Fulmens

We had a point where about three of us decided to play until we got a purple each on one set of characters.

Two hours every monday night, for something like two months. I was on an Elec/Inv brute, one of the others was a /Kin corruptor, so we mowed through content pretty quick. Lightning Rod, what, every 30 seconds or so... for around 30 hours.

Thing is, if you're by yourself it's 1 per 5000 critters. If you're on a 6-person team it's 1 per THIRTY THOUSAND critters.

I've had around five. One on an ITF. One seeing what my FF/Elec could do in the Shadow Shard (just goes to show...) A couple heroside doing ...I don't remember what... and that one villside. Only one of them was jaw-dropping money, and that was the FF/Elec. The rest were, like, sleep or confuse or similar.

Edited to add: I like 2-3 person teams. They're interesting and social, while still giving you a large percentage of the drops, and they can move really fast. Soloing... is less interesting to me.

Lemur Lad: You've lived in that small town for a long time. It may be a different experience for someone who just moved there.

ooh, hey, I'm being quoted. Cool.

Captain Photon: you're talking like you've never seen a rotting corpse in fishnet stockings before.

I'm pretty sure all of the following things CAME with the original game:

Egyptian headdress (under "hats")
"Spiky" facial hair
Earpiece (or Rhino Horns)
"Organic" shoulders
Horse chest symbol (horsie!)
Heavy Leather belt (aka the hernia truss)
Finned gloves with "Bare Hands" option
Armored legs with Stone option (Sir, old ladies are storing knickknacks on your love handles...)
Flared combat boots

... and that's before we start adding in CoV stuff. Your ability to make a terrible costume is hardly impeded by the lack of the Valkyrie pack.

EmperorSteele: You happened to pick the AT with the most spectacular variation between playstyles... playing a Claws scrapper is a lot like playing a Katana scrapper. Defenders, though, very true.

Je_saist:
I've been here since June '04. Your description sounds... different... from the game as it went live, in most aspects. (Respecs weren't in the game at the start, but neither were costume changes... or the 41-50 game for that matter. )

To the OP:

There are ways to improve your level 50- accolades, temp powers, gear (in terms of the IO system.) I used to think that "frankenslotted" IO's gave you about 20% more than generics or SO's, and top end gear gave you about 20% more than that. I checked into this with a guy who runs top-end Scrappers and... the very top end gear can give you a lot more than 20%. I think it was about 70% more DPS for a top-end katana scrapper vs. generics, but for all I know I may have picked the most extreme example.

You can't slot Purple enhancements unless you're level 50, and they drop VERY rarely in normal play. One per 2000 enemies or something like that. And they sell for jaw-dropping prices on the market, so buying your way in is only an option if you like playing the market. (I do. I've got a LOT of money and I think I could afford to purple out about three characters. )

Accolades-Task Force Commander and so forth- are badges with bonuses attached, like +10% hit points or similar. Collecting all those can take some time.

As far as "end content": there's a few things to do with a level 50. One is "Go back and do all the content you missed on the way up." I know a couple people that only have one character that they seriously play. One is "collect badges." There are six hundred some-odd badges, for everything from researching the history of the world (reading plaques) to taking damage to making money to doing task and strike forces. You can build a supergroup base. You can make billions at the Auction House, or make billions by beating it out of critters.

Or, yes, you can play new characters. I've done that a lot.

The end content of other games, as far as it has been described to me, is something like "Spend eight hours with 49 other people doing something difficult for a prize that you cannot trade and have a 95% chance of not being able to use. Repeat until you get all the prizes you want." I don't know if that's a fair description or not, but it sounds like unnecessary pain to ME. If you want to run Lord Recluse or Hami raids or ship raids or ITFs all day every day, you can.

One last point: Pinnacle, redside, may not be the best place to find a social group. Pinn is one of the small servers (anything but "virtue or freedom" is a small server, really) and most of the people on Pinnacle mostly hang out with their existing friends, seems like. If you're around, we have some villains we tend to play 8-10 PM on Mondays. Send a tell to @Boltcutter, maybe we have room on the team.

Lotta people around this horse. Mind if I hit it a few times?

Kinetics, without the Tier 9, is pretty unimpressive to me. Compare, for instance, Rad where you get 25-30% more damage for the "whole team" as well as near-capping AccDebuff, as well as debuffing enemy damage, providing accuracy, and some moderate amount of direct +damage, +end and +recharge.

Kin without tier 9 is basically a two-trick pony: Recharge and Recovery.

Claiming that Kin's tier 9 is way better than the other tier 9s, WITHOUT LOOKING AT THE REST OF THE SET, is like claiming that Blasters are overpowered compared to Scrappers, because they get Inferno and Scrappers get things like Eagle's Claw.

Wait. You put a TL; DR version of a two sentence post? I don't give TL;DR on a twelve paragraph wall of text.

