Ukase

Market advice for level 10? So much depends on your goals - and your tolerance for an activity many find tedious/dull/repetitive. A few opinions of mine, not necessarily shared by everyone, but probably shared by most: To make better than average inf in the market requires knowledge in how the AH works. Lowest list price goes to highest bid. But sometimes the highest bid is your list price +1 inf, so be careful. The more experience you have in looking at recipes and what they sell for, the ingredients required (salvage & inf to craft) and the substitute goods that may be bought instead, the better off you will be. Understand that sometimes, there's competition that limits your ability to sell an item for what the last 5 prices suggest they would sell for. Sometimes, those hundreds of bids you see are from players that no longer play, and they were super, super low noob traps, potentially never to be filled. And, sometimes the IOs you see for sale, it's possible that hundreds of those are priced much higher by players that don't play anymore, and they may never sell. (like a luck of the gambler 7.5% recharge used to sell for 7-8M routinely. No longer. It's possible many of those lotg we see in the AH for sale are from 2020, and priced to sell at 9.6m. We may never know. Now, for specific advice - which may or may not align with what others may suggest. I make no representation that my advice is any better than another marketers suggestions. But, I do think I know what I'm doing with my own influence. So, with a once a week play session - this gives you the opportunity to use time to your advantage. As you learn how much things sell for, you'll get an idea of how much you might ask for a given item. At level 10, your needs are not that great - but there's a lot of enhancements that are now available that would make your character more sturdy than if you didn't have them. I don't know how much inf you have now. Having at least some inf is fairly critical to getting more inf. Look in the AH for Single Origin enhancements that are not the same as your origin. Start at level 50, work your way down. Bid on the Accuracy, Damage, Endurance Reduction - well, really all of them, say, 100 inf for each one. Every now and then, they will sell! And when you get them - you vendor them to the longbow store NPC, and if they are level 50 Single Origin enhancements, you should get well over 10K for them. You can do that for each level of enhancement, each category, each origin if you like. You will probably be able to grab 10-30 enhancements if you go through all of them, which should leave you with 100-300k, maybe more. When you are done with that - look for level 50 rare recipes. Find the ones with very few bids (preferably 0 bids) with a lot listed. Bid 10 inf. and bid creep (increment by 10, or 100 - whatever your comfort level) until you get to 1000. A level 50 rare recipe will vendor for 10K. The reason you're good with vendoring a level 50 recipe is because it would require rare salvage, which can cost 400-600K, depending on market demands at that time. (possibly cheaper, possibly more..on average 500k) All you're after here is starter inf. When you get about 500k, you can bid on something like Cleaving Blow, level 10s. Might cost you 30k to get one. Make sure you check the ingredients before bidding. You want 2 of the 4 in the set. 2 of them require rare salvage. You don't want those two. Don't buy more than 2 of them at first. You may have bad luck and you don't want you influence stored in the form of trashy recipes. You'll need some influence for the common and uncommon salvage. You'll also want to get the exploration badges of the zones you're playing in - Atlas, Kings Row, Mercy, Nova Praetoria...any or all of them. Even Echo:Atlas and Echo Galaxy if you've found your way to ouroboros yet. If you don't have a portal yet, and you don't see one around - pop into City Hall, and look for the gate to Recluse's Victory. You can enter there at level 1. Once you enter - you'll get an ouroboros portal that you can use once you leave Recluse's Victory. Then you can grab the explorations from those zones for reward merits, which you'll exchange for converters. You craft the Cleaving Blow level 10 recipes, and convert them into Eradications:chance for damage. Sell them for what you think you can make. Maybe list one for 600K and see if you get lucky and get 3-4M. You could also get suckered that way and only get 666K. We never know! But, even at 666k, given the recipe, salvage and crafting cost less then 100k, if you didn't lose more than 5 converters, you still made a little influence. Then you think about scale: how many of these can I sell in a week? (since you only play once a week) You will want to bid on converters, once you have a tiny stack of influence to spare. Bid low - like 56K, maybe 54K. They may never fill - but they might! A lot depends on if your teams are doing tfs and story arcs for merits, or doing pointless radios which reward nothing but useless temp powers and xp. If one of your friends is usually the leader, and doing THEIR story arcs - they get paid merits, while you don't. So, push for tfs, and if he starts a story arc - you start the same arc ,and collaboratively complete. Menu-Options, general Tab. Show below: Collaborating is annoying sometimes. Sometimes a contact will give different missions to you and your team leader. This tends to be true with Flux, and Stephanie Peebles in Striga Isle. Still, if there's good communication with the team, you can just redo yours and keep you on track. Whatever path you choose - reward merits (and Prismatic Aethers to a lesser degree) are solid ways to accumulate wealth in game. Whether you use the reward merits to get boosters and sell those, or get converters and sell them or use them - you should be okay. There's a TON I left out, because I don't know what you know and what you don't. But I think I gave you enough to at least get started. Others may chime in with more focused and clear advice.

