Sardan

I like the idea of the game offering challenges to players. I have no problem with the existence of badges that are difficult or even impossible to get in casual play.

However, I think accolades with benefits or powers associated (which are sought by large numbers of players) should not have grindy and unfun requirements. Eye of the Magus is the poster child for this. I'd love it if they removed or dramatically reduced the defeats that were required and instead added requirements for completing several story arcs, Let's say Madeline Casey and Harvey Maylor. Heck, even add one of the Shard TFs. That would be INFINITELY more fun than grinding out the stupid summoned decoys and BP masks.

Requiring a character to defeat all the Praetorean AVs as an accolade requrement: fun. Requiring a character to defeat them all 20 times: unfun. It's a matter of degree.

Just to be clear: I have no problem with the existence of a badge for defeating 500 (or 2 thousand or 2 billion) summoned illusionist decoys. My beef is that accolades should be fun to work on. Attaching extreme defeat requirements to accolades epitomizes the encouragement of "abberrant behavior" that Synapse claims the devs don't want to encourage.

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Used to be that if someone was a level 50, you could count on a certain level of skill and teamwork, because they had worked hard through all the zones, and knew what to do.I'm just frustrated at the ever increasing level of newbies, leveling fast, and not grasping basic game fundamentals.

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I had exactly the same experience as the OP recently. Led an AE PUG and had to repeatedly remind the team to stick together, let the tank begin aggro, etc. And it's not like we had some uber scrapper or controller that was able to leap ahead of the tank safely. They'd go off on their own, aggro too much to handle and promprtly die. The phrase "herding cats" came to mind.

Steiner, thank you so much for taking on the task of maintaining the hero planner. That program is simply invaluable.

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So I reflexively entered 5,500 and instantly bought the recipe.

Now I am having buyer's remorse. I could have made a smaller bid and gotten this recipe cheaper with a little bid creeping. Did I get ripped off?

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You totally got ripped off. I make it a habit to start my bidding at 1 inf and bid creep by 1. I allow each bid to stay on the market for a minimum of 90 seconds because during peak hours the market server can be slow. I have been using this method for 9 months on an Armegeddon recipe I'm aiming to buy; it can be a little annoying raising my bid by only 40 inf an hour, but I take solace that when I finally get it I will have gotten the best possible price.

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Is there a badge for that? And gratz btw!

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There are badges for earning inf via defeats but not from the market.

Gratz!

Macskull summarized it extremely well. One minor point to keep in mind is that Regen has no "Psi hole" or any other kind of hole. Unlike every other armor set in the game, to Regen damage is damage--type doesn't matter.

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since it (figuratively) falls from the sky, it's fun for many of us to help our fellow players make as much as they can carry.

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Pet peeve fixed. Remember boys and girls, the word literally is not an intensifier. This public service announcement was brought to you by the letter e, and the number 5.

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I think this wouldn't remove ALL the 'griefing' (using that term loosely). And an 'olympic' style voting system too would be cool.. i.e. a certain percentage of the votes fixed (5%) would be automatically discounted both good and bad. Losing a small number of votes Best and Worst. That would give you a better idea of what people 'really' think about the mission.

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I think a weighted system might be good, where a vote from someone that hasn't finished the first mission counts for less than a person who completes the first mission, which in turn counts for less than someone who has completed the second mission, etc.

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Is it safe to assume that I should start by working the IO common market? Or is it better to work on the SO market instead? (For a beginner)

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There's an SO market? I guess there is, but since the upside would be limited by SO vendors, I'd ignore it.

As others have pointed out, the key to making money in this game is patience. Most players want to get their slotting over with right after they level so they gladly buy pre-crafted IOs and get on with the game. To get into marketeering, I suggest finding some recipes that are in common use (hint, if the sales history averages less than one transaction per day, that's not "common use") and put in some lowball bids. Try maybe 70% of the going rate. Then check back once a day. Assuming you have a few bids out you'll see them slowly being fulfilled.

Now you have a recipe you can flip for a profit, but instead craft it. Put it up for sale at maybe 85% of the current average sales price. Again, be patient. Don't be upset if it takes a day or two to sell.

Remember that prices always rise during high demand (weekends, special events like double XP, new issue releases) then fall in the middle of the week. So expect most of your best buys to be midweek and your best sales to happen on weekends.

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the only flaw i see in your statements is that the market hasn't been around for 5 yrs. it was introduced in i9 or i10 if i remember correctly.

