Enhancement Starter Kit

[NiyceOne]

I left the game well before all ATO's so I'm a little lost on where to start and how to proceed. I currently have around 12 million on my 34 Bots/Dark main. I'm playing with all dropped enhancements currently out of hesitation for what to buy in what order and slot where...can someone offer some guidance. I also wouldn't mind seeing a Bots/Dark build if anyone has one stashed away. Thanks in advance.

[Erydanus]

Honestly just get yourself some level 25 or 30 generic IOs and use them as if they were the SOs you remember - they basically are, but they don't expire.

 

Invention sets have bonuses but they are really not essential. They're a nice way to minmax if you care to do so and there are a few that give you a special property that are really nice to have - like the ones that grant you just enough knockback protection you can ignore all knockdown attacks.

 

But don't put yourself through the hassle and hardship of just using drops. Sell your drops, either craft your own IOs or buy them on the auction house. Crafting system is very simple and you can do a tutorial at the university and get 1 free.

[NiyceOne]

That makes sense and is a good start. I would like to min/max tho at some point.

[Some Random User]

I have a slightly different approach. I have a toon levelled up to 40 that I use as a "crafter" for all of my other toons. I use the in-game e-mail system to forward any uncommon or better Recipes/Salvage over to the crafter. The crafter is also where all of my Wentworth's transactions are carried out. The reason I'd want to do this? If you've crafted the same recipe enough times the Recipe upgrades to "Memorized" and you get a steep discount on the Influence price to craft Memorized Recipes. (This discount highly incentivizes this behavior.) When one of my toons gets to level 17 or 27 I have the levelled-up toon use one of their free respecs (you get one for free every 10 levels). By typing /respec into the chat this brings up a window that takes your toon all the way back to level 1, and you re-select everything, then you are taken to a screen where you're supposed to re-assign your Enhancements. You have to assign them somewhere or they'll be deleted, but one of the options is to move them to your inventory. I just drag them all to the "put in inventory instead" tray. Then I sell or e-mail them, and note the number of slots each power was given. I switch over to my crafter, make the I.O.s the new character needs (or buy Attuned versions at Wentworth's), and e-mail them back over to the levelled-up toon. I re-slot everything with tasty I.O.s that will never expire. If I wait ten levels I can give the old level 20 I.O.s to the next level 17 toon to come along.

 

This behavior is highly encouraged by the system because there are a few usual suspects you always want in almost every build. [Haste] is a popular power, and the effects stack with other sources of "global recharge" so both that power and those Enhancements are go-to choices in many builds. For example, one of the Enhancements in the Luck of the Gambler Set is a global recharge buff that makes everything you click or toggle off come back up a little faster. That doesn't need more than one Enhancement, this isn't a set bonus, this is just one Enhancement within the Set. If someone makes a build that uses Haste they almost always use this Enhancement as well, because the effects stack. There are also entire Sets that apply a set bonus to global recharge, but they are less popular since they require more than one Enhancement.

 

There are three tiers of slotting which are not immediately obvious. There are Enhancements that you're used to, that can be slotted over and over in the same power. When you deal with sets they are mostly the individual Enhancements (within a set) that you're allowed to re-use across your build multiple times. You just need more than one power to slot them into. This leads to a practice known as "slot mules" where you're taking stuff like [Hover] or [Tough] because you want more powers to slot something into again. Then there are the ones you can't duplicate at all. Usually, the really good stuff like this is limited to 1 per toon instead of 1 per power. These are sometimes a single individual Enhancement within a set, such as the global recharge mentioned above in Luck of the Gambler.

 

The major thing you want to do is get a copy of Pine's (links available throughout the Homecoming forum, just search) and learn how to use the built in calculator. Basically, the only things that in my opinion aren't intuitive about Pine's are:

• You can remove slots (to put them somewhere else) by holding shift and clicking on the slot.
  
• In the bottom left corner there's a big window with info about whatever your mouse is hovering over. Which tab the info window is on ("Info"/"Effects"/"Totals"/"Enhance") will change how the whole rest of the screen behaves. "Info" is used to set up the build but "Totals" will let you toggle the individual powers on and off to see the different results.

 

Your fellow users are awesome about helping with builds. Look up the Primary/Secondary combination in the many threads in this subforum. If you need more help, to get guidelines for what you should be trying to do in a build just post in the Homecoming forums in the correct Archetype's subforum and mention in your subject the Primary/Secondary combination you're having trouble with. If you follow the advice mentioned above you will find you have enough Influence from your first level 40 crafter's intelligently managed bankbook and auctioning that you can have more than one set of "hand me downs" for your lower level toons. As long as you never slot anything on top of anything else and just swap I.O.s at levels 27 you should be fine until you start putting a high level build together between levels 37-50. This is a slower process that relies on things like earning Influence from Missions and making money by selling expensive drops you can't use for yourself. That is a different issue than the one you're asking about, so I'll leave that to a thread focused on a single Archetype and Powerset combination.

