Ukase

So...the winter event will soon be upon us! Adam Smith, economist now long dead, suggested rational self-interest in a free-market economy leads to economic well-being. While I don't pretend that the AH is a free-market, given the seeding the devs do, nor am I proposing all players act in rational self-interest (crazy badgers), I do think part of this premise will have an impact in the coming months. With the assumption that the sale repeats itself, many of us are going to do our best to act in our best self-interest in an effort to enjoy the meta-game of the AH market. Some of us are going to buy anywhere from 1 to maybe even 10000 or more winter packs when(if?) they go on sale for 10M. So what impact will this have on: Catalysts Converters Boosters Ability to team for weekly tfs Unslotters Rare Salvage (due to brain storm ideas) and of course, Winter-Os. I have no idea what many of you will do. I'm still mulling it over in my head what I will do. I can say that from what I got last year, without selling too many of the Winter-Os and using a fair number of them in my alts, I still came out ahead. Plenty of reward merits allowed me to only team up for tfs when I wanted a notice of the well, as I no longer have a need for reward merits, having so many in my email from them. My farmers give me all the catalysts I need, so the ones I get from the pack may get sold, or used on winter-os if it's easier than having the farmer trade them off to my alt. Boosters will probably drop a bit in price, too. Unslotters...sheesh, I still have over 4000 of these. Guess I should just flood the market with them. Rare salvage...thanks (or not) to the seeding, I think no matter what happens prices will never go up over 500k for very long. But the big value in the winter packs has always been the winter-Os. They currently range - non-catalyzed - from about 18-23M, depending on when you catch the sale. The superiors are still going for 25-30M, sometimes as high as 35M or as low as 5k. (that I've seen) But this sale will be different from last year, I think, in that more players have more inf. I know I do. More players will also know about the sale, too. So how will they approach this and what impact will it have on Winter-O prices? I think for the most part, prices on Winter-O's will drop a bit, as demand will seem to drop as people wait for the sale. Then when the sale hits - most folks will dump their winter-os on the market, trying to recoup investment. Others will stash the O's planning on using them, or waiting for the market to pick back up and make more profit. Last year, prices picked back up, I think it was in May. This year, I expect them to stay lower, longer, but I could be wrong. Others will certainly bid low on these in anticipation of playing a mid-run game and reposting them at a higher price. How low will they go?! 7M? 10M? I think they sell for what they sell for now, due to the price of the pack. So, I suspect Entombed will drop to about the same as a kheldian ATO. Blistering Cold will be about the same as a brute ATO. So, 6-10M is my guess...until folks buy them up too fast, then the price creeps up to about 12-15 and it'll stay there, due to uncertainty about how much inventory is stashed in emails out there. Nobody wants to be the guy who has to pull the item of the market because it's not selling, so there's going to be uncertainty for sure. I just wish I could remember how it played out last year. I confess, I'm mainly buying them for the Experienced, the Amplifiers and the reward merits. The cats and converters, boosters I can use or sell, doesn't matter. I'll never use a fraction of the tailor tokens, nor the respecs. The windfalls have proven to be glitched in some way as far as 25% more inf goes. When making a character, I'm often torn between the very rare for the recharge, or the superior winter-o for the defense. I wonder how many are equally as torn. It's tough to predict what others will do when you have no idea if they think like you. So, I can really take or leave the Winter-Os on all but my farmers. And since farmers bring me purples, and not Winter-Os, it's an easier choice. Ultimately, I suspect afk-farming will be addressed in some fashion, in some way - without impacting active farming, so the demand for these may drop at some time in the future. But for now, farming is fairly popular, still lucrative and likely to continue. So what are your guesses? Use this opportunity to share your insights with us mere mortals who aren't yet in the trillion inf club. Or mis-direct us! Or speak of nerfing regen!

I expect more than a few players to have good success on this strategy - but you'll have to be really, really fast. I think that there are a number of players who had deep pockets and did bids like this - but have stopped playing for whatever reason. And their bids will remain in place forever - until filled or the game crashes to a close. How many? No idea. Some of you will be lucky, (or just smart and quick) for sure.

