The MMO Torn has many different ways of playing, and one of those is busting players out of jail. Understanding how to bust players is important if you haven’t done it before. Because, unfortunately, a lot of information in Torn is often hidden away in forums or far from clear until you’ve done it. As someone with almost three thousand busts at the time of writing this guide, I’ve put together these tips to help you out.
Adding to the above to show my experience, I’m an active player with a few years in Torn, doing a little bit of everything. Alongside my almost 3,000 busts, I’m currently in the top 4,000 of Torn busters. I’m constantly getting higher in the Hall of Fame as I casually bust at least five people daily.
How to Bust Players in Torn
Unlike reviving other players, you won’t need a certain job or work stat before you can start busting players. While this means you can immediately run over to the Jail page and start clicking to bust people, you shouldn’t! This is because it’s a much harder activity than you’d think before knowing how it works.
Busting players revolves around knowing the many tricks to increasing your success chance, so you don’t get caught. Fortunately, there is always a chance that you simply fail to bust someone and don’t end up in jail. Which doesn’t have a penalty or consequence aside from meaning you should wait before trying again.
Before we explain all the different tricks to succeed in busting, let’s quickly go over how busting actually works. Visiting the Jail page will show you who is currently in prison, waiting for their sentence to tick down. You’ll see the player’s name, remaining time, level, and the reason they were arrested. For busting, we don’t need to focus on their name or reason for being arrested.
Once you find someone that you want to bust out of jail, look all the way to the right of their name, and you’ll see a small icon of a broken cage. Clicking this button will give you a confirmation window saying, “Do you want to try and bust X out of jail? It will use 5 nerve.” Then, you can click Yes or No to confirm it. Afterward, you’ll immediately see the result of your attempt.
Ways to Increase Your Bust Success Chance
Knowing how to successfully bust players out of Jail in Torn relies on both hidden and visible content. To make it easier for you to quickly learn all the tips and tricks, I’ve put together the bulleted list below:
- Always try to bust players below your level. The lower they are, the easier they will be to bust. Also, when you’re a more experienced buster, you’ll be able to bust more players if you aim for low-level players.
- Don’t bust too many players at once. There’s a hidden cooldown that seems based on how many busts you’ve recently attempted. For example, I can typically bust four to five players around the same time, but when I first started, I could only do one if I was lucky.
- As you succeed in busting players long-term, your overall success chance seems to increase as well.
- The Law education path has a few courses you can take. These will take some time to complete, however.
- LAW2920: Criminal Law – Gain a 5% bonus to your skill in busting.
- LAW2970: Social and Economic Law – Gain a 10% bonus to your skill in busting.
- LAW3102: Bachelor of Law – Busting is 50% easier and bailing is 50% cheaper.
- Factions have upgrades that can help you with all sorts of Torn activities. This includes busting. The Criminality branch has a “Bust skill” path that increases your bust success chance by 5% each upgrade. You can get as high as a 50% chance increase with these upgrades. In addition to this, there are faction upgrades along this path that reduce the Nerve needed for busting as well.
- We don’t know for certain, but increasing your Natural Nerve will likely help too. This increases as you succeed with Torn crimes.
Take Advantage of Extensions Like Torn Tools
One last tip for this Torn guide is to use helpful extensions like TornTools. I’ve used TornTools for a while at the suggestion of faction members when I was first learning how to play. Aside from adding a lot of helpful quality-of-life features, it also adds filters to the Jail page. These make it easier for you to keep your Jail sorted by players you have a better chance of busting.
For example, you can pick a level range, such as only showing players from 1 to 30. In addition to this, you can also set a range for how long someone is in jail. These two filters will help prevent you from accidentally trying to bust someone out who is too difficult. Also, you can activate Quick Busting on the Jail page, so you won’t have to confirm a bust. This works well when trying to bust low-level players that many other people are also trying to get out.
Jeff is a journalist with over 10 years of experience writing, streaming, and making content about video games. With an associate degree in journalism, he’s a sucker for RPGs, idle games, roguelikes, and more.