You are an ace decker who have swiped countless paydata from the Matrix.
Finally finished your custom R12 cyberdeck, drunken in its infinite power.
Found your first black node, can connect straight to it, and now eager to burst it.
You can read this BBS post, whether you have a pulse or not.
First thing first, right after connected to the matrix, you should set your hack dice <max> = total dice / 3, this will give you 3 turns of using dice before they are depleted.
Example: 10 hack dices should <max 3> 11 hack dices should <max 4>, 12 hack dices should <max 4>
You wondered why the peculiar with hack dice, because on black node decker must destroy ICs for most paydata. There are 2 types of black node by their ICs behavior.
First is Dead Man's Switch, mean right after you destroy the weak IC, the black IC will sneak in an alpha strike soon after, if you have 0 hack dice when this happen, chances are, you are going to get dump-shocked in a single strike. The 1st turn of dice is for killing the weak IC, the 2nd and 3rd turn of dice is for black IC, which you should immediately run attack on them after their alpha strike.
Second is Zombie Horde, everything is chill until the node reach a certain Tally, then they spawns 2 black ICs and attacks you non-stop, the more you kill, the more they spawns, you have 2 classical choices here: Fight or Flight. You are reading this post, go figure my choice.
You will panic. This is what separate a black burst from regular paydata mining. The black IC can deal heavy damage to you even with hack dice, with normal reflex you will try running medic. The problem is medic will cost you hack dice, and we know what happen when IC hit and you have no hack dice.
Teetering on the brink, facing the abyss… this is the way of black burster.
We are not here risking our tofu get fried to destroy some black IC, we are here for paydata. Many of us are used to bulk decrypt and disarm, then download everything at once, this is no longer the case. After you have accumulated enough paydata by a threshold that you will soon learn, you have 2 classical choices here: Bulk or Manual. For manual you will decrypt, disarm then download each paydata one by one. Otherwise, beware of black ICs sneak up on you, while you are depleted of hack dice looting your booty.
There is the obvious time trade-off between serial and parallel download, the choice is yours, omae.
Under maximal condition a black node could have more than 15 paydata, in practice, 10 to 12, and if eating the cake whole is consistently possible…
Stealth is the name of the game, we do not bite more than we can swallow. Practically I do 2 runs for each black node with 6 paydata each. Should you choose to eat the cake whole, beware of the Tally, for it always rise faster than the paydata you can swallow, the node or black ICs may dump-shock you before you finish your run.
Between the time to recover from high-risk of dump-shock with loss of paydata, and the extra time for doing 2 runs, the choice is yours, omae.
Standard R12 custom cyberdeck, all bells and whistles, with NO Evasion Chip.
Mean Masking Chip 12, mean Sleaze 11, mean more program in active memory, mean time saving.
On the left of the table: locate paydata and destroy ICs.
Once reached your paydata threshold, unload Analyze and Evaluate. Then load Defuse and Read/Write.
On the right of the table: download paydata and fending off ICs then logoff.
Software | Rating | Software | Rating | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Deception | 12 | |||
Sleaze | 11 | |||
Attack | 12 | |||
Armor | 12 | |||
Medic | 9 | |||
Decrypt | 12 | |||
Analyze | 12 | Defuse | 12 | |
Evaluate | 12 | Read/Write | 12 |
Alternatively, you can decrease Attack to rating 8 and plug in Shield 12, or whatever combination suits you.
However, the inconsistency in one-off black IC, which is crucial for avoiding more damage, have resulted in many fried tofus.
Software | Rating | Software | Rating | |
---|---|---|---|---|
Deception | 12 | |||
Sleaze | 11 | |||
Attack | 8 | |||
Armor | 12 | |||
Medic | 9 | |||
Shield | 12 | |||
Analyze | 12 | Decrypt | 12 | |
Evaluate | 12 | Defuse | 12 | |
Read/Write | 12 |
Higher I/O, closer to bar, closer to data fence, is better.
When you inevitably get dump-shocked, nothing beats a shot of alcohol and a sleep in the bar to recover your drowsiness.
My favorite spot is Velasquez Securities & Investments and Telestrian Habitat. Find your own chummers.
All numbers and recommend setup in this post are highly personal and should be treated as reference, adjusts them to fit your needs, the principle is the same.
Alas, I never wrote this for you chummers, you think I would spills my beans for nothing?
This is for myself in different life, if you ANACHRONISTIC AIRHEAD OF A GIANT, ever make it through the Sprawl to read this.
Beside, black nodes are a myth, leak or leaflet, depends how you read it, made by megacorps and blackops to lures deckers into their game.
For chummers who are reading this on Shadowland BBS, it would be wise to know the administrator is SysOp, and their control host, is exposed.
“Decker or Dreker depends on your dump-shock counter.”
And now your icon has been logged.
And your counter… Is plus plus… Dreker.