Emforus [2535044]

Updated: June 3rd 2025 - Typo.
INTRODUCTION
This guide aims to cover most of everything related to Shoplifting, the 4th crime in Torn's Crimes 2.0 Early Access.
If you already know the basics just skip ahead, I'll try and keep everything organized for clarity's sake.

This guide is more focused to cover information that's not present in the wiki, that is, drop rates, periods where security is on/off, and other similar aspects.

This is the fourth of my series of guides on Crimes 2.0, all other guides released to date:
[Crimes 2.0] Search For Cash: An in-depth guide
[Crimes 2.0] Bootlegging: An in-depth guide
[Crimes 2.0] Graffiti: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Card Skimming: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Burglary: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Pickpocketing: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Hustling: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Disposal: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Cracking: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Forgery: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Scamming: An In-Depth Guide

[Crimes 2.0] Arson: An In-Depth Guide

GLOSSARY:
CS = Crime Skill, your skill at doing the crime, shown at the top of the crime page.
Unique = Unique find, marked with a star under the "ATTEMPT" button, can only be found once.
Crit = Critical failure, leads to loss of CS and sometimes items, sometimes life, sometimes prison time.

FIRST STEPS (What you need to start)
This crime in particular is pretty straightforward, with no consumable items required to perform it. Nevertheless, there's some items in particular that affect outcomes for this crime, in addition to the enhancer. Getting them isn't necessary, but it does increase CS gains and success rate.

The Mountain Bike increases CE and CS gains, and some outcomes mention it. Whether having it increases success rate is unknown, but it certainly unlocks some valuable outcomes.
Obtaining: Searching the Junkyard - Pickpocketing a Cyclist


The Torn City Times unlocks multiple outcomes in all locations, and seemingly increases success rate/lowers notoriety gain, though further evidence would be needed to confirm it. It can be found as a unique find from the subway in Search For Cash.

It has also been theorized that both wearing a jacket and underwear may prevent some critical failures or add some outcomes. This is mere speculation, but something to keep in mind regardless.

THE LOCATIONS (Where to find what)

(All shoplifting locations as of May-16-2024)
There are eight locations where you can steal some goodies, those being:
- Sally's Sweet Shop (Minimal risk, mainly candies)
- Bits 'n' Bobs (Minor risk, mostly misc items, some basic plushies and flowers, and some booze)
- TC Clothing (Low risk, can find clothes of different kinds here)
- Super Store (Moderate risk, mostly electronics, blank CDs and the like are found here)
- Pharmacy (Moderate risk, released Jan-16-2024, mostly medical items)
- Cyber Force (Moderate risk, released Dec-18-2023, mainly computer parts for Cracking here)
- Jewelry Store (High risk, jewelry items like necklaces and rings are the most common finds)
- Big Al's Gun Shop (Very high risk, can find weapons, temporaries, armor and special ammo)

Each location has one or two security measures in place to prevent thieves (although that's not stopping any of us). The more functioning security systems in place, the faster notoriety will increase after a success and the more likely one is to fail.
More details regarding locations further below.

SECURITY MEASURES
Every location has a CCTV system, some better than others; Some locations use checkpoints and tag items, raising an alarm if they're not removed beforehand; Some locations have guards in place patrolling the area and making sure any would-be thieves are stopped on their tracks.

These are the three types of security measures used by the stores in Torn City, in order of least effective to most effective.

When security measures are online, all notoriety gains are increased. The more security in a location, the greater the increase.

These security systems function based on a schedule, that is, they break down or stop functioning regularly, allowing you to rob without increasing notoriety as much.

Rule of thumb: Cameras are disabled a few times a day for 30-60mins, guards take 10-15min breaks every few hours, 4 for the jewelry store and cyber force guards, 8 for the gun shop guards, and checkpoints break down every 3-4 days and require 8-12hrs to be repaired.

