Tips and Tricks

From PackRat Recipe Wiki

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[edit] Cards

When you flip over a card in your pack or vault, you can click the name of it to go see a page that displays the entire history of this card.

If you have pack space, try to have a high value card (2500+) to trade if you see an elusive rare on a rat that has been flushed out of someone's pack. You can usually get these through trading up – e.g., you get a two piece (500) as a bonus draw, then you trade it up for a 750 or 1000 point item, then a 2500 point item, then 5000 point item, etc.

There are several ways to get cards you need:

Buying cards from one of the markets is the most common way to get new items.

You can get 'draw cards' (previously 'popup cards') by surfing your friends' packs and flipping their cards. You can save up to 5 draw cards and draw them whenever you want.

Once you have a draw, it will be indicated at the top of the screen. Go to your pack and click the 'Draw' link on the right hand side to get a draw card into your pack. Most collections have some cards which are only available as draw cards. Draw cards are chosen at random from these - from current collections only.

When you look at the draw cards on offer, you may not want any of them. You can click the 'Draw' link again to cancel the draw or choose to draw the credits or mystery card instead.

You can steal cards from the rats or from any your friends' packs. It's not exactly 'stealing' because you must leave a card behind, although you are indeed depriving the other player of any card you steal. (The legal definition of stealing is 'intent to deprive').

Stealing is not certain! It has the best chance of success if the card you are stealing has the same value or higher. You have to be very lucky to steal a high value card using a low value card, but it can be done.

Stealing cards no longer earns you points.

Any recently acquired card will be temporarily locked in its new pack for 10 minutes. To lock it on a longer term basis, you must buy a lock or acquire one in a bonus draw. Cards bought in the ticket markets are automatically locked until they are moved to a new pack. Note that if you purchase a card in the ticket markets and it leaves your pack, if it returns to your pack it is just like any other card and does not regain its safe (ticket-bought) status.

You can offer to trade one of your cards for a card of any other player. It need not be one of your 'friends' - but you'll need a link to any non-friend player's pack to trade with them. Pack links are often posted in the PackRat discussion board by people looking to trade for a specific item. When you request a trade, you must select a card from your own pack - and optionally some additional credits - to offer in exchange. A trade request may be accepted or declined by the other player.

If the markets don't have what you need and you can't locate the item in a pack from which you can swap, you can post or search for a message on the official PackRat trading boards for current cards or for retired cards, and trade with another player.

If all else fails, you can join the unofficial PackRat Bazaar Facebook group or Packrat Packers Union Facebook group and trade there.

Making recipes gives you points equal to the resulting cards value. Vaulting cards gives your points equal to the total vaulted cards' value.

[edit] Collections

If there is a collection retiring it would be best to complete that collection while you still can; once collections are retired they are no longer sold in markets. The only way to obtain these cards is through trades, finding them in the rats or purchasing them at the premium markets if and when they appear there.

When working on retired collections its easier to get the higher recipes done first and work your way down.

[edit] Your Pack

A way to free up some space in a full pack is to swap out some un-needed cards for three of the same card that is part of a recipe. If you use 3 cards to make a lock, you can then lock and unlock a card, which discards the lock. This gives you 3 free spaces instead of the 2 you'd get from making a regular recipe. See the locks page for which cards can be combined to make a lock.

To post your pack link, scroll down to your history feed right click on "You" and "copy link location", or simply click on "Your Pack" in the top navigation bar of any Packrat page and then highlight and copy the link in the address bar. This is your pack link. Go create your post and then paste the link in it. Should look something like this http://apps.facebook.com/packrat/user/*******-*********

When leaving comments on people's walls a lot of people prefer that you whisper comments as to not push their message down.

[edit] Vault

You can vault 5 (or more) different things from the same collection or just from the same color family.

You cannot remove vaulted items once they are vaulted. Don't learn it the hard way!

[edit] Credits

There are several ways to obtain credits:

They'll pop up at the top of pages randomly. (Note--make sure you click on the credit icon itself when it pops up; otherwise, you won't actually receive the credits)

When scrolling through friends' and rats' packs, you can flip the cards over by clicking on them. Many cards will have credits hiding behind them! Again, make sure that you click on the credit icons in order to redeem them.

Sell cards on the trading boards!
- If you're lucky enough to snag a good retired card out of the rats, you can usually make a pretty decent amount by selling it.
- Stalk the markets! Some cards end up being in very high demand for the first couple days after their release, while some become hard to get once an entire collection is released and everyone's scrambling to feat. If you pay attention to the trading boards and find out which cards are currently the hardest to get, you can stalk the markets for those cards. When you manage to snag them, you can then sell them on the boards. The harder that card is to find, the more that people will be willing to pay for it.

You also have the option of spending real money for credits. There are three ways you can do this -- all involve purchasing tickets, and two involve the trade boards.
- After you've purchased tickets, you can click on the blue "Buy" button at the top of any PackRat page, next to the word "Credits". This option gives you an exchange rate of 1,000 credits for every 10 tickets spent. This method is very easy, but is less profitable than the other methods.
- On the trading boards, it's common to find people who are looking for ticket cards and willing to pay credits for them. If you don't see any recent posts asking for ticket cards, then you can create your own, offering to purchase ticket cards in exchange for credits. The most common (user-established) exchange rate is 3,000 credits for every 10 tickets spent, although it can vary widely (the most extreme rates I've seen are 2,000-5,000 credits per 10 tickets).
- If you haven't yet purchased tickets, you can gift a person tickets in exchange for credits (this is much less common than people buying and selling ticket cards, but does happen). In order to gift tickets to someone, you must be friends with them, so for this option you have to add them as a friend once someone accepts your offer (but you can always defriend them after the transaction if you're not comfortable friending people you don't know in real life). While the basic exchange rate of 3,000 credits per 10 tickets is a good starting point, I've seen people offering slightly more credits for ticket gifts, since ticket gifts are much more desirable/convenient over someone spending tickets for you.

[edit] Markets

Using the Bookmark Toolbar in Firefox, you can bookmark your markets for a quick jump from one to the other.

If there is an item you want in multiple markets try to buy it from the market that moves the slowest (London & NY have really slow turn over rates). This helps keep the markets moving.

An item will stay in the market for no more than 30 minutes. If, after 30 minutes, the item has not sold out, a new item will replace it.

Say an item you're surfing for is either in London or Sydney, and you'd normally be clicking from London to NY to Sydney and back to NY then London. Skip NY by first going to London, then in the address bar for the browser backspace over London and type in Sydney and hit enter, now you're in Sydney. From then on just click back and forth on the browser navigation arrows to switch between London and Sydney without going thru NY.

There are a number of Firefox extensions (Tab Mix Plus, ReloadEvery, etc.) that allow you to auto-refresh a tab at a specified interval. This can be very useful for watching a market for a specific item to come up. NOTE: The devs have stated that it is against TOS to use any automaters to enhance your gaming experience. They can and do disable packs when they discover people doing so, so use these extensions at your own risk!!

It is only possible to buy from a specific slot once per item. After purchasing an item, you may not purchase from that slot until the original item has been sold out.

[edit] Rats

If you're surfing the rats for a particular card and they are flooded with a card you don't need, try collecting and vaulting those cards. It's easy points and helps clean out the rats while you wait for the card you need.