Organica

Here's some different advice:

Skyraiders in Terra Volta: There are flyers all over, of course, but they take time to track down and kill. But there are always two groups near the entrance on the ground that usually add up to the number needed for the hunt. If you enter Terra Volta, jump down to the street, and go right, at the point just before the road dips down on a steep incline, there will be a group of sky raiders on your right on the side of that building, and another group on your left behind that building.

Tsoo in Independence Port: you usually find them more on the Western side of the zone, not so much around the tram. I like to run out to the bridge in the center where you can find groups of Tsoo and Family together sometimes.

Vahz in Faultline: they aren't easy to find, but do a sweep of the underground car park (to the right of the entrance from Skyway). You can usually find several small groups there.

Council in Boomtown: God help you. It's usually a good idea to have more than one person do this one. If you're lucky you'll spawn an ambush. I usually head Northwest to look for them.

Warriors in Talos: Southern edge of the main island below the cliffs, lots of them there.

Rikti in Founders: Probably most people know they're down by the docks near the mutant store girl, Southwest.

Eden: You see lots of DE when you zone in. For Nemesis, just head right from the entrance.

Seriously? For a mere 100 million?

You still taking applications? I'd be happy to pay more than that. ^_^

MG on Virtue, who I TF with regularly, has keybinds for the hunts and sends a tell to each person on the team at the very beginning of the Task Force. This makes it easy for you to scroll back and find the yellow text direct tell informing you what you're to do.

We ran Numina last night, and I was told: "You will hunt 20 (whatever the number is) Hellions in Galaxy City, then 20 Skyraiders in Terra Volta, then 30 Rikti in Founder's Falls." Everyone on the team got a similar message with directions. I know at least two people were sent to Independence Port, and several people are sent to Founder's, and of course everyone then heads to Eden for the final hunt and missions.

This is the extreme version of how to do this efficiently, of course. Not every leader is going to go to the trouble of setting up regular keybinds to use every time they run a given task force. But I do know that telling people what they're to do right at the beginning like this works remarkably well, always assuming someone doesn't drop before you get to that point. ^_^

Wednesday Feb 16 2011

Logged in: Valkyrie of Atlantis, 50 scrapper
Last logged: 10 days ago
Money: 704 million

10 sold: Touch of Death acc/dam/end, 7x 25 mil, 3x 24 mil.

New money total: 938 million

Bought: 10x Touch of Death dam/end/rech at 555,556 each, 10x Soul Trapped Gem at 2.1 mil each. Also 1 Reactive Armor Resistance level 30 at 5 million, to be crafted and stored in base.

Not bidding on the Alchemical Silvers needed was probably a mistake... but then, I probably would have bid too low. Anyway, I buy 10x Alchemical Silver at 261,000 each, 10x Iron at 100,000 each, 10x Data Drive at 12,000 each. All bids instantly filled. Now I can craft!

Crafted Touch of Death dam/end/rech has 100 for sale, 123 bidding, last 5 are 3 at 20 mil, 2 at 15 mil. I probably want more than 15 mil for mine, but there's a lot for sale so it's going to be hard to not overprice. I list everything for 15.2 mil and hope that works. The good thing is, I can afford to be patient if need be.

I have outstanding bids on 10x Doctored Wounds heal/rech at 600,000 each and 8x Numina's Convalescence Heal at 15.1 mil each. Those bids have been there maybe since October or November -- they're probably never going to fill. And I need to be bidding on something that I can sell next time I log in. (Side note -- these are level 50 recipes; unless otherwise noted I'm always bidding and selling the top level of the recipe in question.)

Numina's Convalescence Heal are going for 38 to 50 million per recipe right now. 263 bidding, I have no idea what the bottom end is or where I should bid. I pull down the heal bids and decide to bid on Touch of Death again -- stack of 10 dam/end at 2.1 mil, stack of 10 acc/dam/end at 2.2 mil ea, stack of 10 dam/end/rech at 2.2 mil each. Stack of 10 acc/dam at 1,020,000 each. Also 10x Deific Weapon at 3,000,001 ea and 10x Soul Trapped Gem at 3,000,001 each.

