Fulmens

One interesting thing [to me] is that the 20-million-inf-per-AM conversion doesn't seem to have had a lot of effect on the amount of inf floating around. I mean, maybe it did- Red Fortunes are down from 10 million each to 2 to 5 million each, Numina's uniques were floating around 70 million each- but if there's an effect, it got swamped by the effects of AM's.

Even Mathematic Proofs have a lot of throughput. There's probably at least a thousand a day bought at Wents. Now there might be TWO thousand a day that people are trying to sell. Which is why there are like 16,000 sitting on the shelf and a large number beyond that which are listed for 1 infl or deleted on sight.

I've only done it once, and I did 2 billion plus a couple expensive items for a Teleport/Def. I'm told that if you're working in cash, you do it in two transactions- first one is "Smaller amount for nothing" and second one is "larger amount for shiny". In between you either email yourself the extra inf or you put up a bid at Wentworths (like for a level 53 item, or ten respecs, or something else that you won't get/would be a huge bargain.)

I have one of these things to sell, but I'm asking 3.2 billion. Double XP's coming, yo.

I rolled up around 35 recipes in the low 30s last week. Before that, yeah, I kinda took a break.

Anyone still playing their midlevel crisis characters?

*sniff* that's just beautiful.

I'm sorry it didn't work out for you. Pinnacle is a notoriously unforgiving server for new kids.

As far as the poor navigational instructions: There are very few challenges you can put in an MMO aside from "Beat this thing up". One of the devs said once that if you try to put in a puzzle, there will be a walkthrough up on the net in 15 minutes. One of the only "puzzles" in the game is that it is sometimes tricky to find your mission door. People have been complaining about them for years, while other people complain that there's nothing to do but beat stuff up in a repetitive fashion.

Games are for enjoyment; I hope your next one is more enjoyable for you.

Linkback to previous thread.

Also, still have that Gladiator's 3% Defense for sale, proceeds to go into the fire.

Link to the new thread. Should have put that in already. Terribly careless.

Something weird happened last night in general. One of my niches went from 63M to 40M. A couple of others dipped as well. It was back to 55 or 60 this morning, though.

What server are you on? When do you normally play?

One other thing that can help is the Mentor Project. (already mentioned.)

Are you in Praetoria [shiny, shiny, white-and-gold theme], Paragon City [blue-themed] or the Rogue Isles [red-themed]?

Either way: Welcome to town.

You know, the movies can do the whole trip to 50 in two hours. Clearly we need to level faster if we're going to compete.

We need to step up our game. Possibly also take it to the next level, give 110%, and/or think out of the box.

PsychotiX on Freedom is just under 650 million prestige. It wasn't that long ago that they passed us.

The fire never sayeth, "enough!" And we've got one of those in our base. Dying.

Think of the fire!

LoTGs are pretty good. Good places to check are low level travel stealths, kinetic combats, miracles (quite pricy last I looked). There's a few obscure things that can score big, but those take a while to move and somtimes the niche collapses on you.

OK, remember when someone had a PVP 3% Defense for sale and someone else overpaid, and the money all went into the burn pile?

I have acquired, at what may have been a reasonable price, a level 10 Gladiator's Armor, PVP, 3% Defense. If anyone wants to pay me a stupid amount of money for it, I promise to burn it all.

EDIT: It's crafted! So you are getting extra value for your money!

At some point in the past, Impervium Armor: Resistance (recipe) was selling for about 20 million, and Impervium Armor: Resistance was selling for about 50 million. Slowly the supply of the crafteds grew and one day it started selling for 30 million.

Usually what seems to happen these days is it would start selling for 45 or 40 million, and the price would go up to 25 million for the recipe [note you lose 4-5 million in wentfees and pay around 2.5 million for salvage and crafting. ] Also, these days, if I ignore something for a week it goes back to the previous numbers.

