End Game Problems

[Kodo]

End Game Problems:

 

1. Money. The only viable way to make money for end game IOs is to create a fire farmer. So you basically have to shelf your toon and play another toon so that you can buy sets for the toon you shelfed. This is all wrong. There should be a way to match the income of a fire farmer on our actual toons. Like give us an influence boost, like the xp boost, available at level 50. Or something...

 

2. Custom non-fire AE maps. Custom non-fire AE maps are the hardest content in the game. You can build one of these, and on regular +0/ 8 players, a full group of incarnates will wipe on the first group of mobs.

 

Here's the problem. Let's say you dumb your mobs down. Now your full group of incarnates can barely yet successfully kill the mobs on +0/8. The problem is, they get little to no exp/influence because it's not +4. You can not run these things on +4 unless you completely gimp the mobs. In which case, then you're right back to mindlessly aoe killing groups of mobs that hold little challenge.

 

There needs to be a way, so that when we create an AE map, with mobs that actually have lots of powers and actually pose a serious threat (and a fun fight), that we get xp & $ as if it was +4, Even though, we're running on +0 (because again,+4 under these conditions are impossible). 

 

3. IO sets and the Auction house. If your set is highly sought after, it's probably completely unavailable. I've been looking for the same IO for over a week... I'm 100% not against having a NPC vendor that sells every IO in the game. And I'm not talking about 100 merits for 1. That's extremely unreasonable.

 

4. The main problem with End Game for new players is that the moment you hit 50, you now have to Google for 8 hours to figure out how incarnates work, how IO Sets work, then you have to download a 3rd party software to measure IOs, now you're ready to go start a fire farmer so you can actually afford IO's...

 

This isn't a rant. This is just my experience and opinion on the topic: End Game. 

[Apogee]

You missed the real end game of City of Heroes ... character creation! 

 

Ok now to your points:

 

1. Fire farms are only one means for gaining influence. You can buy/sell items on the AH and make billions. There are numerous guides on this site for how to make money in game without resorting to a fire farm.

 

2. Got nothing here, I don't spend enough time doing that content.

 

3. Use Enhancement Converters. Sometimes you get lucky and get the exact recipe you want in one try, sometimes you burn through 100+ converters. YMMV. Don't get too bogged down in IO sets. You can survive just fine on common IOs or even SOs, sets are a luxury, not a requirement.

 

4. None of these things are required to play the game. Mids is a great tool and can become a game unto itself. I am sure I am not the only one who used Mids after the shutdown just to get that old CoH feeling for awhile. As for Incarnates, again I will refer you to the guides on this site. The info is much more concise and very well put together.

Edited January 28, 2020 by Apogee

[SwitchFade]

Answers,

 

1. This is completely false. I loathe AE. I fund all my toons from normal play and never hurt for cash. Many 50's, all with full kit. My main tank was over 1 billion. Never set foot in AE.

 

2. Also false. Have you played incarnates? I'm beginning to think you have been mind snatched by AE.

 

3. Incorrect. I've never had any trouble buying any io. Also, converters. You can make anything shirt of a purple, and even then you can convert within category.

 

4. Brazenly false. You can find out all you need to know right here on the forums. Plenty of info here to get you fully informed 

 

Honestly, no one gave us an instruction manual the first time we figured it out, and wrote guides. This thread has a theme: I want it now, faster and easier. I suggest, stay out of AE, play the game, enjoy it and figure it out. Use miss/pines hero builder.

 

Compared to games like King's Quest, figuring out this game is a cake walk.

Edited January 28, 2020 by SwitchFade

[Snarky]

About a month ago i had the same complaint. The difference now is night and day. Yet i still have no fire farmer and alt as much as ever. 
 

to make it simple: craft enhancers. 
 

run content. Tinpex gets 80 merits and 2 emps or random incarnate stuff. Weeklies give easy merits. Run content on your character. I get PVP and Purple drops pretty regular

 

take the merits change them to enhancement converters. Buy cheap level 30 recipes. Craft 20-70. Start converting them until you have heals, res, def, end mod sets. Convert those to specific sets that sell well or have procs globals. Convert within set to get desired enhancer. Sell enhancer. Merits—-> process—->cash

 

just running 50 content with a big team also earns well.  See a 50 team running in PI. Ads it will take anyone. Go be part of the muscle. You will earn and help community. And maybe get a purple drop. But TFs are king. ITF LGTF LRSF etc. weeklies. Anything that earns merits earns good cash

Edited January 28, 2020 by Snarky

[Troo]

@MasThoven17 I think I can help a little. I truly sympathize with your experience. It definitely seems like you have had some experience with the game previously.

