESS WAR IMMINENT?
A formal war between JFK and Relentless seemed imminent earlier this week after the two sides were seen hospitalising each other en masse. My insider within JFK claimed that the fight began when Relentless started a chain just a few hours before their own. JFK noticed an above-average number of hits were soon coming from Relentless, and this continued even after their chain had finished.
My source added that R appeared to be hitting JFK as if the two sides were warring, but that nothing official had been declared, describing the situation as "just cold war tensions brewing."
"I don't think Z wants to get into the thick of a war unless the war is brought to us. If it's brought to us, we have a tendency of drawing it out until it hurts their NW enough that they back down."
When I checked in a day later, I was told that JFK leadership had instructed their members to "All out hosp on R1... put literally every single hit on Relentless." It has been reported from within Relentless that the same order has been given to their troops. A betting man would wager it's only a matter of time before this fight is made official, with a territorial war deemed likely given the proximity of the two sides.
Pictured: Bosom buddies, or brutal enemies?
Our source told us that relations between the two factions remain friendly, despite the happenings of the past week. And according to JFK leader Z_junior, a war has not and will not happen.
"It wasn't a war. Both factions were chaining. Regular hits were exchanged. That led to retaliations. Retaliations led to hospitalizations. It carried over to the next chain with full on hospitalizations. There is no bad blood between our factions, wars of the past are in the past and these things happen, and will keep on happening, especially with active warring factions like R1 and JFK are. Sorry to disappoint the conspiracy theory lovers but that really is all there is to it."
OKAY, WE WON'T ASK
RARE ITEM DRAMA
It's nearly a month since our rare item giveaway took place, and based on new information we've received, we can finally clear up the fate of two more of the expensive items that were pilfered from The_Hamster. First up, the Dual P90's which were given to Lohzean were quickly sent on to Queen_Chyna, Lohzean's in-game spouse. Eyebrows were immediately raised at this behaviour, but an investigation discovered that his motive was really quite sweet.
"We're married IRL so I asked him to send them to me so I could sell them and then I sent them back to him since he found a seller first." - QueenChyna
Lohzean says that there was a lot of competition for the Dual P90's, but they were eventually sold on to Pokey477 for $22bn. This money was then used to purchase stock bonuses and upgrade QueenChyna's business. How delightful.
Less delightful is the sorry story of what happened to Sugarhigh, who tried to bid on Duke's Dual TMPs, only to lose the auction in the last few seconds. And to make matters worse, just as he was preparing a final winning bid, he was mugged by Untouchable for $1.5bn - the 64th biggest mug in Torn history. Ouch. There's losing, and then there's this.
"He was the highest bidder up until the last 30ish seconds of the auction. I was planning to outbid him and wait a couple seconds then mug hoping he would withdraw and try to outbid because I actually wanted the TMPs to go with my Bushmasters. Jas beat me to the punch and bid higher than I was willing to, so I went straight for the mug, and walked away 1.5b."
"I kept his name out of the thread in achievements until yesterday, but seeing as the bounties hadn't stopped since the mug, I felt no obligation. I spoke with him yesterday and he told me that the bounties aren't him, his personal stats confirm this, although its easy to have someone else place anonymous bounties for you. He says he's not doing that either, so who the mysterious bountier is will remain a mystery." - Untouchable
And finally, Chohivzla's set of Sports Sneakers also managed to make some good money for two different players. VitaGreta told me that the Sneakers sold for $7bn to a friend of hers, who then resold them to someone else two days later for $12bn - that's some nice flipping right there. In a message to the TCT, Mightygoober outed himself as the new owner of these sneakers.
"Chohivzla was screwed over in a trade. Giving them up for only ~6.7b to a 'friend', even though I already had a 10b offer in for them. Why this new player accepted 6.7b when I had tried to chat/mail them offering 10b is beyond me. I then messaged the person who got them for dirt cheap, we worked out a deal and I now own them."
THAT'S ONE WAY TO ENTERTAIN YOURSELF
BODYBAGGER'S NEW RETREAT?
