[OBSOLETE] My plan to take over the world - one sweat bottle at a time

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I decided to make some rather important adjustments to my plan, and since I had only 4 days anyway, I thought it would better to start clean with my reports.

I will ask though for this thread to be closed and will repost my (adjusted) plan in this new thread.

Please apologize me for the little spam and for any potential confusion.


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Disclaimer:

There is nothing really interesting in this thread, so if you decide to skip it, is not like you're missing much (if anything).

Any feedback, suggestions and even (constructive) criticism is highly appreciated! So please don't be shy!


Concept:

This post was inspired by this other guy's post, unfortunately (apparently) abandoned at the moment.

That post is just a description of my plan to survive in this harsh world without spending any RL$ (which is something I like to pretend is an option of mine, for an extra challenge, but truth is that I couldn't afford even if I would want to ) and, hopefully, a regular progress report of how it goes.

The reason why I'm doing this? Definitely not for showing off (since there is nothing to show off with). I'm just trying to offer a resource for any future new player that will be in my shoes to know what (s)he can expect if going down the same road, learn from the things that worked out for me, but also learn from my mistakes and not duplicate them.


A few things about my plan:

I started playing Entropia Universe on February 10th, 2015, on planet Arkadia, and it don’t took long to realize that I’m totally sold to the game. I have many dreams and goals in game, but probably the biggest one is to manage to come to the point where to be totally self sufficient, as in being able to craft my own weapon and armors, with the bits that I also farmed myself in advance; all these without spending any RL$ and without counting on any external help/income sources.

Practically, resuming the plan in just a few lines, it goes like that:
- swunt low level mobs (for now caraboks, but planing on going up slowly as my skills raise);
- sell sweat and use said money to repair or rebuy weapons / ammo / armour (when it will be the case) / healing tool (when it will be the case) to allow me to keep swunting;
- save (most of) the loot and use it myself for crafting; depending on expenses/income, eventually also sell part of the loot;
- rinse and repeat hundreds / thousands of times; depending on how it goes eventually adjust to a different (easier/harder/just different mob)


(Unasked) Q & A:

Q1: Not depositing is plain dumb; why "work" so hard swunting for a really really small fraction of what you could make IRL working same time?
A1: Considering social and financial background, but mostly age, working IRL is not an option, neither is depositing. So it's not really an option of mine, but a forced one; still I aslo enjoy the idea of a challenge to survive in game.

Q2: So you're one of those many players that plan to never spend any money but get rich / get a living out of EU?
A2: No, not at all. I may be naive, but I am not so naive. As I don't plan to ever deposit, I don't plan to either withdraw either; I just wanna do my best to survive and progress in game using only in-game resources.

Q3: Why swunting and not sweating circles, fruits or oil rigs (the other familiar "free" solutions to make PEDs)?
A3: I ruled out fruits and oil rigs for the simple reason that I don't like to put my faith in luck's hand... they may be great options for some (lucky) people, but they may also end up be a huge time sink with low or no revenue; they are just not reliable; also they don't give any skills; I keep my eyes open for them, but not actively search them. Sweating circles on the other hand are a nice option and I may do them every now on then (especially if I find circles where healing is provided - like the daily SSI event), but while better from a strictly financial point of view, I feel they give skills and are, more important, much more boring.

Q4: What about trading?
A4: I don't think I have neither the brain, tongue or the heart of a trader / salesperson. While I don't exclude taking advantage of certain offers that I may stumble upon, I definitely won't count on them or won't try to make a live out of the market. It is a great option for many, maybe the best of all, but is just not my thing.

Q5: "I know being new/poor/young sucks, so I wanna help you have an easier start/live in game; how can I donate something?" or "You're so freaking hot! I wanna help you! How can I do it?"
A5: If you think I'm freaking hot I highly recommend you an eye exam. But even excluding that, I do not accept any help, donation, support or anything else which comes for free. If you really wanna help me, then the only thing I can accept is being hired for various jobs (like healer) - and even in those potential jobs what I look for is to do them for decay (as in get free skills, not money), so will definitely not accept anything over the market price.
* I added this question/answer, because I actually already met some nice people in game that offered to help me with some freebies to help me get a head start, and I just don't want that - I feel it would be cheating on my challenge..*

Q6: This no help thing means that you also exclude newbie events/contests/hunts?
A6: No, not at all; if it's something that is open for (pretty much) everyone, then I see no reason not to try my chance too and benefit of that event. I just don't want specific, targeted help - I may be new and poor, but I have my pride - I don't need anyone's mercy/poverty/charity.