I suppose I should be more transparent. I have always been behind the curve. An idea is developed by someone smarter than me, perhaps shares it, or tells a friend or two about it - and they share it. Sooner or later, things come out in the open, and usually, that's when I figure it out. And sometimes, I get it wrong. Afk farming, for example. I remember ...must be maybe 4 years ago, I was talking to @Bionic_Flea and I'd shared I had my heal on auto, not burn. I had the blazing aura. I was in no rush, as it was afk. The mobs were still dead upon my return. But I have to laugh at my former self when I realized how most everyone else was doing it, with burn on auto instead. At that time, I was not loaded, but had enough for the next alt or two. It was probably investing everything into the winter packs that really made me a ton of inf. (which still bears fruit, as I've yet to open them all from the very first year, let alone the next year. Was there a 3rd year? I don't remember. I do think I happened upon a niche in an area left mostly untouched, or if it were, it was not heavily touched, or demand was high. The ATO to Superior proved to make me quite a bit. About 8-10M per sale. Granted, there were catalysts I had to spend, and I was only getting a couple per day from my farmer - and my alts needed them too. And, back then, they were going for 4-5M, not the paltry 900-1M we might see now. Add to that...the big money makers were in Brute ATOs for the obvious reasons. Interesting that now - it's more often than not, the tanker ATOs that seem in higher demand. No doubt due to the AoE changes for tanks. I do try and be helpful, and I would love it when people would complain about not being able to get the enhancements they wanted. Because I would stop my mission, exit and do my best to fill that void quickly - and send them that item as a thank you for letting me know where we marketers dropped the ball. I used farming as a source for 95% of all my marketing. I felt like paying for recipes was ridiculous, if I could get them for free. Now, given the fact I've realized I could have saved almost 400K in crafting costs in most cases, I'm not so sure that was the right path. It was certainly easy enough, though. And I never once have paid for salvage for the farmer's marketing efforts. I have an assist character who sits outside on a different account for those times when the salvage marketers try their hand at driving the prices up. 100 pieces of each uncommon in the AH, and bids are refreshed as needed, should those times re-visit. Rare salvage is kept via brain storm idea. One character sells the lower levels, and passes the appropriate ones to the farmer if necessary. And then Brain Storm ideas are bid for again, to keep the inventory maxed. I continue to make probably a billion every 3-5 days with another niche which I'll keep to myself. I used to talk about it - but the competition is annoying to deal with. I keep overspending every couple of weeks to keep the profits on these so low, they have to be very stubborn with very deep pockets to keep up. And then when they leave, I make up for lost time. The best part is - the list price has remained the same for at least a year. The big hiccup I'm having seems to be in the supply side. There's too much of it. People are reading too many guides, and not padding my pockets! The IOs I used to get for 3-4M are now only getting me 2.5-3M. A few still maintain their price, but one in particular, the perf shifter+end, I had over 30 of them sitting, unsold at the same price I always have listed them at for the past few years. Suddenly, whomever else is in that space has decided they are worth less money. On one hand, it means my stacks of inf are now worth more, because it can go further. But on the other hand, it drops my income. It would be grieving, I think, if I were to use my resources and simply buy the ones that are dirt cheap and relist. The option is there, but it just seems like a jerk move. I don't think it's against any rules. And it's not like I wouldn't use those IOs eventually. But to buy all the recipes of all the end mod sets, buy all the end mod IOs, that would take up a lot of inventory. And I don't think it's fair to say I'd find a way to use them all. I just wish these folks would just let MY price be THE price, lol. Is that too much to ask? Apparently! In any event, that's where I'm at. Vendoring my recipes that I used to craft, convert and sell. It's a reduction in my income, but I make up for it with accumulating a lot more reward merits that sit in hero merits now instead of as converters. So, maybe the supply will drop a bit now that I'm no longer selling Oblits, Perf Shifters, Power Transfers, Unbreakable Guards, Preventative Medicines, Numinas and occasionaly, Sudden Accelerations, and Bombardments. (other than Unbreakable Guards, I'm referring to the uniques/procs in the sets) If I can't get 3M for it, it just isn't worth the time.

