Legends' Hunting Blog!

[DB Ulerie]

Glad to see this back on track. Looking forward to more posts!

 

[atomicstorm]

When you calculate your final returns+Markup, considering that shrapnel can be converted into Universal Ammo, I would include in your calculations also the value of the shrapnel *1.01 (=101% conversion of shrapnel TT into universal ammo).

Imo it's very probable that MindArk include the shrapnel conversion into their model for the hunting returns of any player : they created that "shrapnel" on purpose.

Paul

Incorrect. You should count it as markup. It is paid by the planet partner at time of conversion as a rakeback. (as told to me by a PP)

It does not count against you.

 

[Legends]

Creature: Longtooth (L14-L16)
Location: Fort Argus
My Animal Looter level: 25.74
My Evade level: 24.34
Rings: Athenic (L) and Ares Perfected
Tagger #1 (efficiency): ArMatrix LR-35 (L) + A103 + LR1/B8 + B4 + P20 - (67.4%)
Tagger #2 (efficiency): ArMatrix BC-35 (L) + ArMatrix 28P + LR1/B8 + B4 + P20 - (71.3%)
Weapon #3 (efficiency): ArMatrix LP-35 (L) + ArMatrix L-amp 25B + LR1/B8 + B8 + P20 - (71.3%)
Weapon #4 (efficiency): ArMatrix BP-35 (L) + ArMatrix B-amp 25P + LR1/B8 + B8 + P20 - (71.4%)
Weapons decay (incl. attachments): 460.25 PED (+63.19 markup)
FAPs (using Restoration chip 1 (L)): 0.01 (+0.06 markup)
Armor decay: 40.53 PED (+1.68 markup)
Total ammo spent: 4,695.60 PED
Total spent on hunt (w/mu): 5,261.32 PED

Hunting run duration: ~ 8 hours
Globals/HoFs: 109, 219, 74, 63, 85, 115, 199, 95 and 54
Items looted: Castorian Pioneer EnBlade-6, E.L.M Edition (L), Isis Project Zero-Three, E.L.M Edition (L) and Electric Attack Nanochip 6 (L).
Items TT value (~markup value): 47.00 (+55.00 markup)
Stackables (~mu): 4,947.97 PED (+131.78 PED)
Net returns (w/mu): 5,181.75 PED or 98.5%
Loot quality, i.e. % shrapnel: 72% of loot tt was shrapnel
Profit/Cost per hour: -10 PED/hour

Note: I used Damage enhancers on these guns as they tiered up which causes Efficiency to drop. The Efficiency shown is without Damage enhancers.

At the start of this hunt I had 2115/3000 kills. I finished the Iron mission and also finished stage 12 for Longtooth in the Codex.

Hunting: Still trying to focus on the BLP to catch it up with my Laser. Yesterday before logging out I had to make some more BP-35s cause I was completely out. It's amazing how many guns you can go through when you are really grinding mobs down. So I decided to also make myself some BC-35s so that way I'm 100% BLP and no Laser. Now I have something like 10 of each, hopefully this will get my BLP back up closer to where my Laser is at (about 4 levels higher right now).

Defense: I managed to reduce my defensive costs again, they were 0.8% on this last run. This was probably mostly due to the increased dps from the Ares Perfected which I bought tonight just before I started this hunt.

Achievements: level 41 BLP Pistoleer (hit), level 43 Laser Pistoleer (hit), level 25 Evader.

I was literally 1 global away from breaking even on this one. 98.5% is definitely above average for my efficiency and looter level so am happy with that.

On top of the 35 PED of Combat Reflexes I got for completing this Iron mission, I also took Athletics skills as the reward for stages 11 and 12 in the Codex, so my Evade has gone from level 24.11 when I first started hunting these Longtooths a few days ago, to now level 25.44. Not bad for just 3000 mobs.

 

[Legends]

Creature: Leviathan (L27-L40)
Location: North of Port Atlantis
My Animal Looter level: 25.95
My Evade level: 25.44
Rings: Athenic (L) and Ares Perfected
Tagger #1 (efficiency): ArMatrix BC-35 (L) + ArMatrix 28P + LR1/B8 + B4 + P20 - (71.3%)
Weapon #2 (efficiency): ArMatrix BP-35 (L) + ArMatrix B-amp 25P + LR1/B8 + B8 + P20 - (71.4%)
Weapons decay (incl. attachments): 379.32 PED (+56.96 markup)
FAPs (Resto chip (L) + Ek-2600): 32.19 (+12.68 markup)
Armor (Aquila (L) + AP-18 Impact (L)): 108.59 PED (+19.20 markup)
Total ammo spent: 3,978 PED
Total spent on hunt (w/mu): 4,586.94 PED

Hunting run duration: ~ 10.5 hours
Globals/HoFs: 69, 93, 172, 74, 72 and 87
Items looted: none
Items TT value (~markup value): N/A
Stackables (~mu): 3,560.86 PED (+82.57 PED)
Net returns (w/mu): 3,643.43 PED or 79.4%
Loot quality, i.e. % shrapnel: 80% of loot tt was shrapnel
Profit/Cost per hour: -90 PED/hour

Note: I used Damage enhancers on these guns as they tiered up which causes Efficiency to drop. The Efficiency shown is without Damage enhancers.

Ouch. This was my very first time hunting this mob, actually I wasn't sure I'd even be able to solo them at all. It's a bit tedious and slow at times but it's doable. The reason I'm doing Leviathan now is because the Iron mission for them is being removed next Tuesday but there are some nice skill rewards in there that I'd like to get like Evade for stage 2 and Perception for stage 3. So my goal is to just get myself into stage 3 and once started, I'll have a year to finish it. I might do something similar with Rextelum afterwards, we'll see.

