Ironblade

3PM attempt cancelled due to not enough people, likely due to short notice and time of day. See new message later in thread.

Variety Act is one of the new badges that requires a task force team to have role divertity, i.e. at least one character from each of five general categories. The categories are as follows: 1 TANK - tank, brute, peacebringer, warshade 2 MELEE DAMAGE - scrapper, stalker, PB, soldier, widow 3 RANGE DAMAGE - blaster, sentinel, corruptor, PB, WS, soldier, widow 4 CONTROL - controller, dominator, WS, widow 5 SUPPORT - defender, mastermind, soldier 6 EXTRA I'll be doing this on weeks when I like one or more of the Weekly Strike Targets. I like Manticore (this week) and Moonfire (next week). I will have a sign-up post here in the Everlasting section since that's the shard I'm (mostly) on. Sign-up will be first come, first served. If the role you want is already taken, you can sign up as an extra as there is no penalty for having multiples in a category. I'm going to try for a run this evening. Also one on Friday evening.

Ding ding ding! Exactly right and yes, it is five minutes. I timed it once to be sure. If I'm on a high damage character, I just dive in and if they respawn, I just do it again. If I'm on a low damage character, I'll destroy one and wait for the respawn. I don't usually bother pre-damaging the others because even a defender should be able to take down the turrets if they have the full five minutes.

um... You're either thinking of someone else's post or misread mine. I was talking about running the Signature Story Arcs for 20 merits.

I would disagree. I think that, once you have at least SO's and a few decent powers, EVERYONE should visit Bloody Bay to get the Shivan Shard temp power. It is an extremely powerful pet and can make the difference between succeeding and failing a task force if you're alone or just have 1 or 2 people.

I know, I know! I actually have a spreadsheet to track the timer and enough characters that I used to run it multiple times per day, every day, and get the full 20 merits every time. I've run it on every character I have. Also worth noting, for anyone that hasn't run the Signature Story Arcs for the merits: The FIRST time you run each chapter on a character does NOT count against the timer. So, when they first came out, I ran my badger through EVERY chapter of both arcs in one day. Arc 1 is 7 chapters and arc 2 is 5. So that was 12 chapters for a total of 240 merits in a few hours. And then, he went back and ran chapter 1 for 20 merits, which started the timer. FYI, for anyone who wants to do something similar, the "one week timer" is actually 162 hours. There are 168 hours in a week.

Yeah, when I find an item where there are a couple hundred recipes available, I'll start bidding at like 5500 and just keep going up until I've bought like 90% or 95% of them. I'll usually end up around 175,000 per recipe. Grossly overpaying but, if I'm going to sell the final product for a few million, who cares?

OMG I'm ahead of you in something. They've only got 19x as many merits as me. 😛

Is he putting out bad vibes, Oddball?

Because the change in exploration badges occurred today and Vidiot Maps needs to be updated. So, *currently*, it's wrong. I don't know if they have updated it for the new badges yet, but you would then need to update. As for your video, you did *NOT* get the eight exploration badges.

It proves that the guy making the video isn't paying attention at all. Go to full screen and read the badges. He counts off eight badges but one of them is 'TIpped Off', which you receive for getting a tip mission. So he does NOT have all eight exploration badges. Edit: Okay, I came off a little harsh there. I didn't realize that was your video. But my point stands.

Back again to comment that this is a horribly slow way to earn merits. Probably the best way to get merits - but which depends on other people's schedule - is Hamidon raids. On Everlasting, they do Hami raids 2-3 times every day and each time they summon him twice. You can get 120 merits in about 15 minutes. This is per character, per day. They run them at 7PM EST, 10PM and midnight (not sure if the midnight one is every single day). Plus one in the Abyss on Saturday afternoon. If you're willing to deal with the tedious grind you described, instead transfer a character to Everlasting (or any shard with scheduled raids) and get some easy merits.

