Organica

Day 7 (Monday 8/8/11)

Accomplishments:

Grabbed all explore badges in 3 underground Praetorian zones, 15 merits. That put me at 101 merits total.

Did my level 20 costume mission. Got tips, ran 5 of them, did my morality mission, went rogue!

Hit level 22 in Talos, then joined a team and quickly hit level 23 and 24. (Thus why I want to at least play heroside a bit -- teams are much easier to find. I figure I'll stay rogue at least through DXP weekend.)

Also grabbed explore badges in Talos Island, 5 more merits.

Broke 200 million in liquid influence. ^_^



I have a lot of recipes to craft and sell now, as you can see. I killed a bid on more Gift of the Ancient: Defense recipes, they weren't buying and I have plenty to keep me busy for now.

Still trying to pick up that stealth IO. :/

Well things got interesting. Before I left for my BBQ today, I grabbed all the explore badges in Sharkhead, and then went to Praetoria and grabbed all the explore badges in the three above-ground zones. So that's 20 merits. In all that time I sold a couple of things but had not bought a single new recipes to craft or sell. So I got a little worried and put in bids on Efficacy Adaptor end/rech and end/acc, and bids on 3 stacks of 10 each LotG def/rech. Then I went to my BBQ.

I just checked after getting home, and I have 20 Efficacy Adaptor recipes purchased, nearly all 30 LotG purchased, nearly 20 Eradication recipes purchased, and a bunch of Performance Shifter end/rech recipes for good measure. So I have a LOT of stuff to craft now. I put up some of the Efficacy Adaptors to start with, since I could buy the salvage for those instantly and cheaply.

And I'm also sort of in charge of one of the Hero Force divisions now, so I need to pay attention to that too. ^_^ Though HF isn't the massively active SG it used to be. But maybe we can fix that.

(also AE Baby is a member of Villian Force - Rho Ruffians -- which is kind of cut off from the rest of HF because there's no VG-SG coalition chat of course. I was kind of surprised to realize there are still active players in the Rho Ruffians, I rarely check in on them. They're kind of an independent sattelite of HF. ^_^ )

That's true. (And I'm aware of that -- I have over 1300 merits on Tiffany Blackheart and over 700 on Mouse Police mostly because they're vigilantes and I can't convert them, heh). So I have to plan around that fact, because I want to earn as many merits as possible and convert them to a-merits, and I'd like to be earning a-merits via tip missions too... but I won't have time to do that if I stay rogue for very long.

(But going rogue will allow me to collect well over 100 merits just from explore badges.)

Another problem that I have to overcome is this: I want to use most of my market slots to earn money, but at some point I want to start bidding on the IOs I'll need for my build. In the past I've dumped money on a character and placed lowball bids on the IOs I'll need, confident that I don't need to be earning any money and can wait for the bids to fill. Doing both -- earning money, and buying a bunch of IOs to slot (but not paying buy it nao prices) is going to be interesting.

For the moment I'm trying to earn as much money as I can. All of my profits I've plowed back into buying recipes to sell -- ideally I'll have a lot to sell come next weekend (DXP weekend) and really clean house. But I'm not using base storage to do this, that would kind of violate the rules I think. ^_^ Though I probably should buy up the salvage I'll need and fill up my vault storage at least.

In the meantime, it didn't seem useful to keep two slots filled trying to lowball a karma kb recipe at 500,000 when I could buy one nao at 2 million, so I did that and crafted and slotted it. I still have three bids out on Unbounded Leap stealth recipes though, those are harder to come by than I remember them being. My other slots are being used to buy up recipes that I know will sell very well, which I'll say more about later.

/em waves to Dr. Evil.

I've actually run into several people today from the forums, who recognized my character, heh. Just dropped an Ouro portal for a character of Diesel Punk. (Which I have because of the Midnighter mission above, involved time travel I guess -- I can't actually use the portal yet, but it was useful for someone else!)



Anyway, level 21. Bribed Mortimer Kai into working with me... though from what I remember, people don't actually like that SF much. Anyway, I have a BBQ to go to tomorrow, probably won't get to play.