CAMERAS
Cameras by themselves won't stop you from stealing most of the time, but they will increase your notoriety gain.
All cameras stay disabled for 30-60 minutes whenever a maintenance cycle occurs. The interval between camera breakdowns varies depending on the amount of cameras in a location (more cameras = longer interval between deactivations)


Single cameras are found in Sally's Sweet Shop and TC Clothing. They get disabled four times a day on average (3-10hr cycles).
They increase notoriety gains slightly.


Dual cameras are found in Bits 'n' Bobs, Super Store and Cyber Force. They get disabled three times a day on average (4:30-14hr cycles).
They increase notoriety gains moderately.


Triple cameras are found in the Pharmacy and Jewelry Store. They get disabled twice a day on average (4:30-17hr cycles).
They increase notoriety gains significantly.


Quadruple cameras are currently only found in Big Al's Gun Shop, though it is theorized that a future location may also use them. They get disabled once or twice a day on average (4:30-21hr cycles).
They increase notoriety gains dramatically. It is recommended to target locations with this security level only when either security system is disabled.

CHECKPOINTS
Checkpoints will prevent you from leaving with stolen goods without raising an alarm, and can lead to failure.
Checkpoints are disabled every 3-4 days on average for a duration of 8-12hrs.

Checkpoints can be found in TC Clothing and the Pharmacy. They breakdown twice a week on average (3-4 day cycles).
They increase notoriety gains significantly.

There used to be a "Double Checkpoint" image in the code, but it was removed at an unknown date. It is safe to say that, for checkpoints at least, only the type listed here will ever be featured in this crime.

GUARDS
The most active form of theft prevention, only present in the more high-end establishments. Failures will often occur when guards are active.
Guards take regular breaks every 4-8hrs depending on location. The more guards present, the longer the interval between breaks.
Guards will always take a 10-15min break regardless of location, meaning the window of opportunity is extremely small compared to all other security measures. Conversely, these are the easiest to predict if you know when the last cycle occurred.


Individual guards are stationed at Cyber Force and the Jewelry Store. They take a break 5-6 times a day on average (3:30-5hr cycles)
They increase notoriety gains significantly and tend to increase fail/crit rate when patrolling.
Trivia: The guard at Cyber Force is called Marcie, and the one at the Jewelry Store is called Henry.


A pair of guards are stationed at Big Al's Gun Shop. They take a break three times a day on average (7-9hr cycles)
They increase notoriety gains significantly and tend to increase fail/crit rate when patrolling.
Trivia: The pair at the gun shop are called Karl and Lars.


An image for a trio of guards can be found in the game files. These are currently unused, however they're expected to be implemented whenever a new, high-tier location gets released.


STATE OF EMERGENCY
During a State of Emergency, all locations will be temporarily closed, though notoriety will decay as per usual.


Security measures will go through their scheduled downtime regardless of emergency state (i.e. they won't be offset by this).

NOTORIETY(There's a merit here)
As you keep robbing the same place over and over, notoriety will start increasing, showing how store owners and personnel start recognizing you. Successful thefts increase notoriety slightly, failed attempts increase it more, and critical failures immediately max notoriety in the area. Active security systems increase all notoriety gains further.

The higher your notoriety in a location is, people are more likely to stop you from robbing the place, increasing failure rate. If notoriety is high enough, a crit failure can lead to jailings of up to 17 hours due to repeated robberies. If you want to avoid long jail times, only do shoplifting when security measures are inactive or when your notoriety is low. Alternatively, have friends ready to bust you or get multiple lawyer business cards. It is ill advised to rob a store when notoriety is maxed.

Notoriety decays at a rate of 1% every 5 minutes. This is not scheduled, meaning the decay is based on the last attempt in the area, instead of a set 5 minute timer like nerve regeneration. It takes 8hrs 20mins for notoriety to decay entirely from 100%.

BRACKETS
Notoriety is divided in four brackets, these are visible in the notoriety gauge.

