So over the past week-plus, I’ve been playing with the whole Invention thang. I’ve hung out at Wentworths, I’ve juggled salvage and recipes and so forth. I’ve done it at with my 49 and with my 15 and in-between.
Some conclusions:
- If it’s not the sort of thing you care for, then, Costume Bits aside, you can pretty much ignore it. Skip all the crafting and just sell the recipes and salvage to your contacts. Think of it as quick money. Are you getting the faboo prices you might otherwise? No (though simple recipes tend to sell for higher prices at contacts than on the market), but you can at least get some “free money” and use it to buy DOs and SOs early.
- If you’re interested in gaming the system a bit more, you can also just play in Wentworths selling stuff. Only non-Invention recipes seem to be worthwhile, and rare salvage. Everything else is easier (and often more profitable) to sell at contacts. That said, you can easily score some Very Big Bucks very quickly, albeit with a bit of thumbing through the auction history. (It’s best in this sitch to end and begin your sessions in Wentworths so you can put the swag up for bid and then see if any sold when you come back on).
- Part of the savings, though, are an offset for the changes of your not getting any DOs or TOs “after your time.” That’s actually a nice convenience, but it does (for those who compulsively try to sell everything they get their mitts on) mean a few less bucks in the influence bin.
- Note that Inventions (outside of Sets) are basically TOs and DOs and SOs that never age. That means that, effectively, they’re good for about 10-15 levels, which is nothing to sneeze at. You will, eventually, want to trade up to the next “drop” style enhancement.
- If you decide go whole hog and buy sets and all that kinda stuff — well, you can. If you play the market, you can actually earn enough shekels over time to get the stuff you want — even, I suppose, costume stuff, eventually. Having now played with it, I find all the dueling IO stuff (“do I go with this Set or that Set on this power”) to be a Character Customization Too Far, but different strokes an all that.
- Note that, at some point, ED does kick in. Getting a Lvl 50 Damage IO when you already have three Lvl 50 Damage SOs on a power really doesn’t buy you much.
- Note that the Sets you get are visible in your Personal Info window. In case you’re afraid that the name is not properly evocative of your character’s origin or MO.
- An oddity of the new system is that the Devs are providing more (gasp!) numbers. As in precise percentages. We’d had that previously on the boards, but we can now see exactly what different TOs, DOs, SOs, and IOs are doing as percentage boosts.
- While I’ve bitched long and hard over the whole IO process and how it plays out in RP terms, it’s not that much different (aside from the labor involved) than the silliness that is the Enhancement system itself. I mean — when’s the last time your favorite science-based hero (let’s say, Spider-Man) went and got himself a Boron Injection so he could hit harder?
Possible improvements (aside from stuff I’ve already bitched about):
- Tracking salvage is, at this point, way too freaking difficult. Either personal salvage display needs to also indicate what one has in the Vault and/or in Consignment, or something needs to be able to call that up. Trying to remember (without running around all over the place) whether I have a Rosicrucian Thingummie is a serious pain. Better yet, screw the whole encumbrance routine and just give folks an unlimited salvage and recipe capability (and enhancements, too, whilst at it) — I mean, what real-life thing is all that supposed to realistically represent?
- The artificial separation of Vault, Consignment Houses, and Universities (and the dearth of them being all in one place except, in CoH, in Steel Canyon) is another serious pain. Really. Even in Steel I end up doing excessive flitting about. I want workbenches in Wentworths, vault access at the school, etc.
- I want an overall integrated screen system, not unlike (though with more detail) the Manage window for powers. I want to see recipes, salvage, and all that spiffy inventory windows that aren’t part of the craptacular window UI of CoX, where the scroll buttons are difficult to grab and paging up/down is a PitA.
I still think this was all an unnecessary complication and a huge, massive time sink for the dev team that could have gone into developing more zones, more ATs, more power sets, rather than catering to a minority population within the game (cf. PvP). Since it’s there, there’s no point in not making some use of it, at least to earn money, but I remain irked by what might have been rather than this.
I’ll note, in the context of “selling for money,” that all sorts of invention salvage drops at early levels, when it can’t really be used easily. By selling it at the store for between 100 and 1000 a pop, I’ve discovered my lowbies are perfectly self-sustaining, money-wise, and can buy all the latest and greatest TOs to their hearts’ content.
I’ve been playing with this a bit over the weekend too and have basically decided three things since my rant last week:
Influence – As Dave says, making the effort to sell things with low level toons certainly helps them become self sufficient in terms of purchasing enhancements.
Invention Sets – If I focus on any of this in any real way, I think it’ll be on trying to figure out a nice set for my low level MM. Maybe starting from the beginning will help and the bonuses may help overcome some of the weaknesses of the character.