Ending money: 917 million

Logged in: Serpentine-Fire, 50 blaster
Last logged: 10 days ago
Money: 807 million

I have nothing sold, nothing for sale, and 40 items bought: 10x Efficacy Adaptor rech/ac for 6,000 each; 10x Performance Shifter end mod/rech at 1,620,000 each; 10x Performance Shifter Endurance Modification/Accuracy at 2,300,000 each, and 10x Performance Shifter End Mod at 11,111,112 each.
Okay, I need some salvage! I put in bids for Synthetic Intelligence Unit 10@3.1 mil, Chronal Skip 10@3.1 mil, and Hamdon Goo 10@3,000,500 each. But those won't fill for a long while. The salvage for the Efficacy Adaptor recipes is cheap to buy.

I also discover some random drop recipes on my character that are worth crafting and selling: another Performance Shifter end mod/acc lvl 50, a Crushing Impact acc/dam/end level 45, a Red Fortune Endurance lvl 50, and best of all, a Numina's Convalescence Heal lvl 50.

I list the Efficacy Adaptors at 2.7 mil each and hope for the best (87 for sale). List both the Crushing Impact and Red Fortune at 3,000,100. The Numina's shows last 5 at 45 mil each... but wait, wasn't last 5 between 38 and 50 mil just a half hour ago? There are lots bidding, not as many for sale. I list it at 45.1 million. The performance Shifter has last 5 sales around 20 million, with over 200 for sale and over 600 bidding. I list for 17.1 million.

Ending Money: 699 million

Logged in: Organica, 50 scrapper
Last logged: 39 days ago. Maybe not since I hit 50 actually.
Money: 513 million

You have 10 bought and 16 sold items in the Consignment House! Considering my 17 slots, that about covers it. Sold: Efficacy Adaptor Endurance Modification/Accuracy for 6x 4 mil, 1x 3.5 mil, 5x 6 mil, 1x 5.5 mil, 3x 7 mil. Gotta love the way people bid. ^_^

Money: 592 million

I also have 3 more Efficacy Adaptor End Mod/Acc to put up for sale. I list them for 3.1 mil each.

My purchase is 10x Efficacy Adaptor End Mod/Rech at 105,000 each. I buy salvage and craft those as well. I list them for 3.6 mil each -- that might be too high, but last 5 includes some sales at 10 mil, and only 54 for sale. Put in bids for more Efficay Adaptors, 2 stacks of end mod/acc at 12,000 each and 1 stack of end mod/rech at 105,000 each

Ending Money: 583 million

Logged in: Popeye Khan, 43 tank
Last logged: 39 days ago
Money: 640 million

2 items bought, 0 sold: I have bought a level 31 Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge speed for 103 million and a level 32 Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge speed also for 103 million. Now if I could only remember why I wanted to do that. Not that they aren't useful, I'll craft and dump them into storage and use 'em on someone later. But I probably had a specific charcter in mind at the time.

I have outstanding bids on Impervium Armor Resistance recipes in the 29-33 range, and nothing has filled in 39 days. Hmmm. Looks like people have moved into my niche while I wasn't paying attention (for 40 days). I relist bids.

Ending Money: 578 million

Logged in: Holy Bell, 41 Peacebringer
Last logged: 39 days ago
Money: 819 million

40 bought: 10x Scirocco's Dervish dam/rech at 51,000; 10x Scirocco's Dervish dam/end at 15,000; 10x Hamidon Goo at 2 million ea, 10x Photonic Weapon at 2.2 mil each.

Buy salvage, list 10 Scirocco's Dervish dam/rech at 9.1 mil each. Put in bids for 20 more recipes of the same at 10,000 each.

Ending money: 809 million

All for Wednesday!