Each segment is clearly divided as follows:
- Low notoriety (<10%)
- Moderate notoriety (>10%)
- High notoriety (>30%)
- Very high notoriety (>60%)

While the numbers aren't confirmed, it has been confirmed to some extent that reaching these "thresholds" affects chances of failure and critical failure, flavor text after a fail/crit, and jail times after a crit.
It is recommended to keep notoriety under 60% whenever possible, or under 30% if you wanna be safe.

There is one unique find that requires max notoriety.
Critical failures can still occur at zero notoriety.


THE MERIT
There's an honor bar for reaching 100% notoriety in all locations. This honor bar is easier to get the lower your crime skill is, so consider getting it as soon as you start with the crime. I needed around 180 nerve to get it (BEFORE new stores were added!), but results may vary, so keep that in mind.

This honor bar is arguably one of the hardest to get as of May 16th 2024. This is due to the introduction of both Cyber Force and the Pharmacy.
The higher your skill level is, the more nerve on average you'll require to obtain it. When performed right as you start with the crime, it can be obtained with as little as 250-300 nerve, up to 400 if you're really unlucky.

On the other hand, if your skill level is too high by the time you wish to get the honor bar, you'll need to use a significant amount of nerve and preparation to get it. One user required 600N at max skill including multiple days of preparation just to get the honor bar, your mileage may vary if you get crits, or if you get a ton of successes, or if you do it while security is still active.


Recommendations for acquiring this honor bar:
- Easiest way is stacking nerve, so reaching max then drinking alcohol, since nerve stacks until used just like energy. This will take the longest and is a bit of a waste, but is also a surefire way of getting the merit.
- Rolling refills is another option, so using one around the end of the day, then another one right after new day starts. Depending on your max nerve this is a viable alternative.
- Being in any company with nerve-related specials helps significantly if you have job points stored. Meat warehouses and candle stores work decently, although somewhat inefficiently, and pubs are the best for this, being the company with the best crime perks.
- If you don't have it already, one or a few increments of the CBD stock (the one that grants nerve) is a good alternative, especially if you line it up with rolling refills.
- Removing your bike and your newspaper from your inventory, by moving them to your display case or placing them in a ghost trade, can also help by reducing your chances of success.

All in all, this merit can be obtained at any skill level, the higher it is the more effort is required to obtain it, so the sooner you get it the better.

CRITICAL FAILURES (My damn bike!)
There's five possible critical failures in this crime, some bad, some very bad.
- Lose some life
- Be hospitalized
- Go to jail
- Lose a Torn City Times newspaper
- Lose your mountain bike.

The severity of the critical failure and how likely it is to occur is based on notoriety. Remember that crits are still possible at 0% notoriety.

The most obvious example: The going to jail crit, if you get it with low notoriety, you're likely to get around an hour of jail time, while if you get it at notoriety >30%, there's a chance to get 5-7 hours jail time instead, and if you get it at notoriety >60%, you could possibly get 10-17 hours of jail time.

All in all, keeping notoriety low reduces (NOT nullifies) crit chance, and prevents some very long jail times amongst other things.


POINTS OF INTEREST
THE UNIQUES
ALL UNIQUES IDENTIFIED! Thanks to the people on the wiki thread all uniques for this crime have been successfully identified (as of May 16th).

Unique flavor text archive

INCREASING SKILL LEVEL
All locations give the same CS, regardless of current notoriety and security measures active. With this in mind, the best locations for increasing skill level would be those with the least notoriety gain and/or less risk of failure.

These would be the Sweet Shop and Bits 'n' Bobs. This is because they have a single security measure, making it easy to tackle with no security active, and the notoriety gained from these locations is low by default. If you only want to increase your skill level, doing these two locations exclusively whenever security goes down is definitely an idea.

DROP TABLES
As of May 16th 2024, all drop tables for shoplifting have been updated to follow the format used in other guides. This does make them extremely large, to the point where they have to be published as a spreadsheet rather than images. You can find all drop tables (and other tables) here.


