Hunting, mining or crafting? Those 3 are the main activities. There are other careers, but as a new Entropian these are what you will likely be doing. And trading stuff with other players or through the Auction. I don't recommend crafting from day 1. Some people do very well by crafting, but they have skills and good Blueprints. That's not you just yet. No harm in spending a PED here and there for a small try, just do not count on profits on your first day. Mining is better, start small. Use a "rookie terramaster" or what is available on your planet from the Trade Terminal, in the beginning, and use that mininglog. Mining gives good skills, for some reason Health goes up nicely. Get your skills up a bit before moving to better gear, and amplifiers. Amp's are expensive but top miners use them for a reason. Hunting is fun, and what most people seems to be doing. There is a MOB for every level of hunter. Hunt smart, and you will do well. Don't hunt above your levels/skills unless you don't mind loosing some PED. Other hunting - PvP Player versus Player - Entropia has that. On Calypso, the Amethera continent is PvP outside the Land Areas (or Outback Land Areas). More on LA's later. Other places, PvP areas are marked on your map (at least when you find them by going there) with yellow or red color. Yellow means that you can shoot or be shot, red means that as well as that it's "lootable". So if you are killed in a red PvP area, your stackables (stuff in your inventory Tabs "Materials" and "Mined Resources" can be taken from you. Space outside the imideate areas around a planet's space station is all lootable PvP. To enter a "red" PvP area planetside you will need a "anti-toxic" shot. Without it, you will die when you enter. A sensible precation, you will not likely enter a "lootable" area without knowing what you are doing. MU - MarkUp And then to trade your loot. Most things has something called MarkUp. MU for short. Some have little, some massive. Always check the MU on anything you sell or buy. It can be hard to get the best MU if you have small amounts of what you sell, so if you can afford to, save up stacks. And the Auction charges a fee, so there you need to see if it actually pays to pay it. The so called TT value, thats the "standard" value of items. If you sell items to a Trade Terminal (hence TT), that's what you get. Sometimes, if you have some small stuff with very low MU, it may be just as well to sell it to a Trade Terminal. If in doubt about somethings real MU, check the action. What do other people sell it for? If you are a good trader you can make money. Some do very well. The best traders seems to those who do repeat trade over time by being honest and reasonable. SIB and your gear SIB - Skill Increase Bonus - is something you will have on many items. Do not use tools that says "Not yet" on SIB. You will not use those tools efficiently. You can buy thebiggest gun in the game and still not bang much, if you do not have the required skills to use it. Skills! Your skills are important! Skills in weapons, tools, luck, health, all of it. Skills are related, so, for example, when you shoot a pistol, your rifle skills will also benefit. Less closely related skills are also affected, all the way away to things not very related at all. But a lot less, slower. As you progress, you will unlock new abilities. Details on the entropedia. You can sell skills, and they tend to have very high MU. Hence you can buy skills, "chip in" as it's called. This can be very useful sometimes. For example; you have reached level 20 in Laser HIT but you are only level 16 in Laser DMG (Damage). And you really want to use some level 20 weapon, right quickly. You can chip in those levels you need for the balance, and go ahead. Some people with high skills makes money by chipping out "surplus" skills they don't need. Other people use money to quickly gain very high levels. The trade in skills seems brisk at all times. Scams There are some that will try to scam other people, just like in RL. Sad shits willing to be thiefs for monetary profit. It ranges from overcharging in trades, to confidence scams. Someone may try to sell you stuff that seems to have high MU, but may take advantage by short-time fluctuations in the market. Or take your sweat, promising to making it into something more valuable for free. Upgrade your armor with paint or something. It has happened that some will seem a friend, maybe over years of time, and then they get to borrow something valuable. Cash, or a special item. Something. And then they stop responding - possibly giving up the avatar after having sold on or othervise passed the valuables on down a planned chain of trades. Hard to sort out, your loss most likely. Some people may not pay as promised for services rendered. I know a guy was owned for healing someone on a real long hunt. Hunt went bad, hunter said he did not want to pay because he had a bad run. Reasonable? I'd say not. It hurts to get scammed, even if it's for small stuff. It's not nice to know and experience that there are people who don't give a shit that you are a person, that you exist. Burglars in my home I can and will deal with, in the virtual world one often can not do so directly. Best is to use comon sense. And, always, if someone is to borrow something, get collateral. Offer same if you want to borrow. Even if intentions are pure, shit can happen. What if someone borrows from you something valuable, and then the next day crashes the car going to work? Not likely, granted, but plan for worst-case scenario. Teleports and teleporting On any planet, you will start off with some - but not all - teleport locations. To get the rest, you need to visit their locations (and run through the Teleport's there to make sure you get them on your map). The best, slowest and most difficult way to get new TP locations is to run (or walk). Best because you get to know the terrain and what's where. Slow and difficult because you will run into obstacles (MOB's, mountains etc). You can fly, or have someone