Ukase

I also lack the patience for it. There's a method called AFK-farming. You just park the brute/tank in the center of the map, with burn on auto. Come back when you feel like it and reset. All you do is craft/convert/sell when you're ready.

The premise is that if everyone had their own farmer, they wouldn't need to beg for a PL

This goes a bit beyond what the OP was asking, but if any player is patient, I routinely vendor all my excess common salvage for 275 inf (the 250 the vendor would pay, plus 25 for the AH fee). They do not sell instantly. But generally by the next day they have. And I often get more than the 275 I ask for. As the son of an economist playing in this easy money universe, it makes sense to me to do this. There are no taxes in CoH, so it makes sense to gather as much influence as I can. Why sell for 250 when I can get at least 275, and often more? Now, for a newer player who may not have the luxury of waiting, well, the vendor is a fine option. I have often bought common salvage from the AH at 10-50 inf and sold at the vendor for 250. You can make a tidy sum for a level 2 looking for SO money in fairly short order.

I would not want to dissuade anyone of playing gold side. But, if it's task forces you seek, you'll do better on blue side - which you won't be able to visit until you go through the rift at level 20. (Can't do it before level 20) Red side has task forces, too - just not as many. Historically, Blue side was it's own stand-alone game. Red side came much later, and gold side came later after that. So, it stands to reason why there's not as much content as blue side has. If I were you, I might consider having the group make 2 new characters. One a hero, for the blue side stuff, and one a villain for the red side stuff. If you find you like one side better, you may freely switch sides by visiting null the gull. In any event, regardless of your path - if you have questions when in game, use the help channel. Someone will likely have the answers you seek.

While this may be true, I've always found that on a team - some players don't move their characters to the battle fast enough. Some have longer load times, some just seem to march to the beat of their own drum - which is fine, but the fight is usually over when some of them arrive. Anecdotally, the "best" use I've seen of a bubbler is in the MSR. Solo, even with the damage boost, they are woefully inadequate to suit me. And, in the early levels, they are painful to play. Unless you take the PL to 50 route, and for me - when I do that, it just creates work, as now I've got to gather and use emp merits to play a character that is not fun for me to play. But you are right, there is a balancing act. That fine line between Damage, recharge, defense, resistance and hitpoints. The only 5 characteristics I've ever bothered to chase with set bonuses (aside from the kismet accuracy). When you reach that balance point, teaming pretty much slows you down just because of the recruiting process. I can usually get more merits per minute solo than I can teamed up, even with a good team, except when the weekly is particularly good, like Apex/Tin Mage or one of the Shard TFs. On some moments, when I see a low level defender state they're looking for team, I almost what to stop what I'm doing and form a team to help them out. Then, I think again, and remind myself that no good deed goes unpunished, in life, or in game.

Need may be too strong of a word. But, if the issue is all the begging for a PL/Farm run, a second account would resolve the issue. (at least for those who are weary of seeing the begging)

That pun is fantastic!

Off the top of my addled brain: Gullible - that silly chat with Null the gull where you become a immovable bird. Incarnate Rival - Save Madame Bellerose at least once in Dark Astoria before your final meeting in Dream Doctor's story arc Buddy Cop - Save Detective Hopp at least once in Dark Astoria before your final meeting in Dream Doctor's story arc. Firebug - Complete 10 arson side missions in mayhem missions Fire Marshall - Prevent 5 arson side missions in Safeguard missions Bomb Squad - Stop 5 bombing missions in Safeguard Missions. PPD Deputy - Rescue 20 PPD Hostages in Safeguard Missions Interceptor - Stop 10 Weapons Deals in Safeguard Missions Security Expert - Stop 5 Vault Break-ins in Safeguard Missions Obviously, all the Spend X time in X zone for this badge, Day Job badges, Security/threat level badges, badge-count badges, Recipe and Insp rejections badges, Inf earning, debt earning/working off, mentoring and such. History and Exploration badges are also, of course, character only badges. Completing "personal" stories - Yin, Eagle Eye, the Center, Deadlock are solo only, as well as the morality choice missions on gold side as well as the alignment morality missions on red/blue side. Completing various story arcs and arcs within zone. All invention and marketing/consignment badges.

There absolutely is. Marketing can be quite tedious, as can farming. But....so can replaying the same content with each character. The great thing about this game is - there's quite enough content to get a break in the repetition. Alternating between alignments can break the monotony as far as content goes. Seeing the sales on the marketing side can also raise dopamine levels. As for farming....well, that's why I do it afk.

