tutorial for sustained fighting

[ubuntu21]

Fighting for profit
(or "How to BH hunt")

Many folks aren't really willing to pay RL money to get packs, so they decide to pay eRep CC for them. This process creates a big hole in their pocket. This tutorial is mostly for these players that don't buy packs with their RL money. Paying eRep money on packs is a difficult thing as you want your investment back.
Is there a way to actually make profit out of all those packs? I mean, there are plenty of them. Do you actually know all the packs that appear from time to time?

Here's a list:
- Assault Pack
- Blitzkrieg Pack
- Combat Stash
- Infantry Kit
- Power Pack
- Tycoon Pack
- War Stash


Combination of packs:
If you decide to use packs, you need to follow one important rule: Don't use the Infantry Kit without using the Power Pack at the same time. The Infantry Kit itself is a great offer, but you can't be self-sustaining without collecting enough gold by hunting BH medals. And health regeneration does have a huge impact on your BH hunting. More health leads to more BH medals!

The Blitzkrieg Pack is optional. It's not necessary, but does also have some nice benefits.
1. You have more storage for your health, which means that you don't need to login every few hours.
2. In case you're saving up your food fights for epic battles, you'll have a bigger amount of ffs to use later on.
3. If people try to snipe you, you often have enough energy to counter their sniping attempts.

Assault Pack, Combat Stash, Tycoon Pack and the War Stash are those packs you should only buy if you do actually profit within the month of fighting.
A Little Explanation: If you buy IK, PP & BP for a price of 360k CC, the actual profit is the money you get after you already earned back your investment of 360k CC. So, if you earn 500k CC within the month of fighting, you have an actual profit of 140k CC. This profit can be used on WS, CS and TP. You shouldn't buy the Tycoon Pack anyway, as you're not going to work a lot (remember: You want to stay low on XP)

Importance of Strength & Experience Points

Experience Points:
There are four different divisions in eRepublik. You change your division by earning more experience points (XP).

As most of you guys probably know, it's good to avoid XP gain in division 1-3. Furthermore,  XP gain in division 4 doesn't matter. Why is that?
If you're in division 4, there is no need to avoid XP gain, as there is no other division you can climb to. Division 4 has the highest amount of active eRep citizens. Many big tanks have been playing this game for years, and that makes it really hard to achieve good things. While staying in div 4, it's actually better to get as much XP as possible as you get goodies for leveling up.
It's completely different for the other "lower" divisions. The more XP you don't get, the better. One really good option to avoid XP gain is, guess what... the Infantry Kit. This is by far the most important pack you can get while in the lower divisions. When you fight (with weapons), you don't get any XP, which means, you have 30 days of fighting without getting a single experience point.

Strength & Military rank:

Strength & military rank are the important variables that effect the influence you do on the battlefield.
The higher your influence is, the less effort you'll have to put forth to get a battle hero medal (BH medal). By effort, I mean the energy you have to use.
In division 1 the average amount of influence for a BH medal is around 5 million damage. I am not sure about the average amount of the other divisions, but you can easily find out.
Most people in division 1 start fighting with an active Infantry Kit when reaching ~50k Strength. This is a good foundation as you probably do ~50k influence per hit. When you buy it yourself, you can start fighting earlier. If you buy your packs with eRep CC, I highly suggest you wait until you make a decent amount of damage. Why is that?

When you buy your packs with your own RL money, you don't have to care about the strength you have. I won't be getting more in depth with that, however, as I don't see the need for it when you consider that the way to make the most money out of your activated packs is the same regardless, and I'll be getting to that at a later point in this tutorial.
If you're not willing to use your own RL money to buy packs, there is the possibility of paying other eRep citizens to buy your packs for you. This is quite expensive and the actual reason for me writing this tutorial as many players don't know how to use all the given possibilities.
Just to clarify, right now (in the current meta) for each 5€ you usually pay ~45k CC. So if you'd like to purchase an Infantry Kit, you probably need to pay ~135k CC. That is a lot of money, and if you're not able to get that money back by farming BH medals, you won't be able to purchase another pack next month.

But, with patience and intelligent fighting, it is indeed possible to farm enough money to sustain your pack purchases from month to month.

Medals and their outcome

Before you start fighting, you need to make sure you know, where to get your money from. There are lots of medals you can earn by fighting somewhere.

