As a noob on Eulora, you don’t have a clue - but you still have a choice. The choice being of course between losing - both your money and your chance at cracking up the only game that could actually pay you a living at some point1 - and winning. Winning or more precisely actually earning - truly earning your money (as much of it as you can really), earning your place and earning your voice in the future. Making the first choice - the choice of losing - is quick and simple: just dive straight in, without reading anything and without thinking through anything (and by thinking I mean doing some very concrete and quite clear calculations, too). The choice of winning might seem too vague, too complicated or even too difficult to make through the fog of noobishness, but know that if you let that stop you from even trying, than you really just made your choice already - your choice to simply lose.
At a first glance, between those two amazing2 options, there is enough space to wedge in at least a third - the playing it “safe” option, putting your whole trust3 and more importantly earnings in the hands of “elders.” Provided you know at least how to choose the right people to put your trust into, that can even be all right for a start, for a jump-start especially, for a while. The trouble is that it is really only for a while, really only if you use it as an opportunity to learn faster than you could on your own. In other words, if you take its safety aspect as only a side effect rather than the main point: the point of placing your trust in others - carefully chosen others - is that it can help you learn faster, NOT that it protects your ass.
Update (28 November 2016): note that the numbers below are NOT accurate anymore because Eulora has changed A LOT. The principles above remain however perfectly true - you just need however to work out for yourself concrete examples that are more up to date than the one below:
Now that we put the ass behind rather than in front of us, let’s focus a bit on that painful part of figuring things out. Currently, most noobs landing in Eulora get to do jobs kindly offered by others. They are basically provided with everything they need (tools, ingredients, skills and crafting accessories even) and a 10% share of the result as form of payment for their work. For gathering work4, the elder provides tools or claims as well as bundles, the noob does the clicks and hands back over the results. For crafting work, the elder provides tools, blueprints and ingredients, the noob does the clicks and hands back over the results. The noob doesn’t pay anything - hey, no risking your own money, eh? - and he doesn’t own anything, although he gets in the end a small - and quite fair - pay for his clicks. There is usually no ranking up of skills for noobs, least they somehow get out of their noob status and “lose” the perks of being click-slaves to others. All this is, of course, through the noob’s own choice as nobody can ever stop you from ranking up in Eulora. Still, there it is, no ranking and hardly any learning, as that’s considered “safest.” And since the safety of your ass comes first before any longer term considerations, what is there more to say? Go click merrily ever after. And don’t read further, as it might still bite you5.
Since I don’t quite agree with the above model, I always offer it only as a last-resort alternative. I’d much rather work with noobs that want to become apprentices and therefore learn and grow until one day they can also be elders and perhaps help others grow too6. For this reason and for the benefit of my current apprentice, I recently ended up running for him some basic numbers and outlining a possible longer-term strategy. Since this might actually help others too and since as far as I know there isn’t at the moment any other kind of strategy discussed for Eulora anywhere in one place and in clear7, I decided it would be good to have it written here too.
To start off: there are two main ways of making a profit in Eulora at the moment. One is basically gambling through “overcrafting”: you use high quality inputs to get low quality outputs (being a noob basically means that you get low quality output due to lack of skills/levels) and make your money from either a). Quantity b). Loot. This currently works great for resources, especially if you build the claims of a highly skilled gatherer and with high quality ingredients. One click and you get thousands of resources - low quality ones, but which sell anyway at a price corresponding to middle quality as it were. It also works well for crafting although in a slightly different way - you get blueprints as “loot” and those blueprints can fetch you a tidy sum. The other way of making a profit in Eulora is more reliable in some sense - essentially you make a profit by adding value through your skill: you use low quality inputs to produce higher quality outputs. In this case there usually is no loot and no huge quantities, but there is a predictable and guaranteed value added as the difference between the quality of your inputs and that of your output.
To illustrate all the above, here’s the calculation I did earlier for one of my apprentices who currently builds at quality 7:
- Making slag = 5 flotsam + 3 shiny rock, approximately 20 seconds with the FoxyBot (fully automated).
- Base value of shiny rock: 79
- Input value based on my apprentice’s own resource gathering (say, his 10% share of some building work he did for me): 0.07*(5*88 + 3*79) = 47 coppers
- Current market value of the input: (3*79+5*88)*(0.07+(1.54-0.07)/2) = 545 coppers
- Current market value of the output at quality 10: 677*(0.1 + (1.54-0.1)/2) = 555 coppers -> added value is 10 coppers per slag, hence 30 coppers per minute.
