Updated: February 25th - Fixed broken images
February 25th: An update/rewrite of this guide is due. The dataset for it still hasn't been made since I've been focusing other crimes, plus tracking color for each location using the new mechanism of log processing (which is fully automatic) is significantly more difficult given that it used to be completely manual and correcting a dozen sets of logs was a lot easier than 100.

INTRODUCTION
This guide aims to cover most of everything related to Graffiti, the 3rd 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, different outcomes, how spray paint color affects outcomes, and similar aspects.

This is also the third of my series of guides on Crimes 2.0 and also the first "popular" guide I made. It's also a constant thorn on my side.
All other guides:
[Crimes 2.0] Search For Cash: An in-depth guide
[Crimes 2.0] Bootlegging: An in-depth guide
[Crimes 2.0] Shoplifting: 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] Disposal: An In-Depth Guide
[Crimes 2.0] Hustling: 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

Any and all feedback, corrections and new information is appreciated.

GLOSSARY:
CS = Crime Skill, your skill at doing the crime, shown at the top of the crime page.
R* = Reputation level, this is your reputation in a location for the Graffiti crime, ranging from R0* (0 graffiti) to R5* (500 graffiti)
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)
You'll need spray cans, not too many but definitely some variety. There's plenty on the item market but you can also find plenty in Bits 'n' Bobs for a very small sum of $5 per spraycan. You'll need less than 100 to get to CS100.
As of September 11th, you can also find spray cans in the Print Store.


There are three key items related to this crime: The ladder, the wirecutter and the paint mask, all of which can be found while performing this crime (exact method of acquisition will be mentioned below).
Having them before starting this crime isn't necessary, but it will reduce your chances of failing or getting a crit.

THE LOCATIONS
There are seven locations where you can commit vandalism by spray painting your name onto a surface, whether it's a storefront, a car's hood or someone's outline on the ground CSI-style so property value goes to the ground, these are:

• East Side (unlocked at the start, relatively safe, best colors seem to be purple for cash and red for reputation)
• West Side (unlocked at the start, best colors seem to be green for cash and blue for reputation)
• North Side (unlocked at the start, riskier than the previous two, best colors seem to be green for cash and orange for reputation)
• Residential District (CS50 unlock in East Side, lowest chance of failure, best colors seem to be white for cash and blue for reputation)
• Red-Light District (CS50 unlock in West Side, highest chance of failure, best colors seem to be green for cash and pink for reputation)
• Financial District (Requires a crew, best colors seem to be black for cash and red for reputation)
• City Center (Requires a crew, best colors seem to be green for cash and blue for reputation)

Each location has its own independent reputation level, based on the amount of graffiti painted there. Each attempt to graffiti in a location has a ~80% chance of resulting in a reputation increase. As reputation increases, new outcomes and unique finds are made available, most important being:

Reputation 1* (25): First unique of the area unlocked, can find spray cans.
Reputation 2* (50): Second unique of the area unlocked, can find cash.
Reputation 3* (100): Third unique of the area unlocked, cash finds slightly increased.
Reputation 4* (250): Fourth unique of the area unlocked, cash finds moderately increased.
Reputation 5* (500): Can join a crew at CS70, fifth and final unique of the area unlocked at CS100, cash finds significantly increased.
*Exceptions may apply, details further down.



REPUTATION DECAY
Should've added this beforehand since people keep asking about it for some reason.
As time passes, the authorities will clean up graffiti you've painted, lowering your reputation in all locations (this can take you down a reputation level!).
The exact rate of reputation loss is unknown, but it follows these rules:

- The more graffiti you have in a location, the faster they'll be removed over time.
- The lower on the location list a location is, the faster graffiti will be removed from that location.

This decay is random (as most of everything in this game is), varying every day from just a few to over a dozen. Max reported so far is 100 graffiti from the City Center in a single day.

JOINING A CREW (There's a merit here)
Reaching R5* in any of the first five locations and reaching CS70 are the requirements to join a crew. The flavor text varies according to the location in which you joined the crew, although it doesn't have any effect beyond that.
As soon as you hit CS70, a new unique will appear in any location that has R5*. Finding said unique will let you join a crew, unlocking the Financial District and City Center, and giving you what is, to me, one of the best looking honor bars in the game so far.

For some reason people keep asking about this, so I'll say it again in big letters:
HITTING CS70 AND R5* IN ANY LOCATION UNLOCKS A UNIQUE. YOU NEED TO FIND THIS UNIQUE TO JOIN A CREW!




Joining a crew unlocks outcomes in all locations, as well as two uniques.

