Fulmens

Welcome back. As has been mentioned, the cool kids don't call em "healers" because once you get to level 22 or so you will find that people need a lot less healing and more buffing.

BS/SR is ... slightly ... weak compared to other things/SR and BS/other things.

I would be wary of trying a Dark Armor stalker or brute. (Stalker for the AOE mez and other stuff that breaks stealth; brute for the enormous end consumption that Dark Armor is known for.) For the record I love DA on a scrapper or tank.

Oh, gawds, the bad old days. I made a Force Field defender when my group of friends wanted to switch to a new server- there was no way of transferring inf between servers- and teamed with high level blasters for tips.

When I realized I was escorting generous older gentlemen, I made a costume to match. "I've got a new SG . The kids are hungry. Don't judge me."

Anyway, seebs, don't freak out when people explain that the first [x] levels go by so fast you don't have to do anything during them. The first [x] levels go by that fast IF YOU'VE DONE THEM TEN TIMES BEFORE. Take your time, outfit your character, see the sights in Dark Astoria [sorry... old joke.]

Driver 8, two points:

1. I want to emphasize that the "what to vendor" rule that you were given for level 10-14 is ONLY for low levels.

There are three "groups" of salvage: low level [1-25], medium [20-40] and high [35-50]. If you're beating guys that are, say, level 22 you will get 50/50 salvage, half low level and half medium level.

There's almost nothing really shiny in the 1-20 range, and so there's not that much crafting that goes on using that salvage. This is why you vendor so much of it. Once you get to midlevel salvage, most of the orange salvage is worth millions.

2. Seebs' question points out a very good way to make money in the low level game. (I made billions on a character who was at level 17 and living in the market at one point.) Craft stuff for high level characters. If the recipe is the slightest bit desireable [details TBD] you can generally sell the crafted IO for at least a million more than the recipe, crafting costs and ingredients. Why? Some people want it now, and don't mind paying.

Swellguy, Warron: Give him a chance. He's trying, he's just new.

Seebs:
From 1-20 all your oranges are going to be relatively worthless, and from 20-25 there's a 50-50 chance they will be worthless. So I can see how you haven't gotten any good oranges yet [especially if you've been teaming; XP gets a multiplier on teams, but drops get divided between all the characters on the team. So you get less drops, more XP.]

There are a lot of ways to get buckets of money on the market. My personal favorite, because it scales nicely, is buy/craft/sell. You can start with something that costs 250,000 to buy and craft, and sells for a million [I don't know- level 40 Harmonized Healing Heal/Rech or Heal?] You can move up to something that costs a million to buy and craft and sells for three million [level 50 Thunderstrike Acc/Dam/Rech, maybe?] You do a few of those, get 10 million that you can afford to lose, and potentially find something that costs you five million and sells for twelve or fifteen million [Decimation Acc/Dam maybe, or Miracle Heal/End, or Aegis End/Res].

But that's only one method.

Low to middle profit:
There are people who make money flipping stacks of seasonal salvage. There are people who buy generics low and sell them high [I did this the other day, because level 50 damage was selling for 55K and I knew it would be 300K at least in an hour or five. I just couldn't resist the profit margin.] There are people who craft stacks of generics, making 100K or 200K on each one.

Middle to large: Doing TF's as you level up and then buying a really big recipe [a Luck of the Gambler costs something like 240 merits and sells for something like 240 million.] Rolling dozens of bronze recipes and selling the good ones. Farming with a level 50, if you're efficient. Flipping purples.

There's a LOT of ways to make money. Don't be discouraged.

There are about two cases where I would say that IO's are "needed"- that is, there is poor game design that IO's can fix. One is the stupid, stupid, stupid amount of knockback- which you can fix with a 10 million inf or less Karma or Steadfast IO. I'm sure I'll come up with the other one, probably when it's too late to edit this post.

As far as making money in the game: what is it the kids say today? ur doin it wrong? Running recipes to contacts/stores makes you something like a million an hour, and if you need a couple hundred K RIGHT NOW it's a perfectly valid way to get it.

