Inf Making FAQ?

I am curious about the best ways to make inf to then turn buy IO's. I see people with all these builds that look to cost 200-400 million inf, and I can't figure out where it comes from. I played most of my CoH before IO's were introduced, and I can't get my head around how to start to get the inf together for these builds.

I am just looking for a simple kind of quick overview. *Not* a get rich quick scheme kind of thing, or some exploit or trick, just how to do make the inf for the IO's. I see people talk about farming this or farming that, but can just killing mobs over and over produce this level of inf?

Obviously, there is getting inf from killing mobs and mishes, but for example, how do people turn AE's/tickets into inf, or does that even work like that? I just do them for XP, and use the tickets to buy so's, I dont see where the inf comes from.

I see IO's for sale in the zillions, and figure there is some way to get inf of those numbers, and I also see level 50's running AE's, and Strike Force / Task Forces and assume those are connected somehow, but I am just not connecting the dots.

Thanks for any advice. I don't mind earning it at all, I just need to know where to direct myself.

Thanks.

Well buy recipes craft them and sell the enhanement you might just be suprised at how much more is some cases the crafted goes for more then the recipe.

And TF/SF's get you merits and those in turn and be excanged for some very exspensive IOs

Buy low sell high

There's alot of simple ways to make influence/infamy.

Just off the top of my head:

1. Play your 50s. Even if they are only SO'ed out, they'll get drops, sometimes really good ones. Play them long enough and odds are you'll get good stuff. One of the best ways IMO is just run ITFs...the taskforce is fun, painless and you get both drops and merits.

2. Run Taskforces/Trials/Story arcs for merits. Exchange them for either random rolls (level 35-39 is best IMO) or for specific high value recipes (Luck of the Gambler +Recharge, Miracle +Recovery). Craft them and sell them for lots of inf. Both of those right now go for 100M+.

3. Run a lot of AE. AE is simply one of the easiest/fastest/most bang for the buck reward vs. time played things you can do. If you have a good farming character, you can easily get thousands of tickets in a very short while. If you don't, just join one of the bazillions of AE teams looking for scrubs, er teammates in Atlas. Bid on level 24-29, which is one of the sweet spots, for random rolls.

4. Read this forum and learn how to be an ebil marketeer. There's a bit of a learning curve, but ultimately, this is the most profitable. There are various techniques, and the market vets practically give away these "secrets" all the time.

Farming can produce high levels of Inf. For farming non-AE content the estimates I've seen is that about 1/3 of the Inf is from actual Inf drops, 1/3 is from Purple recipes and the last 1/3 is from selling salvage and other recipes. I have no clue how accurate these are but there you have it.

AE tickets can be converted into Inf in two ways. The first is using them to buy salvage and selling that on the market. Rare salvage can generally be sold for up to 1 million each. Uncommon is a little more variable, I tend to buy it for under 100K but I've seen prices go up to 200K for short periods. Common salvage is even more variable and since it's a random roll less reliable as a means of making income although in general Arcane common salvage is more valuable than Tech commons.

The second way that AE tickets can be converted into Inf is through random recipe rolls. If you do Gold Class Rolls the 35-39 range is generally considered best although there are also strong arguments for doing Bronze Class Rolls instead since they are significantly cheaper.

Similarly Merits can be used to roll a random recipe for 20 merits each. The table used is the same as the Gold Class Roll so again the 35-39 range is best.

Finally it is possible to make money from the market itself. There are three general ways of doing so. First is flipping. Since the price of most items fluctuates over the course of the day and week it is possible to put buy bids to buy at the low point and then relist them to sell at the high point. You won't get rich doing this but you can make a steady profit for a few shinnies.

Secondly you can craft and sell common IOs. As long as you stick to popular IOs you'll make a slow but safe profit. The downside is that you'll need to get at least one memorization badge and probably several which does require a bit of starting capital.

Finally you can craft and sell Set IOs. Generally the price of a crafted IO is significantly higher than the cost of recipe + salvage + crafting cost so you can make large profits. However this requires the largest starting bankroll and you can lose a lot of Inf if you make a mistake. If you roll recipes with tickets and merits it can similarly be more profitable to buy the salvage and craft them than selling the basic recipe.

The "honest" way of making money on the market is to memorize common IO recipes, make them and sell them. When you memorize a recipe you don't have to buy the recipe (which can be very expensive), and it costs much less to craft. That means you can undercut common IOs crafted from recipes.

You should see what IOs are in demand and then memorize a few of those types. You won't make all your money at once, but if you do this over a period of time you can typically make several million a day for five minutes' work. Prices paid for certain common IOs have been quite high in the last few weeks, due to inflation and high demand.

Memorizing level 45-50 common recipes increases your recipe capacity, and memorizing 25-30 commons increases your salvage storage capacity. Both of these are quite convenient.

