Yomo Kimyata

There are two types of "yellow rares" as far as I can tell. The first type (the "good" type) are in a rare set but don't require rare salvage to craft. Ex: Deflated Ego: To Hit Debuff. They are cheap to craft, and can be converted as rares right away. The second type (the "bad" type) are in a rare set but do require rare salvage to craft. Ex: Perf Shifter End Mod. These are rares in every way except for their color. So, I don't think that the conning has any effect here. The ones that really suck are the "orange uncommon", like the two Cleaving Blow recipes that require rare salvage but only craft into a really expensive uncommon IO. I have not memorized the whole list of these yet, and I get so annoyed by them that I usually just delete them out of spite.

I did some cleaning up and changed the links to make it easier to see what is what.

Every once in a while, someone asks how to sell something they own to themselves using the AH, so I thought I'd make this guide with an example. Yes, it is possible. I do it every marketing day. Let's start with the two main rules: A. You *CANNOT* sell from one character to the same character. The AH is flagged specifically so you can't do that. B. You *CAN* sell from one character to another character on the same account, or to one on another account. WHY WOULD YOU WANT TO DO THIS? Back on Live, before the email system, the only way to transfer cash or items between alts was either by trading through the AH or by finding a trustworthy counterparty. Pfft, like I'd trust a counterparty. If you wanted to transfer across servers, this was the only way. But now the easiest way to transfer inf is to email it to yourself, and you can transfer items via email as well. (Or if you are on the same server, you can be in the same SG and use base storage.) But on Homecoming, I do this for two reasons: to swap an unattuned IO for an attuned IO (or vice versa), or to change the level of a given recipe or IO. Remember that on Homecoming, certain items are fungible, or bucketed. A Red Fortune triple IO of any level goes into the AH system, and can be purchased at any level, or can be purchased as an attuned. I mostly do this with recipes or IOs that I crafted at one level, but I want them at a different level in order to convert them. NOTE: Since you are trading between two characters, you will pay a fee to the AH that is net 10% of the transfer price. I'm afraid that's non-negotiable. Let's give a specific example. I was looking through my alts, and I found one with this in her inventory: Hey, I can make that into a Luck of the Gambler! But at level 37, there are five different Defense IOs available, and I only have a 1/4 chance of getting a LotG if I convert by category: defense. If only this were a level 41, there would only be three Defense IOs available, and I would have a 50% chance to get a LotG. Improving those odds will save me a lot of converters over the long run! So how do I change this to a level 41? Well, my first step is to craft it (I could do this without crafting, but it's a little cheaper if I craft the lvl 37 recipe than if I trade it for a lvl 41 recipe and then craft it): So I've put it in the auction house and pull up the past history. Now comes the tricky part -- figuring out where to list it. There are two methods, depending on how exact you want to be. You want to find a level that is in the middle of the highest outstanding bid and the lowest outstanding offer. The exact (or close to exact) method would be to bid creep until you buy one, then sell the one you buy at 5 inf, and now you have a good idea of what the two goalposts are. Well, that's a pain in the tuckus, so I'm gonna use my years of experience and take an educated guess (which is the second method). In the Last 5, we see trades at 3mm and at 5mm, and I'd guess that it's going to be somewhere in the middle, and probably very close to if not equal to 3mm. So I throw in a 3.1mm bid to see what happens (I don't expect to buy anything): It does not transact, so we know that there isn't anything for sale at that level or lower. Now, and this is important, *TAKE YOUR BID DOWN*. We are going to be selling this exact item, and remember what I said before about not being able to trade with yourself on the same character. If you have bids and offers on the same item, the queue gets wonky and does things you may not expect. Ok, we take down that bid, and now we offer the item at that level. I like to use a number that is not a round number, so I can be sure the system is working correctly. So now I am going to offer the lvl 37 Red Fortune triple at that same level of 3.1mm. The risk I have here is that someone else has a bid at 3.1mm or higher that came into the system since the last trade. I'm willing to take that risk: Ok, since it didn't trade away, we know that my offer is higher than any outstanding bid, and since we didn't buy one earlier there is no other one offered more cheaply. This is now what I call the Lowest Outstanding Offer, and if I move relatively quickly, I know that I can buy it there on another character. NOTE: the AH charged me 5% of 3.1mm, or 155,000 inf. That note comes up in your chat log, but I forgot to take a screenie of it. So I log out and log on another character. Since I want to buy it at level 41, I set the parameters and put in a bid and presto!: If I now log out and log back on to the first character, I'll see that I sold it at my price: Note that the AH charged me an additional 155,000 inf, for a total net cost of 310,000 inf. It's up to you to decide if changing a lvl 37 to a lvl 41 is worth that fee or not. But changing a lvl 37 to an attuned certainly is, since otherwise it would cost you a catalyst that will cost you 1-2mm. Thus endeth the lesson. Thanks for coming to my TED Talk! * Not legally proof against fools.

