A P2W Store Primer

[Robotech_Master]

4 hours ago, Mansome said:

How do you claim the Powers if you have the badges? I recently teamed with a really bad team on the itf and got like 3 debt badges doing that.

Just go to the P2W store to where you would buy the power, like usual, and it should charge you 0 inf since you have the appropriate badge.

[caml37]

Shadowy presence wasn't listed, FYI

[Kistulot]

Wanted to add something I find valuable: envenomed daggers.

Fighting an EB/AV and your damage just isnt beating out their regeneration?

Envenomed daggers are what you WANT. They're not too pricey, either. Never leave home without them!

[Robotech_Master]

6 hours ago, Kistulot said:

Wanted to add something I find valuable: envenomed daggers.

Fighting an EB/AV and your damage just isnt beating out their regeneration?

Envenomed daggers are what you WANT. They're not too pricey, either. Never leave home without them!

Good thought. I'll fix it.

[Robotech_Master]

Funny…until just now, I somehow missed noticing that you can also enable Dual and Team Inspiration drops from the P2W. Well, I've updated the guide accordingly.

[Bopper]

Just in case you are interested, here are some corrections and add-ons you may want to consider for your guide. Much of the details can be found in my movement guide, but I will also provide you some findings I did not include in the guide.

 

Correction: Twice you made mention to the speed of "a well slotted Fly", however Fly is already capped at its max speed of 58.63 mph as soon as you get it (no enhancements required; even if exemplared to level 2, it's capped). *Note, this is assuming no afterburner*

 

Non-Combat Fly Powers: They are actually faster than Fly because they come with a built in Afterburner (which adds 14.32 mph to the max fly speed). Although these fly powers turn off all your powers (including inherent powers like Swift and buffs like Base Empowerment or Secondary Mutation), it still adds 43.97 mph to your base fly speed, giving you 65.45 mph (11.6% faster than Fly).

 

Another neat thing about these Non-Combat Fly Powers, they still recognize Set Bonuses. So all of the Movement Speed bonuses (like the ones you get for slotting Performance Shifter) will add to this fly total. So with the built in Afterburner you can cap your fly speed at 72.95 mph (58.63+14.32) with just the power and set bonuses. You also can still receive outside buffs, so if you (or somebody else) casts a +Special effect like Power Boost or Clarion Radial, your Flight Speed and your built in Afterburner will be boosted by the +Strength to Fly Speed, which will allow you to temporarily cap your fly speed at the super-fly cap of 87.95 mph.

 

Non-Combat Shapeshift: Similar to what was mentioned above, outside buffs like Power Boost or Clarion Radial will boost your run speed, and set bonuses will still add to your run and jump speed.

 

Jump Packs: You mentioned they have a 30 second duration, but they also have a base recharge of 30 seconds that can be reduced with global recharge bonuses. So having both Jump Pack and Steam Jump can allow you to toggle between them for permanent Jump Pack effects. 

 

However, the most important thing about Jump Packs was not mentioned which is they provide a +300% Strength to Fly (listed as +273%, but it's +300%). This is the equivalent of putting a +300% Fly enhancement into your Swift, your Hover, your Afterburner, etc. It is also the max any power can be enhanced, so don't waste the use of using a Fly IO in these powers if you're also using Jump Pack (they will already be capped).

 

With just Hover and Jet Pack active, you will be capped at your 58.63 mph fly speed. Honestly, this might be the strongest power P2W has to offer (if you plan to use any form of flight).

 

Jet Packs: You are correct that these are not as fast as Fly, as they will only add 29.32 mph to your fly speed (at level 50). With an unenhanced Swift, this puts your Fly Speed total to 53.73 mph. If you use Jump Pack with Jet Pack, you will easily reach the max fly speed of 58.63 mph. The nice thing with using a Jet Pack instead of Fly is the endurance cost (0.195 end/sec vs. 0.455 end/sec).

 

If you have Afterburner, then the use of a Jump Pack with a Jet Pack will allow you to hit the absolute max fly speed of 87.95 mph. I bring this up because it allows for someone to design a build where they can reach the capped super-fly speed of 87.95 mph without taking Fly. Instead they can take Air Superiority, Hover, and Afterburner.

[mmBoba]

On 9/26/2019 at 9:10 AM, caml37 said:

Shadowy presence wasn't listed, FYI

What does Shadowy Presence do?

[RogerWilco]

Nice guide, thanks.

