Sunday 3 May 2015

Thank You And Goodnight

Entropiazines last issue for now. The winner of the last months prize is "Gustov Bronco Yakaraki" I will be contacting you in the game next week. I would like to continue this magazine, but you know how life is, and I am only one person. I hope there will be a future for entropia-zine someday, but as of today it will be closed.


This has been Felix signing off. Thank you for reading.

Wednesday 1 April 2015

Issue 3: Land changes and new pets!

Entropiazine
A Monthly Entropian E-Magazine.

In this week publication of Entropiazine:
Land: Recent changes on the map.
Wildlife: New and rare pets to tame.
A chance to win 10 PED!







The recent changes to land on Calypso!

In the last month there has been a major overhaul of Camp Icarus and Corinth Province to the north. Camp Icarus has now been terraformed to be more convenient, you no longer have to run around massive metal crates up a hill to get to the outpost. The land surround the teleporter and the teleporter itself has been raised up to allow easy of access to the outpost.


The landing platforms at Camp Icarus beach are now open to the public. The ability to place your air vehicles on the landing platforms at the beach south of Camp Icarus will allow for a slight better take off for south bound flight, as Camp Icarus outpost itself is still a no vehicle zone.



To the north of Calypso, new people looking for half moon bay maybe slightly confused as the Half Moon Bay teleporter has now been relocated to the south, the old Half Moon Bay teleporter is now Half Moon Cove.

In last months issue of Entropiazine there was a tutorial for new people looking for free ammo, you would now need to go to Half Moon Cove to Cape Corinth to find the easy quests for free universal ammo along the road.








All new pets to tame on Calypso!

New animals have been discovered which has been the buzz for all the tamers on Calypso. Three new creatures have been seen just north west of the Atlantis Archipelago teleporter. The Atlantis Archipelago teleporter can be found south of Port Atlantis, The best way to travel there is by air, as it is a very long swim. A boat could also get you to the destination.

Simply travel north of the teleporter until you hit the beach at the other end of the island, then follow the beach east. The first animal you will see is the Corinthian Kanin, a rabbit like creature. Misleading in name, one would think you would find this creature closer to Cape Corinth by its name.


This animal is the easy one to tame of the three creature to discover in this area. Slightly harder to tame than a Bristlehog but still relativity easy.

Further up north from the Corinthian Kanin are the Eudorian Devil and Chirin Dragon. These two creatures are slightly harder to tame.


There are also rare shiny version of these pets, the Corinthian Kanin comes in a silver. The Eudorian Devil and the Chirin Dragon comes in sapphire.






A chance to win 10 PED!

Anyone who knows me in Entropia Universe know how I love making PED, but more than most I love to help the people who help me make PED and share the love. Due to the small success of Entropiazine over the first few months, I wanted to give back to the avid readers who contact me and tell me I am doing a good job and to keep it up, To those people, I thank you for helping me to keep motivated in the making of this magazine.

In return I wish to create a free to raffle for all my readers to enter for the chance to win 10 PED in Entropia Universe.


To enter the raffle all you need to do is click the link above and enter the name of your avatar. The winner will be picked randomly at the end of the month and contacted on Entropia Universe. The raffle will be drawn on the 1st May 2015 at 00:00 GMT.

From me [Zell Felix Shallow] good luck to everyone who enters the raffle.


Want to share your story with Entropiazine?

At this current moment in time Entropiazine has been based on Calypso, but now Entropiazine is expanding out, if you wish to submit your own story to Entropiazine, it might end up in next months issue of Entropiazine. To submit your story click the link below:





Sunday 1 March 2015

Issue 2: Line at the big rig.

Entropiazine
A Monthly Entropian E-Magazine.

In this week publication of Entropiazine:
Interview: The insides of the dominating land grab society.
News: The successful line created at Ashi Rig (Big Rig).
Quests: Good advice on quests for new players.







The successful line created at Ashi Rig (Big Rig)!

Most new people with and agility level of ten and above will most likely know about the small oil rig just above Camp Icarus, the burned charred area known as the Orthos oil field.

Most of the skilled player verse player characters hang around at the big rig, where killing for oil is actually worth it. At the small rig at Orthos killing the line is not worth the oil, you spend more PED killing than you do gaining in oil. The people who spree and kill the line at the small rig tends to be blowing of steam or just a bit of fun for the more skilled players, from what I have learned talking to the line killers.

This line created at big rig was not the first line created at the big rig, a line like this has been created twice before, but never as publicly shown as the image above. A number of guards set out to defend the new people from the harder avatars around the big rigs, as everyone lined up for a ton of oil!

Now if anyone tells you a line at the big rig is not possible, you now know otherwise, all it takes is peoples willingness to share.


The insides of the dominating land grab society (WhySoSerious).

