COTCaveHater

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66 Months: Enduring

As well as the Enduring Badge, each character will obtain the following:


+5 Salvage Inventory Slots
+5 Recipe Inventory Slots
+1 Auction House Inventory Slot

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November 2009 for me!!! *Does the happy ebil dance*

The extra slots at 1st level will be a big difference! It may even make it feasible to trade from 1 inf to 2B inf on a level 1 toon...

Grats! I'm still 200M or so short... grrr...

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The White Dwarf has no forward walk cycle post-patch unless he jumps--after taking any other action, such as an attack, he goes sliding across the floor.

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That's an intentional "moonwalk" homage to Michael Jackson (dev post here).

I've long thought moonwalking is the ultimate combat move - it looks like you're attacking your enemy, when really you are moving away. Full credit to the devs for this change.

Pity us Australians, for whom server maintenance occurs in the late evening. The Friday maintenance is particularly galling as it starts 11pm on Friday night.

I guess we're being punished for winning the Australian-American War

From this post from Niviene :
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Save The Date - Next Double XP Weekend July 31st- August 2nd!

We know you've been waiting to hear so that you can meticulously craft your plan of attack! So go ahead - take off work, ignore all of your other responsibilities and stock up on easily grab-able snacks and beverages - we won't tell anyone! Just make sure to save the date because the next City of Heroes® Double XP weekend will begin Friday, July 31st 2009, at 8:59am PST (11:59am EST) and concludes Sunday, August 2nd 2009, 8:59pm PST (11:59pm EST). Don't miss out!

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Where is the announcement that double XP won't work in AE? I can't find it on the announce forum.

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Double xp likely will not work in AE

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If that is true, then ignore everything I said :-)

Boggle indeed!

Grats! I think that is a new market forum record!

This is the thread where I lose any market cred I may have.

I'm going out on a limb and predicting that the coming double XP will be like no other and DOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM! the market (for a few weeks).

My thinking is that, generally, players will favour play that allows them to earn double XP. For the first time, players will have the option of spending all double XP weekend at the mission architect, which pretty much eliminates travel time and therefore maximises double XP playtime.

So players will generally be earning tickets during 2XP, not drops.

Players will be trading them for high ticket value items, to minimise the number of (non-2xp-earning) trips to the market to offload drops. This will be rare salvage, and silver/gold rolls.

Previous 2XP weekends have seen a salvage shortages after the event as people start to slot their toons properly once double XP is over.

I therefore predict that there will be a massive shortage of common and uncommon salvage of doompocalypse!!!!11!!1! proportions, peaking the Sunday after double xp weekend (9th August).

To put my money where my mouth is, I intend to list one 10-stack of each common salvage item for 1 million inf per piece. If I'm right, they will all sell.

Regenerating Flesh and Nevermelting Ice have been big winners in previous 2XP weekends, but I think it is the item that no-one thinks to stock that usually runs out. Your best bet is dig up an unplayed toon and to list one stack of each salvage type at a ludicrous price.

IIRC, the shortages happen after 2XP when everyone takes a break from doing content and slots up their toon at whatever post-2XP level they are at.

So if my memory is correct, a good trading strategy is as follows:
1) Craft and list mid-level generic IOs at exhorbitant prices during 2XP, particularly acc, dam, rech, endmod (People don't want to waste 2XP time, so they will slot the bare minimum and will pay "buy it nao" prices)

2) Buy up cheap salvage and recipes during 2XP (people don't want to waste 2XP time, so they will dump everything on the market for 1 inf)

3) Immediately after 2XP, guess what the shortages will be and list a few stacks at ridiculous prices (e.g. 10 tech commons at 1M each). These are a trap for scrub marketeers that will try to "control supply" by buying out all of the stock of one item.

4) Watch the salvage market after 2XP and wait for shortages. Insta-sell the cheap salvage you stockpiled in step 2 into any shortages that develop. They key to fat profit here is volume, not sky-high prices.

5) Craft the cheap Set IO recipes you picked up in step 2 and list them for sale during the weekend after 2XP weekend.

6) Salvage shortages will also happen on the weekend after double XP weekend. Your experience at step 4 should reveal what items to flip.

7) This is a guess - there will be a lot of respeccing the weekend after 2XP weekend, since people would be hastily picking powers during 2XP, so it may be a good time to pick up crafted IOs on the cheap. Particularly generic Acc and Dam IOs IMHO.

Some of this advice is from memory, some is guesswork based on experience, so other forumites might like to comment.

Grats Protea/KeepDistance/Mind4EverBurning on the name change.

Can anyone suggest a moderator that might be able to help me with my forum handle change? I PMed Niviene, but it looks like I got ignored. Since I only really frequent this forum, I don't know the various mods.