Flavor text for joining a crew:
East Side; West Side; North Side; Residential District; Red-Light District

THE UNIQUES
Graffiti has 41 uniques spread around 7 locations. For ease of looking I've made the following table breaking down where each currently identified unique is located and what its requirements for obtaining are. (click to expand)


All uniques have been identified thanks to everyone on the uniques for graffiti forum thread. If you want a better looking breakdown of this, check the wiki.

CRITICAL FAILURES (There goes my wirecutters...)
For the most part, crits in this crime are fairly minor.

Most commonly you will lose whatever spraycan you're using, and/or a minor amount of life.

Sometimes, you'll get jailed for a relatively short period of time (depending on location risk, from 1hr to 5hrs)

In the worst cases, you can lose your paint mask or your wirecutters. Some evidence of this would be ideal, for now though you'll have to take my word for it.

Not much can be done regarding crits in this crime, only observations I have:
- Having a ladder, paint mask and wirecutters seem to prevent some crits.
- Chance of getting a crit varies depending on location, location risk can be seen further down. In general, ~10% of fails become crits.
- Color used does NOT seem to have bearing on crit chance, or failure rate as a whole. Way more data would be needed to make a more accurate assessment.

THE KEY ITEMS
As I mentioned before, there are three key items for this crime, that while they don't visually do anything, they unlock new outcomes and prevent some negative ones from occuring. This latter part is mere speculation, the flavor text implies that this is the case but there's not nearly enough data to make a certain conclusion.
Evidence of the effect of these key items will be attached at the end of their description.

THE LADDER

First key item, easiest to obtain, only requiring CS15 to be found in the West Side location, this item only appears to prevent negative outcomes related to high places and falling. (1) (2) (3)

THE WIRECUTTERS

Second key item, obtainable after reaching CS25 and found in North Side, this only seems to prevent simple failures by allowing one to reach otherwise locked places. (1)

THE PAINT MASK

Third key item and the crime enhancer for Graffiti, with a price tag to match its rarity. Can be found at CS35 in East Side. It increases CS and CE gains by 5%, while also unlocking some very high-paying outcomes. (1) (2)

OTHERS
Other factors that affect the possible outcomes besides the previously stated are current reputation, with higher reputation resulting in more and higher cash outcomes, being in a crew which unlocks a bunch of outcomes in most locations. At least one case requires both the crew and wirecutters (1), and at least one outcome requires an unexpected item: The cemetery key (1)

THE COLORING (Not enough data...)
It has been stated by Chedburn himself that the color used affects which outcomes can be found. While most locations seem to have common outcomes regardless of color used, and all uniques completely disregard color used, I've broken down what colors do what, and how much they change the outcomes.
I'm still missing some data for this one, and in hindsight it probably would've been better to list averages instead of ranges. Oh well, maybe in the future :P. (click to expand)


Key takeaways from this:

• Some locations drop certain colors commonly, while some others drop no colors at all.
• Each location *SEEMS TO* have one or a few colors with better performance, in terms of either reputation gain or money gain. In Eastside, purple seems to be the best for moneymaking, while red appears to be better at increasing reputation. I'm basing this off of what data I have, so there's certainly a chance of analyzing this stuff wrongly.
• All locations seem to have an "outcome pool", where there's common outcomes, outcomes that appear with certain colors, and outcomes that appear only with one color, as well as some outcomes that require certain items in your inventory (as stated previously)
• The biggest factor in money made by a long shot seems to be having or not having the paint mask. Most high-paying common outcomes seem to be tied to having a paint mask.

THE MERITS
Just like all other crimes, this crime has two honor bars native to it, and all the medals pertaining its category.

Reaching CS100 will grant one the Let Us Spray honor bar.


Joining a crew will grant one the Fresh Blud honor bar.

Like mentioned in the "Joining a Crew" section above, you just need to reach max reputation in any location and CS70. Once both conditions are fulfilled, a unique will appear in said location. Obtaining this unique unlocks this honor bar.

Finally, all attempts at this crime fall under the Vandalism category, giving medals according to the amount of crimes done.

This is the only crime of the Vandalism category, and this category is brand new in 2.0, meaning that all fifteen medals are available for old and new players alike, making this the best crime for obtaining merits for older players.


THE NUMBERS (What do they mean!?)
With eight colors in seven locations and six reputation levels, this crime has (so far) the highest amount of possible permutations for data analysis, this section focuses on giving comprehensible results on factors of interest.

RISK BREAKDOWN
Some locations are more dangerous than others, and as such, the chance of failing and/or getting a critical failure increases the more dangerous a location is. The following is a simple breakdown of failure rate for each location based on reputation.



