Missions and bosses

What missions are

Missions are multi-step jobs handed out by named bosses. A boss gives you an arc, an arc is a run of objectives in order, and you work through them one at a time. Missions live under the Crime menu. Don Corleone takes on new gangsters from the very first rank, so there is nothing to unlock before your first job.

Each boss speaks in their own register and their portrait follows the job wherever it goes: on your active mission page, on the mini-game screens, and in every conversation from taking the work to collecting the money. You always know whose work you are doing.

The three kinds of objective

Most steps are settled by things your character already does: committing a particular crime, travelling somewhere, holding an item, reaching a stat. Those reward planning and progression, and they are the backbone of an arc.

Some steps are mini-games, and those are the parts where the game stops asking what your stats are and starts asking what you can work out. Safe cracking, bomb defusal and others besides. Every one is decided on the server: the answer is generated where you cannot see it and never travels to your browser, so there is nothing in the page to read and no trick to peek at. Losing costs you nothing but the boss's opinion, so you can throw the board away, deal again and try it a different way.

A smaller number of steps are conversations. These cannot be settled by rank, cash or stats, only by paying attention to what the person in front of you wants and making a case. The first of them has you coaxing a container manifest number out of a frightened night clerk at Moscow's freight terminal.

Working through an arc

• Take the job from the boss. You hold one active mission at a time.
• Objectives unlock in order, so read the current one rather than guessing what is next.
• Steps that depend on crimes, travel or items can be worked into what you were doing anyway.
• Failing a mini-game does not fail the arc. Try again.
• Finishing an arc pays out and opens whatever that boss has next.

What you get out of it

Arcs pay on completion, and they are one of the few parts of the game that reward attention rather than raw numbers: a careful low-rank player can finish a mini-game or a conversation that a much stronger player rushes and fails. Completing a boss's arc also opens the next one, so the bosses are a long thread to pull on rather than a one-off.

If you are new, start with Don Corleone, read each objective properly before acting, and treat the mini-games as puzzles rather than obstacles. They are the parts most players remember.