Should I play the Incarnate game?

I have been playing his game for - well, since it was in beta, many, many years ago. I don't PvP. What I do is I pick a character idea, flesh it out, design it up in MIDS, and run it from level 1 to 50. At level 50 I shelve it and go on to the next. This is what I call serial altitis.

Now with the Incarnate System, there may be a reason for me to play these characters post 50. The Incarnate powers certainly look interesting. However, the costs in terms of hours of required gaming seem staggering, way beyond the amount of oomph you get.

Let me frame my situation, and then if you people could chime in with your opinions of whether you think that the Incarnate System would be a good pursuit FOR ME specifically.

I am a self-employed computers consultant, so I have a lot of free time. I spend each and every night with my wife, starting around 8:30PM EST. I can probably put around 10-15 hours into City weekly, mostly Mon-Fri, somewhere between 10AM and 6:30PM EST.

I have nearly unlimited INF from playing more than 20 previous characters to 50. (Well, not unlimited, two purple sets I bought made a big dent in my savings, as did a Gladiator Def IO).

I tend to solo primarily. I am a cautious player, preferring to be methodical and careful rather than take risks. I play it safe - I don't need to brag about the 'challenges' I have faced, I believe that a success at a 'weenie' challenge is valuable and that failure at a tough challenge is a waste of time. In fact, I make it a point to solo banks at -1, to ensure successful completion of the mission rewards.

I also don't collect badges, unless it somehow makes the character more powerful in a justifiable way (like some of the accolades.)

My current character I have just gotten to 50 is an Elec/SR Stalker. He has a base Def of 59% (For some of those 64% to hit baddies I heard about.)

The only Incarnate Enhancements I care about getting are the Very Rare, cream of the crop ones. I understand I think that along the way I collect the lower level ones, but my point is that I will be comparing the value of the power of the Very Rare Incarnates with the slog/grind required to get them. If getting the Very Rare ones can’t be justified, then I don’t want anything less.

I also tend to hate random rewards, especially ones that are so rare that you could conceivably do a lot of work and simply through some crap luck have it be for nothing. For example, when given the option, I would rather use more Merits on a specific Recipe rather than a lower number of Merits on a random roll that *might* give me what I am looking for.

Finally, as the above indicates, I don't want to do a mission in which we have a significant chance of failure and NO reward for our effort, simply because the devs have made it ludicrously hard. If I spend 2-3 hours on a mission, I *expect* the reward we are chasing to be more than likely (if we are not being stupid). Otherwise, it's just a random roll in disguise.

I also don't want to be spending the next twelve months trying to complete the Alpha slot. With the time I put in the game that I referenced above, I would like to be able to complete and slot a top tier Incarnate Enhancement at least every 4-6 weeks. Minimally. 3-4 weeks would be much better. 1-2 weeks would be ideal.

I am not now in a SG/VG, although I am up for it. I just don't find people on the servers when I play (10AM-6:30PM EST, Mon-Fri.) IF all other things were equal, I would probably prefer to solo to gain Incarnates simply because when ou solo other people problems and mistakes don’t so much become a problem, but if I have to, I can play nice and team, especially if I find a good group of dependable and skilled folks.

Can I participate in the incarnate system? Or is this system only for people who either play night and weekends with tons of friends, or alternatively, don't mind slogging through months and months of grind? Because I am neither of the above.

The incarnate stuff sounds cool, but it almost sounds like it is a copycat WoW grind to get them.

Do I have a real chance to participate in the Incarnate system and still have fun, as I have outlined above?

Thanks.


PS. I REALLY REALLY want a lot of accurate feedback on this question. Since I have been playing this game since launch, I am obviously a HUGE fan. Please let me know if this isn't the right forum for this post, if posting this post in a different forum would be more effective and productive. So far as I can see, we don't have yet a dedicated Incarnate sub forum. Thanks again.

