Atlas Earth — Play Like You Mean It
Primer
If you haven’t downloaded the game yet, take the time to read this article all the way to the end. It may help you to decide if this game is for you, and maybe even help you to get a bit more from your efforts. If you’ve already downloaded the game you can probably skip the next section and move straight to Daily Activity. In the interest of full disclosure, I gain referral credit from some of the links in this article, but no direct monetary compensation.
Starting Out
Atlas Earth is a virtual real estate game produced by Atlas Realty, Inc. The gameplay is, at the outset, remarkably simple. They give you 100 Atlas Bucks and you get to buy your first 900 square feet, or 1 parcel, of virtual land (typically exactly where you are standing) right away. With that simple action you are a virtual land owner and are therefore entitled to “rent.” What exactly does that mean?
If you look around in the app you’ll come to the rental rates soon enough. Yes, those are real numbers, and no, they are not kidding. Every second you’ll have that much value placed into your account without you needing to do anything, and those rental rates are cumulative. This is where the beauty lies. If you own two parcels, you get rent on both of them. What about three? Yep, you get rent on all three. The same goes for any number of parcels. So, how well does that all stack up? Actually, not too bad at all. For doing nothing with the lowest value parcel for a year, you get paid ~$0.24 in rent. Why, you may ask, is this worth it? Well, double that, triple it, or insert whatever multiple you want for multiple parcels. If you get a higher value parcel type, the numbers go up. There is also this handy, free calculator for you to use to estimate your potential earnings. Go ahead and play with the numbers a bit. The minimum amount that you can withdraw is $5, and it doesn’t take much to add up to that. But that’s just the start. You can boost your earnings per second.
Boosting
The easiest thing that you can do to increase your rent for a few hours is to boost the rental rate. Using the Boost button is easy. You tap on it, watch a short advertisement, and your total rental rate is increased by the indicated amount for an hour. You can even stack up to 6 hours worth of boosts that will run back to back without you having to do anything. Boosting is something that you should be doing at least daily, as this not only increases your rental rate, but it gives the game developers the money they need to pay out when you decide to withdraw your funds. You can see the effect of boosting in the calculator.
As with all things, there is a caveat. Your boost rate goes down when you own a large number of properties. The current rates are found in the app, but by the time that you hit that first cutoff I doubt that you’ll be too terribly worried about it. The other way that you can boost your earning rate, but on a constant basis and without needing to watch ads, is via passport badges, which we’ll cover later.
Free Atlas Bucks
The game plainly states that land prices start at 100 Atlas Bucks. How do you get Atlas Bucks? Well, there’s always the option to purchase them, which we’ll get to later, but for now let’s talk about the ways that you can get them for free, or with very little effort.
The first option is to watch an advertisement. Go to the Shop tab and use the option there to watch an advertisement and earn 2 Atlas Bucks. Doing this, and only this, once per day will net you 100 Atlas Bucks in 50 days, and by extension a minimum of 7 properties per year. Obviously, the more you do this, the more Atlas Bucks you’ll get, and the quicker you can purchase other parcels. You can watch an advertisement every 20 minutes for a theoretical total of 36 times per day and a total of 72 Atlas Bucks.
The second option is to get your daily login streak bonus. Open the in-game calendar and scroll down to the number of days that you have logged in consecutively. At the very least it’s another free Atlas Buck. On key days, like the 30th day, you get a bigger bonus. After 90 days you get 200 Atlas Bucks, so stick with it. That’s two free parcels just for signing in every day. The catch with this one is that you need to have at least 3 parcels to unlock this option.
The third option is to refer friends. As of this writing you can get 10 Atlas Bucks for every parcel that a friend buys after they go through the tutorial, up to a maximum of 100 total Atlas Bucks per friend. For the friend, they get a bonus of 200 Atlas Bucks when they buy their 10th parcel. That’s enough Atlas Bucks for two more free parcels. How many friends do you have that will be as serious as you about this game? All you have to do is give them your referral link, or your referral code (mine is D8ODRG if you feel inclined to use it.)
The fourth option is to link a credit card to your Atlas Earth account. As of this writing there are only certain merchants offered, and the rates vary between 1 and 4 Atlas Bucks for each dollar spent. Depending upon how often you visit these merchants, you could earn a fair amount of Atlas Bucks. You do have to understand though that giving this information out is a very small security risk, and you should consider that before doing this. You might also want to read the terms and conditions from the card issuer, too.
The fifth option is to book a hotel using their Atlas Travel program. This program works similar to other hotel booking sites in that it offers you slightly discounted rates in exchange for booking through their portal. As a show of appreciation, they give you anywhere from a few to over one thousand Atlas Bucks depending upon the hotel and amount of money you are spending.
The first three options are more likely the ways that you’ll use more often, so let’s take a look at what your daily activity should look like if you are going to play this game like you mean it.
Daily Activity
This is the sequence of activities that I run through every morning in this game. As with all things, if the game changes then the sequence has the possibility of changing. It works for me, but your mileage may vary.
Get Your Free Atlas Bucks
The very first thing that I do is go to the Shop tab and get my first 2 free Atlas Bucks of the day by watching an advertisement. Why do I do this first? Because of the 20 minute timer. While I am doing the other things that timer is counting down to when I can watch another advertisement and get 2 more free Atlas Bucks.
