Is the in-game economy weird and broken?

[Riverdusk]

Honestly even a brand new character can do alright with doing nothing but selling their salvage and recipe drops on the auction house.  Not really more convoluted than that.  Biggest issue I usually see for new characters/players is them not realizing how much orange salvage is worth or thinking for some reason they should horde it, or I guess them not knowing the auction house exists at all.  Those would be the bigger barriers.    

 

I'd say things are a lot easier than they were 15 years ago.  There are just a lot more ways to earn inf than there were back then.

[Andreah]

A new player need only pick one of the many ways to earn Inf, and do that one thing. None of them are so bad that a player would regret using it for the first 20-50 levels of their first character.

 

But really, don't buy ATO's with merits. That's shockingly bad. Fortunately, new players don't need ATO's right away. 

[UltraAlt]

15 hours ago, Zombra said:

Like, I just want to run missions and get a little inf, and buy enhancements appropriate to my level.  But I feel like I'm doing it wrong and the economy is only set up to support billionaires.

 

Before there was the /ah, there was a time when you gained influence based on how much damage you did and that alone.

I had an empathy defender that did a lot of healing. By the teen levels, they didn't even have enough influence to fill even half their slots with Training Enhancements.

Be then came the market.

And slowly and steadily, I began to sell salvage and recipes, and craft salvage with recipes into enhancements to sell and use that money to keep making more until I had built up enough, that had enough to keep financing the crafting and selling and could scrape some off the top to buy things for myself. 

 

So no, it's not just for "billionaires".

I try to pay good on the market for the stuff that I use for crafting. The salvage I buy, I buy well above the average market price and I purchase a lot of it.

The stuff I don't use, I sell well below the normal market value.

I can do that because I make enough profits to give back to the community. 

 

I  used to xp lock a some characters at level 1 and see how much influence I could make.

It is easier to make some influence when you have influence, but you can start from scratch and do it. It's just more time consuming. Once the ball gets rolling, it will yield a return in this game.

 

15 hours ago, Zombra said:

I don't remember the early/mid levels being this rough, contacts don't even sell enhancements any more even though they all say they do, can't even afford DOs for my level 15 characters when I finally get to the zones that have stores.

 

I don't know how other players play, but I purchase all my SO's from the base vendors. I buy all my insps from base vendors. I level up my characters in a base.

 

If you don't have a base, there are links on the bottom of this page for open bases on every server: https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Supergroup_Base

You can also ask in /LFG if anyone is recruiting for a supergroup, ask for a base passcode, or make your own base when you get around to it.

 

It is well worth getting the https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Rapid_Response_Member_Badge accolade from the https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Monitor_Duty_Badge and https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Patroller_Badge day jobs.

Use the free base teleports these give you to go to a base in the open world to level up, exit through the portal you came in, and it will drop you where you were when you went to the base.

 

15 hours ago, Zombra said:

Is the economy perfectly fine if you don't do these weird exploits people are talking about?

 

 I don't use any of their tactics.

 

 

15 hours ago, Zombra said:

Or should I give up on fun and L2Farm?

 

I suggest against it unless you only want to buy stuff that isn't in the /ah.

Otherwise, you'll be giving your influence to me and others like me.

Instead of learning how to turn lead to gold like Ral Partha.

 

 

 

 

[Andreah]

16 hours ago, Zombra said:

So .... what's your take?  Is the economy perfectly fine if you don't do these weird exploits people are talking about?  Or should I give up on fun and L2Farm?

 

I take exception to your wording here. The techniques people are talking about are not exploits. Exploits are actionable violations of the Code of Conduct, sections 7.1 to 7.3. 

 

These are deliberate game systems, being used for the purposes they were intended for, by a great many players who know more about how the game works than you do, for now.

 

These aren't secrets; players easily discover them for themselves, and we teach anyone who asks about them. Frankly, it's hard to get us to shut up about them. ^_^ You can learn these systems too. Pick one, and learn it. Or don't, and gain your Influence a little slower. It's up to you.

[Skyhawke]

I may get some side eyes for saying this, but I don't buy jack squat til level 22. From then til 50, I buy recipes (if I don't have them), craft and slot lvl 25 IOs (adding set IOs as I can). If I'm feeling the pinch before 22, I slot drops if needed, but usually I can do fine till 22 unslotted.

