Ukase

Maybe someone knows...I do not. This morning, the Nemesis Event was triggered in Steel Canyon. We started slow, with just a team for the first few minutes, but eventually got more than 3 full teams, after maybe 5 minutes. After about 20 minutes of spawning Nemesis...the event ended and nobody got the Nemesis Plot badge. That seems kind of strange to me. I have been trying to think as to why this didn't happen, and my only conclusion is he spawned, but a drone took him out, despite our being far away from Positron and any other npcs. They spawn where the player characters are, so if someone was training, he could have spawned there, as well as where the league was, right? Is there some other mechanic I'm missing, why we didn't get badge credit?

The only way I ever did homework was when I liked the teacher. If I didn't like the teacher, it just wasn't gonna happen. So, to that end, in order to graduate, I had to find things about the teacher to like. Harder for some than others. With marketing, for me, it's often a hoot to be there, at level 2, with the AH open, and starting with zip, being able to kit out the character with all the toys in short order. Doing it all by myself, only tangentially relying on others who sell recipes for reasons that escape my logic. I've only ever sold common recipes on the AH, and those were for a badge. But, some folks, instead of vendoring for 80-110k, will list on AH for 1 inf. It is these people that I must credit for my billions. It would have all taken me much longer to get there, otherwise. Still, I get a kick out of doing it. Call me a masochist, I guess. I also like relying solely on the rng to slot out a character every now and then. I would probably do it with every character if the npcs would follow the games original rng and have Hellions drop magic DOs, (or SOs), Trolls drop Mutation enhancements, etc. And lord help me, I don't get why an End Mod enhancement (or common recipe) is so damn rare to drop.

Purchase? You guys are crazy enough to actually bid for and BUY an IO? Surely you jest. I thought you guys knew better. Have I taught you nothing? In this game, just like in life, "Every dollar (inf) you save multiplies to the bottom line." - A.M. Agapos, Economist (deceased) Agapos was the smartest professor I ever had the privilege to learn from. Now, I don't think he was famous, or anything, like Friedman, but I suspect he was on par. He wrote the most tedious book I ever didn't finish: Government-Industry and Defense: Economics and Administration. We've established that if you have a farmer, converters are free, via emp merit conversion. We also know that when you farm, either afk, or actively, the rng gives you recipes. Some common & uncommon, a few rare, and on occasion the very rare. Why would you buy? Yeah, I know, I know. Time is money, and there's no wrong way to turn a buck. And if it works, by all means, proceed, I'm just being silly. Hopefully, the OP will suffer through the first several lines and see this: NEVER buy a recipe with merits! I would venture to say that the most that pvp IO should cost you is 2m to buy the recipe. (They're attuned, remember?) The rare salvage is now going for less than 500k. So, crafting, salvage and recipe for this item would be certainly less than 2.5m. 3M if you just had to buy it all instantly. And, if you couldn't stomach the idea of crafting, it would be what? 5m? 6m at the most? 100 reward merits for a recipe that YOU have to craft and spend another 500K inf on, and if it was level 50...how much more to craft it, another 500k or so. When you could have just about instantly sold the converters from those reward merits for 18M at least, after AH fees. Yes, that was an insane purchase with merits. I get that for some folks, they have more merits than inf, and clicking can be tedious. But just break it down into smaller portions, sell them as you earn them, and it's not so bad. Or reach out to me and I'll buy them in bulk, as a courtesy. (70k each) Just know you'll always make more using converters than selling them.

2 x 0 = 0

That's the one good thing about the market. We are very, very rarely sure who's doing what. Someone might say it's them...but it might not be. I'm still inclined to believe there's a dozen or so folks that just farm and/or just market every spare moment they have. They just stockpile the inf. That's part of the reason I'd love to see a bank of sorts. I used to check in with the City Hall registrar often to see which group was "winning" the prestige war. And for the sake of nostalgia, this was a shot taken the day the servers shut down. (on Liberty)

I was just trying to be helpful. No gifts/donations are necessary. But if you already sent it, I'll find a home for it, be assured.

