Re: Peeps Asking for an Onlink Guide

[Aurora Yukihime]

It's a frequently asked question of mine. Since writing the Minoriko's Series (see the Guides section) lots of people are wondering when there'll be an Onlink guide.

Well, soon-ish really.

I'm starting an Onlink playthrough (and man this game is hard) to make the guide. You will probably see a similar series like the Minoriko's Series for it when it's done.

[AI-bino]

That's great! I've never taken the time to play Onlink because of how small the text is and... the fact that I haven;t fully mastered Uplink, but I'll be looking forward to this guide! :D

[Aurora Yukihime]

Originally posted by Gamecool 10:

That's great! I've never taken the time to play Onlink because of how small the text is and... the fact that I haven;t fully mastered Uplink, but I'll be looking forward to this guide! :D

You'll definitely want to master Uplink first. Bank hacks become trivial in Onlink as opposed to the biggest deal in Uplink, for instance.

Fun fact: I've only ever done one bank hack before starting Onlink. Needless to say I wasn't ready. xD

[Syndicake ☠]

Once you learn bank hacks it ruins the difficulty for you forever. It's so easy in fact all you need is a proxy disabler, which costs 10000 and log deleter v4 and you can do it with the basic gateway. Complete the basic destroy missions until you rank up, then take a university degree or two job, you can do these easily no special equipment. Just bounce through internal service machines you already hacked and have admin access too.

Take a trace unauthorized transfer job then some social security and ask for half upfront if you dont have enough cash yet since they pay well. Remember to bounce through your hacked internal services and the academic database, crack the account with the password breaker. Log out and go to InterNIC, purge logs.

Change your penultimate bounce to another server (so they dont trace on connect), set up your transfer, run the disabler and send it. Then go to the statement and delete the transfer log.

Go to interNIC purge logs. Same process again with your bank account, log in and delete the statement. Log out and go to InterNIC and delete the logs from that hack too. Millions in 20 minutes then you can buy the best gateway and such before the first day even ends.

[Aurora Yukihime]

Well, let's pull a page out of Onlink's book and describe the situation that happens immediately after accepting the first page of missions and ranking up for the first time:

You're a Confident with maybe 15000c, a Log_Deleter 4, Trace_Tracker 1, and Password_Breaker to your name. From here on out, everything has around a Lv.5 Proxy, is encrypted or compressed, or has a bandwidth monitor you need a disabler/bypasser for. You can grind the missions page to ask for more money up front, but there's a 24-hour timer before you fail the mission and lose rank. Lose too much rank and, well, where did the missions go?

That's where the bank hack becomes essential. Uplink is a gentle staircase while Onlink is a push onto a zipline. Basically out the gate you'll need to stock up on all the tools necessary to simply continue, which two bank hacks usually provides in the first two hours of gameplay if you're going for a maxed out gateway and tools.

And my sources say I haven't even scratched the surface yet.

[v0]

It may be easy but one mistake and it could be game over so it's still special experience (if you're playing without backing up progress) :P

[Mc2m]

Maybe I should investigate how to make it so you can't back up progress ;P

[Aurora Yukihime]

Originally posted by Mc2m:

Maybe I should investigate how to make it so you can't back up progress ;P

"The [game] just got [that much harder] !! *crowd cheers*"

[v0]

Originally posted by Mc2m:

Maybe I should investigate how to make it so you can't back up progress ;P

I mean backup so you can return anytime to anything you backed up :P instead of always keeping only current state on disk.

[Mc2m]

Originally posted by v0:

I mean backup so you can return anytime to anything you backed up :P instead of always keeping only current state on disk.

oh I understood perfectly, and I even know how to partially prevent this. But it is definitely not a priority.

[Trygger]

Originally posted by Syndicake ☠:

Once you learn bank hacks it ruins the difficulty for you forever. It's so easy in fact all you need is a proxy disabler, which costs 10000 and log deleter v4 and you can do it with the basic gateway. Complete the basic destroy missions until you rank up, then take a university degree or two job, you can do these easily no special equipment. Just bounce through internal service machines you already hacked and have admin access too.

