Earn an honest PED - Sweating, Rigging and Entropia Partners

In Entropia Universe 'making money' is an important aspect of the gameplay. Over the years MindArk has presented us with a number of different solutions to the pesky problem of increasing our PED balance. Initially there was the humble deposit, later came the rig, then sweating, then fruit, then stones and then other rigs (for example the beer keg). Later, Sometrics was mixed in there somewhere and now, thanks to the initiatives of a few dedicated Entropians, the new wave sweeping the universe is the Entropia Partners site, a crowd sourcing website geared to give you, the Entropian, yet another alternative way of earning an honest PED.

But does it work? Is it a Scam? Is it "Slave Labour" and how does it compare to, for example an afternoon's hard sweating under a harsh Calypso sun or even risking life and limb in the burning oil fields? I decided to find out..

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To begin with, registration was quick and easy. I used Facebook which had the additional benefit of being able to later sign in with a single click. This is important as Entropia Partners is a site that you'll want to visit regularly as offers come and go at different times. The only information I needed to enter was my full avatar name (for payouts) so I was quickly away.

First off, I tried "the game". "The game" (its anything but a game) is something where you sit and listen to a Youtube video while an animation runs of a man slowly digging a hole. At the end of 60 seconds "the game" announces what you have "won" which in theory could be a ticket (just a ticket mind you, not a prize) to a daily or weekly PED lottery. What, in fact, you actually win, and believe me I never want to see another man dig a hole now for the rest of my life, is an assortment of various crap including anything from "a used sweet wrapper" to "the secret plans for world war 6"... No ped and no raffle tickets so, in short, don't bother.

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Next up was the video options. Watching videos on Entropia Partners will earn you a fixed rate of 4 PEC per video and, best of all, you only have to watch each video for 30 seconds or so before the claim button turns green and you get your payout... only it doesn't.

I have to say my first experience was not a good one, as I was forced to listen to 11 minutes of a guy hammering 2 notes on a piano... the button never changed... I watched it and watched it, at 5 minutes my ears began to bleed, at 7 minutes my brain was screaming at my finger to click the close button and make it all stop, at 10 minutes my 1st floor window became incredibly attractive. The eleventh minute rolled by, I hadn't jumped but I hadn't been paid either. I still had zero ped and this was not looking good...

Thankfully for the other 3 videos that remained I was only required to tolerate them for a short time and each paid me a handsome 4 PEC so at 12 PEC in total, my fortune was growing fast!

Next up was surveys. For me in the UK (worth noting since, like Sometrics, offers are regional) there were only a small number of surveys at time of writing. One paid a whopping zero PED so I decided to give that one a miss and headed straight to the 2.70 PED one. After being asked about 8 rather personal questions including my email address (mailinator is your friend) I then moved onto a survey however a few short questions in I was told that I didn't meet the required criteria. "Never fear" thought I,"you can keep your exclusive survey, I'll do another one!". A few more personal questions later it turned out however I didn't meet the criteria for that one either. I tried another and... well to cut a long story short I'll leave it a mystery as to what happened next, suffice to say I still had 12 PEC at the end of my short survey-filling-in career.

So, moving on we have the micro tasks. A kind of crowd sourcing if you will. Here there were lots of options so I tried a Search term feedback task. This was actually very simple. Click a link to open google, type in a search term (for some reason they'd made copy paste impossible) then write in the position in the hit list, copy the search blurb text, comment on its relevance and then enter a date from the the site it referenced. All straight forward and hey guess what? I got 4 PEC! Having reached my mid-teens here there was no stopping me! I tried the same task again... strangely once again it was all about Jeremy and the world transformation centre... easily enough completed and again, another 4 PEC... So what would happen a third time? Well actually not a lot, despite the main page claiming initially there were 104 of these particular tasks available THEN claiming 385... I was then politely thanked for all my hard work and told there were no more of those tasks for me to complete! But was I to be deterred? No, I was making money here and there would be no stopping me! Having double checked there would me no more site checking, I moved on to video annotation - personality type for a whopping 60 PEC a pop. Lets see what happened.

For this particular task I was presented with 4 youtube vlog style videos, a minute long each but with cunningly hidden controls so that I couldn't fast forward. After watching each video I had to rate the person's mood, state their sex and comment on how short sighted they were. Pretty simple but would I get the PED? Well I watched the first video and answered the questions (someone going on about shoes) but the others... well I had the depressed guy, the is it a guy or a girl? guy and the cheery chap going on about Movember but no more questions... I also had a timer telling me I had less than half an hour to complete the task! At the bottom of the screen there was a submit button so, having no other option I clicked it and, what the heck? the same 4 videos... and only 15 mins left on the clock!

