A Base Full of Shinies

I have a solo base on Virtue, where I have twelve enhancement storage bins:
1. the defense/resist IO bin (reactive armor, luck of the gambler, steadfast +3% def IOs, knockback IOs, etc)
2. the melee damage bin (kinetic combat, obliteration, and scirocco's dervish mostly)
3. the ranged damage bin
4. the heal IOs bin
5. the other random damage IOs bin
6. the troller type stuff bin (holds, stuns, immobilize, sleep, etc. -- most notably a small collection of Basilisk Gaze IOs)
7. the lesser defense/resist IOs bin (nearly any resist or defense IO of level 25 to 33 or so is probably worth hanging onto ^_^ )
8. the generic IOs bin, which never has the actual generic IOs I want
9. the other generic IOs bin that has a bunch of BotZ and other travel related IOs in it
10. the bin in the back that has endurance IOs, about 30 winter's gift slow resist IOs that I thought I could sell at some point, and other random stuff.
11. the bin for level 50/top level stuff I buy cheap so I can sell it when prices go back up... if they ever do.

and then there's the special bin, where I keep all the stuff that's really valuable or hard to get. In here I place purple IOs as they come to me, PvP IOs that I manage to buy, stealth IOs, and things like Numina uniques, Miracle uniques, Luck of the Gambler 7.5% defense IOs... etc.

Except that it usually contains stuff that's more or less valuable, but not stuff that I actually need right now. For example, I have a full set of Soulbound Alegiance... but my MM has been stuck at 44 for two years. I have various Absolute Amazement and Fortunata Hypnosis IOs that I got as drops and crafted... not really valuable enough that I want to sell them, I tend to see purples as worth holding onto, but I have no use for them right now. I have a set of Unbreakable Constraint which I pulled off a character during a respec and which I know is worth holding onto... so I keep it in storage. And I have a couple of random Ragnaroks and Hectacombs, but never a full set of any purple set damage IO. The ones I have are the cheaper parts of the set usually, and I tend to buy all of those when I'm working on a new build for a character instead of raiding my base.

What I never seem to have enough of are the things I put into nearly every build: Miracle Unique, Numina's Unique, LotG 7.5% recharge, Celerity Stealth. I tend to buy those things when I need them, usually with a-merits.

This past Spring I spent a lot of time earning 30 a-merits on three different characters, and bought 3 of the Glad Armor 3% def IOs. It was a nice goal to set for myself. I used one each on the builds for Sparks Fly (EM/SD), Trinkets (FM/SD) and Sister Kate (Spines/WP). For a short time two of them were sitting in my base until Trinkets and Sister Kate were high enough level to use them, but then they were gone. I missed having such a nifty IO sitting around in my base waiting to be used.

Soooo... after Trinkets hit 50 I spent a few weeks in June earning 30 a-merits on her, and placed the resulting Glad Armor proc in my base. I like having it there. I have no concrete plans to use it just yet. It's my precious.

I earned this about 10 days ago, and after that I asked myself: what next? Having a goal like "earn 30 a-merits quickly" meant that I was focused on doing that every night. Trinkets has yet to run an iTrial, and I haven't even finished all of the incarnate powers on Sparks Fly yet, but I'm in no rush, so... what next?

I still needed a couple of LotG IOs for Trinkets, and there were none in my base. I thought: hey, earning 2 a-merits is a lot easier than earning 30. Why not earn a bunch of LotG IOs, and a few Numina and Miracle unique IOs, and fill up your base so that the next time you level up a character you'll already have those things lying around?

And the cool thing is, I have quite a few characters who already had between 100 and 200 regular merits, and maybe a single a-merit, that were waiting to be spent. I've run a lot of TFs on a lot of different alts, and I rarely even paid attention to how many merits they had, unless it reached above 300, then I'd probably spend it. (My three Vigilantes are my real "rainy day merit fund" holders, since they can't convert to a-merits and I'm loathe to buy anything strictly with regular merits these days. Because of this I have over 1,000 merits on Tiffany Blackheart, about 600 on Mouse Police, and some 300 on Squiddy Kitty.)

