Awareness

Awareness refers to the quantity of items that a player will find in the City. A higher awareness means a player will find more items.

New items will have a chance to spawn on the city map every day at midnight as long as the player was active at some point in the prior 24 hours. The items are spawned at random points on the map, and can be seen by zooming in on the map. Higher activity levels do not correlate to more items spawning.

Awareness levels are additive and not multiplicative- this means having two boosts, one which gives 200% extra awareness and another that gives 300% extra awareness, will result in a player having a total of 500% extra awareness, instead of a 600% bonus that would result if the bonuses were multiplicative.

City Finds

Most items can be found in the city. In general, the higher an item's value, the less common it will be as a city find.

Some items can only be found at certain times of the year, such as the Meat Hook during the Trick or Treat event or Love Juice during the Valentine's Day event. Cesium-137 will often spawn after detonation of a Dirty Bomb.

Items that cannot be found as city finds include:

• Valuable items sold in United Arab Emirates, such as a Gold Plated AK-47 and Platinum PDA
• Rewards from Annual Competitions rewards such as a Gold Dog Tag and Mr Torn Crown
• Eggs from the Easter Egg Hunt such as the Yellow Easter Egg or Purple Easter Egg
• Exclusive NPC Loot, such as a Nock Gun and Ripped Jeans
• Weapons, armor, or clothing from Caches, such as the China Lake, Riot Helmet, and Wedding Dress
• Items from the old missions system such as an Ivory Walking Cane and Article on Crime
• Dual Melee or Primary weapons such as a Dual Hammers and Dual Bushmasters
• Collectible items such as a Chocolate Egg '05 and Blue Dragon
• Unreleased or test items such as Unknown and Castle Blueprint
• Other individual exceptions such as the S&W M29 and Personal Computer.

Increasing Awareness

There are currently four ways to increase awareness:

• An extra 20% awareness per upgrade can be given by using merits on awareness
• An extra 10% awareness is given from completion of the Psychology education course PSY2680 : Attention and Awareness
• An extra 50%, 50%, and 70% awareness is given for working at a Firework Stand, Candle Shop, and Zoo respectively
• An extra 2500% boost is given for 31 days after using Book : Finders Keepers
• An unspecified boost is given to all players for the annual "Awareness Awareness Week," for the duration of the 3rd week of January

Historical Notes

• Prior to the release of the RESPO update in 2014, a player had a small chance to receive an event finding an item every time they clicked the link for the city. Players also could find briefcases of cash, which would be credited towards their cash on hand. This system was done away with once the city map went live.
• Ecstasy and LSD used to increase awareness while the drug was active.
• Higher activity used to correlate with more finds, but this is no longer the case.

An example of one of the events announcing an item being found prior to the RESPO update: