"But, What will it Cost, Man?"

I had to buy a couple a few weeks back- was running Posi II with a PUG and levelled a couple of times. Cook's Electronics was right by the trainer, it was the right origin, so I thought "why not!"


NEVER AGAIN!

I'd almost forgotten the annoyance and frustration of fishing around for what you want then buying the wrong thing anyway and not noticing until you try to slot it. On the plus side, the wasted inf doesn't matter these days...but it still sucked.

I will run EMPTY until I can get to the market next time.

LMAO. It takes me forever trying to figure out which ones go with which origin. I just slot 25 commons and keep them until i hit 50 then IO my toons. Except for the -kb and endurance procs.

Ya...they seriously need to revamp/rename the SO/DOs!! I'd settle for something like "Technology Damage SO" or "Mutation: Accuracy Increase" etc over those mind boggling and cryptic names they have now! I ALWAYS choose Natural Origin for my characters now, so pretty much have all the Natural SO's memorized...but I would be totally lost trying to decipher Tech enhancements, even though they are color coded, I would still make mistakes sometimes!

there was a time when everyone I made was Magic, because I'd *mostly* figured out what was what on my first character.

=P

I have two characters a /fire and a /elec that use smashing haymaker, multistrike, not more than one Touch of death set, and a mishmash of reactive armor and titanium's for smashing and lethal defense. the whole build costs less than just 3 attacks slotted with kinetic combat, and while I'm not softcapped, I'm at 28% on one and 34% on the other. Thats not worthless, it is, infact, an extremely high performance jump over just SOs on a resist set. It also comes with a lot of +HP, and a decent amount of +recovery and those are also both very nice.

Defenders, Blasters, Dominators, corrupters and controllers can also very cheaply build modest recharge and ranged defense using nothing but cheap sets. Easily in the range of 40% global recharge and 25-30% ranged defense. Not anything as powerful as going all out with purples, but it'll cost vastly less and the performance jump over SOs is mind blowing for someone who'se never tried IOs before.

True. It all depends on how much you have/want to spend. My latest story is of my new brute.

It is a SS/Fire build. I just IO'd it today after hitting 50. I tried running the Liberate farm on villians with just Commons slotted. It pretty much failed epically just at 0x8. Then i got my sets on him. He ran better. No purples, just really good sets like the Kin Com, Oblit, Dervish, the end proc, steadfast proc, etc.

It's no where near softcapped and boy can i tell. I also have an Elec/SD scrapper. He is softcapped and around 155% rech. That build has a few purple sets, 7.5%s, alot of health/end procs, and stuff.

IMO, it's a major difference when more inf is spent on these builds. My brute eats greens and my scrapper sits in mobs while i eat poptarts. I guess it's no surprise that the more inf in a build the better the performance, but to say it's small gains between cheap sets and better sets is non truth, imo.

To Fulmens, none of my builds are frakenslotted. Every toon that i take to 50 gets fully IO'd. They mainly just use commons until i hit 35 then i start IO's. I have a toon stopped at 35 for tickets. I use 2 accounts to be able to supply alot of my own stuff for my toons.

Remember when the stores weren't there and then when though they were there they were not on the map?

Remember when the markets weren't merged? When we couldn't trade between heroes and villains? When we couldn't email our stuff?

I look forward to one day writing "remember when SOs had those meaningless yet specific names?" But on that day I won't care because I haven't used an SO in a year or more.

I slot whatever comes quickest on a character. Usually I start putting in sets somewhere in the 30s, with some choice pieces going in earlier.

Ive gotten accustomed to the colors of SOs so I could roll any origin. Between that and the wierd "alphabetical" order in the stores I usually do okay. But now that the numbers are so damn big I cant make out that tiny pixel of color. So there ya go...one less inf sink for the world.

Dark days, my friend, Dark days.

One the the truly great strengths of City of X is the fact that the game has an enormous challenge range. Namely, it is very easy to play and have a ton of fun, but it is far far more difficult to master.

You can play the whole game through and never need to know anything about the market or inventions, if you want to.

Or, you can let the game absorb your interest and it really has the depth to keep your interest for YEARS, without going stale, because there really is that much to do, and it's all different.

There's no rush. Take your time, make friends, have fun.

Easy to play, difficult to master.

I really wish I'd taken a screencap of Statesman's explanation why not having them on the map was "fun".

oooooooooor....I can just buy generic IOs which aren't confusing in the first place, don't expire and cost me less thanks to badgers.

=P

But that would be handy for anyone who still messes with expiring enhancements.

You just have to remember in his language 'fun' translates into the English word frustrating.

Just loosely doing some back-of-napkin calculations, I'd say the short
answer is: No

Neglecting what the costs would be to actually memorize the various key
recipes, and just assuming you've got that done prior to L22, I come up
with these figures, keeping all of the other assumptions constant...

For the L22 Line, recipe cost disappears, salvage stays the same (30K),
and crafting is cut in half (~18K), giving an IO cost of ~48K each (L25).

