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MNAT Tutorial # 5 | Wise Advice from Virtualsense Owner
@Eugenio Anhithe Wilde
Virtualsense Owner / Content Creator for Monria, DSEC-9 and Planet Toulan
offers the following wise advice to navigate your Entropia Universe experiences.
Virtualsense Owner / Content Creator for Monria, DSEC-9 and Planet Toulan
offers the following wise advice to navigate your Entropia Universe experiences.
We've all been there and had to unplug or switch off as with this being Real Cash it brings in an element of realism which can both drive us mad and make us ecstatic. I played for many years before taking on a business role and content development, and had lots of ups and downs during that period but was always focused on developing my character in game which I found tended to get me less frustrated by the bad loot days and short term challenges.
Everyone plays differently and has different goals, you will get a lot of great advice about a million things there are to know, so take this with a pinch of salt but here's my two cents. There's some general rules I think anyone can follow that worked for me. How I played the game changed a lot over the years but these are some of the things that I think are important. Again, everyone has different things that work for them so you'll need to find your own.
Deposit
Accept that EU costs money, set yourself a monthly limit that you are comfortable spending and never go over it unless you make a conscious decision to increase your play budget. It's too easy to jump to the credit card but you learn far more by being flat broke and frustrated IMO. Treat this as play money and think nothing of it. Your goal from here on out is to learn to make it last as long as possible, and to grow within the game (ped, gear, skills etc). If you cannot or don't want to deposit, you will need to find an alternative source of income, most of which will require plenty of time in game.
Specialize (especially at the beginning)
You will skill much faster in a profession and gain unlocks if you stick with it. If you want to be a BLP rifle hunter, stick with it and progress through the levels. You can off on tangent seeking health gains etc but for me you should chase the unlocks in your main profession as a priority. Over time you can mine for health, do melee for strength etc but I would stick with one. It will also make it simpler to get an effective setup for hunting etc.
Cycle
Whatever it is you want to do, you will need to be able to do lots of it. Different items drop with different rarity, you will need to do lots of the one thing for the law of averages to work for you. When you do long runs of anything you will spot this and get to know what drops. Hunters farm certain mobs hoping that 1 in 500 they get a gun with good markup, crafters do the same in the hunt for high MU blueprints. If you are only able to hunt a dozen of a mob then you will see massive swings in your return over that period (and most often bad). I would recommend only doing something you can afford to do 500-1000 of. If you can't achieve this with your ped balance then you should drop down to a lower mob, lower blueprint, cheaper finder or try to increase your ped balance. If you've done well, this can allow you to go up the mob ladder (if you can cycle), if you're low on ped, drop down and look for mobs cheaper to kill.
Pedroll
You will need to be able to bank roll good runs and bad runs to get through the month. Over time you will have an average loss per month that you can predict, you will want this to match your deposit to supplement it. This will allow you to cycle even if the returns are not great in the short run, it will also mean you can sell your loot at the right time in bulk to get the best mark up you can rather than being under pressure to sell quick for the next hunt etc. I would recommend at least 4/5 times your average loss in TT a month should be your ped float.
Cost Per Activity
You want this to be as low as possible, allowing you to cycle more for your money. Basically, how much does it cost you in decay and ammo to kill 500 of the mob you are hunting, record this and try to reduce it. Try a different heal tool, less armour, no armour, lower MU gun, finishing weapon, etc, etc. Same with crafting, buy the materials when they are at their lowest to make the cost per click as low as possible.
MarkUp
You will hear this a lot but the other things above take the most discipline. The more you cycle types of mobs, certain blueprints, mine certain areas, you learn what drops, if you keep an eye on the markup you will be able to target certain items that are in demand and/or have a good MU. You also want to keep the costs of stuff you buy low as well, ingredients for crafting, or % MU of limited guns etc. With experience you will chase mobs in certain game Version Updates (VUs), look for discoveries, try and get the rare drops at times when they are desirable and have a good mark up.
Record the Details
You don't necessarily need to know all the stats etc but I would record how much it costs you to do whatever your activity is and what the return was in TT at the least. You can then try to reduce the cost per activity and also be able to calculate your average TT losses over time. You can also record what you looted by type and value, giving you an idea of how to farm things in the future.
As an example, if I set myself a budget of $30 a month and decided that I would get about 70% back in TT, this is a simple example that means I can cycle 1k ped and will end up with 700 ped. This is not very optimistic but if that's what I believe it means, losing 300 ped a month, I would need a 1200-1500 ped bankroll to cover the bad times and will want a 30 pec per kill mob so I can kill at least a thousand of them.
There's a bit more to it but I think quite often the reason why we can blow out is that we're hunting mobs we don't have enough ped to be able to cycle enough of them, we don't have the bank roll to survive the bad times and our cost per kill is too high. With patience and discipline you should be aiming to increase your bank roll to be able to cycle at a higher level and reduce the average TT loss per month through reducing your cost per activity. When you do better than this, bank it to increase your float or invest it to reduce your cost per activity.
Personally though I just blew my ped and then went dancing at DSEC Forensics. Sometimes I was dancing on a Monday and sometimes on a Saturday.
... Eugenio "Anhithe" Wilde
Busting a move is also highly respected on the Moon.
Choose your location wisely -- you want as much exposure as possible for maximum effect.
Choose your location wisely -- you want as much exposure as possible for maximum effect.
