This is the 5th time I try to play Uplink I think and at the moment I'm at rank Skilled and for some reason I've Indiscriminate as rating (what does that even mean? That I'm aggressive?).

First, is there any way to add a hotkey like space for disconnect when you're in a tight moment as it's very annoying having to move the mouse and then, like I just did a few hours ago, misclicked right before the active trace caught me?

Now, the active trace. It caught me when I hacked into the social security database and I only received a fine for 1000 credits but the problem was that all the missions I had available at the time required no criminal record. Luckily I remembered the Global Criminal Database and I was able to pull through that one. What I wonder about this is what kind of hacking activity is the line drawn between a fine and jail/account deletion? Also, if you're caught by law enforcement by a passive trace I assume the only thing that can support you is that personal monitor and preferably the gateway self-destruct or is there anything else?

My current missions are sort of a drag. First, I have very few so I have to speed up the time to receive any and while in itself it doesn't matter but I do want to experience the main story when it arrives since I've never done that before but I believe it's time constrained, it'll arrive at a certain time and when it does I'll have a limited time to complete it or? It really bothers me that time is of essence when it comes to long-term play, makes it very uneasy for me to play.

Second, the missions are mostly financial hacking and all banks seem to have eliptic curve cipher, proxy, password- and voice authentication. To be able to bypass them I have to utilize the available tools in different sessions so for example using the cipher and password cracker first then disconnect then I reconnect after deleting the the logs I've on my first bounce (I use InterNIC) and then I use first voice then proxy then I'm in. Now If I've done all this as fast as I can with all the bounces I've top 20-25 seconds to do what I need to do. The the sound effect at this point is so stressful and the amount of missions I've and receive makes me believe I'm doing something very wrong.

I recently received an e-mail about how Uplink is watching me and they advised me to buy that HUD analysis tool but I can't afford it since all the missions I've are either frustratingly annoying or virtually impossible. Once in a while I have received a few low-level missions so I guess I'll survive on that until I can beat the harder.


Banks. Now I wonder. How does loan amount work? What increases the allowed loan? I'm currently allowed to take a loan of 4400 for some reason. Also, is there any point in taking multiple lones on different accounts? It seems bothersome to have to then receive payment from a mission then having to transfer to a bunch of accounts to cover the loan but I think, again, that I'm missing something here. Aside from later bank robbery I assume one bank account is enough? All bank accounts are associated with your own user name too so you can't exploit that in some way or?

Hello Nirth!

I recently played through Uplink (but copied and restored the savegame many times, so kind of cheated), maybe I can answer your questions.

Ranks: There are two ranks. The uplink rank („skilled“) determines what kind of missions are available. The other one states how your esteem around other hackers is. Don’t know if it is important. If you do missions that hack computers or steal money, you tend to the “hacker” side. If you do missions putting people in jail etc, you tend to the other side.

Hotkey: I don’t know of any hotkey, but if you are so tight with your time, you are doing it wrong. I never needed such a hotkey. Either it is possible with enough time (2min or more), or you still don’t have the right tools. Indeed it is no stress, but the game creates such an atmosphere. :)

About the active trace … start always with InterNIC as first node, than use some more nodes, like 7 to 15 or 20. Using nodes where you do have admin account (or at least a regular account) buy your way more time. Do not use public nodes, they are useless.
There is a trick: try to hack the password from any internal access node, but do not login! If the password breaker is successfull, disconnect. You will still have an admin account for this node (that buys you much time), and it never gets resettet, because you did not attempt to log in. The only exception is, of course, when you need to hack this node in a mission. Then it will be resseted after a day or a half.
Try to get 10 to 15 of these accounts. They will gain much time to your trace. You can hack those passwords without any problems if you use monitor bypass or at least monitor disable (needs time, but tracing does not start).
An active trace should never be a problem with too less time.

Passive traces are much more ominous, but in most cases you can prevent discovery. Just delete the logs from InterNIC after doing a mission with Log Deleter 4 (!), but do not delete the first (login) entry, because when you logout from InterNIC, it is suspicious that there is a logout log without a corresponding login one. ;) Don’t worry if you deleted it. Just reconnect to InterNIC and repeat. There is still the possibility (especially after hacking banks or after the story starts), that you will be caught. But at that time you already should have a motion sensor and gateway nuke ready. That helps a lot.