 

I sell everything (unless I'm slotting it or its needed to craft regular IOs) and don't need to dip into cash from my higher level characters. As other have said, one Prismatic and you're pretty set, not to mention orange and yellow salvage. The merits flip cements financial independence. 

 

YMMV, but this works for me.

Edited February 2 by Skyhawke

[Lockely]

12 minutes ago, Skyhawke said:

I may get some side eyes for saying this, but I don't buy jack squat til level 22. From then til 50, I buy recipes (if I don't have them), craft and slot lvl 25 IOs (adding set IOs as I can). If I'm feeling the pinch before 22, I slot drops if needed, but usually I can do fine till 22 unslotted.

 

I sell everything (unless I'm slotting it or its needed to craft regular IOs) and don't need to dip into cash from my higher level characters. As other have said, one Prismatic and you're pretty set, not to mention orange and yellow salvage. The merits flip cements financial independence. 

 

YMMV, but this works for me.

 

I'm surprised you don't at least do DO accuracy and damages, and end reduction into your toggles.

[macskull]

50 minutes ago, UltraAlt said:

Before there was the /ah, there was a time when you gained influence based on how much damage you did and that alone.

Inf gain from defeats has never worked this way.

[Skyhawke]

1 minute ago, Lockely said:

 

I'm surprised you don't at least do DO accuracy and damages, and end reduction into your toggles.

I slot those freebies from P2W as i get slots open and I will put drops in if needed, but buying enhancements? Nah. 

 

One caveat, though, so I guess I'm not 100% that way. In Praetoria, I will slot lvl15 IOs at 12 because Enriche apparently gives everyone Super Reflexes and perfect accuracy. A Praetorian is a once or twice a year project, though as opposed to the ludicrous number of blue and red side characters.

 

 

[Scarlet Shocker]

15 hours ago, Snarky said:

the vahzilok pay decent money for pancreas and kidneys, as long as they are somewhat fresh

 

That explains why @Snarky is broke then! 🤣

[Snarky]

25 minutes ago, Scarlet Shocker said:

 

That explains why @Snarky is broke then! 🤣

Too true.  Help poor Snarky!!!

 

Send what you can to @Snarky   
 

Give until you weep.  Then give just a little more. 

[lemming]

1 hour ago, Skyhawke said:

I slot those freebies from P2W as i get slots open and I will put drops in if needed, but buying enhancements? Nah. 

 

One caveat, though, so I guess I'm not 100% that way. In Praetoria, I will slot lvl15 IOs at 12 because Enriche apparently gives everyone Super Reflexes and perfect accuracy. A Praetorian is a once or twice a year project, though as opposed to the ludicrous number of blue and red side characters.

I do similar, though depends on how fast I'm leveling, what content, what AT I'm running.

 

I have waiting until level 32 at times before I get serious about slots.  Before that, it's sorta random and if I wind up with some set IOs that work, I'll toss those in.

[DougGraves]

As a non-farming non-billionaire player getting enough influence for leveling is easy.

 

Do things that give merits - just run the 3 Atlas Park starter contacts.  Use 5 merits to get a salvage thing and sell that on the AH for close to 1 million influence.

 

That gets you enough influence for many levels.  Then you just need to get the occasional rare salvage, all of which sell for about 450k, or get some more merits and sell that salvage thing.

 

 

[Enchantica]

The market works fine. WAY better then on live. That probably has more to do with the awesome community than anything else.  Alot of people think things are " broken" because they cant go from level 1 -50- in 4 hours and go from single origins to EPIC!!!!!! RAWR!!!  If converting and using merits is not what you want to do then just sell your salvage, craft some recipes, a lot of help can be had from the people here. Not only is this the greatest game ever made it IS the best community of people I have ever encountered.....cheers

[Andreah]

There are other, non-gameplay, ways to make money, too. Both take some artistic skill: 

 

• Enter and win costume contests
• Make and sell Supergroup Bases

[sbloyd]

13 minutes ago, Andreah said:

There are other, non-gameplay, ways to make money, too. Both take some artistic skill: 

 

• Enter and win costume contests
• Make and sell Supergroup Bases

 

My first billions were made on the Everlasting CC circuit, though that's not as active as it used to be.  Once I had a nest egg, I went all-in on Converter Roulette on the AH.  For the longest time my "system" was to run with Veracor's afternoon Hamidon, pick Reward Merits for both rewards, then beeline over to the MSR and do that, converting everything to Rewards, then shifting the whole shebang to Converters.