Earlier this month I was able to find a member of the society that owns all the land areas, it was a great pleasure to get an interview and to find out more about the workings of the land area and the society it self.

The society is a small band of 30 people as stated in last months issue, but only about 20 members make the core of the groups, of which these members are online most of the time. Some of the members of the group know each other in real life, so it seems to be quite a close group of friends.

"Linzey: We are very close, it becomes your second life this game!"

The land areas are taxed but it is not much money is made, most of the fund raised from land areas goes into player verse player gear. For one year there was no or very little contestants of the land areas...

"Linzey: For a year was not much shooting then was decent profits."

... but now the society has to defend more today, which means ammo use and equipment repairs are needed once again to keep hold of the land areas on Calypso in land grab events.

"Linzey: To me its just the fun!"

The funds from land area tax gets shared out in the society, but little is known of the details behind this.


Quests: A guide for new players.

Sometimes I forget how weak new players on Entropia, once you have been in Entropia a while, you character will get stronger very slowly, it is almost hardly noticeable. Recently I have been helping a group of my friends who has recently started themselves and its a nice surprise to see that I survive a lot longer in general, especially when most of my life on Entropia had been solo.

Here is some great advice for new people who have just started:

  1. Sweating; the most basic of skills in Entropia, everyone can sweat an animal, and being new with not a single PED on your card, you will find quickly this is one very small source of income on Entropia. The best way to sweat s to get nice and close, and take plenty of hits from the animal you are sweating, this will give you more skills in other areas which help in combat. The main skill that helps in sweating is evasion, the more you get hit, the more evasion experience you get, the less you will get hit in the future. In a good group of people sweating, people should be in a nice tight circle around a animal to stop the creature moving, because every time the animal moves, you will lose your target, and fail to get sweat. It is also good to note here, everyone wants to sell sweat, but only a few want to buy sweat. My advice for sweat selling, is to hold onto it until you find someone who actually want to buy it, and hold out for the best priced buyer. You will only kick yourself if you sell for 1.7 in haste when a 1.8 buyer can turn up 10 seconds later. Plus every sale at a lower price makes buyers think they can buy it at a lower price in future effecting who economy as a whole for sweat. After you have a few PED from sweating try catch a flight to Boreas, You will find a sweating group there most of the time. The next location, which will yield less experience then Boreas but more sweat is Neas Place, which is further to get to and costs more for a pilot.
  2. If you are returning after being away for a bit, you may notice a ton of vehicles have been added to Entropia. There is a simple mission where you can get a car for free, any new player gets this car from a beginning tutorial mission. If you have not got your free car, you can visit the Calypso Gateway at the end of the middle pier at Port Atlantis. The Calypso Gate is classed as a different planet, so anything stored here will remain here. One of the common problems I hear is that new players lose their car here, if you lose your car, it automatically returns to the storage after being a way from it to long. If you lose your car at the Calypso Gateway, you will have to return for it.
  3. Mission that give away free universal ammo are hiding about.... On the other side of the map! Once you have PED from selling sweat, try get a flight to Half Moon Bay, on the beach will be a mission there that will give you free ammo. After that follow the road out of Half Moon Bay to Cape Corinth Market, you will find a few mission along the way, all easy and rewarding. You can also convert shrapnel into universal ammo, right click and convert. Note: shrapnel can be sold and traded where universal ammo can not!
Skill takes time and sometimes PED to build up, focus on what you can do heading to what you would like to do. This simple 3 step guide should help new people get some basic equipment and skills to get them started, and it will also help people who have been away for a while and returned get some goodies for returning.


Sunday 1 February 2015

Entropiazine 1st Issue


Entropiazine
A Monthly Entropian E-Magazine

In our first publication of Entropia Zine:
Market: Avoiding the dead skin markets.
History: How did humans come to be on Calypso?
Property: Land grab areas owned by one society.
News: Pet fighting for mobile devices and ComPet Deeds.






Publisher's Comments:

Hello, I am [Felix Zell Shallow], most people know me in game as just Felix. It has been a long time since I returned to Entropia. The Cry-engine update did as I expected, and knock quite a few of the big players out of the game, and returning to what feels like a whole new game, I was one of these players.

I come from a time in Entropia when people used to taxi other people by foot to teleporters on a single planet and sweat was 12k per PED. Im sure many of the other older player will remember and still call Entropia Universe, "Project Entropia".

A lot of things have changed in Entropia in the last few years. The most well known is the ability to drive vehicles, with a huge range to selection to choose from, from good old fashioned off road 4x4's to space ship, and everything in between

For the the people who hardly know me, I am the leader of the society Entropia Market, once a quite well known group of traders which used to hang around Atlas Haven, Twin Peak and Port Atlantis. Sadly along with the update, like most players at the time, and many other societies, became dead.

