Life without high-level alts...

By the way, another tip that works well for me: whenever I am buying stuff that I really want for one of my characters, I put in bids for more than I need and then sell the extras.

Suppose my new scrapper wants a whole set of scirocco's dervish. Well, if I want them, and they're expensive, then other people must want them too. So instead of putting in a bid for 1, I'll put in a bid for a stack of 10, or 3, or whatever I can afford. On poor characters I might just double up. Usually this is the recipe I'm talking about, and the salvage for it. Log off or go play or whatever. Time passes. When I collect my stuff, I probably got at least a few buys instead of just the one I needed. I craft them all and sell the extras for a profit. As long as I buy low, it's usually easy to sell for a markup without being the most expensive seller on the block.

Yeah, I've been noticing that. Made some key progress -- I now have the level 30 damage IO memorized, and I've made decent money (well, by my standards) on it.

Been doing a bunch more crafting, filling in a couple of sets with mismatched stuff in the 20s and low 30s, because even mismatched and low level, it's giving me better bonuses than I would get from the level 30 common IOs. I also now have a couple of global buffs, like +5% accuracy to everything, which will eventually add up.

I think the big thing I was missing was that the prices fluctuate SO very quickly, so leaving a bid up at even a fairly "low" price overnight is often effective.

I never buy SOs, and I rarely buy much of anything before level 20 or so. I live on drops up to 17 or so, only buying the salvage I need for any recipes I can use. I sell all my other drops. Then I look for generic IOs and frankenslot for the next 10 levels or so. At 27 I buy generic IOs which will last me thru the life of the toon. I will PROBABLY replace them, but I dont have to. Note: sometimes crafted generic IOs are cheaper than buying the recipes & salvage, and crafting it yourself. Crafters are either A) crafting and selling at a loss to get the badge; or B) have memorized the recipe and can sell for less. So double-check the prices on recipes vs. crafted. At 27 I start thinking about what sets I want, and start putting lowball bids on some of the volatile items. Remember: if no one else is bidding, you might get a bargain. This wont help you for the really desirable sets, but you might be able to scoop up some low hanging fruit.

1-10 I buy uncommon salvage and level 40-50 generic IO recipes for under value and sell to vendors. Usually to make my first million.

Level 12 I'll buy DO's. I already have a million inf. I'm in good shape.

At Level 21, I place low bids for 10 damage, 10 acc, 10 recharge and 10 end reduc level 25 IO recipes and their salvage ( If I wasn't saving them already). By the time I hit 22, I should have them bought. Craft them and slot what I need, and sell the rest for 2-300k each. After that, I usually just fill in with 30's and 35 generic or set piece IO's as I need, or want, or get. Level 25 vs level 30 is a minor difference in effectiveness, and huge difference in price. You can pick up most of the pieces for bids of 111. Level 30+ salvage is usually a lot more. This gives you a decent base to start off into level 30 IO's. You also don't feel as much of a twinge when you trash them as you get better IO's to replace them.

That also gives you a jump on earning the 25-30 crafting badges which are a good way to earn steady inf.

Just came in to say I really like this thread. Thumbs up to you seebs!

I think they should sticky this thread so that everyone coming into these boards crying about influence being scarce could see that with little initiative you can make money even without high level alts.

The more I look at this, the more I think the real issue isn't high-level alts, but understanding the system. I just started on the long path of replacing my Theft of Essence set with Touch of the Nictus. Got a couple of orange recipes. They all need rare salvage that cost 2M-4M or so at WW.

So I'm doing architect missions to get tickets so I can buy them outright, because that's straightforward and reliable at my level, and gives me XP towards making 32 so I can have fluffy. Sure, there may well be more efficient ways to get the salvage I want -- but 540 tickets takes a LOT less time to get than, say, 3M inf farmed by street sweeping. And it's pretty deterministic; I know about how much time I have to spend doing it to get the set bonus I'm aiming for.

Once I have fluffy, I anticipate that my life will get a lot easier in terms of farming speed, and I'll be able to do missions at higher difficulties, meaning More Loot.

... it wiped my comments twice. Nevermind.

Seebs -- somewhat tangentially, if you're starting to playing with slotting sets, then you might like to take a look at Mids' Hero Designer, which allows you to put together builds and check out the effects of IOs without having to spend a lot of inf on respecs. It's an incredibly useful programme. (And despite the name, covers both heroes and villians):

http://www.cohplanner.com/

Okay. I guess I misunderstood the recipe descriptions; I got the impression that the bronze rolls were pretty much all weak recipes. I'm 31 now, and I have a stack of tickets, although not a big one. Should I just start doing recipe rolls? If so, what level/type?

I did a couple of 10-14 bronze rolls, got a couple of level 30 recipes, one of which looks marginally profitable to make (might sell for 3M), but one was a knockback protection that, crafted, looks to sell for more like 10 -- and I had the materials lying around. We'll see whether it actually sells.

If I make it past 10M once, it gets a lot easier, because I can start doing things like putting out lowish but not unreasonably low bids on mu vestments and the like, which in turn makes a lot of other stuff much more profitable. If I can get in the habit of having a few of those 2-3M valued rare salvage lying around, it'll get a lot easier to make money crafting.