So, Performance Shifters. I like markets that are big, BIG and the Performance Shifter proc is the one IO that anyone who is paying attention should have. Everyone gets free Stamina, and everyone gets that free slot. So early on I targeted Performance Shifters as a place to be, since I could reasonably expect that almost every new alt will get one in the long run. So early on in HC, there were only two Endurance Modification sets in the 21-50 range: Performance Shifters (rare) and Efficiency Adaptor (uncommon). For the most part, neither set had the greatest set bonuses, and trading in EA was light. Interest in Performance Shifter procs and End Mod were strong, End Mod/Recharge and End Mod/Accuracy were ok, and the Recharge/Accuracy and triple were meager. So I dedicated one of my characters to the End Mod market (Sonic Screwdriver, a sonic/beam rifle defender) and put together three basic strategies: 1. Buy lvl 21 EA recipes (and IOs too if they were cheap enough); craft; convert once by Endurance Modification to get a Performance Shifter; if a triple or R/A convert by set; 2. Buy cheap lvl 21 Perf Shifter IOs (R/A. E/R/A. E/R. E/A) and convert in set to the proc or the End Mod; 3. Buy lvl 21 PS recipes in R/A and E/R/A; craft; convert in set. Worked well and I considered this one of my 4-5 basic strategies. Good for a couple of hundred mm profit every time I checked in, which was probably 2-3 times a week. When HC announced the new End Mod sets, I was giddy. I figured that diluting the pool would make it significantly harder to get Performance Shifters, and I didn't see a compelling story for the new sets except for the Heal proc, so I anticipated a run on Performance Shifters. And I went all in. I created a SG base and filled it with IO storage, and I bought, crafted, and converted nearly 2000 performance shifters. I also stocked up on various recipes for another thousand or so. When the update dropped, I converted a bunch of EA to get the new sets and started making markets. Whee! I love the price discovery process. I traded a couple of hundred IOs that day for something in the 500mm to 1bn profit range. And then I started posting my Performance Shifters for a 1-2mm markup. At first, things went swimmingly, but then... Sad Trombone Supply kept coming into the market, and prices kept going back to normal. Now, some of that was that demand for the PS had dropped because there was a case to slot other sets now. But every time I tried to defend the prices, I kept buying more product. Prices went back to normal. Prices dropped *below* normal. And I'm scratching my head. Had someone else stocked up like I had, and was she gleefully smacking my bids? Did I miss some easy conversion trick? To this day, I don't really know but what I assume is that someone else was moving into the market and was willing and able to work for a lot less than I was. When overall demand started to drop (my estimate on how many new characters made per day dropped from 150-300 to 50-100), interest in the E/A and E/R went away, and I started having less time to dedicate to CoH in general, I dropped the niche from my regular rotation. I can't say I *lost* any money, but eventually I liquidated my inventory for a much lower profit than I had intended. I still check in every two weeks or so, and I'm still running a presence there, but my marketing time is generally set on significantly greener pastures than Performance Shifters now.

Why: I almost always solo. That's mostly because of constraints (and I almost never have the luxury of a solid block of time where I can do nothing but play play with others), but I enjoy it. I have no problem playing with others (and frankly some of the teaming complaints baffle me), but since I probably will play solo I build my characters to be self-sufficient. That's pretty trivial; this is a forgiving game. What: I make new alts for a variety of reasons, but mainly I like to try out new powersets and combinations. I try to experiment with every power to at least see what I feel about the animation, although sometimes I just skip the weak T1 attack. Respecs are cheap and easy, so I have zero regrets about choosing a bad power as I level. Where/How: Red, blue, gold. I generally follow a rough path that differs from color to color. Ex: redside I will generally go double xp, do paper missions until the mayhem, get a new contact, run their arc until completion and then if I've gained five levels do paper missions again and repeat. I'll alternate the contacts I choose based on what feels most fresh. I rarely halt XP anymore. To me, one of the reasons I'm playing is to get the progression, and honestly none of the content is so mind boggling that I feel I need to run it all with one character.

