View source for F2P Money Making

'''Let me tell you now, nothing worth having comes easy, except for money in StarSonata. Credits are the most versatile commodity in the game, being able to purchase literally any in-game commodity or item, often including players' time.'''
This guide will be F2P only, since I have no wish to annoy any P2P players who have indulged me with information by releasing it, and if you're F2P, well, maybe you should sub and then you won't need these tricks (which will provide a good foundation that translates when you go P2P which I encourage, regardless).

The guide to real money making is never get bored with active earnings (when you actively leave to earn credits), automate passive earnings (slaves/bases/shops) and don't be a slob and expect to get paid for it. If you can master all three, you're set for life.


== Unit 1: [F2P Dungeons - 'dging'] ==

My lovely senpai Rendghast said this about DGing: "Total Credits per hour DGing; 150 to 200 million.", I obviously beg to differ, it is between 400 million and 25 billion (probably around 2-3 billion average per hour, for the average F2P player, with average luck), and he's doing it wrong.

The core of my F2P money making guide is running a shop. For this you will need Station Management which can be learned at Earth Central @ Sol. If you don't have a shop and aren't actively selling things to people you aren't making credits. If you're not making credits you can't buy things and gear up, if you can't gear up, and don't want to learn, then why read a guide?

To get station management, you buy a tech 3 station kit, place it in an easy to see place [important] and then set your base's name to something that identifies its location. People will see this on /mc and remember your shop for its ease of access, whereas more

Levels 15+
Walk into Warp 0 dungeon, grab some bindomite, a nuclear convo-tronic II, hydroponics and pyrite augmenters. Great, you've made 5+ billion. You've now funded your F2P career and it's time to level up. I'm proud of you for staying away from Auric Sector.

Levels 15-2000
Warp 1, Warp 2 and Warp 3 dungeons all drop decent loots, but late warp 3 dungeons (DF290+) are too much to solo in so many ways so don't bother since they don't generate enough income/effort. The trick to these is to bring a team, but I can promise you any loot from these DF300 dungeons is coming into the game much faster from better geared p2ps so is worth effectively nothing. This content is worthless because there is so much of it and no one does it. 

Keep in mind RNG (random number generation) is a factor at play in DGing though it is not everything. Here's some tips to bend it to your will.

DG rewards are not random. That DG that dropped the item you liked will drop it again shortly. Odds are if you cleared that DG and an expensive (for f2p) item dropped (Compressed Mining Dampener+ Blueprint) - other drops at the same Danger Factor (or DF) dg will drop too. So not only will you have access to something that other players find difficult to obtain, you can capture the market even if the DG itself is not particularly difficult. Just obscure.

Another tip: Dementium Fragments appear to drop a lot more frequently from random AI in the DF190-260 range than they do from AI in the 260-300 (and even above 300) range. Why bother killing harder AI when you can have the easy way.

== Unit 2: [F2P Prospecting] ==

My lovely senpai Rendghast said this about prospecting:
"There are many layers where prospecting will yield significant rewards. Earthforce is not one of them. I have frequently searched 30 galaxies to find two nodes totaling less then 150 million in resources. Quite often i will simply find nothing."

Earthforce is a bounty which few people have the smarts to tap into. Fortunately I am not one of those people.

Prospecting is hit or miss, as he suggests, but the key to being prospecting god is to learn when someone's already done your route. You aren't searching for one or two lucky nodes, you're searching for the non-stop node train. You'll need a prospecting beam and scanner and a bit of patience at first. 

To teach you to prospect, there's always something in Capella.

To make your journey always profitable, there's usually something (hint hint) in Arctia. (between 100 and 500 solar prisms)

To make your journey even more profitable, there should be some shinies such as Bauxite, Umbra and Bindomite waiting to be sucked out of stars and planets/moons in Warp 0-1.

To make your journey hella more profitable, don't forget the jelly beans, tin, copper, dark matter and other shinies such as eridium and energon lying around in the higher warps.

and if there's nothing, go clear a few dungeons, have a smoke, watch a movie and come back, it'll be there. Juicy, and waiting.


== Unit 3: [The noob Dungeons - "Jungle, Blanco, Colored Empires etc."] ==

When something is created as a noob zone, the devmins usually make certain desirable gear quite easy to access. These are okay lockouts to do once a day because they break up the boredom and create some new experience, ever killed a Monkey called Harambe before? Now you have! Don't be worried that the bosses drop near to no credits, the primal blueprints (along with ship blueprints) sell for 20m per. In fact a lot of these drops should be AI based, or sold immediately for credits.


== Unit 4: [Mining] ==

I bet you're thinking I'm going to recommend Bonnet (Traginium). I'm not. How about Auric Sector (Gold)? Nah. How about Blue Research, then? Yeah. That sounds about right. Blue Research.

Blue Research you can mine Energon, Rubicite, Petroleum, Vis and other commodities including the key to get back in. 

The catch? It's also a PVP, uninstanced zone with a respawning beast every few howeverlongs. It didn't spawn for me in 15 minutes and I mined (with an abstructor, in a leviathan, 4 energon, 147 petroleum, 9 quantumum, 2 rubicite, 74 vis)

EDIT: Energon appears to have been removed upon release of this guide?

== Unit 5: Merchanting [Basic] ==

Buy cheap, Sell high. Is 'Insane Shop' (a well known shop) buying so and so item at such and such a fair price? I reckon some lazy shop owner is selling it cheaper. Oh they are? I'll go and buy the item, and sell it instantly for a profit. 

Keep in mind that 'Insane Shop' profits from you going back and forth, and that the shop that sold you the item is profiting too with their lazy pricing. You just get paid as a middle-man and can stick that item in your own shop if you don't like what you're being offered.


== Unit 6: [Working with others] ==

There's nothing quite like grouping up with other players to increase profits or game excitement. I find grinding to be particularly boring and have no patience for it. There's nothing quite like bringing a stranger along to something you will both find challenging (important that you find it challenging to some degree*) to increase the enjoyment of the task.

If you don't find the task challenging and nor does the other player then it feels like a chore. There's no better way to make someone quit the game and go do something exciting if you're not already enamoured by the content you are doing.

''I once found a player in a leviathan scooping things that another person was easily killing. Ha, haven't seen 'em since. My theory is they're both bored stiff of the content because the task they set themselves was boring.''

== Unit 7: [Listen to others] ==

You're not always right as to the best place to make money. I submit this guide under no pretenses that my discovered incomes = the best income. Times change and the economy changes. The onus is on you to have your ear to the ground listening for changes and finding the best ways for you and your friends to make money.

''I heard a player struck an agreement with another player to buy Steel Girders and take them up to Wild Space for him at a small profit. The profit was around 1000 credits per Girders.''

== Unit 8: [Stop listening to others] ==

People don't necessarily always have the right information. Someone might tell you that such and such is the best source of income in the game and to go there all day everyday. Except when you get there, you might find what people have told you is either inapplicable, you're making better money, or you are more accustomed to earning in the way you do things.

It's time to try something new if you or the strategies you've been told are not making you credits.

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Overall, the guide is written as a to-the-point contrast, being different in tone and perspective than the currently released money making guide, as written by my senpai Rendghast.

http://wiki2.starsonata.com/index.php/Guide_to_funding,_income,_and_credits

I, of course, believe my guide to be better, showing new areas, not just the tired old tricks of the trade which prove the premise that F2P money not just enough. It is more than enough and that such people just do not know where to look or how to access it.

I have also tried to demonstrate that money making can be fun along the way, and not a chore.

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Thank you for reading - Tako.