Working Out

Gym IP System

When you start a new character you get 70 IP points to allocate for stats. You need 100 points to raise a stat a full point. You will gain 70 IP points every mutation slot you gain. (This is 19 levels.) Exercise will never increase a stat over 18 raw; this does not include permanent stat modifications (both positive and negative) such as from the mutations Brute Strength or Twitchy Nerves or other temporary changes.

You can exercise as much as you want at anytime you please, as long as you have the gym IP points to spend! Otherwise, it will have no effect.

Basics of Working Out

• Exercise will give you muscle burn; over time, or if you're exerting yourself heavily and very quickly, it will reduce all three of your physical stats, though the most significant reduction will be to endurance which can drop by a large amount. Muscle burn can be removed by either simply not exerting yourself (which also applies when you are offline) or by drinking the sports drink jooky which contains creatine, which slowly reduces muscle burn. Jooky can be purchased in Rolf's Gym, Brucie's Gym or in Eschaton Outfitters in Freedom City. Be warned; too much creatine in your system will give you a creatine headache and slowly cause you to lose health. Pay attention to the exact amount in your system using diag and stay below the danger zone.
• Over exercising will give you a message "You are getting dangerously close to injury" Pay attention to this and stop immediately! If you keep plodding along regardless you risk a serious injury such as a groin pull which is quite debilitating and requires the attention of a skilled medic. Just 1 or 2 more reps is enough to cause injury so you need to be paying attention while working out.
• Every single IP allocated to a stat through gymming grants you 1 exp. (The same as grinding a skill. Every IP point spent/gained grants you equal amounts of exp.)

Equipment

So you've decided that working out sounds like the thing for you, and you want to know where you can do it. There are only four locations where exercise equipment can be found: Rolf's Gym, [RG], and Machinae Supremacy, [MS], found in Slagtown, Brucie's Gym, [BG], in Corpclave, and the Panopticon Prison in Gangland. As the latter can only be accessed while you are wanted by the police or are already in prison, the first three are generally the best places to go. Rolf's and Brucie's also have the advantage of having jooky dispensing machines for easy purchase of the essential beverage, and have a full set of equipment for all 3 physical stats, as well as a climbing wall. To access Brucie's, you must first be able to enter Corpclave.

The equipment is as follows:

• Weight set: Weight training increases your Brawn.
• Rowing machine: Training on this increases your Endurance.
• Speed bag: Training on this increases Reflexes.
• Climbing wall: is a totally different piece of equipment entirely, and serves to give a safe place to work on improving your climbing skills.

All of these machines can be found in either Rolf's Gym or Brucie's Gym. However, Rolf's climbing wall has safety equipment that keeps you from being hurt when you fall off. Brucie's does not.

What about cool and senses? How do I raise these?

• CvC machine: is used to grind Cool, and must be played against a second player. The command to use this is challenge [player] on [machine]
• 'It's not Jackie Chan' machine: is used to grind Senses, it's just like the CvC machine in that you need another thing to play against.

Bewarned that if you are challenged and do not intend to raise that stat you will still gain IP in it! So be sure to have either spent all your gym IP points before you play if you do not wish to raise the stat in question.

These machines can be found in Machinae Supremacy.

Help! I need to raise my brains, what do I do?

• Wikipedia is the smart way to grind Brains, since it's easily accessible (you need internet access, of course) and safe.

You can find it, surprisingly, in cyberspace.

• WOPR: is a horrifyingly slow and painful way to grind Brains. It's different from the rest of the machines in there is actual danger to this one. Ranging from the robots, zombies, to the machine itself.

You can find the WOPR down deep in the subway systems of Freedom City, if you really, really want to gym this way (what the hell is wrong with you?)

In summary, if you want to grind brains, use wikipedia, it's faster, easier and safer.

Some more interesting facts about gymming

For all the physical stat pieces of equipment it's worth noting the following:

• Using high weight / tension does increase the speed at which you gain stats slightly, but gives you muscle burn significantly faster. The higher your physical stats the quicker muscle burn wears off, so those with high stats may be able to do very long workouts at the 2nd or 3rd setting on the machines; new players or those who have very low physical stats should keep their equipment on the lowest setting if you want to see good IP gain, albeit over a longer period of time. Adjusting the equipment simply requires you to change [equipment] to [1-5].
• As mentioned above, Jooky is essential to a long, thorough workout so you should keep the level of creatine in your blood as constant as possible throughout. This has the unfortunate side-effect of causing you to need to urinate very frequently; however, you can pee in the gym without any repurcussions other than having to work out in a room that smells of piss. It's not uncommon to see people exercising naked or without pants for this reason, amongst others.
• One should be wise to update your clone before and after going to the gym. Griefers are now a lesser problem, but stray hostile NPCs and other trouble can easily come find you after you spent all that time gymming up your stats and training climb! Be careful!

Other ways to gain stats

Although working out is by far the easiest way to increase your stats, it has its limits in just how far you can improve them. Once you have exhausted the possibilities of the exercise machines, you can gain stat points by implants or drugs - though bewarned, these boosts are temporary. You may want to take mutations that debuff other stats early on, and then ignore the mutations that buff these non-focused stats until after you've satisfied your ability to grind these stats up and the skills associated with them. This is because, like skills, the lower a raw stat is, the easier it will be to get IP in that stat.