Another good tip, I think it came from Fulmens:
Almost anything you want, so does someone else too. When you put your bid up, bid on twice as many recipes and salvage as you need. Craft both, and sell the one you don't need. At worst, you break even on the extra. At best, you can make a tidy profit.
@Roderick
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Another good tip, I think it came from Fulmens:
Almost anything you want, so does someone else too. When you put your bid up, bid on twice as many recipes and salvage as you need. Craft both, and sell the one you don't need. At worst, you break even on the extra. At best, you can make a tidy profit.
[/ QUOTE ]
This is how my D/D def paid for most of his purples. I bid for 4 or 5 of everything I wanted, then played some alts most of the time. Every once in a while, I'd check in, craft whatever I bought, and sell anything I had multiples for. In the end, I turned 200M on him into 600M and over 20 slotted purple IOs. Took a couple of months, and that was earlier in the year so it may take more now than it did then, but it's totally possible.
RagManX
"if the market were religion Fulmens would be Moses and you'd be L. Ron Hubbard. " --Nethergoat to eryq2
The economy is not broken. The players are
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What's the big secret?
Play the game.
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I've been saying this for years, but nobody believes me! =(
Hopefully you'll have better luck.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Yea, playing the game definitely helps. I mean, I soloed for my 100 vanguard merits, which took me about a day and a half but In all I think I made about 10 Mill with all the drops and plus my inf per baddie.
RAWR.
:3
Member of Operation Unlimited Justice!
You only wish you were this epic.
10 Drop Ships taken down.
Ok, not really free... but here's how to get IOed out and end up with more inf than you started with.
Or you can do the whole "earn a ton of inf and get purples" thing, but my altitis always flares up before that point...
I moved back blueside a while back and changed servers, so I had no high level heroes to support alts with. I did have a mid-20s alt with about 105 million inf thanks to selling a ton of level 35 damage IOs after last double XP weekend, but I wanted to try something new. So I made my current favorite Blaster, an Archery / Energy, and decided to see what a fairly decent IO build could do. I figured I'd use the rich alt to buy the IOs, and eventually earn the inf back on the new Blaster...
I was wrong. There was no "eventually" about it. My Blaster is now level 48 and fully IOed out (the last two levels' worth of IOs are crafted and sitting in storage). If anyone cares, the build is:
[u]Click this DataLink to open the build![u]
No ultra-expensive uniques or purples, but a good solid build. And the nice part? My rich alt is paid back and then some, and the Blaster has over 170 million inf saved up. That's a good midrange IO build purchased, plus almost 200 million extra inf earned, before level 50. What's the big secret?
Play the game.
Yep. No fancy marketeering, just play the game and be smart about buying and selling. I didn't flip anything or even buy anything to craft for sale, but I did craft my drops when doing so increased profits and I made sure to bid in advance to avoid "buy it now" markups. Some tips for anyone out there more interested in fighting bad guys (or good guys) than pouring over spreadsheets and sitting at the market all day:
1) Use an alt. If at all possible, use an alt to place long-term bids and sell low-turnover items. That way you aren't clogging up an active character's slots with transactions that will take days or weeks to go through. You'll need those slots open to dump short-term stuff like salvage and common IOs for a quick profit, and to buy quick-filling items. There are a lot of Pool A IOs that sell for around 2-5 million and don't cost a lot to craft, but they don't sell fast. On an active character I'd dump the recipe for a few hundred thousand overnight, but by using an alt I can craft them and get a few million in a few days to a week or so. (And yes, if you're so inclined you can always buy those recipes and craft them.) I solo a lot so I have a personal SG with just my alts to facilitate that sort of thing, but all you really need is someone you trust to help transfer items or access to SG base storage (or a 2nd account).
2) Try to earn merits. Tickets can be good (I got a few multi-million inf items with bronze rolls) but merits are gold. I ran two or three TFs and a bunch of story arcs and ended up with enough merits to buy a Numina's recovery unique, craft it, and sell it for 100 million. I could have done random rolls, but with only 280 or so merits I went with the guaranteed payoff instead. It worked out to something like 400k per merit, which is darn good in my book.
3) A rich alt is nice, but hardly necessary. Between tickets, crafting popular drops, and selling unused salvage you can earn plenty of inf to start buying IOs in the low 30s. A rich alt just lets you pre-bid and get them cheaper since you can let the bids sit longer.
4) Use MA, but don't live in it. Tickets are handy. Not only are bronze rolls a decent source of income, you can use them to keep yourself in DOs and SOs at pre-IO levels (or to buy common IO recipes if you go that route). However, real mission drops can be at least as profitable, and story arcs give merits. Especially the high level arcs... some of those give more merits than some TFs. They do take a while, but if you like to solo they're a good choice.
5) Pretty obvious, but it still bears mentioning: do not buy pre-crafted set IOs. Some commons can be had cheaper than crafting them yourself, but the sets are always marked up. I will never understand why people are willing to pay a premium of 2-3 million inf just to avoid buying salvage and crafting it themselves, but some do. Don't be one of those people... be one of the people getting rich off them instead.
And what do you do once you get to 50 and have a good bankroll plus decent IO slotting? If you're me, you start a new character and use the new 50 as the rich alt to help get him started.
tl;dr version: Yes, you really can afford a good build without farming with a 50 or playing the market. Honest.
Cascade, level 50 Blaster (NRG/NRG since before it was cool)
Mechmeister, level 50 Bots / Traps MM
FAR too many non-50 alts to name
[u]Arcs[u]
The Scavenger Hunt: 187076
The Instant Lair Delivery Service: 206636