Fulmens

TwoHeadedBoy:

You're doing it wrong.

I've burnt pretty near all my inf -turned it into Prestige- and I'm going to have a billion inf again within two weeks; maybe within one. It's not that we start with these tremendous reserves of inf; we start with more knowledge and that's really it.

To oversimplify, let's say I can double my inf every time and I start with a million. 1MM, 2MM, 4MM... In 7 sets of transactions I'm at 128 million, in 10 sets of transactions I'm at a billion. In actual fact some of them are "spend 5 million, sell for 35 million" and some are "spend 100 million, sell for 150 million", but double is probably a pretty good guess.

You want to get rich or you want to complain?

We're #1, or we were like an hour ago: just barely. But they're undoubtedly gonna come back strong.

In other news, I talked to one of the Wing Protector heads [EDIT: the Freedom current #2 SG], who claimed to have close to 100 billion in reserve.

Bring it, saith I.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_techne...ney-for-guards

One data point doesn't make a graph, but allegedly they're using Chinese prison labor as goldfarmers. With real life beatings if they don't make quota.

There's a lot of punch lines but with the real-life broken bones it's hard for me to really put my heart into any of them.

So I'm looking into hiring a Base Designer because, really, it's embarassing, not having a base with all that Prestige.

What are our needs? Here's my list:
1) Gaudy crap. I mean, gold-plated bathroom furnishings. Statues of kids strangling geese. The theme is "Money can't buy taste."
2) Vault, crafting table, some short-term storage.
3) Teleporters.
4) Pillar of Ice and Fire.

( ... teleporters? You mean, like, people are going to have to actually visit zones and like that? )

Anything else?

And I just sold off damn near everything and cancelled my bids in a misguided round of spring cleaning. I now have three marketing characters down to one Rare Salvage each (I hope I remembered to leave them 6 inf to list), no salvage no recipes no bids, and I burned it all.

Virtue is within, like, 100 million inf of #1 again.

AAARRGH.

By the way, if you want ultralite support: Force Field/Sonic has its pluses and its minuses.
The plus is that it's DEAD FREAKING EASY. The minus is it can make for a boring game.
1) Take everything in Force Fields except Detention Field, Repulsion Field and Force Bubble. Slot Deflection and Insulation with three Defense, slot Dispersion with one end three Defense, slot Force Bolt 1 acc/no damage [it literally does a lot less damage than brawl] and slot Repulsion Bomb 1 acc/3 dam/1 or two recharge.
2) Start with Shriek, Scream, Howl, and Shout for attacks. 1 acc, up to 3 damage as you can spare the slots. Siren's song for an "oh s*** power", only needs 1 Acc.
3) Get Maneuvers and slot it 1 end/3 defense, like Dispersion.

MACROS:
Set up the following binds once, on your character:
/bind numpad1 "say I'm a Force Fielder. For best results keep arms, legs and tentacles inside the big bubble; if you don't have the little bubbles, yell at me."
/bind numpad9 "/t $target, your bubbles are expiring soon."
PLAYSTYLE:
At the start of the game, turn on Maneuvers and Deflection Shield, and hit 1 on your numpad when you join a team. Put a little kitchen timer on your desk. Set it to three or 3.5 minutes. Bubble all your teammates [shift-1 targets your teammate.] I have the bubbles on 6 and 7, so it goes something like this for me (if I'm on a 6-person team in slot 4): "shift-1,6,7, shift-2,6,7, shift-3,6,7 [skip me], shift-5,6,7,shift-6,6,7" and then you go back to what you were doing: SHATTERING PEOPLE'S SKULLS WITH SOUND. When the timer goes off, reset it and rebubble your team. If someone's out of range hit 9 on the numpad and go to the next person.
Other than that: Shoot badguys. Try to not jump around TOO much so people can find the big bubble as needed. If someone is being obstreperous, use Force Bolt to put them on the ground, shoot them a couple times, repeat until they stop bothering you. If you are about to die, turn on Personal Force Field and leave. You can't help the team from inside PFF, but you can't help them lying on the floor either. You _might_ want a bind that says something like "Hiding in the fortress of solitude. Good luck out there."

You don't have a heal. You don't have a rez. Those things are for people who are not in the big bubble. If people are still getting killed and they're up next to you, either they're up against one of about six enemies in the game [Ruularuu, I'm lookin at you] or they're trying entirely too hard. If someone wants a heal pass them a green and say "Be your own damn healer."

Without repeating myself too badly, I did write a Blaster Survival mini-guide. Because as they used to say, "If the Blaster screws up, they die. If anyone else on the team screws up, the Blaster dies."

I'm going to put in a vote for Fire/Ice blaster- it's not exactly what she's used to visually, but it's got some ability to defend itself a little bit, and Fireball/Firebreath will drop ten even-con minions in the first four seconds. If you're going to hell anyway, might as well show up with a bunch of new friends.

OK, I got decisive. Freedom 88s are #20, and over 200 million prestige served.

Neuronia:

I once generated something like 1.5 billion inf in the market through a bug- I managed to buy ten high-end items when I could only afford one, and the money just came out of nowhere. I didn't, as it happened, sell to myself all afternoon and make 150 billion inf come out of nowhere- but I could have. I have a friend who said "If you told me about that bug, I would have bought every purple in Wentworth's and given them to level 3's."

And let us not forget the level 50 masterminds going into the big shiny building and inf-capping in a day.

Reward Merits, Alignment Merits, Empyrean Merits, whatever kind of Zorkmids they give us next: they're all locked to the character and you have to play the Devs' content to get 'em.

It's like they want us to play their game and not their market. (Obviously their mind control doesn't work on ME.)