Hunting: This hunting run was approximately 415 Leviathans. I'm still using just BLP, trying to catch it up with my laser. Sadly, compared with an LR-35, the BC-35 has about 25 meters less range on it, which is something that I could really use right now to allow me more time to deal the mob damage before it reaches me. So in hindsight, I kinda wish I had used a laser rifle for this instead.

Defense: My defensive costs are almost 4% of the total hunt costs, this is very high. Unfortunately, I don't have any unlimited armor that would be strong enough to hunt Leviathans with. The cheapest thing I could find to use in my inventory of armors is an old partially used up set of Aquila (L) I bought from auction a couple years ago. I don't remember exactly what I paid but I'm sure it would have been somewhere around 112%-116%, so I'm calculating 114% as the markup costs incurred for the armor decay in the hunt. The 28 Impact on the Aquila isn't really enough so I added AP-18 Impact plates, but sadly, that's a bit weak and I'm taking lots of damage. In hindsight, I've realized I should have used AP-24s, though they are about 10% more mu, would've made my life a lot easier. So anyway, since my armor set-up is weak, I'm having to use my emergency FAP a lot (Ek-2600), almost with every mob, and that's expensive and not eco at all. That Ek-2600 had over 30 PED of decay on it when I ended the run, that's about 300 heals. I'm trying to use the Restoration chips as much as possible, even bought myself a Resto 2 (L) chip to see if it would make a difference, but alone it's not enough to keep me alive.

The things that would really help are: more range, more dps, better armor protection (like switching to AP-24s instead of the AP-18s), more Evade and more Health. So I'm going to switch to laser for a bit just to max out the LR-40, that will give me more range and more dps, and hopefully that makes a difference on the Defensive costs.

Achievements: level 26 Animal Looter, level 23 Cryogenic (hit), level 45 BLP Sniper (hit).

 

[SoberPhil]

Sorry to see you 20% in the red after such a long run, must be dissapointing. I tried to complete some irons too on smaller mobs, but I stopped after I realised that those skills aren't worth it. But of course skills would be very useful to someone who's planning to invest in an upgrade, purchase higher level items.

 

[Ferial]

Incorrect. You should count it as markup. It is paid by the planet partner at time of conversion as a rakeback. (as told to me by a PP)

It does not count against you.

I'm happy to hear this as I have been counting MU on shrapnel all along. I never even thought of it potentially being any other way.
However, does this mean that the community could collectively decide to bankrupt a PP by collecting a crapton of shrapnel, going to the PPs planet and converting it?

on topic: Very nice log, I hope you keep this up

 

[atomicstorm]

I'm happy to hear this as I have been counting MU on shrapnel all along. I never even thought of it potentially being any other way.
However, does this mean that the community could collectively decide to bankrupt a PP by collecting a crapton of shrapnel, going to the PPs planet and converting it?

on topic: Very nice log, I hope you keep this up

Don't know. TBH, when it was told to me, the individual was miffed. It was told to me this way. I would bet that it is not on conversion but at time of looting just for the reason you mention. I think there would be an uproar. I don't want to go into too much speculation, but will say is that you should treat it as markup. It is not some underhanded way to reduce your returns if you convert.

 

[Legends]

Sorry to see you 20% in the red after such a long run, must be dissapointing. I tried to complete some irons too on smaller mobs, but I stopped after I realised that those skills aren't worth it. But of course skills would be very useful to someone who's planning to invest in an upgrade, purchase higher level items.

Hey SoberPhil,

Yeah this is a big loss and it's very disappointing, but yeah, eventually I'd like to invest into something with high efficiency, so I have to work on my hunting skills.

Also, as I tell my soc mates: You can't have the highs without the lows. So I'm hoping at some point there will be some profits which will help to offset these losses.

I'm gonna go do some Rextelums today, need a break from the Levis.

Cheers,
Legends

 

[Legends]

Creature #1: ~100 Rextelum (L22-L31)
Location: Naval Station Triton
Creature #2: ~100 Leviathan (L24-L40)
Location: North of Port Atlantis
My Animal Looter level: 26.14
My Evade level: 25.64
Rings: Athenic (L) and Ares Perfected
Tagger #1 (efficiency): ArMatrix BC-35 (L) + ArMatrix 28P + LR1/B8 + B4 + P20 - (71.3%)
Weapon #2 (efficiency): ArMatrix LP-35 (L) + ArMatrix L-amp 25B + LR1/B8 + B8 + P20 - (71.3%)
Weapons decay (incl. attachments): 159.90 PED (+22.00 markup)
FAPs (using Restoration chip 1 (L)): 12.97 (+4.16 markup)
Armor decay: 38.08 PED (+5.30 markup)
Total ammo spent: 1,568.76 PED
Total spent on hunt (w/mu): 1,811.17 PED

Hunting run duration: ~ 5.5 hours
Globals/HoFs: 228 Rextelum and 85 Leviathan
Items looted: none
Items TT value (~markup value): N/A
Stackables (~mu): 1,592.09 PED (+30.95 PED)
Net returns (w/mu): 1,623.04 PED or 89.6%
Loot quality, i.e. % shrapnel: 89% of loot tt was shrapnel
Profit/Cost per hour: -34 PED/hour

Note: I used Damage enhancers on these guns as they tiered up which causes Efficiency to drop. The Efficiency shown is without Damage enhancers.

I did stage 1 of Rextelum and grabbed the stage 2 mission from the npc, this will allow me to get that 8 PED Handgun skill reward later when I finish stage 2. I've completed stage 2 for Leviathan and grabbed stage 3 from the Admiral, this will allow me to get the 22 PED Perception skill reward when I finish it later. As promised by MindArk last week, I will have a year now to complete these missions, which will be plenty of time.