My prediction is that I will not sell all that overpriced salvage I tried to flip when the "5th slot" science pack was released.

... it turns out that there aren't that many people who both wanted the science pack costume slot AND didn't have access to a SG with a hundred costumes in storage. Huh.

My prediction is that I will not sell all that overpriced salvage I tried to flip when the "5th slot" science pack was released.

... it turns out that there aren't that many people who both wanted the science pack costume slot AND didn't have access to a SG with a hundred costumes in storage. Huh.

A niche is just buying and selling the same thing in bulk.

Let's say, and I'm making up ALL the numbers, a Doctored Wounds: End/Heal/Rech at level 50 goes for 1,000,000 or so- you can buy a stack of 10 (over a day or so) at 1,000,023. It takes two common and one uncommon salvage- you can put in bids on 10 of those as well at the same time and get 'em for a couple thousand per set of 3 .

Let's say the same thing crafted sells for 5,000,000 regularly and consistently. You put up ten of them for 4,100,000 and they're gone the next time you log in.

Let's look at the "hidden costs" on that item- 490K in crafting (or so) and 500K in Went fees on the sold item. So you've got a million per item for the recipe, and a million in crafting and wentfees, and you get to keep the other 3 million.

So if you went into the business of selling Doctored Wounds End/Heal/Rech, that would be your niche. (That may be one of the ones where the recipe has a different name- one might be End/Heal/Rech and the other one Heal/End/Rech . ) Every day or two you'd log in, collect your 30 million profit from 10 sold items. Collect your 10 recipes and 30 salvage, and make 10x Level 50 Doctored Wounds End/Heal/Rech and put them up for sale at 4,100,000 . Put in the bids for the next 10 of everything and go play.

If there's already someone selling Level 50 Doctored Wounds End/Heal/Rech, there are two possibilities.
1) They sell 10 a day and you sell 10 a day and 30 a day move through the system. Result: You sell all yours, they sell all theirs, and you guys may not even KNOW that someone else is in your niche.
2) They sell 30 a day (on a couple characters) and you sell 10 a day and 30 recipes a day drop (or people buy 30 crafted a day.) One of you won't get all your recipes, or won't sell all your crafted.

Let's assume it's "not enough recipes drop". If you're buying at 1,000,023 and they're buying at 1,000,022 you get your 10 and they only get 20. They start buying at 1,000,024 and the next day you get zero and they get 30. Then you see the 1,000,024 in the history and you start buying at 1,010,024 - that will show THEM. Then they go to 1,500,000 and start selling at 3,800,000. You don't get yours, AND you don't sell the ones you have. That'll show YOU.

If you both have more pride than greed, you end up buying for 2 million, spending almost 1 million on fees, and selling for 3 million. Eventually someone backs off and the other one proudly surveys the ruins of a good business.

PM sent.

One thing about the old system that did not carry over: If you were at +2/x1, and you got an AV, it was still +0 to you.

(Possibly bug: We tried a mission with 4 people on +2/x3 and got a +4 Ghost Widow the other day. Ouch.)

How to make money in the market:

* Put in bids for decent recipes at the top level, and the expensive salvage. (list to follow of "Things I've Made Money On")
* Log in the next day, pick up whatever you got, craft and relist.
* Don't be greedy- most of these things have people working the niche, so craft a couple and then get out. Likewise, don't be greedy- buy a little high, list a little low. Most people round off to the million, the five million, whatever and most people listing stuff know that. So if the last 5 are 30 million, the person selling probably lists at 28,000,003 or something (So "28 million" bids don't pick it up cheap.)

I've made money on Crushing Impact, Doctored Wounds, Thunderstrike, Numina's, Miracle, Karma, Steadfast Protection, Impervium Armor, Regenerative Tissue, all "Stealth" travel items, Luck of the Gambler, Blessing of the Zephyr, Decimation, Devastation, Gift of the Ancients, Aegis, and Kinetic Combat. Off the top of my head. Some of those may not work any more; last time I looked at Crushing Impact it was getting killed on competition.

I've lost money on ... trying to corner the market on 20 different levels of Mako's at once, sudden price drops in really expensive items, trying [badly] to flip salvage, and Touch of Death. Also throwing in the extra zero and hitting "buy". Oh, and trying to flip Halloween costume stuff .

So how do you pick one of these things and go? Look at the top level. More stuff moves at the top level than all other levels combined. If you're looking at, I dunno, Serendipity (low-popularity, low profit margin, no competition defense set that ends at 40) you set your "lowest search level" to 40, type in "serendip" and see what shows up with "All" selected. You'll see the level 40 recipes, and the level 40 crafted. There are three important things in this window- the prices, the number for sale/bidding, and the last 5 sales.

