Speedrunning one's In-Game Homework

I've been having a great time playing CoH, but as my characters level up it becomes increasingly apparent that I'm skimping on the busywork. I'm looking for tips on how to streamline and expedite said busywork. I'll try to head off confusion by explaining what I mean.

Gameplay
This is what most of us are here to experience. Radios, tips, arcs, TFs, and trials. This is where we get to use the powersets that we chose, meet & play with people, and test our skills against the game engine.

For most folks, this is the primary component of their gaming "fun", although some people seem to prefer powerleveling and speedrunning to shortcut the gameplay and get to the next level of powers and slots to worry about.

Research and Learning
You want to experiment with /energy. I want to cause the biggest, noisiest, brightest explosions possible. To achieve our goals, we read the CoH wiki, fiddle around in Mids, and use the forums.

For some, this counts as homework, but for some (including me) this, too, is "fun". It's learning new things, experimentation, and chasing theoretical perfection.

Busywork
This is the part of the game that makes me wander off and go play Flash games for awhile to relax and unwind. I'm bad at it, I don't like it, and I'm not even sure I'm doing it right.

When I leveled up high enough to get the Disembowel attack, for example, my initial enthusiasm to go try it out was quickly curbed when I realized that I now had red enhancements that needed replacing, a full-to-bursting Enhancement/Salvage/Recipe inventory, and some stuff at Wentworth's to try to pick up in spite of my full inventory. 2 or 3 hours later, I logged off having done my best to take care of all my business but too tired to actually go play.

• Salvage and, to a lesser extent, recipes are constantly piling up as I defeat enemies. I've learned to sell off any recipe that starts with "Invention:", and try to craft any actual set pieces for my characters or for Wentworth's. This mostly keeps me on top of the recipe situation, but salvage is a cruel taskmaster. I can try to sell it on the market, but salvage is an extremely volatile market - some stuff is going for less than even vendor value, other stuff is hyperinflated, and it's anyone's guess as to whether there are currently any buyers or what they think of the current prices. I can vendor it off, but then I'm potentially wasting a ton of money and screwing over my characters who might need it for a recipe during a season of overpricing. There isn't nearly enough room in the market, the Vault, and my pockets to store it all, though. What typically ends up happening is "all of the above" - I screw around on wentworth's trying to sell off what's currently valuable, get frustrated at how long that takes, vendor off a bunch and then leave my inventory half-full with components that I think I might need.
• Enhancements offer up somewhat of a dilemma, where you can either use the less-powerful, frequently-expiring DO's and SO's, or spend hours bidding on recipes, bidding on salvage, seeing if you have the components in one of your characters' Vaults, crafting, running out of inf, deciding whether to frankenslot or get a set bonus, etc etc. You are less powerful and constantly needing to visit your local Magic Store with option A, but option B frontloads the hell out of your time and inf investment for the promise of uncertain, possibly underwhelming benefit at an unspecified point later that day or week.

Well, Mid's Hero Builder can definitely help you out a bit. It's a third-party program that lets you build a character from the ground up, and then lets you put in the slots and enhancements that you want, so that you can "see" how your character can be.

The great part about it is that you can try out different enhancement combinations to try to get to your end goal without actually spending the influence. Then you can take your final build and try to get to that in-game.

It seems like it would lead to less frustration for you, because then you'd know exactly what sets you'd want, and what you'd need to get there.

Salvage - If you're not in the mood to mess with the market, it's ok to just dump stuff at the nearest vendor. Yes, you might sometimes be missing out on a big payday, but there's plenty more salvage where that came from.

Enhancements - Common IOs are a good compromise between convenience and power. They don't expire, and you can buy the recipes directly from the Invention Table, so all you have to worry about it the salvage. This will make you plenty powerful enough for any ordinary task in the game. After a while, you might notice particular weaknesses in your build, and then you can think about maybe slotting in some Set IOs to cover what you lack. But it's entirely optional.

Basically, don't worry about being "bestest with the mostest" right out of the gate. You can keep up just fine with minimal time/inf investment. You don't have to dive headfirst into every aspect of the game at once. Explore the more complicated options at your own pace.

If you don't like the market and salvage work, you can avoid it without gimping your character or giving up too much. You have to be a bit Zen about it, though.

