Welcome to SMRT Investigations!

Believe me, most of the time, we are THRILLED to have you here! :)

This guide is just a quick copy and paste of some of our more helpful threads that we used to ridiculously bump up for newbies in the past (big ups to Odie for pointing out that I'm an idiot and should have added this before).  All of these posts were posted by directors for the most part, so I'm only changing a little bit for updates, etc.

If you have any questions, get in touch with any director or officer and they should be able to answer anything :)

I just wanted to specify the promotion policy so that everyone knows what to expect:

• Promotion from Rookie to Agent after one week
• Promotion from Agent to Officer after 100K experience.
• Director Promotions are only made in special circumstances and are at the discretion of the existing directors.

We also buy prizes to celebrate important sleuthy milestones, such as hitting 100K, hitting 1,000,000, etc. :)

I thought I'd make a post for our new teammates about how an agency competes in the game. Our overall goal in Sleuth is to make us a top 5 overall agency. This will take time, but what the heck, you need to have a goal!

An agency gets "fame points" for every case it's member's solve. An Almost Impossible case gets 9 points, Ridiculously Hard gets 8, and so on. When we complete a treasure hunt, we also get fame points (100 or more, up to, I think, 1200) as well as a cash reward. We are nowhere near top 5 overall right now, as we are fairly new, but if you look at the high scores for New York, you'll see that we're top 15 in New York, and moving up nicely. It'd be cool to be top 10 New York.

No pressure! Just wanted to let everyone know how this works. :)

EDITORS NOTE:  I left this intact, being that Ara originally posted this back in April of 2006.  Here's how things have changed since then:

SMRT is #13 on the Overall Top Agencies list, with over 110,000 fame points.

We are #6 on the Overall London Agencies list.

We currently possess at this very moment (March 29, 2007) the following on the individual high scores:

• Overall Best Detectives: #14 (Biggie), #15 (Crunch) and #19 (Ara)
• Grand Master Detectives: #5 Crunchpatty
• Master Detectives: #4 (Biggie), #6 (Ara) and #22 (Ranier)
• Veteran Detectives: #8 Zanjana
• Practiced Detectives: #2 Saemus
• Novice List: #4 Ryan 

We also show up a few times on the Villain Hunting High Scores!

• #5 - AraLives with 21 (get a life woman)
• #8 - Ranier Peperhaut with 16 (you too)
• #13 - Biggie528 with 12 (we all know I don't have one)
• #24 - Odietrying with 8 (he's the only one not making us look like total losers)

To see the updated high scores, click here!

Oh and the part about no pressure?  Its a damn lie :)

We have all manner of goodies to help our investigations in our equipment locker. We are happy to outfit you once you join our agency; if later you happen to obtain another, higher value item for solving a treasure hunt, feel free to replace it.

Rookies to the agency cannot access items in the equipment locker. Our policy is to promote rookies after a week or so; this is to prevent theft of items, something which unfortunately happens in the game. If you need your crime scenes searched with smart gear for the time being, mark your cases "SEARCH CRIME SCENE" in the case files, and one of the senior members will search your crime scenes for you.

Smart Gear:

The best outfit for searching crime scenese is: 
The Queen 
The Indian Serpentine Box 
Gabardine Dream
Transparent Rain Hat (also great for sending PMs ;) ) 
Two Tone Loafers.

The best strategy for using this gear is to search several cases at once and store them in the case files, where you can go back to them and continue solving after putting the smart gear back and getting your own outfit. It's important to put the smart gear back ASAP as others may be waiting to use it. We do have other smart items as backup, but the above outfit is the best one,and will be in high demand.

The ONLY people who can sell items from the Equipment Locker are Directors, or those with a Director's permission to do so.  Some items are very hard to come by, and/or expensive, so we just want to make sure we don't lose anything precious

Ah, the case files. The most important feature of the agency, aside from the equipment locker. Case files can be used for many things--to save cases to play later, to give freebies away to other teammates, and to ask for help from other members. If you have suspects who have clammed, another member may be able to get them to unclam. If you don't have the contact for a particular piece of physical evidence, someone else probably does, and can assist.

When you place a file in the case files, be sure to let us know what you need in the notes section. If you want to give it away, mark it FREEBIE. If you need the banker or the shoemaker or whatever, say NEED BANKER or what have you. When the person with the Banker contact has determines who the evidence belongs to, they will put the case back in the files, marking it with the original detective's name and saying the work is done, like ARA BANKER DONE. Then Ara can resume working on the case.

If the case is marked with some sort of gibberish you don't understand, don't worry about it.  We all use different coding systems for our filing, but if we need help, it was always be marked that way very clearly.  We have all four PE contacts here, and are always willing to help out with a case where you get stuck!

Just a few tips for newbies to the game.

When buying skills, it's best to concentrate on obtaining either tough OR charming skills, as well as your smart skills. One of the most important skills you can get is the research skill, which will eliminate one of your suspects. 

Below is a list of what is required to accuse a suspect beyond all doubt. 

