Okay, here's a little track for KDF contra farmers; takes about 3-4mins
1. Starting at the Security officer on First City;
-Turn in Contraband (x5) - 2000 dil
-Check Doff Tab "Personal" for "Confiscate Contraband from Crew" - engage assignment
-Pick up "Establish a colony" assignment (under "Current Map" Tab) (x5 Colonist needed) = 500 dil
-Beam up to ship
Time:20-30 secs
2. System space Qu'Nos;
-Check top tab "Current Map" for the "Pick up colonists (x5)" assignment --- You'll need this for step 1 colony project
-Check Department Heads doff Tab -> First Officer Assignments= Marauding
Pick up any "Scavenge" assignments (avoid Scavenge minefield as I don't think it rewards Contraband).
Time: 20-30 secs
3. Warp out to Sector space
-Check Marauding Tab once again for any missions (see bottom of this post for possible assignments you can find that reward Contra)
Time: 10-20 secs
4. Start flying towards Drozana Station - stopping at Ha'Mat system (no need to enter-just get the "enter system" dialog box to pop up);
-Check Marauding tab for any of the assignments listed at the bottom of this post. Pick up whatever assignments are available.
-continue on towards Drozana
Time: 20-30 secs
5. Stop at Genalda System (no need to enter it - once again just get the dialog box to pop up)
-Check Marauding tab for any assignments (see bottom of this post for possible assignments)
Time: 20-30 secs
6. Continue moving towards Drozana, and stop when the "Enter system" Dialog box pops up again.
-Check Marauding tab once again and pick up any assignments you find there.
Time: 20-30 secs
7. Refine Dil, and switch characters.
Time: 5secs
(The following day work backwards through step 6 to 1 and vice versa on day 3, ect ect)
Assignment list that rewards Contra; (Copied from Wiki)
There's several others that can be found that are not listed here, but they're just variations in name on the ones listed above.
You'll know them when you see them after a while.
There's also a bunch of assignments that can reward Contra on Critical Success but I did not list them for obvious reason. As you want to take as many assignments as you can that guarantee Contra. And not fill your doff list with ones that only have a chance at it.
Contra forever.
Last night, I was able to get between 10-15 Contra assignments per KDF character with this track.
FED Characters;
I just do the "turn in Contra" at the security officer and look for "Confiscate from Crew" assignment.
Refine Dil
Switch character
Time: 10-15secs
(run admiralty on your main if you feel up to it or have the time - add 5mins per character)
---
Enjoy the never ending supply of Contra.
Sell any excess you get on the exchange for EC's
Keep at least 100 contra on each character just in case you get lazy and don't feel up to doing the track for a few days or weeks. (Me)
@taylor1701d THANK YOU. This is exactly the guidance I was needing. I'll give it a shot tomorrow morning!
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
I decided to cut costs and stop paying my mortgage, utilities, and car insurance. Sold my beat up old car and bought me a LTS. Thing wouldn’t run anyway. And I got fired for playing at work six months ago so I didn’t really need it. Upside: That’s 500 zen a month.
I’m homeless now, but I was able to buy the temporal 3 pack, which was totally worth it. Now I’m eyeing the MW ships.
I spend most of my time playing at library, so the weather isn’t really an issue for me. Some days I get a crit at the soup kitchen and get a double serving of protein, meaning I don’t need to scavenge for my evening meal to max out on the daily calorie limit of 1600. Playing video games is really sedentary so that saves me looking for food too.
Usually, I setup my box and sign outside the library. People who frequent libraries are usually more socially conscious and will reward players 5 or 10 dollars at a time. There was another guy, a KDF player who tried muscling in on my territory so we PVPed for the spot and I won. Lucky me!
Once I’ve got 10 dollars I have to walk to the bank and make the deposit. That can take up to 45 minutes both ways. Once I’m back at the library I take the money I’ve earned and buy as much zen as I can. I can bring in anywhere from 1000 to 5000 zen a week if I don’t get arrested.
These other guys spend all their time and money on drugs and alcohol, which makes them total deviants in my book. I try to talk to them, telling them how I went from nothing to Fleet Admiral with just a little hard work and ingenuity, but they never want to hear it. They’re total addicts but can’t admit it to themselves.
