Fulmens

I'm kind of curious, myself, to know how much inf is going to get destroyed in the first big surge. I'm betting on something like 3 trillion inf (20 million x 150,000 characters) which would neatly match the amount of inf in the system, total, before the market gave us a reason to accumulate.

I have a good enough connection to log onto the game briefly.

My big-ticket items all sold in the last four days (two harmonized healing, one thunderstrike) and it looks like I bought a Gift of the Ancients Def/End and a Serendipity Def, both at max level.

I have about 9 million inf, and I am now at the point where I can essentially ignore crafting costs for anything under level 50, I can ignore common/uncommon salvage costs, and I can think about buying stuff for [total] 1 to 2 million that sells for 5 to 10 million.

For the Gift of the Ancients, I have the choice between paying 55K for a Commercial Cybernetic or paying 200+K to get it Right Now. I decide to wait at least 5 minutes.

I shop for a couple of other things, craft the Serendipity: Defense and list it, and now I have two uncommon salvage that I'm waiting for- either I spend 200K to get them right now or I spend 55K and get them later. I decide that I can spend the money, because I'm not going to get online for a couple more days and these are million-plus- inf profits.

I post the Gift of the Ancients, a [new] level 50 Thunderstrike Acc/Dam, and look for ways to profitably invest my remaining 7 million inf. I don't find a single good investment, but I buy three level 50 Crushing Impacts [under 800K each, of which 490K is crafting cost] and list them for 2.1 million, where the last 5 sold for 4 million each. Hopefully that's enough below market price that nobody's going to undercut me; there are 200 for sale and 28 bids, so it's a risky maneuver.

Here are the two things that give me quiet joy:

1) First mission: you get an Alignment Merit and NEGATIVE 20 million inf. It's an inf sink with every new character. If the inf-burning turns out to be a regular thing, which I expect it will, even better!

2) 1 AM = 5 rares. One person can generate a signficant amount of sub-50 rare recipes. Midlife Crisis [I'd like to refer to it as "my unstoppable army" but I have almost nothing to do with it] can generate even MORE.

MWA HA HAH!

Edited: not so quiet. Oops.

... what, no Fire/* blasters?

(I haven't tried Dual Pistols myself, but the last three non-Fire blasters I made all made me wish they were Fire.)

It is MORE efficient to play a 50; this is true. But I have run several characters up to 30,33, or 35 (doing lots of task forces) and rolled my merits; usually I make several hundred million this way.

To clarify for the OP: It used to be that when you finished a Task Force or Strike Force [same thing, just hero vs. villainside] you got a special rare recipe. They then changed the system so you got some number of "merits" where you could trade 20 merits for one of those rare recipes, or buy a few other things with them. Longer TF's give more merits, shorter ones give fewer. ("shorter" means "shorter, when done by extremely efficient people", not necessarily "shorter, when done by you or me".) They eventually added merits when you complete story arcs, which you could do by yourself, at your leisure, any time you want.

Because you don't need to convert merits, ever [the limit is enormous] many people didn't even realize they COULD convert merits until sometime after they turned 50; many other people play their 50's far more than their lower level characters. So you end up with very few merits rolled at any level other than 50. One of my hobbies is trying to get more low-level recipes onto the market.

Irritatingly, this scarcity does not mean you get more money for the lower level recipes.

Tangent, but the point is, you CAN make lots of money playing normally or fairly normally on the way to 50.

I like HAVING DONE the Dr. Vazh arc. So I think everyone should do it once. But I don't know if it really counts as fun, at the time.

... has anyone mentioned the Envoy Of Shadows? 36-40 Circle of Thorns arc. Find out why some things should STAY under the ocean.

Which arc is fastest depends on what you're best at. There's a 2 merit "kill all" level 8 mission, if you are good at killing all at low levels. There's a short arc with a bunch of stealthables, I don't remember which one right now, if you're good at superspeeding around. I experimented with a 2-person "redeem Alexander" (lots of running around and heading back to Alexander, leave one person at Alexander); it didn't go all that fast but it might get faster with experience.

