IOing a New Defender: Case Study

For Issue 21, I rolled a Time/Electric Defender. I wanted to see how hard it was to get some wealth and a nice build playing as if I were someone who 1.) didn't have an extensive knowledge of the market or IOs and 2.) was willing to read threads on the Market Forum with the intent of gaining more knowledge about how to make a better-than-SO-build without too much trouble or effort. My intent is to be a slacker version of the Zero to Awesome thread. No pictures because I am lame.

To start, I saved my big inspiration from the tutorial. After doing the first couple of missions, I sold it at WWs for 100,000 influence. I then placed bids of 11 inf for common and uncommon salvage that had a lot for sale and zero bids. I collected the ones that filled instantly, and ran over to a vendor to sell them for profit. Then I went out and fought crime, occasionally stopping by the market to grab my loot and put up fresh bids.

[Why this works: many people can't be bothered to run to vendor their stuff, and just sell everything on the market to make room for better stuff. There are badges for selling lots of things. I was basically a cockroach, cleaning up the things that got dropped on the floor.]

When I finished for the first night, I had worked my way up to Twinshot's arc. I didn't run the Death From Below Trial (only played a little bit). Before I logged, I set up bids for unwanted level 50 rare recipes of 1111 inf.

The next night when I logged on I had a ton of rare recipes filled. I vendored them, placed new bids, and ran Twinshot's first arc. I did some newspaper missions in KR and did the bank mission to get the free travel power. Then I ran Death From Below. When I was done, I vendored the bids that came in and placed new ones on common IO recipes that sold for well below vendor price. I took a look at level 15 common recipes to see if there were any I could use that I had salvage for, and bought what was on the market and the rest from the crafting table. Then I logged.

Next session I collected by goodies, put out bids for more common IO recipes, did Twinshots second arc, and sold the harvest as it came in. Here's where I changed my formula a bit. There are badges for memorizing common IO recipes. The badge for memorizing level 45-50 recipes gives you a bonus recipe storage slot, and the badge for memorizing level 25-30 recipes gives you 2 bonus salvage storage slots. Plus, when a recipe is memorized you can craft it without a recipe and at a discount to crafting cost!

The previous two nights I had been making money by skimming through common salvage and IO recipes to see what was cheap. I could also see what *wasn't* cheap. Paragonwiki has a page with the crafting badges and the number you need to craft in order to earn them here http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Invention_Badges . My goal was to take my 4-5 million nest egg and memorize some useful recipes (ACC, RECH, DAM, END RED, etc). I did them one badge at a time, placing bids for an appropriate number of recipes and salvage and waiting for it to fill. Then I listed the IOs priced to sell *slightly* below crafting cost. While I was waiting for bids to come in and for inventory to clear, I did Twinshot's third arc and ran a Positron TF.

To be honest, this worked really really well for me, I was surprised at how lucrative it was. For memorized recipes that use inexpensive salvage, the profit margin is pretty high. I varied between buying stuff to memorize new recipes, and padding my bankroll selling IOs I had already memorized. I'd do a couple of missions, then drop by the market to see what sold, get what came in, and put new stuff up. It isn't the stuff that Ebil Marketeers bother with, but by the end of the weekend my bank was up to 30 million.

I dinged 20, started running missions in First Ward, and put in some lowball bids for IO set recipes with the intent of Frankenslotting. I'll update this when I hit 22 and get my initial frankenslotted build together.

There was a period there last week where the price of a large heal inspiration dropped to just 10,000 to 15,000 influence, due to all the new characters trying to sell theirs. So naturally, I placed a bunch of bids for stacks of 10 at 15,000 influence each.

Anyway, I obviously like threads like this, I'll be interested to see how you do.

Are we allowed to give tips? If so:

While you're working on memorising recipes, don't forget End Mod. There's almost always at least one of levels 30, 35 or 40 making a decent profit.