All of that is exactly right. For some things that I market, there are as many as 200 or more crafted and for sale (endurance IOs for example are sometimes like this). In that case my list price is whatever I think is the lowest I want to go or that I think I can go without being nailed by a lowball bid. If the average sale price is 5-7 million, I might list as low as 3.1 million (for a cheap uncommon recipe w/out rare salvage -- Efficacy Adaptors for example). For an orange recipe requiring rare salvage, I'm generally pretty hesitant to list below 5 million -- 5.1 million is kind of a floor min list price for that kind of IO for me. If I'm forced to list that low then it's a sign that this particular niche is not worth my time. ^_^ (Mako's is an example of a set where the prices sometimes drop very low, there are so many of them out there and it's a nice set but not a hugely in demand one.)

This idea occurred to me two weeks ago: to keep a detailed journal of exactly how I make my money in this game. The point would be to show everything I'm doing, rather than speak in general terms. It's all well and good to tell people to buy low, sell high, to be patient with bids, to list below what the actual sell price is but not too low, to check out mid-range uncommons or even to mention specific IOs that you can make money crafting -- but I figure there's no substitute for saying, "This is what I did, this is when I did it, this is how I did it, this is the money I made doing it."

I call it "Lazy Marketing" because I don't keep track of trends or prices, I don't try to manipulate things, I don't try to defend my niches, I don't worry about flooding the market with too many of one IO, I don't even work a single IO or niche, but usually multiple niches at once and sometimes the same niche on several different characters at once. I work every niche it occurs to me to work, even ones that have a lower profit margin. I generally base my bids and list prices on the last 5 bought/sold, unless I'm pretty certain that I can buy lower or sell higher. I had one person in The Market channel tell me last week that I could "make a much bigger profit margin if I knew what I was doing. Whatever.

I have all the money I need to IO out every one of my characters, and I have a lot of characters. I use all of my level 50s, plus quite a few other characters, to market. I can do this with about half an hour spent an evening, or an hour or so on a Saturday when I'm especially lazy (taking notes has slowed me down a lot of course ). Anyone can do this, if they want to.

I started this on February 14th, and waited two weeks to start posting to provide me with some protection from other marketeers, because I'm basically saying exactly what I'm bidding on and selling and for how much. This may or may not be interesting reading. But here it is. (I think my first few posts were a lot more chatty than later ones!)

Also: this is not necessarily meant to represent the best way to make money, or the only way, or the method that other marketeers use. Just what I do to make my money.


Monday February 14 2011

Logged in: Shinobu Dragonheart, 50 scrapper.
Last logged: 8 days ago.
Money: 1184 million

10 items sold: crafted Decimation triple for 80 mil, 80, 80, 80, 85 90 90 90 90 75 mil.

792 million profit = 1.976 billion

30 items purchased: 10 Decimation acc/end/rech for 3.2 mil each, 10 Mu Vestment for 2.2 mil each, 10 Scientific Theory for 51 thousand each.
I have failed to purchase: 10 Alchemical Gold for 81 thousand each, 10 Alchemical Silver for 101,000 each.

Well, I have nearly 2 billion here, I can afford to bid higher on the salvage. I bid 171,000 each for 10 Alchemical Silver, and it fills before I'm finished typing this. I bid 361,000 each on 10 Alchemical Gold, and ten minutes later -- nothing.

Decimations have fallen in price -- a lot. The triples are going for 20 million a pice at the moment, Acc/dam/rech has 56 for sale and 80 bidding, acc/end/rech has 97 for sale and 54 bidding. But that's just in the last week -- I know the price will go up again. So time to buy is now. Acc/End/Rech are selling for 1.5 to 2 million in last five, including two sales for 1,555,555 which I suspect was a marketeer just because of the odd number duplicated. But there's been a sale of 1.5 mil since... so the one marketeer bid must have filled. I place two bids of 10 stack each for 1.6 million. Three recipes are bought immediately.

