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Along with several unnamed henchmen Madara casually strolled out into the busy streets. Several of the goons were there solely to act as traffic cones to the pedestrians and make space for him to set up his presentation. There were stands holding up large flash cards which had brightly coloured charts and graphs. Every now and then a card would contain only a picture of a potato for some reason.
Along with the presentation Madara would be out giving personally he had prepared copies of little booklets which contained all the important information, a manual to anyone who wanted a copy. To avoid having to pay tax on this Madara wasn't selling copies but rather giving them away free, with plenty of cups and suitcases around for tips and donations should people see fit to be as generous.
Once enough people had gathered to see what all the brightly coloured pie was about Madara began his introduction
The purpose of this guide...
Madara points to the booklets which people were being encouraged to take a copy of
is to offer as many tips and as much as advice as I can, to help people who're interesting in advancing their... "career" as fast as possible.
Realising the public streets might have been a bad place to do this, but too late to stop it without being suspicious Madara endeavoured to keep as much of it in code for the initiated to understand as possible
Although some of the tips are common knowledge they're overlooked by the majority of mobsteeee-eerrrm... "members". Some of the tips given in this guide may not be best for personal skill set development. Other tips may require people to prioritise for themselves the aspect they want most, career advancement, which I shall here-after refer to as "ranking" versus personal skill development when it comes to use of money and Madara winks to the initiated members he sees spectating 'credits'.
Much of the advice given is about ways of working towards those 'Squishy achievements'
He winked again... completely forgetting for the millionth time his mask doesn't show both eyes so it only looks like ordinary blinking
whilst you go about your usual criminaaaa-aaahh.. I mean law abiding duties! ... In order to maximise the benefits of your 'valued experience' money and 'credit' gains.
Madara explains that "valued experience" is what the higher ups require members to have in order to give them consideration for promotions through the ranks and is also what most dealers use to determine your ability to shift their products without over burdening yourself.
He continues on to point out that the "Church of Squishy" by which all mafioso in the realm lived their lives according to the rules and teachings of, also rewarded the most devoted who showed their faith by completing "squishy achievements". Each achievement, whilst it would usually also bring good fortune in the form of extra income from random sources, also contributed towards the total "valued experience" which was recognised by all mobsters who operated under the rules of the church of squishy.
Random members of the public couldn't understand what was being said and left to go about whatever it is they were doing, whilst believing Madara to be rambling incoherent nonsense at them.
So without further delay I shall commence with the presentation!
Madara picks up a stick to serve as a pointer and smacks it against the first card on display. Pointing to the words as he reads them aloud.
Pre-Employment Skill Set Training
As I'm sure most, if not everyone is aware already... There are specific skills which are desired above all else when it comes to being employed in this thing of ours. I'm not going to dive into the merits of any particular skill set versus any other during this presentation, but for the purposes of this specific guide the best stats to train your child and the next generation in from an early age are the ones that are actually easiest to improve upon. B & E and Intimidation.
B & E + Intimidation:
Having an early advantage in the art of B & E means less time later developing those jail breaking skills. Meaning you can start getting experience at working those maximum security joints much earlier than your peers. However, in the long run it might not be so desirable to trade out a harder to develop skill you could have worked on since youth like your stealthiness or marksmanship for a skill that with a few repetitions of training can make up for the lack of starting B & E experience.
If your goal for your offspring is simply for them to set a record for fastest 'ranking' in the history of our line of work, B & E is the way to go.
Intimidation, similar to B & E gives the young a quicker start to doing riskier more lucrative crimes with less chance of making mistakes which lead to falure. Again like B & E it's an easily trained skill and losing out other skills for the sake of this isn't a particularly wise decision but if speed at proving you've got the 'valued experience' to move up the ranks is your aim then go for it.
Marksmanship + Physique:
Marksmanship skills developed from an early age will Madara emphasis the next word in case any would be snitches are listening *HYPOTHETICALLY* help to kill things, obviously. Which, whilst it's a desirable skill for people in our line of work to have, is not why it should be considered as a skill to teach the young for the purposes of advancing up the ranks.
