LJHalfbreed

4.) The Right Tool for the Right Job at the Right Level

There is currently a tightly held belief by many that malefactor/exemplar often, that it's best to situate their enhancements to do the most good at those levels. The current standing is when dealing with Invention sets and their Set bonuses, once you are more than 3 levels below the invention, it ceases to count towards your 'amount of set slotted'. To better illustrate, imagine you had two 'Blue Steel's Billy Club Beatdown' enhancements in a power, both at level 50, and a further 4 'Blue Steel's Billy Club Beatdown' enhancements in the same power, all at lvl 25. If you malefactor to 45 (outside the 3 level range of the 50s), your set bonus will count as if you only have FOUR of the enhancements, not 6. You'll still get whatever stat bonus the enhancement itself gives (such as accuracy, dmg, etc), but it won't count towards the set bonus.

So, for the dedicated min-maxer that likes to be at their best with the most set bonuses, even when dropped down in level for TF/SF fun, or even PvP, it's best to have enhancements that are as close to the 'cap' for those particular levels, even if it means a reduced strength enhancement. So, you'll tend to see many recipes that are in that particular range (such as 30-33 for Siren's call), sometimes go for double the price of the same recipe that's only one or two levels higher/lower.

You'll also find that some recipes have an extremely high demand due to their secondary effects/set bonuses, and will be useful to lower level characters, further increasing the price.

Finally, some recipes can only be gotten by lower-level characters running TF/SF/Trials for their level range. Because the TF/SF/Trial reward is directly based off the character’s actual level, you’ll tend to see more high level Pool C/Ds than low-level ones.

SUMMARY: Some recipes are 'worth' more than others of the same exact type strictly because of their level. For Pool C and D recipes, this can mean doubling of the price or more, since it requires a lower level character to get a lower level reward.

3.) Brick-and-Mortars are locked by borders...and transaction 'slots'.

Much like an actual, physical store, our buying and selling is limited by our transaction space. A store, especially a 'nifty chain store' can even employ dozens of people to make sure they maximize the amount of product they expose their customers to, in order to guarantee an extra sale, and therefore, profit.

We don't really have those kind of sales/marketing techniques available to us.

We can't color an available sale 'green' because a group of scientists tells us it's more soothing to a potential customer's impulse buying response. Nor can we have a blue-light special on luck charms, and expect to upsell the customers on boresights at the checkout counter. We both, however, need to maximize our selling space to the best of our abilities, and therefore, tend to avoid low-volume, low-profit sales in favor of high-volume, high-profit items.

So that means that our nifty heal sets probably will get posted instead of our immobilize sets, or similar, just like a chain store for clothing probably won't carry dog food, even if someone eventually would buy that dogfood. Because we have limited space to sell items, we will inherently gravitate towards items that look like they're actually selling. Sure, someone out there might be willing to pay 128 million for a rare sleep recipe between lvls 38-40, but if we see no sales transactions in the marketplace for our lvl 39 rare sleep recipe, we'll probably just sell it direct to a quartermaster and put up a Crushing Impact instead. The lack of sales space forces us to focus on what's actually moving, otherwise we get stuck with a bunch of items that arent' getting sold, and we had to pay a 5% posting fee for.

Summary: Because we have limited space to sell things, we will sometimes market items at a loss (or not at all) to avoid keeping our slots filled and to keep inf rolling in/out. This directly results in some items/salvage/recipes that never get traded on the market, decreasing their availability while focusing the market on more salable items.

2.) I'm ok, you're ok, but that guy is a [u]<expletive>[u].

Some baddies can be a pain to fight, and for various reasons, enemies that drop magic salvage tend to use attacks and abilities that can be quite detrimental to your average soloing character. Why spend 5 minutes on a spawn because you have to deal with massive debuffs and end drain, when you can fight a like-leveled spawn that has none of those abilities and knock them all out in 10 seconds? Or worse, why spend an extra 20 minutes in a confusing layer-cake cave map, hunting down that danged last CoT or Carnie minion that somehow got almost-not-quite stuck in the level geometry, when you can blow through a warehouse map full of Freakshow all out in the open?