[wjrasmussen]

On 6/3/2019 at 6:20 PM, Robotech_Master said:

A P2W STORE PRIMER

 

or

 

IT PAYS TO PAY 2 WIN

 

One of the best features of Homecoming’s I25 City of Heroes is the P2W, or “Pay 2 Win” store. This store is available in the Outbreak/Breakout tutorials, each of the three factions' starting zones, in Pocket D, and in the first three zones of the Shadow Shard, and should be one of the first places any new character visits.

 

But I keep encountering people with misconceptions about the that store and the powers for sale in it. Some of them are even under the impression that the P2W store charges real money, because that’s what “pay to win” traditionally means!

 

Rest assured, the P2W store does not charge real money. Calling it “Pay 2 Win” is the SCORE developers’ little joke, because many of the powers there were originally Veteran Rewards for paying real money for months and months of gameplay, or sold in add-on packs that did cost real money back in the day. Now a lot of them are free, and others cost reasonable amounts of Influence or Infamy. Some of the powers that cost Inf can be selected for free after earning certain badges, too. (The Praetorian flavor of the store is called "T4V," or "Transact For Victory," carrying on the joke.)

 

In the old days, when these powers were Veteran Rewards or else bought with real money from NCSoft's online store, many of them were available to every character you created automatically, and could easily be claimed for free from the Veteran Rewards menu. If you run across any write-ups elsewhere that say they are available account-wide, the old Veteran Rewards system is what they're referring to. (And any server that uses I24 and the old Vet Rewards system will probably still have them available that way.) However, on Homecoming, these powers must be purchased character by character, and a purchase on any one character will not carry over to any other.

 

When I started my first new character, I was so excited to be back in Paragon City that I didn’t give the P2W store more than a cursory glimpse—just long enough to buy the double XP power-up. This was a bit of a mistake, as many of the powers most useful to a starting character are either free or pretty cheap. Some of the powers do cost 1 million inf, or even 10 million inf, but even as a new character, you can easily afford those within a couple of hours if you follow the advice in my other guide.

 

Note that the information in this guide only applies to the version of the P2W store on the public Homecoming servers. This vendor’s listing may be customized by the server admins, so other public or private I25 servers may not have some of these powers, or may list them for different prices.

 

XP BOOSTS

 

At the top of the list on the Homecoming P2W store is the option everybody seems to know about who doesn’t know about anything else on the store. These are options to boost your XP gain by 25%, 50%, or 100%. If you’re wanting to level up fast, that’s clearly the way to go. The boost comes in one-hour chunks, and you can have up to 8 hours of it at a time.

 

What the store doesn’t make so clear is that each boost cuts the amount of Influence that drops to you by the corresponding percentage. That is, if you choose a 100% XP boost to double your XP, you don’t get any Influence at all as you defeat enemies and complete missions. If you’re following the advice in the guide I linked above, that may not matter to you. But it might come as a nasty surprise if you’re counting on that money to help you buy Enhancements, Inspirations, etc. (I know it did to me.)

 

Another important thing to know is that this power doesn’t play well with the switches from the Options menu that let you turn off XP gain (either for double Influence gain while exemplaring or to keep from outlevelling content in general). With the XP boost, you're turning off Influence to gain more XP, while with the menu option you're turning off XP. If you try to use both at once, you're turning off both XP and Influence and not gaining anything! Fortunately, you can easily delete the XP boost powers by right-clicking on the power’s icon in your Power window if you should need to turn off XP gain while it’s still running.

 

Once you hit level 50, the XP boost category vanishes from the P2W store—you’ll just have to grind out that Incarnate XP the old-fashioned way! (You may want to save some charges of the “Experienced” temporary power you find in Super Packs for use after you hit level 50. Otherwise, use them in the level 30-50 range, as that's when the number of necessary mob defeats per level goes way up.)

 

This power is free as of the writing of this guide, perhaps as a way to help make up for the fact that your old characters are no longer accessible. It’s always possible that this could change at any time should the admins decide it’s too unbalanced. Enjoy it while it lasts—or eschew it if you’d rather level more slowly.

 

STOPPING/STARTING INSPIRATION DROPS

 

For a nominal fee, you can tell the game to stop dropping Inspirations of particular types or sizes to you as you defeat enemies while you adventure. This can be useful if there’s a type of Inspiration you just never use and don’t want clogging up your tray—like, say, Awakens if you have a fast-charging self-rez—or if you’re going on a Trial where you need to save room for special Inspiration drops and want to be sure other ones don’t crowd those out on your tray.

