Philotic Knight's Mini-Guide to Debt

Philotic Knight's Mini-Guide to Debt

In most MMOs, death is a horrifying thing. You could lose your stuff, your skills could degrade, you could even lose your first born child! However, thanks to those handy dandy bracelets all the heroes in Paragon City wear, death is no longer a problem! We defy death! However, while death is no longer assured, the only other thing to be sure of is taxes. And for heroes in Paragon City, taxes take the form of Debt.

Most people see Debt as a hindrance, as something to be avoided at all costs, which it is. However, it is also something else. Your 'death' is a hint to the game that you need more help. So what is debt for and what does it do? Debt is the help the game is giving you because your experience and abilities are not up to par to face the challenges you are attempting. Debt helps you in two ways.

Debt as Educational

'Dying' tells the game that you have made a mistake, and what is the best way to prevent mistakes in the future? Practice! And that is what debt does, gives you more practice with your character by reducing your xp by half and making you play the character at a slower levelling rate. Are you really in a rush to get to 50? It's not all that it's cracked up to be. Enjoy the game as it is, and if you die too often and incur too much debt, then the game is telling you that something is wrong and you need to change what you are doing! Take this hint and try a different playstyle. The game might even be telling you that you are playing an archetype that is not the right fit for you!

Debt as Lucrative

Debt not only halves your xp, it also doubles your influence. Why you might ask? Simple, to buy more and better enhancements to improve your character's abilities! Whether it be by upgrading existing enhancements, buying a few inspirations to help you out more the next time, or deciding to change the way your enhancements are slotted for a different strategy, doubled influence means double the chance to improve your character! See it as a blessing rather than a curse!

Conclusion

Debt is the friend of every hero. Instead of truly dying and losing everything, heroes have been blessed with the chance to have 'infinite lives', and to grow and learn from their mistakes. This doesn't mean that you should SEEK debt; most citizens would rather have their heroes standing on two feet fighting crime rather than eating gravel. What it does mean is that you should see debt for what it truly is: A chance to learn something new, and improve both your own skills and the skills of your character. Good luck crimefighters!

You missed one thing: Debt as a lesson in market economics.

The whoop-ti-do medical teleport system in use in Paragon City isn't cheap. Someone has to pay for it. And who better than the people who use it?

When you lose a fight, the Paragon CIty hospitals provide a service. They teleport you away and heal you. If a teammate rezzes you, that teammate is providing a service. Debt is how you pay for that service.

Of course, the analogy falls down on one point; if a teammate rezzes you, your debt isn't paid to the teammate. But then, few analogies are perfect.

Love the guide. I would suggest including something about how you can exemp down to a lowbie (level 1-6) and work off the debt in NO time, if you're in a rush. I've done it twice now, where a friend has exempted me on his new alt, and I'm out of debt in 20 minutes of teaming.

Granted, this isn't quite as fiscally viable as just teaming with ppl at-level, but in a rush (eg. you've amassed three bubbles worth, and the debt-monkey is humping your leg with joy), it's a fast way to get rid of those nasty dark purple spots on your otherwise great record.

Hehe - thanks Mr Knight.

This is a philosophical point I was trying to convince a team of recently. It really adds value to the game if you can stop being precious about debt (within reason) & live a little. Its more fun AND lucrative. How good is that!?!?!

Want to see more game content?? Get debt!!!!
Want to get an awesone XP to Inf. ratio? Get debt!!!
Want to do outrageous tactical experiments with your powers? Get debt!!!!
Out leveling your enhancements?? Get debt!!!!

Sometimes you dont die & only get awesome XP - darn it!!!

Debt is good. But like all good things, moderation is advised.

Its funny. Every toon I've ever had that didn't have easy access to high level twinking pretty much intentionally accrued mass amounts of debt around levels 18-22 to save up influence for 22. And I pretty much consider it mandatory to spend a fair percentage of my time in debt the few levels before enhancements go red all the way up to the late 30s or so when I'm swimming in more influence than I know what to do with.

If you don't get debt, you'll go broke much easier!

If you find yourself in debt frequently, the extra Influence you earn because of that will generally not help you much. Sure you can buy an extra DO or SO if you die enough. Let's look at some numbers... At level 12 it takes 6405 XP to level, and dying outside of missions gives you 350 debt. (Thanks Red Tomax for these numbers.) If you die about 18 times you'll earn 6300 debt, spending pretty much the entire level in debt. You'll have to spread out the deaths due to the debt cap, and you're gonna spend a LOT of time running back from the hospital if you don't have an Awaken or teammate with Rez. It'll take you twice as long to hit level 16. Depending on your targets but assuming mostly Minions, you'll earn about 5000 more Influence than you would if you weren't in debt. (Note that 18 Awakens cost 4500 Influence if you buy them, so you better not buy them.) Your reward for levelling at half speed for an entire level is a total of 1 extra level 15 DO, or 2 if you buy cheap ones. I'm sorry, but 1 or 2 DOs will not make a big difference.