Here's a list:
- Battle Hero medal (rewards you with 2G in div1, 3G in div2, 4G in div3 and 5G in div4)
- Freedom Fighter medal (rewards you with 1k CC per medal)
- Mercenary medal (rewards you with 1k CC per medal)
- True Patriot medal (rewards you with 1k CC per medal)

There are other battlefield medals you can get (Campaign Hero, Top Fighter), but they're usually not possible to get unless you have a HUGE stack of e-bars and enough weapons. You should leave them behind. You can and you actually need to combine the above listed medals in order to make the most profit out of your fighting.

There's some kind of order you should follow for successful BH hunting. Don't just fight in a battle. Try to combine it with the other battlefield medals you can achieve.
One of the most important medals apart from the BH medal is the freedom fighter medal (FF medal). You get that medal by fighting in resistance wars, fighting FOR the resistance. It's really important to coordinate your BH attempts with the other battlefield medals, especially FF medal and Mercenary. That way you just get a lot more money out of the energy you use, which is the goal.
Regarding FF medal, as you might have seen, there are different steps for the medal. 25 kills, 50 kills and 75 kills. If you do enough damage with your strength/military rank/boosters activated, don't waste your energy like doing 75 kills in one battle doing 14 milion damage. Seperate it, so you collect two (or maybe three) BH medals within that 75 kills range. In addition to that, if you have left one resistance war with your mercenary kills done and one not done, prioritize the battle with missing mercenary kills. Bazookas can be used on the 75 kills range, too. But don't use them only, cause your energy is limited and bazookas do really few damage, combine it with your normal Q7 fighting to still be able to run for a BH medal.
The true patriot medal (TP medal) isn't that important but can give you a little boost on your bank account. Do your TP kills when there are big CO's on these battles or on mass attack days. But don't ever just enrage, it's just not worth it.

The battlefield progress

Weekly Challenge:
The weekly challenge is a good possibility to get e-bars, storage, boosters and most important, more health regeneration.
You regenerate an additional 10health/6min at 500PP, 5.000PP, 10.000PP, 15.000PP and 20.000PP. The more health you regenerate, the more energy you can use for fighting. Combined with the power pack, you can regenerate up to 80health/6min. If you get to that point and you have enough strength/military rank, you're able to go for at least one BH medal/per hour.

Respect:
Lately, respect is a important topic for BH hunters. It's not only you that hunts for medals. If you respect the influence of other players done on the battlefield, they'll respect you too. If you have respect of many players, you're able to get BH medals at minimum effort (remember: effort in this case is the usage of health for a BH medal). This is, really important as eRep has a closed community, with elite BH hunters in every division. They stick together. If you screwed up with one, you're screwed up with many more.

First comes, first serves:
Regarding respect, there's another more and more common rule. Who starts fighting first, usually goes for the medal. So if you go for BH medals, make sure, you're the first person hitting. If you enter the battlefield at a later point (after 0:00), you better back off. Don't make things complicated.

Important battles:
There're always some important battles going on. For example DO battles, battles with high CO and similar battles.
If you fight in important battles, expect to be beaten. And you can't be angry about it. People need to do their DO as it rewards citizens with e-bars. Same for battles with CO. People never say no to free money. If you don't do a decent amount of damage, don't expect to succeed in that battle and get rewarded.

The influence bar:
As mentioned earlier in the medal section, there's a TP medal.

On that picture you see two countries (Russia and South Korea) fighting for the region Gyeonggi-do. South Korea is probably supposed to win this battle, which means Russia is returning that region.
If you fight for a country, make sure you make the correct amount of damage. That means (regarding the picture above), South Korea needs more damage as Russia does. Always make sure to follow that. If you're not, you run the risk of other players surpassing your damage to ensure the right country gets the campaign points needed to win the campaign. Even if it's not a close battle (like this one), follow what I said. Why did I mention TP damage here? People would also use the importance of campaign points as a reason to surpass your damage just to get some TP damage.
Fighting on the loser side is a good way to decrease the possibility to get sniped. This is, because you use less influence as the opposing side. That means, if there's someone trying to snipe you, he'll change the domination of the battle which gives you more time to react on his sniping attempt. Sniping and how to counter sniping attempt will be discussed at another point of this tutorial. But it's important to know the impact of the domination bar and what use you can make out of it.

Patient fighting without IK (for high Strength citizens only)
If you have a high strength account and if you're not close to level up to the next division, you can think about fighting without IK.

BUT, if you decide to do so, you need to be REALLY careful with your fighting. And don't buy any stashes, except for the Combat Stash maybe as this pack rewards your with 10% more Gold on any medal earned. But only buy it if you're sure you can get back your investment.
Okay, let's get back to how to earn money by fighting without IK and still keeping your XP gain as low as possible.

