A Noob Who Wants To Pay It Forward

Day 621, 07:05 • Published in Ireland Ireland • by einberliner


So this is my first go at writing one of these and, hopefully, if I'm really lucky, I'll have gotten the formatting right. Lol. My first article is kind of a declaration of intent on what I'd like to do with my eLife in the next few weeks at least, I won't yet speculate on what future articles may be about because eLord alone knows there's plenty going on around here that anything could set me typing at any time lol.

Anyway. I've been saying since I was about level four that once I'd gotten my feet under me a little more I wanted to set myself up to help out newer noobs than myself to get going with the game. I personally was very lucky - not only had my sister already discovered the game and gotten a lot of the basics down herself I also had several people who'd been around longer make contact with me and help guide me through those first difficult days (John Walsh, Grainne and Tayto - I'm thinking of you three in particular). I know that not everyone is that fortunate early on, particularly shyer people who might be slower to join forums/reply to newspapers etc. than I was. So I set about absorbing as much of the eRepublik wiki as I could and read any article listed in 'latest' each time I logged on.

Eventually I even understood them.

Now where I got double lucky is that my first day I entirely misunderstood something and wound up paying a little real world money (not much, fortunately) for gold. I used this to buy higher quality food than most noobs get to enjoy and so my wellness progressed quickly, and as (thank the eGod) we're not at war right now there was no immediate need to start in on purchasing weapons. I made a couple donations to the country, send a couple gifts around those I'd added as friends and started to assess what I wanted to do with my eLife. Politics interests me, for sure, but I know that through summer at least I wouldn't have the time to do the job properly, nor would I be reaching a level that would allow me to run for congress or anything similar for a while. Similarly I was keen to train up, ready to fight for eIreland should the need arise, but I was also reluctant to leave eIreland so early on, particularly with the citizenship module incoming and a lot of research into the whole war situation to do before I chose a country to help out.

Which concerned me, because the way I saw it the quicker I could make myself useful to my already-beloved eIreland the better. As that wasn't going to be immediately possible with politics or the army I looked around for other areas I could work on and finally thought back to my own beginnings here. Obviously the easier it is for our new citizens to get into the game the more likely they are to stick around, and the better we'll grow. And it's no secret or surprise that for a fairly small eCountry good growth is essential.

And then it struck me - I could help the newly eBorn Irish the way I'd been helped myself. I'm new enough to the game that I remember what it's like to go, "...well I'm level four, why can't I take a skill level three job?" but I've been around long enough now to understand that wellness 😕= skill 😕= level 😕= strength. And like I said, I've also been able to pick up a lot of the game basics fast.

I'm not eRich, by any means, but I have just enough that I'll be comfortable for a fair while and I have enough time online that I'm generally available to make myself useful.

So here's me, offering to be useful. I'm not setting myself up as a charity by any means but if you're fairly noob (we'll say level six or lower, for now) and need a hand (maybe a piece of food because your job isn't well paying, or an explanation of what exactly the difference is between wellness, skill, level and strength or some other thing you've stumbled across) then please feel free to PM me. I won't be funding anyone's eLife outright by sending them food daily but I don't mind helping a little, or pointing you in the right direction. Maybe you just want to chat with somebody because you don't know anyone here yet (I'm far from coy and even I was a little bit flummoxed my first couple days) - that's fine too. I'll even make you an avatar if you don't have a picture/photo programme if that's all you need (though in this case please be patient, some days are busier than others for me so it won't nessecarily be immediate). Basically for now I'm just feeling out what it is people tend to need most help with and seeing what I can do to make myself useful.

As this paper's name suggests, this is a learning curve, and that's for me as much as anyone else. I'm not pretending to be an expert on this game by any means but I do tend to know where (or who) to go to for answers and, hopefully, if nothing else I'll be able to point people in the right direction. There's no condition on this - I don't expect payment, or for you to vote for/join the party I'm with, or anything else like that. I'm doing this partly to get myself more involved in the game and mostly to try do my bit for the country, no strings attached.

Wishing ye well for now,
einberliner