Hunting: Using an LP-35 now so as to raise my Ranged Laser (dmg) to level 45 so I can use an LR-40 as a tagger. It's slow but at least it's coming up a little bit now. I'm at like 44.44 right now, another half a level to go. I will be taking Laser Weaponry Technology skill rewards in the Codex if given the opportunity until I reach level 45.

Defense: My god these Rextelum are horrible to hunt. I had what I thought was a good armor set-up but I was taking a lot of damage, then I remembered that this mob does 2 different attacks with different damage types, so I realized my problem was I wasn't protected efficiently for the 2nd attack, the one from the stinger (more info on that here: entropiawiki article for Rextelum). Not only that, the spawn has Aetherex mixed in which does 100% Impact, what a mess it is to try to hunt this thing if you aren't high-level enough to hunt them. The other problem was I started from Naval Station Triton, where the NPC is that gives the mission, not knowing that at Jamieson's Reach there are some lower maturities. Anyway, I managed to kill 100 of them. For an armor I used 3 parts of Vain with 5B plates (30 Impact, 55 Cut, 58 Stab), 3 parts of Polaris with Pulsar 8 (11 Impact, 48 Cut, 30 Stab) and a pair of Chronicle foot with a 5A plate on it (20 Impact, 64 Cut, 70 Stab).

These armor parts are all very cheap as far as markup goes, around 102%-108%. And since the pincer attack is 20% Impact, 60% Cut and 20% Stab, I was aiming mainly to protect for the Cut damage as much as possible. I think this set-up accomplishes this just fine. My only problem was the attack from the tail. This set-up provided very little protection against Acid and left me wide open. I guess Perseus or Rutuba with some Cut plates would be the best option for these guys.

Achievements: level 42 BLP Pistoleer (hit), level 16 Paramedic, level 26 Evader (after taking the 4 PED Evade skill reward from the Admiral).

I'm kind of feeling like a sucker right now, 1132 PED losses just to get a 4 PED Evade skill reward, 1.10 Courage skill reward and 0.80 Dodge, doesn't seem like a good deal at all.. Maybe I should have just left that alone and not bother with it

 

[Hego Damask]

doesn't seem like a good deal at all.. Maybe I should have just left that alone and not bother with it

I have made the same conclusion when checked the rewards of the next stages and the needed ammount of ped to reach them.
Starting from 0, if you not hunt them anyway, with low eff and low looter skills (i would have used similar to yours), it isnt worth it.

 

[Legends]

I feel I would be remiss if I did not remind readers of this Blog that I do quite a bit of crafting in between hunts and it should be known and understood that I do not officially track or record my crafting returns.

Because it is possible that the Entropia Loot System does not differentiate between these various activities, i.e. Mining, Crafting and Hunting, it is possible that a skewed picture of my actual returns in Entropia results from my tracking and recording of only my Hunting returns.

I don't have any plans to start tracking my Crafting returns as well since this is a Hunting Blog, but I do wish to make it known that today I had a couple of nice HoFs which I feel helped tremendously to offset my recent Hunting losses:

Perhaps one day I will write a post about how I think the Loot System works and so on, but for now I'll just say I have reasons to believe that the Loot System doesn't make a distinction between Hunting and Crafting, all it does is hand out a multiplier, it's a very simple RNG (random number generator) and arithmetic function. There is obviously another step to determine what exactly you got in the loot, but that is irrelevant to the core Loot System in place. What I'm saying is the Loot System just hands out multipliers, that's all it does, and it doesn't care if you are hunting, mining or crafting.

So a person could theoretically experience nothing but losses in hunting and have a lot of 'luck' at the crafting terminal to make up for those losses and vice-versa. Therefore tracking only one specific activity is most likely unfair as there is too much unknown about the results from the other activities.

Legends

 

[Hego Damask]

Maybe it works like that, maybe not.
But MA track them separate: https://www.planetcalypsoforum.com/forum/index.php?media/support-looter-issues.305454/

 

[Legends]

I really wasn't sure where to go next with my hunting. After the losses I have had on Leviathans recently, I wasn't really in the mood to go hunt them again quite yet even though I do have a mission I need to finish on them. I was looking at my skills and just wanted to get my Ranged Laser (dmg) to level 45 so I could finally use an LR-40 efficiently. I hunted something that was familiar to me: Allophyls and Estophyls. I didn't log all my runs so I wouldn't be able to say for sure what my returns were like, but judging from my experience, the returns were negative.

Skills were going up very slowly on allo/estos so I thought if I hunt bigger they might go up faster, so I went back to East Scylla Mountains and hunted Promordial Longus for a couple of days. There again, returns were bad. Skills were probably going up a little bit faster but not much. I wasn't getting as many Output Amplifiers as I remember getting from them before so ultimately I decided there was no point hunting them either.

Some soc members had been hunting Caperons for a while and telling me that their returns have been pretty stable over the long-term so I thought about giving them a try. But a quick look at their profile on entropiawiki made me realize I just don't have the dps yet to hunt those guys.

I think every Enrtopia player will go through a phase at some point where they just don't know what they want to do anymore, they no longer have any direction or goal. I think as a hunter I was at that point. I was a bit disappointed by the fact that I had passed over into Category 4 for Mayhem and wasn't really sure what I wanted to do about it anymore cause the prospect of grinding my way to maxing out the LR-45 was just overwhelming to me at the rate that my skills were currently going up, but at the same time I didn't really want to chip out skills just so I could remain in Cat 3, that seemed to go against my long-term goal of being able to hunt bigger mobs some day.

So as I hunter, I had to figure out, what do I want to do...?