Just reserved the name Idle Speculator on Everlasting. Now to figure out an AT, powerset, and build.

That's good info, thanks!

Cowering or fist pumping forever. I think that releasing a hostage has a "defeat all" flag for the entire mob, while the Lost Cure seems to just remove the enemy entirely, so nothing gets defeated. but that's idle speculation.

Some updates on Faultline arcs: The Lost Cure has no effect on Kurse. The Lost Cure will defeat Muxley, which completes the mission. If you use the Lost Cure on the captors of any hostage (Mr. Yin, Fusionette, the Arbiter Sands) they cannot be freed and will just sit there cowering or pumping their fists throughout eternity. EDIT: this is incorrect. They will be freed once any cured Lost exit the mission entrance. However, this can take a really long time.

I've got a long rambling incoherent rant about the Perf Shifter market, but I think I'll just save it for the Monologue thread.

When I play blue side, I run Montague before I run Faultline. The Lost Cure takes out a bunch of bosses, but some missions will not complete if you take out the wrong ones. I'm thinking of Free My Daddy in particular -- you can zap every Lost in the place *except* the mob that is guarding Mr. Yin. I've never thought about using it on Muxley or Kurse. I'll have to try that next time.

Never have I ever created and levelled a character to 50 based entirely on a bad pun. Ok, I'll drink now.

I was going to ask what a Mora was, but then I realized. It's when the moon hits your eye like a big pizza pie.

I’ve always considered this to be part of the programming, like how Nemesis goes untouchable at 25% or whatever. I’ve rarely found it to be a serious problem ( although it’s a pain when Diabolique or whoever it is flies away like crazy). I have a trick that I use. I have NO IDEA if there is any validity to it or if it’s just a superstition I came up with. When I’m coming up to a quartile in an AV’s health (when they normally say something smarmy) *I* run away a short distance. They pursue me, I blast them through the health quartile, they say their piece, and they don’t seem to run away. My superstition is based on the off chance that the run reflex is triggered based on HP total and that if they are in “pursue” mode they don’t seem to flip to “run” mode. I can not emphasize enough that I have no idea if this is true or not, but it helps me sleep at night and I rarely chase AVs.

My suggestions for you, based on your post and assuming you are working on your first character: Sell all your rare salvage drops for the first 30 levels or so. You’ll need that 400-500k of influence more than you need to save the salvage. Later on when you are cash flow positive, save them in storage if you want. Sell all your white and yellow salvage, either on the AH or at a vendor. At this point in the game, there is a pretty strong flow of buyers and sellers, so it’s not difficult to buy what you need when you need it. Salvage is seeded and fungible. “Seeded” means that the devs put 10mm for sale at 10k, 100k, and 1mm respectively for white, yellow, and orange salvage. That’s your cap and you will always be able to buy there. “Fungible” means that every specific salvage is bucketed with all salvage of the same color. You sell a Hamidon Goo; someone buys it as an Alien Blood Sample. In short, you will always be able to buy salvage on the AH, at some price. For me, I usually only buy salvage when I need it (more accurately a session before I need it). I have large amounts of orange and yellow salvage in reserve, in case someone gets frisky and tries to run prices up, and I have one SG full of high level orange salvage to make crafting purples in volume faster. happy hunting!

If they just renamed it Voltaic Blaster, everyone would stop complaining about how sucky they think it is.

And that's why the dinosaurs are extinct.

I'll be honest, I could probably come up with a strategy that fits these criteria for *almost* every item in the /AH.

You know, I was expecting the thread to be about painting the tape, but it's all good!

I generally don't play my 50s that much, and I find that if I need pets for a given situation, they are almost certainly underpowered for the fight. That said, either avoid knockback, or pick up knockback!

Some of us just call it Talk Day.

There is no such thing as a bad deal in HC's economy. A congenital idiot can make do as well as a once-in-a-lifetime genius. It's really easy to get by!

The auto-update option now defaults to +3 for every single SO you have slotted. i appreciate the thought, but in practice it's a huge inf suck.

On live, you really couldn't keep your SOs at +3 consistently until your 40s, IIRC. But now you can auto-upgrade every SO whenever you want, versus back in the day you had to do it manually. If you are really levelling so fast (PLing) you probably don't need or want to upgrade your SOs to +3 every level.