Torn City players wondering how to increase Nerve are in the right place if you’re looking to get crime experience quicker. This guide will explain both how to increase your maximum Nerve as well as recover it. There are a ton of little tricks that can be easy to miss if you’re new to the game.
As usual, when discussing Torn, we like to put a small disclaimer that any mention of drugs or alcohol is regarding the in-game items. So we’d never recommend doing either in real life but are discussing it for the game.
How to Increase Nerve in Torn
Increase Your Maximum via Crime Experience
The first Torn feature we have to explain is how to increase your Nerve maximum so you can try harder crimes. Especially if you’ve transitioned from Crimes 1.0 to Crimes 2.0. As a new player, you’ll need to start with the lowest Nerve crimes first to start building your Crime Experience.
Once you reach a certain Crime Experience amount that isn’t visible, you’ll increase your Nerve maximum. Similar to not knowing how much experience you have toward leveling up, you’ll have to just grind away at it. This can be frustrating but as long as you succeed more often than you fail, you’ll make progress.
For each time you level up your Nerve maximum, you’ll gain an extra five. Therefore, if you’re in Crimes 1.0 and start at 10 Nerve, you’ll then increase to 15 on your first level up. This can also mean you’re ready to try the next crime. Even though certain ones are still known to have high fail rates.
This is why players recommend crimes where you get a lot of green success messages, some blues, and no reds. Fortunately, blue messages don’t hurt your Crime Experience, so you won’t lose much progress. Whereas red messages are when you fail and then lose progress. However, if you participate in successful faction organized crimes, you’ll get experience from those too.
Increase Your Maximum With Merits
The second trick for increasing your Nerve maximum is by using merits. Experienced players will likely already know about this method, but I included it for the newer people. Over time, you’ll gain merits from a variety of achievements in Torn. Some examples include having a high net worth, leveling up, staying in a faction for a long time, etc.
You can then use these merits to get all sorts of useful buffs as shown in the screenshot above. However, I recommend visiting guides before using up your merits. This is because it’s expensive to reset costing 500 points. Even though you get one free reset each year on Christmas (December 25). Regardless, you can increase your Nerve by 10 points for 55 merits.
Use Items To Get Nerve
One of the most common methods for increasing your Nerve, but not the maximum amount, is using items. The table below lists every item that currently exists in Torn for gaining Nerve. However, the most common one players will use is the Bottle of Beer. This is because you can get it cheap at the Bits ‘n’ Bobs store.
Even new players should be able to afford it since it’s only $10 each to buy the daily limit of 100. As explained in our guide on How to Make Money in Torn, it’s a great item worth buying.
| Item Name | Nerve on Use | Booster Cooldown |
| Bottle of Beer | 1 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Tequila | 1 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Champagne | 1 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Sake | 1 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Kandy Kane | 2 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Pumpkin Brew | 2 | 1 Hour |
| Glass of Beer | 2 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Minty Mayhem | 3 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Wicked Witch | 3 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Christmas Cocktail | 3 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Mistletoe Madness | 4 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Stinky Swamp Punch | 4 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Green Stout | 5 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Moonshine | 5 | 1 Hour |
| Bottle of Christmas Spirit | 5 | 1 Hour |
| Red Easter Egg | 250 | 6 Hours |
| Cannabis | 2 – 3 | 60 – 90 Minutes |
| LSD | 5 | 6 to 8 Hours |
Torn Company Perks That Give or Increase Nerve
Another useful way to increase both your Nerve and maximum amount is via company perks. For those unfamiliar, companies are player-run businesses in Torn that you can get jobs at. These will often provide better perks and stats than the city ones. Although, to get those perks, each company needs to reach a certain amount of stars.
Once a company reaches the necessary amount of stars, you’ll start getting that perk if it’s a passive reward. But, many of them require using your job points to get the perk reward. And the amount of job points you get daily is based on how many stars the company has. For example, a five-star company gives five job points daily.
While I didn’t include the city job, Law Student, this is one where you can also get Nerve by using job points. It’s the first city job under the Law category and gives 3 Nerve for 5 job points.
| Company | Stars Required | Job Points Needed | Perk Rewards |
| Amusement Park | 1 | 1 | 2 Nerve |
| Amusement Park | 5 | Passive | 10 Maximum Nerve |
| Candle Shop | 5 | 1 | 2 Nerve |
| Firework Stand | 1 | 1 | 2 Nerve |
| Game Shop | 10 | 1 | 1 Nerve, 5 Energy, 50 Happiness |
| Meat Warehouse | 1 | 1 | 2 Nerve |
| Meat Warehouse | 5 | Passive | 10 Maximum Nerve |
| Pub | 5 | 25 | Refill Nerve Bar |
| Pub | 10 | Passive | 15 Maximum Nerve |
Faction Upgrades That Increase Nerve
When you first start playing Torn City it’s worth looking for a faction to join. Aside from this being a heavily social game where it helps to have friends, factions have a lot of benefits. First and foremost, every faction has upgrades that they can unlock using Respect. This is essentially an in-game currency that factions get from fighting and doing organized crimes.
Depending on how big a faction is, they may have access to more upgrades than a smaller one. Or even better upgrades since they’ll need to hit milestones to continue improving them. For example, the Criminality Branch of upgrades can increase your Nerve maximum by 40.
Another fun faction upgrade to have for Torn criminals is in the Voracity Branch. This area of upgrades increases the effect of items like energy drinks, alcohol, and candy. Therefore, you can end up with as high as an extra 50% Nerve gain from alcohol.
This is why it’s worth combining the Voracity Branch upgrade with the items mentioned earlier in this guide. And then if you want to go a step further, you can get the most Nerve possible by using beer items on International Beer Day. This takes place in Torn from August 3 to August 5 annually.
Buy Into the Herbal Releaf Co. Stock Dividend
As mentioned in our guide on How to Increase Energy, you can also buy a stock to get Nerve. For every 350,000 shares you buy from the (CBD) Herbal Releaf Co. stock, you’ll gain 50 Nerve every seven days. You can continue to increase this amount with each increment/level you buy.
At the time of writing this guide, I’d say this is one of the cheaper stocks to buy into, even though it’s still a lot of money. Plus, you’ll need to unlock the stock market using points before you can start investing. So if you’re a new player, you probably won’t go this route quite yet.
Spend 25 Points on a Daily Nerve Refill
My final Torn tip for increasing your Nerve is to use the daily refill that costs 25 points. You can spend your 25 points at the Points Building to fill your Nerve bar back to max. Therefore, you’ll benefit more from this refill when your max is higher. Since you’re refilling to a higher amount.
But again, this can be an expensive way to increase Nerve that may not be for everyone. And if you don’t have a lot of money to spare but are doing refills, you’re probably better off putting it into energy refills. However, it’s up to you how you play Torn so don’t let anyone force you into a certain playstyle. Not everyone has the same goals.
Be sure to visit some of our other Torn guides now that you’re done with this one. I’ve recommended a few below worth checking 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.