Least Investment Strategy

(you can also refer to this as the "**Antifrustration Strategy**")

(already a little described in a **similar strategy-page** found here: "Savaging and Stealing")

**GOALS OF THIS PAGE:**

* This page was written to solely **HELP** official devast.io players: You can learn about a morally questionable, but important strategy and how it works. By knowing all about this, you are enabled to evolve better defense against it (e.g this strategy). At least you optionally can get some scientific background in game theory (certainly a subjective interpretation/experience here), explaining why it appears, self escalates and to what it leads.
* Like any strategy/hint-guide it can be used for the good or the bad. But that doesn´t make information and knowledge bad itself.
* Like most strategy/hint-tips this page is - of course - bound to subjective perception and playing experience.
* Devast.io is a war game with human players. To keep this game interesting and interactive, everything can and should be tried out. If you want safe and sheltered playing, without the risk of ever getting hurt mentally, then don´t ever play this game, or buy you own server where you make the rules yourself!

**PREAMBLE:**

Please read the GOALS OF THIS PAGE mentioned above carefully and make sure you have understood these completely. Also please read first the following two pages, unless you miss crucial parts for understanding this article: Strategy Basics and Kills.

Official devast.io often causes frustration, especially to beginners, due to the flaws you now have read about. It´s also other players who merciless wipe you off the game field, bringing your investments to ashes.

If you want to shed your heart out, how bad and unfair this game is programmed and/or how people have hurt you mentally then please do this in the discussion pages, as an e.g. in this old thread. Come back when your emotions came down and you have worked off your anger. It´s neccessary to have a clear head, when you want to acknowledge and understand own flaws and failures, and to learn and evolve to get mentally and tactically stronger. If you have been beaten badly then I recommend to listen to Rocky Balboa´s speech to his son for getting some consolation and a better point of view.

**WHY FIGHTING SKILLS MAKE THE DIFFERENCE:**

You can be world´s best in collecting stuff, building bases, crafting items, etc. But all this won´t protect you from barbarians. If they ever appear, your huge investments are gone in seconds, all your skills worth nothing! But if you have fighting skills, you can defend yourself against these and protect your investments. It´s an easy rule: The better you can fight, the longer you are alive in this game. Do not think you can compensate poor fighting skills with better weaponry, armory or base! It´s good to have knowledge and strategy, but without fighting skills, it´s likely you get beaten and frustrated often and deeply.

There´s basically 3 options how you can gain those crucial fighting skills:

* Fight in unofficial servers: The advantage is, that you can learn to handle stronger weapons without the need to build them painstakingly. I highly recommend to practice there, before you go building your weaponry in official devast.io!
* Fight in a bought custom server: This option is not cheap but most comfortable.
* Fight in official server: If you have morally concerns then simply don´t do it. But maybe it helps looking at it from this point of view:
	+ What´s a player worth if he can´t survive barbarian attacks? Could he ever call himself a pro?
	+ What´s a team (or society) worth if they can´t withstand some barbarian attacks? Would you call it strong and predict a stable future?
	+ What would the official devast.io game look like, if nobody could hurt nobody? Everybody would have grinded all possible stuff to it´s highest tier and what comes then? What would people be able to craft or learn then? Remember - it is and stays a war game. If you want to do peaceful things - engage in fine arts, but NOT in this game!
	+ You have more options than you think: You can always switch strategy. You can honour people for their fortitude and give/bring them stuff or help them to defeat hostile players. You can block someone´s base, showing him his flaw, and afterwards you do suicide so all blocking is gone and he can correct his mistake. So you become a teacher instead of a bitchy player.

I just can encourage beginning players to fight only as much as possible in the beginning, instead of building bases etc. Learn to make the very best out of what you have. Learn to use armory, learn to use bare fists best. Learn to quickly take a spear. Learn to always have a slot free for taking enemy´s spear. Learn to move quickly and runout others. Etc, etc, etc.

You will see the difference it does after several fight-only-sessions: You have more chances against opponents who have beaten you before, and made your plans fail quickly. The complete game feels different, when you are not the worst fighter any more.

And now to the LEAST INVESTMENT STRATEGY - if you want just take it only as a valuable information so you can develop an anti-strategy! Again the intention is in no way to encourage you to act as a barbarian (unless you have an urge to be one, or want to tryout something new, etc.)!

**PROS:**

* Leads to important fighting skills. You will experience the crucial difference it makes after some sessions.
* You concentrate on the most important thing first in this gime: fighting skills. This prevents you from grinding (alone, in a bad team or a non-pro team) forever for nothing. Therefore less frustration is the result.
* If you don´t have much time, this is an option.
* Let´s you keep an eye on the time you invest in this kind of entertainment, letting you get other things done.
* Just for fun, just for the experience, just for variety: Since it´s a game you can simply tryout being a "bitchy" player without the implications you would face in real life. Find out how you feel! Make devast.io colorful! All varieties should show up, making it interesting for a longer time.
* Bad behaviour likely makes you get bored after some time, if it doesn´t fit to your real life personality. So don´t worry you would do lasting damage to other players. They also have to learn to compete against savage players and survive mentally. And learning is always a positive development. Act like a teacher!

**CONS:**

* Bad morale. Bad-karma players use it to the full extent. But they teach you to fight, and show you how strong you really are and make you face your flaws. They also have the option to honour your fortitude, if they just wanted to teach you.
* You might not reach any higher advancement, but as a non-pro single player you most likely won´t ever do so, and as a beginner-team it would be hard work and consume a lot of time to get there ever.
* When collecting bad karma, your XP progress might shrink noticeable.