Costume Parts – I can’t really be bothered fighting or saving up for these things. Hopefully the prices will fall and the availability will rise over time, but for now I’m out of that game.
So, I’m basically feeling a little less hostile towards the whole thing for now.
Like Dave though, I hate thinking about all the cool new things we could have had instead, including new zones, new powers, new archetypes, epics on villains, mastermind style heroes etc.
Let’s hope Issue 10 brings something more interesting and immediately accessible for the (these days) casual gamer.
Well supposedly it’s a heavy content ish (return of the Fifth Column?), which would be nice.
Did a bit more playing with low-level toons, and it’s definitely a great way to Earn Big Bucks. Having a 6th level character with 20K in the bank is kinda nice.
Given how irksome dealing with Sets is, and how minimal the improvements of top-tier IOs in three-slotted SO powers, I’m expecting that Torchy is quickly going to turn to just selling all her stuff and saving up for some nice dragon wings. It’s actually not out of reach, over time.
If you put IOs and ED together you have ED2. You need to get out of the 3 SO mindset. I think the IOs will be most useful in powers that you want to do more than the slots allow. Every toon have powers that could use a 7th or 8th enhancement slot. IOs and Sets will let you make that happen. Drop down to 2 Accuracy and 2 Damage IO. Now you have 2 slots for secondary affects or recharge.
This will make it possible for more character to run affectively without stamina. It makes adding endurance reduction enhancement an easier choice. You’ll note that almost all of the sets have endurance reduction as part of the package.
Heres a trick I picked up over the weekend. If you dont give a hooey about Inventions or salvage, just go to Wentworths and sell EVERYTHING for 100 bucks. 95% of the time your item will sell immediately and for a bajillion times more than that. Thats the beauty of Minimum bids. Less work for you, more inf in yer pocket, and the sucker gets what he wants anyway. I made a DM /Regen Scrapper (Soulstrike!! What a cool name not taken!!) on Freedom, and he went from 0 to 500 K in influence JUST selling common salvage.
That whole minimum bid thing is weird.
If you want stuff even simpler (or more convenient), you can just sell it at a contact. In some cases you’ll get less, for more common stuff you’ll get more, and you won’t be stuck going to Wentworths. And I’ll be curious to see how well this strategy works over the long haul. If everyone’s selling for 100, then one would expect the prices to come down over time.
But that said — I need to give that a try. After all, there’s a convenient WW right there in Atlas.
Sorry, Margie, I missed your comments in there:
Two ACC IO will give you 80ish percent boost (vs 66% with two ACC SO). So if you’re okay with that, vs. 99%, then it makes sense. It depends on whether you’re hitting your Damage cap or your effective Accuracy cap. (I’ve never been any good at calculating the caps.)
(Most of the Sets seem to do around 25% of each of the 2-3 things an IO does. So a Set of 4 would give you 75% of stuff that was on three of them; I don’t know that any of the sets have four with the same attribute on it.)
True, though again that’s giving you 25% per one that has it (vs 33% per SO). I think it may make it easier to go without Stamina (though, of course, at Lvl 30 the synergies are lower).
I dunno. Food for thought.
Ok, Its been a good 2 months (?) into the Invention System, And I have to say that for the most part, its painless.
You really don’t have to participate if you don’t want to (as you can sell everything at a store) and if you do decide to get your hands down and dirty, the benefits are tremendous.
Case in point, My main alt, Atomic Saint :
With all the slotting Ive done with him, (and just Casually mind you, I pull him out whenever my SG has a TF or trial run) I managed to increase the following for him:
Accuracy : net +17 %
Heal : Net +5 %
Regeneration net +5%
Net recharge time +10
Various resistances (psi, dark, energy, aoe, ranged ) All between 5-7 %
Its also been a tremendous boon to his epics (I chose the psi pool) as the “cheapy ” slow and hold IO’s are HUGE in their beneifits to mez and sleep.
And this has been done without going overboard, farming, or generally out of my mind. Now granted, I’ve gotten and sold 2 pairs of bone wings (!!!) for all the moola that those bring, so I had more money than Tony Stark for a period of time. But all in all, Im very pleased with the way that Saint can solo at this point. Endurance for a Rad defender is always at a premium, but Ill tells ya, I hardly see my blue bar move any more, Unless I use My EMP or atomic blast.
I’d be inclined to agree with you. I have characters I screw around with the stuff a bit (still a big time sink), but others I just sell everything I get.
I still find it an added complication, but, as you say, you can pretty much ignore it. And with a little time of putting things up for bid, you can get a lot of money pretty quickly, even as a low-level.