The price of sweat is now exactly 5PED per 1,000 sweat. 5 PED is equivalent to .50USD (10 PED=1.00 USD)
This sounds bad, but honestly its really not. You get about 500 sweat in an hour of sweating, as long as your doing it in a camp with a bunch of other people, and there's always a sweating mob going on in the populated sweating spots.
There's always a buyer, so this is good too. The community is helpful. In three days of playing, and without depositing a single cent, I had enough money to buy myself a decent gun and a bunch of ammo. I didn't make it all back, but I also gained a bunch of skill increases from hunting, and on my first hunting run I did make half of it back.
From what I've read, in order to make a profit you don't have to be a crazy 100,000$ player. You do have an advantage as a depositor, but you have to also be smart-this game does use a pretty realistic economic system. Don't expect to make any profit off of MA (mindark) at all. Think of it like the real world-you're not going to profit off of God (MA) you're gonna profit off of other people. PE is like that, in that you have to learn how to be an entrepreneurial player.
It is not unreasonable at all to say that a non-depositor can make a real profit. You just have to remember that for non-depositors, it takes a lot, lot, lot more time and effort. It's also a fun game, so I say give it a shot-if you are willing to put the time and effort in, the feeling of triumph is WAAAY higher then you're any-day MMO. Accomplishing things in PE, especially as a non-depositor, makes you feel GREAT. So it's fun.
