Obvious things that newbies should know

[Oldman Mayhem]

I've read a whole lot of stuff over that past couple weeks of playing this game and asked a whole lot of questions and have come up with a short list of things that may be obvious to veteran players but would REALLY improve the quality of play for brand new players that have no idea about them.
1. There is an auto use button. Yeah...almost 8K sweat later I find out I don't have to manually click every time. If by chance someone out there besides me is unaware it's on pg 14 of your action library (Y key).
2. You CAN completely customize your keybindings. open keyboard map (G) and Edit Panel (L) and use the arrow keys at the top to scroll over to "Active Set *" any changes made here will change those keys for ALL of your active sets.
I'm positive that there are a few more things to add to this list and I would love to have input from veterans. So what "Duh, everyone knows that!" things can you add?

 

[non]

took me a few weeks to learn about auto use... learned it from a pirate that had shot me down and was nice enough to come laugh at me as i was clicking my rk-5 to repair my quad.

ill post something if i can ever think of something that worth knowing

 

[Thanatos]

Newbies should know that they can find some1 that will help them as a mentor.
Its good thing in 2 ways at least: u get info u need quick, and u get a reward from the game (adjusted pixie armor set and a vehicle) after reaching certain point of skills, just like a mission reward.

ps. im a mentor sometimes

 

[Rusty Venture]

Another is that a noobie should not be on this dead planet.

 

[Goldmoon]

Ouch Rusty. Let's see if we can't put a more HELPFUL information on here:

The planet is not dead, it's just under development. Next Island is a DEAD Planet. Each Planet Partner is literally their own entity in here - even though Mind Ark hogs all the incomes. Each one is supposed to get their own players - not hope that Calypso's will come to them. - So Newbies, Welcome!

Yes, Auto Use works for any item you are equipped with at that moment. Another, more harsh, lesson to learn is the simple fact that Entropia is not some World of Warcraft or an MMORPG in any way. If you play it like that - you will find yourself always penniless and if a depositor: chucking THOUSANDS of dollars at this game and making no head way.

With that out of the way, here come the easier ones:

- Don't TT anything, Normally. The Trade Terminal is the fastest way to lose in here. There are plenty of players that would buy from you for Trade Terminal Prices. Once an item is sold to the TT - no one benefits and everyone but MA looses.
* Safe things to TT: Used up Limited Items, Ammunition that is not Explosives, Unused Probes, pretty much anything SOLD from the TT can be sold back to it.

- Try to remember this one simple fact: a 50 Ped global is only $5. 98% of the time, it takes nearly $20 to get that 1 $5 return. Do Not expect these 'swirlies' or global hits to keep you in the game. Play smarter. You can blow through $100 in this game within an hour or less without barely trying at all. Much like a casino puts 'loose slots near the tables' on purpose to get people to hear the "ching ching" of people winning, so too does Entropia have 'Globals' and 'Hall of Fames'. Once again: Don't play AGAINST the Players - It's the HOUSE, Mind Ark, you are against.

- Which brings up the next thing, sure - play to keep yourself knowledgeable to stay in profit. That's great - but DO NOT ABUSE that knowledge on the innocent: Ie. An unnamed player (you know who you are) - keeps bringing items over from Caly at 100%-101% purchase prices. Resells it to the New people here for 120% - 200%. Good play? Sure. Underhanded? Not by MA Standards. Taking advantage of the new planet, destroying the economy there and crushing new players? Hell yes. You can play that way, sure. Nothing wrong with it. Just don't expect to be buddy buddies with the more upper class people - you know, the ones who would help you in a pinch. If you came in here to underhand people, you are NOT NEW to this game and should probably not be reading this. Once again: it's US vs MA. Start attacking the players, we all loose eventually. I can already feel all the hate and flame emails that are going to go to Master Chief (the email I use for those) "Hey! Don't attack a player for making money! blah! blah! 1st: I agree, please do what you feel is you best ability to keep playing. BUT 2nd: taking advantage of a NEW PLANET before it has a chance to blossom only does a few things: it keeps the new players devastated, thinking this is how the game is and makes the planet unwanted - why go there if the prices are so OUTRAGEOUS? I'll explain that theory in a bit.

