Entropia Universe Planets Start – Beginners Guide Part 2

Entropia Universe: which planet should you start on? Because this MMORPG is HUGE!

So, is there a planet more profitable than the others in EU?

Why Calypso Is the Best Starting Planet in Entropia Universe

For Your Information: this article was last updated on July 11, 2026, Revised and Corrected by Claude.

As a new player in Entropia Universe, you should carefully consider your starting place. Veteran players will tell you to "choose another planet instead of the boring Calypso"... But even if Calypso may feel boring to people who've played for years, for newcomers it's not!

Some players will also tell you there's "better loot to be found on Planet Partners".

Understand that this is only partly true. Other planets do have a slightly better average loot % on mobs than Calypso, so you could break even or profit (by very low margins — don't dream 😅) compared to hunting the same mobs on Calypso. Fair enough! But there are a few things those people forgot to tell you...

1. Calypso has the highest player population
2. Calypso has the longest chain of missions for newbies (newcomers)
3. Calypso has several daily missions, and at some point you'll never have to buy a gun again 😍
4. There's a major event happening 3 times a year on Calypso called the Mayhem 😎
5. And even between each Mayhem, there are other temporary hunting events!

Besides, ever since Entropia Universe was added to the Steam catalog, most people now start on Calypso!

Calypso is the best planet to start on, but it's huge — so you'll need a vehicle to explore it.

Important info about the Mayhem: in case you don't know, it's a major event organized by MindArk, now happening 3 times a year. Even though players can join it from anywhere in the Universe, they all have to come back to Calypso at some point! Why? Because the Codex of Mayhem creatures — meaning the skill rewards you earn after a lot of shooting — can only be claimed from one place in EU: Calypso! 😏

Ultimately, the first point is the most important: Calypso's high population! It means you'll easily find and buy everything you need, and sell your own stuff fast. MANY players buy and sell all day long on the main trade channel #calytrade, and the auction system is filled across several pages.

The Truth About Planet Partners: Beautiful but Deserted

Trust me... I'd love to tell you the other planets are better — that they have everything you could dream of and you'll forget Calypso within 2 weeks! But as beautiful as they are, they're nowhere near as crowded as Calypso, and sometimes feel pretty much deserted. Because the truth is...

Most Planet Partners (the other planets) are dying: when you land on a planet where you're alone most of the time, with no green dots on your radar, and where even the officials' "events" only draw 5 players... that's the sign of a dying place!

Entropia Universe genuinely feels like a single-player game sometimes... 😅

So veteran players (who've invested money in these planets) will always tell you: "Don't spread false rumors." But this is no rumor — it's a fact: the Planet Partners are barely breathing.

The main exception is planet CYRENE, often considered one of the better spots for Free to Play players gathering sweat.

Calypso, MindArk's original planet, is the only one truly alive. And to keep it that way, MindArk does everything in its power to retain players with events all year round. Not that these events are all that interesting, but they stop the player base from drifting elsewhere by dangling new jackpots, temporary "rare" monster hunts, new item drops, new tokens for a "bright and rich future" 😎 and so on...

So do yourself a favor:

If you're a newcomer, choose Calypso as your starting place:

• Go to Camp Icarus
• Head to Camp Icarus Beach
• Click on the NPC right in front of the vehicle
• And start the CDF chain of missions, which will keep you busy for a long time

This is the very first NPC you should talk to — it will give you a purpose in EU.

My Next Island Experience: From Paradise to Ghost Town

As an example, let's take one of the planets that was once the most promising: Next Island. I went there because an experienced player told me it was a great place to profit from hunting. I only had a few PED left, and I did the entire trip from Calypso to Next Island in my little Sleipnir (1 hour and 30 minutes in space).

Next Island (NI) had everything a new player could dream of:

1. A sweat gathering circle with a Healing Device every time you die! ❤
2. Nice free items for newcomers, like an unlimited Sword and Colorer!
3. Plenty of easy low-level mobs to hunt: papoos, boars, cyclops, screechers...
4. An average loot % noticeably better than on Calypso (fewer globals though)
5. A nice storyline, Ancient Greece locations and lore, all centered on crystals!
6. The best free armor (Atlas Armor) if you complete your Mentorship on NI.

That was still the case in September 2021, when I stayed there for 2 weeks... It's no longer true these days.

The place is now mostly deserted... The sweat gathering circle is FAR from being as crowded as the ones on Calypso, and a free Healing Device isn't going to change that. When there's no one, there's NO ONE!

The total population of EU has slowly but surely declined over the years.

An interesting figure to look at is the Entropia Universe Steam Charts.

Now, you'll tell me that only reflects players using the Steam client — and you'd be right. But make no mistake: the number of genuinely active players is very low. Steam concurrent counts hover around 100 to 150 players at any given time, and even the broader population estimates (which try to account for the standalone client) put the active base in the low thousands at most — a far cry from a healthy MMO. It's also in MindArk's interest to stay silent about the real active population. Because the truth comes down to a trust issue with MindArk: people have left the game in waves. Only the addicted players like me stayed 😏 And even I don't deposit anymore...

As you can see, there are a LOT of people on Calypso — and that's exactly what you need when you start!