Boost Your Earnings
After I’ve watched my first advertisement I go back to the main screen and watch another video to start boosting my rent. This is key to running up my income faster. If you want to, you can watch the rest of your boost advertisements at this time as well and get your boost duration up to the maximum. Sometimes I do this, other times I hold off and do it after all of the other steps. The main point is to get that first boost going quickly.
Get Your Daily Login Streak Bonus
With my rent boosted, my next stop is the daily login streak bonus. While I’m there I will often scroll down to see how long it will be to the next big bonus. I’m not in a hurry at this point, because that 20 minute timer is still going.
Spin the Wheel
Now that my login streak is preserved, it’s time to spin the wheel for my daily prizes. Go to the Hunt tab and choose Diamond Hunt. If you have diamonds in your inventory you can spin the prize wheel up to 5 times. Each time costs you a diamond, and the last two require you to watch an advertisement in addition to the diamond, but this is what the diamonds are for. I’ve actually hit the jackpot on the wheel a couple of times and that 50 Atlas Buck boost helps a lot.
Finding Diamonds
Lastly, I look around the map for diamonds and go pick them up if I can. Sometimes they are where I can’t get to them, and that’s fine because there are others available. I also will keep this screen open when I am riding in a vehicle (not driving) and grab diamonds along the way. While I’m doing this, I keep an eye on the clock. When that 20 minute timer is up, I go back and grab another 2 free Atlas Bucks.
Long-Term Activities
Daily routines aside, there are a few things that still should be talked about. These long-term activities will build up your rental income faster over time. The amount of time it takes to reach a goal depends upon the investment and the goal. Remember, this isn’t some “Get Rich Quick” scheme, this is an investment in time that will yield very small rewards.
Buying More Parcels
This is the most obvious thing that will increase your rental income over time. The more parcels you own, the more rent you will earn each second. My own method of play is that until I achieve a reasonable rental income per month while unboosted, all of my earned rent will go back into purchasing more parcels, thereby re-investing my income into the endeavor. Once I reach what I feel is that reasonable income per month I’ll decide what I want to do with it. Maybe I’ll take that money and put it into my brokerage account, or maybe I’ll use it to buy lunch like the guy in one of the ads for this game does. The choice is up to me, and for you the goals and choices are yours to make. Do what seems best for you.
Passport Badges
You see them on the Shop tab, but just what are they? Passport badges are ways to boost your base rent on a permanent basis. By investing 200 Atlas Bucks in a badge when you have none you are immediately and permanently boosting your rental income by 5%. Yep, going from 0 to 1 does exactly that. From there, it gets more expensive to boost your rental income more. From what I can see, this boost is to your base rent and that higher rate is used when you do manual boosts. Not bad, eh?
Here’s the other thing that passport badges do: if you are the person that owns the most plots of land in a city/town, state, or country, they give you a small amount of additional income for each passport badge that is purchased for that city/town, state, or county.
Google Rewards
If you’re not participating in Google Rewards you’re missing out on some free cash to use when you play this game. For the small effort of answering some questions or taking a picture of a shopping receipt and sending it in, you get credit that you can use in your games. When I build up enough to make a purchase in a game I make the purchase and no funds have to come from my bank. For me this is justified by not already having those funds in my bank, and by not really having a solid way to get them to my bank anyway. Making purchases in Atlas Earth is about the only way that I can eventually move those funds to my bank in the form of a withdrawal. Google Rewards also makes it easy by not constantly pushing you to refer friends and not being all up in your face about doing more. It’s very casual, and that means a lot to me.
Mini-games
A few times each month there are mini-games available to play. For a small entry fee per round (typically 2 Atlas Bucks) you can compete against everyone else and see how your luck and skills fare. As it turns out, mine are not up to snuff, but that doesn’t mean that yours aren’t. You should try every different mini-game at least once. The entry fee goes towards the prizes for the winners and who knows, maybe that will be you.
Mistplay
If you are using an Android phone (and haven’t already downloaded the game) this will be an option for you. Download Mistplay from the Google Play Store and create an account. Mistplay will ask for some permissions that it needs and you should grant them. Once you have your account on Mistplay established, search for Atlas Earth and install it via Mistplay. When you go to play the game, launch it via Mistplay. Doing this gets you credits in Mistplay that count towards your choice of payment methods, such as gift cards, PayPal, and Google Play credits. If you take the Google Play credits, those can be used to inject more Atlas Bucks into your account and then buy more parcels and pump up that rent even further.
Withdrawing Funds
Now we come to the part that you’ve likely been waiting for: Withdrawing Funds. The ultimate end goal of this game is to have fun, but goal #2 (at least for me) is to get to this point. Everybody wants the cash, and from what I have read in the reviews in the Google Play Store the process and ease of use for the withdrawing of funds is easy and free from hassle. Does this sound to you like I haven’t done it yet? You’re right, I haven’t. As I’ve been saying all through this article, I’ve been putting my accrued rent back into the game to build up my stack of parcels. When I do get to a point of wanting to withdraw cash I don’t expect to have any problems.