- Technical out of the way, let's go more game related: Hunting, Mining, Crafting. The Big 3 that most newer people can grasp quickly.
Continued on next post:

 

[Goldmoon]

Hunting: If you like to kill things and loot their bodies for goodies, this is up your alley. I was once asked if I could HUNT something. I said sure, I KILL them all the time. No, No - he said: can you HUNT it. That's an important question I'd never thought about back then. Sure, you can KILL a creature - but HUNTING it is different. If you slap on some MASSIVE ARMOR, sure you can sit there and KILL anything (eventually), this is not HUNTING. You will find your returns far less than your repairs and expenses. This will suck the most, but here's the lesson: DO NOT go out and KILL things, HUNT them. How? If you can get hit by the creature enough to have to 'HEAL' during combat with it - It's too large for your skillsets, making it uneconomical to HUNT. If you are hitting something and it attacks are fast, and all you see are '1 damage' to you: your weapon is not high enough for this creature. It's tearing you up in a repair bill (Once again: THIS IS NOT AN MMORPG, everything you do COSTS you). Unless it's a puny, EVERY Creature has the SAME chance to drop the items that their group is set to drop and can GLOBAL/HOF on it too.
"That's BS Goldmoon!!" Oh? Is it? People hunt the "Leviathan" on Calypso cause of it's loot pool. They however do not go to the "Stalker Class" of them to do it. Most stay on the Younge-Mature range. Less health, less damage, same loot - lower costs.
Hunting is not about biggest gun, best armor and every attachment in the game.

Weapons should be able to hunt the critter you're after to the point of killing it within 2-5 hits on yourself. (You can increase that size by increasing your EVADE and DODGE, not armor)

Armor should be for the off chance something hits you, if it's too big for the critter you're after: you'll get plenty of 1's in the damage - but the armor STILL costs the same to repair whether you take 10-20's or 1-2's.

First Aid should be used after a fight, or in one if you've taken too many at one time and as an emergency. Each Aid you use, every time you use one is increasing your costs. The best hunters I know almost NEVER use theirs.

Attachments/Enhancers: These are to 'boost' a weapon/armor to the next level. NOT the add on to allow you to KILL at that level. Each one only increases the costs even MORE. Think of them as, in between, add-ons. Something to boost you a little until you can afford the proper items.


Now for after the hunt: Selling your swag!

Once again as I said before: If you TT everything, no one wins in here but MA. Find someone willing to buy at TT or better, many things DO sell for over TT prices. Most of those require a LOT of that item to be able to do that. So unless you have a large pocket book, holding onto these items for months to get enough to Auction House them properly is a long route to go. NORMALLY going to the Auction House (AH) is a good way to get a feel for what is valuable and what is not. On Cyrene - unfortunately - we have people selling WAY OVER the normal price for 'needed' items from other planets here. Making the market inflated. Switch to the Calypso Auctions in your AH interface and see what "REAL PRICES" things are moving at. (Remember: all hate mail goes to Master Chief on this)

If no one is around, and you can not sit on your loots for one to show up and for whatever reason you've not joined a society (like the one dedicated to only the Planet Cyrene: Syndicate of Fenris (shameful plug) - a society is a great place to make friends and get information. You may find yourself selling to the Trade Terminal. Don't beat yourself up on it. It's there for that reason.

Next Post: MINING!

 

[Goldmoon]

Alright now for the Mining Aspects (Brief View):

Mining is by far the easiest, yet over looked tactical wise of the Big 3. Why? Well, that's easy, anyone can run around buying probes and just carpet bomb the living heck out of the planet. Works? Sure. Costly? Heck Yeah.

Let's talk about the abilities and skills used in mining for a sec:

There's Ore (Prospecting) and Enmatter (Surveying). You Dig Up Ore (Mining) and you Drill Up Enmatter (Drilling). Back in the beginning days these were all separate finders and diggers. Now it's done with any finder and any digger.

FINDERS:
Below Is a Picture of Probes, Extractors and Finders

Finders rank from TT Rookies and Starters to the Ziplex VRX3000 Seeker. Just to let you know this now: the most commonly used Finder EVER for any level is the Finder F-105 and F-106 (These require at least level 3 in Prospecting/Survey to use and level 11 to use at full efficiently).

How to Use Your FINDER:

All finders can search for 3 things: Ore, Enmatter and Treasures – Treasures are found ONLY on Arkadia and will not be available unless you are on that planet. You can select any 1, 2 or all 3 of them to use. Each one has a probe cost for use (Ore-20, Enmat-10, Treasure-30) that means if you choose to do just ORE, you’ll use 20 probes every drop. So if you search for Ore and Enmatter you’ll use 30 probes, and so on.

