Stillhart

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Expect this around here. Remember your failure at the cave.

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Well at the very least, a response THAT far out of left field helps identify the tr...err....people with unreasonably strong opinions without factual basis.

Update: My elec/fire PBAoE blaster is L22ish right now. He's SUPER FUN! It helps to have 2 tanks and a controller or two on the team so I don't catch aggro and the mobs all stay tightly packed. Once I catch aggro, it's over, which is always amusing...except when it happens right after I hit hasten. :P

But yeah, this blaster is great fun to play. More so than trying to line up cones all the time. Thx for the tip, Fulmens.

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you can't come to the market forums and say "cheaper". too many greedy people here for that and you'll just get flamed. trust me. (i agree wityh you though) everything is too high. i'll never spend those prices.

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It's amazing that with so many threads on the front page right now about people giving away or straight up destroying inf, you're generalizing everyone on this forum as greedy. Simply amazing.

Smurphy is right (or course) that even if the prices were forced cheaper, you'd STILL never have one because people would just be selling them in public channels for the going rate (which is SET by the buyers). Alternately, they'd be snatched up so fast in most cases that you'll never see one. If MORE of them drop, the price will go down naturally AND more people will have access to them.

I definitely used both guides, but for some reason the Viva Las Vegas one stuck with me...

Grats! Now you have to add a roman numeral after your name, like Thurston Howell III.

This is my favorite Frankenslotting guide:

The Viva Las Vegas Intermediate Guide To IO's

You're basically slotting IO from different sets based on the primary benefit of the IOs, disregarding potential set bonuses. You do this because set bonuses are what tend to make two otherwise identical IO's more or less valuable. When you frankenslot, you can take the cheaper of the two because you don't care about the bonuses.

PS - It works GREAT!

EDIT - WTF...That's the guide in Fulmen's sig! lol Good on ya, Fulmens. Nice guide.

EDIT2 - I would recommend it at low levels, say 25-35. Past that point, money usually is less of an issue and you have more selection of IOs (because you can use 10-38 you have more to choose from and can usually find a cheaper deal!)

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Sure farming requires more work, but sweeping the walls or the shadow shard has always been kind of fun to me. And with the pay out on good purple drops? It seems like a decently worthwhile use of time to pull in that kind of influence.

*Note* also, with the chance for pool C drops from bosses there is that added chance for an extra jackpot or high selling item.

(And yes Marketing will always be easier, but a decent farmer may be faster with the current prices)

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One of these days I'll have a 50 and then I'm really gonna have to figure out how to do this farming thing people keep talking about...

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Does anyone else use spreadsheets to track their investments? Or the market prices?

About every few days, I log in and record the avg price for a number of lvl 50 recipies and crafted enhancements. My spreadsheet then calculates the delta minus 10% for listing, 500k for crafting and about 1M for salvage .... Viola! I know which recipies I should go for.

Anyone use something more complex?

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I use spreadsheets for some of the more complicated stuff, like calculating profits from stacks of recipes to be vendored, etc. But for tracking pricing, I don't bother. There's so much volatility, even from hour to hour, that unless I'm sitting there all day every day it's not going to help much.

I prefer to just find a niche, abuse it for a week and then move on. Much less work for about the same reward.

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Ssssh .... of I'll start a thread called "Fulmens smacked my niche up!"

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I stole Flushots' blue-side niche to use red-side...I make even MORE money on it red-side than he does blue!

Best advice I can give is to buy recipes, craft, sell the IO, profit. Do like 15 mins of research and you'll see the huge premium that people place on this value-add service.

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Hey, this maybe a stupid question, but what is the quickest way to rake in some influence/infamy? Trying to make it to the BC.

[/ QUOTE ] I was wondering the same thing lolz

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Cap and Esers, check out the guides at the top of the page.

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Great mini-guide at the bottom of this page too.

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Just about everyone who plays a level-based MMO develops a notion of "preliminary levels" and "real levels". The preliminary levels are rushed through, coming and going so quickly that you might as well not bother doing anything besides minimal upkeep on your toon. Then you hit the real levels, when your character's life turly begins....

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You make some good points, which I agree with, but I don't really think that's why people don't do much with the low-level IO's. I think it's because the marginal improvement before L25 on IO's is ridiculous. They just get SO much better each level from 10-25 or 30 that it's not really worth slotting them.

Than again, back to your point, if you aren't gonna be hitting 25-30 anytime soon, they're better than nothing...by a LOT!

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... I don't know if 50% mitigation is going to be enough. If you do this, watch out for Combustion: it is a trap that will kill you.

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I'll make a FF/ defender and I'll get him the rez from the health pool. Going down in a blaze of glory every group of mobs sounds highly amusing, especially with a pocket rezzer and a tank to pick up the aggro when I go down.

lol This whole concept amuses me. Maybe I'll slot him for +melee defense while I'm at it.

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can i borrow a few billion? lol j/k

but wow, the most i have combined with 36 alts on freedom server is prolly 50 mill lol

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Follow our advice and you'll be swimming in inf like Scrooge McDuck in no time at all.

=)

My wealthiest character started out with 50k in the bank and slots full of expired DO's and SO.s.

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I can confirm this is true. I have over 200m in cash and about 200m in market orders on my richest toon right now. I don't have a single toon that I actually PLAY that's under 10m inf atm.