Guerilla Fighting: Yay! I hate it. Some love it. Some don't care.

To enter a guerilla fight, you need five kills in that battle. The positive impact of Guerilla Fighting is that you don't get any XP and you don't lose weapons, but still do damage.
So you go for your five kills and start the guerilla fight. Try to win it to maximize your damage. That way you can earn some BH medals by a minimum of XP gain.
Here's a link to a random guerilla fighting tutorial. Not sure whether it's good or not, but better to have some knowledge than none.

Sniping and get sniped:
You actually don't snipe people, as no one likes to get sniped. And as already mentioned, we have a community that sticks together regarding BH hunting. Only snipe those guys that sniped you before or people that are well known for not sharing respect.
When there is a soldier you want to snipe, check his profile first. Check his online status. If he's offline, easy sniping. If he's not and if he even stays in the country he's heading for BH, you need to be careful.
Remember: Rounds last until one side has got 1800 domination points OR until the country reaches 94 campaign points.
Little explanation: Russia has 93 campaign points and they're winning every current battle. Division 4 is in lead of domination points. All the other divisions are in lead of domination points as well, but they all have less points than division 4. This happens, when the other side had more influence for some time and earns domination points as well. So, let's say division 4 has 1790 domination points. Division 1-3 each have 1600 points. The campaign will end when one country reaches 94 campaign points. That means, if division 4 reaches 1800 domination points, the campaign is over, no matter the progress of the other divisions. Keep that in mind please.

Sniping:
Okay, you decided to start sniping now and checked back with the further explanations.
You best start sniping within the last one or two minutes. The less time left, the less time for your enemy to react on your sniping attempt. If your enemy has way more strength than yourself, you better use accelerators to do more damage in a short time. When you're going for a snipe, keep your energy as full as possible. If your enemy sees the sniping attempt, he'll probably try to counter it, so keep your energy full to put pressure into it.

Counter a sniping attempt:
There are a few people that don't share respect to others. It's okay, I mean... it's a WAR game. Without snipers, that game (regarding war module) would be terribly boring.
Anyway, how to counter a sniping attempt? It's actually the same way you do your own sniping attempt.
1. Keep your energy full.
2. Be ready to activate boosters/accelerators
3. Refresh your battlefield page every few seconds. The less time is left, the more you refresh your page. Try to remember the current percentage of domination points. If it changes, it's the first indication of a sniping attempt. Thanks to eRep in that case. You often don't see the damage of snipers immediately, but the domination changes a bit faster.

Other important things to know

Energy bars:
This needs a special topic? ubuntu21, are you serious? Of course, I am. Never ever waste your e-bars. Energy bars are very expensive and you shouldn't waste them without a special reason.

What are reasons to use e-bars? Well, there are a few.

- Use your e-bars at the start of the week, if you want a better health regeneration. But use them in EPIC battles only, as they reward you with double prestige points. Best is, if you find an epic battle at the first day of the week. Try to get to 5.000 prestige points. With the power pack enabled, you'd have a 50health/6min regeneration, which is pretty solid. But if you can't make it at the first day of the week, you better don't waste your e-bars.
- Use your e-bars while Plato has special events enabled. For example the x4 day, where you get 4 times as much gold on your BH medal. If you have enough e-bars, you can earn enough gold to purchase another pack next month at this single day only.
- Use your e-bars on HUGE COs. Huge is >150CC/mil (in Div1).

Boosters, accelerators and all that stuff:

Boosters:
There are two different kind of boosts. 100% more influence and 50% more influence. Each of these boosts has boosters with different duration: 2 hours, 8 hours and 24 hours.

Never use your 100% boosts, unless you have a very specific situation. Seriously, this is really important as you're going to get a lot out of them. But you'll never have a lot of them, they're very rare. Please, don't waste them.
You should use your 50% boosts when Plato creates special events or if you're going to fight like hell. For example, if you're going for 5k PP at the first day and you're planning to do a massive amount of hits. This is the time to activate a 50% booster. Another good possibility for you to use your 50% boosters is if you fight in battles with huge COs.

Accelerators:
Use them wisely. For example, you have an activated booster and you're planning to fight in an epic battle with CO on it. That's the right time to activate your accelerator. You can use them while sniping or while counter sniping attempts. Otherwise, don't use them.