Any screenshots of this rumoured 1 billion sale? That would be a forum record IMO.

Fair enough, I guess I overreacted.

I suppose even if he was 'spotting', it's not even that bad. It's almost certainly tougher to fight 2 vills than a vill+a hero spotter.

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These guys *want* uber rare PvP IOs so they are never finished tweaking their builds.


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Ummm, no. Most of the PvPers are yet again facing the head-scratching ideas of the Devs.

I, as well as many other PvP'ers that I've talked to, are lol'ing at this. What the Dev's think as a fix really just screws this game over more. People PvP'ing for shinies really won't want to PvP once they realize that the drop rate is about 1:1200 in a 10 minute match.

I would much rather see them drop at the rate they were doing so before.

Please don't put words into others mouths, especially when you have no idea what you are talking about.

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Sorry, I said "want" when I should have said "need". The PvPers need a miniscule drop rate so that when they get a PvP IO it is an exciting event.

This Twixt?

I was in RV the other day with my blaster whom has Stealth and a Stealth IO. I was getting owned by a Brute. After a while I noticed there was another hero that was always near the Brute, but never engaged in the fight. I sent him a tell and he said he was the Brute's best friend.

I can't help but think he was spotting for the Brute. Is this likely?

Now, I only occasionally PvP and my build is nowhere near optimised for PvP. I am quite happy to spend a few hours in a PvP zone and get no kills because I believe it is the nature of PvP that there is always going to be a PvP fan with a better build and better tactics.

I have no doubt that I would have still been owned by the Brute even if his friend wasn't spotting. However, this was the first time ever I've left a PvP zone due to the behaviour of other players. If the two had both been playing villains and been ganking me, I would have been fine with that.

I'm not suggesting the behaviour be banned or anything, I believe in "anything goes" pvp since it is impossible for PvP to be 'fair' and also impossible to enforce any sort of standards of behaviour.

I am wondering, however, if 'spotting' is commonplace. I play during off-peak times so the PvP zones are pretty empty when I play, and I've not seen it before.

Zone PvP can never be for casual players. There will always be PvP freaks that spend all their time in WB/BB/SC/RV with fully tweaked out builds owning all that enter. These guys *need* (EDIT: was *want*, how do I strikethrough on this thing?) uber rare PvP IOs so they are never finished tweaking their builds.

If you want to PvP "casually", then go to Arena with some friends and battle it out with your PvE builds. The lack of PvP IOs will not be an issue then.

P.S. "Casual friendly" means that the bulk of game content can be enjoyed by casual players. It does not mean that game in its entirety is accessible to casual players.

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I take my hats off to the billionaires out there, but while it's off, I'm scratching my head wondering "Why all the effort?"

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Because your inf total is your [u]SCORE[u].

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Anything halfway decent in this game with 0 for sale is drastically undervalued.

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QFE, this is a cornerstone of my (lazy) marketing strategy.

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if something sells for 1000, your fees will be 100, leaving you a total of 900. You'd need to buy at 899 to make ANY profit off of this sale. That would mean you need to list at 1.11x your cost to make profit.

Listing something at a 30% markup would be 1.3x, making profit 1.3 - 1.10 = 0.20 or 20%.

That should clear up the mess of what you need to list at.

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I don't think that is right.

If you have a 30% mark-up, you make profit of 17% (if it sells for exactly what you list at).

e.g. buy something for 100, sell for 130, pay 130 x 10% = 13 in fees, thus
profit = 130 - 100 -13 = 17 inf

My personal minimum mark-up is 20% since it yields a profit of 8% (120% - 100% - 12% = 8%). It has to be a multi-million inf item for me to bother with such a small profit margin.

Off topic, how about them purple recipes, eh? They seemed to have tripled in value in the last few months... many are in the mulitple 100s of millions... there used to only be a very few items that range

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Do Luck Charms have any broad effect on the game economy? Would buying up all the LC's over an extended period have any knock on effects with respect to price or availability of other items?



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There is only one way to find out: buy them all. Every single one. Even the single most expensive luck charm listed on the market.



... I'm tired of it taking up a transaction slot.

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I've done that once before (click), but it might be worth trying again...

Let me know how you go with the name change, KeepDistance. I have wanted to change my handle from COTCaveHater to match my in game global handle, @Graal, but when I try it says the handle 'Graal' is taken, even though a search says it doesn't exist. I've assumed it is my global handle blocking my forum handle change.

I've recently sent a PM to Niviene (after fruitlessly logging an NCSoft petition) but haven't heard back.

Flipping M:+R's .... aahhh nostalgia...

If you are flipping them, try also flipping purple recipes. Some are very lucrative, and the strategy is the same.

A belated thanks to Fulmens who matched my 400M with 400M of his own to add 1.6M Prestige to my SG. Thanks, Fulmens!!!