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The TL;DR version of my post below is this: You can buy things on the market, and resell them for more. You can buy cheap-but-popular recipes, craft them, and resell them for millions more.
Edit ends here ---------------

The orange salvage you've mentioned can be sold as well as bought- although I realize that in the first 20 levels all the orange salvage sells for nearly nothing.

The traditional way to make inf around here is "buy low, sell high" or "buy low, craft, sell high." There are pitfalls doing this, and it is possible to lose money while you're figuring it out, and some people claim that you're taking advantage of other players' ignorance. (If I'm buying stuff for one of my guys? I'll happily overpay. I'm rich and I don't care. Most big sales are to people who are rich and don't care.)

If you have ethical problems with buying low and selling high, memorize generic recipes. You can produce for cheap, list for less than it would cost someone to craft it themselves, and still make a profit.

Otherwise, do the following: Look at the level 50 stuff for ONE of the following: Thunderstrike, Crushing Impact, and Doctored Wounds. You will probably find something where the recipes are selling for 100-200K, and the crafted is selling for 2 or 3 million.Put in a bid for one of those at some reasonable number (like 201K) and put in cheap bids for the salvage. Unless you have all the ingredients immediately, leave those bids and WALK AWAY. Check before you log off, and check when you log back on. Once you have all the stuff, grit your teeth and go to a crafting table [your SG should have one, or the Universities are full of 'em.] Spend the 500K to craft it, go to Wents and list it for just over a million inf.

People mostly bid like this: 1,000,000 [didn't get it] 2,000,000 [didn't get it ] 5,000,000 . So you'll probably sell it for 1.5 million or 2 million. Maybe 3m if the guy was in a hurry.

Do this a couple times, checking the top level and making sure you've got something that sells fast. Don't get too heavily invested- if you've got 5 million inf, only put 2 million or so on the market- and don't flood your niche by listing 10 of the same thing at the same time. That's a sure way to drive the price down.

Eventually you'll get more comfortable, get a couple different niches, and you'll make a few million every time you log on. At that point you can either decide you have enough inf, or you can decide you want more. There are a lot of ways to make more, and more, and more in this game. At some point you may find you are buying things for 210 million and selling them for 350 million. At some point you may find that you're not allowed to pick up your sales because you would have more than 2 billion inf. At that point you're one of us.

From a debuff standpoint, Fearsome Stare gives you -24% on +2s, Darkest Night also gives you -24% on +2s, and Shadow Fall slotted for Def and a Steadfast Res/Def gives 11% Defense. Unless they're archvillains, they hit you when you LET them hit you, and they do [again assuming +2] 30% less damage when they hit you. When they're not Feared. Or stunned. Or waiting on recharge. And Fluffy [I named mine Mozart] is spammin' heals and providing MORE -damage and -ToHit and immobilizing and whatnot.

Personally I only throw out Darkest Night on the tough fights.

Play both!

Also, mini-guide to Blasters in my sig.

I park at 33 and 35, generally. Those two levels sell for very good prices. (I think max level still gets you more total money, even though I'm rooting for you to roll early.)

Should I subscribe to this thread for the next time je_saist claims to be "never wrong"?

Someone was selling a KoA code for pixel money a year or two ago. I bought it for my wife. Everyone won!

At those rates,the market's cut for a 1B sale is earned back in 20,000 seconds. Or approximately 5 and a half hours. And a 1 B flip (say 800M going in, 1 billion going out) takes around 10 hours for someone to farm up.

Or were you talking about the 100K price cap, where it would take eighteen thousand such transactions ?

I thought psi pretty much centerpunched Malta right out. I realize now that's not based on any actual evidence, though, so feel free to disprove.

Zactly. I'm thinking people are getting cranky after fifty hours of play and a brand new level 50 ...

... pretty much what Pitho said. The difference between 80% and 90% resistance is that it takes twice as much shooting to kill you.

I think the only time I ever did a second build was for a mini-green-machine, where I have an Emp with a normal build and one with no fitness and all the Leadership powers.

There's a "stupidity divisor" where if you don't know how to make inf, and you don't want to learn, you'll make 1/500 as much as you otherwise would in a given amount of time.

All combos are good.

Rad/Sonic is flippin' amazing.

... if they're out there shooting things and not getting killed, what's the problem?