Making EC's

smokebailey

What's the best stuff to sell to make EC? I really wanna know how some of you folks make tens of millions a day.
Because I wanna at least have a chance for a TOS Constitution and/or T'liss.

~slips on her cute librarian glasses and grabs a notepad~

gavinruneblade

Doff selling is a reliable few million a day for me.

Crafting "perfect weapons" is hit or miss, but I get the occasional 40-100m beam to sell.

Crafting mats are worthless just now, buy em and resell during the next upgrade weekend.

Buy things from this lockbox, wait until the next is out and then sell them.

smokebailey

I got ~200 million right now, which took weeks to make....do I get the RD packs and hold on to them or no?

jaguarskx

I normally do not chase after ECs. I basically accumulate them in spurts like selling "failed" upgraded gear on the Exchange or sell Master Keys and Promo R&D Packs.

For example, I sold two of the exact same armors with the same mods that I upgraded to MK XIV, but unfortunately did not go ultra rare. They were mission rewards that I decided to upgrade. Anyway, I know I spend less than 4m EC to upgrade both of them and I sold them for 38m EC in total. That was a nice profit.

As for the promo R&D packs... I would just hold on to them and sell 'em later. Sometime I hold on to them for 3 months or even longer. I am pretty patient. For example, I bought Master Key back in early 2014 when they were selling for 1.6m EC. I sold them in 2015 for around 5m EC.

gavinruneblade

Watch the price of rnd packs. They are still dropping. If you can identify the point where they bottom out, then buy and hold them.

lordsteve1

I find trading manuals is a good place to start, especially the lockbox ones.
Buy low, sell high.
There's quite a fluctuation of prices over the week that you just need to keep an eye on.

Generally playing the exchange is a good way if you have some initial investment cash.

markhawkman

the trick to playing the exchange is the ability to identify trends. this takes a lot of observation.

iconians

Find a market, observe that market for a long period of time until you become confidant you understand how it works. Then you buy low, and you sell high.

You will inevitably lose money, but your short-term losses and gains are irrelevant compared to your long game. I have likely lost more EC than I've ever made, yet I'd still be considered one of the ultra-wealthy because my business strategy has proven successful, and my long-term gains outweighed the losses I've taken.

I'm involved in several markets, and I prefer a generalized strategy for making EC over a broad spectrum, instead of putting all of my eggs in one basket.

However, for someone just starting out, that's not really realistic. I'd still recommend sticking to one market and learning from it.​​

jaguarskx

It takes money to make money... so assuming you do not have much EC, then you should do things to accumulate EC without resorting to playing the Exchange. Playing the Exchange involves the risk of loosing EC and trust me you are going to make some bad decisions because everyone makes bad decisions including those that have experience playing the Exchange. Loosing EC in the Exchange in the short term is okay as long as it does not completely wipe you out.

However, sticking with making EC the "safe" way, I simply recommend you do things like Tour The Galaxy, play "farming" foundry missions, and if your rank is high enough, then play the end game queue missions and sell the R&D boxes you get from them.

Tour The Galaxy rewards up to a max of something like 925k EC every 20 hours assuming your ship is fast enough to race through all the check points. You need something like the Assimilated Subtranswarp Engine from the Borg reputation which allows you to travel at a speed of 68.6 in sector space (approx. Warp 14). I would also recommend that after spending 5 skill points in science abilities you select the science "bonus skill" Sector Space Travel Speed.

http://sto.gamepedia.com/Assimilated_Borg_Technology#Assimilated_Subtranswarp_Engines

I do not have the Assimilated Subtranswarp Engine, but I have selected Sector Space Travel Speed which allows me to travel at about warp 12.34 instead of just warp 9.97. Naturally, with only a warp speed of 12.34 and using slipstream I cannot complete the Tour The Galaxy quest, but at least I can get something like 450m EC from it. However, the mission is 15 minutes long and because it is a "boring" 15 minutes of just flying through sector space for only around 450k EC, I only did that mission for maybe 4 days in a row before I considered it to be a "waste" of my time. Maybe I will decide to get the Borg engine and give it another try. Assuming I do the mission on all of my captains (10 in total) on a daily basis, I can make up to 9.25m EC per day in 2.5 hours... if I do not fall asleep. That excludes "prep time" like traveling to the "appropriate" location to begin the mission. That works out to 6.475m EC per character per week / or 64.75m EC per week in total for 17.5 hours. That works out to 3.7m EC per hour.

There are plenty of "farming" missions in the foundry, I have only done one mission sometime back in 2014 just to check it out. To me they are boring as hell and from what I've read Cryptic change the loot drop system back in 2015 where you can only farm so many items before nothing gets dropped. I think people stated you can earn something like 500k EC per day. The more DPS your ship can do the faster you can earn your EC.

