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Grinding: EC or Lobi?
ambassadormolari
Member Posts: 709 Arc User
So, lately I've renewed my efforts to try to get one of the Lockbox ships. I have four chars (2 Fed, 1 Rommie and 1 Klingon) all farming dil wherever possible. My question is, which method is faster: using the Dil Exchange to buy keys and unlock Lockboxes to get Lobi, or selling the keys (among other things) to hopefully get up to the 200 million EC mark?
If it helps, I currently have 200+ Lobi for my main, but only 2.5 million-ish EC.
If it helps, I currently have 200+ Lobi for my main, but only 2.5 million-ish EC.
[SIGPIC][/SIGPIC]
Post edited by ambassadormolari on
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Go for the EC if you have to go for something.
Assuming at worst you got 4 lobi per box you open that means you need to open 200 boxes at most. Then again you might get lucky and get 10 or more in each box, significantly lowering your requirements. And you might get some nice goodies in the boxes that can be sold to boost your EC.
You'll need to sell keys for EC so you'll be needing to sell a fair number and that needs zen to buy them. And as a result you need dilithium to get zen using the exchange (unless you use real world money for the zen).
Trouble is that at the moment with the exchange rate going all over the place it really is not a good time to be buy zen with your dilithium. You could get a really poor price one day and miss a better deal the next.
You may want to try a combination of tactics. If you've got 4 toons farming dilithium then you're looking at 32,000 dilithium per day and that'll net you at least one key per day. You can sell that for around 2-3 million EC.
You're looking at around 50-ish days to earn enough EC that way for a high-end lobi/lockbox ship off the exchange. Over the same time you'd earn at a minimum 200 lobi crystals, but you could get lucky and get more.
At the end of the day it's all a gamble, hence the huge prices of these types of ships.
Personally i'd just wait an see what DR brings to the table, maybe slowly grind out a good haul of refined dilithium over the next few weeks. Plus there could be another FE rerun soon and that'll net you a fair bit of lobi.
Wait, 32,000 per day, between all four of them? I mainly rely on them spamming DOFF missions/contraband so I can focus on other things. Realistically, what should I be doing to get more daily Dil? Dilithium mining? STFs?
Hmm, thats a good point.
If you can reach that cap each day on 4 toons then it won't take long really, a couple of months maybe.
To reach this cap is something that has been discussed in depth many times previously, basically work out a checklist of missions that will net you you 8k in the shortest time and repeat daily per toon.
My personal favourite is:
Borg STFs x3 nets you 1000 per run after you include converting marks. Then you get 3 Bnp's that will net you another 1000.
Starfleet academy exam nets you 500.
Satellite repair daily mission nets you 1440.
Derfi mission dailies will net you another 1440.
Then just a couple of other STFs or a run in the Voth battle zone to finish off.
If you really want to earn dilithium then wait for the next dil weekend and go mining once per day per toon with a rich claim and you'll be rolling in the stuff. Last time it was netting me my daily cap in about 2 minutes work.
I had 15 toons that did the Crytalline Event enough to get the full Dilithium payout. Then hoarded it on the Exchange until it fell to around 163:1 this last weekend. Sold it all (about 950K Dilithium) and bought the discounted R&D 4-pack at 800 Zen each. Then sold all of them for 7.95M EC each on the Exchange. Made over 250M EC. That's enough for 1-2 ships, depending on what you want.
Even w/o the discount, the R&D packs even at 5M each is a better tradeoff than Master Keys. (1125Zen = 10 Master Keys @ 2M/ea = 20M EC; 1000Zen = 4 R&D Packs @ 5M/ea = 20M EC)
D'kora and Wells are at 2Million EC each, but a Recluse and Narcine are 100Mil or less each.
Fif...FIFTEEN toons? :eek: Sometimes its a challenge just dealing with four...
@lordsteve1: That makes a lot of sense, though my current schedule kind of limits my daily grinding. I think I might be able to manage a Deferi Run/satellite repair/STF per character each day (plus my KDF guy DOFFING for contraband), but thats it. Though I already guessed that getting the requisite amount of EC would take a while...
Can't be that bad. I have well over 1,000 Lobi, and no idea what to do with it other than look at it and say, wow, I've got over 1,000 Lobi.
Wow. How long did that take you?
That's going give a 800 lobi ship a price of 400 million or 4 times then cost of EC.
Of course yes, you do other items with boxes and will at times get more than just for lobis but there is no saying what those items will be.
You could even get a top ship, sell it for 100 million and stil have wasted money paying 300 million in lobi, that's how terrible it is.
The main thing that totally kills it for me is it's a character unlock, so I'd simply rather not reward them for doing that and try to stay away from anything that is not c-store /account wide or straight up free items, winter event episode ships or summer give away.
My main is a Fed Tac
My main KDF is a Engi
For the event, I did CCE on my main and CC on my alts each day.
I also did the minimum STFs I needed for Marks to upgrade Rep Tiers for my main. (Was working 8472 CC)
As of tomorrow, only 1 alt will be ready to go T5 in all reps and I am planning on working others to that end. But I am doing it and saving the T5 upgrade for every alt's Reps until the next Dil Wkend to rake in again.
My toons are 6 Fed (2 of each class, each class has 1 traited for Ground and 1 for Space), 3 KDF (1 per class) and 6 RRF (1 per class, per affiliation)
And I created and levelled 12 of the alts to 50 during last year's XP "Q Event"
And no two toons are the same species. :P
What you do is... copy your toon 10 times to Tribble and then buy every lobi ship, console set and etc. there to test drive them. I did that and found most to be 'meh'.
the average key is going about 1.7M a pop a key is 18825 Dil, assuming 162 D per zen. that's 50-60 keys if you sell them
I think someone said 4 but there are several threads that say 5.7 average that's 140 boxes. or 140 keys
if you do it purely by Zen/dil you are looking at over a MIL D. of course in the course of getting all that dil you are going to get extra EC not only from the grind. let's say conservatively, 10M ec