 

The game keeps track of when Inspirations would have dropped, and awards you badges after you’ve turned down 50, 100, 500, and 1,000, respectively—so if you’re a badge fanatic, there’s also that. You can still buy Inspirations from vendors, or from the Consignment Market, but the Inner Inspiration power (which I’ll get to later) won’t work. (It will give you three bumps toward getting those badges, though.)

 

A good way to work on those badges quickly, if you can, is to solo clear missions set to 8-player spawns via Notoriety. (You can do it on -1 Difficulty to kill everything faster.) The Inspirations fall like rain, so you’ll be there before you know it.

 

After you finish getting the badges, you can also buy options to turn the drops back on again.

 

You can also disable recipe drops by type, but badges for those take a lot longer to earn.

 

There's also one more Inspiration drop option that I didn't even notice for the longest time: you can choose to enable Dual and Team Inspiration drops, the same sort of Inspirations you find in Super Packs. These Inspirations may affect more than one property (Health and Endurance, Damage and Accuracy, Damage Resistance and Defense), or they may apply their bonuses in a PBAoE effect to any allies near you at the time. These options are disabled by default, but you can choose to enable either or both of them and start getting these Inspirations dropped randomly from foes, Inner Inspiration, and other sources.

 

NON-COMBAT TRAVEL POWERS: FLIGHT

 

There are three different versions of this power—which are, as far as I can tell, just different skins over the same basic powers. There’s the Flying Carpet, which looks just like a flying carpet from Arabian Nights. There’s the Rocket Board, which bears some vague resemblance to those flying skateboards from Back to the Future 2. And there’s the Void Skiff, which is basically just a disc of pink glowing light. Choose whichever one is most appropriate to your character’s concept—or just take the rocket board, because who doesn’t look cool on a rocket board?

 

These are non-combat travel powers. They will drop all your other toggles and render most other powers inaccessible while in use. (If you run large numbers of toggles and want to drop them all at once, switching to this power and back is a great way to avoid a lot of clicking.) Hence, they’re not available in a fight, and probably not the best idea if you run a lot of toggles and expect to be dropping into combat immediately when you get there.

 

That said, these are great ways to traverse large hazard zones, or non-hazard zones that are too high-level for your character. (In the Shadow Shard, they’re a god-send.) And since there’s no time limit on them like the temp-power jet packs I’ll get to later on, they’ll let you hang there high in the sky to take an AFK safely out of combat (if there aren’t any flying enemies around, at least). And what's more, they're faster than regular Flight, being roughly equivalent to how fast you'd go with Afterburner kicked in. If you only need travel powers to get from place to place, buying one of these might let you skip travel powers entirely and use their slots for other things.

 

At 1 million Inf each, these are a little pricey, but if you’ve got money to burn having at least one is definitely worth it. Especially if you’re doing the Shadow Shard.

 

NON-COMBAT TRAVEL POWERS: SHAPESHIFT

 

There are two versions of this power—a coyote and a panther. These do for running and jumping what the above do for flying. They’re not as fast as superspeed or super jump, but they’re better than sprinting, and they have nice walking, jumping, and idle animations. Like the above, they switch off ll your toggles and don’t let you use most other powers while active; like the above they cost 10 million Inf each.

 

I could wish that there were more animal types, or that you could re-skin or recolor them to have wolves, foxes, lions, tigers, etc. the way you can the animal heads from the beast costume pack, but for what they are, they’re great—especially if you’re an RPer and they fit your character concept.

 

NON-COMBAT TRAVEL POWERS: RUNNING

 

Ninja Run and Beast Run are running powers that give you different body language and better jumping distance when you run. They can’t be combined with (and detoggle) regular travel powers like Super Speed, Super Jump, and Combat Jumping, but do stack with Sprint, and can be used with flight powers. These are faster than sprinting alone but not as fast as super-speed. You can take one of the two for free; the second one costs a million Inf. Combined with the free Jump or Steam Pack, which I'll discuss in a later section, they're nearly as good as a "real" travel power, but are free at level one. If nothing else, they'll be good for RPers.

 

There is also a set of prestige sprints that are simply alternate versions of the plain old Sprint power with different visual effects. They're free, but can't be revoked from your character after you take them.