 

A couple quick questions first:

• Regarding #1 Money: How long did it take you to go from 0-50 most recently?
• Regarding #2 Non-Farm AE Maps: Do you have the same experience in current strike forces, say Lord Recluse Strike Force?

 

Regarding #3 Buying IO sets: We can definitely help here.

Regarding #4 Learning curve for IOs and Incarnates: I agree it is a steep learning curve.

 

 

Edited January 28, 2020 by Troo

[Snarky]

3 hours ago, MasThoven17 said:

3. IO sets and the Auction house. If your set is highly sought after, it's probably completely unavailable. I've been looking for the same IO for over a week... I'm 100% not against having a NPC vendor that sells every IO in the game. And I'm not talking about 100 merits for 1. That's extremely unreasonable.

To address this very real problem.  I have had a moment where i am sitting on hundreds of millions and the enhancer i want is not on the market.  Sooooo.  I buy another pvp purple or archetype.  Sometimes in same set. Othertimes way out there cause it is cheaper. And i convert until i have the one i want

 

there is a theme to my answers. enhancement converters.  They will solve almost all your building issues. Whether it is a lack of funds or there not being the exact enhancer you want on the auction

 

i cannot stress enough how much a difference it makes. If you are currently converting merits to converters and selling them then crafting will net you 2-3 times as much. And give power to create out of nothing earn merits and buy whatever you want

Edited January 28, 2020 by Snarky

[Pixie_Knight]

2 hours ago, MasThoven17 said:

End Game Problems:

 

1. Money. The only viable way to make money for end game IOs is to create a fire farmer. So you basically have to shelf your toon and play another toon so that you can buy sets for the toon you shelfed. This is all wrong. There should be a way to match the income of a fire farmer on our actual toons. Like give us an influence boost, like the xp boost, available at level 50. Or something...

 

2. Custom non-fire AE maps. Custom non-fire AE maps are the hardest content in the game. You can build one of these, and on regular +0/ 8 players, a full group of incarnates will wipe on the first group of mobs.

 

Here's the problem. Let's say you dumb your mobs down. Now your full group of incarnates can barely yet successfully kill the mobs on +0/8. The problem is, they get little to no exp/influence because it's not +4. You can not run these things on +4 unless you completely gimp the mobs. In which case, then you're right back to mindlessly aoe killing groups of mobs that hold little challenge.

 

There needs to be a way, so that when we create an AE map, with mobs that actually have lots of powers and actually pose a serious threat (and a fun fight), that we get xp & $ as if it was +4, Even though, we're running on +0 (because again,+4 under these conditions are impossible). 

 

3. IO sets and the Auction house. If your set is highly sought after, it's probably completely unavailable. I've been looking for the same IO for over a week... I'm 100% not against having a NPC vendor that sells every IO in the game. And I'm not talking about 100 merits for 1. That's extremely unreasonable.

 

4. The main problem with End Game for new players is that the moment you hit 50, you now have to Google for 8 hours to figure out how incarnates work, how IO Sets work, then you have to download a 3rd party software to measure IOs, now you're ready to go start a fire farmer so you can actually afford IO's...

 

This isn't a rant. This is just my experience and opinion on the topic: End Game. 

 

My answers:

 

#1. Wait, WHAT?! So you're telling me that my TA/A defender who had funded a full set of level 15 generic IO for what I'd need up through level 21 and a full set of level 25 generic IOs for my entire planned build before level 10 isn't real? No, money is not the issue. And a fire farmer isn't the only viable way to fund a character. In fact, no matter what your AT or power sets the only way for you to ever be strapped for Inf is if you're only using TO/DO/SO enhancements and you're still leveling to 50. And even then, money issues go away by the mid 30's. Generic IOs cost more upfront to make then it does to buy an SO of the same level, true. But that upfront cost offsets the fact that they are "once and done" enhancements. Once you have level 25 generic IOs slotted, you never actually need to replace them. Hell, even if you are never slotting an IO you can still easily fund keeping your DO/SO enhancements updated via selling salvage and recipes on the AH. Post them for 5 to 10 Inf each, and watch the Inf roll in.