And since the other planets are pretty much deserted, their auctions are very scarce too. They'll only be useful for selling specific planet-tied loot; everything else will have to be trashed or sold to the Trade Terminal. But between you and me, the Markup (the extra you can sell loot for above its Trade Terminal value) has also dropped significantly over the years. Many of us players no longer bother hunting for a buyer — we just sell straight to the Trade Terminal!

Low or no Markup means no added value in spending time to find a customer.

Still, if you decide to visit Next Island like I did, here's the one and only website you'll need: nihelper.com

It contains everything you need to know about the planet — the missions, the rewards, all the hunting mob positions, and so on. You can treat this site (Cat is the owner) as the full unofficial Next Island guide.

Anyway... choosing Calypso or Next Island as your starting planet won't get you stuck, don't worry 😉 You'll be able to travel from planet to planet later on.

There's a FREE space transport every Sunday between planets. And if you don't want to wait for Sunday and have enough money (just deposit $5 and you'll have plenty), you can buy yourself a space-enabled vehicle like the Sleipnir or a Quad-Wing Interceptor and make the trip yourself... like I did 😎

Besides, traveling through space in your own vehicle feels damn cool! 😍

It's riskier though — pirates — and it takes time (1 hour+), but we'll cover that in the Space Travel part.

My Personal History with Entropia Universe (2007–2026)

I first started playing EU back in 2007, on Calypso! Next Island didn't exist yet, and my main activity was "Sweat Gathering". At some point I decided to spend $100 to speed things up, because sweating is tedious and just not worth it when you want to actually enjoy yourself! I was unemployed at the time, which is why I needed the entertainment — and EU was there to provide both the MMORPG and the gambling.

I played a couple of months on that $100, then left... for 3 years! Yeah — I came back in 2010 because, funny thing, I was unemployed once again! Well, it's not really that funny, but it is, because it seems I only enjoyed EU when I was jobless ahah! 😅 So in 2010 I deposited even more — $400 exactly, for a total of $500 with my 2007 deposit. But this time I burned through it fast, playing with expensive gear, hitting my first HOF, and within 2 months I was out of the game again. And then... I took a LONG break of 11 years!

All of which brings me back to September 2021 — unemployed once more, lol!

Told you: I only ever play EU when I'm jobless 😆 It's definitely an MMORPG for desperate people, lol!

The problem was, I had to re-learn everything this time. I barely managed to recover my account details (I had to open a support case with MindArk and provide my ID). I logged in and appeared naked in the middle of nowhere, with around 600 PED on me. I'd been away so long that all my gear had been sold off to the auctions.

Naked! My inventory was empty, and all I had left were stacks of PED.

I had no idea where the heck I was, and I didn't know how the game worked anymore. Fortunately, there's a "Rookie" channel where I asked a bunch of questions, and everyone told me to head to Camp Icarus to get started — the noob starting area. Alright: there was a TP (Teleporter) near me, so I used it and selected Camp Icarus as my destination.

Teleporters are free, by the way. There are several on every planet and they're the main and fastest way to travel. So I arrived at Camp Icarus and got a pop-up to join the "Gauntlet". Unfortunately for me, the Gauntlet is a teamwork mission only available to players who haven't yet passed level 5 in their main combat profession — and I was already level 15! Don't rush there from the start, though...

Camp Icarus: The CDF Missions and the Codex System

The first thing you want to do at Camp Icarus is head south, down to the beach.

There, you'll find a CDF Officer (Calypso Defense Force), with a shuttle behind her. Click on the CDF Officer and enroll as a CDF recruit (that's what I did). From there, you'll embark on a chain of missions that will keep you busy for several dozen hours! And that's a good thing, because it gives you a purpose in-game.

You'll explore the world and do all sorts of courier missions (bring me that, and I'll give you this), hunting missions, scouting missions, and more. One important habit: click on every NPC (Non-Player Character) with a yellow question mark above their head! It means they have a quest for you — and most of the time, a reward is waiting!

Even when NPCs aren't part of your CDF missions, they often have side quests that bring even more entertainment and benefits (ammo, weapons, stuff you can resell...).

NPCs with exclamation marks are quest givers! 👍

Another very important thing to know is a system MindArk calls the Codex.

Every time you kill a new creature, it gets added to your Codex — like a book referencing every creature you've encountered in the world. And it's not just information about the creature: it's also about Hunting Ranks! When you kill a creature for the first time, you're at Rank 1 and a % counter starts filling. The more creatures of that kind you kill, the closer the counter climbs toward 100%!

The Codex is very important to boost your avatar's attributes!

Once you reach 100%, you unlock a skill reward that you pick from a panel of skills, and your avatar moves up to Rank 2 for that specific creature. There are many skills in EU, and being able to boost them by completing these Hunting Ranks is a great bonus! And every 5 Codex levels, you also earn an attribute point!

Of course, the higher your rank, the longer the next rank takes to complete. The % you earn per kill depends on the creature's maturity: you'll gain more Hunting points for an Old Caudatergus than for a Young one. And higher Hunting Ranks also grant higher skill rewards.

So in EU, grinding monsters also rewards you with skills!

In the screenshot above, you could see my skills window on the left, where I already had more than 2,500 points in the Anatomy skill. So what? Well, in the next part we'll cover the next MOST IMPORTANT thing in the game: Mentorship — a MUST-DO for every new player — and how it ties back to the Anatomy skill.

Next part: Mentorship