Eldorado

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FYI at 25 percent Health, ressing in your Base and running back to a mission is sort of a waste. So you really don't need a med bay very early.

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I find that having a med bay forces me to think a little bit when I faceplant.

"Where IS the hospital in this zone? Where's the 'base portal drop off point'? And in what part of the zone is the mission located?" By the time I zone back and travel to the mission, even my squishies are often mostly healed up....

Sometimes it's a LOT quicker to use the hospital; other times it's even FASTER to use the med bay and grab a heal inspie or two -- and I can stock up on other inspies while I'm there.

Of course, how early others want a med bay is all about personal preference!

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1. Using skills from your secondary will force a weapon redraw. This means that powers like SR and WP will rarely have to redraw their weapons. Something like regen will have to more often to use their click abilities. It isn't a huge deal, but it annoys some (I'm one of the some).


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I'm "one of the some", too -- currently having fun with my newish kat/SR scrapper at level 43!

Well, okay, I have fun for a minute and 50 seconds or so, then I grit my teeth while perma-Practiced Brawler goes off, THEN while the sword redraws, and then I go have fun for another minute and 50 seconds or so....

While it's not as often as it could be with regen, it still seems fairly often to me...your mileage may vary, and it's all about perceptions anyhow. And don't get me wrong -- I'm still having a blast, but I think I'd be having a slightly better time without the redraw action. *shrug*

Well, y'know -- just logged into the forums and happened to see both posts as "most recent" and happened to read them back-to-back. <shrug>

And I bet lots of people would comment on my username if it was worth five million influence...hmm.... <plots and schemes> "You quoted me!! By name!! Pay up!!" Nah....

Interesting....

From "Player Questions": "I need the Acc/End/Recharge Shield Breaker IO, but it is out of stock.

If anybody has it then put it on stock. The level doesn't matter. I will pay 15 mill inf for it, as I'm generous. [Link]

But only bidding 10 million on the Market forum? Clever! (And no, I don't have it either, I just found that humorous.)

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Nothing to do with republishing. They just all get whacked every now and then.

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When MA first came out, I played a LOT of arcs through to the end -- some great ones, some good ones, some mediocre ones, and some that were so totally awful that they were funny. To those, my subconscious kept crying "well, this arc's GOT to get better -- it can't POSSIBLY get any worse!" and my subconscious was WRONG.

One day I noticed I had a TON of souvenirs -- like, 30 or 50 or something. Some were cool, some were horrid and reminded me of an agonizing arc. "Oh, look, we can delete individual souvenirs," I remember thinking. "But this could get pretty unwieldy down the road."

A few days later, I tried to tell my friend about one I got from an arc we'd played together a week prior. I opened that section and I had ONE souvenir from the arc I'd played that afternoon.

I petitioned. Short answer: "Yeah, we know about that bug/problem -- we had it back in beta, too."

I replied "but will we get them back? Some of them were COOL and/or funny!"

Short answer: "We don't know, but don't hold your breath."

It's been weeks now; I haven't gotten them back and at this point don't really expect to. *sigh*

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I mean come on, is this really reasonable?

Gouging


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Well, *I* think it's pretty unreasonable, but whoever was PAYING up to 500k apparently found it reasonable ENOUGH to get one "NAO!!!" Presumably a bunch of other people waited a few hours and got theirs for a reasonable fee.

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I think we should have a stock standard answer that we all use in reply to market-hating blow-ins. Or even the market-hating regulars, for that matter.

Something short and sweet like 'You're right!'

I reckon that should cut down the complaints pretty quickly. Hard to sustain an argument against people that agree with you. Maybe we can come up with a backronym that describes our real argument.

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I humbly suggest "You're right -- now fetch me a [noun]" or "You're right -- now deliver this [noun]."

(Which is, of course, a sly wink towards Progress Quest since these "quests" aren't quite as easy in CoX! And of course, bonus points for "now fetch me a LotG Recharge!")

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1: Supergroup Mode becomes available when you join or create a Supergroup, obviously. When this mode is activated, you don't gain as much Influence/Infamy as usual (I think), but earn Prestige, which your Supergroup can use to build a base and pay rent.

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Actually, you DO get just as much influence/infamy up to level 24, according to Paragon Wiki, and then after that you start earning less and less influence/infamy if you stay in SG mode.

