Crystal Palace shares, New Mission System, and more...

I should be bringing you updates more regularly here... I very much am grateful for all of you who take the time to visit my blog. Much of what has long since been posted is now obsolete just due to the fact there were so many massive overhauls to so much of the game; but I leave it all posted in the hopes that it will bear witness to what was a glorious golden age of Entropia years gone by.

That said, we seen a lot of BAD changes the last several years. I am pleased to report I am now seeing POSITIVE changes. What am I talking about? Well ok, then... I know you are thinking "positive changes? in Entropia??! What's this guy on!?" But seriously, yes there are some positive changes.

NEW MISSION SYSTEM: From what I see, EVERY mob now offers missions and rewards; you will have to likely track down the button from the action library and add it to your keyboard or GUI yourself. A lot of good mobs suffered from lack of hunting missions. Now, even the miner bots have missions! I just wish they had some loot again like the old days. You can let the rewards pile up, just have to hit claim as many times as your rank increased for that mob, and pick from a wide variety of rewards. Might be a good opportunity to push for that new level that you always wanted, or fill up your lower skills so you can catch up on what you are lacking in.

What is so good about this system? For those of you who were around a while before the new system came online; you probably have a ton of unfinished iron and bronze challenges. Well, this is one thing they did right: while you are trying to climb the ranks of the new mission system, your progress still counts for the old missions too. But I am told once you complete the old mission and finish it, that's it, its done. But you effectively will end up with double the rewards for the same amount of grinding. I know, some people don't like change, but, I am sure you were complaining about something before it got changed, so, at least now you will either be happy or more upset! But at least it isn't the same old thing.

CRYSTAL PALACE SHARES: I absolutely do NOT like Mindark deciding to roll out the new shares system to sell the shares in Crystal Palace, which I am told all 500K shares sold out within days of the update; when the old system still had tens of thousands of Ark Moon Deeds going unsold. I did send suggestions to MA, and I don't know if they helped, but I see that the robot pets are awarded for buying deed packs. I don't know how many AMD's we have left to sell before we can trade, and I wouldn't put it past MA to hold just ONE deed out just to keep us from being able to trade them on the AH... Well after having so many for so long now, you kind of worry about that kind of thing happening. Waiting, and waiting, and waiting. The moon has a lot of potential; but I think loot needs better balancing, no ones going to bother making the trip if they already know its going to be a money sink. There needs to be better rewards for risk. Low or no multipliers doesn't cut it.

We can now buy and sell these shares in Crystal Palace by right clicking on the PED card and clicking on the shares system, and then highlight the necessary tab and the entry for Crystal Palace and click buy, and you are free to buy however many you can afford of what is available. Last time I looked, they were purchasable for around 19.7 peds each. For those who like a little trivia, with 500K shares, valued at almost $2 each, that makes the fair market value of Crystal Palace around $1 million dollars. As long as something doesn't go wrong at CERN and wipe Sweden off the planet, we are ok, right?

I do not know what they pay out but they gotta be better than AMD's... Not that I want to knock the AMD's... Please folks, hurry up and buy them so we can trade them already. You can dollar-cost-average them after the prices crash on the free market. Seriously though... I think the Moon will have a bright future, just, that's the problem. We need it to happen sooner than later.

MARKUPS AND TRADING: There are some interesting things going on with the markups on certain items. I won't specifically mention anything, but there is indeed hope that things are improving based on what I am seeing.

SURVIVABILITY: My biggest problem the last couple years has been no matter what I looted or how much markup I got out of it, it was impossible to survive no matter what I did or didn't do. I have this week, survived hunting and amped mining on 500 peds. Yes, for almost a whole week I've played on 500 peds. Before, I'd be lucky if that lasted a couple hours. So I get the feeling some rebalancing is being done, and I feel like things are going back to being a little more equitable. Afterall, if we can't survive to enjoy playing, why bother even to deposit? Just maybe they have figured this out. But, yes, Crafting does seem rather busted still.

MISCELLANEOUS: There may be a lot of things I am not aware of that I should be aware of, but I do not frequent the forums. The forums are full of smug elitists who think the world revolves around them and I just don't have time for that. At least here I am reporting what I directly observe and experience.

Good luck, and I will probably have more to post soon!

ADVICE: The Importance Of Tracking Where Your Peds Go

The surest way to lose money in any venture is to not keep track of your income and expenditures. You should track how much value your equipment has before you start a run. Write down how much ammo or probes you buy. Then, when you are all done hunting or mining, write down what you sold your loot for.

By taking a look at where your peds went, and your profits or losses, you will soon understand that you aren't doing as bad as you thought, or maybe you are doing worse than you thought. If the latter is true, then you should make necessary changes: i.e. more eco weapons and armor.

Over the course of a 200 ped hunt or mining run, if you lose only 5 or 10 peds you do well, and especially if mining, 5 or 10 peds can easily be made up by getting even one more ped out of each stack of resources you sell. Always try to get the best markup you can.

