Secret Agent Training: Introduction to eRep's Secret Missions

Day 2,145, 07:57 Published in USA Ireland by Mercurius100
Real missions don't come with a step-by-step instruction manual.

We've gone over the official tutorial missions in eRep and how to complete them smartly.

But like any other MMO there's far more to being successful in eRep than what Plato tells you to do.

These “secret missions” are often more important to developing your eRep character, and many offer far better rewards than official missions do.

These aren't actual eRep missions with official icons and fancy pop-up animations. But they should be. Many introduce players to the metagame, the player-created community/game within the game where all the real action in eRep actually takes place. If you aren't into the social and community aspect of eRep you aren't playing the same game as the rest of us.

It's time for you to decide how you want to play eRep. Are you going to hold Plato's hand the whole time? Or are you ready for something a little more serious?

Agent, your first real missions are waiting. When you're ready, open that unmarked envelope to read more.





Secret Mission 1: Giving Yourself an Identity

Requirements: Add an avatar to your profile.

Rewards: Looking really cool.

Commentary: As much as your name, your avatar is a representation of who you are in eRep. Much of being successful in eRep society is building your own personal brand reputation. Replacing “Grey Silhouette Guy” with something to represent yourself, whatever that may be, gets you taken seriously and remembered by those you interact with.

To Complete: Literally any kind of pic can work as an avatar in terms of representing you well. The only technical limitations are that it needs to be in JPEG format and the file size can't be too huge. It also helps if it's roughly square (eRep will crop what you upload to make it square) and not really tiny (eRep will scale you avatar for different pages, from 16x16 to 256x256).

To upload a new avatar, navigate to your profile by clicking on your current avatar (Grey Silhouette Guy) and click the Change Profile link on the right.

Upload your chosen file to be your new avatar, enter your password below (needed for updating anything on your profile), and save your changes. Note that it can sometimes take a bit of time for newly uploaded graphics to start showing up on eRep.

Unlike changes to your eRep name, changes to your avatar are unlimited and always free. So if you don't like how your upload turned out, or if you get tired of an avatar, you can always try something else.





Secret Mission 2: Securing the Free Cache of Food

Requirements: Receive free food to recover your energy.

Rewards: Dinner delivered to you.

Commentary: Everything you need for your eRep daily needs is available for free. And since you need every penny to invest in helping your character develop, make sure to take advantage of everything you can get for free. Getting your food for free from your MU or government public assistance programs is the easiest of what you can get for free.

To Complete: Find your country's free food program. Read official government newspaper articles, or send a message to your country's Minister of Education. Or contact your superior officer in your MU to sign up to get free food (and weapons). Delivery usually is completed within a few hours, which you don't have to be online to accept.





Secret Mission 3: Infiltrate the Halls of Government

Requirements: Research political parties and join the one you like best.

Rewards: Eligibility to vote in all elections, and membership in an eRep community.

Commentary: Political parties aren't only for those wanting a career in politics.

In real life, many places require that you can only vote in a party's elections (i.e. primaries) if you are a registered member of that party. Thus you become a member of your chosen political party when you register to vote. eRep is the same. That includes voting in primaries for President, elections for Party President (the second most powerful people in politics behind a Country President), and in many parties voting in primaries for Congress elections. A country's political leaders are largely decided in these party elections while national elections are often merely a formality.

Parties are also a huge part of the social part of eRep. Your party is the community you choose to be a part of. Your fellow party members are who you will be interacting with the most in game. Finding the best group of players to spend your in-game time with, players you will enjoy playing eRep with, goes a long way to making eRep fun.

So choosing the political party that is right for you is in fact important.

To Complete: Important decisions deserve research first. A quick look through the top-ranked parties can give you a good idea of the landscape. But don't get bogged down in the political stuff. Parties are communities, what makes them fun for members and good parties to join is the people in those communities.

Despite how eRep defines a party on its party page, there is absolutely no left-right spectrum in eRep politics. The Libertarian-Totalitarian spectrum is equally useless and meaningless. Plus while the political descriptions on party pages make for a bit of fun role-playing they really have no relation to what a party actually is. Ignore that stuff entirely.

So what is actually important when choosing a party?