Acc/Dam/Rech has sold for 10, 15, 13, 10, and 1 million in last 5 sales. That one million is eye-catching, that means a lot of low bids are out there and not very many high bids. I place one bid for 10 at 6.1 million (should fill easily) and 1 bid for 10 at 2 million (longer range lowball bid to see if I can get lucky).

While I'm at it, with my toon flush with cash and prices seemingly dropping at the moment, I put in bids for other Decimations -- 10 Acc/Dam at 7,000,112 each (some marketeer was buying at 7,000,111) and 10 Dam/End at 5,612,000 (again, bidding just above an obvious marketeer's bids).

At this point my Alchemical Golds still haven't filled, so I can't craft or put anything up for sale yet. Time to move on.

Money after bids are out: 1.737 billion

Logged in: Huntress Midnight, 50 brute
Last logged in: 8 days ago
Money: 810 million

10 items sold: Aegis Resistance for 55,555,555 (x5), 55 million (x4) and 1 at 57 million.

Money after collecting sales: 1.335 billion

Purchased: 8 Reactive Armor: Resistance for 10.1 million each (bid on 2 still outstanding), 6 Ancient Bone (I have 4 on me already) 10 Stabilized Mutant Genome and 10 Carnival of Shadows Mask.

I craft the 8 recipes. Going price at the moment seems to be 23 to 25 million, with 52 bidding and 57 for sale. Seems low. Price may spike again, but I'm not sure I want to take a big risk on that happening. In any case, salvage and crafting costs are negligible; I bought at 10.1 mil so a 25 mil sale is still a very good profit.

I need to buy too -- I have nothing else in the pipe. But Reactive Armor: Resistance recipes are going for 15 to 20 million each in last 5. That's just stupid -- and makes me wonder if I shouldn't have listed my crafted ones higher. Anyway, I rebid for 10 at 10.2 million, and bid for 2 stacks of Aegis: Resistance at 13,220,111, matching the price of the last 5 sales. When I do this, I'm hoping that my bids will go undetected by the other marketeer for a longer period of time (although someone else could always come along and outbid us both).

Ending Money after bids: 979 million

Enough marketeering for one day. Off to play!

At least, that was the plan. But I recall that my current toon needs some recipes mailed from my tanker. So:

Logged in: Sailor Shinobu, 50 tanker
last logged in: 2 days ago
Money: 271 million

Purchased: 1 Apocalypse Dam/Rech for 471 million (for my current build, reworked after respec'ing into inherent fitness. I had a bid at a lower amount -- about 350 million I think -- for more than a month with no luck, then rebid on it Saturday.) 10 Aegis bought at 15 million each. 10 Reactive Armor: Resistance bought at 15 million each. Probably overpaid on both of those, eh. Luckily for me I won't be selling them now, I need salvage first.

I bid recklessly on the salvage for my Apocalypse, I want to craft it now. 3.6 million for Hamidon Goo and Magical Conspiracy, 4.5 million for Synthetic Intelligence Unit. When I'm done I have a nice 16% regen bonus for a 2-slotted Fire Blast epic pool power. ^_^

For the rest, I put in a bid of 10 Pangean Soil at 3.1 mil each, 10 Carnival of Shadow Masks at 51 thousand each (currently selling for 500,000 and up - yikes.) 10 Ancient Bone at 5,000 each, 7 Stabilized Mutant Genomes at 31,000 each (I have 3 on hand already).

Mail my recipes to my other account, and NOW I can go play!

