Merits to Influence - step by step?

[Mashugana]

Can someone help me understand how people turn Merits to Influence?  I know there is a process but I cannot find something that explains the steps.

 

And please speak to me as you would a small child or a golden retriever 🙂

 

1. How do you get/farm Merits?
2. What do you buy with Merits and where?
3. What do you convert that into and with what?
4. What is the end product that you sell on the AH?

 

Thanks all.

[Apparition]

1.  You obtain merits by running Task Forces/Strike Forces.  Lots and lots of Task Forces/Strike Forces.  Story arcs as well, although they're not as efficient as TFs/SFs.

 

2, 3, and 4. Go to a Merit Vendor in most zones (they're on the map), and buy Enhancement Converters, Enhancement Boosters, and/or Enhancement Unslotters.  Sell them on the auction house.

[Yomo Kimyata]

There have been a couple of threads about this in the Market Forum -- try your search fu!

 

In addition to what @Apparitionsaid, you can also get merits from opening Hero packs or Winter packs.

 

As far as what to exchange them for, it's up to you.  If it's for personal use, it's all fair game.  Merits are easy to get, pain heals, chicks dig scars, glory lasts forever.  If you are trying to exchange your merits for inf at an "optimal" rate, there are a number of alternatives.  My observations are:  1.  For 100 merits, anything netting out 18mm+ (selling for 20mm+ before market fees) means you are probably doing ok, although there a few marginally more profitable options;  2.  I've never found anything more profitable than converting them to converters and then using the converters to make lead into gold.  

 

Who's a good boy?  Is it you?  It is!  You're a good boy!

 

 

Edited February 28, 2021 by Yomo Kimyata
Forgot I was talking to a golden retriever.

[Ukase]

The road to pixel wealth in CoH has many paths. Some are better than others. But, in order to be really helpful, we need more information. 

How much time are you willing to invest? 
Do you have a second account? 
How much influence do you have to invest? (technically, you don't need any)

Have you read Yomo's latest guide/adventure, the meandering path to a billion? 

No point in my reciting it. Look through this very market forum. Some guides even have pictures. 

 

[Mashugana]

Thanks everyone - this is really helpful 🙂

[aeb]

Three other sources of merits are giant monsters, Dark Astoria dailies/repeatable missions,  and hunting certain badges. 🙂

 

Each giant monster drops a few merits for each person on a team which got at least one hit on them. 🙂

 

There are repeatable/daily missions in Dark Astoria with special rewards. One of the options is merits: 2 the first time in 20 hours, and 1 per time after that. Not a lot, but for a single mission, not bad. 🙂 

 

The badges are limited, but I'm certain the badges for getting every exploration badge in the zone - available for zones with 8 or more badges in them - drop some, and I think the badges for doing every story arc in a zone do, too. Not every zone seems to have those, but when they do, you get the merits for each story arc, and an extra bunch of merits for doing all the story arcs in that zone. 🙂

 

Edited March 29, 2021 by aeb

[DocRadio]

Orobos portal is a good option. Repeat story arcs to get additional merits. Cash them for converters. Convert low value enhancements to sought after ones. Sell. You end up with an insane amount of cash fairly quickly.

 

Though I hear farming is more profitable.

[Sakai]

Good merits to be had in Tip missions as well. Fun to run and enough variety so it isn't too repetitive. 

 

Believe it is 40 these days and I imagine the cool down period is gone so they can be done endlessly. 

[Ukase]

In case our OP returns to the thread: 

The zones that offer bonus merits for completing the arcs in that zone are: 
Mercy
Atlas
The Hollows
Faultline
Striga
Croatoa
RWZ

Except for Kallista Wharf, Pocket D and Cimerora, all zones offer 8 exploration badges only. Get all eight, you get an accolade badge and 5 reward merits. In Pocket D and Cimerora, there are only 2 explorations each, and in Kallista Wharf only one. 

Recently, we've been able to use a new power called Long Range Teleport for getting all the badges in a zone. This works for Pocket D and Kallista, but not for Cimerora. So, other than just being a badge nerd, there's no motivation to get those badges in Cimerora. There are a few other zones lrtp doesn't work for, but that's a tangent issue. 

If you think about the number of zones we have in game, and the ease in which you can swap alignments, there's a lot of low hanging fruit. 

[Myrmidon]

On 3/29/2021 at 10:13 PM, Sakai said:

Good merits to be had in Tip missions as well. Fun to run and enough variety so it isn't too repetitive. 

 

Believe it is 40 these days and I imagine the cool down period is gone so they can be done endlessly. 

In addition to this (yes, there is no longer a limit), every alignment option grants you the 40 Merits. 

[Myrmidon]

On 3/30/2021 at 8:39 AM, Ukase said:

Except for Kallista Wharf, Pocket D and Cimerora, all zones offer 8 exploration badges only. Get all eight, you get an accolade badge and 5 reward merits. In Pocket D and Cimerora, there are only 2 explorations each, and in Kallista Wharf only one. 

If you wait until Page 2 drops, there will be tips that lead to these badges. Street hunt mobs, read the tips and grab the badges. Magneto Flight and this are two of the features that I can’t wait for the most.

[TheSpiritFox]

Step 1: Make merits by running TFs

Step 2: Turn merits into enhancement converters

Step 3: Bid on cheap yellow recipes lvl 30+

Step 4: Turn 80 recipes into 80 enhancements, buying salvage off the AH

Step 5: Pray to the RNG gods and use converters to turn yellows into oranges by converting in type to get a rare then converting in rare to get a valuable enhancement

Step 6: Sell enhancements, profit

[Ukase]

On 3/29/2021 at 9:02 PM, DocRadio said:

Though I hear farming is more profitable.

Whoever tells you this clearly doesn't understand how to play the market. 