So...I did end up with mark & recall. I discovered I had everything anyway, except The Last Word history badge. I thought, "Self, you're a genius! A great use for this power is in the magi trial when Chimera teleports you while you're fighting a different AV for triple threat badge." And I was all set to use it - and it doesn't work in the trial. Funny. My passive accolades work. And I was pretty sure the click accolades worked too - but I never saw much utility out of them, so I can't be sure. In any event, that's a darn shame. It might have been good to avoid the crackle from Tyrant, too, although the recharge is too long to use it for both purposes. I don't wish to complain...but..why would the powers that be opt to disallow this to work in an iTrial?

Sent - but noticed that despite my saying I'd uninstalled the Halloween Event map, it wasn't uninstalled. Which probably explains a lot. I re-tried and it seems to have uninstalled. Map is still borked, but I think I can fix that with the vidiots reinstall And, strangely enough - when I reopened the modder to redo vidiotmaps, the modder shows it still being installed. So, retried the uninstall, clicked refresh, and that seems to have done the trick. Everything is back to normal. I DO appreciate your attention, and your time and your efforts. I thank you profusely. I'm sure it's probably some kind of USER error on my side.

This is probably a user error or something. Not sure. First, I installed the Halloween GM add-on. When I tried to start the game, I got a message saying I couldn't because of some error, and I saw the word Halloween in it, so I figured it was the add-on. I re-opened City modder, uninstalled it and was able to play. Now, despite the halloween add-on being uninstalled, it's there. And I can't see the badge locations anymore. I wish I'd saved the error panes that popped up, but I was in a hurry trying to log a character in to help someone out. Since I've never seen it before, I assume this is the halloween event overlay for Atlas? I dunno. I guess I'll uninstall vidiotmaps and then reinstall it.

Hmm...I remember using up the wedding ring on a character - because I forgot I had it toggled on. So, I redid the arc, and got a 2nd one..which I think only had a 5 minute timer. Better than nothing. I always try to ask myself when to make the most use out of these temps. Like Enchantment of Serafina. It's interesting. For one minute, it reduces Psionic damage and boosts Psionic Damage. If my math is right, a 25% strength to Psionic Damage on a fire blaster would be ...well...zero. As 25X0=0. I've yet to ever use this temp, as I usually have my visible trays filled with other stuff by the time I earn it. I suppose it would act like a psionic damage proc to all attacks, rather than providing no benefit, but I'll have to use it to find out. I should have originally mentioned my curiosity was about temps that cannot typically be re-earned. Like, the Wedding Ring. We get 2 hours of it - and when it's expired, we can redo the arc, and get another for 5 minutes, I think. After that, not sure, as 5 minutes isn't really that long for the duration of the arc to re-earn it. HVAS, while fairly inexpensive at 250 vg merits can be reacquired with no penalty, other than the opportunity cost of 8.3 reward merits. I like the 80 merits. Having it reduced to 71.7...too greedy to deal with that math. Other temps, once used - poof - gone. (or gone until you re-earn them by redoing the arc/mission you earned them in. Some only last a couple days of game time, some real life time, some have 20,50 100 uses. I recall I made a dark tank that had, flurry, Sands of Mu (prestige power), Shadow Maul, and the Sands of Mu temp earned from Miriam Bloechl or Laura Brunetti. It was as silly as it sounds.

