City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

A-Merit farming using Tip missions: Is it viable?

Bionic_Flea

By Bionic_Flea,
Posted on: 2010-08-23 07:34 in Victory

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Incarnadine View Post


So 3D, you go to Dark Astoria and kill big mobs there for tip drops? Are you running a 50? I didn't know enemies that much lower than the player would drop tips...worth looking into. Half of my villain tips send me to Port Oakes anyway.


100% positive. Anything over lvl 20 will drop tips. Ive gotten 3 tip mishs in a 40 second span once. (only once). Group of 10+ BP zombies, FireBall, done.

Redside, i head to Sharks and grab large groups of protesting Scrapyarders. So much fun fire bombing protesters.

Thats one more.................. For the good guys!

 

Posted

Latest run: Time from completion of first tip mission to 5th tip mission, 21 minutes. That includes zoning to a low level zone to obtain tips.

So, 4 missions / 21 minutes = 5.25 minutes per mission.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by __3D__ View Post
100% positive. Anything over lvl 20 will drop tips. Ive gotten 3 tip mishs in a 40 second span once. (only once). .
Last night, I got 3 tip missions from one group of mobs that I hit with a single AoE. I'm sure it isn't likely to happen again soon, but...

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Posted

I ran tips missions for about 2 hours day. I was able to complete 1 mission which was click 4 glowies and defeat a boss in about 2 minutes. However, I did run into a mission that spawned a few ambushes that I had to go running around to look for and I ended up having to kill most of the map to complete, it took me about 30 minutes.

So, I think quick times are obtainable but sustainable I still have my doubts.

 

Posted

I have also had longer missions where I had to free two hostages way in the back that also spawned ambushes, and so I had to clear most of the map (I always do since GP doesn't have stealth, but you couldn't have avoided clearing much of the map with that mission no matter what). You couldn't do that one in 5-10 minutes at all, and there was no way of really knowing it would take that long from the descriptions I was getting. I suppose you could try to cherry pick your tips like a newspaper or radio, but I haven't really noticed an easy way of figuring these out. Would you be able to get more than 5 tips during one session, anyway?

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Posted

I'm one of the people who made the "30 minutes a day" claim. I don't have the patience to run 5 tips or 5 tips+morality on 4 characters a day, but I have been doing it on two. I run at +0x1 and -1x1, both with no bosses, the hero in Talos, the villain in Shark. I street hunt until I get a tip. If any tip I get is outside the zone I'm in, I dismiss it. Once I get a tip, I street hunt to the mission, speed the objectives, and then if I haven't picked up a tip yet, clear the map until I get one. Again, I dismiss any out of zone tips, and street hunt to the next mission. I time myself from the first kill I make when street hunting until completion of the last mission for the day. My best time so far was yesterday - 5 tips+morality in 26 minutes. My worst time involved an objective hidden in an unusual spot in the morality mission that took me over 10 minutes to find. That run totaled 43 minutes, again for 5 tips+morality. Every other run has been 30-35 minutes on the level 50 scrapper, and 35-40 minutes on the level 25 brute. This has been consistent for about 10 days.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Grey Pilgrim View Post
Would you be able to get more than 5 tips during one session, anyway?
Yes. The limit of 5 is on tips completed, not earned. However, whenever you earn or dismiss a tip, there's a timer where you can't get that particular tip again. I don't know how long that timer is. Theoretically, if you're earning and dismissing tips fast enough, you could lock out all of them, at least temporarily. You can cherry pick the best tips to speed run, once you learn which tips match which missions. There aren't that many in each level bracket.

@Roderick

 

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Originally Posted by The_Masque View Post
So there was a discussion yesterday on Victory Badges about what was the best way to buy IOs using merits. Reward merits (R-merits) compared to Alignment merits (A-Merits).


My suggestion to the person asking was to use tickets/merits to get most recipes and only use A-Merits for purples/pvp-Os that are ultra-ultra rare (the ones that there are 0 on the market).

A few other people spoke up stating that A-Merit farming was super fast and a viable way to farm recipes. They went on to state that they could run all 5 tip missions on a character in 30 minutes. Which would equate to a LoTG 7.5 after 4 days of farming, while only investing 2 hours to get the LoTG.