 

PRESTIGE ENHANCEMENTS

 

These five Enhancements are good for attack powers. Each of them adds a chance for additional damage of a particular special damage type (good through level 20, after which it stops working), as well as offering the same 16% boost to Damage and Recharge Rate as a Dual-Origin Enhancement—effectively, an SO's worth of Enhancement, split between two categories, that doesn't expire (even after the additional damage proc stops working at level 20). And they’re free. So you might as well take them on every character, slot them, and then replace them later on once you can get something better. They’re better than trainings, at the very least.

 

The description for the Enhancements may say something about enhancing by -1200% instead of 16%, but that's a bug, so don't be alarmed. You can see the actual effect in the Enhancement managenent screen as you slot it. You can claim these Enhancements for free at any time, but you can only have one of each slotted. So, if you decide to slot over one of them with something else, you can claim it again from P2W to put it in some other power instead.

 

PRESTIGE ATTACKS

 

Here’s where we get to some of the best powers for beginning characters. There are four powers here, Veteran Reward permanent versions of temp powers available through certain missions in the game: Sands of Mu, Ghost-Slaying Axe, Nemesis Staff, and Blackwand. These powers are all free, but you can only have three out of the four, and you can only have the origin bonus version of either the Nemesis Staff or the Blackwand.

 

Sands of Mu is a temp-power version of the Dark Melee power Shadow Maul, a short-range damage-over-time melee cone with a fairly long smacka-smacka-smacka (or whiff-whiff-whiff) animation. It’s most useful if you have a bunch of enemies tightly grouped in front of you so you can hit several at once, though it isn’t bad against just one enemy. Like all dark energy powers, it includes a slight debuff to accuracy on its targets.

 

The Ghost-Slaying Axe is a melee lethal-damage attack that deals regular damage to most foes, but has bonus damage it deals to supernatural ghosts and zombies, like Circle of Thorns spectres, Croatoa or Ghost Ship ghosts, and Banished Pantheon zombies (though not Vahzilok zombies, as you’ll get a little “INEFFECTIVE” pop-up when you hit one with it—it still does its regular damage to them, though). Echo: Dark Astoria zone monster Adamastor takes the bonus damage as well. The axe also has a good chance to knock down any enemy that it hits.

 

The Nemesis Staff (or “steam-powered lollipop,” if you like) was one of the most popular temp powers in the early game, so it’s no surprise they added a vet-reward version of it. This staff comes in two versions, one of which deals bonus damage when wielded by characters with Science, Technology, or Natural origins, and one which doesn’t. In addition to the smashing damage, this power does a hefty amount of knockback, and it’s endless fun firing it off with a WHOOSH! and watching some mob go flying like a rag doll.

 

The Blackwand isn’t quite as fun as the steam-powered lollipop, but it does a decent amount of ranged dark energy damage, with the associated to-hit debuff. As with the Nemesis staff, it has an origin bonus damage version that does bonus damage for Magic, Mutation, and Natural characters, and one that doesn’t.

 

These powers are most useful at low levels (or when exemplaring to low levels), when they provide extra attacks to fill out your attack chain. Before too long, though, you’ll find them crowded out of your power trays and into one of the secondary non-hotkeyed trays you might keep on your display. They can still be useful at higher levels in certain circumstances, like when dealing with particularly annoying Circle of Thorns ghosts, adventuring in Croatoa, or potting Ghost Ship passengers for the badge—and melee characters might find the Nemesis Staff or Blackwand useful for dealing with mobs that are just out of reach.

 

Best of all, these powers are free, so there’s really no reason not to have them—though you can only take three out of the four, and the bonus/no-bonus versions of the Nemesis Staff and Blackwand are mutually exclusive with each other. You can choose to have Sands of Mu, Ghost-Slaying Axe, and either the Nemesis Staff or the Blackwand, or you can ditch one of Sands or the Axe, and then take the origin-bonus Nemesis Staff and the no-bonus Blackwand, or the no-bonus Nemesis Staff and the origin-bonus Blackwand.

 

(Note that any character can take the origin-bonus version of either weapon. However, they will only get the bonus if the character's origin matches that of the weapon. So there's really no point in a magic character taking the origin-bonus Nemesis Staff, or a Technology character taking the origin-bonus Blackwand. They'll just do the same damage with it as they would with the no-bonus version. So it really makes more sense to make sure you take the origin-bonus weapon that matches your character's origin. The one exception is that Natural-origin characters can choose to get the bonus from either weapon, since their origin is one that makes equal use of either technological or magical devices.)

