First A-Merit Random Roll...

After reading up on the advice given here about how to spend Alignment Merits, I went with the general consensus that it is most profitable to do the random roll in the 35-39 range, then craft and sell what you don't need in order to buy on the market what you do need (and have plenty of loot left over.

The results for the first roll?

Glimpse of the Abyss: Chance for Psionic Damage (Recipe).
Trap of the Hunter: Chance for Lethal damage (Recipe).
Aegis: +Psionic and Mez Resist (Recipe).
Sovereign Right: Acc/Dam/End (Recipe).
Mako's Bite: Dam/Rech (Recipe).

All in all, it was pure crapola and largely a waste of a merit. Taking the value of the rare salvage needed for crafting, the only item there moderately worth crafting and listing is the Aegis, which would net roughly 10 million (sells for around 15 million, and fees and salvage value eats 5 million of that.)

Over all, I think I would have been better off just purchasing whatever it was I wanted in the first place for a single merit (Stealths are mostly what I am after, plus a few other odds and ends here and there).

Or perhaps 35-39 is actually not such a good range after all. Perhaps 30-34 would be better?

I know people will likely claim the ones in the 30-40 range are what you want for these random rolls. That may be true, but I can only comment on the relative consistent success I've had with the level 50 rolls I've done.

I've spent around 20 A-merits for level 50 recipe rolls so far and the absolute worst I've done (after crafting and selling the 5 recipes) is around 20 million INF. On the top end I've gotten over 200 million from one roll.

I think the difference between the 30-40 level range and the level 50 ones is a trade-off between risk and reward. If you get real lucky you can probably make many 100s of million off a level 30-40 roll. But you can easily get almost nothing from it as you've seen. On the other hand you might not be as likely to hit it super huge with a level 50 roll, but you're also (apparently) less likely to get totally screwed as well.

As always YMMV but I'm sticking with level 50 rolls because they seem to be the safer bet overall.

I'll keep that in mind. However, it would be quite the trick for the character in question to pull off a level 50 roll, as he is only level 41.

Also, seeing how the merit spending rate is heavily throttled, by the time he was able to do level 50 rolls, he would have so many merits racked up, it would take a long time to spend them anyway.


I think though, the next time I try, I will give the 30-34 range a shot. I seem to recall back when I started experimenting with AE ticket random rolls, that proved to be much more lucrative than the 35-39 range. Hopefully, A-Merits will be the same way.

And I think that for my other character who has some A-Merits racked up, he will go ahead and for now become the Stealth vendor for some of my others instead of trying to get it via the rolling lotto, since the one I am focusing on lately would like to have his stealth before tonight's session.

Yeah I thought it was only if you were 50 that the best rolls would be 35-39, because you can still get up to 50 for some.

Here's the results of my second try. This was on a level 35 character, and the roll was in the 30-34 range:

Devastation: Acc/Dam/Rech
Expedient Reinforcement: Resist Bonus Aura for Pets.
Scirocco's Dervish: Chance for lethal damage
Devastation: Chance to hold
Sovereign Right: Aura 10% Resistance (All but Psionic) buff for Pets


Looks like a much better haul this time around (Hold proc is being stored, since I always need those).

I'm rather surprised that the crafted Expedient Reinforcement is selling for less than the uncrafted. That seems rather backward.

I had forgotten the silly tendency for people to go after primarily the multiples of 5 instead of any of the odd level enhancers, despite the enhancement differences being so miniscule.

Even sillier is that I did actually forget that trend, considering I actually have a fairly young personal super group on one of my off servers where there will be characters level locked at 25, 30, 35, 40, and 45 specifically for doing random rolls to sell and to equip alts. I actually created this group back before GR, when I started getting into random merit and ticket rolls. Guess it is time to consider leveling up there again soon.

Yep. Random rolls are random, and can return craptacular results.
They're statistically a better bet than buying a safe seller for reward merits, and probably so for A-merits too, but don't do them if you can't handle the loss when the RNG works against you. With A-merits, the next fix is always just 2 days away, so they're kind of easy come, easy go.

I had a couple of old characters sitting around at 35 with 240 and 480 reward merits who I remembered recently. I random-rolled all these merits (36 recipes in all) in the 30-40 range, and got one decent item, a Kinetic Combat triple that sold for 70 million. Everything else went for < 5 million.
I think this was my worse random roll run ever, but eh, I was doing fine anyway without them. I'll still keep random rolling every type of merit I get though.

I'm wondering if alignment merits are what will be used to open the Alpha Slot. Just a thought given what Posi said in various I19 comments.
Seems like that might be a way to reward spending time as a Hero/Villain.

Or maybe the initial slot if unlocked that way and further ones are purchaseable...

I learned a long time ago that I do not have the required luck to random roll, I don't random roll merits, I haven't random rolled my A-merits either. its so cheap to get some stuff with A-merits anyway.

Random rolls are going to be more valuable if you have a large enough sample size, but for some people, the whole concept of random just drives them crazy. They don't handle the uncertainty well, and they just end up feeling ripped off. For those people, I would recommend ignoring random rolls entirely. After all, what's the use of doing something you hate in a game?

I've done 6 A-Merit rolls over the last 6 days (working through my stash of reward merits )

I've earned over 250 million after crafting and conversion fees (1 kinetic combat was 130 mil) and that is without selling 2x lotg recharge, 2x miracle unique, 3xnumina unique which have been slotted in some poor neglected 50's that didn't have them yet.

I'm quite happy with how the rolls work out

I just did another random roll. This was on a level 35 character, and I went with the 30-34 range. Here is what he got with what the best of the last five crafted currently show:

Entropic Chaos: Dam/End/Rech (6,000,000)
Touch of Death: Acc/Dam/End (20,000,000)
Touch of Death: Dam/End/Rech (15,000,000)
Kinetic Combat: Dam/End/Rech (135,000,000)
Impeded Swiftness: Chance for Smashing Damage (25,000,000)

The K-Combat was the big crown jewel of the roll. The Impeded Swiftness proc could have been, except that since it requires an Soul Trapped Gem, it would be better to sell it uncrafted, and get 20,000,000 out of it, instead of wasting the rare salvage for the same overall net take).

And in 4 days time, I will try it again with him, since it will take that long to get another 2 hero merits. He should still be 35 (from 36-39, they will be spent on individual pieces various alts need, since they will rack up fast enough that he would not be able to spend them all on random rolls fast enough anyway).