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!

Open Letter to Mindark

Once in a while I feel the need to express some things publicly. And maybe I will open a support case later and express them directly.

1. We who HEAVILY invested in the Arkadia Moon.... Would have appreciated it if A. You would have waited for the new shares system until AFTER AMD's were tradeable... OR port the AMD's TO the new Shares system so that they might actually sell out and be tradeable finally.

2. The game has a LOT of potential, but only a minimum of it's potential is being reached. I see a lot of improvement as of late, and as long as you keep working towards reaching the full potential of what the game could become, I'd say Entropia's better days are ahead of it still, and not behind it as the case has been for so long.

3. I am still not seeing loot as commensurate to what we are spending / grinding. I have 210K skill points (after some chipping out in the past, I still have 210K now), and I can't get a hunting hof on big OR small mobs. I've had one hunting uber in 12 years. This is not how you retain customers. This is not how you get people to want to grind months long mission chains. Yes people scream about "Pay to Win"; but for crying outloud, when the game costs money to play, what is fair about paying to lose?

4. You need to look at other games that have a space component to it; find the good ideas they utilize in making space so it isn't just a big expanse with nothing to do once you leave orbit. Maybe fill the voids with small asteroids so that you can equip space craft with mining equipment so that these space rocks could be bombed and drilled for ore and enmatter. It would be riskier but you could offset that risk with better odds, you will make it all back anyways when miners have to defend themselves against pirates or other miners.

I am sure there are a lot more ideas to get people thinking... There are so many things that could make the game better for everyone. It is not necessary to make 99% of the player base suffer in order to make the 1% happy. Everyone could be treated fairly and commensurately then there would be much less complaining from everyone on the average.

OH YES, my biggest complaint... I had acceptable loot... Literally until the moment Mayhem went online. Nothing but lose since, and I don't even participate in Mayhem, and when I did I lost even more. I wish Mayhem did not every year punish those players who do not participate. I can't imagine anyone doing extremely well who isn't doing Mayhem and who is actually tracking their loot during Mayhem. Am I in the majority? Am I in the minority? I don't know. But every year it is the same thing. I will not have a good return until after Mayhem goes offline.

After 12 years, while much of the game is still a mystery, and "dynamic" loot can mean anything; somethings are all too predictable. I know if I go spend a year on Atrox or Ambu, I will not uber. I've done it before. I know if I play during Mayhem, I will be broke as fast as I can deposit.

The game is always trying to balance and counterbalance with every update; but there is always an imbalance. Instead of having some developers in a room discussing how to tweak loot, I would say what is wrong with setting up an AI algorithm to balance loot automatically and just let it ride out, certainly it can't do any worse than how loot is distributed all these years already.

I dunno. I've said what I need to say, some of you will agree some of you wont. The point is to get people to think about things in terms they haven't maybe thought of things in, and start discussing them. It is through discussion that things finally will be worked out.

If MA finally gets the game to where much of its potential is finally realized, I will be happy no matter what. It is just the fact so little of its potential is unlocked and untapped, that it hurts to see. It is almost like they are happy with how things are, they make their money, people keep playing thinking there is actually loot somewhere for them, the world keeps turning. But they would make so much more if they would make the game be what it could be, and THAT is what I am pushing for here.

They are the only game in the business, they have no direct competitors. Second Life is almost a joke as for the real cash economy portion of it; yet it has the level of complexity I like to see games have. But as for MMO's running on real cash, MA is the only game in town. I don't know if it is a lack of competition that keeps them unmotivated, but surely the time to strike is when you have the only iron to work, never mind if it is hot or cold.

Smuggler Warehouses

There is very little information available as to the actual mobs, loot, cost to run each warehouse, etc. I think the assumption is that if you can afford to grind say, Wombana through stage VI (which counts whether or not you've bought the smuggler clothing yet or even found the smuggler den; you simply visit them, buy your clothes and tell them you've already completed the task and then you will be granted access to the appropriate warehouse for that mob. Wombana = 1, Navi = 2, Badger = 3, Togolossi = 4).

They likely also assumed if you can handle those mobs with no problem, the instances should be not that bad for you. Well, that is a fairly accurate statement, with exceptions and caveats. 

If you have chipped out any of your dodge and evade at any point in your Entropia career and never replaced it, the bigger boss mobs in the instances will be a pain, and whatever armor was good for the mobs you completed, you will be wanting to have some plates and good healing. You are going to want DPS as well since it is a timed run, plus the faster you drop the bosses the less you will die, and the smaller the revive counter will be. Yes, the incrementing revive timer is the worst invention ever conceived by the swedes.