This skill gives the next generation an innate advantage when it comes to successfully completing hits and contracts whether it be their own pay-rolled corrupt agents who know too much, other outside mobsters like the Durdens, or mafioso and their employed or unemployed bodyguards.
I can't be certain whether or not successfully completing a hit gives much or any 'valued experience' towards proving you're ready the next rank at all, but being successful and not failing to kill (minimising the falures until the successes start rolling in frequently) will speed up the rate at which you or your children complete the related 'squishy achievements', which ARE considered as 'valued experience'
You and your child's "Physique" is something else to take into consideration. When it comes to pick pocketing other people and agents, much like successful WACK!ing I can't say whether it gives a significant amount of 'valued experience' but it will speed up completing the 'squishy achievements' which again do translate to 'valued experience'.
Funding:
If you're living an ordinary life, attempting to make the best of what you inherited and reaching the potential that you have, this probably won't apply to you. My parents, were content with not reaching the pinnacle. They were okay with getting by and not standing out. The reason is, they were quietly and calmly working hard for the future generations of our family. They knew they'd not achieve much but what they could do was save their money, live frugally and slowly amass wealth for their children's children. They essentially spent their days keeping money coming in through low key operations with corrupt agents and making some drug runs here and there and stacking 'credits' in preparation for me. Having start up funds and credits goes a long way to getting a faster start out of the blocks.
A majorly needed investment in your life should be a P.A who can keep track of "timers" for you, from the start or as soon as possible. They'll let you know when the coaches leave the station for the next district over, when the heat is off the jewellery filled cemetery (if you're into that sort of thing) and are essential to minimise your down time.
If you know who to speak to, you can exchange some of the 'credits' your parents earned and passed down to you for some useful perks. The Freemasons don't even have the privileges that our 'credits' afford us. I'd recommend investing in a 'travel' perk, which will occasionally allow you to convince a coach driver and even more occasionally a pilot, who was supposed to be going 1 way, to take you the other way 'by accident' so you don't have to wait for their schedules to travel around the place.
Having a good connection with guards in the big house is also a wise investment. As are some of the others. I recommend you do some research as to what "credits" can actually do for you.
Here's a potato
Madara flips over the chart to the next section. Before continuing on he asks people how they're feeling about the presentation and offers people a short break to use public restroom facilities and get themselves some refreshments. He paused to pour a cup of tea from a flask he had on a table next to the cards. He stretched, yawned to re-focus his mind and when everyone who was staying for the lecture were ready, moved on.
Getting started
Petty Crimes:
So you've decided the life of crime is for you? Your parents did their best to set you up with some skills that'll help you later in life and it's time to make it worth their while to have done so. Well, first things first. When starting out in this life, despite being unemployed... get rid of those jobs pages and ignore them jobs boards and crack on with being self employed. Start by getting some practice doing those petty crimes for fist fulls of dollars, immediately. If you've got O.C.D or just into that sort of thing, feel free to complete each crime related 'squishy achievement' before moving onto the next one. I personally preferred to do 25 of each crime, just to get the first achievement for each of them. (this gets the easier squishy achievements done whilst making sure you're not unnecessarily failing crimes as you train the skill) After that move on to robbing the local P.O.
K.O the P.O doesn't appear in the free to all holy book and isn't added in until you've moved up the ranks and are allowed access to further chapters of the book of the church of squishy. When you do turn gangster, it will be on the achievements list and all the post office jobs you've done for it up until then will be recognised and count towards your completion of said squishy achievement.
Felony Crimes:
As far as I can tell, these don't actually directly contribute towards the recognised 'valued experience'. Or if they do it's a negligible amount when it comes to gaining respect and trust with more units, with haste.
Reasons for doing felony crimes would be A) for the monies B) to tick off the squishy achievements C) Cos pimpin' ain't easy and when you do it successfully it makes you look cool.