Many of the 'best' farming maps tend to have enemies that are tech-based in drops, which means that the market suffers from a large surplus of these items. Conversely, since many people dislike carnies and cave maps, magic-based salvage drops are in short supply. To compound this problem, there are roughly 20 enemy types that drop ONLY magic-based items, 33 that drop tech-only, and 5 that drop both. Finally, some enemy types are sometimes felt as more trouble than they are worth, and are avoided at nearly any level, which complicate the availability of even common salvage items in certain level ranges.

Summary: Due to enemy ability, map annoyance, farming difficulty, enemy availability and other ergonomic/Quality-of-Life factors, magic drops are in shorter supply than tech drops throughout the various salvage 'levels'.

1.) Water, water, everywhere, and nary a drop worth slotting.

A quick skimming of the starting powers/powersets throughout the various ATs on your side should point you easily in the direction of which recipes are going to be inherently worth more than others. However, some particular enhancement types (PBAoE, Healing, etc) may have multiple sets available (Regenerative Tissue, Miracle, etc) within their type. Then there are other enhancement types that only have a few sets available. So, even though you may have just gotten an 'orange recipe' drop, if it's for something that is little used (say, comparing an orange sleep to an orange melee), you may not get what you see other similarly rare items going for. The amount of sets for a given enhancement type, the levels within those sets, the set bonuses, the enhancement bonuses/levels of the actual item itself, and the amount of powers that can take that kind of set all combine into a perceived value for that particular recipe. This is why you might work your tail off during a trial or task force to gain an orange snipe recipe that sells on the market for 5-10k, and find out that a yellow melee recipe you got from an unrelated mission the other day goes for 500k.

This is where the idea of 'scarcity' comes into play. It's quite easy to play this game, and 'produce' a drop. However, due to the RNG, maybe you got an inspiration instead of a recipe or invention salvage. And even if you do get a recipe or invention salvage, there's also another spin on the RNG to determine what rarity/kind it is. And, of course, if you’re on a team, you automatically share each chance at a drop, which will make your chances of getting something even slimmer. So, although you can concentrate on getting drops, and even get more drops that others in the same amount of time, even solo, you can't guarantee which exact drop you'll get next. Conversely, many players know what they want, and use the markets to get what they want, even if it's extremely difficult or time consuming to get what they want. This introduces scarcity to our marketplace because the more some item becomes in demand, the more obvious the difficulty to 'produce' specific items with accuracy. We can guarantee producing a pool C drop by fully completing a TF/SF, but we can't guarantee it will be a specific recipe within that pool.

SUMMARY: Due to scarcity (not rarity!), just because it's orange doesn't mean anything. Just because it's a pool B/C/D drop doesn't mean too much at times either. The usability and utility of an item, especially recipes/enh that can be used by the largest part of the population, will usually increase the price of said item way beyond what people normally expect to see. Scarcity runs our market, and the more we feel we *need* X salvage or Y recipe and need it *now*, the higher the prices will get due to our demand, even if that item can be gained simply by playing a bit more, or leaving a bid open for longer than thirty seconds.

PART TWO: STATING THE OBVIOUS IN TERMS OF THE INCOMPREHENSIBLE

Explaining some economic things like rarity, scarcity, usefulness, hoarding, surpluses, shortages, spoilages, and other economy/business terms nobody really cares about, but still directly enhance/affect/change/create our marketplace(s), or "hw0 k0m3 dis kRaP c0s+ s0 mUcH????/// <expletive> !!!!1111oneone"

4.) The ancient bone's connected to the... bleeding stone?

In addition to the other stuff enemies like to drop upon defeat, we have two fun bits of... stuff. Firstly, we have 'base salvage'. Base salvage is used to help create items within bases, whether it'd be a zone teleporter or a nifty scrying object or giant supercomputers or what-have-you. Unfortunately, with the current lack of SG's razing each other’s bases to the ground over Items of Power, we tend to have a glut of these. They're useful for gaining some badges, but other than that, these hold more worth within the SG than they do on the open market.