I think I may go rogue for the next week and try to hit 35 by Friday or Saturday if I can. After that I can go back redside with no worries, since I can always join an ITF. I might actually do several ITFs for DXP weekend if it works out that way.

Is that true? For some reason i seem to recall not being offered a contact when I failed, but you're probably right.

One thing I forgot to mention: salvage for level 25 and lower IOs is cheaper than mid-level salvage. With the money I've already earned it was quite easy to completely IO my character with level 20 IOs. Those can probably serve me until I start buying level 30-33 set IOs.

Edit: I did manage to get to 20 and picked up speed boost. Not five minutes later I joined a team lead by my friend Dante to take down the Ghost of the Scrapyard. Eventually I managed to get five rogue tip missions in, but dredging for tips in Sharkhead Isle is one of the most tedious experiences I've ever had in the game, and I've done it on plenty of occasions. Your best bet is to take down bosses, but taking down a level 20 or higher boss when you're level 20 yourself and not a great soloer is tricky. I resorted to running back and forth from the hospital a lot so I could stock up and eat enhancements like candy. And when I was done I was nearly 21.

Also bought quite a few of the recipes I was bidding on (the level 50 ones to sell). I crafted some LotG and placed them up for sale. I have bids in on five Gift of the Ancient: Defense recipes too, those are over 3 million a piece to buy but will sell better than the other stuff I'm working at the moment.



This is the entrance to the tip mission "Curse of the Curious Mook". However I don't think I've seen it before, and I'm pretty sure that's because it's the villain version of the tip rather than the rogue version. Because I wasn't sure I dropped the mission, I didn't want to do a villain mission by accident. (It's been a long time since I did tip missions to change alignment instead of just to earn a-merits -- so I've gotten in a bad habit of clicking without even looking.)

Anyway, it's a very cool mission entrance, like desciending into a grave or something. ^_^

Day 5 Saturday 8/6/2011

The plan today was to earn some merits and gain a level or two. To that end, I first grabbed all of the explore badges in Cap Au Diable, then I turned my difficulty down to -1 and ran my bank heist.

The contact I got from this was Marshal Brass. I eventually completed his The Aeon Conspiracy arc, so I got 10 merits from that and also made it to level 17 by the time I was done (after a little street sweeping for those last two bubbles).

It's been so long since I've done low/mid level redside content that I was surprised by some of the unique maps that I didn't remember. The "Find Out What's Wrong with the Power Transfer System" part of the arc has an especially cool map -- essentially a Council map reskinned, but it looks cool, and the final room is unique to this mission. I took pictures!







I was going to log after hitting level 17, but instead I got a blind invite. What's this? A team redside? And it turned out to be a very fun team running in Sharkhead Isle. I think the leader was switching between two mission arcs. One involved the Midnighter's. I didn't recognize what arc it was, but it also had a cool unique map:



The team ran into trouble after this mission -- a Tsoo mission where at one point we were fighting Tsoo with multiple sorcerers at +4 to most of the team, and then after we turned it down we found a corridor with 3 groups and a patrol wandered in, so we had 4 different full groups (8 man team) and I don't know how many sorcerers, more than 8 I think, and after a couple of team wipes the sorcs were in the front of the hallway but were from different groups, and attacking them would bring all four groups down on us. Fun times!

But I got all the way to level 19 and within a bubble and a half of 20 on this team, so no worries!



Currently bidding on more LotG def/rech recipes (I crafted two more of these and have them up for sale) and also on Performance Shifter end/rech recipes, and hoping to pick up a Karma kb protection recipe cheap, and an Unbounded Leap stealth IO for what passes for cheap for these recipes at low levels. ^_^



There's a good chance I'll play some more tonight, hit 20, and work on going rogue. Not sure if I want to turn full hero yet, I do want to be able to buy a merits eventually, but right now being able to team hero-side would help a lot.

Day 4 (Friday 8/5/2011

Market-wise this was a very good day. I crafted five more LotG def/rech IOs and listed them, and several of them sold -- for good money, 10 to 13 million each! (Listed for 5.1 mil). Oh that's right, it's the weekend. ^_^ I knew these things would sell well given several days or a week!