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I built a PBAOE Mess (Elec/Fire) but it only made it to about level 13. I think some of the key elements are just too damn slow and you'd have to be suicidal or know a force fielder really well. Or both.

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I don't know why, but this idea has really taken root. I think it was because I was playing my fire/kin yesterday and just standing in the middle of a mess of guys and PBAOE'ing everyone. Doing in with a blaster for even more damage sound highly amusing. Maybe I'll whip one of these up and have my sonic/sonic follow him with bubbles...

I would never post 10 of each at a time unless it's commons which turnover super fast. You're blowing your own niche before you start.

On a related note, I had a Nictus: Healing that I won on rolls and it was worthless. Blueside must rock...

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The "Standard AOE" primaries are archery, AR and fire for blasters. (We don't get Dark. Yet?)

I built a PBAOE Mess (Elec/Fire) but it only made it to about level 13. I think some of the key elements are just too damn slow and you'd have to be suicidal or know a force fielder really well. Or both.

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Well, I have been dual-boxing lately. FF/ or Sonic/ or Emp/ on follow and spamming whatever is most useful. Suppose with a pocket defender, I could do some interesting things...

Cool well it sounds like the AR/MM was a good choice then. Thanks for all the feedback and the info about knockbacks! I'm so slotting my AOE's for recharge now. >

2 ignored posters in a row in a thread on the same subject that got them ignored in the first place...I hope nobody quotes them if they feel the need to reply.

I <3 forum ignore. :-D

Back on topic, I still think you should post this as an official guide.

It's a great guide, and deserves to be shunted over tot he guides section and the guide sticky here!

That being said, I don't think it really addresses some of the misconceptions like the one you quoted in the OP.

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At least one Niche mentioned so far is still profitable.

I'm just sayin.

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They do tend to go in and out of vogue. A blown niche doesn't necessarily stay blown for long as people move on to other things.

On another note, happy birthday, Hey_Tiny.

Well I've been playing for over two months now, and actively marketeering for a few weeks. I recently started a bunch of blue-side alts on Freedom to play with a friend and decided to see how tough it would be to make some real money on a new guy from scratch. Here's what happened:

1 - AE farm to L23. Yes it's lame, but I wanted to get playing and I have guys I'm playing for real on another server.
2 - Roll 10 Bronze rolls. Scored a few nice recipes and one jackpot (Performance Shift +endurance proc)
3 - Craft jackpot
4 - Sell recipes to be able to POST jackpot at going rate of 20m
5 - Wait 24h.
6 - Profit.
7 - Frankenslot to dramatically increase performance and still have 16m left in cash.

Okay, so I'm not going to score jackpots every 10 rolls. But really, it didn't cost much to frankenslot my guy in the low 20's. I don't NEED 20m inf to do it. I short-sold some recipes that were worth a few hundred thousand uncrafted, meaning I could have made a few mil crafting and selling them.

The moral of the story is that it's ridiculously easy to make money on this game. I haven't been playing my "main" much lately since I've been exploring all these alts on Freedom...he has a bunch of long-term orders up. Every day I check em, craft and post any good recipes that came in, grab cash from and IO's that sold and log out. He is almost up to 200m in cash with at LEAST 200m in buy orders up on the market. I don't need to craft tons of commons or flip tons of salvage. I'll hit 1b in a month or two by logging him on for like 15m per day.

People who complain about the market or about prices...well some people will complain about anything. Take me for example, I complain about people who complain about the market. Thanks, ebil marketeers, for the advice and the patience to help me out while I was figuring stuff out. I'm not officially eBil yet, but I have no doubt I'll be there shortly and the journey just doesn't seem too meaningful at this point, being so easy.

Flagging to check this later. Good question and I'd be happy to see some responses as well.

I know you guys must get similar questions to this ALL THE TIME, but I didn't see anything in my cursory search of the forum and guides.

Title pretty much says it all. I want to do some AoE destruction, but I'm sick to death of fire and dark skills. I made myself a AR/Mental blaster just because I counted all the AoE's and that looked like the best combo from a purely "count the AoE's" perspective. He's decently fun to play but the redraw on the gun makes me kinda sad. Still is this the best choice besides fire/ ?

About KB...I've read that people don't like the KB and I know there's a lot of it in AR...but I've found that if I wait for the troller to pop Fire Cages, the KB seems to turn into a KU. Is that true or am I still just p.o.ing people?

Thanks!

You make a lot of valid points, many of which I think we agree on. The rest are matters of opinion and I'll let them lie. I did want to make one comment about this tho:

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I know from my point of view it doesn't really make a difference. And I know from my limited experience that if you COULD switch sides, red side would die and the devs don't really want that.

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nonsense.
players play villains because they enjoy it, not because they're being forced to.
Some villains will migrate to Paragon, some heroes will migrate to the Rogue Isles, and the population imbalance will stay roughly the same.

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I play mostly red side because I like the classes much better. I'd rather play on the more populated side with more to do and a better market, given the chance, but none of the classes on blue-side really appeal to me. (Tho, I have been enjoying playing a sonic/sonic defender lately, I must admit!) Sure I'm not FORCED to, but I kind of am if I want to play a stalker or MM since there's nothing even close on the blue side.

*shrug* I may not be a big enough sample size from which to draw any conclusions however.