I was so busy being silly, I neglected to respond to this post! Silly me! Very, very silly me. The way most of us afford such things is, well, simply put, we've put our previously acquired knowledge of IO sets to good use. I played back in live, and understood the basic mechanics of turning an RNG turd into a golden nugget. What this means, is when I get any recipe that drops, if I have the salvage for it, I craft it. If the AH suggests from bid history that I can make 3M on it, I'll sell as is. If not, I will convert it until I can sell it for 3m. But to do this, it requires other areas of knowledge about the game that I've learned in live, and had to re-learn here on HC because HC has changed some things from the way things were before the shut down. For example: Seeded salvage - the costs to us are capped. It wasn't that way in live, so I'd use my character in AE, regardless of archetype and powersets, and just complete any random non-fire-farm story for tickets. 540 of them for the rare salvage. The uncommon and common salvage is often cheap enough to simply buy, unless you're restricting yourself for an insane challenge, or you just don't have the inf when you take into account the crafting costs, and the list fee. So, if I'm on my challenge characters that aren't allowed to buy salvage, I'll go to AE and do a mission or two for tickets to get that specific salvage I need. When I finally craft whatever dropped (not the white recipes - only yellow, orange or purples), I slap it in the AH, click "Find" and see what the price is. If the inf is too low for my expensive time, I pull it back out and convert it. Now, converters are a cost! In my head, I consider each one worth 70k. Converters are best acquired via Merit Vendor, in my own opinion, BUT ONLY IF YOU DON'T HAVE A FARMER SET UP SPECIFICALLY TO GET EMPYRIAN MERITS. If you do have such a farmer, there's no sense wasting merits on converters, although, they have no real other wise use, if you ask me. Yes, you can get certain recipes and other enhancements for 100 reward merits, but the math says buying converters and selling converters will almost always give you more influence. I say this because it may not be only the OP that reads this. Pretty confident the OP doesn't have an emp farmer. If you would like to know more, DM me, I'll share what I know. In any event, at lower levels, converters are a great resource for influence. No need really to even craft/convert if you'd rather just play the game. Just see the merit vendor, get the converters in exchange for merit vendors, and either send me a tell - and if you catch me, I will pay you 70k each, as a courtesy, whether you have 10 or 1,000,000 of them. If you do have more than 10k worth, this will add to the time, because I can only hold 10k on each alt. That said, you will make far more influence by actually using the converters than selling them. But, you need to understand several more areas of the process to do so. (which IOs sell, how to get the salvage to minimize costs, how to get the recipes to minimize costs, etc) So, the default, easy answer to how does a new player get more influence - get reward merits, exchange for converters, sell converters, then pocket plenty of influence to slot your character with all the SOs you need, quite easily. Watch the auto-upgrade button, tho, until you are comfortable. In the 20's, the auto-upgrades can start to cost you quite a bit, like 500k or so each time. But, if you're doing task forces, story arcs, and exploring the many zones, you can gain these reward merits quickly, easily and enjoy yourself while you do. All I ask is that you never "beg" for influence. It's a bad look. When you ask for info on how to earn your own, you may be surprised by how much seed money you get to help you out. It's not unheard of for folks like myself to encourage marketing with seed money. Not enough to build your 50, but enough to get you started. Almost all of us are happy to teach you to fish, figuratively. Yomo will give you a fish - once. It's a small fish, but if he gave you a big fish, you'd eat too much and maybe choke on a bone. So, he gives you enough fish to keep you from starving, which is one fish more than I tend to give anyone. (For the folks at PETA, I'm speaking figuratively. No fish are harmed, or even consumed in this game)

I believe @Yomo Kimyata has influence at a level where if he were to stop and count it, the amount would change while counting, as bids are seemingly continuously being posted & filled, which results in a lower total in the short term, only to be recouped in the slightly longer short term - hours or a day or so. There are just too many beans to count. While that's just speculation on my part, my last tabulation of my own resources, resulted in a 160M opportunity cost, just from not marketing, and only counting the stacks. It's no longer feasible to track the pile without sacrificing the height of the pile.

I am what is some would call hirsute. I am dubious of such critters.

The set bonuses, aside from recharge are pretty much...well, not worth it. With the ATOs, and the newer sets like Reactive Defenses and Preventative Medicine offering 8.75%, I find myself able to skip purples entirely. Procs, as you say, can be quite useful, tho.

