At first, Some people miss starting education. Some people start whatever sounded/looked good. Some people start a course after comparing the working stat gains. Some people ask their faction mates or in new player chatroom, and start. Some people forget. And, Some people just don't care.

But Education here is as important as the real world education. The interesting thing is, if you stick with Torn for long, you are bound to complete all the education courses (roughly 4 years) along with 16 merits.

GOAL of this GUIDE:

Caution:

Ways to reduce Education time (In order of usual feasibility):

Ultimately the bonuses work one upon another, not as additives.

So the total time reduction for having full education merits + principal + WSU bb will not be 40% but 35%.


Structure of the courses

Courses are divided in three tiers. Completion of previous tier courses of same degree is a necessity for starting the next tier. Each group will have one Tier 1 (T1) course and one Tier 3 (T3) course. Tier 2 (T2) Courses vary in number throughout different groups/subjects.

First/Definite courses

Throughout the game these courses are undoubtedly regarded as the first courses to be finished.

This course is For every one to reduce their spending on medical bills. After the 'Newbie Protection' period of first 14 days into the game there will be a need for having equipped with our own blood packets.

Blood bags will heal more amount of life and hospital time while giving less medical cooldown compared to other kinds of healing items.
These can be acquired either by buying in item market or by filling up of empty blood bags (Which are preferably bought at item market. Pharmacy is their place of origin but you would need 'Bachelors in Biology' to access it. They are also available at mission credit market in 'Missions' tab. But 'Mission Credits' are precious don’t waste them on empty blood bags).


Why do we need to worry about medical supplies?

Being attacked is natural in this game. This is a crime based one. What do you expect?


Now we are going to discuss about the steps which can be taken from this point onwards.

You can choose like most of the players, the 'popular approach'. Or the 'alternate approaches'. The key here is knowing 'WHAT YOU WANT TO DO WITH THIS GAME?' This can only be answered by 'YOU'.


The Popular approach is,

Battle stats are the core of the game, You gain respect with that. All the money will go into training them. The real growth of your account is usually measured by these numbers.

ALTERNATE APPROACHES

Money, Crimes and Merit hunting are three most sought alternatives by players as an approach rather than battle stat centric approach.

A. MONEY-CENTRIC approach:

These people are mostly concerned with money. In reality, this is the most important stat than battle stats because it can boost your training efficiency in leaps.

For this, newbies have very few viable options (some of these are time gated, may not be viable for newbies but the reason for mentioning here is that you can get an idea, so that you can plan ahead)
- Flying, Selling losses, Crimes, Trading, Company direction, Casino (in the order of ease)

Now coming to the various education courses that will be helpful for earning money

1. Crimes like FBI hacking can earn you good amount of daily income. But you will need to have 35-40 natural nerve (not possible for a newbie in short term). You need to finish a course to unlock this ability.

2. Company direction: The high tier companies can earn 100s of millions a week. But running them is a hard task as the competition is going hard and it is getting hard to acquire loyal employees. So you need to enter with conviction and full set of education

3. Trading: The basics of trading is appeasing the larger mule community of fliers. Getting rid of their plushies and flowers can give you good mileage and can rope in recurring customers. How does education help this? After acquiring all those stuffed animals and exotic flowers you would need a place to exchange them to get points out of the sets is MUSEUM. You need to unlock it by education only.

B. CRIME-CENTRIC approach:

As crimes are done through separate stat (nerve) and it is mainly depending upon an invisible stat (Crime Experience - CE), this approach can be said as an additional approach rather than an alternative approach. Education helps little in this aspect but important.

1. Hacking: As said above. It is a CE draining crime that can be done after achieving 35 NNB (natural nerve bar) but lucrative.

2. Grand Theft Auto (GTA) crimes: To be able to do them you need to first finish these courses. These courses are also useful for unlocking the staple crime for positive CE - Arsons (warehouse)

3. Crime success rate: 10% increase in crime success rate will be seen after finishing this course

C. MERIT-CENTRIC approach:

These players want to earn or plan their progress according to maximize the capacity to earn as much as possible number of merits. They tend to splurge a large amount of money on it sometimes and may hamper their battle stat growth.

Finishing all the education courses itself can provide a good 16 merits. But some courses are so much helpful for gaining early start on many 'long-burn merits'.

1. Busting: It is severely time gated to earn merits in busting as you may be able to only bust 2-3 people a day in the beginning at max. While busting others can cost 2-5 nerve depending upon the faction specials. Self bust can cost more than half of your nnb.

2. Bailing: You use money to bail yourself or others out of jail. It can be quite costly.

3. Weapon experience: A nightmarish merit is achieving 25 weapons' experience to 100%, which would take at least 2000 hits with each weapon. But to start acquiring weapon experience, you need to finish this course. Weapon experience also useful in battles as a weapon will get a bonus damage and accuracy when you reach 100% experience with it.

4. Virus coding: You can code various viruses using a personal computer or a laptop. You need to unlock each virus coding ability by education. You need to code 250 viruses to get the merit. It takes long time to code a virus. The below said courses will help

D. BATTLE-CENTRIC approach:

While for this the best starting point would be 'Sports science' bachelors, some people try to cover other areas first.

1. Passive stats: Xanax usage is associated with -35% of all stats while under drug cool down. This will be seriously hampering in getting good respect on opponents in chains or wars. To counter it you can spend merits on passive stats but as new players do not enjoy a freedom of having numerous merits to spare, you can grab passive stats using education also.

The total number of passive stats that can be gained from education would be,
Strength = +5% (9 weeks, including introductions)
Speed = +14% (27 weeks, including introductions)
Defense = +11% (21 weeks, including introductions)
Dexterity = +19% (22 weeks, including introductions)
(Total - 66 weeks)

2. Misc: There are wide range of educations that help directly and indirectly in battles, apart from gym stat gains and passive stats. The list of courses will not include introductions, as you should work on them in the late phase rather than early.

FINAL WORDS of Advice