Let's look at the important stats in a finder: Range and Depth. 98% of all finders have a range of 55m (that a circle roughly the size of the Inner Most Circle on your Radar.) Height/Elevation don't really mean much to a finder. If the find is WITHIN the range and depth (up or down) it will show.

This means we simply need to know how to Drop a Probe. Equipping your finder, simply use it. (if you have the finder hot keyed, press it again or the use item key) A nifty little probe will appear, whirl around and dig a hole. A second later you'll get a large BOOM and Shaking. Your finder will then check the area for finds. If any are found, it will start beeping and point towards the direction of the find. The find also shows up on your radar as a larger red dot. Now dropping a probe after probe (carpet bombing) is very inefficient. Remember that the range is 55m? If you move 100m away, and drop again. You will create a small overlap of searched areas. This means you can use your probes more efficiently.

There are 3 colors for the claim marker finds: Green (Ore) Blue (Enmat) and Red (Treasure)

Any finds are reported, Ore to Enmatter in that order. What's that mean? That means if you were searching for Ore AND Enmatter together, the finder will show you ore in the tracking Window First. Even if you find Ore and Enmatter at the same time.

Now if you get something VERY BIG, an automatic mining claim will appear (Called a Tower):

These will mine the materials for you, and you can claim some of it every 24hrs.

Once you have a claim, non-tower, you need to use your Extractor to get at the nugget creaminess. Simply point your extractor at the claim and turn on auto use. The little machine will whirl away pulling the materials out of the ground for you.

Now for the parts that get most miners in serious trouble:

AMPS and ENHANCERS!

Your typical amp can come in a variety of shapes. The one above is the most common. Now what do amps do? They increase the SIZE of a find. Nothing more. They require you to be of a certain skill level to use them. If you find a 2ped find, they can turn it into a 2.5 or even a 20ped or higher find, based simply on their efficiency rating.
Amps are very delicate, and will wear out faster if you use more than one search method: using 1 is a normal decay, 2 is twice the decay, and so on. With that said, why isn't every miner running them 24/7? Easy: the price on the amp can range from $2-$5 all the way to $30-$50 for a SINGLE unit. This was because in 1998, the parts and materials were scarce - hard to find. So the price was kind of set then. Today, that's not true - but miners still pay the same '98s price because most don't know any better and the crafter that can make them love it that way. So you as a miner must either bite the serious bullet and hope you get a large hit with them, otherwise - they will destroy your returns very fast. Many miners swear by them, they have deep pockets or have been around a very long time. As for the newer crowd, stay away from them until you feel safe that you may have to burn away money on a bad run or two.

::Warning:: Propaganda::Warning:: Propaganda::Warning:: Propaganda::Warning:: Propaganda::

Remember: MA has users set to get an average return of 90% (I say average more because that's what the mathematicians have figured out. I'm more of a 75-80% person on a good day. Probably because not every avatar can get a great return all the time - someone has to pay for the New Lamborghini over at MA! ). So we must sell our ore/enmat to make up this 10%-25% deficit just to break even. This does not include the occasional "lucky strike". Searching for rare finds becomes a more important factor than Size eventually.

Meet the Enhancer! As you use your finders/exctators, heck almost everything now. They can be tiered to be more useful. In our case as miners, DEEPER DEPTH, WIDER RANGES and FASTER EXTRACTIONS. No, I did not forget the "Skill Enhancer Version" - if you need to use an item to tier it to a level that you can add enhancers to finally be able to use it right. Eh - so be it.

Mining Enhancers tend to burn out faster than their comparable cousins and crafters know we like them: hence the higher costs for them. Being able to search deeper is a great help, just remember this tip: a maxed out (Tier 10) finder usually won't find as deep as the next level up with only a few tiers. Enhancers also increase decay on your items, usually. There are some enhancers for economy.


Ok, My eyes and wrist hurt now from putting all this together. Hope this brief over view is helpful to new players in Mining.