Salvage: Put everything up for sale at Wentworth's for 90 infl. Usually you'll get close to the market value. Sometimes you'll get a lot less. You'll virtually always get more than you'd get from vendors. As you go along, you'll sell enough Mu Vestments and Enchanted Imperviums and Military Cybernetics to fund any kind of reasonable investments you yourself want to make down the line. It can be painful to have to buy an Enchanted Bone for 500k when you sold one the day before for 10k, but here is where the Zen part comes in... it's more painful spending mental energy trying to plan what you might need and keep track of an inventory of ingredients. Sell what you have and buy what you need...

Enhancements: When you get to 22, I'd craft up level 25 IO enhancements and be done with it. As you gain more slots, craft IO's of as high a level as possible. True, it's a bit faster to get SO's initially, but it's such a pain to keep them up to date. Only start Frankenslotting and using sets if you feel your game play experience will be truly enhanced by squeezing out a few more numbers. Sets significantly increase the mental energy spent on managing enhancements, influence, salvage, merit points, etc. Don't get me wrong... I spend a lot of time on IO sets, but I like that part of the game. But even for me there are times when I say, "Heck with it... I must kill."

Salvage: Pile up until full. Check recipies that need salvage. Set this salvage aside in WW. Run to store, sell everything but rare salvage. Sell all junk recipies.

Sometimes, I just huck the lot up on WW for 5 each.

Sets: Paragon Wiki. They have pages titled IO sets with bonus to (x). I do this at work.

I don't bother with Mids.

I read twice, buy once.

[QUOTE=JKCarrier;3536662]Salvage - If you're not in the mood to mess with the market, it's ok to just dump stuff at the nearest vendor. Yes, you might sometimes be missing out on a big payday, but there's plenty more salvage where that came from.[QUOTE]

I forgot to mention this in my previous post. Part of the reason I always dump my inventory at WW's is not a fear of missing out, but a moral obligation to share. As a crafter myself, I hate not being able to get ingredients. I feel guilty sending my salvage to the bit bucket of the vendors knowing that someone out there just needs one more Ancient Bone to complete IO set x and become uber hero, or to make one more batch of common IO's for their field crafter's badge. If there are > 2,000 items on the market with 0 bids, then I feel justified dumping, but otherwise I put up for sale.

You have no moral obligation to do anything. The best advice is just to get over it, you'll have much more fun playing if you don't make up silly and arbitrary restrictions on your gameplay.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Rabid_Metroid Ditto. Common I put up for 275, uncommon for 1100, and rare for 5500. This makes sure that, after market fees, I get at least what the vendor would have given me for them. Anything else is a nice bonus.

It would be far better just to list for 1 to move your inventory faster. The tiny loss in profit will be greatly made up for by the fact that your market slots aren't constantly being clogged by junk items. 5,500 inf is basically nothing, not close to enough to worry about. It'll matter less if you don't play the same characters regularly... but even still, IMO, it's a good idea.

Now for really valuable stuff, you should follow the goatrule (actually, you shouldn't, only I should )

We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.

I can suggest one other thing that may help you avoid the trap of trying to "save the salvage you might need for recipes". You are right, storage space we can achieve is pretty limited, even with a maxed out sg base you can only store about 2 of each salvage.

Until you realize that your "storage" is the market. It is almost unheard of for any salvage to be at zero supply, and most of it has hundreds to thousands listed. So sell what you have without a care, knowing that when you need that Ruby to craft a recipe, you can buy one. And, if as it sounds, you mostly play and only do a bit of crafting, you will generate much more Inf selling salvage then it costs to buy it back later. If you want to be careful, study what the prices are for the rare stuff and try to list near (but not at) the highest prices you see, that will pay for a LOT of common salvage that you sold for 10 and buy back for 5000. Then, placing patient (24 hour) bids on things will get you good prices on what you buy back.

This extends to recipes as well, though there it can actually make sense to craft some drops for what you need later if you have a sg base to store them.

And consider buying common IOs on the market, if you don't want to craft them yourself. Don't believe the 300,000 price you see on a lvl 25 damage IO, place bids about 40% above what SOs would cost and wait a few days. Some IOs never drop that low, but a lot do, then you can just make the handful you still need. It saves a ton of time and Inf on the way to 50, long term.

