Everything seems to cost too much influence

[Diantane]

As much as I've tried, I just can't afford to upgrade my enhancement upgrades. Only play a handful of alts and every one's enhancement page is lacking. The enhancements are either red or some have IO's that are 20 levels lower than the character. Now DO's dropping as loot sure helped, but its not enough to catch my characters up. I've been told that when I reach 50 that the influence will be coming in a lot more (course level 50 enhancements are very expensive too). See players with IO sets and I'm thinking how could they possibly afford it.

[Carnifax]

Run Task Forces, especially the Weekly Task force.

Get merits at the end

Exchange the merits for converters

Buy a load of level 31 yellow travel recipes (ones which only need white and yellow salvage). Craft them

Use the Converter. First convert them to another travel recipe, which will typically be an orange one.

Then keep converting By Rarity until you get something worth 2-7 million on the auction house and sell it. 

 

Thats how I do it. Easily make enough with 40 mins crafting and selling to fund my builds (one 'run' of 30 travel io conversions usually yields 60+ million and takes me about 20 mins). Normally I do it in the Vanguard base in RWZ, which is accessible from Atlas.

 

Takes a few days for things to fill and sell, but you can be playing while they do.

 

And don't forget you can convert merits into Hero / Villian token thingies and back again, perfect for emailing between alts.

 

 

[Miss Magical]

Note that you can buy unslotters or enhancement boosters to sell, too, and they offer the same (occasionally much better) merit:inf ratio as converters. I typically sell boosters if I want to convert large amounts of merits - I am not dragging 3000 converters into the AH 10 at a time.

 

Unslotters should be sold for 100k apiece minimum. Boosters should be sold for 1M apiece minimum. You can try to get a better price if you like but they sell very quickly at these prices and I typically get paid more anyway.

 

IO’s don’t need to be replaced, so it’s alright if you have ones that are 20-30 levels below your current level. Level 25 ones will last you all the way to 50.

 

It is normal that your very first character cannot afford to update all the enhancements every 5 levels if you are using SO’s. (So don’t use SO’s.) However, money is very easy to come by in this game once you have at least one character at level 50 and access to the full range of potential WST’s and lucrative endgame content like hami raids, tinpex and the ITF. The only one of my characters who did not have a complete cost-no-object IO build ready to be slotted upon hitting level 50 was my very first one, and I neither farm nor profiteer on the market.

[Blackbird71]

Speaking as someone who refuses to farm and who runs very little high-end content, I will say that making Inf in this game is trivially easy.  I run many, many alts, and spend only minimal time making the Inf to slot out full level 50 IO set builds.

 

I'm not going to go into details on how I make my Inf.  There are different ways to do it, and plenty of more detailed guides have been written on these methods.  I learned from those guides, and recommend that you do as well.  Learn to use the forum's search feature; it will serve you well for this and for many questions to come (hint:  there is a "Guides" section in the forums).

 

What I will suggest is that you do not use the enhancement "upgrade" feature.  This is an unnecessary Inf sink that will sap your funds.  At early levels, I only bother slotting whatever I happen to pick up along the way (loot drops).  Depending on my planned build, when I hit either 22 or 27 (when you can start slotting level 25 or 30 enhancements respectively) I start getting the IO set enhancements I plan to use in my final build.  That way I'm not wasting any Inf on stuff that will be upgraded/replaced/etc.  

[Carnifax]

43 minutes ago, Miss Magical said:

Note that you can buy unslotters or enhancement boosters to sell, too, and they offer the same (occasionally much better) merit:inf ratio as converters. I typically sell boosters if I want to convert large amounts of merits - I am not dragging 3000 converters into the AH 10 at a time.

 

Unslotters should be sold for 100k apiece minimum. Boosters should be sold for 1M apiece minimum. You can try to get a better price if you like but they sell very quickly at these prices and I typically get paid more anyway.

This is a good point too. Rather than doing my Merits > Converters > Convert cheap crafted IOs to sell route you can use the merits for Boosters and just sell those. It's much quicker but less lucrative. 

[The_Warpact]

I do believe there are several guides in the guides section of the forums that have detailed walk through on how to make inf.