For the recipes, you'll probably see it selling for like 100 K to a million, few bids and few for sale. Last 5 sales are on the order of a couple days.
For the crafted, you'll probably see it selling for 1 to 5 million, NO bids and a TON for sale. Last 5 sales on the order of a week or two. This means if you craft it, you'll get stuck with it.

Now look at level 50 to 50, Red Fortune: Defense. You're going to see that there are a lot of bids, a lot for sale, and the last 5 moved in the last day or two (both crafted and "raw". You'll probably also see that the crafted sells for a million or two more than uncrafted.

The problem with THIS recipe is that it costs you half a million to craft a level 50, you give up 10% of your gross to Wentworth's, and you could actually lose money crafting it. I don't know current prices, but last time I looked it was around half a million and 1.5 million. You make a couple hundred thousand and you're risking a million. You want something where you can come close to doubling your money, or more.

Look at Crushing Impact, Thunderstrike, and Doctored Wounds (all at level 50). Chances are one or more of those sets will have something that's "buy for a million, craft, sell for 5 million." At those prices you can bid a little high, and sell a little low, and make good money. Put in a bid for two different recipes, one of each type, and put in lowish bids for the salvage. Log off for the night, or go play, and ignore it.

Next time you log in (I log off at or near Wents, usually) check to see if you bought any of your recipes . Craft 'em, buying any salvage you forgot to pick up. Put them up for sale (remember: don't be greedy) and forget about them until you are ready to log off. Before you log off, collect any sales, put up new bids, and walk away.

Most people pick a niche and work it, buying/crafting/selling the same thing over and over, and if someone competes with them they defend it (buy for more, sell for less.) There are hundreds, maybe thousands of different niches.

I don't work a single niche, because I don't want to fight for my money. I grab a couple and move on. I actually like the extra work.

It would be nice, yes. We don't have it, no.

As far as a workaround: I'm willing to help. The last two people who gave me hundreds of millions for currency exchanges were Reptlbrain and Laevateinn but there were a bunch before that, so I've got references. @Boltcutter in game.

First time we did it was a deathfest. Like, "couldn't get some of my friends to try it for three years" deathfest. Second time I had a plan for the vertical shaft, but not really for the bottom part. And that worked OK, after we got past the panic with not knowing where to go or what to do and there being no map. I felt like I was giving wall of text in realtime, but it pretty much paid off.

Now we went in with a ridiculously high powered team. We had kin, rad, empathy, force fields and maybe a dark. Having said that, this is what we did:

Before starting the cooking process, assemble your ingredients. The only thing I would say you NEED is someone with either good stealth or personal force field, plus Recall Friend. (vet teamports are not up enough.) Also someone tough enough to herd rikti (or "tough enough when buffed") who has either flight or a jetpack (hello, shadowshard!) and enough firepower to handily defeat hatchlings. I liked having a Force Fielder, because that's my personal security blanket, and having two people in the vertical shaft herding was faster than one.

VERTICAL SHAFT: Clear the whole thing. The old days when you could invis and teleport and grab glowies ... that doesn't work any more. At least not reliably. And then people die and fall to the bottom and everyone freaks out.

There are side corridors off the vertical shaft. Clear the top part, herding (or pulling groups if you prefer to think of it that way) rikti up to you, then stealth and port to the first side corridor. Herd the rikti to there in waves, slaughtering them as they enter. Then stealth and port to the second side corridor, herd and slaughter. I think we were using a force fielded spine scrapper and Kheld in this part. At some point someone's going to die and fall to the bottom, maybe more than once. This is why Recall Friend, single serving, is important. Once you've pretty much cleared, you set up to get the boxes. I don't remember if it matters who has the guns, but your tough taunty person (if any) should probably NOT have a gun. Also, if you have the sort of friend who cannot resist clicking the glowies, do not invite them or the friendship may suffer.

For the bottom part, if I recall there are 3 or 4 hatchlings and 4 force field generators. We eventually started referring to them by compass direction - I think they're roughly northeast, southeast, northwest and southwest. The classic trick on the force field generators, which works great, is to beat them MOST of the way down and then drop them all at almost the same time. Traditionally people split into four pairs but two 4-packs seemed to be more doable with my limited management skills. North side and south side, or whatever. We had a lot of panic at this point. Panic is your enemy.

Tentacles are easy. You don't even really need tentacle guns. I think you can do tentacles before the force field generators.

Once the generators are all down and you're shooting the head, there are two separate sets of events:
1) Rikti Repairmen come fix the generators. You need to beat the repairmen, beat down the generators, get back to the hydra. Something like 5 minutes between "first gen goes down" and "repairmen show up", but I don't know the actual timing.
2) Rikti ambushes- I think at 50% and 25% head health.