Secondly, we have the 'important' salvage, namely, Invention salvage. This is the salvage that is required to create actual enhancements out of those recipes you've been getting from the various pools. Each recipe needs anywhere from 2 or 4 or more salvage pieces, usually of different type-trees or rarities, to be created. There's also a drop rate for salvage, which is a bit more generous than Pool A recipes ( 8%/10%/25% for minion/LT/Boss, with a rarity ratio of 22:5:1 for com/unc/rare)

Third, your invention salvage has the lucky ability to be placed in a per-character storage vault, either accessible in a 'Vault Reserve' location, or if your SG has one, a salvage vault. So, if you are carrying items that you wish to hang on to for later, you can do so. Finally, and most importantly, the invention salvage is divided up into 'levels'. Even if you get a recipe during a mission (especially if you are mal'ed/exemp'ed, or LK/SK'd), you can't be guaranteed that you'll be getting the correct salvage from those enemies to create the item.

[u]Helpful hint:[u] By bringing up the info window on an enemy, you should see a tab that will tell you what salvage that particular enemy has the chance to drop, including if any of those items it drops will work in any of your currently carried recipes.

As per Pool A recipes, salvage drops are directly affected by your enemy mobs defeated per hour skill, divided by the number of people in the group.

Pamela and Harry, like usual, rake in these drops like nobody's business.

Chuck, having chosen the winners of the costume contest, is now inviting some of the better named/costumed/background-ed characters with no SG to join his own SG. No drops.

Terri, having the same defeat/hour ratio as Pam and Harry, gets a few drops, even though her items are split between herself and 7 other teammates.

Sam, feeling feisty, streetsweeps for a bit, focusing purely on CoT bosses. While not getting the same defeat/hour ratio as the others, Sam is getting a higher chance at a drop due to the boss drop rates. End result? Almost nearly as many salvage drops as Pamela and Harry, with very little effort.

Summary: Even though it's much easier to get salvage than recipes, you can easily get more recipes than salvage to create them, or at least not have the right salvage needed to finish the item. So, you'll need to hit up the marketplace to cover your missing items, or concentrate on fighting enemies that drop what you need, or trade directly with other players.

3Z.) Pool 'Z' Recipes

Pool 'Z' is an [u]imaginary pool[u] I made up to cover the existence of the relatively-new 'Ultra-rare Purple Invention Recipes'. These are special in that they are unique, extremely difficult to get, and can only be gotten as drops from enemies that are already dropping lvl 50+ items. These Ultra-rare drops are still part of Pool A, shifting the ratio from 32:8:1 (common/uncommon/rare) to something like 64:16:2:1 (com/Unc/Rare/U.rare), or even as tiny as 256:64:8:1. As far as I can tell, none of the devs even want to mention how 'small' the drop rate is. Either way, this is only a pool you can get things from if you're fighting things that are (usually) lvl 50 or higher, so it counts as the 'Pool A' set, with just a simple rule check for enemy level. Let's see how our helpers fare:

Harry, if he's fighting lvl 50s (which he seems to be), scores pretty highly on this list, just like he would on regular Pool A drops. We'll say that he's able to score a minimum of 1 an hour.

Pamela, like harry, is pulling off the same thing, sans inf gain. 1 an hour.

Chuck, being sociable, is actually *awarding* a purple IO donated by one of his SG members to the winner of the costume contest. No recipes an hour, but he still knows they exist.

Terri was unlucky, and during her hour of play, didn't get any purples. She did, however, curse under her breath when the lvl 48 character that seemed to be along for the ride and wasn't even assisting with the battles, mentioned that they got an Armageddon off that last Bane Spider. No recipes an hour, but the team did receive one.

Sam Solo, however, is laughing all the way to bank, as Fate smiled broadly and granted a total of 2 different purple IO drops on a relatively easy Freakshow mission during their hour of play.

