Organica

Am I the only one who keeps reading the title of this thread as "Do I have to keep playing?"

It's somewhat refreshing when an ebil marketeer actually looks like he'd cheerfully crush the downtrodden beneath his heel. Congrats!

Marketeers trade in patience and impatience. ^_^

Bear in mind that my experiment was in November (during the AE monkey business even). Prices change rapidly on the market, so comparing what I got in November vs. what you can get from LotG today may or may not be informative. ^_^

Even so, I think if you can get 220 million out of your LotG then you're probably ahead. That even beats the PvP IO selling for ~ 3 billion.

Meh. I don't have room to store stuff in my base.

Oh... but I have the base on Freedom... and my villain base. >.>

I virtually never broadcast for teams, and I virtually never form teams myself, although I'm certainly capable of doing so. I'm in a large Super Group, so I join teams that people are forming there, or if several friends are looking for something to do we'll come up with something. I'm a member of multiple global channels, those are always good for finding teams. I sometimes join teams when they're broadcasting for members. But on the whole, if I don't find a team, I find something to do with myself, and frequently something more interesting will pop up soon. I keep my LFT flag on, some people still pay attention to such things.

Case in point: This morning. I wanted to level my fire/kin from 37 to 38. It was early morning, not many people on, nothing going on in coalition chat. My fire/kin needs most of the Freedom Phalanx TFs so I considered forming a Citadel or something, but instead I just decided to run the Freakshow Wars arc via Ouro. I haven't solo'd much with my fire/kin, and I wanted to see how well I did. Finished in 1 hour 12 minutes, which was very good considering I paused partway through to make breakfast. (Another good reason to be playing solo, heh.)

After that I had 48 merits, not quite enough to convert to a hero merit. I was trying to think of something I could do to earn a few merits, and while I was doing that I wandered around Atlas collecting all of the new explore badges. Bingo! 5 merits for the accolade! Oh, duh! I should do a little more of this!

So I spent a few minutes collecting explore badges, and then I get a tell asking if I wanted to join a Synapse Task Force. Hey! Sure I do!

It was a great team. ^_^ We finished that in 1 hour 37 minutes. I hit level 38 too. Afterwards I finished up my badge collecting and converted 50 merits. I also joined a SG mate for a bit to help them out with the Trapdoor mission. I got another tell about joining a team after that, but I was ready to log off, so I declined.

That's usually how things work for me. Waiting for an invite like that takes patience of course, and some nights nobody is looking. Forming your own team is a much better option if you A) Have a specific task you want to accomplish, say a specific task force or entrance to the Midnight Club, and B) Have a limited amount of time to play and/or aren't interested in badging or marketing, or doing anything that is not actually teaming. Standing around doing NOTHING but broadcasting for a team -- no thanks.

I have two accounts, and I'm pretty terrible about storing any salvage at all. I keep rares on my characters until I need room, then I sell them. I sell everything else. When I'm crafting, I buy whatever I need, either bidding low and waiting until the next day to grab everything or buying it at whatever the buy it now price is. On the whole, I make a lot of money crafting and selling so I can't be bothered with worrying over salvage prices. Also, being able to only store 30 salvage per bin makes it completely not worth my time. I'd rather have 100 crafted IOs than 30 pieces of savlage that might or might not be useful to me someday.

Most of my base storage is devoted to storing crafted IOs that I might need later or want to sell at some point. (9 bins of IOs, 2 enhancement storage, and 3 or 4 salvage storage I guess, but mostly filled with base salvage junk from way back.)

It's frustrating, but what can you do?

I did this last Summer I think, and someone attacked me just as I was ready to launch the rocket. I was on Mouse Police, a very heavily IO'd katana/regen scrapper... so I attacked back and killed them, and still got my launch off. Happy times all around, especially since we had several more duels afterwards and talked a bit. But it had the potential to be very frustrating had I not managed to finish my mission.

A couple of months ago I joined a badger group trying to take on the AVs in Recluse's Victory, and it was an exercise in futility due to repeated attacks from PvPers. We fought back... but after 10-15 minutes we were no closer to accomplishing any of the things we'd come there for, so we had to give up and leave. I was on Mouse again, I know I can hold my own in PvP even though it's not a PvP-specific build, but... meh. I'd like to get those AV badges... someday.

