Rhonwen's Terminology Guide
Tips for The Great Heist
Part One
Terms
Marbles are underworld currency which can buy you skill implants (100m for 5* skill, which is the necessary amount since they aren't accumulative).
Recon is a career mission which assesses a location for a heist. Marbles vary depending on recon %. Reconning decreases zone transition time during heists.
BM is the Blind Man, who sells three pieces of equipment. These pieces are better quality than Ma Baker's for comparative cost.
Alarm is how alert the guards are. Aggressive actions will lower it from Green > Yellow > Red, in varying amounts. Past Red, the alarm is raised and guards will start to arrive.
Cards are actions/boosts you can use during a heist. Must be added to crew loadout.
First Steps
Skills: Prioritize improving Reconnaissance to 4 stars, as it will shorten the time it takes to recon locations, which means more marbles per week.
Stats: You have quite a few stats to put your XP into. To be most efficient, you will want to max out...
Intelligence (for learning skills) and Dexterity (for crime actions)
Charm (for bribing)
Looks (for distracting)
Strength (for brute actions like knocking out)
Constitution for health
Equipment: You can get one piece of Ma Baker equipment every week. She charges however many marbles you have up to 10, so buy AFTER you have bought a skill implant once you are doing hotels.
Part Two
Role
Solo crews have limited role uses, which you will want to change depending on the heist.
Master Mind allows you to see the alarm level and total timer of the heist, so you know if you are green/yellow/red, alarm raised, and how much time you have to work with. It also speeds up the transition times between sections.
Other roles shorten the time of the actions that are tied to these roles. For example if you are safe cracker, you crack a safe in a shorter amount of time than any other role.
Your Week
Monday: Ma Baker, weekly challenge, temple challenge, and weekly heist count resets at 8am GMT.
Thursday: BM relocates and refreshes stock, you can get 4 more free cards from the card vendor at the black market.
It will begin slow, but have patience and keep faith! You will want to recon locations completely until you get the hang of the rhythm of a heist. Heist actions have their own times, and do not reflect real time, so you can pace yourself and read.
You can do a maximum of 7 marble heists a week. Shop heists count towards weekly challenges (check the Temple and see what seems doable!), which have no limit.
Your goal is to get to a point where you're comfortable doing Hotels, and to do 7 a week. The sweet spot for that is 2-3 updates per Hotel (for 9-10 marbles at completion), which will give you the most marble-per-update for the week.
It will be rocky while you level up Basic Recon manually, but hang in there! Hotel heists > save marbles > check blind man > buy implant > get ma baker item once you had no marbles left.
Part Three
Cards
First you need to go to your character page > deck of cards (on the right) > and select which cards you want to add to your load out. Then down at the bottom of the page you click the load cards button.
In the heist, there's two 'tabs' of sorts -- actions and cards. Your default is the actions tab, with the dropdown approaches to each obstacle. Above those, click on the card link and it'll switch to a view of your loaded cards, which you can then click to use.
As you recon a location you may gain an observation for an obstacle you will face. Most obstacles have a corresponding card which can decrease your overall time.
Challenges:
A great way to gain XPs and marbles, the pair/2 pairs /3 of a kind/lighthouse are examples to challenges that are suitable for newbies.
Misc
Keep an eye out for Day 40, Kobe's Day. The Moscow Kobe's Day Quest is the easiest, and will give you one star in a basic-level crime skill.