Doing a Successful BAF and Lambda each day will give a very rare component in 15 days. That is 30 successful runs in about 2 weeks. Therefore, you can get the very rare components in just 2 months of completing both trials every day. Now you need just 8 rares, 8 uncommons, and a bunch of commons. If you can't get 8 rares to drop by doing just trials, then you should be close or at least have enough uncommons to craft the rares. Some people will be able to craft their very rares in less than a month because the RNG is good to them. However, the minimum amount of time to get all 4 very rare slots assuming rares and very rares never drop is 2 months.

I would suggest the first two rare slots you get is the rare Lore and rare Destiny slot due to the Incarnate shift. Then you can bother with getting the rest to very rare.

You don't have to get them in order? The Alpha first?

For what it's worth I only PuG and now have a character with t3s in every slot, t4 in alpha (got the alpha before i20), and well on my way to two more t4s. Most of my failed runs took place on the first day i20 was live (they're usually successful now). I'm in the UK, so weekday playtime for me is 1pm->7pm EST. The character in question is on Freedom (though I've been able to get some trial progress for my main on Victory too, but I'm not sure how long that'll last).

I wouldn't fancy trying to progress very far into the incarnate stuff through soloing though.

(note to clarify: I join PuGs advertising on globals and pocket D broadcast, I haven't used the automated lfg much since the first day as it tends to only half-fill the raid, which greatly reduces the chance of success)

Is doing the BAF and Lambda the only effective ways to gain Incarnates, or is it worth doing other missions?

Everything is "soloable", give you spend multiple months to get a Very Rare on just Shards alone...

No, seriously, though: though you can't (feasibly) unlock the Incarnate slots (other than Alpha) solo, depending on what server you're on, walking into Pocket D and broadcasting "lf trial" will usually net you an invite within seconds.

The solo path has been calculated to be very long and expensive. I believe it's on the order of 1.6 billion influence per Very Rare and 2.7 years of playing daily and converting shards to threads to get Very Rares in the four I20 slots.

You can looks at some numbers in Dispari's guide.

If you can't find someone forming a trial in RWZ or Pocket D on Freedom during the day, then you have to have bad luck at finding them. Others are in the same situation so I would be surprised if you can't find someone.

The LFG system makes it very easy to PuG these trials. None of that "global channel" nonsense. Just flag that you're looking for a run, and you'll be popped in automagically.

If you want to get your ALPHA first, you need to do some research. First, you unlock it doing a somewhat-tough-to-solo arc, or just get in on one of the raids. Then, there's 4 types of "enhancements' you can place into the alpha "Slot". To make a basic one requires you to either do 3 tasks, or collect and convert enough shards to make the components.

The STF/LRSF, KahnTF/BSF, ITF, LGTF, and CoP all offer components. These are guaranteed to appear in a pop-up window at the end of each task (you however forgo merits in choosing components). The Hamidon raid has an option for 4 shards, which can be crafted into a component of your choice. You can also get a certain component with 150 vanguard merits at a vanguard workstation.

It should be noted that, especially if you defeat most of the critters in each TF instead of stealthing, you can gain a very good number of shards to convert into components. Anecdotally, I had my uncommon after ONE DAY by pretty much running 3 TFs and a ritki ship raid. So you should be able to slot your Alpha without too large of a time investment, a few days at most if you can stand running at least one TF a day and maybe run a few other missions to collect extra shards.

The difference between a Common and Ultra Rare alpha isn't a lot. A common Alpha will give you 33% of an attribute across each of your powers. At ultra rare, it's... still 33%. However, it usually has 4-5 extra enhancement effects tacked on (For instance, Nerve starts out with Acc, but gives hold duration, confuse duration, defense, taunt durration and flight speed at the UR level), and MOST of the enhancement value surpasses ED. Rare and Ultra rare also give you the Level Shift, which is probably what will benefit you most.

And since each level of an Incarnate tree is crafted using the levels below it (the ultra-rare requiring two rares!), you're going to be repeating your work a lot and crafting/converting a lot of shards and components. But again, i got my ultra-rare shortly after they came out, and i'm not a hardcore player. I just had shards saved up...

I would like to mention that the trials are actually quite easily succeeded in a pug, baf especially but hell its just plan hard to fail that one.

What are the top global chat channels to find Lambda and BAF teams forming?