The situation was getting desperate so I tried again this time with Movember Guy... it didn't work... I tried refreshing the page and... it kicked me back to the task page with no payout! the BASTARDS! Not to be deterred I did it again."Arrgh" only 12 mins left on the clock and the same bunch of Wachos to look at.... I tried Depressed Guy and still no questions after the video... I gave up.

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At this point I discovered I could do some more googling and this made up for the overwhelming feeling of loss having failed at the last task and with 24 PEC on the cards this was sure to be a winner. Another google this time paying 12 PEC and I was doing well. At 36 PEC I would be at my target in no time!

Next I tried something that asked me a question about how to apply for jobs at various education sites. I quickly decided with 80 of 30 (yes 80 of 30...) minutes left to complete the task and 5 questions to answer it really wasn't worth it for a few PEC and moved on to a mega 1 PED offer for use of a tablet. Knowing my task would be over if I could pull this one off I had to give it a try.

The task was straight forward, basically do some googling on my tablet. Simple enough I thought, until I I got the message, "you must use a mobile device"."WHAT?!" I yelled at no one in particular, "this IS a mobile device". I tried Opera, same message. I tried the crappy built in browser same deal but then, oh wait... what's this browser mode switch? A short play with settings later and I was cooking with little yellow boxes which, with less than 18 minutes left on the clock, really was just as well. I put my code in and announced in a clear voice "mobile casinos" (gotta love twenty first century technology). This time I was tasked to check if the search result no data available could be found within the first 10 pages of my mobile casino search. It couldn't, so I reported this and ticked verify I searched on a tablet... and it wouldn't let me! With nothing else for it I clicked on submit... it wouldn't let me. I gave up. I tried again but despite the result phrase being a little less bugged than last time I still couldn't verify I had searched with a mobile. I gave up again.

Luckily, by this time, another video had shown up for me to watch. 35 seconds later I had reached 40 PEC... almost half way there but it seemed like I was running out of tasks...

For my next trick I tried reviewing peoples answers to questions. 7 items to read and tick boxes for. I got an 84% score but was told some of the questions I said had good answers were plagiarised.... they paid me though... 24 PED! I then did another google (this time for a whopping 60 PEC) I couldn't find the article but it didn't give me an option for that soooo.... I cheated, found the info manually and I'd done it! I'd made it over a PED! 1.24 to be precise! A bit more googling followed and with another 8 PEC this was going to be 2 PED in no time.

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So at this stage, I'd run out of videos, the treasure hunts were a con, answering questions took too long, I'd done all the google searches I could, the tablet was a scam, the personality testing was bugged, I didn't fit the bill for surveys and everything else, it turned out, was actually unavailable. Just 2 choices remained: either rate some more answers to questions or... look for porn. Yup porn. I was going to be a cop looking for shady material on the evil interwebs. This was going to require a Coffee and a Cheese Sandwich.

Cheese Sandwich and liquered up coffee attained I went for it, I clicked the link and...no work available.... I tried the next link, no work available... I ate my cheese sandwich and cried... I then tried the remaining links, all of which said the same. The only ones that didn't were in German and these wanted me to pass a German test first. Considering I spent all my German lessons playing connect 4, sticks, lines and reading fiction books, I didn't think I was going to pass... I went to bed.

The next morning I wanted to find our how many of these tasks were repeatable. While many I'd expired the night before were still unavailable there was a new video for 4 PEC and the my pretty blue button task (I swear I'd going to start seeing that phrase everywhere now).

The my pretty blue button task was simple and very repeatable. Look at four sets of three buttons and say which is the best/worst in each. Each round came in at a mega 8 PEC a shot so I have to admit I got quite into it (if you ever need someone to assess your buttons, you know who to call). Additionally, by the following weekend many of the web search tasks were available again (and paid more now) so by the time Sunday rolled around, and I was ready to withdraw, I had amassed a sum total of over 5 PED, but could I withdraw it?

Withdrawal as it turned out was an incredibly smooth professional and fast experience. Clicking the withdraw button informed me a 5 PEC fee would be charged and that there are 3 reps on Calypso and on 3 on Arkadia. Their online status is additionally indicated. Upon requesting withdrawal, a chat window opens and you are requested not to close it until the transaction has been completed. Within seconds a rep was on line and within a few minutes more I was standing at New Oxford with 5 shiny new PED in my wallet.

Withdrawal dialogue on Entropia Partners...



...and in game.