Level-wise, I didn't accomplish much. I wanted to make sure that my bank mission went well so I'd get the contact afterwards, so I decided to street sweep to level 15. But I joined a Cathedral of Pain trial run by Zombie Man, and then formed a Manticore TF that went longer than planned (and one of the people I specifically formed it for DC'd just before the AV went down, and didn't get the badge/reward, grrr.)

My friend Dante Jr. (noticing I'm on a TF with another character): At this rate it's going to take AE Baby forever to hit 50.
Me: I know.

Ah well, I had a fun evening anyway. ^_^ And moneywise I'm now in position to buy and sell with few worries.

Specifically, I think it's level 30 or 35 where an IO is equal to an even-con (white) level 50 SO?

In any case if you wanted to do it only once and never again, level 35 is a very good level to slot IOs. But they tend to be more expensive at those levels for the same reason.

What Four said is absolutely right. Bidding on the crafted IOs is being lazy... and also done because in the back of my head I know that you can get the lower level IOs especially for below cost that way, if you can wait. But in fact I can't wait, and so I wound up crafting a bunch of level 15 IOs anyway.


This morning before work I checked things. My 3 LotG def/rech IOs had sold for 8 million each. (The one listed for 6.2 mil still hasn't sold). I'd also bought several more Efficacy Adaptor recipes, so I quickly crafted some of those and put them up for sale, and bid on five more rikti alloys.

Just to recap what I've done so far to raise money:

1. Sold my two starting enhancements that I got from the tutorial. The large heal sold instantly for 140,000. This was my starting capital.

2. Bought level 50 recipes for 100 and 500 inf each and vendored them for 5,000 or 10,00 inf each. I picked recipes that I know are not popular -- sleep, stun, snipe, slow, certain of the hold recipes, etc.

3. Once I had a couple of million I bid on some recipes that I knew I could craft and sell for a profit. I could have started by crafting generic IOs -- especially in the 25-35 range that can be profitable. But you can skip that stage to more profitable things if you like. Efficacy Adaptor IOs are very good for this, they're common recipes and endurance IOs always sell. I also bought some cheap Luck of the Gambler def/rech recipes -- this is a bit more risky, there's a glut of them on the market. A month or two ago they were selling for 15 to 20 million each, now they're selling for 6 to 9 million, but that still leaves room for a profit if you're careful.

The next two steps will be to ramp up my money-making by selling more IOs and more profitable IOs, and then to start buying the recipes that I'm going to want for my final build. I should note here that I plan to buy mostly level 30-33 IOs which is what I normally do, but this strategy isn't much different for those who want to IO at level 50 -- the only difference is that you'll have to find places to store your recipes or crafted IOs longer. But the key to everything is placing low bids that you can wait for days or more than a week to fill, so that you're not spending so much money at level 50 to buy it now. As always, patience is your friend. ^_^

Day 3

After a diversion to run an ITF, I got to work on my new corruptor. Market-wise I was disappointed... my LotG IO had not sold, and I'd only bought three accuracy IOs with my lowball bids. I realized that not only had I made a mistake with the LotG, for which the market is glutted and prices are way down, but as it's an orange IO that requires rare salvage it wasn't the best choice for my first thing to craft and sell. Also, these are recipes I normally craft and sell with an eye to what will sell in 4-7 days, not what sells overnight. So I've made several mistakes initially.



Also my great build that I found on the forums... is actually a fire/rad build. Hmm. What can I say, I grabbed it during a 15 minute break at work and didn't look at it hard enough. Maybe I should have gone fire/rad anyway, they're certainly more popular.

I place bids in for some Efficacy Adaptor recipes. Good old Efficacy Adaptor, always fairly cheap to buy and always sells for a few million at least. In no time I have two endurance/accuracy recipes that I craft and place for sale at 2.1 million each. This takes a bit more buying and vendoring recipes first, it's 490,000 to craft a level 50 recipe and the listing fee is 105,000. But what are Essense of Curare recipes for if not vendoring? Also I'm juggling a lot of things, with the LotG IOs and salvage stored in the market, bids on crafted IOs, and everything (and I only have 12 slots). But within an hour one of the Efficacy Adaptors sells for 4 million. Now I'm in business!