I think the scrapper & stalker are the most balanced across all levels of play. Often, with brutes, once a certain resist and/or defense threshold is reached, the difficulty can be increased and you can go nuts. With scrappers and stalkers and their comparatively lower HP (and thus regen), and their random crits...they seem to average out more consistently in the mid levels. Brutes are always great early, due to Fury. But in the middle levels, before 30, they are lacking, and pick back up in the mid-30's are then can do whatever you like with them, just about. The scrapper/stalker is more slow and steady. Less effective AoE due to a lack of taunt aura, so just not as effective - but still, with the crits and such, it's more consistent across all the levels - at least, that's my perception. I still would make a brute over a scrapper. Much better damage (anecdotally). Scrapper Crits often happen on the killing blow with only a sliver left, anecdotally. Combined with lower HP, they're not worth it to me. Fury is far more consistent. But that's another topic.

Sorry, Snarky. The RNG likes me more than you. If you want some let me know, I have over a thousand of them stashed. I'm only holding on to them in the event farming gets nerfed and the price of purples go up due to less supply.

You could be right. On Tequila, initially I assumed we couldn't, as the default setting had the "Close Tequila after start of the game" checked off, so it closed. I'm typically obtuse, so never noticed there were options, let alone click the tab and take a look. It wasn't until HC had issues with the manifest and had instructions on where to put the link to the temporary manifest did I notice that. The HC launcher had a similar setting that wasn't obvious to me, but I knew enough then to look for it. But, if that is the case, when folks like myself suggest dual boxing, I don't see follow up questions on how dual boxing is done, so I just assume they don't want to, for reasons that escape me.

My apologies then. That's just crazy to me. Kill one AV for xp? We used to do that with Mender Silo's arc - we'd just pop in, kill Recluse, exit and reset. We got like 4-5 bars of XP just for recluse. Dinged my 2nd level 50 on HC that way. Never thought to do it with a pissant like Quatrexin. He's usually just an EB when I do the arc.

I think this is probably the biggest disconnect here. "Unless they have two accounts"....why in the world doesn't everyone have two accounts? Or three? Three is the limit per shard. This game is ancient and just about every computer system alive can handle running three accounts. Why wouldn't you make more than one account? The reasons can be a multitude, I suppose. Ultimately, you don't have a second account because you don't want one. It's not worth it to you to do the work to make the 2nd account, to make the farmer so you can PL yourself when you want to. That's fine. But any cries in any channel for "New character looking for AE" will be met by me with silence. I think it was in the marketing section, I was analyzing the time it took to get from level 50 to vet level 48 vs the time it took to get from level 1 to vet level 27. (for the emp merits) The alt that was being PL'd got 2-3 purples recipes. Now, it was my alt, so I was fine with it. But if I'm doing the farming, and some person is getting the benefit of my farmer, I'll never know the purples they get off my effort. But when I see this happen, it just reinforces my own rule, never pl anyone. It's not like I need the purples. I have literally over 1000 in my base. 100 of each kind and then some. But, what I do need is for other players to need purples. Every purple they get decreases the demand for them slightly. That's not good for business. So, I keep mine. All of 'em.

So, I've done these patron arcs countless times. And it seems that there are a number of folks that jump in to join the last mission of BS - not for the xp levels, but for the access to patron powers so they don't have to do the unlock themselves. There are 4 patron arc options. Most of us do Black Scorpion because it's the fastest/easiest. If folks can skip it altogether, most will. I can almost guarantee you that it would likely not be run nearly as often, except by badge enthusiasts and those who simply love red side content if the patron pools were no longer unlocked, but available without the unlock. Nobody is doing these specifically for XP. They won't turn down the XP in most cases, but that's not why they're there. They're there for the unlock. Personally, I want Scorpion Shield as soon as I can get it. I don't want to be level 35 and then do the unlock, because then I can't get the Shield until level 38. I have, in some cases, had a PL'd alt be the initiating contact and while it was unslotted, my level 34 would be doing all the work. Not a super big deal, but I do detest red side content. All the stories I hear about not having to hunt, not having to zone hop for story arcs, that's patently false. It's the same deal on red side as it is blue. What's worse, the npcs are simply ugly. Who wants to look at bugs and snakes? Not me. But, I digress. I only endure it for the ability to only select the armor and forgo the other powers of the pool.

