Attributes and Returns... Conclusion

After studying numerous loot versus deposit statistics that I and friends have gathered... It is the opinion of this Blogger and Entropian that Attributes are the main determining factor in your ability to loot well. Skills obviously impact your abilities to do things efficiently, since you can't economically hunt second entities if your skills don't even allow you to max out an Opalo. However, looking back even to my own instance of starting out from scratch... It took me about a year to get my first global I think. The second was 6 months after that, then another 3 months later... But the key thing here is... The higher my intelligence, and other attributes got, the more regularly I have globals and runs that break even or profit.

All the people I know that regularly uber hof or ATH, have attributes well above the 60's... I've deposited a modest amount over the years, and my attributes aren't as high as I would like to see them, but I know the more you spend and the faster you spend it, the faster your attributes go up. Chipping in and out doesn't affect any of them, EXCEPT your health.

So, with this in mind... You will all hit big hofs. It is only a matter of playing LONG enough for them to roll your way... I have only had one four digit hof in my 5 years on Entropia. I knew EVENTUALLY it had to come, and it was a TOTAL surprise when it did. I cannot for the life of me imagine hitting a 5 digit or even a 6 digit, and should something like that happen I may need an ambulance!

But, I think the whole time that it takes for you to start looting big and looting well, is simply the time it takes for you to hit certain amounts of attributes. Skills don't seem to directly influence your loot as much as attributes. And I've looked over the numbers of dozens of avatars and the information they were willing to let me review.

Of course, I can't prove this, and MA can say anything they want, but I feel very strongly that attributes are the key to doing well. The second part of it is of course to ONLY use items you are maxed on. And if you want to go right into using big guns, the skills are pretty much TT food right now for weapons, so get the skills to be able to max them out... I am pretty sure that the skills will pay for themselves with your abilities to use your powerful weapons with maxed ratings.

I've spent the past several months examining trends and relationships between attributes and loots, and have discovered there are certain ratios that tend to manifest themselves... And if I can make the data more organized and presentable, I will probably gladly make it public via my blog, but for now... Just keep it in your mind and think about it. I may not be 100% right, but I know for a fact I am not 100% wrong either!!!

EU is dynamic. If one thing is changed, any number of other outcomes are changed. Together, all the people playing and doing the things they do, makes up the algorithms that govern how loot is distributed. If everyone were to go back say 10 minutes in time, and do something completely different than they did 10 minutes ago, I am pretty you would not see ANYTHING happen the same the second time through. It is a complex universe that we play in.

I really don't believe all theories are completely wrong, rather that some are more true than others at one time or another. MA probably modifies things from time to time so that when a theory is right on the money, it will end up appearing false so people will form new theories... So my own theory is, perhaps MA changes how things work from time to time just so no one cracks the system.

I think I have rambled enough for now, but I look forward to bringing you all some new and exciting posts to read! Thanks so much for making this blog a success... We've just passed 25,000 views!!!

Mining Research: Mine for Ores, or Enmatters, or Both at once???

It would seem that the more confusing MindArk makes elements of the Entropia Universe, the more money people will lose before they figure out what they are doing wrong. This was almost me being the victim again. Fortunately, I have been able to reproduce my results. Not saying it's going to be 100% right. Fact is, you could be most opposite of my conclusion and still manage, in even a small remote possibility, of hitting two towers on one drop. That doesn't prove I am wrong, that only proves you are lucky to the tune of one in many billions. There is always room for an exception to occur. But let's make luck the rule rather than the exception, shall we?

By stretching your ped roll as long as possible, you give yourself more chances at hitting a home run. If you spend wrecklessly, you actually get fewer chances at a jackpot. What we are all about here is the law of large numbers. The more you do something, the more likely you will succeed. Many times playing Video Poker, I have literally hit a straight flush or four of a kind on my last 25 cents. If I would have missed one proper play. If I would have accidentally thrown out a pair of jacks or kings, I would not have had the stake to make the last bet that ended up winning me enough to keep playing and come home a winner. It is the same way here. If you spend wrecklessly, you may go broke before your jacpot comes along. That is why what I am telling you here is important.