Not me. I’ve travelled to dozens of alien planets. I fly ships that would make Bill Gates and Warren Buffet weep. And I wouldn’t change a thing.
I know a faster methode. Responding to your phrase "I look forward to any comments or concerns"
1. Ask your neighbor (or some one else) if you can wash their car for 10$.
2. You complete task 1 in one hour.
3. You now can exchange that for 1000 ZEN.
Which is 13.3 times more ZEN earned and free to spend in 1 hour then your methode takes in 1 month.
Additional remarks: washing cars can be exchanged for any other job. If you repeat this daily you have approx 30000 ZEN each month to spend or 400x more then the 75 ZEN you can spend when using your methode. Even if you do a 1$ job e.g. sell a kiss for one dollar or, sing a song for 1$, or even win a bet with some one for 1$ every day, you will end op with 40x more ZEN te spend each month :-))
This. The OP doesn't understand opportunity cost. I don't mean that as a slam. It's a hard concept the first time around. As a kid I intuitively got it (I was in my mid teens before my parents thought maybe my allowance should be more than five dollars a month, which back then was two to four hours minimum USA wage) but never had the words for it until I worked my way through college.
If you put the time in per the OP, you are walking away from thousands of RL dollars to make your QOL better and leave something behind for your kids or your relatives' kids.
And that is a bad use of your life. Cryptic doesn't demand anyone do this. But addiction and fear of walking out the door can and does.
> @repetitiveepic said: > nccmark wrote: » > > It always amazes how hard people will work to stay poor and earn free "stuff". > If you worked his hard at actually getting money.... > > > > > This kind of ignorance I can never wrap my head around. > > It takes about 20 minutes a day to get 100k refined dil. What is the point of a video game if you pay real money to get stuff in it?
Ignorance? Your words are foolish.
It takes a lot longer than 20 min to earn 100k zen. Stop lying. And the value after all that time? This is the equivalent of rummaging for nickel deposit cans and making 30 cents an hour.
Okay, wow. I hope no one was offended with what I said. Mainly, I found the math interesting. I want to thank everyone for their comments. I am personally grinning from ear to ear. I don't have a ton of income that I can put into my games, and I do a lot of volunteer work, so I don't have a ton of time to spare for the "$10 wash the neighbor's car" routine. These are superb ideas you've given me, and I can't wait to use them in game.
I'm not offended at all. I do a tiny bit of grinding now and then when I feel like it, since getting that 30,000 dil from admiralty or a reputation is fun. But to me maxing out dil income by spending an extra hour a day grinding in the game day in day out is not fun, it's work. And real-life work pays me much more than I could ever possibly grind.
> @repetitiveepic said:
> nccmark wrote: »
>
> It always amazes how hard people will work to stay poor and earn free "stuff".
> If you worked his hard at actually getting money....
>
>
>
>
> This kind of ignorance I can never wrap my head around.
>
> It takes about 20 minutes a day to get 100k refined dil. What is the point of a video game if you pay real money to get stuff in it?
Ignorance? Your words are foolish.
It takes a lot longer than 20 min to earn 100k zen. Stop lying.
And the value after all that time? This is the equivalent of rummaging for nickel deposit cans and making 30 cents an hour.
100k zen? what on earth are you talking about?
Anyway if you really don't know that you can get 100k dil in about 20-25 minutes doing contraband, aren't you by definition ignorant? Since you don't know?
while 100k might be possible, you need many chars on your account who can refine the limit of 8k each day (it is a little more as a subscriber)
contraband gets you 2k per char, and you can do it only once a day. It would already take you longer than 20 minutes to even log though all those chars only to klick the doff assignment. and you'd still only get 2k refined dilithium per char per day . So the contraband thing requires you to have somewhere around 40 chars to make it work as you described it. My estimate would be that you need to log in for 3-4 minutes to get contraband and do the doff mission at the very least that multiplied by 40. So you are more in the range of 2-3 hours to get 100k refined dilithium.
It would be simpler to get rich dilithium claims and do them each day to be able to get 100k dilithium in 20 minutes. And even that takes longer than 20 minutes.
