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It was a couple of patches ago. The exchange rate is simply stupid bad. Anyone doing this is just ignorant of Luna. I see no reason to advertise it, because you'd have to be dumb as a rock to do this transaction. I honestly have no idea what the HC devs were thinking when they slapped in that exchange rate. It costs 80 tickets for a specific uncommon salvage. So, 80 threads. Or, 540 tickets, or 540 threads for a specific rare. 100 tickets/threads for one random large inspiration. Yet, I can take those same 100 threads and visit Luna for 10 Super Inspirations. Now, does that make any damned sense at all? I'm thinking they goofed and intended to make the threads to tickets something a bit more generous, but missed the mark. Too bad we can't use tickets to buy incarnate salvage!

Let me shed what is likely a rare, but not unique perspective. Stripping a character of IOs is tedious work. Further, once that's done, you have to stash those items somewhere, where presumably, another alt would use them. But, the thing about other alts is they're different. While it's true most of my characters will use the usual pvp IO procs, the steadfast 3% defense, perf shifter +end, miracle + recovery, numina +regen/recovery, etc - they'll have different sets and such. Why would I make an alt that uses all the same stuff, unless it's a farm brute to be recycled. My base is set up to stash the expensive IOs, but not the cheap stuff. And, it's currently full. 10 bins with 100 purples each. 1 bin with LotG 7.5% recharges. 1 bin filled with ATOs 1 bin with Winter-Os 1 bin with random sets that most of my characters would use. 1 bin with PvP IOs. and 1 bin has my spines/fire brute IOs for when I recycle the farmers when they hit vet level 48. (after that, the emp merit returns drop too low to keep them around. So, I respec them, stash the IOs for the next brute) The other two storage units are for Super inspirations. So, I just don't have room to strip alts I don't play. The characters can hold the IOs just fine. Not like I need them. I have plenty of inf to spare. Besides, sometimes, I do play those characters again, particularly when HC changes the rules on the powersets and power pools. For example - that miserable, dastardly change to Rune of Protection and the rest of the Sorcery pool. I chose to respec a lot of my characters that have that pool, and played them for a time after, just to try them out for a few days. I have one whose only real purpose is to farm Ambrosia. Not so I can be a damn mercenary and charge 3M each, but so I don't have to spend 3m each, and maybe help out a teammate or two. I have a lot of characters that exist as mission holders for various badges. And, some...well, here's an example: Lagniappe. Lagniappe was my first corruptor, a water/time corruptor. I think it's a fantastic name. And I really enjoyed playing it when I was leveling it up. And, it is an AT powerset combo that @Bionic_Flea himself suggested I try when I pestered him for a suggestion. To delete it after that would really be poor form. I haven't played it in ..looks like 7 months. Maybe longer, but that was the last log in for that character. I don't think I'll ever delete it. Wouldn't feel right. Now my widow, my warshade - those are true garbage characters. I leveled them up with my sg, and that's the ONLY reason they got to 50, because one was a blue side crawl team, the other a red side crawl team. I can't bring myself to delete them, but I have banished them to reunion where they won't take up character slots. And they're still fully IOd. One day, I may revamp them, respec them and see if they can actually punch their way out of a paper bag, and avoid getting stunned. (yeah, I tediously came up with a human only build for the WS, and suddenly realized - they don't have status protection unless they use dwarf form. My mistake - so, it's not so much the AT is trash, but the way I made them is trash) And, who knows? One day, HC may make sweeping changes to them - and this will save the trouble of leveling an identical character should a change occur.

Just as an example - you can barely see it - but that's a "glowie", one of my mission objectives. That is as bright as it got. Everything else is fairly normal as far as I can tell, but this is a bit disappointing. As for client-side improvements, I don't think I require that. I'm sure there's some minor setting, but candidly, I have no idea what half of the terms in the graphic slider even mean.