Last month the Torn City Times heard that Bodybagger was planning to purchase a high respect faction with the aim of creating a faction of giants. Bodybagger, Torn's strongest player, later purchased the Scorched Earth faction from Realist, renamed it to Guerilla Warfare, and installed himself as leader - Realist is now co-leader.
But this isn't how things were supposed to turn out. Scorched Earth was originally going to be sold to Killer-For-Hire and Pokey477 for $22.5bn. Sadly, the deal fell apart late last month when KFH pulled out, which is when BB swooped in to acquire the faction.
"I initially turned him [BB] down on the sale (as the first deal had already been 'agreed'). He was interested in buying the place and when he found out mine was to be sold soon, He invited me to join his group. As I had spent 2.5 years at the top of mine, I agreed and was going to go play with them after the sale."
"When the original deal fell through, I messaged BB and negotiated a second deal with the man himself (a bit over the 22bil you were told). Me being co-leader wasn't part of negotiations, Just a circumstantial thing. I wanted to step away from the complexities and responsibility of leadership within a partially democratic system (complex = awesome... but time!!)." - Realist
Realist told me that the original deal with KFH was cheaper as it involved assurances for their members. However, with BB paying slightly more and gaining 100% ownership of the faction, it remains to be seen what the future holds for those who chose to remain. The old members of SE are being allowed to stay for the time being, and the faction has completed two +1,000 chains of late under their new leader. But with rumours swirling that an alliance has been struck with a major power, nobody is quite sure what this faction will look like in a few months time.
THE REGRETFUL THIEF PART I
Earlier this year, we reported how a player called Deimos stole over $10 billion from Unrelenting, just before the faction was deleted. Our interview with Deimos revealed his motive was to get back at the faction for deceiving him, after he had spent upwards of 16 hours a day "busting his ass" for UR, only to discover his work was all for nothing.
We attempted to convince Deimos to return the money he'd stolen, given that it belonged to UR's members. We felt he could restore his reputation given that his actions had actually saved UR's members a great deal of money, money which might've been lost with the faction's deletion had he not stolen it. Deimos was having none of this, however, and when our conversation ended it appeared he was going to keep the money and join up with DUDE... of all people.
But in late May, Deimos, now known as Tik_Toc, got in touch to inform me that he had returned $3.8bn of his ill-gotten gains to its rightful owners.
Bish was one of the players he repaid, and this led him to create a forum thread praising Deimos for his actions. Fellow UR members Jiren and Gadzt were also reportedly repaid the money they had stored in the faction vault. We don't know what happened to the rest of UR's vault money because sadly, Deimos, aka Tik_Toc, would not talk to the Times for reasons we cannot discern. Our best guess is that we accidentally accused him of containing Chinese spyware.
PLAYING GOD?
FASTEST REVIVES?
Reviving has been in the news lately after Chedburn's recent announcement, with many healers now worried as to where their next paycheck will come from. But amid all this negativity, WhiteRabbit of Health-Hare United (nice name) got in contact with the Torn City Times to ask a more positive question.
"I need to know... what is the fastest that a faction reached 10k revives from 0. Our faction - if all goes well - will be there in 3 months. We only have 7 revivers so far and a 250 chain unlocked, and with that we want to get there in 13 to 15 weeks max."
So what say you, stat-geeks of Torn? Does anyone know how long it usually takes a faction to rack up 10k revives? What is the existing record? Contact the Torn City Times to let us know.
HT SELL HT-X
Did you know that HT has sold HT-X to Malcky_420 for $18 billion? We didn't
until an anonymous player tipped us off. The faction is now known as Ruthless Reborn, and I have heard that many of its original members were both uninformed and unhappy about the sale.
"I know a lot of HTx was upset about the sudden sale, they were not given any advance notice and simply told to move to HT and HTO. Many did not. Several bigger hitters joined Malcky_420’s faction and based on the name it looks like an attempt to rebuild a former faction, though nobody I have spoken to has heard of Ruthless before."
