You can add me to SR3 and SR4 any% considering.

I feel like getting the respect from the cycle shop wouldn't work as well. It's a little RNG based since you have to steal a car and things can always go wrong. Taking the heli from Samedi 1 to the FP and then to UDFC is a sure-fire way to string them and probably takes only a little longer than it'd take to get to the UDFC by any other means. And then, use the Tornado to get to the PFC, it's "close by" and we already have the tornado in our possession.

I think with the respect we have, we'll make it all the way to the demo derby, where we load up again, this time with hopefully even more of a style boost. It's my hope that this lasts till the end.

I also tested getting a car from FP during SR4, before we do Carlos' part but that doesn't work nearly as well as doing it after Samedi 1.

Thanks for the write up on those missions! I'm starting to try and find which ones to do in which order and it's proving to be quite complicated. Right now, I did Samedi 1 and after the activities, went to Ronin 1. That leaves us off near Ronin 2 but we also have the Suburbs Strip Club and Elysian Fields Strongholds. I know that EF stronghold will be better with a tornado. My guess is that we get this done, along with the Strip Club when doing Ronin 9, Rest In Peace, since we'll be at the cemetery and the tornado will probably be good for that too.

So I guess, leaving off from the Kobra, on my route, do Ronin 1, then Ronin 2, then I'll have to see from there. Maybe that'll be a good time for Samedi 2.

And that doesn't really tell us how to get to Rest In Peace but gives us kind of a string of missions in the middle.

I just did the first few missions/activities. I figured this is a pretty good route right now for reasons I'll explain.

S1 S2 races S3 (on the way down, pick up flash bangs) Tornado IF (3 levels) - save warp Revelations (doesn't matter if swapped with SR4) - save warp SR4 (start and end are the same) Samedi 1 with Tornado - after, fly towards Foreign Power Foreign Power, buy car - fly to next activity Ultor Dome Fight Club - fly to next Prison Fight Club - save warp Fuzz (to get Kobra) Pick up Kobra

The reason I do it this way is that Samedi 1- FP - FC1 - FC2 is a pretty good string using the tornado. Then, Fuzz gets the kobra and it's close so it's important to do before other missions.

Idk what'll be best to go from here but this gives a pretty good starting point, imo. I also have about 26x respect. I ended with a time of ~1:25 but that's with a super terrible Fuzz (2 restarts) and with taking everything generally slow.

Let me know what you think about my route?

Huh....idk. That'd be very nice if it'd work but I'd guess that if you couldn't get it in 60 tries, it's pretty unlikely. I could try later (either today or another day soon).

I want to try and route again, now that everything's changed. I'll probably spend the bulk of the next while doing this, finding which missions we want the tornado for and which ones we don't. I had Elysian Trailer Parks really soon, right after Burning Down the House, but with the tornado, it's SO easy. The majority of missions will probably be like this and we're going to have to plan what the easiest method is, regardless.

On the Insurance Fraud bit, I bet lvl 3 is all that's needed and that takes about 5 mins, tops. Going to lvl 6 is a much larger time sink and in the end, it's not going to save so much, especially since most of the time will be spent flying around, blowing crap up.

For the first little bit, my strat will be SR1 - SR2 - races - SR3 - Tornado - IF - Revelations - Fuzz and/or Mayhem and then idk.

I just did some different activities for timing.

Fuzz took me about 11 mins which I think will be an avg time. Probably sub 10, depending on RNG and practice.

Mayhem took me 13 mins, where 2 of those minutes, my tornado had its guns knocked off so I had to reload and continue. That time can definitely be improved, probably sub 10.

Insurance Fraud (6 levels) (highway strat) took 16 mins. This could clearly be improved since I've already had about 13 mins.

Insurance Fraud (6 levels) (airport strats) took 19 mins. This was a clear cut case of bad RNG. I got to lvl 4 and then nothing spawned. No helis, no jets. I got screwed and had to reload.

Comparing the 2 strats, I think the airport one is more heavily RNG based. You can easily lose minutes, either because nothing spawns or because you have to go far out of your way. The Factories one, however, is still RNG based but they're in smaller increments. It's generally safer because you have many chances to rack up points. But you won't consistently get 50-100k like you will at the airport. I think at the end of the day, it comes down to preference. You'll generally get the same time no matter which one you choose so I'd say to pick whatever's more comfortable.