[Some Random User]

34 Bots/Dark main.

I play a Robotics M.M. and there are two things you need to be aware of.

 

The first is that most builds will be for the most min-max friendly Powerset combinations. For Robotics that means something that increases Defense (Forcefields, Ice, etc.). Since you're pairing with /Dark you're going to have a harder time finding builds to do that. Good news! If you look through the Sets you'll notice plenty of set bonuses that will increase the Defense of your pets. If you mention the specific combination in the subject of the thread you might get lucky with someone sharing a build, but the title of this thread attracts a different set of eyeballs.

 

The second is that Robotics/Dark is actually a pretty good combination. You're debuffing others' ability to attack effectively, which makes your robots survive longer, just like with a +Def buff. Since you're high enough level to have all of your robots already I would use a respec to drop all of the personal attack powers out of Robotics (except maybe [Pulse Rifle Burst] for the Knockback). Their damage is inconsequential compared to your minions' mailed fists of steel and plastic. You're probably going to go for a [Haste] build, since you have a lot of long recharge powers. [shadow Fall] will help you get out of things if you're in over your head, and you might think you can use the +Def(All) buff to buff your robots! Except then you use Pine's and see the buff isn't very high, you realize this is a slot mule for a Defense Set. You'll want that power to focus on Endurance Reduction so you can leave the effect up, but use the remaining slots for something else useful. This will save you from taking [Weave]/[Combat Jumping]/[Hover] if you don't want to. Beyond that you're going to want to get specific advice from someone who has more high level experience with /Dark toons. I've only played part way up on that Powerset.

[Nyghtmaire]

34 Bots/Dark main.

I play a Robotics M.M. and there are two things you need to be aware of.

 

The first is that most builds will be for the most min-max friendly Powerset combinations. For Robotics that means something that increases Defense (Forcefields, Ice, etc.). Since you're pairing with /Dark you're going to have a harder time finding builds to do that. Good news! If you look through the Sets you'll notice plenty of set bonuses that will increase the Defense of your pets. If you mention the specific combination in the subject of the thread you might get lucky with someone sharing a build, but the title of this thread attracts a different set of eyeballs.

 

 

OP - here is a thread that looks at your pairing: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,5964.0.html

[Some Random User]

OP - here is a thread that looks at your pairing: https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,5964.0.html

+1 Inf

[Sovera]

I have a slightly different approach. I have a toon levelled up to 40 that I use as a "crafter" for all of my other toons. I use the in-game e-mail system to forward any uncommon or better Recipes/Salvage over to the crafter. The crafter is also where all of my Wentworth's transactions are carried out. The reason I'd want to do this? If you've crafted the same recipe enough times the Recipe upgrades to "Memorized" and you get a steep discount on the Influence price to craft Memorized Recipes. (This discount highly incentivizes this behavior.) When one of my toons gets to level 17 or 27 I have the levelled-up toon use one of their free respecs (you get one for free every 10 levels). By typing /respec into the chat this brings up a window that takes your toon all the way back to level 1, and you re-select everything, then you are taken to a screen where you're supposed to re-assign your Enhancements. You have to assign them somewhere or they'll be deleted, but one of the options is to move them to your inventory. I just drag them all to the "put in inventory instead" tray. Then I sell or e-mail them, and note the number of slots each power was given. I switch over to my crafter, make the I.O.s the new character needs (or buy Attuned versions at Wentworth's), and e-mail them back over to the levelled-up toon. I re-slot everything with tasty I.O.s that will never expire. If I wait ten levels I can give the old level 20 I.O.s to the next level 17 toon to come along.

 

I did the same for a good while, but I want to add a caveat. Well, first of all, do make a SG to transfer the enhancements much more easily, your crafter can lead it and you can use /altinvite for your baby alts.

 

But most importantly..... it's completely not needed. And I say that as someone who did the exact same with a crafter and making IOs and stashing them and respecing alts I no longer played and etc.

 

Assuming that 1 merit = 3 converters by the time I've reached 22 I usually have around 7-8 million inf. Decking myself in full generic IOs costs me around 2-4 million. So each alt sustains itself easily just by doing the TFs we naturally would. Buying Numinas and Performance Shifters uniques does cost more than a baby alt can make by level 22, but again it's pretty easy to make cash simply by running TFs as they open (I find it best to work for the accolades by doing the TFs when they are level appropriate, than be all tricked out and optimized and then exemp down to when we had a couple attacks).

 

 

For the OP, check https://forums.homecomingservers.com/index.php/topic,3810.msg27438.html#msg27438 where I placed some generic advice.

[NiyceOne]

Amazing info in here folks! Thanks again.