I was wondering what everyone else's experience has been with tip/morality missions. I know, I have not been able to run them at an average rate of 5 minutes. I have also seen people go 6 missions without getting a morality mission to drop.

The other way to look at A-Merits would be someone buying them 1 a day at: 20 Million fin and 50 R-merits a day. After two days they have spent 100 R-merits (1/2 of what a lotg would cost with R-merits) and have only spent 40 million inf. That actually would seem to be not too bad of a deal, 40million to cut the required R-merits in half.

So, I'm a little torn, I still think 'farming' A-merits for unique recipes may not be that effective but buying them maybe. What do you all think?


So its been 7 months, and what are people's experiences now? I know there are still people who farm their 5 tip missions EVERY day. I however have not been.

Prices of LotGs have fallen to about 150 (crafted) and while there are other recipes with a great profit margin (75million per A merit) I think the prices on those are falling as well.

I don't have the exact cost or the most recent WW/BM values infront of me but lets compare people farming LoTGs and those farming for the +3% def. 30 reward merits for a +3% def (I think its 30 anyway) and selling it off market for 2.5-4 billion (lets say 3billion). The LotG farmer get 15 LotG 7.5's and sells them for 150million each crafted- 2.25billion (minus crafting costs).

So what are you guys doing? As for me, I am just buying things I need for my builds like LotGs/Numinas/Miracles and using other methods for farming up inf. I do have 3 characters who are just saving up A-merits I think they are up to mid 20's at the moment and I'm not sure what I will do with them long term.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by The_Masque View Post

A few other people spoke up stating that A-Merit farming was super fast and a viable way to farm recipes. They went on to state that they could run all 5 tip missions on a character in 30 minutes. Which would equate to a LoTG 7.5 after 4 days of farming, while only investing 2 hours to get the LoTG.
This has been my experience. Knock your difficulty down to the basics, but make sure you're still fighting against level 50s so you still have that odd chance you can get a purple recipe to drop.

Quote:
I was wondering what everyone else's experience has been with tip/morality missions. I know, I have not been able to run them at an average rate of 5 minutes. I have also seen people go 6 missions without getting a morality mission to drop.
The morality mission won't drop until you've filled your meter. Occasionally I've had it drop off the last MOB in a tip mission, but it's pretty easy to go to Talos and start hammering away on MOBs there to get the tip.

Quote:
The other way to look at A-Merits would be someone buying them 1 a day at: 20 Million fin and 50 R-merits a day. After two days they have spent 100 R-merits (1/2 of what a lotg would cost with R-merits) and have only spent 40 million inf. That actually would seem to be not too bad of a deal, 40million to cut the required R-merits in half.
I find this inefficient, but others may think differently. 40 million INF + 100 R-Merits gets you an LotG. Or 200 R-Merits and 0 INF can get you a LotG. If you easily get 100 R-Merits, why not save to the 200 mark? (I'd suggest using them for rolls, but most of the recipe and craft IO prices for the roll rewards have crashed big time.)

Quote:
So, I'm a little torn, I still think 'farming' A-merits for unique recipes may not be that effective but buying them maybe. What do you all think?
It depends on how patient you are and how quickly you get burned out on the tip missions. Keep in mind that if you're spending most of your time farming A-Merits, chances are you're not bringing in a ton of R-Merits.

I had never really used the LotGs before, but now with the inherent Fitness sets I've found a lot more room in my builds for them. Over the course of about a month I managed to get all of my level 50s updated by running tip missions. (I still need a couple of LotGs here and there since I just did a couple of respecs over the weekend and found more space for these.)

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Posted

I find that I can't get myself into the daily grind of Tip missions unless I have a specific character goal I'm working towards. Got a character I want a different alignment on? It's done in the minimum amount of time. Got a character I want LotGs or Kinetic Combats on? Out come the softcapped stealthers, and I have all my recipes in a week or two.

Want a +3% Def PVP IO, just so I can have one if I decide I need it somewhere? I ran tips and traded in Reward Merits daily until I had 20 or 21. Two months later, I've earned ONE more A-Merit since then.

I find that it's so easy to get the things I want for my builds (I rarely use purples or PVP IOs) that it just isn't worth the boring grind to get the uber leet gear.

@Roderick