ARK DEEDS: Paltry Returns or Serious Considerations? A Fresh Look.

Well... I see my 1 pec per day per deed revenue and think wow, thats sad. But... You know what? In the real world, 5% per year is the magic number. If you compound it, and add to it a reasonable amount each month, in 10 to 20 years you will be wealthy. Of course the limited number of deeds available would eventually put a price squeeze on the deeds maybe negating some of the compounding effect...

What I see right now:

Ark deeds are paying about 7.5% to 8% per year in dividends if all things remain the same as they have been the past few days. The past few days I've gotten a pec a day per deed.

I bought my deeds at 47 ped each on caly auction.

There are say 365 days a year more or less.

This means a deed is expected to yield 3.65 peds a year.

If you divide 36.5 cents by $4.70 you end up with 7.76% interest per year.

If they would run big events like that big gold rush event they had a while back, then yeah, you bet we could see even better numbers.

The point here is, if you took the same money and put it in your savings account at a bank, you MIGHT get half a percent per year on your savings. Inflation is up around 3 to 5% in any given year if not more. That is the hidden tax we pay due to our governments forcing us into fiat money. If you can't beat the rate of inflation your savings are LOSING you money. This is why metals are favored as investments in the real world.

No one knows the long term state Entropia will be in. But as long as land owners aren't in a hurry to sell off their estates for any amount of money they can get. As long as the price of CLD's and Ark deeds isn't crashing near zero.. I think in the end these are the indicators as to whether or not Entropia will survive. Those at the top will find out first and if you start seeing EVERYTHING going up for sale at any price, you know the game is doomed. Despite all the "chicken little" predictions that the "sky is falling", I don't see it happening. Too many people have too much to lose if entropia goes under. A lot of money in the game is pretty much in the hands of scammers to be honest with you. The interesting thing about a casino, or a non casino but real cash economy like Entropia, if I show you two dollars, can you tell me which one is honest and which one is dishonest? I suspect those who have in the past perhaps even laundered money through Entropia, I am sure it must happen, would not let such a mechanism as Entropia go away. Somehow there will always be a big enough influx of deposits to save the company.

I will say I do not believe it is being run sustainably right now. MA needs to take a lesson in running a business. Seriously, the CEO needs to have a meeting with Donald Trump and learn how to REALLY run a business, and how to REALLY treat your customers. If all the casinos in Vegas operated the way MindArk does, the whole city would have dried up and blown away by now. When I was a noob, it only took a year or two for loot to really get to averaging out good. Now, it's taking years for the loot to average out to anything meaningful. Instead of the 1K to 2K clicks it once took to have a nice average crafting return, it now takes 10K to 100K clicks to get that same average. If you quit before it averages you've lost everything. If you keep going til you do get it to average out, you could go bankrupt. It is simply too high variance for it to keep players happy.

Yes I got sidetracked... But ok.. I just don't want to see Entropia shutting down, and I hope enough people will continue putting pressure on MindArk to get them to see what they need to do to make it more sustainable so that people WILL be more secure about depositing larger sums into the game.

So, are the deeds worth getting or not? If you get them cheaply enough, and you aren't hurting for peds or cash, then yes, it is better than a savings account. But, the ROI isn't as high as it should be to offset the degree of risk involved. I expect this to change over time, hopefully for the better. The thing is, if you have faith that things will improve, then we are on the ground floor right now. If you think this is the beginning of the end, well, there you have it.