Pretty much the same way I deal with beggars in Pocket D when I'm on my fire/fire brute. "Hi, any chance you can PL me?" "No." Except that, since this was an email, I would just delete it and act like it was never there.

No, it doesn't. You get the merits by getting all 8 badges in the zone. Nothing changes and you do not need to go to a different zone. So, no, you DON'T know why it was changed.

A durable, high damage character can earn 20 merits in 5 minutes by doing the Signature Story Arc 1, chapter 1. This amount can be earned once per week on each character. Run a bunch of different characters through that and it's serious merits.

Unless they're in the public domain and from somewhere like Project Gutenberg. Over 70,000 free books available at gutenberg.org Plenty of classics like Arthur Conan Doyle and Edgar Allen Poe.

The RPG version of 'first world problems'.

My guess would be that they are restricted from doing so in the licensing agreement they have with NCSoft. I don't imagine the IP owner would want a newer, updated version of the game being released 'into the wild'.

Yikes. I had a Lady Grey on Thursday that was exactly the opposite. Everybody followed the few instructions I gave and our 'tank' was a brute that knew the missions and maps at least as well as me, if not better. Super smooth.

Well, if you're willing to go hardcore.... On Everlasting, they do Hamidon raids at least twice per day (7PM EST and 10PM, sometimes also midnight). At each time, they actually do it twice and you can get 120 merits in about 15 minutes. The devs have said they're fine with this since it requires massive teamwork (we're talking 40+ people). The reward has diminishing returns for each extra raid on the same day so if you brought a different character to each raid, they could each get 120 merits. You could get two full ATO sets in under a week. A more efficient way is to use the merits to buy converters. Sell those and buy the items off the market and you'll come out slightly ahead. Even more efficient is to use the converters to convert trash IO's to useful ones. This takes more time and research but is REALLY big bucks. The way I get merits is that I do whatever task force is the 'weekly strike target' at least once each week. Each character can get a bonus of double merits once each week. The lowest task force starts at level EIGHT so I'm sure you have many characters that could do this. The weeklies for the coming week (starting at midnight UTC) are Manticore, Mortimer Kal and Admiral Sutter. The minimum levels to join are 30, 20 and 20 respectively. I enjoy the task forces and do them for the XP since I have over 52,000 merits.

Hold on a second. I think you might be misusing a term. A proc is very specific sub-category of IO's (Invention Origin enhancements). If you really meant IO's in general, then that's a different story. You really do need at least some IO's for a good performing build. Having said that, you can put together a good build, that makes the character DRAMATICALLY more effective, for maybe . . . . between 50 and 100 million for most characters. I wrote in another thread how I made a tank incredibly tough (with 350% regen rate) for around 20 million back on live. Could do it for maybe half that now.

The first sentence is flat-out false. I would agree that you do need procs in order to min-max your character to do the absolute best possible damage. But to "successfully deal damage"? That's total nonsense. And I think I understand 'late game' reasonably well. I just checked and I have 28 characters that are fully tier 4 incarnate. As for spending billions on a build.... is that even possible? It was common back on live, but everything is so much cheaper now. A full purple set is around 120 million for the GOOD sets. I've never seen a build that could have more than six purple sets. Add the ATO's and every useful unique and I honestly don't know that you can shoehorn more than ONE billion into a single build. I guess you could spend more if you're a 'buy it now' person, but that's on the person with no patience.

Um.... no opinion? They're all good. I've taken SR to level 50 on a tank and a scrapper, regen to 50 on a scrapper and sentinel and I've taken willpower to 50 on a tank. Personally, I like regen because I like having something to click (besides inspirations) in an emergency. Also, I'll say Erratic1 isn't wrong about bio. I never change the stance and it's a really good set too. You have the OPTION of some management with the stance, but I never do. It's like my dual pistols blaster can change ammo types but never does.

Well, I would definitely try a sentinel, then. I have a water/regen sentinel and regen is better on a sentinel than a scrapper since the sentinel version gets an absorption shield.

Not me. If I find or craft any extras, I hoard them.