The angry farmer in me says "that's what you get for only trying to bid 1 million for a rare in the first place." They should ALL be worth 2 million, but that's just my narrow minded thinking. Could have been much, much worse. I once paid 400 million for 4 Micros. (1.6 Billion! for the math-challenged folks)

Like most folks, in the low levels, I grab Sands of Mu from p2w to get some kind of attack chain while I'm waiting for my two powers to recharge. But Sands of Mu...so annoying when it misses...and as much as I'd like it to be auto-hit, I know that's not a real solution. But, since the CoH we all knew is now dead, and there's this new flavor of CoH by you HC folks - could we implement some kind of mechanic where when you use Sands, or Flurry that if the rng says you miss, you don't miss all the punches? Is it at all realistic to fight someone, and they dodge 8 punches in a row? I mean, I know they're telegraphed with poor form with the head down and swingin' away like a 6 year old who got his candy stolen, but all of them miss? Argh! How about just the first three? Then the streak breaker can clean things up, let you hit at least one shot in there.

I am in the habit of verifying/validating the manifest when, for whatever reason, my mouse cursor - when it turns into a hand to grab a piece of salvage or an enhancement doesn't turn into a fist. Never am quite sure for a moment if it's user error or mouse glitch - but when I verify, it goes away. In any event - using HC launcher, I click on those 3 very tiny little dots and scroll down to verify, and it says, "verifying", but after 5 minutes...there is no progress. This seems odd to me, as typically with Tequila, validating files take about 30 seconds. After 10 minutes, still nothing.

The big irritant I have with the chance from Stun to Power Crash is the reduction in recharge time, and the change from single target to cone. While it's probably going to be a plus...I have Touch of Death %Neg Energy, and Glad Strike's % Smashing, Mako's % Lethal and Perfect Zinger's % psionic. (The plan is to unslot the Mako's and toss in the -res Fury of Glad., take out the Glad Strike % Smashing and throw in the Eradication % energy....but I'm thinking the change from melee to cone will throw off the odds.) And I get to keep them in there...if I don't ever respec the character, if I understand the patch notes correctly. Seems like a strange thing.

If I only count the time the AH window is open, I make about 500M every 5 minutes. The problem is - I only have the window open 2-3 times a day. And the inf made isn't made the first time I open the window, but the next time I open it. And sometimes it's 300M, others close to 700m. On average, about 500m, and while the window's closed, no telling what inf is being earned because I'm playing the game and not using metrics to track it. People have varying interests - but I don't understand why more folks aren't marketing AND afk-farming. The two go hand in hand quite nicely.

So a badge specifically for ATs with pets? How's that going to go over for the badge hounds that don't have pets?

At this time, no. Not to my knowledge.

In Kings Row, Entering the Royal Refinery neighborhood: [08:05] [NPC] Gravedigger Slicer: That sweet sterio is as good as mine. Granted, I don't expect proper spelling from a Gravedigger Slicer, but since he's saying it, and not spelling it...

There is one that seems to work in AE. Recipe rejections. Inf earned - no. Damage taken/dealt - no.

Hmm...my 1439 "Personal Record" came at the hands of my ice/cold corruptor with the three Targeted AoEs, with burnout and heatloss to mitigate any end crash (hardly necessary in the msr) But bonfire...that's interesting.

Number Six out of RWZ. This arc should either be solo'd, or if you're going to team, do so with some friends that are not inclined to speed through. I say this because of the number of easter eggs in the missions - you find them all, you get a badge. And I am fairly confident only the avid badge hunters will have taken the time to find the items. It's also an arc that is just different in the way it's presented or something. I can't put my finger on it, but it's one of the better ones in my opinion.

It is true - your trailing numbers do indicate the order in which your sg was registered. Mine primary base is 233 on Excelsior. On Torch, it's 1019. The base I made a month ago for a challenge group was 14123, That's a lot of supergroup bases!

My personal best for V merits in a ship raid was 1439 Vg merits. At 30 to 1....if you're getting 100+ merits, you're raking in over 3000 vg merits a run...how? I've got a ice/cold corruptor with sleet, ice storm, blizzard, burnout and judgement...I can't fathom much more AoE goodness than that.

