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Tendou gave me a hand with this. Check out his paper.

Edit: See stalker comments for errors.

As a new player, you’re probably wondering how this crazy thing called eLife works. You're giddy with excitement. You want to be a juggernaut. You want to be rich. You want to be president. Our subsequent guides should be able to shed some light on the three major modules of this game: Military, Economic, and Social/Political, and how anyone who's anyone can accomplish any of these goals! First up is a guide for you to achieve military dominance.


Also known as, ‘So You Wanna Kill People with Your Bare Hands?’ Guide

There are two important aspects to your individual status as future awesome eSoldier: strength and rank. This guide will walk you why each is obscenely important to your daily life and how you can attain each to maximize your killing potential.

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Strength

Much like real life, strength is acquired through months, if not years, of training. That's right. I said years. If you want to make a difference right away, you best be finding yourself another game. We here at eRepublik don't take a liking to people who don't put in effort.

Each day, you may train once for free for 5.5 strength each time. If you also work each day (more about this is the economic module), you can get a +1 daily bonus to your strength. This makes for a base total of 6.5 strength per day.

I know what you’re saying. 6.5 strength per day? How long will it take me to be a difference maker? Fear not! To give you an idea, the United States Special Forces looks for members who can do 2000 points with a Quality 5 (Q5) weapon.

Now, if you look at a player like me who has nearing 1300 strength and Lt. Colonel status, you'll find that I do a little under 600 damage with a Q5 weapon. The weapon lasts 5 hits, so that's 3100 points. Whee! Of course, Special Forces wants 2000 points per hit. I guess I still have a long way to go.

I'm not one for fancy smancy equations, so I don't know how much strength+rank would be needed to achieve 2000 points per hit. So, I'm going to pull a number out of my ass. That number will be 1800. This is mainly because Tendou mentioned it. He could have been talking about 1800 burritos because I wasn't really paying attention, but I digress.

If you wanted to get to 1800 strength through base training (6.5 strength/day), you’ll get there in 277 days. Or, a little over nine months of signing in and clicking your Training Grounds everyday. That’s right. Much like a baby developing, you need time to get all your muscles in order. This game takes commitment. The highest ranked player in this game is Romper, who has a strength of 6,671 (at the time of this writing). He has been here for more than 21 months.

Of course, after a little figuring out, I bet you noticed that Romper has gained an average of about 10.5 strength per day (roughly estimated). I’m sure you’re wondering how because you want to be as big and as strong as Romper as soon as possible.

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A Quick word about Gold

Gold makes the world go ‘round and will be looked at more completely in “Welcome to the New Worl😛 An Updated How-To for Economic Dominance.”

You procure gold through various means. One way is to obtain an achievement – the most common of these being working for 30 straight days or reaching 250 strength increments (i.e. 250, then 500, then 750, etc.). Each achievement garners you five gold.


Which I'm sure makes you feel quite the ladykiller.

What to do with your newly found cash?

If you spend some money building a nice training facility ($300 as of this writing. Or about three days work.) You can gain 16.5 strength per day. Woot. That’s pretty amazing, huh? Of course, each time you train you’ll have to spend 1.79 gold. As in real life, soldiers have to pay for their equipment and training.

You quickly figure out that the five gold per achievement you get will only pay for two sessions with a little left over to pay your baby momma. Still, lucky for us, Plato graces us with the humble opportunity to purchase gold relatively easy at a small fee. This way, if you have the best training facility and purchase gold you can reach the 1800 strength plateau in 110 days! That’s 167 days faster! That's only four months of logging in everyday. This action should only cost you about 322 gold. If you got the 300 gold package from Plato, that would work out to a little more than 99.9 euros. Or $141.14. A small fee to jump start your illustrious military career.

Or, let’s say you got one of each of the training facilities for $600 (about a week of working. Or, if you’re in the US, about one gold as of this writing) because you like to be well-rounded. You could get 24 strength per day if you maximized everything. Wow! Now it’ll only take you 75 days! And it will only cost you 260.25 gold. You just saved yourself 61.75 gold! Sweet! Now if you bought the 300 gold package, you can use the extra 40.75 gold you got from that 300 gold package for other buildings, buying weapons, paying bribes, etc.

Note: These figures do not figure in missions or other bonuses which could shave off as much as 10 days off your total time as they add strength and rank points for completing them.

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Rank

Rank is the second aspect, achieved through “fight(ing) against real people on the battlefield.”

Don't worry. They’re not real per se. Even Plato doesn’t go that far. Rather, once you enter a battle you will face off with a citizen who possesses comparable strength to you, an arbitrary health bar and weapon all their own which you must defeat. Defeating them should take between 1 to 8 hits (which will cost you between 10 to 80 health units). Each hit costs you ten health points and removes ten health points from them. Note: If you lower your opponent to fewer than ten points but have still not defeated them, it will still cost you ten health points. This is how war works. Have no fear! This is not a real-time battle. You’ll be able to get all your hits in.

Note: You do more damage & get more rank points by using tanks (Q5 weapons). If you work a job, you can spend an entire paycheck on 3-4 tanks. If that's not enough, pay up and get some more gold, pansy!

After you defeat each opponent, you’ll be awarded rank points (with a bonus if you’re facing a natural enemy. More on that in the "Welcome to the New Worl😛 An Updated How-To for Social/Political Dominance"). Each rank you achieve awards you a 5% bonus to your hits.

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Other Points

All this math! Don’t worry though, it will be about a year before the damage you do counts and you can actually sway a battle and obtain achievements such as Battle Hero and Campaign Hero and Resistance Hero, unless, as above, you choose to spend money on gold, then you could blast yourself to Romper the Magnificent levels in about a three months or so by using gold for training, weapons, and health packs.

Plato, too, has recently blessed us with the ability to fight up to 2400 times per day. In order to do so, you’ll have to log in every one to three hours or so. You see, each hour you can recover 100 health and max out, as a beginner, at about 350. As they say, pixels before RL friends. No pain no gain. Besides “eRepublik creates multiplayer global strategy game” and “provides a real second life.” With deals like these, who needs the first life?!

There will always be a battle for you to enjoy! Non-stop wars are also a feature, mostly because of inflated egos and those who are overcompensating (more on this in "Welcome to the New Worl😛 An Updated How-To for Socio-Political Dominance").

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And the rest


I know. I know. It isn’t about being the biggest battle hero to you. You simply want to defend your country. Very admirable! I will leave you with one final point. First, if you are trying to liberate a region from a foreign entity (if you’re American, for example, say you wanted to fight for the resistance to liberate Virginia from Spain), you better live in the foreign territory or move there. You have to be in Spain to fight against Spain, even if you are in America.

I hope this guide has shown you the light and path to military dominance. Stay committed!


Now with more Void Stuff!