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Ah, I did not know that. How long ago was that, anyone know? I will gladly update any of my comments with that in mind if anyone wants to call me out on it.

See, told you I was a newb!

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You may be new but you have a more solid grasp on basic market mechanics than 90% of the players in this game.

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As to whether it's worth it or not, I've seen several folks who have claimed they made tens or hundreds of millions by simply crafting memorized common IOs. It's always struck me as a bit iffy because it's common to have crafters or folks doing respecs dump common IOs on the market below cost.

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During the whole "Meow" maddness I crafted and sold over 2500+ lvl-45 common IO's and earned something like 700 million inf redside, so yes, sometimes at least you can make money crafting commons

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I stand corrected! I think my impressions were formed while I was going for the Field Crafter badge. Since I was crafting large numbers of IOs, I was motivated to post them at "sell now" prices so naturally I'd often be up against temporary gluts. Clearly you can make nice margins selling crafted memorized IOs if you're a bit patient.

A great resource is Mids Hero Designer. It will show the ED rolloff.

As to your character prefs, my Ice/Stone tank is incredible and thanks to IOs he is softcapped against the most common damage types, and thus does quite well. Bots/FF is a classic MM combo and is very strong at all levels.

As to PvP viability, you should direct those questions to the PVP forum.

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What is the best way to go about using salvage and recipies at early levels in the game?
Sell. Invention enhancements do not 'wear out' like the other kinds, but they are 'scaled' to your level. So, the ones you can make and slot at early levels are relatively shabby. I would not even consider using invention enhancements before level 25 and, generally, I really get into them in the 30-35 range.

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Tons of good advice in this thread but I thought I'd elaborate on the selling. As you play, you'll get drops of enhancements, inspirations, recipes and salvage. These can be a tremendous source of income. Let's break it down:

1. Enhancements
For those you can't use, sell them. It pays to sell them at a store of the right origin. If you have a Tech ehancement, the Tech store will pay you significantly more for it than a Magic or Natural store. Once you get access to Ouroboros at level 25, that's a handy place to sell enhancements because the store there (Mender Roebuck) buys all enhancements at the most favorable prices.

2. Inspirations
Don't sell these. Use them steadily as they drop. If you get 3 of a type you rarely use, right click on one and you can convert the 3 into a single inspiration of your choosing.

3. Recipes
Here is your biggest opportunity to make money. You can sell recipes to any store and they will pay you a modest sum. Or you can try to sell them at Wentworths. Some recipes are essentially worthless and it's better not to tie up your Wentworth slots on them, just sell them to a store (known as "vendoring them") and be done with it. Others can be worth millions. You simply have to spend time and learn which is which by checking out the sales history at Wentworths. If you have a little extra time, a great way to make even more money on a recipe that is in high demand is to craft it at a University or your super group base. Because many players don't want to spend the time it takes to craft, it's common to see a recipe that would sell for 100K and that requires another 100K in crafting fees and salvage sell for 1 million once it's crafted. Yes, it's that easy to make money in this game.

4. Salvage
Before the mission architect was released, common salvage was cheap. Now it is often worth big money. That salvage you got on your mission, the one that a vendor will give you 250 inf for, will often sell for 50K or more at Wentworths. So the same rule applies: before selling salvage to a store, check out what it's going for at Wentworths.

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I think 8 Kins would be overkill. 2 Fulcrum Shifts are usually enough to cap +Damage and you'd be maxed out on recharge after 6 SBs stacked. Would still be a lot of fun.


8 Rads, however... Pure awesome.

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No such thing as 'overkill'. }:>

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I'm a big Kin fan, but I believe TopDoc once posted numbers to show how game-breaking a team of 8 Fire/Rad controllers are when he was putting together one of his super teams. Taking away one of them and putting in a Kin only dropped the numbers. Basically you cap damage, ToHit, and recharge with 8 stacked AMs. The team runs Hotfeet and Choking Cloud. You team teleport into spawns and everything is held in a couple of seconds and then melts. The process gets a little faster once you add 24 Fire Imps but it's brutal even before then.

In this case, a PM to Castle is your best bet. Try to keep it short and lay out your reasoning clearly. Include a link to the discussion thread if you think that'll help. Note that "help" in this case has nothing to do with sheer numbers of players typing "/signed" but rather people being articulate about game balance issues. Sheer numbers of thumbs up/down do not sway the devs when it comes to game balance decisions.

If Castle doesn't respond you might see if you can get Babs' attention. It's not his job, but there've been a couple of times that he was persuaded of a worthy power change and advocated it to Castle. That's not a guarantee of Castle agreeing to anything, of course.

