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.

ARCTIC PT 1: I Begun The Thing Quest: TIPS

I just wanted to give you a few tips for starting the Thing Quest...

1. You get to be either a Scientist or a Soldier. The Soldier gets to use the Assault Rifle to begin with, and the Scientist gets to start with the 9mm pistol. It's not as bad as it sounds though... Even though the weapons are weak, the mobs aren't very hard to kill.

2. You have to do everything in the proper order or you will confuse the Quest system. It's not too bad.. But for instance when going to the first satellite receiver, don't TP chip or otehrwise cheat, actually walk down the road to it!

3. When you arrive at the next base after getting your vehicle, you have to turn on the power generator. This requires a level 1 access card but I have not yet found it. I do not know if you have to loot it from a mob or actually find it... However... You can right click and operate the parked vehicles in the bases. Some of them will have things stashed in them to find like Ammo and etc. There is one vehicle that is locked, but I do not know if it is possible to break into it or not, and part of me thinks that the access card may be found inside it, but I dunno if they put that much complexity into the quests to where they would make you pick your way into a vehicle to find something.  UPDATE: Continue south through this base, almost to the next satellite dish, you will see a vehicle. THIS vehicle has the access card.

4. The freebies you get amount to a couple peds probably, including the fap, weapon, ammo... But you may purchase the shotgun, assault rifle, and additional pistols at the terminals attached to the various buildings.. And the ammo.. The shotgun is fairly powerful to be honest, it packs more of a punch than the sollomate opalo...  But they are limited so you can't repair them. So if you like them, and leave, stock up while you can.

5. What is the sequence for the power generator?
Reduce power to Beta.
Increase power to defenses.
Increase defenses again.
Increase cooling.
And you want the 13/20 split on last one.

ROCKTROPIA: How To Get The Cell Phone

Please see the post that came before this for getting your CND pass... This one deals with getting your cell phone.

You have to talk to Frankie on the top patio walkway. You then have to talk to one of the gals dancing on Level 2, forget her name. Actually you might want to talk to her first since it seems to start the cell phone quest. Then, you have to talk to Trey up on level 3 in the lounge. He gives you a tour of the town you must go to the waypoints. Once thats completed, you return to him. Then he will invite you to go up and talk to the DJ. You talk to the DJ, he will give you a cell phone.

It took a bit of time, but was simple. I still not know what use the Phone will be though... But that is how you get it.

Also, you need to get your pass or you will die when you go places.

My First Visit To Rocktropia!!! New Visitor Tips!

Rocktropia is awesome in my opinion! Seems like there is so much more to do, and the environment is more fun... Well, atmosphere is the word I think. I don't recommend it for anyone on dialup since even high speed wireless seems to be giving me enough lag as it is... Perhaps a good graphics card will make the difference on that.

But there are some things I didn't know that I just learned, and I wanted to post them here :-)

OK...

FIRST! I landed on the top patio for the club neverdie in the city of dreams. Now, yes, the bouncer kicked my butt and I died because I didn't have the pass. But I got to talk to Frankie Headstone up on the top somewhere outside the club. I can't really specify his exact location, but he's up there. If you talk to him, he will give you a free baseball bat worth 1 Ped TT. My friends who been there before didn't know that and didn't get theirs. So I wanted to let you all know.

SECOND: I didn't know I was going to rocktropia today... And I thought there was a CND pass on Calypso auction, I figured eh, I will bid a few peds, thinking it was a good deal. Heh... LOL... No. You get them free at the club on Rocktropia. But it took me forever to figure out how to get the pass.

You have to go to the bottom level, walk outside the club, and there are two people at the entrance, NPC's, and more NPC's making a line to get in. You have to talk to Trinity, and she will add you to the guest list and then Bulldog will give you a pass when you talk to him. This will prevent you from dying from being where you aren';t supposed to go.

I will continue to blog my tips and experiences here on the Rock until I leave maybe tomorrow back for Caly.

AND A REMINDER: DO NOT attempt the journey in a sleipneir with any cargo. I guarantee you the Sleipneir has a "Shoot Me, Loot Me" sign on the back of it!!! Dump all your ores and matters and resources into storage prior to travelling. And unless you have a warp capable ship, prepare to spend an hour or two in space.

This Weeks Share Dividends...

1.93 ped per share... Hopefully this was due to people saving their peds for Merry Mayhem, or perhaps everyone being with their families for Christmas, who knows. I hope this is the exception and not the rule... If the payouts stay this low, I expect a lot of people will cash out their shares at any price just to be out of it while they can.

I advise any land deed holders to just wait a week or two and see what happens. If it still so poor, then you might expect it to keep up that way for some time.

ADVICE: Do Not Underestimate Land Deed ROI

I want to give you this piece of advice as a christmas present in that you may understand it and take it to heart. I just had an epiphany of thoughts, and I know a lot of you see the returns offered by the Land Deed dividends as paltry. But let me shine some light on this for you.