I personally refrain from committing felonies when I'm in my home city due to the higher level of "ohhmm!" that comes with doing felonies, the authorities are far more vigilant of their surveillance of their suspects. In turn this stops you being available for the large organised crimes (OCs) which bring in way more dosh and also help towards completing their related squishy achievements too. If you do want to work the felonies I'd recommend doing them whilst outside of your home city, especially in unoccupied cities. As well as getting achievements for doing them around the cities, you're far less likely to be invited to an OC outside your hometown.
Drugs:
The dealer is usually where you'll first be informed you've shown enough 'valued experience' to carry another unit (unit being slang for whatever measurement of weight the specific drug is measured in) Drug trades them selves are for making money money moooney... MOOOONEEEEY! which of course, can be exchanged for credit. (I'm not promoting the idea of never donating, just to advance your personal development by the way. Donate to your family, they'll love you for it)
As well as making money which can be converted to credits, there are squishy achievements for profitably dealing every drug under the sun. The cheap drugs, through to morphine have 1 x5 sell for profit squishy achievement. The big 3, barbs, heroin and coca cola all have multiple levels and hidden hardcore achievements for the truly devote Squishians.
Firstly, I'd recommend investing a credit in the 'travel perk'. It's not all that fantastic for the long haul flights as most pilots are too uptight to get lost along their route... but when it comes to the inter district coach drivers who don't have navigation equipment and can easily take the wrong turn it's super spiffy, especially when drugs are high in the city and the potential for profit is higher between districts.
Drugs have a 10% deviation from the price set by the local agent. If you invested in that P.A to keep track of all your affairs and times they'll also be sure to get info from local agents that may be useful to you...
Rumor has it that Jim Howe has set Coke at $9,001, Heroin at $7,702 and Barbs at $2,833
In this example, coke has the capability of dropping down to 8.1k and going up as high as 9.9k which is 1.8k potential profit.
Knowing the potential for profit is key to completing drug related squishy achievements faster. If you're holding coke in this example because where you are it's 8.8k, then you travel and it's cheaper at 8.6k, sell that coke and re-buy it. That way, even if the price doesn't change in your district and the next time you travel it's 8.7k, you've at least made 1 profitable sale on the coke, towards your achievement.
I generally ignore the cheap drugs in favour of making profit with the big drugs. If however all the drugs in your district are more expensive than the set price, I'd take one of the low drugs and slowly work the x5 for those that way.
Jails:
They're well known as being one of the biggest contributors to 'valued experience' gains. The best conditions for maximum gains whilst jail breaking would be higher guards, the serious criminals at 20-22 guards each and whenever someone gets caught commiting bloody murders and are thrown in with even more guards. This in New York, whilst you've not exhausted yourself repeating the exercise in the last 6 hours, is optimal.
After much preying in the church of Squishy for enlightenment, coupled with expensive and sci-fi style "scientific research" the boffins in the lab have calculated that as we tire, due to expending energy and keeping focused on certain tasks for extended periods of time, our ability to gain knowledge and retain muscle memory decreases. Surprisingly, despite your physique or how skillful you may be compared to others, the amount of times you can repeat the task before you start fatiguing remains the same.
To begin with because you're so focused and the adrenaline is pumping through your veins you retain the knowledge with much greater vigour than you ordinarily would.
Less than 15, 125%
Less than 50, 100%
Less than 175, 75%
Less than 250, 50%
More than 250, 25%
By the end, you may as well be bashing head against the wall for all the good the continuation of the task will do for you.
Each city has a different level of difficulty for breaking people out due to how well incentivized and practised their guards are. With New York being the hardest city to break people out of. This also affects the amount of 'valued experience' you gain from jail breaking. Bare this in mind when it comes to jail breaking. Although Detroit has less respected guards and thus lower 'valued experience' gains for jail breaking, they're easier to be successful in, making it easier for training and developing the skill.
Last I checked the cities level of difficulty, due to the guards levels of vigilance and care Please check this info for yourself. It may have changed depending on when you're reading this.
