Bionic_Flea

This is an unsolved mystery that deserves further investigation.

Don't give them any ideas.

This may be the first and last time I agree with every single word he said.

You're welcome!

Well, I don't know if it helps or not but in my mind I associate crafting with Batman creating or buying gizmos, Reed Richards inventing some future technology, or even Dr. Strange/Dr. Fate learning a new spell.

While I usually recommend against disagreeing with Uber, I no longer feel one needs to run dozens of trials now that we have four trials to run. I have heard that a single run of the Underground Trial will earn you enough incarnate XP to unlock the alpha slot and 1/3 of the way to unlocking both judgment and interface. I think that if you are willing to convert your astrals into threads to craft common incarnate salvage that you should be able to have at least something slotted in 3 or 4 out of 5 incarnate slots just by running each trial once. And if you open alpha slot via the Ramiel arc like you did and obtain the necessary components to craft the alpha by running TFs, I think that you might be able to slot at least the first tier in all five incarnate slots.

But if you want to get to tier 3 or 4 powers, then yes, you can expect to run the trials dozens of times per character.

so I wanted to take a couple of minutes and give you a quick explanation. My explanation will assume that you know nothing about it so please don't feel that I am talking down to you. I just wanted the explanation to be clear and complete.

As you know, defeating bad guys gets you influence and XP (if you are under level 50). Occasionally they may also drop an enhancement that you can either use or sell to a vendor and inspirations that you can use to buff certain attributes. Initially those were the only rewards the game offered. There are a lot of new things that have been added since the early days of the game.

We now have recipes, salvage, reward merits, alignment merits, vanguard merits, astral merits, empyrean merits, and tickets!

Recipes and Salvage

If you look on your powers tray, you will notice that you have a little tab for salvage and recipes that, if you click on them, will open a window that reveals what you have picked up and are carrying in your personal inventory. If any of the words on the tab are red that means that you are full. Being full is generally bad because you are missing out on any future drops and you never know if the next thing that drops is going to be very valuable!

The recipe will call for a certain set of three or four salvage pieces and some influence in order to craft it into an enhancement. But you can't just craft them anywhere, you need to have a crafting table. Crafting tables are available in any of the universities in Paragon City and the Rogue Isles. I mainly use either Steel Canyon or Cap Au Diable as they are each close to a market. You can also add crafting tables to your Super-Group base and most super-groups like to dedicate a room to crafting and storage. Finally, there is an accolade you can get from collecting a series of badges related to crafting that allows you to summon a portable crafting table.

Some recipes are for "generic" invention origin enhancements (IOs). They kind of look like the original training origin (TO) enhancements and they buff one aspect of a power, like accuracy, damage, endurance, etc. Unlike dual origin (DO) and single origin (SO) enhancements, they can be used by any character origin, cannot be combined, and never expire. Generic IOs run from level 10 to 50, in increments of 5. A level 30 generic IO provides better enhancement (generally 34.8%) than an equivalent SO. A level 50 generic IO generally 42.4% enhancement to most categories (some things, like range, run on a different table of values).

Set IOs are crafted in the same way as generic IOs but they have additional benefits. Most of the set IOs enhance two, three, or even four aspects of a power. Additionally set IOs grant bonuses for having more than one of the same kind slotted in a power. For example: Thunderstrike is a set IO for ranged damage powers. The set has six pieces:

Thunderstrike: Accuracy/Damage,
Thunderstrike: Damage/Endurance,
Thunderstrike: Damage/Recharge,
Thunderstrike: Accuracy/Damage/Recharge,
Thunderstrike: Accuracy/Damage/Endurance, and
Thunderstrike: Damage/Endurance/Recharge.

Slotting more than one would get you the following set bonuses:

Two enhancements increases Recovery by 2%.
Three enhancements increases Energy and Negative Energy Defense by 2.5%.and Ranged Defense by 1.25%.
Four enhancements improves the Accuracy of all your powers by 7%.
Five enhancements improves your Run Speed, Flight Speed by and Jumping by 4%.
Six enhancements increases Ranged Defense by 2.5% and Energy and Negative Energy Defense by 1.25%.

So if you six slotted this into say shuriken on your scrapper, you would get an additional 3.75% to ranged defense on top of your existing defense, all your powers would have extra accuracy, you would move faster, and recover endurance faster. If you slotted 5 complete sets into a blaster you start talking about some big numbers -- 18.75% ranged defense is nothing to sneeze at!

Set IOs and salvage are colored depending on their rarity, white for common, yellow for uncommon, orange for rare, and purple for ultra rare. Additionally, we have PvPIOs that grant extra set bonuses when facing other players. Set IOs can be dropped by defeated enemies, completing missions, purchased off other players via the market, traded by players off the market, or purchased off special vendors with merits.

