Introduction
Million on Mars is a real time crafting resource management game built initially on the Wax blockchain but have now cross-chained to Polygon with the Sunflower Event and Sol with the Martizen Sale. As such, prices fluctuate by the hour and sometimes by minutes. It is possible to start the game without a substantial investment apart from an Access Badge (~US$10). Patience and the ability to do basic Arithmetic is essential.
Pay or not
Before you start, you need to go through the player guide and the whitepaper to see if this is your kind of game. After that, you need to decide if you are going to spend money on it and how much. The minimum amount you need to spend is for an Access Badge. They are available on nefty for onlya few wax. If you want a head start, the Premium Access Pack (~US$20) is the way to go. It contains land, buildings and fully charged power cells for you to start your journey. Note that you cannot 'upgrade' from Access Badge to Premium Access. Once you entered the game with just the Access Badge, you cannot benefit from the Premium Access Pack any more.
Gameplay
When you first start out and have little capital and space, you need to find something that is cheap to craft but still make money. These will be things like charging power cells in your solar panels, making soil in your c.a.d., filtering water in your water filter or planting sprouts or lettuce in your greenhouse. There are a number of ways to find this information:
- Join Discord and have a feel of what other players are doing
- Use a publicly available tool - https://digipedro.github.io/mom_quant/index.html
- Do the sums yourself - recommended
I can’t stress enough that you should always double check third party information by doing your own calculations. The above tool assumes that you buy in all the necessary ingredients for a recipe. If a recipe shows up as unprofitable and if you substitute the one costly ingredient by producing it yourself, then the same recipe will suddenly become profitable. For example, producing water and soil for your greenhouse.
Once you get the hang of the daily loop, i.e. charging your power cells, putting them to use in your buildings, harvesting your products and selling them in the Marketplace (for a profit), then you are ready to proceed to the next stage of the game - the Professions. There are currently 8 professions in the game: Scavenging, Life Science, Electrical, Mining, Chemistry, Machining, Robotics and Fabrication.
Advancing through Professions
Every profession has 6 tiers. 25 levels per tier to 200. Levelling up unlocks more recipes depending on the level. You are already getting experience (xp) from doing daily crafting. Charging power cells give Electrical xp, using your greenhouse gives Life Science xp and so on. In order to level up faster, you will need Libraries. Notice I said libraries because one is never enough even as a starter. There are researches in the library that you can do in order to gain xp and research papers. Once you get a generic Research Paper, you need to turn it into a profession specific one. This is done by doing the 101s or Introductions, e.g. Electronic 101 or Introduction to Fabrication. Once you get a Research Paper for your profession, you need to go to a Training Hall in order to level up. There are Training Halls for rent if you haven't bought one yet but as with everything else in the game, there is a huge discrepancy with the rental charges.
The Expansion Itch
After playing for a few days, you are going to think that you need every building in the game. You might even start to put money in, buying more land and other buildings. A word of advice, do not buy any more buildings until after you sort out your energy production. Any non-core factories use far more power cells than the starting factories. The first expansion should be solar panels followed by libraries. After that, you should know enough to develop your own goal and strategy to achieve that goal.
If you appreciate this post, you could use my referral link to start the game. I would get awarded only if you play for 30 days and collected 30 Daily Rations.
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