 

There's a reason gold sellers consistently failed to create a market in CoH, and that's because Inf is so laughably easy to get.

 

#2. Like others said, step away from the Architect Entertainment building. There's some wonderfully written storylines in CoH. And even the one and done missions can have amusing writing for why your doing something or NPC dialog in the mission. Now, do you want to know the biggest secret about this issue you seem to be having? Those AE missions give crap XP/Inf because they are AE missions. Go out and speak to your contacts, get regular missions, and watch the xp and inf roll in.

 

#3. As others mentioned, you can Convert set IO into other set IO. Or you can pool resources. Maybe character A got a recipe for something character B wants, meanwhile character C found something character A wants. Rather then deleting or selling these because the character you are playing doesn't want/need it, consider sending it to another of your characters that does want/need it.

 

#4. That's rather amusing of you to say. You see, most of what you need to know for Inventions can be learned by doing the Invention tutorial quest chain and reading what is said. Got that? Great, cause this next part will blow your mind. When you first unlock Incarnate abilities you are taught how they work. Yes, this means you might have to read what the NPC is saying. Thus really, you are given almost all the information you need for IOs and Incarnate abilities without needing to google anything for even 10 minutes, let alone 8 hours. The only thing not mentioned I believe is the fact you can only benefit from 4 or 5 of a given set bonus at the same time. No, I don't mean the bonuses from a specific Set. I mean you can only stack 4 or 5 copies of a +3% Melee Defense set bonus at a given time. And as has already been explained, there's no need for a fire farmer to begin with so that's not even a step.

 

No, really, the only thing you need to do once you hit 50 to get ready for the Endgame is... be willing to read what the game is telling you and having the patience to farm Incarnate mats. This last one was a HUGE roadblock back before the server shutdown. But these days I hear it's pretty much a non-issue. So the only thing you need to do before you can dive into the Endgame is... I guess decide you want to engage in the endgame?

[Troo]

28 minutes ago, Pixie_Knight said:

only way for you to ever be strapped for Inf is if you're only using TO/DO/SO enhancements and you're still leveling to 50.

I resemble that remark on many characters.. which are not short on funds. = ) 

 

I think what happens to a lot of new folks is they race to 50 skipping a lot of the game (willingly or inadvertently, and not earning much infamy or merits in the process).

Then when they look to outfit their character based on the information they are able to piece together, some enhancements for that build could be 20M-30M. Dozens of IOs x 15M avg is a lot.

[Pixie_Knight]

43 minutes ago, Troo said:

I resemble that remark on many characters.. which are not short on funds. = ) 

 

I think what happens to a lot of new folks is they race to 50 skipping a lot of the game (willingly or inadvertently, and not earning much infamy or merits in the process).

Then when they look to outfit their character based on the information they are able to piece together, some enhancements for that build could be 20M-30M. Dozens of IOs x 15M avg is a lot.

 

I did mention that Inf issues vanish by the mid 30's, right? I was leveling Madam Enigma and other characters long before Inventions were added. And my experience was that pre-30 you often couldn't afford to fully update all your enhancements at the same time, so might need to run a mission or in order to buy the rest. Starting at level 30 this was less of an issue. And by level 35 updating every enhancement at the same time was easy.

 

Of course you'll be strapped for cash and under enhanced if you PL'd to fifty. But if you actually played the game that's not an issue. In fact, you may find that you're at least 50% of the way decked out with set IOs before you hit level 50. Especially if using generic IOs in the mean time and selling stuff you don't need on the AH.

 

EDIT: Of course, it should be mentioned that you're only strapped for cash while leveling pre-30's if you completely ignore the auction house/black market as well.

Edited January 28, 2020 by Pixie_Knight

[Sovera]

5 hours ago, MasThoven17 said:

End Game Problems:

 

1. Money. The only viable way to make money for end game IOs is to create a fire farmer. So you basically have to shelf your toon and play another toon so that you can buy sets for the toon you shelfed. This is all wrong. There should be a way to match the income of a fire farmer on our actual toons. Like give us an influence boost, like the xp boost, available at level 50. Or something...

 

2. Custom non-fire AE maps. Custom non-fire AE maps are the hardest content in the game. You can build one of these, and on regular +0/ 8 players, a full group of incarnates will wipe on the first group of mobs.