 

There is an option in the store to revoke any of these weapons so you can choose other ones instead—and since they’re all free, nothing’s stopping you from switching up at any time.

 

PRESTIGE BUFFS

 

A trio of useful buffs are offered as the first one free, second two for 100,000 Inf each.

 

Inner Inspiration can fire off every 30 minutes, and will give you three random medium or large Inspirations. (Unless you’ve turned them off, as above.) Some people recommend that starting characters sell any mediums to vendors and use that money to list larges on the Consignment Market for a little fast cash, though it's not as lucrative as other early money-making methods. However, this is the only way I know of to get even a little bit of Inf for free, without having to defeat anything—which can be helpful if you've got something you want to sell before you've even defeated anything yet.

 

Mystic Fortune will let you apply a random minor buff to another player-character every 30 seconds or so. When you receive such a buff, you’ll be asked whether or not you want it, which can be annoying if you get these buffs a lot—but if you go to Pocket D and talk to Null the Gull, you can set yourself to automatically accept or decline these buffs every time so you don’t have to worry about it.

 

Secondary Mutation will let you apply a random minor buff to yourself every few minutes—nothing too great, but better than nothing. And hey, you might as well have every minor buff you can get, right? The one drawback is that there's a very small chance it will turn you into a Rikti monkey for a couple of minutes. (Note that this isn't actually an instant death sentence if it happens in a fight; the monkey form is pretty much invulnerable, with a brawl attack and a PBAoE "monkey gas" power that's pretty amusing. It does drop all your toggles, though, so you may want to get somewhere safe to bring them up again after the transformation expires.) I've only had this happen once in all the times I've used the power, so it's pretty rare...but if it happens to you, then have a banana on me.

 

BUFFING PETS

 

There’s a wide variety of buffing mini-pets you can get—drones, Clockwork oscillators, Wisps, or Sprites that will follow your character around and apply a small buff to either Damage and Damage Resistance, or Defense and Endurance Recovery, like the Leadership power pool. They’re free and effectively identical apart from the skin and choice of buff, so you might as well pick whichever one best fits your character concept and powers. But they’re not really too useful; in combat, they pop like a balloon, so if you want to keep one up you’ll end up re-casting it after each battle. But they’re free, and perhaps they’ll have RP value, so you might as well grab one. And to be fair, the attack that pops them wasn't aimed at you, so there is that.

 

VANITY PETS

 

Possibly even more useless than buffing pets, you can summon vanity pets that follow you around and, I guess, don’t do much else, for 1 million Inf each. Still, if you’ve got the money, why not?

 

TELEPORTS

 

A variety of teleportational powers are available for 1 million Inf each. There are teleporters that take you to your supergroup base, Pocket D, or the door for the currently selected mission. There’s also Assemble the Team, which will teleport your entire team to you (within the same zone). Some of these powers can also be earned by earning particular badges, like spending a particular amount of time mentoring or hanging out in Pocket D, so you can still get them if you don’t have that kind of money. But if you’ve got the money, you might as well go ahead and grab them.

 

Some of these powers are also very useful together—for example, using Mission Teleport to get to the mission door, then Assemble the Team to pull everyone to you once they get into the zone. This is great on Task Forces or mission teams where a lot of travel from door to door is involved.

 

There’s another power, called Team Transporter, for 10 million Inf, that will summon an air transport that will teleport your entire team to the currently selected mission. It’s a bit pricey, but in my opinion worth every penny, especially if you’re doing Task Forces that often send you from zone to zone (and especially especially if you’re in the Shadow Shard). If every member of the Task Force has the power, then by the time everyone’s used theirs, the first person’s should have recharged again.

 

These powers do take half an hour to recharge, so they can’t be used super-often, but they can be quite useful to have on hand when they’re available.

 

SELF-REZZES

 

The P2W store offers two self-resurrect powers, Renewal of Light and Return to Battle. They’re mutually exclusive, so you can only take one or the other; if you think you took the wrong one, there’s an option to revoke it and buy the other.

 

These two self-rezzes take two different approaches to getting you back up. Renewal of Light includes a flashy animation effect and a PBAoE blast that knocks back and disorients enemies around you. Return to Battle just lets you get back up, but applies five max-size Inspirations to you, the same as leveling up does. It comes down to whichever better fits the character's playing style: do you want enemies knocked back and stunned, or do you want to get up super-buffed? Renewal might be best for squishy types who want enemies knocked away from them, while Return might be a good choice for crunchy melee types who don't want to scatter everyone, they just want a moment to get their toggles back up. But either should give you plenty of bang for your buck.

