Ukase

I'm sure it's common knowledge among those who have made a farm of their own. If not - if you didn't read patch notes, or learn it from other players by chance, you'd never know. Sure, there are a lot of farms out there, but my guess is, most are either rigging the game in favor of their own character, for specific circumstance. Only a few seem to take great pains to ensure 100% xp. And, unfortunately, unless you're paying close attention to how much xp you get for a certain ranked mob (I don't - as I'm after the drops, not the xp), you'd probably never notice any discrepancy.

You made me curious. I knew that with custom mobs, the xp was going to vary, but man, some farms are definitely better than others. I was in one farm - and I was getting almost twice as much xp in Briggs as I was in another farm - no sense naming it here, who want's less xp? The strange thing is...both maps have an ally of sorts...the only difference must be in mob difficulty, but they're all dealing in fire. Other than the costumes, I really can't tell the difference between them, but the game seems to see one.

After consulting with a marketing peer, I think I'm going to sink a tremendous stack of inf, beyond the 2k I've already purchased. I've only opened a couple hundred of them so far. But, I'm making the assumption that these packs being on sale don't really help the little guy, the player with a smaller stack of influence. Sure, they can maybe get a few packs more than otherwise, but: If they just wanted cheaper ATOs & goodies within the packs and aren't concerned with the marketing aspect, they can only buy about ..40% more than they could before. I don't know the precise math, don't care to tabulate it. If they are thinking of the marketing, obviously, the more inf you have, the more you can buy. And, since the "buy-in" is 50% higher during this sale than the one last year, then odds are, fewer packs overall will be bought. Patch that tidbit in with the idea that they won't go on sale next year, if ever again...then someone with the really big stacks can help keep these prices lower or higher. Price them too high, and folks will just use the reward merits for them - and you lose inf. from lack of sales. But, if you know the math, and you make it easy on folks, you can still make a tidy sum. So why not?

There are better uses for the influence. The question is more, "how much time are you willing to spend on it?". The way I see it, if you have enough inf to fund your next alt, do you really need to sweat farming or marketing? A farmer can generate just from the defeats and selling the commons & enhancements enough in a day or so to fund an alt - depending on the build, of course. An AFK farmer may not make as much as an active one, but if you have two accounts - play on one, afk the other, there's really no "need" for the packs. But the temps & other goodies outside of the enhancements can come in handy. It's just a question of how much time do you want to spend clicking and opening, and if you're driven like some of us to accumulate big stacks of inf for whatever reasons you may have. If you've no issue with clicking, the winter packs on sale, well....they're essentially free inf - if you can afford to buy enough to make the average work for you. Some packs have zero Winter-Os. Some have two, some only have one. On average, you get 1.2 per pack. Selling each one for 10-11M (seemed to be the "instant" sale two days ago) you make about 10M every 10 packs just from the winters. And the reward merits, converters, brain storm ideas, boosters...all those add up. And, of course, patience can make these add up even more. Like...say next year, since they're not likely to go on sale again. Like ever. Your farmer will accumulate catalysts over time, so those are essentially just an opportunity cost if you use them to make the winters you get superior. Slot them, catalyze, unslot them, sell. The 15M you paid per pack will then offer you approx. 15-21M per pack on average, just for the winters. To me, even if it takes TWO years for all the big players in this niche to get through their inventory and for prices to normalize to pre-sale prices, you can make quite a profit. But, if such plotting and planning sucks the fun out of the game, there's no point in it, really.

Feel free to be judgemental, or a jerk. Be yourself, whomever that may be. I'm too obtuse at this early hour to take offense. There's only so much time in a day, so I don't play each of them daily, but I do play them all routinely. If they don't get play after 3 months, I tend to just respec them, get the IOs out, and delete them, then re-roll them - with the same name. That way, I'm only using a dozen names, not ALL of them. In the spirit of transparency, I have three accounts, and each one has a different "flavor" Wait - I have 4 accounts now, but the 4th just holds inf in email pretty much. Each account has a "brand" of sorts. The Ukase brand, which is more about order. (More defense, more HP when appropriate). The Gordian brand which is more chaos (recharge, dps-focused) and the Apache brand which are a blend of chaos/order. I make no apologies for pursuing variations of Ukase, Gordian or Apache named characters. Obviously, I can't control what anyone else does. But, I still have the right to be amused & appreciate or be annoyed by it. As for being an altaholic, I used to wonder about these people you refer to alt-aholics. I'm still not sure it means the same thing to everyone. As far as I can tell, everyone aside from maybe LB3k and Veracorp are altaholics. I know one guy that I don't think I've ever seen him on the same character twice. Like ever. I don't know for sure, but my guess is everyone has multiple characters. They may play one more often, but if you have more than one...is that the threshold for being an alt-aholic? Or is three? Or is it something else?

