Fulmens

I'm going to withdraw my comment. I don't have rigorous proof, and in any case an anecdote is not data.

EDIT: However, I'm averaging somewhere around 100 million inf per AM.

I don't think anyone's currently playing hard in Thunderstrike or Crushing Impact. Or if they are, they're happy making around a million a slot profit. (Thunderstrike, Crushing Impact and Doctored Wounds are, I think, the most popular all-uncommon sets available at level 50. Red Fortune is another good one. The market may be temporarily distorted by all the Kinetic Melee guys running around. But the market is ALWAYS temporarily distorted by SOMETHING.)

Farming is almost always a means to an end, when we see it around here. You'd kind of have to go back before Going Rogue to find it, which is at least 16 pages in THIS forum... but almost every "What's best for farming?" thread I've ever seen really meant "What's the best way to get the nicest stuff in the game?" There's also often an assumption that you NEED the nicest stuff in the game or you're a sick sad player who will have no friends.

Farming for its own sake is a valid hobby which I do not share. Good luck and good hunting.

Yeah, but in 14 alignment merits it's never happened to me.

First I'll explain the "old way" and then the "new way".

Traditional reward merits: You get them from task forces or story arcs (or from getting all the exploration badges in a zone, or for having extensive vet badges, but those are 1-time things.) You can do story arcs in Ouroboros and get merits, or do individual badge missions in Ouro and get merits.

20 traditional reward merits gets you a random roll; the recipe will show up at your current level(what used to be a "Task force completion" reward recipe.) There are bands you can roll in, 15-19 or 34-39 or 45-50 or whatever. That means you get a recipe that could happen in that band; if it is too high or too low for you, you get the min or max. So if you're level 32, rolling in the 35-39 band (you can do this because you can slot a level 35 recipe) you might get, say, Impervium Armor: Resistance. This exists from 25 to 40, so it will show up at your level. You might get Sting of the Manticore: Dam/Interrupt/Recharge. Sting of the Manticore only exists from level 35 to 50, so you'd get a level 35 instead of a 32, because there IS no level 32 Sting.

200 (more or less) reward merits gets you any recipe you want, at any level you choose. This is usually a bad deal, except for about three specific recipes or if, for some reason, you want a very specific IO at a very specific level and it just doesn't show up at Wentworth's ever.

Alignment Merits (the "new way"): You can get an AM by either doing tip missions and a morality mission, or by cashing in 50 Reward Merits and 20 million inf.

You can roll an AM to get five recipes, just like doing five "roll 20 reward merits" acts in a row, you can buy a specific rare recipe with 1 or 2 AM's, or you can buy things that you couldn't buy before, for ridiculous prices. PVP IO's, for 25 or so AM's, or Purple ultra-rare recipes for 20 or so AM's.

The PVP IO's MIGHT be a reasonable deal, but probably not; the purples are a total waste.

The five-for-an-AM deal is the current best one, in my opinion. I think most of the Market forum agrees with me.

Why are you so concerned about farming? You're new. Play the game.

For dual-origin slotting attacks, "two acc, as many damage as you can fit."
For dual-origin slotting defenses, "one end reduction, as many defense/damage resist as you can fit."

SO basic slotting: one acc/three damage/ whatever-you-need and one endred/three defense or resist .

A full set of level 22 SO's costs about a million inf. If you need a million inf, right NOW, not tomorrow or in two hours: go to Wentworth's, buy as many level 40-50 set recipes as you can get for 100 inf each [look for uglies like immobilize or snipe, 0 bidding 20+ for sale] and sell them to the nearest store. Run back and forth doing this till you've sold about 100. This is the worst return on time there is, or close to it, but it will pay for your SO's if you are short on cash.

The problem in my head is that I don't know what your financial goals are.

It SOUNDS like you could do a business in, like, generic EndMod/RechRed in the 35-40 range and be happy, but you only make 100K or 200K on each of those, so a couple million on a 10-stack... compared to 20 million on a single good set IO. You can make a billion on those, eventually; I've done it. I don't know if you get more satisfaction from the activity or from the wealth, though.

Purples are pretty high right now; my guess is a bunch of new Kin Melee's and Praetorians are starting to get to 50 and suck up supply, while not having had a chance to generate any yet.

No idea what the real timing is on the wave of 50's, though.

My FF mini-guide is in my sig. Westley's guide is probably still around somewhere.