I have unlocked Warehouse 1 and 3. I unlocked 3 first, because my avatar likes robot hunting, and does the best on bots, always has, probably always will. But even though I was able to drop the level 10 badgers, there was just no way I was going to progress very far on the warehouse 3. So, that's when I decided I need to complete Wombana and open up warehouse 1.

Before I go into details here, I better tell you what I was equipped with. And mind you, I was one of those people who thought "I will just chip out all my hunting and never do it again, stick to things that actually loot for me like mining"... I only got as far as chipping out dodge, evade, and firstaid. I never really replaced those skills, so they are quite low as of this attempt on Warehouse 1 I am going to tell you about. What gear did I have? This is important. If you are this well equipped or better, warehouse 1 will be no problem.

Piron PBR-20 with Fi/Ra/Co Evil; no damage enhancers used. Adjusted Vigilante (full set) without plates. With plates, the boss (Col John) would have been a LOT easier. Or of course more DPS would have been good too. I have 169 Health, and 210K total skill, but only like 2K each of Dodge and Evade though I have 7500 points of BLP Weapons Tech and 7200 of Rifle. (No matter how tempted you are to chip out, don't do it, DONT do it, unless you are truly done.)

What is the difference between the warehouses and ark keys?

Well, Ark Keys you have to craft or buy a key each time you run the instance which it isn't such a big deal as it was in the beginning of Arkadia. Also, just anyone can run them, solo or in a team. I would tend to think the more people able to run an instance the more competition you have for the good loot that remains to be got.

The warehouse, once you've completed the stage VI to unlock it, and have your smuggler clothing and have talked to the smuggler boss; that's it, you've got free access for life for the instance. You can run it as many times as you want any time. The only exception is, there is as of yet no solo option. You have to have a team, and someone has to be on the team, even if they aren't hunting with you, you can't loot mobs or enter the instance without a team and someone on it.

I don't want to go into all of the specifics, certain things I need to keep close to my vest because these certain things have made it worth the couple years it took to grind my missions and get into these warehouses. But I can tell you most of what I have discovered.

There are a lot more multipliers on the loot than on normal mobs in normal instances. It is easier to global, presumably hofs will be easier to get too. Of course the real draw to the warehouses is not the better loot, but rather every kill has a small, a very small, chance of dropping a smuggler armor part. I am hoping I can loot a set, yes it is bound to account, but is that so bad? How many of you have had a full set of uber armor, pawn it or sell it because you are poor and then wish you never did it? What if you could have a set of uber armor that will always be yours and the only cost to you is the TT value it was worth when it dropped which you cannot TT it for?  That's the only way to really look at it... Though I hope these things which are not tradeable in 10 or 20 years might end up tradeable finally. The game has changed so much since I started in 2007, that I would say anything and everything is possible.

I will only say that Wombana are the biggest losing things I ever had to grind. It was COSTLY to unlock the warehouse 1. My only advice if you are going to do the Wombana's first, do not continue if you burn say 100 Peds of your run and have not had a mini at least. My last 10K points of Wombana were a 400 Ped loss to me. But I persisted because the finish line was in sight and I was sick of hunting Wombana. I probably will never hunt another one ever again now.

The first run on Warehouse 1 was a profitable run. I didn't track it closely enough to know how profitable, but it was noticeable. Of the 300 Peds in loot some 40 Ped of it was in the form of Arkoins, and another 40 Ped or so were in the form of weapon attachments (L). The rest was not mostly shrapnel, but had the feel like the old days of hunting loot were back. So, are the warehouses running with the old style loot algorithm? I don't know. But it sure feels like the good old days to me. 

Yes, it is costly to get access to the warehouses. Yes it is a pain to find someone to team with you every time you want to do one. But, in my honest opinion, it is all worth it. I am sure some people will read this and say "Oh my god, the instances are so horrible how could anyone like them." I surely would hope those people are in the minority. I quite probably have had the best hunting of my entire Entropia life in these warehouses. I can't guarantee you will too though. 

Warehouse 1 mobs start out with Level 10, and go up to what Level 30 or 33 with Col. John. I would say if you can take on two or three generation 10 badgers at the same time, Col. John will be no problem. The mobs leading up to him, I dunno, comparable to say young to old Atrox really. No big deal. 