Paragon Wiki Prestige

And yes, Paragon Wiki is a handy link -- I bookmarked it.

Paragon Wiki

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Maybe the powers that be are hoping that the shiny "Architect Edition" boxes will bring in as many as they lose. Maybe they're looking farther down the road and hoping "Going Rogue" will bring in fifty times that many new players.


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The problem I see with that concept is that "Going Rogue" is going to appeal to current players, not NEW players who havent tried either hero or villain, so they don't even know that certain archetypes are limited, etc. You lose the current base, then Going Rogue will have the resale value of a new expansion to Star Wars Galaxies or Tabula Rasa.

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While I'll agree that I think MOST of the appeal is going to be for existing players, you can't deny that they talked up Mission Architect to get a buzz going, and it seemed as though there were a bunch of allegedly new players using MA in the early days.

Frankly, I was kind of surprised that they printed a shiny new box to put (hopefully) shiny new CD's or DVD's into, but there they were at my computer store, sitting on the shelf. The experts figured that those would reach new customers as well.

I'm not sure if "Going Rogue" is going to get its own shiny new cardboard box (printing cardboard boxes can't be THAT expensive) but I'm sure they'll get some sort of buzz going about it, too.

"Never before in an MMO...."
"Walk the line between good and evil...."
"Superhero, supervillain, or....vigilante?"
"Answer to no one. Choose your own destiny."

Blah blah, blah blah blah. THEY have professionals to write that stuff, whose job IS to bring in new people.

Are they any GOOD at it, though? I guess we'll find out.

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I mean...the phantom merits sounds really weird.

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Well, they're not really "phantom merits." I got them on the first new toon I made since I got the badge -- no idea if they apply to already existing toons, though. But as soon as I logged in, and got through the barrage of "Badge Earned!" messages, "Merit Reward!" popped up, too.

From paragonwiki:

60 Month Reward

* City Traveler Badge
* Unlocks access to the following Power Pools at level 6, so players can access Tier 1, 2, or 3 powers early on.
o Flight
o Speed
o Teleport
o Leaping

* 1 Free Character Slot Per account.
* 5 Free Merit Rewards

And yes, that toon hit level 6 and I got to jump right to my travel power. No "take one of these prerequisites before 14," just "go directly to travel power at level 6." Kind of fun, and made me wonder if I wanted to go chase after a Raptor Pack.

Maybe I need more caffeine, but after reading the Captain Marvel entry on wikipedia -- yes, the Marvel Comics Captain Marvel and not the DC version, nor the Fawcett Comics version -- I'm still back on "what the heck's wrong with the name "Nexus Ar'gos?""

Seems as though the character needed a non-homage "look" and maybe a "bio retcon" -- can someone perhaps explain how the NAME became an issue?!

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At first glance, it looks 'random' but I don't think you could just throw something like this together, you had to think about what you were building.

Thus, "I didn't know my mission was being farmed!" is, using your term, horsepucky.

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I think there's a miniscule chance that the ORIGINAL mission was designed by a TRULY demented 37th level scrapper, who wanted to take on some +5 Rikti. Or, given the number of allies, maybe it was an equally demented, albeit squishier, 37th level insert-other-AT here. And when I say "miniscule", I mean something like less than half a percent probability.

Now, even if that were the case, it all fell apart when the first lower-than-37th buddy played it and got more XP's than s/he could carry, and either told someone else or made their own. And the odds that NONE of the creators of the other 73,497 or so, very-quickly-pulled-by-the-devs knock-off farms DIDN'T know what they were doing?!

Probably about the same odds of someone hitting the lottery... ...while being struck by lightning...while being eaten by a shark.

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Even if you are happy with everything about the game, you should be worried about too many people unsubscribing.

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And we come full circle, for the thousandth time!

Maybe the powers that be are hoping that the shiny "Architect Edition" boxes will bring in as many as they lose. Maybe they're looking farther down the road and hoping "Going Rogue" will bring in fifty times that many new players.

I really like the idea someone had in the first, original, 600+ plus page thread: we should make every thread that degenerates into this argument into a drinking game!!! Everybody has to drink when someone says one of five catch-phrases?

Or maybe we should make it like an office football pool and everybody gets a number from 1-100 for various re-re-re-re-re-posts? How long from when someone says "it's officially degenerated -- start counting!!" until someone says one of the following?

