Torn Bootlegging Guide: DVD Ratios, the Online Store and All Three Honor Bars

Output scales steadily with skill

From a dataset of roughly 15,000 logs, average DVDs per attempt rises about 1.1 every 5 crime skill levels, or 0.22 per level, and that trend holds all the way to CS 100. Early on expect 3 to 5 per attempt.

The spread widens as you level

The gap between your worst and best attempt grows from around 3 at low skill to nearly 20 near maximum. High-skill copying is swingier, not just better.

Copy speed is predictable

Every 5 crime skill levels cuts 2 seconds off the copy time. The High-Speed Drive halves it outright.

You can add multiple packs of blank DVDs at once rather than feeding them in one at a time.

Always keep some of every genre

Variety is what drives a large sale. A stock of 500 Action DVDs and nothing else sells poorly compared with a spread across all eight genres. Never let a category hit zero.

The store shifts the ratio towards comedy

Selling directly needs slightly less comedy than the table suggests. Once the online store is running, it moves more comedy than expected, so top that genre up more often.

Crits scale with nerve spent

Because selling is the highest-nerve action, its crits are brutal. Logged cases include a player dropping from CS 13 to CS 8, and another from CS 7 to CS 1. At low skill a single bad sale can wipe most of your progress.

Early on, sell in smaller batches. The skill efficiency is slightly worse but a crit will not erase your account's progress in this crime.

All four uniques come from selling

Stock up before you reach each threshold so you can spam sales while the unique is available.

Building it costs real nerve

Each attempt costs 10 nerve and adds 1% to 9% progress, with a success rate around 80%. Reports range from 20 to 40 attempts to launch. Budget for it rather than starting on a whim.

Customer growth is exponential, and stock-gated

The more customers you have, the faster the base grows. The only known factor driving growth is keeping the store stocked, so never run dry in any genre. Reaching the 10,000 customers needed for the honor bar takes roughly 15 and a half days of continuous stock.

You can switch it off

A dial next to the collect button disables the store. This matters more than it sounds, because it lets you stockpile DVDs for bulk selling without the store quietly draining them.

Two crits are possible here: losing all uncollected money, which is confirmed, and losing the store entirely, which appears in the logs but has never been evidenced.

The store eats your sale inventory

Selling in bulk is the highest-skill action in the crime. The store sells those same DVDs passively for a trickle of skill that is often literally zero. Every DVD it sells is one you cannot include in a large manual sale.

Keep it closed until you are happy with your skill

The efficient route to CS 100 ignores the online store completely: copy a spread of genres, sell in bulk, repeat. Open the store when you are near maximum skill or ready to work the honor bar specifically.

Passive skill does accrue, slowly

Patch notes confirm the store grants passive crime skill while running. One player at CS 93 reported roughly 3% growth over 24 hours. That is real, but far below what active selling delivers.

Box Office: reach CS 100

Standard progression, and fastest with the store closed.

Online Entrepreneur: 10,000 store customers

Build the store, keep every genre stocked, and wait about 15 to 16 days without running out. That works out at roughly 20,000 DVDs sold through the store, so plan your copying around it.

Cinephile: sell 10,000 DVDs of every genre

The long one. Both direct sales and store sales count, and you can track progress from the banner on the bootlegging page. Start with the slow-selling genres such as Sci-Fi, Horror and Romance, because the popular ones accumulate on their own.

Sci-Fi sells at a fifth the rate of Action, so it needs five times the attention to finish at the same time.

Every attempt counts, regardless of nerve

Copying, selling and collecting all count equally towards the 10,000 crimes needed for all 15 medals. The nerve cost of the action is irrelevant to the medal.

Farm them with 1-nerve collections

Set a few DVDs copying and collect from the store immediately whenever a copy sells. At 1 nerve per collection, this is by far the cheapest way to push the medal count.

The money is modest

The store sells DVDs at around $20 each, and a player at CS 100 averages about $25. That is roughly $500 for 2 nerve. With natural nerve regeneration alone, expect somewhere around $50,000 a day.

Play it for the merits, not the income

The three honor bars and the Counterfeiting medals are the real reason to work this crime. Treat the store income as a small bonus that exists rather than a earner.