Stop the Abuse

At the end of 45 days, if you play your cards right, you can achieve all of the following:

** Access to all the features of the game
** 10 Gold from leveling to 16
** 10 Gold from a Hard Worker and a Super Soldier medal
** Skill 4 in your job
** Wages in currency valued at about 5 Gold or more
** Strength 5
** Rank 4 (Lieutenant) with a 180% damage multiplier (1.5 times a Private)
** (Optional) The respect and admiration of your peers

This guide will show you how to do all that and a little bit more.



Baby Stage: Your First 6 Days (Levels 1 to 4)

The baby stage is a delicate time. You are close to broke, you get paid very little, you have virtually no game options, and you may have no friends in-game. This is when most people quit the game, most often on the very first day.

None of these are real problems if you know what you are doing, but... on top of everything, you don't know what you are doing. For the first six days, until level 5, you should be doing this:

(1) Making sure your job is at a Q1 (one-star) company and working daily. Higher Quality companies take away more wellness, and your main struggle right now is to keep your wellness (the meter that makes your body blue) above 40 (a magical number explained in the next stage).
(2) Training each day. Even though this takes away more wellness, it gives you much-needed experience and progress in Strength.
(3) Buying Q1 or, possibly, Q2 food daily. You need the Q2 food if you had made some mistake (such as joining a high Quality company) and have to get above 40 wellness or stay above it.

All of this should take only a few minutes a day. In addition, this is a good time to read the eRepublik wiki and start making connections, either on the country forum (Greece has one), the chat channels (Greece has a Xat channel and an irc.rizon.net channel), or among those who write and comment on newspaper articles (just send a message or friend request).

It's possible that you started reading this article during the baby stage, child stage, adolescent stage, or beyond. Whenever you did, keep in mind that it's never too late to reconsider your job skill. While you may have as much as skill 4 in Construction or even Manufacture now, it could pay off relatively quickly to switch that over to Land and work in a country that produces Iron in a High region. Alternatively, if Land pays poorly in the countries in which you'd like to work, consider switching to Manufacture. Of course, you'd have to research a little on wages, particularly in the countries in which you are willing to work, before you do so. While there are some efficiency tradeoffs when switching careers (you could have even more skill in your first job), that possible loss is very rarely accepted unwisely. Much more often people align themselves with a career tenaciously even if it doesn't benefit them to do so in the long term.



Child Stage: Day 7 to Day 16 (Levels 5 to 13)

This is an exciting time for many players; for others, it is when they burn out because they never win at the wellness game. This is when you can start fighting and will see your first award of Gold. You'll also get slightly better wages at skill 2 than the pittances offered to skill 0 and 1 players.

Immediately upon reaching level 5, you should do the following:

(1) Check to see if there is a Quality 5 Hospital in your region. If not, find out where those hospitals are in your country. (For Greece they are in Thrace, Central Greece, Attica, and the Aegean Islands.) Move to that region by changing region on your profile page. This requires a Moving Ticket. Buy one. If you cannot afford a ticket, you country may be able to buy one for you (e.g., the Ministry of New Players of eGreece can help here).
(2) Check to see if your wellness is above 40. If not, find a suc^H^H^H kind soul to gift you up to 40 wellness (or a government program such as, again, the Ministry of New Players of eGreece). You need at least 40 wellness to fight.
(3) Find out where the wars or war games are in your country in which you should fight. For Greeks, that information is published in the Ministry of Defense paper.
(4) Fight in said battle... once only on your first day of fighting. This will cost 10 wellness but will allow you to use the Hospital (once only) to gain 50 wellness that day.
(5) Go to your region's page, which is accessible by clicking "Back to the Battlefield" and then "Hospital," or by finding it on your profile page or on the country page.
(6) You'll know you can heal because beside the 5-star Hospital it will have a Heal button (you'll also know that you haven't healed that day if there is a link to the Hospital on the battlefield page). Click that Heal button.

Now you can finish your day off with training and work (if you haven't yet). There is a new feature that lets you see your production (and lets your manager see it too). You may notice that your production jumps up by a factor when you work at high wellness. There is indeed a factor at work here, such that a worker at 100 Wellness does 1.5 times the work of someone at 50 Wellness and 3 times the work of someone at 0 Wellness (while the 50 Wellness person does 2 times the work of someone at 0 Wellness). The only thing you really have to know is that you should be as close to 100 as possible and always over 90. Anything less, and your manager should be (and usually is) looking to replace you.

Assuming Day 7 is your first day of fighting, per the ideal schedule, your Day 8 will bring you level 6 and your first 5 Gold award for achieving level 6. It will also bring 5 Gold to whomever referred you to the game, if anyone did. Also, around Day 8, you should have caught up with wellness and be doing either 4 or 5 fights every day, with only 4 fights only if you are very close to 50 wellness after 4 fights and you are looking to raise it back up to 100.