Here's a few things I do know:

1) I would like to keep skilling as a hunter
2) I'd like to create some good content for this Blog
3) I'd like to somehow align my hunting activities in Entropia with my other primary activity of owning and running shops if I can

So I've decided to finally bite the bullet and go up to Crystal Palace and at least do the initial 5k Aurlis so as to gain access to the Cave there. Ultimately, I should have that, as I may want to grind out some of these mutated bones one day so I can make upgraded 5B plates for my armor shops. I think this will also produce some great content for this Blog, at the very least, it should give people a good idea of what to expect if they decide to go up there and do it as well.

So here's me starting out on this 5k Aurli mission:

​

Creature #1: Aurli (33-44)
Location: Crystal Palace SS (Dome 1)
My Animal Looter level: 26.82
My Evade level: 26.64
Rings: Athenic (L) and Ares (L)
Tagger #1 (efficiency): ArMatrix LR-40 (L) + ArMatrix 37B + P20 - (71.3%)
Weapon #2 (efficiency): ArMatrix LP-40 (L) + ArMatrix 28B + P20 - (71.4%)
Weapons decay (incl. attachments): 309 PED (+53 markup)
FAPs (Ek-2600 and Resto 1 (L)): 3.31 (+1.30 markup)
Armor decay: 127.13 PED (+17.21 markup)
Total ammo spent: 3726.70 PED
Total spent on hunt (w/mu): 4,237.65 PED

Hunting run duration: ~ 6.5 hours
Globals/HoFs: 57, 120, 58, 51, 60, 109, 82, 87 and 112
Items looted: Hermes foot (L)
Items TT value (~markup value): 62.59 (+6.26 mu)
Stackables (~mu): 3,451.80 PED (+42.83 PED)
Net returns (w/mu): 3,563.48 PED or 84.1%
Loot quality, i.e. % shrapnel: 67% of loot tt was shrapnel
Profit/Cost per hour: -104 PED/hour

Note: I used Damage enhancers on these guns as they tiered up which causes Efficiency to drop. The Efficiency shown is without Damage enhancers.

This is going to be very expensive and I almost regret starting this... The 4.5% tax on hunting means that if I typically have 94.5% tt returns on hunting, then I would suspect that my average here will be only 90%, which means this little endeavor will end up costing me ~4k PED in hunting losses. We'll see how it goes but that's my prediction anyway.

Hunting: I'm not going to use any attachments on my guns since these would just add to the losses. The only attachments I will use will be the amp and the P20 to try to save a bit of money (make the guns last longer).

Defense: As far as armor protection goes, I narrowed it down to 3 options: Aquila, Tiger and Ozpyn Beetle. I've settled on a used set of Aquila (L) which I bought from auction a couple years ago. I don't remember what I paid for it exactly but am sure it would have been somewhere between 110% and 120%, so I'm just going to use 115% as the markup amount. I don't actually have a set of 5B plates at the moment so I've put a set of 5A plates on it for now (4A would work as well). As you can see from the FAP costs above, It's working fine (I don't have to heal very often). The Ek-2600 is just an emergency FAP in case I get swarmed or get crit hit more than once. I mostly just use the Resto chip. Once the Aquila breaks I will most likely just switch out the parts for Tiger (L) as the mu on it is quite reasonable. My defensive costs on this hunt were about 3.5% of overall costs, which is high, but I'm a bit weak for these guys so that's just what it will be. I should be able to improve this number on the next run now that I am more familiar with the spawn and aggro characteristics of the mob.

Achievements: Level 45 Pistoleer (hit), Level 42 Ranged BLP (dmg), Level 20 Robot Looter, Level 27 Animal Looter and I finally reached level 45 Ranged Laser (dmg) and unlocked Wounding.

After about 6.5 hours, I'm at about 17% progress.

 

[Chronophobe]

Aquila is nice and comfy to wear on aurli, but it will decay quickly when they swarm you. I have been wanting to try old school goblin and some of the new plates from NI. Even goblin and 5b with good evade is an option. I think traditionally that gremlin\5b has been the cp choice.

 

[CortunWrath]

Viceroy and gremlin are the best options up there when paired with 5b. Another setup might be Adj pixie with some acid plates but I think that might be too little on the C/S/I protections.

 

[Geralt]

What are your total profit/loss stats including MU so far? Or just cost to play per hour so far?

 

[Legends]

Aquila is nice and comfy to wear on aurli, but it will decay quickly when they swarm you. I have been wanting to try old school goblin and some of the new plates from NI. Even goblin and 5b with good evade is an option. I think traditionally that gremlin\5b has been the cp choice.

Viceroy and gremlin are the best options up there when paired with 5b. Another setup might be Adj pixie with some acid plates but I think that might be too little on the C/S/I protections.

Well yes, it has been the traditional choice in the past, but when was the last time you went and hunted Aurlis in Dome 1? About a year ago, MA actually increased the amount of damage they do. I haven't tested this out myself yet but I can tell that Aurli Weak do more than a max of 77 damage (either that or the damage types in entropiawiki are wrong).

Still, Gremlin +5B would be the best option I think, if I had more hp, more dps and more Evade. At my current level, I am taking a lot of hits from these Aurlis because it takes me a while to kill them. Gremlin with 5B would only give me 19 Stab and the Aurli Weak does an average of 23 Stab per hit, and can go as high as 31 Stab damage per hit. For the Watcher, it's an average of 26 points of Stab, and max is 35. So if I was wearing Gremlin +5B I'd be healing constantly.

Either way, I'll either spend a lot on Armor, or a lot on fapping. Right now I'm using Ek-2600 which has terrible eco, so I'd much rather protect my health using armor instead of using that.

What are your total profit/loss stats including MU so far? Or just cost to play per hour so far?