Pool Z Summary: Granted, I made up Pool Z, but I feel it is tiny enough to practically warrant its own just-as-tiny pool and just-as-tiny drop rate, especially due to player demand of these ultra-rares. These do exist, with some players having all the luck and seeing multiples in a play session, and other players only seeing them up for sale in the market and never in their rewards window. Again, like the pool A recipes, and since the drop rate is (technically) so low, the best way to increase your chances of hitting the "Beat-A-Mob Multi-Million-Jackpot" is to smash more baddies faster with less people on your team.




All Pools Summary: Hammering away at minions is generally the easiest and fastest way to get recipes, but it can be noted that some recipes can take much longer to get just by the way they are rewarded. It is also helpful to note that if your character isn't all that great at soloing/farming (or you detest it as a player) there are at least 3 other recipe pools you can try to get picks from by doing things other than 'farming the same dumb mission repeatedly'.

3D.) Pool D recipes

Ah, the joy of some and the bane of others, it's the pool of recipes available as rewards to those doing Trials and supposedly, the Hami raid! Keep in mind that I say 'Supposedly', as I am entirely too afraid of getting a yucky recipe to pick anything but the Hami, so I'm afraid to even find out. In the beginning, I believe the devs planned to have 'Trials' be some sort of uber-TF/SF. In other words, for an extra amount of risk/time expenditure, they wanted to give a special reward. Some trials give you the chance at weird new enhancements, some give you access to a respec for your character, and so on. However, these rewards fall under a rule of 'once every 24 hours' per character.

As we know, 3 of our helpers can't do anything. One is socializing, the other two are 'farming'. Sam, after the trauma of trying to solo a TF/SF, decides they'd be better off clearing out a few more Oro missions.

So, it takes our hapless Teaming Terri and her team 24 hours to do a Trial. End result? 1 Pool D recipes per day. And yes, if doing a trial that involves other missions/baddies, you can have chances at the pool A and pool B recipes again.

Pool D Summary: Again, given the time, effort and 24-hour timer involved in obtaining a Pool D recipe, these also tend to be in short supply. However, due to the relative small size in said pool, along with what is assumed to be a lack of 'important' recipes (such as many high-demand Procs), they don't always seem to command as high of a price as many other recipes in other pools.


Edited thanks to info from rmskull, who pointed out my error with the timing. My bad!

3C.) Pool C Recipes

Pool C rewards are gained by completing TFs and SFs. There's technically a 100% chance for reward, if you (and your team) are able to complete the TF/SF, AND you choose the recipe reward option AND you have room in your inventory for the recipe. There are some barriers involved in getting to this point, as many of the TFs and SFs can be viewed as 'entirely too long' or involve malefactoring/exemplaring to a 'sub-optimal level', or against 'crappy enemies' or similar complaints/excuses. Plus, they can be pretty difficult, especially if you are unfamiliar with the SF/TF. Nevertheless, there's at least two out there that I know of that, for a while, could be reliably completed under an hour. However, for this example, we’ll say that each TF can be completed in exactly 3 hours. See, in addition to the length and difficulty of a TF/SF, the devs have instituted a rule where you can only get one ‘rare recipe reward’ from any TF/SF to just once every 3 hours. Our 4 helpers fare somewhat similarly to the Pool B example.

Hardcore Harry is still hanging out on his map. Exemplaring/Malefactoring would be too much of a deterrent to his setup. Zero Pool C an hour.

Prestige Pamela, just like Harry, has 'better things to do'. Zero Pool C an hour.

Chatting Chuck has his costume contest underway and needs to judge before he can even think about doing a TF. Zero Pool C an hour.

So, it falls next onto our poor Teaming Terri, who decided to do a TF/SF with her SG, and clocked out with a Pool C recipe exactly 3 hours later. 0.3333, repeating of course, Pool C recipes an hour.

Finally, Sam gets a crazy idea. After running to Warburg and getting a few nukes, and then running to Bloody Bay for some Shivans, and after getting the last few badges needed for a bunch of different accolades PLUS a few useful temp powers... Sam decides to be really hardcore, and to try and solo a TF/SF alone. Sam invites 3 random people to 'pad', and has them quit out, and then Sam goes in alone. After burning up a gazillion inspirations, dying entirely too many times, and using up every single temp power in their inventory, Sam miraculously completes the TF/SF in the blindingly quick solo speed of 3 hours. Net result: 0.3333 (repeating, of course) Pool C recipes an hour.

