Redempti0n

Originally Posted by Call Me Awesome

Ok, your powers have slots available in them, you've been getting two every other level to add to your powers. These slots do absolutely nothing unless you put an enhancement into them... you've had these dropping from enemy defeats all along. From your questions I assume you haven't ever opened your "enhancement" tray; I imagine it's stuffed full of worthless level 1-3 training origin enhancements.

Enhancements come in three basic "store bought" varieties: Training which are usable by any character of appropriate level, Dual Origin which are usable by either of the origins of the enhancement (for example a Natural/Tech Dual Origin enhancement can be slotted by either a Natural origin or a Tech origin character) and Single Origin which can only be slotted by a character of that origin.

The slots you've added to your powers are places for you to put enhancements. Let's take a basic attack as an example. You can slot for accuracy which will make that attack hit more and you can add damage enhancements to make that attack do more damage when it hits and you can add endurance reduction enhancements so that it costs less endurance to use the attack and you can slot recharge enhancements so the power recharges faster.

Now the various enhancements all have a level and can be used by a character within 3 levels of that enhancement. As a level 27 character you could use level 30 enhancements (3 levels higher than you) down to level 24 enhancements (3 levels lower than you). Once you level to 28 you would no longer be able to use level 24 enhancements (they would turn red and have no effect anymore) but you could use level 31.

Let's get down to specifics on enhancements here. A typical Training enhancement (usually only available up to level 20) will boost one aspect (for example accuracy) of a power by 8%. A Dual Origin will boost one aspect of a power by 16% while a Single Origin will boost one aspect by 33%. It's a little more complicated than that as some types of enhancements have different "schedules" with different values but that's the basics.

Keeping this in mind let's go back to our sample attack. We want it to hit so we'll slot accuracy in it. We want it to do more damage so we'll put damage enhancements in it. We want it to recharge faster so we can use it more often so we'll slot recharge enhancement into it and we want to be able to fire it off without running out of endurance so we want endurance reduction. We can have a maximum of 6 enhancements in this power, so we can't maximize everything (well, not with basic enhancements but don't worry about that for now) and we need to choose. A good basic slotting for an attack with Single Origin (SO) enhancements is 1 accuracy, 3 damage, 1 endurance reduction and 1 recharge.

To slot enhancements click on the "enhancements" tab on your power tray. This will open the enhancement tab and close your inspiration tab by default... you can undock any of these from the tray by pressing the little blue dot on the window. On the enhancement tray you'll see a tab labeled "manage". Click on this and you'll bring up your power/slot screen that you see when you level up. This is where you move enhancements from the enhancement tray into your individual powers. Once you've slotted an enhancement it's there until you put another on top of it (overwrite it) or you delete it... you can't unslot it and move it to a different power (exception: when doing a re-specification <respec> of your character).

Talos Island is the place you'll want to take your level 22-30 hero to buy enhancements as all the stores are relatively close together. Look at your map and go to the store that matches your origin (if you're Natural origin go to the Natural store, if you're Tech go to the Tech store and so forth) and talk to the store clerk. This opens up the shop window, first sell off the enhancements in your tray that you can't use and then buy enhancements you need. Once you've bought 10 and filled your tray go to the "manage" screen and move your new enhancements into your powers. Repeat this until you've bought the enhancements you need.

What enhancements you want will of course depend on your character's powers and the enhancement slots you've added to those powers. A Blaster will mainly want accuracy & damage enhancements while a Controller may want accuracy and hold or immobilize. Always slot at least one accuracy into any power that needs to hit enemies first... a power that missed is one that does no damage so that's the first priority.

One item however is your money situation... a full set of SO's at your level will run in the neighborhood of 1,000,000 - 1,500,000 influence. Do not be concerned about this however; inf is very easy to come by. Your likely full of salvage and recipes; take these to Wentworths and put them up for sale. Do NOT sell these to a store or vendor until you have a better feel for prices; many items are worth hundreds or thousands of times more to players in the auction house (Wentworth's) than they are to the store. As a case in point rare (orange) salvage is only worth 5,000 to a store but most pieces are worth at least 500,000 on the market with many worth 1-3 million. Even some common salvage (store value 250) will bring 10,000-100,000 on the market.

Money's no problem at all; many of us have billions on hand so it's well worth paying a little for a piece of salvage we need to craft something. On that perspective the difference between 100 inf and 100,000 inf is meaningless to many of us.

In fact if you'll give me your global name I'll shoot you a couple million inf to get you started.

I hope I haven't been too basic in my writeup here but it seemed to me you were confused about these areas. I know all of us talk about Invention builds and discussions about this set is good for x while that set is good for y. I'm going to strongly suggest that you totally forget about inventions for now and just use the store bought enhancements until you have a thorough understanding of the powers and enhancement. Those enhancements were all we had for the first several years of the game and they're still perfectly adequate and MUCH simpler. To put it another way right now you're working with addition and subtraction while Invention builds are along the lines of Calculus. Don't try to learn everything all at once.

Oh, I almost forgot the most important thing of all about the game, and that's to have fun. Enjoy the ride, learn about how things work and don't try to jump straight into the deep end; there's plenty of fun to be had in the shallow end of the pool before you learn how to swim.

Welcome to the game and always remember to have fun.