Shinobu

Free character idea. Name's free on Torchbearer at least. ^_^ Maybe this looks more like a pug?

Don't be too sure. ;)

I can usually put up with stupid people enough to finish a TF. You have to be a serious jerk for me to want to see you kicked before the end of a TF, and generally you have to be a real jerk to kick someone from a TF before it ends. As to the original question, I agree: teleport anyone who can port others, then teleport whoever you want in whatever order you want. There's no rules you have to follow. Generally I don't go so far as to put people on ignore, but I will 1-star them with a note as to why they're a jerk/idiot/need to be avoided. Even if I team with them again, at least I have an amusing note to read, and I don't forget when they were stupid. ^_^

The test server Justin was down from about July 6 to yesterday. Thread: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,6423.0.html. So there was no testing going on, but I guess things are working now. There's definitely a patch being prepared, that will include snipe changes and possibly a few other things. Stuff's being worked on, but don't expect major, game-changing patches -- see above about how devs are volunteers. ^_^

There's a conundrum inherent in my instructions that I realized after I posted: *I list Hold - Lockdown and To Hit Buff - Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control as good sale options, even though they mostly sell for no more than 2 million each. *I list Hold - Essence of Curare and To Hit Buff - Adjusted Targeting as good recipes to start with. If you craft a bunch of Essence of Curare and convert them to rare, about half of the time you'll get Lockdown. If you craft Adjusted Targeting and convert them, you'll get Gaussian's 100% of the time. This does not, however, mean that I necessarily think it's a great idea to just list a bunch of Gaussian's. You'll probably make money, but you won't make a lot of money. My goal when doing conversions is to do enough conversions to get at least some really good IOs to sell (at least one Defense IO in ten on average, I'd say, and maybe one Resist Damage and one Heal IO per ten) but to stop short of chasing the very best IOs on every IO conversion, because you can spend a ton of converters that way. I think it's best to try and find a happy medium between "convert everything to a Luck of the Gambler IO" and "take whatever you get on the first conversion". Therefore my list of acceptable results includes quite a few IOs that sell for 1.5 or 2 million, because that's not a terrible result. That meets my "bare minimum" profit margin, I guess I'd say. ^_^ So... if you craft a bunch of Guassian's from Adjusted Targeting recipes, you can just list them all. You definitely save on converters doing that. But I'd recommend converting at least half of them randomly to see what you can get.

I was inspired to write a specific guide on how I make my money, in detail: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,7199.msg60852.html#msg60852 Hope that helps.

I wrote a more specific guide to explain exactly how I make my money -- what recipes I buy, what things I convert to and list for sale. https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,7199.msg60852.html#msg60852 Hopefully that's useful for those who are still struggling to make good money.