So...

Yesterday's test involved a Finder 105, two Level 2 Finder Amplifier, two Level 3 Finder Amplifier... And a few hundred peds in probes. I spent most of it mining in the same general region.

For the first three amps, I burned up a level 2 light searching for both ores and enmatters. That was something like 100 peds or so spent, my return was eh, 70 peds with markup. Not tooooo bad, but my average finds were level III and IV. It just didnt seem like I was getting anywhere.

I went on to a Level 3 amp. I probably recovered 25 or 30 peds on that one, again doing both.

I did my last level 2 light, and again right around 50% return. Mining for both.

I realized some things of importance. First, by bombing for both, if you don't increase your mining run to account for the extra cost in mining for both, you are actually cutting your possibilities of hitting a hof or a global. By mining for both, you are dropping 1/3rd less bombs total. That is 33% less possibilities at hitting something big.

Second, I realized that my Prospecting is level 23, and Surveying is around level 17 or so. It made me realize that there is such a large gap that my surveying skills would be giving me less of a return than my prospecting skills, lowering my average return. To this time, I was still only pulling average of V's, thats even with a Level 3 amp too.

So I decided ok. I am going to burn the entire last amp just mining Ores. It will give me more drops, and more chances to get some peds back. Also, my prospecting skill gave me confidence, it's one of my highest skill sets, if not the highest.

I started hitting VIII's all over the place. Almost every bomb hit. Gazzurdite, Cobalt, Durulium... Azzurdite... 10 points extra credit if you can identify where I was mining just by those resources :) Towards half way through, I hit a 155 Cobalt I think it was. I didnt mine it right away, figuring if I am on a warm cycle, I will keep mining. I only extracted my smaller claims. Then, I hit a 65 ped Durulium I think it was. Two globals on one amp... I dont usually do that, but considering the heavy losses I suffered the previous three amps maybe the servers were balancing out my losses for me... BUT... Fact is...

1. Average claim size went up a great deal.
2. By sticking to my highest skill, I got the best return.

I speculate that if your Surveying and Prospecting are more closely matched then you should comfortably be able to mine for both, though I recommend any time you mine for both, you want to extend your budget by 33% to give you the same chances of hitting something good accross the board.

So out of 500 peds, I came out with around 600 to 700.

Now today, I am again mining just ores. I have hit a 50 ped blausariam... My initial finds were far and few between, but I ended up with a 40 ped gain after running through half a 102, not light that is.  So 150 ped run yielded 190 with markup. I am now off to finish my other half of the run and see if my findings still hold true!

Good luck and happy mining!

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UPDATE!!!
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I just concluded the second half of my run.

Another global on Cobalt of 68 peds I think, and a level XII gazzurdite one or two stones away from a global.  I ended the second half of my run which cost around 150 peds (Whole level 2 run takes around 300 peds without markup), second half ended at about 200 peds. A rough gain of about 50 peds.

The whole time I was mining in one region. I haven't moved areas all day. I want to do another amped run and see if I can work up into a hof, but I gotta get my nerves to calm down first! I need my peds to keep going up because there's so much I want to do. But mining is my strongest profession. Crafting used to be, but I chipped up my prospecting and I think that pushed my tendency to be a good miner even higher. Still I have never had a hof over three digits. And that was 908 I think gazzurdite with a OF 105 and a OA102 (which if you want to convert into the new amp system, a 103 is equivalent to an OA102), second biggest hof was crafting at around 500 and some I think it was. I have yet to hof on hunting, but I am still working at it!

I think whatever you do the most is going to be your best profession. Although I do a lot of hunting and crafting, my avatar STILL wants to be a miner!

Perception: What I've Learned About The Skill

Perception has been a useful skill gain. It tells me something is nearby. It could be anything. But generally, most of my globals are accompanied by a Perception gain. Some people argue there is no connection. But it seems that Perception really means there is something that your avatar sees that is beyond your radar range... In many cases, I notice that if you keep going the direction you are going when you get the gain, you will sometimes see, or find, what your Perception gain was from. In many cases, it turns out there is another avatar just a little further than I can detect on Radar, which lends credibility to this.

