VU17: Tiering and enhancers update in December

More information has been released today by MindArk about the upcoming version update in December. In the upcoming update several changes and improvements will be made to the item tiering and enhancers systems to make it cheaper and easier to use.

MindArk plans to lower the cost of using these systems to help increase the usage of enhancers, this is to help stimulate an increase in crafting activity by increasing the demand for enhancers. It has also been stated that further updates will also contain further improvements to these systems.

One of the major improvements will be that 100% of the ingredients will be return in trade terminal value as shrapnel. A persons tier level will not longer be involved in salvaging ingredients when upgrading a tier of an item.

100% of the trade terminal value of enhancers will also be returned in the form of shrapnel when an enhancer breaks and enhancers inserted into limited items will now break much less often.

With the changes to the item tiering process, the "Tier Upgrader" profession will no longer have any purpose, and will be removed completely. Any remaining skill points will have its value converted to a corresponding "Tier Upgrading Skill Implant" and compensated at a markup of 20000% in early 2020.

In the meantime, anyone wishing to convert their existing "Tier Upgrading" skill points to PED can list "Tier Upgrading Skill Implants" on the auction and a MindArk Official avatar will buy any implants listed for 20000% markup or lower, once per week.

A few minor changes to the interface which will greatly improve the smoothness of the interactions will be the ability to attach and remove attachments and enhancers without unequipping the item first, and no longer needing to drag items from the inventory or storage to the tier upgrading window. Items from your inventory as well as items from an open storage terminal will automatically be used in the tier upgrading window. Items in vehicles or container storage will not be used.

Another minor improvement which improves the information the interface will provide to the user is the addition of a second decimal place to the tier level. This will provide more finer detailed information about the progress to the next tier level.

News: Toulan New Tokens And New Weapons

New Mirsal Tokens And Changes To Cards

In the recent Toulan update, New Toulan Mirsal Token (TMT) which will be utilised for various activities and access to instances across the planet, the TMT at this time is used for access to the Qaydar, Baydar and Shamsdar mini instances, with more planned uses for it in the near future.

The New Mirsal Exchanger can be located standing at Nahar City Center, for exchanging sabikah into TMT depending on its value. New sabikah (Bullion) items, in different values (5 Gram , 10 Gram, 20 Gram) can be acquired through CUHOF instances.

The Card Parts Left/Right/Center are no longer available through loot, Maher who now provides Qaydar/Baydar/Shamsdar full cards, trading them for TMT. Salhoob has new dialog options to trade card parts for universal ammo.



New Weapon

A number of new weapons have been released and are set to be discovered, but little information on how these weapons will be discovered, and little details on these weapons are available.

These weapons are more than likely to be found hunting, it is unlikely, but because hardly any information is available, we can not rule out these weapons being crafted.


Better Starting Experience

An overall step by step fix to Toulan's beginner experience has been applied. The new arrivals to the planet  now spawn in a better positioned and the starting area now has a wall preventing new players from wander off instead of following the beginner path.

The mission "Learning To Craft", involving Faiza and Mawlood, now has different requirements and the starter armour blueprint has been changed.


Supporting Sweaters

Vibrant sweat has been added to the recipe of the CUHOF Keys Blueprints and the CUHOF Instances exit spawn point is now better positioned to avoid getting stuck in the door.


Fix Updated Missions

Some missions have been updated and the Toulan team has suggested to abandon and re-take "Cold Cuts Research" (Sarhan standing to the West at Nahar City Center) and "Nahar Outfit Stage 1, 2 and 3" (Uthman standing at Nahar City Majlis).

Doing this will not clear the whole mission chain, only the mission you are on.

Guide: Crafting Basics

This guide will teach you about the basics of crafting. Here you will learn about using resources gathered from hunting and mining to create clothing, tools, armours, weapons, enhancers, vehicles, furniture and much more.

Crafting Equipment

To craft all you need is a blueprint of what you want to craft and the resources that blueprints requires to craft with. You are able to buy a number of basic blueprints perfect for people new to crafting and blueprint books from a technician.

Blueprint books are not needed for crafting, the books are simply designed to keep your blueprints organised.

You can acquire further blueprints from other players, on the auction or from crafting. There is a small chance of blueprint being created from crafting.

Construction machines are located across the major settlements on any planet in Entropia, these machines along with your blueprint and resources needed for construction is what you use to construct with.

To find out what resources a blueprint requires, right click the blueprint to bring up the item information screen. You can also see this information from a construction machine.

To acquire the resources needed, learn more about trading here.

Construction Machine

Once you have the blueprint and resources required for the blueprint, right click on a crafting machine. You will see the following window with a list of blueprints you currently own.

Here you have an overview of each blueprint, its success rate and how many attempts you currently have with the resources you got. Note that this includes resource stored in storage on that planet, not just resources in your current inventory, and this is also solely determined by ingredients, and is not the same as the number of attempts left on a limited blueprint.