- Current market value of the output at quality 20: 677*(0.2 + (1.54-0.2)/2) = 588 coppers -> added value is 43 coppers per slag, hence 129 coppers per minute.
- Current market value of the output at quality 30: 677*(0.3 + (1.54-0.3)/2)= 622 coppers -> added value is 77 coppers per slag, hence 231 coppers per minute.
Consider now that you can run FoxyBot over the night. In 8 hours straight, it will make 8*60*60/20 = 1440 slags, eating up 1440*5 = 7200 flotsams and 4320 shiny rocks and landing you a net profit on tinkering alone of 1440*77 = 110`880 or a total of 1440*622 = 895`680 coppers (satoshi) made literally while you sleep (assuming tinkering at 30q). And that’s certain, predictable money right there, without relying on luck or anything else. You can even take and fill orders in fact!
Based on calculation such as those above, my suggestion of a possible strategy for an apprentice is quite simple: team up with a highly skilled gatherer and get your 10% in resources rather than coppers. Then train your tinkering skill (either using some books or - cheaper - just training it when you do some overcraft on tinkering). Then simply start making and selling all sorts of crafted items that are highly needed and used as further input for more complex crafts (such as slag above, but also disgusting goop and others). Making more than 1 bitcent each day (24 hours) while also growing your skill and getting to experience Eulora from a different position than that of a click-slave.
Note also the beauty of it all: it really is a place best fit for a noob *and* it is a scheme that you really can even run quite fully by yourself. You can buy chetty sticks that will give you9 only ordinary claims (hence relatively high output for your low quality) on basic resources. So you don’t even depend on the highly skilled gatherer if you really don’t want to10. You also don’t depend on anyone for blueprints as you can easily get some more at any time: just buy a few high quality resources and do some overcrafting increasing your quality output AND getting blueprints in the process. As long as you keep your building low and increase only your tinkering, your building feeds into your tinkering wonderfully.
As to best fit for a noob: consider a highly skilled crafter. They do indeed extract significantly more value from the same input resources. However, do they really want to spend their time undercrafting and moreover, undercrafting slag of all things? For one thing, while they extract value through undercrafting, they are effectively stagnating in terms of skill while doing that. For the other, if they choose the undercrafting strategy as a way of making money, they would actually earn more by doing items that are way more complex than those11 - using in the process your output in fact. The difference in quality between input and output is effectively a percentage difference in value added, hence the higher the value of the item one makes, the higher the amount of money they earn at the same level of undercrafting. So if you see now highly skilled tinkerers undercrafting slag and the like it’s really because there’s nobody else to do it - in all likelihood, they’ll be quite happy if someone finally steps in and do the job, so that they can do all the more complex (and more expensive) crafting that is needed.
As a final note: you can also just keep playing it “safe,” leaving to someone else all the calculations, planning and pain of actually doing something other than clicking. Of course you can and you’ll still earn your share, no problem with that. Just remember though, that so can all the other noobs. And noobs there will always be in Eulora like anywhere else. How safe is it exactly to remain forever at the very start, perfectly fungible and indistinguishable from the next noob and the next 1000 noobs with whom you will inevitably start competing ever closer, ever fiercer, ever more dangerously. How is that exactly the safe strategy, can you tell me?
A more than double loss if you come to think about it, but hey, your choice is the best choice, right? ↩
And passionate, did I say passionate enough? ↩
Did you actually even consider that, hmm? Like really consider it, with all its implications - putting ALL your trust into others and into their understanding of a world you just stepped in, naked and penniless and more vulnerable than you can even begin to understand. Did you really consider what you really trust those people with, when you decide to just do their bidding without even trying to figure out things for yourself? ↩
Gathering resources, so exploring and/or building. ↩
In the ass, where else? ↩
Sure, I CAN and WILL work with those who are happy to remain click-slaves for ever, but I’ll also consider them precisely as such and nothing more than basically fungible click-providers. ↩
There are bits and pieces scattered throughout the irc logs I’d say, but that’s about it. ↩
Value of an item/resource at quality 100. An important concept in Eulora, this one, so better get your head around it sooner rather than later. You can find base values of many items and of all resources known so far on their respective page in my cookbook. ↩
due to your low gathering skill ↩
It might be more lucrative though over a longer period of time as they’ll get higher yield claims on average even if not at every hit. ↩
You’re warmly invited to run the numbers and see for yourself. ↩
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