[Marine X]

Reward Merits are the easiest way to go.

 

You will get various amounts for various tasks. Completing a story Arc will award Merits, As does collecting all the Exploration Badges in a Zone ( 5, I think ). Task Forces will reward more than almost anything except the Weekly Strike Target which rewards additional Merits above those the TF normally awards. Cashing these in for Boosters or Converters is quick and painless.

 

Basically, 5 Reward Merits - 1 Enhancement Booster = 1,000,000 Influence

Orange Salvage = between 400,000 and 500,000 Influence each

 

Also, Recipes and Salvage that are only worth 10 - 100 Influence on the Market are worth 250 - 1000 at a Vendor or AutoDoc in your base, it's not much, but it can help.

 

If you plan to change out a lot of Enhancements at once, do it by doing a Respec, this allows you to Unslot ALL Enhancements for FREE and Sell what you no longer need for Influence without having to buy Unslotters. You get a FREE Respec every 10 levels, or after running a Respec Trial. If the Enhancements are RED, they are no longer working anyway and the Influence Return from Selling them will cover a chunk of your Upgrade Costs.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Marine X

[Carnifax]

Level 50 Common IO recipies also go for a nice chunk at a vendor btw. So if you're running level 50 missions don't forget to cash in on them every once in a while. Quite common for me to make 1-2 million from a chunk of those sitting in my inventory. 

[Shred Monkey]

Also, generic Invention Origin enhancements work just like Single Origin enhancements, but they never go red.  You can buy a level 25 IOs for 50K-100K at the Auction House and slot it in place of an SO.  It will never decrease in power, it never goes "red" and you never need to upgrade it.

Edited September 9, 2021 by Shred Monkey

[Dona Eis Requiem]

I don't have an absurd hoard sitting around from 2 years of playing, either (someday!). A lot of the recently returned/new players don't.

When you're leveling, just sell everything. Those nice rare components sell for a nice chunk of change (selling your enhancement & recipe drops will cover the posting fee 1st time around)

I wouldn't bother worrying about slotting early on since, as you've found out, you level out of them pretty fast anyhoo.

 

[Luminara]

17 hours ago, Diantane said:

See players with IO sets and I'm thinking how could they possibly afford it.

 

Finding all eight exploration badges in a zone grants 5 merits.  There are almost 50 of those rewards available, netting the player nearly 250 merits, and you can acquire most of them at level 1 by going to the P2W/T4V vendor, taking the free Athletic/Beast/Ninja Run power and running around.  Install the Vidiotmap pack or @Shenanigunner's BadgeDRADIS or @AboveTheChemist's Optimal Badge Path Maps and start jogging.

 

Merits can be used to purchase things which can be sold on the player market, such as boosters, catalysts, converters and unslotters, or they can be used to convert set IOs, which you can use, sell or squirrel away for alts.  This is a simple, direct path to nearly unlimited wealth in the game.  With the merits you obtain from collecting badges, you can net at least ~50,000,000 inf*, even if all you're doing is buying converters from the merit vendor and reselling them on the player market.  Converter roulette is riskier, but can turn that ~50,000,000 into ten times as much with some lucky conversions (and knowing when to quit and sell, rather than keep converting).

 

Merits are easy to obtain, even with the shittiest, least capable characters imaginable running story arcs solo at -1/x1.  So go get your merits and get rich off of them.

Edited September 10, 2021 by Luminara

[Snarky]

This is one of those "It is not the issue, It is MY not understanding."  Sorry to be blunt.  No Snarky offense intended.

 

The market is very stable.  even the market swings are in the -20% to +20% area almost all the time.  That is because the value of everything is incredible predictable based on time to get, value to use.

 

What the issue is (again, no offense intended) is that you do not understand how to earn.  

1) Farming.  Even a farmer built from Single Origin Enhancers can stand farming +0/x8 and start raking in cash.  Use a Rad/Fire Brute.  As he bulds tons of cash send half to your nedy alts and use the other half to finance his build.  Will not take a week or so of hard gaming to generate a few billion.

 

2) Lazy (not efficient) way to make Inf for nothing.  Get merits. (see ideas above) sell merits on Auction.  they go for around 70,000 per merit.  Free cash.