I think back to the good old days when the asteroid was CND. I fully expected Rocktropia to do as well as the asteroid did, because it had seemed Neverdie was better at managing things than Mindark ever was. Of course it seems Mindark loves tying the hands of it's planet partners. This brings me back to an earlier argument, that Mindark is trying to do with the Soviet Union failed to do: centrally plan the entire economy. The loot distributions, what the planet partners can do, is all centrally planned by Mindark. If the game was ran honestly an sustainably, it shouldn't need much central planning at all. They just are not transparent enough for us to know exactly how honest and fair everything is. But the point is, in a leap of faith, I set out to craft every warbond I possibly could firmly believing they would turn into something down the road. I figured I was seeing around the curve. Now who knows... But what I do know is 1. I have made more crafting them than I invested in the mats to make them including all the failed attempts and 2. Not only do I own the Entropialife page on warbonds, but I have many hundreds of peds TT value of them stockpiled waiting for that day that may never come. Even if they turn out to be nothing, I still made peds on them. If I were to TT them all, I guarantee in a few months plans for them would be rolled out. That is how bad my luck is. So I will hang onto them indefinitely. It's like buying penny stocks. You only need one of them to make it and you've got it made.

I hope I've been of some help to all of you. I just wanted to dispell the myth that Ark deeds aren't doing much.

CLD/Ark Deed Trading: A Look At How It Works

If I don't tell you someone else will and I'd rather get the blog traffic!

Some of you have already figured it out and if you are like me then at one time you wondered how it was done... Someone told me they made a ton trading CLD's... Trading CLDs? Really? At the time I had forgotten about the order function at the AH... I wasn't used to deeds being orderable, but they aren't the typical deeds.

You can place an order for CLD's and Ark deeds. I see orders on Ark deeds for example ranging from +41 peds to +45 peds a piece. If you get them at a low enough order, the daily price on Ark deeds ranges from 46 peds to 48 or 49 lately. It isn't a huge spread, but it is possible to carve out some extra peds. Just bear in mind you will have a little over a ped in auction fees when you relist an ordered deed.

If you want to buy many deeds to keep then I'd recommend placing an order just above what the traders are paying that way there won't be enough in it for them to try and outbid you in the orders.

I had several ark deeds for a day. In that day I earned about a pec per deed. Not much. But when you consider that it was a slow day and I didn't see any ark underground hofs to speak of, it wasn't bad at all. I would imagine if they run any underground events again or otherwise have a busy day it might surprise a person what the ark deeds would pay.

The beauty of trading them is, while you own them you own the dividends too. So even if it takes you a week to flip your deeds you are still making something plus your profit from selling them.

CLD's work the same way, just it is scaled up and presumably with larger margins simply because the auction fees must be horrendous on a CLD to relist.

Good luck, happy trading!

Getting More for your TT Food! Auction Advice

While I am doing monotonous things like hunting... Yes, to me it is monotonous... I randomly think of things I don't consciously consider, and then I figure ok now I have something to blog about. Which, is why I am posting now.

A lot of people get a lot more markup for things that otherwise are sold to the trade terminal. The reason this works is because if you need a few pecs worth of a certain ingredient in a huge 10 or 20 ped or more per click craft, it's ok to pay 200% for tt food. If you are dropping several peds per click, or in some cases maybe a ped or two, it won't really affect your outcome much at all. You have two options. Buy in bulk so that you can get it "cheap", but why buy 4,000 ingots of lyst when you need 40 of them? Or buy what you need so that all those peds you would otherwise tie up are free for the main ingredients so you can get more clicks in your run.

So, when you are determining what you can get for smaller lots of "tt food"... Consider when you were crafting. What were you buying and what percentages were you paying for your small lots? Chances are similar lots for similar markups will continue to sell. Convenience is a service. Small lots can be convenient. So, the extra markup is the natural cost incurred by convenience, especially since you still have auction fees to contend with.

The only long term profits tend to come from markups. Not always, but, generally. I know the exceptions are rare but I do know of a very small few. Basically if you can make an extra few peds every hunt, thats an extra few peds you won't have to deposit later.

Go through, write down a list of materials youve bought in small quantities and the price range youve paid for them. This will give you a working guide from which to base future listings on. Certain wools and cloths are good for around 120 to 150% in small lots. Leathers.. Wood... Anything you can't generally do something with.

I hope this gives you some encouragement when deciding what to do with your hunting loot. Good luck!