A darn shame I only had one to sell...but maybe I'll buy more! Who knows how many bids for this clear error are left?

I usually only present my sage wisdom on the market, or badge acquiring details. And then, only in the help channel. From time to time, I'll see someone in the SG present a dilemma about wanting X, but only having enough inf to get 1/3 of X, or something like that. Then I simply DM them my very long, detailed methods for acquiring 300X while they sleep. Sometimes, I'll see someone give what they think is the right or optimal answer, but it's not presented in a way that lets a newer player understand all the nuances at play. Like the old "Shard vs Thread" controversy. Then I'll chime in with more information, always being sure that they understand that the RNG can only do so much. Back on live, it was more commonly known that an ITF would get you an Ancient Nictus Fragment - and you'd forgo merits and such to get the component. (some wouldn't, they'd grab the merits and let the shards drop when they drop) Run the right TFs in pursuit of those components (MSR for the Gr'ai matter, Lady Gray for Hero 1 DNA component) and you can fill the alpha sooner than later. But that's a whole other topic. Or, I'll see someone suggest using merits for recipes to maximize inf - which is simply bad advice, as it's not true. Granted, there are occasional circumstances when the price of certain Winter-Os may exceed the revenue from selling 300 converters acquired from the 100 reward merits you'd spend on the aforementioned Winter-O. But, given the volume of cheaper winter packs in circulation, that circumstance isn't likely to be the case for another year. In those cases, I simply can't help myself. I have to be helpful and share the math.

I've not made it a secret that I deal with PvP IOs in the market. While I do have a character that only does this, in the past few months, I've only checked in with the character a couple of times a week. I've actually been enjoying a Savage/Shield brute lately; it's been a bit of a distraction. But, like all good things, they come to an end. Each of my alts typically starts with zero, and I let them earn their own billion to use and/or hold as the mood strikes me. So, knowing my own character was idle in this area, I set out small, just going for the small kills...buying enhancements & recipes & salvage cheap, selling them to a vendor to get some start up inf. Buy a few level 41 resist recipes, converting, selling. Nothing 90% of you haven't done yourselves from time to time. Certainly not on a large scale. Just enough to get me a few million to get starting in the area that has served me well. While I haven't been getting the usual 8-10M I'm used to, I'm okay with it. But, when I slapped 30 of them in the AH, and they all sold instantly for 7k, I have to wonder who the rascal is that's buying them...and if my math is right, and I can somewhat trust the "bidding" and "For sale" numbers, they are simply reposting them. I can't definitively state it, but that's what it "feels" like. So, let's say that I'm not a savvy marketer, just someone who's trying to follow MY suggestions that I've made in this forum and others - you've just armed someone with all the influence they need to buy more and sell more in your efforts to try to keep the prices up to where they've been, instead of this downward trending price of 6-8M instead of 8-10M. I'm not trying to discourage anyone from anything - I'm just wondering if maybe this is a bad strategy on the part of this player buying and re-listing for higher (if that's indeed what's happening. Seems that way to me.) It may work in the short run, but I think it's gonna take you a while to unload these, cuz I'm fairly sure there's other players in this niche that are already wise to this tactic. And for those of you that aren't in this niche - suggest, if you're in the market, be patient. The lower bid prices will probably fill sooner than they otherwise would.

I basically just went in and killed Mistah-Static. Got zero souvenirs. The mission would complete if I cleared the mobs around him, so I left them alone. As it turns out - my desire to save time by saving this mission just shows how fuzzy my thinking is. I have 6 characters that have Tarnished Star already. I can just have any of them run the arc for Tarnished Star. I don't know why my brain didn't go there in the first place, but it didn't. ******************************* So, I went ahead and completed it - with an alt that hadn't done Freaklympics. I am unclear about how these Souvenirs work. The mission was completed, my alt was on the map, remained on team until the team lead called it in after it was over, and my alt still doesn't have the souvenir. Apparently it's a mission holder only type deal. Not a big deal, but I had thought this would have worked.