So... for the last 10 days I've been using both accounts to duo 5 tip missions a day, effectively earning 1 a-merit every day, and also duoing the occasional Ouro arc for extra merits to convert or running a second set of characters through tip missions. And I've checked to see what merits my other character have sitting around and I've converted those. My goal is about 15 LotG IOs, 5 Numinas, 5 Miracles, and maybe a few new Celerity Stealth IOs.

Because I was able to convert a lot of regular merits, I've moved very quickly towards my goal. And I feel like Gollum when I look at all those beautiful shinies, so I just had to share/show off (first photo is from about last Sunday):





In a way it'll be kind of sad to use these... I kind of like just having them there to look at.

(Meanwhile... still haven't run an iTrial on Trinkets, I've been too busy doing this )

Rats off to ya!

Great work! I am no where near disciplined for that. Get it nao, back to playing.

How do you take a pic in there? I want to show off, too, and shove all my shinies in the players faces that don't have near what i do. It's a great feeling, im sure.

I used to have a big stockpile of shinies I was quite pleased with. Then I realized that while pretty, they weren't doing me a lot of good in there. So I went back and gave a bunch of my characters more pimped out builds. Much more enjoyable.

I derive much more enjoyment from playing my dudes with IOd builds than stockpiles of IOs and inf. To each their own.

I think the most significant thing about what you have done, by preparing in this way, is to insure that when a particular Alt catches your fancy you can campaign that character with out any distractions. That would certainly ramp up my enjoyment of CoH.

I find that constantly having to stop play on a new or mid-level toon, and figure out where I have resources to buy and craft needed stuff, really breaks the feel of being a Super on a Super Quest for Totalized Self.

I know I will not be able to duplicate your achievement, but would certainly wish to. Hopefully I can at least get far enough ahead to have one toon's worth of primary goodies in a bin somewhere.

Congrats,

Jak

Wow! I still have 50s with empty slots. My solo base does have a couple hundred shinies in reserve, but they are mostly the cheap stuff I don't have an immediate use for.

Your ability to generate a lot of stuff fast is always impressive. Takes more didication than I am willing ot put into the game, but it is fun to watch you from afar.

I am amused that most of the items seem to have been deposited by a character called "Trinkets"

My enhancement bin distribution is similar to yours, though I have fewer due to having other storage items. On toons I'm leveling I random roll all my reward merits at some point in the 30s, so the contents of the bins is always in flux. When it comes time to slot up a build I go raid the bins and I seldom know in advance what IOs will be there, which makes it kind of fun.

I also take an approach to leveling that usually has me approaching 30 alignment merits when I hit level 50. So each new toon since alignment merits came out generates a 3% def IO or equivalent as part of the leveling process. Not all of my builds use them, so I end up with a surplus over time which is allowing me to slowly refit my existing 50s to use them as appropriate.

Not a system that would work for many I know, but it does work quite well for me.

That, and in fact I have bought on the market a lot previously but it's nice to have a full stack of level 30s. ^_^

Besides, I tend to use my money for things that merits are not good to spend on, such as purple IOs.

All done, goal accomplished. I guess I'm happy now. ^_^ But now I need to find something else to do with my time!

(I have joined 3 hami raids and 4 ITFs this weekend... maybe I need a little more variety, lol. But my spines scrapper Sister Kate hit 50 yesterday, and I got two of my defenders very close to 50 -- Ice Girl Eight is now 48, Dark Girl Four is 47. ITF on a WSF week is soooo yummy!)

You better hope that the base bug never comes back again that caused everyones base to go back to the entrance room with the portal. They restored the bases from the database that was two weeks prior I would guess, but I lost alot of IOs I had stored during that two weeks. I don't store anything valuable there anymore except for when I'm using it for transferring to IO out a toon.

Nice collection though.

You have to store something somewhere -- whether in base/bank storage, in the market, in e-mail, or on toons. I guess on your toon is the safest but nothing is ever truly safe. ^_^