n00b

[mini steve]

hey everyone. am new to this games and i think its brilliant. only thing is.. i always seem to get caught... even though on eery hack i delete all of the log files... its still revokes my passwords and i end up having to start again?? what i am doing wrong?

any input would be much appreciated,

thank you

[Rkiver]

Hints and Tips

FAQ - READ THIS BEFORE POSTING

Last but not least The Guide.

[Tsunamii]

Just some stuff I wish I would have known sooner...

1) Before you do anything at all in the game, even before the test hack, browse Internic and filter by "public". Click the boxes of everything that comes up. Disconnect and go to the world map. Make a nice 40 long chain out of all of the Public Access Servers and make sure you put in either Internic or Uplink Test Server within 3 or 4 jumps of your gateway. I personally put UTS near the gateway and put Internic as the farthest away at the last hop before the hacked PC, but thats my calling card. Hit Save on this path and use it for everything.

2) After missions, jump between the uplink bank, uplink ISM, and Public Access Server. These 3 are going to be what I call the "back channel". Never hack through these, only use these to have 3 jumps before you get to either the UTS or Internic whichever you have 3 or 4 jumps from your gateway when you cover your tracks. You wont ever need to cover your tracks after covering your tracks if you use Uplink servers as your back channel nor do you have to worry about uplink tracing you.

3) Never ever accept missions off the main screen till you bought everything you can buy, always always always contact the employer, ask for more money, and then ask for half up front for everything you do. This makes sure you have the money to pay for the increased equipment you need to go from missions levels 3 and 4 and level 5+

4) Try not to accept too many missions at once. Get one or two and do those and then get one or two more. Doing this helps you to be successful more often when asking for more money on jobs and also when asking for half now.

5) Once you open up level 5+ jobs, ignore #4, instead try to get half now on everything you can, you need 60k or so in order to skip right to the HUD_Connection_Analyzer and the Proxy and Monitor Bypasses.

6) When you get a mission to determine the size of a loan, always reply back with 0 before you do anything, about half the time I get instant success like this without having to hack the bank.

7) Tag all uplink machines and internic with orange by hitting the % sign at the end of the link on the main screen. This helps with #2 when you have 40+ bounces on the screen.

When you get a "Elite Agent Needed to destroy mainframe" or such, tag the Public Access Server orange before you check for the admin's name and analyze him. Make sure to bounce through the newly created orange hop on the way to the mainframe, again this is helpful in negotiating the HUD with 40+ bounces up.

9) Dont take "Trace the hacker" missions more than 2 hours after they appear. When I get an itch to play "f your buddy" I usually alternate quickly between hitting super fast forward and normal speed so it doesnt take forever to find such a mission and so its not already too late by the time I switch back to normal.

10) If you are stuck on a LAN mission, you can try doing the voice part and then clicking Accept and then hacking the password and hitting accept and then disconnecting. Then reconnect, do the voice and hit accept and then disconnect again and cover your tracks. Wait a few hours and go back in, the voice will already be done and the admin password probably wont be changed so you just click through and go right to what you need to do. This method buys you the maximum possible amount of time in the box. Some LAN missions can only be successfully done this way because no other way buys enough time.

11) When trying to get more money and get half money now, if you hit no thanks and contact them again, usually it will give you a chance to undo decisions they already made previously - this is pretty cheaty sorta like hacking banks and stealing money for yourself.

12) Hacking banks should not be done in the game, but if you are going to do it at least dont cheeze and steal money directly, just take like 30 bank hacking missions and then each bank will have 6 or 7 that you can do all at the same time for 100kish total money per hack. This also works for "Elite hacker needed to destroy mainframe" type stuff. I try not to hack something unless 3 or more people want to pay me to do the same hack. Until then they can just wait.