Some of us hoard them, never to be used. Some of us earn them and honestly have no idea we even have them until something causes us to click on powers and look at the right side and see all those temps. Some of us seek them out and use them repeatedly. My question is when do you use them? I used to save mine for PvP. I never felt right about recruiting for pvp badges, because if the party I spoke with wasn't interested, they could easily just intrude and make my badge efforts more difficult. So I often solo'd the RV AVs/Heros. And I can tell you, it can take a lot of them when your build isn't quite right for pvp land. I noticed I earned the Enchantment of Serafina. It's a nice little temp. But when to use it? For solo play, say a solo ITF? Or team play? The times when it would come in most handy, the temps are disabled. When do you folks use your temps, if at all?

I wonder how Yomo would feel about this. I mean, if true, I'm Yomo also.

So...maybe he's just a bit above normal and the rest of them are just relatively shorter/smaller.

A man convinced against his will, is of the same opinion, still. - Dale Carnegie

Eh, for me - a break free is much easier to get and has a lot faster recharge. The power itself is a "nice to have", but both hurdles for each alignment are too high for it to be worth it. You may now thank me for deleting a page of useless, worthless opinions.

So, there are two zones specifically I'm thinking of, where I kind of wish we had a say in where our teleport beacons would drop us of, or alternatively, where the SG portals would be in these zones. Primarily, Boomtown. For the most part, people might have a mission or two in there, and there may be a few lower level folks doing some street sweeping, but the rest of the folks are heading to Babbage and the GWW, in either order. Both of which are in the back of the zone. It might be nice to move that base portal a little closer to the center of the map. Or, even better, by the Council base. Additionally, I'd love to see the Croatoa base moved closer to War Witch - which in turn, is closer to the Grim Vale. Lastly, since about the only thing anyone does in Echo:DA is clobber Adamastor, can we either move his ritual site closer, or move the ouro portal spawn point closer to his ritual site? That'd be swell. I know, I know, it's me being lazy, but still.

"Hey, remember folks, we don't have to do this, we GET to do this!" "AV ahead folks. Push yourselves. Remember. You won't die. You'll pass out first." "We CAN do hard things!" "Remember, God gives his hardest battles to his toughest soldiers. You are not his toughest soldiers, so this should be super easy!" And probably the hardest, "Follow me!"

I am probably going to change my method of play - at least in the short term. Get to 50 in the farm, and then acquire the accolades I wish and approach it that way, rather than the reverse. It's time for a change.

I do appreciate the sharing of appropriate uses. I just tried it out on the spelunker mission. Now, I just need to figure out if it's worth getting this accolade at level 10 and the more efficient way to do that.

I could be cited many times in these forums stating I'm not much for spending time in the costume creator. But I do have an anecdote that may be worth sharing. It was issue 3. I was very new to the game, and I made a stone tank. I arrived in the city, in front of Ms. Liberty, excited to begin my second adventure. I still had my first character a blaster, but wanted to try the other ATs out as well. I got to ...I dunno, level 6 maybe. And when I chose the armor, and saw it on my avatar, the first thought was I now have a s**t armor. That is what it looked like! The default for Abalative Carapace isn't any better. Once I saw it, I logged it off, never to play it again. While it's true that more experienced players can disguise or hide these more unsavory appearances, shouldn't the default be to have all the powers be unseen, and have the player choose the effects or not? Just a question. I've no idea how much of these effects are baked into the utility of the power. Like Hide, for a stalker. Everyone can see him, but the character is still stealthed? Or maybe, if such a thing is possible, only the player can see his stealthed character. I dunno. But I say, make no fx be the default.

Are you suggesting some of us might release our inner misogynistic tendencies? Because I'm pretty sure you're spot on.

