I originally thought that it would be silly to roll random rewards with merits when you could guarantee what you get however, lots of people told me I was being silly and I now happily go through all my merits getting random rolls.
I don't tend to sell any of the hugely sought after recipes as I can usually find a place to use them. Perhaps this is what others are doing also.
The trouble with statistics is they're all based on chance. Sure, you might get some good recipe drops out of it, but there's a fair chance that every roll will be terrible and you end up with a handful of useless, underselling recpies and wasted those merits.
I've never had a random roll which didn't completely suck. The TF rewards always gave me rubbish, and the random rolls aren't doing any different. Given how long it takes to obtain merits, it might be better for me to just save the 220 merit needed for my specific recipe. At least then I can choose the level of the IO and use it immediately.
The reason there's so few recipes on sale is probably because people are getting the drops THEY want and using them on THEIR characters. You no longer get the most powerful recipes by chance, they're all traded for merits. People are only likely to do a random roll for pools which have the recipes they're looking for (or at least a decent chance of getting an expensive one), because anything less would be a waste of those merits, especially given the time needed to amass a decent supply.
Until they make merits easier to obtain, I have a feeling Wentworths will remain pretty dry when it comes to rare IOs. And the few that do make it to the markets will be snapped up in moments.
Characters:
The Heroic Mary Grace (50)
The Mystical Thunderspark (50)
The Candy-loving Little Jenny (50)
I think that Thunderspark has pretty much summed it up.
If you're just wanting to convert your merits into cash, you're far better off going for the Trial Random Recipe roll (pool D) for 30 merits, as it only has nine drops (seven at level 50), most of which tend to go for a lot (20 million plus in the case of Numina's Convalescence) rather than the more risky Pool C (which seems to be biased towards dropping Trap of the Hunter and Pacing of the Turtle).
Actually, im rather hoping to get my hands on a ton of Luck of the Gambler recharge IOs for my speed build scrapper...
...they retail for a whopping 60 million or more, are never on sale and seem to elude my best attempts to get them through the random rolls...
Characters:
The Heroic Mary Grace (50)
The Mystical Thunderspark (50)
The Candy-loving Little Jenny (50)
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The trouble with statistics is they're all based on chance. Sure, you might get some good recipe drops out of it, but there's a fair chance that every roll will be terrible and you end up with a handful of useless, underselling recpies and wasted those merits.
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I think there are a number of factors that determine whether random rolls are "good" or "bad" for each player. The factors are the number of random rolls taken, the size of the recipe pool, the player's attitude to risk and confirmation bias.
In this post, I use the typical market price of a recipe in inf. as a measure of it's value.
You're not going to get the "expected" result from rolling in a pool unless you make a large number of rolls relative to the size of the pool. Pool C contains about 100 recipes so large might mean 300 rolls. If you've only got enough merits for 10 random rolls then you're very unlikely to get to the "average" value per merit. There's a good chance that your rolls will be rubbish and an equally good chance that they'll be brilliant compared to the average. Pool D is much smaller. 10 rolls here are much more likely to be average.
If you like gambling then a small number of random rolls is much more attractive. The result may suck and it may be brilliant but you'll still be entertained. If you hate risk then don't make random rolls unless you're going to do lots of them. Just buy high value recipes and sell them directly.
Finally there's the problem of confirmation bias. People have a tendency to notice and remember events which support their world view. There's some cool research out there which shows that people who think they're unlucky tend to remember the bad things that happen to them and forget the good things even when they get equal amounts of good and bad. Optimists and "lucky" people are the other way round. Most people are somewhere in between.
In short, if you think you're an "unlucky" person, you hate risk and you've only got a small number of merits then random rolls will almost certainly make you sad. If you're an optimist who likes to gamble then they'll make you happy.
Disclaimer: I'm not a statistician and I haven't cranked the numbers to work out how many rolls you need to make to get typical results.
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If you're just wanting to convert your merits into cash, you're far better off going for the Trial Random Recipe roll (pool D) for 30 merits, as it only has nine drops (seven at level 50), most of which tend to go for a lot (20 million plus in the case of Numina's Convalescence) rather than the more risky Pool C (which seems to be biased towards dropping Trap of the Hunter and Pacing of the Turtle).