In each post I give the details of the individual hunting run along with Net returns. Periodically I tabulate all of these hunting runs to give the cumulative returns for all of my logged hunting runs up to that point. That last time I tabulated these returns was in post #53:

TOTALs:

Hours of hunting: ~93 hours

Amount of PEDs cycled: 24,041 PEDs
Spent on markup: 104.27 PEDs

TT value of loot: 22,525 PEDs
TT value Returned: 93.69%

Loot markup: 202 PEDs (128+74)
Net Returns w/markup: 22,727 PEDs
Net Returns: -1,314 or 94.53%

Profit/Cost per hour: -14 PED/hour

So 94.53% is the number you're looking for probably. That factors in the mu of the loot.

 

[Legends]

Creature #1: Aurli (33-44)
Location: Crystal Palace SS (Dome 1)
My Animal Looter level: 27.13
My Evade level: 26.77
Rings: Athenic (L) and Ares (L)
Tagger #1 (efficiency): ArMatrix LR-40 (L) + ArMatrix 37B + P20 - (71.3%)
Weapon #2 (efficiency): ArMatrix LP-40 (L) + ArMatrix 28B + P20 - (71.4%)
Weapons decay (incl. attachments): 256.69 PED (+48 markup)
FAPs (Ek-2600 and Resto 2 (L)): 2.94 (+1.41 markup)
Armor decay: 76 PED (+9.63 markup)
Total ammo spent: 3,186.64 PED
Total spent on hunt (w/mu): 3,581.64 PED

Hunting run duration: ~ 5 hours
Globals/HoFs: 95, 155, 129, 111, 120, 113 and 96
Items looted: Hermes Groin (L) and Isis LBP 25 (L)
Items TT value (~markup value): 152 (+18 mu)
Stackables (~mu): 3,361.64 PED (+33.50 PED)
Net returns (w/mu): 3565.14 PED or 99.5%
Loot quality, i.e. % shrapnel: 68% of loot tt was shrapnel
Profit/Cost per hour: -3 PED/hour

Note: I used Damage enhancers on these guns as they tiered up which causes Efficiency to drop. The Efficiency shown is without Damage enhancers.

I crafted myself 15 more LP-40 (L) last night. That should be enough to complete the 5k Aurli mission. I didn't have any luck with the crafting but some of the Tier Increase Rates aren't too bad. I got one gun with a TIR of 321, so I started out with that one and got it all the way to tier 3. Now I have it filled with Damage Enhancers and I'm only going to use it for the Watchers and above. This will help kill them off faster and hopefully help save on defense costs.

Hunting: I'm getting a lot better now at not getting swarmed by these guys. The most I ever had on me in this 5 hour hunt was 4 and that only happened once or twice.

Defense: My defense costs for this run were 2.5% of overall costs, so that is a big improvement. I attribute that to a few factors, 1) I am much better now at avoiding getting swarmed by lots of Aurlis at once, this helps me save on needless armor decay and fapping, 2) I have a couple of tier 3 weapons I can use now for killing the higher level Aurlis faster and 3) I started switching out my Aquila for some Adjusted Jaguar pieces I had sitting at the shop. Unfortunately I don't have a full set of Adj Jag, only 4 parts, so I won't be able to benefit from the full decrease crit damage buff. I'd say it'll be a pretty good option with some 5B plates. Not as good as Aquila but pretty good.

Achievements: level 46 Ranged Laser (dmg).

I don't like that my Laser Sniper (hit) is a full 2.5 levels ahead of my Laser Pistoleer (hit) so I'm taking Handgun in the Codex right now whenever I can to try and catch it up. I'll keep doing that until I reach level 50 and unlock Combat Sense. When Handgun is not available, I'll probably focus on skills that contribute to my Looter professions until I reach level 30 Looter and unlock Butchering.

 

[Namokiller]

Heya Legends, I would recommend you hunting Exarosaur young @ PA I know it's a tottaly boring mob,but with the recently high Mu on Blazar (over 250k%+T2 comp over 150%) ,take a weapon that could 2 shots them,you will gain lot of skills for cheap , for the first time if things continue like this I will be in green this month ,that's funny because I start to see some old player rushing those mob like bulldozer ( Stoica Alina ) take pillls auto loot,and you can easily cycle 1k per day without taking any risk , Cheers mate.

 

[Legends]

Heya Legends, I would recommend you hunting Exarosaur young @ PA I know it's a tottaly boring mob,but with the recently high Mu on Blazar (over 250k%+T2 comp over 150%) ,take a weapon that could 2 shots them,you will gain lot of skills for cheap , for the first time if things continue like this I will be in green this month ,that's funny because I start to see some old player rushing those mob like bulldozer ( Stoica Alina ) take pillls auto loot,and you can easily cycle 1k per day without taking any risk , Cheers mate.

Hi Namokiller, yes you are right and I have been thinking about logging a few runs on them lately, if only to show what the returns are like with the price of Blazar Fragments being at 25 ped/k these days.

After the 5k Aurli maybe

Legends

 

[Chiee]

Thanks for the blog. It was intresting read it trough once again

 

[Legends]

Creature #1: Aurli (33-44)
Location: Crystal Palace SS (Dome 1)
My Animal Looter level: 27.29
My Evade level: 26.84
Rings: Athenic (L) and Ares (L)
Tagger #1 (efficiency): ArMatrix LR-40 (L) + ArMatrix 33B + P20 - (70.8%)
Weapon #2 (efficiency): ArMatrix LP-40 (L) + ArMatrix 28B + P20 - (71.4%)
Weapons decay (incl. attachments): 399.72 PED (+75.82 markup)
FAPs (Ek-2600 and Resto 2 (L)): 7.09 (+2.71 markup)
Armor decay: 119.96 PED (+8.16 markup)
Total ammo spent: 4,992.80 PED
Total spent on hunt (w/mu): 5,606.26 PED

Hunting run duration: ~ 8 hours
Globals/HoFs: 65, 77, 65, 107, 275, 67 and 94
Items looted: Hermes Gloves (F,L), Regen 6 (L) and Kinetic 10 (L)
Items TT value (~markup value): 167.90 (+14 mu)
Stackables (~mu): 4,488.31 PED (+30.36 PED)
Net returns (w/mu): 4,700.57 PED or 83.8%
Loot quality, i.e. % shrapnel: 66% of loot tt was shrapnel
Profit/Cost per hour: -113 PED/hour

Note: I used Damage enhancers on these guns as they tiered up which causes Efficiency to drop. The Efficiency shown is without Damage enhancers.

