The No Numbers Guide to I9 for the Casual Player
By
beowulfe,
Posted on: 2007-05-10 09:10 in Player Guides
Mako's Bite: Chance for lethal damage [Level 41-53]
Malaise's Illusions: Acc/End [Level 41-53]
Scirocco's Dervish: Chance for lethal damage [Level 41-53]
Sovereign Right: Acc/Dam/End [Level 41-53]
Stupefy: End/Stun [Level 41-53]
Trap of the Hunter: Immob/Range [Level 41-53]
Download Iakona's spread sheet it will tell you all the recipes that need that salvage.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showflat....&PHPSESSID=
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Are there any "reverse" recipe guides out there?
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Ask and ye shall receive! E_R_A created an online tool where you can put in a piece of salvage and get back a list of stuff that uses it. Check it out!
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
Thank god for this guide. I'm a new player and the whole IO/SO/DO/TO thing was drivin me a bit nuts. I still have a couple questions about sets though if someone can answer.
-Are there special "set IOs" that go into the powers or are the standard IOs you make the ones you need?
-Do all the IOs need to be the same level for the set effect to work?
-Does it matter what order you put them in the power? For instance the wiki at http://paragonwiki.com/Invention_Ori...hancement_Sets list the Far Strike ranged set as taking Acc/End, Dam/Range, Dam/Recharge. Do the IO ditties have to go in the power in that order? or could I put in Range, Dam, Acc.
Sorry if that's newbish but I can't really find an answer to these. TIA
EDIT: for clarity
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Are there special "set IOs" that go into the powers or are the standard IOs you make the ones you need?
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There are special set IO's. The regular IO's you make only enhance one thing at a time, they don't have cool names, and they don't give you set bonuses.
You can also make set enhancements. The recipes are uncommon or rare. The set's have cool names, and the enhancements in those sets often enhance multiple aspects of a power. Just because an enhancement comes from a set, though, doesn't mean it's always better than a common IO. Only set enhancements give set bonuses.
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-Do all the IOs need to be the same level for the set effect to work?
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No. They can all be different levels. You will still get the exact same set bonus.
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Does it matter what order you put them in the power?
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Nope. Doesn't make any difference. The set bonus depends on how many of the enhancements from that set you have slotted into a single power. The order in which you slot the enhancements doesn't affect the set bonus at all.
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
I probably should have put this in the original guide. People get confused by it a lot.
Selling: You list the item for a given price. The CH immediately goes through all of the existing bids for that item. If there is any outstanding bid for at least as much as your asking price, then your item sells instantly to the highest bidder at their offer price. If nobody has placed a bid for the amount you are asking, then your item just sits there until someone does place a bid which is equal to or greater than your ask price. Even then, your item won't sell unless it is the lowest priced item for sale at that time.
Buying: When you place a bid, the CH will immediately compare your offer price to all of the ask prices for that item. If your price is higher than one of the ask prices, then you will immediately buy the item, for the amount you offered, from the person who put in the lowest asking price. If no one has listed the item for as low as you are offering, then your bid will just sit there until someone does list the item at or below your price. Even then, you won't buy it unless yours is the highest bid in the CH for that item at that time.
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
This guide merits the Captain Decency Seal of Approval!
Seriously, this is an excellent guide for a fairly casual player like myself. The invention system was not really being a lot of fun for me, I felt there was too much work involved in figuring out what I was supposed to do. This guide makes it much less intimidating. Thanks!
I've a question about a couple of statements in this thread, and the Invention Origin enhancement bonuses chart over at ParagonWiki:
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peterpeter Whenever you get a chance, look into upgrading your level 25 IO's to something better. A level 30 IO is actually better than an SO, and a level 35 IO is even better than that.
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FatherXmas Level 30 IOs are roughly a +1 SO.
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I was bidding on some L30 IOs and happened to have a few L30 Tech SOs in my tray. I slotted them while I waited for the IO bidding to complete.
I picked up a few of the IOs some time later and started to slot them. However, I noticed the listed enhancement percentage of the SO was higher than the listed enhancment percentage for the IO. This seems to contradict the comments here. For example:
IO -> SO (Tech)
34.8 -> 36.7 Accuracy
34.8 -> 36.7 Endurance Reduction
34.8 -> 36.7 Recharge Reduction
34.8 -> 36.7 Heal
34.8 -> 36.7 Taunt Effectiveness
20.9 -> 22.0 Damage Resistance
20.9 -> 22.0 Defense Buffs
So... are the percentages currently listed in the game correct or not?