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Ding ding ding, hello new merit plan.
I never knew what to do with these merit rewards, my Blasters only need 75 of them to pick up a knockback protection, and then I haven't got any plan at all. You have to grind the knickers out of merits to get anything greater than marginal use out of them, so I'm happy just throwing any I have at some potential moneymakers.
Chairman of the Charity of Pain; accepting donations of blood and guts.
Prophet of the Creamy Truth; "If it's empty, fill it with cream."
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If you're just wanting to convert your merits into cash, you're far better off going for the Trial Random Recipe roll (pool D) for 30 merits, as it only has nine drops (seven at level 50), most of which tend to go for a lot...
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Some of the regulars on the US boards have provided a handy spreadsheet to show which pools and level ranges get the most inf per merit. There are two; one for blue side and one for red side.
The winner at the moment appears to be Pool C in the 40 to 45 level range. Pool D is pretty good and is a safer bet if you don't have many merits. However, you're better buying specific recipes than rolling in Pool D if you're a Hero.
Merits seem to do different things for different people. Most people I know just do random rolls and have gotten some very nice stuff out of it. However, if you get something nice, chances are you can use it, so people tend to keep them rather than sell them. But many people do seem to be doing this, random rolling and hoping. After doing a Posi run, you can make a few rolls and people are doing quite well, at least the ones I know.
Me personally, I have my Shield brute that I've been IOing up. Some of the stuff I wanted for him was just totally not available on the BM, so I had to grind the merits to buy them that way. Because of this I have on him a lvl 20 miracle, a lvl 21 chance for +end, and a lvl 30 Numinas unique. I'le probs end up grinding more merits to get him the lotg +rch i want for him as the 90 mill they cost vill side is just silly.
There does seem to be a lack of purples and I think this is due to breaking the knives arc. 9 merits for what most ppl do in 20-30 mins, but cos its 40-45, no purple drops. When that arc gets nerfed to 4 merits in the next patch, I can see people picking other arcs, and hopefully lvl 50 ones, so the purple rate will go back up. But most people it seems are farming flashback arcs for merits, as that tends to be more profitable than just straight farming mishs.
I'm torn between random rolls since on 3 days i managed to roll 2 lotg 1 zephyr 1 res/def. So for me its either tf pool or saving merits for miracle and sell(guaranteed 60 million+).
I just tried 3 random rolls on the Taskforce section and 2 from the Trials
In the following order I got:
Freebird + Stealth
Siphon Insight: Acc/End/Recharge
Pacing of the Turtle: Chance for Recharge Slow
Mako's Bite: Acc/End/Rech
Aegis: End/Rech/Res
Not bad IMO
Thelonious Monk
Operating under the assumption I could grind the heck out of story arcs in Ouroboros without gaining any levels ( I haven't checked yet if I'll still get merit rewards even if I'm out of the XP range), I went with rolling up in the Taskforce Recipe Pool.
My first ever roll, not just with Merits, but I've never even finished a task or trial in my entire time on CoX....I got Blessing of the Zephyr Knockback Reduction. YES! GET IN! You're getting transferred to a Blaster, Merits ROCK! No wait....a /Fire Scrapper maybe! Hahahaha!
Chairman of the Charity of Pain; accepting donations of blood and guts.
Prophet of the Creamy Truth; "If it's empty, fill it with cream."
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I haven't checked yet if I'll still get merit rewards even if I'm out of the XP range
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You will, but with diminishing returns if you keep doing the same flashback arc on the same day - you'll get fewer merit rewards the 2nd time around, and so on.
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You will, but with diminishing returns if you keep doing the same flashback arc on the same day - you'll get fewer merit rewards the 2nd time around, and so on.
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Diminishing returns doesn't apply to flashback arcs, only trials, task forces and strike forces. See the wiki article for details.
I think people in general have a VERY wrong idea about random rolls and statistics in general. Let me give you one example:
Here in Sweden we have a game that's called TRISS. It's supposedly giving a "win" on every 4th ticket made.
So, does that mean you win at least once if you buy 4 tickets? No of course not. There's a looooot of tickets and pure coincidense then states:
on every single ticket you buy there's a 25% chance of winning. It doesn't matter if you buy 200 tickets. It's still only 25% chance of winning on each ticket.