So, if you just slot with L25 commons the whole way, that's 94 IOs * 48K
which is roughly ~4.5M or so. That replaces the entire group from L22 on,
so, you'd figure to save ~9 Million...

However, a full set of L45 IOs would cost 384K each (118K each if you
had those memorized too), which comes out to ~36M, and still more than
11M memorized.

As you can see, that far exceeds the savings through memorization, even
if that process were free (which it isn't), so, no - that's probably not going
to be workable (imho).


Regards,
4


PS> One other thought though. If you just slotted L25's the entire way,
and never upgraded to higher levels (even unmemorized), the total costs
over the career would drop to ~6.3 Million.

However, bear in mind that the build would *underperform* SO's somewhat
(which might be ok at 1/3 the price of SO's - but I personally wouldn't
advocate that approach)

Memorization isn't free, but it can be very profitable if you list your excess enhancements on the market.

Crafticus is on track to clear a 60m profit while earning Field Crafter.

For what it's worth, when being introduced to the game, what made me make the leap-of-complexity into the invention system...

...was that is was far less complex than figuring out which SO I wanted.

I've never noticed any difference.

As someone who vividly remembers the burning annoyance of getting WEAKER as I leveled thanks to gradually expiring enhancements (because back in the day inf was too dear to blow on a whole new set just for combining) I leapt into generic IOs and never looked back.

Generally they are comparing it when the SO is your level or higher because at even to your level an SO is 33.33% Purely a strict numbers thing. Of course they are probably looking at when you are using +3 SOs and getting 38.33% boosts. I cannot imagine the cost to pull that off.

An even level SO (ie. one at the level of your character) is 33.3% enhancement
(for Schedule A enhancements).

A +3 SO (ie. one at +3 levels to your character) is 38.3% enhancement

IO's don't work that way, they get a fixed number, period. So, L25 is 32%
which would slightly underperform compared to any even level SO. An L45
IO is 40.5% enhancement which handily outperforms any +3 SO.

@Goat:
Agreed - IO badges can be lucrative, but that's not really what we're
talking about here - in the sense that, a player who is active in the market
has already, far exceeded the cost concerns in this thread

Also, for an IO, I'd agree, it's difficult to see a 1.3% change - however,
if you're slotting, say 3 damages, then you're talking about 4% - again, not
large, but I'd say it's detectable in-game.


Getting back to the bargain basement pricing though, underperforming by
3-5% for 33% less cost over SO's, may be a tolerable tradeoff for some
players, especially, if they're market-challenged, and doing it to help scrounge
and save for better IO's later.

Personally, if I was doing the cheapskate's IO build - I'd use the "Frugal"
approach -- but, in all honesty, I'd advocate learning enough marketing
skills to gain, not only the 15M needed for that approach, but the 50-100M
needed for barebones Frankenslotting (which is ultimately where any guide
with this info would be headed).


Regards,
4

Frustrating pretty much sums up my trial accnt experience from lvl 1-11 in Paragon. I went back to Rogue Isles and shake my head at the heroes trying to find the right train station to go somewhere.

I do wonder tho, how many trial accnts didn't result in a subscription because they started on hero side and got discouraged.

I know, I know...I just couldn't resist.

=)

You can cut it to 0 by simply using drops.

Novel ideal.

Incidentally, the salvage flipping guide in my sig generates roughly 10 mil a week with 5 minutes of your time each day.

So, do it for 2 weeks and you can fully SO or IO your toon all the way to 50.

lol - seriously? Make a toon, solo it to L50, slotting only the stuff you pick
up off the ground... I'm willing to bet you will not be happy with the stuff
you end up putting into those 94 slots.

And, I'll guarantee you it will cost you more than 0 with the very first IO
you have to craft...

Novel idea? Sure, but largely ineffective, and completely impractical.

As for marketing, yes, your strategy gains ~10 Million in a week, and my
Recipe Vendoring strategy gains 10M+ in a couple of game hours...

That said, those strategies are worth exactly bupkiss if they aren't used
by the newbies they're most intended to help.

It's definitely clear that a player who struggles to fund a 15M minimal IO
build, or an 18M SO build has zero understanding or practical experience
with either of our guides -- which is basically the point of where I'm
heading with this thread, how do you get them to START using those
guides to solve the funding problem?

My feeling is that they have no idea that they'll need to earn 15-20M just to
equip their toon with the bare minimum enhancements, let alone, have an
idea how to practially achieve that funding on their own. Further, if it's
sets, they want, they need a factor of 10, at least, above minimum for
that approach.

That's a scenario I'd like to help improve if possible, not by giving them a
proverbial fish, but by showing them that they should learn to fish, and
giving some practical ideas on how to do it.

imho, the bulk of the complaints I see stem from the basic idea that they
never had any real understanding of what they needed to do to get their
toon to where they want it to be...

While we know it isn't very difficult to do, we also know, it won't happen
by crossing your fingers, clicking your heels and wishing - some effort is
required... That mindset is the biggest stumbling block, I think.


Regards,
4