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Malohin // Characters
As you level up, your SO's become less effective- I can tell you were level 29 by the numbers you listed. When you hit level 30, those SO's will go to 33.3% and 20%, but the numbers for the IO's will not change. Level 31? 30% and 18%. Level 32? Time to combine and replace the SO's... the IO's have not, of course, changed.
In other words: the percentages in the game are correct, and the comments here are "roughly" correct.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Yeah, what Fulmens said. When I talk about SO's, I generally assume even level SO's. A level 30 IO has a fixed benefit. A level 30 SO changes in value as you go from level 27 to 33. Roughly speaking, a level 25 IO is almost as good, pretty much, as an SO, give or take a little. A level 30 IO is mostly better than an SO, roughly speaking, depending on relative levels, more or less. A level 35 IO is always better than an SO no matter what the relative levels. I think.
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
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Fulmens I can tell you were level 29 by the numbers you listed.
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Hm. I was actually L27 (hunting for L30 IOs) and am now L28. I just checked and the numbers shown in the game are the same as in my post.
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Malohin // Characters
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peterpeter I generally assume even level SO's.
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So the Invention Origin enhancement bonuses chart over at ParagonWiki shows the relationship between SOs and IOs at the equivalent character level. Frex, a level 30 character examining a level 30 SO and a level 30 IO.
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peterpeter A level 30 IO is mostly better than an SO, roughly speaking, depending on relative levels, more or less. A level 35 IO is always better than an SO no matter what the relative levels. I think.
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There are two vertial lines on that chart; one at level 13 and the other at level 26. These markers seem to show that L13 IOs (if there were any) would give the same benefit as DOs to L13 characters, and L26 IOs (if there were any) would give the same benefit as SOs to a L26 character.
Given that and, in general, compared to even-level SOs, L25 IOs give a smidge less bonus than SOs, and L30 IOs give a smidge more bonus than SOs. Pretty much noise, given the "ceiling" Enhancement Dysfunction imposes.
I suppose you could squeak out another two or three percent by using "plus" and "double plus" DOs and SOs for a couple levels, but the benfit would certainly be temporary, probably be trivial, and would be costly and dull to manage:
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The Amazing, Challenged Super MinMax Man.666 Oh no! I leveled! My powers have all lost 1/1000 of their effectiveness! Hang on, I've got to go buy enhancements again.
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:-)
So, if I have this right, a plausible plan might be:<ul type="square">[*]L1-11: Roust Hellions, Clockwork, Skulls, Vahz, etc. for pocket change, i.e. TOs[*]L12: Get DOs if you can afford them, or L15 IOs if you can find them cheaply.[*]L13-L21: Upgrade DOs as necessary. Replace DOs with L15 IOs as plausible.[*]L22: Replace with L25 SOs, if you can afford them. If L25 IOs are much cheaper, get them instead.[*]L27: Replace with L30 IOs when possible. Upgrade SOs as necessary, until you can replace them with IOs.[/list]L30 IOs provide a better bonus then existing SOs, and they only improve at higher levels, so replacing any enhancement with anything higher level than a L30 IO is gravy. 
That about cover it, or did I miss something important? (Yes. I'm ignoring Invention Enhancement Sets, and will continue to do so. )
Hm. I see the L15 IOs as a good SG project. Not too expensive for the high level folks and a good way to work on the invention badges, if they care and don't want to simply grind for the badge.
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Malohin // Characters
P.S. PeterPeter -- this is a great article, and I'm glad you wrote it. It really helped the whole I9 Invention thing gel for me. My questions are purely to help me make sure I did "get it" as opposed to merely thinking I did. :P
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So, if I have this right, a plausible plan might be (...snip actual plan...)
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Yup, that sounds like a good plan to me. The price of IO's is still fluctuating a lot. I bought some level 30 damage IO's for 5k apiece the other day. That's a lot less than a level 30 SO would have cost. Other days I haven't had such good luck. Patience helps. Prices tend to randomly bob up and down during the day, or over the course of the week, so putting in a bid and letting it sit can sometimes snag you a good deal.
If you want to obssessively min/max, that's another ball of wax. But you aren't going to get a perfect min/max build without using numbers! I'm glad this guide was helpful to you. I'm afraid parts of it are already getting painfully out of date.
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
Don't worry about the market details being out of date... it'll take months for the economy to "settle" even for the more common items. The best rare stuff (especially the better procs and globals) will probably never settle since the supply never gets even remotely close to meeting the demand. (The quirks of the consignment house make all this worse, as 1 bored badgehound billionaire could shift the entire economy for a time.)