Not everyone has the capacity for dual boxing. I've gotten the Beast Within in two ways - first way, myself and two others simply used Aeon SF as a farm. Got the Cryogens, & the Lycanthropes. It didn't take as long as you think, the Lycanthropes. When you're not looking for badges, and you're on the lowest diff...what is that? Malicious, I think. Things go pretty quickly. You just have to make sure all are set to 0/8, because if you're not on discord, hard to know who will log back in first. The second way was using Kahn TF. I only got 6-7 per run, the first map. That took a while because, as you (Placta) state, you never know who's gonna turn. I think that's why I prefer the Aeon SF path. You KNOW the Dark Vamps will transform. No guessing needed. I used a target macro for Dark, and discovered a number of them...maybe 6-8 that weren't in formation. There were 20 in formation, if my memory isn't failing me. So, needed to reset it only twice for those. Unlike the damn Cryo's, had to reset it 9 times for that one.

I tried! Admittedly, I knew it was likely it would be taken on Excelsior and Everlasting. I have a character named Apache Fog. I got the name off of a race horse that an old girlfriend of mine owns. I liked the sound of it. So, I also made an Apache Fire, Apache Flame, Apache Mace, Apache Heat, Apache Rain, Apache Steel, and a lot of other Apache Named Characters. Then, last year, (2020), I see a character named Apache_Fire. Now, I checked their character info and saw that my character was made first. I promise you, this really bothers me. It shouldn't, but it does. It's like a peeve. I realize it's fuss over nothing, but it irks me. In any event, I've always felt like if you try to get a name like Brain Freeze, and someone already has it, using something like Bra1n Fr33zE is just sad. I mean, it's obvious you wanted Brain Freeze but can't get it because someone else has it already. But that's what makes the names in this game so fantastic! That creativity that develops a character's name, and how the name ties in with the power sets, or some other facet of the character. I truly understand that sometimes, a name is just so perfect for a character you have in mind, that you feel like you MUST adapt the name in some small way to use it. But it still irks me when it's my character's name that's been sort of copied. And I do think those that use numbers for letters are just not trying hard enough to come up with a suitable name. So I'm sometimes judgemental and a bit of a jerk. Nothing new there! I just can't help it. Mindsicle Nasty Neuralgia Hail Hitler (sorry if that's offensive. Hail may be a verb for a greeting, but it's also frozen rain, sort of. ) Sleet Sammy Nothing as fantastic as Brain Freeze, but not horrible suggestions.

There's a distinction between using it and then telling a newer player to use it. I typically use the wiki myself to find the answer to a newer player's question if I don't know it off the top of my head. I'll know if I need the HC or can safely use the older version. I prefer the older one because of where the search text box location is, and it auto-fills. The HC Wiki is not the same in this regard. No idea why they changed that, but they did. Eventually, I'll get used to it. I have both bookmarked, but in my case, I play on HC and Rebirth. So, using the HC Wiki would sometimes be incorrect for that server. Thus, my affinity for the original version.

Brain Freeze

I completely agree. The code of conduct is clear: If there are less than 1500 people logged in to a shard you may play with up to three accounts at once. If there are more than 1500 people logged into a shard you may only play with a single account. The code of conduct also lays out penalties if you violate these rules. What's not really clear to me is what magic number, if there is one, makes the server display the three red dots. I would think that zone events like MSRs & Hami Raids might put more stress on the server than standard mission play, but I've really no idea. It would seem like the servers display those red dots well before the 1500. It should be pointed out that it is the player's responsibility to check the shard population. Very grateful that the CoC lays out how to check the population easily. For convenience, https://forums.homecomingservers.com/code-of-conduct/ Scroll to #5 for multi-boxing policy.

Are you suggesting it doesn't?

Close. It's Perception Bias.

