I was back at it again grinding the cave access mission on Crystal Palace. This time around I ended up parking myself at the station for around two weeks. I would once in a while log in when I had the time and do a little hunting before logging back out.
I did not realize it at the time but my runs up at Crystal Palace were about to come quite the markup-filled adventure. Shortly after I went up there, they updated the game to start dropping a new token which I've talked about in other posts. These TWEN tokens that were dropping at the time ended up having well over double the market value they have been selling in in more recent times.
Like so many times before I ran over to the Twin Peaks shopping mall and stocked up on some ArMatrix LR-45 (L) guns and some amps. I also swapped out the gear and 5B platting that gear to my gremlin set. As that would be what I'd be thanked for.
It’s been kind of fun to return. I was not expecting to notice quite a massive difference in how I would end up doing at that station in dome 1. I, however, had gained a little more evade and most importantly bought a better ring. These things had quite a performance impact.
To top things off I was also using some stat-boosting skills for things like reload speed and critical damage. I have such a stockpile now of such things from all the Merry Mayhem events I've done. This just felt like a decent time to start using them.
This was also during another period when a few people all started to fly up here and do some hunting. It had been a while since someone last got an Uber loot in Aurli. While someone would almost a week later. It was not going to be me.
The good news at least is that Aluri every time I logged in to hunt where looting a lot better than I was expecting. Well before any market would be included in how the run went. Online numbers were also indicating people were getting a lot more global and bigger ones as well. It seems I just lucked out when I decided to go.
Perhaps one of these times I'll check out another dome. There is a dome with higher level Aurli but with my current weapon and armor, I don’t feel it’s quite fitting to attempt those. I have, however, noticed a lot more players are preferring the other dome.
There are also the Keltin domes. It has been quite a long time since I've hunted any of them as well. This, however, would not be one of those times I went into that part of the space station. I always think to myself when the Aurli is dreadful I'll just go switch to them for a bit but that ended up not being needed.
For my first couple of hunts in dome one, I decided I'd just stay in the middle front. I tried to get a bit further back, but some players were camping back there. Some of them were having a great old time as well with loot from the best I could tell.
I, however, was not that concerned about it. I ended up quickly in that first run while up there hitting a nice pocket of loot. Nothing that crazy at the time in loot. It’s a real shame Dense Plates are not worth much these days.
Like many times before I was hoping to loot some bones and components. They have quite an amazing markup and tend to sell fast as well. The bones are used for making better plates and while I am not saving up any for myself to pay someone to craft some for me. Getting some better 5B plates, in the long run, is quite a nice goal to have in mind.
On these first couple of hunts, I did not loot any of that. What I did loot instead that rather intrigued me was the TWEN tokens. When seeing what they were going for I could not make heads or tails of it. The market data just showed something like 999999%. These tokens are naturally quite low base value so the markup on them was going to be high anyway. I had no idea at the time they would be adding to the total profit overall of my trip up to the station.
I was almost half tempted after I looted a few dozen of these tokens to fly back down the Planet Calypso and place them up for sale. I knew trying to sell them up here at the station was not going to go well. I’d just end up paying a large sum of listing fees due to the high markup and that be.
Sure, I could have just run over to the auction room on Crystal Palace and worked out the math by switching the market to Calypso to see what they were going for. Such logic at the time, however, had escaped me as most of these grinding sessions ended up taking place quite late at night.
This was in part why I just enjoyed sitting not that far into the dome. There are a couple of spots where you won’t get that many adds respawning on you if you have a fast enough kill rate and are willing to move around a bit.
I would often see much higher skilled or armored players themselves sit in strange spots. In those spots, they would get overwhelmed and have up to 5 Aurli attacking them at once. That was a great way to ensure having a massive armor repair bill.
At least this time around I'd avoid finding myself in quite a dire situation with far too many of them attacking. I did mess up a couple of times and found myself almost killing off one Aurli while getting a second to spawn on me. Other times, I'd just navigate myself out of aggression range in time to avoid unwanted situations
Besides, since I'm using a weapon with some decent range on it anyway. I want to take advantage of the maximum range I can and have each of these creatures almost dead by the time they get to me. With all the added reload speed I had as well that was starting to be quite a desired outcome.
Final Thoughts
My first couple nights in my two-week stay ended up being in the green. While I did bring in each time, I went out to a dome more ammo than I tend to do on my hunts. I would not usually be on for more than an hour or two a night if that. These first hunts were more of an “I have a couple of moments” and I made sure to fill them with laser shooting sounds.
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Screenshots were taken and content was written by @Enjar about Entropia Universe.