Today I'm going to look at Merits you can earn from receiving attacks rather than initiating.
Defends
Below is a table listing all the Medals you can earn from successfully defending attacks. The cost column assumes you pay people to attack you and lose at a cost of $300,000 per loss and lists how many $Millions you will have to spend.
| Defend Merits | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| Name | Defends | Cost | Notes |
| Bouncer | 50 | $15 | |
| Self Defense | 50 | $15 | Honor Bar |
| Brick Wall | 250 | $75 | |
| Turtle | 500 | $150 | |
| 007 | 1000 | $300 | Honor, 1k attacks won |
| Solid as a Rock | 2,500 | $750 | |
| Fortress | 10,000 | $3,000 | |
If you want to buy all the defend merits, it will cost you $3,000,000,000 (3 billion). That's a lot to pay for. You're better off being strong and getting attacked naturally and not losing.
However, as a level 75 player, I only get attacked by strong people who have no problem beating me and therefore I collect almost no defends naturally. I just paid my way to the 007 Honor bar. Without any Defends acquired naturally, I'll have to buy another 1,500 Defends for the next merit and 9,000 for the final merit. This is looking at $450m and $2.7B for the respective Defend medals.
I need people to attack me and lose. I need to get wayyyy stronger so that I don't have to buy all these Defends. If only I could take advantage of getting Bountied and receiving defends. Unfortunately for that I think I'm likely to be focusing on Dexterity for the foreseeable future. It might help with Stalemates, which I don't need because I've already received my 100 for the Honor. I don't know what to do about getting more Defends other than joining Faction Territory wars and hoping someone attacks me unsuccessfully but that stops me traveling which is my main source of safety and income.
Runaways
If you run away from enough foes or have them run away from you you can get Medals. These are intended to be rewards for the situation where someone starts a fight with you, realizes they can't win, and try to escape rather than eat a loss and all their Health. In practice, these can be purchased from players, farmed easily with a friend with proper stats or earned in the early levels.
Below is a table for the Medals related to Runaways. There are no Honors.
| Runaway Medals | ||
|---|---|---|
| # | You Run | They Run |
| 50 | Close Escape | Ego Smashing |
| 250 | Blind Judgement | Underestimated |
| 1,000 | Overzealous | Run Forest Run |
To increase chances at Runaways, the Runner wants higher Dexterity than the target's Speed. Other things that can help include:
- Education for passive Dexterity (up to +19%)
- Spending Merits on Dexterity (+3% each level)
- Vicodin, +25% all stats or Target being on Xanax (-35% all stats)
- Temp Items: Smoke Grenades and Flash Bangs to reduce enemy Speed
- 10* Car Dealership Perk: +95% chance to Run away
- The Book: Running Away From Trouble (100% Run Away Chance, 31 days)
Book items are a relatively recent addition to Torn items. Books last for a month and you can only have one book active at a time. They can cost anywhere between 1000-2000 mission credits which means a lot of energy spent to earn them. However, a month is enough time to grind out all 1000 runaways especially if you eat Xanax for energy or use point Refills. Otherwise, Runaways will have a chance to fail and can cost additional attempts.
Here are some obstacles that can make Running away more challenging:
- Enemy's Education for passive Speed (up to +13%)
- Enemy spending Merits on Speed (+3% each level)
- Enemy on Vicodin or you on Xanax
- Enemy using Temp Item: Pepper Spray or Tear Gas to reduce your Dexterity
- Enemy having Health and Fitness Bachelor Perk: -50% Enemy Chance to Run away
I was fortunate when I worked on the 50 and 250 Medals for both types. I had a partner. Our stats were compatible: our Dexterity exceeded each other's Speed. We traded Runaways until we both got 250 each and matched attacks. I failed a little more often because they had the Health and Fitness Bachelor, but it was OK as I didn't mind spending a bit on Smoke Grenades. We also coordinated to have the Target on Xanax and the runner off Xanax.
As it stands now, I need just over 700 more enemies to run away from me. I am willing to pay 1 Xanax per Runaway. 720 Xanax to give away will cost me about $600m worth of Xanax. I'm not pursuing this too aggressively so I won't burn out of money right away.
I also need to do 720 Runaways myself. Assuming I succeed 100% of the time, I'm only going to have to spend 18,000 Energy. If luck is a little worse and I only succeed 80% of my attempts, it'll cost more like 22,500 Energy. I want to talk about opportunity cost right now. The table below shows just how many stat's I'll miss out on at different gyms while working on a single Merit:
| Gym | George's | Frontline | 8* Single |
| E/Train | 10 | 25 | 50 |
| Gain/Train | 25,200 | 64,700 | 138,000 |
| 18kE Trains | 1,800 | 720 | 360 |
| Stat Gain (M) | 45.36 | 46.584 | 49.68 |
I was going to calculate how many stats I will miss out on with a less than 100% success rate at Runaways, but I can already tell that this single Merit is NOT worth it. I'm still going to work towards it. Not actively. It's not worth it. But I want it.
Perspective on Runaways
Let's pretend for a second I have no merits spent on Strength. If I spend 1 merit on Strength, I will gain 3% Strength. The break-even Strength stat for this depends on which gym I train Strength at. If it's George's, I need 3% of my stat to be 45m, or a total of 1.5 Billion.
To make it even worse, imagine I have 9/10 merits spent on Strength. I have 9 merits on hand, and this Run Away merit will be the 10th and final merit to be allocated to Strength. This single merit is now worth 1/10th of 3%, or 0.3% my stat in Strength. The new break even point is going to be 15 Billion Strength. How do I get to 15B Strength? Not with training. Energy is near worthless at this point. To simplify things, I'm going to pretend I can't bargain and I buy all my Dumbell Stat Enhancers from Nikeh Sports for $450 million each.
To figure out how many Stat Enhancers I need, I must solve for x: 1.5B * 1.01x = 15 B
Without showing logarithms, I can say that x=231.4 rounded to 231 because I'll probably train past exactly 1.5B. 231 Dumbells purchased from Nikeh will cost $103.95 Billion. Assuming I can afford all that, Stat Enhancer's still have a cool down of 6 hours limiting their use to 4 per day. In other words, I will have to eat 4 Dumbbells daily for 57.75 days. At this stage of the game I am so far beyond caring about 18,000 Energy. I think.
That's All Folks!
I hope this information was helpful. Feel free to comment with additions or suggestions. Do you like my speculation? Did I make a mistake? Are there any topics in Torn you're interested in or would like to read about? Let me know!
