Entropia Universe is a F2P (free-to-play) MMORPG (maasively multiplayer online role-playing game) whose ingame currency, Project Entropia Dollars (PED), can be exchanged with fiat and vice versa. It is a non-crypto play-to-earn game. I discovered this title thanks to long time player, @enjar. THANK YOU!
I have yet to "chip in" or buy skills or anything for that matter with my hard earned cash, and I don't think I ever will. Just playing the game for fun is enough for me. Having only started about 2 weeks ago, I'm still very much a noob with no skill so my earning potential is slim to none.
Since I have no ship, I'm stranded on the planet Calypso, which is fine for now at least. On my second day of playing, I was scouted by someone by the name of Enzo the Great and inducted into his society (what the game calls 'guilds'). Expedition Ultima are a very generous society. A few days later, a senior member who has been playing since 2008 took me under her wing. She is now my mentor and claims that I am the fastest skilling of all the society's mentees. Expedition Ultima sure knows how to pick 'em, apparently. I've gotten quite a few handouts from her and Enzo in the form of shrapnel which can be converted into ammunition, cheap weapon loot drops, and even a piece of Pixie armor.
The game is pretty brutal at times. Everything costs PED. (After all, it's not actually a game, but a business.) You want to hunt? That gets costly. Just add up your ammo costs and repair costs for the weapon and first aid kit and your hunt may not have been profitable. There are loot cycles and Hotarubi is even compiling drop data and has a few theories on them.
Lately I've been passing the time hunting Merry Snargs as part of a seasonal quest. They've quickly become my favorite animal. Just look at that bipedal monstrosity! I've been kicked, stomped on, headbutted, and bitch-slapped by these creatures all in an effort to kill 500 of them (I only need 70 more). The reward is apparently a cool limited gun. And by limited I mean it cannot be repaired, so once it's done that's it. And now I'm writing about this game because I have no more ammo and no more PED so I don't think I'll be able to get that gun. Usually they drop enough shrapnel to keep me going or once I run out I'll have gathered enough Animal Muscle Oil to fund another ammo run. But when all else fails, I switch to "swunting", the only activity that doesn't put a drain on my PED card.
I'm starting to catch on in terms of Entropia's player lingo. Swunting is a Mindforce skill that involves gathering Vibrant Sweat from alien animals. And they don't like when you try to take it from them! Said animal will aggro and attempt to kill you. Luckily there are locations such as Boreas where there are large swunt circles with about 20 or more other real people gathering sweat from the same animal! The animal, in this case a Kerberos, does not know who to attack and basically runs around like a headless chicken. Sure occasionally some people die but the revive station is literally right there. I didn't initially have access to the Boreas teleporter but a soc-mate flew me there. The vistas on the way were amazing.
I can't help but wonder if by pressing F do I drop out of the ship and fall to my death...
My mentor pays me 2 PED for every 1000 bottles of Vibrant Sweat. That's a good deal since nowadays 1k sweat normally goes for around 1.3 PED. Streamers pay 3 PED but I don't know any...
But what makes the sweat highly coveted? Everyone wants it but no one really wants to swunt for over an hour to get the 1k (at least that's how long it takes me). From what I know, people use it to make special ammo or to summon mobs.
I was AFK swunting just now but died and somehow could not properly revive nor gather anymore sweat so I decided to quit for the time being.
Just look at the contorted position I got myself into. I think I went catatonic.
Being an MMO, you get to meet a lot of interesting characters. Some savory...
...Others not so much.
I even met a Splinterlands player but he did not stick around. (He didn't even know about Rising Star!)
I don't know when my mentorship ends but I think it's when I reach a certain level. There are so many different skills; I haven't even scratched the surface.
(Each category, for example Combat or Medical, has its own set of corresponding skills so there are so many more than what you see here!)
If I've learned one thing about this game it's that you should not approach the large, monolithic structures in the distance lest you be ambushed by robots (the main antagonists of the game, it seems).
It seems that that is all for now. Can't hunt for the moment so I can't progress the easy codices like Sabakura or Snableshot (I've been picking Anatomy for the skill bonus). Hopefully one of my socmates is feeling generous or else I'll just have to keep swunting... There's a reason why Boreas is known as "Bored Ass".
See you later!