Having PED Doesn't Mean You're Ready

I finally had PED. Now I had another problem

Getting PED had been the question. Once I had some, I started worrying about how to keep playing without spending them all before I understood where they were going.

I could get started. I still had to learn how to manage what I had.

It's easy to feel past the difficult part when you can buy ammo, get your equipment ready and head out. You have something to work with now. Pick a mob, do a run, see how it goes.

But you'll need PED after that run as well.

The weapon costs something to use. Equipment decays. Healing costs something too, if you need it. And finishing with loot in your inventory doesn't necessarily mean you're ready to buy more ammo or repair. You may still need to find a buyer.

That's what I mean by bankroll: the resources that let me go out, hunt, cover the costs and keep going. They have to support the activity through a bad run or a sale that takes longer than I'd hoped.

I don't think of those PED as already lost. They're what I need to keep playing. How long they last depends on what I choose to do.

The same balance might cover several runs in one activity and feel short in another. A higher cost per kill takes more PED to sustain. If there's a lot of defensive spending as well, it's coming out of the same bankroll.

So “Have I got enough to go out?” only gets me part of the way.

Can I keep hunting like this after the run ends?

Buying equipment raises much the same question. Being able to afford it today doesn't tell me what it'll cost over the time I intend to use it.

A Limited (L) weapon can cost far less up front than a repairable alternative. That matters when PED are tight. One might be within reach while the other isn't an option yet.

But there's more to compare than the purchase price.

A Limited item wears down through use. You can't restore that wear at a Repair Terminal as you can with a repairable item. Once it's no longer usable, continuing with the same equipment means getting another one. Planet Calypso's official trading guide.

If I bought it with markup, using it costs me more than the TT it consumes. I paid that extra amount to acquire it. Paying the MU before the run doesn't put it outside the cost of hunting.

The next purchase may carry markup too. Keep doing the activity long enough, and those replacements can become a substantial cost.

That's why I want to know more than today's price:

“How many times am I going to buy this again if I keep hunting this way?”

How long does it last? How quickly does it decay? How much use am I actually going to get out of it? A lower entry price can help me start, but it won't tell me how much I'll have spent after several replacements.

In my own tests, when there was a reasonable repairable alternative and I kept doing the activity long enough, its higher upfront cost eventually worked out better than repeatedly buying the Limited item and paying markup on each replacement.

That was my experience under those conditions. With different equipment, I'd need to look at the comparison again.

The Limited item's MU matters. So does the asking price of the repairable one, and whether they really suit a comparable activity. Their requirements, how they work with my avatar and how much I expect to use them all belong in the decision.

A repairable item still costs PED to use. It can also tie up a lot of PED from the day I buy it. Those PED aren't available for ammo, repairs or other hunting expenses while they're sitting in the equipment.

Its possible resale value matters to the long-term comparison too. When I stop using a repairable item, I still own something I can sell and turn back into PED. The market price may have risen or fallen. I won't know how much I'll get back until I sell it, but I still have the item.

A fully consumed Limited item has reached the end of its usable life. If I want to keep using that type of equipment, I need another one, with another purchase price that includes its markup.

So I want to compare what I'll spend throughout the time I use the equipment, as well as how much capital I might recover afterward. Today's asking prices can't answer all of that.

And buying something that might work out cheaper over prolonged use won't help if the purchase leaves me without a bankroll to use it.

I had to separate the PED needed to buy the item, the cost of using it and the cost of keeping the activity going. A larger balance can hide the problem for a while. As long as there's enough left for more ammo or another replacement, it's easy to keep going without looking closely at each expense.

Veterans can do this too. You can know the weapons, mobs and locations and still have no clear memory of how many Limited items you've used up or how much MU you've paid across the purchases. Experience doesn't keep those records for you.

Managing my bankroll began to make more sense when I stopped treating each purchase as a separate decision. The equipment I chose affected what I'd need to keep playing.

That brought me back to another decision I'd thought was fairly simple: which mob to hunt.

Being able to kill a mob wasn't enough reason to hunt it

Killing the mob tells me I could finish that kill. What did it take to get there?

How many attacks? How long? How much damage did I take, and how often did I have to heal? What did armor and healing add to the cost of attacking?

It's easy to stop thinking about that once the mob goes down. There's loot to look at, and another mob nearby. But the next kill needs resources too. So does the one after it.

What I learned to ask was whether repeating that made sense for my current avatar and bankroll.