[Dazl]

On 6/5/2021 at 8:52 AM, Ukase said:

Whoever tells you this clearly doesn't understand how to play the market. 

As someone who has a farmer and plays the market I would agree with @Ukase, you can make much more influence on the market. The big difference is farming is easy and doesn’t require any market savvy.

 

Another great source of merits which has not been mentioned is Hami raids. You get 80 merits the first time you kill the hami and 40 each time after that until the clock resets after about 20hrs. Most servers do at least two rounds and others do three. So you are looking at 120 to 160 merits for less than an hour of effort.

[tidge]

I find the Hami raids to be a mixed bag: by all measures, a Hamidon raid is probably the most efficient way of earning merits/inf (MSR is a slightly different beast, IMO):

• Two raids can net 120 merits, the third raid is dealer's choice
• Waiting around for a raid is a perfect time to craft/convert enhancements for the market place

Personally: I have been avoiding Hamidon raids because I no longer need to amass a fortune in INF, so I find waiting for the raid to start to be boring (sorry, the banter isn't witty enough). I seriously wish that the raid leaders would start the raid when the league is 2/3 full. The AH usually has enough EoE to cover anyone who didn't get drops/comes late, and button mashing during the GM phase doesn't really need an entire league. Once Hamidon spawns, we can discuss the subtleties of approaching the Hamidon... but I've only ever seen a full league give up, and I have seen smaller groups stick around and clean up a triple bloom... so it isn't as if a full league was really needed from the get go.

 

As for easy merits: The first SSA1 arc mission can be run VERY fast, primarily because travel between the three missions is very easy (especially red side). My slowest times are with Masterminds; every other AT can easily get this done in under 10 minutes. It helps if you have some P2W attack powers as not all ATs will have enough attacks to speedily defeat the enemies (at the exemplar level), in my experience the MMs can still struggle because of Endurance issues.

 

There are many other low-level arcs that give better Merit rewards (in the non-once-a-week sense, a repeated SSA offers 20 merits ) but the travel times between missions usually takes more time and many of them have at least one 'defeat all' mission. If a character has sped past low-level missions, revisiting them can be rewarding in multiple ways.

[Apparition]

11 minutes ago, tidge said:

I find the Hami raids to be a mixed bag: by all measures, a Hamidon raid is probably the most efficient way of earning merits/inf (MSR is a slightly different beast, IMO):

• Two raids can net 120 merits, the third raid is dealer's choice
• Waiting around for a raid is a perfect time to craft/convert enhancements for the market place

Personally: I have been avoiding Hamidon raids because I no longer need to amass a fortune in INF, so I find waiting for the raid to start to be boring (sorry, the banter isn't witty enough). I seriously wish that the raid leaders would start the raid when the league is 2/3 full. The AH usually has enough EoE to cover anyone who didn't get drops/comes late, and button mashing during the GM phase doesn't really need an entire league. Once Hamidon spawns, we can discuss the subtleties of approaching the Hamidon... but I've only ever seen a full league give up, and I have seen smaller groups stick around and clean up a triple bloom... so it isn't as if a full league was really needed from the get go.

 

 

As a raid leader, I can tell you from two years experience that adding people while a raid is underway is a PITA.  In addition to keeping an eye on everyone in the league, making sure people are where they are supposed to be, making sure that people are doing what they are supposed to be doing, and then do whatever it is you are supposed to be doing, you also have to invite people, move them to the correct team, and make sure that they know what’s going on and what to do.  It’s three additional things to worry about on top of everything else.

[tidge]

42 minutes ago, Apparition said:

As a raid leader, I can tell you from two years experience that adding people while a raid is underway is a PITA.  In addition to keeping an eye on everyone in the league, making sure people are where they are supposed to be, making sure that people are doing what they are supposed to be doing, and then do whatever it is you are supposed to be doing, you also have to invite people, move them to the correct team, and make sure that they know what’s going on and what to do.  It’s three additional things to worry about on top of everything else.

 

I can TOTALLY appreciate this, but from my POV (as a participant, not as a leader) that amount of effort appears to be more about improving the efficiency of the raid and less about completing the raid. I wouldn't suggest starting a raid without having a dedicated tank, or enough Control/DPS to take out the mitos. In my experience the 'waiting around time' isn't used to explain the mechanics of the event, even by folks who aren't setting up macros to use during the raid. 120 merits in 35 minutes isn't bad, but if my game time is ~2 hours a day that's a pretty dull use of 35 minutes.

 

The most interesting twist (but ultimately boring IMO, YMMV) I saw a league use was the explicit desire to spawn and clear each mito bloom in a semi-old school approach. I never got an explanation of WHY that is how the leader wanted to run that raid, but I saw a LOT of macro use explaining that this was HOW it was going to be run. I had plenty of time to look at the league composition and powers and there was nothing that stood out to me as making it necessary for the league to have to take that approach (he still had requests for Lore drops, for example). I'd be slightly less jaded about the Hami raids if I didn't see a full league of people give up when a triple-bloom goes pear-shaped. It's a LOT harder to get those first 80 merits in that circumstance, but it is still 80 merits and it is entirely doable, especially with a full league... and access to the auction house for EoE refills.

 

 I wish all blessings to raid leaders. Maybe appoint a deputy to run a trivia contest or something while we are otherwise doing nothing in game?

[Dazl]

I kind of like the down time before the raid starts, it gives me time to work the market.

 

Most regularly scheduled Hami raids have certain fixed leaders and core members who do them daily, so you don’t get any failed raids on those. The only server I can see where multiple blooms could be an issue is on Torchbearer. I love their “No Guts, No Glory”style but if you fail on a no mito clear zerg, then you are looking at a quad bloom. That’s when Hive 2 comes in handy.