Working Out

Gym IP System

At birth, everyone gets 605 gym IP. This is a one-time grant which can't be replenished except by re-rolling. Whenever you earn an IP from a gym machine you use one of these. Each week of gametime, you can only earn 20 IP from gym training. After that you get a cooldown and you need to wait til the next game week to start training again. However, the gym machines now give IP much faster -- if you train wisely using appropriate settings and jooky and so on, you should be able to get your 20 IP quickly.

• 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.

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 me= 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 in a stat costs exactly 7 XP (regardless of how high your stat is) so make sure you have sufficient XP for your desired stat gains every time you work out.

Equipment

So you've decided that working out sounds like the thing for you, and you want to know where you can do it. Apart from carrying heavy weights around with you, which can obviously be done anywhere, there are only four locations where exercise equipment can be found: Rolf's Gym [RG] in Slagtown, Brucie's Gym [BG] in Corpclave, Machinae Supremacy [MS] and the prison west of Freedom City. 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:

• The weight set. Weight training increases your Brawn. You must "lie on weight set" before you can "rep weight" and thus only one person can use it at a time.
• The rowing machine. Training on this increases your Endurance. Much like the weight set, you must "lie on rowing machine" before you can "rep rowing" and only one person can use it at a time.
• The speed bag. Training on this increases Reflex, and can be used by anyone standing in the same room as it (i.e. in Rolf's Gym). Simply "Rep speed" to see the benefits.
• The climbing set is a totally different piece of equipment entirely, and serves to give a safe place to work on improving your climbing skills. Many of the same rules apply to using the climbing wall, though you only need stand next to the wall and then move "up" and "down" its face to improve your skill. Though you can see small Endurance gains from climbing the wall, that is not its primary purpose, and many players prefer to improve their climbing skills in certain relatively safe spots throughout the world which give more challenging climbs, thus giving better potential for improvement.
• The CvC arcade machine is used to grind cool, and must be played against a 2nd player. The command to use this is "sit on CvC" followed by "challenge [2nd player] on [machine]
• The beat-up 'It's not Jackie Chan' arcade machine is used to grind senses, and must be played against a 2nd player. The command to use this is "challenge [2nd player] on [machine]".

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.
• As the gym often has multiple low to medium skilled players in it, it is often a popular place for griefers to attack or throw bombs or even nukes. Be alert and ready to =stop= in the middle of a workout to flee or defend yourself! Also, make sure you update your clone frequently to avoid severe loss of stats if killed.

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 performing an activity which is dependent on that stat. To make best use of this method of training, you would want to figure out your focus stats. These stats would be the ones you max out in the gym. 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. This is because, like skills, the lower a raw stat is, the easier it will be to get IP in that stat.