 

Then I bought a bunch of crap recipes off the AH, and started rolling the dice!

[Ironblade]

19 hours ago, Zombra said:

I don't remember the early/mid levels being this rough, contacts don't even sell enhancements any more even though they all say they do, can't even afford DOs for my level 15 characters when I finally get to the zones that have stores.  The auction house looks like a Wild West of "exploit or die".

 

So .... what's your take?  Is the economy perfectly fine if you don't do these weird exploits people are talking about?  Or should I give up on fun and L2Farm?

 

If you don't remember it being this rough, then your mind is playing tricks on you about 'the good old days'.

The in-game economy is DRAMATICALLY better than it was back on live.  Prices for the 'good stuff' on the auction house are far lower than back on live.  I mean, the +3% resistance unique cost me 2 billion inf back on live.

 

Also, it's easier than ever to earn influence.  The one factor that might be working against you is the common practice of getting the free double XP buff and/or playing on one of the servers that currently has an XP buff to attract new players.  These make you level faster without increasing your influence (and actually decreasing your earnings in the case of the Pay2Win XP buffs).

 

Final note:  If you're genuinely struggling, plenty of people will throw money at you.  Go to the thread linked below for info on how to have Yomo send you 100 million inf.

https://forums.homecomingservers.com/topic/43870-yomos-new-and-improved-bang-up-salmagundi-spectacular/#comment-570668

 

[nzer]

13 hours ago, Lockely said:

This is all great info, but I can't help but laugh that it's literally is the point of his initial post where it feels like an overwhelming twelve hundred step program to funding a character initially. 

 

That post is overly wordy, in fairness. It boils down to "do exploration badges for merits, turn merits into converters, sell converters on AH." And you could even remove the first part, because almost anything you do in-game will give you merits.

[Xalon]

OP, you just have to do a few easy things. 

 

I sell off any salvage over 1ct. 

So if you have 2 or 5, sell all except for 1 of each type you have.

 

All enhancements you can't use you should sell as well.

 

Recipes that won't help your character you can sell on Ah. Just type /ah, then drag recipe to bottom area and click "Find" to see value.

 

If that doesn't get you enough Inf, you can do the following:

 

Go to P2W vendor. Buy (with Merits) enhancement boosters, enhancement unslotters, and enhancement converters. These sell from 50k to 200k + for each one, only costing 1 merit each.

 

You get merits from completing story arcs so you can use a few to make some quick inf and from there it will build up, especially once you get past level 15-20.

 

Good luck!

[Zombra]

Just posting again to say thank you to everyone who has replied, too many to name.  I'm glad to see I have many options for enriching my characters, some less skeezy than others - and that even if I don't take any special path to increased income, the game is playable as intended with the income from simply fighting crime.

[ZekeStenzland]

A small thing that no one else here has mentioned…. Common Crafted IOs. 
 

A fair number of folks make the common crafted ios for the crafting badges. You wind up typically having to craft way more than you need, and put them up for sale on the auction house. And generally price them to sell just to recoup some of the crafting costs as opposed to making a profit. You can often get a great deal on them, sometimes cheaper than what the equivalent TO/DO/SOs sell for. 
 

And the beauty of crafted ios is… they never expire, so you can upgrade them whenever — if ever — you feel like it. As opposed to Right Now because they all went red on you. 
 

[StarseedWarrior]

22 hours ago, Zombra said:

I'm glad to be back in CoX after 15ish years away 🙂

 

However I feel really overwhelmed by what's going on with the economy now.  I'm being told "read my newb guide, this is the way you're SUPPOSED to progress.  Farm these task forces for merits, then take the merit rewards to the worktable and turn them into splanges, then sell the splanges for a billion inf each at the auction house, then use that inf to buy shoobadoo enhancements, then break those in half and smear peanut butter on them, then ...."

 

Like, I just want to run missions and get a little inf, and buy enhancements appropriate to my level.  But I feel like I'm doing it wrong and the economy is only set up to support billionaires.  I don't remember the early/mid levels being this rough, contacts don't even sell enhancements any more even though they all say they do, can't even afford DOs for my level 15 characters when I finally get to the zones that have stores.  The auction house looks like a Wild West of "exploit or die".

