Hey everyone,
I just started playing Entropia Universe again and wanted to share my experience, as well as tips for new players who want to play for free.
For those who do not know what it is, EU is a game with a real cash economy which allows you to deposit and withdraw money, which is converted at a stable rate of $1 USD to 10 PED. You can in theory make a profit but playing the game consumes your ammo or materials so you slowly lose over time unless you are lucky. The only way to really be successful is through trading. And you can profit this way but it is very competitive and requires lots of patience and planning. You can combine trading with hunting, mining and crafting, or just trade.
You can play for free by collecting sweat from animals and selling it to other players. You can also collect fruit and oil which you can sell too. Sweat is used for crafting which is a big part of the game.
Sweat is bought in quantities of 1K(1000). You can sell it quickly for 1.2 PED / K, but if you are patient you can get up to 2 PED / K.
The amount of sweat I can gather in one hour is currently about 500 (so half a K) on average.
It does vary a lot: if the animal hits you- you don't get any, your attempt may not be successful and on a successful attempt you get between 1-4 sweat. Getting the evade skills up really helps which is what I am trying to do. You can also sweat in a group so the animal hits you less often.
What is the maximum you can get? I estimate around 700-800 per hour, although some claim to get 1K per hour, I am skeptical.
So lets use 800 as a max. So we get 8K per day if we collect sweat for 10 hours per day. And if we are very patient(could take days or even weeks) we can sell this at 2 PED/K. So in theory you could make 16 PED / day ($1.6 USD). It is not going to make you rich but will enable you to start playing and trading and make some profit.
The value of sweating also depends on your electricity bill. Don't forget to consider that. And your time too of course. Which leads me to an important point. Where you sweat matters. most of the sweaters are found on Boreas outpost on planet Calypso. Because this is the starting planet for most people and has the biggest economy. You can almost always find a group here to get a good amount of sweat per hour, however the mobs have low HP (important note, the sweat an animal contains is directly proportional to its HP). So this means these mobs with low HP lose sweat fast and you need to target another one every minute or so. The "Kerberos" animals at Boreas have around 100-300 HP and lose sweat fast because of the groups.
A much better place to sweat is at Studio Gate on planet Rocktropia (in screenshot above)
The "Hater" mob here has 300 HP and can be sweated solo as it does a low amount of damage and does not hit you too often. So you can just start sweating it and go AFK and come back 15-20 minutes later to get a new one. The low effort is what really makes this worth it.
Another great place to sweat is Ancient Greece area on planet Next Island. The "Bullman" mob has 140 HP and there is usually a group there. I like to collect sweat on Next island especially because there are new sweating missions which you can see in the screenshot below.
My goal is actually to skill up my evade enough to sweat the Cyclops mobs on Ancient Greece which have up to 240 HP and even higher versions with other names, but I don't know what evade is like at this level. You can also see my LARA pet next to me. I can not use its abilities unless I feed it(which costs PED) but it seems to be free to just spawn it and have it follow me around, which I really like.
Below you can see my blueprints and there is one which consumes sweat on the left. In the middle you can see the Entropia Exchange which allows you to invest in shares/deeds which pay you regularly. Although you must also try and buy them at a low price. And they are all different.
The economics of these shares/deeds is a whole separate article on its own so I won't go into more details here. Just thought I would give a preview of what it is in the game.
What is new since I returned? The UI is the main thing I notice. It is a lot more flat and modern looking, which I like. Space also had some great updates. They removed the 2 PED landing fee on planets. It costs half the fuel to travel (only about 1 PED now from planet to planet). And there is a space mining thing too which I want to try. Also most of the planets have added new missions which I make a separate post about if you are interested. I am very optimistic about the future of the game, they seem to be always adding new content and it is very unique, I have not played any other game like it.
I actually withdrew and sold everything when I stopped playing before and now I returned as a free player. I am doing a bit of hunting and crafting and missions, enjoying myself in general. If one day I can withdraw a small bit of profit I will be happy. The key to this game is not being greedy. Chasing big profits and short term gains is how most people lose. Also my rule is not to sell anything to the trade terminal if its Markup value is over 110%. Basically all the items and materials have a "TT value" in PED which the terminal gives you, and a Markup value which players will pay for it. There are some exceptions of items which can not be sold but most stuff can.
One more important tip for new players, players who are pirates can shoot you down in space and steal your stuff. So be careful not to bring loot in space, or use a warp. Yes you can also become a pirate and profit by shooting players and taking their stuff, but pirates are not loved in this game and if you get a reputation for it, you may find that players refuse to trade with you, talk to you etc. But it can be fun and it is a legitimate part of the game. There are lots of other aspects of the game I could talk about but I will leave it there for now.
Let me know if you have any questions or want me to go into more detail about anything.