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The Newb Perspective for Fellow Newbs

Part 3: Energy

On a game like eRepublik, resources are essentially unlimited, but they come at incremental intervals. Things like gold are often rewards for making achievements, leveling up, or participating in certain game features like fighting. Other resources are produced via working or through a variety of other means. Energy is special in that it always replenishes automatically if you meet the relevant criteria.

This article is going to cover the basics of energy as a resource and the best way to manage it in the early game.

My first suggestion with energy is always knowing how much time you have left until it's full. Thankfully, there's a handy little feature for this. You just have to hover over your energy bar.



Knowing exactly when your energy is going to fill up gives you the option to check it at a regular interval and sink all of your accumulated energy into something like fighting without having to worry about hitting cap. It's important not to sit at full energy, because that means every few minutes you're permanently losing out on potential energy gains, which means you're losing out on potential experience gains.

Knowing when you're going to max your energy also frees you up to not have to babysit the game, which is great if you want to do something else, like have a job or a life. In a previous article about experience, I covered some of what you should do with your experience first thing after the start of a new day (once your daily challenges reset). To briefly recap, you should always work both as an employee and as a manager for your own companies, and you should train. After that, you're probably going to spend your early game doing a lot of fighting. And honestly, if you're looking to just dump your energy when it's nearing its max, your best bet is probably the no muss, no fuss option of sinking all of it into a battle. If you're just looking to increase your exp, then the type of weapon you use doesn't matter, and should probably be the weakest one so that you don't have to worry about swapping weapons mid-battle.

If you're looking to win some trophies along the way, then you should definitely consider pairing a good booster with a high quality weapon. There's no guarantee that you'll win anything, because someone else in your division might do better than you, so it doesn't hurt to be strategic about how and when you use those boosters and weapons.

You also get the benefit of helping eJapan in the process. Just be mindful of any daily campaigns or military unit orders!

However, the main point of this article isn't just about how to spend your energy. Another tip I have is to always make sure you have plenty of food in your storage, especially at the beginning of the day. I think the ideal scenario would be being able to produce enough of your own to sustain your max energy several times over, though as you are in the early stages of your development, this is unlikely.

That means if you want to really get the most out of your energy, you're probably going to have to buy some food on the marketplace. The important thing with that is to always purchase the lowest cost per unit of energy available at the time, that way you get the most bang for your buck. This is especially vital for us newer players given that we don't have tons of currency stored up.

To determine this, you just have to take the cost of the individual food and divide it by the number of energy the food gives.

Look at this:



versus this:



Your first instinct might be to go with the q1 food because it's the cheapest option. If you do the math, that's .61 (cost)/2 (energy). That's a per energy cost of .305 per unit. Whereas the top tier option is 3.5 (cost)/20 (energy) which is a unit price of .175, which is radically cheaper.

The prices are going to vary a lot over time, so it's best to do this calculation every so often until you're able to start producing enough food to meet your energy needs.

Another special consideration for energy are energy restoration items such as energy bars and first aid kits. First aid kits are 10 energy for every .5 gold spent. To me, this seems like a bad deal for newbs because we don't have a massive abundance of gold. You should probably not bother with this option. Energy bars can be gained a number of ways and increase your energy even if you've hit your max, which makes them pretty uniquely cool.

I personally think energy bars are best spent in battle, as a way to get more exp or to increase the amount of damage you can output. There are a few ways to get these including military rank ups, rewards for weekly and daily challenges, and via some missions. Apparently you can also buy them, but I'm going to try and write my articles from the perspective of someone who doesn't have a surplus luxury budget. Also you can purchase them from the gold store, though I'm not sure that's a good use of your gold in the early game. You'd probably be better off using said gold to improve on buildings like factories or other buildings that offer you benefits in which you're interested.

From there, the only real concern is looking at ways to increase your energy cap. You'll note as you go up in levels, the cap does as well. As a matter of fact, you start out with a cap of 200 energy. From there, you gain 40 to your maximum for every level up to level 21 (which is also about where you're going to find a soft cap in how quickly you gain levels). At level 21, you should have about 1000 maximum energy, and from there, the only way to increase it is via buildings.

Specifically, you're looking at central parks, houses, and energy centers.

Houses are a little advanced for the early game, so I'm going to skip those for later, though they do seem like a good long term investment.

Central parks add 100 energy to your cap, and are based on your residence. I'm not experienced enough honestly to know if all cities have one, but if the city where you reside doesn't, you should definitely consider moving.

Finally, there are energy centers. Energy centers can be bought at the gold store starting at 99 gold. Which effectively prices them out of anything we can afford as new players. This might seem like it sucks, but I like to think we'll eventually be rolling in the gold and be able to make purchases like that without having to think twice.



At the very least, if you are keen to get an energy center, you have something to work towards.

This means that once you hit level 21, you're probably going to hover around 1100 max energy for a good while, and that's okay! Worry about it more after you've accumulated wealth.


To summarize
1. You should be aware of when you're going to hit your energy cap, so you can regularly spend your energy without wasting any.
2. You should be sure to always have enough food. Regularly check your storage to be sure.
3. One of your mid to long term goals with the game should be creating enough food to sustainably feed yourself, which means having the right number of factories that produce high quality food and companies that produce raw food materials. This is a balancing act that may take you time to get right, so feel free to experiment.
4. Until you are totally food self-sufficient, you should only buy the cheapest food on the marketplace. You can do this by dividing the cost amongst the total energy regained per food unit.
5. You should always have a plan for how to spend your energy. Doing so fighting is valid!
6. Starting at level 21, you're going to be capped at around 1100 energy, and that's totally fine until later in the game!

If you have any questions or any other topics you'd like me to cover, please leave comments below.

Links to Previous Lessons
1. [TXN]: Lesson 1, First Day Jitters
2. [TXN]: Lesson 2, Experience!