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Are multiple characters worth the grind?
kyrabid
Member Posts: 13 Arc User
in The Academy
I played PC version years ago before there was much to do but did not get very far. Started the XBox version 2 weeks ago and really loving it. At first I planned to level multiple characters. Now I'm not so sure. So, I have two questions...
1. Do people push multiple characters up to 60+ or stick with maximizing a single character.
2. What is the best way to level a secondary character? My primary is an engineer. I started leveling a scientist and tactician but I really don't like some of the episodes that you have to repeat. I thought that if I can push to 30 I can start grinding deep space incidences but I'm not sure if that will gimp my character equipment wise.
1. Do people push multiple characters up to 60+ or stick with maximizing a single character.
2. What is the best way to level a secondary character? My primary is an engineer. I started leveling a scientist and tactician but I really don't like some of the episodes that you have to repeat. I thought that if I can push to 30 I can start grinding deep space incidences but I'm not sure if that will gimp my character equipment wise.
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1. I generally get toons to 60 and dont bother too much with spec points as each toon does a spec on its own, but others spend lots of time on one toon to get all specs done instead of spreading the load. Second toon can be easier than the first especially since you get the rep token after rep level 5 is reached to double progress on alts making dilithium awards etc a nice bonus to get hold of.
2. Story missions seem to give highest xp but after a while you can always try seperate lines of progression by browsing foundry missions to go your own way to 60.
Still waiting to be able to use forum titles
The fastest way is to speed run missions on double exp weekends. The fist time you play a mission it gives a massive exp boost. Some high carnage missions are particularly good but they come late, like takedown in the delta arc. Ground combat gives far less exp than space. People grind certain space patrols in teams for the command and lifetime exp boosts combined with fast clears.
The easiest is to get an away team of 4 engineers, ideally at least one with self Rez (like the android or nelen exile) and afk overnight on nimbus or similar spots.
Once they get added to the console, be sure to run duty officer missions constantly. After level 11 you can easily hit 50 just by doffing then 60 by doffing+admiralty. You don't even need to play the character.
As for is it worth it... The answer is different to different people. If you see playing the game as "grinding" then probably you will get bored and frustrated. I play for fun. I use different voices and talk out loud as I play making up dialog for my captains and officers. My ferasan' first officer sometimes equips a party popper and always uses a sniper rifle hoping they will get the captain killed in battle thus letting her take command of the ship. And I even rp it out usIng pounce and shout "shiny" every time that boff uses the laser sighted secondary fire mode on her sniper. That is what is fun for me.
I don't do the same thing repeatedly for hours. I don't do dailies. And I don't run the end game queues. Each of my characters is different in style. They all have different ships, different away teams, different powers, different gear. So changing characters is a very different experience. Playing my all melee science Vulcan is quite different from my melee Klingon tactical captain. Both are unlike my ferasan and her pounce+shotgun to the face or my Borg sniper or my romulan science pyromaniac, etc. and that's just ground, the differences continue in space too.
I get to use my low tier c-store ships every day. I get to benefit from my account wide rewards many times. I can refine more dil than I can earn in a day. I have a fleet all to myself and it is making steady progress unlike some small team fleets that get stuck. Nearly every new item or mission reward set is useful to one of my characters. If a big nerf ruins one character, no worries I just play a different one. If a friend needs help with something I can not only help, but I usually have someone who needs to complete the same thing so we can both benefit.
But then I have a friend who only has three characters. His main, one delta recruit for those rewards and one agent for those rewards. His agent and delta are retired. He played the bare minumum to get the rewards unlocked for his main then never again logged into them. He has just as much fun as I do, but in a totally different play style.
He looks at the 9 reputations as a horrid grind he can't imagine doing again. I look at them as "cool, half a million free dil per character times 20+ characters". But then I don't rush to finish either. I complete a daily rep project when I have the marks for it. If I don't, it is no biggie the reward isn't going to go away anytime soon.
He looks at mark 14 gold gear as a massive headache to get again. And he gets frustrated not doing "the best he can". I don't see a need to get it at all since I can and have pulled my weight in elite content with mk 12 purple and blue gear I got for free. The cheepdeeps Reddit and stobuilds have great budget ideas for alts.
So is it worthwhile? Depends how you play and what is fun for you.
I'd suggest creating at least one of each captain type, more for the ground combat differences but the space power differences can be fun too.
I'd suggest creating at least one of each faction type so you can see the different story episodes and fly the different ships.
Ship type does NOT need to match captain type. An engineer can fly escorts, a tac captain can fly science ships. But be warned that KDF and Romulans have no real endgame T6 science ships or carriers, they can only get those future alliance cross-faction ships that don't look Romulan or Klingon (or KDF allies).
Also for Romulans at endgame you can only fly Romulan ships (and lobi, lockbox, event) not the Fed or KDF endgame ships.
Overall its not worth it anymore and the whole purpose of things they have done like training manuals was to reduce the time taken to switch setups or start a new one but instead it actually has made it worse of a problem. Not to mention say a bird of prey is a staple ship to my 20+ KDF. So take the time to hit the mastery on 20+ bops of the same class just to use that mastery that comes with it. It should be account wide done once not needed to do anymore than that. So hopefully they might get a clue and make it where I would want to play again.
