Reward Rolls: The Answer?

I solo 99% of the time, absolutely abhor farming for probability-based drops and "cash", and am a very poor capitalist. So for me to gear up in most MMORPGs is a bit of a challenge, unless there are some juicy, content-driven, mostly soloable (hah!) quests that I can take advantage of.

Sadly, CoX has no story arcs that qualify.

I'm a packrat, so your run-of-mill mats are usually pretty easy for me to manage, and I've got crafters who can crank out common IOs fairly cheaply. So that's no problem. I avoided IO sets for a long, long time. I have finally started dipping into them a bit, but the market is not kind to folks like me. I've planned my builds to avoid the more popular (i.e. expensive) sets and uniques, but those IOs are popular for a reason...they have lots of sweet bonuses. Unfortunately, now that I've taken a bite out of the forbidden fruit, there's no going back to a state of innocence.

I took a break from CoX shortly before Issue 14 came out, and I'm just now discovering that (a) AE tickets drop at a decent rate and (b) you can get specific rare salvage items from the ticket vendors. I ran one AE mission this morning on my ninjas/dark MM and got enough tickets for 1 rare salvage of my choice. Woot!! Now that's a time investment vs. reward ratio that I can live with! Aside from the ticket drop rate (which probably doesn't vary much), there is also nothing probabilistic about it. It's even soloable. And so much better than spending a few million inf for a single Reactive Gas. Perfect!

So packrat + a limited number of AE missions seems to be the solution for salvage. I may even be able to avoid the market completely (wooo hoooo!!).

Is there any similar strategy for recipes? There are so many recipes in the game that the odds of getting any particular set are way, way, way too low for me, and packratting recipes only goes so far with limited storage space. Merits are fairly hard come by compared to the prices of individual recipes at the merit vendor--especially since my main sources of merits are soloable story arcs. 20-some odd story arcs to get enough merits for a single, 250-merit recipe is not gonna happen.

I guess that pretty much leaves me with rewards rolls. 20 merits is not so bad. The number of AE tickets for a gold-class reward roll seems a bit steep, but may also be doable. But is it worth it? Once again, the odds of getting anything I need seem depressingly low. I suppose I could attempt to sell the recipes I don't need (or ever anticipate needing) but that almost always means that no one needs them, and I'll be lucky if they sell at all.

Probabilistic drops and market economies are two of the things that frustrate me the most about MMORPGs these days. I'm supposed to a super-powered force of nature...and whether or not I'm lucky or a capitalist guru should have nothing to do with how unstoppable a force I am.

No way to store the recipes, but it shouldn't take much to craft the recipes and store the IOs on a table in your base. That's what I do for stuff I want to keep until I can use, or stock up on for alts to take.

RagManX

Equipping characters with full IO sets without using the market will take a long time (and a lot more patience than I have).

One thing to keep in mind is that the vast majority of Uncommon recipes (the yellow ones) go for very little on the market (less than you'll spend on crafting them in many cases). There are a lot of very good sets in those groups so if you mostly stick to them you can just buy them on the market for very little and use architect tickets to get the salvage that you need. You won't be able to make a perma-hasten build with them but if you're careful you can make a pretty good build on the cheap.

Using Reward rolls to try and get specific rare recipes is pretty much useless. For the most part your better off making the rolls, selling the recipes and using the cash to buy what you actually wanted.

An alternative method that you might like given your preference for reliability over randomness is to take your AE tickets buy a variety of rare tier 3 salvage and list it on the market for a little under 1 million. It should sell overnight netting you almost 900K after the market takes it's cut. You won't get rich doing this but since most of the more useful rare recipes (i.e. the ones from damage sets) sell for between 1mil and 15mil so you can easily save up for the recipes that you want without having to worry about how much the RNG likes you.

Finally I will note that you don't need to be a capitalist guru to make inf on the market, you just need patience and a calculator.

My suggestion is to skip the gold class reward rolls and instead do bronze class rolls. You can get some fairly lucrative stuff, and you can often increase your profit by flipping the recipes you get.

Ironblade: Yeah, it was the soloable part I was referring to. I've gravitated towards ATs and powersets that can solo fairly well. Even my defenders are more offenderish. And all can manage a standard story arc just fine. If I had any desire to, I could even farm well enough on some of them with some minimal IO sets (one of my first toons was a fire/rad controller and the ninjas/dark MM I referred to is a beast).

But still...completing a story arc means getting 5-10ish merits and once in a blue moon some kind of reward roll. The SF/TFs would qualify, except for the soloable part (even if you managed to pad those and then solo them, you would still have a tough time with most). But even then all you get are slightly more merits...just enough for a single reward roll at the merit vendor. And then we're straying into the luck/farming territory that makes me feel sad.

What I was thinking of was some kind of "epic" story arcs. Long, with an interesting story and fun encounters. Involved enough not to be farmable for groups (or maybe even solo/small group *required*) and possibly lasting several real-time days with lock-out timers and such. At the end, you get a definite, really cool reward...maybe a whole IO set or a purple of your choice or something.

Thanks for all the advice, everyone! Most of my builds lean heavily on the Uncommon sets already, but I'll definitely try some of the other techniques you've suggested. I know a capitalist guru isn't required to play the market hehe ...but I'm much more of "reluctant capitalist" than anything else.

You might want to check out the TFs in Ouroboros. They aren't a huge time investment, can be started by a single player, and give decent rewards (not to mention, they can be incredibly fun.)

My usual advice for "Reluctant capitalists" is this: Next time you want to buy something, look at the price of the recipe (and salvage, and crafting cost) and then look at the price of the last 5 "Crafted" versions of that. Usually there's a million-plus difference in prices.

Then buy two, craft two, sell one and slot the other.

It won't necessarily pay for your expensive IO habit, but it will subsidize a lot of it.

EDIT: This won't solve the problem that you hate the market and think it is no fun. This WILL solve the problem that you have trouble affording the high-end gear you covet.

What? 99%(or more) are very soloable.

Being wildly optimistic about my ability to interpret that, I'm going to guess "buy up most of the competing stock and list one big batch." May also have said "Flip" and meant "Craft and sell."