Yomo Kimyata

To be honest, the fastest way is to two-box, which is technically solo, which can get you from 1-50 in a number of hours, but I doubt you are talking about that. If we are talking about some sort of challenge, where people would compete against the clock, it is intellectually interesting to me to think about how I would approach it. first question is: self-funding or not? I made a thread a long time ago about speed inf gathering, and it’s not as lucrative as it once was, but you could probably still pull it off. Second question is what types of missions, if any? AE farms would probably be fastest, followed by regular missions, lastly street sweeping. if I were to go down this path, I would have a catheter installed, self-fund, and mainly do paper missions, specifically Council missions. I’d probably start blue side at +1/x1 (which is my starting default) and run my first set of contacts (probably natural origin). By the time I hit level 5, I would expect to have enough inf to keep myself in SOs and I would start running paper missions. Depending on your AT and power choices (I’d probably pick some sort of brute, definitely one that is AoE friendly, because I prefer melee and going to the hospital will shave previous time off your goals), then it’s just pushing the limits on your +/x to max out your xp. Double xp? Sure. Normally, I go +1/x1 to +1/x3 to +2/x3 to +2/x5 to +3/x5 to +3/x8 and I usually don’t go +4/x8 pre 50 unless I’m playing something really overpowered. But for xp gain I might prioritize the x over the + and shoot for +1/x8 ASAP. I’ve never tried to do it in a single session—not even close. But I suspect someone could easily pull it off before 8 hours of double speed expired. Even faster if you add 8 hours of boosters as soon as you can.

Yeah, I found that to be the interesting part as well. We don't often get supply droughts.

It's been a while since I took my fearmonger out for a spin, but you don't see a lot of runners with the terrorized mechanic. IIRC if they are in cower mode and take damage, they either counter attack or run away for a few seconds before going back into cower mode. @Bionic_Flea had a good post about this titled "Phobophobia" in General a while back and there was some good stuff in there.

Two more things I'll add to this that may be a little esoteric. Weaken Resolve takes a *lot* of procs. And you should be pretty much maxed out in terms of activation percentage. Don't sleep on the two +to hit procs -- they can have some real usefulness! Just make sure you have plenty of accuracy built in the power in the first place. If you are a knockdown freak like myself, Takeoff (from Mighty Leap) is an auto-hit (I think) knockdown. It's only available when Mighty Leap is active, but it is quick, easy, and tremendously amusing to click Mighty Leap, then Takeoff, then turn off Mighty Leap and get back to business in the midst of all that floppery.

Massive demand and reduced supply of raw materials. A robber baron's wet dream.

I love macro events, and I particularly *love* unannounced macro events. Anyone want to guess what happens when you give 10x experience events?

That's exactly what a shapeshifter would say.

If it’s made a toggle, then they should change it to the FF/sonic resonance/whirlwind model and make that endurance cost usurious. And make it knock back .

I think you'll find that you will have plenty of endurance with the theft of essence proc in DNA siphon and Parasitic Aura (I usually slot the latter with 5x panacea and the theft proc) so you can probably lighten up a bit on your other investments in endurance reductions. For almost all my bio alts (and I have a lot of them) I don't need to give Health more than a Panacea proc and Stamina more than a Perf Shifter proc.

Well... On the plus side there are still lots of opportunities for marketers. On the down side, user demand is waning daily, so unless you are selling to marketers, it's difficult to maintain certain benchmarks. I think it is still possible to make a billion inf profit from zero in 24 hours, but you'd really need to know what you are doing, and you'd have to do it on a weekend. My days of raking in 2bn a day for an hour's work are long behind me. But at the end of the day, all you need to know is how converters work.

You are way too late for that. Good luck with yourself!

This is ten pounds of wrong in a five pound bag. You do you, and best of luck with that!

Radiation Emission would be nice too, with no accuracy issues.

My aesthetic objection was more for using Dark Mastery, since my distaste for tentacles is legendary. That said, my absolute stunner project is a Dark/Psychic defender, but that's not on my hot list right now. The scrapper I'm working on that could benefit from immobilize is my ice/fire scrapper, and it's working out pretty well. I do also have a rad/stone scrapper that just dinged 41 and that guy is one hungry hungry hippo endurance-wise. I'm hoping that I won't need to go all in on endurance like in this build, but we will see how things pan out now that I've got a third perf shifter proc in the build. Here's what I'm aiming towards, although the order is currently fubar. I'm particularly proud of Atom Smasher because 1. I've always wanted that to be a knockdown power and 2. it's nice to find a use for the Stupefy proc. Sometimes it procs twice which knocks back and I'm going to consider taking out the Overwhelming Force proc and just let knockback be knockback.

