Nethergoat

wrote up a big long post about my introduction to DA, when to post it and the forums had logged me out, tried to go back to the previous page & my browser crashed.

Grr.

So, you get the Cliff's Notes edition.

Kept getting mapserved on the Cole solo mission, so I shelved it pending a fix. The forum workaround of pulling individual spawns & concentrating on single target attacks didn't appeal.

Decided to take Paralehell to the new DA, appropriately enough as he was the star of my How To Make Millions in DA Off Arcane Rares thread lo, those many moons ago when the market was new and paying a few million for a recipe was considered either griefing by the seller or an unreachable sum.

Had to check the wiki to find DA, slightly embarrassing- my base beacon took me to the old one. Hooked up with the contact, ran the 'investigate apartment' mission which was a great introduction to the zone. Very not in the usual tone of the game, which made it very effective. Gave me a brief flashback to Clive Barker's Undying, which is a good thing.

I like the makeover, although I really miss the fog and think retaining it would've added to the atmosphere. Keeping the layout basically the same is great, as I've spent countless hours in the zone and know it like the back of my hand- zipping around with Paraleghell was giving me serious deja vu, although the spawns were much smaller.

Ran across a couple of people street sweeping, which warmed my heart.
Nuked a couple of spawns myself- he's still got it, although some of those Knives of Vengeance bosses hit hard.

Got situated with my contacts & started the first story arc.
And, started getting weird lag and mapserving. Not as bad as the Cole arc, but it did cause me to have to re-start a couple of missions, which is annoying.

I wasn't having the problem out in the zone just nuking spawns. I'm hoping it isn't like when CoV came out and I just couldn't play those Arachnos Lab maps because my machine couldn't handle the load.

Anyway, managed to clear a few missions.
I like the big new cave- like a bigger Troll cave but with the blue color palette of the old CoT caves. Knives of Vengeance are a lot less annoying than their Artemis counterparts- the bosses are rough, but I'll take a rough boss over a 6-deep pile of caltrops any day of the week. Storyline so far is engaging, although I'd have given the writing a few more polishing passes.

Took me a couple of tries, but I managed to find Kadabra Kill & Sigil.
Hoping to get back in the mix tonight. I guess I should start nosing around seeing what I want to slot in my Alpha slot...

RIP to a true pioneer of imaginative literature and one of the nicest people in the whole of publishing.

is anyone going to measure up to the standards of the original series?

no.

So, nice that some creatives will be getting paid, but I won't be contributing to their retirement fund.

same problem here- I'm going to flatline my graphics settings tonight and see if that helps.

you can always do better, and the current load screen certainly has its issues.

that said, it's such a huge improvement over Eunuch Statesman I'll give it a pass.

=P

okay, another typical night of planning one thing then doing another.

Paraleghell is at the Marcus Cole solo mission but keeps getting mapserved. It's super cool so I don't want to drop it or autocomplete it, I'll try again tonight at minimum graphic settings and see what happens.

In the meantime, I switched over to my recently created dark/dark dom Plasma Noir, got on a DFB team & mowed a bunch of stuff & ended up level 7.

Second time through I appreciated DFB more.
Quite a bit of the new content is a refutation of those who say the devs don't pay attention or listen to the playerbase. Things like many elements of the Twinshot & Graves arcs taking place in areas where players worked their way around rough patches in the leveling highway are sly digs only long time regulars are likely to get, but DFB is a huge billboard that reads GET IT? GET IT? in two story tall neon letters.

It really is an old time sewer run given a Michael Bay summer blockbuster makeover. And with trainers at the doors & no need to get killed so you can get back to Atlas. The Hydra battle at the end is a great touch, very thematic.

As for dark/dark, I'm really liking it so far. The power animations for dark domination are terrific- the only downside so far is they're *so* good and modern it makes the dark blast/dark melee stuff in the secondary look musty and dated- sort of the way the newer higher res costume bits exist uneasily with the old time options.

It isn't a deal breaker, just something I noticed.

Anyway, fun character, one more addition to my crowded playlist.

I'll try and get past the Cole mission tonight and get Paraleghell through some more incarnate stuff.

So, I've been out of the loop for a while and still don't have a terrific grip on what stuff costs these days, but for the sake of argument let's peg the value of a 'good' IO build at, say, 100 million inf. Not frankenslotted, not a Mid's Platinum Plated Uber Build, just a nice, solid, performance added set IO build.

If I'm way off with that estimate, someone let me know.


Anyway, you can make 100m inf in this game in about two minutes- pick up some Super Packs, sell the ATOs at the going rate, voila!
There's your Uber Build.

Now, some will say "but that's random, you can't know blah blah blah!"
Well, it is random and it isn't. The devs have their thumbs on the scale and you'll always get a fair proportion of "good" stuff with your packs. So it's random, but not in the way recipe or salvage is random.

I bought about 30 packs chasing the Elemental Order costume set and the ATO's I sold brought in about 500m. The Brute and Blaster ones I slotted, the Kheldian ones are still sitting in email while I ponder whether it's worth converting them or not.

That takes absolutely no effort at all.
Get packs, burn packs, sell junk.

And I guess you don't even have to buy them, you can pick them up with tokens- I consider tokens more valuable than $$$ so I wouldn't go that route, but if you have a lot of tokens and you don't particularly like the VIP costume sets, it's an option.


I logged in my crafter, Crafticus, last week and made a bunch of generics.
I figured the weekend was going to be big, so I churned out 30-odd level 40 *Redacted* generics, a perennial seller from way back. Checked in this AM and they'd all sold for between 600k and 1m, netting me in the neighborhood of 25 m.

Figuring 15 million is a sustainable weekly total for a few minutes of "work" he's have his 100m bankroll in a little over a month, if that's the only effort he made.

Of course, this character worked up a 120m bankroll in the process of getting his Field Crafter accolade, so.....


I have another character that has been compulsively buying up piles of big inspirations cheap, usually oranges & rez's, combining them into big purples & selling the result for between 500k & 1m.

I buy at around 10k, so it's spending 30k to make 650k on average.
It isn't actually very efficient on a per-slot basis, but it's something literally anyone can do to print 'free' money. Place bids before you log out, combine and list when you log on. Eventually you'll have your 100m.


Another, slighly more exotic but still far from difficult method is find an IO people like, buy the recipe cheap (bid around 1/2 the 'last 5' and you should be fine), craft it and list the IO for whatever people think its worth. This is more efficient than any of the above methods, but does require a bit of legwork and more up-front expense.

There are always huge numbers of 'good' IOs people would rather buy crafted than fiddle with themselves. Tracking one down that you can make for less than 100k total and sell for 5-10m is child's play.


These are just a few of the more obvious methods to make inf. There are many, many, many more, generally vastly more efficient & profitable.

But the pretense that there's some insurmountable barrier to a good IO build is pure nonsense and needs to be refuted.

Carnival of Light costume pieces, here I come!

They both stink.

Endless reboots & retcons driven by corporate policy rather than story render following either "universe" pointless. Whatever happens will be wiped clean and ignored by the next regime to come along.


Back in the day I read both, but preferred Marvel.
In retrospect, mostly due to the protean creative talent of Jack Kirby.