If you are just starting to play Entropia Universe I highly advise you to stay away from Crafting. In this guide I want to take a broad look at Crafting. We can learn the basics and we can build on them later. Crafting can quickly break your bank account. Please proceed with extreme caution before trying your hand at it. Let’s see what we can learn about the subject.
What Is Crafting
Crafting is the process of combining in game materials to produce another item. This is a concept which you are likely familiar with. You take the loot you get from Hunting and ores from mining. These items are combined to create something new. But this very simple idea is extremely complicated.
Make no mistake this is one part of the game that can cost you a fortune. You will need a large bankroll. In depth knowledge of the game is a must. You have to know item uses, the market and demand. Find a way to take all of the “luck” out of it or crafting can end your entire career.
Let’s look at what you will need to get started:
Crafting Skills
Before you get started you will want to be sure you already have the skills you need. You could chose to simply start crafting and gain skills naturally. This would mean many failed crafting attempts. Each failed attempt would cost you PED. This would be so extremely costly I can not even estimate it. The number would likely be in the tens of thousands of dollars. It would also be very boring.
Alternatively you could purchase the Skill Implants you need at auction. This is slightly less expensive and would likely just cost several thousand dollars. You would need multiple implants. Each skill implant would have a huge mark up since the skills are hard to acquire.
The best way to get the skills you need will be by repairing a Mothership. We will get more into this in a later article but the concept is simple. There are about a dozen Motherships in Entropia. Several of them will allow you to be part of the repair crew. You won’t get paid but you will be able to repair the ship to gain skills you need for crafting. Most ships that offer this service do regular or daily repair runs.
This is the cheapest most cost effective way to get crafting skills. You will need to provide your own RK-5 Repair tools and Welding Wire. Most ship owners sell both for slightly above normal mark up.
Blueprints
The next thing you will need for crafting is a Blueprint. Each Blueprint requires different materials and makes a specific product. There are Limited Blueprints which are good for a set number of attempts. With an Unlimited Blueprint you can try as many attempts as you like. They never wear out.
You will want to use a Blueprint that you have the proper skills to use at its maximum success rate. If you use an Unlimited Blueprint you will want to be sure that it has a high QR or quality rating.
All UL BP’s start with a QR 1 and the highest QR is 100. The more the BP is used the higher the QR will become. Success rate is tied directly to BP QR. A QR 100 BP, and more than enough skills to use it, will give you the most successes possible. I do not recommend using a UL BP with a QR rating under 100. And I NEVER suggest using a BP you don’t have the skills to handle.
Materials
Once you have the skills and proper blueprint you will need materials. Each BP requires certain materials in certain quantities. This is a per attempt set up. The Simple 1 Conductors BP uses 2 Animal Eye Oil and 20 Animal Muscle Oil per attempt. If you want to do 100 attempts you would need to multiply those numbers by 100.
The materials you will need will be loot from Hunting and Mining. Usually BP’s use some mixture of hunting loot and mining loot. This helps to create demand and stimulate the in game economy. You may decide to collect these items yourself or purchase them from another player. Once you have gathered the materials you need it’s time to get started!
Crafting Your First Creation
With everything you need in hand you’re ready to go! You can find your favorite Construction Terminal and get started! You walk up to and interact with the construction terminal. The interactive menu will pop up presenting you with all of the BP’s that you have available.
You will want to select the one you wish to use. Now you will want to chose the proper settings for your crafting run. As I mentioned this is more complicated than you would think.
Quantity Vs Quality
One of the first things you will want to decide is quality or quantity. The slider bar can be set to either extreme or somewhere in between. Quantity will give you the most Successful crafting attempts. Quality will give you very few successes and a lot of failures. But full quality is how you get earth shattering high loots. All Time Highs in crafting are almost always from runs done on full Quality.
Knowing this we can guess which is more likely to break the bank. While there are exceptions you will almost always want to craft your run with the bar all the way to Quantity. Disregard this advice if you are a billionaire (but feel free to contact us about sponsorship!).
Residue
With the bar set all the way to Quantity we need to decide if residue is needed. If you are creating a stackable item there is no need to use residue. If you are making a Limited item you intend to resell, such as a tool or weapon, you will want to use residue.
You will have to have residue available as if it were a material the BP required. During your construction run you will have partial successes. This means you will have created an item but it will have been made below full TT value. If you have selected to use residue when this happens residue will be consumed. The item will now come out at full TT value. Electing not to use residue will mean you get whatever TT value the machine spits out.
This is important for two reasons. The first is that people typically do not like buying partial TT items. Second is that your profit will likely be derived from Mark Up. As with hunting and mining your construction run will not produce TT positive results. You will have to sell the end products for a chance at profiting. The more TT value an item has the more profit you receive from mark up.
Number of Crafting Attempts
You can chose a single crafting attempt. In this case you have to hit the construct button every time you want the machine to work. Or you can set a pre-determined number of attempts. Since you should be doing large crafting runs this is preferred. Simply set your number of attempts, hit construct and sit back and watch the results.
Other Settings
There are other settings you can use. Included is the option to automatically sell items. This is generally not a good idea. You will want to see your entire runs results before making decisions. Since this is an introduction guide we will save these features for later analysis.
At this point you are finally ready to try your luck! So why are the success rates wrong?
Success Rate
With correct skills and QR 100 BP you may think you will have a 95% success rate. After all that’s what it seems to indicate. Truth is that’s not how it works. Success rate includes successes and partial successes.
It’s also believed that this indicated 95% is 95% of some other unknown percentage. There is a lot of theory and research about this. We will save such discussions for a future date.
What You Can Do
Now you can see crafting is complicated business. My advice to any new player is simply do not do it. Get to know the game. Learn the market and the way the game works in depth. Only after extensive preparation should you even consider crafting. Failing to listen to this warning could break you financially.
In future articles we will look at crafting in more detail. For now learn all you can about Entropia Universe. Study the markets and do some Trading. Do repair runs and gain some crafting skills. Have fun and save up some PED.
Also be sure and check out the Offers and Videos available to our EarnPED members. This can help you earn PED you will need for crafting later on. Becoming a member is FREE so be sure and Join Us today!
