Oh no, the Ego has caught up with me!

Greetings Buskerians, I hope you had a great weekend, relaxing or stimulating, depending on your tastes. I also hope you have a very productive week. If you win the lottery, it was because of me, so at least give me an ice cream 😅

When you venture into the Rising Star game, it's inevitable that you'll encounter talented people on the streets of Buskeria, people who transmit a lot of energy with their music, who envelop you and who can achieve anything they want. But these people don't always achieve their goals, no matter how talented they are. Sometimes their overconfidence knows no bounds, and that can cause problems.

The curse of the ego is something every Rising Star artist has to deal with. Overconfidence makes you see yourself as a star and think that everyone idolizes you. But the sad reality is that things are not like that. The ego that every artist struggles with is a personal battle, and only humility can get you through it.

When do we see the ego for the first time?

Ego appears in every artist who takes their first steps in Buskeria when they reach level 15 or when their music quickly gains traction and they suddenly reach 1,000 fans. For many artists, the best moments are their first 15 levels, just playing or singing in clubs and earning some Starbits, pizzas, or coffees offered by passersby or those attending a show you participate in.

My friend @flquin, what happens when my ego appears?

I would describe it as an awakening, a moment when you say, well, I have to do things right because otherwise I won't evolve as I should.

As soon as it appears, an Ego bar is activated, which will increase in percentage, measuring the relationship between the number of Fans and the Skill of the artist. If you have more fans than Skill, your Ego increases. It is worth noting that if you stop adding new fans to your account, your Ego could increase depending on the missions you complete. In other words, when you finish a performance or mission, your artist will feel great, fulfilled, and satisfied, and this translates into Ego. Each mission you complete in the game adds to your Ego. Worst of all, the Ego you earn stays in your account forever.

Your ego inflates you, deceives you, and makes you see yourself as an artist that you are not necessarily, creating false expectations of what you should earn (what you feel you deserve to earn as an artist). So, as your artist's ego increases, the rewards you could earn will decrease. As the percentage of your Ego bar increases, the amount of Starbits you can earn with each mission will decrease.

How do I keep my ego in check?

The ego is a serious thing once it appears. But don't worry, we have several ways to keep it in check. As I mentioned, our artist must remain calm and humble, and must gain skill whenever possible. As we already know, cards provide us with the fans we need, but they also provide us with other useful statistics, such as IM and the precious skill. The skill we can get from cards can help us a lot to keep our ego in check. It would be advisable to buy cards that provide the same skill as fans or at least more skill than fans, but this depends on how far away you want your ego to be.

And, just as the ego appears from missions and cannot be removed, we also have something very similar through music lessons.

In order to take music lessons, you need to collect musical instruments because they give you another important statistic in the game: Luck. You can accumulate Luck to perform certain types of music lessons, such as singing (you need microphone-type instruments), percussion (drums, tambourines, boxes, and other similar musical instruments), piano, guitar, production (music boxes, consoles, computers), and orchestra (trumpets, saxophones, violins, cellos, harps, etc.). You can see all the instruments and their types in the game's FAQ (?)

Once you have some musical instruments, just go to the lessons section, find the lesson that matches the instruments you are collecting, and start that 1-hour lesson to get the skills you need to complete the mission.

Well, now you know how to keep your ego in check thanks to the cards and music lessons. But it's important to note that these music lessons are only free until the amount of skill you gain from the lesson exceeds 100. If you buy instruments and the lesson starts to give you more than 100 skill points, the mission will automatically request payment in Starpro.

Three other ways to reduce Ego are by reducing the number of fans you have. One is by selling them, another by burning them at the Buskeria Hotel to obtain Shiny cards, and the third is by storing them with Storage Trailer, Shipping Container, or Storage Warehouse cards, which allow you to store and remove the stats of 10, 100, or 1,000 cards respectively.

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We can say that you are quite advanced in the game if you already have to pay for music lessons. That's quite an achievement, good for you! Don't worry, and don't feel bad. Now comes the good part: growth and evolution within the game must continue. You can't spend your whole life on island 1 or 2 or gain little skill with music lessons, and although buying cards that give you skill can be a big help, it's currently more expensive than taking music lessons. Although there is the concern of how to pay for these music lessons, the game is quite well designed to take advantage of the Starbits you are getting from missions.

Recommendation to use your Starbits to take music lessons

The game made this change almost two years ago, I'm referring to the idea of paying for music lessons. And that's how it should be, if you want to become an established music artist, the lessons should get better and better, especially if they help you with the Ego you accumulate.