About the missions … you already should get missions like "trace a hacker" (at least they don't want to trace yourself, in which case you cannot accept these missions), hack a mainframe or similar. These are quite good in money, so some of them and you can get yourself a HUD for proxies, a better gateway etc.
Do not waste money on buying something like monitory bypas 1, bypass 2, bypass 3 … just wait, then buy the maximum level.

About hacking banks: maybe it's too early. You need a better gateway with at least two CPUs, better three. But still you have much time and no active trace, when you are using monitor bypass, than firewall and proxy bypass (or disable). The active trace won't even start in banks (but the passive one). On internal access nodes the trace starts after logging in, after hacking all three things (cypher, voice, password).

Banks:
It is able to hack them, but this is another chapter. If you want you can read it here: http://guide.modlink.net/section6.php

I never used any loans because I hacked a bank account with 800k credits quite early in the game. But that ruined some of the fun. Indeed I was able to gain another 500k easily with many hacking missions in three or four weeks. But I also got caught (passively) twice, for which I blew up my whole gateway. That costs at least 180k for a new decent gateway with CPU and memory.

You should already have missions where you get access to file servers. There is a trick: if you have all bypass things, try to hack Uplink. You get a list of all Uplink hackers. Store it. After a week or two, some companies e-mail you and offer money for the list. It is up to you if you want to sale it, but the point is: you gain access to file servers (no need using nodes for accessing).

Then you can backup all your software and voice patterns on these file servers. In case your gateway needs to be nuked, you don't have to buy the software again. Just connect to file server, copy your software back, and you are back in the game. Only costs money for the new hardware …

So … enough of tricks. On the link above there are money more tipps, like what you should buy for software, in which order. But no worry, you always will get some missions you can accept and fulfill. Then step for step you will gain enough money to buy a new gateway, three CPUs (like 120 or 150GHz), more RAM, more bandwith (useful for copying and deleting).

Do not buy the LAN stuff unless the story is kicking in and you have to hack LAN mainframes. The stuff is extremely expensive and does not help in other missions.

I hope that helps. :-)

The biggest and best advice I can give you is that you should make an account at all 7 banks (in addition to your uplink bank account) and an account at the International Stock Exchange as soon as you finish the test mission. This will add eight user-account systems to all connections, which greatly lengthens your traces and can mean the difference between a successful mission and getting disavowed, especially in the early stages. The longer your connection, the better. By the end of the game I'm generally running my connection through every single ISM (and often mainframe too) in the whole game, whether I have access there or not. A minimum connection length for mid-game should be at least 15, and late-game should be 40+. The ONLY time you don't want a long connection is if you're framing someone for bank fraud or data destruction.

Also, your Neuromancer rating is basically irrelevant in gameplay terms, but it does reflect your morals (or lack thereof) in the hacker world. Basically, every mission in Uplink is screwing over somebody. If your mission is to screw over a person, your rating goes down, and if your mission is to screw over a corporation, your rating goes up. So falsifying any sort of records or doing anything with banking or framing people for crimes will make your rating go down, while stealing or destroying research or computer systems will make it go up. The ratings seem to go down and up at approximately the same rate, but there are a lot MORE missions that make it go down than up, so if you accept every mission you're offered, you're likely to end up Sociopath or worse. Again, this doesn't actually mean anything... it won't affect your missions or rewards in the slightest. With a long enough connection, you should be able to crack the voice, password, and cypher with 30+ seconds to spare once you're inside. A trick with the voice analyser is to start playing the recording right BEFORE you actually establish the connection, then quickly go immediately to the voice-print. The voice-print will grant access as soon as the recording is finished, regardless of whether it "heard" the whole message or not. All it needs to hear is the "me" at the end of "Verify me." This should save you a few seconds at least.

Also pretty much everything ZivilSword said.

What's the purpose of International Stock Exchange? And what's the point of having a bank account on every bank?

I've known about the bank hacking and that it basically destroys the game so I'm going to wait with those, I would prefer to keep the challenge in this game as long as I can.