So 100k refined dilithium is a work of hours (especially if you use only contraband), not minutes. Hours you could be earning a multitude of what you do ingame in any job because 100k dilithium is still just about 350 ZEN. Less than 4 dollars an hour, assuming it took you only 1h, which can't be the case because of game mechanics and other limitations. In other words, you are "working" for around 2 dollars an hour to get "cheap" ZEN with contraband.
You could literally get 3 times that amount of ZEN (at least) if you did the same amount of time in overtime at work and took the overtime money and bought ZEN every day with it.
> @repetitiveepic said:
> nccmark wrote: »
>
> It always amazes how hard people will work to stay poor and earn free "stuff".
> If you worked his hard at actually getting money....
>
>
>
>
> This kind of ignorance I can never wrap my head around.
>
> It takes about 20 minutes a day to get 100k refined dil. What is the point of a video game if you pay real money to get stuff in it?
Ignorance? Your words are foolish.
It takes a lot longer than 20 min to earn 100k zen. Stop lying.
And the value after all that time? This is the equivalent of rummaging for nickel deposit cans and making 30 cents an hour.
100k zen? what on earth are you talking about?
Anyway if you really don't know that you can get 100k dil in about 20-25 minutes doing contraband, aren't you by definition ignorant? Since you don't know?
while 100k might be possible, you need many chars on your account who can refine the limit of 8k each day (it is a little more as a subscriber)
contraband gets you 2k per char, and you can do it only once a day. It would already take you longer than 20 minutes to even log though all those chars only to klick the doff assignment. and you'd still only get 2k refined dilithium per char per day . So the contraband thing requires you to have somewhere around 40 chars to make it work as you described it. My estimate would be that you need to log in for 3-4 minutes to get contraband and do the doff mission at the very least that multiplied by 40. So you are more in the range of 2-3 hours to get 100k refined dilithium.
It would be simpler to get rich dilithium claims and do them each day to be able to get 100k dilithium in 20 minutes. And even that takes longer than 20 minutes.
So 100k refined dilithium is a work of hours (especially if you use only contraband), not minutes. Hours you could be earning a multitude of what you do ingame in any job because 100k dilithium is still just about 350 ZEN. Less than 4 dollars an hour, assuming it took you only 1h, which can't be the case because of game mechanics and other limitations. In other words, you are "working" for around 2 dollars an hour to get "cheap" ZEN with contraband.
You could literally get 3 times that amount of ZEN (at least) if you did the same amount of time in overtime at work and took the overtime money and bought ZEN every day with it.
Ignorant! you don't know what you're talking about.
it takes 20/25 minutes to switch through 50 toons and do the contraband doff mission.
Let's see, I have a 70MB internet connection, and a decently fast computer. 25 minutes comes out to 1500 seconds. On average (tested with a stop watch, not guess work) it requires 22-25 seconds to switch toons. That is from the time you click options, change character, select the new character and the new character loads so you can interact with it. Using the low end of 22 seconds, that is a total of 1100 seconds spent just switching toons. Dividing the remaining 400 seconds between the 50 toons means that each toon has 8 seconds to turn in the previous missions, then que up both the confiscate and turn in contraband missions.
It's doable......
Edited for missing numbers and letters......translation, edited because I type about as well as politicians tell the truth.
> @repetitiveepic said:
> nccmark wrote: »
>
> It always amazes how hard people will work to stay poor and earn free "stuff".
> If you worked his hard at actually getting money....
>
>
>
>
> This kind of ignorance I can never wrap my head around.
>
> It takes about 20 minutes a day to get 100k refined dil. What is the point of a video game if you pay real money to get stuff in it?
Ignorance? Your words are foolish.
It takes a lot longer than 20 min to earn 100k zen. Stop lying.
And the value after all that time? This is the equivalent of rummaging for nickel deposit cans and making 30 cents an hour.
100k zen? what on earth are you talking about?