Pool C Summary: Here we begin to see the exaggerated effects of 'Only upon completion' that we saw earlier with Pool B recipes. Even though the reward is 100% if your team is able to complete the entire arc, the time involved, and even the difficulty, can be enough of a deterrent to keep many from trying to get one through the normal means. Also, if we're generous, and say that each TF/SF can always be completed in 15 minutes, even doing a marathon session of 24 hours of non-stop TF/SFs only gets you 8 recipes on the same character due to the ruling! Keep in mind that while doing a TF/SF, one can still get chances for many pool A rewards, and even a few pool B. The amount of effort required to get a Pool C recipe, along with the time involved, increases the scarcity of it on the marketplace, even though the rarity never truly changes (you always have a 100% chance to get a recipe, even if it takes you and your team 4 weeks to complete the SF/TF). More food for thought: The more people on the team that complete the SF/TF, the more Pool C recipes that become available to the playerbase.

3B.) Pool B Recipes

At last check, each team member has a 10% of a recipe reward upon completing a mission, whether they helped defeat everything on the map, or they sat by the entrance while the scrapper/tanker/brute/dom/troller cleared it for them. As long as they were on the mission long enough to get the reward, they get a 10% chance of getting a 'bonus' recipe as well. Let's see how our 4 helpers fare at getting mission complete (pool B) rewards!

Hardcore Harry refuses to complete his mission, as that would destroy the 'farm' he's created. Pool B per hour? ZERO

Prestige Pamela is in the same boat. Completing the mission would 'break' their farm. ZERO pool B per hour.

Chatty Chuck isn't even doing missions, as he and his friends are waiting to do 'all that noob level stuff' again with their 'new' characters when i12 comes out. ZERO pool B per hour.

Teaming Terri, therefore, is our first helper that has a chance of getting Pool B recipes. However many missions her team is able to complete an hour she, and everyone in her team, has a chance at the invisible roulette wheel that is the RNG for Pool B drops. Her team clears 10 missions, and Terri, being extremely average in luck, manages to snag one Pool B reward. The rate here is (roughly) Mission Completes divided by ten equals Pool B reward. Keep in mind that each teammate gets their own chance at the mish-complete reward, so even though she didn't get 9 out of the 10 rewards, her other teammates did, which increases the total amount of mission-complete recipes available for player use, even if Terri sees only one

Sam Solo is also clearing missions, trying to finish up arcs and get badges and souvenirs at the same time. Sam's able to clear up quite a few missions an hour, due to the smaller amounts of enemies, and the ease of going at one's own pace (even if that means Sam ghosts a few). Sam clears 15 missions an hour, and has some nice luck, resulting in an average of 2 mish-complete recipes an hour.

Pool B Summary: Despite the static 10% chance for pool B rewards, one can only complete one mission at a time, while one can (technically) defeat many mobs at the same time. One can feasibly even get plenty of Pool A rewards while trying to get even one pool b reward! So, by their very nature, Pool B rewards can be considered much harder to get over time than it is to gain Pool A rewards. So, despite a flat 10% chance upon each completion for each team member for a 'spin', the time spent to reward ratio is considered 'bad' compared to a crazy farmer and their pool A drops. However, the easiest way to get more Pool B recipes available to the playerbase is to include more members on your team when completing missions. Food for thought...

3A.) Pool A recipes (also, Pool E and Pool Z)

These go almost hand in hand with the above examples. They are explicity given out for 'mob defeats'. The numbers for drop rates are roughly 2.6%/5.3%/7.9% for minions/LTs/Bosses, with a final* rarity ratio of 32:8:1 of common:uncommon:rare. So, all pool A recipe chances are exactly the same (the drop rates for each enemy type), but the actual recipes themselves are spread out. Simply put, out of every 100, about 78 will be common, 20 will be uncommon (yellow), and 2 will be rare (orange). And, to get those rhetorical 100 recipes, you'd have to kill practically thousands of baddies. Supposedly. Again, along with the above examples, the more mobs you defeat, the more recipes you have a chance at picking up. We're also going to roll Pool E into this, for simplicity's sake. (We’ll leave ‘Pool Z’ for later)

Harry and Pamela, as above with the inf gain, are pretty well much rolling in recipes.

