jwestonmoss
Old Alpha
- Joined
- Sep 13, 2021
- Posts
- 714
- Avatar Name
- Francis Merlinfire Sureshot
Here's my basic impressions of the planets as they stand as of Feb 2024. I rate them by 2 main criteria. Bankroll-Friendliness and Themepark-Quality. These will be BR and TQ.
What do you think? Did I get some of these rankings wildly wrong? Did I miss something that makes the difference?
- Calypso
- BR: B+. Caly has two major things going for it here. One is the easy of access to the auction and calytrade channels. If you are good at buying low and selling high, and have the patience for it, there's no better place to be. For those that don't, the daily missions for tokens can be a good way to get weapons. Other than that, the MU is poor or non-existence on much of the readily-available mobs to hunt.
- TQ: B-. Caly has a story but there is no overriding mission chain and there's not really any ladder to climb. Boring and lacking in aspirational goals. Some landowners have made some interesting leaderboards/contests on their land.
- Monria
- BR: C+. Most loot reachable by everyone is about the same quality as Caly except you don't get access to the beneficial market advantages of Caly. One benefit they get is that they share daily token opportunities with Caly. There's also a cheap warp from here to Caly using the map.
- TQ: A. There are some interesting long term goals you can set for yourself based off of rare loot and sets. That would put it into B+ but there are quite a few live events that happen on Monria which I think bumps it up to A-.
- Cyrene
- BR: A. Wide variety of loot reachable by everyone that has some MU. Most of this loot will always have stable MU because they feed into daily crafting missions or other long chains. Some nice lowbie-support dailies, and a tremendous once-per-2-week mission to trade robot or animal residue for a gun. A socmate of mine designed the mission and the npc bears part of his name. I did some math on it, and iirc, if you did it every time you could, it would return something like 186p/yr. IMO one of the best quests in the game on one of the best planets in the game.
- TQ: A+. Tons of dailies. Lots of big, long-term ladders to climb. Good variety. My favorite planet, and I expect the place to continue to improve.
- Arkadia + Moon
- BR: C. Most loot (and most treasures in mining) have no markup. This has gotten a little better lately due to the revamp but it still has a ways to go. You will be cubing a lot of this junk and shipping the rest back to Caly. Moon is taxed significantly.
- TQ: B. Some nice missions and the dailies are ok. Good mob design and variety. Some landowners have made some interesting leaderboards/contests on their land.
- Next Island
- BR: B+. Some of the best dailies in the game in terms of TT return. A lot of the crystals are still cube food but there is more MU than there used to be. There are some decent mid-level mobs with good loot. Distance from the galactic core (Caly) is annoying.
- TQ: A-. Factions are interesting. Lots of missions and some nice upgrade chains. Obviously Ancient Greece is a cool theme park to add to overall variety. I look forward to NI continuing to improve its overall quality in coming years.
- Toulan
- BR: B. A bit of MU in loot if you know where to find it, accessible to low-level players. Guardian Village's giant blob of mobs is really easy to demolish and frequently drops low-level guns appropriate to kill more of the same.
- TQ: A-. CUHOF, nawacores, citizenship path, etc. Missions here are not just daily, some are hourly, and give skills. Some interesting story and events (since it is run by the Monria people). In my opinion, the most aesthetically pleasing planet in the game.
- Rocktropia
- BR: D. Many of the crafting recipes have not been kept up to snuff in the changing nature of the game. Many recipes are not useful, and there is little demand for anything. A handful of items have some off-world demand (vixen gears, alternative ingot). If it weren't for that smidgen of off-world demand I would rate this F.
- TQ: C. There are a lot of cool ideas on RT. Some of them are not quite finished, or not quite working. Some quests are bugged or broken. What is there is often not well explained or understood. RT leans way more into the theme park atmosphere than any other planet, almost partitioning itself into its own set of theme parks, like the zombie areas, the king kong stuff, The Thing, Hell, Harlem, etc. The overall theme is really unique and in my mind the best thing about the planet.
- Everyone knows this planet has seen a level of neglect, and is effectively abandoned. The ratings below reflect that reality. None of these problems are unfixable with the right attention from its owner. It's beyond the scope here but I would just say that if all the bugs got fixed, the crafting got a balance pass, and the mining and hunting loot for the planet were carefully considered as inputs into a range of new dailies and weeklies following in the style of what Cyrene and Arkadia have done in the past couple years, RT could be revived from the ashes.
- Update: I noticed that recently a bunch of events keep popping up on Rocktropia. I don't know what if any relationship thisEUPlayer has with ND but he's been running a bunch of events. this is a good way to get player engagement for sure. an example of how ambitious players can improve things.
What do you think? Did I get some of these rankings wildly wrong? Did I miss something that makes the difference?
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