All 10 of my captains in my primary account have reached max level. However, I do not go out of my way to level them up as fast as possible. I just play the game doing various things like playing STFs (when they pop), a foundry mission once in a while, replay missions to grab gear, etc. I tend to rotate my characters. I may play 2 or 3 captains tonight, then rotate to the next 2 or 3 captains. Sometimes the only thing I do is queue up some Doff and Admiralty missions on all my captains, then log off.
Early on Doffing is a good way to earn extra XP to level yourself up faster. Of course a double XP weekend (like the one we just had) is definitely the best way to level up quickly and allow you to skip missions you do not like. Assuming the mission can be skipped.
As for weapons and gear... there are some missions that gives you good space / ground gear. But most of the missions at best gives you mediocre gear. But mediocre gear is good enough to at least carry you through the game. I generally do not bother with being too concerned about my gear until I reach level 50. At that point I used to simply to simply purchase most gear from the Exchange. Nowadays I generally craft the gear and then upgrade them. Things like Deflectors, Impulse Engines, Warp Cores and Shields, I generally get from missions in the Cardassian Struggle, Breen Invasion and Dyson Sphere story arcs. The free gear offered by "A Step Between Stars" is generally pretty good.
PC.
Having had "plenty of time" before all the crazy stuffs started happening, I pushed a handful of characters to 60. 2 Fed Scis, Fed Tac, Fed Eng, KDF Tac, KDF Sci, Rom-Fed Sci, Rom-Fed Eng.
Since then, other than 2 of the 3 Delta Recruits I've built - I haven't pushed anyone all the way to 60. Not enough "reason".
TBH, a lot of alts were built because they'd have a Tac-Eng (for survival stuffs), a Tac-Sci (for blasting stuffs with a touch of science), etc. Since BOffs have become a "one size fits all", a "main" character with a fairly "generic" skill build and a bunch of expertise (for BOff trainings) can more-or-less fly any ship in any situation they desire.
Add to that the expense (and time) performing the upgrades, chasered by the "special events only hand items over to participants, not whole accounts" - and anyone who doesn't grind events 30x daily for 14 days probably has settled into a "main" who draws all the playtime, and "alts" for periodic departures from the main...
Unless they're "rich" and can afford to gold-out their alt's build - at which point it returns to "what flavor do I want to fly today?"...
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Personally, I get enough out of that to own 16 characters (you could probably double that if you added in the characters I've ran through the missions to the end and deleted over the last 6 years). Not all at once and only the few I consider my primary characters get run through all the events and have top level gear, but they all get used and have enough differences that there's a point in having them. It's also useful for crafting, farming etc if you bother with such things.
I primarily got the second and third characters because I wanted the account-wide bonuses that each can provide. I figured that I could just create them when the events were open and level them when I felt like it. In this case I felt it was better to be safe than sorry.
I mostly play on my primary character and have unlocked as much stuff as I could with it. The reason why I brought up time and money is because I lack time to play so many characters, so I make up for it by spending money here and there whenever needed. If you feel like this is not something you want to do and prefer to use your own time instead of let's say money, then there is nothing wrong with leveling several characters for that sole reason.
These are things you have to weigh against one another. Personally I find it relieving to know that I only have to run several events once instead of multiple times across several characters. I want to enjoy this game and not burn out myself because I have to repeat the Crystalline, Mirror Universe, Anniversary, Winter and Summer events more than once per day.
Basically like both gavinruneblade and nephitis have expressed, it really all comes down to what ends up being "fun" for you. I left all the over MMOs as I wasn't having fun. Generally I have found so far that after the story ends, MMOs for me, stop being fun. I can't do the same things over and over again, just to get whatever to a higher level to play the same things over again at a higher level. I'm trying to take the approach of gavinruneblade to have something very different with all my characters. I created my account's limit of 5 characters. 3 Federation for each captain type and one Klingon and Romulan, scientist and engineer respectively.
Like nephitis, I don't have lots of time and having too many characters and getting no where with 5 characters would likely drive me crazy. After looking at most of the C-Store bundles, just about every one is buying the same ship 3 times for small variations and looks. I would never play all three in a bundle. I am taking gavinruneblade approach with my three Federation characters and all will be very different with very different ships and crews. Hoping that will help when I get to the point of repeating things over and over plus I can share between the 3 to help build each one up. The other two faction characters are just to play through the stories as I find it interesting as the Klingon one plays the opposite of the Federation with the Drake character so far and the Romulan one is about starting over. Enjoying both. Time to develop each one pass the story? Not likely so they will either sit there for occasional use or be deleted eventually.
So I plan focus on my main, a scientist and like gavinruneblade, my 3 Fed toons all have background stories and so do some of the boffs that I use to support the captains. I have picked out 3 T6 ships to purchase, escort, science vessel and cruiser to play, each to be tailored to the 3 characters' background stories. From there I will see how it goes with the game and the time I have to play it. Will I purchase all 3 T6 ships? Don't know yet. I am taking the advice from the forums and waiting till Zen goes on the sale to get what I need to buy 3 ships, then I have to wait for the ships to go on sale. Buy for my main first and one alt first and see if I can keep enjoying the game. It will be like purchase a game so no big deal to me.