"I'm leaving and taking my friends with me!"

"Can I has your stuff?"

"Doom!"

"Farming is/is not ebil!!"

Or of course, how many posts between the "okay, start!" and when they lock the thread.

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*cue dramatic ominous music*

Oh noooes.... it could be ... ME!!

*insert record scratch noise*

If Posi WANTED to chase off the game population, say, to a certain superhero-themed MMO currently in beta testing that I cannot confirm or deny having experience playing, he'd probably do something a LOT WORSE.

Yanno, like, say, yank the MA right back out, nerf level pacting, put timers on every instance mission, and double the effects of ED and the GDN. All in the same week.

Oh, and make all the zones free-for-all PvP. That'd definitely chase folks off, there.

How's that for dramatic baseless extrapolation? Was it too over the top? cos I can never tell....

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*applauds Soul_Train*

Over the top? On THIS forum? Nah, you're good. Great, even!

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i13 pvpers.
i14 farmers & MA creators.
i15 could be you.

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Hmmmm.

Issue 1: rolled a katana/regen scrapper. Heavily nerfed until what? Issue 4? I lived, and quietly agreed that yeah, regen scrappers were MASSIVELY overpowered at the start. I also got alt-itis and didn't get that scrapper past 40 until they were done nerfing. Bad timing. *shrug*

Issues 2-12: survived ED, miscellaneous other nerfs -- some good, some bad.

Issue 13: rolled a fire/kin-troller which sat idle until AFTER that particular pet nerf. *shrug* Bad timing.

Issue 14: still haven't published an arc, didn't really "farm," but have enjoyed the heck out of some of the well-written arcs others have worked on.

Issue 15: holds no particular fear for me. Nor do subsequent ones.

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You got me there -- but you can't really compare SOs to level 50 IOs, which are WAY better than SOs (they give a 42.4% bonus, while a level 50 SO provides 33.3% for a level 50 character). You really should compare SO costs to crafting a level 30 (34.8%) IO.

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Well, sure, if we're comparing 50th SO's to 30th IO's, the numbers are a lot different, and you're absolutely right: A level 50 damage/healing SO costs 60k, a memorized level 30 damage/healing IO has a crafting cost of 30.9k or 51.5% of the SO's cost.. Level 50 defense SO costs 42k; a level 30 defense IO (memorized cost) is only 29k or 69% of the SO.

Without prior knowledge, though, that we're mixing and matching.... <laugh>

I've said many a time that my Jeep can blow the doors off most Ferraris and Lamborghinis in a drag race. Heck, depending on the model, I'll race for cash, pink slips, or anything else they can dream up. And yes, I'm quite serious!

...of course, I get to pick the track and the day. Countachs, Diablos, and Murciélagos don't run so well in the mud, and don't even get me started on the creeks and log crossings.

But, we can't buy exotic imported supercars with MA tickets either, which is where we got started here.

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Looking at the first quarter report from NCSoft. First they didn't list number of active accounts or daily population of any of their games, just income numbers per game.

Looking at income from 1Q08, 4Q08 and 1Q09. The amount is in millions of Korean Won.

1Q08 -- 5,164

4Q08 -- 6,865

1Q09 -- 6,837

Adjusting the 1Q09 into US dollars that's approximately $5.5 million dollars for the quarter. At $15 a month that's roughly 120,000 accounts. Bulk time purchases being cheaper per month would raise that number, income from $10 add on packs would lower it.


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This thread got me interested in the topic for a second time -- last time my search-fu skills were weak, but THIS time I managed to find what I think is the same nifty PDF file with colored charts -- on page 5 there are the same numbers FatherXmas used:
NCSoft Quarterly Reports

My question is, as that page is titled "Sales Breakdown," is that actual copies of the games SOLD? Actual copies sold plus monthly fees? Just monthly fees? How can we tell? And how come annual/quarterly reports always tend to be vague? (And of course, I'm curious about what "excluding royalty" means, exactly.)

Meanwhile, over on page 8, EVERYTHING first quarter '09 looks amazingly higher than it did the previous quarters..."net income" is up over 300%?! Looks like they're doing something right somewhere -- but what?

Sadly, I'm not much of a techy myself, but dropped in here 'cause I MIGHT be buying a laptop...in a year....maybe.... I mostly read this thread to learn stuff....

