http://www.entropiauniverse.com


Simplified its a mmorpg combined with "gambling" through three main professions, hunting, mining and crafting, all beatable although in some cases hard, Ill return to this. Im making this post solely as a player who wants to bring in more ppl for the good of the game and its ingame economy. I think it suits 2+2 and poker players very well. With even a little knowledge in poker, probabilites and basic gambling-type math you have a really big advantage over the general playerbase in this game. I make my living playing PLO online and Im a (slowly) profiting miner/crafter in Entropia Universe.


Economy and profit
Currency is PED, 1 ped = $0,1. The game works kind of like a casino, general player consensus is that it pays back around 90-92%. So, if you spend 100 ped on ammunition hunting some animal you're on avarage gonna get loot worth 90 ped back. However, everything in the game has markup. Oils, skins, minerals etc are used by crafters and can usually be sold at around 105-125% to other players due to a dynamic supply and demand type economy. Some rare items like weapons, armors or tools might have a 200ped set value to the "casino" but be worth 100.000 in reality to the players.

Very simplified: You profit in the long run when your loot can be sold for an avarage of ~110% or more to other players.



The professions...

Hunting
You use guns, rifles, knives, swords, grenadelaunchers etc to hunt animals, mutants, robots and other weird creatures. Probably the most popular profession and hard to profit at. Supply of loot from hunting is high because of the popularity so markups are low. To get good markups you have to be able to hunt the really tough creatures that drops rare stuff.

Mining
You search the ground for minerals, metals, oils etc. By far the easiest way to profit in the game since there are many places where you can have an avarage loot markup of 120%+. Its also cheap to get started.

Crafting
You make, armors, tools, weapons, components etc, mostly out of ingredients gathered from hunting and mining. Here I think the profit comes from understanding the economy, buying ingredients when its cheap, selling products at right times etc. Takes no really big investment in theory (needs no equipment or tools) but in practise a big bankroll will help alot and give freedom when it comes to buying and selling.



A few extra points

* If your goal is to earn money this game is a horribly inefficient way of doing that. But its a really cool and fun game wich has the potential bonus of being slightly profitable if played well.

* It is free to download and play

* It is possible to build up a bankroll without depositing, through "sweating" or searching for stones and fruit wich randomly appear on the ground. This is very time consuming and I would not recommend it if you can afford to deposit, but there are a few very succesful "non-depositers" ingame.

* All the skillpoints your Avatar gains while you play are worth money and can be sold at pretty good prices.


If you have any questions please post in thread and If you decide to download and try it out, send me a pm and Ill give you my avatars name and I can help out ingame.

Sounds interesting. How time consuming is it?

Is it the type of thing you can login for 15minutes and actually do something? Or do you need to set an hour+ of time down to get anything done in the game?

I may check it out sometime.

Its time consuming for me

But to answer your other question, yes. You can log in for 15 minutes and hunt or w/e, obviously you get 8x more hunting in if you hunt for 2 hours but I assume you compare it to games like WoW where you often have to commit 2-3 hours to do a dungeon or something. And if you dont finish the dungeon and quit after 2 hours its been a complete waste. No, theres nothing like that in EU.

Sounds cool. I'll definitely check it out. What are the computer spec requirements for the game?

The higher the better, game looks awesome at very high graphics settings. Its built on the Crytech 2 engine. I dont know alot about computers and specs but I play on a:

Intel® Core i5-2500 Processor
8gig Ram
ASUS GeForce GTX 550Ti 1GB PhysX CUDA

Does "High" settings really smooth but get low framerate on "Very High".


There are alot of cool things I failed to mention in OP.

* Vehicles, boats, choppers, space ships, cars, buggys

* Pirating, some parts of the universe have lootable PVP. You cant loose equipment, tools, weapons, armors etc. But stackable loot, hides, minerals, oils etc can be looted by killing other players in these zones. If you dont want to parttake in this its very easily avoided and only certain zones has it on the ground... wich leads me to the next point.

* Space, there are a few different planets, markups differ quite alot between planets so there's a huge incentive for traveling traders to buy and sell between planets. You might think that in a competetive world this would instantly be exploited until prices are equal everywhere... Think again. All of space is lootable pvp and crawling with pirates. I dont need to explain how cool a dynamic this creates.
You are never forced to risk travelling with loot through space, but at some point it might be such a profitable risk that you might choose to.

* Mentor/Disciple system. Get a mentor when you join, the game can be pretty complicated and overwhelming at first. You become a disciple and when you "graduate" both you and your mentor get some free stuff. I'd obviously be happy to do this.

Downloading now.

I'd do the mentor thing when you show me how hah.

I'm going to Arkadia, downloading that now. The only place with a good description lol

Oh great, a game where the massively rich can have their boots on my neck! How fun, it's just life real life!

Oh cool. Im on calypso so we cant meet but I can help you out through chat anyway. Arkadia has good mining, been thinking about goin there.


Its actually more like in poker where the massively rich feed the game by doing stupid descissions and gambles. Difference I guess is that if you can deposit $10.000 and play EU really well you will be more profitable than someone who deposits $100 and plays equally well.

Where's a good place to be a hunter? Or does it not really matter at the beginning?

When I just logged out I had a gun and just got armor so I'm gonna hunt haha.

