Coyotedancer

All it would do to "add challenge" is make life short, painful and not a lot of fun for melee types.

You know my magi too well. XD

Farming is far from the most efficient way to make money in this game. Marketeering will get you a lot more INF a lot faster. No joking. It's basically an order of magnitude beyond what even the fastest farmers can do. So, if you're really interested in building up a bankroll quickly, that's the way to do it. Farming is more fun than playing around with converters and the Wentworth's interface, but...

They're annoying people "for the lolz"... I don't think that means they have problems. I think it means they're assholes.

As the person who plays creepy Oranbegans, I think I can translate what that unhappy mage had to say about the experience... *picks a moldy banana peel off of his armor* "Dammit... I just GOT this new body, you jerk. And now it's all bruised up. And dusty. AND I landed in the dumpster. THE DUMPSTER! Gah! 'Undignified' doesn't even begin to cover it... And... now you've tossed my lashers into the dumpster, too. *sighs* They're going to sulk, you know. They're going to sulk, and blame me, and probably complain to the Death Mages about 'abuse' and 'poor treatment' and 'workplace safety violations' and Ermeeth only knows what else. You know what? The modern world STINKS. I'm going home. Keep your stupid rooftops!" *stalks off towards the nearest cave door, grumbling something about cleaning rituals and 'never going to get the garbage-smell out of this armor'* XD

Time flies like an arrow... … Fruit flies like a banana. (And yes. There's at least one song by that name. XD)

In before someone comes along and tells you to "Learn to play the Market"... Although that's not actually a bad suggestion, mind... It may not be any fun for most of us to sit around playing "City of Wentworths", but marketeering actually is the most effective way to make money in the game. It's far and away more lucrative than farming, even before the nerf.

I'm not likely to join you... 'Just not my kind of theme, I'm afraid... But purely for fun I DID use the random dice-roller to see what I'd end up with if I did. XD 81 - Corruptor 1 - Archery 83 - Time That actually wouldn't be a terrible character, I suspect. 'Not a combination I've ever had, but not a bad mix at first glance.

As a fellow "mostly solo" player who also sometimes runs with teams, I'd say just jumping into random PUGs that are looking for people on the LFG or channels may be a better bet than waiting around for a group of people who want to form an all-new static group. You meet a lot more interesting people that way, and while you'll definitely see some real disasters on occasion, that's not the norm. You'll also dodge the very real potential issue of never getting to play your static team character because the other members of their group are never around, or are more interested in other alts, or any of a dozen other reasons statics are problematic in the long run.

Eh. I enjoy ship raiding. I really do... And I only bring characters after they're high enough level to have done the intro arc, myself... But raids with lowbies are hardly "always a disaster". As long as you also have a decent number of higher level league members, you'll be fine. Everlasting has 'bring anyone' raids on a regular basis. That said, I'm wary of the instanced version. I've joined several since it was introduced and every time it's had issues with multiple dropped members and completely lost or blown-apart teams... Maybe it's more stable these days. I hope it is. But it REALLY didn't make a great impression. I suspect a lot of us just wrote it off as being more trouble than it was worth as a result. I think I could count on one hand the number of instanced raids I've even seen advertised this year.

The Ways of the Purse (or lack of a purse-) are Many and Full of Questions.

I tend to run Briggs' #2551... Angry Cosplayers in Atta's junkyard troll-cave. It takes me about 45-50 minutes to clear with Harry (Fire/Claws Brute built for speed-) and it tends to get him around 25-30mm as a solo, after selling off everything but the PvP recipes, Catalysts and Purps that I horde to use with my own crew. (Totals would be a lot higher if I didn't keep those. But I know I'll eventually use them. XD) Typically, though, I don't toss him in there alone. Harry is on my secondary account, so I dual-box him with one of my main account's 50s. After sales, I usually end up with a little over 50mm between the two of them that way. (Exact final totals vary with drop luck, of course, but they very reliably come out with 22mm INF each before I AH anything-) The Bloody Rainbow asteroid map is a lot faster to clear, but not worth quite as much INF as the cave, and it's a bit of a pain to dual-box with the multiple-mission format.

The Jackpot neighborhood music from Saint Martial. (Jackpot was Kestrel and Cardinal's base of operations... IC they owned one of the brownstones across from the Giza... so I always associate that music with them.) I kid you not... During the Dark Times? I had that little clip on one of my iPod playlists. 'Made me grin every time it came on.

Guilty. Definitely guilty of that here, too.

*laughing* And what about those of us who DON'T carry one? We are mysterious. XD