General Overview
A key part of being successful within Entropia Universe is recording and understanding useful bits of information, and using that information to make improvements to your what ever profession you decide to work on.
As a hunter, this would be keeping track of which animal produce what animal oils, skins, hides, extractors, components and other resources along with their location. Understanding which weapon, weapon attachments, healing tool, armour and armour plating is best for which situation will greatly increase your chance of success.
As a miners, this would be keeping track of the type of resource found along with its locations and depth. Different mining tools search at different ranges and depths, understanding which tool to use for the best depth will greatly increase your chance success.
In both hunting and mining, the cost of equipment can drastically effect the margin between profit and loss, not only in the cost of its use in ammo and degrade, but also the markup price you spend on purchasing the equipment. Unlimited tools tend to have a higher usage cost in ammo and equipment degrade, but can be repaired, where limited weapons has lower usage cost in ammo and equipment degrade, but once broken, it can not be repaired.
As a crafter, you want to keep track of prices on the market, the market prices can fluctuate. When buying resources to craft with, you want to purchase for the lowest possible markup, and when crafting, you want to craft products in demand with highest possible markup.
As a trader, you want to keep track of the prices of different amounts on the auction, along with the values they can fluctuate between. Stocking up on resources when prices are low and selling when prices rise is one posible way of making profit. Smaller amounts tend to sell for higher markup compared to a bulk amount on the auction, and street value tends to be below that.
Equipment Costs
Tracking of your ammo use and the degrade on your equipment will allow you to adjust your equipment to better suit the situation.
If you are a new at mining for example, the trade terminal mining tools is very cheap and cost hardly anything to use, which is perfect for new people, but their depth and range is very small, which will make it harder to find bigger deposits. Mining tools can also have enhancers and amps attached to the tool. You will also want to keep track of the degrade on the amp, and also keep track of the markup payed on enhancers.
When a enhancer breaks the trade terminal value is returned in the form of shrapnel, so when buying and an enhancer, you are only paying for the markup cost of the enhancer.
Hunting is slightly more complicated than mining in tracking costs, there is more equipment parts to track. The main bit of equipment is obviously the weapon. Weapons can have multiple attachments and enhancers attached to them, the attachments include laser sights, scopes and amps, each attachment degrades along with the weapon itself.
Hunters also have healing tools and armour equipment. The most basic healing tools are simple first aid packs, which heals people at close range, and degrades when healing. The more advance form of this is mind force healing, using mind force requires you to have an implant, healing chip, and mind essence as the ammo. Both the implant and chip degrades when using mind force.
Armour comes in seven parts, face guard, body harness, arm guards, thigh guards, shin guards, foot guards and gloves. Each type of armour has specific types of protection, impact protection, acid protection, cold protection and stab protection are a few examples. Armour protects a person from damage but degrades when taking damage.
Armour can also have enhancers and armour plating attached to improve the person's defence against specific attacks.
Keeping track of each part of armour degrade and it's own specific attachments is also important. Where one type of armour and plating may be good against one type of creature, it may be ineffective against another type of creature, which can lead to higher costs when hunting.
Crafting equipment is very different from hunting and mining equipment. Blueprints are the main tool in crafting, there are 3 types of blueprints, limited, unlimited and boosted blueprints. Unlimited blueprints are just like unlimited tools, you can continuously use them without them breaking, limited blueprints have a limited amount of uses before the blueprint breaks, and boosted blueprints are like limited blueprints, but have a high success rate.
With limited and boosted blueprints, you will want to keep track of how many uses remain on a limited or boosted blueprint along with its cost and markup. The main cost in crafting is the actual resources required to make a product. Boosted blueprints offer a high chance of success when crafting.
Testing, Failures And Success
You do not fail, you only found ways that do not work. Starting with no experience can be daunting, not knowing the items or their values and uses can be overwhelming, just like with any new experience. Asking for knowledge can be unclear, you see many people ask "What is a good creature to hunt?", but hardly anyone asks for further details, like "What equipment was you using?" or "Where was this hunting spot?". Even then, the few people who do have an edge, might be inclined to not share their knowledge, or mislead you.