Ending Money after bids: 227 million

(As an aside: MG invited me to an Abandoned Sewer Trial. I've done this four times I think, twice failing and twice BARELY succeeding. MG asks, "Anyone remember how this goes?" I reply that the last time I did it was of course the last time MG did it. ^_^ Anyway we rock the AST, we're down clearing the rikti out with more than an hour to go, we have the hydra down below 50% after the first wave, we kill it with something like 30 minutes left -- just over an hour spent on the trial total. I've NEVER seen it done like that before. ^_^ )


Tuesday February 15 2011

Log in: Nina Ballerina, 50 scrapper
Last logged in: 9 days ago
Money: 796 million

51 bought, 0 sold (nothing for sale) 10 x Devastation acc/dam (paid 1 mil each), 20 x Decimation acc/dam/rech (paid 2.1 mil each -- guess I was gambling on those 80 million per crafted IO sales hehe). 1 Obliteration dam/rech level 30 for 3 million (save for later use). 10 ancient bone at 600 inf, 10 inert gas at 26 thousand inf each.

Bids that have failed to fill: 20x Military Cybernetic at 2.6 mil each, 20x Commercial Cybernetic at 51 thousand each. Lowball bids are too low. (Also some misc outstanding lowball Obliteration bids in the level 30-32 range).

Not much to do here but up my bids on the Commercial and Military Cybernetics (151 thousand and 3.2 million respectively). Also put in a bid for 10 Rikti Alloy at 2.8 mil each to craft the Devastation recipes.

Ending Money after bids: 754 million

Logged in: Sparks Fly, 50 scrapper
Last logged: 9 days ago.

(For some reason I'm standing in the Vanguard base -- oh, probably working on the day job badge. I don't do that with most of my characters anymore.)

Money: 677 million

10 sold: Touch of Death Dam/end/rech for 21,234,567, for 22,00,002, 3 for 25 mil, 1 for 22 mil, 4 for 20 mil. It's hard to predict what people will pay -- I suspect i had these listed for something like 18.1 mil or 19.1 mil, or even 17.1 mil.

Purchased; 10x Touch of Death acc/dam/end (for 751,000 ea), 10x sci theory, 10x rune.

Bids not filled: 10x Deific Weapon at 2.1 mil ea, 10x Steel at 51,000 each. Sigh.

Rebid at 152,000 per steel, 3.3 mil per Deific Weapon. Also place a bid for 10 Touch of Death at 2.1 mil each.

Ending money after bids: 850 million

Logged in: Squddy Kitty, 50 WS
Last logged: 9 days ago
Money: 688 million

10 sold: Scirocco's Dervish dam/rech, all 10 for 10 mil each.

Money at this point: 782 mil

Purchased: 10x Scirocco's Dervish dam/acc/end at 251,00 each
9 Platinum at 2.6 mil each (I have the 10th on me)

Bid: 10x Temporal Tracer at 2,000 (fills instantly) 10x Hydraulic Piston at 1,000 (fills instantly) 10x Ruby at 500 (buys 5) at 1,000 (buys other 5). Oh hay look, I can actually craft and list something!

Scirocco's Dervish triple: last 5 are 10 mil (4) and 1 at 9 mil. 36 bidding, 64 for sale. Seems safe to list just under 10 mil... although I seem to recall these selling for above 10 mil in the past. Ah well. List all at 9.1 mil.

Bids on: Scirocco's Dervish triple 10x 552,00 each, dam/rech 10x 200 inf each (0 bids out, I got one insta purchase), and dam/end at 12,000 each. 10 Hamidon Goo at 2.8 mil each (pretty lowball bid these days).

Ending Money: 739 million

Logged in: Bubble Girl Six, 50 defender
Last logged: Last night, I ran the Abandoned Sewer Trial with her. I can't remember if I did any quick marketing when I first logged her in, but when we were done I logged out in Ouroboros.
Money; 808 million

Bought: 10x Mako's Bite dam/rech at 100,015 each; 10x Mako's quad at 501,00 each; 10x Pangean Soil at 2.6 mil, 10x Magical Conspiracy at 2.6 mil. 10x Spirit Thorn, 10x Silver, 10x Thorn Tree Vine (ah, I now remember bidding on the common and uncommon salvage just before the Abandoned Sewer Trial. Good! I place bids for common/uncommon salvage for the other recipe too. All cheap stuff, level 50 salvage) I craft 20 recipes.

