Personal EventsThese happen to individuals at the start of their Exploitation turn, each round.
There is a 27.5% chance that a player will have a personal event (The game manual claims it's 25%).
If this is the case, one of the 22 distinct events is chosen randomly, and checked to see if it can be applied. The game will continue to try and pick an event until the following requirements are met:
- The event cannot have occurred before in that game. SEE Reply #12
- If the player is in 1st place, the event must be Bad.
- If the player is in 3rd or 4th place, the event must be Good.
- The player must meet the specific requirements of the selected event (see below)
Additionally, if the player is not in 1st place and has no Food, he automatically gets Care Package if it's still available.
If none of the events are valid, then the player doesn't get an event.
Most of the events involve a monetary bonus (or penalty). This amount, which I'll call the
cash factor (CF), is $25 * (Round# / 4 + 1). In other words:
Rounds 1-3: $25
Rounds 4-7: $50
Rounds 8-11: $75
Round 12: $100
Good| Name | Effect | Requirements |
| Care Package | +3 Food, +2 Energy | see above |
| Hospitality | +2 Smithore | none |
| Best Built | +2 CFs | 1+ installed MULEs |
| Tap Dancing | +4 CFs | Requirements |
| Agri Council | +2 CFs per Food MULE | 1+ installed Food MULEs |
| Wart Worms | +4 CFs | none |
| Antique PC | +8 CFs | none |
| Eel Eating | +2 CFs | none |
| Charity | +3 CFs | none |
| Artificial Dumb | +6 CFs | none |
| Inheritance | +4 CFs | none |
| Moose Rat | +2 CFs | none |
| Extra Plot | Gain an plot | 1+ unowned plots |
Bad| Name | Effect | Requirements |
| Glac-Elves | Lose 1/2 of Food | none |
| Lost Bolt | -3 CFs | 1+ installed MULEs |
| Mining Deterioration | -2 CFs per Smithore/Crystite MULE | 1+ installed Smithore/Crystite MULEs |
| Dirty Solar Panels | -1 CF per Energy MULE | 1+ installed Energy MULEs |
| Inlaws* | -6 CFs | none |
| Cat-Bugs | -4 CFs | none |
| Kazinga Losses | -4 CFs | none |
| Bat-Lizard Bite | -4 CFs | none |
| Botched Claim | Lose last plot | 1+ owned plots |
The Decompilation does not indicate whether a player needs enough cash to pay for a Bad event, for it to be applied to him.* This one's called "Space Gypsies", which may be slightly offensive these days depending on what country you're from. I'm not about to claim PCness, but it'd be easy just to omit the slur and refer to them as "your obnoxious inlaws".
Global EventsThese are events which occur either just before or just after the Production phase (splat splat splat splat splat...)
For the first 11 rounds of the game, a random event is chosen from a collection of 20. Certain events have a greater chance of occurring than others, and once it has occurred once, it is less likely to happen in the future. The best of way of visualizing this is as a deck of 20 cards, which is shuffled at the beginning of the game and then dealt out, 1 card per turn:
| Event | Max Occurrences | Description |
| Pest Attack | 3 | Random food plot of the player in 1st or 2nd place loses all its production. |
| Pirate Ship | 2 | All Crystite is removed from Store and player storage/production |
| Acid Rain Storm | 3 | Storm passes through a random row. Food MULEs in the row produce 4 more, Energy MULEs produce 2 less. All other rows produce +1 Food and -1 Energy. |
| Planetquake | 3 | All Smithore/Crystite MULEs lose half their production.* |
| Sunspot Activity | 3 | All Energy MULEs produce +3 Energy (max of  . |
| Meteorite Strike | 2 | A meteorite strikes a random plot (other than the Store or the river valley) that does not already have a 3-Crystite deposit, turning it into a 4-Crystite deposit and destroying the MULE there, along with its production. |
| Radiation | 2 | A random plot belonging to the 1st or 2nd place player loses its MULE. |
| Fire in Store | 2 | All goods in Store are removed |
*
In the Atari version only (and also currently in Planet MULE 1.0), 50% of the time Planetquake occurs, a random mountain plot among columns 2, 3, 7, and 8 has one of its actual "mountains" move to either the left or the right. Both plots lose their MULEs.
Kroah fortunately did the indulgent math in case you are wondering:
| Event | Never | 1 time | 2 times | 3 times | At all |
| Pest Attack, Acid Rain Storm, Planetquake, Sunspot Activity | 7.37% | 34.74% | 43.42% | 14.47% | 92.63% |
Pirate Ship, Meteorite Strike,
Radiation, Fire in Store | 18.95% | 52.10% | 28.95% | n/a | 81.05% |
How can this be expanded?Obviously, if most of the Player events revolve around gaining/losing a set amount of cash, then all that is needed are creative descriptions of how that occurred.
Global events can be decidedly more bizarre and fun, and can be inserted into the "deck" in whatever frequency is desired (though it will water down the chances of other events, unless they are substituted for other events, rather than just included).
As a challenge to all of us, I encourage everyone to give their ideas for player/global events by replying to this post and adding them below. Remember that any event which is decidedly negative to a single player (i.e. doesn't give anything good to a player, like Meteorite Strike does), cannot happen to the players in 3rd or 4th place, and a decidedly beneficial event for a single player cannot happen to the player in 1st place.