 

So... where I'm starting from on 22/2 (that's what I managed to achieve in my first 12 days here - none of them were free gifts or something):

- one AUD
- 30 PED
- 37 PED worth of universal ammo
- pretty much nothing else (as in gear, weapon, tools or really anything) except this

Links to daily reports (once more will pile up will only link to milestone ones, but for now linking to all is no harm):
- day 1
- day 2
- day 3
- day 4

 

Day 1:

Played time (effective, afk not counted): ~4h

Fun factor (subjective ofc): 3/10

Actions:
Spent day swunting caraboks and attending a sweating circle at outpost (found one with healing).

Skillups:
- Knifefighter (Hit) from 2 to 3

Globals:
None

Financials:
- Bought [MANTA K-TT (L)] from TT - cost: 9,00 PED; remaining money: 21,00 PED)
- Daily payment from my AUD - 0,01 PED; total money: 21,01 PED
* Didn't ruined the small sword yet or sold the sweat, so didn't made any math about loot / expenses / profit.

Next day (2)

 

Good luck with your mission
I did things the hard way for a very long time myself, so I wish you much patience and discipline - but things will steadily grow if you tend them correctly!

 

Good luck with that! You might want to reconsider the crafting part though, what many (crafters) say is that it's a money-sink and that you need nk$ before you even see yourself getting into the break-even results. You'll need every PEC you have, so why spend it in different areas and progress in neither?
On the Planet Calypso Forum there is also an active swunters-log from Derid. I don't read it myself, but I guess it will be helpful for you.

 

Thank you.

And I know that this (to try to also persuade crafting ) is not a wise decision. But this is my dream, my goal - to become as self sufficient as possible - as in to not have to buy my stuff from other players. I don't have big dreams; I don't aim to become a top player or to reach really high skills in anything. But I do have this dream - to be a jack of all trades, to come to the point where I'm able to craft my own (crappy) weapons, armors and clothes or to make my own makeup if I feel like looking pretty one day. If that will mean that I will never be able to hunt mobs higher than level 20, or 15, or 10 - so be it; but I don't want to depend of other peoples (directly or indirectly via AH for example).

 

Well, on the fruit side of things, all you have to do is walk between caraboks and you may find fruit and stones without actually looking for them. You can find these things inside Fire Base Academies even, so no need to walk long distance and waste time for nothing.

Have you set up an excel sheet for all the data important to you? I can recommend doing that to get a "clear" view of what you have done. Mine tells me I have only profited once(!!) this month swunting carabok - not taking sweat into account.

Good luck!

 

About fruits/stones: Yeah, it happened to me to occasionally find some here and there, while fighting or while waiting for my health to regenerate. Is just something I don't count on or search specifically, but just keep my eyes open and enjoy it if/when it happens.

About excel sheet: Don't really know yet exactly what or how I should track - hahaha. But what I will try to track would be something like that: spent 27 PED on these 3 swords, when they break see 1. how much sweat I gathered and how much it values, 2. how much loot I got and how much it values (TT value), 3. how much loot I got and how much it values (considering TT+MU).

 

I've been watching this post for a while, I think now is time for me to say something. Your "plan" is nothing new, I do something similar since first day I started playing this game. I'm a proud owner of a Sleipneir 100% bought with sweat, that was my first goal ingame.


Nowv look the screenshot above. Is not for showing off, take a detailed look on two icon rows on mid botton screen. the top one is composed with all my vehicles. Among them: Sleipneir, Spear MK IV, Valkyrie, Quad Wing, Neteller, Explorem MK1, Arctic Truck, Gunknir. Not to mention the ones I already blowed up like my poor hoverpod. I deposited only once when I wanted really bad a Quad Wing and won the Neteller without knowing. But the point is, yes, most of it bought with sweat work.