While looking to see what I had left to get High Pain Threshold accolade, I saw this in my Closest to Completion section. Relentless badge, per the HC Wiki was formerly the Rogue/Villain equivalent of Unbroken Spirit. It was repurposed as an achievement badge in Issue 25. But, the thing is, Relentless is not required (Earn this badge by dealing 1,000,000 hit points worth of damage.) to get the High Pain Threshold Accolade. What is required, in addition to the ones in this list, but not Relentless is The Unbroken Spirit Badge. (Pay off 200,000 Debt) So, we will likely want to edit Relentless out, and replace it with The Unbroken Spirit.

Ah! You're right! That's an easy test. Check the souvenirs list, go in, kill mistah-static, then recheck the souvenir list! Thanks! Sadly - killing only Mistah-Static gives no souvenirs. So, I would expect it to not work.

I don't know that I would do this every time. It just depends. For example: On a tank, s/l resists are often at cap. That's why I often will put the unbreakable guard 7.5% in tough, as opposed to a primary armor. More often than not, without even trying my tanks would be over the s/l cap with Tough, so it's a good mule set for the Glad Armor 3% and the Unbreakable Guard 7.5%. I'll play around with the Steadfast 3%/res to see where it will be the most beneficial. In some cases, on brutes, I'm tempted to put the 7.5% unbreakable guard in something like Temperature Protection as a mule, because the brute will need all the extra resistance it can get.

So, here I am, playing through content with my new(ish) savage/shield brute, and I am going through Freakalympics arc, by contact Collin Larson. The next mission in queue is "Bust Mistah-Static and his crew". What I don't know is if I can save this mission for alts, other folks to use, where they can go in, clobber Mistah-static but leave his crew "not busted", (so the mission won't complete) and find him in the cell for the Tarnished Star badge requirement. Before I test it with an alt, figured I'd check in to see if anyone has done this and can confirm/deny if it will work.

Unfortunately, this isn't likely to happen. And not because they can't agree or wouldn't/don't get along. I know nothing about those relationships, if they even exist. But I play a bit on Rebirth and here. On Rebirth - Catalysts & converters -- they are not tradeable. If all the different server hosts got together - each market section of code would have to be further reworked to fit in with each server's unique set up. The market code, from what I've read, is basically held together by binary duct tape and bubble gum. Yes, the last 5 display is glitchy, but after a time using it, it's only the newer player that's going to have any difficulty figuring out what the price should be. Not ideal, of course, and certainly annoying, but it beats not having any market at all. I encourage everyone to make an account on Rebirth whenever they get tired of the people here. Aside from weekend evenings, it's practically a ghost town there. More folks in Ouroboros than all the maps put together! And just check THEIR AH out. You have to have an account for a fair number of weeks, logging in at least once a week to use the /AH shortcut, otherwise, you'll have to port there with a temp power or just use your slower travel power. And when you get there - you see there are no Rikti Alloys. And you see the last 5 sold for 2M each. But there are 4 chronal Skips! They sold for 1.2M, 1.4, 2, and 800k, and 1.1M. Try to find an LotG 7.5%. Nope! I listed one for sale at 15M.. I'll see next week how much I get. Further, try making one with converters...yikes, I digress too much! Sorry! Let's just maybe take a moment, be glad and trust the dev team to take the game in a good direction. By all means - share your views. They can't know what your thoughts are if you don't share them. But let's maybe not try to ask for too much. Like an actual bank, accessible by any character, instead of stashing things in email. Or an increased inf cap to 10B per character. Or 100B per character. Or an inf sink, like 10 billion to hold 1000 recipes, or something like that. (man, that would hurt the economy more than I'd like to think about) Or 10 enhancement trays instead of 7...I'm gonna hush now.

I'm missing something...you say that the different maps that give different XP for the kill of the same level mob isn't a factor when dual boxing? Why not? The xp is still less for each defeat, isn't it? Or have I totally misunderstood what you're written? (Certainly wouldn't be the first time that's happened!)

