Fulmens

It's just as effective AS WHEN YOU GOT IT. Higher level IO's work better. For generics: Level 15s are about equal to a green DO. Level 25's are about equal to a yellow SO. Level 35's are about equal to a green SO. Level 50's are about 42%. I can't find the generic table on Paragonwiki but for most things these numbers are right for bonus by level.

Don't look at the optimum builds in Mid's. It doesn't cost anything to put a full set of Panacea in Health in Mid's. In the actual game it's, I don't even know, billions. I think of IO'ing as about three stages of "Goodness".

1. Generic IO's. Good while levelling up, similar in price to SO's (not TOO much more expensive), never go bad, work like SO's.
2. Frankenslotting. I wrote a guide when IO's were fairly new. The formatting is broken and the link goes here but it's still OK. It's not a great guide- if I had it to redo I'd tweak some things- but it was pretty good for the time.

I haven't updated it because Cap'n Canadian's Guide is better, clearer and more detailed. I did build a miniguide (see sig.)

Frankenslotting is kind of a lot of work- I recommend picking two powers at a time and trying to get the IO's and salvage for them, then when you finish a power slotting all the IO's at once. But it's cheap; around as expensive as buying prebuilt IO's. A frankenslotted character will do everything faster, more accurately and for less endurance than the same character on SO's.

The third level- and I use this loosely, because there are levels and levels in this- is set bonuses. You have to be careful here for a number of reasons.

1) It is very possible to gimp yourself in WHAT THE POWER ACTUALLY DOES to get set bonuses. It's a temptation. It's a trap.
2) It's also very possible to find out that most of a set is fairly cheap, but key parts go for 100 million. Or that ALL of a set is expensive.
3) Set bonuses don't carry down well when you exemplar. If you have [for instance] level 50 IO's you lose the set bonuses below level 47.
4) It's hard to find good IO's at any level below 50 (people are stupid and various fixes to the market have allowed people to exercise this stupidity.)

Pool A drops from beating badguys. There are common and rare pool A's but they all drop in the same way. I think Bronze rolls are all Pool A.
Pool B drops from mission completion. Silver rolls are Pool B plus some rare Pool A, I think.
Pool C&D (or "Rare Recipes") used to drop from completing a task force or respec trial. They were combined and you get them for merits now. Gold rolls are "Rare Recipe" I believe.
Purple/Ultra-Rare recipes are pool A, that only drop at level 50 (so only drop from enemies level 47 or higher), exceeeeeedingly infrequently.

Merits are "fractional recipes" that you get from completing story arcs, either as you go or from Ouroboros ("flashbacks" you can do after level 25), or from doing task forces. Longer TFs give you more merits. That's based on the average time. Some people can do some TFs very, very fast. So if you do a task force and it takes you six hours and you get 12 merits... someone has a shortcut. 20 merits gets you a random rolled recipe, and you can buy a specific recipe for 200 or 240 merits. The specific recipe is almost never worth it, in my opinion; there are a few recipes that you can sell for a godzillion inf and buy what you need, but even there you will USUALLY do as well or better with the random rolls. Random rolls are random! Much of Pool C is unloved and oversupplied.

Tickets are Architect system. They're "Abstracted rewards" that you can turn into salvage, or random rolls, or whatever you need or want. I like to save a couple hundred tickets in case the price of some common salvage gets stupid (which usually lasts five minutes, but I get impatient.) So you don't HAVE to pay half a million inf for that Circuit Board. You can take about six rolls on the "25-40 tech" table and make your own.

Wall of Text crits for 1420 points of damage!

First thing is, my insensitivity filter goes both ways. So half the time I don't notice.

Second thing is, I generally tell people that they're likely to get a better deal somewhere else.

Third thing is, I have no problem walking away if people try to bargain or invent their own exchange rate or whatever. Lazy beats greedy for me, every time.

Fourth, I suppose, is that people are paying me for a service, not asking for a favor, and that might limit their feelings of entitlement somewhat. They're getting, say, 100 million worth of service on a billion-inf deal. They're not getting "all the service they deserve."

So yeah, your problem might be that you're NOT a jerk.

... so I could get a Katana/BS "parry" power in place of Fire Breath? Or Fire Sword Circle in place of Whirling Sword?

This probably isn't what the OP had in mind when they ... who am I kidding? Sure they did.

... this is half right.

Everyone remembers when prices go UP. Nobody remembers when prices go DOWN. For the week of 7/17/2007, Pangaean Soil was 4.1 million. Do people at the market rejoice every time they buy one?

The price of level 50 Crushing Impacts has gone down- I don't have the hard data, but I think they've gone from around 10 million each to under a million. Do people smile and tell each other of the glorious new days they live in?