LOCATION SUMMARIES
This section will contain a brief summary on each location, including security measures, main loot found and personal advice.

SWEET SHOP

Most common drops are 25H candies, while anything 50H and above is significantly more rare, and sometimes requiring certain items or specific combinations to occur. Having a bike helps in getting additional candy, as well as the TCT, and having cameras off helps even further.

It takes on average 6hrs between camera cycles, but predicting them is nigh impossible. If you can catch the cameras here disabled, it's a good idea to just go for it, since it's the safest location to rob with the lowest notoriety gain.
Besides increasing CS, this location gives candy and nothing else, so don't expect much from the payouts. If your goal is exclusively increasing CS, however, then spamming this locations until notoriety hits 60% and then letting it cool down is a fairly good option.

BITS 'N' BOBS

The drops here are significantly more diverse. Most of everything is junk items, but sometimes you may find crime tools and materials like Gasoline, Glow Sticks, Jemmy bars and the like.
Unique outcomes for this location are mainly crime enhancers for both released and to-be-released crimes, so getting them along the way is definitely an idea.

Do this place if your notoriety at the sweet shop is high or the cameras are down, check around noon and midnight to catch them offline. This location isn't the greatest in terms of loot, the only useful goods being gasoline and spray paint, maybe cigar cutters if they're ever used, but it's still pretty good to increase CS quickly.

TC CLOTHING

In general, the loot here is very straightforward: Clothes, and that's it. As things stand, this is arguably one of the least profitable locations, with most items having no use except accessorizing and little to no market value.

That said, this location isn't the worst. The loot here while mostly useless compared to other locations, is a good source of apparel, so players can dress like proper human beings instead of wearing only armor and maybe a jacket. Camera cycles are unpredictable but regular enough to make this location an option, if one's goal is to increase their CS.

SUPER STORE

Very simple location, with the loot here being electronics or crime consumables like blank DVDs and spy cameras. The value of the loot here is fairly low compared to other places, uniques notwithstanding.

This location isn't particularly good. The drops found here are mostly worthless or extremely common, danger is fairly high as well, and getting security measures disabled is even harder, compared to most other locations. The upside of this location, compared to the others, is the uniques, where four crime enhancers and an E-DVD can be found here, being a decent windfall in that regard.

PHARMACY

Introduced on January 16th 2024, this location contains medical items and other assorted junk. Most importantly, you can find Ipecac Syrup here, used to self-hospitalize without requiring an education course regardless of your bloodtype.

This location is pretty mediocre with all security active, but becomes decently profitable when security is down due to the availability of Ipecac Syrup. It's strongly advised to wait for security to go down before tackling this particular location.

CYBER FORCE

Introduced on December 18th 2023, one day before the release of Cracking. This locations contains exclusively components for said crime.
Uncommon computer parts like Water Blocks, HPCPUs and Heat Sinks tend to be more common when the guard is away or the cameras are off so make sure to tackle this place whenever security is down.

Given market prices at the time of this update, Cyber Force ramains one of the better locations to do, especially when security is disabled to obtain HPCPUs. Given that the mathematically most efficient rigs require 30-50 HPCPUs to function, getting them through this crime may be your best option if you don't wanna spend a few million in computer parts.

JEWELRY STORE

A lackluster location, most loot is jewelry items like watches, rings and necklaces, all of which are worth very little.

The unique outcomes for this location are the main selling point, with two crime enhancers and a few tools available. Besides uniques, there's little to no reason to shoplift this store unless both security measures are disabled.

GUN SHOP

Very complex location akin to TC Clothing, but more straightforward as well. Most weapon/armor finds require either security measure disabled. The best find by far here is special ammunition, and for that one it's required for either security system to be disabled. If your goal is finding special ammunition or maximizing profits, wait until either security measure is disabled before even attempting this location.