HT leader D3vl reportedly emptied and sold the faction while it was in the midst of a chain, according to a thread posted by Champion late last month. This makes it all the stranger that he criticised HT-X for failing to chain properly after the sale was completed. As my anonymous source suggests, some players promptly left the HT family by staying with the faction when it was rebranded as Ruthless Reborn.
It will be interesting to see if HT comes into conflict with RR given how close they are on the territorial map. My source tells me that HTX only dropped one racket, which Yakuza then took in order to hold for HT main while they resorted their territories. D3vl claimed he was going to use his profits from HT-X to buy a new HT faction, but nobody is quite sure where this faction will fit in their local area - it may be that Ruthless Reborn may be impolitely asked to leave.
POINTLESS
Two weeks ago, a player called _Santa_Claus_ (Not Santa_Claus) got in touch with The Times to let us in on a dastardly scheme he'd cooked up. He was known as CountShankalots at the time, and he thought he'd come up with a brilliant plan to make money from the points market - a plan nobody had ever thought of ever, ever, before.
"I've got a story for you. I'm amassing an army, after we raise the price of points up enough we will sell them for massive profits. Imagine... ALL of Torn, everyone one of us, raising the price of points to 100k then selling our hoards to Felix at the pawn shop."
_Santa_Claus_ even posted about his magnificent achievement in the Achievement forum before he'd even achieved it. The only trouble is, his plan was utter bo***cks. For a start, the pawn shop price doesn't automatically rise or fall based on the price at which points are listed, but on the price they sell at. You can list a bunch of points at extortionate prices if you want, but this will do diddly squat to what Felix the pawn shop guy pays - he's no fool you know.
Furthermore, a recent patch note indicated that pawn prices will now be changed manually by Chedburn and the Economist, and not rely on previous point sale prices and quantities. This is how Donator Pack pawn prices are currently adjusted, which in turn affects the price Donator Packs go for on the item market. Now that the pawn shop point price is also fixed by the Economist, we may see a more stable and predictable price graph in future.
Sorry Santa, Christmas hasn't come early this year.
THE REGRETFUL THIEF PART II
Deimos / Tik_Toc isn't the only vault thief who regrets his actions. In our article on vault thieves, we covered the tale of a player called Shminiganz, who stole $13 billion from ELITE back in late May. We noted how he was still without a faction when we reported on him in June, and this remains the case to this day. In response to our highlighting of his case, Shminiganz sent us an explanation as to why he stole all those sweet billions from his own faction.
"I became absolutely bored of being ELITE, I didn't intend to inflict anything onto ELITE members but obv I know what problem was caused with doing what I did. I was as loyal as they come when it came to ELITE but leadership and bad choice after bad choice and the loss of all our best guys and no effort made to get them back, from being kicked off the island leadership was too late to react."
Shminiganz's list of excuses continued, and he went on to say that ELITE was an insular faction, and that their leader Kitman gave empty promises to its members. Regardless of whether any of this is true, Shminiganz's reasons are similar to those of Deimos and other vault thieves, who seem to profess loyalty to their faction on the one hand, while using the other to raid the pockets of its members in response to a disagreement with leadership.
"I metaphorically tried to put a rocket up ELITE's arse but clearly a bad move but i'll be the one to take the brunt in an effort that ELITE would show the same pride that I felt. I'd rather leave than just click my gains day to day i'd rather work for it and respect my team doing the same... I've only ever believed ur as strong as who u know and if to get ELITE back on track it was me who had to be the bad person despite the hate that would be inflicted on me."
I cannot fathom how one can "take the brunt" and "respect my team" while stealing from them, thus reducing their months of hard work to ashes in an instant. This kind of self-righteous attitude seems to be prevalent among vault thieves, so faction leaders would be wise to use the forthcoming permissions update to keep such people away from the faction vault.
As for the money itself, Shminiganz claims they "flipped it into a crap stock but it was sent back." That doesn't seem to explain why Shminiganz's networth never went up due to the $13 billion he stole. If you know what happened to this missing money, contact The Times today.
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