Energy

Energy is your key to everything. You have a base energy level of 100 (200 if you’re donating). You use your energy to attack (20e), revive (50e), mug (20e), hospitalize (20e) other people. You’re also using your energy to work out in the gym, the parts will be explained more below. Revive cost can be reduced through cartel perks.

Jobs

The jobs are divided into three categories. You got your standard jobs which are, Intimidation, Arson, Grand theft auto, Transport drugs. Each one of them has different levels of difficulty and my personal suggestion would be to max out each job in that particular order. Yes it will take longer to gain money and respect when you’re starting out with intimidation rather than arson. But it will also increase your success rate of doing arsons because of the hidden passive job experience level that you gain after completing a successful job. You don't lose any job exp when failing which is good but it can be considered a waste of time in my personal opinion. 

The second category are your robbery jobs. Those are Farm robbery (weed fertilizer), Agave storehouse robbery (agave plants) and Coca paste robbery (coca paste) and Construction robbery (Nails, bricks, concete bags, steel). Same thing goes here with the strategy I am recommending, I’d start with Farm, go on to agave and lastly coca paste. The items that you gain from the jobs are used in your production factories which generate Cannabis (weed fertilizer), Alcohol (agave), Cocaine (coca paste). The construction robbery job is new in this game and was released while I was doing this guide. I wont say much about that job because I have not gathered the info I need to help you. But I can say that you’d be better off doing the other jobs first than construction robbery.

The third and last category is advanced jobs. And right now there’s two of them, Blackmail and Hacking. I am not going into those in this guide mostly because I haven't done too many of them to gather the information needed to help you as a reader. But it's safe to say that you shouldn't bother doing them until you’ve at least maxed out every crime before in those two first categories.

Reputation

Reputation (Rep) is what makes you level up and is a key factor in the production area. The factories you unlock are based on your reputation and you should aim to increase your rep as much as you can, as often as you can. 

Reputation is gained from a variety of actions as shown below -

• Attacking another player awards a large amount of Reputation.

• Hospitalizing another player awards roughly ¾ths of the normal Reputation.

• Mugging a player awards roughly ½th of the normal Reputation.

• Completing Jobs awards Reputation depending on the completed Job. 

(Source: CE Wiki)

Gym

The gym is where you train your battlestats, you have Strength, Defence, Agility and Accuracy. There are many ways you can go here regarding the ratios. The balanced one is 25% on each stat. You can vary your ratios just the way you feel like based on how you want to be as a “fighter”. You can go for an offensive build which is focused on strength and accuracy. You could go for a defensive build which focuses more on defence and agility. It's completely up to you to realize what you need to improve.

University (Intelligence)

Intelligence is a big part of your success in the game. Intelligence improves your chances of completing a job and also increases your gains in the gym. You can take courses at the San Andréas University to gain intelligence, and you can also spend energy to increase it. I wouldn't recommend training your intelligence before you’ve at least got your medical degree. Mostly because the gains are so low at the beginning and it is in my personal opinion more worth putting the energy in the gym rather than the university at the beginning (A_Merchant would probably think the opposite, but whatever <3).

Cartel

Cartels are the “gangs” or “guilds” in Cartel Empire. You can choose if you want to become a leader of your cartel and start your own (think you need 5k rep for that). Or you can choose to join a cartel of your choice. Cartels can take over several territories by claiming them which costs reputation, or fight against a cartel who already has got a territory. The territories gives the cartel a daily rep gain and a passive perk which updates every sunday at 00:00. The reputation is very important to the cartel because it can unlock permanent perks for its members. The reputation is also gained by attacking other players and through that, gaining reputation after each won fight, the cartel gets a small percentage of that. 

Cartels unlock various perks, those perks are as follows below:

• Fight stats
  Passive Strength
  (This upgrade increases the passive Strength of all members)
  Passive Agility
  (This upgrade increases the passive Agility of all members)
  Passive Defence
  (This upgrade increases the passive Defence of all members)
  Passive Accuracy
  (This upgrade increases the passive Accuracy of all members)

• Headquarters
  Member Capacity
  (This upgrade allows the Cartel to maintain up to XX narcos as members)
  Production Profit
  (This upgrade increases the efficiency and profits of production buildings)
  Revive Energy Cost
  (This upgrade reduces energy costs of Revive)
  Territory Capacity
  (This upgrade allows the Cartel to maintain up to XX Territories)

• Gym training
  Strength Gym Gain
  (This upgrade increases gym gains for Strength by X%)
  Agility Gym Gain
  (This upgrade increases gym gains for Agility by X%)
  Defence Gym Gain
  (This upgrade increases gym gains for Defence by X%)
  Accuracy Gym Gain
  (This upgrade increases gym gains for Accuracy by X%)

• Job training
  Job Success Rate
  (This upgrade increases the success rate of all Jobs)
  Job Profit
  (This upgrade increases Job Profits)
  Cartel Job Rep
  (Members represent the Cartel during Jobs, The Cartel gains 1% of Rep gained during Jobs)

Attacking

Attacking other players is done in three ways. 

