Eco: Secret early objectives in Eco

In Eco by Strange Loop Games[play.eco], the tutorial, recipes, pie charts and XP numbers tell you about the most common missions you can undertake. But, there are other objectives with a huge impact on your success. The problem is they are part of implicit, unwritten and often unspoken rules of Eco that even advanced players fail to see.

So here are 4 secret objectives in the game Eco and tricks to reach them.

Bonus points if you find the elves, the session-0 and a gold covered land.

Servers that die out after 3-5 days frequently suffer from an unbalance in the price of basic resources such as wood, rocks, animals and plants products. Getting a tomato is generally less demanding than wood in terms of time and calories. Whatever the price of wood, tomatoes are usually traded for less.

Reaching the exact relative value between all basic resources, aka the balance, is not critical to a server as long as players are in agreement. However, I landed too many times in worlds where a team of 2 or 3 admins clearly went far from the balance and were also too happy to “welcome new players”, giving them the jobs linked to the cheapest resources.

If a general agreement about this balance is not reached quickly, it is likely you will face more problems of exploitation, price dumping and unhappy neighbors. Someone will inevitably speak of the law of supply/demand and hope for the “invisible hand of the market” to make things right. In my experience (2018), trade and motivation on unbalanced servers degrade so fast that this “invisible hand” only adjusts empty houses and roaming animals afterwards. Something different is at work here and it’s not the communists.

Quality servers with a long tradition of collaboration are likely to have propositions for a basic resources’ balance. You may check directly these examples (the numbers sometimes change between versions of the game).

This world has a nice calorie-based calculation to back up the price balance. The community has many more perks to help both elves and dwarves build impressive monuments.

Link to Maeistas Haven: https://discord.gg/dCbQ4CN2

This world uses a sweet time-based approach for the price balance. For the more math inclined people, there is also a spreadsheet where you can put your own time-based experiments to see how it affects the balance.

Link to Pancake: https://discord.gg/aWt7Zr7G3b

When crafting, you can calculate the cost of ingredients, work, fuel and repair easily. The result is based on factual information found in the recipes and is known as the base cost.

Next, you may add a profit margin and sell for more than the base cost at your store. This is where facts stop and are replaced with beliefs about the “right” profit margins for items. A popular example is the price of furniture sold at double the cost of production “because you don’t sell many”. I won’t argue here about the level of profit margin you should use. Like other things in this game, the objective is to share a common view that most people will enjoy.

My enthusiasm fails when I realize it’s 2 AM and I am still struggling to get virtual, overpriced latrines…

Just like the balance of basic resources, profit margin is something that requires your attention early in the game. I have seen worlds go down quickly after people realized their one engineer or chef switched to a different profit approach in mid-game. On the other hand, monopoly and high profit margin lead to shiny landscaping ideas.

This is a hard problem to solve, but asking others what they think about profit margins remains a first step. Just make sure long discussions involving beliefs and “what I think” don’t lead you to drama.

One valid model comes from teams, which are high-level collaboration groups in Eco. They share stockpiles, so in a way, they sell each other at a 0% profit margin. Everyone does their own share to work on the infrastructure. In some cases, one team member may contribute less and can still enjoy the same benefit : he got items at a negative profit margin.

– I sell with a high profit margin because I don’t expect people to buy this item a lot.
– You are right, at this price, I won’t buy a lot.

Depending on the server settings, you can expect a number of skills to pick during the game. With medium values, for example, I know I can get 3 stars roughly within the first technological era. Therefore, I can ask others what they are planning for their 3 first skills and quickly see how everyone can contribute to projects later.

There is no recipe for what should go in the skill plan. Theoretically, everyone in your regional cluster or town could pick the same skills as long as you trade with other towns. But usually, players close to each other wish to have all the resource gathering skills covered and then pick complementary skills needed to reach a common goal or make the most items.

It is perfectly normal, even better, to have two players pick the same skill: as soon as your local population grows beyond 4, you should look for more logging and mining specialists and double key crafting skills.

A novice move is to aim for the perfect, most effective skill plan where you have a shining place as the engineer that saves the day. A good plan in Eco contains some inefficient choices and some compromise. It is not perfect, but people are satisfied with it.

The game has a personal objective section (type “O”) that is very useful to put the list of your future skills. Then, you may simply reach 2 or 3 neighbors to see what they think about your list and invite them to make their own.

Advanced servers often have some kind of session-0 or general discussion about skill plans before the game begins. A shining example is “Le Village”, a world that is also known to be the first with a live signing concert organized in-game. For the world Pancake, the section for skill plans is next to a “pop psychology” test about skills, roles and other key themes.

Link to Le Village: https://discord.gg/zAaJq75Sqx

Link to Pancake: https://discord.gg/aWt7Zr7G3b

Everything in this game really comes down to trust. Trust is necessary to make fun projects and complex structures. It can prevent massive abandonment and avoid drama. The level of trust you have in your neighbors will even influence the way you set your store. In short, trust is a critical requirement for collaboration and is what makes a community thriving in Eco.

I can’t sell you lower than that ! I need money to eat !

Oh hi buddy. Take one for free.

On the other hand, working with strangers, online, in a video game setting, is a very difficult context. From my experience since 2018, there is often a degradation of trust during a game as people make mistakes and fail to agree on various subjects. This is why you have to invest your mind and time in promoting trust in your Eco world continuously…but this is done with fun projects.

The evolution of trust: https://ayowel.github.io/trust/

The above is a clever game that takes 10 minutes and explains how enemy soldiers during WW2 were able to meet and exchange gifts. The game concludes on 3 conditions we can aim for :

• repeated interactions;
• win-win outcome;
• low communication error.

If we translate these back to Eco, interactions are way more than say hello and trade. Completing a contract, mining or logging together or making a long-term deal is better. High stakes interactions such as sharing a factory, sharing a contract, working together to build a town, planning a public research center, sharing a residence, making joint buildings are the best interactions.

Win-win is found in the choices we make. Many problems in Eco have three kinds of solutions: competition, individualism and collaboration. Win-win is always the collaboration option.

For instance, what happens when a rich iron site is found ?

• I compete to claim and control most of the site (competition);
• I agree to share exactly half the land with another miner (individualism);
• We share the claims and mine together to benefit from the complementary mining perks (good answer!).

Low communication error is quite hard to reach in Eco. A simple thing will help you a lot: listen.

There are many more of these secret objectives in Eco, but these four are routinely associated with early server failure and drama. All four require honest attempts at reaching them, but also making sure they are still solid at each major technological change during a game (ex.: each time the new building blocks increase by one tier).

Thanks for your interest in this guide and happy Eco.

Suggestion: leave in the comments other “unspoken” and secret objectives you think are worth your attention.