What to do with all these merits?

[Story Archer]

So I just dinged 50, all IO'd up (no purps though, and nothing on the incarnate track) and I'm sitting here with just under 1,000 merits.

 

A lot of the higher-level aspects of this game (crafting, merits, incarnates, even the in's and out's of basic task forces) are far from intuitive or user-friendly, especially for someone relatively new to it. I've mastered the auction house and I'm pretty strong when it comes to character builds, but I've never so much as crafted an enhancement, and I'm always on the fence as to whether I should just take the deep dive necessary to become proficient with all this stuff when I really just want to PLAY... so I'm here to ask you, in the simplest, easiest to understand and implement terms, what should I do with all these merits? I'm presuming that the best use of them is to turn them into Influence somehow, which could definitely benefit one of my many other characters, but I'm also open to the idea that that might be 100% wrong.

 

1,000 merits (give or take). What should I do with them?

Edited December 28, 2023 by Story Archer

[UltraAlt]

53 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

A lot of the higher-level aspects of this game (crafting, merits, incarnates, even the in's and out's of basic task forces) are far from intuitive or user-friendly, especially for someone relatively new to it.

 

Yes. If you think craft and merits and figuring out the in's and out's of basic task forces are "higher-level aspects" of the game I can understand your confused.

 

Maybe you don't mean "higher-level" as character level, but "higher-level" as in experience in the game.

I'm unsure by your wording.

 

53 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

I'm always on the fence as to whether I should just take the deep dive necessary to become proficient with all this stuff when I really just want to PLAY

 

You don't have to do anything other than to play the way that is fun to you unless you are on a team and being disruptive to the other people's gameplay.

If you are not leader, the leader might want you to work with the team or give you the boot.

If you are leading you can do what you want to do and the other players have to comply or leave.

 

53 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

so I'm here to ask you, in the simplest, easiest to understand and implement terms, what should I do with all these merits?

 

The only thing that I do with merits is buy archetype and event enhancements, and I don't do that too often.

I make enough inf in the markets, that I can buy card packs and the archetype enhancements drop in the card packs (so do merits for that matter), and I like playing the Summer Blockbuster.

So that pretty much takes care of all the enhancements that I would buy with merits with the exception of enhancements that come in the Lords of Winter Card Packs. Due to the price of Lords of Winter Card Packs, merits seem to be a good way to go for those.

 

If you have enough inf, you can buy all that stuff on the market at any rate.

 

53 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

I'm presuming that the best use of them is to turn them into Influence somehow, which could definitely benefit one of my many other characters, but I'm also open to the idea that that might be 100% wrong.

 

Yes. Could use Merits to buy enhancements that sell for high prices in the Auction House and put them up for bid in the auction house.

 

53 minutes ago, Story Archer said:

1,000 merits (give or take). What should I do with them?

 

I would save them until you need them, or use them to buy high-end enhancements to sell on the market if you need inf.

 

 

 

Edited December 28, 2023 by UltraAlt

[twozerofoxtrot]

2 hours ago, Story Archer said:

1,000 merits (give or take). What should I do with them?

 

If you're a badge hunter, save them for April (or May?). The anniversary month for COH is the only time you can get certain badges, which sell for 100 (?) Merits each from Luna in Ouroboros. 

 

 

[Frozen Burn]

2 hours ago, Story Archer said:

1,000 merits (give or take). What should I do with them?

 

Yes, a lot people convert the merits into inf by buying converters or boosters and selling them on the market.  You can also use your merits to buy AT IOs, Event IOs, or Purple recipes at the merit vendor.  You said you don't have any purple IOs, well, you can get some now.  They cost 100 each.  🙂  

[Scarlet Shocker]

I'd echo what UltraAlt says, first and foremost - Play the way that works for you!

 

But with that said, crafting can be interesting and fun and allows you to kit out your character to be the best that it can. It may be you're entirely happy with the 50 you have now, but it may also be that you feel the need to make another and that might want an extra boost, in which case crafting a few inventions can help immeasurably.

 

If you feel the need for more Inf, you can craft some sought-after Procs and sell them on the Market Place or place them in Supergroup storage for alts and other SG members.

 

1000 merits sounds a lot but some of those procs cost a few, so you might find it's not as much as you think. But that's ok, right? Because it encourages you to go out and get some more.

 

Whatever you choose, have fun with it!

[Uun]

Although lots of recipes and enhancements can be purchased directly with merits, it's almost always cheaper to convert the merits to inf and purchase the recipes/enhancements on the AH. Take ATOs for example. They can be purchased for 100 merits each. They also sell on the AH for about 8,000,000 inf (80,000/merit). But you can purchase 10 Enhancement Unslotters for 5 merits. These sell on the AH for about 100,000 inf each (200,000/merit). So you could use 40 merits to buy Unslotters and sell them for the 8,000,000 inf you need to buy an ATO. 

 

Other items which can be purchased and sold efficiently with merits are Enhancement Boosters and Enhancement Converters. Prices fluctuate, so you need to do a little homework to see what's bringing the highest price/merit at the moment.

[Water]

When I want to IO a toon I find this Wiki page essential, probably my most used wiki page actually.

Invention Origin Sets with set bonuses

 

I check prices for recipes and enhancements in AH before I spend the merits to make INF and merits go as far as possible. Purple sets you need like Panacea are worth spending merits on.

