Thanks all for your replies, much appreciated.
Quick update: I bought an Ardora Ballista MK3 (L) (
http://planetarkadia.entropiawiki.com/Info.aspx?chart=Weapon&id=2076) for about 105%, an Armatrix Amp (L) for about 120%, and an Improved Ares ring.
Opened 100 boxes (mostly universal ammo) and used 1k ammo to hunt low-maturity Allophyl.
The results weren't the best, I ended up with around 85% return, mark-up on loot was pretty much non-existent.
Does that return seem about normal? $15 for a few hours shooting and some skills isn't terrible, but there must be a way to slightly reduce that cost.
Any recommendations for better mobs to shoot? Or a setup change? That gun is pretty much broken now, Sulje's advice on ArMatrix weapons makes me want to avoid those. I'll stick with (L) for now, but if I can get returns up to 90-95% I'd consider UL.
Boxes markup after opening can vary considerably, easy to get less than 40ped in pill mu from 100-200 boxes (and currently the pill market is heavily saturated so you won't get top dollar for any valuable pills right now). Pill prices went up last year partly because there was no summer mayhem. Prices started to go down during Xmas Mayhem, remains to be seen if the demand for the amount of pills from opened boxes exceeds the current supply. The biggest source for MU from boxes other than rings, is amps, with the Mindforce/B-Amp ones easily 800-1100%, and the Laser ones significantly more. I've found I usually get around 1-2 amps per 100 boxes, but sometimes you go cold and get none for a couple hundred. Also if you get a Melee Amp the MU is significantly less. I've read that on average, over a large sample size, the average markup for opening a Seasonal Strongbox is close to 2ped/box, not including seasonal ring drops. I've found this to be close to what I've gotten over a few thousand opened, but it can vary quite a bit with a small sample size, and could be a bit less than that as I haven't kept exact records.
85% return on a small amount of ped turnover is very normal, in fact it can easily go to 70% for small hunts, although rarely lower than that. Over a larger ped turnover, your returns will usually be within your expected return rate (which is roughly 86% plus your efficiency level * 7% plus your looter level * 7%, which is usually in the 90-93% range for newer and returning hunters with looter levels under 20). Also when hunting larger hp mobs, your tt return variance goes up significantly (and Allophyl are a medium-sized mob, costing 2-3.5 ped per kill). They don't drop much regular markup, can drop say a one in a million chance for a shopkeeper pad and maybe one in one hundred thousand chance for a a101 amp. Rare MU like that can never be counted on. And whether it's 1 in 100,000 or 1 in 1,000,000 doesn't matter much, it's really rare and you could do the full codex 10 times and easily not see either.
I highly recommend you do not pay 120% markup for any amps, ever, except during Mayhem events. Most UL laser and blp amps are quite reasonable in price. UL guns for either can be quite high, however. I personally use an UL mindforce chip when hunting, as the cost for them is usually much lower than for a comparable UL laser/blp weapon. Armatrix weapons up to around the -45 are generally under 120% MU and are a decent way to get some hunting action if you don't hunt for 10hrs a day. If you cycle alot of ped then it's much better to buy an UL weapon. UL Melee weapons are also much more affordable than most others, however you will end up with a ton of shrapnel that you can't convert to keep hunting (so on average you will lose around half a percent .5%) when using a melee weapon if you tt the shrapnel unless you use the shrapnel to either sell it or convert it to universal ammo and then use that for mining. Most hunters don't want to use their universal ammo for mining, as the gameplay for those two endeavours is very different in pace, tt return, and knowledge base required. However, an UL melee weapon would mean you no longer are paying any markup to hunt, which imo is better than most other options using L weapons. If any of that sounds confusing, it's because it is. Trying to hunt at a sustainable pace with looter levels lower than 50 is extremely difficult. Generally, when I hunt, I just assume I'm going to lose around 7% of the ped I cycle, minus say .5% for the shrapnel I cycle, and depending on the mob, sometimes 1-2% in markup received (like Maffoids are the best non-Mayhem mob I found for MU on calypso, and I still lost a ton of ped cycling 25 codex ranks on them, around a 5% loss when all was said and done, so almost 2700 ped lost on the full codex.
I suggest you buy an UL Melee or Mindforce weapon, either can be bought for less than 1000ped for a decent amount of dps, and for Melee you can buy an amp later on. For Mindfoce, I recommend hunting unamped unless its a Mayhem event. You can also usually buy a L Mindforce weapon for less than 110% markup and they last, most of them, three times longer than a gun, so you end up paying quite a bit less in MU to hunt. If you are determined to hunt using laser/blp weapons, then I recommend you use the TT weapons/ or the Barbarella until you get a better understanding of what your tt returns will be over a higher amount of monster kills (like hunting exarosaurs with the TT gun), if you kill 5000 of them, you will almost certainly then understand what your tt returns will be, barring any huge multipliers which will skew the results of that small a turnover. Once you understand what TT return you can expect, then paying MU to hunt with Armatrix guns on larger mobs is fine so long as you understand what your expected return is going to be over the long run, and also what the Markup cost is going to be to hunt long-term constantly paying MU for your weapons. You will need a large bankroll if you chooose this route, and will need to dedicate yourself to monthly deposits of at least $100/month. Frankly, hunting at low looter levels requires constant deposits, I've found no way around this, and trust me I've tried. Some people develop the misconception that they can profit easily from hunting with 60 efficiency weapons and looter levels under 30. This is simply not the case. Those that do profit with those levels are almost certainly not hunting on Calypso, where the opportunity for decent markup on small-medium lv monsters (under 1500hp) is not good.