Many of us who were used to free lessons let time slip by, and suddenly we were approaching 30% ego. We didn't get used to it quickly, and I think we wasted time and Starbits waiting.

The bill arrived, and now we're paying for it, 😅. But, my experience can surely help someone who is still undecided about taking music lessons.

As for how to earn Starpro, I won't go into too much detail on the subject. I'll just say that there are several ways: one is by buying it on the Exchange, another is by exchanging Hive, Starbits, and even Ethereum for Starpro on Swap, another way is by promoting missions in the Music Promoter with Starbits (a way of burning or swapping Starbits to Starpro within the game), and if you don't want to complicate things too much, you can go to the Withdraw/Deposit section and you'll find buttons that will automatically exchange a certain amount of Starbits for Starpro. Deposit section and you'll find buttons that will automatically exchange a certain amount of Starbits for Starpro.

Let's start with the important stuff. Rising Star shows a log of everything you do in the game throughout the day. From the pizzas you get, the Starbits you earn on each mission, the drunks you add up, the Skill you gained... At the top, in green, you'll see a summary of the most important things you did during the day, the Starbits you earned, the Ego you gained from the missions you completed, the Skill you gained, and most importantly, the Starbits you need to combat the Ego you generated during the day. The game suggests that you exchange these Starbits for Starpro in one of the ways I mentioned above.

This summary is usually very important, as it allows us to adjust the tasks we are carrying out or reduce the number of times they are performed, in the hope that at the end of the day we will not have a day completely in the red. Although, sometimes, regardless of the strategy, there are bad days...

I hope I have been clear enough, but if you have any questions, please do not hesitate to ask.

The key point I want to remark in this section, and one that's fairly obvious but often overlooked due to the false belief that our odds will always beat the system, are the various red messages that appear in the journal. Some tell us that we've received fewer Starbits than the lesson costs, or that we've completed that mission so many times that the amount of Starbits has decreased. It's also worth mentioning that when we complete a mission many times, the Starbits decrease, as one of the red messages claims.

So far, everything is correct. The messages are telling us to be careful, you've already completed too many of this missions, or that this mission isn't generating enough for the music lesson. With this last message, we must realize that as we complete the mission, the amount of Ego we receive also increases; this depends greatly on the number of fans we have. However, it's important to note that the amount of Starbits decreases, and the amount of Ego increases with each mission completed. For the first islands, it's advisable to calculate the Ego price in Starbits and multiply it by the amount of Ego a mission gives you to see if it's profitable. However, you'll do this once you have all the islands, and perhaps once or twice while you fine-tune your mission strategy.

For example, if I received 45,287 Starbits, which is equivalent to 1,588 Ego, a simple rule of three tells me that each Ego point I receive is equivalent to:

Each Ego point is equivalent to 28,518 Starbits. You can multiply this number by the amount of Ego a mission gives you to find out if a mission is still profitable, or in the formula above (for 1Ego) you simply enter the amount you want to appreciate, and it should give you the same number. If the number shown is greater than the maximum a mission can give you, then that mission is no longer profitable. If the number is considerably lower, you can do it with low risk, but if the gap between it being profitable and not being profitable is very small, it doesn't seem to be as profitable to do, although in the end it's up to you.

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Now that you have a wide range of missions at your disposal due to the number of islands you've unlocked in the game, you'll find that you'll have to be more careful with the missions on the first islands, especially Home Town. Many users decided to completely discard these missions. It makes sense that this would happen. As an established musician, of course, you're allowed to return to your roots, but there are other places that are more eager to see you and pay you, and they're usually far from your home. In your hometown, you're warmly welcomed, but it's probably not as lucrative, and of course, you feel so confident and fulfilled that your ego skyrockets with every performance you make.

I think with these last tips I've shared with you, the reader, you'll have a good outcome in the game. At least, you won't be so worried about your ego consuming you. Pay attention to it and discard the missions that don't serve you well, and do the missions a certain number of times.

And, if you ask me, is it worth reducing your ego?

My answer would be, why not do it? Little by little, you can do it by managing the Starbits you generate wisely. It's certainly worth it: having your Ego at 0% means receiving more Starbits, and keeping your Ego in check means exploring other features the game offers.

Using myself as an example once again, currently 5-minute missions give me around 4,600 Starbits with about 22% Ego (without drunks). If I were at 0%, if my calculations are correct, I could generate over 6,000 Starbits with these missions. Almost 2,000 more Starbits, which are very useful.

I hope this information can be useful to other players, for people who are still learning about the game before venturing into it (I recommend you do), and for future players. Ego will not defeat us!

Thanks for stopping by!

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