Castle gets so inundated with PMs that I suspect it's hard to rise above the noise.

I hope you succeed. It's always annoyed me that Full Auto had a lower cap than Rain of Arrows, the other blaster no-end-drain nuke.

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Now here's a question. Is it worth the money to get the crafter badge so I can summon a crafting table? I noticed that regular old non-set IO's generally sell for a loss, but that may just be the really low-level ones that people craft for the badge and then just dump on the market. Does this turn around at higher levels or will all my crafting towards a badge be at a loss?

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The crafting table is just for convenience. You can memorize any common recipe with just a fraction of the work it takes to earn the crafting table. Memorization means you don't have to purchase the recipe and I believe crafting cost is cut by 50%.

As to whether it's worth it or not, I've seen several folks who have claimed they made tens or hundreds of millions by simply crafting memorized common IOs. It's always struck me as a bit iffy because it's common to have crafters or folks doing respecs dump common IOs on the market below cost.

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The crafting in this game is so simplistic and boring, I'm not surprised people are willing to pay others to do it. I was an explorer/crafter in my last MMO. In this one, those are about as appealing as a trip to the dentist's office.

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This has been my only MMO so it's the only crafting I've seen. Can you explain a bit what made crafting in your last game more interesting?

Thanks for the replies.

A point to ponder: you used to have to type in a character name to send a tell, which made replying to a question or a "TF LFM" request via broadcast considerably easier, especially when the broadcaster had a name like "xxXX'W00lv3rine.XXxx". But since you can now reply via tell by simply clicking on the broadcaster's name it's just as fast/easy to reply via a tell as via broadcast, and you'll be cutting down on zone noise if you retrain yourself to do it that way.

And before you reply saying "I'll answer in broadcast if I bloody well choose to!" keep in mind this is just a point to ponder, I'm well aware that you'll do as you wish.

EDIT: just to clarify, I'm really not trying to be snarky on this reply. I regularly team with a few vets who were unaware of this change to the chat window (or other changes like being able to copy/paste) until I mentioned it to them.

The OP is a genius. The only thing I could suggest that would improve his "one character per side" suggestion would be perma-death--eliminate all hospitals, awaken inspirations and rez powers. That would really get players fully engaged in the health of their characters.

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/unsigned. It can get annoying, but sometimes you want to broadcast something to the whole zone while in the AE buildings.

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OK, so obviously this is a very unpopular suggestion. I'll just move the broadcast channel to another tab, problem solved.

But enlighten me, please, what amazingly valuable nuggets do you feel compelled to broadcast from within the AE, other than the LFT/LFM messages which should either be done via Local or via tells after searches?

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I think for right now it might be wise to turn the burner down a notch or two, Johnny. Let's see what the Devs are planning.

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For two and a half years I've seen what these devs can do.
And I know the results of what they spent the last year and a half doing after they were bought by NCSoft and staffed up.

And that is exactly what's got me down.

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It's not fair to say that the releases over the last 18 months have reflected the new dev team. Let's remember that they didn't magically have all the current staff right after the buyout. To me it looks like they only hit critical mass around December. (In fact if you look at their recruiting web page, they STILL have a bunch of dev slots open.) And it usually takes months for a new developer to get up to speed on a large existing code base.

Given that a major software project can easily take 9-12 months I'm willing to wait and see what Going Rogue (which I'm assuming will be a November-ish release) looks like before passing judgment on the efficacy of the newly enlarged dev team.

I know Widows/Forts are incredibly versatile--this build is strictly PvE, focusing on AOE attacks with high ranged defense. (I figured it'd be cheaper to build for ranged defense than to get enough recharge to make Mind Link perma on a Fort.) According to Mids, this build gives 48% ranged defense, 43% melee, and 35% AoE.

I'm not thrilled with Maneuvers' high end cost + only 3.5% base defense. Yet I know that the combo of TT:Man + Maneuvers gives 12% def, thus they're mitigating about 24% of damage for the entire team.

I didn't slot for Acc, because with the Kismet unique + TT:Leadership I'm getting 21% ToHit along with 32% global accuracy bonuses from sets.