My HP, Evade and Dodge development mattered to that question, along with the defensive pressure from the mob and how much equipment I needed to handle it. The weapon alone couldn't describe what was happening during the hunt.

If most of the encounter is spent trying to stay alive, that's worth looking at even when I manage to finish it. The first response can be very quick:

“I need better armor.”

“I need a better weapon.”

“I need more damage.”

And if bigger mobs are how I'm judging progress, there's another thought waiting:

“I need to move up.”

Each change seems to solve something. More protection to survive, a different weapon to finish sooner, more PED to cover the new spending.

There can be good reasons to change equipment. What I learned to question was the assumption that adding more equipment had to be the next step. I had something else to ask first:

“Why am I hunting something that makes me spend so much just to stay alive?”

I might be able to kill it while spending too much to hunt it comfortably. Or the equipment might send me back to the market for replacements more often than my bankroll can support.

That changes where I start when choosing a hunt. Instead of picking a mob I can kill and then working out how to pay for everything it takes, I prefer to ask:

“What equipment can I afford to keep using, and what can I hunt comfortably with it?”

The answer might be a smaller mob than another one I can also kill. That gives me an activity I can sustain, less pressure on my bankroll and more room to observe how it's going. It doesn't promise profit on the smaller mob. It helps me choose how much spending I'm taking on.

I look at armor and healing in the same way. They're reasonable costs on some hunts, and I can plan for them. Wearing armor or needing to heal doesn't, by itself, mean I've chosen badly.

There are also activities an avatar can handle with less defensive pressure, perhaps without armor or with little healing. I'd want to understand what I actually need before adding protection out of habit.

Taking armor off when I do need it doesn't settle anything. I still have to look at how well I survive, how much I heal, how long the kills take and what the whole thing costs.

MindArk has documented that Loot 2.0 considers different Hunting costs, including ammo, weapon and armor decay, and healing. It also relates lower cost-to-kill to a larger proportion of Optimal Loot. That's about loot composition, rather than total loot value. Developer Notes #12, reproduced on the Entropia Universe forum.

That doesn't tell me how much of a particular defensive expense I'll get back. It doesn't let me promise better ROI by removing it, either. To work out whether I can sustain the hunt, I still need to know what I'm spending and what results I'm getting.

A little healing or decay can look insignificant over one kill. Across a run, it becomes spending worth counting. Time per kill helps explain the hunt too. If I keep interrupting attacks to heal, I have something specific to examine. Finishing faster still doesn't tell me how much I paid to do it.

“Is this mob working for me?” starts to break into questions I can actually check. What does each kill cost? How many attacks does it take? What am I adding in defense? How long does the equipment last before I need to repair or replace it?

In Analytics, Cost/Kill means offensive cost per kill. I use it to compare what I'm spending on the attack. It doesn't answer the full cost of the activity by itself. Armor, healing and markup on Limited equipment still cost me PED even though they aren't part of that metric.

This is where keeping runs and purchase records starts to matter. I want something to compare later, and I need to keep the metric separate from the full economic cost. An expense doesn't stop affecting my bankroll because it isn't in Cost/Kill.

With kill counts, attack counts and equipment decay, I can begin estimating how much I've consumed. To know what the replacements cost me, I need the purchase records too. Months later, memory is unlikely to give me all of those details back.

Those records also give me a way to check what happens as my avatar develops.

With more HP, further progress in Evade and Dodge or better offensive capability, a mob that used to be too costly may be worth looking at again. Do I still need as much healing? Can I use the same armor? How many attacks does it take now? Has the time or cost per kill changed?

Something that didn't make sense months ago may make sense now. I need to measure it again with the avatar I have today.

If I've also changed the weapon, armor or maturity, those changes belong in the comparison. Otherwise it's easy to credit the avatar's development for everything, when several things changed together.

Progress starts to look different when I pay attention to that. I can keep hunting the same mob and find it more comfortable, need less defensive support or have an easier time sustaining the hunt. That can be progress even before I move to anything bigger.

I want to understand what changed and what I can support now before taking on more spending.

Separating those questions helped me. Killing a mob, handling the hunt, maintaining the equipment and having PED to continue are connected, but each needs an answer.

Then comes another temptation: finding one number that will tell me whether I'm doing all of it well.

I went through that too. The weapon had a number called “Efficiency,” and it was tempting to read everything else into it.

But I was already looking at my avatar, my setup, the cost of using it and what happened during each kill. There was too much going on for one stat to answer it all.

Efficiency is more than one number.