I and several others have posted guides on how to use converters to craft and convert to items that will sell on the market and make you good money, and yet I still find people that struggle with the process. This boils down to familiarity with the market, knowing what to buy, at what level to buy it, and what will sell. So I thought a step-by-step guide on exactly what I do to make money would be useful. This process usually nets me 50 to 75 million influence per session, per character that I do it with. Note: This guide assumes you understand how to use converters. If you're brand new to this, you might want to read one of the other guides first, then this one once you have the basics down. That said, it's pretty self-explanatory if you study the converter window and play around a bit. Step One: Buy Converters You will probably need at least 100 converters at a minimum, but 200 for preference. If you have enough money, buy converters off the market -- otherwise you can start out by buying them with reward merits. I usually put in bids of around 90,000 per converter and give my bids 24 hours to fill, and they almost always do in that time. 200 converters at 90,000 influence per equals 18 million influence, if I'm calculating correctly. Caveat: buying converters, and having enough money to craft and list for a good price, is the first hurdle for anyone. If you're starting with just a few million, you'll want to do 1-2 recipes at a time until you've made enough money to go at it like I do, 20 at a time. Step Two: Buy Recipes For recipes, set your minimum and maximum level to 31. This is how I do it -- it allows me to craft at the lowest level possible (IE cheapest crafting costs) without dealing with level 30 recipes. There are, of course, some good IOs that you can come up with at level 30, but also a lot more stuff that won't sell for you, so this is what I consider a good "sweet spot". Others do things different, but if you're just learning, follow my guide until you have a good idea of how things work. ^_^ I tend to craft 20 recipes per session / per character. I'll log into multiple characters, but for each I will collect sales, collect converters I've bought, grab 20 recipes to craft, and craft and convert them and list them for sale. The next evening I'll do the same thing. So! Buy recipes in bulks of 10, and put in bids of 5,000 to 10,000 per recipe. Bid for 40 or 60 or 80 recipes at once, so you're sure to have enough for several sessions. I buy the cheapest recipes I can, and I usually bid 10,000 per recipe, as this is a pretty good high price that will mean my bids will normally fill in 24 hours or less. Good recipes to buy cheap: Confuse - Perplex Defense Debuff - Undermine Defenses Fear - Nightmare Flight - Soaring (except Soaring: Fly/Endurance which requires rare salvage) Holds - Essence of Curare Immobilize - Enfeebled Operation Knockback - Kinetic Crash Leaping - Springfoot Running - Quickfoot Sleep - Lethargic Repose Slow Movement - Tempered Readiness Stuns - Rope-a-dope Taunt - Mocking Beratement Teleport - Jaunt To Hit Buff - Adjusted Targeting To Hit Debuff - Dampened Spirits Good recipes with multiple uncommon/junk conversions: Melee - Crushing Impact Melee - Focused Smite Melee - Smashing Haymaker Pet Damage - Blood Mandage Pet Damage - Brilliant Leadership PBAoE Damage - Cleaving Blow PBAoE Damage - Multi-strike Ranged Damage - Maelstrom's Fury Ranged Damage - Ruin Sniper Attacks - Calibrated Accuracy Sniper Attacks - Exploit Weakness Targeted AoE Damage - Air Burst Targeted AoE Damage - Detonation Note that some of these damage recipes may sell for more than 10,000 influence part of the time. PBAoE is a quick conversion to Obliteration, which sells well, so those for example may sell for more than my usual 10,000 influence bid. Why buy these recipes, specifically? They're all cheap and all of the ones in the first group should convert to a rare IO if you do a Category Conversion (2 converters) first. The second group listed can convert to other uncommon IOs (there's more than one uncommon set in the category) so with those, you can do a Rarity Conversion (1 converter) first and hopefully get something that automatically converts to a rare with a Category Conversion, and even better, something in a category that will sell. Obviously, buying a "cheap" defense or healing recipe may sound like a better idea since it converts directly into something good -- but a lot of people can see this, and those recipes are sometimes selling for hundreds of influence per. Meanwhile, with converters, virtually ANY recipe can be turned into something valuable, so we just want some cheap recipes that we can get easily. Step Three: Crafting Once you have 20 recipes (either 10 of each of two different recipes, or 20 of one recipe) then buy the salvage to craft them. I tend to bid 5,000 influence per salvage for both uncommon and common, because I want my bids to fill immediately. I don't see much of an advantage in bidding ahead of time to save money -- you don't save that much. I like to craft in the Vanguard building, but a university works, or anywhere works with a crafting table which is 10 million from Pay 2 Win. Step Four: Converting As noted above, for IOs from group A, do a Category Conversion (2 converters) first so that you have a rare IO. Next do one to several Rarity Conversions (1 converter) until you get something that will sell well. For recipes from group B, do it in the reverse order -- one or more Rarity conversions, and then a Category Conversion to get to a rare. Then more Rarity conversions if needed. Things that will sell well (convert until you get one of these): *Defense - Luck of the Gambler. Always convert Gift of the Ancients and Reactive Defenses to Luck of the Gambler with Category Conversions. This can sometimes take a lot of conversions, because you'll also hit Red Fortune and Serendipity, but LotG sells better than almost anything so it is always worth it. I usually do in-set conversions until I get Defense, Defense/Endurance, or the +7.5% recharge IO, but all of them sell pretty well I think. *Resistance Damage - Aegis or Unbreakable Guard, or Impervium Armor Psionic Resistance. If you get any other Impervium Armor, my suggestion is to