Let's compare the ROI on a Land Deed to say, a savings account interest, or perhaps a Certificate of Deposit:

Savings accounts with your local bank only offer maybe .25% to 1% Interest PER YEAR. So, on $100, you MIGHT get as much as $1. That's 10 peds per year per hundred dollars in your savings.

CD's might offer 2% or 4%... So you are talking $2 to $4 per hundred per year. 20 to 40 peds per year that way.

Calypso land deeds are paying out between 5 and 6 peds a week!!!! Do you know how significant this is?! That's 50 cents to 60 cents a week!!! You are getting a years worth of bank interest in about 2 weeks time or less on that same $100! Say you are getting 250 peds a year, you are talking 25% yield per year. THERE IS NO CD IN THE WORLD RIGHT NOW THAT I AM AWARE OF THAT YOU CAN MAKE MORE THAN 5% ON.

Robert G Allen wrote in his book multiple streams of income, that just saving $1 a day, and earning 5% per year interest will make you a multi millionaire within 20 years by compounding interest. Of course, the only way your ROI will compound is if you use the dividends to buy more shares... BUT imagine what you can do with 25% interest!!!

Of course, the playership should grow over time, every product and service has it's critical mass at which things go crazy at. When that happens, I will bet dollars to beans that you will see the ROI go far beyond 25% per year.

No, I have no shares, and no vested interest in how well they do or what their price goes to. Oh yes, I would like to have some, but maybe some day... But here lies a tremendous opportunity to those of you who are quick enough and sharp enough not to squander it.

But even if the ROI drops to 5% for some reason... YOU ARE STILL WAY AHEAD OF WHAT BANKS ARE PAYING!

Mining Basics Part 4: Selling Your Ores

This seems like a logical fourth part to my recent series of posts outlining the basics for all the noobs who are coming into Entropia on a daily basis. I am seeing incredible amounts of new people every time I log in. It takes me weeks sometimes to run into another avatar I've seen before. Seriously!

If you look at the totals on Entropia Tracker, say my mining rank is like 700 out of 3000 or something... And you think wow... 3000 people is that all thats here? But then you realize... That's only people who have hoffed and globalled in the last 30 days that are counted. It took me 6 months to get my first global. Then it took another 6, and after that it dropped to 3, and then I started hitting some kind of a global at least once a month... Until now, where I have globalled virtually every day I've played. So just think of how many people there really are playing that are not counted in the globals and hofs.

Anywho... I am a bit off topic here, but that's ok. This is going to be short and quick.

Markup is crucial to your success in any profession. It is the difference between winning and losing. Mindark is not going to guarantee you will win on every run you do. However, what gives you the opportunity to is markup because markup is directly out of other peoples pockets unlike the TT value of items.

There are several things to consider.

1. Rarity and % markup.
2. How many peds worth of each resource you have.
3. Auction fees.
4. Trader prices.
5. Is it worth more refined or unrefined (This may sound dumb, but I will explain why it is valid)
6. Do I fill orders, or do I just list an auction with a buyout?


So lets start with number one...

If a resource is selling for less than 110%, you are generally going to have a hard time pushing it on the auction unless you know what you are doing, and it is going to take a fairly large stack of the stuff to make it worth doing. For instance...

Oil had orders at 104%. I thought ok, I will try refining my 80 ped oil global and sell it to orders. What I didn't expect was, my refiner broke at least two times, so that cost me 4 peds right there. Then there is a matter of the auction fee of nearly a ped or so. My markup was less than 5 peds. I literally didn't gain anything by doing this.

However, it has a lot to do with what is the value per unit. See, refining decay is based on how many units you are refining. It is costlier to refine Crude Oil than say, Angelic flakes or Dianthus... Ped for ped that is. It wasn't worth bothering to refine the oil and fill orders. But I could have 80 peds worth of say, Alicenies and refined it and sold it on an order of 104% and actually made a few pecs.

Depending on the markup it can be cheaper to actually TT the stuff. But on all items you think are TT food, at the very least talk to a trader to see if you can get ANY markup for.

BUT REMEMBER: If you take something like Dunkel... Assume 5K% markup. A trader MUST automatically deduct around 1500 points off that markup and offer you between 3500% and 4000%. Because even with 3500%, the auction fees would take all the profit and then some. And if you think it is easy to sell something so rare, especially when it's not refined, you can try it. If its extremely high markup and rare, so few people even use it that it would be a risk counting on the fact someone using it would actually see your listing and buy it... It's safer in my opinion to sell it as fast as you can as long as the offer is reasonable. Reasonable, in my book, is markup minus auction fees on rare items. On common ores and matters, the standard few percent discount is reasonable.