[tidge]

I am constantly "merit rich" (orders of magnitude more than 1K merits), here are some of the things I do with them:

 

1a) Buy (directly) ATO Enhancements for new characters.

 

As mentioned above, with the Auction House this isn't economical, but I find it satisfying. Pretty much all my builds leverage ATO, I find it very convenient to slot these to get the set bonuses ASAP.

 

1b) Occasionally, there will be one-or-more power in a (new) character's build that will benefit from a small number of Winter Enhancements. Typically I have some attuned PVP enhancements that better fit what I need, but I like these for franken-slotting. I don't often use Winter pieces for set enhancements; the builds that use them almost always do so to have a Superior enhancement bonuses that scale down for exemplar content.

 

2) Enhancement Boosters (at Level 50). I almost always have 'finished builds' with a large number of level 50 pieces that can stand to be enhanced.

 

3) Enhancement Converters/Unslotters, when I find myself short on them and I am too lazy to use the AH.

 

4a) Level 50 PVP and Very Rare recipes. I don't have that many alts, and I tend to play my level 50s such that I get these as drops, but occasionally I don't feel like playing converter roulette or waiting for bids to fill. These are all boostable, so I tend to keep my preferable (non-%proc, non-global) PVP 50s in storage (Accuracy/-- or --/Endurance pieces, Gladiator's Armor, Shield Wall, Panacea, Gladiator's Net, etc.) for use on the 'complete' build.

 

Note: I often have most of the Very Rares for a 'finished build' that I want (from drops, because I level slowly and also play my 50s), so the merit vendor is typically used to fill gaps in a set rather than buying 15-20 recipes.

 

4b) Occasionally: Level 10 PVP recipes. (via Merits -> Hero/Villain Merits -> Email -> new level 10). The level 10 recipes are dirt cheap to craft, and they tend to use rare salvage that would otherwise clutter the SG base salvage racks. I do this when I have burned through the useful %globals and %damage PVP pieces that I have already attuned. These have to be bought with a low level character, as PVP recipes at the vendor will match the character level.

 

Note that PVP recipes (at any level) are reasonably cheap to buy on the AH anyway. I will also play converter roulette with all sub-50 PVP enhancements to get pieces I am likely to use while leveling and burn Catalysts to make them both scalable and slot-able early for new characters.

 

5) Tip missions. Occasionally if I want a specific level-appropriate Tip mission (for a badge) I'll just buy the mission I want for a single merit.

 

I don't buy Catalysts with Merits, but that's because I have enough level 50s and it pretty much takes a single door mission at x8 to get one catalyst drop per day. This is also a good way to get the Very Rare/PVP recipe drops.

[Yomo Kimyata]

You will probably get lots of people who will tell you to convert them to xxxx and sell them and to do it in the most efficient manner so as to maximize your inf.  And there are several ways that can net you about 20mm inf for 100 merits.

 

You can also use them to get items that you want to use for yourself.  100 merits for a Winter-O is totally reasonable.  100 merits for a purple is fine, but you could probably net out a little better by selling items and buying the purple directly and have a few mm inf left over.  100 merits for an ATO is also fine if you really want that ATO, but again you could almost certainly net out better by selling items and buying the ATO directly.  That said, there is no problem with using them to buy an item you want, even if in theory you could get it cheaper some other way.  It's not like you are starving your children.

 

Saving them for badges is also reasonable, but since I am well versed in the conversion process, I spend all mine on converters and use them to convert.

 

 

[Story Archer]

A lot of really good advice on here - some of it I actually understand.  I appreciate everyone taking the time to respond.

[PLVRIZR]

If you are "merit poor" on alts, you can convert 50 Reward Merits to one Hero Merit and email to yourself, then save the Hero Merit on your alt and convert back to 50 Reward Merits.

[KC4800]

14 hours ago, PLVRIZR said:

If you are "merit poor" on alts, you can convert 50 Reward Merits to one Hero Merit and email to yourself, then save the Hero Merit on your alt and convert back to 50 Reward Merits.

I played one scrapper as a throwback era type character who used only SO enhancers until 50, never sent her any seed money playing the game like at was at launch, not even going into newer zones or playing newer TFs. As she leveled my other characters crafted Hero merits and put them into email. She retrieved them and as she dinged 50 she was able to buy full sets of ATO's.

[Ironblade]

On 12/28/2023 at 1:42 AM, Story Archer said:

1,000 merits (give or take). What should I do with them?

If you find a good answer, let me know.  I have over 50,000 across my accounts/characters.

I used 2004 on my badger for the Mini Statesman vanity pet, 2012 for Mini Tyrant, 2005 for Mini Lord Recluse.

[PLVRIZR]

On 1/1/2024 at 7:25 PM, Ironblade said:

If you find a good answer, let me know.  I have over 50,000 across my accounts/characters.

I used 2004 on my badger for the Mini Statesman vanity pet, 2012 for Mini Tyrant, 2005 for Mini Lord Recluse.

Feel free to e-mail as many Hero merits as you want to @PLVRIZR or @PLVRIZR2 😆

 

(Yes, I know they are "account bound" and that's not possible)...

[Ironblade]

On 1/3/2024 at 7:29 PM, PLVRIZR said:

Feel free to e-mail as many Hero merits as you want to @PLVRIZR or @PLVRIZR2 😆

 

(Yes, I know they are "account bound" and that's not possible)...

 

Do you even hoard, bro?

My precious merits are MINE!  ALL MINE!