Oh and at what time/date might the main story arrive?

Technically the purpose of the stock exchange is to make money. Every time you do a job, the company that hired you gets a boost in their stocks. Every time you do something that damages a company (like stealing their files or destroying them) that company gets a drop in their stocks. If you take note of all of your dealings, you can apparently make a good bit of cash buying and selling, though the stocks only change once a month.

Technically the purpose of the accounts at other banks is to provide yourself with more banking opportunities.

In reality, having regular user access on a system (dotted box on the map screen) makes your trace take longer. Admin access on a system (solid box on the map screen) makes your trace take a LOT longer. By having eight extra user-access accounts, your trace in the early game is slow enough that you can actually complete jobs without having an embolism. If you have a particularly tough job, you can hack a few extra systems to gain admin access on them as a preliminary step. That will give a substantial (temporary) boost to your trace time, which will hopefully allow you to finish your hack before getting caught. If you get caught hacking a Central Mainframe, bank, the Global Criminal Database, and a few other systems, it's game over, so the trace timer is your primary enemy. (So long as you're good about deleting logs at InterNIC with the Log Deleter 4.0, you shouldn't have to worry about passive traces ever.)

If you're desperate for help, there's the Ultimate Uplink Guide or this awesome FAQ, but be warned that they are filled with spoilers galore and this may somewhat damage the shadowy atmosphere that Uplink does so well. They will indubitably make you a better player, however.

Hehe, I forget about the bank accounts, but they are quite helpful at the beginning. With these 8, the uplink test machine and internic, you have 10 nodes with admin or user access. And later on, you gain permanent root access to other internal access nodes, like I described in my first posting.
I think, 20-25 nodes are enough (with most of them root access, some user access, but no public access – they are useless), as it already gets you more than 2 minutes even for mainframes and LANs (in the latter you don't need more because you will be kicked out of LAN long before) and four or five minutes in less secured computers.

Have in mind that you can store your current (or planned) connection, so if you notice you forgot something (like a voiceprint), but an active trace did not start: disconnect, do other stuff, then load the connection and retry.

I've been doing this a lot, almost to the point of abusing. I remember using admin access in bounces the last time I played but I must have forgotten it now as I had not used at all up to the point I asked about this thread.

I've also started to accept all missions even those I can't perform because they don't seem to have a deadline (some do I guess?) and then I ask for half money upfront, that way it's a larger chance I can upgrade something if I need to. :P

Now, I have done some progress. I'm currently at rank Experienced and I've now a monitor, firewall and proxy bypass level 5 but how does the bypass monitor work? I assume it takes longer for a system to notice you're doing anything unauthorized. I did some trial but I think too few to notice exactly how it works. First, I just waited to see if anything happened without doing anything and I guess it won't notice but if I tried to access voice-authentication or eliptic curve encryption the active timer started but not immediately.

With monitor bypass, it helps that you can search for the password or for an elliptic curve without having the trace starting. Just display the HUD after connecting, wait some seconds until identification and place the bypass over the "monitor" square. Then start cracking password / elliptic curve cypher. The trace starts when attempting to login (or when trying voic ident, in some cases).

Then you should have more than enough time, when using some admin account nodes.

You should try to fulfill the accepted missions. They do in fact have a deadline, when they are in the list, but I don't know what happens, if you don't fulfill them for two weeks or so … never did myself.

Maybe you finish some missions, then buy another gateway to have more/better CPUs? That depends on the missions. The "hack a bank account" ones even don't need much CPUs, only a monitor / proxy bypass, log deleter 4, and a quick hand. ;-)

I guess I'll see if they have a deadline but I'll will focus on the ones that accepted at first so I
guess I'll finish them before I meet the deadline. However, since I accept half money up front
what happens if I fail a deadline? Will they ask to pay me back, no consquence (that would be
weird) or just refuse to work with me again? It would really suck if it comes to a point where you
won't get any missions at all. :P

Ugh, I quickly lost interest in this game. The learning curve might have been steep in the
beginning but it was always fun and I at least progressed in an orderly fashion, quick enough so
to say. Now there's always some mission that requires weird work arounds that even after hours
I haven't figured out. I just checked the guide at modlink after trying to trace a hacker.
I had so much fun with this game and now it's almost lost due to frustating/weird difficulty. :(

Question, I just received the message of the top Uplink hacker about the ARC, I assume that's the main story. Now, how much time do I have until this particular mission has to be completed? I would prefer to prepare myself with more powerful hardware. I've all the necessary applications and its versions though.