There's not a lot of FF/Archery magic synergy, so I'm just going to say "Archery is archery, check the Blaster boards for details."

FF: Take Maneuvers, and the three defensive bubbles. That's the core curriculum. Force Bolt, Personal Force Field as desired. Repulsion Bomb is highly recommended. For Archery, take whatever you like. Rain of Arrows is your crucial power, I believe.

Bubble everyone up every 3 minutes. Use passive-aggressive binds ("I'm over here with the tank, and your bubbles are expiring soon") on people that aren't around for the bubbling. They'll come back or they won't, they'll live or they won't, not your problem. They made their choice. Avoid getting too much aggro. Shoot people with arrows in your extensive spare time. Remember that everyone ELSE on the team is the tank.

In the upper levels, you can IO up and get yourself some extra ranged and AOE defense. Then you can stop worrying about the aggro and shoot people with arrows even more.

It's really about that simple.

Someone else quoted 15K prestige per person, per TF, running TF's. Is that fairly accurate?

Is this gap that shouldn't exist, therefore, roughly 24 person-TFs wide?

OLD WAY OF GETTING RESPEC: Vetspec [if any], respec trial, buy with real money, buy on market, use freespecs.
NEW WAY OF GETTING RESPEC:Vetspec [if any], respec trial, buy with real money, buy on market, use freespecs, or run way to many missions.

OLD WAY OF GETTING PVP IOs: PVP, buy on market.
NEW WAY OF GETTING PVP IOs: PVP, buy on market, run [probably] way too many missions.

OLD WAY OF GETTING PURPLES: Beat level 50 critters by the division, buy on market.
NEW WAY OF GETTING PURPLES: Beat level 50 critters by the division, buy on market, run way too many missions.

Bring back the old way!

Edit:

You'd need to be pulling an awful lot of shinies off a character to need 3+ respecs.

One clarification:

Your FIRST "alignment reinforcement" (with the 10 tips and the morality mission) gives you 50 reward merits. Your SECOND time through gives you an alignment merit directly [you don't get reward merits and buy the AM].

You can still get merits from other sources and pay to convert them into AMs.

One other note: there's two timers: one to GET AM's and a timer to SPEND AM's.

Quick guide to frankenslotting in my sig. Cap'n Canadian used to have a VERY good guide to frankenslotting (search for "Cheapskates") but it might have broken when they changed the forum software.

Yeah, I remember being lost in Perez and unable to get out, even by dying (L36 or something) and being rescued by PCS&R. With ouro, SG bases, wentporters etc. that could never happen.

I saw Taxibot Belle in Atlas when Going Rogue opened. She's still out there, still helping!
Edit: Paragon City Search and Rescue is a different organization from the Taxibots. They're both very helpful organizations, though.

On average- now I haven't been doing this at level 50, I've been doing it in the mid-30s- on average, I've been making upward of 100 million per 5 rolls. I didn't keep precise numbers, but I've done 70 rolls and I've gotten at least six 100-million-inf rolls just for starters.

I've got PM's from someone who got 15 or 20 rolls - I'd have to check, it's not my info to release- and there's this thread.

I'm going to try to be more informational than hostile in this post. I hope that comes across.

1) ED for defense: You go from about 142% of base to 156% of base with the extra slot. A FOURTH slot for defense would put you to 160% of base, highly unlikely to be worth it. For Stamina, you go from about 170% of base to 195%. Your math is... questionable.

2) Frankenslotting: You can indeed get a lot of benefit (1 acc, 3 dam, 2 rech, one end in 5 slots, to use the classic example) for really cheap. You may have to leave your 50K or 100K or 200K bids up on the market for a week for them to actually fill, though. Examples and description in my sig.

3) I am the original cheap builder- back in issue 9 I frankenslotted a level 50 over a weekend for 6 million inf. 92 slots. I don't go quite that cheap anymore, but level 31 and 34 (For instance) tend to be considerably cheaper than 30s or 35s. And, as you know Bob, you can save millions by buying recipes instead of crafted, and by leaving a bid on the market for a day or two. If you want help and suggestions, I can offer them. If you want to flounce, I can hold the door for you.

Most of my schemes didn't pan out. Two out of six types of Hecatomb reached my "overprice" point. (The others may have, this weekend.) A very few of my "be the first/only one selling x" sales panned out (I sold a costume recipe for a million, but only one of the 40 I listed.) I found a few ridiculous inefficiencies in the new market. (I don't know if I could have found similar things in the old market... Regen Tissue +Regen, buy at 26M and sell at 90M?) So I probably made a little more than I would have if I'd just ignored the market merge, but mostly I clogged a lot of slots.