Here's "the thing":you won't get to beat up dozens of guys at once until you hit, oh, at LEAST level 22. Which could take a WEEK! or more!

I normally restrict myself to one monologue per new kid, but I'm going to give two this time. Because I deserve a treat.

1) Enhancements! enhancements. There are two "systems" of enhancements: the traditional (single-origin aka SO after level 22, dual-origin aka DO after level 12, training origins initially) and the newer invention-origins. IO's vary from slightly more performance than traditional to "totally change the way the character plays" (at high level, with an investment of squillions of inf and a lot of planning.) They're also a LOT more work and have a brutal learning curve. You can do just fine with traditional enhancements until you get your feet under you in the rest of the game. ("Did we just get our *** kicked by a mushroom?" -Me, August 2004)
So. Enhancements make a really big difference. You can enhance up to about double strength (except a few where you can enhance up to about 60%- you'll know them because SO's only give 20%) which is three SO's or six DO's.
"Standard SO Slotting" is one accuracy three damage on attacks, and then "chrome" in any other slots- usually endurance reduction, recharge reduction. Defensive powers usually get one endurance reduction, three defense or damage-resistance.

2) Money. When you're playing with traditional enhancements, it costs something like 15 million inf, level 1-50, to outfit yourself. There are invention-origin enhancements that cost a whole lot more than 15 million inf, EACH. So your "traditional enhancement" investment is really low, so you don't HAVE to spend a lot of time worrying about costs of things at the auction house. You can sell everything for 1 inf. The way the system works is "lowest seller sells to highest current bidder" which means you will get a little bit ripped off selling for 1 inf. But only a little bit, and you don't need very much inf at all BY AUCTION HOUSE STANDARDS so you will still stack money up pretty fast. If you need any inf, send me a tell at @Boltcutter and I'll give you a million, you should be self-sufficient after that.

One of the most Soylent Cola characters I built- not the fastest, not the most powerful- was a Dark/Traps corruptor, emphasis on Defense and Acc Debuff. The enemies miss because you MAKE them miss- get them in the cone of tentacles, hit them with the other cone, drop stuff on them to make them weak and stupid. You have a small heal [if you hit!] and a lot of ways of digging yourself out of trouble- but you can get IN trouble if, say, you have an unlucky alpha, or your FF drone pops at the wrong time.

It was fun for me. It was like a Super Reflexes blaster with a lot of twiddling required to make it work.

You may find some use in the mini-guides in my sig.

Or this more extensive guide which unfortunately got somewhat munged when the forum software changed.

Or the reference of doom .

TL;DR? you can go with cheap stuff and patience to get a considerable improvement in your power; you can then go with much, much, much more expensive stuff to practically turn yourself into a whole different character.

I'm hoping there's some inf drain as well.

I suspect this will be another thing like "purples with A-merits"- considerably overpriced, that is. On the other hand if you've already bought everything you need, why NOT spend them on 'overpriced' items? You're slightly adding to the supply and using stuff you can't get rid of any other way...

I remember one of these threads from a few years ago where someone said they were Top Knot Guy in beta and someone liked the look. Sorry I can't narrow it down any more than that.

... This has probably gotten a bit technical for someone who's only one month into the game.

Dear OP: Giant Monsters are _designed_ to be beaten by, roughly, ten or twelve ordinary, not-built-for-crazy-stuff, characters. They con deep purple for a reason.

Yes, it is possible that if you're running the right character, with the right build, and a lot of temporary powers, and it's the second full moon in a month, you can beat a Giant Monster by yourself.

For reference, Archvillians are easier than Giant Monsters and I've got one character who's soloed an Archvillian. (one Archvillian.) And I've been here almost seven years.

So ... I wouldn't try it.

Wow, the actual movie Fight Club was from the Clinton administration. You may all feel old now.

We've got a new chapter of the Crazy 88s on Freedom! Well, "new" in the sense that we haven't done anything with the place.

Anyone feel inspired? What would you do with over a hundred million Prestige?

(I will sponsor the basebuilder: this time, I think it takes TWO billion inf to get base building privileges.)

Two things:

1) I have enough spare inf to either recapture #1 on Virtue, or reach #20 on Freedom, but not both. Opinions?

2) We should do something with the place. Do I have permission to visit the basebuilder forum and hire someone?

Jimmy: the only way to "sell" crafted IO's is to respec out and leave them in your tray. You get crafting price [so for that Panacea: 600,000 inf or something. Off by three ZEROES from "a fair price"] or, for generics, half crafting price.

Things that can go wrong on Lusca, the Old Days version:

* Different teams attacked different tentacles, or general noncommunication between teams
* There are four tentacles that tend to hang out very close to each other, causing aggro
* Squishies got whiney after their fourth no-warning death and left halfway through

Lusca's not nine times tougher than a normal GM... but might be two or three times tougher. Heck, I remember the first time I saw Jurrasik and he was pretty scary. Of course, I didn't even know what Rad defenders DID back then.

(In that "don't bring [thing x] list, add "Don't bring Envenomed Daggers.")

We know the game better. We've got way more tools. Heck, back in the day you couldn't easily resupply on SMALL insps, never mind going to wents and picking up a bunch of LARGE ones.

I just started a new critter. I wanted to build some inf for itself, so I bought some level 50 IO's at 120K, listed them at 201K, and they sold for a million.

For any given value of "enough inf", There's always SOMEONE for whom that's not enough inf to bother with.

Also, if you play a "finished/nearly finished" character a lot, you have a lot of spare inf. What else you going to do with it, make a bonfire on Virtue?

I had three IOs left to go on a build recently. I overspent by close to a hundred million inf. . . of course, I spent half of that thinking I was buying the LAST IO and I had two to go.

So, sometimes, me.