Two Hundred Days - First Edition

Day 917, 20:00 Published in USA USA by Iamnameless


First Edition Intro, wall-of-text version:
Hello fellow citizens!
Welcome to the first issue of Two Hundred Days, a paper designed with newer players in mind.

Two quick promises to start:
1) Any ads for this paper will feature an image of a hottie, because like most people, I like hotties.
2) Each issue will contain not one but at least TWO pics of hotties, because (again like most people) I hate false advertising and like getting more than I expected.

So first things first – this one makes me want to salute:


There are many tutorials out there that do a fine job of detailing the steps most players should follow in their first few weeks, and others that explain the finer points of fighting, work and wellness. Useful as they are, this is not one of those tutorials, so let me recommend a good one written by one of our leading citizens, ligtreb.

I wanted to do something different and hopefully add something unique to eRep. The idea here is to look back in time at the progress a new citizen makes in his (or her) first Two Hundred Days in eRepublik. If you’ve ever felt like you weren’t gaining much ground in eRep, this paper can provide a bit of encouragement and serve as a sort of roadmap to level 20. Think of it as a series of snapshots if you will, or like the marks some parents make on the wall as their children grow up. Follow along, and in Two Hundred Days you too can be a somewhat-respectable General living in a Q5 house and earning a nice Skill 7 wage.

When I first joined eRep, a little over Two Hundred Days ago, I was told about some key things – the need to maintain wellness, the importance of living in either Florida or California (this was prior to our current arrangement in Karnataka, which btw is particularly lovely this time of year if you’ve never been), the large amount of info available in the Wiki, and the existence of the eUS forums* – all very good to know but I still had lots of questions. The community on the eUS forum and especially the folks on the Welcoming Committee were very helpful and patiently answered many of them, but I wanted to get a better feel for how the game worked. How quickly could I expect to advance levels? What should I do to become more financially secure? How much damage can I do in fights? What is the impact of choosing a Q2 weapon vs. a Q1? Is higher-Q food worth it?

* You should be registered on the eUS forums already, but if you’re not, please use this link:
http://eusforum.com/index.php?action=register;referredby=6395
and help increase the size of my ePeen!




To help me answer my own questions, a couple of weeks into my eRep “career” I started recording some basic information about each Day’s events. Where did I fight, how much did weapons cost and could I afford them, how much damage did I do armed vs. barefisted, how productive was I at my job, how much did I earn, what did I eat… recording these details became incorporated into my daily eRep routine. It seems odd that while being able to play in just a few minutes per day was a big selling point for me, I willingly added quite a bit of copy-n-paste-time to each Day. Leave it to me to turn two-clicking into two-dozen-clicking. D’oh!

“Two Hundred Days” also refers to how far back in time we’ll be looking – each issue will look back Two Hundred Days from the current eDate. This first issue is being published on Day 917, so in it I’ll write about what I was doing on Day 717 as a young Corporal. Issues won’t be published daily, but each issue will focus on the decisions and progress my citizen made Two Hundred Days earlier. By Day 1117, (if there are still willing readers) I’ll be writing about starting this newspaper. One last thing, there won’t be much in the way of retelling eRep history or politics – there are other excellent sources for that sort of analysis – but the focus here will be on eRep from a micro- or personal perspective rather than a macro- or eNational perspective.


First Edition Intro, tl;dr version:
This paper looks back Two Hundred Days from the current date and examines the progress one citizen made over the course of his first Two Hundred Days. Also, there will be hotties in every issue.


Let’s take a brief moment to acknowledge the special relationship between the eUS and eCanada. We have nothing but manly love our Canadian BROs; of course that goes double for their women.

Beneath that maple leaf beats the heart of a tigress. No, not that one!


OK, enough lead-in.

Two Hundred Days ago today, Day 717 dawned on the New World to find me a Corporal with 99.87 Wellness. Among my concerns at the time was deciding the best order to work, fight and train (i.e., WORK-->TRAIN-->FIGHT-->HEAL vs. TRAIN-->FIGHT-->HEAL-->WORK or whatever). I wanted to maximize my citizen’s progress while providing good value to my employer as a worker and to my eNation as a fighter. After reading a variety of opinions on this issue, it seemed to me that at this stage in the game, WORK-->TRAIN-->FIGHT-->HEAL was the way to go. In a later issue I may discuss the pros and cons of each approach in greater detail and why I later switched to my current pattern (FIGHT-->HEAL-->WORK-->TRAIN).

I don’t have documentation of who my employer was at the time, but I’m pretty sure I was working for one of Colin Lantrip’s “Great Ape” companies. For anyone who doesn’t know (hard to imagine there are too many out there), Colin Lantrip is one of our eNational treasures. He’s provided employment for many low-level citizens, but beyond a mere paycheck also provides other invaluable assistance to them. At the time there were many “trap” companies operated by our eNation’s enemies – companies that would lure eUS citizens to work with high wages, then fail to pay them, leading to broke and unhappy players, many of whom might quit in disgust. Colin (along with other ePatriots) fought against this by providing a safe environment for new players to earn a living and mentoring them until they had learned enough to stay out of trouble. The number of citizens helped is probably incalculable, as is the subsequent damage those citizens have gone on to do to our enemies. Colin continues to provide assistance to new and even established citizens to this day.

I started Day 717 with 10.73 USD. My salary at the time was 5.00 USD, and working added 4.01 to my bankroll (eUS taxes at the time were 20😵, bringing it up to 14.74 USD. Working also added 0.05 to my Land Skill (those were the days!), bringing me up to a whopping 3.15 Land. In exchange for my salary, I provided my employer with 6.96 in Total Productivity by working at 99.87 Wellness. Since I worked for a Q1 company – something I’d recommend to players at that stage – a day’s work only lowered my Wellness by 1 point.

I fought 5x that Day, the first three times with a Q1 weapon and the last two barehanded as I couldn’t afford to arm myself fully. I did 24 damage that Day with my 1st fight and 23 with my 2nd – this is typical as each fight lowers one’s wellness, and damage is dependent on wellness (among other things). My 2nd fight that day put me over the 750-damage level, earning me a promotion to Sergeant. As a result, my 3rd fight resulted in 24 damage, same as my first, even though by then my Wellness was down to 77.87. Fights 4 and 5 together only added 19 damage, since by then I was fighting barehanded. Still, those last two fights got me that much closer to my next promotion and also earned me 4 more XP. Total contribution to the battle: 90 points of hot noob damage! 😃

I spent 12.22 USD that evening before turning in – I didn’t record the details, but 12.22 probably means I bought 3 Q1 weapons and spent the rest on Q1 food. By 12:21 AM Eastern Time on November 7, 2009 (2121 11/6 Day 717 eRep time) I ended the Day as a brand-new Sergeant with 97.77 wellness.

Until next time, as always, and with no disrespect to citizens of other eNations,

Go eUS!

And since you’re still here reading to the very end, here’s a bonus hottie. You deserve it.


PS: I'd love to hear suggestions from readers, especially older citizens – I can’t change what information I saved Two Hundred Days ago, but I can change what elements are highlighted here and how they’re presented. If you feel this has potential to help new citizens, or even if you think it’s a total waste of bandwidth, please PM me or comment below.

In addition to suggestions/criticism, votes, subs and shouts are of course welcome.
Encouraged even. 😉

OK, this is the end. I really mean it this time.