True knowledge is gain in personal experience, with repeatable results over time. Doing one test and being successful, may not be repeatable, and doing one test and being unsuccessful, just as equally, may not be repeatable. After a few good tests, you can get a more general idea of highs, lows and averages. From testing something new, you will be able to find what works and what does not work, from what works, test further and refine your method.
Do not overestimate advice people do share, just as equally do not underestimate. Do not overstretch your budget testing bits of advice people have offered you, but do not ignore the advice, if you are able to test a new area in your budget, do it.
Be flexible and expect change, if you have found a repeatable successful thing, still look for other new successes, because small things in the universe change over time, and nothing last for ever. Once you have found something successful, use a part of that to find the next success thing. Once you have found a few successful thing, if one thing changes, you will be less concerned about it.
Your Level Of Control
Understanding what you have control over compared to what you do not have control over is important. You do not have control of the returns of each individual loot pot, but you have control of how much you put in and the ability to change target and location.
Some days your usual successful area might be low compared to normal, knowing this from previous knowledge acquired can save your PED from being drained on a bad run. If you feel like one of your successful spots is low, stop and change target or area.
What is also in your control is what you spend on equipment, ammo and resources, and what you sell your resources and products for. This is slightly in and out of your control, as a buyer, you will want the lowest markup possible, and as seller you want highest possible markup, generally speaking the market info screen for an item shows the average value between the highs and the lows of the sales on the auction.
Once you have acquired a good bit of experience and knowledge, you will be able to look at market prices and focus on the right targets and location to maximise your income potential. Some items are very common in crafting, these items tend to have a large amounts sold on the auction in trade terminal value and low average markup values on the market info screen. Animal eye oil and animal muscle oil are a few examples of common fast moving markets.
The rarely sold items on the auction tends to have a higher markup, if there is a demand for them at that time, these items are harder to sell in smaller amounts on the auction, and it is best to sell these items directly to another person or to save up a bulk amount for the auction. Unique skins and hides are good example of the slower moving markets, like Snablesnot skin and Exarosaur wool.
A really simple way to check if a market fast or slow moving is to search it on the auction, if there is only one page, it is likely to be a slow moving market, if there is more than one page, it is a faster moving market.
Try to avoid selling items to the trade terminal, this is one of the biggest well known ways to lose PED. The system is not always 100% in and 100% out, markup on items can make a big difference between winning and losing. Store everything and sell it to a player, sooner or later you will find a buyer who wants what you have to sell, it is just a matter of time.
Skills And Equipmentment Information
Needless to say your skill is also a big factor, the more skill you have the less likely you are to get hit and take damage, less cost on armour and healing, the more accurate you will be with your equipment, the less ammo and degrade you will waste on weak damage, misses and evasions.
You are able to view your skill with a tool or weapon on the item info screen. When looking at statistics of accuracy and damage, or depth and range, all the number on the right hand side of the "/" is the weapons maximum potential, all the numbers on the left side of the "/" is your ability with your skills when using that specific weapon or tool.
If you are not at maximum potential and you are not in any learning period for the gun, you are more than likely wasting PED. When you are in the learning period of a tool or weapon, you will be wasting a little bit of PED but gain and extra boost in the skill you will gain.
You can look at an items info before you purchase a tool or weapon to see if the statistics are appropriate for the skill you have. You can do this by right clicking a tool or weapon in the auction, shop or trade window and selecting view information.
You can also click on an [Item Link] in the chat window to view its details, viewing items via an [Item Link] will give you its default statistics, and will show the maximum trade terminal value for tools and weapons, and the trade terminal value of one item for stacked items. Using [Item Links] will not revile the statistics of the trade terminal value or stack size of what is in a persons inventory.