It's been six years, and I'm still trying to level 3 of the first 5 characters I ever created and played past level 10. It's my goal this year to finish them.

Organica: My first ever character. Created as a katana/dark armor scrapper, leveled to 17, promptly deleted and rerolled as a katana/regen scrapper. This was back when katana had the broadsword animations, and regen made you a god. I got all the way to level 36, but after weeks of street hunting in Brickstown I stopped playing her. Later moved her to Virtue, and this November she finally hit 50! Yay!

Jalia: My first 50, a fire/axe tank, leveled before burn was changed. I've moved her to Virtue and then Freedom, changing her name both times... I still don't like playing her that much.

Mouse Police: I have two level 50 Mouse Police characters on Virtue and Victory, but the very original Mouse Police was an invul/energy melee tank that I deleted at 20 and rebuilt as a dark melee/invul scrapper. (I didn't like the lack of damage the tank had -- strangely enough one of my favorite 50's today is an invul/energy melee tank). She was 27 before I stopped playing her. Later I moved her to Justice and she is up to level 44 I think.

Jalia Ice: An ice/ice blaster, got her to 26, never liked the name, but I liked ice blasting well enough. Eventually I moved this toon to Freedom and remade her as the Mouse Police of that server. I got her to 43, but she's been stuck there a while.

Shinobu: My Winter Lord baby! This was a fire/kin created in June 2004 long before they were in vogue. I went from about 10 to almost 30 on Winter Lords, then played up to 32 so I could get my imps. Right after that, I lost interest in the character. I later moved her to Virtue, had to change the name slightly ("Shinobu Dragonfire", bleh), and then decided I still wasn't big on playing a fire/kin, so she sat for 3 more years. These past two weeks I've revamped and respec'd the character yet again and I've been having more fun with her; she's now up to 37. I think she needs a better name though.

For some people, using SO's first then buying generic IOs at 27 or 32 (level 30 or 35 generic IOs) and then waiting until 50 to fully IO out your character with set IOs is the way to go. This has the advantage that a level 50 toon can make a lot more influence simply playing the game, level 50 IOs will give you the most enchancements possible, and seeing all of those shiny IOs all at level 50 probably makes people feel better. It has the disadvantage that level 50 IOs are always more expensive (sometimes ridiculously so), you lose your set bonuses as soon as you exemp more than 3 levels down, and you don't gain any benefit from set bonuses before you hit 50.

For me: I skip enhancements in the early game except what falls to me; I use generic IO's at 17 or 22 (level 20 or 25 IOs). Then I usually start working on a set IO build by 27 or 30. I am a big fan of using level 30-33 IOs, because I can exemp down to 27-30 and keep my set bonuses, the enhancement difference between 30 and 50 is not really that great, I get set bonuses to use from 30 to 50, and IOs at 30-33 are, as a rule, MUCH cheaper than the level 50 versions. They are, mind you, not nearly as plentiful, so you'll have to learn to place bids and wait in some cases... but that's how I like to do it.

But there's no one way to do it that is obviously superior to any other way. You'll get a lot of different answers. If you plan to farm/play your way to the money needed to finance your build, you probably need to get to 50 first. If you plan to market your way to the money needed to finance your build, you can start working on that at level one. ^_^

"recipes you don't need"... "outrageously overpriced"...?

Recipes I don't need, that are valuable? Does not compute!

Recipes I don't need are the ones I can't make any money on. And I can't give those away.

But by all means, if you want to list your Oblits, Kinetic Combats, Luck of the Gamblers for 10 influence, don't let me stop you! I have lowball bids out on recipes like that all the time!

Some 15-20 characters. Most of my 50s and some of my lower characters. Since I tend to start IOing out characters in the early 30's, ones that I'm working on probably don't have the market slots to do a lot of marketing. But level 50 toons, they're not using those slots for anything else. ^_^

"Smacks of elitism" Heh. Not that that isn't true, but it makes me laugh all the same. If you're terrified to attempt a Task Force (short of the alpha slot ones anyway) without special requirements for who you invite to your team, you, my friend, are the opposite of elite.