 

So .... what's your take?  Is the economy perfectly fine if you don't do these weird exploits people are talking about?  Or should I give up on fun and L2Farm?

 

Thanks in advance for any perspective.

You just need to get into using merits for so enhancements to level with, they are so cheap and just as strong, and what others have mentioned here as well helps to, I do not think its broken at all if people stop rolling alts every 30 levels lol.

[Sovera]

23 hours ago, Zombra said:

I'm glad to be back in CoX after 15ish years away 🙂

 

However I feel really overwhelmed by what's going on with the economy now.  I'm being told "read my newb guide, this is the way you're SUPPOSED to progress.  Farm these task forces for merits, then take the merit rewards to the worktable and turn them into splanges, then sell the splanges for a billion inf each at the auction house, then use that inf to buy shoobadoo enhancements, then break those in half and smear peanut butter on them, then ...."

 

Like, I just want to run missions and get a little inf, and buy enhancements appropriate to my level.  But I feel like I'm doing it wrong and the economy is only set up to support billionaires.  I don't remember the early/mid levels being this rough, contacts don't even sell enhancements any more even though they all say they do, can't even afford DOs for my level 15 characters when I finally get to the zones that have stores.  The auction house looks like a Wild West of "exploit or die".

 

So .... what's your take?  Is the economy perfectly fine if you don't do these weird exploits people are talking about?  Or should I give up on fun and L2Farm?

 

Thanks in advance for any perspective.

 

 

That guide's wording seems familiar 😄

 

It's not weird though, nor exploits. It's literally a system placed in. In WoW you might be told to farm leather or mine and pick herbs and then sell in the auction house.

 

I will grant is overwhelming for a new player, but, it does not hurt to bookmark some of these explanations and come back to them until you're better acquainted with the game.

 

I know that in new games I try to be sure I don't throw away valuable stuff but the splanges into flanges and the peanut butter get to me too. That said the easiest way to make money IS by playing the game. Just try to follow a storyline to its end, get merits, trade merits for converters at the ATM, type /ah, toss the Converters in and make money.

 

It is an exceedingly simple loop birthed from.... playing the game.

 

 

Now, regarding the 'contacts don't sell enhancements anymore' you don't need them to. Type /ah, go to Crafted, Other, and you will find that stuff like generic accuracy, or generic damage. Those are worth anywhere between 50k to 100k (and never go red unlike the old SOs) which will be a pittance considering a single merit is worth 210k in Converters and a new character simply doing the initial arcs ends with 9 merits after 20 minutes of play.

[Luminara]

The economy is my bitch.  Of course it looks "weird and broken".

 

*puts a liplock on the economy*

*spits out a level 10 Interrupt IO*

[Water]

I've seen similar issue for my entire gaming life. A player new to the game finds it hard and time consuming to understand the economy. Seeing everything as out of reach. I noticed it in myself when I first started gaming in economy based games such as this one. I learned over time how it ran, its value, the value of its items and the value of becoming familiar with it. So that's what I did. I saw people chatting in general about stuff, what stuff cost etc. Saw the vast amount of items thinking I'd never get to know the entire economy. Well after nearly 20 years in this game (excepting the enforced hiatus) and equipped with the HC (formerly Tony5) wiki I am in a place of familiarity purely because of becoming familiar with it over time during everyday use. Nobody was born with the knowledge. Everyone had a first character. Those who stay and learn have the advantage.

 

Start here:- https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Enhancement_Sets - compare prices - make strategy.

 

[StarseedWarrior]

1 hour ago, Water said:

I've seen similar issue for my entire gaming life. A player new to the game finds it hard and time consuming to understand the economy. Seeing everything as out of reach. I noticed it in myself when I first started gaming in economy based games such as this one. I learned over time how it ran, its value, the value of its items and the value of becoming familiar with it. So that's what I did. I saw people chatting in general about stuff, what stuff cost etc. Saw the vast amount of items thinking I'd never get to know the entire economy. Well after nearly 20 years in this game (excepting the enforced hiatus) and equipped with the HC (formerly Tony5) wiki I am in a place of familiarity purely because of becoming familiar with it over time during everyday use. Nobody was born with the knowledge. Everyone had a first character. Those who stay and learn have the advantage.

 

Start here:- https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Enhancement_Sets - compare prices - make strategy.

 

However most mmo economies are manipulated or allowed to be manipulated since they do not have to at all, so learning those economies are very boring.