So it would go something like this:
1) Clear vertical shaft in waves.
2) Beat hatchlings and local rikti at bottom, avoiding psi head of death.
3) Two teams each take down two generators.
4) Teams get back together for safety, blast psi head of death and any incoming rikti ambushes.
5) Force Field generators come up. Teams split up and wipe out repairaliens and generators.
6) Repeat 4 & 5 till victory.

The side corridors are very useful. If you fight in the vertical, rikti fall off. Players fall off. It's a big mess and people die all over.

Good hunting!

There are a bunch of "kryptonite" enemies in the later game- Psi, Toxic, untyped damage, massive mez, what have you. SR gets their "kryptonite" a little earlier. To make it extra annoying, there is both a Quartz minion and a Quartz pet, so the targeting bind is not guaranteed to get what you want. There may be a clever way to distinguish between them, I don't know. I hate all the Devouring Earth doorstops, except maybe Trees of Life. I don't hate Fungi much, but I don't play controllers much.

The Quartz bonus to hit is ridiculously high. RIDICULOUS. Something like +150% To Hit. There are a variety of tactics to deal; "kill it first", "stun/knockdown/kill the thing that drops it" have been mentioned. Worst case, you herd the group away after it drops. You move; the doorstop does not.

Global Chat Channels were not original to the game; it is not really obvious as to how you get on them. here is a brief description of them. To join, I think the command is, for instance, "/chanjoin Defiant Events". You can also do it from the search GUI, I believe. (It's been a really long time since I joined a global channel.)

So that's how to FIND "Defiant Events" and "Sal's". I only play on NA servers, myself.

Welcome to the game!

I've failed an ITF for this reason before- had a high-melee team that a couple people bailed on... and we ended up with unrezzed Romulus and one Nictus that heals off melee'ers. And we couldn't beat the heal rate.

Here's the answer from one marketeer: People trade inf for convenience.

If someone enjoys the high-level game (say they run a STF every day whether the world needs saving or not) they will, as an inevitable consequence of that, make a tremendous amount of influence. If they have 500 million inf and three empty slots, they don't CARE if they're overpaying by a couple million. It's quicker and easier to pay a little extra and get back to what they were doing.

This happens on all sorts of scales. You, yourself, when you're paying 3 million for one piece of salvage, probably don't care if you pay 5,000 or 50,000 for another piece. Someone's buying those for 5K and selling to you for 50K. They're happy and you don't care.

I do some currency exchange- people give me influence and I give them infamy, keeping about 10%- and I can tell you that there are people out there with at least four billion inf. They said they had a net worth of 20 or 30 billion, but I only personally moved four billion of it.

I put something up on the market once for 32 million and the next day someone had bought it for 45 million. Not an existing bid- someone looked at the market, saw one for sale, and their FIRST GUESS was 13 million higher than my sale price. That day I realized that some people are really, really happy to give me their money.

And I'm happy to take it.

Oh, man, X-Com.

... did they ever fix that bug where you'd start off on Really Hard, save the game, come back and it was on Really Easy?

I'd totally pay $5.00 to get it on Steam if that was fixed.

My memory isn't what it used to be. I mostly only remember the parts where I'm right.

Eric Nelson: What exactly do you do at 50 that is so much better than what you do at 49?

It's a very small chance- something like 1/2000 bosses drops a pool C- but it makes me happy.

It's hard for me to not write a Wall of Text about the market... I'll give brief rules here. Realize that wealth is like a pinball score... you're getting a million, two million and all of a sudden you figure something out and start getting 10 or 15 million. Then even more. If you want to slot SO's, old school, anything over about 10 million inf and you're set for life. If you want new shinies, it can get expensive.

White (common) salvage is quite variable. Some of it typically goes for 30K to 50K each, some of it barely goes for vendor cost (250 inf.)

Yellow (uncommon) is mostly vendorbait these days. In Issue15 (only) it was worth like 100K on average, but they changed the game and the yellow is oversupplied again.

Orange (rare) is worth an average of a million apiece. Some less (diamonds, Black Blood of the Earth) and some more (enchanted impervium.)

White, generic recipes: Always sell to vendor unless you want to craft whatever dropped. There's no market for them.
Yellow and Orange recipes: Check supply. You can put it up at Wents without setting a price and use the "More" button to get information. If there's 0 bids and 13 for sale, nobody wants it- sell to vendor. If there's 0 bids and 0 for sale, check the last 5 prices. Those are ... probably...accurate. If there's a lot of bids and 0 for sale, I tend to go somewhere around 80% of the last sale price.

If the price is high (whatever you define "high" as) look at the prices for the crafted IO. Chances are the prices are higher but the sales are much less frequent. Also check the price of ALL the salvage, check the crafting cost, and remember that Wents takes 10%. That can turn "Hey, I could make a million inf!" into "Hey, I could lose half a million inf!". But there are a lot of things out there where you spend 2 million, craft, and make 5 million profit.

Feel free to ask any other questions- I love to hear myself talk!