Mako's dam/rech has 128 bidding and 47 for sale. Top price 10 mil. I list ten for 9.1 mil, betting that I can get that much since there aren't a ton of them for sale.

Mako's quad -- 44 for sale, 84 bidding. last 5 includes sales of 13, 13, and 14 mil, and one for 9,999,999. I list 5 at 10.1 mil.

Ending money: 791 million

All for Tuesday!

How'd your Saturday go? Me, I spent seven hours in the evening on just two task forces.

My Saturday: Did some marketing, then got invited to an ITF. That went well. Right as Rommy is dying for the last time, I see someone advertising a Sister Psy TF. I've only run that once this week, so I ask to join and switch toons. This also goes quite well -- we finish in about 1 hour 20 minutes, I think it was.

Logged off after.

Evening: I log back on. MG asks me if I want to do a 4 person Doctor Quaterfield. Uh... Yes, MG is not afraid of any task force, no matter what others think. Citadel? Manticore? Sister Psyche? Synapse? These are FUN! We ran a Sewer Trail just two weeks ago, and finished with more than 30 minutes to spare! As for shard TFs... MG does not like Justin A. so much, but loves to run the others. Faathim... ran it last week. Sara Moore... ran it the day after Faathim. The infamous Dr. Q? MG is not afraid to run it, although I think I've only joined in maybe twice before. MG would run it solo if there weren't some 4-item simultaneous clicks near the end.

But I know MG can run Dr. Q fast -- fast being a relative term here. So I say, "In half an hour or so, sure."

I bring my electric melee/shield defense scrapper. Lots of AoE is good, there are no AVs here, just a lot of things to kill as quickly as possible. MG has a spines/invul scrapper, and we have a fire blaster and a fire/kin corruptor to round out our four man team.

There's not much to say about a Dr. Q TF. Four people makes the hunts take longer but the missions had fewer enemies, and everyone on the team was capable of stealthing and soloing when needed. We finished in 3 hours 16 minutes, which was the fastest time MG's ever run it.

"We should do a 4 man STF," MG says.

"Sounds like fun," I say. "What do you need?" I mean, MG's the expert, surely my friends know what they're getting into. Right? It'll probably take an hour or so... right?

MG uses the same scrapper, Lucy switches to a dark/dark defender, we talk Dante into joining on an illusion/empath controller... and MG asks if I have a ranged toon, so I bring my fire/fire blaster. This is not a toon I often play, but it's one of my most heavily purpled toons, so I have massive recharge and can pump out a lot of damage.

Off we go!

Things go really well at first. MG can tank AVs with that scrapper. "We could do a 4 man LGTF with this team!" MG exclaims. We're not overpowered on damage though, so each AV fight takes a bit of work to whittle them down.

Finally we reach the last mission. After clearing our way up, MG asks me to use my snipe to pull. "Mako, or anyone except Ghost Widow." So I pull Mako. And Black Scorpion also comes. AND Ghost Widow.

Somehow, MG tanks all three of them while we whittle down Mako first, then BS, and finally we take out Ghost Widow. Awesome! We rock! Four heroes on three AVs!

This is where things start to go wrong. First, Scirocco gives us more problems than the other three AVs combined. MG dies, all of us die at least once I think. But we take him down finally, and it's on to the Flyer. I die more than once again at the Flyer, but we whittle it down to a sliver of health, and then....

It respawns. What? "It respawns every 20 minutes," the others tell me. Oh. Hmmm, never ran an STF where that was an issue before. (But I haven't run STF all that often.)

We decide to ignore the flyer for now and just concentrate on Lord Recluse. But now we have a problem: MG can't really tank him. I sort of assumed they had a plan for this, and they kind of do, but it doesn't sound like they really discussed anything ahead of time. (MG had even spoken of this as a 'trial run' for an eventual 1 or 2 man attempt -- something that it soon became apparent wasn't going to ever happen.)