If you do buy 200 tickets you should statistically get pretty close to winning on 25% of the tickets, but it will not be every 4th ticket. You may win on 10 tickets in a row, and you might, theroetically, not win anything even if you buy 200 tickets.
So even if it's statistically smart to do random rolls, I'd personally still not take the "chance" of ending up with 20 pacing of the shiii...smurfer...
Now, the randomness doesn't seem to be random at all though. Doing a lot of LRSFs back in the days, I noticed two things:
1. Doing it often on same alts usually generated a pacing of the shii...
2. When I hadn't done a SF for ages on an alt I always seemed to end up with something really nice like numina, stealth recipe etc.
If it's just simple stupid, jolly good luck or intended code, well, I have no idea, but it sure seemed like it happened waaayyy too often to be pure coincidense.
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Now, the randomness doesn't seem to be random at all though. Doing a lot of LRSFs back in the days, I noticed two things:
1. Doing it often on same alts usually generated a pacing of the shii...
2. When I hadn't done a SF for ages on an alt I always seemed to end up with something really nice like numina, stealth recipe etc.
If it's just simple stupid, jolly good luck or intended code, well, I have no idea, but it sure seemed like it happened waaayyy too often to be pure coincidense.
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I would have to suggest that it is coincidence backed up with positive reinforcement.
Back in the day I didn't often do T/SF's and never repeated one on the same alt so, if your theory is correct, I should usually have recieved a decent drop from completion. In the time before merit rewards were handed out only twice did I ever recieve anything valuable (and by that I mean worth more than 500k or so).
Since the introduction of merits I have recieved a number of very good recipes, so, overall, I am very happy.
So what is the best way to get merits??
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So what is the best way to get merits??
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If you figure this one out, let me know. I need 1100 of the darned things to finish my scrapper's build...
Characters:
The Heroic Mary Grace (50)
The Mystical Thunderspark (50)
The Candy-loving Little Jenny (50)
LOL I'm working on my scrapper too!! I hate IO's the game was so simple when you just had a load of 53 SO's and as many HO's you could get your hands on....
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So what is the best way to get merits??
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Rock on down to NCSoft, find the GMs, and don't stop punching until they've added a hundred thousand merits to everything on your account.
Chairman of the Charity of Pain; accepting donations of blood and guts.
Prophet of the Creamy Truth; "If it's empty, fill it with cream."
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So what is the best way to get merits??
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Rock on down to NCSoft, find the GMs, and don't stop punching until they've added a hundred thousand merits to everything on your account.
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on my way 
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So what is the best way to get merits??
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Rock on down to NCSoft, find the GMs, and don't stop punching until they've added a hundred thousand merits to everything on your account.
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Didn't they change the EULA to stop people doing this?
DON'T eat muffins while I'm developing you.
Pants! Turkey Magnates! A man in a box! Rogue AI! Come one, come all, to arc ID 10107 - It's [i]'Not as long as some other arcs'[/i]!
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So what is the best way to get merits??
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Rock on down to NCSoft, find the GMs, and don't stop punching until they've added a hundred thousand merits to everything on your account.
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Didn't they change the EULA to stop people doing this?
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Pffft.
Who reads the EULA anyway?
"Idealism is such a wonderful thing. All you really need is someone rational to put it to proper use." - Kerr Avon
Myopic Aardvark on Twitter
According to the wiki there are about 30-100 recipes in pool C, depending on the level. about dozen of them are actually good and sought after at any level (Stealths, Zephyr -KB, Numina/Miracle procs etc.) Some are not as good at lower lvls but still worth a lot. So, purely by eyeball-o-metry, just taking random rolls looks more profitable than saving for a specific recipe...
So, if I'm right, why do we have so few recipes on sale and those silly inflated prices at in the first place? No, really, why? It isn't rocket science, just common sense, - random rolls are still statistically better than direct merit purchases. Yet, from the looks of it, no one does random rolls... Or do they? And inflation is caused by something else, say, dual-builds, or not enough drop farming? Then again, more inf needed for a build==more farming, and more recipe drops. Even farming for merits still ought to bring decent number of reciopes anyway. What Am I missing?