If you memorize all common recipes in the 10-40 range (and do some other things) you get the Field Crafter accolade which allows you to summon a crafting table anywhere.

The problem with this and other market-based methods for raising influence is that it only works when a few people do it. If everyone is doing it supply rises and you can't sell your crafted items profitably. But you can generally double your money selling memorized IOs because they're so much more cheaper to make than from recipes, and most people don't bother to memorize because they won't be needing 14 level 50 Resist Damage IOs.

Again, that's only true for the IOs that are in demand. And those IOs change all the time. Basically, you need to find a niche and be prepared to change as the market shifts.

Finally, making memorized IOs is cheaper than buying SOs (if you have the salvage) before level 25 or 30. That means your crafter character can make IOs for your lower-level alts and save you tons of money, while outfitting yourself with enhancements that don't wear out. You need to be in the same SG as your alts so you can use enhancement storage to transfer them, or have friends transfer them for you.

Don't forget PvP. The right lucky drop would net you over a billion!

There's no single FAQ because, honestly, making INF hand over fist is extremely easy no matter what you do, as long as you stick with it. Demand in this game is so incredibly high for just about anything remotely useful, and supply so low, that as long as you are generating anything that can be sold on the market, in any quantity, it will sell if you price it to sell.

Salvage is low profit, but can lead to extremely high turnover rates. It's also easy to learn, and low-risk (INF-wise.) It's where most people learn the basics of marketing: cyclical behavior, low, high, and median prices, and why you shouldn't ever let your reach exceed your grasp. Also, you learn to spot people jumping your niche, mainly because the barrier to entry is so low.

Crafting IOs is a healthy profit. You may lost a bit int he beginning getting the memorization badges, but once you can start crafting memorized recipes, you're basically printing your own money: there is a steady demand for the big ones: accuracy, damage, defense, recharge, but some niches almost NEVER have anyone filling them. Find one of those, and you make a good profit consistently.

Flipping recipes and crafted IO's. I don't do it. It can be lucrative, but you can also lose a LOT if you misjudge things, or if someone steps into your niche and you don't catch it. There are entire guides written about flipping. Profits are highly variable, and in general, the bigger you bet, the bigger the potential payout. Flipping purples or PvP IOs for example, takes a lot of INF to get started, but can literally pay out hundreds of millions per market slot.

Of course, playing the game normally, in whatever way you see fit, supplements all this income. Run TFs, run regular content, run AE: it all generates rewards that you can use or sell. One thing that I would advise against, strongly, is saving merits for a specific recipe. Random rolls have, on average, far better returns per merit spent. The market is the best way to make INF, and one of the best things about it is that once you learn, you can log in, move your slots around, then go and make money on the market while you do other things.

[further edit, to address a specific question- AE tickets can be turned into other things. Random recipe rolls are a crapshoot, but if you hit it lucky, you can be looking at several million for a single rare. Even some Bronze-level recipes can go for big money, including the Steadfast protection set in 10-30 and the Regenerative Tissue unique also in that level range. Common salvage rolls give you a very cheap way to get lots of salvage for crafting common IOs, while uncommon salvage can be bought specifically to make a certain uncommon/rare recipe that you either bought to craft, or just happened to get while playing.]

Here's a sort of mini-guide I wrote up a couple of months ago:


Understanding the Fundamentals of the CoH Auction Market

This short guide will explain a few basic truths of the market in CoH. The goal is to introduce a few important concepts and avoid drowning the reader in details.

I don't think this guide is very long, but here's a TL;DR version anyway:

Quote:

If you want to make a fortune playing the market or just want to avoid paying top prices, the secret is to have a bit of patience. Don't outbid peak weekend prices. Look at average prices on a Tuesday or Wednesday, put in your bids, and force yourself to wait a day or two for your bids to pan out. Buy recipes and salvage and do your own crafting instead of buying pre-crafted IOs.

Supply and Demand
Unlike a store, prices are set in the CoH markets by "supply and demand". We've all heard this phrase, but what does it mean? Simply put, the more available something is, the lower its price will be and vice versa. Prices are set between willing sellers and buyers. No one can force you to buy at a price you're not willing to pay.

Example: before the Mission Architect (MA) was introduced, only rare (orange) salvage was pricey. Uncommon (yellow) salvage was cheap and generally you'd get a better price by selling it to a store than by selling it on the market. Now uncommon salvage frequently sells for 50K-100K inf. What changed? MA missions don't drop salvage, they drop tickets. Players have shown a reluctance to redeem their tickets for uncommon salvage; instead they save up for desirable recipes. People are crafting IOs just as much as ever so demand has remained constant but supply has tightened up, so salvage sells for more.

