Organica

Thanks for all the nice comments everyone! And I'm glad I inspired a few people!

Aftermath/Wrapup



Because saying something can be done and actually doing it are two different things, I continued to run tip missions and confirmed hero status this afternoon, then ran SSA1 for my weekly hero merit. I think this is pretty neat -- it takes 10 days to go from hero to villain and back and confirm hero status again, but since you can have 10 vigilante tips already run without being a vigilante yet, and can run your SSA immediately after confirming hero status, you really can do two SSA's 7 days apart for hero merits while still making the full round trip journey.







By the evening of Wednesday the 1st I was a hero again, and had nearly 1.5 billion influence on hand. I immediately set about buying influence to expand my base:



I think I spent at least 1.2 billion influence on prestige conversion -- which would net me 2.4 million prestige, I think.

This was far more than I needed for a fully functioning base, but I had the chance to add a Super Computer and a Turbine Generator, and I figured, why the heck not? I'll never need more power than that (most likely) and probably will never need more control either.



I expanded my plot, added larger control and energy room and a much larger workshop, and added a teleport room large enough for four hacked teleporters.

As it turned out I still needed to get the King's Row beacon (I had done that before starting my SG I believe) and the Pocket D beacon, and I still don't have my Rikti War Zone Beacon. But I have 22 of 23 possible destinations so teleporting to anywhere isn't a problem.

I arranged my teleporters as so:

Main Low Level Zones: Atlas Park, King's Row, Steel Canyon, Skyway, Perez Park, The Hollows

Midlevel Zones: Talos Island, Independence Port, Faultline, Croatoa, Striga Isle, Pocket D

High Level Zones: Peregrine Island, Dark Astoria, Eden, Founder's Falls, Brickstown, (Rikti War Zone)

Miscellaneous: Echo of Galaxy City, Echo of Dark Astoria, Boomtown, Crey's Folly, Terra Volta

The only important thing is that you can remember which one to use quickly.

So far it's not a very interesting base, but it's big and does everything a proper base should. And I managed it in just over 31 days along with everything else.





Although I spent nearly all of my money on prestige, I sold my hami-O the same evening for 400 million, so I was hardly poor. Bought a few more things to list too.



And since I wasn't focusing on doing a lot with Dilthium Flower, I turned back to one of my other projects on Wednesday and got Jennie Nova, a beam rifle/radiation corruptor from 47 to 50. Build nearly complete on her and she's already been redside and back for the scorpion shield so I don't expect she will occupy a lot of my time, but I do plan to incarnate her. That was the point of leveling her -- a /rad corr can be useful on something like a Mag trial, I figured.

Wow, I could have sworn there was one.

So all I really did is get all the personal explore badges while not in SG mode. That sucks.

Day 31 -- July 31, 2012

I've actually been taking it pretty easy the last couple of days since I mostly managed to reach my goals by Sunday. But I do have a few things left that I wanted to do:

1. Set up a fully functioning base. I originally thought this would take me well into August, but actually I could do it right now, except I'm not a hero again just yet.

2. Give a kind of wrap-up of what I managed in a month. I crafted a lot of random drops and bought some stuff that is still in base storage so I wanted to list some of that too, which I won't be able to do until tomorrow night.

3. I want to confirm hero status and run my SSA1 on Friday. I just think this is kind of a neat trick: I ran an SSA1 last Friday, and you can only repeat it for the hero merit reward once a week, and I've gone villain and back in between but I will be able to run it again on Friday and gain a hero merit. This, even though it takes 10 days to make a full trip from hero to villain and back and then reconfirm your hero status. How did I manage that? Pretty simple -- I did my ten vigilante tips last Wednesday and Thursday, but held on on doing the morality until after I'd run my SSA1 (and spent the hero merit of course!). Then immediately after turning vigilante I ran my first five villain tips. Following this pattern you can turn villain on Saturday, only a day after running the SSA1, then rogue by Monday and hero again by Wednesday. By Friday you can confirm your hero status and you're ready to run your SSA1 again right after.

Of course, I got a little messed up by forgetting one of my tip missions on Friday... but last night I woke up at 1:40 as I'd planned and ran my last rogue mission. That meant I was able to turn rogue as soon as I got home from work today, then run four hero tips, with the fifth one available to run right at 10 PM (which is just 5 minutes away). So I'm back on schedule for becoming a hero again by tomorrow.