fly you, to get TP locations. Fast and easy. You can also use a Teleport chip - an implant - to teleport (TP) from anywhere you are. Higher levels of TP chips enables you to TP greater distances. The chip's uses MindEssence as fuel. Vibrant Sweat is an ingredient for making this "ME". Transport You have legs, use them. Best way to explore. Then there are moving machines of a variety, flying, boats, cars and spaceships. Quad's and (if you are desperate) Sleipnir's double as planetside and spacegoing vessels. A fast vehicle, like a hooverboard or some pod, can be very useful to escape big MOB's. A helicopter or troop transport good for bringing a team to the spot. Personally I favour TP chips to move somewhere fast and accurate. In space you want to be careful, you can be shot down and looted by pirates. If you want to bring loot from one planet to another, the safest option is a warp flight with a proper spaceship. Two groups I know and trust have organised to bring you a safe service; see the websites efa.ms and titans-of-space.de There may be others, check around. If you fly on your own (normally by Quad), know that there is a fee of 2 PED to land on a planet. I have no idea why. Land Areas Land Areas (and Outback Land Areas) are (typically) owned by fellow Entropians. The owner of an area needs to stock it with some MOB or several MOB's, spending money on MOB DNA to make that happen. And then put Dung into the deal, to keep the spawns up. Your advantage with this is that you may be able to find a area that guarantees that you will have your exact target - the right MOB at the right maturities. For miners, it is often specified what ores and enmatter is found. The downside for you is that most all such areas comes with a tax on what you find. Good LA owners will make sure spawns are as advertised, and may make events with prizes to market their land. Events Entropia has a event system. To keep it short, events can be made in certain areas (like Land Areas, but not limited to) with different rules. Typically, an event is for hunters and use one of two rules: Most Loot (collected by a single player) or Highest Single Loot (collected by a single player). Limits can be set, such as no use of armor, no use of TP chips, others. Entropialife, as an example, makes events outside of the standard system. Read ingame ads and keep an eye on the forums for events, both for those made using the event system and for other creative efforts. For ingame events, right-click somewhere "clean" on your screen and select "system" - then "events" from the menu. Daily Missions There may be Daily (as in repeatable) Missions available on the planet you are on. The rewards differ, on Calypso you get Daily Tokens that you can use to buy things (weapons, other gear). Arkadia has a daily mission chain that will at the end reward you a troop transport vehicle. Tokens Daily Tokens, Combat Tokens, Skill Tokens. So you'v read about the Daily's. Combat Tokens (also a Calypso thing) can also be used to buy stuff. They can come from Missions, more come from special MOB spawns. There are places where you will trigger a "wave-spawn". Here you (most likely with other people to be able to finsih it) will kills waves of a specific MOB. At the last round there will be a "boss", and this boss may yeald Combat Tokens. Skill Tokens are typically rewards of Missions where you, for example, kill a certain number of a MOB. Team Hunts Team hunts are fun and efficient. But make sure the rules are clear. There are several ingame "rules" that can be choosen by the one making a Team. Often used is the deal where the damage you do will reflect how much of the loot you recieve from each kill. But. You and your team may well loot something valuable, some special item. Decide before the hunt how to deal with such things. One way to do it that some uses, is to say that with any item looted by anyone worth 50 PED or more, the money should be split equal with all team members. It has happened, when people hop into teams with people they don't know, that such arrangements has been discarded by the greed of whomever got the nice piece. For me, I only team with people I believe I can trust. I might team on very small things with strangers, but if I do it would be more to be there to help, maybe heal. On Money and Deposits One PED equals one USD. The PED can be split into PEC. Project Entropia Dollar into Project Entropia Cents. Entropia is the one virtual that has successfully linked it's currency to the RL. We have no stress with "virtual gold" being harvested and sold illegally, as many other's have. You can take your money out of Entropia, as you can deposit. Some people live by it. To take cash out, you need to register an account for MindArk to deposit into. To put money in, you have several options. You can use PayPal, Visa or Mastercard. There is a webshop, and you can depo directly while ingame - very fast. One-time Visa cards are widely available as a quick solution to those who may not have a regular one. As a new Entropian you should off course be careful spending. Maybe you will leave us? I'd hope not, but to be realistic, not all that comes chooses to stay. I will say this; as a new Entropian even a small amount of PED can boost you to more interesting things way faster than you would by just gathering sweat and other resources. If you where my disciple, I'd suggest - in general - to graduate "slow slow but sure" and then, after graduation, count your savings and consider widening your options with some PED. Don't go overboard. Manage your funds as best you can. But at the same time, have the little leverage to pursue fun. Details On all I have written here, others have also, and in more detail. Peruse the forums. Check Mega's MOB list, for one really superb example, on the Calypso forum. The Arkadia team are known for keeping a eye on the ark-forum, so if you have any ideas that are actually smart, they may be noted. I welcome you to Entropia, my virtual home, hoping it will become yours! John "eras" Bluetail