FWIW, your guide opened my eyes to the value of lower-level common IOs, and I'm one of those annoying number people. Well done.
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Fulmens I can tell you were level 29 by the numbers you listed.
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Math is hard... I had you at 28, then redid the numbers and screwed them up.
for every level they are "yellow" they're 10% worse, for every level they are "green" they're 5% better. You were reporting exactly 10% better...
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
As I said before, nice guide. It's still highly relevant now despite market changes.
In case anyone wants to see just what the numerical difference is between 30 and 35 IOs, or 35 and 50 IOs, I did up a few charts over in this thread that should be of some help.
By the way, is it just me or have mid-level IOs gotten a whole lot more expensive in the last couple of months?
By the way, Fulmens has an intermediate guide to IOs here. It's a good follow-on to this guide.
great guide
Just to add to the comments. As someone who's come back to the game from a bit of a break, this guide is a godsend.
The guide would even be better with your additional comments. Stuff like 'buying' did not click with me. Now I see you actually 'bid' on things for 'sale'. Still this is kinda confusing to me. Is there a way of seeing the 'minimum' bid in order to buy something that is listed for sale? This seems awkward.
I'd like to know more about sets. What defines a set? If you have a special IO, and it gives a 'set bonus'... does that mean you need all of them? Can they be slotted in any power? Or do they have to be all contained in the same power to have their bonus kick in?
Thanks again. This is very helpful.
Nekron: Beam Rifle / Poison Corruptor and Slayer of Evil!! (Exalted)
Intergalaktic: Fire / Time Corruptor (Exalted)
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Just to add to the comments. As someone who's come back to the game from a bit of a break, this guide is a godsend.
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You're welcome. I'm glad it's still helpful.
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The guide would even be better with your additional comments. Stuff like 'buying' did not click with me. Now I see you actually 'bid' on things for 'sale'. Still this is kinda confusing to me. Is there a way of seeing the 'minimum' bid in order to buy something that is listed for sale? This seems awkward.
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No, there is no way to see what other people are offering. There is no way to see what prices the sellers are asking. You can see the last five prices, how many items are for sale, and how many bids there are, but that's all. All of those numbers can be manipulated by other players.
Here is what I do when I want to buy something. First I make sure that I really want it. You are bound to make some expensive mistakes. Everyone does. Try to keep them to a minimum. Second, try to get a sense of what the item is worth. Watch the price over a few days or weeks, look at the prices of similar items, etc. Third, lowball. No matter how expensive something is, or how many other bids there are, I almost always start by offering 100 influence, just to see if I get lucky. Creep up by whatever increment makes sense to you. For example, if I need to buy an item that costs around 2.5 million, I'll make offers like this:
1 inf
100 inf
1,000 inf
10,000 inf
100,000 inf
1,000,000 inf
1,250,000 inf
1,500,000 inf
1,750,000 inf
2,000,000 inf.
This is called bid-creeping. If I don't need the item right away, then I might leave that 2 million bid up over night, or for a week. I seldom let things sit more than ten days. I'm not that patient. If I do need the item right away, then I just keep bidding up until I get it. It pays to be patient.
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I'd like to know more about sets. What defines a set? If you have a special IO, and it gives a 'set bonus'... does that mean you need all of them? Can they be slotted in any power? Or do they have to be all contained in the same power to have their bonus kick in?
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Paragon Wiki has a list of all the sets. In order to get the set bonus, you need at least two enhancements from the same set slotted into the same power. The more you put in, the more bonuses you can get. Each enhancement in the set can only go into each power one time.
For example, the Bonesnap set has an Acc/Dam enhancement. You can only put one Bonesnap Acc/Dam into a power. You can put one Bonesnap Acc/Dam into, say, shadow punch and another into smite. You could put an Acc/Dam from the Bonesnap set into smite, and then put an Acc/Dam from the Bruising Blow set into smite, and then another Acc/Dam from Smashing Haymaker. That would get you some nice enhancement values, but no set bonuses, because they are all from different sets.
To get the Bonesnap set bonuses, you would need to put the Bonesnap Acc/Dam and the Bonesnap Dam/End into the same power. That would give you some immobilization resistance as a set bonus. Adding the Bonesnap Acc/Rech enhancement to the same power would get you another set bonus: +health.
If you ignore the set bonuses, you can get some very affordable enhancements which can improve your powers more than SO's could. If you pay attention to the set bonuses, you can pay through the nose for some rather small improvements, but every little bit helps.
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
I wrote a guide as well, designed to go a bit farther. I went back a few months later and decided "It's still mostly reasonable."