One other thing I managed to do tonight was join a Mothership Raid. The Rikti War Zone was the only zone that I hadn't gotten the explore badge accolade and 5 merits and Supergroup Beacon yet. You need the Unabashed badge, which you can only get when the mothership shields are down. So I joined a very good ship raid, got my badge, earned over 800 Vanguard merits (which are actually useful on my new account), and then I grabbed the rest of the explore badges in the zone, and...

Nothing. No accolade, no SG beacon.

The beacon might be because I'm currently a villain... except I earned beacons for my SG for all of the villain zones, even if we can never use them. RWZ is a cooperative zone so that probably isn't the reason.

However, the Vanguard Operative badge that you get in the base itself, I had earned as a hero. Going back to where it was accomplished nothing since I already had it, but I had the other 13 badges too and didn't have the accolade. What's more, I didn't even show any progress towards the accolade. My guess is since I started it as a hero, I'm locked out from completing it as a villain... which seems like a major bug to me, what if I wanted to remain a villain? Anyway, I bugged it. It remains to be seen what happens when I turn hero tomorrow night.





My purple drop sold, and I managed to buy one new corruptor ATO.



...which sold a short while later, along with two brute ATOs that I've had lsited for weeks now.

I'm at nearly 1.5 billion influence at the moment, more than enough to buy a fully functioning base. ^_^

Too easy indeed!



Sometimes the world just wants to hand you a sack of money. Well, in-game at least. I only wish the world would take that attitude with me more in real life....

Anyway I got this on the first of my rogue tips for the evening. Immediately after finishing the mission I crafted it and listed it for sale for a good chunk of change.

Also of note, while running about Sharkhead looking for tips I saw a large number of running miners. Well, I know what that means! I helped a couple of other people take down the ghost, so there's two more merits in my pocket!

(And... another minor strike started up within fifteen minutes. That ghost never gives up!)

Good grief. I was only gone for an hour to exercise.

Too easy!

Day 30 -- July 30, 2012

Tonight I did a Manti on one of my other toons -- my mace/shield scrapper, One Divine Hammer. It was fun playing a scrapper again, and fun being on an account that had all the bells and whistles of course too. I got 64 merits and 2 levels out of it, which got me to 35 and Shield Charge. And I spent some time after that filling in a few holes in One Divine Hammer's current build.

I didn't do anything on Dilithium Flower, although I plan to run four more rogue tips later tonight. I probably should do at least a BAF or Lam, but I may not. Ah well.

But I did get up at 5:30 AM this morning and run the one rogue tip. I got a tip right away and it was one that could be stealthed quite quickly, so that I was done by 5:43. That means at 1:43 in the morning I can run another, and by late evening I can run five tips in a row again. I think I'm going to try and do that, just have to wake myself up in the middle of the night for 15 minutes.





It's always nice when you get an instant return on your investment. The first picture shows what I'd managed to purchase by 5:43 AM. The second picture shows what I'd sold by 4:30 PM. That's what I call nearly instant profit!

The Cytoskeleton I didn't list for sale right away... listed it this evening for a very healthy markup. I'm prepared to wait for that one to sell, but sell it will. There's only 9 of them for sale total at the moment.



Also by evening I'd bought these three ATOs, which I immediately listed for sale. So even though I'm stuck redside and don't have access to my base, I have stuff for sale for the moment.



This finally sold tonight too. I'm not really hurting for money right now. ^_^

You know, I only just noticed that my Knight Errant badge title has been transformed into "Black Knight". I kind of like that. ^_^

Now you've got me curious to make a special DfB build character...

And I think I WOULD six slot brawl with procs. Why not?

Sold some stuff today.

I'm at a disadvantage at the moment since I can't pull anything out of my base to list for sale. So instead I put some bids in for stuff. But I was sad to notice that Cytoskeletons had dipped all the way down to 201 million today. Sad, because I'd had some bids in for 221 million but had pulled them down this morning. That stuff will be selling for 300-400 million again by midweek, I have no doubts.