 

3) Craft. Take said merits.  Get recipes. They drop.  Craft all.  24 or less convert to uncommon.  25 or above convert to rare. convert to Def/Res/Heal/End Mod. Convert to sets like LoTG, Perf Shifter, Unbreakable Guard, Numina, about a half dozen other.  Most sets have ONE proc.  Unbreakable guard anything with Resist buff.  convert to those.  Sell.  List at 80% current going rate.  Free cash.  Takes a while to learn/craft/sell.  Good amount of cash.  Not quite as much as farming in my opinion.

 

4) Run any (all) level 50 content.  Cash flows, drops happen, merits, bling, sweetness, ka-ching, gold baby gold.

 

 

[Yomo Kimyata]

What is true is that playing the game organically (just playing for playing's sake, not making any plans on how to make inf or get items) doesn't really result in a cash flow positive experience until you are in your upper 20s or low 30s.  So if you are playing for the first time, I can see how it may seem daunting to keep your enhancements above red level.  But fear not, for many reasons!

 

1.  There *is* a breakeven point, where you can sell everything that drops to vendors and buy SOs from vendors and be ahead of the game.  So if you haven't gotten there yet, it's coming.

2.  Honestly, up to that point you can probably play completely unenhanced.  It's a forgiving game.  But you can also only slot things that drop, or pick and choose what to spend your limited resources on.  See @Ukase's thread on the drop challenge.

3.  Once/if you use the AH to sell your items, or even better to use it as a source of income, you'll never want for anything.  There are tons of useful suggestions above on how to accumulate inf using that system, if you so choose.

4.  People are generous, because many of us have more inf than we know what to do with.  All you need to do is ask.  See the link in my signature.

[Snarky]

4 minutes ago, Yomo Kimyata said:

 

4.  People are generous, because many of us have more inf than we know what to do with.  All you need to do is ask.  See the link in my signature.

I was about to reply to your post by saying there is a guy named Yomo that gives away 20 mil a pop....  but then, oh yeah, it's Yomo.

 

If you catch me in game I will also give 20 mil to new players.  I am not as organized (or un Snarky) as Yomo.  But I value new people trying the old game.  yomo is sitiing on an untold vast expanse of riches that I have heard desribed as over 400 bill, more than 2,000 billion, or progressively infinite like bitcoin.  Myself, I am currently at a little less than 2 bill liquid and a few billion in stored enhancers.  Enough to kit out a few top end 50s if I get a wild experimenting bug in me.

[Ukase]

I believe @Yomo Kimyata has influence at a level where if he were to stop and count it, the amount would change while counting, as bids are seemingly continuously being posted & filled, which results in a lower total in the short term, only to be recouped in the slightly longer short term - hours or a day or so. There are just too many beans to count. 

While that's just speculation on my part, my last tabulation of my own resources, resulted in a 160M opportunity cost, just from not marketing, and only counting the stacks. It's no longer feasible to track the pile without sacrificing the height of the pile. 

[Ukase]

5 hours ago, Diantane said:

As much as I've tried, I just can't afford to upgrade my enhancement upgrades. Only play a handful of alts and every one's enhancement page is lacking. The enhancements are either red or some have IO's that are 20 levels lower than the character. Now DO's dropping as loot sure helped, but its not enough to catch my characters up. I've been told that when I reach 50 that the influence will be coming in a lot more (course level 50 enhancements are very expensive too). See players with IO sets and I'm thinking how could they possibly afford it.

I was so busy being silly, I neglected to respond to this post! Silly me! Very, very silly me. 

The way most of us afford such things is, well, simply put, we've put our previously acquired knowledge of IO sets to good use. I played back in live, and understood the basic mechanics of turning an RNG turd into a golden nugget. What this means, is when I get any recipe that drops, if I have the salvage for it, I craft it. If the AH suggests from bid history that I can make 3M on it, I'll sell as is. If not, I will convert it until I can sell it for 3m. 

But to do this, it requires other areas of knowledge about the game that I've learned in live, and had to re-learn here on HC because HC has changed some things from the way things were before the shut down. 