The elite player knows they can run the TF with whoever else shows up. ^_^

I mostly join TFs with Multiple Girl II, and while they're almost always simple Freedom Phalanx TFs or Hess, Moonfire, Katie, Shadow Shards TFs sometimes ITF... never once has MG required any particular AT or powerset from anyone.

If it's still active now, then I assume it'll probalby stay active until the normal downtime Tuesday morning?

My dual pistols/devices blaster is 49. I never thought of her as sucking, although obviously I don't get much out of more than half my devices powers on a team. And I've teamed almost all the way to 50; she's a part of a "static team" that meets every Monday, Tuesday, and Thursday night. (We also have an electric blaster, heh).

I like that dual pistols has 3 AoEs that recharge fast. I like that it also gives me a couple of good single-target options. I like the animations, whether they slow me down or not, they look cool. My toon is pretty well IO'd out so maybe I don't notice the suckitude as much.

I don't get to use trip mines very often on a team, but solo they're fun to play with, just very slow. As for time bomb... what I like about it is I can run ahead (invisible -- superspeed plus cloaking device), plant one in a large group, then back off. Usually it goes off just as everyone attacks. Solo, I'll lay my trip mines at a corner, place the time bomb in the group, hide around the corner, and wait for things to happen.

I mostly picked /devices because I wanted to avoid any "blapper" powers. I've done blapper-style blasters. And it sort of fits thematically, of course, for someone without any real super powers. But yeah, I get the most mileage out of cloaking device, targeting drone, and caltrops. I usually forget to even summon the stupid gun drone -- wouldn't be so bad if it lasted longer like a normal pet.

One thing that might be nice for a /devices set is a shield generator like the sky raiders summon. ^_^

I also have a sonic/sonic defender at 45... I don't find her that underpowered.

On the other hand, I absolutely agree that my level 41 Peacebringer just isn't good enough at anything. :/ Especially compared to what my Warshade can do.

I didn't create any level 10 Winter's Gift IOs, although I did buy up a few over the event. (I think I was paying 12 mil per). I did, however, create more than 50 level 50 Winter's Gift IOs, crafted and placed in storage. I know that last year around August I was able to sell a few of these for well in excess of 50 million each. I have no idea if they'll sell that well in 2011, but given that it cost me 4-5 million (in candy canes) per IO, I'm sure I'll make a profit.

I also created a few level 30 Winter's Gifts for my own use, since I prefer that level for IOs.

Trials limit you to no higher than level 14. Also, there's an influence limit... 50,000 I think?

I'd read the first page or so of this thread and was looking forward to this "epic" story arc. I finally ran it today, on Sable Lance, my level 47 dual pistol/devices blaster.

I noticed in the first mission that I was set to +2. But Sable Lance is well IO'd, and I was having fun laying trip mines and pulling enemies into them. Slow, but it felt like I was the better "normal person with tech gadgets" operative. They had no super powers, I had no super powers. I was sneaky and using my mines and caltrops and guns, and taking out one group at a time.

The glue was REALLY annoying. That made a very slow process even slower. It never stopped me from winning a fight, it just delayed the next fight by a couple of minutes.

When the bomb went off in the office building, I was a bit confused. I remembered the post about the "epic fight on top of a burning building" or something like that... so I thought, "Oh, we're several missions in, this must be the big ending. Where's the stairway to the roof?" Needless to say, I could find no stairway to the roof, failed to find the room with the boss and hostage right away, went down two floors by accident (kinda confusing in all that fire and smoke), and when I finally found them I didn't realize I was on a timer. I was laying trip mines when the mission ended.

The warehouse mission with the three other guys was kind of annoying too, because I was being pushed to run forward, run forward, I'm on another timer, but that's not really the style that works for my blaster solo. But once my allys were dead and the timed ambushes were over, I went back to my old habit of laying trip mines and pulling enemies to them.

Everything went slow but steady until the big final fight. This is where I realized that being set at +2 was a REAL problem. But also, Castillo was just plain annoying. I'd buff up, lay mines, attack, and he'd run away. Buffs would wear off, I'd lay more mines, and then he'd come back. Buff up, attack -- he ran away. On his third return I was low on inspirations and he killed me. I bought a boatload of purple inspirations, ran aaaaaaalllll the way back, and repeated the above scenario over and over again -- buff, lay trip mines, attack, he runs away, buffs wear off, lay trip mines, he comes back, buff, attack, he runs away.... He killed me two more times, so I went through more than two full trays of purples (remember, I'm 47, this is a full sized tray) trying to kill him. And thank god they put a hospital in Striga or it would have been even more unbearable.