Then again, I'm not too sad because I probably bought some of those with my other toons today... placing lowball bids on Cytos is one of those things I do when I have too much money. Also, the reason I pulled it down was so I could buy the purple recipe that became that Ragnarok damage that I sold... and I needed the slot to list it to sell too.

Anyway, ran my 4 rogue tips tonight, and I also joined a Barracuda SF, which I don't think I'd ever done before. So now I'm up to 602 badges on Dilithium Flower.

I had been planning to have my solo base fully up and running by mid August... then I realized I had enough money to actually do that by the end of the month. Then again, I realized today that this won't happen until I'm a hero again... heh. So August it is! I'll probably pay for another month of goofing around on this account.

And as a side note, I don't think I'm planning another project like this (or need to), but I do have another GR box that I haven't applied to any account yet, not sure what I'm gonna do with it exactly, though I have a couple of other free accounts I could use it on.

Oh yes... on the Cuda I was teamed with this guy:



I'm not posting the full bio because it's very nearly a direct rant against Fox News and right-wing policies... and that's just asking for a nasty argument on the boards, heh. But I have to admit, I loved the idea of a suit-and-top-hat-wearing villainous master mind named Job Creator. And his Villain Group was the one percent, I think. Lol.

Anyway the first short paragraph of the bio gets the entire message across.

Well, after all, you've got an awful lot of slots to use, and only a handful of powers that you'll ever need...

Day 29 -- July 29, 2012

Last night I joined a Penelope Yin TF being run by a friend. Someone else on the team recognized my character from this thread, heh. Anyway I needed 1 more shard to craft my T1 Alpha, and I got it. Yay!

After that they ran a Moonfire and I stayed for that as well. More merits, and 3 more shards.

This morning another friend was starting up a min-BAF. I joined -- it was less than 24 hours since the other BAF, so no Emp merit, but I wanted to unlock my Judgment slot. The BAF went very well, we earned two of the badges for no prisoners escaping and no tower guns taken down. Then we ran a speed Lambda, followed by a TPN in which we got all the badges (Oooh, Master of something!) and lastly a Keyes. Keyes is a trial that still confuses me, I know what all the goals are but I never know exactly when I should be where doing what. But it went well anyway.

In the end I had my Judgment and Interface slots unlocked and was able to craft T1's for each. I also had 6 Emp Merits and 27 Astrals, so I went to Ouro and bought my favoritest boots in the game, both versions, plus the Ascension belt.

In the meantime I had bought a purple Coercive Persuasion this morning, and after all the itrials I went back and crafted it and in two conversions got a Ragnarok damage. (no photos). This is not the best-selling Ragnarok, but I put it up for sale anyway. Don't want to waste converters trying to get that perfect IO to sell.

By this time it was also after 9 AM, so I headed villainside and did a quick tip mission and finished by 9:23, so that means I can run a rogue tip at 5:23 AM tomorrow if I like. Anyway, did the morality mission, Hometown Hero which is my favorite, blowing up Croatoa is fun! And then I was a villain and ready to aid my patron!

Patron arc took about an hour. When I was done I headed straight to Port Oakes and did the respec. I had three pieces of Thunderstrike on me, and four pieces of Call to Arms, and everything else needed for my build was already slotted somewhere. (I'd cleverly used extra slots to drop three of the Thunderstrike pieces in my other blast powers so I wouldn't have to carry them).



My build is complete!

Woo hoo! And what does all of this get me?



The important parts are 46.44% smashing/lethal defense and 44.99% energy defense when I have hover on, and 103.75% global recharge before hasten kicks in. And I'm doing pretty well in the endurance and damage departments too, trust me!

And I no longer have to look like a popsicle to do it! Plus, I now have a second pet -- the Tarantula -- who just adds to the chaos. Drop my two pets, toss out seeds of chaos, toss out carrion creepers, and then start blasting. Hold anyone that actually attacks you. It's a lot of fun!

I ran through the ghoul zone event in Praetoria solo and picked the tantrum emote instead of the badge. Quite easy on a kitted out level 50 dom, heh. I need to go back for the badge at some point though.

Nothing's sold, so no more marketing news to report.

Sold all three Steadfast Protections over the course of the evening, 50 million each.

But somewhere in between there, someone sold one for 500 million...