About the crafting part, is a hard road for non depositors. The best way to pursuit it is first find a Mothership to do some skilling repair, is a big investment on your avatar, so you better start saving that ped. Once you unlocked blueprint comprehension, you'll be ready to start component crafting and earn with that, not some basic filters as most mentors try to make their disciples do. Simple I conductors will be the best, since is 100% hunted materials and the final product have a real market.

And keep in mind, sometimes you might get some globals / hofs, but don't be greedy or will be a bad surprize MA stores for greedy ones

Just keep hard work and faith your you abilities.

 

Thank you for encouragement, Murk! You are, indeed, an inspiration and a good role model.

I never thought that I'm doing something new or anything... basically what I was trying to achieve with this post is to leave a testimony of how this, quite common plan, worked out for me... so others that will follow can see that it is possible and, equally important, don't repeat the mistakes I did myself.

 

Day 2:

Played time (effective, afk not counted): ~4h (maybe a bit more)

Fun factor (subjective ofc): 3/10

Actions:
Spent day swunting monura (females); reason for this was because the ammo reward for 100 and 500 kills missions looks really attractive and wanna try to take advantage of it before it can be potentially changed in next VU. Killed 62 mobs (from 7/100 to 69/100 in mission rankings).

Skillups:
- Knifefighter (Dmg) from 2 to 3
- Jammer from 0 to 1
- Paramedic from 0 to 1

Globals:
None

Financials:
* Didn't ruined the small sword, but realized I can just sell it back at TT and buy new one and make the math anyway. *
- Sold (to TT) almost used [MANTA K-TT (L)] for 1.23 PED; total money: 22.24 PED
- Sold sweat to my mentor - 2.56k * 3 PED/k = 7.68 PED; total money: 29.92 PED (yeah, I know, I'm lucky to have such a deal )
- Sold 50 trutun rocks I randomly found to my mentor - 0.30 PED; total money: 30.22 PED
- Sold (to TT) ammo worth 1.10 PED; total money: 31.32 PED
- Bought a new [MANTA K-TT (L)] - 9.00 PED; total money: 22.32 PED

Others:
- converted my shrapnel to universal ammo (25.061 or ~2.51 PED); for a total of 395.114 (~39.51 PED)
- saved all other loot (3.76 PED TT value)

Loot analyze:
- expense: 7.77 PED (9.00 PED - 1.23 PED)
- return (net; TT value): 7.35 PED
- return (percent; TT value): 94.59%
- net lose: 0.42 PED

Sweat/freebies income vs expensese:
- income: 7.68 PED (from sweat) + 0.30 PED (from stones) = 7.98 PED
- expense: 7.77 PED
- net profit: 0.21 PED

Next day (3)

 

Just remember the TT is not your friend.

Every single item has markup, and even if it's 101%, it's something.

I calculated it costs around 800ped tt if you want to finish a puny mission from stage 1 to stage 5. If you don't sell a single piece of loot to the TT during that time, you can make much more peds than if you did. The hides have a nice MU, and the muscle oil sells very nice too. I don't know what you TT exactly, or if you keep every piece of loot to be sold with MU, just keep it in mind when hunting.

 

I explained in first post - I don't sell any loot, I save it for later when I'll try to also skill crafting.

I try to finance my hunt expenses by selling the sweat (I never just hunt, but swunt).

So plan is sweat pays for weapon, loot gets in storage.

 

Day 3:

Played time (effective, afk not counted): ~4h

Fun factor (subjective ofc): 3/10

Actions:
Spent day keep swunting monura (females); killed 49 mobs (from 69/100 to 18/500 in mission rankings); also participated on the daily SSI sweating circle.