Parties are communities, groups of people who choose to play eRep together. You want the most enjoyable community for you to become a part of. So what matters are the people in the party you are considering joining.

Look up the leading members of a party to see what they are like. See what they have been up to in game. Read some of their newspapers. Strike up conversations with a few. See what they are actually like as people.

The people you would enjoy hanging out with the most, that's the party you'd most enjoy being a part of.

When you've found the party that is right for you, go to their party page in game and click Join.





Secret Mission 4: Meet Your Contact on the Inside

Requirements: Add 10 people to your Friends List.

Rewards: Being better informed, well-connected, and able to communicate better.

Commentary: Your Friends List does two things for you.

You will see posts by your friends in your Feed, and your Feed posts will be shown to those on your Friends List. If you don't have people on your Friends List you won't get any news, updates, or funny YouTube links from your Feed, and any posts you make won't be seen by anyone.

It's also easier for you to message people on your Friends List, and for them to message you.

To Complete: Adding 10 people is a good place to start, and a number that is easily achievable.


You don't need to add quite that many friends to have a useful Feed.

To send someone a friend request, go to their profile and click the little Add as Friend button in the top right.


Those people you have already interacted with in game are good people to add as friends. They are probably active posters who will add good content to your Feed.

Officers in your MU are good people to add as friends, you'll want to be getting updates from them in your Feed and you will likely be communicating with them a lot. Grab the links to profiles of your MU's Commander, 2nd Commanders, and Captains from your MU page.

Leading members of your political party are good people to add as friends. Grab links to their profiles from your party's page.

Leading members in the government are good to add as well, they typically produce a lot of news updates to populate your Feed. Grab links to their profiles from the country's Political Info page.

If you get somebody on your Friends List who you don't like their Feed posts, just go to their profile and click the Remove Friend button and they will be gone from your Feed.






Secret Mission 5: Send a Secret Communication

Requirements: Send an in-game message to someone.

Rewards: Interaction with other people.

Commentary: Talking with other people isn't really that scary. Really. Plus unlike talking to yourself all the time others will sometimes say things that you never thought of before.

Seriously though, engaging people in conversation is a great way to gain knowledge and insight into what's going on in the eWorld.

To Complete: If you have someone who has already sent you a message, and they seem nice, reply to them and ask them about something you'd like to know more about.

If you're looking for someone to strike up a conversation with, send a message to one of the bigwigs in country government. Click your avatar to go to your profile, click the country link for your country of Citizenship, and click on the Political tab. When people apply for such a high-profile position they are prepared to do a lot of communicating. So communicate with them a bunch!





Secret Mission 6: Infiltrate the Country's Forums

Requirements: Sign up for an account on your country forums.

Rewards: Knowledge is Power!

Commentary: There's a lot going on in eRep every day. Much of it takes place in the player-created “metagame” and off of the main eRep site. The best place to start really finding out what is going on is your country's dedicated forums. You'll want to see what people are saying there.

To Complete: The eRep Wiki lists the official forums for every country in the game. Find your country, sign up for an account, and start listening in on what's really going on in eRep.





Secret Mission 7: Gathering Local Intel

Requirements: Subscribe to 3 Newspapers.

Rewards: Getting up to speed on current events.

Commentary: Things can change quickly in eRep. Staying on top of current events can put you out in front of the next big wave of change instead of frantically racing to catch up.

Everybody finds their own preferred sources of news and commentary, and they won't always show up in the Top News or get posted to your Feed by one of your friends. So by subscribing to newspapers you like reading you set up your own personal news feed right on the eRep homepage.


Subscribing to a writer's newspaper also tells them that the effort they put into writing articles is appreciated and encourages them to write more often.

To Complete: Find some articles you like reading, and click the Subscribe button in the top right to have that writer's future articles appear in your Subscriptions feed.


Watch the Top News feed and posts from your friends to find some good newspapers to follow.

Click the More News button to explore a larger number of articles.


Particularly the First Steps in eRepublik category is good for players just starting out. Also check out articles published in other countries to get the point of view of the other side.






Secret Mission 8: Increase Your Power Level

Requirements: Reach level 20.

Rewards: The satisfaction of hitting a big round number.