"Is your PA perma?" MG asks. "Nearly," says Dante. "There's about a second gap." I have a level 50 illusion/rad troller (who I used on the ITF earlier in the day) with excellent recharge time and this sounds even better than what mine has. That's good, right?

"Okay, you try to tank him with PA while we take down the red tower," MG says.

But this fails to work. First of all, the Flyer comes screaming in dropping troops and missiles. Dante goes down, and LR runs all over the place killing people. We give it a couple of more tries, with no better results. Finally we decide we need to take out the Flyer first... but it will respawn again in less than ten minutes.

We try once more, then we wait on the Flyer. We take it down. Okay! Now to try Recluse again!

We try. Over and over. The problem is that Recluse moves so fast... once PA drops, he's across the map before they're summoned again. We try having MG tank him for just a second or two, but he kills MG almost instantly. I try hover sniping the red tower, but that's not enough damage. When I drop low enough to use other attacks, Recluse comes after me.

We die. Over and over and over. We whittle the tower down, then things go wrong and repairmen fix it. Then the Flyer respawns again and we have that to deal with, too. We simply don"t have enough people to deal with everything at once. After many more tries, I'm fully convinced that it's impossible and we probably need to give up, but I'm waiting for the others to reach the same conclusion. It sounds like MG finally does that -- we're talking about giving up.

At this point Dante is convinced that MG just needs to eat some orange inspirations and then can tank LR long enough for Dante to heal and/or summon PA again. He heads off to go buy some. I decide to head to my base to pick up inspirations too... but something weird happens. I go through Ouro to Talos, but when I get there I can't see the land or buildings, just people and cars and the tram. Since I can see the tram, I find the doors and zone to IP, but it's exactly the same there. So I relog, then hit my base, and finally we're all back in the mission.

Dante tries to get MG to take some of the inspirations and try to tank with them, but in the meantime MG has gotten all of LR's attention and found a way to hover tank him. LR is running in a loop... climbing buildings, jumping at MG, then going back to do it again. "I think I got him," MG says. "Try taking out the tower!"

This time I chew inspirations and stand at the base of the tower so that I can hit it with my AoEs -- Burn, Rain of Fire, Fireball, Fire Sword Circle, sometimes Fire Breath or one of my single-target attacks. I do this to kill the repairmen as fast as possible. Burn hasn't been this useful to me since.. what, Issue Four? With Lucy picking them off too and Dante healing and summoning pets, we finally manage to take the red tower down. Woo! The hard part's done!

The next part is nearly as hard though. MG can't keep LR's attention again, but Dante employs his own strategy and finds that HE can tank LR with enough oranges and constant healing. In any case, we get this tower down too.

The others also fall... slowly, with a combination of hover-tanking, PA tanking, etc., and despite the Flyer attacking us most of the time. Dante summons several Amy's, and MG summons several Shivans. I don't have any temp powers on my blaster, since I don't play her that much.

When we finally take down Recluse, it's nearly 2 AM. The final tally as best I can remember: 3 hours 40 minutes, 107 deaths.

But only four people! And the fact that we actually finished it, after being on the verge of quitting, made the whole thing feel very epic indeed.

It goes into the superhero pension fund, which is administered by Azuria. She has most of it in offshore investments... someplace called Rogue Isles I think.

The addition to the Hive is especially appreciated!

I'd think so. I had to figure this out with a friend this week... we couldn't find a good way to do it.

I guess something's wrong with me. I like Manticore, Citadel, and Sister Psyche. I even run Sarah Moore and Faathim the Kind with MG on a semi-regular basis. The only TFs I absolutely dread are Dr. Q and Justin Augustine. The first is just impossibly long with no payoff, and the second boggles me that it's almost entirely hunt missions -- IDENTICAL hunt missions, even, just in different locations.