New York > Philly > Chicago > Detroit > Las Vegas > Los Angeles.
There are several squishy achievements relating to jail breaking.
Lockup Liberator. It doesn't matter what amount of guards they have you'll get +1 towards this achievement. So breaking out all the unguarded 'criminals' at the end of a jail breaking spree, whilst not being good for 'valued experience' gains and ultimately fatiguing you, it will work towards the achievement. I'd recommend breaking out the unguarded people using the joint as a weekend away from the wife and kids only when you're ability to retain knowledge has already dropped and you're not planning to stick around for much longer.
Lofty Liberator. Similar to lockup liberator, it's strait up breaking people out of jail, no matter the difficulty of the task. Only with x amount in each city to complete each level of this squishy achievement.
Arrested active. Simply put, it's just luck if you catch active mobsters in jail. These are usually mobsters who're still in the middle of being processed and kept in a holding cell. These mobsters tend to be grateful for the assistance.
There's no way to predict when you'll catch mobsters who're being processed although there's a good chance if you're part of an OC and it fails that someone could well fail to get away from the law enforcement and get thrown in jail for it. So be sure to scout the local precinct's jails if you ever have to make a hasty get away from robbing an art gallery
Paternal pardon. This squishy achievement is for breaking out "family members" but also included in this are corrupted agents on the payroll of members your family. As I have done with my family, I've compiled a list of CAs on the payroll of various family members who were kind enough to share that information, then added those CAs to a contact list which my P.A usually keeps with them. This helps by highlighting them when they appear on the prison manifest. This makes it possible to know which of the CAs currently serving time for their corrupt activities are going to help with working towards completing this squishy achievement.
Grave Robbing:
For your first 24 hours after making the decision to join the ranks of our thing, as you transition from a civilian to petty thief and then a thug and you're still working up the nerve to try picking someone's pocket, you could be steadying those nerves by sneaking out to the cemetery and looting some jewellery from those who don't need it any more. As I stated near the top about pick pocketing, I can't say whether you get 'valued experience' from successfully grave robbing. However this skill does come with a sadistic squishy achievement and is actually one of the most lucrative of the achievements, offering meeeellions for completion of it's higher levels. It would seem the Gods that founded the church of Squishy have a rather dark side and enjoy motivating us mortals to do gruesomely dark things to prove our devotion.
The trade off with this skill is that if you intend to see it through you'll need to stay back as a wiseguy, because once you're a Made Man it becomes socially unacceptable for you to muddy your hands with such a low activity.
If you've already been promoted and you want to go back to grave robbing but don't want to lose your level exp, you can drop out of a family (with permission of course) and rejoin. Despite it being the same family, etiquette dictates when you rejoin you'll be automatically demoted to wiseguy however, you won't have lost any of your 'valued experience' like you would if you're demoted for a punishment. (Be sure to have someone ready to re-invite you back into the family so you're not perceived to be a rogue)
Pick Pocketing:
As already stated, pick pocketing is a lowly skill and essentially the same as grave robbing minus the need to remain a wiseguy and below. The achievement completions will be the main contributor to 'valued experience' gains for this skill. As well as a small amount of money each time which could maybe buy you a credit every 100 ish successes (as long as you average 4.5k - 5k each time)
Potato
Madara stretches out his arms. He takes out a box of cookies from his cloak and begins dunking them into his tea. He informs people he'll be taking a break, and that all this talk of potato has given him the munchies. If anyone fancied running to the store and getting some "chips" for him they'd be more than welcome to.
Despite the extremely lengthy presentation being given Madara's henchmen were doing a fantastic job of forcing pedestrians to detour around the set up and the small gathering of students.
Madara finished his cuppa, wiped the cookie crumbs off his cloak, picked up his pointy stick and prepared to continue with the lecture.
WACK!ing:
As previously covered during info on skills on the first slide, as well as mostly covered with pick pocketing and grave robbing. I can neither confirm nor deny whether the experienced gained from this skill is 'valued' or not.
