Join the new world

(This guide has been designed keeping in mind a medium strength, non-gold-buyer D1 soldier but for most part applies to all soldiers of D1, D2 and D3.)

D1 offers promise. There is enough BH medals for everyone. You do not need to be too strong, no need to consume Energy Bars. There is a whole 'market' out there offering you the pleasures of becoming a battle hero, you just need to know where to buy and how to bargain. Let me guide you through this world.




Minimum Requirements

1. 34,000 strength. For every additional 100 days since Day 2845, add 1000 to it.
Although you may be able to get BHs well before reaching this strength, what I am talking about here is BH Hunting. This figure also acts as a psychological barrier for your opponents. If you think it is ironical that I mentioned this is a guide for no-gold-buyers but at the same time put such a high strength requirement, think again. eIndia is a very helpful community and if you are a real-life India, we can collectively fund your TG upgrade. Just be active!

2. Ability to choose the right battles and fight at the right time. This is the single most important reason why people fail to get their BHs.

3. A lot of free time in your hands.



Analysis

In the current BH hunting market, you can get a (cheap enough but easily available) BH at about 3.5 million damage (for every 100 days since Day 2845, add 100,000 to it) if you play your cards well (which I will teach you how to do.)

So let's suppose you are a young 34,000 str Lvl 28 person who has set on a quest to earn some BH medals. You have 35000xp to expend out of which lets set aside 5000xp for daily activities, etc. You are left with 30,000 xp.

It takes you 120 fights (= 120xp) to do about 3.5 million damage. With a success rate of 2 out of 3 attempts, you can roughly get 165 BH medals before you graduate to D2. It will cost you about 0.6 gold per attempt. So your net profit is 180 gold. If your strength were 50,000 you could have got 350 BHs assuming lesser xp to expend but a higher success rate.




Choosing the right time

1. In general, if you count more that 30 campaigns on the Wars page, it is a good time to hunt BH.
2. 5 a.m. to 8 a.m. IST and 3 p.m. to 8 p.m. IST are good.
3. Weekends, public holidays, election days and tournaments are bad but you can get lucky, specially during the night time.
4. 10 a.m. to 2 p.m IST is bad.

It is advisable start striking at 00:00:00 time of the round (i.e. be the first one to strike) because most other BH hunters won't go for it if you went first. If some other BH hunter starts fighting before you or about the same time as you, quit it. This approach can be a bit frustrating.
The alternative is to wait for some time after the start of the battle (say about 20 minutes) and if no one comes to claim the BH, go for it - it's a cheap one. Such cheap BHs aren't as rare as you may think!




Choosing the right battle

1. Resistance wars of a weak country against another weak country are best because you can go for BH for either side.

2. Resistance wars of a weak country against a strong strong country are good.

3. Wars of a weak country against a weak or a strong country are good.

4. Any war offering CO more than 120 currency is good (you may not get BH but it's still worth it.)

5. Wars or Resistance war of your own country is bad. This is because given your low strength, other BH hunters will assume that you might have fought just out of patriotism or because you are following your Daily order and hence may not respect your BH.

The sure shot way to decide whether to go for BH in a War or not is to see the previous battles (by clicking 'previous battle statistics' button at the bottom right of the battlefield) of that campaign. Look for if there are more than one person with high damage in previous battles. If there are, then it means that this is a high importance War and BH hunting is not advisable. On the other hand, if you consistently see in every battle rounds, there is only one person with high amount of damage, it means this War is a BH hunting heaven and you have the best odds of getting a one.




Rules of the trade

1. Make your intent clear that you are hunting BH and not just fighting for the sake of fighting. You can do this by either having a large number of BH medals or by specifying it in your 'About me'.

2. Respect BH of other players (specially if they have low strength.) As I have said, there is enough for everyone, don't be greedy.

3. If the campaign is a BH hunting heaven, almost all of the full-time BH hunters will respect your BH irrespective of your strength or the damage that you have done for the BH. There are a few exceptions, of course. Make sure you defame such BH thieves.

4. Never fight for BH against your own countrymen or soldiers from allied countries.



Advice

1. This is business, keep your ego out of it. Do not spend your resources fighting someone for the BH spot, it is not profitable and doesn't prove that you have a bigger D.

2. You may use energy bars to get BHs. One may argue that 1 EB costs 2g making the BH unprofitable but the thing is you can't sell an energy bar to someone else and must use it for yourself. Therefore, this makes it worthless in the market and perhaps the best use you can get out of it is to get yourself a BH. But it is totally up to you if you want to save them for those big battles of your country or for tournaments.

3. With the introduction of Infantry Kit it has become very easy for high strength players to linger in D1. I estimate that in an year or so, D1 will become over-crowded with such players and then there won't be enough for everyone. So, please start BH hunting as soon as your stats allow you to.




Tricks

1. eRepublik works best with Mozilla Firefox.

2. Use the script eRepublik Stuff++ which has extremely helpful features like Auto-Eat.

3. Being online (as shown on profile page) is strong deterrent against someone stealing your BH. But of course, you can't always be in front of your PC. So use some page refresh add-on for your favourite browser.

4. There is a small bug on the battlefield page. After all divisions have finished, a countdown till the next round appears and when this countdown has finished, a 'Next battle' button appears. Now, sometimes even after you press the 'Next Battle' button, the 'CAMPAIGN DETAILS' banner still come down and you lose critical few seconds at the start. To overcome this, the trick is after you click on 'Next Battle', move your mouse over the "FIGHT' button. When the page has reloaded, quickly hit the fight button before the banner comes down. Reload page and repeat this until the banner stops coming down.

5. Houses are over-rated. Being a non-gold-buyer, buy only Q1, Q2, Q3 if you must.

6. Do not be shy to travel to any country. But wherever you go, make sure that there are at least two good wars going on then and there.




Suggestions are welcome. All this is based on my experience in BH hunting and I can guarantee you at least 80% success rate if you follow this guide.

Of course, the actual number of BHs that you are able achieve will also depend on your patience, dedication, temperament and character.



I wish you good luck!