Joined a Hami raid earlier. By the time it was over I had 10 incarnate shards total. Picked up another later on and now I need 1 more to craft my T1.

The Hami raid did not go very well -- they had few yellow spikers, and I felt sort of guilty because that's what I normally do and they obviously needed help doing it. On the other hand, they also needed help getting the greens held, and I was the only Dom there, so it's not like I wasn't useful. I showed up too late to have any EoE's, but being a flying blaster I found I didn't need them so much, not compared to what a scrapper or brute yellow spiker needs.

Also joined a BAF which did not go especially well... killed Nightstar too soon, then killed Siege after Nightstar had respawned, so we had to kill both of them a third time. I never saw that happen before (not sure why people couldn't avoid killing Siege after Nightstar, people just don't pay attention) but the good news is I got 53% of my Judgment slot filled in from 1 run.

So it was probably a good thing that I was still a vigilante when the Hami raid rolled around. I also was certain to run my first villain tip of the day the moment I was able to, which was just after 1 PM. That means I can turn villain and run my patron arc tomorrow morning after 9 AM. And if I really feel like it, I could run a Rogue tip Monday morning at 5 AM before going to work, and run another Tuesday morning at 1 AM, and I could manage to become hero again by Wednesday instead of Thursday... if I really wanted to put in the effort.

Two more things:



I certainly don't recommend using 3 converters to do an in-set conversion of an uncommon IO... but I had over 300 regular merits, and I had a 50% chance of another Steadfast res/def. And the KB IO isn't necessarily a bad alternative either.

So I have three of these to sell, it seems.



And the price of these has jumped noticeably in the last hour and a half. I'd consider this a "weekend bump", but anyway, I listed mine high.

Now we're going to play a game called "what I did with my tickets". Early on I gave a brief demonstration of how you can make money from AE tickets, but after joining my friend's fire farm for an extended run this morning I had 1688 tickets on hand.

Of course, I could save them for when I need rare salvage that is inexplicably selling for 7 million each... but that's about 540 tickets for 1 piece of salvage. I can do better than that, I think.




What I'm doing here is bronze rolls, level 10-14. I get a lot of junk this way, but I can potentially get some very nice stuff.

As a general rule, heal and endurance and damage resist or defense recipes can usually make you money, even the less popular ones. Low level damage recipes, on the other hand, are usually junk, to say nothing of low level holds, immobilize, sleep, fear, etc.

What jumps out at me right away in the above group is the two Steadfast Protection res/def recipes. Those will make me some money. But the Adrenal Adjustment, the Regen Tissue, the Triage, the Impervious Skin, all of these are probably keepers. On the other hand, Air Burst, Bone Snap, Far Strike, Exploit Vulnerability, Unspeakable Terror, Exploit Weakness, Volley Velocity -- all of this is stuff that I delete immediately.



Let's take a look at what I have left from all of that. I'm going to check how the crafted version of these recipes are selling.





What we see here is Adrenal Adjustment endurance mod is selling for about 10 million with 3 for sale and 1 bidding... and the endurance mod/rech is selling for about 8 million with only 1 for sale.

These won't always sell immediately... but they cost nothing to craft, so I can definitely make some money here.



Impervious Skin res/end looks less rosy but again, cost to craft is virtually nil, so even a 5 million sale is profitable.



But there's no question I can make the bulk of my money here. ^_^ I have two of these to sell!

Please note that I got all my tickets in 1 run. I could have bought 3 rare salvage and if I timed it really well i might have sold that salvage for 15 million. But I'm going to make 100 million plus on the recipes I got instead, almost certainly. It will take longer and a bit more work, but I like 100 million better than 15 million.





The Regen Tissue heal/end should sell well for me too. And even the lowly Triage, a set I have never had a use for, should sell.



This paralytic is basically junk. You can sell this kind of stuff eventually, and maybe even for a profit... but it's probably more trouble than it's worth. I should have just deleted it immediately, but I wanted to check to be certain.







Cleaving Blows are plentiful and not the best set in the world, but in some cases they will sell for money. There are two reasons for this that I know of. One is that the set provides 1% endurance recovery and 1.25% energy/negative energy defense with 3 pieces. I have builds where I slot 3 pieces of Cleaving Blow and 3 pieces of Eradication for extra Energy/Neg Energy defense. Also, a lot of sets don't have a piece that boosts accuracy and recharge only; often they do damage/rech or damage/accuracy but not accuracy/recharge, so that piece is sometimes useful to frankenslotters. (Although I think Eradication has such a piece too.)