Even though Entropia has changed a lot over the last few years, the basics of trading are exactly the same, and I was able to jump straight back in where I left off, setting up new contacts and making new friends along the way.

The main reason I am writing this E-zine is to help to improve the game as a whole, the economy of this game is widely based on the value of its players and the way MindArk controls and represents its own product. With that in mind my goals are purely to enlighten younger players and enhance the economy of the game by pointing out things that attention should be drawn too.

Thank you for reading, and hope you find it enjoyable and helpful inside Entropia!


Avoiding the dead skin markets.

One of the unavoidable annoyances of any hunter is not being able to sell their loot. New player may scrap their items for quick PEDs at the trade terminal, but for an old experienced played this can lead to a very big stack of items that can not be traded!


This is highly important to understand, for something to have a value, someone must have a need for it, and Entropia's structure for hunting, mining and crafting is based on this. The main reason for the lack of people wanting to buy such stacks of items is simply down to the lack of demand for the items in the game. A good example of this is Snablesnot Skins, last month had no sales on the auction, and I know it is not down to supply, With the some people offering trade terminal price for it at auction, with not a single bid.


The problem could be one of three things, there are hardly any people who craft, which I very much doubt, or hardly any blueprint which use theses items, or the product that is produced is not in demand. No matter where the lack of demand stems from, the market for these stackable items seems to be a dead one currently in Entropia.

To the hunters, I recommend to avoid assuming that you will be able to sell these stacks of items at all, it would be a waste of your PED on the auction fee to place these items on the auction if no one is buying at all. Be prepared to sell these items to the trade terminal, or stack them for a while longer, to see if the market returns.


How did humans come to be on Calypso?

In early days humans traverse their own star system, their home planet of Earth was ravaged for resources to the point of where recycling was a necessity, a number of the planets in the humans home star system were terraformed and colonized including many of the asteroids in the asteroid belt.

The furthest reach of human expansion was not far away from their home star. It was not one but a number of technologies that proved to be needed to cross the great void of space to the next nearest star. The Odysseus project was developed, seven huge unmanned probes built in orbit designed to travel vast distances, probe planets, and construct bases ready for human arrival. The probes main technological advancements, a mixture of shielding, AI and jump rail technology.

Once one of the probes uses its jump rail, which is a one use technology, it jumps vast distances to a location. On arrival the probe begin surveying and constructing drones in orbit, the drones go about mining and constructing bases for human arrival, then finally when the base was self sustaining the probe would constructing itself new jump rail to jump to a new location. Once the base reached a certain size it would be able to construct it own Odysseus probes. One of these spin off technologies from the project is used quite commonly today, the teleportation technology has erode many barriers in for the human race, not only distance, but also culture.

In the spirit of space travel humans followed the probes trail in massive colony ships adorned with their own jump rails headed for Calypso....


Land grab areas all owned by one society.

It may be a little know fact that land areas can be owned be by society leaders. At this current moment in time, all the land areas on Calypso are owned by one small society. So why is this such a big deal? I hear you ask. Well, all the land grab area create a revenue in hunting, mining and trading taxs, as well as settings for pvp and radar of the area. All this revenue goes the leader of a society the society that owns the area.

Now, what if I told you that all the land areas are owned by one society? One small group of 30 people in the society "WhySoSerious", currently do own all the land areas on Calypso.

This month I met up with KATILA, the well known estate owner on Entropia, as the details of the ownership of the areas was revealed to us, and the nature of the society owner. A KATILA reported to me, the owner of the area was willing to cut a deal for the land area, as number of well equipped, skilled members of "WhySoSerious" stand ready. I personally will not disclose any details of this deal, apart from a price was laid down to claim ownership from the society.

It would be interesting thing to see if this deal was agreed to or not, in the next month or so. It would be even more interesting to see some other competition to steak a claim on one of these land areas.


Pet fighting and ComPet Deeds.

Unless you have been living under some natural stones for last few months, you would have heard about about the pet fighting game coming to Android. Little is known about the pet system to come to Android but what is known, is the mixed view from the community about it. From a small poll done on the forum about who will try/play it at least once. 44.04% are totally not interested in the app what so ever, but the rest are interested in at least trying this Android application out!


Currently not much is known at all about the battle system, or how the game play will play out, but what is known is the fact the auction is littered with ComPet Deeds, and pet are once again running around following their masters.

One thing is for certain is people are uncertain, about deed payouts, when this application is coming, even how much to price a pet for sale, how to get a whip to tame, it is all so new and unsettled and it shows. Once the whip can simply be brought from the trade terminal, but today can only be crafted, It will be interesting if this will remain crafted or will it be available to all via the trade terminal.

Mindark's first Android app was not received very well, lacking some wanting features and many hope that this application will not be another bad side tool to Entropia Universe.