Oh me. Oh my. Forgive them, lord, they know not what they do. On a more serious tone, I get it with the brainstorm ideas. More clicking, right? First ya got to click each damn set of 20 into your inventory. Then you have to go to a crafting table and make the salvage at no cost. When you have the tons you have - you will get each salvage piece, several of them. You can avoid your fellow marketer's shenanigans and not over-pay for salvage for starters. Or, you can dump yours for sale cheaply, and still make over 500k per rare. That adds up! I should add - my strategy with brainstorms is far more about my attitude towards the market than profit. I was raised with this credo: "Every dollar you save multiplies to the bottom line." For every 4 rare salvage I don't have to buy, that's one damn IO I don't have to craft, convert and sell to get that 2m. And, best of all, those other marketers, essentially my competition, I suppose, I'm not putting any inf in their pockets, either. But that's just my old-curmudgeon way of looking at things, I suppose.

Oh..winter packs. I still have a vast number left to open! I have yet to relist any winter packs. Ever. That's a waste of good inf. I get that you don't have to actually open the pack and you pocket 15M (assuming at 25M sale) less AH fees. But within the packs is a lot more influence than 25M. The reward merits, the boosters, converters, the catalysts, the unslotters, and the "average 1.2 winter-Os" and those wonderful amplifiers, candy canes....I place each pack at a value of 40M, easy. Why? Because of the wonderful people who never read these forums and genuinely have no idea how easy it is to make a winter-O superior. Despite Yomo's fantastic guides, an incredible help channel where there's a number of folks like me who will take an hour to explain to anyone that wants to know more about the accumulation of inf, they are still out there, overspending. Catalysts are essentially free to anyone who plays a level 50 character. And if you have a farmer, you'll likely amass hundreds of them in short order. Take the winter-O, catalyze and make 30M just for that one IO. Never mind the rest of the goodies within the packs. Don't sell yourselves short!

Have you made this alt yet?

So, I have played here on Homecoming, but I've also got accounts on Rebirth server. The thing about the Rebirth server is that it's just as CoH was at shutdown, for the most part. There are a number of what I would call "stark" differences when it comes to the cost of enhancements. The first is converters. Converters are available on HC here via a random drop (ya might get 20 from leveling 1 to 50), and from the AH, and from the merit vendor at a cost of 3 converters for 1 reward merit. Back on live, this cost was 10 reward merits for 1 converter. They are not tradeable. Not accessible on the AH. But they will drop randomly at about the same rate as on HC. Another big difference is the cost of enhancement on the AH. On Rebirth, the population of their single server is..well, pretty low. Last I looked, the most players on during a weekend evening were about 60-70 players. As such, most folks don't even use the AH for big ticket items. They have a thread on their forums to trade for items in game. Here on HC - all invention salvage is seeded with a max cost for each tier. All rares cap at 1M. Back on live (and on Rebirth) there was no cap. Someone could buy all of a specific rare at whatever the cost, and repost it for 2-5x and if you weren't inclined to earn 540 tickets at AE for that specific salvage, you either had to burn merits at a merit vendor for a random rare, or pay the price, whatever it was. Would you like to pay 10M for a Chronal Skip? Purples/Very Rare recipes on HC - in the AH, I usually see them at 11.5 to 14M. Crafted, they might go for 14 to 20M. On Rebirth, or Live, they'd go for 150M to 275M, depending on your patience level. Just like here on HC, the sleeps, holds, immobs, confuses - they go for less than the melee, ranged & AoE damage ones. Leveling on HC is easier, even without the 2xp buff, because XP is awarded at a higher rate. On Rebirth, as back on live, there was no 2xp buff. Builds - stuff like ATOs, Winter-Os, Overwhelming Force...those also came from merits like here on HC. But on live, it was 400 merits for 1 ATO. Same with Winter-Os. They are not the inexpensive 100 merits like they are on HC. Now, one thing they did have - was they allowed you to get pvp IOs with emp merits and astral merits. Luna and her fabulous inspirations were not available in live. But they did have Astral Christy and Empyrean Mike. And you could get a number of recipes from them for 60 to 75 Emp merits. Even so - HC is far, far cheaper. We don't have Emp Mike, but we do get vet levels for threads and emp merits. That didn't happen on live, nor does it happen on Rebirth. Suffice it to say - things are about 10X cheaper on HC than on live. No exaggeration.

Sorry - I just realized how insane my post was and just hid it. It's not worth the mental energy to bicker back and forth.

Ha! At my age, anyone under 30 is a kid!