This is the best location to get special ammunition, while also being the most dangerous by far.
Unless you're chasing uniques, avoid doing this location whenever guards are active, they WILL break your legs if given the chance.
If cameras are down and you expect the guards to be off-duty soon, consider keeping your notoriety low and unequipping any weapons you may have, while only keeping your best one, to get as much special ammo for it as you can, especially if you haven't gotten the unique for cameras and guards inactive.

AMMO SUMMARY
The main tables include a section with a full breakdown on ammo outcomes for this crime (rightmost tab), the following is a summary of said breakdown.


In short - You really want security down to find special ammo, shoplifting this store with all security active is a great way of wasting nerve with little to gain.


FINAL THOUGHTS
May 18th - This update took me long enough... four months since the release of the pharmacy before a proper update to this guide was done. I'll keep everything in this section unedited except for the data gethering bit :P. Besides seasonal outcomes, there shouldn't be any more updates for this guide for quite some time (I hope!)

I really like this crime. The concept of managing notoriety and hitting a store when security is at its lowest is something I'm really fond of. Some people don't like having to wait for notoriety to cool down, but to me that's even better since it makes you think where to hit and manage your notoriety more thoroughly, so you can steal more when it's more vulnerable and avoid increasing it too much when everything's active.

Loot is even better, the fact that you can find special ammunition as a common find in the gun shop makes getting the special ammo merits easier to get in the long term, by not needing to use job points or mission credits to buy special ammo. Same applies with other new items, clothing in particular being a neat thing that's no longer limited to city finds and clothing caches. This will, however, drastically lower prices of most clothes that used to be found only in caches.

Fourth guide in the Crimes 2.0 Guides series, and even with the lack of substantial/concrete data compared to other guides, I'm quite content with how this one turned out. I'm always happy knowing people reading this find some use from these guides and learn a thing or two about Crimes 2.0.

DATA GATHERING(FINISHED!)
Data gathering for this crime has been closed. Thanks to everyone who contributed their logs!

CREDITS
Finally, a shoutout to all who contributed in the making of this guide, as well as those who financed this and previous projects.

Providers of research funds:
kelfi: 7x Donator Pack
onlelonely: 10x FHC
MrFancyPants: $100,000,000
Gem: 25x Bottle of Moonshine
Kamkool: $50,000,000
Invert: $10,000,000, 1x Xanax, 1x FHC, 20x Bottle of Mistletoe Madness
Sinvetic: 1x FHC, Quran Script : Ubay Ibn Ka'b
Hamid448: $10,000,000, 3x E-DVDs, 1x Drug Pack, 1x Six Pack of Alcohol
RatstaR: 1x Donator Pack
Jackass_420: $20,000,000
BigDaddyLuvsU: $20,000,000
Lidia: $15,000,000
illum: 1x FHC
Gandalf: 1x FHC
hugeknight: 10x Lottery Voucher
Lexcifer: 10x Xanax
something: $7,500,000
MissMary: $1,000,000, 1x Drug Pack
Tuit: $5,000,000
Chimken: 1x Drug Pack
-Behemoth: 3x Xanax
badmagicks: 1x High-Speed Drive
Green_Babz: 1x Can of Santa Shooters
TheBonebreaker: $1,000,000
bcla7: 1x Lottery Voucher
Anonymous: $28,000,000

Research collaborators:
Fetheryhorse6

Identifying uniques:
maimunah

All contributors:
Trudeny, Jamas, Rho, onlelonely, Xnot, Fetheryhorse6, ComaVision, Allenone, ApexKing, Lithdren, Bard, Darrellia, Hamid448, haohao229900, six31167, White-Lion, ZeroTime, NutBurger, Patapouf, riddermargh, HaiNguyen1107, Jackads, monngd, the people of IMF and HeLa, and the people on the wiki thread for Shoplifting.

All in the name of science.

esmux [2509397]

Anyone got to 100 skill yet? Any estimate on how many crimes are needed for that?

Good [2545616]

Similar question, regardless of rewards, what’s the fastest way to gain CS?