But it isn't limited to stuff above ground. I surmise that it is as easily indicative of something on the ground, in the ground, maybe in the air, who knows. But it indicates to me there is some change up ahead that my Avatar perceives.

I guess the bottom line is, it tells us something, but it can be anything. Doesn't mean it is not useful, but you will have to play around with it and see what you observe. In my case, sometimes another person is up ahead, or someetimes the mining gets better, or sometimes it is a mob, other times a REALLY BIG MEAN MOB! So it is plausible it means something is there. There is just no knowing until you see it for yourself or find it.

Metallurgy Skills and Prospecting: What it means to you!

How many of you craft AND mine? How many of you have checked your mining skills and wonder why it shows "Metallurgy" "1"... I learned accidentally that Metallurgy is in fact a mining skill used in prospecting, that you do not gain through prospecting or mining! In fact, you only gain it by working with metals, i.e. crafting metal components.

If you wish to skill up in prospecting while crafting, you may want to making something very cheap (in terms of markup) such as Basic Screws, all they take is Iron ingots, and Iron is pretty much TT food right now, which coincidentally the screws basically are too. This is good for skilling, because it means you are not losing your markups from only getting TT food as a loot. It is possible to craft something with higher markup ingredients only to sell it at a big loss or end up holding it for so long waiting for it to sell that you can't do anything with your PEDs tied up.

My other favorite metal component to craft is Basic Sheet Metal... The reason is, it has a very high demand, since all those OA 101 lights and I believe the OA 101's require generous amounts of BSM per click. So, the markup is usually very nice on it, but my advice is, never to sell it for the orders. I have always been able to get 10 to 20 points higher markup listing it for a buyout higher than the order prices, and this is almost always needed to get a good return on the metal unless good residue drops are hit.

The reason I want to point out Metallurgy... I found my returns from mining actually went up over time as my Metallurgy skills did too. It wasn't until I had a decent amount of Metallurgy that I actually hit my first level XX deposit, 904 peds of Gazzurdite, maybe it was 906 or 908, I can't remember exactly, but I know it was one of those three. And last I checked on entropedia, Metallurgy had a decent size impact on prospecting... You know how they show the chart with the % effect each skill has on your overall prospecting.

I just find it helpful to do one thing that affects many things, in this case, crafting can help your prospecting too! I hope someone finds this helpful... And if not, well, stay tuned, I will bring you every tip and trick I know of! Thanks for reading!

What you need to know about Skill Implants

Here is something I wish I would have paid more attention to when I first started in Entropia Universe. You start out with only one skill point in each skill. The lower your skill, the cheaper it is to buy skill implants to increase your level. The higher your level, the more costly your per point increase when you buy a skill implant.

Let me explain better... Say I have 1 point of prospecting... And that I am looking at a prospecting implant with 1,000 skills on it. When I buy it and insert it, I should get about 950 to 1001 skills, not sure of the exact numbers, but I just want to explain the principles of why it's cheaper to buy skills early on... If I have 1000 skill points, and I buy a thousand skill implant, it might give me around 1500 skill points after putting it in. So each point has less of a effect the more you have.

But when you have say, 3000 skill points, adding a 2,000 skill point chip would give you around 3300 points at the end. You have diminishing returns and increasing costs. If you wish to skill, I recommend doing it at the beginning when it is cheapest.

But you can also chip out. You should look at my previous post with the links... Information on ESI sizes needed and how much skills they hold, and their values is there. Suppose an ESI has a markup of 700%... Your 50 ped ESI TT value, would cost around 350 PEDs. If you add a skill that is selling for 3000% to it, you have a TT loss of about 10% from chipping out, so you might end up with say 45 ped TT implant of the profession you chipped out. 45 X 30 = 1350 PEDs. 1350 - 350 means you will pocket about 1000 peds of your skills you sold.

Of course a 50 ped implant is quite large.

On smaller amounts of skills, the values are lower, and your gains are less significant.

A more detailed explanation of skills will come in a little while... But I wanted to give you a basic understanding of how they work, and keep it simple. Stay tuned for more great info!

