Laevateinn

In addition to the above advice, go out and make more money.

First, look at the pricing of the set and determine which pieces will cause you the most trouble. Most "expensive" sets actually tend to be made up of a bunch of comparatively cheap recipes and 1 or 2 really expensive pieces. (e.g. Lv30 Eradication - everything but the quad is in the 1m-2m range) This is usually the Pool C(s) in the set. For quite a lot of sets, depending on level range and popular frankenslotting combinations, the Pool A recipes will be expensive too (e.g. Lv35 Kin Combat: Dam/End, Lv50 Numina: Heal).

This means that in an "expensive" set, less than half the recipes make up the majority of the cost. Do Task Forces and collect Merits (which you need for blueside accolades, anyway). Pool Cs, like ToD Acc/Dam/Rech, are usually 200 Merits with rare exceptions. You can buy these for Merits directly, but it's usually smarter to buy a Lv25 LotG 7.5 with the 200 Merits, sell that, then buy the recipe you want. Nearly all Pool C recipes of equivalent Merit cost are significantly cheaper than an LotG 7.5 on the market, so you will get your recipe and a nice chunk of change to buy the rest of the set with.

Be skeptical of people who blindly tell you to turn to direct Merit purchase for everything; some anti-market posters will lie to you out of a misguided belief that they are harming the market, when all they are encouraging is a wastage of Merits. It is typically a better idea to make buy LotG 7.5s and sell those to buy the recipes you want, unless the recipe you want is rarely available on the market (usually happens if you are typing to buy recipes at less than the maximum level of the set, or from non-50 sets. ToD is one of the examples, actually).

Farm the AE for tickets and make lots of random Bronze rolls. These will get you your Pool A recipes, and you have a shot at other desirable Pool As as well, which will go towards funding the rest of your build. There's discussion elsewhere on the best level range to roll in.

If you can afford it, bid on both the recipe and the crafted enhancement (a good sum to bid for the enhancement is the same price you bid for the recipe, or 1m-5m less). Occasionally people sell enhancements for less than the recipe price. If both bids fill, then sell one for profit and keep the other.

This sort of problem is everywhere, because people tend to overestimate the effectiveness/necessity of their powers.

I once tanked for a team with an FF/Rad defender. We were doing a Freakshow mission when I made a miscalculation and aggroed two large spawns - enough to put me over the aggro cap. The 'fender had the bright idea of turning on Force Bubble to repel the enemies. This would have been a great save except that 1) the entire team except for him was scrappers and tanks, 2) rather than pushing the enemies into a corner, he just drove them in a line down the hallway, 3) he would then run up (I think he was trying to use short-ranged Cosmic Burst), which ended up pushing the mob further down the map and into the next spawn, aggroing even more enemies and causing a near-teamwipe.

He was so earnest and obviously thought he was doing a good job, excitedly pointing out that he was keeping the scary Freakshow away from us, but when he disconnected the team agreed that we were better off without him.

It's also human nature to be unhappy if you sink time and influence into playing a particular "role" well, and then you get on a team where it's unnecessary. So you sometimes see people insisting on trying to tank even in situations where they can't do it well, even when there is another player who could do it better, because they've invested in their team tanking build and want to use it (I have no idea why the tanking "role" seems to draw this mentality the most, versus damage/support).

I don't understand how worried some people are about "manipulation" of the market by people bringing goods across faction lines. Given that side-switching is not going to be "flipping a switch", how prevalent will this sort of behavior be? Will it even come close to being able to affect the balance of supply and demand on either side? Even if it were practical, wouldn't it result in people bringing goods from the side with more supply to the one with less supply, driving down prices?

I have trouble understanding whether this sort of opinion is rooted in 1) a general dislike of the game motivating immersion-breaking behavior or 2) jealousy of the idea that other players less concerned with concept would potentially be able to make money this way.

Things like infinite inf would be nice for laughs, but the one cheat I could see myself having lasting fun with would be all powers from all powersets available. Ideally, it'd also let me ignore the limit of 24 powers at level 50. And then I'd respec my characters to give them exactly what powers they ought to have, were concept not necessarily restricted by game balance.

I'm not claiming that's the purpose (or even one of the purposes) of the IO system, which is why in my original post I used if.

I think the rep farmers and neg rep farmers are all doing a great job. They're mocking the idea that some anonymous public approval meter on an online forum can ever be a worthwhile gauge of character, and that ought to be applauded.

If proliferated, SR on a Tanker would be softcapped with just CJ.

...This idea excites me.

Actually, I think merging mez recipes is a good idea, provided that droprates were reduced so that people could not achieve high-end builds any faster. (To be honest, I think this game is already too generous with its rewards, if IOs are meant to be a long-term goal for level 50 characters.) You would have fewer drops, but when you found one it would be more likely to be valuable, so your income remains the same. Common/Uncommon salvage drops also ought to be cut, severely.

Recluse won't ever get U.N. support for anything, because even if the U.S. did not veto it, his public image is a failure. How do you sell the idea of helping a man who has giant spider legs, whose closest advisors include a ghost and a shark, and whose troops wear stereotypical red-and-black faceless helmets?

On the contrary, I think all scrappers should embrace flipping out and killing things. Heroically.

I have a character who is so lethal that she's only allowed to fight things like Clockwork, Rikti and Rularuu. It would be the ultimate testament to a scrapper's killyness if the FBSA only deployed him or her against things which are not protected under the Geneva convention.

Week 10 (Oct 19 to Oct 26)

Liquid cash: 595,892,608
Market bids: 286,160,485
Unsold goods: 170,100,000

Net asset value: 1,052,153,093


I was wrong when I thought it would be business as usual this week: Halloween has been an unexpected windfall. Recipe prices fell (in some cases, severely) and transaction volume rose strongly, so I've been making more than usual. Turnover is actually comparable to what it was in the late AE era. I'm also trying to take the opportunity to hoard large amounts of recipes for future use. It's been a pretty exciting week.

Since a few people have asked about this, I'll take the opportunity to say that I have no plans to run another such fund for the forseeable future. I now have new characters to IO out, as well as some mid to longterm projects that are going to take a lot of funds, so my attention is going to be occupied for a long time.

This has been fun and successful, but to be honest, I am also mildly burnt out on marketeering after all the frentic action since the start of i14. I marketeer on 9 characters red and blueside now, excluding anything related to this fund, and I spend an hour a day just logging them in and out. I may move into the purple market in the near future, since that has less transaction volume and won't require me to check in as often.

Next week will be the last one. It's been great fun

I never claimed it was a good option, performance, cost or convenience-wise. It's a silly tradition that I indulge myself in.

I understand what you feel.

I live in Malaysia and I am one of maybe three people in the entire country who play this game. Over here, World of Warcraft is a distant rumor from a faraway galaxy and nobody knows what EVE Online, Aion or Everquest are.

None of my real life friends are interested in this game (or any Western MMO, for that matter). The few who do play MMO games play horribly grindy Korean, Chinese or local ones that are F2P or paid for by microtransactions, and which are more populated by bots than live humans.

Don't stock up on Winter's Gift, either. It isn't a really popular IO, and there's not much demand for it.

I wouldn't go as far as to call it the best feature added to the game. It'd be hard to top the invention and market systems for that. But yes, it is very nice

I go from 1-50 on all my characters with SOs. It's something of a rite of passage for me, and replacing my SOs gives me something to look forward to every few levels.