Where I did make a billion or more, that I otherwise wouldn't have, was by generating 60 or more Midlevel Crisis recipes. This is where the new market shines for profit- what's a L31 Oblit quad worth? Usually, people paid my guess. I ate a few market fees, but one big win pays for a lot of mistakes. And the supply was free, with doing the new content!

OK, it's been six years, I barely play Broadsword anymore... so why is it that I still crit two guys with Headsplitter and yell out "DOUBLE DOUBLE ANIMAL STYLE!"

"CHRISTMAS!" When the nuke absolutely, positively has to wipe out everyone... and does. Most recently when I managed to successfully Awaken, get some End, and Blizzard about fifteen Knives of Artemis.

Failure modes? "F*** YOU THAT HIT!" when something like Dark Miasma's infamous delayed heal fails to do what I want, when I want.
"SO glad I got Hide instead of something useful" when a laser guided ambush visits my Stalker.
General:
"Oh, hey, look at that second boss."
"NOW I'm mad..." (usually while hitting F1F2F2F2F3F3F4F3, just eating whatever's in there. Last time it was a purple, a yellow, an orange and three reds.)

New, wish I could stop:
"Blasting your pajamas!" EVERY TIME I see a Blast Master. Turns out that's not the lyric. Who knew?

Zaion: I disagree with you about the "full team without good buffs." Because it's damn near impossible to find eight players who are active and doing SOMETHING like their job and have SOMETHING like a decent build who can't make it work.

Let's build this ineffective team. Starting with all-Heros for simplicity.

Can't have more than three blasters- I've seen a 4-blaster team with a tank on point. I've been the tank. My job was pretty much "Forward observer" and villains basically had time to do three things: turn, look at me, and wake up in the prison hospital.

Can't have any buffers - no force fields, no cold, no thermal, no sonic, no empaths. No Traps.

Can't have much in the line of controllers.

Clearly if it's causing trouble you don't have SO'd out Rad or Dark defenders. Either of those is only stopped from tanking by the limited supply of Break Frees.

You don't have a COMPETENT Storm defender. (I can't speak to Trick Arrows. The team goes better with TA on the team but I don't know why.)

No Kheldians- they could off-tank, or blast, or both, and they'd be buffed by their teammates.

So... five scrappers, two blasters and a Kin defender? No, cause five scrappers with Speed Boost are going to be racing the tank in there and ripping stuff up.

Tell me. What's this mythical 8-person team of otherwise skilled players that can't keep the tank alive?

In other news, has anyone else ragequit another game when they insisted that you couldn't walk up a 45 degree slope?

I can't defend the interior environment- you can either let it pass or you can't. Even most custom Task Force maps aren't THAT different.

A lot of the other problems seem sort of like either you're building oddly, or you're not teaming.

"more powers learned less slowly, so that players who have put six hours into their character have more than three offensive abilities to choose from."
... are we playing the same game? We may not be- I can't judge the low-level game with fresh eyes, I've been here far too long- but an hour in, I'm level 5 or 6 even if I'm playing solo. You should have three offensive abilities if you're a scrapper, blaster, dominator, brute or [possibly] corruptor, and you should have two no matter what else you're playing. Even if you don't, you can get temporary powers- baseball bats, sledgehammers, pistols, hand grenades- to mix it up a little. I've got a guy who represents a casino, who uses the St. Louis Slammer WAY more than is necessary or appropriate. The company refused to sponsor him...

A lot of the variety,in my opinion, comes from team makeup- unlike any other MMO, a fight with a different team has a VERY different feel. Got a force field defender on the team? you're only limited by how fast you can do damage. Got a Kin? You're faster, stronger, hit harder and sometimes fall down dead unexpectedly. Got a Storm? NOTHING IS NORMAL. (Could be better, could be worse, won't be the same.) Four scrappers? three controllers? No melee? Different, different, different. They all WORK, or should work, but they don't play the same.

Teams level faster, fight more interestingly, and provide the social experience [such as it is.]

The new Tip missions have somewhat more variety as well, although there aren't an enormous number of them. Not the environments, as much as the goals, plot, dialogue, etc.

This may never be the game for you; it's not the game for everyone. But some of your problems are solvable.