Sweating in Entropia Universe

Sweating is an activity that is carried out in Entropia Universe to collect bottles of sweat from mobs. It is the only feasible way that you can play Entropia Universe without depositing. However, as MindArk, the company behind Entropia Universe, needs to make money to keep the servers running and the programmers paid, the game is designed so that the amount you can make from sweating is so small that most players will eventually deposit if they want to play the game properly.

But, sweating does have its place and function in Entropia Universe, and if done with an overall plan in mind, can help fund your gameplay and help you make a steady income from the game. But I’m getting ahead of myself...

History
In the past, sweating used to be a 2 step process in which you did a sort of dance first, and then you extract the sweat. Each pull can get you anywhere from 2 to 22 bottles of sweat. You have to remain still during the dance, and each extraction will fail more times than it succeeds.

There also used to be a sweat cap so that only the lower level players can sweat. This was meant to help the newer players by limiting the supply of sweat but many players abused it by opening multiple accounts so the sweat cap has been removed. Players of all levels are now able to sweat.

Basic Sweating Information
You can obtain bottles of sweat from land based mobs and birds, but you can’t get any sweat from robots, humanoids and fishes. You need a sweating tool called the VSE Mk 1 to sweat. You will get it for free in your inventory but that is the one and only type of sweating tool available in the game and it cannot be upgraded. To sweat, you just aim your equipped VSE Mk 1 at the mob and click. Not every pull will be successful but each successful pull will get you 1 to 4 bottles of sweat.

The total amount of sweat that a mob or creature has is the number of health that it has. The amount of sweat that you can extract per hour varies depending on how skilled you are, whether you are sweating alone or in a group and the mob that you are sweating. In general, a sweater who knows what he's doing can get about a few hundred bottles of sweat per hour.

Why Should You Sweat?
If you are a new player, sweating is a good way to get the hang of the game. You get to learn how to move around, you can chat with the other players, visit different places in the game and maybe even do a little bit of hunting from the PED that you earn from sweating.

Sweating will also help build up your character in that you will get skills when you are attacked by a mob, and also when you are sweating. These skills will help you attain higher levels so that you can use better and more efficient weapons and tools.

Sweating Efficiently
Sweating is easy. You just drag the health bar of the mob onto your screen, equip your trusty VSE Mk 1, and click on the mob’s health bar every few seconds. The mob will get irritated that you are stealing its sweat and attack you. Eventually, you will die and your mind and body will be reconstituted at a nearby revival terminal. You can wait a little while to gain some health back, and then you can run to the same mob or another mob and do the whole thing all over again.

But sweating efficiently is quite another story. I have put together some tips below that can help you gather more sweat per hour. While not every tip will be suitable for every individual, the difference between merely sweating and sweating efficiently could be as much as 250 bottles or more bottles of sweat per hour:

• Sweat in a small group instead of sweating alone as this will distribute the attacks of the mobs and you will die less, and thus waste less time running back to the mob. Getting hit might cause you to lose concentration, which will lead to a failed attempt. So getting hit less will result in less failed attempts and more sweat.
• If you are attacked by a mob, don’t run. Just stay there and keep sweating. In the long run, the attacks of the mob will help you gain skills which will help you get hit less. And anyway, running doesn't help as the mob is perfectly capable of chasing you.
• If you are refining your sweat into Mind Essence, save enough PED to buy a top of the line refiner, the T-105. The decay of the T-105 is much less than the normal refiners and will definitely pay for itself in no time at all.
• There is an Auto-Use Tool icon in your Action Library in the Control category. If you activate this while sweating, you will continue to sweat without needing to click once every few seconds.

The Uses of Sweat
The bottles of sweat that you so painstakingly collect from mobs can be used in the following way:

• 1 bottle of sweat can be combined with 1 Force Nexus in a refiner to make 100 Mind Essence. Mind Essence are used in teleportation chips.
• There are blueprints that uses sweat as one of the ingredients. You can find a list here.
• The Hook, Line and Sinker mission on Volcano Islands requires 500k of sweat.