 

[Rusty Venture]

- Which brings up the next thing, sure - play to keep yourself knowledgeable to stay in profit. That's great - but DO NOT ABUSE that knowledge on the innocent: Ie. An unnamed player (you know who you are) - keeps bringing items over from Caly at 100%-101% purchase prices. Resells it to the New people here for 120% - 200%. Good play? Sure. Underhanded? Not by MA Standards. Taking advantage of the new planet, destroying the economy there and crushing new players? Hell yes. You can play that way, sure. Nothing wrong with it. Just don't expect to be buddy buddies with the more upper class people - you know, the ones who would help you in a pinch. If you came in here to underhand people, you are NOT NEW to this game and should probably not be reading this. Once again: it's US vs MA. Start attacking the players, we all loose eventually. I can already feel all the hate and flame emails that are going to go to Master Chief (the email I use for those) "Hey! Don't attack a player for making money! blah! blah! 1st: I agree, please do what you feel is you best ability to keep playing. BUT 2nd: taking advantage of a NEW PLANET before it has a chance to blossom only does a few things: it keeps the new players devastated, thinking this is how the game is and makes the planet unwanted - why go there if the prices are so OUTRAGEOUS? I'll explain that theory in a bit.

How can you say that? When a player runs the risk of bringing a 101% item to another planet to sell for 120% it is because of several things.

1: IT IS WORTH THAT MUCH! IF IT SELLS FOR 10000% IT IS WORTH THAT MUCH! EVEN IF HE BOUGHT IT FOR 101%! OTHERWISE IT WONT SELL.

2. He is running the risk by bringing it there, and wasting his own time.

3. You wouldn't have those items otherwise, if you don't like the markup go fly and bring some down yourself.

4. I do the same thing and it only HELPS the economies even if being sold at 300%, if items are needed and NOT dropping it is SHITTY DEVELOPER fault, and players must bring in the item or it simply won't exist on planet. If it doesn't exist and is needed, it is worth 5000% in my opinion if it sells at 5000%, even if I bought it for 101%.

5. How is selling an item that a player wants crushing a player?c

6. No one is taking advantage of a NEW PLANET, they are taking advantage of LAZY DEVELOPERS, if an item is needed on a planet and not there, that is POOR PLANNING, not undercutting, ruining the economie, or anything else.

7. A planet should not have, get, or need a chance to 'blossom' it should be released fully blossomed with it's own userbase.

 

[OZtwo]

Another is that a noobie should not be on this dead planet.

Rusty, this is very much NOT a dead planet. They are working on the limitations that MA has given them with their version of the Cry2 engine best they can and for the most part are doing a GREAT job. My hate off to the team here for their great work! Keep it up! We know it will be here for all one day soon!!

 

[Goldmoon]

I find those statements both shallow and pedantic. I had quoted you across everything and put facts to the fiction, but after I was done. I realized something: You can't change the opinion of a person in here who is only looking after #1, does not know a development cycle that includes Mind Ark, or pulled that 1 tiny little quote about someone else, not you, and blew it all up from those entire 3 posts on what a new person should be looking out for and what to do with themselves to better themselves.

 

[Master Chief]

I find those statements both shallow and pedantic. I had quoted you across everything and put facts to the fiction, but after I was done. I realized something: You can't change the opinion of a person in here who is only looking after #1, does not know a development cycle that includes Mind Ark, or pulled that 1 tiny little quote about someone else, not you, and blew it all up from those entire 3 posts on what a new person should be looking out for and what to do with themselves to better themselves.

Preach it!

 

[Oldman Mayhem]

In the spirit of "obvious things newbies should know" the previous posts point out two things 1. People will treat you like a well informed consumer. It behooves you to be one. If you are unsure of an item at the auction terminal then click on the other planets on the upper right hand corner of the terminal to view auction prices on other planets. Other than that make sure you read up on whatever it is being offered so that if you decide to pay a huge markup for convenience sake then at least you are informed. 2. Hopefully I don't hurt anybodies little feelers by tweeking one of my favorite John Wayne (mis)quotes "Life (on Cyrene) is hard, It's harder when you're stupid."

 

[Goldmoon]

Those words move me. You go Oldman Mayhem!

 

[vonblack]

Greetings, AS a new player, I have found very little to engage me in the game so far. That is not a dig at the game (or the planet) it is merely my way of saying that the learning curve is very steep and when you are going to put in real monies in, then is should take some reading time and research. Thank you Goldmoon for the effort to explain some of the game theory. Now I'll just be taking my yellow jump suited butt back to sweating puneys (I have 55 bottles so far..Muhahaha)

 

[Chris Spencer Schmidt]

Welcome to Cyrene. If you has any questions, just tell me. The Cyrene Com happy to assist you.

 

[Fifth]

"Life (on Cyrene) is hard, It's harder when you're stupid."

So true. The most expensive commodity in RCE is information, at some point or another we all have paid dearly for our lessons... although, (most of) the info is free.

It's a paradox.