Lastly, there are various end game queue missions that rewards you with R&D material boxes. Sell them on the Exchange. Normal R&D boxes generally sell for around 60k EC to 70k EC on the Exchange. Advanced R&D boxes / Elite R&D boxes (depending on what very rare mat it rewards) can probably be sold for 135k EC / 450k EC.

jcsww

Buy low, sit on it, and sell it higher. It isn't as easy with the less EC you have. The more though, makes things much easier. Kelvin Intel ships were 270 million a couple of weeks ago and no go for 480 million. Buying up a couple of those back then and reselling them when the price is up, makes it easy to make some decent EC. To make 10's of millions daily though... You would have to turn into one of these Exchange trolls that sits there all day buying and selling stuff. If you have the patience for it, then that's great.

gavinruneblade

Jaguar's advice about not stressing if you lose a bit is really good advice. It happens, just roll with it as best you can.

jaguarskx

gavinruneblade wrote: »

Jaguar's advice about not stressing if you lose a bit is really good advice. It happens, just roll with it as best you can.

Yeah, my biggest loss to date is roughly 50m EC.

I purchased a Plasmonic Leech for 60m EC which was a pretty decent price at the time. I relisted it on the Exchange for maybe 75m EC which was the average trending price. A few weeks later, the Infinity Lockbox came out and that caused prices for the Leech to crash down to about 10m EC the last time I've checked.

The captain that purchased the Leech is a Fed-Aligned Rom Sci captain that did not have a Leech and admittedly was doing okay without one. The Leech is still in the box, but I suppose I will simply use since it is not really worth selling it only to get back 10m EC out of the 60m EC I spent on it. Like I stated, it was a decent price at the time I purchased it especially since I can still put it to good use.

gavinruneblade

My biggest loss is... I've never added it up, but it is frighteningly high. I deleted the wrong ship. 3x lobi consoles (tachyokinetic, bioneural and I forget what the third one was), Mark 14 gold consoles and weapons, reputation gear for engine/deflector/shield/core (not upgraded). At least it was KDF side so the leech wasn't another 60m. Horribly, I've done this more than once. the first time was bad, but not nearly as expensive as that was before I was as heavily into upgrading and I didn't have any lobi gear on that one.

I also once opened a few hundred lockboxes and came away with almost nothing (I forget the specifics, I posted about it way back near when it happened, but I think the grand total of everything I got out of all the boxes was worth ~30m). Wait, I hear you thinking, at least you had the lobi... yessss. I *had* the lobi. Until I accidentally bought a bound-to-character-on-pickup dyson destroyer for a character who got one free during the event but hadn't claimed it yet. >.< I think at the time keys were selling at 1.6m each and I think that means I lost half a billion ec on that one. Heh. Oops.

Granted, the deleted ships aren't directly auction house losses. The keys are a market loss since I'd bought them with EC not zen, so I didn't get to resell them at a profit. If I took things like that seriously I'd probably have an ulcer by now. To quote an NPC from another MMO I also play "money comes and goes, it's an ethereal thing".

raulblanco7

If you dont have EC, you have to sit on exchange to buy off everything that is underpriced, even like a contraband, an r&d reward pack, a master key, or anything, its require lot of time to make EC on exchange, when you dont have EC.
Of course you can farm missions, foundry, and other, that is the same time consuming farm like the EX, but at least you can use your beams for that.

Later when you have fund to make investment's, you just need to wait for the next promo, new box, event, to buy as much as possible for low price, wait till price up again, sell all. Like the r&d event was at last weekend, you have bought as many r&d pack as possible for low price, you opened them, and you will sell them when price is up again. I dont exactly know how many pack's i opened, but it was around 3-4.000 pc's.
It needed 2-3 day's now, of course not all day, you check exchange between 2 stf, buy the low priced one's, open, go toward to kill some borg. And it will need a few other day's to post everything to exchange, but that is also like 10 minutes to post all of them per toon, than re-post next day the item's that not sold yet, well, it can be more time, depending how many pack you opened.
Like im still selling the omega sliver's i bought during the event, but that is again a few minutes per day.

My biggest win was a Bulwark sell, bought it for 800 million around end of last year, sold it for 4.35 billion at beginning of this year, the buyer was a collector guy who, its super rare, he was begged to sell him the ship for that offer.
(Of course it was 1 billion in ec, and a lot of other item like ship's, FSM's, plasmonic leach's and more, the value of the whole package worth 4,35 billion at exchange).

My biggest loss was with infinity box, i had a rest from STO when infinity box came out, im not followed the new's, and next time when i logged in, my 30+ ship's worth a bit less compared to the last time i logged off, a solid 4-5 billion ec loss, never counted it exactly, and im not really want to know, but i know it was 5pc Vonph, from 600+ to 230m, wells and orb from 500-500 to 100-100 and the 25+ other cheaper lost value too I just sold all of them.
It happens, i learned i have to check new's even if im not playing daily, and i shouldn't keep my EC in box item's.