Then I finally somehow finish him off, and I'm ambushed by an EB that is all but invulnerable to bullets and somehow keeps killing me even when I've swallowed 3-4 purples. I went through several more trays of purples fighting him, died multiple times, but at least the robot didn't run like a scared rabbit. It did fall off the top of the platform more than once, though.

Anyway, this fight, from the eyes of my blaster at +2, was hardly "epic". It was a painful hour spent trying to whittle two EBs down. When I finished, the arc had taken me 3 hours and 24 minutes total.

Now I realize it'll go much faster and feel much different on one of my scrappers... if I actually want to run it again.

What's funny is that I logged in Wall Street Brawler specifically to invite Larker's toon. I asked "what's the name," and then turned about and there was this guy there in black and white stripes named Burney Madinf. I took a second look, laughed at a clever character, and then started running to the base to craft a couple of things... and Burney sends me a tell. D'oh! Should've guessed Burney Madinf was the guy I was supposed to invite. ^_^

Pretty much.

I have a solo base with 9 IO tables mostly filled with level 30-33 IOs. I hoard them, and I typically have lowball bids out on level 30-33 Oblits, Kinetic Combats, etc. Whatever seems hard to come by.

I'd have to say Martial Arts. Which is odd since until a couple of years ago I really had only the one MA scrapper, who was 25 or 30. But then I leveled her up to 50 and really got into the set. Shinobu Dragonheart was MA/Invul, which I liked a lot, so I decided to make an MA/WP scrapper as well. This was Tiffany Blackheart, who's since become just about my favorite character to play.

However as I was leveling up Tiffany I was working my way through the Striga and Croatoa arcs, and we had a double-exp weekend. I did not want to level Tiffany twice as fast, but I was still enjoying MA a lot. I had an MA/WP scrapper on Freedom that I liked named Ballet Dancer (because the high kicks and overall graceful flow of attacks suggested ballet to me), so I created a clone of her on Virtue specifically for playing during that double xp weekend, and named her Nina Ballerina (Ballet Dancer was taken -- Nina Ballerina is an old ABBA tune ^_^ ).

I played a lot that weekend and got Nina well up into the 30's. After that, I leveled both Tiffany and Nina up to 50. Also around this point I started playing on Freedom again, and wanted a level 50 so I could hami raid. Because I was still infatuated with MA I took picked Ballet Dancer, who was already about 25, renamed her and redesigned her (the name Jalia was suddenly available, which had been the name of my first 50 on Pinnacle as well as the first name of my original EQ barb shaman).

...end result, I have 4 level 50 martial arts scrappers, three of them MA/WP. (And all three slotted based on a very good (and expensive) build that I got from the scrapper forums that I really REALLY liked a lot, makes those three toons nearly unstoppable.)

And I still like MA, so when I decided to level up a stalker, I went with MA/WP as well. Though the stalker versions are significantly different for both power sets. I miss my AoE leg sweep.

I do have a few other Willpower scrappers and a willpower tank, all between level 25 and 35.

My other favorite set (or pair of sets) is very likely dark/dark defender powers. I have a level 45 dark/dark fender, a level 47 dark/arrow fender, a level 50 force field/dark fender, and my level 44 mastermind is bots/dark.

And... I have 9 level 50 scrappers overall. Two are katana/regen and one is broadsword/regen; one is broadsword/shield and one is electric melee/shield. Only have the one invul scrapper (and one invul tank), and no dark, fire, electric armor scrappers at all.

I don't know about anyone else, but when I can 1-shot lts and pound a boss for more than half his health in one shot, that does make me feel super.

Conversely, when I play my electric melee/shield scrapper and I'm left pounding on a boss over and over until he finally goes down... well, that doesn't make me feel so super.

For everything, there is a season, and all of that. ^_~

Besides, my scrappers are built to solo 8-man spawns, which feels super no matter how long it takes. ^_^