Daniel P. Barron

Mircea Popescu has structured his game, Eulora, around a principle found in the real world: if something is worth doing, it is a loss until it isn’t. Things that are assured to yield a profit from every single iteration of activity are generally not desirable things to do. Consider, for example, the behavior of cattle: each time a cow bends its head to the earth, it gets to take a profitable bite of grass. But we shouldn’t aspire to be cattle, and for obvious reasons. I’m sure the cow doesn’t mind, but the profit is really for its owner ultimately; the cow is slaughtered.

And so it is in the world of Eulora that characters often dig themselves into pits of failure for long stretches of time, wondering ⁱ if they will ever see gains. And then they “pop” — a colloquial term we Eulorans use to describe a particularly big loot– so big that a message is displayed to everyone online describing what the activity was, and how much it’s worth in terms of bitcoin. It’s a controversial topic, but generally assumed to be true that the pops outweigh the losses in the long run.

Last night, in the midst of trying out the latest FoxyBot which came built in to the latest client update, I struck the record-setting largest pop in the history of Eulora. ⁱⁱ

(22:35:16) >Daniel has got 0.81 BTC worth of Boulder and assorted loot while building. Congratulations! ⁱⁱⁱ

It didn’t feel real until Mircea congratulated me on winning part of a year-old contest. That’s when the excitement set it: I just hit a score worth, at the time of this writing, at least 478 USD. That’s just in “base value” ^iv — another Euloran term meaning the amount of coppers ^v one would receive if he sold whatever back to the server. Even the most common resources sell for at least 150% these days; my big score is a rare skill-granting item, ^vi and a very high quality at that! I can probably sell them for over 500% !! ^vii

Sat Aug 6 22:43:13 2016, Stone Pickaxe,178.95,57.02,169.93,Small Boulder Exploration Marker ,2914

I also found almost three thousand high quality boulders in the same pop, although these are worth significantly less. In fact, the cost in tools and ingredients to even bother gathering at a boulder-rich location is expected to cost more than the short-term yield. ^viii The boulders are incidental to the polished small stones I was really after. But, as I pointed out in the linked logs, boulders are popping lately. My theory is that there is a shortage of them in the world due to the fact that until recently, everyone has avoided them. That’s because the old explore bot would get stuck if the player became overweight, and boulders made this happen too quickly. With the new and improved bot, we can gather the heaviest loot to our heart’s content, and the server will oblige. ^ix

1. Out loud, even:

   diana_coman: previous remark pretty much broke even, so overall it’s still a loss

   ---

   alikim: I can push q180 on basics but it’s a loss

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   danielpbarron: although all my tinies are probably profitable, the loss comes from the smalls mostly

   ---

   diana_coman: not sure I follow that given that it is a net loss basically; though it is indeed better compared to previous experiences (with gathering level way lower) so possibly it might even get better another 50 levels up or something

   ---

   Birdman: yeah but probably working at a loss here considering what i have been paying for the ingredients

   ---

   diana_coman: well yes, that’s precisely the thing I got so far on basically all of those; I did sell them at a loss sometimes mainly to keep the rest of things going, but otherwise yes, it’s pretty much above 300% to break even

    ^

2. It has since been beaten. ^
3. My system’s clock is apparently off by some minutes; here’s the line from my own chat log:

   (22:43:04) >Daniel has got 0.81 BTC worth of Boulder and assorted loot while building. Congratulations!

    ^

4.  ^
5. 1 copper == 1 satoshi == 0.00000001 bitcoin
   There has since been a float. Now it's:
   0.00000001 bitcoin == 1 satoshi == 10 copper. ^
6. A Mysterious Rock is a ‘potion’ that grants the ‘building’ skill, with which players can gain experience in extracting resources from exploration claims they find while exploring. It’s also an ingredient in the ‘sacrifice’ line, which is used to produce even rarer skill-granting items. ^
7. Putting this in the 4 to 10 bitcoin range !!!!! ^
8. Boulders are the second least valuable resources in the game, and are the most obnoxious to carry around. ^
9. Basically the server has blue balls. It wants to be be sucked on every inch of its body, but the players stick to the more desirable parts. Now that we can suck on its rocks, it’s ejaculating massive quantities into our inventories– what’s been pent-up for years now. That’s my two bitcents anyway. ^