I'm sorry that you have interest in the game but can understand that it's frustrating. I found it frustrating when I was passively traced in my first game after doing some bank hacking incorrectly. Suddenly: game over.
After that I stored my savegames regularly (each day or so) and without much effort I got experience. There is always a mission you can fulfill (maybe wait a day or so). I think it is important not to waste your money on half upgrades.

Maybe I can help with some of the currently accepted missions? Sometimes, the "trace a hacker" missions cannot be fulfilled because the logs on the intermediate nodes have already been deleted (by oneself?). That happend twice to me, I cancelled the mission then.

All other things worked out, except those where you should copy 70-100 gquad of data. You should have at least 64 gq RAM, otherwise you need to connect 5 or more times and copy file after file to the file server. Quite annoying, but possible.

I don't know what happens if you cancel a mission where you accepted half the money. Copy your savegame and try!

The main story starts when reading a news about a dead hacker at ARC (or something). Around 7 or 10 days later (I think) you will get an e-mail from him (postponed), then the storyline really kicks in. There will be several mission offers, each one around 3 to 7 days apart. You should already have most tools to fulfill, only the LAN tools (needed at the final mission) are quite expensive, as I wrote earlier. But: you should get experience with LANs before, there should be some "hack a LAN" missions in the list by the time. It's a bit difficult to understand how everything works.

Copy database missions are great! They give you user access to fileservers, which pads your trace time and gives you places to store extra software. Since fileservers are unhackable, the only way to get them is by copy database missions, and it's well worth the effort even if you have to make 4-5 trips. I always use the first fileserver I get access to make backups of all of my software in case I have to nuke my gateway. For database missions after the first, I always delete unnecessary programs to free up more space, and then get the software back after I'm done.

If you accept half the money (or all of the money) and then abandon the mission, you get to keep the money. However, your Uplink rating will decrease a lot more than it would normally. You've got about a week after the email to hack the ARC mainframe. If you don't, the storyline will progress without you, which can be good or bad. It's good because you don't have to worry about doing any of the missions for anyone, but you also don't get to participate, either. If you see something about an "unknown virus outbreak" in the news, you've waited too long.

I sided with Arunmor.

Question. How the hell are you suppose to do the frame missions regarding bank fraud or destruction of a computer system? I read the guide and I can't believe you're suppose to use few bounces so the federal agents will actually find the one you frame, I have too little time. I need some tips here. Don't worry about spoilers, I've already skimmed the guide too much anyway. I tried once when I had 200 seconds and once when I had 80 seconds, both failed the missions. I'll need at least 30 or 40 seconds to be able to perform the mission but I doubt I'll succeed because of the stress, I lose focus when stressed really quick.

I had 2 LAN software away from being fully upgraded (at least with the Trinity gateway) but before back-uping my save before I attempted a bank robbery and lost about 1.5 hours playtime in case I revert to my latest back-up so I couldn't of lost the mood to play for a while.

Anyway, regarding bank hack. This is what I did and I think that's where I went wrong:
-Bounces all around until I reached Apollo Bank
-Bypassed security, the active timer never began even when I left
-I mistakingly created a new user here instead of creating then leaving then return with a separate IP
-I logged in with already noted password and account number of a guy named Richard Boughton, he had 1,300,000 Credits because someone sent it to him earlier regarding an early mission.
-I sent those money to my newly created account.
-I deleted the logs.
-I disconnected and entered InterNIC and deleted the logs (bounce, admin).

They still found me. I guess creating a user with the same IP as doing the hacking wasn't the smartest move (I actually thought about it before I attempted it but I got lazy) but other than that I can't see a problem.

From the account yes, but not to the account I transfered to. Ugh...

I'm going to do it again but this time I'm going to throw all the money I know to one separate account (I think I can find like 3m) then steal all that. Worst case I blow up the gateway but at least I can afford the upgrade after that.