The advice I give to total newbs is "go with SO's, list all your salvage and recipes for 1, if they don't sell in 5 seconds pull them down and delete them."

Advantages:
1) Simple. Simple simple simple.
2) You will always have as much inf as you need for SO's. More, even.
Disadvantages:
1) You're giving people bargains, sometimes huge bargains, all the time.
2) If you ever DO decide to go for shiny happy IO's, you will be slightly behind in building up the necessary inf.
3) You lose some of the possible benefits from things like "Frankenslotting at level 30-ish" (you can get free recharge reduction, or free endurance reduction- basically more "SOs" in less slots.)

There are as many ways to IO out as there are people doing it- maybe more. I've got some characters that I never fully IO'd out, some that got new sets of IO's at 17,27, 32, and 42-ish. But I _like_ playing with the market and building IO's, so the answer for me is not the answer for you.

The simplest option is, as mentioned, sell everything for 1 and buy SO's.

Second simplest is, at level 27 or 32, reslot everything with generic IO's of level 30 or 35. Put in your orders in advance, and you can get some great bargains in a couple weeks. Generic IO's sometimes actually sell for cheaper than you can craft them yourself, and by leaving the bid up over a couple weekends it will be there when some crazy goon crafts 150 Level 35 Damages and dumps 'em all on the market at once. For this you may want to make more money faster than the "Sell for 1" approach. This will take some learning time, unfortunately. If you have a couple spare million on another character you can email it to your own global and pick it up on any character.

Third simplest is to frankenslot- this isn't, actually, all that simple but you only have to do it once per character, then you just have to plan a couple levels ahead and have the bids in place (ideally filled) when you level.

I'm trying to come up with a couple good rules to get you in and out of the market in a hurry.

1) Learn to Read The Market . This is maybe more detailed than you need, but it's clear and will teach you general principles.
2) List for less than you would expect to get, but not less than you'd be willing to actually get. If you list for 1,201,908 and someone bids 1,234,567 they'll get it. Don't complain if you think it was "Worth" 5,000,000 and the last bids were all 5 million. Don't list for less than you want to get. You'll probably get the 5 million [or some clever bird bidding 4 million] but you may get your list price. There'll be more stuff to sell.
3) The take-a-penny rule. The reason those "Take a penny, leave a penny" trays work is that nobody cares if they end up with a couple pennies more or less. For me, a penny is about 5,000 inf: any amount under 5,000 inf is too small to care about. I could sell it for 1 inf or 5000 inf and I'm equally happy; I never bid under 5000 inf because that's too small for me to worry about. If "a penny" is 500 inf for you, that's fine. Just figure out what the number is and don't worry about numbers less than that. If I'm buying something that uses a 2 million inf piece of salvage: That's 400 "pennies" for me. Paying 1 more penny to get my Improvised Cybernetic on the first try doesn't make a difference to me .
4) There's probably a couple useful miniguides in my sig. It's more homework, but you only have to do it once, ever.

Unless I'm looking to craft something, I just drop all my salvage in WW/BM for 12 inf each. Some items will sell for less than I could get at the vendor, but those are more than offset by the salvage that sells for substantially more than the vendor price.

The only exception is Rare salvage. These I'll actually take time to look at the current selling price then list accordingly.

I *never* sell salvage to the vendor. It's just not as profitable, at all.

I quit vendoring except for recipes for generics. I drop most common salvage on the markets for 5 inf without thinking about it. For example, you'd get 250 from the vendor; when I drop it for 5 inf, I often get over that, like 5,555 or something. Ever since I switched to doing that, I'm getting more inf overall and saving myself time. The exception for this are things like Luck Charms.

Same goes for most yellow salvage, I usually drop it, click "find" and then only price it higher if it's actually going for more than say 20k. Things like that often are in demand anyways, so I'll still get reasonable inf (meaning 'more than at the vendor') for it and save myself the market fee. (I've been wondering how that math really works out - 'making more off market fee savings' - but I'm not really the one to be able to figure that out)

I've been holding on to most of my rare salvage via the Vault.

Recipes are hard to know for sure. I don't know all of them off the top of my head ("'Kinetic Combat', is that a good one?"), so I'll drop it on the market, click find and if I like what I see, then I'll check the crafted price for it. If I really like what I see there, then I craft it.