As a rule of thumb, you will do more damage in fights at higher wellness, so it often makes sense to train, fight, heal, and then work (in that order) for the most damage. Alternatively, if you don't want to cheat your employer out of any wellness, you can fight, heal, work, and then train (in that order). You will usually be ending the day at high wellness (above 90) for benefits that include not having to worry that there will be no available fights tomorrow to let you use a hospital. This means, however, that the effect of higher Quality Food and of Houses are diminished (by as much as half), and that should be kept in mind when you purchase them (see Wellness on the eRepublik wiki).



Adolescent Stage: Day 17 to 45 (Levels 13 to 16)

Once you get over the great wellness problem plaguing eChildren, you have also learned many of the mechanics of the game along the way and are off to a great start. You will be free to pursue the various fun parts of the game more as time goes on; these include making friends, expressing opinion, running for office, fighting for your country, building your wealth, and helping others succeed as you have.

Here are some of the milestones promised at the beginning of this article (in the life of the citizen on an ideal schedule--fighting 5 times a day on almost every day possible to do so, i.e., on every day after Day :

(1) Day 6. Skill 2 in your job.
(2) Day 8. Level 6 and a 5 Gold award.
(3) Day 16. Skill 3 in your job.
(4) Day 21. Level 14 and the ability to run for President.
(5) Day 28. Level 15 and all abilities are unlocked.
(6) Day 30. Hard Worker medal and a 5 Gold award.
(7) Day 36. Skill 4 in your job.
( Day 39. Rank 4 (Lieutenant) fighting mostly bare-fisted.
(9) Day 43. Strength 5, a Super Soldier medal, and a 5 Gold award.
(10) Day 44. Level 16 and a 5 Gold award.

The majority of your experience comes from fighting. The numbers above assume 5 fights a day on every day starting at Day 9. Your progress will be only slightly slower if you fight 4 times a day occasionally. Fighting will give you 2 experience per fight, so 5 times a day makes for 10 experience in a day. The other common methods of gaining experience--training and work--yield only 3 experience per day. That means over three-quarters of your experience comes from fighting. Fighting is also very important for increasing your total damage done over all time, as that determines your rank, and a higher military rank will give you more damage per fight.

What about the respect and admiration of your peers? Only you can manage that one. I suggest finding a niche or role to play in your virtual society. Everyone loves to pigeon hole somebody! Instead of being "that guy who seems kinda nice" you could be that "super cool guy who is always making sure that people are informed of what Congress is doing" or that "swell gal who is doing an awesome job keeping us up-to-date on foreign affairs" or whatever else you see yourself wanting to do. This is often best achieved through the use of both a newspaper, which is a tool used by many within eGreece, and other venues such as the official chats and forums.



You're All Grown Up and Want More?

Everybody is confident that a budding young adult citizen can figure most of this out for themselves. However, here are some links anyway with guides in both English and Greek.

More advanced articles... from me!

** The Way of the Gun (basic info on ranking up and using weapons but also some more advanced info on higher Quality Weapon budgeting)
** A Word to the Bored (info on browsing the news press in eRepublik, of special interest to Greeks, with lists of popular papers)
** Home Economics: Making Money and Home Economics: Saving Money (for the go-getter and the penny pincher in all of us, respectively)
** Finding and Funding Your New Business Plan (for those who want to go into business)

Visual Guides:

** lrn2wellness A Newbie Guide (in English, with great pictures!)
** Youtube video on how to fight and heal (English/Ukrainian)
** Youtube video on how to fight and heal (Greek)
** Youtube video on fighting wars in eRepublik (Greek)

Guides in Greek:

** The guide by Metallium
** The guide by milios
** The guide by columbia

Official newspapers in eGreece:

** Ministry of Defense paper (an absolute must!)
** Ministry of Press eGreece (official notices)
** Ministry of New Players (includes helpful info in Greek)
** Greek Ministry of Health (another Organization that can help with Gifts and that has useful information in Greek)

Please also look at the eGreece Media Mogul project and subscribe to the newspapers on that list with your citizen and Organizations. Not only will you get to read some fine pulp, but you will be helping to create some Gold for eGreece.

Feel free to link to this article as a "shorthand" way of providing more detailed explanation of things that a new player in eGreece needs to do. If you'd like to adapt this guide for your own nation (with links to the appropriate agencies and forums in your country), please contact me first. So far, Sir Cagliostro, salva_vlc, Herr Vootsman, Jelly9473, and 123sls have permission.

Best wishes to all citizens, Greek and non-Greek, new and old alike!