do a Category Conversion to get an Aegis or Unbreakable Guard, those sell pretty well and doing an in-set conversion to try and get the Psionic Resistance IO does not strike me as worth your time. If you get it randomly, then keep it and sell it of course. *Healing - Miracle +recovery, Numina regeneration/recovery. It is not necessarily a bad idea to sell any Numina or any Preventative Medecine that turns up, most of them will sell for 2-3 million influence, but what you want is the two above IOs that sell for 4-5 million influence. In my opinion it is always worth converting a Miracle IO into the proc, the profit is too good not to. *Endurance - Performance Shifter Endurance or +Chance of Endurance. I do in-set conversions to get one of those two, although the Endurance IO only sell for about 2 million right now. But it will definitely sell. *Some Damage IOs, as follows *PBAoE Damage (Obliteration especially, but also Scirocco's Dervish). Some Obliterations can go for 4-5 million depending on availability. *Melee Damage - Touch of Death and Kinetic Combat. Mako's Bite I usually convert again. Kinetic Combat is the only really good seller here, and I will usually convert the Chance to Knockdown into one of the others since it does not sell well. The other pieces sell for at least 2-3 million. Nothing else here sells for a lot, but I can list Touch of Death for about 1.5 million and it will usually sell. *Ranged Damage - Decimation only. Again not a huge seller, but sometimes certain pieces of the set are in short supply and sell for several million. The other options - Entropic Chaos, Devastation, sell for very little. *Targeted AoE - Positron's Blast, and to a lesser extent Annihilation. Annihilation does not sell for a ton but I can get 1.5 million to 2 million for them. Knockback - Sudden Acceleration: Knockback to Knockdown. Pretty much only this one knockback IO is worth your time, but it sells well. *Universal Travel - Blessing of the Zephyr. It's probably worth converting your BoTZ to the 4 points Knockback Protection IO, which always sell well -- although not well enough to chase it with in-set conversions, I think. *To Hit Buff - Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control. They don't sell for a ton, but around 1.5 - 2 million. *Running - Celerity (Steath only). Again, 1.5 to 2 million. I only sell the stealth IO (only this run version, I ignore the leaping version which sells even more poorly). If I get a Celerity that isn't the stealth IO, I do a random rarity conversion again rather than trying to do an in-set conversion, it's not valuable enough to mess with that. *Recharge Intensive Pets - Expedient Reinforcement. These sell for at least 2 million on average, sometimes more *Holds - Lockdown. I don't bother with Ghost Widow's Embrace, but Lockdown will sell for about 2 million. *Accurate Healing - Touch of the Nictus. These don't sell particularly well except when something is in short supply, but 1.5 million to 2 million per IO is possible. If you get anything other than what is listed above, do another random Rarity Conversion. They only cost 1 converter, so do as many as you need to get something good, and then do Category or In-Set Conversions as needed to get the right IOs. Remember, more Rarity Conversions means more chances to land on a Defense or Resist Damage IO, or a Miracle IO. Caveat: Everyone will have their own list of what they consider worth selling, and even mine changes occasionally. At one point I was selling Mako's and Devastation and I did not consider converting to the Numina unique worth my time. Always be willing to try new things -- the important point here is that you need to do enough conversions that a good portion of what you list is making good money. You might be able to sell a lot of other IOs for 1 million a piece and turn a small profit, but if we're going to all this effort we might as well do an extra conversion or two to get something that sells for 2 or 3 or 4 million. Step Five: Listing/Selling Never list for what you want to sell for. Your goal is to have the lowest price without selling it that low. If you think it usually sells for 2 million, list for 1.9 million, or 1.7 million, or however low you think you can go without accidentally selling it too low. Naturally, this trick only works some of the time, but that's okay too. The point is that you want your IO to sell, not sit around -- but you're hoping for a good price. ^_^ Pay attention to how many are for sale. If there are few for sale, you can sell at a very high price. IF there are only a couple for sale, or zero, then list for at or above the most recent prices, because you should be able to get that. Be careful of last five. Sometimes it lies to you. That said, most of this stuff sells frequently and I think that affects how often the display bug crops up -- I don't see it a lot when I'm listing these IOs for sale. Also you will learn from repeated selling about how much is the right price. I often see an IO that has sold for, say 2 million in the last 5, and I know it normally sells for 3-4 million and will again, so I'm not fooled by a temporary drop in price. Generally speaking the best IOs here are the Luck of the Gamblers that sell for upwards of 7 million. That's been a pretty consistent price for the +7.5% recharge. Recently though the Defense/Endurance has been really low and has also been selling for about that much. Miracle +recovery, Numina's regen/recovery, and sveral of the other specials will usually sell for 4-5 million. It's okay to sell a few of the cheaper things for 2 million but you want to hit on the expensive IOs about 1/3 to 1/2 of the time if you can, because that's where you make money fast. Step Six: Bidding Before you end your session, make sure you have bids in for enough recipes and converters for next time. --------------- And that's it! Once you have a good idea of what sells and what to list it for, you can do the whole craft and convert thing on 20 IOs and list them in about 10 or 15 minutes, and by the next day you should see at least 50 million in sales. Profits vary, and you'll be spending money to buy more converters, but it doesn't take very long doing this before you have several hundred million on hand.