Mez...it's not just for breakfast anymore. Hmm...catchy, but hardly a useful comment. Sorry. So, my thoughts are many, but on this topic: Yes, single target status protection powers like Clear Mind...a little annoying to have to cast them on each character instead of just spamming once. I play a lot of blasters. Always have. I used to use the defensive amplifiers so I wouldn't have to deal with 95% of the mez in game. And then...I found a method to mostly mitigate it. With the build. I'm playing a fire/Atomic blaster right now, and it's quite interesting to. I don't get held that much, but when I do, I just ignore it and use the two attacks I have...but oddly, because of the sustain, the holds never last more than the time of one of those two powers. Like 2 seconds at the most. I'm sure I can't do this with every blaster, but so far, the solution works for me. The only defeats have been in the Abyss for the required debt badge to get High Pain Threshold accolade. I think Mez NEEDS to be a pain in the ischial tuberosity. (Like that? It's my new 10 dollar synonym for butt) If the mez is easily mitigated, the npcs genuinely have no chance. They just don't. Mez is the only thing in game that ever gives my blasters any real trouble. I can take inspirations, but invariably, they run out, because in longer missions, the breakfrees don't drop as often as the others. Just my opinion, but I think having mez being annoying is crucial to the game. Otherwise, blasters would be the ONLY thing I'd ever play.

So, I just keep three instances of the game at the login screen, and then log in which one I want to play. Occasionally, I'll bring on one or the other for helping someone grab Anti-matter or Seige, or just to hand off catalysts or boosters, depending on the need. While it wouldn't bother me if the option were available, I don't know that I'd take advantage.

I would welcome the option to disable/enable group fly in Menu-options, rather than visiting Null.

So...just me thinking here. First - kudos to the OP for some entertaining story. But, please no. I don't EVER want to see any new NPCs in Kallista Wharf - and here's why: Hallowe'en. Spring Winter See where I'm going? It's nice to be able to take your character and just run around and click objects for the various events without wondering if you're going to have to engage in some other nearby NPCs. KW is a haven. It's got everything we need. And we don't need more NPCs. The variety of NPCs available to clobber is already a bit mind-boggling. I couldn't even name them all, I don't think. While I do think more stories would be useful, more npcs would not - and here's why: (just my opinion) The writing on the wall... Look at Aeon, ITF, Lady Grey - these tfs all have the option to further increase difficulty with increased rewards - although the rewards are essentially for costume tokens - the prismatics. A currency only as valuable as the demand for costume toggles go. If they were still selling for 100M, then sure, it's worth it. At the 2.5M...not so much. At least, not for me. I can make the 25M (the current equivalent of 10 prismatics at AH price) in a few minutes marketing or in 30 minutes playing, give or take a few. And I don't need to be selective in my incarnate power or build choices, nor the choices of whom I'd team with. It is this player's opinion - and only mine - that IF a new faction were to appear - they would have some unsavory abilities to take our current meta and diminish our abilities so that the fight would be more "interesting/challenging". Some of you genuinely love that kind of thing. I do not always favor such encounters. Every now and then, when I'm on a character I really like, as opposed to the "just trying things out" type of alt. Generally speaking, more challenging stuff requires I sit at the edge of my seat, play closer attention and think more carefully about the attack chain. I'm a fitness nerd. I literally sit playing on a stability ball. Sitting on the edge of my seat is dangerous! I might slip off and bust my ischial tuberosity. And, because I row daily, I need that to be healthy. Now, if the powers that be were to populate the zone with some level 7 Hellions...I wouldn't mind that so much. But some new NPC that drops toggles with a ranged attack, or some high mag stun that just ignores toggles, or some trickery where my range is debuffed...not no, but hell no! Until such time that I see evidence in future patches of focuses on new additional stories for the factions we already have...I just don't see any positives from adding a new faction. Again - that's just my opinion. And I don't think I can sell it for any influence, so that's about how much it's worth. Still clever story. Just not for KW. Slap that stuff in Nerva or the Shadow Shard.

