What is the best way to get common IO's?
By
Catwhoorg,
Posted on: 2009-10-13 21:48 in The Market and Inventions
You can buy the recipes or crafted enhancements from WW/BM, or you can buy the recipes from any crafting table for a fixed price. It is generally cheaper to get the recipes off the auction house. I generally start slotting IO's once level 15's are usable, as they are equivalent to a DO, and never degrade in performance. After that, I will slot 25's, then once I hit the 30's I will begin slotting IO sets or level 35 common IO's.
ETA: Worktable recipe costs are here: http://wiki.cohtitan.com/wiki/Common_Invention_Recipes
here's what I do for all generics except endmod (which is always pricey due to the plotting of an eeebil super secret cartel):
1: Put in cheap bids for crafted IOs I know I'm going to need. Cheap = 1/4 to 1/3rd of whatever the 'last 5' looks like during rush hour. You can go lower if you don't mind waiting longer, or higher if you want to pick them up sooner.
2: Go play for a while, log out whenever and check back tomorrow or the next day.
3: Collect IOs because nice, kindly badgers have dumped loads of ridiculously cheap stock on the market out of the kindness of their hearts...or maybe because the game doesn't give us a lot of storage options, one or the other. =P
The only time I've ever paid higher than crafting cost for a finished generic is because I was in a hurry & ate the buy it NAO price. Well, except for endmods- they're the exception to all generic IO conventional wisdom.
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It really depends on how you play. If you run a single character exclusively and rack up the levels as fast as possible, whipping through levels 1-30 in a few days, then you won't want to bother with IOs till you can start slotting 30s. If you continue that headlong pace to 50, then you may not want to bother with IOs at all.
But considering that level 30 IOs are better than +2 SOs, if you slot level 30 IOs you never need to replace them. It's cheaper to craft a set of 30s than to buy the 5 SOs you'd need to buy on the way to 50). In fact, level 25 IOs are just a little shy of even-con IOs in terms of bonuses, and you might be satisfied with those.
On the other hand, if you play a lot of alts and you have weeks or months to develop the character, you can usually get level 10 IOs on the market for 1-2K (if you wait), and usually level 15 and 20 IOs for the price of DOs. You need to place your bids and then wait a day or two, and they're usually filled. I bid several levels ahead to make sure I have what I need on hand when I level up.
IOs are much better than DOs of the equivalent level, and they never wear out. I don't slot 10s unless I happen to get them on the market cheap, and start slotting 15s at level 12 (which I start buying at level 7 or 8, after I've found something that sells for a lot on the market). As I add slots, I add IOs of the maximum level possible. That means at level 20 I have a mix of level 15 and 20 IOs, which give pretty good bonuses (much better than DOs).
I continue to add common IOs as I add powers, replacing the 10s and 15s when I get 20s and 25s.
If you can't get IOs on the market, you can usually craft them yourself by saving the salvage needed for the recipes. Mostly people need accuracy and damage, so be sure to save the salvage that's required for those. Because of the massive inflation in the game, even starting characters usually have millions after just one fortunate drop. That means you can buy the recipes on the market if they're available, and off the invention tables if they're not. But usually you can get the most popular common recipes for a few hundred inf at level 25 or less.
The reason that there are good deals on IOs has to do with players getting the crafting accolade. This accolade requires that the badger make hundreds of IOs, far more than they can possibly use or typically store in their bases. You have to make so many that you just don't have enough market slots to sell all the IOs you need to make at a decent price (if you're in a hurry to sell), so the prices are often low. If you want to get an IO quickly, bid the crafting price -- it lets the crafter more or less break even, and it's not all that expensive for IOs less than level 30.
I start outfitting my characters with IO sets when I can start slotting level 30s. These typically have maxed-out damage (or other primary effect) due to ED, and you really don't need more than 60% accuracy (roughly equivalent to two acc SOs), especially if you're slotting sets that give acc set bonuses. Doing this also lets you retain the IO set bonuses when you're exemped down to the 30s. For powers obtained after level 30 I use IO sets appropriate to the level of the power (I use 50s on the level 47 power, for example).
This slow and steady development isn't for everybody. You don't really need a lot of influence to do it; if you take your time and purposely do missions with mobs that drop the salvage you need, you can get more than enough of what you need. But most people don't have this kind of patience or planning.
Final note: be sure to get the Mids character creator (you can search for it on the forums here). It's really great, especially for putting together characters with IO sets.
One of the SGs I am in keeps an inventory of various IOs.
The most used ones are 15 (for better than DO) 25 (SO time) 35 (for the rest of the career).
So much so that after a about a year we eliminated the others as they were just not being used.
Personally I start at 12 with commons IO, or cheap sets on just about every character. Either pulled from SG bins, crafted by one of my field crafters, or frequently bought for a steal in advance.
@Catwhoorg "Rule of Three - Finale" Arc# 1984
@Mr Falkland Islands"A Nation Goes Rogue" Arc# 2369 "Toasters and Pop Tarts" Arc#116617
There are, as everyone's said, a ton of "right" answers.
level 15 IO's are about as good as +3 DO's. I almost never use those because DO's are not that different and those levels go pretty fast.
Level 20 IO's are better than DO's- I very occasionally slot them. If I have a slow-moving character that needs every ounce of goodness. Or sometimes I slot four L20 IO's to get the same performance as three SO's. (For force fielders, where you're hitting the team defense cap when fully slotted, it makes a big difference.)
For generics, 30 or 35 is the "use instead of SO's" point.
I know you didn't ask this, but I'm going to go on a tangent here. I'm a big fan of frankenslotting sets around level 32 and keeping those until I'm bored and/or rich. The idea here is that any set IO (no matter how bad the set bonuses) is like a mini-hamidon enhancement. Three Acc/Dam from different sets is like two Acc, two Dam. Two Acc/Dam/Rech (again, you can't slot two of the same IO from the same set in the same power, so this would be like a Thunderstrike A/D/R and a Ruin A/D/R) is like one Acc, one Dam and one Rech.
So you can get "extra slots" into a character. One extra EndRed in a few big attacks and almost nobody had endurance problems any more.
Put up medium bids and leave them over a weekend and you should get most of what you want.
Mini-guides: Force Field Defenders, Blasters, Market Self-Defense, Frankenslotting.
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@Boltcutter in game.
I have never messed around with IO's or the market, really. I played from beta through issue 5 and then came back for about a month or so here and there since then. I have a LOT of catching up to do. Can IO's be bought from contacts or do you always have to caft them yourself? (aside from buying them on the AH) When is a good time to start slotting common IO's in favor of TOs, DOs, and SOs? I heard 35, is that right? I understand the idea behind IO's, both common and sets, I'm just not sure how I should go about getting them into my toons.