I've been itching to say this since I first became aware of Flea. I think Flea is by far, one of the most helpful people in game, at least on the Help channel. Odd..now that I've said it, I'm still itching.

What's confusing you? It is true, there are many ways to figuratively skin the cat that is "marketing". A few principles: You will need to have some idea of what items on the AH are worth to other players. This includes salvage, recipes and enhancements. You may need to be patient to save more inf on raw materials. You may lose some influence if you haven't been paying attention OR another marketer moves in on your niche and stays there, undercutting your potential for profits.

Hopefully, this one will be easier after they patch it. For now, I'm trying to remember how often those blue patches fall - and if Incadescence could be used in the same way as many do on Keyes. Since there's no timer, folks could all pause in that hallway before the fight begins and slot incan if they had something else slotted instead.

For one, stashing 2B per character is illogical, because then you can't earn any more inf - you're "full". For another, Scrooge McDuck would violate Disney's copyright. That would be a no-no. But, 1B per character is what I'm doing now. I would do more, but it's impractical to do so because of the way I will sometimes pull inf out of email in billion size chunks. And I ran out of room in email. So, I had to make a 4th account, OR, make another character that I would have to log out, then back in to email it, then log out, then back in to access it if needed. Or, I can just log in the 4th account (on a different server, of course) and email it from there. That seemed easier to me. Stashing in AH just makes the inf character bound instead of account bound, so email is a better option at this time. But when you can only carry a billion...you run out of room eventually.

I will continue to use it because it is useful. The HC Wiki is pretty much a standard copy. Very little has been updated to reflect the newer data. And, when I go to update certain things in the HC wiki, I find that it's already been updated, aside from a few things that weren't. (so I edit them and update it) I get that it's a work in progress, but until that progress is complete, there's absolutely nothing wrong with using it. It's the same thing, practically. I see no harm in it.

Perhaps "auto-hit" isn't the right term. Doesn't seem to need to hit anything. Just seems like a noisy version of a sustain...but I guess all blaster sustain toggles make some sort of noise. Never really noticed it on Caustic Aura or Frigid Protection, but it's there. Oh well, thanks for answering the question. Just wanted to be sure I didn't need to only use it against Fire attacks or something.

So, I've just come from running this on Relentless. I was the last person to arrive, on a fire/rad corruptor. The team comp was...6 other corruptors and one tank. We tried to get the tank say "Scourge" with every attack, but that didn't quite pan out. If I ever do this again, I'll try to make some targeting macros ahead of time. Shimmerings, the Scientists in the first mission, Rifters, Brickernauts...the specific AVs, all pretty hard to find in a crowd. Just tabbing through took some time. I'll say this - Relentless is a poor name for it. Stupid is the word you were probably looking for. I say Stupid because inspirations were disabled. Now why would you do that, after beefing up the npcs? Oh well, saved me some button mashing - except, I had brought supers. Then, thinking supers are disabled, "Okay, I'll use AH and overpay to get some large Insps right now". Those damn things were disabled, too. Whatever. Stupid is my term for it. You allow incarnates, but you disable inspirations. That doesn't make sense to me. But, lately a lot of things in game don't make sense to me. My fault for not reading more carefully. Moving on. The first four missions are fairly simple. Nothing terribly complicated if you're not pursuing badges. The last ripple where you're fighting Lady Gray, Dark Shadow, etc - it was pretty dull once Incandescence goes down. I don't see the excitement here. You get taunted by Hero 1, which is super annoying, but I get it, nothing we haven't dealt with before. But they're all just a big bag of hit points. They don't seem to do anything special, nothing exciting, no clever dialogue that I could tell. It's just button mashing, and the only real strategy is to use barrier on rotation. A yawn fest. Except that one group teleport..right beneath Hero 1's size 14 boot. Nice. I'm still traumatized, lol. Oh, before Incan and Hero 1 (and the others if you chose to fight them) - there's Glacia and Infernia. Why these two are such push-overs escapes me. They really should be quite pissed, given how many times many of us deliberately let them die to progress the TF forward more quickly. I would have expected some dialogue on that, too. Still consistently talkative, so I guess there's that. On Ripple Surge, it's nice that it count towards Gremlin defeats. I would love it if the shimmering patch that's left on the ground were more clearly defined. On my system, anyway, it's very hard to tell where Ripple's feet clearly are. They could be on the patch, or they could be his feet. It could use some more distinction, that's all. As far as it being challenging, the content isn't. What's challenging is taking a bunch of speed runners and having them all stick together. That is what's challenging. It still only took about an hour, and only a few defeats across the board. About 20 defeats in all, I think. Maybe 30. More than I expected, given the group. That one group teleport..right beneath Hero 1's size 14 boot. Nice. I'm still traumatized, lol. What really puzzled me was the pay off. A hami raid can get me 4 emp merits. So can this. If I'm chasing emp merits...the hami raid is the least hassle. Of course, a number of Astrals dropped, quite a few, so maybe it's not that bad. Seems to me the reward merits should be a lot higher, when contrasting with other content. Also, the influence for killing these AVs..dunno, seems like it should be more, since they're all souped up. Nothing at all wrong with the story from what I could tell. A little long, but that's on the chosen difficulty setting.