I buy another rikti alloy and craft a second LotG def/rech. This one I list for 5.2 million. I note that they're selling for 8 and even 9 million today, but the one I listed yesterday for 6.3 mil still hasn't sold. I listed too high. Anyway it doesn't take long before my second LotG sells for 8 million, allowing me to bid on several more rikti alloys. Maybe my original idea wasn't as bad as I thought! My other Efficacy Adaptor sells as well.

I also pull down my lowball IO bids and place more reasonable bids on level 20 generic IOs. A few purchases come in within an hour or two, but I'm still leve 12. I don't bid on the Endurance Modification IOs I need, level 20s are selling for a million each. But I recognize another good marketing niche when I see one and bid on 10 each of the salvage needed to craft them.




I want merits so I do the explore badges in Port Oakes, and work though missions for my current contact, Radio. It's slow going though. The problem with Radio as a contact is that he only has one arc for 5 merits, and doesn't introduce me to any new contact. But I run 4 radio missions in Cap Au Diablo and get another bank mission, which I'll save for tomorrow -- that will get me another contact. I hit level 14, and also earn 2 merits helping take down Deathsurge. That gets me to 49 merits total.

I buy salvage to craft some of the level 15 IOs I failed to buy overnight. Now at least my character is a little better off in the IO dept.

Two set IOs I need as soon as I can afford them: a stealth IO (unbounded leap will work) and a knockback protection IO (which will likely be a karma in combat jumping, or stuffed into manuevers for the time being if I don't have CJ yet).

I'm probably going to pull a build from this thread and maybe tweak it slightly.

Day 2

As with the first day, I start off soloing. There are few other players redside and my corruptor is (so far) a slow soloer. At one point I get blind invited to a team, and it's exactly the kind of team you'd expect from a blind invite. It includes such scintilating conversation as:

Team Leader: st martial
Team Member #4: Mind if I switch to another toon?
Team Leader: st martial
(several minutes of silence ensue)

On the plus side, it's a level 33 team which is a boon for me at level 8. On the down side, it ends exactly like you'd expect such a team to end -- with the leader going silent in the middle of the second mission, then inviting a brand new person to the team, followed immediately by: I gtg guys, good luck in the fight. And he quits. And what's sad is, it's not even the second or third time I've seen someone do that -- invite new people and quit immediately after, halfway through their own mission.

I go back to soloing, find another (better) team, and even manage to get both a jump pack and a raptor pack. I make level 12.

On the marketing side I'm a bit worried that I've made an error. I buy my 10 recipes easily enough, and only 1 rare salvage to start with given my modest startup cash of 2.5 mil. I craft my IO and discover that they're selling for a lot less than they were in just the last week or two. There are hundreds for sale, so clearly the market is glutted. Maybe that will change when we hit Double Experience Weekend, but I need to make money now. I list for less than I'd like but just above the last 5 sales, which may not work. We'll see.

I also put in lowball bids on level 15 generic IOs: accuracy, damage, heal, endurance. I expect better results from this.

No new merits, no new cash. All I really accomplish the 2nd day is making it to level 12.









Other than that, I scanned the Corruptor forums and found a build I thought would work for my project. Again I was wrong. More on that later.

Because there's no way you could ever finish the Justin Augustine TF with less than 8 people.

(For those that have never done it... it's almost entirely hunts.)

I have 2 accounts, 36 x 2 characters on Virtue, and a bunch of characters scattered across other servers... I forget how many 50s, over 25 now I think.

I am not planning to incarnate all of them, thanks. Although every 50 on Virtue has at least opened the alpha slot.

Here's a project that I've been planning to do for a few months: run a character from 1 to 50 in about 30 days, and finish with a completely IO'd build.