Skillups:
None

Globals:
None

Financials:
- Sold (to TT) my [MANTA K-TT (L)] for 6.62 PED; total money: 28.94 PED
- Sold (to TT) ammo worth 0.17 PED; total money: 29.11 PED
- Bought a new [MANTA K-TT (L)] - 9.00 PED; total money: 20.11 PED
- Sold sweat to my mentor - 0.81k * 3 PED/k = 2.43 PED; total money: 22.54 PED (yeah, I know, I'm lucky to have such a deal )

Others:
- won 24.000 universal ammo (2.4 PED value) from the monura mission; for a total of 419.114 (~41.91 PED)
- converted my shrapnel to universal ammo (3.295 or ~0.33 PED); for a total of 422.409 (~42.24 PED)
- saved all other loot (0.64 PED TT value)

Loot analyze:
- expense: 2.38 PED (9.00 PED - 6.62 PED)
- return (net; TT value): 1.14 PED
- return (percent; TT value): 47.89%
- net lose: 1.24 PED

Sweat/freebies income vs expensese:
- income: 2.43 PED (from sweat)
- expense: 2.38 PED
- net profit: 0.05 PED

Next day (4)

 

Hi Lovefall,

First I want to wish you luck in your plan and I hope it goes well for you. I was also interested to read your post regarding video promotion of the game. It's always great to see the enthusiasm of new players and to watch them develop.

However I do want to give you some feedback about your plan to become self sufficient. You are writing that you want to save your loot to use to craft your own gear and thus not need to buy from others, not need to deposit. I guess you would need to sell some loot to buy ammo unless you go all melee.

If you follow this plan you are setting yourself up to always run at a loss and you are going to need to find extra peds from somewhere.I dont think the income from sweating is going to fill that gap. In EU, profit only comes from interactions with other players. It's you may Hof or otherwise get an occasional uber loot, but in the long run, the value you get from MA will be less than the value you put in. You need to find something other players value and sell that product or service for more than it cost you to produce. Your plan effectively involves you not participating in the player economy and I am afraid that you are then setting yourself up for failure.

To succeed in this sandpit universe you need to do a few things

Firstly you need to understand the player economy and find opportunities to leverage. Find a role that allows you to add value to your TT investment. This could be services you can offer, objects you can make to sell, short term changes in the MU Of items or stackables that you can loot. Also look for ways to grow the economy as that generates more opportunities.

You need to build relationships. Relationships and reputation are critical success factors in business and within the game. I get people coming to buy from me not because of my pricing but because other players refer them to me based on the relationships and reputation I have built. If you have a good relationship with someone you will often share knowledge or opportunities. It's a two way steet and you will both benefit. Societies are a great way to build these relationships.

If instead you don't buy from others, don't sell to others, then you aren't really contributing to the economy and you have no opportunities to become financially self-sufficient. Really you aren't playing EU as a RCE MMO. Instead you are playing an online single player game with chat.

So I'd like to encourage you to have another think about your long term goals and how you engage with the economy.

Regards,
KikkiJikki

 

First of all thank you for your wishes and for your feedback - it is greatly appreciated.

And yeah, I know you are totally right with what you say. The game itself has to make it's profit, so is only clear that, on the long run, it will always return less than what you spent; the percent may be arguable, but the idea stands true no matter what. I totally understood that from my first day here.

So truth is that no matter how much I would enjoy the idea of a "single-player game with chat" I am aware that this is not something that can work out. And, at no time, I didn't said I don't intend to trade with people - even selling the sweat or the occasional fruits I may find is trading, isn't it? Also, I'm looking for any jobs that I could perform for other players. Same, I'm willing to sell anything else I would produce (not raw materials though, those I want to use in my crafting and sell the "final product").

What I said instead is that, while I don't have any problem with selling, I don't want to buy things that are otherwise craftable (have no problem to buy things that are otherwise unachievable anymore - like for example, I'm trying to buy a S.I. H.E.A.R.T). Take it as a personal challenge of my own - if it can be crafted, I wanna work my a$$ towards being able to craft it myself.