 

These powers have a 30-minute recharge time. Whichever one you take will cost you 1 million Inf—or it's free if you've earned the badge for paying off 200,000 XP of debt.

 

JUMP PACKS

 

There are two Prestige jump pack powers available, Jump Pack and Steam Pack. These seem to be functionally identical, just a technology skin and a steampunk skin on the same thing. The first one you choose is free, the second one costs 100,000 Inf. If you just want one, pick whichever one matches your character concept better.

 

These are a bit different from the usual jet pack temp powers (which I’ll discuss a little later). The usual jet packs provide a version of flight, controllable in all three axes. However, the jump packs simply send you forward and up at a 45-degree angle, for as long as you have the space bar held down—sort of like a version of Super Jump that doesn’t come down until you stop jumping. It can be used for about thirty seconds, every couple of minutes or so.

 

Being available at level 1, these powers can sort of fill in for the travel power you’re lacking at that level—you can get a good distance across the zone in thirty seconds, especially given that these packs send you aloft at a pretty good rate of speed. But you can also get a good distance up in the air, and falling damage is very much a thing in City of Heroes—so you may want to save enough time on the pack to let yourself fall and break the fall before you hit the ground, or else be ready to catch yourself with one of the temp power jet packs described below.

 

There is a mildly annoying bug related to these packs. If you let the pack run out of time on its own, sometimes it will not refresh and become available again until you either change zones or re-log. To avoid this, try to be sure to turn the pack off manually before the 30 second time can run out.

 

JUST FOR FUN

 

For 100,000 Inf each, you can get a couple of powers that are pretty pointless but still kind of fun.

 

Flying Disc is a cute implementation of a Frisbee that you can "throw" to someone and they can "catch."

 

Snowball is a temp power from Winter Event gift boxes, that lets you hit someone with a snowball. (Some players do find that Snowball, being a zero-damage attack, is great for single-pulling mobs without attracting the attention of their companions with a damage splash.)

 

PRESTIGE POWERS: MISC

 

These are the powers that don’t quite fall into any other category, but they include some very useful ones.

 

I believe that Reveal may very well be the single most useful power in the entire P2W store. Costing only 10,000 Inf, this power clears all fog of war from zone maps, and completely reveals the entirety of instanced mission maps. It’s invaluable in completing missions by stealth, because you can see where the last room is likely to be and avoid any dead ends. You can also see if the Council or Circle of Thorns base has a hospital-port-diverting prison, or if the Thorns base has one of those annoying portal rooms you’d like to avoid if at all possible. Note that this power only makes the map visible for you, not anyone else on your team.

 

Of course, there may be some maps where you don’t want to clear the fog, so you can keep track of where you’ve searched so far for hostages or glowies, but you don’t have  to use it—or you can fire it off to see the shape of the zone, then head out and back in and the fog will be back in place.

 

It’s also invaluable for that obsessive sort of person who doesn’t want any fog of war left on their zone maps, and might otherwise feel compelled to visit every square inch of the zone to clear every last smudge of shade away. (I’m sure you’ve encountered at least one such person, if you’re not one yourself.)

 

And it costs less than a Dual-Origin Enhancement, so there’s really no excuse not to have it.

 

The Portable Workbench is the reward you get from the Field Crafter badge, a portable crafting table that can be summoned wherever you are, and can be used by anyone in the area. The table will explode after a couple of minutes, but you can continue crafting recipes for as long as you have the crafting window open. If you close it, you’ll have to summon the table again to craft again.

 

You can still earn this table by memorizing recipes and crafting 1,000 items, and I feel that’s the better choice even though memorizing all those recipes does cost a bit more than 10 million Inf. After all, if you earn it the long way, you'll also have all those recipes memorized, and will save a bundle on common IO crafting costs going forward. But if you prefer to have it available immediately (perhaps you've already memorized the recipes on your main and don't feel like going through that again on this alt), and you have 10 million Inf in cash, you can get yourself one at Pay 2 Win.

 

Self Destruction is kind of an odd little power, but it can be very useful. It blows you up and kills you (without accruing any debt), while doing an extreme damage fire/smashing PBAoE to all the mobs around you. Even though the description says it “sends you to the hospital,” it actually just leaves you lying there, where you can pop an Awaken, self-rez, or be rezzed by a teammate—or go to the hospital/SG base if you prefer. The power has a 60-minute recharge, and costs 100,000 Inf.