I was reminded recently that at minimum, more than a few players never played on live, or if they did, they were a munchkin figuratively, or literally, sitting on someone's lap. A lot of folks have no idea what an unseeded salvage price tag would look like. They don't understand that 20M for a purple is very inexpensive. Heck, they don't even understand that even the most expensive thing in this game is cheap, relatively, when you consider how simple it is to get influence/infamy/information. I tried really hard to grasp what the OP wants - and doesn't want, I think I get it now, thanks to his/her recap. (but I could be wrong. I've learned that reading comprehension isn't as strong a suit for me as I would like to think!) Regarding #1 - we do have that in a sense. We get usable loot. But I think the OP is wanting that everything that drops be useful, rather than something to vendor because we can't use it for varying reasons. Or we don't want to use it. "I did the Synapse TF, and besides merits & XP, all I got was this Basilisk's Gaze recipe that I can't use." That's a fair statement. The game is set up to drop random loot instead of specific things that the game should probably know we can use. For example, why should the game drop a level 16 Steadfast protection on a character that doesn't have any type of resistance armor? I always felt like my emp should have gotten items like Doctored Wounds, or Miracle, that type of thing. I believe the converters were introduced to specifically address that. Yay, a new currency. Just what every game needs, right? I do think we could make the following changes without much hassle: Random enhancement drops should align with your origin so you can use them. They should all be the level of the npc that was defeated. So, if you want a +3 SO, then get to clobbering +3 NPCs. Recipes should only require one type of salvage - arcane or technology. My reason for this is because when you're doing an arc, you get a recipe, the salvage for that recipe, should have a chance to drop within that arc. It drives me up the wall when I need a bleeding stone for a recipe that dropped on a freak map, and I'll never get it until I fight magic origin npcs. Looking for specific loot shouldn't drive my choice of arcs, I don't think. It should be the story itself. But that's just my opinion. It's odd. In AE maps, both arcane and tech salvage may drop, but not "in the wild". And that's crazy to me.

I could have sworn there was a better place to ask this question, but I wanted to ask it sooner than later, and didn't find it in my first look around. I recently got a new Nvidia 3060 for my computer. Before, I was playing on performance settings, now I'm maxed out. So...the thing is - why does everything look the exact same except for the glowies? The glowies no longer appear to glow as brightly, and sometimes, they flicker more than they "glow". I would have thought there would be greater contrast, more colorful effects, etc..but that doesn't seem to be the case. I'd be curious to see snippets of what some of your graphic settings are set to.

Let me at least share one perspective to address this question of "Why have characters and not play them?" When HC opened, the first thing I did was remake some of my favorite characters from live. Ice/ice blast, ill/rad troller, spines/regen scrap, fire/fire blast and fire/stone tank. Even solo, with 2xp, leveling from 1 to 50 takes less than a week. But, just because you make 50 doesn't mean the journey stops. There's still incarnates and badges. 4 characters now with all the badges, 1 with all but a dozen - and that's simply because last year, I just got tired of badging. To be as brief as I can, I make new characters to try combinations I haven't tried. Eventually I had over 50 level 50s. How am I to play those characters on even a semi-routine basis? And still make new alts and level them? There's still another 100 I haven't tried, at least! I have a friend in game, @stitch, and while I don't see him daily, I can tell you, other than the 15 badge characters he's got, I have never, ever seen him play the same character twice. And why would he? You get to 50, t-4 in all, then what? Pursue all badges on each and every character? That's the stuff of madness because it's not sustainable. Imagine having 500 characters, and then a new big patch comes out and you have to get all the new badges on all those characters. Oh - and you still have to make sure your wife is happy and your kids are fed. There's just no way to do it and still live life as a half-normal human. There's a few folks that only have a few alts and they cycle between those. And that's perfectly fine, too. But my way is also just fine. I make a character. In most cases, I level to 50. In a few cases, playing them isn't that much fun, so I shelve them, thinking I'll be in the mood to play them later. And in a few cases, I do get those characters to 50. In other cases, I just delete them. And after they get to t-4, I don't have any more goals with that character. I've already done what that character can do, save badges, and that's just madness to do that with every character. (They do all get the 4 passive accolades tho)

With regards to the invention tutorial, not only would I like to see it unlocked at the first recipe drop, I'd like it expanded to include converters, catalysts and boosters.

Not sure I understand. 5/6 slot every power? Like Hurdle and Swift, too? Just attacks?

I think that's a good thing, but I am inclined to think that it's the work of one or more players working to drive the price of it down. Or, they're liquidating a large reserve. I dunno. But, I'm gonna make sure my base is re-stocked. I do not think it will last, but I could certainly be wrong.

That's a fan site that was put up about 2 years and 2 months ago. If you try to click through, most of those links are dead. Yes, you can see the dialogue as it was back on live, but click through to actually read them, there's nothing there.

When you do these trials - are you using the league window or the team window? Sometimes, I use the team window just to see what kind of team reds are active. Sadly, the range on these is only 20 feet, and after the first crackle and the inevitable scatter, often folks are never in close enough proximity to make full use of the inspirations. What's interesting to me is the fact that it's 16 target max, but you only have 8 folks on a team...I guess that includes pets, but the game has a bad habit of never quite spelling these things out specifically.