Yes it works, but aesthetically it really bugs me. :P

I can name at least one good friend who creates very high end builds but almost never uses Hasten. You can achieve a great deal of recharge without it, so while I personally use it almost all of the time, it certainly is optional in theory and in practice. You don't ever need it, but I certainly like having it. :D

I know that they've said they're working on a new launcher, and that will presumably work much better. I wouldn't expect them to do anything to "fix" Tequila, since the plan is to eventually abandon it in favor of a better option.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but there are more pylons these days and/or a few have been moved around. I noticed this when I did a raid on Homecoming for the first time... there's a pylon directly North of pylon 7 (I think I have the number right -- the one close to the back end of the ship / section that's below the ground surface). I think there may be 1 or 2 others that are different or new, but I noticed that one right away, because I'd never seen it before. I wondered if I had somehow just never noticed it before, maybe I always went straight to pylon 7 and half the team went and killed this other pylon, but then I realized that the drop ship was a new thing too, so they'd made a change on the SCORE server, and apparently added at least one pylon. Your map confirms that I wasn't just crazy and had never noticed it, because you don't have it on your map either.

Because you generally want your Set IOs to be at the max level possible for that set, in order to provide the max possible bonus%. Most people are happy to slot attuned versions of the IOs they need, which you can buy from the market for the same price as the regular version. Mind you, if you want to boost these IOs at level 50... well, you can still slot attuned versions while leveling and then swap them out later for unattuned level 50 versions. ^_^

I'd say it depends on what you want. Standard rewards: few recipes but the chance for a PvP or Purple recipe drop. Incarnate XP. AE rewards: You can buy a lot of recipes (or other stuff) with tickets, and you earn tickets fast, but you don't get incarnate XP and there's no chance of a random purple. If you haven't slotted out your incarnate powers yet then choose standard rewards, at least most of the time, I'd say that much. ^_^ Also I want to plug my farmer of choice: claws/fire brute. The AoE damage on Claws is not to be overlooked, Spin recharges very fast and is an awesome PBAoE, and can be supplemented by cones Eviscerate and Shockwave (I usually slot Shockwave with a knockback > knockdown IO.) Toss in Fireball or Ball Lightning/Static Discharge, you got tons of AoE going.

You're still not getting it - very simple math here... 2 > 1. Fly > Stuck on the Ground What's not being said here is how much worse Super Jump and Teleport are in comparison to Super Speed or Flight. If anything, those two need buffing somehow. I never use either of them myself. I've used super speed and flight in missions constantly. I think I've only ever used teleport in a mission on a stone tank, and as for super jump... well you'd use combat jumping instead of course. I don't know, Flight seems perfectly fine to me and is incredibly useful, as has been pointed out. Super Speed is also incredibly useful, especially for stealthing. It makes perfect sense to me that Flight requires an extra power to reach the same speeds (roughly) as Super Speed, because it has quite a few other benefits as an outdoor travel power. If you increase the speed of flight, then what's the purpose of Afterburner? If you make Afterburner useless, then what do you replace it with? If flight is as fast as super speed and also has additional benefits of avoiding ground geography, then are we going to do anything with super jump and teleport so that they can keep up? It seems to me that we're A) Trying to fix something that isn't actually broken, and B) opening up a can of worms in terms of other things that will need to be adjusted or fixed or have a whole new power created to replace the one that we're invalidating.

I know that Luck of the Gambler Defense/Endurance IOs were down to about 10 total for sale at one point on the weekend. Luckily I sell those, because they were selling for as much as the +7.5% recharge ones for a while there. ^_^

A really bad costume?

Actually, if he’s trying to fill all the bids, the price would go down. More supply, less demand, assuming he’s able to affect things at all. I know I buy more than 100 converters a day, probably closer to several hundred a day.

My fake monies keep me warm at night. ^_^ I like to swim in it like Scrooge McDuck!

A Martial Arts/Willpower stalker is not objectively better than or even equal to a Martial Arts/Willpower Scrapper. The Stalker version of Martial Arts removes the only AoE attack they have (which admittedly isn't a very good one -- but any AoE is better than no AoE) and the Stalker version of Willpower removes Rise to the Challenge, a very useful power. Which is why people have said it depends on the sets in question. I also like to play fake tanker on my shield and my invul scrappers, and they can hold aggro pretty well. A stalker isn't going to fill that role. But yeah, in terms of doing single target damage there's no question you'd rather have a stalker, and depending on what sets you choose, maybe for AoE too. (I've played shield stalkers but never tried elec/shield on a stalker.)

I keep my Warshade on page 12, you'll never find it. Aha! The advantage of having 500 alts is finally revealed!

I miss those cysts. It was fun to run into something that was actually a surprise threat. 8)

It seems like a fair price to me. Considering that the Homecoming devs chose to bump the price on Winter Packs to 25 million (they were 10 mil on the SCORE server), I think they already took a look at this and made the decision that the pricing was fair. Now, what I think you could probably ask for and expect to get at some point would be an event where ATOs dropped from missions or something for a short time, and/or packs were a reward for something. Not a permanent change to make them much easier to get/cheaper, but a temporary window where you could get them even if you haven't accumulated a lot of influence or merits.

I like the Unai Council Earth farm map for my electric/shield scrapper. You get nice concentrated spawns that you can nuke one at a time and then move on to the next spawn, and usually my lightning rod and shield are up for every spawn. But it's not as fast as an AE fire farmer by a long shot.

I got two yesterday. So, you know, my anecdotal evidence trumps your anecdotal evidence. ;D