Take a trace unauthorized transfer job then some social security and ask for half upfront if you dont have enough cash yet since they pay well. Remember to bounce through your hacked internal services and the academic database, crack the account with the password breaker. Log out and go to InterNIC, purge logs.

Change your penultimate bounce to another server (so they dont trace on connect), set up your transfer, run the disabler and send it. Then go to the statement and delete the transfer log.

Go to interNIC purge logs. Same process again with your bank account, log in and delete the statement. Log out and go to InterNIC and delete the logs from that hack too. Millions in 20 minutes then you can buy the best gateway and such before the first day even ends.

Onlink accounts for that. Banks do monthly audits meaning if your account suddenly has several million in it with no statements, they confiscate your money and eventually disavow you. [UPLINK bank doesn't do audits though.]

[Trygger]

Originally posted by Aurora Yukihime:

Well, let's pull a page out of Onlink's book and describe the situation that happens immediately after accepting the first page of missions and ranking up for the first time:

You're a Confident with maybe 15000c, a Log_Deleter 4, Trace_Tracker 1, and Password_Breaker to your name. From here on out, everything has around a Lv.5 Proxy, is encrypted or compressed, or has a bandwidth monitor you need a disabler/bypasser for. You can grind the missions page to ask for more money up front, but there's a 24-hour timer before you fail the mission and lose rank. Lose too much rank and, well, where did the missions go?

That's where the bank hack becomes essential. Uplink is a gentle staircase while Onlink is a push onto a zipline. Basically out the gate you'll need to stock up on all the tools necessary to simply continue, which two bank hacks usually provides in the first two hours of gameplay if you're going for a maxed out gateway and tools.

And my sources say I haven't even scratched the surface yet.

Here's a tip. So far the only sec systems you can't disable by the security section are active encryption, bandwidth monitor[you won't be able to even login to reach it] and proxy. As long as you target ISM's you can simply bust in, use only proxy and encryption disabler/bypasser and rush to shut off the rest of security like firewall and sentry.

This ONLY works with Internal Services Machines. Central Mainframes and backup servers don't have a security section, meaning you HAVE to use software to shut it down so you can do your work, and that doesn't even scratch the surface in access control systems, lifters, security mainframes, VDPIN etc.

You need more than your default RAM to even RUN lanview, learned that the hard way.

[Selovanth]

I honestly wish VDPIN / VSEC weren't a thing in Onlink. Maybe I'm just more of a simple kind of person, but it gets to the point that I don't even want to deal with the systems anymore. VDPIN isn't too bad, especially since you can run software to break it. VSEC is ♥♥♥♥♥♥♥ hell though.

It could just be me, but spending so much time on one system just trying to get through VSEC/VDPIN without a cracker is just exhausting.

[ATM Tech]

Do you have an ETA on the guide?

[Valkon]

Originally posted by The Wolf's Shadow:

Here's a tip. So far the only sec systems you can't disable by the security section are active encryption, bandwidth monitor[you won't be able to even login to reach it] and proxy. As long as you target ISM's you can simply bust in, use only proxy and encryption disabler/bypasser and rush to shut off the rest of security like firewall and sentry.

You actually can disable Active Encryption via the security section, you just have to know which buttons to press to get there (and have the proxy disabled or bypassed).

[Trygger]

Originally posted by Valkon:

Originally posted by The Wolf's Shadow:

Here's a tip. So far the only sec systems you can't disable by the security section are active encryption, bandwidth monitor[you won't be able to even login to reach it] and proxy. As long as you target ISM's you can simply bust in, use only proxy and encryption disabler/bypasser and rush to shut off the rest of security like firewall and sentry.

You actually can disable Active Encryption via the security section, you just have to know which buttons to press to get there (and have the proxy disabled or bypassed).

You sure? Last time I tried it an error came up, and I was 100% sure it stopped me while proxy was bypassed. Active encryption also prevented me from using the console or deleting files. Copying files didn't work, either even when I had disabled or bypassed everything else.