If I went to go hunt Allophyl, I would expect with 60 efficiency and 40 looter level, to get around 93% tt return, plus say half a percent from converting shrapnel at a rate of 50% shrapnel returned in loot. I would expect zero markup from most of the oils and miscellaneous items that they drop, and would not expect a shopkeeper pad or a101 amp. I would hunt them because I wanted to rank up codex and to skill the weapon I was using. I would assume that if I cycled 50000 ped to get to rank 25 codex on them, that I would simply lose 6.5% so for every 10k cycled, 650 ped. So 3250 ped I would expect to lose. That's $325. Now if it takes you 3 months to do that, that's not a bad cost for entertainment. However, if you do that in a week, it will really hurt. Using a 40dps weapon, unamped, you would normally cycle around 300-500 ped/hr depending on mob density. So let's say you can get 100 hrs of entertainment at 500ped cycled/hr, for the cost of $325. That's $3.25/hr, which depending on where you live, is actually a reasonable cost for entertainment. If you aren't having fun doing it, then it's no longer entertainment, it's just called losing.
So the key is, to have fun hunting, while understanding what your expected return should be, and to MINIMIZE HOW MUCH MARKUP YOU SPEND while hunting. Imo, for the new to average hunter, Mayhem is the only time where constant Markup spent on hunting materials is justified (I used Mayhem limited Mindforce amps during the Xmas Mayhem, and used enhancers until their cost went over 300% when I stopped). The other extremely important concept, is to hunt within your budget, or to be willing to accept that you will easily go to zero. As an example, say you start with 1000 ped: you cycle it, and now you're at 935, then you're at 870, then 815, etc... it won't take long before you're at zero. If it takes you a month to finish that cycle, no problem, but if it happens in 3 days, you will most likely be upset. From my observations, Mindark expects most hunters to pay $3.25/hr give or take a few cents, and expects them to hunt for 20-40hrs/month, thereby spending close to $100/month. Personally, I think this is an awful business model which relies on people's perceived conception that they can get lucky (you can't, this isn't a casino). In a casino, you can get lucky. Here, the books are cooked and always will be. It also preys on those who think the game is a form of gambling, and lures them into all kinds of endeavours which just put them deeper in the hole. The main reason why I emphasize to stop paying markup for your hunting, is that if no one pays markup anymore, Mindark will be forced to adjust the expected TT return for the new player and for the monthly depositor, instead of the current system where Joe/Jill average deposits his/her $100/month, then pays $10 of that to one of the elite hunters and the rest to Mindark while hunting. This is a stupid business model and the only reason why it has persisted is because some people mistakenly think this is a gambling game. It's not. It's my hope that new and returning players, and consistent depositors, will start to understand how much it really costs to play the game, so that at least they can understand what the real expected returns are for what they are doing. If you hunt knowing that it will cost you $3.25/hr on average, would you keep doing it? For me, the answer was no, and so I stopped once I understood what the real cost was. If the cost was $1.00/hr, then I would probably do it much more, but it's not, it's much more than that. And yes, I could go use a weapon that has 10dps/hr, and lower the cost that way. That is a reasonable adjustment that many people do, to continue to have hunting activity but to reduce the amount you pay every month.
And to clarify the difference between a casino/gambling and this game, I will give you a simple example: I have 100$. I make a 100$ wager on red on the roulette wheel. I have a 47.4% chance of winning. That means that almost half the time, I double my money. Now, I take that same $100, and go hunt with 1000 ped. From what I've experienced and what I've read in others logs, on avg, most hunts of 1000ped+ aren't TT profitable, around maybe 10-15% are. So I have a 10-15% chance of making more than the original 1000ped back, but almost a 0% chance of doubling it. And even when I do win, the % of my win will usually be less than 10%. So let's say I cycled the 1000 ped, and I'm upset because I only got 825ped back. So I go hunt some Proterons that cost 20ped/kill. 40 Proterons later, 80-90% of the time, I will have lost even more. Whereas if I lose $100 on red, on the next roll, I still have a 47.4% chance of getting my money back. So in reality, Entropia Universe's rate of return is actually much worse than a casino. Casino's would shut down if they only gave 93% back to their customers. This game actually has numerous anti-gambling measures built into its payout structure, the biggest one being that you can't just keep doubling your input cost and hope to "win" your money back in one lucky spin, as most of the time even when you "win" it won't be a doubling of your input (in the proteron example, maybe you kill one of them, and get lucky, and get 50 ped back... but most likely, that doesn't happen, as we all know a 2.5x multiplier in hunting doesn't come every other mob.) Emotionally, it is very common to become upset when doing something with an unpredictable outcome that ends up unfavorably. This is human nature. The only way I've found to overcome this in Entropia is to have the proper expectations of whatever endeavour I am doing, therefore mitigating any surprise factor in the results. If more players thought of hunting as "training" or "fun" instead of "gambling", they would enjoy the game for what it is, a game.
I hope you find your sweet spot, where you are having fun playing the game, and not discouraged by it's cost.
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