You raise some interesting points - but the one thing that you haven't mentioned is that the recipe in question is a very rare. Anecdotally, these are far less rare for me than they used to be. But, back on live, I didn't have a true farmer, I just had a fire/stone tank that could farm the dreck map, and did. But I had to be present, controlling my character. Burn on auto would have done the job, I think...but I'm not real sure, as it never occurred to me to try. In any event, if you take farming out of the equation, AND you take the Market Crash auto-purple drop out of the equation, I think it's safe to say, I might have gotten 5 purple drops in the past couple of years. Maybe 8. But, really, they're very, very rare as a drop. At least, they are for me. The rarity is why these are so relatively expensive. Think, back on live, a very rare recipe, uncrafted could cost you well over 250M! Even the Fortunata Hypnosis, the sleep set, arguably the least used would have cost you about 225k. And the salvage for it would be closer to 1-2M, with same crafting costs. So, the percentages on live were even more out of whack. So, I think it's about perspective. Yours is interesting. And I don't disagree with a lot of what you stated. But - ya gotta remember that purples are very rare. Scarcity means low supply. 10% global recharge means higher demand. And when someone gets one they can't use, they can craft it, keep it, store it, convert it or sell it. But if they do sell it, they want to get as much as they can. So, that will push the price higher. Eventually, there's a balance between what folks want to get for it, and what folks are willing to pay. Folks like me who are more frugal get annoyed at the high cost of these items. Other folks, not so much. It's just part of the game, I figure. I don't see a good way around it. Increasing supply through market crash and farming is probably the only thing keeping these items cheap. And they are cheap. Very cheap. At least, when you compare to 10X the price like they were on live.

There's nothing deep about the water that is RHW. It's super trivial now, if folks can maneuver their characters to avoid the AoE crackle. And, even if you can't, the rebirth and barrier buffs almost guarantee you can live through a couple of ticks until you can get out of the way - unless of course, you don't get out of the way. I remember in the Army, there was a test I was given on the Bradley Turret. You had to literally stick a paper clip or a pin in a tiny hole from outside the turret, and then, go in the turret and activate some controls to slew a certain direction a certain number of degrees. But, if the pin/clip didn't stay inserted all the way, you wouldn't hear this beep and you wouldn't be able to verify a certain condition. The problem was, you couldn't be sure the pin was inserted all the way until you came back out of the turret. I failed this test. Not because I didn't know what steps to take, but because the steps gave me trouble. A big chap like myself, climbing in and out of a tiny turret, over and over - not my strong suit. I look at RHW the same way. Most folks know exactly what to do, they just have trouble doing it. That doesn't make the water deep, just makes some folks poor swimmers.

Vendor common salvage if you must. Vendoring uncommon and rare salvage is just ...well, nothing I would ever do, particularly given the silly marketing thing going on with uncommon salvage. But, you're gonna do what you're gonna do. Me telling you that you're taking supply of uncommon out of the game that could be used by other players for a fair price is just going to fall on deaf ears. Just don't ever complain that prices are high, because it's vendoring inventory that could be placed on AH that causes upward pressure in prices. Supply and demand and all that jazz.

Well, it seems to narrow it down to a CoT arc of some fashion, presumably in the level 30 range.

That's really quite clever, and useful. I appreciate your taking the time to create it. My one question - at the bottom of the list, "Soul Crystal". I can't say I recall that one crossing my radar before. My search on the HC wiki further verified my ignorance. How would I get that one?

How is it painful? Lug over 10 salvage at a time, choose a list price and wait to collect. Rather painless and simple.