I always skip both the ice swords since I cannot stand the looks of them -- you can do fine without them, especially GIS. I see the Theft of Essence proc in DNA Siphon, but I'd put one in Parasitic Aura as well. Those two powers are blue bar fillers and you'll probably find you can free up some slots elsewhere since you should not be dying for endurance recovery. Honestly, I'd probably put the Critical Strikes proc in either Genetic Contamination or Ice Sword if you take it.

Thanks, that's a good idea, but sadly not a fix. Same issue even when all fonts are 4 points smaller. It seems to be icon size not font size.

For some powers, there are too many DSO options and some cannot be chosen. See this image: I can select any of the top sixteen DSOs, but the bottom four are unclickable. Of course, those are the ones I want to use!

It sounds like this is your first main character. Although eventually inf falls from the sky in this game, it's tough to bootstrap your first character without playing some market tricks. But if you don't want to play market tricks, here are a few thoughts of mine: -- In general, you can vendor every enhancement drop you get (unless you want to slot it), vendor every common, uncommon, and rare recipe you get (unless you want to craft it or it looks really valuable in which case put it on the /AH), vendor every piece of white and yellow salvage, and sell every piece of orange salvage on the /AH. You don't need to hoard anything for later. Even if you decide you want to start crafting things later, you can always buy the salvage you need. -- You can really go completely without any enhancements slotted up until level 15 or so. And then an SO build will suit you just fine unless you are looking to run solo TFs at +4/x8. There is a button you can press on the enhancement screen that will upgrade all your SOs to +3 -- it's expensive to do that every level but every three levels is doable. -- I wrote a guide on "essential" IOs and when to slot them. I can't link to it right now but you can find it in the Guides section of the forums. that should help you get a feel for what non-SOs you should look for and to save your inf towards. -- See my signature if you are interested in some start-up funds. Don't stress and have fun. By the time you are in your mid-30s you should be generating positive cash flow. And honestly, if you just post in Help that you need something people will almost certainly be kind and generous.

Welcome to the dark side! I was looking for AoE Immob on a scrapper: to stop runners (especially bosses); to keep foes in damage auras/patches; and to work with stun/disorient to provide an ersatz AoE hold. This is the kind of thing I spend much of my time on now -- mez builds for melee characters. It's entertaining to me. I think I found my solution, but I don't like it aesthetically! I'll have to check to see if that's an immobilize that works with knockdown or not. I can never remember which types do and which don't.

The programming does not seem to skew the RNG, nor do any empirical tests seem to indicate that the RNG is anything but pseudo-random.

There were some good ideas in this thread, some of which were mastermindy:

It's encouraging to see how many different approaches there are. I used to keep a spreadsheet, but I haven't looked at it in over six months. I have 187 characters on all five shards, from level 2 to 50. I almost always multi-task, but usually have a few projects running at a time. Those projects may be conceptual or practical (a supergroup based on XYZ, or a powerset I'm not familiar with, or exploring how to abuse certain mechanics). If I keep interest in it, I'll play it to 50. I may play it into incarnates, but not always. I rarely play my 50s for any length of time though, because I seem to mostly enjoy the levelling process. If I lose interest in it, it falls to the wayside until or unless there is something about it that piques my interest. On the other hand, I have a lot of marketing alts. Very few of them are active, but I am sure that I have enough of anything I need or could ever need, even if the game goes pear-shaped. I probably have between ten and twenty supergroup bases that I use exclusively for storage (potential storage mostly). If I need something on an alt, and I cannot buy it quickly and cheaply, and I can remember which of my other alts works on creating it or has it in /AH inventory, then I'll dump 10-50-100 into the market. It's kind of stupid, because there is no way I'll ever need, say, a few hundred Kinetic Combats but when that day comes I'll be ready. But for the most part I just put in low bids and wait for someone to sell it to me for half price. I don't see the point of storing specific salvage, but I've got significant amounts stored on defunct characters in case someone else wants to destabilize the marketplace. My philosophy is to let other people store it for me until we get to the day when people stop putting recipes or salvage or converters into the /AH. That's why I always like to pay decent prices for raw materials -- to keep people coming back to sell more while they buy my finished goods. One way to keep things easily accessible is to buy a lot of hero and/or winter packs. When you open those it all goes into your Character Items menu which can be opened by any character on your account, at any time (even in missions). This is why I don't bother buying things like ATOs or WOs for personal use.

I would never consider selling inf for a real world currency, but I suspect that if there were an actual market for it, it would be a lot faster to make money by putting a dollar in a savings account and waiting for interest to accrue. In a million years, I'll be rich, RICH!

Sadly I've got one of those at 50 too...

This is the only MM I've run to 50, and I recall it being very strong (haven't played it in over a year). I'm looking at the build I have now in game (don't have it in Mids) and it looks pretty generic. It looks like I fit in every one of the pet uniques and split Mark of Supremecy three ways. If I re-did it today it would probably be more sophisticated, I think.