[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]

Level 1: Telekinetic Blast -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(3), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(5), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7)
Level 1: Combat Training: Defensive -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(3), Ksmt-ToHit+(43)
Level 2: Poison Dart -- Thundr-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(7), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(29), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(34)
Level 4: Tactical Training: Maneuvers -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(5)
Level 6: Swift -- Flight-I(A)
Level 8: Hover -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(9), Flight-I(9)
Level 10: Psychic Scream -- Posi-Dmg/Rchg(A), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(11), AirB'st-Dmg/Rchg(11), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(19), EndRdx-I(19)
Level 12: Psionic Tornado -- AirB'st-Dmg/EndRdx(A), Det'tn-Dmg/Rchg(13), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(13), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(15), RechRdx-I(15), EndRdx-I(17)
Level 14: Fly -- Zephyr-Travel(A), Zephyr-Travel/EndRdx(17)
Level 16: Health -- Heal-I(A)
Level 18: Dominate -- Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx(A), Thundr-Dmg/EndRdx/Rchg(23), Thundr-Dmg/Rchg(40)
Level 20: Stamina -- Efficacy-EndMod(A), Efficacy-EndMod/Rchg(21), Efficacy-EndMod/Acc(21), P'Shift-End%(23)
Level 22: Indomitable Will -- S'fstPrt-ResDam/Def+(A)
Level 24: Mind Link -- RedFtn-Def/EndRdx(A), RedFtn-Def/Rchg(25), RedFtn-EndRdx/Rchg(25), RedFtn-Def/EndRdx/Rchg(27), RedFtn-EndRdx(31), RedFtn-Def(42)
Level 26: Hasten -- RechRdx-I(A), RechRdx-I(27), RechRdx-I(29)
Level 28: Dart Burst -- Posi-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(A), Posi-Dmg/EndRdx(31), Posi-Dmg/Rchg(36), Posi-Dmg/Rng(37), Posi-Dam%(37), EndRdx-I(37)
Level 30: Foresight -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(31), DefBuff-I(42)
Level 32: Psychic Wail -- Sciroc-Acc/Dmg(A), Sciroc-Dmg/EndRdx(33), Sciroc-Dmg/Rchg(33), Sciroc-Acc/Rchg(33), Sciroc-Acc/Dmg/EndRdx(34), RechRdx-I(34)
Level 35: Tactical Training: Leadership -- GSFC-ToHit(A), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg(36), GSFC-ToHit/Rchg/EndRdx(36), GSFC-Rchg/EndRdx(43), GSFC-ToHit/EndRdx(43), GSFC-Build%(46)
Level 38: Confuse -- Mlais-Acc/Rchg(A), Mlais-EndRdx/Conf(39), Mlais-Acc/EndRdx(39), Mlais-Conf/Rng(39), Mlais-Acc/Conf/Rchg(40), Mlais-Dam%(40)
Level 41: Maneuvers -- DefBuff-I(A), DefBuff-I(42), EndRdx-I(50)
Level 44: Gloom -- Decim-Acc/Dmg(A), Decim-Dmg/EndRdx(45), Decim-Dmg/Rchg(45), Decim-Acc/EndRdx/Rchg(45), Decim-Acc/Dmg/Rchg(46), EndRdx-I(46)
Level 47: Soul Tentacles -- AirB'st-Dmg/EndRdx(A), AirB'st-Dmg/Rchg(48), AirB'st-Dmg/Rng(48), Det'tn-Dmg/EndRdx/Rng(48), EndRdx-I(50), RechRdx-I(50)
Level 49: Tactical Training: Vengeance -- DefBuff-I(A)

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[u]Set Bonus Totals:[u]<ul type="square">[*]5.5% Defense(Melee)[*]21.1% Defense(Ranged)[*]8.63% Defense(AoE)[*]2.25% Max End[*]23.8% Enhancement(RechargeTime)[*]32% Enhancement(Accuracy)[*]5% FlySpeed[*]52.2 HP (4.87%) HitPoints[*]20% (0.35 End/sec) Recovery[*]10% (0.54 HP/sec) Regeneration[/list]

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Isn't the request channel where you should be requesting teams?

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I just dislike the noise that emanates from the AE building. I'd be just as annoyed if it was Request channel as I am that it's Broadcast, since they're all standing right flippin' next to each other!

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ED was a giant crap sammich.
I'm glad you enjoyed your mouthful, but I was inspired to cancel.

If they'd had IOs ready to go it would have been fine, but they didn't so it wasn't.

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That is my biggest complaint about ED. Jack made a VERY oblique remark at the time that they had to do ED in order to enable some coming changes but I think the timing was horrible. If they would've rolled out ED in conjunction with IOs, there still would've been an uproar but people would've quickly realized they could build more powerful and versitile characters than they could pre-IO/pre-ED.