We do run Manticore in 45-50 minutes regularly, and Citadel can be run in under an hour. We did Sister Psyche in 1:16 last night. ^_^

I usually play scrappers, and I'm frequently on speed TFs. I take great pride in having builds that allow me to stealth, teleport team members in, in knowing how to get to missions fast and using all the various tricks and shortcuts at the right time (is this the right mission to use my Mission Transporter?) and in being able to solo a large group of enemies or free a hostage when needed. We did a Sister Psyche in 1 hour 16 minutes last night, that's moving quite fast and I was able to get to bed on time. ^_^ It can be a lot of fun to see how fast you can zerg a TF, and to run several in a row.

But I like kill-alls too. What scrapper doesn't? Killing everything is the scrapper way of doing it. I've never been on a kill absolutely everything ITF yet, but I know I'd enjoy it. A couple of weeks ago we ran a +4 kill most Citadel, meant for helping people level up. That got to be a bit of a grind at the end, we didn't have the ideal team for it, but overall I enjoy that kind of TF too.

What's important is that people know what kind of TF you're running before you start it.

Right now I'm documenting everything I do on my marketing toons each evening, as a way of providing a demonstration of a marketeer in action. I started doing this on Feb 14 and I figure I'd wait two weeks to start a thread on what I'm writing down, so that I'm not giving people information on what I bid on recipes or salvage last night. ^_^ But other than that I'm pretty much noting what I bid on, for how much, how much I list for, how much I sell for, how much money I made. I figure it'll be a detailed example of how to buy, craft recipes, and sell and make money (or at least, how I do it). And if not that, it'll give people something else to read while bored at work, or whatever.

But basically it boils down to exactly what Fulmens said. I buy recipes for next to nothing -- say, Decimation or Devastation, Mako's Bite or Touch of Death, Scirocco's Dervish, Performance Shifter, etc -- and salvage (rare salvage cost more than the recipe itself usually) and then sell for a nice profit. In some cases the recipe sells for 1-2 million, sometimes even a lot less, and the crafted IO sells for 12 to 20 million or more.

I just lent a billion influence to a friend (actually we worked out a trade). This friend runs TFs constantly and is doing a special build on his favorite character, and had spent 5100 merits in the process... but needed a billion influence to finish the job.

"I know exactly how you make influence," he said, "I just don't know how you have the patience."

This, from a person who runs as many as 4-5 TFs a night, who spends a great deal of time trying to figure out the fastest ways to run them, who solos AVs and TFs, who datamines various TFs and story arcs to try to figure out how to become even more efficient... but spending 15 or 20 minutes at the market requires too much patience.

Marketing simply isn't for everybody. ^_^

I will say that I work very hard to generate as many recipes in the 30-33 range as I can. Last September I kept one character locked for a month in that level range just to generate recipes (I was doing an amerit roll every day). For my most recent character, once I hit 30 I rolled all of my AE tickets (about 5,000) and did as many hero merit rolls as I could manage before I hit level 34, at which point I've just started saving merits so I can buy what I still want/need. But this is typically what I do with a new character: PL them a bit in AE, run TFs and hit up all of the zone explore badges that I can, then when I hit 30, roll everything.

So the concept itself is something I've kept alive, even if my actual MLC characters are busy doing nothing at all.

I always blamed my failed participation in MLC on the fact that it was on Freedom and I always play on Virtue.

Now that Crazy 88's are on Virtue, I don't really have an excuse.

Was there really a party? I burned some influence, but I didn't see anyone or see any chatter about it.

I'd think it's perfectly sellable on Wentworths, just have to list it for the price you actually want to sell it for and then wait for a buy to notice it's for sale.

That said, doesn't hurt to sell it here. ^_^

Normally I like level 30-33 range IOs, but since the PvP IOs exempt down I'd probably prefer the higher level ones if possible. But then again, depends on the price. ^_^

Yeah, if you can get 3 billion for the PvP IO then that's a lot less time and work than any other method, and it's very hard to get that much or more than that via any other method.