No I do not have any AUD's, so I do not gain by talking you into doing these missions. I do however have AMD's and I will shamelessly ask anyone who has never been to the moon but thought about going, to please go already  (LOL). Seriously though, I need to get serious about this blog again, I still have not found an adequate means to monetize the blog yet, so that leaves me with plugging my own stuff, which is fine.

If you are based in the US and would like the highest quality and most affordable hand-crafted jewelry, please check out my banner at the top of my blog, or go to www. JewelryStoreShop.com. Anyone in other countries who wants anything I sell will have to go to my Instagram at Instagram.com/goldbaronscoinrings and direct message me there with what you are looking for and from there I can list it on eBay or whatever. There is so much red tape to be able to sell on Amazon in other countries, I am working on it, but there is so much red tape I do not know how it hasn't stopped the world from spinning yet.

I have Irish Penny and British Penny coin rings sizes from 7 to 16 for only $19.95 with free shipping! these make great gift ideas, too! They retail elsewhere in perhaps not as good of quality for $30 to $40! (The large, pre-decimal pennies) Also, Morgan Silver Dollar coin rings from sizes 9 through 16 for $79.95 and free shipping! These retail elsewhere from $100 to $200 each! And again, I make all this stuff myself, I guarantee my quality will not be beat, and I have a lot of repeat customers. You don't get repeat customers if you sell substandard junk (unless of course you are Wal-Mart, or Chinese).

I only have a handful of different items right now, but I am going to keep expanding hopefully into the hundreds of items before fall.

My specialty truly is working with Gold, Silver, and Copper, and making rings for people who cannot find large enough rings to fit them. Yes, there are a lot of people out there with size 14, even 16 fingers who simply gave up hope of ever finding rings they like that will fit perfectly. I have excelled at supplying this niche, so if you fall into this category, I especially would appreciate your taking a look at my store.

This is the Goldbaron signing off. Stay tuned for more posts in the near future.

Is the Planet Arkadia Moon going the way of COMPET? No! And proof included!

A few weeks ago I may have said maybe not, give it some time. But now; a lot has changed. People are grinding on the moon, judging by new item discoveries it seems there are smuggler mission chains on the moon too, not to mention the shared loot smugglers are there as well. I do not follow the forums closely at all because there is too much drama, too much whining, too many jerks, let's face it. You and I know it. Everyone knows it. Not worth bothering with. And I am not scared to say it.

So, I find out for myself. As I always have done.

I have 140 moon deeds bought not long after they launched the sale. Since the last major VU, the moon has paid out every day but two it appears. AND! The last couple days I am seeing 2 pecs per deed per day! Will it go higher? It should.

"Are you sure other deeds aren't confusing your numbers?" Yes, 110% positive, I don't own any other deeds.

When the AUD's were paying none or 1 pec a day most times, I can't wait around for a 20 to 30 year return on investment (ROI). Yes it still beats savings account interest at the bank; but if you read the EULA, anything you have in game is NOT an asset. If something happens, if anything happens, if someone working at Mindark just wakes up one day and decides they hate you, with a flick of a switch or whatever their ban hammer looks like, you are out everything. So I suppose one could say it's paying out better than a savings account interest is because of the risk; but if you ask me it isn't commensurate.

At the end of this post you will find two screenshots of my deed revenues for the last few months basically.

Of course the deeds are doing much better lately. And yes, the AMD's are a risk too; but I bought them with the last of my cryptocurrency profits from a year ago. Running $1K to $120K and then not selling and watching it crash thinking it can't possibly go back to where it started, only to find out oh yeah, it not only can but did... I did bail out before it went back to the starting point though; but being up 120K and down not quite that much in the same month? Yeah it hurts. So I got out, did things I absolutely needed to do with what was left. And I figured worst case, in a year or two I will have enough deeds to sell (still waiting on them to be tradeable), and actually not have to worry about depositing for a little while. Given the way loot has been the past year, a very little while. The moral of the story is... Whenever you have a tremendous gain, you need to view it in terms you are familiar with. How bad do you hate your job? How many hours of doing what you hate going to pay for the profits you can take if you don't take them and lose them? In my case, thinking of all the books I would have to write and publish to even come near making that up on the short term. Long term oh yeah no problem, but the problem with money it is only useful in one large pile instead of a bunch of little piles. Think of Archimedes and his give him a place to stand a lever big enough and he could move the world with it. If you have a hundred small piles of wealth, that's just a box of tooth picks. But if you put it all in one pile, just maybe you are talking a baseball bat, or for some of you maybe a telephone pole. It is all about leverage. Even Andrew Carnegie said to put all your eggs into one basket and then watch the basket. Oh, I was watching the basket, but I froze up and yes, I almost always lose every 50/50 wager or decision I've had to make in my life. If I would have flipped a coin and went with the coin toss my life would have been infinitely better. But what the hell. I have too much going on to be bothered with cryptocurrency crazes. I mean, its not dead, but I've been there, done that, I will worry about it when I deal with my current situations adequately.

