Life without high-level alts...

I mostly ran on teams to level up, so I didn't get many drops at all. I'd guess I had about 900k inf from actually selling stuff (often listing things at much more than the apparent going rate and waiting a while for them to sell), and the rest I got by farming WW for vendorable recipes to make a bit of a profit.

I'm told that I'd have more money if I'd been soloing that whole time.

One of the ways I like to use to pick up a couple of quick million on new toons:

Find common salvage with zero or few bids, and with a relatively small amount of supply. Currently that looks like mid-level tech and high-level arcane. Put in some lowball bids, then repost them at 100-1000 times what you initially bought them for. Sooner or later (almost always sooner) someone will try to run up the market and you will make a nice little profit when they lift you out of your position.

This also beats buying and vendoring, since you don't actually have to leave the WW to go to the store.

There are 1000's of different opinions on slotting at your, or any other, level and none of them is necessarily wrong depending on what you want to do with your character. Unless you want to constantly solo and battle at say +4 X 8 IOs really are not a requirement at any level. The Devs have stated on numerous occasions that the game is designed to be played successfully with nothing more than SOs.

Here is what I do...

Lower level 1-20

I never bother with Training Origins at all ... Very little increase and unless you are a very casual player (a few hours a week or only on weekends) you can zip through these far too fast to waste even the small amount of INF required to slot them.

10, 15 and 20 level IO do offer uncreased power over the Dual origins you can slot starting at 12 so I will use those when I acquire the recipe and salvage required. By that I mean they drop during missions NOT that i run to WW and start buying them. Again at these levels if you play often enough you won't need them for long anyway so I refuse to spend a lot of INF on them. Dual Origins work just fine at these levels in slots I don't luck into a recipe for during normal play.

Level 22-36

I run with nothing but Single origins. As stated yes they degrade and eventually expire but a 25 level SO provides significantly more power that a 25 level IO so WHY spent INF on something that makes me weaker?


37 and beyond

Now is when I start to seriously start IOing my character. A 40 IO is slightly stronger than a 50 level SO. If you want to start soon 35 levels are only a bit less powerful than 35 level SOs and of course they don't degrade. 45 and 50 levels far outshine their SO counterparts so I will slot 40s, 45 and 50 until every slot has an IO and then GRADUALLY replace the lower level IO with higher levels until every slot has a 50. So at some point with say a 47 level character I may have a 40 level Damage IO in one slot, a 45 level Damage in a second and a 50 in a third along with a 45 or 50 level accuracy.


Now ask yourself "What do I want to do with this character?" There are players out there that like to solo GMS, attack Rikti Pylons by themselves and/or run solo missions at +4 X8. If any or all of this applies to you them start doing the math and Frankenslot those expensive IO sets and start farming for Purples. If, on the other hand, your perfectly happy running on teams and soloing at +0 X1 or depending on the characters even +1 0r +2 X1 simple basic generic IOs along with a well thought out build will be more than adequate.. so why spend 100s or Millions on something you don't really need? My 50 level SoA crab is a perfect illustration of this. Every slot has a 50 level IO and not a single set bonus to be found but all my attacks have 3 Damage IOs, 1 Accuracy and then depending on what they require 1 Recharge IO (for the ones that recover slower) or 1 End Reduction IO for the ones that use a LOT of end. My pets have damage, accuracy and recharge enhancements in place and I can ALWAYS have at least 1 set of them out through any mission adding to my damage output. Not a single Purple IO in sight I sold every one that's dropped which is why even after slotting with nothing but 50 level IOs and crafting enough so that she has now memorized every recipe for 45 and 50s she still has over 250 million in Infamy. On an ITF she is LETHAL pouring damage out at anything in range and she has defense that some Tankers/Brutes would envy... plus many of those defenses help her team mates.

So decide what you want from your character and build accordingly. If you want to attack Jurrasik solo I strongly encourage you to use another slotting strategy but if you just enjoy teaming and playing "normally? (what ever that is" my way will work just fine. Good luck and have fun :-D

oh, and the quickest and easiest 'early bankroll' tip of all:

save your large inspirations from the tutorial and sell them once you make enough inf to cover listing fees.

My baby demon/storm mastermind cleared almost a million inf before level 10 using this 'trick' the other day.

Yeah, I noticed that. The tradeoff, of course, is that you sometimes get a ton more with unreasonable prices. I managed to go through a stack or so of brass selling for 175-250k and buying for 500 on one of my alts.

Oh, gawds, the bad old days. I made a Force Field defender when my group of friends wanted to switch to a new server- there was no way of transferring inf between servers- and teamed with high level blasters for tips.

When I realized I was escorting generous older gentlemen, I made a costume to match. "I've got a new SG . The kids are hungry. Don't judge me."

Anyway, seebs, don't freak out when people explain that the first [x] levels go by so fast you don't have to do anything during them. The first [x] levels go by that fast IF YOU'VE DONE THEM TEN TIMES BEFORE. Take your time, outfit your character, see the sights in Dark Astoria [sorry... old joke.]

I have a new hero alt of mine that's level 18, and started running AE arcs (no farmy things, just normal story arcs) around level 8.

She's now at 90 mill inf, about half from bronze roll knockback IO sales and half from idle salvage flipping (going to get 1k sales badge for second bonus market slot). I could really do better if I played the market more, but I don't quite care that much yet. Also that extra market slot will probably come in handy later.

While there are some good ideas here, I think some of it is just too advanced maybe. I have to recommend peterpeter's ideas here. It's a great starter to make reasonable money without HUGE profits, I've used it a lot and so has a friend of mine. Really handy when I branched out to new servers.

* Tutorial Inspirations I sell for 100k each
* Buy normal recipies cheap and sell them to a vendor (make sure you understand how the vendor sale price is worked out)

I usually let my chars be do that without any help from my other characters until level 12 or 22 depending on how skinflint I'm being. At that point I do make IOs with my main on each server for them.

Now I have a project on Virtue who only does the TFs and who doesn't have IOs made for him. He's currently 25 and I've burnt through all the inf he has picked up on Posi 1 & 2, Synapse and Sister Psyche and a million I sent to him because I couldn't afford enhs and refused to do a TF while unslotted. So I understand it CAN be tough, particularly if you solo a lot.


The MA rolls and flipping will get you bigger rewards in the long term but you need cash behind you to do that even if that's buy enhancements to do MA arcs to get the tickets. So from a very low stake, I'd go for peter's suggestions. Personally I don't like using Merits to buy recipies for profit because I use those merits to outfit my characters. YMMV.

I know there is a guide somewhere something like 10 million by level 6 but I can't find it at the moment.

Best of luck.

This is a really interesting thread.

My solo characters have absolutely no issues with money for obvious reasons. My team only players have run into the same money problems as the OP occasionally. If you're unlucky with drops teaming, you can be nearly as poor financially as the pre-IO days. For this reason, I occasionally seed my team only players. When I'm in the mood, and have time, I play the market, as has been demonstrated countless times by the various market gurus here.

My advice to the OP. If you're finding yourself low on funds on a character, and have limited time to play the market(or are simply too lazy like I am sometimes), make a solo friendly character(Scrappers and Brutes are the best) to help fund your team friendly characters.

Most of my opinion is based on very limited time to play the game at all. More often than not at very odd hours. There are some days(or weeks) I have time to play the market, and others not.