Here's the lowdown on Cosmic Council: They will invite anyone that wants to join, except for certain folks that somehow have gotten on their naughty list. But, in order to join, you have to visit the Discord, via invite: https://discord.gg/DVksJ4N Once you get there - you should investigate the Public Welcome and Rules channel (seen on the left when using a PC) And in there, you will see this: The bad news is - ordinary members, nor senior members may extend an invitation to you. This privilege/burden is reserved for High Council members. (I don't think they're stoned, pretty sure that's just the highest rank.) So, you once you post in the gateway that you have read and agree to the rules, one of them SHOULD get with you within 24-48 hours. There are 4 HC members. It's rare that one of them doesn't log in on any given day. Granted, if your play time is out of alignment with when they log in, it can be more difficult to get the invite, but I would expect them to reach out via tell and determine when a good time for you to accept the invite would be. If you're someone that is curious about who some of these people are, and are wary of joining, I would encourage you to try and join the Really Hard Way Magisterium efforts on Saturday nights, at 9PM Eastern. NOT THIS JULY 2nd, holiday weekend! SG folks get invited a few minutes before the general public, but usually, a member will drop to make room for a non-sg member that would like to do the iTrial. All you have to do is show up in Echo Plaza (reached via Long Range Teleporter, or the van on Hero side in Pocket D. ) If you lack the threads to get the requisite super inspirations, someone will provide them at no cost to you. If you aren't quite t-4 in Lore, then I suggest you join us for the Cathedral of Pain effort on Mondays in Pocket D. (9:30pm Eastern) The good parts about the SG rules are (in my opinion) - there's really no minimal activity required. If you don't play very often, you might find yourself removed to make room for other folks who want to join, but all you have to do is reach out when you return to get an invite. Once you join, you'll get set up in the discord, and you will be given an invite to the Private Cosmic Council chat channel - which you can use/observe even when you're on a different shard, or a different character that's not in the SG. And, your characters that aren't in the SG can still participate in any events.

It's much easier with two accounts, but you can sell a non-attuned IO and buy an attuned IO of the exact same type for the same price - but it requires one character to sell it at a price where someone else doesn't have a high enough bid for it, and your other character can bid high enough to get it. For example, the attuned Luck of the Gambler 7.5% global recharge. My farmer may get a few of these after each run, when done crafting and converting. I can log in another character, and bid lowball bids and determine just where the bid is actually at ...almost. Remember, I do want an attuned version, and I already have a non-attuned. So, worst case, I get one cheaper than I thought, and can simply list the non-attuned for a price that I think it will sell at. It doesn't have to the same, it can be a bit more, or a bit less. Totally up to me. Sometimes, I'll do this for a large number of them, just for convenience's sake and stash 50 to 100 of them in my base. With the rule of 5, and leveling a character usually once a week, every few months or so, I'll need more. There's no need to use a catalyst for this action, unless it's just out of convenience.

Sigh..once again, I fail at expressing my question. What's the difference between this and the /enterbasefrompasscode passcode-12345 ? I don't see one. EnterbasefromSGID seems to be the exact same thing as Enterbasefrompasscode, as far as functionality goes. Again, maybe I'm missing something.

Temp power recipes are not in this flavor of CoH. They are in Rebirth, I know, but not here. Which is fine, because most of those temp powers are available at p2w and you don't have to rely on the RNG.

Oh, the joy of packs! The tedium of clicking on hundreds of them! There's a clever chap who was kind enough to go to the test server and acquire and open hundreds of these packs and compiled a list of what you're likely to get in a given pack. @Bopper and @Faultline have done the grunt work here, so I take no credit. The long and short of it is: with Hero/Villain packs, you can make inf, but not a great deal. With Winter Packs, those of us who bought a ton of them at 10M 2 years ago when they were on sale, and this past year (Winter/Christmas time) on sale for 15M are making a figurative killing. But, even at 25M, you can make a tidy sum of about 5-10M per pack, possibly more, depending on RNG blessings.

Yes. What you're missing is the actual USE of the converters. 100 merits gets you 300 converters, as you mentioned. But let's go with your version of 143 converters lying around. But...what if...what if, as I'm playing my character, I get various uncommon & rare recipes & salvage drops, and then opt to craft those recipes, regardless of what they are, and whether I can use them or not? Given (ya just have to trust me on this) the average use of 15 converters per try to turn something fairly useless like a Perplex into something useful like ...an Oblit, or a Perf Shifter proc or something that routinely sells for 2-4M, I can reasonably take 9 IOs and make 27M. That's better than the sale of the 143 converters*70,000=10,010,000 Mind you, sometimes, the sales may take a little longer, and crafting/converting of 9 recipes isn't instant. But it doesn't take that long, either. The folks in this game that have the most influence are the folks that USE converters, not sell them or trade them. Anyone that tells you differently doesn't understand math.

So, the thing is - when you have the base entry selection window open - why would you click a macro or use a keybind when you could just enter the base as normal? Not sure I see any advantage beyond the base tp.

That's interesting! I'm sure you've already put in some sort of a petition or bug report, just to let them know, but I'd just burn 3 more converters and then if you like, I can trade you any purple you like for the proc that you can actually use. (although I suspect you've already addressed this)