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Last I checked, installing Chrome added a Scheduled Task that keeps restarting GoogleUpdater whenever you shut it down....

You should find the scheduled task under Start Menu/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Task Scheduler, and if you so desire you should be able to delete the task from there.

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...and once again, I learned (cool) stuff! Thank you, Stargazer!! Hopefully that's one more thing I finally got rid of on this already-overtaxed system -- we'll find out when I reboot?

I'm glad we've at least got choices with what we can do with tickets -- so far I've used most of the options!

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I am of a disposition that makes me not fond of rolling for anything. The many times something worthless comes down the pipe loom large in memory.

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That sounds as though you tend to roll like I did yesterday -- 4 of 14 bronze recipes were worth crafting for a profit, and 10 were vendor trash (including FIVE pet recipes, which are generally next to worthless blueside.) Woo. Or, 28.5% were winners if you're keeping score.

On the other hand, the day before I got 22 of 29 bronze rolls that were worth crafting, with an estimated "last five" value of a little over 110 million! (Or a remarkable 75.8% were "winners", which is about double my guesstimated average since MA launched.) So far, I've made 85 million with a few that I may have to reprice. *shrug* Over two days, I'm still over my "about 40% are keepers" average, which means I'm probably due for another awful day at the ol' ticket casino sometime soon.

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The other thing I get with tickets are rare and uncommon salvage which can be made to order.

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That time I got 29 rolls which "paid out" over 100 million, I could have bought 5 Pangean Soils. Estimated retail value: about 5 million influence this week.

On the flip side, you got to take the money and run; I got to spend about an hour making my salvage list, bidding on salvage, doing something else while the bids "filled" (time I'm not counting here), running back to WW's to pick up salvage, running to the base and crafting, going BACK and bidding on the two items I forgot, crafting some more, and then making three trips to WW's with my "market toons" and putting everything up for sale.

An hour of drudge work during my semi-valuable "play time" -- semi-big virtual bucks.

An hour of doing whatever YOU wanted to do -- priceless!

I might have gotten the short end of the proverbial stick there after all, huh?

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To the OP: I'm sorry if you came in here with your idea and we were all "My wallet is far mightier than your puny mind can imagine."

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Yes, I'm sorry as well if that's the way that came off! I think most of us just wanted to point out some of the other great ways out there....

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The market is like a pinball game. You start out, and you get like half a million, and you think that's pretty damn good. Then you figure something out and you get like two million and you think THAT's good. Then you see someone get fifteen million.... damn.

There are a bunch of ways of making money, and the thing is that there's such an embarassing surplus out there that we can talk about them all day- broadcast in Atlas Park- write guides- and these ways STILL WORK.

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It'd be kind of like the early days of the California gold rush, if there was a practically unlimited supply of gold:

A guy walks into the assayer's office, carrying a bag full of gold nuggets. "Yahoo!! I'm rich!"

He walks out, only to bump into a guy with a wheelbarrow full of bigger bags. "Whoa! Where'd you get all THAT?"

"'bout three miles south of Pickle Creek. Nuggets the size of my fist, and I'LL never be able to carry it all out. You should come take a look -- ain't but a few of us up there."

While they're talking, a guy rolls up in a wagon, with a load so huge some of it won't fit into bags. The first two guys just stare.

"Pickle Creek?" says the third guy. "I've been working about five miles north o' there. Big chunks o' gold the size of my HEAD, and I'll never be able to haul it all outta there. Sounds like you two need to come on upriver -- and bring your own wagons!"

The scary thing is, as Fulmens said, there's so many different ways to make a profit there that there's no end in sight, and that opens up alternatives to find what works best for you.

Arbitage is a nice, risk-free system, but I suspect it's one of the lower time-to-money methods out there.

Crafting-for-profit and "flipping" both involve some degree of risk, but I think they're higher on the time-to-money chart.

The really high end of the spectrum is where people can make a LOT of money in a short time, but I'm kind of with Fulmens here -- I'm still a little scared of that myself, having lost a hundred million or so when I placed bad bets and the market shifted both times. Of course, I got right back on that horse and eventually got my money back and then some.

Experiment, have fun, play around with different ideas, see what other people are saying and trying themselves, and I think it's worth saying twice: have fun!!

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I will also here plug Mike McQuay, an old college professor of mine, who wrote some SF Noir about a character named "Matt Swain". Thanks, Mike.

