What to do with Empyrean Merits in the future...

[Spectral]

Instead of being sad about loosing my emp->reward source of money/purpleIO for the next altoholic toon, I'm pondering what to do now...

 

IThreads

I know I can exchange Empyreans into IThreads through the incarnate crafting window...

 

I can then exchange those at Luna (Ouroboros) for UltraInspirations... um, not my thing...

I buy the occasional Super-Rezz and Ultimate+1lvl... the prices for these on the AH will (likely) drop fast once the page 4 patch hits live. So actually AH-selling UltraInsp will become pointless unless you enjoy trading (which is a totally legit way to play the game, just not something I enjoy much).

 

I can also take my IThreads to AE-vendors and exchange IThreads for orange salvage to self-craft my purples, purple recipes will likely go up in price on the AH... but I get more reward merits to compensate (in theory), so I can just exchange reward for purple recipes and then craft... lots of crafting instead of playing the game, meh.

________

 

It almost seems like Empyreans have become the new Astral²... who gives a damn about them/not very useful stuff - that fills inventories and will never get cleaned up...

 

So... anyone here got a clever idea what to do with Empys when the next patch goes live? or are Empys now like Astrals... mostly useless once full T4...?

 

 

 

PS: Funny enough...

I dislike AH-trading more than I dislike afk-farming... so I might actually have to end up making an afk-farmer - if access to purple IOs becomes too difficult through normal content (big economy shift incoming). Which is kinda hilarious 🤪 (or maybe devs are actually not anti-afk-farmer? and people just assume because of some past heat/hate?)

[Digirium]

EMs will have the same purpose as before - to create incarnate threads and incarnate components (common, uncommon, rare and very rare). No change there. EMs will remain very useful. I think it was unproductive to convert them to RMs. RMs were really easy to obtain, still are and will be even easier.

 

I think it is also unproductive to convert threads to super inspirations for sale to the AH. Get them for your own needs only.

 

Page 4 will disrupt AFK farming and builds will need changes to stop builds being overwhelmed by damage and defeated by critters.

 

If you want purple IOs for builds then active farming is the way.

[Ukase]

1 hour ago, Spectral said:

So... anyone here got a clever idea what to do with Empys when the next patch goes live? or are Empys now like Astrals... mostly useless once full T4...?

A couple of options: 
First, convert them to trancendants, and send them to your alts. Your new alt at level 1 can hold these, and when they ding 50, you can play a bit, unlock the slots and use the emps for the new 50. 

Alternatively, just convert the emps you have now to reward merits now, before that patch hits. If you have so many that you'd have over 10,000 reward merits, convert 50 at a time to Hero or villain merits. 

[arcane]

Considering I’ve never made this conversion, nothing will change. It’s pretty damn hard to run out of Incarnate-related uses for empyreans unless you’re one of those mystical unicorns that doesn’t like alts. 

[Seed22]

2 hours ago, Spectral said:

Instead of being sad about loosing my emp->reward source of money/purpleIO for the next altoholic toon, I'm pondering what to do now...

 

IThreads

I know I can exchange Empyreans into IThreads through the incarnate crafting window...

 

I can then exchange those at Luna (Ouroboros) for UltraInspirations... um, not my thing...

I buy the occasional Super-Rezz and Ultimate+1lvl... the prices for these on the AH will (likely) drop fast once the page 4 patch hits live. So actually AH-selling UltraInsp will become pointless unless you enjoy trading (which is a totally legit way to play the game, just not something I enjoy much).

 

I can also take my IThreads to AE-vendors and exchange IThreads for orange salvage to self-craft my purples, purple recipes will likely go up in price on the AH... but I get more reward merits to compensate (in theory), so I can just exchange reward for purple recipes and then craft... lots of crafting instead of playing the game, meh.

________

 

It almost seems like Empyreans have become the new Astral²... who gives a damn about them/not very useful stuff - that fills inventories and will never get cleaned up...

 

So... anyone here got a clever idea what to do with Empys when the next patch goes live? or are Empys now like Astrals... mostly useless once full T4...?

 

 

 

PS: Funny enough...

I dislike AH-trading more than I dislike afk-farming... so I might actually have to end up making an afk-farmer - if access to purple IOs becomes too difficult through normal content (big economy shift incoming). Which is kinda hilarious 🤪 (or maybe devs are actually not anti-afk-farmer? and people just assume because of some past heat/hate?)

Get 50, send to new toon. That's about their only "financial" value once P4 drops. Or I guess making a new T4.

 

Can make threads for an ultimate if you want?