You can use regular attacks which give you the most reputation per won fight(normal reputation). The amount of reputation you gain is based on a FFM (Fair Fight Modifier). Harder opponents generate more reputation and 

Hospitalizing gives you around 3/4ths of the normal reputation. This one has the longest hospital time. Which can be to prefer if you want to keep someone in the hospital or to make them waste more med items (if they are active in a war for example).

Mugging gives you ½ of the normal reputation. And it also steals a percentage of the money that the target has in their hand.

All these types of attacks cost 20 energy to perform.

Drugs

Right now there are four types of drugs in the game.

• Cannabis - Increases defence by 30% for 15 minutes. It gives you a drug cooldown of 60 minutes. The possible overdose effect by this drug is -10% of all combat stats. 

• Tainted Cannabis - Reduces Life to 0 and sends you to Hospital for up to 1 hour. Increases Medical cooldown by 30 minutes.

• Cocaine - Increases Energy by 100. Increases drug cooldown by 6 hours. Possible overdose effect of -20% all Combat Stats

• Tainted Cocaine - Reduces Life to 0 and sends you to Hospital for up to 3 hours. Increases Medical cooldown by 90 minutes.

Overdose effects aren't permanent. Just until your cooldown ends.

The tainted drugs are for self hospitalization if you for some reason need to stay in hospital when your cartel is in a war so that the enemies dont get free rep if you are a weak target.

How much cocaine can I take per day?

The short answer to it is technically 9. 

The long answer is, you start with 0 drug CD and assume you take 4 cocaine = 24 hour cooldown, wait 1 minute then take 1 more = 5 cocaine taken total.

Next one you can take would be at 06:00 = 6 cocaine total

Next one would be 12:00 = 7 cocaine

Next one would be at 18:00 = 8 cocaine

Next one would be 24:00 (technically outside of the same day) = 9 cocaine

EDIT: Since I wrote this guide, Diablo made a change to the cocaine. The energy and CD is reduced by 50% so just double the intake of cocaine under the question "how much cocaine can I take?"

Alcohol

Right now there are six types of alcohol items in the game. They are obtainable from the alcohol still in the production section of the game.

• Corana Beer - Increases energy by 5. Increases Booster cooldown by 2 hours

• Mexcal Beer - Increases energy by 10. Increases Booster cooldown by 2 hours

• Blancoda Tequila - Increases energy by 15. Increases Booster cooldown by 2 hours

• Repose Tequila - Increases energy by 20. Increases Booster cooldown by 2 hours

• Anejo Tequila - Increases energy by 25. Increases Booster cooldown by 2 hours

• Raicilla - Increases energy by 30. Increases Booster cooldown by 2 hours

The thing with alcohol is that it generates energy with no negative side effects. You only get a booster cooldown, but you cannot overdose and it doesn't affect your stats in a negative way as drugs can do. That’s why alcohol is more expensive in-game and rarely used for gym training.

Pets

The dogs in the game are put in different classes. You got Common, Rare, Unique, Legendary. The different classes have a certain base stat which is improved the higher class the pet is.

The dogs are helpful when attacking other players as they put in some damage as well, you can also spend energy to train them and they also need to get fed with dog food. By training and feeding them, they gain stats and loyalty towards the owner which can increase the amount of attacks they do in a fight.

If this guide has helped you in some way or you just appreciate my effort, please leave a thumbs up :)

If you have any questions regarding anything, feel free to send me a mail or contact me in discord, got the same username there as here.

Lol I like that you referenced me.

Int wise I also don't recommend it until you reach the point of 1 int per 200e which is 178 int if I remember correctly but you can start earlier like I did.

Thanks for the input!

Great guide bro.  Merchant he mentioned because we <3 you haha 

Great guide. One small addition is that you forgot about Epic Dogs.

Good guide !