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

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Earn your way into a Training & University session — you cannot afford one at signup, by design. The cheapest costs $2,500 at level 1 and you begin with $1,000, so the gym opens only after a petty job or two has covered the gap. That ordering is the lesson: on day one the petty ladder is what moves your stats, because early sessions are deliberately modest and grow steeply with your level. The gym takes over later. You may run 2 sessions per game day whatever your level.
4. Refill stamina in Nightlife when you run dry (mind the addiction and the STDs).
5. Join a gang as soon as a decent one will have you — facilities, protection in numbers, and gang jobs beat going alone.
6. 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.