Terri, depending on her luck (and whether or not the numbers given by the devs are correct), can expect somewhere around 1 recipe per 40-50 mobs her team defeats. If she's lucky.

Chatty Chuck? He's joking about something OOC, so I'm not going to even bother asking him. No mob defeats past that small mob he accidentally nuked means that he has a slim-to-none chance of getting any recipes (past the normal drop rates mentioned above)

Sam is able to sweep up enemy spawns with ease, hardly needing to stop except for the occasional sneaky 'too many enemies too close together' problems. However, Sam is still solo, and therefore gets each chance at a recipe, resulting in many more than what Terri would get, but not nearly as many as Pamela or Harry.

Pool A Summary: Much like inf rates, the more baddies you defeat with less help, the more you can potentially get.

3.) There's no such thing as a free lunch (recipe)!

Some drops don't specifically involve regular mob defeats. This includes Mission Complete recipe drops, SF/TF/Trial rewards, Hami/SHO rewards, and a few others. In fact, recipes themselves come in 5 different pools to reflect this.

Pool A is purely through mob defeats.
Pool B is from mission completes
Pool C is from TF/SF completion
Pool D is from Trial completion (including Hami raids)
Pool E is purely from minions (and mainly comprises costumes)
Pool 'Z' is an imaginary pool I made up that comprises the 'ultra rare Purple recipes' that only drop from enemies that can drop lvl 50 recipes.

2.) Drops: The sure way of getting nothing from something

As part of 'offing bad guys', we each have the opportunity to get what many of us call 'drops'. This includes everything from inspirations, to enhancements, to base salvage, to invention salvage, to recipes. However, this is all entirely randomly generated. Killing mobs of any type guarantees nothing, outside of the salvage drop table mentioned for the mob, and a few rules for both higher-level and higher-class mobs (AVs/Heros drop SOs, f'r instance. Many 'pets' give no reward, etc). So for each reward-giving mob you are part of defeating, you have 6 Random Number Generators (RNGs). The first RNG 'rolls' to determine who on the team is getting the drops. Then there are 5 separate 'rolls' for each of the rewards (insps, base salvage, invention salvage, enhancement, recipe). So, the more bad guys you kill with fewer members on your team, the greater your chances of getting a ‘drop’ of any sort. If it helps you understand it better, visualize the idea that every time you have a chance at a drop, the game is really giving you a secret spin on an invisible slot machine. Sometimes you’ll get lucky and get 3 cherries, sometimes you’ll be unlucky and get nothing, while your teammate gets 3 triple bars. It’s all based on luck, and your only chance at guaranteeing something coming your way is to continually try for more chances at the invisible slot machine. So, let’s see how our helpers fare:

Hardcore Harry, soloing a map for 8, with a character 'designed' for such an occasion, gets an attempt at the ‘invisible slot machine’ for each bad guy he defeats, since he's the only one on the team. Solo x Lots of Kills= much higher chances for all enemy-defeat drops.

Casual Kim, doing her thing on a team of 8, has a smaller chance of getting mob-defeat drops, due to her teaming nature. Lots of Kills divided by team size=lower chances of getting drops.

Chatty Chuck, other than the accidental spawn nuke in PI, had tiny chance of getting drops. Solo x low amount of mob defeats= Lower chance of getting drops.

Prestige Pamela, doing the same as Harry, but while in SG mode, has a theoretical 'same chance' as him to get mob-defeat drops. Solo x High amount of mob-defeats= high chance of getting drops.