Ran SSA 1, blue side (skyway) 20 reward merits (character's first run) Ran it a second time, because for whatever reason, the first run is a bonus, so you can run it twice. I'm sad to report - the red side does NOT award 20 merits. So, I am sorry to have led folks astray. Getting older, I guess. I thought it would - but it could have been the first time I'd run the map and didn't run it a second time, as I only learned about the "free first run" after I did the red side run months ago. So, kindly disregard my suggestion.

Well, in about 10-20 minutes, I'll put it to the test. And will post the results.

If memory serves, you can run an SSA the first time on a character for 20 merits, then run it again for 20 more, then wait a week, run one for 20 merits once a week thereafter. However, many are not thinking that redside has their own version of the SSA...the first one is almost the same mission, and you don't even have to fight the CoT boss, but agree to work with him. (but you will have more than just Echinae to deal with in the last mission) Why not run both? An easy matter to see Null and switch. But for me, the best bang is Apex/Tin Mage. 80 merits in 20-25 minutes. 30 if your team isn't quite up for speedy runs. 40 if they are a bit sluggish, but still competent. Second is the hami raids. 3 runs for 160 merits, in less than an hour - discounting the horrible wait for leagues to assemble.

Appreciate it - there is a Settings button for HC launcher. I clicked on it, and it gave the Install Location, and I found what I needed there. Popmenu changes are now working. Now, I can zip right towards the Chasers, the Security? and the vines in this week's weeklies a bit faster.

The macro I used before is nothing like that. It's simply /macro TAR popmenu Target Which makes no sense to me why it works, I just know it works with Tequila. And it worked with HC Launcher, until I changed it. Well, it still works, it just doesn't reflect the changes. I even deleted the .mnu file, and yet it still works without the changes, presumably because HC Launcher copied it to some other place. In any event, thanks for the replies, I'll hunt it down.

So..I got a new M2 hard drive, because my other SSD is about 5 years old, and only 250GB, so I wanted more space. No issues with installation of the drive. So, the first thing I installed on the new drive (which is just more storage for my system - not doing anything special with it, like making it a boot drive - at least, not yet), was the new HC launcher. Works fine. But when I went to make changes to my targeting popmenu...I look in my new drive and ...all I see is the launcher. No idea where any of the other game files are. I would have thought the launcher would have installed the game files it needed into the new drive location, where the HC launcher is. I suppose I can always uninstall it, re-install it and pay closer attention. But, before I do that - is there somewhere else I should be looking? When using HC launcher - if I change the pop menu file - no changes occur. It's still accessing the old popmenu file. I even deleted it - and apparently it copied it over, because when I logged off, re-verified, and came back on, it still found the old popmenu file, but not the new one. I log on with tequila, it found the new file. So, gonna run with tequila until I can find where HC launcher is stashing the copies of the popmenu.

Did you also know there's this thing called "Popmenu"? Not only can you make a target macro - but you can make them "on the fly"! You should be able to copy this file down in the C:\Homecoming CoH\CoH\data\texts\English\menus folder and log off, close the game, re-log and then access the pop menu with this macro: /macro TAR popmenu Target It's by no means complete - I'm still working on some of it. A friend helped me get it to this point. But, for now, it does function, and it does make a macro on the fly, and if it's not the target I need, I can edit it a lot faster than making it from scratch. Targeting_Macros.mnu

To not buy rare or very rare incarnate salvage. So many tabs in the incarnate management windows...I never thought to click on Emp Merit rare or very rare tabs to use 8 or 30 emp merits for the respective pieces of incarnate salvage. I didn't screw up and buy the very rare once, mind you - but twice before someone told me of my mistake - just by happenstance. I wasn't even smart enough to pose the question, just happened to read someone else's question in the help channel and saw the answer. I can laugh now...but last year, 100 million was a LOT. I even sent a petition because I had no idea where my inf went. I never even noticed there was a cost! I just had the rares, but needed a very rare, and clicked the button to get it.

Not sure if this is the right place..but, if not, feel free to move it. Regarding the HC Launcher - I believe the size of the widgets for download (the down arrow) and the submenu (the 3 dots to get at Verify/Settings/Uninstall) should be larger. I barely noticed them.