Just my opinion, this temp should be an auto-hit.

On "Attack Types" -- I'm probably over-thinking it, but in the context of Mud Bath (seems to be a sustain toggle for a blaster), for "Attack Types" it says AoE defense, Fire defense. I am not understanding why it even says "Attack Types", let alone what Mud Bath has to do with AoE Defense or Fire Defense. Just to rule it out, I toggled it on and stood in melee with a few npcs, and no change in those attributes, or any others. Shall I just ignore this? Am I missing something?

Okay...There's a lot of information you need...and I don't want to overload you with too much at once. So, here's just a tiny glimpse of what 5 seconds with a spines/fire brute with burn on auto, and quills and Blazing Aura toggles on. The 8,544 XP and the 20,504 are for lieutenants, not minions. It's just the #125 map, I'm doing them for tickets, as I need a lot of rare enhancements. Some "ebil marketers" are playing with the rare salvage in some fashion, where they are now selling for 500-700k, depending on how quickly you want to buy it. My farmers have no need of xp, so may as well do a couple of runs for tickets and not let those marketers have my influence. I'd pay 500k, but if the bid doesn't go through by the next day, I'll just use tickets. I stash all the rares that do drop in my character's vault, so I can fit more common and uncommon salvage in my standard inventory. It's not always how much you make, but how much you save. I try to keep all the inf I earn and to buy as little as possible from the AH. There is a chap named @Yomo Kimyata who is quite the student of economic theory. He may have mastered it, I dunno. But, if you have two characters, one character can sell a level 50 IO, (invention set, the kinds that give bonus) and another character can buy that same enhancement, only attuned, for the same price. But you have to be careful! If the first character prices it too cheap, someone else will get it before you can. To learn how to make that crafted IO into an attuned IO (or vice-versa), read about that, here: As for your p2w XP buff, that stops working when you reach 50, yes. That's part of the reason you're poor now - you're trading XP for influence. Disable that, and you'll be making more inf, for sure. As far as what recipes are good, and which are not, there is MUCH to say on that! I have my beliefs, Yomo will have his, other players can and do differ on the value of certain "looted" recipes. I could cover that here, and probably should, but others have already laid out how to determine the value of these items. The sad part is - it's boring for many players. Tedious. Not hard, just tedious and somewhat time-consuming until you get used to it and develop a disciplined system for performing these rather mundane tasks. In these forums, some players cannot be bothered to determine how to get the most out of a "looted item". So, they sell them at 1 influence, and get whatever the highest bid for that item is at that point in time. Others sweat these details, taking copious notes as to what's being sold, when, how many others are being sold, and what the last 5 prices are and who knows what else they could be tracking. When buying items, our player base mostly doesn't treat in-game currency like currency. They will spend whatever it takes to get what they want RIGHT NOW. They can afford to do this because they've played the game a lot. The more you play, the more inf you make. Especially at 50. Once you hit 50, I recommend you keep playing until you've collected a large enough pile of influence to slot your next character how you want to, without waiting around. Maybe 50 million if you're just going to use commons, 300 million if you're going to use IOs that have set bonuses. The difference between a brute with set bonuses and a brute without them will vary from build to build. They are not all build the same! Some brutes can do what yours can do while not even controlling the character. They just sit in the center of an asteroid map with burn on auto. Then they play the game with another account, relying on the brute for funds to get the enhancements the character they're actively playing will need. You can do that, too - but you don't need to if you don't want to. There are many paths to take, many options! None of them are wrong. Some may be more optimal. Some may be more fun. Pick fun. Optimal is great, too. If they're the same path, fun and optimal, you win! If it's just fun, you still win. If it's optimal, you win, but it means less. Spend some time reading the Market sub-section in these forums. You can learn a lot. Oh, about "rolling in influence", consider all the "looted recipes" after a large map. Each Common recipe can be vendored (sold) to the npc in AE for anywhere from 80-120K influence. A large map will get you a million just in those. The right uncommon or rare recipes, you can sell quickly for 2M. (a pvp recipe is likely to sell for 1.5M to 2M. Craft it, and ...looking at the market now, it will sell for 5-8M, depending on what's going on in that niche when you list it. A red fortune recipe can go for a decent price, too. 1.1 to 2M for those as well, because they can be converted easily to an LotG for just a few converters. (once they're crafted, of course) Recognizing the value of these items will take exposure to the AH over time. I can't just say, keep and craft these, sell those. I craft ALL the yellow, (uncommon) and orange (rare) and purple (very rare) recipes I get. I will stash the purples in my base for use by my characters, and I will convert any and all enhancements I craft into some that sell fairly well, fairly quickly. I've done this since ...June of 2019, I think, and I've over 350Billion now at last count. It adds up pretty quickly, once you figure things out. The good news is, you don't need nearly that much to enjoy yourself. Any more than 2-3 billion, as long as you're playing a level 50 character once a week or so, you should be fine. And if you need more, you can play your brute more.