 

Here's the problem. Let's say you dumb your mobs down. Now your full group of incarnates can barely yet successfully kill the mobs on +0/8. The problem is, they get little to no exp/influence because it's not +4. You can not run these things on +4 unless you completely gimp the mobs. In which case, then you're right back to mindlessly aoe killing groups of mobs that hold little challenge.

 

There needs to be a way, so that when we create an AE map, with mobs that actually have lots of powers and actually pose a serious threat (and a fun fight), that we get xp & $ as if it was +4, Even though, we're running on +0 (because again,+4 under these conditions are impossible). 

 

3. IO sets and the Auction house. If your set is highly sought after, it's probably completely unavailable. I've been looking for the same IO for over a week... I'm 100% not against having a NPC vendor that sells every IO in the game. And I'm not talking about 100 merits for 1. That's extremely unreasonable.

 

4. The main problem with End Game for new players is that the moment you hit 50, you now have to Google for 8 hours to figure out how incarnates work, how IO Sets work, then you have to download a 3rd party software to measure IOs, now you're ready to go start a fire farmer so you can actually afford IO's...

 

This isn't a rant. This is just my experience and opinion on the topic: End Game. 

*headscratch* Perhaps instead of stating a string of 'facts' you should ask to receive answers. Since others have already disproved your list (I had a 🙂 for the 'full group of incarnates unable to defeat +0x8 AE content. Perhaps you could point which mission in specific you are talking about or was it just a claim?) I'm not going to add my own to it.

 

I also had several cases of looking for an IO where there were 0 available and never failed to get it in a day by leaving a bid. If it's really bad remember you can buy the recipes with 100 Merits and just doing a Tinpex alone (40 minute total) gives 80 merits. One double Hami raid (20-30 minutes total) is 120 merits.

 

As I said, ask when in doubt, don't just make a list stating things as truth. As others mentioned other than for testing purposes or minimal last leveling on some characters I don't go into the AE for farming and I have two characters IOed to the nines, plus 800 million in liquid cash, plus perhaps half of that in IOs in my base for alts to grab.

[presto2112]

5 hours ago, MasThoven17 said:

This isn't a rant

Srsly not even a rant

[Pixie_Knight]

But seriously, my plant/trick arrow controller who's not even level 20 has one full set Slow enhancements crafted, attuned, and ready to be slotted into Glue Arrow when open slots become available. As well as having the full set for one of the hold sets planned (in recipe form) with a couple of them crafted already. I'm still making generic IOs for the build since I spent so much inf on a full set of Neurotic Shutdown recipes. But this still goes to show that funding an IO build doesn't require a fire farmer.

[DSorrow]

1. Patently false. I haven't farmed a single minute on Homecoming but I have 8 50s with no-limits IO builds.

 

2. I don't really understand what you want here. +0 mobs that reward the same as +4? I'm on board for making rewards scale better with enemy difficulty because right now there isn't any incentive to fight stuff like the Vanguard. However, the way difficulty works in CoX is pretty binary: either your numbers are better than the opponent's or they're not and skill isn't involved all that much beyond planning your build because the game doesn't have many active mechanics such as aiming, dodging or parrying.

 

3. 100 merits for 1 top of the line IO is actually extremely reasonable. Consider an arbitrary build: 24 powers between your primary, secondary and power pools plus Health and Stamina and 67 freely assignable slots for a total of 93 slots you most likely want to fill with something. If we assume you want to slap a purple / PvP IO / ATO in each slot - which is an extremely exaggerated assumption, by the way -  you'll need 9300 merits to get everything. For the sake of simplicity, we'll also assume that you get no useful drops and you won't even use the inf gained from drops to trade for enhancements, so you're left with merit gains to complete your build with.

 

Considering that there are plenty of activities in the game that reward you with a rate of roughly 1 merit per minute, we get an extremely conservative estimate that it's going to take you around 9300 minutes or 155 hours of gameplay to obtain maxed out gear. However, once you factor in influence and enhancement drops, converters, activities with much better than 1 merit/minute reward rates (Tin Mage / Apex / Hami / etc) and the fact that even a top of the line build isn't going to have a 100 merit IO in every slot, you're probably looking at 70-80 hours maximum unless you specifically spend your time in low reward activities.

