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Star Trek Online Free to Play |OT| Boldly freeloading where others have subbed before
- Thread starter Walshicus
- Start date
Got 3 in-game pet codes from the raptr Q&A event to hand out. Quote to see and post which one is already used.
Redeem at:
https://my.perfectworld.com/redeemkey/sto
Redeem at:
https://my.perfectworld.com/redeemkey/sto
Quoth! 36L9W6T
Affeinvasion
Member
Thanks...I used this one.
Interesting article on starbase building. I read it awhile back, didn't see it posted here, so why not.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/738221-monetizing-perfect-world-s-latest-update
I think the author's methodology is flawed, cryptic will probably only get a fraction of that amount from people buying zen and exchanging it for dilithium(paying for convenience)
Edit: Added link.
http://seekingalpha.com/article/738221-monetizing-perfect-world-s-latest-update
I think the author's methodology is flawed, cryptic will probably only get a fraction of that amount from people buying zen and exchanging it for dilithium(paying for convenience)
Edit: Added link.
I'm not complaining. I found it to be a interesting and novel approach to generating profits, thought you guys might find it to be an interesting read. In terms of f2p mmo's star trek is one of the best, you can do everything and buy everything without spending a single penny. Hell, I even like the lockboxes, don't want to spend money on the ship "lottery" buy the keys on the exchange.
People have long accused Cryptic of manipulating the dilithium exchange, but regardless of whether that has any truth to it, the price of Zen has been very low for the last month. Since lower Zen prices means more money for PWE if people actually are paying real money to get dilithium, I wonder if they'll ever throw another C-Store sale since that would inevitably drive the price of Zen way up, at least temporarily.
Sickboy007
Member
Interesting read. I didn't know the retooling of the lockboxes was due to the rumours of a European investigation. EU for the win!
Since all the projects in a category roll up to the more expensive higher tier ones once we clear the necessary XP, I'm queuing all military projects for the moment. There's a 1000XP one in cooldown right now, which will put us at 24,755. The next military project done after that will block any new projects until we finish the tier project, but any that are queued will stay queued, so don't change any. This way, we can get around 3000 military XP at the relatively lower cost. I'll do the same thing when engineering gets close.
I've got a great screenshot from an exploration cluster I'll need to upload after work. I got mobbed by about twenty midget aliens with guns bigger than they were. Funniest bit was the game spawned them on top of a colony building, so when they engaged me they rained down...
For those of you that need a little bit of extra energy credits, here's a little guide based on some things from STOwiki and my own observations.
You've probably heard of the Strange Alien Artifacts and the Powered Alien Artifacts. They're the first and mid products of the Children's Toy chain of duty officer assignments. The final product is a Mk XII ship console of green, blue or purple rarity, depending on the DOFFs you assign. Making consoles this way is such a crapshoot that it's really not worth doing all that much unless you've already got a pile of very good DOFFs for it. Even if you have a huge chance at purples, you've got to contend with the fact that you could get any number of different kind of consoles, many of which will be useless to you and anyone else.
Our goal here is just to make EC, so we just want to harvest the artifacts as efficiently as possible. This is of course dependent on how many characters you have, and your availability and timing.
First of all, you have to have completed the initial "Negotiate Delivery of Rare Commodities" assignment on any given character with which you want to be able to do the repeatable assignment. This is the most tedious part, because as far as I know, there's no way to tell when and where you'll find it other than by looping around the applicable sector blocks every few hours until it appears. Those sector blocks are Beta Ursae, Zeta Andromedae and Alpha Trianguli, or what I just call the Cardie Triangle (hereafter referred to as CT). To complete the assignment, you can use pretty much any DOFF, although traders are obviously preferred. The assignment cannot be failed, insofar as you will always get the Strange Alien Artifact regardless of the mission outcome. There is also no casualty risk as far as I know. For completion, you need to have 3 Shapeshifting Locket items and 3 Jevonite items. These are relatively cheap on the exchange, but if you've been traveling around the CT, you'll have probably picked up a lot from trade assignments.
Now, once any one of your characters has that under their belt, they are capable of finding "Negotiate Delivery of Additional Rare Commodities." I do not believe that the completion of the original assignment correlates in any way to when the repeatable shows up, so you will have to find it again. However, the beauty of this is that if you've found it on one character, you know where and when it will be for all of your characters that have completed the original. All you need to do is fly each character over and queue the assignment before the four hour assignment block rolls over.