At level 22, die 22 times, earn 27500 debt to stay in debt most of the level, earn an extra 25000 Influence, that's 3 level 25 DOs or a single SO. At level 25, you can buy 2-3 SOs. Pretty soon it doesn't really matter. At level 30 you need to die 35 times, but you can buy an extra 10 or so SOs. But at level 32, you can usually buy a full set of level 35 SOs even if you've never died.

If I don't have a rich high level char on a server, I usually make do with Training Enhancements till 17, and DOs till 27. Better Enhancements are nice, but they are not a magic cure for debt.

I will admit that debt is a learning experience. It isn't always a bad thing though. If you take a test and get 100%, you haven't really been tested. I usually play around with the difficulty slider and increase it to keep things interesting. If I don't die for a while, things are too easy. If I die too much, things are too hard. I usually aim to die a few times per level, just to make sure I'm playing near the top of my game.

Actually, TopDoc, I did do the strategy of going through a whole level of debt on a character for more influence (well, it was a villain, so infamy). While the actualy inf doesn't accrue for much, the extra time through the level will allow you to earn more enhancements from defeats than you normally would if it wasn't taking you twice as long to level. And even the devs have admitted that most of our inf comes from selling enhancements.

Excellent point that I failed to take into account. I don't believe this is true at the higher levels, but it probably is the case before 30 or so.

If you're so interesting in earning Influence or Infamy at lower levels to buy Enhancements, why not just Exemplar? I'm not positive about the details of debt removal and Inf gained while exemplared, but I thought you earned extra Inf after you worked off your debt. Why not just skip the debt part and exemp for extra Inf?

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Excellent point that I failed to take into account. I don't believe this is true at the higher levels, but it probably is the case before 30 or so.

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Actually, it's even MORE true at high levels if you're in a SuperGroup and earning Prestige for you group. After level 25, your earned influence starts declining by a regular amount until you get to level 35 when you earn NO influence/infamy while in SuperGroup mode.

I've had my MasterMind on a fast track to level 40 recently and I've been running missions at +2 level difficulty to accellerate her advancement (love that higher mission bonus!!) and even then (with very few defeats), she's had NO trouble at all keeping up with enhancements. Of course, I also ran her to 17 on Trainings and 27 on DO's (and even now at 33 she has a few DO's) for all but her most important powers.

Back to defeat and debt. Who cares? What does it actually do? It temporarily slows your leveling rate and unless you literally get defeated all the time that you're always capped on debt, it will never take you to leveling at half speed. It goes away all by itself. You don't have to do anything special to get out of debt. It can't stop you from levelling. It doesn't actually DO anything to you besides slightly slow down your rate of advancement. That's it. COH/COV has the nicest debt penalty out of ANY game I've ever played, even solo games except for the fact that you can just reload them when you die.

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You missed one thing: Debt as a lesson in market economics.

The whoop-ti-do medical teleport system in use in Paragon City isn't cheap. Someone has to pay for it. And who better than the people who use it?

When you lose a fight, the Paragon CIty hospitals provide a service. They teleport you away and heal you. If a teammate rezzes you, that teammate is providing a service. Debt is how you pay for that service.

Of course, the analogy falls down on one point; if a teammate rezzes you, your debt isn't paid to the teammate. But then, few analogies are perfect.

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I still blame the hospital for that debt - when you die, they create a link to you allowing you to hit the hospital if you want. That link creation is what costs XP, not the actual use of the link. Furthermore, links are costly to set up, and time consuming to tear down. After you rez, the link stays in place for a while, so it doesn't cost more to use it if necessary shortly after you first rez. Shoot, the hospital even sets up a link to you when you are in a prison map, it's just the bad guys interrupt and re-direct the link. So the thing is, you get charged for the link, even though using it puts you in a worse spot than what you started with usually.

RagManX

Once you are at a point where you can take on +3s, the best way to clear debt is to set your Rep to the lowest level, invite someone that is 3 lvls lower then you to your team, and exmplar to them. Even at the debt cap one or two missions should clear you up just fine.

However, I do agree with the OP. Getting debt is a learning experience. Death is nothing to be afraid of...I wouldn't encourage it, but you won't learn or expand your skillset if you play it safe.

Debt is just a badge!

Holy Necrothread, Batman!