 

4. IOs and incarnates being confusing at first is maybe the only thing I'd agree with here. While Incarnates are pretty straightforward, the IO system is extremely intricate. However, the IO system is a bonus. You can do any content in the game with just SOs, though maybe not solo, in undersized teams or at high difficulty settings. Even if you understand very little about set IOs, slap on any set build that makes any sense (i.e. powers slotted for their primary purpose: no defense debuff sets in damage powers and so on) and it's going to be better than an SO build. If you want a beautifully optimized and executed build, it's going to take a while to learn how to build those, but you'll often find volunteer help with that kind of stuff if you ask nicely on an AT forum. The builds you see on the forums generally aren't built for the standards required by the game, but something much, much, much higher: the standards required by hardcore veterans who are pushing the limits of what can be done.

 

Sure, 800 million builds are great fun to play with but you'll do more than fine with a 50 million build and even an 800 million build is actually quite accessible if you're willing to commit for what I consider a rather reasonable amount of time.

[EmmySky]

I have a few 50s.  Most of them used double xp boosters and therefore earned no inf.  All salvage and recipes I list on AH for 100, they generally sell fast and net good profits (a few items will take a while to sell).  At lvl 50, you can easily slot common lvl 50 IOs in every slot for 20m to 25m....just buying off AH.  If you craft them yourself its cheaper.  And that is with the buy now prices, it would be even cheaper if you are patient and put in lower bids.  

 

AE, as many have stated, is unnecessary.  Those rewards were intentionally nerfed by the live devs because people were exploiting it.  Also, if a full team of incarnates is wiping on AE content set at min, something is wonky.  

 

I am just learning the intricacies of set bonus' and incarnates.  Lots of info here on HC forums and a little info on paragonwiki (although navigating that monstrosity is a challenge).  The reason so many of my 50s are still using common IOs instead of sets is because I like to learn by doing.  Since they specialize in different things it isnt like one set fits all.  

 

Many people recommend mids, and I have it but rarely use it.  It spits out numbers that mean nothing to me and actually building and playing it in game is much more educational for my learning style.

 

Good luck to you, OP, and happy hunting ☺

[Pixie_Knight]

And then there's the fact that you may not even want to put IO sets in every power. You flat out can't six slot everything. Nor can you five slot everything. This is because you just plain don't get enough slots to do so. That's especially true for kelds since they get an extra 8 or 9 powers that need to be slotted up if they take Nova and Dwarf forms. Which means your looking at sets which have 3 or 4 enhancements. And you realize that if you use those sets, you're giving up some of your power's potential in exchange for the set bonuses. Most 4 enhancement damage sets don't hit the soft cap for damage, for example. Not unless they are very high level that is. And even then, you may find that said power did more damage with a generic IO acc enhancement and 3 generic IO damage enhancements. This is even more true for 3 enhancement sets. Especially if one of the enhancements in the set is a proc. So maybe you decide to frankenslot? Okay, sure that's an option. And it's potentially a very good one. But frankenslotting a power doesn't generally give many (if any) set bonuses.

 

Then there are your goals for IOs. Are you trying to shore up weaknesses, or enhance strengths? It'll be far easier for a /SR scrapper to soft cap their positional defenses using set bonuses then it would be for a blaster to get worth while amounts of defense or resistance from set bonuses. An ice armor tanker is going to want different set bonuses then said super reflexes scrapper too when trying to softcap defenses. That said, while it can be complicated none of this is so complex that you can't figure things out for yourself just by opening up the AH and looking over what various sets offer. There's many different ways to acquire these enhancements too. I prefer organically finding the recipes, then sharing them among my characters.

 

Incarnate stuff is even less complicated. Look at the powers, compare them, and decide which ones you think will benefit your build more (or are more thematic). Once you've decided on that, check what you'll need to craft that Incarnate ability. This may or may not require farming, depending on how your acquiring your mats. But it's also FAR easier then it was originally.

[Yomo Kimyata]

OP's experiences are so diametrically opposed to mine that I wonder if we are logging onto the same program.  If OP cares, I can try to give  some tips if these are problems that he/she is looking to solve for personal play -- feel free to send me PM.

[Coyote]

End Game Problems: Solved.

 

Thank you all for your answers, we'll meet again at the same Bat-time (Cat-time for you roleplayers on Everlasting 😉 ) next week. 😄

[Shred Monkey]

Never have I ever seen such a great example of what makes farming AE dumb.   Here's my advice.  Go make a new account.  Pretend AE doesn't exist, and go experience a whole new and wonderful game.