Sam Solo, as the name implies, is running solo, although not on a farming map cheesing easy minions repeatedly. Solo x Medium amount of mob-defeats= high chance of getting drops (though not as numerous as a hardcore farmer)

Summary: For many of the drops available in the game, the fastest way to gain them is to beat up more baddies on smaller teams, if not solo entirely. Although you can skew your salvage drops by fighting the correct enemies (Circle of Thorns for magical salvage drops, for instance), or other similar dev-instituted rules, you cannot guarantee any specific drop for any specific mob. So, the more times you can make the random number generator (RNG) look up a drop table with your character as the receiver, the better your chances are at getting mob-defeat drops.



Edited due to info from Fulmens, who thankfully pointed out that there are 5 separate rolls, not one single roll, for the rewards from each enemy defeat

PART ONE: ALL THAT GLITTERS IS NOT GOLD. SOMETIMES.:
An explanation behind in-game items/values/ideas that count as currency or salable items, that in turn, directly enhance/affect/change/create our marketplace(s), or "h0w k@n i maek $$$$?"

1.) Time is money. I mean Infamy/Influence. Wait no, money.

Let's say playing this game was my 'job'. The more time, and effort during that time, I put into the game, the higher turnout I'm nearly guaranteed to get. In the real world, playing this game could be likened to a 'per-piece' job. The more items you finish (time you spend doing things that put infamy/influence in your characters pocket), the higher your payment (the actual amount that ends up in your characters pocket) at the end of the work day/week/month/whatever. With me so far? Good. So to illustrate (and use some imaginary samples/numbers) let's look at a single hour of playtime for our four friendly helpers:

Hardcore Harry, a person doing their best to get tons of inf (infamy/influence), is running around the <insert easy outdoor map> spawned for 8 while running it solo. He’s averaging 1mil inf gain an hour.

Teaming Terri, a person just hanging out with their SG, does a few story arcs, maybe some street-sweeping, maybe even a quick TF. Although her team is technically tearing through mobs as quick as Harry is, she's on an 8-person team. So even though her team is killing 1mil inf/hour worth of bad guys, her share of it is only 150k an hour.

Chatty Chuck, a person who is just waiting for i12, is spending their time gabbing on their favorite few global channels, and while super-speeding to Atlas to hold a killer costume contest, accidentally kills a few Malta in PI with a nuke by hitting the wrong button while typing during auto-run. His average comes out to 10k an hour.

Prestige Pamela, a player trying to win the 'top spot' in her SG's prestige list, is playing Hardcore Harry’s same setup, but purely in SG mode as a lvl 50. Average inf earned? 0 an hour.

Sam Solo is trying to round up some funds for some purple IOs. While not on a crazy farming mission, Sam is able to complete quite a few missions and defeat a ton of enemies along the way. Average inf earned is 500k an hour.

Summary: Everyone does different stuff while playing, whether hardcore farming or PVP’ing or socializing or teaming or whatever. Our first viable way of gaining inf is directly related to how many bad guys we have a part in offing. Even with the market, inf gained through mob defeats is probably the easiest and most consistent way to gain cash without relying on luck. While outside of SG mode, Mob Defeats per hour, divided by team size equals your net inf gain. The best ways to increase this number is to defeat more badguys , spend more time at it, do it with smaller teams, or any combination (or increase) of the above. I'll say it again, in this game,[u] Time is Money.[u]

Hi! I've seen some players have difficulty understanding how our Market works and why, so I thought I'd write this up I'll try to be as simple as possible without leaving out important bits. I apologize ahead of time if I tell you things you already know, or come across as a jerk, as I truly am writing this to help the playerbase out.

INTRODUCTION:
First, we’ll need some example characters for some of the explanations below. Imagine we have 5 separate lvl 50 characters:

Hardcore Harry, your basic ubermensch character (fire/psy dom, fire/kin/fire, or whatever), is specifically geared to smite the heck out of as many enemies as possible in the shortest amount of time possible.

Prestige Pamela is a clone of Harry, except she plays purely in SG mode.

Teaming Terri is your basic teaming character, playing out of SG mode.

Chatting Chuck, a clone of Terri, is here for socializing and personal enjoyment of the game.

Sam Solo, on a self-sufficient build, is here to solo. And no, it doesn't matter if Sam's not teaming by choice or by lack of teammembers.