The first half of this run was just really really bad but fortunately the last 3 or so hours helped to bring the returns back to a somewhat more reasonable range. I'm about halfway through the 5k Aurli now and so far it looks like I've lost just over 1500 PED, so we'll see how it goes for the rest but I still think I could end up with a 4k loss by the time I'm done with this.

Hunting: It's a slow grind, I figure I'm killing about 130/hour, slower when my gun breaks and I pull out a fresh one. I'm seriously considering using pills when that happens just to help things along a bit and keep the momentum going. Now my 2 LR-40s are almost broke, I'll have to go make 2-3 more to finish the rest of this.

Defense: My defensive costs came in at just under 2.5% of hunt costs for this run so still improving. I splurged and bought myself 2x Mk. 5B plates and a Serpent Scale armor plate. I didn't really want to but I realized I didn't have a choice if I wanted to use those 3 parts of Adjusted Jaguar armor. If I could have found 2 more Serpent Scale plates for around tt+40 each, I would have bought them because given the choice between Serpent Scale or 5B, at the same price, I think the Serpent Scale makes more sense in the long term in my case. My Aquila gloves broke and I found a cheap pair of Eon (M,L) for less than 110%. I added an AP-18 Impact plate to it which makes it a great option at a great price for hunting these guys.

Using Unlimited armor though adds the dynamic that my protection lessens as the hunting run progresses, which means I end up having to FAP more towards the end. If I was using a full set of Adjusted Jag, I'd probably have to repair my armor and plates every 2 hours or so.

Achievements: level 48 Laser Sniper (hit), level 46 BLP Sniper (hit), level 43 Ranged BLP (dmg), level 46 Laser Pistoleer (hit), level 44 BLP Pistoleer (hit). The gap between my Sniper and Pistoleer is shrinking slowly, my Sniper is about 2 levels ahead atm.

 

[Legends]

About 50% done

​

I noticed this sign at Crystal Palace which was made by Buzz. It shows different damage distribution then what entropiawiki has. I haven't tested this myself but based on my observations from the 2.5k or so Aurli I've killed, 50% Impact and 30% Stab makes more sense. I'm not sure who entered 40/40 Impact/Stab on entropiawiki, but I suppose it's possible that they could have tested this on a different maturity as it is often the case that different maturities do damage in varying proportions. I checked with Buzz if he had any info as to why entropiawiki had different numbers, all he said was that the sign was made about 10 years ago and the damage distribution information is based on testing that was done back then.

I'm pretty sure that 50% Impact and 30% Stab is accurate for the Weak, so I will update entropiawiki for now and maybe later I will do some testing just to confirm this.

 

[Legends]

Creature #1: Aurli (33-44)
Location: Crystal Palace SS (Dome 1)
My Animal Looter level: 27.82
My Evade level: 26.96
Rings: Athenic (L) and Ares (L)
Tagger #1 (efficiency): ArMatrix LR-40 (L) + ArMatrix 37B + P20 - (71.3%)
Weapon #2 (efficiency): ArMatrix LP-40 (L) + ArMatrix 28B + P20 - (71.4%)
Weapons decay (incl. attachments): 314.85 PED (+57 markup)
FAPs (Ek-2600 and Resto 2 (L)): 4.50 (+2 markup)
Armor decay: 92.84 PED (+6.13 markup)
Total ammo spent: 3,908.43 PED
Total spent on hunt (w/mu): 4,385.75 PED

Hunting run duration: ~ 6.5 hours
Globals/HoFs: 119, 93, 68, 98, 50 and 109
Items looted: Regen 6 (L)
Items TT value (~markup value): 22.50 (+2.50 mu)
Stackables (~mu): 3,563.39 PED (+57.50 PED)
Net returns (w/mu): 3,645.89 PED or 83.1%
Loot quality, i.e. % shrapnel: 69% of loot tt was shrapnel
Profit/Cost per hour: -114 PED/hour

Note: I used Damage enhancers on these guns as they tiered up which causes Efficiency to drop. The Efficiency shown is without Damage enhancers.

I globaled on a Soldier, which is kinda nice. Overall the returns are not getting any better though.

Hunting: I'm proceeding in a cautious manner, trying to pick at them one at a time and paying attention to the red dots on the radar so I don't get swarmed by a bunch of them all at once. Although the range on the LR-40 is pretty decent, so is their aggro range, so I have to pay attention and be careful. But It's going well, and I think my defensive costs reflect that.

Defense: My defensive costs came in at 2.4% of hunt costs for this run so still improving. I repaired my unlimited armor parts and armor plates halfway through because I noticed I was taking more and more damage as the hunt progressed. My Ek-2600 is very uneco (about 4 hp/pec I believe, versus 20hp/pec for unlimited armor), so it's better to absorb as much damage as possible with the armor and heal less.

Achievements: Level 28 Animal Looter, level 27 Evade, level 27 Swordsman (hit).

I am at 85.7% on Rank 11 for Aurlis and I see that there is a 17.21 PED Handgun skill reward coming up so I'm excited for that, looking forward to seeing how much I gain, probably 3/4s of a level in Pistoleer (hit).