Hopefully it's obvious from the above that the acc/rech and dam/rech are sort of worth crafting and selling, even bearing in mind that they will require a piece of rare salvage (I'll want to sell the dam/rech for more than 2.5 million but there's only 1 for sale so it's doable), but the dam/end certainly is not worth crafting. Junk! Junk! Burn it!

Anyway, it should take me a while to craft and sell everything, but there's your short tutorial on how ticket farming can work. ^_^

Day 28 -- July 28, 2012





Stuff continues to sell... except for my LotG +7.5% recharge. But I'm not worried, the upcoming DXP weekend should clear out a lot of stuff that isn't selling right this minute.

I was unable to buy a "cheap" purple recipe (Absolute Amazement, Fortunata Hypnosis, Coercive Persuasion, Gravitational Anchor, or even Soulbound Alegiance & Unbreakable Constraint) for any bid of152 to 155 million. On the other hand, out of the four damage sets I've always noticed that Hectacomb and the Ragnarok knockdown proc sell cheapest. I bought this Hectacomb for 151 million, and decided after crafting it to just list it for sale rather than convert it to anything. They still go for 250 million or so crafted, though there are over 100 for sale atm.

I wasted all my converters trying to turn two semi-useless ATOs (a stalker one, and one of the tanker ones that I'm unable to sell right now) and eventually wound up with a scrapper ATO and a brute ATO, both of which I listed.



I joined some friends in a fire farm to earn my last half level to 50. Not a glamorous way to do it, I know, but I was open to anything this morning, I just wanted to get it done. Right after I slotted my Ragnarok set and then ran my Mender Ramiel arc and opened up my alpha slot. Trapdoor was easy, and I dropped the RWZ mission which I usually do.

After that an itrial seemed in order, but there weren't a lot of people in DA that I could see, so I set off to collect all of the explore badges that I had yet to collect.

This included: Dark Astoria, Cascade Archipelagio, The Chantry, Storm Palace, The Hive, Sewer Network, and Abandoned Sewer Network. After all of that, I went redside and did all of the zones there, including The Abyss and Monster Island. At this point I still haven't done Rikti War Zone or the PvP zones, but I have all other explore badges in the game outside of instance-only stuff.



Not bad for 1 month on a new account. ^_^

Day 27 -- July 27, 2012









Sold several things today as you can see. Brute ATOs seem to be rising in price again... or maybe that's my imagination because I sold something. Anyway, I currently have bids on a couple of purple recipes and on another Cytoskeleton... lowball bids on stuff that I would turn around and sell for more money.

This evening I ran my SSA1 as expected... but it turns out I kind of screwed things up yesterday: I only ran four vigilante tips. I was able to turn vigilante tonight (I spent my SSA hero merit on 10 converters) but I was only able to do four villain tips, so I'll only be at night tomorrow. But if I do them early enough tomorrow, at least I can turn villain Sunday morning.

I joined a Summer event mostly for the instant team and experience. Naturally I got the Overwhelming Force quad, now that I don't actually need it.

I also joined friends on a Renault Strike Force. Hey, I can do that, I'm a vigilante now! This got me level 49 and nearly halfway to level 50. We killed scrappy afterwards too.



And... I filled in the last Virtue slot on my account. This is Baron Moneybags. Not a terribly inspired character, but he doesn't need to be, he's just a filler.

When I went to sell a baron exposure later, I wondered if that name was taken as a character name....

That sounds like what I'd consider a more normal Manticore. It's not exciting, but it should be run fairly quickly and thus not feel too tedious. There are several things you can stealth or plan ahead for that speed it along.

Basically anything that's not invented is good:

TO's, DO's, SO's of course
Hami O's
ATO's
Attuned Enhancements such as Overpowering Force
Attuned Enhancements that are store-bought... all of them

Any and all of the above will work without a paid account or an invention license.

Dang me, dang me,
They ought to take a rope and hang me,
High from the highest tree,
Woman would you weep for me

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mtB8tC5ey4g