Halloween and Prismatics

[Ukase]

A lot of alting and a lot of ToT - during parts of this first day, both Kallista Wharf and PI had full leagues. 

Whatcha gonna do with those prismatics? 

[lemming]

49 minutes ago, Ukase said:

Whatcha gonna do with those prismatics? 

Based on experience, hoard them.  Maybe make a couple other mini variants.

 

Though looks like I have less than a dozen chars to get prismatics on.   Will probably work more on filling in the other badges.

[Andreah]

Has the market price crashed yet? 

[Ukase]

I last checked a couple of hours ago, and the price was close to what it was; from a little over 2M to a little less over 2M. 

I have thus far earned 470 prismatics, with another 24 characters to assess and see if they can earn them. As for the other accounts...well, I'm growing a bit weary. Perhaps I'll be refreshed tomorrow. Selling them might rejuvenate me, my math says it's close to 1B at 2M each. At least 850M after fees. 

I've been doing this in a strange fashion, not recommended. Solo. The reason being, having led leagues in ToT before, I know what a headache it is to have people come and go, even if they take the time to ensure a 50 is promoted before they leave. So, instead of being a nuisance in that fashion, I just join in the clobbering. 

As expected, I have to really focus on the dps; because anecdotally, if I don't dish out sufficient damage, I don't get credit for them. And those damn MMs have an unfair advantage being able to attack them before they even come out of the door. I really wish there was something that could be done about that. No matter. 

At 2M each, I suspect they won't really get any cheaper. At least, not much cheaper. I had thought initially these would sell for 100K eventually. And that may yet happen. But if people actually are hoarding them or using them, the price should remain fairly stable at 2M. That is, I can't think of any reason for the demand to increase. I should probably hop on brainstorm and see if there are any pricy costumes at Benovolabs coming around the corner. 

[tidge]

I certainly wouldn't put it past players to try to endlessly farm Prismatics by using a stream of disposable new characters, I also think that the effort is almost certainly more than just running a classic AE farm. I imagine that this sort of "farming" thing would be mostly done by a player that specifically wants Prismatics, and also has a roster for which they want badges and/or name-locks.

 

As for ToT Leagues in PI: They can be a real mixed bag. I was surprised several times over the first few days just how poorly a couple of them were being run. This isn't meant to be a knock on the folks who were "leading", it was more that there were so few level 50s playing that my level 50s were constantly getting exemplared down to inappropriate levels for the zone. Sometimes this was due to folks dropping, but one league leader was actively doing it by moving my character from team-to-team, which is borderline griefing IMO. At no point was that character made a team leader, so that was simply clueless leadership.

 

As for which types of characters I prefer to play in the ToT leagues: Ranged attackers, because it makes targeting easier. I agree that low-DPS can be an issue, but mostly because I've seen a bunch of ToT leagues with low-damage (and low-level) characters on the same team, which doesn't help the team (especially on Banner events).

[lemming]

2 hours ago, tidge said:

I certainly wouldn't put it past players to try to endlessly farm Prismatics by using a stream of disposable new characters

Yea, I suspect there's a couple people running MMs that are just camped and running another alt knocking on doors letting the MMs pulzerize the resulting mobs.

 

Last year i did run a bunch of alts up to 25 to check some simple builds and get Prismatics.  Woo, thought I kept more of them, just one survivor. 😄

[Ukase]

11 hours ago, tidge said:

it was more that there were so few level 50s playing that my level 50s were constantly getting exemplared down to inappropriate levels for the zone

This was by far my biggest gripe with being on a ToT league. To be fair, when you're leading, and a level 50 team leads without warning - and the league is otherwise full, you literally have to stop what you're doing, and first see if there's a level 50 on the team that just didn't get promoted by the previous one. Alternately, you have to begin looking at the other characters to find out who's 50 among them. It's a bit tedious. 

I think the first two days are largely okay; and the lack of level 50s doesn't seem to be that much of an issue. After that, anecdotally at least, if you have more than 5 level 50's, you're living right. 