I usually don't bother with too much bid creeping on salvage unless it's over say about a million, and even then I lose patience pretty quickly. I'm not ultra wealthy (maybe 2.5 bill spread across a whole buncha toons), but paying the going price of 2 mill for a rare is really easier, although I have been known to low-ball a bid if I know I'm about to log off for the day.

As for build... I've spent two hours just working around on those as well. It does feel like homework, doesn't it? This is why I often just lift builds from these forums and run with those, making an occasional adjustment here and there. I have Mids but still can't seem to bother opening it up and trying to fit my toons-in-progress and checking them for other options. Homework, yuck.

At this point there are some kinds of salvage I won't even think about selling unless I'm literally already standing at the market and sometimes not even then, ones that often have 2000+ for sale and no bids up. Salvage full? I have six Temporal Analyzers? Fifteen Kinetic Weapons? Right click > S. Oh look, more space just magically opened up!

(...on a tangential note, after ten issues I have just now looked at the description for Temporal Analyzers and realized they are watches. Not even fancy Science Watches: ordinary wrist watches. Just beat up some Rikti? Jack their cheap-***, $5 drugstore watches while you're at it, why not.)

I'm actually the opposite of you regarding recipes. I'll keep the standard invention recipes I can use at my next level-up and sell everything else. I craft very few sets until I'm at 47+ and those I do are for frankenslotting under-slotted powers. Keeping up with the slotting at level-up and using inventions that never expire is for me the most important part of minimizing down-time.

I also find trying to craft sets is a lot more complicated and takes a lot longer and uses up more inventory space (as you keep the myriad yellow and orange slavage and recipes "just in case"). Normal IO's have only 12 salvage items to store (instead of 36 for sets) and you never need to keep more than 5 to 8 of each one which is easily handled by vault and WW storage. It isn't like the pre-50 game requires sets and the IO's are just as good or better than store-bought enhancements.

I also always spend about 15 minutes or so after each game session to clear my inventory. That way the next time I login I can get right into the game and play.

As for how I clear my inventory that depends. I'm still at the stage where I'll sell everything I don't want (i.e. can't use at the next level-up) to whoever pays the most because influence is not inconsequential to most of my characters. It doesn't take long to get a feel for what sells on the market and what doesn't and in a place like Talos it isn't far from market to store to vault to SG portal to get all of that done with as little travel as possible.

When I'm in a hurry and don't have 15 minutes or wasn't able to do it at the end of my last session I do it the quick and dirty way:
1) Review what I have and decide what I want to keep
2) Go to Talos or SG base and visit the vault, if it isn't full put as much as I can of what I want to keep into it - if I know my vault is full I'll skip this step.
3) Visit the market and plop everything that fits into it then check each one to see if it is selling well. Using the new Find button makes this extremely fast. If it is selling well I list it for about half what it is selling for and if not I put it back in my inventory. If it is something I want to put in deep storage for later down the road I'll either e-mail to myself or leave it in storage on the market.
4) Use my Ouroboros portal to visit Mr. Roebuck and sell everything that didn't stay on the market (he pays max price for enhancements too).
5) Exit to wherever I'm headed to start playing the game.

For the people downplaying the value of selling EVERYTHING at the Auction House:

You get a +1 Auction Inventory Size increase bonus at the 250, 1000, 3000, 5000, and 7000 "Items Sold" Badge levels for a total of five extra Auction Inventory slots.

7000 Items Sold isn't really that hard either. When you log in fill your Auction Inventory with bids for stacks of 10 of the most abundant White salvage available (Kinetic Weapon, Mathematic Theory, Temporal Analyzer, etc.) at a price of 500-1000 Inf. By the time you're done playing you'll probably have them filled and have upwards of 100-150 or so of them for sale. Post them all for sale at 1 Inf each and log out. When you log in, odds are you'll have sold them all. Collect your earnings and repeat.

Interestingly, I have always (3 characters so far) made good money doing this as people often pay 5000+ Inf for even the crappiest, most abundant salvage. Also, having the lowest posted sale prices means the highest current bids will be yours, so sometimes that crazy uber-rich player who drops 100K on a stack of 10 Silver just paid you one million Inf for trash. You won't get rich by doing this but you'll probably make plenty enough to finance yourself through the 7000 Items Sold badge. I've personally sold a single stack of crap white salvage for 10M Inf.