For example: Seeded salvage - the costs to us are capped. It wasn't that way in live, so I'd use my character in AE, regardless of archetype and powersets, and just complete any random non-fire-farm story for tickets. 540 of them for the rare salvage. The uncommon and common salvage is often cheap enough to simply buy, unless you're restricting yourself for an insane challenge, or you just don't have the inf when you take into account the crafting costs, and the list fee. 
So, if I'm on my challenge characters that aren't allowed to buy salvage, I'll go to AE and do a mission or two for tickets to get that specific salvage I need. 

When I finally craft whatever dropped (not the white recipes - only yellow, orange or purples), I slap it in the AH, click "Find" and see what the price is. If the inf is too low for my expensive time, I pull it back out and convert it. 

Now, converters are a cost! In my head, I consider each one worth 70k. Converters are best acquired via Merit Vendor, in my own opinion, BUT ONLY IF YOU DON'T HAVE A FARMER SET UP SPECIFICALLY TO GET EMPYRIAN MERITS. If you do have such a farmer, there's no sense wasting merits on converters, although, they have no real other wise use, if you ask me. Yes, you can get certain recipes and other enhancements for 100 reward merits, but the math says buying converters and selling converters will almost always give you more influence. 
I say this because it may not be only the OP that reads this. Pretty confident the OP doesn't have an emp farmer. If you would like to know more, DM me, I'll share what I know. 

In any event, at lower levels, converters are a great resource for influence. No need really to even craft/convert if you'd rather just play the game. Just see the merit vendor, get the converters in exchange for merit vendors, and either send me a tell - and if you catch me, I will pay you 70k each, as a courtesy, whether you have 10 or 1,000,000 of them. If you do have more than 10k worth, this will add to the time, because I can only hold 10k on each alt. 

That said, you will make far more influence by actually using the converters than selling them. But, you need to understand several more areas of the process to do so. (which IOs sell, how to get the salvage to minimize costs, how to get the recipes to minimize costs, etc) 

So, the default, easy answer to how does a new player get more influence - get reward merits, exchange for converters, sell converters, then pocket plenty of influence to slot your character with all the SOs you need, quite easily. 

Watch the auto-upgrade button, tho, until you are comfortable. In the 20's, the auto-upgrades can start to cost you quite a bit, like 500k or so each time. But, if you're doing task forces, story arcs, and exploring the many zones, you can gain these reward merits quickly, easily and enjoy yourself while you do. 

All I ask is that you never "beg" for influence. It's a bad look. When you ask for info on how to earn your own, you may be surprised by how much seed money you get to help you out. It's not unheard of for folks like myself to encourage marketing with seed money. Not enough to build your 50, but enough to get you started. Almost all of us are happy to teach you to fish, figuratively. Yomo will give you a fish - once. It's a small fish, but if he gave you a big fish, you'd eat too much and maybe choke on a bone. So, he gives you enough fish to keep you from starving, which is one fish more than I tend to give anyone. (For the folks at PETA, I'm speaking figuratively. No fish are harmed, or even consumed in this game) 

 

[iBot]

Plenty of useful information here that I hope OP can take and make use of.  My only comment is don't be discouraged.  The first toon is always the poorest in terms of inf.  Don't stress over it.  As stated this game is very forgiving.  You can go entirely from 1 - 50 and never enhance anything.  You won't be running 4/8 and you'll miss a LOT when you get into your 30s but it still can be done.  Think of enh as just a boost that gets you through the next set of levels.  Most of us originally only slotted them every 5 break levels and even then it wasn't everything only the really important ones.  Also, convert to using IOs instead of SOs.  It isn't too bad to craft the level 25s for ACC, DAM, and either END REDUX or RECH depending.  Those level 25s will last you all the way to 50 easy.  Sets are only needed if you want to min/max and run +x content.  From there you can just vendor or AH whatever drops and by the time you are 50 you'll have more inf than you know what to do with for your next several hundred alts.

[Shred Monkey]

17 minutes ago, iBot said:

The first toon is always the poorest in terms of inf. 