If you don't keep track of your results, it is much harder to make up for losses when you don't know what they are, or where you can cut back your expenses at. The more economic your equipment, the closer you will be to breaking even on every run.  And soon, you will be broke and wonder where your peds all went.

The other benefit to keeping track of your results, is that over time you will have enough data to construct a chart or graph which will easily show how much of the time you are on a down cycle and how much of the time you are on an upcycle. Many would argue this information is unimportant, but ideally, you want to do something as long as you are on the upside of it, and when it heads down, do something else.

It is very easy to waste peds if you don't track them. I think you will notice you do a little bit better if you do take notes and watch your finances in the game like a hawk. Stretch all you can out of every pec. Even if you only save enough to make one more click at the crafting terminal, that one more click might be what hofs you. I've seen it happen, even with my avatar. In real life it's happened to me so many times. Get down to my last 5 nickels on a poker machine and either hit four of a kind or straight flush. That actually happened four times in one session to me. I couldn't believe it! But believe it. The crappier your luck is, the more unusual the good luck will be when it finds you!

ADVICE: How Much Should You Deposit?

Money is a lot like manure... It does little good in small amounts.

If you are just starting out, I recommend a $10 or $20 deposit,, it will get you your weapons, basic armor, and enough ammo for you to keep going quite a while on. Mining, it should last a long time too under normal circumstances. I made it 6 months on my first $10!

But, if you are wanting to do some serious mining... I recommend $100 to deposit. If you take 1000 Ped, and say you mine with that... You are going to have a less volatile result by the time you are done than if you only did 100 ped mining run. Quite honestly, you should hof or at least global by the time you are through that 1000 Peds.

I think I will never again deposit less than $50, because for me, 500 peds eliminates most of the volatility that bankrupts me with smaller deposits. You will either have a really good run, or a really bad run with just a few peds. With a lot of peds, you will tend to have a good chance of both the good and bad times, but the good times are good enough to get you past the bad times and survive to see good loot again.

If I deposit $20 at a time like I have been doing, it's a 50/50 chance if I go broke or not. But in all cases, if I start with say 500 peds, I can play for weeks. It just gives more chance that you will survive a given cold streak to have a bigger deposit.

I guarantee the smaller your deposits the more frequently you will deposit (and the greater the sum of the deposits) than if you make just one bigger deposit.

What Survivability Means

I have spent the past 8 years or more of my life playing and learning all I could about Video Poker. There is not a whole lot Entropia has in common with Video Poker. But there is one thing of great importance which I've hinted about in my earlier posts. Survivability.

Every statistical action in the world has results that are never predictable with 100% accuracy. In some cases, we know the mathematical probabilities that govern certain outcomes, and can thereby know our odds and if the risk is worth it. In Video Poker, I can tell you that a jacks or better paytable showing 9for1 on full house and 6for1 on flushes will return 99.5% over the long run, IF PLAYED PROPERLY. This is where the professional is able to actually make a profit where the casual players don't care or don't know, and lose a lot more.

If you play video poker properly, you can survive the cold cycles long enough to see it warm back up and start paying good again. If you miss a few proper plays, it can cost you a few hands on the end of your session. Those very few hands can make or break your entire session.

Entropia, there is no way to tell you the long term payback. Only Mindark knows this, and only they know how it is calculated (it's probably better that way LOL)... First lesson is though... Say you put $10 in a nickel machine and play 1000 hands. That's 5,000 nickels you wagered. You only got 4,800 nickels back. So even though you lost 100% of your bankroll, you got a 96% return. See, people fail to realize that those credits you are recycling ARE part of your return.

In Entropia, if you want to know your % return, you are going to have to track everything you spend on Decay, Ammo, etc, and track every pec you get back in loot. You might be doing extremely well but you won't realize it becuase losing a few percent at a time even, will grind a small bankroll into oblivion in no time.

If you have a large pile of peds, you will do much better. It will be much harder to go completely broke, and it will give you less volatility so that you may survive to see a hof that will greatly correct your losses. On a small pile of peds, you have a much greater chance of going bankrupt before you even see a global.

Too many times I am guilty of being a cheapskate, putting in $20, and losing it in a few days, and then i'll put in another $30, and then maybe a couple more deposits after that. What I should have done was just put my $100 in and not worry about it. At least by the time you cycle a full 1000 peds, you should have most of it back in loot by the time you reach the end of the run.

But you have to discipline yourself not to waste, not to lose faith in the law of large numbers. I had about 30 NRF's in a row on TI north recently, and it corrected with an XI. But what happens if you run out of bombs without hitting anything, but had you kept going, the correction would have been a XV, or a XX?

Three times I have had my very last hand in Video Poker result in Straight Flushes for 250 credits or Four of a Kinds worth anywhere from 125 to 800 credits depending on the variations im playing.Yes, it is a long shot to say my last bomb is going to save my run. Yes it is a long shot to say my last hand will be a Royal Flush. But the longer you can play, the better the odds of it being possible.

I hope this helps some of you better understand what a great return really means and why getting a great return can still mean you lose.That is why getting the most markup you can out of your resources is paramount to anything else. This is what bridges the gap between a 96% payback and a 101% return.