Cria Builds

The recommended build in Build 16

• How it was picked: each of the 1,951 STR, DEF and VIG splits dueled 200,000 times against the whole field (1,326 builds in steps of 5), everyone in BIS, to the knockout.
• Two scores: the average is the chance to win. Bad luck is the chance to win in the 10% of games where your dice rolled worst. The final score is (average + 2 × bad luck) ÷ 3: bad luck counts double, because a good build is the one that holds up when luck doesn't help.
• The recommended: wins 54.9% of duels, 5.9% when the dice go bad. Score 22.26.
• It doesn't have to be exact: any split between STR 5–8, DEF 104–137 and VIG 118–150 ties with it (20 splits).
• What about 86/80/94? It wins 52.1% of duels and 5.2% on bad luck (score 20.80).
• Duel only: war was left out of this math. Test yours in In the Crosshairs.

1. The recommended build

• Why three nearly equal parts: STR makes you hit, DEF makes the other guy miss and Vigor is your HP. STR and DEF pay less and less the more you put in, so splitting pays more than dumping everything into one stat.
• Why so much Vigor: in Build 15 only Vigor gives HP. With 648 HP you take more hits, in war and in the 1v1.
• Why not zero out STR: whoever attacks and misses takes the counter. Hitting little means taking damage for nothing.
• Why not zero out DEF: in war you get focused by several at once, and every time they miss you, the counter goes back to them.
• It isn't the best at anything. It's the one that isn't weak at anything. We tested all 31,626 splits on 7 things (hitting, not getting hit, staying up, dealing damage, dealing it back on the counter, not dying to your own miss and winning the 1v1), always looking at the worst cases, the bad luck.
• It doesn't need to be exact: any split between STR 81–89, DEF 79–83 and VIG 90–100 works the same.

2. How far you can push a stat

Want more STR to hit more, more Vigor to take more or more DEF to get hit less? You can. Move the three below: the points are the same as at level 50 (SPD and CUN at 5), so when you raise one, the other two split what's left. The panel compares on the spot with the recommended build, both with the BIS.

• It's a cost-benefit call: near the recommended one, moving a few points costs almost nothing. The farther you go, the more each point costs, because what you take from one side starts to be missed.
• Pushing STR up to ~95 you lose at most 2 points. Vigor up to ~140. DEF up to ~85. Past that, the loss grows fast.

The offensive option: for those who don't mind getting hit

• What it is: ~96/31/133. It takes out DEF and puts in Vigor. STR barely changes (+10 points), so it is not a strength build.
• The price, first: you get hit 4.3 pp more and deal 11% less counter damage. Focused by several in war, that shows up on every attack you take.
• What it gains: a bit more damage (4%) and almost the same hit chance (0.5 pp more).
• Who it's for: whoever accepts getting hit more in exchange for a bit more damage. When in doubt, stick with the recommended one.

How far it's worth raising STR

• Balanced build: up to ~98 STR you lose at most 2 points. The STR points come out of Vigor, and time standing is what suffers first.
• Offensive build: up to ~122 STR. The points come out of DEF. Past ~105, DEF drops to the minimum and you get hit like someone with no defense.
• Raising STR pays little: from 86 to 150 STR, hit chance goes up only 2.9 pp, about 0.05 pp per point. And each point is 1 HP less.
• The choice is yours: want to hit harder? You can go up to these limits and lose little. Past that, the math doesn't add up.

3. Build yours (no BIS, or below level 50)

Nobody needs a computer to put a build together. The method has 4 steps:

1. SPD and CUN stay at the minimum (5). For fighting, every point pays more in STR, DEF or Vigor.
2. Split the rest into three nearly equal parts between STR, DEF and Vigor. At level 50 that's 250 points: 86/80/94 (the three add up to 260 because each stat already starts at 5, except Vigor).
3. Test it in In the Crosshairs with your gear today. From the weakest gear to the BIS, the best split moves little, but check before paying for a respec.
4. From level 40 on, leveled up? Train the 5 new points keeping the three close to each other (STR, DEF and VIG growing together). No respec needed for that.

4. When to respec

• Haven't used the free Vigor respec yet? Use it now. When Vigor came in, everyone who was already playing got a free respec: no price, no wait, and it doesn't move the price ladder.
• When you change gear, check again. Today the best split moves little with gear, but that can change until everyone reaches the BIS. Test it in In the Crosshairs before paying for a respec.
• When the game changes the rules (new stat, new formula for HP, damage or hit chance). The site redoes the math on every update and the Patch Notes let you know. That's what happened with Vigor in Build 15.
• Leveling up doesn't call for a respec. The new points go into normal training, keeping STR, DEF and VIG close to each other.
• Never with your gang at war (the game won't let you). If you're changing for a war, change before the declaration.

What it costs: the first paid respec costs $4,000 per trained point. The lower the level, the cheaper: level 20 (100 points), $400,000; level 35 (175 points), $700,000; level 50 (250 points), $1,000,000. The second costs ×4, the third ×24 and the fourth ×192. The ladder only resets with Gold. One respec every 24 h. That's why it pays to do it once, and do it right.

5. The basics, as questions

6. Items: what counts and what doesn't in a fight

7. The proof: a real duel

A street corner duel from 10/13/2026 (best of 3), player A against player B, read hit by hit on the game's page. The site's model, with each one's stats and gear, predicts exactly the damage that went in:

On the scoreboard, player A landed 23 of 33 attacks and player B 15 of 31. The model gave 54.3% and 52.6%. Read from the duel's page in the game (Hit by hit), read-only. Both used tools (Flashbang and Ballistic Shield) in this duel: here the log is for checking the damage rules, not for comparing builds.

8. How to test your build in In the Crosshairs

1. Enter your character: level, points, house, megastructure (if you have one) and gear.
2. Press the recommended button to see the 86/80/94 with the BIS, or move STR, DEF and VIG by hand.
3. Pick who you want to measure up against: the reference builds, or an opponent you build yourself.
4. Respec before the war, never during.

9. Deep dive: how the math was done

From here down it's for whoever wants to check. You don't need to read it to use the page.

• The builds: all 31,626 STR, DEF and VIG splits with SPD and CUN at 5, level 50, BIS (the first in each slot of the Arsenal), Mansion in a tier 3 district, no drugs and no tools.
• The war: you focused by 4 real level 50 opponents from the server, with their real gear and the behavior seen in the war logs (you hit the team's focus target; for each attack of yours they make 1, 2 or 4; weapons and shield in the proportions that showed up in the logs; counter with no reduction). 3,000 wars per build at each pace, 3 different draws.
• The 1v1: to the knockout, against real level 50 players from the server, with the standard weapon sequence.
• Bad luck: on the war numbers the score is the average of the worst 10% of cases.
• The tie: builds within 2 standard errors of the best (15 splits). Among them, the chosen one is the one that loses least in the other scenarios (the opponents as read on 10/13, 4 BIS opponents, everyone on Adrenaline Shot).
• The check: the same model, running the 3 wars 10 against 10 with each one's real behavior, matches the game on 13 of 15 points (duration, each side's hit rate, losses and drops from counters).

How much each point of STR and DEF pays

How much each item stat is worth

How many more duels you win by gaining +5 of each thing, on average over 66 STR/DEF/VIG builds against their field: