Astral/Empyrean Merits = Recipes.

http://www.cityofheroes.com/news/gam...scend_ove.html

Issue 20.5 Overview:

Invention Origin Recipes: Get those Invention Origin recipes that you've always coveted! Buy Rare, Very Rare and PVP Set Invention Origin recipes that are hard to find or inconvenient to obtain.

So...gonna ballpark 10 to 15 Empyrian Merits for a purple, 30 for a PvP IO?

Thoughts from ebil ones?

I'm betting that E Merits will follow the Alignment merits prices at least for Purples/PvPIOs (I could see them being a little higher for lesser recipes). For Astrals my WAG is that the prices will be something along the lines of 1 Astral = 5 Reward merits (in terms of buying power, I doubt there will be a conversion) and like Reward Merits will not be usable to purchase Purples/PvPIOs.

Their statement says you can use them to get Very Rare (?) and PvP IO recipes.

It depends what they view as a "good price". If they feel that purples going for 100,000,000 to 500,000,000 is excessive, they might make a purple be worth 5 Empyrean Merits and a PvPIO 10-15.

We'll find out soon enough I guess, seems to me just one more currency that won't make marketers or casual players happy.

I would assume that it should take more Empyrean Merits than Alignment Merits to get a Very Rare IO or PVP IO.

It's possible to get 2 Empyrean Merits per day (3 after Keyes Trial goes live?).

Using purely tip missions, takes 2 days to get an Alignment Merit.

Admittedly, can buy an Alignment Merits every 20 hours, but the 50 Reward Merit plus 20 million Influence costs seems like more than an Incarnate Trial worth of effort.

I'd mostly agree, but it should be noted that you can get 3 a-merits in 2 days purely solo, while the 3 empyrean merits per day requires teaming with a lot of other people.

But other than that, yeah, easier to get. Not hard to find a trial to join right now.

Not that I'm a pessimist or anything.

But I'm expecting this to be a Merits+Inf thing, as it's FAR easier to assemble large numbers of merits (even Emps) relatively quickly, compared to Alignment Merits.

Clicking on the linked image above will take you off the City of Heroes site. However, the guides will be linked back here.

Interesting factoid that may not matter, because it could be a red herring: The info on Astral Merits right now on live say they can be cashed in for Reward Merits. (Well, at least they said that up until yesterday's patch - I didn't check to see if they still do.)

If it turns out to be correct, that could mean that you can only use Astrals to buy stuff by turning them into Reward Merits, meaning they couldn't buy purples or PvPOs at all. I'm not sure that jives with the new info that's out, though.

Yet another pseudo currency since the devs can't balance the supply of inf and have set the supply of high-end items well below aggregate demand. I'm hoping its an inf + merits sink as well but it'll probably just make amerits obsolete is my guess.

I REALLY hope that no amount of astral merits will be able to buy VR/PvP recipes but I am not sanguine about the developers ability to see the differences between the astrals and empyreans as far as limits go.

I find it hard to imagine that "Incarnate Merits" (one, both, or some combination) will make Alignment Merits obsolete in general, because only level 50s can obtain or use them, while A-Merits are available to anyone over level 20 with Going Rogue.

It's possible that I-Merits might become a viable means of obsoleting A-Merits for "incarnated" level 50s, but there are some people who are going to enjoy soloing more than iTrialing. And hey, in theory, one can do both. I can earn an Alignment Merit every two days and 2-3 Empyrean Merits every day, maybe after 60 days I can buy two +3% Def PvPOs.

Yeah, I am pretty sure I don't see the obsoleting as a serious problem here.

I'd say they'll be a lot more expensive than people have guessed so far.

PVP recipes are in the 25 to 30 A-Merit range and a v-rare Incarnate Component is 100 E-Merits or so? You can only get one A-Merit a day realistically whereas you can get 2 Emp-Merits per day with relative ease.

I'd say closer to 150/200 or so for a Purple/PVP recipe. Could easily be more.

I'm hoping there's some inf drain as well.

I suspect this will be another thing like "purples with A-merits"- considerably overpriced, that is. On the other hand if you've already bought everything you need, why NOT spend them on 'overpriced' items? You're slightly adding to the supply and using stuff you can't get rid of any other way...

My WAG is roughly 10 E-merits = 1 A-merit in recipe purchasing power. So LotG would be 20 E-merits and PvPIO would be 300?

Neuronia:

I once generated something like 1.5 billion inf in the market through a bug- I managed to buy ten high-end items when I could only afford one, and the money just came out of nowhere. I didn't, as it happened, sell to myself all afternoon and make 150 billion inf come out of nowhere- but I could have. I have a friend who said "If you told me about that bug, I would have bought every purple in Wentworth's and given them to level 3's."

And let us not forget the level 50 masterminds going into the big shiny building and inf-capping in a day.

Reward Merits, Alignment Merits, Empyrean Merits, whatever kind of Zorkmids they give us next: they're all locked to the character and you have to play the Devs' content to get 'em.

It's like they want us to play their game and not their market. (Obviously their mind control doesn't work on ME.)

I really hope that this is used as a way to make purple and pvp recipes affordable for a change... Not all of us have been playing for years and have tons of purpled out characters. It's a struggle for newer players like myself to finish a solid build. I've been playing for less than 6 months, and about 90% of the inf I have at all times goes towards building up one single character. The prices on some purple sets and PVP procs are absolutely absurd.

That's true, but many of the builds I'm working towards do require them in order to be as efficient as I'd like them to be. A large portion of the player base either got things when they were cheaper, or have so much old money that they can afford to buy things in bulk and make them even MORE expensive for players who actually intend to use them for their characters instead of trying to hustle the rest of the game.


edit: Maybe I should've used the phrase 'top notch' instead of 'solid.' The development team seem to be pretty 'anti farming,' and I certainly don't play the game just to do the same thing over and over, but the way that I got approximately 4 billion and counting into my main character thus far was by farming AE for tickets, crafting the good stuff, and reposting. I don't want to have to keep wasting my time in game doing this, because I want to actually PLAY the game... But I want to do it with an efficient character.

There is absolutely no need for purple and pvp recipes to be so expensive. It's just an opportunity for old players to profit off of new players. If I wanted to be initiated, I would have played sports in high school. I would be really stoked if these merits let us get things we need for our builds in a reasonable time frame without any farming required. It's not like it would break the game if purple sets were accessible... I'm sure a lot of people would still end up slotting them poorly. Everyone wouldn't automatically be overpowered, but a lot of people would farm less and get ripped off less.