Staying alive is a cost centre, not a free background activity. Armour decays when it absorbs damage, healing tools decay when used, and dying has its own price. Managing that cost is half of hunting economics.

Damage types

Damage in Entropia Universe comes in types: impact, cut, stab, burn, cold, acid, electric and penetration. Creatures deal specific types, and armour protects against each type by a specific amount.

This is the central fact about armour: there is no best armour, only armour that suits the creature you are fighting. A set that is excellent against a creature dealing impact damage may be close to useless against one dealing burn.

So the sequence is: find out what your target creature deals, then choose armour that covers it. The creatures wiki records damage types per creature, and the armors wiki lists protection values by type.

How armour costs work

Armour decays when it absorbs a hit. The value it loses is a real cost of the kill, and on creatures that hit hard and often it can be a substantial fraction of your cost per kill.

Two failure modes to avoid:

  • Too little protection. You take damage through the armour and pay for it in healing instead, plus the risk of dying.
  • Too much protection. Heavier armour than the creature requires means paying more decay per hit than you needed to.

The efficient point is armour that stops most of what the creature deals without being expensive overkill. This is creature-specific, which is why experienced hunters own several sets rather than one good one.

Plates

Armour plates attach to armour and add protection, at the cost of additional decay. They are the fine adjustment on top of the coarse choice of armour set: a set that is nearly right for a creature can often be made right with the appropriate plate.

Like amplifiers, plates are not free. They change your cost profile and whether that is favourable depends on the specific combination.

Healing

Healing tools restore your health and decay as they do it. Some healing is unavoidable on most creatures, and it is part of cost per kill.

The practical considerations:

  • Heal rate versus heal cost. A tool that heals a lot per use is necessary against a creature that hits hard, but the cheaper tool is better where you can get away with it.
  • Do not heal reactively at the last moment. Being caught at low health forces expensive decisions and risks a death that costs more than the healing would have.
  • Mind Force healing chips are an alternative with different economics. See Mind Force.

The healing tools wiki has the per-item data.

Dying

Death is not catastrophic. You revive, and you do not lose the items you were carrying, outside of lootable PvP areas. See PvP for the exception, which is a genuine exception.

What dying does cost:

  • Time, getting back to where you were.
  • Any loot you had not yet picked up at the point you died.
  • The cost of the fight you lost, which is spent regardless.

So death is a moderate cost that occurs when you have already spent money without result. It is worth avoiding, and not worth panicking about.

The practical setup

For a new hunter, a workable approach:

  1. Pick your creature first.
  2. Look up what damage it deals.
  3. Buy the cheapest armour that covers that damage adequately, not the best armour you can afford.
  4. Carry a healing tool appropriate to how hard it hits.
  5. Include armour decay and healing in your cost per kill from the beginning.

Point 5 again, because it is the one that matters: a hunting setup evaluated without defensive costs is not evaluated. Reading a return figure covers what to do with the numbers once you have them.