Housekeeping: I haven't played much this week, just maybe a mission or two in the evening. I've tried to log in in the morning to check WWs before work over coffee. Things have slowed down since the weekend.

I moved many of my slots from selling common IOs to placing bids for set recipes for frankenslotting. This cut down on my crafted IO turnover, and the with the weekend shopping spree over, my river of incoming influence has dwindled to a trickle. That's okay for my purposes, I've got more than enough inf for the time being. Not a lot of recipes out there for frankenslotting; I've got several for around 11k and I'm patching in the rest with common IOs or SOs.

Tips: I ran several tips missions, haven't done the morality arc yet! I also got an alignment merit from the SSA. I will be using AMs to get expensive IOs (I splurged on the performance shifter proc with my first AM, because endurance was bugging me. I think it probably would have been smarter to save up for the Miracle +recovery, but it will all work out).

A couple of things I forgot in the first post: grabbed an O-portal and did the Spelunker badge mission, I also grabbed all the explo and history plaques for AP, KR, Skyway, and Steel and did the Midnighter's arc.

I hope to have more playing time over the weekend and more interesting things to update!

I haven't had time to do much teaming over the past week. My playtime has been in fits and bursts, mostly solo, in the morning over coffee or a little bit after work. Played a fair amount Saturday, but no new TFs on my Time/Electric.

What *did* I do? I ran the Signature Story Arc a few times to snag some hero merits, ditto with running tip missions to earn more hero merits. I used the O-zone to access the Echo of Galaxy Park for those badges. I joined up with a GM team that never got off the ground, but ended up going to Striga Island to earn the Silver Bullet and Slayer defeat badges. And I earned the Recieved the Atlas Medallion accolade (+5% endurance)! I recommend joining your servers global badge channel, it makes it easier to find cool stuff going on. I also ran a few AE missions to snag some tickets (not farms, its a time/electric defender). I am now level 25.

I continued my market strategy of "earn recipe memorization badges 25-30, craft and sell good ones for profit". At this point the ones I memorized weren't the ones that sold well, so I'm basically just doing it to get the extra salvage slots. I have all of them in that range but the jump, fly, run, range one. For the non-valuable ones, I'll put one up in the AH and if there are no bids, just delete it. For many of them, I just bought the recipes from the crafting table because I could use my AH slots for more valuable things. I worked on one badge at a time, to keep from clogging up my inventory. I continued to craft and sell common IOs with a decent level of demand. I had to take some some common IOs and relist them in order to get them to sell . . . I should have done it earlier, even though I lost a bit of my posting cost, I more than made it back by actually *getting them to sell* and being able to put more common IOs up on the market.

I had a conversation with a friend about my project, and his comment was basically "but you know so much about the market, that's not realistic for someone who doesn't know anything about what to do". And I guess on some level he has a point . . . even after buying and crafting my IOs (see below) I'm up to about 80 million now, which might seem outlandish for someone who *wasn't* familar with the market.

But that's the whole point of the project, to provide a case study for folks who might not yet know the ins and outs of the market or IOs, but are willing to learn a bit more. I'm not using bleeding edge farming or marketing strategies, but rather solid, middle of the road ones that don't involve esoteric knowledge. At least, that's what I'm *trying* to do.

I'm still lightly frankenslotted (not a whole lot of slots to spread around yet). My attacks are more heavily slotted since I'm soloing a lot. I've got my two single target attacks and ball lightning (TAOE) 5 slotted, with 30% ACC, 77% DAM, 48% RECH, and 62% End Reduction in the single targets and 35% ACC, 96% DAM, 41% RECh, and 16% End Red in the TAOE. My PBAOE is just 2-slotted at this point, with an ACC IO and a multistrike Dam/End/Red. I have a couple more Multistrike to put in, but am waiting till I have the slots to keep the acc up. My hold is frankenslotted with 3 acc/hold/rech for 48.7% to all. And my heal and +def powers have 2 Heal/Rech or Def/Rech for +40% to each. Pretty much all of the set IOs were purchased for under 55k, and many of them set me back only 10K.