The keys to not breaking the bank when you come back:
1) That paragonwiki page: If it has a yellow gunsight on it, that enhancement is "Common" (meaning "more common than Rare", and drops from enemies.) Common IO's may not be cheap IO's, but at least they almost always have cheap ingredients.
2) You can put together a very, very good build with almost entirely cheap "set IO's."
3) You don't need [starting out] level 45 IO's on your level 42 character- they don't expire like SO's do. You lose like 4% effectiveness going from a level 45 IO to a level 35. . .and you can buy the better one when you feel like it, not "when the old one goes scuzzy."
4) People often spend more on the level 45 set IO than the 44 or the 46. The market is full of strange pricing. Bargains are everywhere.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
So you think you're a hero, huh.
@Boltcutter in game.
Thanks a lot, IO noobs like me need this guide 
My 50's:
Fiya Man: Fiya/ Fiya/ Flame Blaster -Protector
Ethros: Dark/Dark/Dark Defender - Protector
Ja-Ja: Fire/Kin/Earth Controller- Protector
Shadow Flux: Fortunata
Daily Forecast: Fire/Storm/Mace Corruptor- Infinity
"XP is for sissies. Real men collect debt." -Adelie
@Gammos
Just wanted to be the first person this year to thank you for a great guide for new and returning players!
I was pretty confused about IO's and the CH until I read this thread. Thanks Peter and everyone else who contributed.
I'm glad to see people still find this guide helpful. Here are a couple of other threads which might be useful as well, at least until the forum monster eats some of them:
Invention Origin Enhancements at ParagonWiki. One of many helpful pages there about inventions and the economy.
Fulmen's Intermediate Guide to Inventions. An excellent second course if you enjoyed my guide.
IO's for Newbs, Casual Playas, & Cheapskates by Capn_Canadian. Another excellent guide.
A sample build for a level 50 katana/regen scrapper that Fulmens and I put together for under 7,000,000 influence.
Cost analysis: IO vs TO/DO/SO. Some numbers I put together to compare the cost of using IO's vs regular enhancements. Summary: IO's can save money in the long run, because they don't expire, especially if you can buy them precrafted for a good price.
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie
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Second, the better news: Issue 9 actually gives us, the casual players, an advantage over the hardcore 24x7 powergamers. We've learned patience, and for possibly the first time ever in a computer game, patience pays. While some other players are bouncing up and down in their seats salivating at the prospect of getting a shiny new piece of salvage, and paying through the nose for it, you and I will be putting in modest bids and then logging off. A few days later, or maybe next week, whenever we get some free time, we'll log back in, check the market, and the new shiny will drop into our pocket. No fuss, no muss, and no outrageous prices. Well, maybe some outrageous prices, but we'll try to keep them to a minimum.
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As this is true that you pay lower prices, isnt it also true that the people that play 24/7 can afford to pay the higher prices? It basically evens itself out. Example: If you play once a day and earn 10,000 influence a day (I know, Im not going to use big numbers) wouldnt the crazed 24/7 gamer at lv 50 earn lets say 200,000 a day (way more than that, I know.) So if the bid price for an item was 4,000 influence, and the casual gamer said, I dont wanna pay THAT much for that, Im just gonna pay 3,000 influence... the 24/7 gamer has room to pay out the nose for that while the casual gamer doesnt. It actually HURTS the casual gamer to get that thing, but it doesnt hurt the 24/7 gamer at all just to pay 5,000 influence.
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Issue 9 actually gives us, the casual players, an advantage over the hardcore 24x7 powergamers.
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So sorry, I don't see how thats true. :/
And yes, once again, I know that those numbers were not up to scale... I didnt want to use big ones!
EXCELLENT guide besides that and some other things tho :P
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Are there any "reverse" recipe guides out there?
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Not that I know of. I'd love to see one, though. Red Tomax's cookbook seems to have all the data. If you look up a recipe, it will tell you what the ingredients are. If you look up the ingredient, though, it does not tell you what recipes it is used in. There is a heading there for recipes, but no text. Hopefully that feature is coming soon.
ParagonWiki has a list of invention salvage, and again there is a place to list recipes, but again it is blank. The nice thing about a wiki, though, is that you can add to it yourself.
I would love to see something like this made available to players. Heck, I'd like to see it in-game. You should be able to click on the info for a piece of salvage and get a list of all the recipes that use it. I don't know if the devs plan to add that feature, though, so I guess we players are on our own.
Avatar: "Cheeky Jack O Lantern" by dimarie