#2:  If you have 10 peds of lysterium thats worth say, 105%... You are only talking 50 pecs markup. You wont make money with orders. Potentially, you could list a 9.99 ped lot of Lysterium ingots (333) of them for say, 120% and they will sell becuase lots of crafters will pay a little extra for smaller quantities. But you risk also that you might not sell it and lose the auction fees. So you have two options: Hold your ore til you have about 50 to 100 peds worth, or find a trader. Small markups will make a difference, but only on large TT values.

#3: Auction fees are progressive. The more value the item has, and the higher the markup, the faster the increase in auction fee as you up the price. However something you should know is... The auction fee to list what, 200 peds of Cobalt is like 6 peds or something... But to sell say, 900 peds on auction the fee is only like 12 peds. So after a while, economies of scale kick in and the more you can list at once the cheaper it actually gets for you to list. If you were to list four lots of 200, you would be paying nearly 25 peds in fees, versus saving and filling that 900 ped order. The numbers are just approximations from memory, not accurate... But the principle is what I am trying to explain. It will always be CHEAPER to sell the biggest lot that you can sell at one time,

Fees are good though. Why? Because it prevents people from using the auction as a warehouse like so many online games tend to do. If there were no fees, people would simple list everything at astronomical prices and never have to worry about storage for their stuff again. It might not be a big deal now, but back in the day when there was no storage on the asteroid, it would have been considered a major exploit.

Also, it prevents people from flooding the markets or otherwise manipulating them by buying up all the cheaper listings and relisting at much higher prices. The fees force people to list at prices they reasonably expect will find buyers.

I do notice the more I spend in AH fees, the better quality of loot I get... But I have no concrete proof, only observation from my own situation. But just keep your eyes peeled to see if it's making any difference for you or not. There is a lot we may never know about the game.

4: The reason traders are justified in making profit is simple. Most people do not have more than a few peds in any given stack of ore or resources. If you mine with less than a couple hundred peds, you are going to have a varied inventory when you get done. You will be forced to either tt lots too small to put on auction, or find a trader.

Now, when a trader buys from you, he has to consider how the market is. Are prices heading upward, or downward. Is it in high demand or is it not being used much. Whats the current price.

See... The advantage of a trader is this: If you cant list the stuff you have yourself, you either have to wait til you have more, TT it, or sell to the trader. Would you rather have five piles each of 2 peds of 120% ores and trade terminal them, or go to a trader who would give you say 115% for the ores. It is your choice. You can either lose 2 peds in markup by TTing, or you can go to the trader and let him make a few pecs, and lose only half a ped.

In turn, the trader accumulates the ores til he has sufficient amounts to peddle on the auction house or direct to crafters.Traders however, if they are smart, will take a sufficient cut on the ores so that when they have amassed their piles, that they will still make some money after figuring in the fees and etc.

However, if you have piles of ingots worth over 20 peds, and markup is over say 115% or 120%, by all means sell them yourself, in most cases you will get more than a trader will offer. It's just reality. But the exception to this rule... If it is an Ore that doesn;t move fast... Cobalt is very tempermental. If I list it as the lowest auction buyout, someone always undercuts me. But orders are sometimes 10 points below the lowest auction price. The solution? See what a trader will offer you. If Cobalt is 120% on orders and buyouts are no lower than 130, rather than risk being undercut, you might get a trader to give you 125%.

#5: Yes, I have to cover this... Becuase there are separate categories for unrefined and refined ores and enmatters, differences in the market value arise. In the case of chalmon/devils tail... I once sold 20 peds or so TT value, to orders for 560%. I went and checked the devils tail orders... Devil's tail was ordered at 620%. I would have made more money selling it unrefined. So when you have VERY high markup stuff... ALWAYS check the refined and unrefined orders BEFORE you refine it... You can always refine it later, but you can NOT unrefine an ore!

#6; Filling orders vs. Selling on Auction...

Scenario 1: Your ore's lowest buyout is at 120%. The orders are paying 119%. It is best to fill the order. Because even if you do list for say 123%, it might not sell, and for the 4 points difference, i'd rather have my money now. Also a gap like that generally means the price is going to be dropping so is best to be done with it than stuck with an overmarked up listing.

Scenario 2: Orders are at 120%, but lowest buyout is 130%. This is what I have experienced with Cobalt on a somewhat regular basis. Because the cobalt is virtually impossible to move without filling orders for me, I would opt to take it to a trader or fill the orders. Any other ore though, I would just do a listing at slightly under the lowest buyout if I needed the peds right now. If I wasn't in a hurry, I would find the lowest price listing around the size lot I had, and list just a little bit below that. People are going to always pay a little higher markup for smaller lots of resources.

Scenario 3: Make note of what the lowest auction buyout is, and then ask a trader, if there are no orders. If the trader offers you an amount somewhat close to that figure, do the math and see how much of a difference it is and if it is acceptable, take the trade. Otherwise, see Scenario 2.

I hope this helps clarify some situations and help you understand some of the dynamics at work in the market place. I will go through and clarify and rewrite this over time... Maybe add better examples and make it simpler to understand... But in the mean time, good luck!