 

I'll miss their conversions, but it's not gonna be the end of the world for me. What I will do is regard them like astrals; useless garbage once I've gotten T4's on everything unless I want my new toon to have an incarnate head-start, which I usually don't 😛 (It takes the fun out of playing the 50 for me. I know I'm weird buzz off 😆)

[Coyotedancer]

I'll continue to use them for the same thing I've always used them for... Incarnate bits to make the powers my next alt needs. 

 

(Merits are very easy to get elsewhere, even for a solo/small-team player like me. That made Emps more valuable for Incarnate use than as conversion fodder.)  

[Myrmidon]

Laugh when the people converting them start whinging when the time comes for more Incarnate abilities to be created. It’s more of a long-term thing.

Edited August 16, 2022 by Myrmidon

[Spectral]

Hmm, I think I'm starting to understand... I guess I'm part of the crowd that Seed22 belongs to: we play our toons quite a bit because we enjoy them.

I do have 50-60 max-level toons... so it I think I do qualify as a moderate altoholic.

It's just: usually my toons are T3-T4 before I even manage to unlock the hybrid slot and I still have Empys to spare.

 

So, I guess the consensus is: Empyreans are like Astrals now... either you have stuff to T4 or they are worthless stuff that accumulates in a corner...

[Frozen Burn]

When your incarnate abilities are all crafted and there is no need to make any more, you still collect threads, emps, and astrals... Yes, Luna will help convert threads into super inspires... but I find this mostly useless -- only on a rare occasion have I had a need to do this.  Most of my toons will never need to visit Luna.  I like converting the few leftover Emps and Astrals I have into Reward Merits -- it's a great way to use up this salvage in a more productive way.  I am bummed this feature is going away, but it won't hurt me as bad as some others, as I know some people heavily rely on the conversion to RMs to build their alts.

 

I am excited that RMs will be dropped with iTrials in addition to the usual rewards.  That will be awesome!

[Excraft]

2 minutes ago, Krimson said:

I like how it works now, but I am okay with removing conversion to Reward Merits, since there are myriad ways to farm Reward Merits. Mother Ship Raids reward Vanguard Merits which can be converted, but the real purpose of MSR is an XP farm for lowbies, and a thread farm for 50s. Hami raids can grant 120 merits per two runs, and they happen daily on several shards.

 

I'd rather not have to be reliant on a full league of other people to get merits.  I'd be fine with removing the conversion if there were more ways added to get merits solo.  It's just easier to farm and look into setting up an AFK farm now to earn enough inf to just buy stuff outright.  That conversion at least gave some use to EMPs after you've finished out Incarnates and don't want to make any new alts. 

[TheZag]

I think the change is mainly aimed at power leveling a farmer to vet lvl 50 and then converting all the merits before deleting it and starting over.  If thats not how you play then the increased rewards from other activities should keep the gaps filled.  Just send extra emps to your new alts for quick crafting of incarnate abilities.  You will probably end up with more emps than you need but if we arent farming for emps anymore,  it shouldnt be too much over what we use.

 

[battlewraith]

2 hours ago, Spectral said:

So, I guess the consensus is: Empyreans are like Astrals now... either you have stuff to T4 or they are worthless stuff that accumulates in a corner...

 

Pretty much. People keep saying that you can send them to alts. Okay, I send them to an alt and use them to do all the incarnates. Now what reason does that alt have to run those missions, particularly when the conversion to merits is nerfed? 

[Yomo Kimyata]

I was going to make a big fort.

[arcane]

It baffles me that people who have  clearly stated over and over that they are not okay with doing anything but farming… are also stating over and over that they need the reward merit conversion to make money. Where the hell are your 24/7 farm rewards going?

 

Since there is so much cognitive dissonance coming from some folks, at a certain point you have to assume they are confused or just lying trolls.

[Neiska]

Me? Keep stockpiling them. I need EMP merits for alts and their incarnates far more than merits and the assorted things that normal merits can get me. I have piles of money aplenty. But Emp merits? Once you hit higher vet levels they become a precious resource if you don't like doing team things. Sure, I might be full T4'd on my main characters, but not all my alts or other builds I want to try. Often I immediately open up a new 50s alpha and slot their T3 Alpha just for that level shift, especially if its a pet class. And it is so nice to not have to claw to that first level shift when you have the resources already. And its a simple matter to refill them once that new alt hits a few vet levels. So its largely a self-replenishing resource, so long as you earn back as much as you spent.