Play around with a bunch of different things, see what you like and mix it up a little.

It seemed like a fair question to ME.

I'm not on those forums much, though.

The metaphor I use is a pinball game. I thought I was doing really well getting scores like 50,000; then I figured out how to get 200,000 . 200,000 seemed really good then I figured out how to get 1.2 million.

With the market, it takes about as much work to make your first million as it does to go from 1 million to 10 million, then 10 million to 100 million. Then it maybe slows down a little. Maybe.

Farming doesn't have to be quite as dire as it comes across in firespray's summary- there is one "Best" way to make money, but there are a couple dozen that are nearly as good. So you don't have to do exactly the same thing over and over, unless "exactly the same thing" is "play the game."

Dying Breath: I wear shoes on my nose.

Yeah, Def/End/Rech.

This morning: sold the three stabilized genomes for 225,000 and a generic Resist for 500,000. [People paid 75K when they could have paid 50K and when I paid 1.5K. This is the nature of our market.]

Bought a bunch of ingredients for level 20 Resists which I am going to actually slot.

The Thunderstrike price has crashed to, basically, cost of crafting. It may come back; I've got time.

Built a Harmonized Healing: Heal/End and a generic Damage, both at 40. [I'm almost at the point where I can ignore salvage costs under, say, 50K, and crafting costs... but not quite.] The Damage instasold at 400K [there were NONE for sale] and I decide to build two more. You can normally get the recipes on the market WAY cheaper than you can get them at the table. I probably said that already.

I couldn't get the recipes WAY cheaper, and "zero for sale" isn't going to wait around, so I invest the extra 70K in recipes [so a total of almost 200K per item] and, boom, instant 400K sales on both of them.

At this point I realize I've done enough of various generics that if I'd picked a niche, I"d have it memorized by now. Oh well.

On to vacation!

... I think I gave you the advice to roll that duo.

As far as endurance:
Stamina [with slotting]: +50% end recovery.
Recovery Aura [slotted for 3 recharge only]: +200% end recovery, 90 sec out of 250 sec or less [per RA]
Adrenaline Boost [slotted with one SO equivalent]: about +1066% end recovery. Note that a nuke crash is -1000% end recovery.

As far as "what to avoid":
There's NOTHING you have to avoid. You've got Tank-level mez protection [Clear Mind], you've got regen rates that make regen scrappers cry (what's the cap for defenders, 3000%? You can probably hit it; that's a full HP bar every 16 seconds or so), with two Defender-strength Maneuvers and one Fortitude, slotted, you've got something like 37% Defense to all- so 3/4 of attacks just miss.

Worst case is you run into something that you can't debuff the resistance of, and then neither of you can kill the other.

Yeah, you have to rebuff every 90 seconds (RA, AB, Fort, Clear Mind) but in return you are probably close to Stone Tank toughness.

Phase 2 started: things that will get me from "About a million" to "About ten million". Cheap set IO's, mostly [although you can do this by memorizing a common IO, or a variety of other ways. ]

Put up a level 40 Serendipity: Heal/End/Rech [cost 300K, should sell for around 2M] and the aforementioned Thunderstrike [cost 530K, should sell for around ... 3M, I hope?]

9 PM: Sold most of my IO's (have 1.2 million). This ends phase 1: Getting a million to spare. (the stabilized mutant genomes didn't sell. But the defense IO sold for half a million.)

The Thunderstrike Acc/Dam at level 50 filled and now I have to spend the half million to craft it. (total "parts" cost about 30K...)

Logged back in-probably should have given it more time- and have sold the Defense IO for 500K. The level 30 End Reds are selling for 25K and a hair, so I put in a bid for 3 at a slightly higher price.

The stabilized mutant genomes I bought for 1.1K are now selling for 100K. I list them at 44K and put in a new bid.

My set IO bids haven't filled yet.