I have grabbed a couple of sets, too. I have my debuff toggle 4 slotted with Dark Watcher's Despair (crafted at level 25 to avoid expensive salvage) and in my TAOE I have 4 Positron's Blast. Some of those recipes were cheap (10K) others I reached for (Posi triple, I'm looking at you). I have some outstanding bids on the Posi proc recipes that range in the low millions. I only have 3 of the Posi slotted because I'm concerned about keeping the overall enhancement value high, but when I have a 6th slot to dedicate to it, dudes is getting wrecked! With my hero merits, I bought crafted and slotted a Miracle +recovery and a LOTG +7.5% recharge. I also bought a Kismet +accuracy recipe for 500k and crafted it. I haven't yet slotted the Kismet or the LOTG.

Looking ahead, I want to get the Numina's +regen/+recovery proc ASAP to sort out my End woes, and do some bronze recipe rolls with my AE tickets once I hit 30. Less soloing and more teaming will be great, and it will be nice to get extra slots to spread around! Thanks for reading.

I got to play a lot this weekend and made it to level 30! Highlights include doing Sister Psyche's TF and running all the First Ward Arcs. I also did some random teaming here and there, ran tips, etc.

IO wise I now have Positron's Blast 5 slotted with a level 25 common damage IO in the 6th slot. I had two bids out for the proc, and after waiting a week they both filled overnight at the same time for an average of 2.5 million. I crafted both, and posted the one I didn't slot for sale and got 20 million for it. Even afer subtracting crafting costs, I was *really* psyched for that. I also slotted the Numina's in Health (along with Miracle) and put a LOTG recharge global in Manuevers (I already had those, just didn't have the slots for them).

I picked up 2 Thunderstrike Acc/Dam/End and 2 Dam/End Rech recipes @ level 33 for around 100k each. I also got a couple of Oblit Dam/Rech for around 500k each, crafted the one I'll use, put the other one up on the market and we'll see how it sells. I think I also got an Oblit Acc/Dam/Rech but I haven't been to the market in a while due to camping out in First Ward.

When I log on tonight, I need to hoof it to WWs to see how I'm doing, restock it with some common IO recipes, and plan my next round of wish-list purchases. Minus the aformentioned Posi proc "flipping" (ie selling my spare) its been all selling drops at WWs and crafted common IOs. I'm up to about 100 million in the bank plus the IOs I have slotted.

@Ironblade, I could see slotting that way too.

Got my defender to 35, oh lordy but my patient bids have paid off! I had several bids out on each recipe in a range I could use, crafted all of the ones that filled, slotted the ones I'd prefer, sold the rest. Profit! I've moved it up a level to placing multipe bids on each recipe in a range, crafting the ones that filled slotting one and selling the rest. I've also been crafting and selling good drops.

I'm up to 200 million now.

I have obliteration 4-slotted (don't think I'll get a cheap proc or quad), doctored wounds 4-slotted, thunderstrike 2 and 3 slotted. I'm at level 35.

I've been teaming a bit more, and part of me wishes I had more slots in my primary. My secondary is strong enough that I can wreck stuff solo (for a defender) and I can carry my own weight on teams, but over the next few levels I really want to round out my primary to allow some more interesting things.

Part of me is a little conflicted on the shift in my marketeering strategy: crafting your good drops and selling them isn't exactly next level marketeering, neither is placing extra bids for the good stuff you want to slot and selling the excess. At the same time, it *is* a definite step up from the mundane strategies I had been using. I'm not devoting any more time to the market, I'm not using esotetic niche knowledge, etc . . . so I'm personally okay with it. It seems like a natural evolution that a noice would make if they were serious about using the market. I understand that people who *hate* the market and agressively don't want to use it might cry foul; I am intentionally *not* aggressively buying excess recipes at this point (for example, I'm not bidding 10x even though I have ample influence to so so).