So, along with those other skills I presume that the majority of 'valued experience' gained from this will be due to the sadistic Squishy achievements. Given that there are achievements for killing each rank x5 it would be prudent whenever possible to aim (even if you can successfully hit a higher rank) at specific ranks in order to reach the goals set out by the church of squishy.
As for some of the squishy achievements about killing whichever prominent members of the ever rejuvenating "Durden" crew, if you can kill those guys to collect on the rewards, ranking is most likely not an issue for you any more.
BOOM! goes the dynamite:
This is one point where deciding what the priority for your life is, mostly comes into play. If you're not a hitter, then this shouldn't be a problem for you and you can add this to your repertoire without any conflict of interest. If you ARE a hitter, this may be problematic if you value gun training more than rank and unit gains.
Most of the times you'll be attacking forts is when Durden and his lot try and set up shop. If they come with a weaksauce force, there maybe a 1 wave removal of the scourge and next time around, if you're not on the hunt for unemployed bodyguards to hone your skills on.. the forts should be good to be attacked with dynamite (Molotov/PP doesn't give 'valued experience' for ranking) In larger, less hastily cobbled together Durden attacks which take the combined effort of all mobsters across all the cities days to get them down in numbers, you probably won't have the luxury of waiting until there's no more Durdens alive to kill, before turning your attention to their forts.
Same can be said when it comes to post-war take downs. When there are forts to be attacked, attack them. If you're after the 'valued experience' Trying to hone your killingsmanship on unemployed bodyguards before turning your attention to the forts isn't going to work, it will be too late by then.
There are also squishy achievements for attacking and for destroying forts. Simply attacking them with dynamite is how it's done, nothing special.
Using your rights to vote:
We may be criminals and we may go out of our way to make sure the little man's vote doesn't count, but don't underestimate the power voting contains. As well as bundling you some cash, you also gain that lovely 'valued experience'. If you do decide to vote you'll be rewarded by the Gods for using your, their given rights, by filling you with the confidence to raid multiple P.Os of their cash in quick succession, as well as participate in other more severe crimes quicker, too. Some people refer to these as "Insta" crimes. (Pro tip, this confidence can be passed down generations of your bloodline)
Street Presence:
A final potato
Madara leaves the potato pic up on the flip chart board and puts down his pointy stick.
Despite the huge bang for your buck you get when blowing shit up with dynamite... despite the visibly noticeable difference spending your week end breaking chumps out of jail is, nothing compares to spending some time to craft a well thought out street appearance. Whether you plan to speech about your opinion on joe bloggs' lack of style turning up to that funeral whilst making out with the deceased's mother or if it's simply to get an audience for your dope poetry slam or if you feel like putting on an impromptu performance of your favourite act of a Shakespearean play. Nothing will get the attention of those who'd consider you for higher positions or business deals like sharing your personality and making some waves.
Ever wonder why people aren't all that bothered or jovial when Joe Bloggs does get authed? They never impressed anyone, or at least no body outside their little circle. That's not to say they didn't earn their position, but if they don't show some personality publicly it'd have been a lot slower for them to have earned the "valued experience" required for the position.
Recently, the man many uninitiated civilians consider to be a crazy guy, "Squishy" came down from the mountains to deliver unto us a decree from the Gods. Who for unknown reasons, chose him specifically to deliver messages. It said, and I'm of course paraphrasing some what here...
"Like el oh el, you people amuse me so. I am pleased when I get to watch my favourite reality show live and to inspire more activity amongst you I shall reward you all greatly for making an effort to put on your shoes and go out into the streets to mingle with thy neighbours, who I frankly don't care if you love or not, so long as the banter is of good quality"
With this in mind, has there ever been a better time to invest in paying for the prestige to be called a "VIP" in this world? I think not. So, what are you waiting for? Hit the streets. Share your joy, express your anger. Question society. Throw down with your competition over whatever it is you feel you can best them at and share with others some of your experiences.
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