• Physical Evidence + Fake/No Alibi; OR 
• Witness Evidence + Fake/No Alibi; OR 
• 2 Witness Evidence 

Once you have met any of the above criteria, you can accuse your suspect safely.

PLEASE NOTE: Physical Evidence and Witness Evidence with an unknown alibi is NOT enough to accuse.

If you find yourself with two false accusations, please PM any of the directors, and we will help you with Shady.

Occasionally during the course of a case, you'll find that ALL your suspects have clammed on you. Or, the one suspect whose alibi you most need decides not to talk anymore. What's a detective to do?

In these cases, you have three options. The first two involve putting the case into the case files and specifying in the notes exactly who you would like unclammed; the third is extremely rare but worth knowing about.

1. Random Unclamming

If this is the FIRST TIME you have opened the file (meaning, it is YOUR case--not a "freebie" given to you by someone else), then you may benefit from random unclamming. Placing the case in the case files and having someone else in the agency open it gives about a 90% chance (in my experience) of having 1-2 people automatically, randomly, unclam. The number of questions these unclammed people will answer is also random. The names of the people who have unclammed appear in red at the top of the case file page when the second person opens the file.  Random unclamming will only work once, the first time another person other than the original file "owner" opens a file. So if random unclamming isn't possible because you got the file from someone else, and if surveillance doesn't work, then there is no way to unclam the suspect, and you'll either need to work around it or quit the case. 

2. Surveillance

The Circle of Light, in Delhi and Shanghai, teaches surveillance as their faction skill. It is a "smart skill," meaning it works best with smart gear on. Several of the agents here have surveillance and have noticed about a 50% success rate. Basically, we have an extra option for each suspect that says "Hide in the shadows and see if you can discover something about the suspect." If successful, surveillance will give you at least one, maybe several questions for the suspect. Surveillance works only once per case, so can only be used on one suspect.  If it does NOT work, you're out of luck for that case

3. Become the highest ranking person in Sleuth with any of the six factions.

This is supposed to be an unofficial Sleuth secret, why I have no idea. To reach the highest rank, there is no skill involved, just keep doing your little jobs).  On the day that you are the ranking person, just once that day, you are able to "Get help with an uncooperative suspect." This works 100% of the time, but again, is a one-time only deal on EACH day that you are the highest ranking scorer. This of course is a special situation, and for all practical purposes, options #1 and #2 are more relevant.

If you would like help with unclamming a suspect or suspects, please place the case in the case files with the note "unclam JOE and SUE," or "unclam anybody." and someone with surveillance will attempt to get them to talk.
 

I am making this post because this realization came to me somewhat later in the game, certainly well past the 200K mark. And I have recently discovered that others had not made this realization.

First, I will point out that there is ALWAYS a piece of PE which points to the guilty party. If you have a case where none of your PE points to your killer, it's because you were missing a piece of PE when you did your crime scene search.  Note that as long as you have basic hair and thread, you will NEVER miss a piece of PE.

Consider the following two pieces of evidence from an intermediate level case (for ease of explanation):

1. Thread from a female suspect (F)
2. Hair from someone with curly hair (C)


Your killer MUST therefore be either a female, OR have curly hair, OR both, You can eliminate anyone who is male with straight hair. And if the curly hair doesn't belong to someone with a false/no alibi, then the killer MUST be female, so may be able to eliminate more suspects that way.

This may be self-evident to some people, but if you're like me, it might have taken a while for this to "click" with you. If this isn't clear or if there are any questions, or if you'd just like to roll your eyes and say "DUH, Ara", feel free!

(EDITORS NOTE:  I say DUH ARA on pretty much a daily basis)

Also, there is something else we noticed later on, regarding Almost Impossible cases (AIs).  This is vital, considering our agency is known for villain hunting and working AIs for as much fame as possible, so we will ask you to work these when and if you can.

There will always be 10/11 suspects and 3/4 PE in an AI case.  Out of those 10/11, there will always be SEVEN false/no alibis, and either three or four real ones (obviously depending on the number of suspects).  For the purposes of getting through an AI on your own, it is many times easier to match the real alibis to the PE before you try the guilty ones.  Less people, less questions wasted.  If you have three pieces of PE, there will always be only ten suspects in your case, with one real alibi person not matching any of the PE.  The same applies to cases with 11 suspects and four PE. 

You kids might have already covered this, but I thought, since I'm all new and stuff, if not -or for new people, this might help y'all play.

This is what you can expect to see at each case level in terms of numbers of suspects and fakes, courtesy of Reda, one of the longest serving sleuths around.

(Oh - these numbers assume you have the Research skill. If not, add one fake to each level):

• easy case - 5/6 suspects 2 fakes
• intermediate case - 6/7 suspects 2/3 fakes
• hard case- 7/8 suspects 2/3 fakes
• really hard case - 7/8 suspects 3 fakes
• really really hard case - 8/9 suspects 4 fakes
• incredibly hard case- 8/9 suspects 4 fakes
• stupendously hard case- 9/10 suspects 5 fakes
• ridiculously hard case- 10/11 suspect 6 fakes
• almost impossible case - 10/11 suspects 6 fakes