 

[Legends]

Creature #1: Aurli (33-44)
Location: Crystal Palace SS (Dome 1)
My Animal Looter level: 28.14
My Evade level: 27.13
Rings: Athenic (L) and Ares (L)
Tagger #1 (efficiency): ArMatrix LR-40 (L) + ArMatrix 37B + P20 - (71.3%)
Weapon #2 (efficiency): ArMatrix LP-40 (L) + ArMatrix 28B + P20 - (71.4%)
Weapons decay (incl. attachments): 319.38 PED (+60.80 markup)
FAPs (Regen 6 (L) and Resto 2 (L)): 3.39 (+1 markup)
Armor decay: 95.46 PED (+6.88 markup)
Total ammo spent: 3,986.37 PED
Total spent on hunt (w/mu): 4,473.28 PED

Hunting run duration: ~ 7 hours
Globals/HoFs: 101, 256, 109 and 331
Items looted: Hermes Groin (F,L) and 2x MacMahon Vengeance (L)
Items TT value (~markup value): 432.56 (+52 mu)
Stackables (~mu): 3,562.22 PED (+47.64 PED)
Net returns (w/mu): 4,094.42 PED or 91.5%
Loot quality, i.e. % shrapnel: 61% of loot tt was shrapnel
Profit/Cost per hour: -54 PED/hour

Note: I used Damage enhancers on these guns as they tiered up which causes Efficiency to drop. The Efficiency shown is without Damage enhancers.

Fewer globals on this one but some of them were quite decent and I looted 2 MacMahon Vengeance (L) which was a very nice surprise.

Hunting: I got swarmed pretty bad at some point but it wasn't really my fault, just a lot of them spawning around me for some reason.

Defense: My defensive costs came in at just under 2.4% of hunt costs for this run, still improving. I was looking at the Regen 6 (L) chips I had looted on previous runs and realized it was actually perfect for me. My Ek-2600 only heals 4.67 hp/pec whereas this Regen 6 (L) chip heals 8.3 hp/pec. In addition to it being more economical to use, it also will give me Bioregenesis skills which is what I want. So I've made up my mind I'll just use that chip from now on instead of the Ek-2600.

Achievements: Level 47 laser pistoleer (hit), level 45 BLP pistoleer (hit) and level 44 Ranged BLP (dmg).

I took Handgun as reward for both Rank 11 and Rank 12 so now my Laser Pistoleer (hit) is less than 1 level behind my Laser Sniper (hit), so that's good. And my Ranged Laser (dmg) is catching up quite nicely as well since I unlocked Wounding. The goal now is to just get them all to Level 50 as soon as possible to max out the LR-45 and unlock Combat Sense.

Judging from the progress bar, I have about 12.5% left to go, so about 5 more hours and this 5k Aurli will be complete. Can't wait.

 

[Legends]

Creature #1: Aurli (33-44)
Location: Crystal Palace SS (Dome 1)
My Animal Looter level: 28.37
My Evade level: 27.22
Rings: Athenic (L) and Ares (L)
Tagger #1 (efficiency): ArMatrix LR-40 (L) + ArMatrix 37B + P20 - (71.3%)
Weapon #2 (efficiency): ArMatrix LP-40 (L) + ArMatrix 28B + P20 - (71.4%)
Weapons decay (incl. attachments): 245.37 PED (+46.41 markup)
FAPs (Regen 6 (L) and Resto 1 (L)): 2.19 (+0.99 markup)
Armor decay: 69.36 PED (+3.50 markup)
Total ammo spent: 3,048.50 PED
Total spent on hunt (w/mu): 3,416.32 PED

Hunting run duration: ~ 4.5 hours
Globals/HoFs: 69, 56, 98, 282, 210 and 135
Items looted: none
Items TT value (~markup value): n/a
Stackables (~mu): 3,221.71 PED (+34.50 PED)
Net returns (w/mu): 3,256.21 PED or 95.3%
Loot quality, i.e. % shrapnel: 72% of loot tt was shrapnel
Profit/Cost per hour: -36 PED/hour

Note: I used Damage enhancers on these guns as they tiered up which causes Efficiency to drop. The Efficiency shown is without Damage enhancers.

This 282 PED Watcher could have been another MacMahon Vengeance but I died just before killing him and by the time I could get to him again he had pretty much fully regenerated so although it was nice to get a decent multiplier on him (I think it was a 25x), it was all shrapnel unfortunately.

Hunting: I'm just glad this 5k Aurli is finally done.

Defense: My defensive costs were roughly 2.2% of hunt costs for this run. I noticed that in addition to Bioregenesis I am also getting some Concentration skills sometimes when using the Regen 6 (L) chip. That's good cause that contributes to my mindforce (hit) professions as well.

Achievements: Level 48 Ranged Laser (dmg) and level 17 Mutant Looter.

It kind of sucks that you get nothing at all at the end of this mission now, it's such a slow grind you'd think something should happen, there should be some sort of reward or something. Nope. All that happens is that you can now enter the Cave..

Anyway I'll tabulate all my runs in Dome 1 together in the next post so we can all see what this cost me, how long it took and what I got for loot exactly.