I work max level, either the most desireable of the uncommons [e.g. if you're going for Doctored Wounds, there's much more market for Heal/Rech and Heal than the others in the set] or the high-but-not-highest end of rares. People put work into getting the best price for a Numina's Regen/Recovery, and are likely to buy it with AMerits, but put much less into getting the best price for a Numina's Heal or Heal/Rech .

Also, sets that cap at 30, 35 or 40 often give very good return compared to sets that cap at 50.

The good news about recipes that "go for so much inf" is that sometimes they drop from critters and you get to sell them. And you can buy things and resell them for more. The Market forum is full of ebil marketers who won't shut up about their secrets for making money. I'm probably not foremost among them but I'm up near the front. Anyway, if you want advice on affording shinies, let us know and we'll talk a hole through your head.

Getting back to the mechanics of how to use IO's, rather than how to buy them:

I have this ready to paste, ripped out of the Viva Las Vegas guide I wrote back in I9, so I might as well repost it.

I'd vote Rad/Sonic defender, except for that whole "intuitive concept" thing. [You could also go Dark/Sonic which might be slightly easier to crowbar past the plausibility police; I've got E K Nachtmusic, myself. Awesome orchestral-conductor-in-armor look.]

Replying to myself to pull something out of my old Viva Las Vegas guide:

The classic slotting of an attack power is "four slots: one accuracy SO, three damage SO's." This would give you roughly 33% accuracy and 95% damage [would be 100% except for Enhancement Diversification.]

Instead of the first slot being accuracy, the second slot being damage, the third slot being endurance reduction and the fourth slot being recharge reduction, the second slot is damage, the third slot is damage, and the fourth slot is damage.

Is that clear?

Congrats on your extraordinary run of luck!

I'm going to answer your questions and throw in occasional bonus answers, labeled [BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T ASK]. These things may be obvious, but they're important to know anyway.

a) Ranged is different from "Targeted AOE." A common cause of frustration (I've done it) is mistaking one for the other and trying to figure out why it won't take. If you right click on the power, or go to the enhancement page and look at the power, it should say what sorts of sets it takes. Ranged is single-target [like, say, Power Blast] while targeted AOE is multitarget [like, say, Energy Torrent.]

b) "Proc" is a chance-to-do . For instance, if you are using, say, Boxing there is a 20% chance to stun lieutenants and below, every time you swing. Energy Punch has a certain chance of knockback. And so forth. You can use various enhancements to add procs to powers that would not otherwise have them. So you could add a "Chance to stun" to, I don't know, Broadsword's "Hack" and get a similar effect.

In this case you have "chance of more damage"- it's a constant amount of damage- and it comes up for this particular enhancement 33% of the time, which is a lot more than most nonpurple procs. I got some very impressive results back when inventions were new, slotting procs in all my Ice Blaster's powers.

c) That is correct. You can slot an A: D/R and an A: D/R/A, in the same power or different powers, but it's only one A: D/R to a customer. [BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T ASK: You do not get the set bonuses unless the Apocs are slotted in the same power.]

d) [BECAUSE YOU DIDN'T ASK: I am not sure you understand slotting, or I don't understand your question, or both. You are aware that you can slot up to three regular damage IO's in the same power, and get pretty much full benefit from all three of them, right? You get almost full benefits up to 95% slotting in the same power, and after that you get very little benefit.]

e1) Make sure to check the price for selling the recipe, and the price for selling the crafted IO. Usually you can make 30-100 million more by spending a few million crafting it.
e2) You can increase the difficulty of enemies at any time by going to a Hero Corp representative and saying "I feel I'm about as tough as four heroes" or "I want to fight enemies +2 to my level" or whatever. Villainside, fateweavers have the contract for that service.

My needs are simple, just not small

(And yes, I convert to a-merits first. 2.5 recipes is worth WELL over 20 million inf.)

I think I make a billion and a half, two billion a week off marketeering, but I haven't really measured it. Occasionally I'll run someone up to level 30 and cash in all their merits and that gives me another billion or something.