Earth 2 is pleased to announce the introduction of Tier 3 Jewels into our evolving EcoSim. This introduction sees the next level of player crafted jewels released inside Earth 2 and is part of our ongoing commitment to tweak and expand the important economical component of our future metaverse. Over time, we envision these changes will bring new dimensions to Earth 2 and future gameplay mechanics involving the upcoming Resource release, as well as other aspects, such as PvP.
The Jewel system was created to introduce gameplay that would foremost serve to benefit its players in play and trade and has been incredibly successful for the Earth 2 community resulting in very healthy user to user trade volumes. In fact, Earth 2 jewel crafters have sold over 1.3 million Jewels to date, inside the Bazaar, for a stable value in fiat of over $1m. These statistics are important as they validate a proof of concept concerning player crafted assets being created and successfully traded inside Earth 2 and we intend on expanding this to include more player crafted or created content that will ideally, where possible, have varying attributes linked to benefits inside the Earth 2 metaverse.
This Jewel release now expands the total number of possible jewels by more than 3 fold, resulting not only in more potential crafting combinations but also slotting strategies for those players who wish to focus on mastering the EcoSim gameplay.
When asked about the reasoning behind the new mechanics, Earth 2 Game Designer, Marco Stano, explained, “With Tier 3 Jewels, I wanted to hand a lot of control over to the player on how much Essence a property yields, which Resources are being produced and what to focus on. What’s currently happening is that players discern which Jewel is the best and then focus solely on obtaining as many Jewels of that type as possible.”
He revealed, “With Tier 3, we’re tying them in closer with Resources, which are location dependent. In addition, a lot of Jewels now have an Essence bonus attached to them, increasing [the] options. Thus, the best Jewel for player A might be different for player B; and with Interference in play, you may want to find a working combination of Jewel colors that both maximizes your Essence and Resource yield. A desert property will have a very different optimal combination compared to a forest property, for example, which is a great base for trade.”
This suggests a significant relationship between Tier 3 Jewels, Essence generation and Resource production, meaning players will need to consider using a combination of strategy and luck to optimize the effects of slotting.
Tier 3 Jewels are characterized by a mixed-color appearance. While not unlike Tier 2 jewels in that these mixed-color jewels will increase production of multiple Resources without increasing cost, when a property is slotted completely using these crafted, mixed-colored jewels, Essence production on the property could be boosted by up to double digit percentages.
Tier 3 Jewels differ from Tier 2 Jewels in that not only are there now a multitude of different color combinations, some colored jewels can cause interference with other colored jewels, or even with themselves. Earth 2 players will need to experiment with multiple colors to discover the optimal slotting combinations resulting in another dimension to the game that rewards players who spend time investigating, researching and testing.
In addition to the new mechanics of Tier 3 Jewels, there is a very special and rare jewel that only the very luckiest of players will be able to discover; the Brilliant Jewel. To date, there are only a very small handful of Brilliant Jewels in existence, making it the highest possible quality of jewel a player can aspire to obtain in Earth 2. Brilliant Jewels can boost Essence generation by up to 60%, as well as allow jewels to exist which simultaneously prime Resource production and boost Essence generation. It is important to note that there is no specific “recipe” for crafting a Brilliant Jewel, they are simply a random and ultra-rare occurring variant of the Luminous Jewel.
Furthermore, in conjunction with the launch of the Tier 3 Jewels, Earth 2 has also implemented the following updates to the jewel system:
Black Jewels now only affect oil production;
New Anthracite Jewels will affect coal production;
Tricolour jewels (Sunset, Sunrise, Jamaica) will increase E-Ther evaporation by 2% on slotted properties;
The effectiveness of jewel slotting on properties will be massively increased
Tier 1 properties will have a minimum of 5 open jewel slots; and
Tier 2 properties will now allow players to slot jewels onto their properties with a minimum of 3 open slots.
The new Jewel tier release illustrates our commitment to actively adapt various segments of the Earth 2 EcoSim in order to ensure it is not only interesting but balanced, and our game design team will continue to monitor the actual results of the released updates. As a result of this particular update, players on Earth 2 can now begin crafting more types of jewels and look forward to discovering how the jewels they craft affect Resource discovery and production on their properties.