This is the second post attempting to sum up everything I’ve done in Entropia since March.
Next Island was our next stop on the tour of Entropia Universe. There awaited beaches, roving hordes of monkeys, and the end of my mentoring. This is where most of April was spent.
Next Island was a colony set up to be a utopia built on science and reason. Separate from Earth and far away from all of it’s problems. A colony ship was sent, and this “First Wave” was sent with a bunch of robots to help set up the colony. The second wave was suppose to bring more people. They never came and the robots went about building anyway.
First off, I want to say that the writing on Next Island is much better than Arkadia. The quests have some humor to them and there’s a lot more exposition to set up the planet. Some time’s there’s too much but overall it’s a much better written set of quests. My favorite of which is Helen’s Super Epic Hunting Adventure.
Go forth and kill 10 boar. No! That’s way too easy! Go forth and kill 25 boar! No! There’s nothing epic about that! Kill 25 boar and 17 papoo! But not the smart talking papoo like Sebastian, of course.
Go forth and slay 63 Mutant Boar and 63 dumb papoo! And by dumb I mean mute because it’s rude to judge the intelligence of a creature you can’t even talk to.
Helen Venture
Words to live by for sure.
Next Island’s native wildlife include mostly, you guessed it, Papoos and Boars. There’s Red Papoos, and Yellow Papoos, and Grey Papoos. And then there’s village boars, mutant boars, sand boars…ect.
But then there’s also GIANT elemental drakes and snakes. So you get some variety.
Next Island has a bunch of different wave events. Once you walk in to the area the wave event starts and you better hope you have enough ammo to get through it. It spawns ever increasing amounts of creatures at various levels. You would think this would culminate in a boss fight but we only found one wave event with an actual boss. The rest just kind of ended. Pretty anti-climatic.
The issue for me with Next Island is there wasn’t really much I could do at my level. Mobs that I can kill on my own either take to many shots for the loot they give or don’t have good enough spawns to make hunting there enjoyable. I think once I have some more levels on me, Greg and I could come back here for sure. I also noticed a decent size community here. I even logged on one weekend to see a giant Hide and Seek community run event going on in chat.
Ancient Greece
Ancient Greece is a sub area on Next Island that can be accessed by a teleporter in Orpheus Cave. Much like Next Island, it doesn’t feature a whole lot to do for a player at my level but it does feature some pretty landscapes and cities. With Greg along, I did get to see some of the native wild life. Mainly, Cyclops and Minotaurs.
We didn’t stick in Ancient Greece long but we did stay long enough to grab a few teleporters if we wanted to visit again. I also ran a quest chain which gave me a nice beginner unlimited sword for when I want to train melee.
Finishing Mentoring
The whole reason we came to Next Island this early was for me to get the Atlas armor when I finished the Mentoring program. When we arrived I was at about 95% completed so I just needed to get out there and hunt for a bit to fil it up . It was a bit slow to fill since the aforementioned level problems for me here but I did manage to fill it up after a few Papoo hunts.
When you’re ready to graduate there’s a button you have to press on the mentoring menu. The mentor then has to log in to approve it and once approved both parties get their rewards. The rewards for the disciples are much better than for the mentors. I think that’s to encourage new players to link up with old ones when starting out.
Like everything in this game so far nothing goes right the first time. I clicked my button, Greg approved it, I saw a nice flashy congratulations animation. I opened my inventory to find….a Pixie Armor set….That’s the set you get if you finish mentoring on Calypso and it looks terrible. Apparently this happens so often there’s forum posts about it dating back years. .
So I did something I’ve never had to do in an online game before: I put in a support ticket. Which was an adventure all on it’s own. I was descriptive as can be and armed with screenshots and time stamps. Only to get through the whole thing only to be told there was an error and to contact support….Attempt number two went through though adnd 3 days later my garish Pixie armor was replaced with my sleek Atlas Armor
Yay!
Many Welps 
This series of posts has been fascinating. I’m amazed how good Entropia looks in the screenshots. I recognize the extreme lack of detail in the landscapes from when I played eons ago but allowing for that the overall impression is very favorable for a game as old as this one. Did they have some kind of graphical overhaul?
As for the gameplay, though, it sounds appalling. I can’t think I’ve ever read about an mmorpg that was so openly and blatantly dedicated to grinding. The quest you called out certainly sounds amusing but I think it might be the first time you’ve really mentioned there even are quests, as such. How much of the gameplay revolves around questing and/or storyline as opposed to sheer numerical mob grinding?
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I believe there was a graphical update at the end of 2019. I’m still surprised at how good it can look. It has its issues with empty swaths of land with minimal teztures for sure. But when the light hits just right in the right area it’s fantastic.
From what I’ve seen so far, outside of the tutorial missions at the beginning of the planets I’ve been on, there isn’t much lore/story going on with the quests. From a gameplay perspective, most of the quests aren’t worth doing because they don’t reward enough resources back for what you spend doing them. I’ve even seen some quests give nothing at all which you don’t find out until you turn it in. Then there are these “Iron Challenge” quests that ask you to kill x amount of mobs where x is usually greater than 1000…
With that being said, I’ve only been two some of the smaller planets. I’m not sure if things will change once we get to the main planet, Calypso, in that regard.
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