So from the 3 or 4 tries I had this worked every time. I deleted all my saves and retried everything from the start until the end of Down Payment, saving my cop car from Appointed Defender. I took that over to the police station, went straight into the wiretaps, killed cops all the while, got dex's number, and went straight to the helipad. Every time the tornado was there, waiting.

This isn't 100% confirmed cause it's only been a handful of tries but it seems to definitely be reset-worthy. I'm gonna try some different things now, timing different activities with the tornado and trying to see just how useful it is in missions. Specifics need to get ironed out but this is definitely gonna happen now.

Also, just for completeness, this was the unpatched 360 version. No idea how it is on PC.

This might be a long shot...but would the number of saves you have (either with or without a tornado) affect their spawn rate? I just deleted all my saves again and got one my first try. It's just a theory right now but...idk. It's possible?

You're probably right about confirmation bias. I just tried again. Takes 15 mins to get to the end of Down Payment for me. Definitely reset worthy if we don't get the tornado. My strategy that got me the tornado this time and last was to go immediately afterwards, before even checking at all, go in and do the wiretaps. I think you should be able to leave but I never left the room. Kill cops or wait. Then, once you have dex's number, go upstairs and it's there! At least...there's a better chance. That, I'm fairly sure of. I did it a few more times today. 2/4 times, it was there.

I was wondering if it'd take longer to do septic avenger or not. But then I decided even if it's quicker, the race is a better idea because you keep the cop car you get for appointed defender. It's a quick car and making sure you have it early would probably be a better idea, all around.

As for the Fuzz thing, I didn't have an issue with it. They cleared the guns on the tornado between levels but I just had to reselect them and it was alright.

As for parachuting, I've heard it was pretty difficult but I haven't tried, myself.

LOVE the front page and the search bar!

Holy crap...important note (I think). I tried for about an hour with NO luck. No matter what I tried, I couldn't get the tornado to load. Then I removed all xbox patches and tried again. First time, after doing the wiretaps, I got the tornado. I think this means that if you ever play on the xbox, make sure you have the patches removed.

Removing the patches will also make a few missions easier since enemy tornadoes won't fire missiles at you.

I'm hope that this was the cause because if it takes, on average, an hour to to get a tornado, this'll get annoying.

It would just be nicer to do IF after the wiretaps, I think. I think I'm going to try and find another route but that might be the best shot we got to reroll. I'll spend a little bit today getting something together and maybe I'll have a different strat. It's good if nothing else. Might waste some time but we have to find what causes the reroll. Maybe it's even as simple as flying back and forth and we don't have to get out of the heli at all.

Hahaha glad we're on the same page! It seems like the first hour or so is coming together so I'm getting really excited. I love the idea of the tornado cause this can definitely be a sub 5 run in the end, withit. Maybe even without it, but it'll be easier.

3 Kings, easy. I haven't tried yet but I'm imagining we can pick up pierce, destroy the samedi, pick up shaundi, fly through the markers, pick up carlos, do his bit. Should be super quick now. Probably half the time it was. I imagine there'll be more missions like that too.

After thinking about it...

The tornado is a must. It'll save so much time in so many places. Not just activities, but missions as well. And if we're going for the tornado, we should go for Revelations too. It cuts down on activity time and we're already at the Police Station. The tornado can even (probably) be used to speed up the mission, making it that much better anyway.

You're right about the Kobras too. They tear apart vehicles so they're pretty good for everything.

EDIT: http://saintsrow.wikia.com/Tornado That page has a strategy for a tornado spawn. "A good strategy for forcing a Tornado to spawn is to enter the Police Headquarters and listen to all the wiretaps and obtain Dex's phone number. Without calling Dex, immediately vacate the headquarters through the heliport exit, and a Tornado should be sitting on the helipad. In the unlikely event that this does not work, reload an earlier save and try again."

That's pretty much what you did in the video you posted. We should confirm this :)

I'm even wondering if the fact that you go into the Police Station, out of view of the helipad, is enough.

Idk why I didn't think of getting in the APC That could help. It was just that the chopper tore me up so badly. That's where the multiple deaths came from.

