Surviving Your First Days
The city gives you 48 hours of grace. Spend them well.
You arrive with $1,000, 50 tickets, full stamina, and no reputation. The good news: nobody can touch you yet. The bad news: that doesn't last.
New-player protection
Fresh accounts are under protection — you can't be assaulted, killed, or sabotaged. It lifts when the first of three things happens: 48 real hours pass, your respect crosses 5,000, or you switch it off yourself from the dashboard. When it ends, you get a letter in your inbox — read it; from that moment you can be hospitalized by a beating or, far worse, permanently killed.
A first session that works
- Run your first Robberies — the petty jobs need almost no stats and pay your seed money. They have no upfront stake beyond stamina, although failure still carries penalties.
- Bank the take. Cash in hand can be stolen; the Bank protects it from ordinary pocket losses. Kid Genius Sabotage and citywide bank events can still change the balance.
- Follow Rook's Jobs 1–4 and earn your way to level 2, when short Training & University sessions unlock. At level 1, petty jobs build your stats; having enough cash alone does not open the gym. Long sessions unlock at level 5. Early sessions are deliberately modest and grow steeply with your level. You may run 2 sessions per game day once eligible.
- Refill stamina in Nightlife when you run dry (mind the addiction and the STDs).
- Join a gang as soon as a decent one will have you — facilities, protection in numbers, and gang jobs beat going alone.
- Set an heir on your dashboard. Morbid, but so is the city.
Crossing paths
The city notices who stands where. Enter a nightlife venue and other gangsters there see you — and you see them, in your Gangsters Seen list on the Friends page. Being seen is how encounters start: anyone who spots you in a venue can jump you on the spot once your protection is gone (and you can do the same). Watch where you drink.
Guest accounts
Playing as a guest? You get a taste of the city, but the doors are closed: most actions beyond the basics are locked until you create a free account. The trial freezes when 48 hours pass or your respect reaches 5,000, whichever comes first. Once the 48-hour window expires, an unregistered guest character can be reaped. Guests remain non-targetable and cannot target anyone. Register in time to keep the character and unlock the full game.