Edit: I went back and built four Damage Resistance, two 30 and two 35, and put up one of each for sale. I got the recipes for under 2K, and there are less than 5 of each, crafted, for sale. I probably could do better than 300K each, but I put em up for just over 200K. Now we wait.

What you must do: NOT GET ON SPEEDRUNNING TEAMS For any of the above.

I love the Eden trial. People skip through damn near all of it. What do people possibly have to do that's more fun than Eden? I don't know.

Imperious TF: They've got a checklist. Boom, boom, go here and beat 180 of these guys, skip to the end and do that thing. Everything's out of order, maximum efficiency, minimum coherence.

You can gleemail influence and items to yourself [or other people].

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Gleemail

Almost everyone here knows this, but I'm going to go through it again because new people show up here every day. Unfortunately I'm going on vacation tomorrow... so there will be a considerable gap.

OK, I got a character to level 8 in the sewers and mission teams to the jetpack... now what? I'm going to only do things that are in really large supply [so level 40-50 SO's are out] and that anyone can do even if they're only 2 weeks into the game. I do have Ninja Run and 5 extra recipe slots, but I can't do anything about that.

The goal is to get to 100 million with minimal playtime and no particular starting advantages.

I have about 5K, a Luck Charm, two human blood samples and an Ancient Artifact. Instaselling gets me 52K on the luck charm, 20K on the ancient artifact. Before realizing I had these, I bought 20 Temp Analyzers for 50 each.

Now I have 68K starting cash.

The really boring part: spend 15-20 minutes cleaning out level 39-50 set recipes (I used Nightmare), buying for 10% of their sale value and selling to the vendor. That got me to half a million inf, buying for [eg] 401 and selling to vendor. I stopped selling white salvage to the vendor fast, because that was only around 3000 profit per run. (I was using Ninja Run and going to the vendor in Kings. There may be a faster way.)

Invest 10K in a wentporter to get me to Steel Canyon. Look for my first thing to craft. I want something I can craft right now, total investment under 200K, selling at a decent profit margin. I start looking at 25-30 generic IO's. I'll be spending a lot, because I don't have them memorized, but hopefully I can find something that costs me 100K and sells for 300K.

Level 30 Defense buffs look like the thing- 0 for sale, last 5 sold for over half a million, 29 K crafting cost and I could pick a recipe up for 5000 - but I get wedged on the two Runes and the Alch Silver. It will cost me around 75,000 and some time. I am impatient.

I decide on an Endurance Reduction, also at 30. Pick up the salvage for 22,000 [buy it nao prices], 2000 for the recipe. Create for 38K, total cost 62,000 inf. List for 121,000 (last 5 200k or more), find out the runes and silver have come through. List the Defense Buff for 201,908 [total cost about 122K] with the assumption that it will PROBABLY sell for half a million but I'd happily get half of that.

I had some "buy it in 5 min" bids on End Red salvage [1200 vs. 11,000] and those came through so I create another End Red at 30, total cost about 42000. Put in bids for Demonic Blood at 56K [someone's run the price up] and more End Red/EndMod ingredients (End Mod sells for more, but is "one end red plus a Demonic Blood Sample") and Defense ingredients. I decide that Resist Damage [runes + improvised cybernetics] is going to be a lot cheaper than Defense so I put in ingredients for four Resists and one Defense. I don't know what level is going to be the best to craft, so I don't put in any bids for recipes.

I should come back to about a million inf cash, and ingredients for a bunch of generics.

I start thinking about what my first Set IO should be. I put in for a Thunderstrike Acc/Dam at 50, and the ingredients, and a Serendipity Defense at 40- I don't have the slots for the ingredients. With 20K cash left on me, I log out.

Are they level 50 or are they below that?

My personal hobbyhorse [ok, one of them] is that there isn't enough supply at levels below max. So if you're under level 42 or so, I'd say roll 'em . Level 50, roll or pick as you see fit. Don't spend 'em all at once, though...