My "work-around" has been to recognize that while EBs will spawn occasionally if you're a solo ToTer, if you're solo at the motel (for example) you can take advantage of the numerous EBs there, and really, you don't have to do any knocking at all, unless you just want to. I didn't knock at all until I wanted to get the tips and the costumes. And it works for me. I've accumulated over 500 prismatics, which is roughly worth 1B, less fees. Mind you, I haven't sold them yet. I'm just not sure if I want to yet. Never know when I might want a mini-me. 

But, better to have them and not need them, than want them and not have 'em. 
 

[Yomo Kimyata]

I may as well ask here -- can any of the costumes get rid of non-suppressable effects?  I'm thinking radiation armor here.

[Bananiac]

I guess people are also just hoarding the Aethers for costumes. 250 for a Mini SFX is something where you need to run a lot of toons through this for...

[Ukase]

just an observation, it takes about 7-10 minutes to get those 5 EB defeat badges. Given the frequency of people leaving, then rejoining, it's my guess motivated folks with free time are going to earn these on every character that can. 
It's been a week, I think. I've gotten over 800 Prismatics - just from the event. That doesn't even include the labyrinth of fog and the named GM kills. 

But, I would also conclude that people are either using them as intended, or like me, hoarding them for either future use or future sales. I would have thought the price was going to plummet, but that has not been the case. 

[kelika2]

Same as always

horde them

get idea for mini character

get bored with mini character in the 30s

try to not do the math on how much inf i wasted

repeat for 3 or so years

[Andreah]

Market price is still around two million.

[Ukase]

About an hour ago, they were at 1.2M 

I am not sure which way it's going to go after ToT ends. 
I could squeeze out some more from my lower level characters, but seems like I should just wait until next year. 

My gut told me when they were first introduced that there would be a time when they might sell for the same as halloween salvage. 

I know there's a small minority that does the advanced mode tfs and are likely swimming in them, if they aren't using them for the mini-modes or selling them. 
And, there's probably about 250 put into circulation on Excelsior from the labyrinth runs -which seem to be once a day, at least as far as I can tell. But that's only about 7-8 per player, after a monstrous aether conversion. 

If I were smarter, I'd look at how many are in the supply and check again tomorrow. 

Not sure about other servers and how often they do Labyrinth. Probably the same, or less, but who knows. After ToT, these activities might increase. I certainly don't see the supply increasing after ToT ends, unless it's from hoarders dropping their inventory. 

So, it will be interesting to look back 6 months from now and see if the price is around 1 to 1.5M. That's my guess. 

 

[tidge]

A few days after the end of ToT and the market price is around 1.3M per aether.

 

This is me trying to guesstimate demand: When I see players using an obviously non-temp costume, it is pretty much always mini-mode. I suppose some players can be using effects that I don't notice. I know a handful of players that run certain characters always using a specific costume. On my one character that I specifically wanted to have mini-mode, I ended up not liking the way the collision box worked... I think the mechanic is fine, it was simply too disorienting for me.

 

With the name release, I expect a slight uptick in characters that use costume toggles, but I expect (in my imagination) most of those would be Tier 1 costumes.

 

On 10/25/2024 at 9:42 PM, Ukase said:

Not sure about other servers and how often they do Labyrinth. Probably the same, or less, but who knows. After ToT, these activities might increase. I certainly don't see the supply increasing after ToT ends, unless it's from hoarders dropping their inventory.

 

I see regular Labyrinth runs on another (less populated) server. As near as I can tell based only on participants, it is a sort of farming exercise for players' characters that would otherwise be 99% engaged with things like ToT/April Fools leagues, periodic Giant Monster Hunts and the like. It seems as if it is mostly something to do while waiting for one of the multiple daily Hamidon raids. No judgement, and no way to tell what if anything makes it to the market from any of those.

 

I'm still hoarding my Aethers... mostly because I wanted to see how long it would take me to earn over 1500. I'd sold some along the way, burned a few more but otherwise they feel like a nest egg that will never be hatched.

[Crysis]

Mini mode has its uses but you basically look like something afflicted with Funkopop disease.  I’m glad I tried it on Brainstorm first.  If we could adjust the head and thigh dimensions I might feel better about spending 250 Aethers on it.