I absolutely have enough confidence after seeing what the update has done with the moon, to not only hold onto my deeds but acquire more. If any of you were on the fence, you might seriously consider grabbing at least a few. If I have learned anything in Entropia, it is that free peds are awful expensive!

I figure the AMD's in a year or two if Arkadia doesn't drop the ball, could reach 100 peds each, and they could start paying up to 5 or 10 pecs a day. Yes it is optimistic; but if they really do everything right, especially if they can draw the big spenders into doing things on the moon that contribute to the payouts.

And this brings me to another point. I remember just last year or two years ago, Entropia was so dead. You could mine half of Eudoria or Amethera and not see another green dot. Now, all of my secret mining places, even the hardest ones to get to, constantly running into green dots. I generally am not hostile or rude to them; but when you are at New Switzerland, and they run right up to you and drop a probe, of course I am going to give them a free ambulance ride back to the revive. But I am glad to see that just about everywhere you go now there are players doing stuff. I am not sure what happened, it isn't like anyone is running television ads or youtube ads for Entropia; at least if they are I sure as hell am not seeing them. Do you know what the last advertisement I ever seen was? A banner ad! Yes, the most ineffective form of advertising there is. And that was back in 2007 and it was what made me aware of the game and how I got going... Financially I wish I never did see that ad... But, I really do mean this... There's been quite a few of the best people one could hope to know that I have met in Entropia, and several are after all this time, as good of real life friends as one ever would hope to have. Yes, the game costs money. I remember when it WAS pay to win. Now, I am certain enough people bitched and got it changed to just Pay, who cares about winning. So it is pay to lose now. Even so, I am glad to have been able to do it. You can't put a price on the friendships I've gotten out of it.

So many things are different now in Entropia, much of my past blogging may be obsolete, but I know I've said it a few times; let this blog serve as a timecapsule, a witness to forgotten times.

I've got quite a few new posts I want to make soon, and I should keep up a fairly regular pace again. I also want to overhaul the design of the blog, but I just don't have the time.

I am trying to establish my amazon business, if any of you want to take a look at some of the stuff I am making and selling, I registered the domain www.jewelrystoreshop.com and pointed it to my Amazon shop, I do not have a sponsor for this blog, or any advertising really, so its pretty much just my stuff that I get to plug here and there. Sure I've put a banner for my book at the top of the blog page; and yeah, woopdedoo. So, if you want an affordable high quality coin ring, or something and feel like supporting my blog, take a look. I guarantee high quality that won't break the bank, and everyones happy with my work! Business is slowwww though. eBay is dead, and I don't know what the deal is with Amazon; it literally is two different worlds and if one of them is Pluto you know the other is Goofy. I do hope it is appreciated this is one of the few places you can go and not get bombarded by paywalls and pop-unders and all that junk. There aren't enough of you's Entropians around to risk irritating anyways. And yes, I probably still do irritate some of you. No two people can play Entropia and have the same outcomes, or see the same theories actually work when you crunch the numbers on them. The fact you can never make two ends meet, is I feel part of the mechanism behind why they call it "dynamic".

In case you were wondering, yes, there was a class action lawsuit going on against Google over their wrongful termination of adsense publishers to get out of paying them. I was one of those people who were able to make a claim; still waiting to hear what and when, supposedly they had all their hearings and all, but my luck the judge is bought and paid for by Google. If we get anything we will only get the exact amount they owed us when they terminated our accounts; but really, its been like 10 years, there needs to be some compounding interest on that. If you want to see for yourselves how big of a rat Google is, http://www.adsensepublishersettlement.com/index is the home page for the class act suit.

And yes, before I go, here's some pictures of the recent deed payouts. Remember to divide each days payout by 140 to get the pecs per day :)