Prediction: when the Going Rogue expansion goes live, there will be at least a temporary shift away from the MA. Salvage will once again be abundant and prices will plunge.


Cyclic Demand
Demand that predictably follows a pattern is called "cyclic demand." In the real world, think of peak season hotel prices. Hotel prices are always highest in the peak season because there are more people chasing after a fixed number of hotel rooms. This pattern of higher prices during peak season is so reliable as to be predictable.

Is there cyclic demand in CoH? Sure. There are always more players on during weekends, holidays and special events such as the release of a new issue or a double XP weekend. Why should you care about cyclic demand in CoH? It'll make more sense after the next section....


Gotta Have It NOW
When most players decide they want to buy a set of IOs, they proceed to bid high enough to get the set right away. That's understandable. For them the market isn't fun. It's a necessary chore, like going grocery shopping. They want to get it over with and get back to having fun. By putting in high bids they get their stuff quickly. Experienced marketeers derisively refer to that as "get it now" pricing; they're derisive because it guarantees the buyer is paying top dollar.

There's an even worse form of "get it now": since many of the players that want to get their IOs right now don't want to be bothered with the hassle of crafting them, they'll pay a healthy premium to have someone else do the crafting. And when I say "healthy premium" I really mean "insane premium" like paying 2-3 mil for ingredients that costs 500K to purchase and craft.


The Secret Every CoH Market Billionaire Knows
Combine the concepts of cyclic demand with "get it now" pricing, and you get an interesting phenomenon. During peak demand (usually weekend evenings) there is a reliable flood of players who just want to buy their stuff ASAP and get back to playing. Prices surge. Off-peak those players are absent for the most part and prices sag.

So if you want to make a fortune playing the market or just want to avoid paying top prices, the secret is to have a bit of patience. Don't outbid peak weekend prices. Look at average prices on a Tuesday or Wednesday, put in your bids, and force yourself to wait a day or two for your bids to pan out. Buy recipes and salvage and do your own crafting instead of buying pre-crafted IOs.

The real kicker is that for every player who takes the time to read this and try it out, there will be hundreds who can't be bothered. And those will be the ones making you rich.

We've maybe been giving overly advanced answer to basic questions. And the time for the basic answers may have passed. Nonetheless, in case it hasn't been covered, here it is.

Thanks to everyone for all the great and varied respones, both simple and fancy.

I have three last questions:

1) Is it generally better to use tickets and get the salvage to make your own IO's and get the recipies, or to just go for bigger inf items and buy the IO outright?

2) Why does everyone say to go for this 35-39 salvage or 35-39 random recipies? Why not 40-50?

3) What does it mean to memorize a recipe? I have crafted a pair of costume parts so far, and never an IO, so my crafting experience is limited. How does one memorize a recipe and what are the consequences of not memorizing and the benefits of memorization.

Thanks!

As mentioned, a key factor is that "30-34" or "35-39" include sets that top out at 30, or at 35, respectively.

This link, linked above by Adeon Hawkwood, shows that there are 30 "10-30" and two "15-30" recipes that you can get if you roll 30-34.

Most of those recipes are very, very undesireable and sell for almost nothing.

Many of the gold roll reciepes are uniques, like Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge time (which is a global recharge, it affects all of your powers). However, some uniques are more unique than others. ^_^ The one I just mentioned is in very high demand, others are ones virtually nobody wants. At least, the number of people that want that recipe is far less than the number of recipes available.

The bronze rolls are usually uncommon (yellow) recipes. I think most of the silver rolls are rare (orange) recipes, just not the special ones you can only get on a gold roll.

Hope that helps. Purple recipes can not be rolled for, btw.

Generic or common IOs are a great way to outfit your character. Many of us will outfit with level 30 or 35 generic IOs until the character hits or at least nears 50, and then you can think about whether you want to invest in more expensive set IOs. For some of my characters, I never bother going beyond the generic IOs.

They divide up recipes into pool A, B, and C/D (used to be separate, now combined.)

Pool A subdivides into "uncommon" and "rare". Look at the top of this page.

If you're not in the AE, pool A is "What drops from badguys" (uncommon something like eight times as much as rare.) Pool B is "mission complete". Pool C/D comes primarily from cashing in merits OR taking gold rolls on the AE.

There is a tiny, something like 1/2000, chance that a boss will drop a pool C/D . To put it another way, if you run ten respec trials one person on one team will get a boss to drop a pool C/D; the respec trials will generate (for 7-person teams) 140 rare recipes worth of merits.

So what's the optimal AE ticket random roll these days anyway? I never paid attention to the discussions before cuz I never ran AE mishes, but I have a few (10s of) thousand from 2X weekend that I wanna dump. Golds? Bronzes? I know silver is a crappy bet.