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To conclude Entropia Partners, far from being the initial scam I assumed it to be, is actually a very good initiative. The website is functional rather than flashy however can be a little confusing as lots of "links" (i.e. underlined highlighted words) are not actually links, merely titles or decoration. The tasks, provided by an external crowd source site called Crowd Flower, for the most part work but could do with being a little better updated to reflect what you can and cannot do. Having to constantly click, to remember which work and which don't can get a little tiresome.

Regarding other content, while the surveys seems a work in progress and the digging "game" is a total joke, the videos mostly work although occasionally will vanish before you get to click on them. One of the most impressive things about the site however is the speed of payout. You will see your PED balance increase usually within seconds of completing any given task. On the negative side I did find, certainly in the UK at least, the number and frequency of paying videos occurring was a little on the low side and also that this isn't a site you could play on to your heart's content. You will run out of things to do if you plan on using it a lot.

As a final point, one of the more powerful features of Entropia Partners is that there is an additional way of bringing in the PED without actually lifting a finger. Because of course the owners want to spread the word about their site, they encourage existing users to do this for them by offering a single tier referral scheme. So for example, if you are wandering the wilderness of Calypso and happen to pass a crowd of new players and see someone shouting

(that's mine by the way, feel free to click it ^_^) you know that, if anyone signs up using that link, the advertising player will directly benefit from any PED you earn through the site. It's worth noting that using a referral link does not divide your earnings, its simply that for every 4 PEC you earn, the referring player will also get an additional PEC. Certainly worth knowing about and perhaps even worth investing a bit of time into advertising.


To Sweat, Partner or Deposit?

All in all Entropia Partners is a great way of earning a PED or two but the question remains, how does it compare to other methods and over all, given the time taken to complete tasks, is it worthwhile?

To make a comparison, lets take the, my pretty blue button task for example (I soneed to use that as a code phrase one day) I'd guess maybe it took me around 1 minute to do each task. This comprised around 10 seconds to look and make each decision with 10 spare for pondering. I think anyone would struggle to do it faster and cheating will send your accuracy down, potentially barring you from the task. So, depending on availability and style of task, we are talking a potential typical income rate of 4.8 PED per hour. Lets compare this to rigging.

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In Entropia there are now a number of "rigs" to choose from, the big rig on the eastern side of Eudoria, the oil fields near Camp Icarus, the keg near Lemmy's Castle and the oil drops in Hunt the Thing to name a few. For convenience I chose the oil field as this area is designed for new players and is normally protected by a number of "guardians" who declare their own rules and shoot anyone who doesn't comply. On my testing occasion I queued up with another 7 to 10 other players (I'm told by a regular this is typical) and over 1 hour (4 collections) I earned a total of 1.80 PED worth of oil which, with mark up, really won't be worth a lot more than that. So what about sweating?

Sweating has an interesting history and its price has fluctuated massively in the last 9 years or so as well as popular extraction methods, restrictions, uses, demand and favoured sweating locations. For testing I initially went to Nea's but then discovered the Big Industries Land Areas make for a more organised and efficient group. Roughly speaking, sweating on this occasion worked out at around 200 bottles per hour (for a level 1 sweater like myself) and the best (limited availability newbie's only) price I could find was 2.5 PED per thousand. This means that a good hour's sweating will only earn you a meagre 50 PEC.

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The bottom line is that if you want to earn PED fast and "for free" your best bet is Entropia Partners as its returns are approximately 266% better than rigging and 960% better than sweating. Its worth noting however that, out of all of these income generators, sweating is the only one that will gain you skill and also the only one that you to can perform in a largely unattended fashion. This Sunday, for example, I spent most of the afternoon sweating while in actual fact, 95% of my time was spent cleaning my house. Due to the way people work in groups to sweat, this sort of afk sweating becomes possible. Additionally, even if you are not earning as much, there is something to be said for working in game as at least you are in game (which is kinda fun) whereas any other tasks really are just work. Speaking of work, given the minimum wage in the UK will soon be a little under 98 PED per hour, really the most efficient way to get PED is simply to "get a job". In actual fact though, it you take away the "game element", all of the options listed here merely amount to slave labour.


Further information

• PED - Project Entropia Dollar - the ingame currency of Entropia Universe
• PEC - Project Entropia Cent - 1/100 of a PED
• Rig - Oil rigs and similar facilities produce a small amount of resources that can be picked up from the ground by everyone every couple of minutes
• Sweat - Vibrant Sweat can be extracted from animals in Entropia Universe
• Fruit - Various kinds of fruit can be found and picked up from the ground occasionally
• Stones - Various kinds of stones can be found and picked up from the ground occasionally
• Sometrics - Service rewarding small amount of PED for performing little task, fx filling surveys
• Scam - Fraudulent way of cheating fellow Entropians for personal benefit
• Wiki: About Making Money in Entropia Universe

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