I havn't been to ark so I dont know much about it. Generally as I said, hunting is gonna have a negative expected value for early and midlevel players, its fun though

http://www.arkadiaforum.com/ is probably the best forum for ark specific things.

Downloading now. Excited but scared of what I may be starting. Any reason to start on one planet over another?

Cool Johnny. I'd say start on calypso cuz its the first original planet and has most ppl.
Also Im there, and it helps alot to have a cpl of friends.

Often a problem is that you get too many different things as loot. So if you have 500 ped loot it is made up of 10-40 ped stacks of different things, wich are not worth to put up on auction. If you dont have a big bankroll ingame and need money it really helps then to have someone to sell those small stacks to. I can help out with this when it comes to miningloot. There are resellers who you can sell your stuff to at bad prices, usually like 3-6% under daily auctionprices but I mean buying as a favour without doing profit. I have to take like 1% under auctionprices though cuz when I have enough and put it in auction there's a fee for selling it.

The game isn't scary,.. well, lootable pvp is kinda scary. Obviously that zone has the best mining in game Just have to return to storage often and drop off loot so you dont run around with several hundred ped.

This could be the beginning of the end of a not a few 2p2ers. Stay sane, guys.

Ended up depositing Played all night. Have about 250 rifle, just running around shooting **** and dropping the occasional probe. Pretty fun.

Oh yeah I started on calypso. Where is the auction house in the port atlantis mall?

Hehe gj, any luck? Auctioneers are plentiful, they are NPC's. In every service center and trade center. Check PM, Im online now.

Big update today, new items, weapons, armors, blueprints etc.

Graduated 2+2 disciples: 1

Are you still playing this?

I started playing this about 2 weeks ago, quite addictive so far. The RCE is an interesting twist on the usual MMORPG economies.

So far I've mostly been focused on mining and think the trading aspects will be a huge focus once I get more familiar with the game. Got setup with a few vehicles and a mothership crew, to ease moving around on/between planets.

Started out on Calypso but I think long term I'll probably base out of Arkadia.
Would like to add any 2+2ers also playing, so feel free to pm for contact info if your actively playing and based out of either of those planets.

I've been playing the last 3 days. Swunting and Mining now. I deposited also.
Making money though is going to take a long, long time.
I am now really interested in the land deeds that are being resold for 25$ more than the initial offering.
They offer 25-30% ROI paid weekly in-game in PEDS.
Some of you richer players should be able to snap these up and generate a real life passive income.
I have some money aside and plan to do this once I've researched losses on transfer fees and timing etc.

Is it a closed universe or is more and more stuff spawning all the time? Or I guess repharsing...what's the inflation situation like on the spawn side? I'd guess money is inflating quite a bit because after all money can be injected into the economy at all times.

How many players/how big an economy, how easy would it be to corner the market for some essential ingredient with some cooperation/a group?

Seems like an interesting playground to test some economic theories :P

Do not play entropia if you plan on making money. The one exception is mining - if you mine efficiently and in areas with ores that have high markup you can eke out a minor profit.

Everything in the game is set up to bleed money out. Auction house fees, decay on armor/weapons/ammo, etc. If you really want to learn about this game you need to read planetcalypsoforum.com as well as entropedia.info.

I got really into this game for a few months but eventually you have to realize that it's a form of gambling and is more like a slot machine than a real money economy. You can't really corner markets because people are often willing to sell for a loss. There are a few exceptions but they don't last long and the market corrects itself very quickly.

In short, if you want to profit stay away from hunting and far, far away from crafting.

hmm, well I've played since 2005 so I know this game well enough... but I kinda like poker more now that I don't have time..

Its not bad, its just a lot of work to earn a few bucks, thats why I'm planning to sell my peds to for pokerstars transfers but I gotta go find some reputable fellows first

Anyhow, if you have money in that game, you're pretty boss cuz ppl work really hard just to earn a few bucks and basically you have can them do slave work just for a few dollars so not necessary a bad place to be lol. Thing is, it can also get massively expensive cuz the upper side of the place are each carrying things worth in excess of 20k usd easy, but yeah... thats about it, if you want to earn money in it, its possible, but its a lot of work, more so than poker... if you want fun for big bang of the buck, you can pretty much go in there pay some people and be king (in theory)

I've played the game off and on since it was only "Planet Entropia". One of the better players in the game, Jenna Star Mercury, found me wandering in my orange noob suit, way out in the boonies, took an interest in my perseverance and became my mentor.

Hadn't played in awhile, but am now playing a few hours per week. It's a mindless diversion and entertaining in its own right.

Skilling up is slow and tedious. Understanding the arcane nomenclature is a bit confusing as well.

its funny i played this game like 2 or 3 years ago and early on after depositing like 10$ actually hit a huge hall of fame in mining think it was like 4,6k ped sold off for 6k peds and had a fun ride afterwards. think i have a screen somewhere on some forum

Never tried to cash out tho, think my account is innactive now too, will look into it.

nolimitfiend, i actually remember that player too, i was i think somewhere in space mining with biggest amps possible, ofc lol

and in the place where i was mining there were some really really strong monsters i believe strongest in the game then and i found like 900 ped worth of some ores and it was right in the middle of them, so i saw her shooting them and she offered to help for 10% and in the end she didn't even took the 10%.

This game is almost identical to gambling tho.