Reward Merits

Completing story arcs or task forces will grant the player a number of reward merits. The number awarded is based on a develop assigned amount that corresponds to the average amount of time needed to complete the set of missions. These merits can then be traded in to merit vendors to purchase certain set IOs directly or you can take a chance and "roll the dice" within certain designated bands to see what the random number generator throws your way. A random roll costs 20 merits and has a chance to reward you with some of the best non-purple set IOs in the game. Purchasing a recipe directly with merits costs anywhere from 75 to 250 merits.

Personally, I always chose the random roll. Even if I don't get a valuable rare IO I can usually craft it and get 5 to 10 million from a market sale. Just by vendoring my generics, crafting my random rolls and my better drops nets me 100 to 200 million on the way to 50, after accounting for all the purchases I made with that same character.

Alignment Merits

Defeating any NPC higher than level 20 has a chance to earn you a "tip." A tip is a mission that lets you chose your morality. There are four moralities: hero - vigilante - villain - rogue. A vigilante is a "morally loose" hero and a rogue is a villain with some scruples. In order to change moralities you have to run 10 tip missions of that morality type and then run an alignment mission where you make the choice. Players are limited to getting 5 "morality points" per day. You can run more if you like but you will not get credit.

The first time you complete an alignment mission you get 50 reward merits, the kind we discussed above. But if a hero chooses to remain a hero, reinforcing his alignment a second time, then he earns an alignment merit. Same thing for a villain but the morally ambivalent vigilantes and rogues can't get alignment merits. Alignment merits can be traded in at special vendors Fort Trident (off of Atlas Park) or The Crucible (off of Cap au Diable). One merit can purchase most decent recipes, two alignment merits can purchase highly desirable IO recipes like Luck of the Gambler +7.5 recharge, or Numina's Convalescence +regen/+recovery. You can also buy purple and PvPIO set recipes from these vendors for 20 - 35 merits.

That sounds like a lot but that's about 2 months of running 5 tips every night. If you find other players at different levels to run them with you, you can have plenty of variety. Or you can set them at -1 level/1 player setting and breeze through them. You can collect a-merits faster if you are willing to trade 50 merits and 20 million inf for a merit. Again, that sounds like a lot but if you run 2 TFs in a week and sell your drops you should have more than enough merits and money to make the trade. If you did that, you could have a purple of your choice every three weeks!

Vanguard Merits

Vanguard Merits are obtained by defeating Rikti opponents anywhere in the game, but only after you complete the Introductory arc from Levantera in the Rikti War Zone. It's very fast and mainly involves talking to a series of contact inside the RWZ base. Vanguard merits can be traded in at tables inside the base for Vanguard costume pieces, a few temp powers including the very powerful Vanguard HVAS pet, or a Gr'ai Matter --piece of incarnate salvage. Participating in a Rikti Mothership raid can get you hundreds of vanguard merits in a very short amount of time.

Astral and Empyrean Merits

The newest merits on the block are Astral and Empyrean. Both are obtained exclusively from participating in Incarnate trials. Completing a trial awards Empyreans and completing certain tasks or earning badges inside the trails earns you Astrals. Astrals and Emps can be converted into incarnate salvage to craft extremely strong incarnate powers or they can be traded in to one of two vendors in Ouroborous, one for each kind of merit. Michael trades Empyrean merits for costume pieces, emotes, vouchers that let you send some incarnate goodies to other characters on your account, and set, PvP and Purple IOs. Christy does similar trades with astral merits, but some items are unique to each vendor.

Tickets

Finally, you can earn tickets by playing missions in the Architect Entertainment System also known as Mission Architect or the initials AE or MA. Most zones have an AE building where players can design their own missions or play missions designed by other players. Some of these missions are very story driven and expand or throw twists into existing lore. Some of them are challenge missions pitting you against multiple AVs or large numbers of foes with over lapping debuffs. And others are straight out farms designed to highlight your character's strength, for example making a mission with huge numbers of enemies that only do fire damage and have no resistance to fire against your fire/fire brute. Instead of getting salvage, recipes, SOs and merits that you might get completing developer designed content, in the AE you get tickets. These tickets can be traded in to a vendor on the second floor of the building for TOs, DOs, SOs, generic IOs, and salvage. You can't buy set IOs directly, but you can once again "roll the dice" in several level bands in Bronze (stuff you would get from defeating NPCs), Silver (recipes you would get from completing missions) or Gold (same recipes you can get from rolls at a merit vendor, which were formally available from completing TFs and trials).

You can find out how many of the different merits and tickets you have by checking the "Special" tab in your salvage window.

Whew. So there you have it.

Even casual players can be rolling in their money like Scrooge McDuck and have strong IO builds if they take just a few minutes each play session to convert their tickets and merits to recipes, craft the recipes, and then sell the crafted enhancements and vendor the rest.

Why doesn't Zwill have breakfast with his own family? I mean, it's bad enough he abandoned his work buddies to do the heavy lifting and dirty work on the weekends, but to abandon his kin to have breakfast with the family from the Original Pancake House is just too low!

No, not that you are smelly.

As other players surmised, having a young woman trapped in your lair carries certain . . . connotations.