City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

Value of an A-Merit in Inf?

AlienMafia

By AlienMafia,
Posted on: 2010-10-06 09:32 in The Market and Inventions

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Minotaur View Post
The Uleap stealth looks like a bubble about to burst, most people slot them in sprint and will cotton on that the celerity one is currently cheaper so the prices will equalise. The set starts at 15, so if you got a level 10 one you'll sell it for a fortune.
Er, yes, lvl 15. I thought the leap stealth price was surprising, considering the Celerity's cost. Almost every other time I've checked, Celerity was worth more, which I assumed was for the Superspeed stealth stack.

Quote:
Regen tissue 10 regen is about 85M, Kinetic combat 35 dam/end about 80.
So the +regen is not even in the running for tops. The Kinetic Combat D/E was my plan for direct purchases before I even looked--but I thought I saw 65-75 mio as the price yesterday. Sloppy data-gathering, I guess. I would not be surprised if the res/def price is a bubble also.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Carnal View Post
what is the "true" value of an A-Merit?
There is no "true" value for anything that depends on a market that is driven by speculation and whim. Even in a the "real" stock market, the "true" value of any stock varies on a daily basis, depending on what economic report was last released or who gets elected to office or what the value of the renminbi is or whatever rumors the traders heard at the water cooler. Despite what many economic theorists say, high-flying markets are not rational.

This goes double or triple for the in-game market, where impatience is the primary factor for driving prices up, inf is easily obtained and the consequences for mistakes are nil.

The numerical inf. value of anything is largely irrelevant unless your sole goal is to hit the inf cap. What really matters is: can you get the things you want for your character in the time frame you want them?

If you consider that you can do most tip missions in 5-10 minutes, that means it will take about 30-60 in-game hours to do the 330 missions required to get 30 A-merits, over a period of two calendar months (or less calendar time if you're converting reward merits to A-merits as well). If you can generate 3 billion influence in some other way in less time, then using A-merits to buy that PvP IO is not worth your while.

For example, if you were to PvP for 30-60 hours, what would the expected number of PvP drops be? If it's greater than 1 or 2, and you like to gamble, then A-merits are not the way to go. But there's always a chance that you'll wind up with nothing because you're depending on a random drop that may never come.

So, if you're the kind of person who would rather do the work and get the sure thing, A-merits are the way to go.

And even if you get bored halfway through and decide to pack it in, you're still fine. You'll have a lot of A-merits for each of which you can get 5 random rolls. Many people prefer to save up and make a lot of rolls at once, because they don't feel ripped off if they get 50 lousy rolls and 25 great rolls.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Reptlbrain View Post
So the +regen is not even in the running for tops. The Kinetic Combat D/E was my plan for direct purchases before I even looked--but I thought I saw 65-75 mio as the price yesterday. Sloppy data-gathering, I guess. I would not be surprised if the res/def price is a bubble also.
The prices vary, the KC is in a bubble of 65-100, all the last 5 were 80 when I looked, the regen tissue unique SHOULD be a 1 merit purchase as it's a rare pool A, but seems to sell for 2. For reference the Kismet +acc which is a unique from the same drop pool only costs 1.

It's true. This game is NOT rocket surgery. - BillZBubba

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Fulmens View Post
Used to be a lot of people didn't realize you could put a leapstealth in sprint. I don't know if that's still the case, people may have wised up.
If anything I would have expected the price of the jump +stealth IO to go down considering the change to stealth IOs with I18 (can't toggle and then detoggle Sprint for the quick two minutes of stealth anymore).

@macskull, @Not Mac | XBL: macskull | Steam: macskull | Skype: macskull
"One day we all may see each other elsewhere. In Tyria, in Azeroth. We may pass each other and never know it. And that's sad. But if nothing else, we'll still have Rhode Island."

 

Posted

If you're using the 'buy recs with Amerits, sell crafted items for inf' method, value them at around 65m profit. Cost of selling through the BM is disregarded in a lot of these calculations.

I figure the true value at around 70-75m, but you have to give up ~10% of that to make it liquid.

 

Posted

So, between September 9th and October 10th, I ran three level 50 characters through 5 tip missions a day and did random A-Merit rolls in the 35-39 range. I then recorded my rolls. I originally planned on recording the crafting costs and sale prices for all the rolls as well, but I forgot to do it after the first day and decided not to, since it was too much work. Plus, I wanted to keep a bunch of the recipes for myself, so it wouldn't work anyhow.

Today I decided to do some very rough calculations on how much I could have earned, so I just looked up the sale price of the crafted recipes, took an average number for anything that had some price variance (usually erring on the side of low prices). Then I subtracted a rough crafting cost # for each recipe (3 mil for recipes that require 1 Rare salvage, 5 mil for recipes that require 2 Rare salvage). I multiplied that number by the number of recipes I'd received, then added all that up, then subtracted 10% for market fees. Then I divided by the number of rolls I'd done (47 in total).