 

The most obvious use is, of course, when you've bitten off more than you can chew and want to sacrifice yourself preemptively to avoid debt. If you can manage to fire it off before you faceplant, you should be okay, as you shouldn't take further damage once the animation begins.

 

But beyond that, this power makes a great once-an-hour nuke for a Fiery Aura character, as it can be used in conjunction with Rise of the Phoenix to do even more damage to any mobs that are left. It’s also particularly useful in those Council/Fifth Column and Circle of Thorns maps that have prison areas with hospital teleport interruption (which you can determine with the Reveal power), if you want to self-kill with zero debt then rez yourself in that room and bust out and clean house in it.

 

TEMP POWERS: JET PACKS

 

The P2W store has a good selection of jet pack temp powers available. They come in a variety of shapes, sizes, and sound effects, but they all seem to have pretty similar properties when it comes to speed and maneuverability. If you’re looking for the cheapest flight time, you might just want to go with the basic Jet Pack power, which is identical to the one you get from the first Positron Task Force—the standard-issue jet pack used by the Sky Raiders. It costs 5,000 Inf per half-hour, and you can have up to five hours at a time.

 

It goes without saying, the cheap and common availability of this jet pack can really change the way you get around, and the way you plan out character builds. For example, a lot of characters that took Teleport as their main travel power used to spend a power pick on Hover, just so they could be sure they didn't fall out of the sky if they took too long to set up their next teleport. (I actually had a teleporting character with Hover and Flight.) But that's no longer necessary—teleporters can easily get by with a jet pack instead. 50,000 Inf is a ridiculously small amount to pay for five solid hours of flight time.

 

The rest of the packs—including large and small Longbow packs, the Goldbrickers pack from City of Villains, the game card exclusive LKT-1700, and even the “Jingle jet” from the holiday event—are 50,000 Inf per half-hour. Still not too expensive, and maybe worth it if you want to have the variety available, or want to tank up on as much flight time as you can in one go. You can have up to five hours of flight time on each of the packs at any one time, which means that if you max out all of them you can get thirty hours all in all.

 

The packs aren’t as fast as Afterburner, or even regular Flight slotted well for speed, but they’re faster than walking. And unlike the Prestige flight powers covered above, you can use your toggles and fight while using them. Between the two, you might very well be able to skip any other travel powers on your character and just get by with the temps.

 

These jet packs are very useful in the Shadow Shard—in fact, a recent patch replaced the old jet pack vendor in Firebase Zulu with a P2W store.

 

TEMP POWERS: SUMMONS

 

There are just a few pet summon powers available via the P2W store—effectively, just the Backup Radio from Safeguard missions that lets you summon a Paragon Police energy melee scrapper, or the old Signature Summon powers from vet rewards that can produce one of the signature heroes or villains to fight by your side. The Signature summons are pretty expensive at 10,000,000 Inf for 5 charges, but might be worth it if you can afford them. Backup Radio is a lot more economical at 500,000 Inf for 5 charges, and certainly can’t hurt to have along—especially if you like to solo as a low-damage-capability hero class.

 

TEMP POWERS: MISC

 

Apart from that, available temp powers include things like the St. Louis Slugger baseball bat or Plasmatic Taser energy blast that you can get from Safeguard missions or various other missions. They’re certainly useful (especially at lower levels), and cheap enough you can afford to stock up to the maximum number of charges you can carry. Most of the attacks are just 5,000 Inf for at least a couple of dozen charges. Hand Grenade is especially useful for characters who don't get most of their AOE attacks until much later, and Stun Grenade makes a nice supplemental mez for Controllers or Dominators who are just starting out (and a nice double-stack add-on to whatever Disorient comes from their control set for later on).

 

Particularly worth buying is Resuscitator, a resurrect power that you can carry up to 100 charges of. It rezzes to about 25% health without mez effects. Never underestimate the usefulness of being able to rez 100 people, especially if you spend much time on pick-up groups. Of course, it does cost 500,000 for 10 charges, so it may be beyond some people’s means, but for those who can afford it, it’s worth it.

 

Another worthwhile 500,000 per 10 charges pack is Med Pack, a self-heal, and then there’s the 50,000/10 Recovery Serum, a self-Recovery booster. Really, if you have the money, you could just buy some of everything.