Got all those? Good. They'll be important in a short while. Now, I’ll describe some of the major forces behind the market, and the disparity (real or imagined) as to why they could be why they are. Hopefully you'll take something from this and learn from it. Or you'll just get angry and flame me. Whichever.

Also, it would be beneficial if you are familiar with your salvage and recipe inventories and their size limits, along with having completed the 'Invention Tutorial', available from Admissions Officer Lenk in Steel Canyon for Heroes, and Dean John Yu in Cap Au Diable for Villains. It's extremely difficult to get the most benefit from the market if you're still running around with full salvage and recipe inventories (Hint: They'll show up on your tray as Recipes and Salvage )

(QR)

That's the issue, Attache. 'Private' contacting doesn't seem to be working, possibly because due to busy schedules, other items needing more attention, etc.

I'm not trying to sound ungrateful, I'm just trying to determine if I should bide my time, or if I (or rather, we) have been forgotten.

Squeaky wheel gets the grease, and all that.

FWIW: I've not gotten my title either. I've been quiet (plus I have been sticking mainly redside, whereas I want the title on my blueside WS) but I log in every so often and have someone check.

Any advice as to what I and 8Baller/Todd should do?

<QR>

To Devs:
I hate you. I hate all of you. I've got enough tinfoil-hat conspiracy garbage screwing with my mind on a daily basis that I DON'T NEED THIS CRUD! I did the whole ilovebees thing, I was shocked that Digger did it, I still think the Smoking Man is quite possibly alive, I know about the Christ in a Rose tattoo, I twitch when someone says "Would you kindly", I know who Keyser Soze really is, I hunted down Namaste and Dharma... and I'm done! I'm sick of this crap! Either tell me exactly what's gonna happen, or leave me alone! AND QUIT SCARING ME WITH CRUD WHEN I MAKE ALTS AND GO THROUGH THE TUTORIALS!

To players:
QUIT ENCOURAGING THEM!




*runs off to scour the UK boards and paragonwiki for more tidbits of info suitable for pasting on his conspiracy wall-o'-obsession, spiralling deeper into madness, mumbling about the number 23, and to never trust anyone with the initials H.C.*

Anybody experience any rollback? I seem to have some debt that I *know* I worked off before the game went down.

I updated my CBC entry (link in sig) with some info to some frequently asked questions I keep getting hammered with in various places.

Thanks again to all those that liked it.

Unfortunately, the CBC demo I downloaded expired before the final end of the contest, and I'm unable to post it as a pdf (plus a final error that prevented me from submitting it as a PDF in any event). Once I get my winnings, I'll make sure I post an updated link directly to the pdf. Many of the fonts and shots look terrible in the CBC, so I'm hoping that a high-quality PDF might look a ton better to everyone.

Congrats to all, and I'm really anxious to see who the runners up were, because there's a few of my favs that didn't win either.

Thanks devs, and congrats to all!

Thanks all! And congrats, Chase and 8Baller! I'll work harder on my covers next time (got worried that too much photo editing would have been frowned upon...now I know! )

All I gotta say is this gave me the 'guts' I need to put my planned machinima based on CoX into action. Once the closed beta is over, expect to see a teaser trailer and an initial episode (hopefully) depending on how well demos are being played in i10.

Thanks to the judges, thanks to all for the constructive criticism, and thanks to everyone that entered. Whether you won or not, many of you had some amazing entries. Keep up the great work!

(PS. I'm LJ, winner of the 'Best Action' category)

Knowing the devs, they'll wait until oh... 7pm CST to put a small blurb hidden somewhere in the NCSoft Player FAQs about who may or may not have won the contest, with the true results avialable, if you send in a SASE to a particular address.

Hmm... Oh well. Guess I get to wait all day on June 15th to find out who won!

I'd also like to see a 'judge's favs' type list of favorites. Honorable mentions from the big boss peoples.

And yes, much like everyone else is saying... please stop by and click the link in my sig, and tell me what you think of my comic!

Indeed. I'm pretty sure I didn't win, but I'd like to know at least what I lost to.