It wound up being rather surprising to me, with the rough average coming out to 72.25 million INF in profit per roll (or 14.45 million in profit per recipe).

Of course, this is all done with a grain of salt since I didn't actually record exact crafting or sale price numbers (and I didn't sell anything anyways). But I think it gives a decent general idea about how much you can get from rolling A Merits at level 50 on the 35-39 table. And I'd say my luck was pretty average, as while I rarely got TERRIBLE rolls, I never really got GREAT rolls either.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Misaligned View Post
I would expect somewhere between 30-35 would give best results. But... then again, that can change over a weekend.
I was actually just thinking about this the other day. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but when you roll it's always the "max level possible." Which is your level +3, or the maximum level of the set. I'm not in a place to test this at the moment, nor have I been at any other moment where I was thinking about it. I rarely do random rolls so I don't have a concrete memory of whether it works like that or not.

If that's the case, I would say the best results are at level 32. All the heavy hitters for inf that can be rolled will roll between 30-34, and at level 32 they would come at as level 30 or 35 recipes. Either 30 is the set's cap, or your level+3, 35.

People are suspiciously attracted to pieces that are a multiple of 5. I suspect it's one part OCD, one part ingrained from pre-IO days. That is a "I'm going to update my SO's at 22, 27, and 32" sort of mind set.


Using the random rare recipe drop chances that were compiled on the wiki, I estimate about 21% of the drops are something worth a significant chunk of inf. About 1/4 of those (6% chance) are worth maybe 100 million (health procs, LotG+rech, etc).

In regards to the OP, my A-Merits have been worth about 60 million on average thus far. I mostly deal in LotG+Recharges with the occasional roll.

Of course it fluctuates. I held off for a bit because shortly after i18 we saw a sharp drop in LotG+recharge prices (I imagine folks reposting and buying them ASAP with A-merits was the cause), but the price has been climbing since then.

@Gilia1
I play heroes on Champion.
I play villains on Virtue.

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilia View Post
I was actually just thinking about this the other day. Please correct me if I'm wrong, but when you roll it's always the "max level possible." Which is your level +3, or the maximum level of the set. I'm not in a place to test this at the moment, nor have I been at any other moment where I was thinking about it. I rarely do random rolls so I don't have a concrete memory of whether it works like that or not.

Random rolls are generated at your level, or the max level of the enhancement, whichever is lower.

This means if you roll say 10-14 on a level 34 character and you get a Basilisk's Gaze, it will be 30 (because that's the highest level of the enhancement). If you roll 25-29 though and you get a Decimation, you will get a level 34 Decimation recipe because your level is lower than the max level of the recipe.

That help?

 

Posted

Now i didnt fully read every reply but the cost of a GA Proc is a for sure price. Random rolls are as stated, Random.

Even so what i am doing with my H/V Merits is i have 1 toon saving up for specific IO to use or sell. For example, GA Proc, Panacea Proc, and Purples (Ugh).

BUT thats not all.

I also run my other 1-2 toons for the 1 H/V Merit Random rolls. These 1-2 toons are gathers up the low price IOs with the 5 Random roll choice for other toons that i am building.

So far it is a good method and a nice way to get Influence and build up my toons that are in line for IOs.

Thorns - Spines/Willpower Scrapper (1366 Badges)

 

Posted

Quote:
Originally Posted by Gilia View Post
Either 30 is the set's cap, or your level+3, 35.
As stated before, it's your level, unless the cap is below your level, or the minimum is above your level. At lvl 32 rolling 35-39, if you nabbed the Sting of the Manticore proc--lucky you!--it would be level 35. Similarly, a lvl 27 toon could grab a lvl 30 Obliteration proc, rolling in the 30-34 pool.

 

Posted

I've actually been running 2 of my 50s (my Fire/Fire Dom and my INV/SS Tank) nightly to build up A-merits and using them to buy LoTG 7.5s at lvl 25 and selling them- about a week & a half and I'm around 350 million. (I've been fairly casual about it)

I'm seriously thinking of taking a character, giving him 6.5 million in startup cash and seeing how much I can make JUST with A-merits in 30 days. (I'd vendor everything else entirely and subtract that amount from my total)



"Well, there's going to be some light music and a short note of apology saying, 'The universe ended last week, we're really sorry, we don't know what you're doing here, didn't you get the message?'"- Steve Moffat

 

Posted

When I first started thinking, yes, 20 mill to buy hias 1st A-Merit seemed a good idea. However, I want to see what I can make purely from A-Merits (and the sale of what I redeem them for) so really if I start at zero Inf and just give him 20 mill to buy his 1st Merit.. where would I get my listing fee from? I would need to give him 20 mill + a list fee. I guess I could do that too.. just seemed like an extra step. All works out the same I guess though.



"Well, there's going to be some light music and a short note of apology saying, 'The universe ended last week, we're really sorry, we don't know what you're doing here, didn't you get the message?'"- Steve Moffat