Commentary: Levels 1-19 are made to be tutorial levels to introduce new players to the game. Level 20 starts the “real” gameplay. Your leveling will slow dramatically, most missions will be completed, and the free gifts of gold from the game will be much fewer if you don't develop your character well from now on. Before level 20 you are essentially on auto-pilot. Now at level 20 you can really take the wheel and control where you want to go.

To Complete: 500 XP for level 20. Most of that will come from completing missions, the rest from training, working, and fighting. You get there faster than you expect, but once there you get to start playing the real game.





Secret Mission 9: Hit the Gym

Requirements: Upgrade your Free Training Grounds

Rewards: Vastly increased gains in Strength and Gold income.

Commentary: Upgrading your Training Grounds, particularly the free one, is the best investment you will ever make in eRep. You will gain a ton more Strength that will help you do much more damage in fights. Gaining that much more Strength will also gain you boatloads of Gold.

If you wait a bit for a discount on upgrades you can save 45% on the upgrade cost too.

To Complete: Go to your Training Grounds and click the Upgrade button.


Select your free Training Ground (the first one) and upgrade to Q2.






Secret Mission 10: Distribute Propaganda

Requirements: Create a newspaper and publish your first article.

Rewards: Presence in the media, added attention for your ideas.

Commentary: Promoting your position on the topics of the day requires putting out newspaper articles. In addition having a good media presence will help with any career choice that depends on having a good reputation and promoting your personal image. If you are really good your newspaper can even earn money for you.

Creating a newspaper requires an up-front investment of 2 Gold.

To Complete: Click on your name/avatar on the left to navigate to your profile, then click on Newspaper on the left.


Click to create a new Newspaper, and enter the details you want.


Recommended reading for how to write good quality articles here and here.





Secret Mission 11: Earning Recognition

Requirements: Earn some medals to display on your profile.

Rewards: Gold, plus profile bling.

Commentary: You can earn a ton of income in Gold from earning profile medals, far more income than you can earn in USD. Done right Gold will be your main source of income.

To Complete: There's several different medals you can earn with relative ease. The easiest are ...

Hard Worker Medals

Hard Worker medals are really easy to earn. You'll get one for every 30 days you work, either working for a salary-paying employer or for yourself. Each Hard Worker medal earns you 5 Gold.

Super Soldier Medals

Super Soldier medals are also really easy. You'll earn a Super Soldier medal for every 250 Strength you gain. This is what makes upgrading your Training Grounds so profitable, the more you upgrade the faster you gain Strength and Super Soldier medals. Each Super Soldier medal earns you 5 Gold.

True Patriot Medals

True Patriot damage is earned by doing damage for your country of citizenship. Your profile keeps track of the True Patriot damage you do. You will earn your first True Patriot medal after doing 100,000 True Patriot damage, with future medals requiring an increasing amount of damage. Each True Patriot medal earns you 5 Gold.

Battle Hero Medals

A Battle Hero medal is earned for doing the most damage for your side in battle, in your division, in a single round of battle. Battle Hero medals are easiest to earn when you are a Division 1 fighter, with increasing difficulty as you reach higher divisions. Just follow the strategies here for being a Battle Hero. Medals start out earning 2 Gold each for Division 1 fighters and earn more Gold (but are more difficult to earn) in higher divisions.





There's many more ways to grow your character and be successful in eRep, but these “Secret Missions” are the easiest ways to set yourself up for success.

Developing your identity and a respectable reputation.

Increasing your stats and abilities.

Securing a stable financial future.

Getting plugged into what is going on and creating a personal network that can help you succeed.

Most importantly, becoming a part of the eRep community and finding the real fun in playing eRep.

Each of these tasks should be fun to achieve and should make eRep more fun once done.

Because even secret agents should be able to enjoy their time on the job.





More educational reading:
This Article Will Self Destruct: Introduction to Missions
Don't Do That! How Not to Get Banned in eRep
Fighting on a Budget: How to Be a Soldier without Going Broke
You are the Commander: The Guide to Combat Orders
Saying No to Temptation: Getting Ahead in eRep by Saving and Waiting
The Collected Knowledge of eRep's Greatest Minds: Introduction to the eRep Wiki
Guide to Understanding PTO's and ATO's