Rich Quick's "How to guide to financial independance at low levels! or How I earned 6.5 million influence by level 8!" Ghostwritten by Ridiculous Girl

[Ridiculous Girl]

NOTE: I started writing this and then did not finish initially because I thought that it was a bit silly. But then someone randomly responded one day that I should make a video about my claims of ease to gaining influence at low levels, I decided to just finish writing what I had. This is not the best guide, nor the most efficient way of gaining influence, it is just me trying to practice what I have been preaching.

Context : For a while I have been an advocate of people using SOs (Single Origin enhancement) rather than generic IOs (Invention Origin enhancement), until about lvl 32.

But! But, that's not why we are here today... that is an argument for another day. Frequently, as I am SO pontificating, I i like say that I give my lowbie alts fun money when they get to lvl 7-8 (10 million to be exact). Enough to buy extra stuff and enough to get them to level 32 with SOs. If they actually make it to level 32, then I will start investing serious influence into their character build. I also frequently say that it only takes about 6-7 million in influence to keep your alt in SO 's until level 32, while auto-upgrading every 2-3 levels. (If you do not know about the auto-upgrade button in enhancement management, you're missing out!) A frequent retort I get from people, namely generic IO fanati- *cough* enthusiasts, is that 6-7 million influence is a lot of influence for somone just starting out. To which I respond that no, that really is not that much influence.

But that got me to thinking... Maybe, I have been awash in influence for too long that I have forgotten what it was like being poor. Poor with no rich sugar daddy, or sugar momma in my case, level 50 main character to feed the lowbie alts a steady diet of influence. Maybe I am out of touch!

 

Hence!

 

 

Meet Rich Quick ! He's my experiment for the next couple of days in wealth building from nothing but what is available and what he earns himself. He will only take free P2W (Pay to Win) prestige powers from the P2W vendor, namely the free travel and attack powers. No 2xp buff since that supresses influence gain and the character levels too fast, and Rich Quick will generally only take missions from low level contacts. But, most importantly to start, he will take the Inner Inspiration prestige power.

 

This prestige power is important because it gives the player 3 inspirations (medium to large) every 30 minutes. Large inspirations are very important because they typically can sell for 50K+ each, on the auction house. Medium sized can also sell well depending on type, so I may keep a couple and combine three to make a better selling medium-ized inspiration.

 

NOTE: you do not need to go to the Wentworths Market or the Black Market, you can access the Auction house from almost anywhere (not in instances nor bases, etc) using /ah.

 

First round I got two mediums and a large inspiration. But, oops, I forgot that I cannot sell on the market while nearly complete broke. I had arrested a few deserving villains, and while gaining my first level, I had only earned 188 influence. I refuse to sell things for 1 influence because the market is weird and sometimes very unpredictable. So, Rich Quick needed some start up cash. I went to the Hero Corps vendor sell the few DOs (Double Origin) drops that I had gotten. Selling those 5 DO enhancement drops netted about 1400 influence from the vendor, enough for me to sell the first three inspirations.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

While those were on the market, I went around Atlas Park and picked up all of the exploration badges. Doing this would not only get me an accolade and the Long Range Teleporter, but also 5 merits with very little effort or risk to my own life. It can be done in under 10 minutes. With my merits I could either buy some enhancement converters (3 converters for 1 merit), enhancement unslotters (2 unslotters for 1 merit), or enhancement boosters (1 booster for 5 merits). In practice, they will net about the same on the market per merit, though in my opinion there are more fluctuactions in price for converters but a higher demand. At the time of playing and writing, boosters were selling for about the same price per merit as the others. So, I bought 15 converters with my first 5 merits.

 

So, while my round of inspirations netted me 16k of influence, my first round of converters netted me 900k ! I might have gained more with a Booster, but when I listed the converters the price was farily high, but because the price dropped for converters as I sold them I lost out a bit. But that is the name of the game. Anyway, I was almost a millionaire by level 2 ! It was not going to continue to be this easy, but it was a good start.

 

Spoiler

 

 

 

 

I found my first contact that would give me some missions that rewarded merits for completing their story arc. I found Matthew Habashy in front of City Hall. He has a short arc that has 10 brief missions (kill 5 hellions, talk to someone, rescue 4 civilians on the street, etc.) that rewards 3 merits upon completion of the arc. Habashy introduced me to Sondra Costel, whose arc had 7 short missions and awarded 3 more merits. Costel introduced me to Aaron Thiery who had another 7 missions, with 3 merits and a badge (Savior of Atlas Park) as rewards. With 9 more merits, after each arc completed I converted my merits to converters and then tried unslotters. I sold 9 converters, along with various salvage that had dropped, for about 600k. Unslotters yield about the same influence per merit as converter, but of course this can vary. 6 unslotters, 2 per merit, earned me about 700k inf, pushing me over 2 million by the time I was level 6. I bought more converters, with my last 3 merits, which pushed me up to 2.7 million inf. Not bad for lvl 6 ! 😄

 

Truthfully, I was gaining influence faster than I was expecting.

 

  

Spoiler

 

 

  

 

Since I was past level 5, the lovely Twinshot had contacted me and after talking to her, I started her arc. This may surprise you but her level 5-9 arc has 12 missions, this will be important later on.

 

I got to level 7, and decided to load up on SOs, so I would not be fighting enemies as a 99lb (that's about 45kg for you non-american types) weakling. This first round of enhancement buying did not cost me that much, 155k of influence, which was only about 5% of my currently extraordinary wealth. Now I was a 99lb superhero !

 

Spoiler

 

Automatic upgrade!

 

Now, most everyone that has played COH HC for a while, knows the Twinshot arcs. It's a basic COH superhero tutorial, with arcs starting at level 5, 10, and 15. They're simple and a bit silly but they serve their purpose of introducing all of the basic concepts of the game. But for me, what is most important is that I hit paydirt on the second to last mission set, of the first arc. When I visited the vault, looking for clues, I had a PAP (Prismatic Aether Particle) drop. These very rare salvage drops happen to drop only 2% of the time after mission completion. (NOTE: On the wiki it says both a "standard mission" and "completes a mission map" but this was not a separate map, just a mission completion, so I don't know which is true. Both?) Which does not seem like much. But, with the 3 other arcs that I ran, and Twinshot's arc, there were a grand total of 36 missions. The odds were very good that one of these would drop for me eventually. Some of these missions were ridiculously easy too ; go to the train station, find Proton in City Hall, go to the vault. PAPs sell for anywhere from 3-4 million influence each. I easily doubled my influence in one drop ! Selling that at the auction house netted me 3.3 million influence ! 😄

 

Spoiler

 

One thing I did notice is that I did not have much in the way of salvage drops. Typically, I should have had several uncommon salvages drop for me, and by the time one gets to level 15 odds are pretty good that a rare salvage will drop. I think this one thing that is often overlooked by low level players, is that by level 20 they'll have 1-2 rare salvage sitting in their pocket. That's influence there, a lot of influence! Sell that!

 

In conclusion, I have decided to take a break from wealth building for now. Now that I am level 8, I have the choice of either going to do the Positron task force, or I could go to King's Row and run a few arcs there. Though when I think about it, the Hollows would probably be more profitable. I'll decide later.

 

CIAO! 😎

 

NOTE: I have no idea why half the photos are so small, I may replace them later? We'll see... 🙂

Edited January 30 by Ridiculous Girl

[Ridiculous Girl]

This space is reserved for further shennanigans...

[Ridiculous Girl]

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[Ridiculous Girl]

This space is reserved for further shennanigans...