Yomo Kimyata

I will almost always 100% support new weapon skins. +1

It’s almost certainly an anchoring effect that ATOs are half the price or less of winter Os. I rarely use anything except Avalanche myself, and I use that everywhere.

I haven't run the numbers, since that sounds perilously like work to me. From experience, the mean seems to work out around 1.2-1.3 ATOs per pack, and it's probably pretty straight forward to come up with an approximate standard deviation. I generally do Packs in bunches of 25 to keep it manageable, and after ?a few hundred? bunches over the last year or so, I do not recall ever getting less than 28 ATOs or ever getting more than 38 ATOs, but I am definitely not a strict record keeper. You might be ok with 10, but 25 is a good number for me. Oddly enough I bought about 30 of those yesterday, but none at your usurious prices!

That said, there's no shame in spending merits directly for things. It may not be the most efficient way, but it gets the job done, and if you don't mind paying more than you have to, do as ye will. Just because it may be more efficient to bake your own bread doesn't mean that there is anything wrong with buying a loaf at the grocery store!

I would incarnate them from worst to play to best to play, based on your personal preference. I would suspect that incarnates would probably really help a few of your builds (based on my personal experience), and I think you'll get a real rush as a character goes from "meh" to awesome.

One of us! One of us!

Sorry, just wanted to avoid confusion.

Bless you for this, especially since I am a net buyer nowadays thanks to your work! I cannot imagine how tedious this would be -- I generally don't post more than 50 IOs at a time because of ADHD burnout!

On an aside, I agree with @Lockpickand @Sir Myshkinhere -- I feel like the billion inf build is mostly a mythical beast nowadays. I mean, sure, you CAN spend a billion inf, but even at buy-it-NAO prices I think most high end builds cost 1/2 to 2/3 of a large, especially if you are crafting and converting on the way.

My play style is primarily what I call Accelerated XP Mission Content (AXMC, trademark pending), so I build alts quickly and equip them with IO sets as I go, usually starting at lvl 17. I'd say that by level 17, each of my characters has need for about 200mm in inf for staples like Miracle procs and ATO sets, and I can generally make that in the AH from scratch by the time I level to 17. So it's safe to say that I'm accumulating inf a lot faster than I need it. I have about ten 50s, and the only real difference between my lvl 49 builds and my lvl 50 builds are purples if I want to swap out sets and catalysts, and I've never not had enough cash on that character to buy them as soon as I ding 50. I don't think I'll start PLing to 50, since I don't enjoy the end game as much as I do the rest of it, but if I did, I'd say I think that a "correct" length of time it should take to kit it out would be a week or two. I'm pretty much just making that number up, but it feels right to me.

I made this the other day, but lost interest...

The latter. Also, if you are buying in merits one is significantly cheaper and occasionally gives converters a run for its money in terms of monetizing merits.

Identical demand, but it is way easier to get the Steadfast. Supply!

Nerf prose.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way – in short, nerf regen.

I'd like to open this to all requests, but my specific beef is with ATOs and Winter Os. It seems silly to me that they cost the same amount in terms of merits, while the cost of the packs that generate them are so different (most of the time, exception of course during the winter Winter events). I don't particularly care if the cost in merits of Winter-Os goes up, or if the cost of ATOs go down, but if we got closer to a 2 or 2.5 to 1 ratio, I think we would see more people using merits for ATOs. I would find this to be interesting and engaging.

I am incredibly suspicious of this thread! Where are the calls for a toxic damage aura, or a bio armor type toggle?!? I guess it's working as intended!

And yet, purple recipes and IOs have plummeted. It's almost like there's too much supply!

I seem to have four distinct mental values of converters in my head at all times. From lowest to highest, first is where I can buy them in bulk on the AH, which is on the low end of 60-80k a piece. Next is the mental accounting of 100k per converter when I'm trying to decide if it's worth converting within a set to get a particular piece, or within a category to get a particular set. That's just a rule of thumb left over from when converters were worth that, and it's a nice round number. Next is the merit value of 333,333, which is simply the cost of buying a merit with cash and converting to converters. That feels like a pretty good of thumb as well for "what is the value added of a converter," albeit on the low side. Finally, there is what I think the real value in inf is of the converter, which ranges in my head from 500k on up. I can rarely bring myself to buy converters with merits, simply because I feel that I'm always better off using the merits for something else, even though I never do. Like I said, i have the hoarding disease.

Let me ask the question to the farmers out there: what’s your end game? Is it to amass just enough inf to equip an alt you are trying to build, or is it to just build big piles of inf, or other? Do you farm to buy something in particular, or do you find it peaceful and fun, or other? It is clear that Jimmy et al are concerned about inf entering the system, and the fastest way that happens is through 50s farming. The venom towards AFK farming is clear, and I personally agree. It is detrimental to the system, but it benefits the individuals who engage in it, so the way to avoid moral hazard is through fiat. That sucks if you were benefitting, and I realize it’s cold comfort to hear it’s better for everyone when it’s not as better for you as it used to be.

I've got a lvl 50 BA/Shield brute, and he would probably run better as a scrapper, but he's pretty awesome as a brute. I suggest building for recharge. You can put a Force Feedback +recharge in just about every attack, but I only do for the AoE attacks. It's pretty easy to hit soft cap positional defense numbers on melee and ranged. You can probably hit it on AoE as well, but it didn't seem worth the effort for me.

A tutorial like the crafting one would work wonders.

@JimmyI was with you 100% until this last paragraph. Personally, I don't think that any of those adjectives are accurate for the current system. It is a very simple system, and if you made it simpler, which I am not opposed to, then a month later you are going to get the same people saying the same things that they choose to not use the system. You want to democratize this? I thought we were already there, but here's what I will do. I was already giving away 20mm inf to anyone who sent me an in-game email at @Yomo, but I'll also post a ridiculously simple system that will guarantee* 1bn in profit over a no more than 30 day period and with no more than 20,000 clicks. Here's the system: Buy 10 yellow recipes that do not require rare salvage at a level under level 50. Buy 100 converters, or 10 per recipe. Craft the yellow and convert by category until you have a rare. If the LOWEST price in the last 5 is over 1mm, post the IO at 1mm. If not, convert by rare until LOWEST last 5 is over 1mm. Wait until things sell. Repeat 100 times. This is a stupid system and is far from obscure or unintuitive or difficult. It is, however, time and click intensive. That is what people are paying for. *Not a guarantee

Good to see that you are doing your part. Would you like to learn more?

Jimmy, stop stealing my material!