Your video was also running a little bit faster than my game is so the time will be slightly off. I could imagine using the APC would cut about a minute, maybe 2, off of my time. (because my time didn't include the deaths) We can take my total time down to about 8 minutes for the wiretaps and the mission itself

Regardless, doing Revelations requires a level of respect, which would take time to get, and it still takes about as long as, say, the other FC, or mayhem. You'd come out behind, overall, in respect earned, and the travel time it takes to get to the Police Station could be negligible compared with the time it takes to get to another activity. That "lost" respect will still need to be earned, taking more time.

Although....maybe if we're only doing IF till level 3, that's how we'll get the "lost" respect and then we'll have to do 4 activities besides it.

Even then, I still see it as more of a time sink, then a time saver but...time for some math!

Without Revelations: 5 activities. (avg of ~12 mins) - 60 mins 52500 ¤ 2 = 105000 65625 ¤ 3 = 196875 Total: 301875

With revelations: 4 activities + Revelations + 3 levels of IF (48+8+4) - about 60 mins 68250 ¤ 4 = 273000 24050 ¤ 1 = 24050 Total: 297050

This is making a couple of assumptions. The first is that we only do IF until level 3 and that we don't count driving time to get to the airport, since we'll be doing that in each case. We also won't have infinite sprint but I hope that upgraded sprint will be enough that it won't cost time. The avg activity time is used based on my runs (not counting my horrid snatch time).

Now the difference between respect is not that huge and can easily be made up by respect on the side.

I wish I had some more solid numbers for activities. Maybe I'll work on that next so we can make a more detailed analysis.

Let me know what you think about this!

I was seriously hoping that snatch would be better with a heli too.

The only thing I'd be wary about with the tornado is that it's so rare and I'd hate resetting 9 out of 10 runs, 15-30 mins in just for it. It'd definitely be faster, that's without a doubt. When using it, I feel like...maybe instead of CC/FC, do both mayhems (or fuzz if that's faster too, but i doubt it)

So I've actually done some...not very thorough tests on IF as well. I completed all 6 levels of IF using the airport strats. The biggest thing I could find was that it is probably faster except for RNG. RNG screwed me and I had over 10 minutes on starting level 5. What killed it was having to fly to the Saints Row district and back. That's about a minute, right there. I also had a problem a few times with nothing spawning. Sometimes it'd take a minute or 2 for anything usable.

My strats, though, involved stealing the snipes, getting it to the level of the control tower and then just jumping backwards to land by the snipes again. Consistent 50k, if not ~100k All in all, each jump took less than 30s.

I think that, if we're going for just till level 3, we do the first 2 levels in the factories, since that's where we start, restarting till we get that district, and then the 3rd in the airport. After lvl 3, take the heli there back to the hideout, and we can use that for both snatch and for three kings, or whatever mission we want.

Take all this with a grain of salt, though. I haven't tested it too much and these are all just initial reactions. I don't want to say it's no good without giving it a little more time.

I did some testing with Revelations. I'm having some more doubts after this too. The time it takes to get from starting the first wiretap to getting dex's number is 1:45. Revelations took me exactly 8 minutes. That didn't count the few deaths I had due to attack choppers or the time to go from the police station to the mission start. Revelations also takes 1 level of respect. Basically, this sounds like it's riskier and needs to provide at least a full 6 levels of an activity to be worth it, since it'd take just about as long to do the activities. This is especially true since we can do 2 activities and then buy the car we want to boost all the rest.

I did some math and please let me know if it makes sense... I'm basing things off of what I've already seen in my 1 actual run. I did 5 sets of activities + 1 level of another and that let me beat the game, but I'll just round that to 5 because I like the idea of doing the race for the first level of respect.

Also assume that we buy a car after the first 2 activities (we'll have enough and if the second activity is FC, we'll be at the ultor dome, right next to Foreign Power). The respect we gain is: 52500 ¤ 2 = 105000 65625 ¤ 3 = 196875 Total: 301875

If we do Revelations, I'm assuming we only need to do 4 activities since this needs to replace 1 set with the time it takes to complete. 68250 ¤ 4 = 273000

We'll get close but still not surpass it, leaving a lot of respect we'll need to make up. Considering the risk of death is far greater in Revelations and we don't come out ahead anyway, I don't see it as a decent option. Even considering we can get awesome strats for Revelations, it still won't be enough to justify doing it over an activity. It's pretty far out of the way, take a decent amount of time, and is riskier. It'd be a better idea to get to the Prison for FC there or do some mayhem, IMO.