 

There are also Defense, Offense, and Survival Amplifier, which provide one-hour buffs to the relevant combat stats. Their prices scale up exponentially as character level increases, starting out at 1,000 Inf per hour at level 1 and capping out at 2.5 million per hour at level 50. This means they're most worthwhile at lower levels when your character is fairly low-powered, but even higher-level characters may find them worth buying if they can afford them. Note that, like the XP Buff, these take effect immediately upon purchase, so don’t just buy them haphazardly thinking to save them for when you need them. But, like XP Booster, you might want to purchase a few hours right when you start a Task Force.

 

The Power Analyzer might be particularly useful to those who like to crunch numbers and delve into enemy capabilities. This power pops up a combat stats window giving a statistical run-down on any enemy you use it on. This can be useful in figuring out what new-to-you enemies are strong and weak against, so you can plan your attack and defense strategies accordingly.

 

And as @Kistulot points out in a comment on the second page, Envenomed Dagger is a tool that no one who wants to solo an AV should be without. It provides a big enough hit to regeneration for ten seconds that it can significantly affect even mostly-resistant archvillains, keeping them from out-regenerating your damage if you chain the daggers along with your more damaging attacks.

 

RESPEC RECIPE

 

One other item that the P2W store offers is a respec recipe. If you've used up all other character respecifications that are currently available to you, then for 10 million Inf you can buy a recipe to make another one. (But you have to have no other respecs available to you at the moment to be able to use this one.) I have no personal experience with using this recipe, given that I've never had to respec a character enough times to run out of them, but I assume that the crafting process will be pretty self-explanatory.

 

That being said, buying this recipe is probably a waste of money, because the very same respec recipe sells for about 250,000 Inf via the Auction House. You could buy 40 Auction House respec recipes for the cost of the 10 million Inf recipe from here.

 

CONCLUSION

 

There sure is a lot of useful stuff in the P2W store, isn’t there? Hopefully you’ve got enough money to afford it all—or at least all of the best stuff, like Reveal. May it help you in your adventuring!

 

And if I got anything wrong, or didn’t mention a power you feel deserves some particular attention, please let me know in the comments below.

THis is so amazing.

[Snarky]

Grenades.  I started using stun grenades when i switched back from Blaster to Brite in a solo the game project.  I quickly picked up the explosive one as well.  You can carry about 200 of each.  They are Very useful at low level (at least through 25) when soloing on a low AoE toon.  The stun grenade is arguably useful all the way to 50.  Need to grab a glowie?  Pop a purple and lob a stun grenade!

Edited November 18, 2021 by Snarky

[wjrasmussen]

20 hours ago, Snarky said:

Grenades.  I started using stun grenades when i switched back from Blaster to Brite in a solo the game project.  I quickly picked up the explosive one as well.  You can carry about 200 of each.  They are Very useful at low level (at least through 25) when soloing on a low AoE toon.  The stun grenade is arguably useful all the way to 50.  Need to grab a glowie?  Pop a purple and lob a stun grenade!

Love Plasmatic Taser cone shaped attack.   Just fun trying to bowl down groups.  I run around on a 50 in low zones just to bowl.

[Frissy]

Are the XP boosts gone? I don't see them in the P2W vendor.

[Glacier Peak]

41 minutes ago, Frissy said:

Are the XP boosts gone? I don't see them in the P2W vendor.

There are still where they have been, you might've scrolled past them.

 

[Frissy]

Ahhh I was looking for a category named something like xp boosts, didn't know it'd be buried a bit down under buffs, thanks. ^^;

[KMadeleine]

On 11/17/2021 at 10:43 PM, Snarky said:

Grenades.  I started using stun grenades when i switched back from Blaster to Brite in a solo the game project.  I quickly picked up the explosive one as well.  You can carry about 200 of each.  They are Very useful at low level (at least through 25) when soloing on a low AoE toon.  The stun grenade is arguably useful all the way to 50.  Need to grab a glowie?  Pop a purple and lob a stun grenade!

Oh, I like the way you think!  Using stun grenade that way never occurred to me.  I’ll visit the vendor tomorrow, thanks!

[strangething]

Everything at the START vendor is either free or one million inf. You'd think the devs would split it up into two vendors.

[Andreah]

16 hours ago, strangething said:

Everything at the START vendor is either free or one million inf. You'd think the devs would split it up into two vendors.

I wouldn't split it into two vendors, but a top-level menu division between Free and Not-free would be interesting.