Ironblade

To maximize your merits, consider doing task forces. Every week, three task forces / strike forces / trials are designated "weekly strike targets". Upon completion (if you are not yet level 50), you will receive a large amount of bonus XP (up to half a level worth). You will also, regardless of your level, get DOUBLE reward merits. You can receive this bonus once per week per character. Right now, the weeklies are higher level. Starting Sept 23rd the weekly will be Positron (minimum level 8 for part 1, minimum level 11 for part 2). Two weeks after that, Synapse will be up (min level 15). Two weeks after THAT, Penny Yin (min level 20). Followed at 2 week intervals by Citadel, Manticore and Numina. These six task forces are the 'Signature Task Forces'. I do these on every single character for the massive bonuses and also the Task Force Commander accolade power. This gives your character 5% additional hit points. Personally, I start slotting select IOs around level 35 and add more as I level up. This reduces the cost of upgrading the SOs, although I have some SOs right until level 50 in the powers where I'm going to put purple recipes.

This is former professional strongman Brian Shaw, standing with the winners of the Mr. Olympia bodybuilding competition.

Otto Von Bismarck said, “Only a fool learns from his own mistakes. The wise man learns from the mistakes of others.” Let's go be a learning experience for someone wiser than us.

That's the key factor. Some people are willing to spend exactly zero time crafting/converting. And then, some people are Yomo.

Eisenhower said, "In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable."

Or not. Firstly, by definition, it's not a fairy tale price. It's the actual market value, even if you don't approve. Secondly, we've seen long-term and/or permanent price changes before. This could be one of those. Time will tell.

um, slow down there. Diantane was talking about BOOSTERS and you're talking about CONVERTERS which are way cheaper than boosters. Try to get up to speed before you start laughing at someone.

OMG I remember that. And we only had 12 character slots per server. I created over 600 characters across 7 accounts. Muahahahahaha!

As Yogi Berra might have said, "No one plays on Excelsior any more; it's too crowded." 🙂

Yeah...... I actually just do random tip missions for the badges. Why would you... oh "25 alts with all the badges!" That's why you need to be efficient about it. 🙂

My impression is that you need to put in a bit more work to get the big payouts. I use merits to buy converters and then use them to convert trash enhancements to valuable ones. For a while, I would give a new character a pile of 3,000 converters and get to work. I would do this on a new character so I knew I would be logging the character on a regular basis. They would approach the influence cap before finishing their incarnate powers and I would move any remaining converters to a new character. I started to taper off after passing 10 billion inf since I don't think I'll ever run out at this point. Playing high level characters generates a lot of inf and it takes me a while to take a character from level 1 to fully tier 4 incarnate.

Once upon a time, these were a big deal because you could get one type of SO at much lower level. Now we can buy low level SO's from the regular vendors so . . . more of a novelty now.

Menu Options Windows tab Window section last option - "Show Target Distance"

Definitely take a good look around. There are new power sets, new story arcs, and the Homecoming servers are officially licensed by NCSoft.

This. The Homecoming team is creating new power sets, new content AND managed a licensing deal with NCSoft.

I claim credit for this! I was at the raid when you hit 40,000 and made a 40K reference when it happened. 😛

As the Neutrals in Futurama would say, "I have no strong feelings on this matter, one way or the other."

They were NOT raised. But your initial observation is correct in my opinion. Margins have become narrower and it is (slightly) more difficult to turn a profit.

I heard . . . um somewhere . . that a pen of hogs can devour a human body in minutes.

The N.A. one is in Canada (maybe Toronto? I forget). The Europe one is in Frankfurt.

It says, in red letters at the top, "Click the drop down in cell A4 to pick the start date for the cycle." The new start date would be 7 days after the date of the last week in the spreadsheet. I think you need to download it to edit it, or change a setting. I dunno. I have a more succinct version that I created which fits everything on a single page.

The order does not matter. Task Force Commander, for example, requires that you do the six 'signature' task forces. You can do them in whatever order, over whatever length of time, that you like.

No! We marketeer on different shards and don't give me any of that "market is cross server" baloney! I'm not listening! YOU CAN'T HAVE MY MONEY!

Yes, BUT - only if you're level 50 or higher. Not sure why it has this restriction, since you can earn them at any level by other methods. I believe the odds are 2%.

I figure things out as I level up. My only advance planning is to identify any key powers (like Fulcrum Shift or a blaster tier 9) and make sure to take them as soon as they become available. I use SO's until somewhere in the low 30's and then start crafting and slotting IO sets. I almost never respec at level 50 since the build I did on the way up is 'good enough'. The exceptions to the above are characters from back on live that I wanted to recreate exactly. In those cases, I had the builds and costumes saved, so everything was planned completely in advance but I used the above method for the original build back on live. This applied to about 15 of my level 50's on Homecoming (out of a total of 39, I think).