Running costs are recurring expenses for property and active protection. Your personal overview is available under Status > Running costs. It shows the current hourly or daily amount for each item and the total for your account.
Which costs keep running?
- Bodyguards — hourly upkeep. The amount rises with your bodyguard level and the number of bullets required to attack someone of your rank.
- Protection — a bulletproof vest or shield has hourly upkeep. Stronger protection and a higher attack pool cost more.
- Vehicles in your shed, garage and hangar — a combined 0.1% of their original value per hour.
- Villas — $1,000 per villa per hour, multiplied by your rank factor.
- Means of transport — 0.1% of its purchase price per hour, multiplied by your rank factor.
The rank factor for villas and transport is 1.0 for ranks 1–5, 1.6 for ranks 6–8, 2.2 for ranks 9–11, 3.0 for ranks 12–14, 4.5 for rank 15 and 5.0 for rank 16. Your costs can therefore rise when you rank up.
These base costs are deducted every hour: first from your pocket, then from your bank. A safehouse, ordinary travel costs and shop purchases are paid in advance and are not automatic running costs.
Daily vigilance
Normal is free. Alert and Bunker are charged once per day. The amount scales with your rank's attack pool and is shown in your profile settings before you select a stance. If you cannot pay for the selected stance or no longer meet its requirements, your vigilance returns to Normal.
Staying in Hawaii
The first 180 minutes in Hawaii are free each calendar day. After that, you pay a rank-based hourly rate for the actual paid minutes elapsed. Under Travel, you can choose to leave automatically and for free when your free time runs out. If you cannot afford a paid stay, you are moved to another city without additional travel costs.
Hawaii is an optional stay and is therefore not included in the protected cash reserve below.
Your protected cash reserve
The cost system does not drain all of your money. Every deduction automatically protects a reserve equal to three days of your own costs:
(hourly base costs × 24 + daily vigilance) × 3
Only money above this reserve can be used for running costs. As soon as a payment cannot be completed because of that limit, the calculated reserve is frozen. New online activity starts a fresh cost cycle and recalculates the reserve from your current property and settings.
What happens if you cannot pay?
- Your means of transport immediately becomes inactive and uses the slow default travel time. It remains yours and becomes active again after your base upkeep is fully paid.
- At most once every 24 hours, your bodyguard level drops by one. If you have no bodyguards left, your protection level can drop by one instead.
- Vehicles whose upkeep you cannot pay can take additional damage at most once every 24 hours.
- An unaffordable vigilance stance returns to Normal, and an unaffordable stay in Hawaii ends with a free relocation.
After 72 hours offline
Once you have been offline for at least 72 hours, all further running-cost deductions stop. Vigilance returns to Normal, transport becomes inactive and a stay in Hawaii ends without additional travel costs. Your villas remain yours, but their protection does not count during a murder attempt while you are away for this long.
Property can still deteriorate in a controlled way: bodyguards, protection and vehicles receive at most one consequence every 24 hours. This stops the loss of money without leaving unmanaged property fully active forever.
Vacation mode
While vacation mode is active, hourly and daily running costs are skipped completely. It is the safest choice when you know in advance that you will be unable to play for a longer period.