Here is a slightly tricky part. The assignment has a three day cooldown, but the cooldown starts from the time you COMPLETE the assignment. Let's say you found the assignment in the 12PM-4PM EST block. You might be around in the 4PM-8PM block to complete it, or you might not be on again until the next day. The cooldown starts when you first collect the assignment rewards on any of your characters. It might help to jot down the time and day you do this, and add a note to run through the CT in three days to pick it up again. The cooldown seems to end on the same time block three days later, regardless of how late in the block you collect. So for example, say you do collect your artifact at 7:59PM the same day. You'll be able to do the assignment again as early as 4PM three days hence. It's possible this is incorrect, but it has been a reliable timing scheme for me so far.
As far as turning a Strange Alien Artifact into a Powered Alien Artifact, you will need a Development Lab Scientist DOFF, or preferably two, for the Infuse Alien Artifact with Rare Particles. There is a casualty risk, so you'd be advised to use uncommon DOFFs or better so you don't risk losing any permanently. There may or may not be another assignment between Negotiate and Infuse, but it seems to have been skipped on some of my characters. As far as materials, you need to have the Strange Alien Artifact in your possession or bank, as well as one of each rare particle trace. The traces are getting somewhat pricey on the exchange, so it may well be that it might be more cost effective to sell the Strange Alien Artifact rather than Infuse it. In any case, like Negotiate, Infuse cannot be failed. Even if you blow up your DOFFs, you'll still get the Powered Alien Artifact.
Currently, Strange Alien Artifacts go for around 800-900k on the exchange, whereas Powered go for 1.4-1.5M. If you can wait a while, the exchange is still semi-bugged wherein an item you list will not show up in the "All" category for several days. Even if your price is not the lowest on the "Data Samples" category, when it reaches "All," as long as you didn't price it outrageously, it may end up being the lowest. There are plenty of people who don't know about this bug, and you can take advantage of that. That of course applies to any other item, but don't go buying things for higher than their fair market value in the hopes of relisting them for a long-term profit, or that may bite you in the butt.
You've probably heard of the Strange Alien Artifacts and the Powered Alien Artifacts. They're the first and mid products of the Children's Toy chain of duty officer assignments. The final product is a Mk XII ship console of green, blue or purple rarity, depending on the DOFFs you assign. Making consoles this way is such a crapshoot that it's really not worth doing all that much unless you've already got a pile of very good DOFFs for it. Even if you have a huge chance at purples, you've got to contend with the fact that you could get any number of different kind of consoles, many of which will be useless to you and anyone else.
Our goal here is just to make EC, so we just want to harvest the artifacts as efficiently as possible. This is of course dependent on how many characters you have, and your availability and timing.
First of all, you have to have completed the initial "Negotiate Delivery of Rare Commodities" assignment on any given character with which you want to be able to do the repeatable assignment. This is the most tedious part, because as far as I know, there's no way to tell when and where you'll find it other than by looping around the applicable sector blocks every few hours until it appears. Those sector blocks are Beta Ursae, Zeta Andromedae and Alpha Trianguli, or what I just call the Cardie Triangle (hereafter referred to as CT). To complete the assignment, you can use pretty much any DOFF, although traders are obviously preferred. The assignment cannot be failed, insofar as you will always get the Strange Alien Artifact regardless of the mission outcome. There is also no casualty risk as far as I know. For completion, you need to have 3 Shapeshifting Locket items and 3 Jevonite items. These are relatively cheap on the exchange, but if you've been traveling around the CT, you'll have probably picked up a lot from trade assignments.
Now, once any one of your characters has that under their belt, they are capable of finding "Negotiate Delivery of Additional Rare Commodities." I do not believe that the completion of the original assignment correlates in any way to when the repeatable shows up, so you will have to find it again. However, the beauty of this is that if you've found it on one character, you know where and when it will be for all of your characters that have completed the original. All you need to do is fly each character over and queue the assignment before the four hour assignment block rolls over.