Clicking on any of these blueprint will highlight addition information at the bottom of the window including the resource you have and require for the construction.

The filter button at the top of this window will allow you to filter and search what blueprint you want show.

Double clicking any of these blueprint in the list or clicking the construction tab at the top of the window will take you to the highlighted blueprints construction screen.

Construction

This next screen will show a number of buttons and dials. From here you will be able to select how many construction attempts you wish to undertake and adjust your focus to quantity and condition.

The quantity and condition bar will adjust your level of success compared to the quality of your outcome. Quantity will provide a better success rate, but each construction will be mediocre in value. Condition will offer higher value results, but will be more likely to fail in each construction.

When you are confident with the choice you have made, the construct will start the construction, the stop button will halt production.

Quality Rating/Condition (QR/CD)

If the blueprint is unlimited, the number displayed is the quality rating of that blueprint. If the blueprint is limited, the number displayed is the condition of that blueprint.

As you use a unlimited blueprint, there is a chance the blueprint quality can be improved leading to better success with the blueprint in the future. Limited blueprint do not improve over time.

Residue

The residue options in the top right of the window allows you to fill in the value of a tool or weapon. Residues are produced as a byproduct from crafting different materials. 

When constructing limited items, you will want to create items with the maximum trade terminal value, when constructing without residue the value of an item will more than likely be under its maximum value, this can make an item harder to sell.

Residue is used to fill in the remaining value on an item to create items with maximum trade terminal value.

Male Or Female?

If you are constructing a clothing or armour blueprint, two buttons, “Male” and “Female”, will appear. These buttons allow you to choose for which gender the item should be designed. Males cannot equip female clothing or armour, and vice versa.

Supply And Demand

The most important factor to whether a crafter is successful or not is their ability to understand the cost of what it is they are crafting and peoples demand for what is being crafted. Every profession requires a little bit of trading savvy to be successful, as it is an integral part of the game, but non more so than crafting is the ability to trade most important.

First you must understand your ability to produce the item in question, if your success rate is 80%, you must understand that roughly one in every five times you will fail, and must be factored in.

The second thing you must factor in, is the price of the resources you wish to purchase, it is easier and cheaper to buy the resources needed than to go out and find the resources yourself.

Thirdly and one of the more important factors is the ability to sell what you produce, demand is an important factor in trying to sell an item.

Many miners will refine their own resource before selling, but hunter do not tend to refine hides or wools, where as a crafter you are more likely to look for refined resources when buying, sometimes it might be worth looking the unrefined forms. Although refining is not needed it maybe handy.

Finally, you never want to sell anything you produce back to a trade terminal, the best way to sell loot is to another player, you will always get more PED from a player than you would from a trade terminal. Anything you are unable to sell, save in your storage to sell later.

To learn more about trading in general click here.

Guide: Hunting Basics

This guide will teach you the basics of hunting. Here you will learn about weapons, healing, armour,  attachments and other combat enhancing items.

Equipping Equipment And Basic Controls

To view your inventory press "I", here you can access your healing tools, armour parts and weapons. Right click the item to access its options. From here you can view the details of an item or equip an item by right clicking it. Clothing is purely aesthetic and does not offer protection of any kind.

To target a creature simply click on it, an arrow will appear above the creatures head with the name and level of the creature and the health bar of the creature. Click the creature again to use your equipped weapon. The "F" key (Default)  will auto fire.

To target yourself for healing, you can use your health bar on your HUD while your healing tool is equipped. To heal others you can click their avatar, or if in a team their health bar. The "F" key (Default)  will auto heal. You can use the use tool key "E" (Default).

You are able to create custom controls to auto fire and to quickly switch between weapons, tools, and armour sets, you can learn more about the edit panel here:
Guide: Edit Interface

Weapons

Doing more damage is not simply down to buying a better weapons, skill is heavily involved in your ability to inflict damage and your ability to be accurate with a weapon. Using a weapon far above your skill level will cause you to waste ammo on missed shots and weaker damaging hits.

There are many types of weapons. Short blades, long blades, pistols, rifles, laser, BLP(bullets), explosives are a few examples. Using a weapon of one type can help improve skills in using other weapons, for example, using a laser pistol will give skill in laser rifles and BLP pistols.

Close combat weapons will help improve strength, which will improve your carrying capacity. Close combat can also increase your maximum health points. Some of the skills even carry across into other professions like weapon crafting skills, for example laser weapon technology.

If you are under level 10 in any skill it is recommended that you use the weapons in the trade terminal in game, use the starter pack on the web store, or use any of the weapons acquired from the new player missions. Weapons can also be purchased from other players in game for a markup. Ammo can be purchased from a trade terminal or converted shrapnel.