I still haven't looked at the Insurance Fraud strats to actually time it but I feel like that'll definitely be something we want to do anyway, if only for the early heli. I'm still planning on doing that testing but it may not get done tonight. If not tonight, then definitely tomorrow.

@SOB, Interesting. That does seem like it would at the very least be more consistent. That's probably a good way to do it, if only for that. I was also thinking maybe do the first 2 in the factories since it's pretty easy to get that done there. And then move to the airport so you don't have to fly back to be in the area initially. We'll have to do some good testing to find what's best here.

That's also a good point about resetting. I can imagine it'd get frustrating but I THINK the Fuzz will get super easy with a tornado. Basically just go blow everything up super quick. Probably the same with mayhem.

Also, idk about you guys, but mayhem took a decent amount of time for all 6 levels. Definitely over the 15 mins it took me for CC. I could have just been not in a good area but I tried to do the one on the southern island an stay in the china town area.

One question for both of you, too. What platforms are you running on? I'll be doing this on the 360 but if we'll be comparing times between console and PC, it'd be good to make sure times can sync up correctly.

First of all, I'd like to say that I do like this site. I like the idea of it and for it being as new as it is, it's pretty great. But I do have some gripes..

1. The front page shouldn't be laid out like that. I'd keep it very simple to start. As mentioned above, the pictures are too huge. As the site grows and more games are added, this will simply be too unwieldy. There should be a second page that lists games in some kind of order. e.g. most popular, alphabetically, etc, but the front page just seems too cluttered.

2. I had no idea separate game forums exists. I assumed they were all under a blanket "series" and finding it took many trips to this site. Now that I found it, I'm very glad it's there but it wasn't very intuitive.

3. I do like the idea of the pictures in general. For instance, the game covers on each page work really well.

EDIT: After thinking a little more, I don't think the pictures on the front page are actually a bad thing. I'd just change it so you only have a block of 4 or 8 or something of the most popular games and then have everything else under an "other" section, kind of like what you do now but I'd move more there.

Hmm...I was able to do 5 activities to level 6 but if we do that mission, I'm guessing all of CC will be able to be skipped.

If this works, my guess for the beginning is this: Jailbreak Appointed Defender Suburb Race Down Payment Revelation (look for tornado while in Police Station here) Buy car IF (get chopper, if no tornado) Either FC or Snatch, depending on chopper strats.

The other activities should probably be FC at ultor dome (if the prison one isn't done) and/or demo derby. Demo derby should definitely be done when doing the University stronghold for the samedi, though. There's usually no need to be in that district at all.

I think that strats can change dramatically if we wind up with the tornado but that's a whole other discussion and we should proceed assuming we don't get that spawn.

@Sellz, One thing I am confused on, though, is why the revelation mission is important to do. I know that getting that extra respect is important but with the activities I had done, I found no need for the bonus respect that early on and the activities I'd done were pretty fast, to boot. I feel that the extra time spent going to the police station, doing the mission, and heading to the activity afterwards would be much more than simply doing a small set of activities to make up the respect you would have gotten at that time. The way I have it planned, you only have to do 2 sets of activities with lower respect and then everything else with level 5. You end up with enough respect to take you to the final mission as well, assuming you do what you can to get respect as you kill gang members and drive "poorly."

Also, I do see the importance of getting SR3 done before, at least the IF activity, if we're going for airport strats so that race would probably be beneficial. Otherwise, we can't store the heli.

Do you know how long Fuzz takes? I did it once and it didn't seem like it took terribly long but it seemed like there were better options out there. Particularly going to do both fight clubs because they're each less than 10 mins.

I'd ultimately say that Snatch and IF are must have's. But having a heli for snatch, to make it consistent, would probably be for the best. Right now, so many things can go wrong that can put you so far behind.

@SOB, I'll take a look at that tonight. Seems like it could be a solid plan and it might make it so I don't have to do CC and will get a heli which will be even better. But afterwards, would you continue with IF till 6 or just go for the sprint boost but not unlimited?

I still have to try out those airport strats too cause I have a hard time understanding how it'd be faster than the highway but for now, I'll accept it :P

I think what I'll do is set a timer and try to see my best times out of "x" runs.

As a last note, the one thing that I know would make everything more awesome is if we could get a tornado or the other attack chopper. Fuzz would be over so fast, as well as mayhem. But without DLC, we don't have one by default, and in over 10 attempts, couldn't find one at the police station. Stupid RNG!