SOs, IOs, and Influence

So... I cannot stand crafting. It is a set of actions that adds tedium to a game I otherwise love. When the Invention system was added, I almost left the game. But I realized I could just ignore it all.

Meanwhile, I don't mind popping by the auction house and dumping my inventory, so at least I'm getting influence and not wasting the goods that I collect.

Now, what comes out of crafting IS kinda nifty. I don't care about procs or set bonuses for now, but an enhancement that doesn't decay is something that appeals to me.

So, I'm considering moving out of fully-SOing my character once it becomes sensible to use IOs instead. However, I do not want to craft ANY of these things. So, the auction house it is.

And it appears there are enough other people that adore crafting that I could probably pop into an auction house and grab some stuff.

However, unlike NPC stores, auction house items have prices set by players (another thing that isn't fun for me - in both directions).

My questions are as follows:

1. At what level would it be sensible to switch from SOs to IOs?
1a. When do IOs start giving at least as much benefit as a green SO?

2. How much can I expect to spend on a full suite of said IOs? (without buying the raw materials and going through the tedium of crafting)

3. How much time would it take? Comparable to going to an NPC store?

Level 25 or 30 is a nice time to switch to common IOs. You can buy most of these for about 100k a piece if you're willing to wait for about a day, which is a reasonable price in my opinion as you'd spend more than that upgrading every five levels for SOs.

When I level a new character without powerleveling, I tend to hop by the market during the teens and drop bids on level 25 IOs so I know it'll all be ready and waiting for me when I hit level 22.

Level 35 IOs are better than or equal to SOs for every 4 out of 5 levels. The only time SOs beat them is the level when they are +3 and green.

Common IOs are in most cases more expensive than their SO counterparts, but when judging the cost, look at how many sets of SOs you'd have to buy to get the same number of usable levels. Buying IOs at 32 means skipping 4 rounds of SOs.

Even though you hate crafting, I would recommend saving up salvage in the appropriate level range once it begins dropping for you, and then crafting a few of your IOs with recipes from the crafting tables. It really doesn't take more than a few minutes, and is quite a bit cheaper than buying some of the higher demand IOs off the AH.

Specifically, I think it's level 30 or 35 where an IO is equal to an even-con (white) level 50 SO?

In any case if you wanted to do it only once and never again, level 35 is a very good level to slot IOs. But they tend to be more expensive at those levels for the same reason.

As others have mentioned, 25-35 is a fairly optimal spot. For a loose rule of thumb...

L25 Commons are slightly worse than an even SO (-1.3% worse)
L30 Commons are virtually identical to a +1 SO (-0.2% worse)
L35 Commons are virtually identical to a +2 SO (+0.04% better)
L40 Commons are slightly better than a +3 SO (+0.27 better)
based on P-Wiki information found here.

2> Basically, if you limit yourself to *only* crafted IO's, I'd expect it to cost 20-30M
over the entire career of your toon (TO/DO/SOs run about 18M). You'll pay (loosely)
double for them than you would if you crafted them yourself. If you only buy at L35,
you can probably do it for less (5-10M?) because you'll skip earlier, low-level buys.

3> In terms of time, that's directly related to how much you want to spend.
The '0' key is the "Buy it Nao" key, and if you put enough zeros on your bids, you'll
get them as fast as you'd buy at a store. Of course, if you did it that way, please
discard my answer to question #2

Far better is to plan ahead and put reasonable bids out before you need them.
Also, keep in mind you'll need many more IO's than you have transaction slots,
and unlike recipes and salvage, you cannot buy IO's in stacks.

So, I'd plan on a few days to get all the ones you need.


Regards,
4

Lol.

You don't like the invention system, you almost quit because of it, but now you're slowly heading down the path to fully using it. What exactly are you gonna spend all the inf you make selling stuff on? SOs are cheap.

Also keep in mind, and I don't think anyone mentioned this, but if you want to skip the crafting process, the only place you can buy crafted IOs is the market.

You'll be rolling in generic IO recipes at all levels, and generally the salvage needed as well, so crafting generics isn't as tedious nor as expensive as crafting Set IOs. Generic IOs only need common salvage, which can flux in price, but is generally always cheap. Get the Market Day Job to earn discount coupons for crafting, and it gets even cheaper. You can dabble in the crafting side without going crazy trying to figure out what sets, with what bonuses you want.

generic recipes also drop by the boatloads too, so just crafting is not too bad, i personally prefer already crafted stuff, but i also sometimes tend to do BUY IT NAO buying too which i end up spending more inf on, but in the end it makes my goals take longer (plus im also impatient when dealing with the market lol)


but yeah as the others have said if you want to use generic IOs, then yes i would stay around lvl 30 (+/- 5 lvls), and theres no problem with buying pre crafted but the prices will run a little higher than SOs

Depending on what kind of bid you want to buy an IO on, it might be just quicker to craft it yourself. I would grab 2K-3K in AE tickets and you can random roll the salvage and be left to just get the recipes which will be cheaper.

If you just save the salvage you need to make the IOs you care about in the vault or market slots, most characters will get enough to make the IOs you need at about the rate you need them. You'll also get most of the recipes you need, and the rest can be had on the market for much less than the table price.

If you make common IOs as you level, as you find the salvage and recipes, it's actually quite easy. When you use IOs there's never a point where you need to upgrade. The problem comes when people try to IO out their characters in one shot: that can take hours, lots of running around, paying outrageous prices for salvage, etc.

There's no reason that you have to have matching levels for all your IOs. At level 12-15 you buy or craft level 15s as you need them. At level 17-20 you craft level 20s as you need them, and perhaps upgrade some level 15s in key powers as needed. Continue this process, crafting one or two at a time, until level 32, when you'll have a mix of 25s and 30s. Upgrading to 35s is really not at all necessary if you found SOs to be satisfactory.

You may also want to craft a few of the uncommon recipes you find that provide multiple bonuses you want: Acc/Dam, for example, or Dam/End if you notice you're running low on endurance. Look up Frankenslotting to see how cheap and efficient using one-off uncommon IOs can be.

If your IOs are level 27 or so, you'll never need to upgrade them again. The bonuses for uncommon recipes will be on average better than equivalent SOs, and you'll get increased recharge and decreased endurance usage at the same time.

In the long run, if you plan ahead, using IOs is much cheaper and less work than buying SOs every five levels, and much less work. Instead of completely swapping out SOs five times (at 27, 32, 37, 42 and 47), you can be done with the hardest part at level 27 or 32, and then just add one to three IOs every level from then on.

If you want to save yourself the bother of buying IOs every ten levels or so and completely avoid crafting all together, do what I do and stick with SOs all the way to level 47. Bit of a grind, but if you have put up with SOs for so long then you'll be fine.

A good IO build might set you back around 50-100 million. But it's well worth it.

With double xp weekend coming up, this might not be a good time to go shopping. People have already started hoarding common IO's to sell that weekend. In general I find that I can buy any level 35 common IO for 55,000 inf if I wait overnight except for End Mods. Those are crazy. Normally I'll buy a stack of 10 at 55k and then sell the extras for 151k and come out ahead. That works for the major ones, like accuracy, recharge, heal. The minor ones like jump height and slow can be bought for much less, and there's not much point in trying to sell them.

I use common IOs at 15, switch to SOs at 22 and then back to common IOs at 30. I will use higher level ones for aspects that I only one or two slot due to ED.

As for Set IOs, I'm far to wary at their cost, concerned about screwing up to seriously try them for big set bonuses. With inherent Fitness pool however I am seriously looking into Frakenslotting powers I normally six slot to save on slots.