Tsunamii

[mr_anonymous]

1) Before you do anything at all in the game, even before the test hack, browse Internic and filter by "public". Click the boxes of everything that comes up. Disconnect and go to the world map. Make a nice 40 long chain out of all of the Public Access Servers and make sure you put in either Internic or Uplink Test Server within 3 or 4 jumps of your gateway. I personally put UTS near the gateway and put Internic as the farthest away at the last hop before the hacked PC, but thats my calling card. Hit Save on this path and use it for everything.

Why? That just clutters up the map. Instead, may I suggest that you hit InterNIC and search for banks and the stock market system? You can create an account on each one of those machines. It takes longer to trace you through a machine where you have an account than it does to trace you through a machine where you do not have an account. It takes even longer if you have root access.

2) After missions, jump between the uplink bank, uplink ISM, and Public Access Server. These 3 are going to be what I call the "back channel". Never hack through these, only use these to have 3 jumps before you get to either the UTS or Internic whichever you have 3 or 4 jumps from your gateway when you cover your tracks. You wont ever need to cover your tracks after covering your tracks if you use Uplink servers as your back channel nor do you have to worry about uplink tracing you.

I'm confused by what you are suggesting, here. Why not first jump through InterNIC, and connect there directly to delete your logs. You will not be traced for hacking InterNIC, and there is no monitor, either. Win-Win.

3) Never ever accept missions off the main screen till you bought everything you can buy, always always always contact the employer, ask for more money, and then ask for half up front for everything you do. This makes sure you have the money to pay for the increased equipment you need to go from missions levels 3 and 4 and level 5+

Little known fact: if you contact the employer, and demand all the money now, and he refuses, do not accept the mission, and try again. Eventually, they will give you all the money up front (assuming you really need it).

That being said, why buy everything that you can buy? Buy what you need, when you need it. If you don't need the LAN tools, don't buy them. Also, I don't see any of the above as being hard and fast rules, or even good policy, in general. The amount of extra money you get is pretty trivial, and not really worth the hassle. You might prefer that method, but there is no reason to suggest that it is the best method, or that it should be something that everyone does.

4) Try not to accept too many missions at once. Get one or two and do those and then get one or two more. Doing this helps you to be successful more often when asking for more money on jobs and also when asking for half now.

It makes no difference, as far as I can tell. Someone with the DevCD may be able to chime in, though. Personally, I like to grab as many missions as I can all at one time -- often, multiple missions will target the same computer, which means that they can be completed all at once. Furthermore, it saves several trips to the Uplink Internal Service machine.

5) Once you open up level 5+ jobs, ignore #4, instead try to get half now on everything you can, you need 60k or so in order to skip right to the HUD_Connection_Analyzer and the Proxy and Monitor Bypasses.

The advice being: don't bother with the disablers, go straight for the bypassers. This is good advice. Though I would recommend getting the firewall and proxy bypassers first. I rarely find that I need the monitor bypasser, except when I am stealing money.

6) When you get a mission to determine the size of a loan, always reply back with 0 before you do anything, about half the time I get instant success like this without having to hack the bank.

Heh. Indeed. It is zero often enough that this works quite well.

7) Tag all uplink machines and internic with orange by hitting the % sign at the end of the link on the main screen. This helps with #2 when you have 40+ bounces on the screen.

Or, as stated above, don't clutter up your map with so much shit.

8) When you get a "Elite Agent Needed to destroy mainframe" or such, tag the Public Access Server orange before you check for the admin's name and analyze him. Make sure to bounce through the newly created orange hop on the way to the mainframe, again this is helpful in negotiating the HUD with 40+ bounces up.

Again, good advice.

9) Dont take "Trace the hacker" missions more than 2 hours after they appear. When I get an itch to play "f your buddy" I usually alternate quickly between hitting super fast forward and normal speed so it doesnt take forever to find such a mission and so its not already too late by the time I switch back to normal.

The hackers the game all seem to use Log_Modifier, rather than Log_Deleter. If you have Log_Undeleter, the mission should always be possible.