And as I recall, somewhere around level 43-45 the influence starts coming in much faster then the levels so you'll end up catching up on your SO's once you hit that point.   I've not played an SO build in a long time and there's been changes since then, but I imagine there's still a tipping point on that scale. before you hit 50.

 

 

[Shenanigunner]

Sell, sell, sell. Make a stop at the market at least once a session, drag all your orange drops over to post, collect the inf from those that have sold. I tend to post at a nominal price like 10,000; they sell for anything from 25-500k.

 

Sell everything else at any vendor; yellows and whites aren't worth posting.

 

This alone tends to get most of my alts fully stocked with SOs all the way up, which is good enough for my needs. The 4-500k orange sales come often enough to keep me in Inf. The only alt I've had lately that needed an infusion from my one rich uncle is a Kheld with two builds.

 

If you believe IOs and sets are essential, you are pretty much going to have to run a farmer to fund those.

[Luminara]

6 minutes ago, Shenanigunner said:

If you believe IOs and sets are essential, you are pretty much going to have to run a farmer to fund those.

 

I only use sets.  I don't farm.

[Shenanigunner]

9 minutes ago, Luminara said:

I only use sets.  I don't farm.

 

I can see how management of all "income," especially the gambits for converting Merits to Inf, could make that work.

[Wobegone]

15 minutes ago, Shenanigunner said:

Sell, sell, sell. Make a stop at the market at least once a session, drag all your orange drops over to post, collect the inf from those that have sold. I tend to post at a nominal price like 10,000; they sell for anything from 25-500k.

 

Sell everything else at any vendor; yellows and whites aren't worth posting.

 

This alone tends to get most of my alts fully stocked with SOs all the way up, which is good enough for my needs. The 4-500k orange sales come often enough to keep me in Inf. The only alt I've had lately that needed an infusion from my one rich uncle is a Kheld with two builds.

 

If you believe IOs and sets are essential, you are pretty much going to have to run a farmer to fund those.

Assuming you don't want to bother with IOs:

I'd be more selective about which IO recipes to auction and which to craft and auction.  Take a quick look at crafted IO prices first.  
Same for Yellow recipes.  Going further, unless you need orange salvage, I'd craft almost all yellow recipes before dropping on the AH.  

 

You can make more money with less investment in time by simply buying cheap yellow recipes, crafting them, then converting them.  No farming needed at all.

[Shenanigunner]

1 minute ago, Ignatz the Insane said:

You can make more money with less investment in time by simply buying cheap yellow recipes, crafting them, then converting them.  No farming needed at all.

 

I think there's also a tradeoff between spending a lot of time managing your investments, and, you know, just playing the game. 🙂

[InvaderStych]

11 minutes ago, Shenanigunner said:

I can see how management of all "income," especially the gambits for converting Merits to Inf, could make that work.

 

There's zero need to farm.  No farmer toons here, yet I not only build with sets, I start using key pieces while leveling.  Even if I were to extrapolate my modest "strategy" from my relatively small number of toons to a much larger stable farming still wouldn't be necessary.  Merits to Inf does more than enough on the road to 50, and playing at Veteran levels ... well, between raw inf, Common IO Vendor "Trash" and selling drops on the market I can't say I've ever felt the need to farm.

 

I suppose if one wants to be able to drop 750mil on a build all at once on their PL'd 50 ... well, I can't help you there.  Playing what others have termed "organically" nets more than enough once one gets the hang of what to sell where to support a toon through their progression to their final build.

 

No crafting required either.  I tried that route on one alt; got bored with it.  I don't mean to offend anyone, just a personal taste thing.  I'm that guy dropping all recipes on the market for you crafters to flip and sell. 😉

 

Edited September 9, 2021 by InvaderStych
clarity

[Ukase]

31 minutes ago, Shenanigunner said:

 

I think there's also a tradeoff between spending a lot of time managing your investments, and, you know, just playing the game. 🙂

There absolutely is. Marketing can be quite tedious, as can farming. But....so can replaying the same content with each character. The great thing about this game is - there's quite enough content to get a break in the repetition.  Alternating between alignments can break the monotony as far as content goes. 

Seeing the sales on the marketing side can also raise dopamine levels. As for farming....well, that's why I do it afk.