ARCTIC Part 2: The Thing Conclusion... Tips

Well... After many hours I finally made it through The Thing quest, and got my arctic helicopter.

I am still not an expert with this quest despite how long it took me. Here are the following issues I ran into:

1. I cannot find any storage terminals in the Arctic. So, DO NOT LEAVE YOUR VEHICLES SPAWNED WHEN YOU LOG OF. They get returned to storage, and NOT to Rocktropia storage either! So I had lost my Arctic Truck to storage. Without it, you are going to have a hard time getting through all of the things gathered along the path to the exit point. It quite possibly may take a trouble ticket with MA to get your truck back if you lose it.

2. When you enter the refueling base, you basically keep to the right, and there is a large building, and a smaller building kind of close to the satellite receiver. Don't worry about fixing this satellite, theres no terminal on it. Instead, you have supply and repair terminals on the side of the buildings there. Inside the smaller building is a hole in the floor that you are to drop down and you will find underground tunnel with Things all over.

3. It does appear that your Armor works from Calypso. My shogun was doing an admirable job, but that could just be from my defensive skills who knows. Supposedly only the arctic armor should work, but who knows really. In any case, the Things are very tough despite being level 7. These aren't the 1 shot 1 kill level 7s of Rocktropia. It took about 20 shots with my breer M3A to kill one. The shotgun you get from the supply terminal is powerful, but it was a 50/50 if I died or not while killing one. And if you get more than one attacking you you are better off to run for it unless you are uber. So if you plan to do the thing, BRING SOME POWERFUL WEAPONS AND THE APPROPRIATE AMMO!

4. You must reach the escape point from underground. There is no way to complete the mission above ground, believe me, I tried. Upon escaping you are at the surface next to a base. You will receive further instructions by Radio, and then it just gives you your Helicopter and says thank you for playing, and more episodes coming in the future. So it does appear that they will be expanding the Arctic.

5. MINING IN THE ARCTIC: You cannot buy bombs there. BUT you can drop them! Though all I found so far is Lyst and Oil but I did use the crafting terminal in the refueling base, and ran a small profit on standard dampers with the mined Lyst and Oil. Just bring everything you think you need and maybe even some things you don't think you need.

If you are not wanting to spoil the spirit of The Thing, and juse use all Arctic gear, that's fine, and I can respect the ambition of that, but you might want to go with friends since it will be helpful to have a team in dealing with all the Things.

Please see Arctic Part 1 in case you missed it for tips on getting through the first half or so of the mission.

Limited Armor vs Unlimited Armor

There is debate on which is better... Limited or Unlimited...

Experience and research has shown to me that  the decay is much slower, a LOT slower on most limited armors versus equivalent unlimited armors. Notice the durability numbers... The lower the durability the faster it will decay. L armor has insanely high durability.

Sure, Unlimited can be repaired.... But is wearing your armor out four or five times faster any more efficient than paying a few hundred percent markup on a good armor and having it last forever? :-) And if you pick the right armors, you can actually get far more value and use than you would out of an unlimited armor.

People make the excuse "My armor might break in battle"... Hmmm... I've never had a piece of L armor long enough to wear it out! That's how durable the stuff is!!! But you just keep an eye on your condition, and when it gets close, purchase replacements.

L also has the benefit of keeping more peds in players pockets, versus just dumping the peds straight into the repair terminal and into MA's cybernetic oblivion, since we don't know WHAT their percentage goes to them and what percentage goes to the loot pool... And I maintain there IS a "loot pool" because if they awarded more loot than peds were spent in the game, then we would have uber inflation like all the free MMO's have because millions of game dollars is what you have in a POOR PERSONs account... You would have lots of people running around with lots of peds! Not true in EU! Sure, there are "millionaires" in Entropia... But not hundreds of thousands of them like in other games! :-) This is reflective of a sustainable system that X amount spent - Y amount equals the amount of Loot that goes into the loot pool, Y being MAs cut. Sure, I can;t prove it, but the evidence does not indicate an oversupply of peds!

See, buying L armor supports the crafters, who in turn buy from the miners and hunters. Sure, we can buy UL items, but if a crafter sells to one person, they won't sell the same piece of armor to them again unless it is sold by the owner and needs to be repurchased later, or is accidentally TTed. L armor will eventually wear out and then it is no longer in the game and a new one has to be produced.

I think if you pencil it all out, it will become obvious in most cases that the extra markup on L items is still more cost effective than buying a UL version and having to repair it, considering the faster decay rate.

But then there is the argument that the more peds you spend the faster, the bigger and better globals and hofs you get... This seems to be true, I mean, look at what people hit with OA 109,s but they are dropping 10 peds TT per bomb drop too..  I would assume it works with armor and ammo and weapons while hunting...

If you are trying to hunt economically, my experience is Limited is better. If you want something you can repair, and don't care about the decay, and expect it will improve your loots, then you will most likely want UL.