Some of the weapons suitable for under level 10 include: Solomate Rubio (L), Solomate Onyxo (L), Sollomate Azuro (L), EWE EP-1 Neutron (L), EWE EP-2 Proton (L), Skildek P30 (L), Skildek Lancehead (L), Castorian Combat EnBlade-B (L), Solomate Opalo, Bukin's Spare Rifle, Z12 Barbarella, Omegaton M2100, Castorian Combat EnBlade-A.

To be efficient in hunting you want a weapon which has the most bang for bucks, not only in ammo consumption for damage, but also how much markup you pay for a weapon. To be effective in hunting, just like any other professions, you want be smart on what you spend on your equipment.

A good example of being smart with what you have is buying shrapnel for 100.1% to 100.9% and converting it to universal ammo, as every 100 shrapnel converts to 101 ammo, buying shrapnel under 101% and converting it will provide more ammo than just simply buying it from a trade terminal

Defence And Healing

Getting hit in close combat will help improve evasion skills and getting shot will help improve dodging skills. Using close combat weapons can also increase your maximum health points. These abilities will naturally make you more resilient in combat. Evade and dodge can save you PED in healing and armour repair and replacement costs.

With the weaker robots and animals in Entropia, armour is not needed, but a healing device is an essential. Most of the lower level creatures will not be able to out damage most of the basic healing tools.

There are 7 armour parts to each armour set, hands, arms, head, chest, thighs, shins and feet. Some armours sets have a special ability when all parts are worn. For example the gold and platinum starter pack Adjusted Harrier Armour grants an extra 8% to running speed when the full set is equipped.

Every armour protects against certain types of damage, where some armour sets maybe more suited to hunting a creatures with particular types of damage, hunting creatures your armour is not designed for will offer little protection and will cost more in repairs and replacement.

Attachments

You can attach a number of attachments to your equipment to improve its statistics. A gun can be equipped with an amp, laser sight and scope to enhance damage,  accuracy and skill gain ability. Armours can have plating attached to enhance its defence. Every one of these attachments have their own trade terminal value and degrades like any other equipment.

To equip attachments to an items, simply drag the attachment to equipment it is designed for. To view what attachments are attached to an item, view its item info. On the item info screen you will be able to individually view and detach each attachments.

When an attachment runs out of trade terminal value, the weapon will no longer fire until the attachment it detached or repaired.

Limited And Unlimited Equipment

Some equipment can be repair and some equipment is disposable once used. Items with an (L) in the name are limited items. Limited items can not be repaired and are disposed of when they can no longer be used by selling them to the trade terminal. Items without the (L) in the name can be repaired at a repair console for PED.

Tier And Enhancers

Equipment has the ability to level up to unlock sockets, this is known as the tier level of an item. Sockets allow you to add enhancers to equipment to modify the statistics of an item.

Limited (L) items have the ability to unlock sockets when they tier up automatically, and continue to level up. Unlimited items require resources to tier up when they reach the required level to unlock a socket and continue to level up. When an items is ready to be upgraded, the resources used in the upgrade will be converted to shrapnel.

Enhancers can be attached at the bottom of the equipment info screen. Each enhancer can only be attached to the sockets number equal to the enhancer level, for example, a Weapon Damage Enhancer 2 will only go into the second socket of a gun. Enhancers can stack and do not degrade like other equipment, rather they have chance of one being destroyed every time you use the item.

The chances of this happening is very small, but because the chances of enhancers break is down to luck, you can use one for ages and then break few in a row. Enhancers have a lower chance of breaking on a limited tool. When enhancers break they will return the trade terminal value in shrapnel.

Other Useful Equipment

A number of other useful items exist to enhance your combat capability and efficiency. Everyone has access to loot collection pills, these pills can be purchased from any trade terminal and costs 0.50 PED per pill. Loot pills can automatically collect loot from dead creatures within 20 meters and each pill lasts for an hour.

This is just one of many of the combat enhancing drugs that can be purchased, Neurobiotic Boosters provide a skill boost bonus and different Neurostims provide different boosts, reloading speed boosts, health regeneration, faster running speed, are some for example.

Rings also provide an improvement to your abilities in combat by providing a constant boost to your statistics. Rings provide effects like pills, but without the short time limit. Each player can wear 1 ring per hand, check on the ring's information screen to see which hand it is for. Rings are classed as clothing and are found in the clothing tab.

Loot!

When you defeated you pray, do not forget to collect your loot, the "F" key (Default) will loot your target. When you have finished hunting, you will want to sell your loot, the best way to sell loot is to another player, you will always get more PED from a player than you would from a trade terminal. Anything you are unable to sell, save in your storage to sell later. Some of the hunted items are easier to sell after being refined.

This is a very important factor to whether a hunter is successful or not. Every profession requires a little bit of trading savvy to be successful, as it is an integral part of the game.

To learn more about trading in general click here.