Not much of a novelty in the days of "self-PL your brute to 50 in hours" guides, but for my goal is more to show that a solid IO build is just as easy to pull together as is getting to 50. (And that may not be much of a revelation either, but after all, there are probably people out there who still haven't investigated an IO build because it's complicated and expensive.

(Which is why I'm posting it here... it's more an exercise in leveraging the market to a nice build by level 50.)

Just to be perverse, I'm going to do this without ever setting foot in AE and do it on a character called AE Baby. (I've had that name on Virtue for several months now.) To be doubly perverse, I've come up with a reasonably workable backstory to explain the name. Yes, you can roleplay a character named AE Baby if you want to! ^_^

Goal: Reach 50 and finish build by August 31 2011. Maybe even incarnate a little.

Restrictions: No AE. No borrowing money from any other character. The whole point is to show that anyone can manage this, starting from nothing.

Day One: I should have started August 1st, but anyway... I spent most of the day at work looking into Mind/Psi doms, which I believed my AE Baby character was, and then decided to make a Plant/Fire Dom instead. I spent a couple of hours working out a build that was perma-Dom, smashing/lethal softcapped, and did not include too many expensive IOs that I couldn't manage to collect them all in 30 days.

And... then I logged in AE Baby and discovered that she was, in fact, a fire/kin Corr. Oops. And I like the idea of a fire/kin corr, so I tossed the plant/fire build out the window. I'll work on a build later.

Ran both of Kalinda's arcs and the first Mongoose arc, all solo. Collected all of the Mercy Island explore badges. Along with the 5, 6, and 7 merits I get from vet rewards, that netted me 37 merits right off the bat.

Hit level 7, moved to Port Oakes, sold my two starting inspirations, and then began the process of buying up recipes cheaply on the market and vendoring them to raise capital.





So much easier to do with /auctionhouse.

With about 2.5 million in capital raised, I placed a lowball bid on a stack of 10 of one of my current favorite recipes to craft and sell... I can buy the recipe for as little as 5,000, and the crafted recipe sells for around 10 million. That's a good place for me to start. ^_^



Day 1: Level 7, over 2 million, 37 merits! No IOs yet.

I didn't check, I just assumed.

75 billion is a lot, even by the standards set around here.

I think we can assume no one in the game has ever had more prestige next to their name. ^_^ That's impressive.

Thought it's almost as impressive that #2 is at 55 million.

Wow, yours is a SG of brutes I take it.

Also, it takes more than 2.8 million prestige to make it to Executive Vice President.

Yeah, I have a 50 Invul scrapper and a 50 Invul tank, and a 40 Invul brute, so I'm familiar with both sets. ^_^ In fact MG sort of went with an Invul scrapper after asking me about them, but by that point I was already building my WP and Shield scrappers and didn't play my Invul that much anymore.

Tiffany Blackheart and Nina Ballerina are both WP scrappers and a lot of fun to play, but I didn't try to softcap anything on them. Still they're very tough. I'd like to have a WP brute or tank someday.

Honesty, I think I prefer my shield scrappers over everything... but shield can be very expensive to outfit... and you still suffer the pains of being mostly defense-based: untouchable until something can touch you, and then you die quickly. ^_^ I can handle ITF though, might even be able to solo it I think, but trying to solo in the warehouse on a Lambda can get me killed. ^_^

My main problem with Invulnerability isn't so much the psi hole... that's just something you have to deal with, it doesn't come up all that often... but it's the horrible endurance issues the set has. But I haven't worked hard at incarnating my Invulnerable toons much, I'm sure those problems can be made to go away. ^_^

This is actually something more than just an academic question for me. My friend Multiple Girl II's favorite character was a softcapped spines/invulnerable scrapper, who could tank pretty much anything (had tanked on STF several times, for example, including a 4-main STF that we ran one night). MG also solo'd most of the TFs with this toon.

When I decided a couple of months ago to build my own spines scrapper, I decided to go the Willpower route:



Just finished the build tonight. With softcapped smashing/lethal and near-softcapped energy/neg energy, I'm very curious to see how capable my spines scrapper is, as compared to what MG could do. ^_^