Here is a slightly tricky part. The assignment has a three day cooldown, but the cooldown starts from the time you COMPLETE the assignment. Let's say you found the assignment in the 12PM-4PM EST block. You might be around in the 4PM-8PM block to complete it, or you might not be on again until the next day. The cooldown starts when you first collect the assignment rewards on any of your characters. It might help to jot down the time and day you do this, and add a note to run through the CT in three days to pick it up again. The cooldown seems to end on the same time block three days later, regardless of how late in the block you collect. So for example, say you do collect your artifact at 7:59PM the same day. You'll be able to do the assignment again as early as 4PM three days hence. It's possible this is incorrect, but it has been a reliable timing scheme for me so far.
As far as turning a Strange Alien Artifact into a Powered Alien Artifact, you will need a Development Lab Scientist DOFF, or preferably two, for the Infuse Alien Artifact with Rare Particles. There is a casualty risk, so you'd be advised to use uncommon DOFFs or better so you don't risk losing any permanently. There may or may not be another assignment between Negotiate and Infuse, but it seems to have been skipped on some of my characters. As far as materials, you need to have the Strange Alien Artifact in your possession or bank, as well as one of each rare particle trace. The traces are getting somewhat pricey on the exchange, so it may well be that it might be more cost effective to sell the Strange Alien Artifact rather than Infuse it. In any case, like Negotiate, Infuse cannot be failed. Even if you blow up your DOFFs, you'll still get the Powered Alien Artifact.
Currently, Strange Alien Artifacts go for around 800-900k on the exchange, whereas Powered go for 1.4-1.5M. If you can wait a while, the exchange is still semi-bugged wherein an item you list will not show up in the "All" category for several days. Even if your price is not the lowest on the "Data Samples" category, when it reaches "All," as long as you didn't price it outrageously, it may end up being the lowest. There are plenty of people who don't know about this bug, and you can take advantage of that. That of course applies to any other item, but don't go buying things for higher than their fair market value in the hopes of relisting them for a long-term profit, or that may bite you in the butt.
Seems I might have been partially off in regards to the cooldown. I guess it's per character as opposed to per account, as I just noticed the assignment come up for the first in my typical order, but none of the rest. I was thrown off by it appearing for one of my characters so soon after I'd done the original assignment, with it coinciding with all the rest of my characters.
It's a gamble. You could get a worthless Green quality Mk XII console that nobody needs... or you could get a Purple Mk XII Phaser boosting console which could sell for 40m or so.
It's actually quite baffling now. I think the cooldown may actually be something close to real time, in that it's actually 3 days after each character collects rewards, completely disregarding the four hour assignment blocks. I found it on my main who is always the first to do assignments when I log on close to the beginning of the four hour block, but when I was rotating through my alts, none of them had it for at least 20 minutes afterward. I then did some STFs, logged out, then came back in the last 20 minutes of the block and found that they did have it. Luckily every alt was parked in the appropriate sector block so it was a quick matter of just accepting the assignment and swapping to the next character. Don't really want to test how much of a window a character gets for accepting it, as I'm pretty sure if you miss it, it'll roll over to another three day cooldown.
http://www.pcgamer.com/2012/11/09/star-trek-online-season-7-new-romulus-trailer/
Hey guys, looks like Season 7 is being released on Tuesday 13/11. A lot of pretty cool changes are being incorporated:
Hey guys, looks like Season 7 is being released on Tuesday 13/11. A lot of pretty cool changes are being incorporated:
- New 5 and 20-person team missions, including Azure Nebula (rescue Romulan ships from the Tholians), Mine Enemy (defend a colony against mutated Salt Vampires from TOS) and others.
- Part four of the Special Task Force series, seeing players defeat the Borg Queen's Diamond-ship and then herself in ground combat.
- New Romulus "adventure zone" - basically a ground environment more akin to SW:ToR's style. The largest ground zone in STO, you perform missions to help the new Romulan/Reman colony defend itself and expand.
- Better Foundry (UGC) exposure - the best user made missions are now highlighted directly in the interface.
- "Reputation" system - basically uses the same sort of system as Fleet Starbase construction does. It enables players to run projects to gain XP in "Omega Force" (i.e. anti-Borg) and "Romulan" reputations, which in turn offer passive and active boosts and store unlocks for gaining levels.
