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VOTE this Survival Guide to the top five articles in Canada, to reach actual "babies"!

You can shout this article as http://tinyurl.com/caguide for short. (Great for employers!)


(Aren't they so cute at that age? Help the children; vote, shout, and tell your friends.)

Education is crucial to increasing population and to increasing the average level of it, which are the engine both of the economy and the military machine in any country. Do your part to vote it and promote it in EDEN, whether that is Canada, Australia, or elsewhere.

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
** 5 Gold from leveling past six and 5 more for getting up to sixteen
** 5 Gold from a Hard Worker medal and 5 from a Super Soldier medal
** Over 4 Skill in your job
** Wages in currency valued at about five (or more) Gold
** Over 5 Strength
** 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. (Ignore Alexander, Caesar, and Napoleon. They were introduced only recently to help eRepublik sell Gold for real money.)
(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 official eRepublik wiki and the eCanada website. Start making connections, whether on the country forum (Canada has one), the chat channels (Canada has the irc.rizon.net #eCan channel), or among those who write and comment on newspaper articles (just message or friend them).

Don't know what this IRC business is? Joe Newton shows you how to get on IRC, explaining that "Cool Kids Don't Use eRep Chat" and that IRC is the place where experienced players chat about eRepublik. The link http://tinyurl.com/ecan-irc will also let you get on IRC, with very little fuss, through a browser app called Mibbit (so try it, and if you like it, bookmark that link... or just bookmark the eCanada website, which has a link to the IRC on the front page).

Something that will enhance the experience of eRepublik for any eCanadian, especially if they are just starting out, is to join the eCanada forum at ecanada.ws where you can find out about all the assistance programs, get important updates and news, and just make friends or talk about what’s important to you.

You're probably going to do this eventually, so you might as well do it now: befriend TaiwanPanda. The man is an institution to himself. He may help you with getting started (advice, food, gifts, etc) if you send a friendly PM.

A Word to the Wise: Picking the Right Career

What job skill do you want, long-term? Basically, if you will be moving between countries (typically, to fight there) or living in a country that does not have “High Iron” or "High Diamonds," then Manufacture is the most portable profession and is well-compensated everywhere. But since you may be living in a country that does have “High Diamonds” (Canada has two such regions), Land can give you the best wage (and acceptable wages in countries with “High” Wood or Oil). There is not a very strong argument for starting out in Construction, since it has the lowest wages, especially during times of war, when the Housing industry slumps.

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 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 Canada they are currently Ontario, Quebec, and Alberta.) 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 (or, e.g., ask for help in the eCanada forums).
(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 program such as Canadian Health Services). 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 Canadians, that information is published in the Canadian Defense Updates paper (published by Canadian National Defense).
(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 your country’s “Society” 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 yet 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 feature that lets you (and your manager) see your production. 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).

A Word to the Wise: Picking the Right Home

As you already know, you absolutely must be in a region with a Q5 Hospital. Living in a region without a Q5 Hospital is a bad idea; even if it is your real-life home, you should move in eRepublik. But have you considered living abroad as a Canadian citizen? There are at least three different reasons (sometimes cooperating) that a citizen might want to use a base of operations outside of their home country. First, Canada does not participate in all of the wars in which EDEN is involved. For the most part it doesn't take part in wars of resistance, for example, and it can't take part in efforts like battles over "Hello Kitty" (a Hungarian fortress in China). Moving can let you fight in more wars (and still defend Canada through MPPs). Second, having more citizens in a region makes it more costly for the enemy to attack, a defensive advantage. Certain fortresses such as Karnataka and Liaoning, regions that have High Iron, are critical to EDEN right now. Third, there may be an economic advantage to working in another country if it pays higher real wages for your Manufacture, Land, or Construction skill. Keep in mind that you don't have to change citizenship and can still participate in elections even though you work and fight in another country. However, this is one of those decisions that is up to your discretion.



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 eCanada, and other venues such as the official chats and forums (ecanada.ws).

Service to your country is the surest route to earning respect, and it can be a lot of fun at the same time. One way to do so is by joining the Canadian Armed Force Rangers and serving in the military. Paramilitary organizations such as the Crimson Guard also recruit sometimes. Keep an eye out for opportunities to improve the welfare of your country and its citizens.

A Word to the Wise: Money Matters

There will never be a time in eRepublik when you couldn’t use some extra money.

To learn the fundamentals, please read my articles Home Economics: Making Money and Home Economics: Saving Money (for the go-getter and the penny pincher in all of us, respectively).

The best extra GOLD you can get comes from referring your friends (or anyone!) and getting them to level six. That’s because eCanada needs more people! To refer people just use a link that looks like this: http://www.erepublik.com/en/referrer/Buck+Roger.

Some citizens, especially those who don't realize how big the admins are on cracking down and banning accounts suspected of this, think they can game the system for extra GOLD by creating multiple accounts (called "multis&quot😉. This is most commonly done for the rewards of achieving level 6. However, you are warned against doing this. You could end up losing all of the accounts, including the one that has all the friends, medals, and months of progress.



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 more guides.

Ministry of Education (the official organization in Canada for helping new players learn things like those taught in this article) has their own excellent New Citizen Guide/Guide du Nouveau Citoyen (in English and French).

Visual Guides:

** lrn2wellness A Newbie Guide (in English, with great pictures!)
** eAustralia's Fighting Tutorial (Youtube video, in English)
** Youtube video on how to fight and heal (English/Ukrainian)

More advanced articles... from me!

** Rules of War Every Greek Should Know (which is really applicable to any warrior in eRepublik)
** The Way of the Gun (basic info on ranking up and using weapons but also some more advanced info on higher Quality Weapon budgeting)
** 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)
** How I Made 7 GOLD Overnight and You Can Too (explains how to use the “incentivized offers” like surveys to get quick, free GOLD)

Some International Papers (in English) for you to Read, Vote, and Subscribe:

Defense Intel Review | Stars and Stripes Journal | The Briefing Room | McFarland Journal | The Federalist Papers | The Angry Kitten | Lung Ficat Romania | From the Shelf | the High Times | eWorld Trade Centar | tall_niki_news | eRep in Maps | 2 Clicker Morning Coffee | Business Magazine (Phoenix)

Be sure, especially, to subscribe to the Canadian Defense Updates (official orders, an absolute must!). Another way to get your daily orders is the eCanada News Alert, a script using Greasemonkey for Firefox in order to show orders conveniently on your eRepublik home page.



http://tinyurl.com/caguide
Feel free to link to this article (say, in a shout or a pm) as a "shorthand" way of providing more detailed explanation of things that a new player needs to do. If you'd like to adapt this guide for your own nation (with links appropriate to your country), please contact me first. This version of the guide itself has been rewritten with links for the Canadian audience (the original was in Greece, your ally).

VOTE this article to the top five in Canada to reach actual “babies.”