One other thing I said would definitely not suit me is the so called "trading as a profession" or "professional trading" or whatever - as in buy cheap, sell more expensive. Spamming the channels with WTB/WTS offers, spending hours at auctions house or on chats to track the best offers, keeping tables with prices fluctuations, taking advantage of either buyers or sellers naivity and many other things like this are just not my thing. I don't say they are a bad thing - far from me - a good trader can do a service both to initial seller (ex: manufacturer) and final buyer (end user), while still making a nice profit for himself. But is just not my thing - both IRL or in any other MMO games I played, I realized I don't have neither the brain, the tongue or the heart of a salesman.

Finally... that is just a plan... I will try to stick with it as much as possible, but if I'll see it is not working or I'll just get a better grasp of the game as the time goes by, there will be nothing that could prevent me to try to adapt to the new realities I might discover.

TL; DR version: I don't wanna play EU as a single player. I'm all for selling, for doing jobs for other people; is just that I try not to buy things I could (at some point) craft myself [personal challenge] and being a "pro trader" (buying cheap, selling more expensive) is not my thing.

 

In part I understand you way of thinking of I want to be selfsufficient & independent. I have that myself to some degree. When Gremlin was first introduced (that is a Calypsian armour) it was just perfect for me and relatively common enough that one could loot a part now and then. So one day I found a piece in my loot that I would wear and from then on my goal was to get all six parts (Footguard were introduced later). I started with the Bristlehogs and while they gave me enough Korss H400 (L), I found no other Gremlin-part. In the end (>1 year) I used the money from the sale of the Korsses to get my own set of Gremlin. When the Footguards got introduced I had a little stack of PEDs from despositing and used just that to buy the feet.
What I want to say with this is that you will get stuff that you don't want or need, so you can use the money gained from selling that to buy something that others have for you.

You do realize that a S.I. H.E.A.R.T. is maxed at level 15.2? When ingame you can right-click --> Item Info and there in one of the tabs see the level requirement(s) for the SIB (Skill Increase Bonus). It will say No; Yes; Not anymore; or Never. Try and get the items with SIB that says Not anymore ideally. Yes works too, but it is on debate if the SIB offsets the higher costs of using due to not having it maxed out. An item with Never is maxed-out at level 100.
You can see on this chart which healing kit serves you best.

PS. For crafting you need mined recourses too, did you plan for that too?

 

Yes, I do realize, and it's not an emergency to buy it so not desperate to buy it in any conditions. It is just on my to buy list and if I'll get at a good price, I would buy it, considering it as an investment. Since it is a no longer createable item, it is logic that the price will only go up over time.

And about your PS, yes, I intend to do that too. Just not right away. Trying to eventually get myself into Greenleaf mining company for example.

 

Day 4:

Played time (effective, afk not counted): ~4h (maybe a tiny bit more)

Fun factor (subjective ofc): 4/10

Actions:
Spent day keep swunting monura (females); killed 60 mobs (from 18/500 to 78/500 in mission rankings); also explored a bit as part of my new quest to locate a new teleporter every day ('till I find them all ).

Skillups:
None

Globals:
None

Financials:
- Daily payment from my AUD - 0,01 PED; total money: 22,55 PED
- Sold (to TT) my [MANTA K-TT (L)] for 5.86 PED; total money: 28.41 PED
- Sold (to TT) ammo worth 1.14 PED; total money: 29.55 PED
- Bought a new [MANTA K-TT (L)] - 9.00 PED; total money: 20.55 PED
- [TO BE DONE] Sold sweat to my mentor - 0.52k * 3 PED/k = 1.56 PED; total money: 22.11 PED (yeah, I know, I'm lucky to have such a deal )

Others:
- converted my shrapnel to universal ammo (22.841 or ~2.28 PED); for a total of 445.250 (~44.52 PED)
- saved all other loot (2.81 PED TT value)

Loot analyze:
- expense: 3.14 PED (9.00 PED - 5.86 PED)
- return (net; TT value): 6.21 PED
- return (percent; TT value): 197.77%
- net profit: 3.07 PED

Sweat/freebies income vs expensese:
- income: 1.56 PED (from sweat)
- expense: 3.14 PED
- net lose: 1.58 PED

 

Really enjoying seeing a log from someone with a tighter budget, keep up the great work.