MONEYMAKING BY LOCATION
On average, chances of getting money vary significantly depending on location and current reputation level in the area. The following is a breakdown of expected rate of money gain, how much on average was gained, and sample size for reference.

In general most locations don't give a particularly high amount of cash per attempt on average. Given that this is a 3 nerve crime, that much is to be expected. Nonetheless, any chance of receiving money is a reduced chance of increasing reputation, demonstrating that the higher one's reputation is, the harder it is to increase it further.

COLOR BREAKDOWN
Against my better judgement I decided to post a sample of a color breakdown. This is only on East Side currently since it's the location with the most data by far.
Due to low sample size, expect everything beyond this point to be fairly inaccurate. I do not suggest using this as a guideline.

EAST SIDE


The sample size being relatively small for some colors leads to some degree of unreliability, mainly since this does not rule out luck.
As stated before, red appears to be the best in reputation gain, outshining all the others, while purple seems to be the best at moneymaking, with pink as a close second. This, however, does not account for reputation level, which has a significant impact on rate of money outcomes.


While this one reflects better on how good each color is at each thing, the low amount of samples makes these results dubious at best.

Other less-than-ideal breakdowns can be found here:
Reputation 1* - Reputation 2* - Reputation 3* - Reputation 5*
*The reputation 5* one says REPUTATION 4* at the top. This is a typo, it is in fact the R5* breakdown. Will change it once I make breakdowns for other locations.

FINAL THOUGHTS (I am once again asking for your logs)

This crime was... a let-down, to put it bluntly. While I very much liked it and was a fan of how both color, location and items in inventory had bearing on possible outcomes, I am very aware that that's just for me. Most people from what I heard aren't fond of the reputation system here, having seen the intricacies of Search for Cash and its time-based success rates, or Bootlegging requiring time for copies to be made, the most common complaint I heard was "This is pretty much just spam click over and over".

Again, while I liked it a lot, I can see where people are coming from, and feel like some things could've been done differently to make the crime more interesting, like adding a notoriety gauge the more graffiti you did in a location, increasing the risk of being caught by the police, similar to busting's heat mechanism. Regardless, I liked it's underlying complexity.

This is my third attempt at making a guide for Crimes 2.0, after the extremely favorable responses my bootlegging guide received. Making these guides and compiling this information is a joy to me, and receiving positive feedback and correction messages lets me know people are invested and finding some use to these, making the time and effort spent worth it for me.

UPDATE: Since the release of this guide, I've managed to gather a total of 32,000 logs from different people. Thanks to everyone who contributed, this guide and most precise information has been listed.
Even still, given the massive amount of permutations for this crime, I'm still lacking logs for more complex analysis, particularly regarding colors and their effects. With that in mind, consider selling me your logs so I can complete this guide, improving its accuracy and having it complete for future readers and those who migrate to crimes 2.0 later. Unlike previous times, I'm now willing to directly pay to anyone capable of providing me workable data, including a step-by-step guide on how to send it to me easily, all information in the linked post above.

Finally, to conclude this guide, a shoutout to all contributors, those who provided their data expecting nothing in return: (If I didn't name you here I either forgot or had to pay you for the data)

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
BigDaddyLuvsU: $20,000,000, 3x Drug Pack
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
Lidia: $15,000,000
illum: 1x FHC
Gandalf: 1x FHC
hugeknight: 10x Lottery Voucher
Lexcifer: 10x Xanax
something: $7,500,000
Giovanni: 3x Six-Pack of Alcohol
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

Providers of a significant amount of samples:
An Enthusiastic Reader (Anonymous): 5,113 logs
Bard: 2,908 logs
TMG100: 2,753 logs
SimbaJack: 2,519 logs

Providers of very valuable data:
Fetheryhorse6: Most residential data
Sindree: Most financial data
tejdog1: Eastside 5* data
prepucealdente: Eastside 5* data
Flying_Dutchman: Financial 5* data

All contributors:
SimbaJack, six31167, Prynce, real_mister, 777horse, Rho, Trudeny, DocFox, residential gang leader Fetheryhorse6 (hehe), kingVoid, Allenone, Bard, KRobert, RaiNN97, that1dude1995, Kamex, FreakyParty, Lord_Nitrox, TGM100, Judge, Allenone, Boydosbem, Killerworm, Sindree, ihatedaycare, -Corvus-, tejdog1, TornFalcon, prepucealdente, MIA, Flying_Dutchman, and all the people in the forum threads for graffiti.

All in the name of science.