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Wow -- I remember picking up the first one of those in the bookstore and thinking "mixing these two genres is either going to be a disaster, or it'll be great!" Of course, that was a year or so after "Outland" with Sean Connery, a sci-fi western...and I thought both it and the Matthew Swain stories were pretty good!

And again, you did an awesome job with your story, too!

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QR - 'Kiss Hello Goodbye' is an awesome noir title.

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Shameless plug: IMHO, the title's not the only awesome thing about it -- the whole arc's full of awesomesauce! Plot, characters, dialog -- they're all great and I thought it stayed very true to the genre!

PS: when's the next one?!?!
PPS: sheer nosiness, but was there a particular author you were inspired by for that? I guessed Mickey Spillane, but if there even WAS a particular inspiration, there's a bunch to pick from. Again, great job!

Good ideas, Rodion, and I'll agree with all but:

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If you can't find IOs for sale on the market and you already have a 50, consider going for the crafting accolade. Once you memorize a recipe, you craft it at half the cost and you don't need a recipe. This winds up making IOs cheaper than SOs in most cases (especially if you have the salvage). If your characters are in the same supergroup you can place the crafted IOs in storage and retrieve them with any of your alts.

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I just ran my main toon (with Field Crafter) to RWZ to compare prices -- level 50 damage and healing SO's are two of the most expensive at 60,000 inf each.

BASE cost to craft those level 50 IO's is 464,400, my 'memorized' cost is 232,200 (plus salvage, which I might or might not have.)

That's not exactly half the cost -- the IO is more like 3.87x the cost of the same SO (which also appears to hold true with cheaper SO/IO's like Defense Buff at 3.8714x).

I've said something similar to my friends, who argue "they don't have enough GM's. They're all too busy checking and banning arcs themselves to actually screen and approve them beforehand."

To which I said "hey -- summer's right around the corner. Why couldn't Paragon Studios hire a handful of college kids -- specifically, English majors -- as summer interns for $8 an hour?"

"Look -- we'll pay you to use your major, to proofread and make MINOR edits when necessary, and to make sure these player-created arcs fit OUR criteria. And you'll get valuable experience working inside the world of gaming, which will look good on a resumé!"

It'd be a minor expense, perhaps offset in part by all the new copies of CoX they're selling with the "MISSION ARCHITECT" logo on the front. Otherwise, with school out, I cynically suspect the GM's will be even busier checking and banning new arcs than they are now.

*shrug* Or maybe the idea has all the flight characteristics of a cinder block. I just wanted to agree with the OP's idea and perhaps even expand upon it.

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I am open to all intelligent ideas.... not everyone stumbles upon the same ideas so pm if you care to share this, as it sounds great. let me know what to do! I'm not about fighting and debating, I'm all about finding better ways, so lets hear it!

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I don't know about anybody else, but I'd still be stumbling around if it weren't for this particular forum!

Link to Market Guides

Just like any other player guides, there's bound to be a few minor inaccuracies or dated references among all the ideas and strategies, but I'd definitely suggest a quick skim through those to start, and then you might perhaps read [u]in more detail[u] about ideas that you find most interesting!

I was on a short CoX break when IO's and WW's came along. When I came back, I was a little overwhelmed at the IO system, but quickly figured out what I would want for my new "main" toon. Then I was a LOT overwhelmed at how much it was going to cost.

Soon, though, I'd figured out an arbitrage system all on my own and worked that to make my first half billion, and wow, it was a lot of work. (It didn't seem so at the time -- a few minutes at log-on and before bed sure beat hours of grinding!) And I got my new main the IO's I wanted, and was close to being broke again.

Then I discovered this particular forum. Wow -- as I tell others, "it's like a cross between the Wall Street Journal and those late-night infomercials...IF the infomercials were telling the truth, and IF they were free!"

I've since found a lot of niches beside arbitrage that work for me, lost a little influence gambling on bad bets, and made it all back within a day or two and considered it a learning experience.

Right now I'm working on about my fifth or sixth billion (which still makes me "small potatoes" around here) but according to my spreadsheet, I sometimes came close to making 50 million a week with arbitrage. Assuming most of my sales tonight go through, I'm on track to hit about 110 million in 5 days with other market strategies.

And a big belated "thank you!" to everybody here who's given me ideas and inspiration!!