 

[Legends]

5k Aurli Tabulated Results (~37.5 hours of hunting)

%Shrap	Def%	MU-in	TT PED-in	TT Loot-out	TT-Return	MU-out	Net Amt	Net-%
67%	3.5%	71.51	4166.14	3514.39	84.36%	49.09	-674.17	84.1%
68%	2.5%	59.04	3522.27	3513.64	99.75%	51.50	-16.17	99.5%
66%	2.5%	86.69	5519.57	4656.21	84.36%	44.36	-905.69	83.8%
69%	2.4%	65.13	4320.62	3585.89	83%	60.00	-739.86	83.1%
61%	2.4%	68.68	4404.60	3994.78	90.7%	99.64	-378.86	91.5%
72%	2.2%	50.90	3365.42	3221.71	95.73%	34.50	-160.11	95.3%

TOTALs:

Avg Shrap%	Avg Def%	MU cost	TT PED spent	TT Loot	Avg TT Return%	Loot MU	Net Return	Avg Net-%
67%	2.6%	402	25,298.62	22,486.62	89.65%	339	-2874.86	89.55%

So with all the markup considered, both in and out, the price of admission to enter the Crystal Palace Cave was just under 3k PED in total.

 

[Legends]

Here is the breakdown of the stackables I got on that 5k Aurli:

Stack​	Used for​	Total TT looted​	Markup​	Net Total​
Shrapnel​	Universal Ammo	15,107.00​	100%​	15,107.00​
Adrenal Oil	Crafting	5789.40​	104%​	6,020.98​
Aurli Bone piece	Craft Mark.5B armor plate	133.20​	170%​	226.44​
Alien Blood	Craft various armor plates	123.28​	106%​	130.68​
Aurli Fangs	Craft various armor plates	95.40​	104%​	99.22​
Aurli Dense plate	Craft Armor plates	85.50​	105%​	89.78​
Aurli Chitin scale	Craft Mark.4C armor plate	84.00​	100%​	84.00​
Aurli claw	Craft Mark.5A armor plate	58.50​	105%​	61.43​
Surface Toughness	Crafting Armor Durability enhancers	52.20​	115%​	60.03​
Aurli Shock Flesh	Craft Armor plates	49.92​	126%​	62.90​
Alien Acid	Craft Mark.6A armor plate	22.78​	220%​	50.12​
Bio ID Verification*	Mission	16.00​	110%​	17.60​
Spleen Oil*	Crafting	10.00​	108%​	10.80​
Tier 8 comp	Tier Upgrades	10.00​	570%​	57.00​
Adv. Leather extractor	Textures	8.16​	112%​	9.14​
Basic Wood extractor	Textures	3.78​	110%​	4.16​

Note*: I'm pretty sure that the Spleen Oil and the Bio ID came from Kreltins I sometimes had to kill in Dome 1. There's not very many of them but there are some that randomly spawn in there occasionally.

In addition to the stackables above, I also looted the following items:
Hermes Groin (F,L)
2x MacMahon Vengeance (L)
2x Regen 6 (L)
Hermes Gloves (F,L),
Kinetic 10 (L)
Hermes Groin (M,L)
Isis LBP 25 (L)
Hermes foot (F,L)

 

[Zenzile]

A few thoughts after looking at your log.

In loot 1.0,hunting naked was preferred as armor decay was not returned in loot. In 2.0, this has obviously changed as you’ve mentioned. If your armor decay is 2.3% of your expenses, and 95% is returned in loot, you now have ~0.1% of your hunt lost to armor decay. I’ve always felt there’s a tradeoff between tt returns and scalability (scalability being speed at which you cycle ped).

Imo, with the high armor health/pec values and the above, if you’re profitable it makes sense to armor up most of the time. Time spent healing is reduced significantly, giving probably a 10-20% increase to your hunting speed. As such I think the tradeoff is completely worth it usually. (Note, armor usually equates to ~20hp/pec decay)

Applying the same idea as above, enhancers have a place and can improve profits, but not for probably 99% of hunters. Would strongly suggest against using them atm.

Lastly, as you’re probably aware, the mu you’re paying on gear is insane. At the very least, you should invest in a UL amp (and avoid ever using L attachments).

 

[Legends]

A few thoughts after looking at your log.

In loot 1.0,hunting naked was preferred as armor decay was not returned in loot. In 2.0, this has obviously changed as you’ve mentioned. If your armor decay is 2.3% of your expenses, and 95% is returned in loot, you now have ~0.1% of your hunt lost to armor decay. I’ve always felt there’s a tradeoff between tt returns and scalability (scalability being speed at which you cycle ped).

Imo, with the high armor health/pec values and the above, if you’re profitable it makes sense to armor up most of the time. Time spent healing is reduced significantly, giving probably a 10-20% increase to your hunting speed. As such I think the tradeoff is completely worth it usually. (Note, armor usually equates to ~20hp/pec decay)

Applying the same idea as above, enhancers have a place and can improve profits, but not for probably 99% of hunters. Would strongly suggest against using them atm.

Lastly, as you’re probably aware, the mu you’re paying on gear is insane. At the very least, you should invest in a UL amp (and avoid ever using L attachments).

Hi Zenzile,

Thanks for your input. I'm well aware of what you are saying, after all, I did write the book on Armors (see my signature for the Armor Guide I wrote for this forum).

I prefer not to use damage enhancers if I can avoid it but in this case, I really needed the extra dps for the Aurlis since I am/was only around level 44 when I started that 5k mission. I don't know if you have ever hunted them with an LR-40 but it is very slow... So I decided to use enhancers to speed things up a bit, it was either that or pills, and enhancers are much cheaper. But I agree that it is purely an expense and should be avoided.

I also agree that using limited gear is more costly, but in my case what it comes down to is I have to choose between paying $4k usd for a nice rifle of my level (with a nice efficiency), or pay approximately $1 usd per hour of hunting in markup for limited gear. Since I don't really have much time to hunt anyway, it makes more sense that I just eat that extra cost rather than fork over $4k usd and tie up all that ped into a gun I might only use for 1-2 weeks every 3 months or so. If I was hunting 40 hours a week, I would totally do it, but I'm not, and it's highly unlikely that I ever will because I am just way too busy looking after my shops.

Cheers,
Legends