The Price of Sweat
The TT value of sweat, or the price at which Mind Ark will buy sweat, is 0.01PED/k, which is too low to make it worth your while, keeping in mind that 0.01PED translates to one tenth of a US cent. The players in Entropia Universe will buy it from you at the current market price. While there is usually no agreement as to the current market price of sweat, it can be approximated by checking the current market price of Force Nexus and Mind Essence at the auction.

How to Sell Your Wares
There are 3 ways you can sell your stuff to other players in Entropia, each with its own advantages and disadvantages:

• Private Trade. You right-click on a player and select “Avatar - Private Trade”. This will open a trade window into which you can drag items that you want to sell and player can drag his offer in PEDs into his window. Obviously, this works only if both of you are at the same place. There are no fees or commissions when trading in this way. You would normally go to Twin Peaks to hawk your wares over the public trade channel. If you are selling sweat, you could also try Nea’s Place.
• Entropia Auction. This is an auction that is accessible anywhere you can find an auctioneer. Take note that there is a minimum fee of 0.5PED for each listing in the auction. However. sweat cannot be sold at the auction.
• Shop. You can purchase a shop and sell your wares through it. However, the price of a shop is not cheap and it does take quite a bit of advertising before anybody even knows about your shop.

Selling Your Sweat
The price of sweat is normally quoted in PED/k such as "Selling sweat @ 2PED/k". Sometimes, it can be quoted in PECs for each bottle of sweat like "Selling sweat at 0.2", with the PECs usually left out.

There are generally a few ways that you can profit from the sweat you gather:

• Sell Your Sweat. Normally you would just go to Twin Peaks or Nea’s Place and state your price over the trade channel. Or you can watch the trade channel for good bids. If the buyer is buying at good price, you might like to ask him if he is a regular buyer and whether you can add him to your friend’s list. If he is on your list, you can message him any time he is online with your offer without meeting face to face.
• Make Mind Essence or ME. This is a better way of selling your sweat as you can probably get a better price for your sweat. But you need to buy Force Nexus in a sufficiently large quantity, probably 100 - 200PED worth at least, so that the markup will not be too high. Don’t forget to invest in a T-105 when you can afford it to reduce your refining cost. Once you have your ME, you can sell it in the same way that you sell your sweat, or you can put it up for auction.
• Craft. You can use your sweat to craft something to sell. As far as I know, a common item you can craft and sell is Welding Wire.

What is the Fair Price of Sweat?
The price of sweat is a contentious issue among some sweaters. They feel that the price of sweat is lower than it should be. They have ideas on how to raise the sweat price or the reasons behind the decline of the price, many of which are unworkable or unfounded.

Many among them blame the resellers, resellers who buy at a lower price to resell at a higher price, for the perceived low price. They feel that if the resellers are out of the market, leaving only genuine buyers, the price of sweat would correct to its fair value. Explaining to them that resellers only provide liquidity or a service to the market and that the sellers are free to take the extra time to find a genuine buyer to sell to at a higher price would not elicit an intelligent answer. Instead, they would simply tell you about the time they sold sweat to that nice guy who bought at way above what the reseller was bidding, insisting that that is the market value of sweat.

The purpose behind this section is to warn that resellers are disliked at the usual haunts of sweaters like Nea’s Place so do thread carefully if you are trying to buy sweat for resale there.

Conclusion
At the current price of 2PED per 1000 bottles of sweat, and assuming that it takes you 2 hours to gather that much, you are effectively paid 1PED/hr or $0.10/hr for your sweating. Although not exactly a princely sum and actually rather low by any standard, sweating does have its place in Entropia. Many recommend it as a way to get to know the game and to interact with the other players. Some use it as a way to play Entropia for free, using the PEDs they make from sweating to hunt and mine, and perhaps, even craft.

For me, I combine sweating along with buying and selling at the auction, and land deeds to generate a relatively steady monthly return, which will increase as the months and years pass. You can find more information here.

Entropia Universe Resources

1. Making Money In Entropia Universe - A set of guidelines on how you can play Entropia Universe and make money.

2. Figuring Out the Decay of Items - A way to find the exact decay of items when the decay is in the fractions of a PEC.

3. Entropia Universe Glossary - A glossary of terms usually encountered in Entropia Universe.

4. The Auction in Entropia Universe - A guide to trading profitably at the auction in Entropia Universe.