Edited January 28, 2020 by Shred Monkey

[Pixie_Knight]

I never understood the appeal of AE farming to begin with. When the system was added I made a few story arcs myself. I ran a bunch of arcs too with a few characters. But the writing just wasn't as good as the actual missions in the game. A nice alternative to newspaper/police band missions or repeatable warburg missions when trying to get from 35 to 40, sure. New badges too, which I felt compelled to go after. But I quickly saw the system being used  by the general population as a replacement for PL farming outdoor warwolf filled defeat all missions. And I've never understood the appeal of powerleveling past all of a game's content. Especially since those same people tend to then whine about how the game has "no content".

[Shred Monkey]

I understand the appeal of PLing.  It's a version of min/maxing.    You're setting a goal of earning the maximum influence and/or experience per minute and then tweaking all the available knobs to fine tune you game play to achieve this goal.  That's very fun to some people.   But it shouldn't be confused with playing the game.

 

Power-leveling will always exist because there will always be a "most efficient" and repeatable method of earning experience and because players will always find it.  Really, the only problem with power-leveling is when the results are so greatly exceeding regular game play that players become "normalized" to the experience rate gain of a farm can no longer accept non-farm experience rates. 

 

In a normal situation where your game is competing against the rest of the world for survival and you care about gaining new players and retaining old players, you need to close that gap and manage it carefully.   But at this point, with this game ...eh... who cares?  

 

 

Edited January 28, 2020 by Shred Monkey

[Pixie_Knight]

But in MMOs the whole idea behind powerleveling is that the game doesn't "start" until you hit the level cap and are doing the endgame content. So these people PL to the cap, run the endgame content obsessively, then whine about how the game has no content. Which ignores the fact that they skipped months worth of content.

 

I just really don't get the mindset of people who whine about a game not having any content when they intentionally skipped past 99% of the game's content to reach what they consider the "real" game.

[roleki]

6 hours ago, Troo said:

I resemble that remark on many characters.. which are not short on funds. = ) 

 

I think what happens to a lot of new folks is they race to 50 skipping a lot of the game (willingly or inadvertently, and not earning much infamy or merits in the process).

Then when they look to outfit their character based on the information they are able to piece together, some enhancements for that build could be 20M-30M. Dozens of IOs x 15M avg is a lot.

This.  The *most likely* reason a character is broke at 50 is because they went 2XP the whole way through.  While I am sure that - through persistent gaming of the market - you can roll 2XP AND have scads of influence for your alt, that seems too much like "spreadsheets in space" to me.  (To ME).  

 

[NNDeepdish]

These complaints are about... 8 years too late? 

 

Nobody here made the game... it's preserving what we lost and making logical improvements where we can and people have seriously lost sight of that. 

[Snarky]

5 minutes ago, NNDeepdish said:

These complaints are about... 8 years too late? 

 

Nobody here made the game... it's preserving what we lost and making logical improvements where we can and people have seriously lost sight of that. 

This. Also you will find a LOT of good information being dispensed on these boards. These gamers are knowledgeable and seriously trying to help. The help is directed at dealing with what we have and how various people have problem solved it. Whether that is soloing an AV min/maxing a build running an efficient Supergroup or earning cash to bling out a thousand alts. 
 

not saying this is the method you will use. I am sure my method of earning will be looked down on by ‘real entrepreneurs” but it is comfortable for me and it works.  
 

also you may be the one that comes up with an entirely new way if doing something. Thats what all these geeks do. Me?  I run my head into a wall a few times then come here to find out where the door is when i get tired of that 🤪

[Grouchybeast]

10 minutes ago, NNDeepdish said:

These complaints are about... 8 years too late? 

 

Nobody here made the game... it's preserving what we lost and making logical improvements where we can and people have seriously lost sight of that. 

No lie, the OP gave me a warm fuzzy feeling of nostalgia for the days when people used to come to the old market forum to complain bitterly about the ebil marketeers who were making it impossible for them to purple out their warshades.

 

@MasThoven17, I'm sorry you're having problems getting the stuff you want.  The tone of your post obviously raised some hackles, but there is loads of good advice in the comments already.  If you want to come back with some more specifics about what content you're doing in the game now and what your goals are, I'm sure that people will be able to help point you to strategies that will give you a more enjoyable experience.