Entropia: Helpful Links You Should Know

I have ran into a lot of Entropians who still don't know a lot of the best places to get information they need. A lot of things in Entropia Universe seem to have a high degree of confusion, such as how big of a skill implant do you need to cash out 2500 skill points? Or, how big of an implant do you need to go from 2000 prospecting to 3500 prospecting? Then you have times when you need to find out every possible item you can manufacture with the resources you have on hand.

A lot of things are learned by trial error, which for most Entropians is expensive to do, so fortunately there are those who have tried, and sacrificed, but have been nice enough to share their information and research with us all.

Because it is an important matter, I wish to share these useful resources so that you may have a more pleasant experience in Entropia.

http://www.entropedia.info/... A must visit. They have a full Wiki on everything. They have a database of all ores, enmatters, materials, blueprints, skills, every last thing you could need to look up can be found here. Even a complete list of mobs, and their common loots, and even where you can find them. They even have maps that you can select what you want to find, whether it be an ore, or a mob, and it will show you the reported areas on a map!

http://www.entropiabay.com/... Their numbers are off on markups, but other than that, is a free alternative to the auction house. And they have an inventory calculator, just copy and paste all your items from your account list when you log in at http://www.planetcalypso.com/ and it will tell you what your value is before and after markup.

http://www.entropiatracker.com/ is a must visit too.. They use Optical Character Recognition to provide real time global and hof stats. It tracks each item, each ore and enmatter, each mob, what globals and hofs they have had... Their average loots, highest loots, total for that day, the times they were hit. A lot of patterns can be studied and perhaps theories derived. But importantly, it tracks each persons hofs and globals, so it keeps a running record of everything you hit :)

http://www.entropiatools.com/numchips.php If you wish to ever chip out your skills, this tells you how many skills will fit on a certain TT value chip. If you have say, 5000 skills, and you wish to sell 2000 skills, you would go to the 2000 skills on the chart, and it would tell you the smallest chip you can use to hold 2000 skills would be 11.64 TT... The more skills on a chip, the disproportionately higher the TT value goes. Likewise, it tells you if you want to buy a 5,000 skill point chip, the TT value of implant to look for! I will make a post soon about how chipping works, so you can get the most out of it.

And last but not least, http://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/ .

There are more great sites, but you can find their links within the pages I've given you. These are probably the most important of them.

Stay tuned for more posts coming soon!!!

Welcome to my Entropia blog!

There are a lot of people wondering where the best places to mine what are, or what items they should craft, what skills to focus on... I am here to help. I have been an Entropian since summer of 2007... Hard to believe my avatar will be four years old :( Time goes by so very fast.

I have done a lot, I have tried a lot. I have experimented with theories. I have studied statistics. I have successfully been in profit mode numerous time... But like all of us do, I get greedy from time to time and want to go big or go home... I have not hit it big on there yet.

I am not perhaps widely known in EU yet, as fame has not reached me. However, I have done some trading part time as well... And if you must know, my identity in EU is Goldbaron Goldbaron357 Maximus. Goldbaron is a nickname I've always used since I am a real life gold prospector... Yes, I have caught the gold fever, and one of the main attractions to Entropia is the fact it is a real cash economy, and one that I can mine all year round in regardless of the weather, though it is nothing like actually being out there and finding real gold! My gold prospecting blog if it interests you is located at http://goldbaron.blogspot.com/.

I plan to post anywhere from two to four times a week, depending on what material I have to bring to your attention. I don't want to go for quantity, I just want to have quality. Information that you can depend on.

As for hunting on Planet Calypso, my advice is, DONT. I have several thousand peds worth of crafting and mining globals and hofs, but despite hitting levels in the 20's for weaponry from hunting, I have but one global hunting and it was only a 50 some pedder. As compared to a level XX gazzurdite on TI North a couple years ago, which gave me 904 peds in TT value. That is my biggest hit to date. Don't let my small numbers fool you though. I would rather hit constant profits than to hit a few big finds in between big losses.

Over the next couple days expect new posts from me, in an effort to get this blog underway, and attract some readers.