My First Rare Purple

Since I've been on as of Jan.09', I only started playing the markets within the last seven months. During that time, I have yet to come across a rare purple that is very hard to get from drops. At least that's what I gathered since I've been playing. Anyways, last night I got on and went to the market to do my normal buys and sells with my level 49 Fire/Kin Controller. To my surprise I noticed an Apocalypse damage/recharge/accuracy Recipe in my inventory. I sort of compared it to the feeling of someone having a winning lottery ticket, you start to get nervous just thinking about the possibilities that await you.

My goal with my toons is to at least get one to my first Billion in influence. I knew this would be a challenge but last night made me think that it can be done by having the right (rare) enhancement to sell.

Needless to say, I wasn't going to keep it, I wanted to sell it. I knew that I could get a nice hefty price at the market for this. As I checked prices and bought all the necessary ingredients, I decided to sell my Apocalypse for around $400 Million in influence. About an hour later, I got my wish and someone bought it for what I was asking for. As I looked at my pot of influence, (approx. $500 Million when added to my existing influence), I felt like a kid in a candy store because I was going to buy some wonderful invention sets that I could not afford before.

I don't normally do PvP so I wasn't going to start dumping influence on those types of enhancement sets. I did go for a few good ones, and after I was done spending influence like a drunken sailor, I had about 40K in influence left. It was fun knowing I could buy some nice enhancement sets that would work with my toon.

This got me thinking. As much as I normally play CoX, mostly on weekends, and sometimes after work or before work, why do I not see more "rare purples" come my way? I've thought I read somewhere in one of these forums that "rares" are a completely random drop. You have no idea when, where or from whom they will be dropped. In reading paragonwikis explanation on this, http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Recipe, my head started to hurt..hehe. This is the only thing I could find per paragonwiki:

"The drop rate for the Very Rare Purple Recipes has been reported to be anywhere from 1 in 1,500 to 1 in 5,000 chance to drop. These were added to the Pool A drops, but we don't know the ratio they are set to appear compared to Common, Uncommon, and Rare Recipes. They drop only from foes that would ordinarily have a chance to drop a level 50 enhancement, so a level 47 minion, a level 46 lieutenant, etc. An easy way to tell if an enemy might drop a purple recipe is if it cons green or better to a level 50 character. Additionally, only level 50 characters can slot Very Rare enhancements."

So, is there a better (more simpler) way of calculating or maybe giving yourself a better chance to get more "rare purples" or is this it?

Super-simplified version: Fight enemies that are level 47 or higher, and kill as many as you can. Keep open room for recipes. If one drops and you don't have room for it, it vanishes. I like to do level 46-50 flashback missions at +0x8. This lets me kill tons of enemies for chances at purples, and earns me merits for non-purple big ticket items at the same time.

What Roderick said.

TopDoc reports 1,500 badguys per purple, soloing.

"Soloing" is important because if you're on a 4 person team then the TEAM gets 1 purple per 1,500 badguys, so you get 1 per 6,000. (Standard disclaimer:Random numbers are random. The only big-ticket purple that ever dropped for me was on a Force Field defender soloing in the Shadow Shard... I wasn't doing a lot of killing at the time, obviously.)

Yep, solo farming and defeating about 18k mobs (minions and Lts), I got 13 purples.

Also as you get more comfortable playing your fire/kin and once you ding 50 you will realize that x8 is nothing. I run my firekin +4 x8. It just takes some practice. Once I got 4 purps in 3 missions. Meaning 1 purp, then i went to the next mish got another, and then in the 3rd mish i got 2.

Update. So far I have done five mish'es at -1x8 with my level 50 MM Bots/Traps. I have "cleared" mish'es even when the objective wasn't defeat all. The best things I got so far from that was some rare salvage and one respec recipe that I accidentally deleted,.. I know, I know, that's a good 200 Mill or more in influence right there in the market.

Anyways, currently doing the TV Mish'es and now fighting The Malta Operatives. Getting whacked around pretty hard with their Sapper's, Gunslingers and Zeus Class Titans. I am working at it, be it ever so slow in getting through these mish'es. It is funny to see my inspirations going "ding" every few seconds because so many foes are dying, it's like I'm in Vegas playing the slots..hehe.

Also in my observance, it seems I would get a lot of level 49 enhancements as opposed to level 50 enhancements. I do know that rare purples are only level 50. So, with that being said, do you guys think that by playing at -1x8 versus playing maybe at +0x8 might have something to do with this? I am not saying this is the reason I haven't seen a purple yet after only 5 mish'es. Maybe I need to average more mish'es before I see one? As someone earlier stated, it is not the difficulty that you play but the number of foes that will determine how the rare purples are dropped.

I guess I will need to just keep plugging away until I can get one. As soon as I do, I will post it.

It took me about 10 battle maiden clears to get my first purple while farming on my spines/fire. You might get one soon or in ages, that's the nature of random. Don't be disheartened if it takes a while, and you're better off getting rid of any expectation to see one every x or so clears. I've averaged a purple every 3000 kills until I hit 30k mobs killed, and then I got five purples in the next 5000 kills. Do it long enough and you'll get some, but they certainly won't be regular.

As far as the enhancements go, I farm on +0x8 and I still get a lot of enhancements below level 50. I wouldn't worry about them, considering enhancements don't sell for much of anything. Unless you mean recipes, in which case yeah you need to farm level 50's to get level 50 recipes.

I've also accidentally vendor'd an Armageddon chance for fire damage proc before, so I feel your pain, heh. I've learned not to mess with my inventory unless I've already off-loaded the stuff I want onto the market, base or crafted them.

I use brutes to farm missions. They have good defenses and do very good damage. I have managed to get about 5 purples so far, but I haven't been playing a lot lately or it would be more.

Well, ahem....I'm still working on my "second" purple. Now I have not been playing my MM since the last post religiously as the past few weeks I've been working on my Dual/Elec Blaster, but I have been playing my MM now and then. Last night, I was running a bunch of mish'es with Borea in the RWZ. You know, those "prove yourself" mish'es that she has you run over and over again. I have been running these mish'es at -1/+8 on the diff setting. As stated earlier in these posts, it shouldn't really matter if I am doing +0/+8 or -1/+8 right?

I know, I know, call me impatient because we all know this is pretty much a random event. Of course you would think the odd's will eventually fall in my favor after fighting all these +8 groups. So, just to clarify once again as I am not doubting those who say -1/+8 or +0/+8 will make no difference in how fast or having better odds in getting rare purples? I really don't think the higher the foe the greater chance of them dropping purples right? I just need some extra confirmation on this. I know it can be hard to predict since this is a "random" event but still there has to be a way to stack the odds in our favor more?

One small thing.

"rare purples"

Tautology. Purples are, by definition rare.

Sorry to be all grammar police on you.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

To be honest, there is no way to stack in your favor. I used to farm a mission with my spines/dark before the difficulty settings. I averaged (yes. averaged) 1 purple per run. Made close to 1.4 billion and purpled out said spines/dark.

When the new difficulty settings came in I have only seen a total of 5 purple drops. Then this week I have had 4 drop (all crap unfortunately). So there is no way of stacking in your favor. But as others have said, dont underestimate the lvl 50 set drops. I have made nearly 200 million in one run from some of those.

All that being said, I have also had the rarest of rare drops and had a LoTG + Recharge and a Numina ++ drop while farming. So it is totaly, completely random!