**AND HERE IS HOW IT WORKS:**

Normally it´s the things like chancelessness to survive peacefully, boring cockfights, etc. that cause frustration, but the root is always simply the **calculus investment vs. return** on it. So if you already decided to waste your time with this game (an investment that doesn´t cause you too much pain) then it´s important to keep further investments as small as possible. This sounds simple but can be a real challenge! It´s done by following the list below:

* Always start by using **no nickname**. It´s always bad to get identified or remembered.

* Don´t build up anything, invest work only in special situations. When you start first with 2 stones, die immediately and respawn - you will be rewarded with an already made hatchet in your inventory. Certainly you take care of having enough food but that´s all for the first. A campfire can be made most of the time by demand later. Don´t waste time or work, don´t fall into the build-up-illusion like you did before, and concentrate on this often popular strategy.
* Set a countdown clock with 15 minutes - that´s the time you have left until the first ghouls (Normal Ghoul) will start to attack you (by having normal XP). This is a limited time, but how long do you want to waste time today with this game? So it´s a reasonable session breaker, preventing you to invest too much time. Quit after 15 minutes, or log on to a different server starting from scratch (cause the more XP you have collected, the sooner the ghouls will attack and therefore shorten your playing time, leading to frustration). This is the way to lose the least.
* If a server is hazardous (you get killed immediately more than 2 times) use a different one. Don´t come back too soon! Never respawn immediately, better wait up to 1 hour there! Always switch servers!
* There´s 2 options to **optimize damage** (set frustration to other players) and **gain maximum profit** (stuff or fighting experience, and fighting can sometimes be very funny, it´s not always a boring cockfight!). The first option is simply **being opportunist** and watch out for easy victims: Whenever you see someone freshly spawning, fighting (with ghouls or players), running or in any trouble (cold, hunger, radiated) - your time has come! Follow them and often you can give the "winner" the rest and takeover parts (weapons, armour) of his stuff. Never fear a player with strong weapons, even if you have only your bare fists! If you know how to fight (e.g. stay close to the one with wide range weapons) you may have a good chance against him, when he is already a little weakened (cold, hunger, stamina, health). Always watch your own stamina and be most careful with it - this is often the crucial point in whatever fight you are involved. Once you got better equipment, maybe you want to keep the hatchet to fake a noob in some situations.
* The 2nd option takes some more investment, but can be very satisfying to you, and certainly equally frustrating to your opponent(s). But since you likely got that frustrated by others, you might prefer to act now like they did with you. This game-course is about you **laying siege to a base** by blocking doors with cheap wooden low walls or ideally full stone walls, so that the besieged die of hunger, cold or by ghouls (you can also cage ghouls towards the base´s walls). After that it might be necessary (exceeding the 15 minutes no-ghoul-phase) to go for a little more investment - you will have to build yourself some kind of shelter (not inevitably a base with walls): To survive normal ghouls, it´s sufficient to have a spear (better 2) and a campfire, a bench and 2 wooden spike traps to the left and right of the 2 builds. You run in a circle around, the ghouls get trapped and you can kill them with the spear. Certainly you can build your own little base nearby the base you are blocking, but set it with some distance to it, so nobody knows who is the blocker.

* Another thing you can do is to try to be a betrayer. You try to get accepted by a clan, behave like a real cooperator at first, and when the time is best, you put all the stuff out of their boxes (you don´t keep that, just waste it), let all the ghouls inside the base at night, and try to kill the weakened builder of the base. This is **pure bad morale**, but remember, they most likely did the same thing already to you, and it´s a **big illusion** that you can get far in this game with a foreign team with unknown flaws. It´s always much more likely to get frustrated after grinding with those "teamplayers".
* You must know that often lots of come-by players are using this strategy, and they even often go one step ahead and cheat by using some kind of AI-software running in the background helping them to aim perfectly (aimbot-scripts etc). If they have a quick connection to the server and you don´t, then your chances are little to get far in your antifrustration efforts. Just switch to another server is the urgent advice.
* Learn to stop and quit when you were successful (more profit than investment). Because it´s likely to lose this balance the longer you are playing the game. This is not easy to learn, and really a psychological trick from the programmer: At least you have made it to better stuff - now you should throw it all away?
* If you are in need for XP you can quickly collect points for it by the following investments: 625 pts: If you see the rare flower - take it (and then drop). If you see animals: use the hatchet and get out all stuff (even if you don´t need these). If you see tomatoes or oranges - take all of them (also seeds). Make a spear while walking over the map. Craft a pickaxe. Gather stone/iron and/or wood by hitting 3 or at least 2 of them standing side by side simultaneously (don´t collect from single appearances). All this will enable you to get enough XP in time. Certainly by killing players you can get most XP and that should always be your focus!

CONCLUSION INCLUDING GAME THEORY:

After reading this, you will agree that **this strategy is self escalating, and in the end often everybody is using it**. That´s the reason why in anarchy systems without social responsibility nobody survives in the end, and why higher evolved creatures developed social care and let them survive over good and bad times.

Especially at overpopulated servers (more than 100 people) you can watch this bloody trend of anti-cooperation. Sometimes you have peacuful servers with medium amount of people (around 50) where you are faced to some evolved people trying to hold bad morale down by killing any bad behaving people. But a single pro team with 3-4 members (with **world domination claim**) can shift the system sooner or later to the bad. At servers that are low populated (up to 25 people) you will often be faced by bad morale after a long time of grinding, so beware of these mistakenly chanceful looking servers.

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