Thread Rare and V Rare costs

anyone know why the costs on these are so horrible?

rare

4unc 100 threads and 100mil inf

v rare

3 rare 1 common 400mil... (i think)

so for a casual player these are nigh impossible to get...

i can see money cost... and maybe some threads but rares take the cake at 340 threads and 100mil inf...

so how the heck is a person who solo's and does no trial/tf content EVER supposed to get a rare enh let alone 4+

It only looks bad until you actually start playing the trials. You can get Rare and Very Rare incarnate salvage as mission rewards, and they only take 20 minutes to run each and can be repeated infinitely. In just a few days of even "casual" play you'll almost certainly have all your Tier 3 ("Rare") incarnate powers without paying a dime of influence, and be on your way to collecting components for your T4 Very Rare powers.

It's true. Even "casual" gamers can participate in the new incarnate trials. From start to finish you can easily complete either trial in 30 minutes or less (not including the time it takes to form a team).

to restate

If the only method you have of getting threads is converting shards to threads from normal play (ie no tfs / trials or whatever)

how much play time do you think it will take to get 1 rare thread bit?

340 threads = 340 shards (disregarding inf) (also you can make 3-4 uncommon enh for your slots with that many threads)

assuming horrible drop rates of 1 shard per hour
5-10 hours a week
20-40 shards a month
a year and a half for one rare... and that is not counting threads to unlock slot with...

Since you can only get the 10 for 10 conversion once every 20 hours (and considering you already have 340 shards to convert) you are looking at a minimum of 34 days to get 340 threads.

Maybe I don't understand what a "casual" player is...

I have some (like 6-7) 50s... And, I think 3 of them have anything after alpha. One has the alpha open but nothing slotted...

My main (Beorn) has opened up all the new stuff, but doesn't have everything rared up... and I am okay with that. You just play when you can and enjoy the ride, or make fun of Marauder's Enriche bottle, or Mother's set of <ahem> robots, or just go for certain badges or (for the Lambda) just clear the outside of the facility and restart...

You get exp regardless. UNTIL you unlock everything, then you get the occasional thread or astral merit.

This is fun. If I get bored with a tank, I'll run a crab spider or a corruptor or a Mastermind. In any case, you meet cool people and if there are people too serious for you, just excuse yourself and find a new group.

I am SO not concerned with the Very Rare stuff... It will happen when it happens. I've actually converted merits and other stuff for threads just to see what nifty things I could make with each thing... Some would call that wasting threads and incarnate stuff; I call it having fun.

I hope you have fun playing the game, and just don't stress about intangible shiny things that don't exist in the real world anyway...

If you don't do the trials, the level shift that comes with the rares doesn't work, so you don't particularly need rares. Commons and Uncommons are more than fine for anything that is soloable.

It's still pretty slow, but people seem to always focus on the rares or even very rares as if they are the only ones worth getting.

Just to play devil's advocate, although the level shift from the rare and very rare enhancements do not work outside of the new Trials, the bonuses that the enhancements provide do apply. So, I could see how someone might want to slot the 75% chance to debuff Interface enhancement, or get the best pet, even if all they play is the solo content.

That's true, but the increase in power from an Uncommon to a Very Rare is for most abilities much less than the improvement from nothing to a Common or Uncommon.

An Uncommon Core Lore ability gets you a boss pet. A Very Rare gets you a boss pet with a 25% damage bonus, and a much weaker Lieutenant pet.

A Common Judgement does 428 damage to 16 targets. A Very Rare does the same amount, plus a chance at a secondary effect/extra damage, to more targets, but in solo content you will rarely be fighting more than 16 enemies at once.

A Common Destiny generally does the same thing as a Very Rare Destiny, just for a shorter duration. If it's the secondary effect of the Destiny that you want, it's available at Uncommon.

Interface is admittedly the most dramatic increase as you improve ranks - a Rare is 3x the proc chance of the Common.

I actually agree that unlocking and crafting any of these abilities without trials is painfully slow, but looking only at Rare abilities exaggerates it unnecessarily. It's like complaining that Inventions are too hard to get while looking only at the cost of purple sets.

Hey Junction Boy! You misspelled "vicious" in your sig, twice!

/e flings poop, inaccurately

Pretty sure he meant viscous.

What I don't get is why people are complaining so much about the Incarnate system "grind" when unlocking these slots are way eaisier (in my experience) then trying to "purlple out" your hero. I know that as a casual player I could probably never really fully purple out a player...Incarnate hasn't been nearly as difficult.

Also...if you only solo and don't do TFs...are you even playing your 50s? Seems like there is really no reason to play your 50s if you refuse to do a TF or team.

Incarnate Slots are introducing basically 5 new Powers for each of your Toons.

Even for the solo-only casual player, after a few months, they'll be able to unlock and slot the first tier of all 5 powers. So, think about that. Solo-only casual player able to unlock 5 new Powers. Pretty friendly, unless, of course, if one expects to have all the Powers of the Universe at their disposal through limited play. To have more, you have to invest more. To expect solo-only casual players to be top tier is unrealistic.


To those who are casual Team players. They can expect to unlock and slot the first Tier in about a week or two, even hitting second Tier or third Tier rather easily. Solo-only players who are *hard core* could probably do the same.


But what about that rarefied fourth Tier? Well that's meant for hard core players who Team. It will take them even at full-out grinding about a week to get there. And, most probably, they have several 50s to work on. So, this is months of activity even for them to "do it all."

The idea here is that initial entry is relatively easy. But further progression in each slot is exponentially more difficulty. This gives access to the casual and a goal to the hard core.

The problem is when people who limit their play as only being casual or only being solo-only expect to have access to the same reward as people who put in tons more time and effort.

That being said, there *could* be another path for hard-core solo-only, but, this being an MMO, the first path to be worked on is Massive Multi-player.

If you can't get threads or succcead in Trials, try sucking less. That is all,

If a person can't spend less than an hour to participate in a trial, then they probably shouldn't be playing CoX since they appear to be too busy. Most casual players can spend at least an hour or two with the occasional afk due to RL concerns. The only people that can't participate in trials are the solo only players that get sick in their stomach at the thought of having to deal with other players. MMOs generally never cater to these individuals for the good loot. Just look at WoW, to get the top gear, you need to team with players and participate in raids. Although, CoX has been good for soloers. Used to be that you had to participate in Task Forces to get the LoTG: +7.5% global recharge or pay an extravagant cost, but now their is merits, AE rolls, AM rolls, and Alignment Merits. Chances are that there will be a solo-friendly option to get threads.