 

Honestly, I am surprised people convert them. Personally I have never considered such a thing. So you can get inf and make it easier to initially gear up? Why not just spend the 100k or so getting yourself set for 20-30 levels, and see if you like it first. That way you get to keep your emp merits for characters you really like instead of just wasting them on builds before someone even knows they will enjoy them. But that's just me.

[ShardWarrior]

1 hour ago, TheZag said:

If thats not how you play then the increased rewards from other activities should keep the gaps filled.

 

Sure, assuming being herded into team content is your thing.

[Hedgefund3]

27 minutes ago, Neiska said:

Me? Keep stockpiling them. I need EMP merits for alts and their incarnates far more than merits and the assorted things that normal merits can get me. I have piles of money aplenty. But Emp merits? Once you hit higher vet levels they become a precious resource if you don't like doing team things. Sure, I might be full T4'd on my main characters, but not all my alts or other builds I want to try. Often I immediately open up a new 50s alpha and slot their T3 Alpha just for that level shift, especially if its a pet class. And it is so nice to not have to claw to that first level shift when you have the resources already. And its a simple matter to refill them once that new alt hits a few vet levels. So its largely a self-replenishing resource, so long as you earn back as much as you spent.

 

Honestly, I am surprised people convert them. Personally I have never considered such a thing. So you can get inf and make it easier to initially gear up? Why not just spend the 100k or so getting yourself set for 20-30 levels, and see if you like it first. That way you get to keep your emp merits for characters you really like instead of just wasting them on builds before someone even knows they will enjoy them. But that's just me.

Sometimes a post comes along that just lets me be lazy and say "ditto to the above", I put a check mark next to pretty much every point above.  I certainly agree with the rationale for not converting Emps.  I've got a big stockpile of Emps (Transcendents to be more precise) and I could convert them to RMs.  But I've got a big stack of RMs that only increases over time.  I could convert those to Enhancement Converters for the purpose of generating inf (whether by using the converters or selling directly) but that just adds to the pile of inf, yet another pile that only increases over time.  Empyreans is the resource with the smallest pile for me and the only one I make any effort to acquire more of via afk farming alts to vet level 48.

[roleki]

5 minutes ago, arcane said:

It baffles me that people who have  clearly stated over and over that they are not okay with doing anything but farming… are also stating over and over that they need the reward merit conversion to make money. Where the hell are your 24/7 farm rewards going?

 

Since there is so much cognitive dissonance coming from some folks, at a certain point you have to assume they are confused or just lying trolls.

That's really interesting.  I have no doubt people have complained about losing Emp -> RM, but I've either blind-eyed it or missed it entirely, so I can't speak to the motivation behind the complaint from those corners.  What I do know is that to me, RMs are just enhancement converters, and there would have to be a massive sea change to get me to spend inf to buy converters on the market. 

 

That (multiple?) other people are complaining about losing the conversion makes me wonder if I am not alone in my aversion to actually using inf to BUY things; to me, the market is just where I shit out the imperfect tarts from the yellow->orange->random rare minigame.  If there ARE more of us than anybody realized... well, those of you still stuck using the market may be in for some challenges a couple months down the road from Page 4. 

 

Myself, I don't convert Emps to RMs because I know I won't be getting any more of those outside of what trickles in when the alts ding while they're out of the barn every third or fourth week.  In that way, Emps are worth more than RMs or converters.

[kelika2]

Vet level 0 all tier 4 incarnate alt less than an hour after hitting 50

 

Go

[Neiska]

3 minutes ago, kelika2 said:

Vet level 0 all tier 4 incarnate alt less than an hour after hitting 50

 

Go

 

I don't think you can actually do that, as you would gain a few vet levels before unlocking your slots. I have had a full T4 sub vet lvl 10 though, but I can't recall what exact her vet level was. But it was pretty early on.

[Hedgefund3]

It's doable, you can buy iXP with threads.  It's a horrible horrible rate but doable.  

[Grouchybeast]

I've never converted Emps to Reward Merits, and I very rarely spend RMs either, so I don't think I'm going to notice much of a change.  They all just stack up in one of those tabs I don't look at much.

[Oklahoman]

For those who haven't shared their feedback on this change already in the Beta feedback thread, just a reminder to head over here and let it be known ASAP.

 

[ShardWarrior]

40 minutes ago, Oklahoman said:

For those who haven't shared their feedback on this change already in the Beta feedback thread, just a reminder to head over here and let it be known ASAP.

 

I doubt very much there is any changing anything at this point.

[Spectral]

I was just wondering what to do with excess empyreans... I got my answer, thank you everyone who contributed.

I guess we can end the derailing here?