They could definitely improve how long things are on beta. As I understand it, they have a large number of volunteers that test things before they even get to Beta. And then, the rest of us have maybe a month to check things out. That's just not enough time for a number of us. Certainly not me, unless I forgo playing on the standard server. The Beta server has a great option to insta-level to 50, and slot your character however you choose, even randomly if that suits you. But, what about the levels in between? While you can choose to any level you want to be, which is quite excellent, it still takes time to assess how the new powerset plays on a blaster, versus a corruptor, versus a defender at roughly levels 10,15,20,25,30,35,40,45 and finally 50 and incarnated. Run a mission or two at this level. Take a note or two on how it compares to other powersets, other ATs with the same powerset in secondary or primary, etc. I could say more about why I'd like more time, but I think I've said enough. This last patch hit the servers so fast, I truly believe the time I spent on Beta was wasted. And what sucks is I felt that way before I went to Beta. I was convinced by someone in game I had a responsibility to test things out. But three weekends isn't nearly enough time. (I wasn't gonna spend time during the week, I'm afk most of the time mid-week. Weekends are about the only time I can give full focus of my attention.)

They right click on your avatar and check your global. Or, if they see something you wrote in chat that was funny, or mean, or intelligent or stupid, they might also check in a similar fashion. There's /getglobalname localName which will tell folks what your global is from your character's name.

With level 40 SOs...at level 43, they're going to be rather useless. The inf you spent there, well...it could have been spent on level 30 IOs of the same type, and even if you couldn't get ALL of them that you wanted, you'd not have to rebuy them again. There's a lot of ways to proceed from here. I can pull back the curtain later in this thread, (not this post) share some useful paths to take, I can just gift you a large sum of inf so you can buy Common IOs right now, and then, maybe work your way, one day, to the very useful IOs that give set bonuses - which may be more than you're willing to do, from what I can tell. You mention the cost of these things being ridiculous, and compared to some other enhancements, I suppose that is true, in a relative sense. But, consider the idea that when you slot a given "Set", it's like a free enhancement that you didn't have to buy, and if the set is attuned, it works as you level up, getting stronger each level, and it scales down if you exemplar. (unless you exemplar too far below the level in which the set would normally occur) There's no need to use those,(set bonus IOs) of course. But, if the right recipes drop, and all you have to do is craft them (later when you reach 50), you'd be rolling in influence at that time, why wouldn't you? At level 50 - other than inspirations or p2w buffs you might buy, you don't really have expenses. So, as you play, it adds up. Even solo, it adds up. On a team, the kills come quickly, the inf pours in. The last time I paid attention, a kill most ITF, I think I got about 20M inf. If the only thing that's stopping you from proceeding to 50 is the cost of the enhancements, you let me know, I'll drop some inf on you, if you like. Not so much to take your motivation away, but enough to buy all the Common IOs you might need.