Getting purpled on the cheap?

I admit, until now I've been something of an invention refusenik- just not terribly interested. But now I've got a couple of level 50's that I'm working through the incarnate slots with, and I'm looking at ways to make them better and stronger, including IO's.

So here's a question for those in the know in these affairs- if you want to get a set of purple IO's for a character, what are some good ways to do it as cheaply as possible?
One character is a Katana/WP scrapper, the other is Dual blades/WP.

Run ITF until your eyes bleed.

Failing that, put up bids for 40 mil and leave them up for a long time. You might get lucky and someone will accidentally leave off a 0 when posting their recipe.

Those two are of course assuming you're talking about a melee character, which you are. If you happen to play a character with a confuse or sleep power, I poked at Fortunata's Hypnosis and Coercive Persuasion recently; compared to the damage sets, those are ridiculously cheap. You can get a full set of Fortunata's for under 100 mil if you're patient.

Edit: Oh, right, one other way. You can get them from alignment merits for 20-25 merits per recipe. That's an incredibly slow way, but you can do it without spending inf at all, and using it to supplement market purchases is more or less viable.

The cheapest way to get a purple set is to have a character with a sleep. Delete your Dual Blades/Willpower and roll a Willpower/Dual Blades, then take the Stone Mastery ancillary power pool.

My advice is, if you are just starting to look at IO sets, don't start with purples.

It's amazing how much you can improve your build with a relatively cheap application of Thunderstrike, Crushing Impact, Doctored Wounds, Red Fortune and the like.

If, after you fool around with the affordable stuff, you find that you are having fun and still want to do more with your build, then you can step up to the higher priced stuff.

I wouldn't go for purples unless you're really a completionist and/or have nothing better to do. The differences between purples and oranges are relatively minor, but the price difference is... Rather steep.

Purples are a boon in a high-recharge build and the procs can be very nice, but other than that they're pretty much a status thing.

Rather than getting the whole set, I've found I get more mileage slotting one lower-end set (as others have said, Thunderstrike and Crushing Impact are wonderful!) and then using one slot for a purple proc.

All the utility, less of the cost!

An example of a basic market method to get the purples you want:

1) Alignment Merits.
Don't save up for an actual purple. Instead, earn / buy 2, get a LOTG +7.5% recharge. (The price is going down on these as this tactic gains steam and starts to satisfy the market-- when I started, I could sell a crafted one for 220-250mil. Looking at it now, they seem to be closer to 175-200mil, but there may be other similar special rares that hold high value). Running the tips on the lowest settings (keep em at +0 difficulty, so the level 50 foes have a chance to drop a purple.

So, if you just buy a Hero merit every-other day, you'd need 100 reward merits and 40 million inf, you'd clear around 120-140 mil profit.
If you just go by earning merits, you can earn 3 LOTG's every 2 weeks and get around 500-600mil...

2) Architect Entertainment
This is counterintuitive, as the purples won't drop there, but there are some good spots in the commons that you can make good coin through cashing in some AE tickets. Have a stack you earned ages ago? Have some lowbies still leveling? Look at what's in demand and cash in some tickets. Granted, even at 4 million a rare, you'd need 100-150 sales to get the costly purples.

(Of course, there's a dearth of mid-tier commons right now with everyone playing their 50's, you could sell stacks of commons (much cheaper per ticket) for hundreds of thousands each, if your timing's right. I don't encourage 'helping' your timing by buying up all the cheaper items first :P )

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Now, if you're interested in marketing more aggressively, there are several level 50 rare recipes that you can usually buy for 20 million less than what they sell for (healing/defensive rares are the most well-known). Put up a low bid for 10 of them, and a day or 2 later, gather em, craft em, and resell em. With less than 5 mil in listing costs and under 5 mil in crafting costs, you can clear 100 mil with each stack.

Once you get the starting funds, you can have several stacks bidding at a time, moving at a rate that you constantly replenish and easily earn the $$ for 2 or 3 expensive purples a week.

Well, here's my $1.13 on the matter.

You plan the rest of your build around which Purples you need. You can have up to 5 different sets, but usually 2 to 3 will do it.

Buy sleep, confuse, hold, or stun first. Cheapest. I got a 5 set o Absolute Amazement for 300 mil total. Then, I wrangled a 5 set of Unbreakable for 500 mil.

So, that's what I paid total. 800 mil.

Ragnarok dropped for me along the way (so I slotted 5), as well as various other purples and respec recipies. I used the proceeds from these to build out everything else.

The inf isn't a big deal. It's a time game. ITFs, level 50 task forces, alignment missions, recipe farms, large groups, play every nite.

BUT, if you love your 50, you'll be doing that anyways.

No one goes from no IOs to full kit instantly. It's a journey of small steps. The good news, as you go along, you get better and get drops faster, make more inf and also, have more fun.

And BTW, purples are awesome. They aren't everything, but seriously... 2 to 3 sets make a big difference.

Eh, not really. Use the proc and you'll avoid that issue, especially once the alpha slot is unlocked.

Anyway, there aren't that many builds that really strongly benefit from purple sets. Dominators and other builds with extreme +rech needs get the most out of them, and builds that need a lot of recovery get some help (although in that case you're often better off frankenslotting them for the sake of the +rec bonus.) Defense builds often can't get away with using many purple sets at all, just because most purple sets don't have defensive bonuses.

Lots of folks have the attitude that they want to work toward the most expensive and 'best' thing, and that means purple sets, without putting much thought at all into what's most useful for how their character actually plays. Compare the set bonuses on, say, obliteration and armageddon, or on posi's blast and ragnarok. Is it more useful for your character to have one set of fancy purples, or 4-5 sets of oranges?

Don't need purples.

Just get the A-Merits to get the rare orange procs (LOTG Recharge, Numina's Regen/Rec, and or Miracle) and become an Incarnate.

Learn to be Ebil on the Market and it really costs you nothing.