Does one always win? I suppose it depends on how you define "win", right? On the one hand, merits drop from playing (or from packs). So, you exchange them for boosters, sell, then profit. But the profit from the sale of boosters vs converters, used wisely - I dunno if I call that a win. It is a win, in a fashion. You didn't spend time crafting and converting. You just slap them on the AH, maybe check back in a day. To be clear - it's relatively easy to compare the sales of converters vs boosters on the AH. But it's not so clear how much you make with converters by using them to turn trash into gold. I think Yomo once said he valued 1 reward merit as 1 million inf. And maybe that's true in the long run. I think you have to go through a lot of RMs to reach that average. But, I digress. One of the better things about CoH is there's so many options to play and earn the loot required to kit out your character and the many alts. Most of you are savvy enough to know this already. I just point it out for those who may not recognize the versatile ways to playing your way to in-game wealth.

And these rules of thumb don't even take into consideration that possibilities for incarnate powers. There is no one right way.. there are many right ways, and well, a lot of sub-optimal (but never wrong) ways.

If that used to be the case, it no longer is.

I just wrote a full page and never even got to the topic directly: When you get a drop from the sometimes fickle RNG loot god, specifically a Obliteration: Chance for Smashing Damage - how much thought are you putting into how much you're charging for it? So many different ways to deal with this! Craft and keep for later. Nothing wrong with that. But, for the sake of argument, let's say you want to make influence. The recipe has dropped; free, sort of. We could say we used time and resources to get it, so it wasn't free. But, in a fashion, since you were doing those things that allowed the drop anyway, and the drop wasn't your actual goal, it's basically free. The salvage to get it..that drops too. And while we may say they were basically free for you, we know there are players that will pay inf for them. So, we have a concept called opportunity cost. If I use the rare salvage to craft the recipe, the rare salvage is gone; that means I can't sell the rare salvage. So, instead of crafting, I can sell: Recipe - 10k at the vendor (and no tax) common salvage x2 - 250x2 at the vendor, or potentially a little more on the AH, but requires patience and a cost of some auction house slots. Uncommon salvage - 1k at the vendor (no tax) OR list it at 2200 or so, and wait for those other pesky marketers to start driving up the price again like they seem to do every so often. Again, may require patience and some AH slots Rare salvage - in general, I consider it a 500k item, but sometimes it's a little more or less. Crafting costs vary on the level of the recipe: this is where some folks will just list the recipe on the AH, and then repurchase it at level 30 for cheaper costs. (and different salvage) So, the wisdom of saving on the costs of crafting can sometimes be offset by not having the salvage in the right tier on hand. Much depends on how you organize your assets. Or maybe you just buy it again at level 41, to avoid that salvage issue. Using the oblit as the example, and these crafting costs are the exact same for all uncommons and rares - although the ingredients change. So, it makes inf to sell the level 50 recipe and re-purchase at a lower level. Or does it? There are so many variables. and while the marketing is the game within the game, it's not why so many people keep making alts! And over-thinking things can really suck the fun out of a game, right? But, if by listing these recipes on the AH, and grabbing 100K or even 1M instead of vendoring them for less - are we arming our competition? I would say yes. This is why I craft everything that's uncommon or rare. Except 1. Regenerative Tissue: Regeneration Ever look at this recipe? THREE rares if you craft it below level 25! (and isn't that recipe format change a little crazy?!) In this case, it would make sense to craft it at a higher level of 25, as there would be less cost involved. But is it even worth it? So many folks, myself included just take cheap uncommon level 10 recipes, craft them by the hundreds and convert them into enhancements like these to get around those costs! So, then - how do YOU decide what an enhancement is really worth? It's really a matter of subjective opinion, isn't it? I'm sure there's some kind of minimum value, but from what we read folks say, the minimum value is 1 inf. They truly list items that have subjective values of more than 1M for 1 inf. I'm sure many of those 1 inf sales get sucked up by the noob traps left by most of us. Still, am I supposed to believe these folks are selling all their drops for 1 inf, and relying on inf earned from defeats to finance their roster of characters? I guess so. It's not that hard to do.