I think with the team search status, and the options under /ghide, we pretty much have that already. It's kind of the opposite of what you're asking for, tho. You want to signal you're free for a message as opposed to choosing to appear offline. If I want to team, I can select what I'm looking for. If I have no desire to team with unknown pugs, I can select Hide from searches, global chat channels. If I only want to team with the SG, I can select the appropriate options. If I don't want to team with anyone, I can select the top one, or all of them. It's not exactly what you're talking about, but it's pretty close.

So a few things: Not all AE maps are the same. At least, anecdotally, I've noticed some maps give more XP for a +4 boss than other maps. More XP for +4 minions than other maps, too. Another point of information: The goal (for me) is to get the emp merits. So, if I were to proceed beyond vet level 48 to vet level 51, I only get 10 emp merits. I have to proceed further to vet level 54 to get 20 emp merits. So, technically, I need to PL a character from 1 to 50 vet level 3 sooner than it takes to get 6 vet levels. Or, alternatively, go from 1 to 50 vet level 3 faster than 2/3 the time it takes to get from vet level 24 to vet level 30. (which would give 30 merits) But, as I should have mentioned, I'm an afk farmer. So, not really sweating the time. It's more a question of the number of maps. And, I think the optimal solution or process to do this is likely going to be different for many of us.

Well, that's certainly interesting reading. So much so, I turned off the NFL commentary in the background to better remember it. Thanks for writing it out.

In my case, it wouldn't - except the farmer that can no longer earn emp merits, and doesn't have any IOs slotted, as those were given to the new alt...there's no reason to log in this character any more, once all the threads have been used to purchase super insps. I can't see continuing to log it in and market when the new farmer can do anything this one can do.

Not quite. This is just anecdotal and my perception bias at work, but I notice it takes roughly the same amount of time to get from 1-50 as it takes to get 3 vet levels. Given that perception of mine, it doesn't make sense to me to keep working a farmer from vet level 48 to 51 when the emps drop from 15 to 10. So, I reroll at that point. A case can be made to reroll at 24, before the emp drops go from 20 to 15, but it can be a bit tedious to re-roll. You have to respec twice to get all the IOs out. Then you have to transfer all the merits, salvage, catalysts, etc to another character and then to the new farmer.

This is still my favorite spot.

One thing I really like about soloing posi 1 is no matter what character I'm on, my simulacron (whatever the copy/clone is called) is a real push over for the Nemesis Staff. Zap with that, they go flying, and give a nice advantage. And for Posi 2...those bombs on the outside, since the mobs are fewer for 1 person than for a team - you can often use the jet pack and click the bombs from underneath the bridge without aggroing anything. And for inside - without exception, every time I've solo'd this - the mobs "guarding" the bombs to click are facing away from the bombs. I just click 'em, and watch my combat stats to see when my 65 feet of stealth comes back and go onto the next. And every time I've teamed to do this - someone ends up dying on this part, mainly because a lot of folks are still using DOs instead of SOs, if they're using anything at all. Or it could just be a lack of heals and a lack of slots altogether, or a combo of many factors. Just easier to solo in my view. My poor tanks and other non-dps ATs require a lot of reds & the envenomed dagger to tackle Dr. Vahz. My poor tank couldn't actually do it without a summon pet to help out with the dps. Probably should have waiting until it had more slots.

I am pretty sure I mentioned that for dual boxing, it makes sense (and inf) to do so. So, you and your husband are on the right path assuming what's his is yours and vice-versa.

Sadly (or not) this is my first farmer. De-slotted, retired once I realized I could just re-roll them for the emp merits. Vet level 2525. So, most of my farmer/marketers never get more than 1000 enhancement sales before they're put out to pasture. This one is just pvp IO sales since April 2020 when I stumbled on to the idea that I could focus on one niche with one character. But, I play the game, too - and usually characters don't JUST do marketing, so there's no telling what the actual stats are without a lot of logging in/out and tallying.