- Fleet Embassy - the second Fleet Holding alongside the Starbase. Develop an embassy on New Romulus to unlock new equipment, officers and more.
- Tau Dewa Sector Block - filling the gap between Federation, Romulan and Klingon space on the galaxy map, the Tau Dewa Sector Block contains New Romulus, the Azure Nebula and a number of worlds from TNG such as Galorndon Core, Acamar and more. Each contains a short repeatable mission - for instance Acamar expands on the clan politics from the TNG episode that race was featured in.
- A bunch of stuff I've probably forgotten...
One thing that everyone should know though: According to nearly universal reports on the STO forums, the conversion rates for existing STF-related loot is a blatant ripoff, so if you have a large pile of EDCs and/or Borg tech/salvage, trade them for dilithium or whatever before Tuesday rolls around!
Vlodril
Member
Hey all. I just re installed the game and i am a bit lost. I have a 21 level tactical character.
I see they added starfleet academy and duty officers plus a bunch of stuff. i was thinking of maybe starting a new character? or should i push trying to remember what i am doing with the one i have? Any suggestions?
Feel free to contact me in game nayba@vlodril (i see they are still using the weird nickname system).
I see they added starfleet academy and duty officers plus a bunch of stuff. i was thinking of maybe starting a new character? or should i push trying to remember what i am doing with the one i have? Any suggestions?
Feel free to contact me in game nayba@vlodril (i see they are still using the weird nickname system).
I can send you an invite to the GAF fleet if you like? I'd think it's probably a good idea to start a new character - the game will ease you into the new systems!
If you join the fleet we can help you out with lower-level gear, and we've got a few ships you can unlock that will work *moderately* well for max-level.
Let us know if you do and we can send you a Fleet invite. Should make it easier for you to progress if you have access to the low-level gear we've stashed in the Fleet Bank.
Done. Darthwoo's online with a couple of guys who are new to the game so probably a good time to get acquainted with the systems!
DurielBlack
Member
I might come back to this game as F2P for a bit, haven't played since way back. Nice to see its still got some sort of player base.
Well if you do it later today you can play the new Season 7 content. As usual, post your "character@handle" if you want an invite into the GAFleet.
The file should be a lot smaller than that - the patch is 800mb but you will only download about a hundred typically.
And you're right - it does go too slow for my liking...
DurielBlack
Member
So how long of a wait am I going to look forwards to being able to play because of patches? Downloading the torrent from the official website while at work and its about 4gb, I'll transfer it to my desktop at home but my internet is junk, I'm afraid I'll be patching all week. 800mb will probably take 6-8 hours or so.
Getting 786k down speed at work, at home I'll be lucky if I hit 60kps.
If you're getting the latest version from the website, I can't imagine there's much to DL with this patch. You might get 100Mb or so of *actual* download, providing you leave the default "patch on demand" option active.
DurielBlack
Member
After installing the 4gb download at home, it wanted another 1.4gb patch. Then I see the option to disable downloading while playing and have it download all the assets now, so I clicked that. Its an additional 6+gb.
I'll have to download all of it before playing, or my connection will just lag to crap if its also trying to download in the background at the same time. Might be a few more days before I get to play.
I'll have to download all of it before playing, or my connection will just lag to crap if its also trying to download in the background at the same time. Might be a few more days before I get to play.
DurielBlack
Member
Alright, I guess my handle is Sonata Dark@sonatadark. Starting with an Engineering character.
I've sent you an invite! Join up and you can access the Fleet Bank for items that should help you along. Get to T5 and I'll throw in a free ship
a Mirror Universe variant of your choice
What you can do is pay a sub for a month or three, level up all your characters within that time, and you'll have permanent access to most of the perks of a sub even after your sub expires. Those perks include a respec token upon ranking up, extra bank and inventory slots, extra bridge officer and ship slots, and probably some other things I've forgotten. If you don't want to deal with a recurring sub that you'll have to cancel, you can try to find a cheap retail copy of the game and use the included code for a free months of sub time. The extra inventory slots really do help out a lot.
Ok, that's cool. I'm thinking maybe a 3 months sub to start. No way in hell I can level up all my characters in a month. Thanks.
I'll join the gaf fleet once I level my science character a little bit more.
edit: Done, 3 months sub purchased. See you guys on the other side and death to Bajor!!