Ghost Boosters:
This is the latest introduced addon to eRepublik. Soldiers can activate them in specific battles to increase their influence. Best to use in combination with other boosters and accelerators.

About bombs and rockets:
You can build rockets, but it's not really worth it. They're expensive as you have to use many weapons and their damage is really low. Most active BH hunters do more damage with a single kill.
Furthermore you're able to receive bombs. There are two different kind of bombs. A small bomb (75k damage) and a big bomb (5mil damage). They expire 30 days after you got them. But if you get a new bomb within that period, their expiration date will be reset. That way you can collect many bombs and save them for special events for example. Just be sure not to lose them. Most packs have bombs included. (As long as you're buying (or get others to buy you) packs, you won't lose your bombs)

Waiting on full FF and it's impact:
I actually already explained it. To have full FF or being close to have full FF is important for:
- epic battles (remember the double PP you get by fighting in epics)
- good to counter sniping attempts and your own sniping attempts on other citizens
- boosters should only be activated at full FF for the best outcome.

Free stuff offered by governmental and non-governmental programs:
Free food and free weapons are always good as this is money you can save for later purchase of packs. Make use of all programs that offer supplies and stuff.
If you're eUS citizen, check the DoCA newspaper. Most of the programs are listed there. Arm America is a good program to get back up to 100 Q7 tanks from fighting in priority battles.
If you're not an eUS citizen, check with your governmental education program.

Monetary market stuff:
It's important to know what's the right time to sell Gold. As for the last few days, since the BP appeared, the exchange course had a massive decrease from ~ 1G/416CC to 1G/398CC. (Just saying: If you sell big amounts of Gold like me, this can easily be a loss of 20-30k CC if you sell at the wrong time.)
The best time to sell Gold is probably when there are discounts on factory upgrades. There's one important rule to follow regarding monetary market. Never buy CC, always sell your gold. Much better outcome!

Useful tools for better coordinated fighting:
- One of the most useful tools is the eRep Stuff++ Script. It provides you with many information regarding medal progress and stuff. I highly suggest you to use it. Makes life a lot easier.
- eRep-Deutschlands Battlewatcher provides you with information regarding current BH medal claims.

[ubuntu21]

If you have any questions (no matter what topic), don't hesitate to pm me!

[Gnilraps]

I can add a guide to using the Tycoon Pack effectively when I get a chance.

It's a fairly simple concept, but some people may not have considered it.

[S A I T A M A]

Nice tutorial , but i have one question IK=efficiency how much BH in month will pay of my pack ?

[ubuntu21]

That depends on different variables.

First variable is the price you buy your IK for. Second variable is the Gold/BH medal (Div1=2). If you have Combat Stash activated, it's even 2.2G.

You have 30 days left to get your investment back. So, if you payed like 120k CC on your IK and you have no CS activated, you had a total investment of 120k CC (300G).
That means, you need to hunt 150 medals within these 30 days, which is ~5 BH medals a day.

This was the first step.

Now you need to figure out how much energy you have to use for one BH medal. In your case I believe you need about 1k energy for one medal, if you don't use any boosters. This is pretty solid. Try to get to 500PP as fast as possible, so that you have a double energy recovery. That way you can hunt for more medals. Also, always use event days like today. In div1 you can get BH medals with just a little more damage than you use on normal days. Todays average BH medal in div1 will probably be about 8mil, which is pretty less regarding that you get x4 Gold on your BH and that you only do ~x2 damage.

Any further questions, PM me ingame in case you want me to respond faster ^^

[S A I T A M A]

Thanks for all help above now i must ask how much houses you have , and did you ever play with IK only ?

[ubuntu21]

I have one of each houses that can be activated and deactivated. Furthermore I have all other houses that can be bought by Gold/Loyalty Points.
Only once I was playing with IK only. It was two or three months after the new packs (IK, BP,PP) came out. I didn't have enough RL money to afford packs and wasn't able to pay them by eRep money, so I decided to go with IK only. It was a terrible mistake. The poor health recovery is a big problem and that's why I won't ever go with IK only again.

[S A I T A M A]

IKR i have same issue now that i am active all day with pack, but that energy recovery is killing me PP is mandatory with IK

[ubuntu21]

Try to get to 5k PP at the first day, if possible. If not, don't try. Just trying is like wasting your bars. You needa be sure to hit 5k. That'd be at least 30 health recovery, which would be OKAY. Wait for epics is best. I think, you might get the chance while "ressource wars" are active. Damage is probably rising, besides you'll be able to switch divisions, which increases the chance for epics.

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