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!