10) If you are stuck on a LAN mission, you can try doing the voice part and then clicking Accept and then hacking the password and hitting accept and then disconnecting. Then reconnect, do the voice and hit accept and then disconnect again and cover your tracks. Wait a few hours and go back in, the voice will already be done and the admin password probably wont be changed so you just click through and go right to what you need to do. This method buys you the maximum possible amount of time in the box. Some LAN missions can only be successfully done this way because no other way buys enough time.

A better way:

1. Connect to the mainframe on the LAN.
2. Use Voice_Analyzer to get by that portion of the security setup.
3. Disconnect.
4. Immediately reconnect, and connect to the mainframe on the LAN.
5. Break the password, login, and do what you need to do.

You can repeat this as many times as you like, until you have copied or deleted all of the files that you need to. Then, you can cover all of your tracks at once. Much less hassle, and gets you almost as much time on the server.

11) When trying to get more money and get half money now, if you hit no thanks and contact them again, usually it will give you a chance to undo decisions they already made previously - this is pretty cheaty sorta like hacking banks and stealing money for yourself.

Why do you keep insisting on getting half the money when you can get all of the money?

12) Hacking banks should not be done in the game, but if you are going to do it at least dont cheeze and steal money directly, just take like 30 bank hacking missions and then each bank will have 6 or 7 that you can do all at the same time for 100kish total money per hack. This also works for "Elite hacker needed to destroy mainframe" type stuff. I try not to hack something unless 3 or more people want to pay me to do the same hack. Until then they can just wait.

Why shouldn't you hack banks? It improves your Neuromancer rating, and gets you lots of money. On top of that, to really do a good job hacking banks, you need Proxy_Bypass and Firewall_Bypass, which are quite expensive. By the time you have them, you probably have most of the other equipment that you will need in the game (maybe not the fastest, greatest gateway, or all of the LAN tools, but you should have most of everything else).

What is with all of your arbitrary rules about how to play Uplink?

[Tsunamii]

I would have wanted the tips when I started.

That being said:

I have a lot more success getting half now rather than all now and getting half now on everything that is encrypted on the starting mission list is usually enough for the 70k or so I need to get HUD + Proxy Bypass + Monitor Bypass + Voice Analyzer.

I guess I could sit there and redo until I get all the money now every time, but rather than something that has a 75% success rate per job I would be fighting through a 10% success rate per job.

I dont know if its just me, but I am too annoyed to do it the "all now" way.

As for choosing to use public access servers rather than banks, I never have problems due to passive traces anyway, and I can get SysAdmin phone numbers from them without having to hit Internic every time.

What I was saying in #2 is that hackers tend to have a personal signature in their hacks, and mine is that Internic is always last. Thats why I use the UTS for what you do with Internic. With 3 jumps till my gateway, I never have problems deleting logs from the UTS, even if I did like 10 hacks that I need to cover up all in one run.

As far as #4 goes, as your number of successful hacks goes up, the employers likelihood of accepting your requests goes up. Ideally you would always get 1 at a time for the best chance at successfully negotiating, but I am too annoyed by the process to do that. My way is fast and works pretty well.

As for getting Firewall Bypasser before Monitor Bypasser, to each his own, but I wouldnt.

For #9, perhaps you are right, but I could swear after about 3 hours enemy agents will go to log deletion level 4.
I dont think its possible to anti-hack some mission the day after its posted.

For #12, I dont remember needing firewall bypass to do banks, but I do remember needing Monitor bypass instead. Partly why I mentioned getting monitor before firewall.

As far as arbitrary rules how to play uplink, the whole game pushes you toward "optimal play" at every instance.

Sorta like you have a hard and fast rule to make your first hop to internic. It makes things much easier, faster, and safer for you when you do.

I just know that whenever I play like I just said I can always move through the game quickly and complete everything successfully and never be traced, and I dont have to sit around waiting for missions or to sit there and try to negotiate for payment longer than I want to.

Tsunamii