Anyway if you really don't know that you can get 100k dil in about 20-25 minutes doing contraband, aren't you by definition ignorant? Since you don't know?
while 100k might be possible, you need many chars on your account who can refine the limit of 8k each day (it is a little more as a subscriber)
contraband gets you 2k per char, and you can do it only once a day. It would already take you longer than 20 minutes to even log though all those chars only to klick the doff assignment. and you'd still only get 2k refined dilithium per char per day . So the contraband thing requires you to have somewhere around 40 chars to make it work as you described it. My estimate would be that you need to log in for 3-4 minutes to get contraband and do the doff mission at the very least that multiplied by 40. So you are more in the range of 2-3 hours to get 100k refined dilithium.
It would be simpler to get rich dilithium claims and do them each day to be able to get 100k dilithium in 20 minutes. And even that takes longer than 20 minutes.
So 100k refined dilithium is a work of hours (especially if you use only contraband), not minutes. Hours you could be earning a multitude of what you do ingame in any job because 100k dilithium is still just about 350 ZEN. Less than 4 dollars an hour, assuming it took you only 1h, which can't be the case because of game mechanics and other limitations. In other words, you are "working" for around 2 dollars an hour to get "cheap" ZEN with contraband.
You could literally get 3 times that amount of ZEN (at least) if you did the same amount of time in overtime at work and took the overtime money and bought ZEN every day with it.
Ignorant! you don't know what you're talking about.
it takes 20/25 minutes to switch through 50 toons and do the contraband doff mission.
The more you know!
All bickering aside, if this is true, I would love to "know more". Seriously, because I'm interested in learning the contraband system. I have 12 characters. @taylor1701d gave me some great tips earlier in the thread; is there anything you could add to help me out?
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
Let's see, I have a 70MB internet connection, and a decently fast computer. 25 minutes comes out to 1500 seconds. On average (tested with a stop watch, not guess work) it requires 22-25 seconds to switch toons. That is from the time you click options, change character, select the new character and the new character loads so you can interact with it. Using the low end of 22 secons, that is a total of 110 seconds spent just switching toons. Dividing the remaining 400 seconds between the 50 toons means that each toon has 8 seconds to que up the contraband mission.
It's doable......
the point however is, that even if you made this process 3 times more efficent, you'd still be able to get 2 times more dilithium if you worked for 25 minutes on your regular job. It is idiotic to spend time doing something in the game as efficently as possible, when there is an obvious and significantly more efficent way to get the same result in the same timeframe. It really requires a certain kind of stupid to boast about achieving something by repeating a process over and over in a game,
Let's see, I have a 70MB internet connection, and a decently fast computer. 25 minutes comes out to 1500 seconds. On average (tested with a stop watch, not guess work) it requires 22-25 seconds to switch toons. That is from the time you click options, change character, select the new character and the new character loads so you can interact with it. Using the low end of 22 seconds, that is a total of 1100 seconds spent just switching toons. Dividing the remaining 400 seconds between the 50 toons means that each toon has 8 seconds to turn in the previous missions, then que up both the confiscate and turn in contraband missions.
It's doable......
Edited for missing numbers and letters......translation, edited because I type about as well as politicians tell the truth.
That sounds about right.
You hit the doffing screen hot key, collect the mission, press F to open the dialogue with the contraband NPC, click the contraband mission, click the start button, start hitting escape and move on to the next.
Its pretty mind numbing but its very time efficient, and after like 25 minutes you've got your dil and can do whatever you want.
I hardly ever do it anymore since what would I even use the dil for, and once you've got 50 toons made and know you can get dil whenever you want, the need seems less urgent i guess.
It's weird to the see the pernicious problem of deliberate ignorance in the microcosm of sto. You wonder how people go through their lives never wearing seatbelts or refusing to take medicine or eat MSG or something, and then you see someone like Baudl and its like "oh its like that I guess."
you still haven't figured out, that you are doing it for pennies...be efficent as you like in STO, those 25 minutes are still a waste of time considering you can make 4 times that money in real life. If you are that desperate for dilithium or Zen, that method is still idiotic if you look at the big picture.
But hey, if you enjoy doing what bots do in your free time you might have the mindset and desperation for a chinese bot farm worker.
I just didn't assume there are people that insane to do this kind of work for pennies and call it efficent.
easier take 15 miuntes to run admirality on 10 toons. Gather Dilth sell on excahnge get new ship in as little as two weeks. So easy it's scary no need to do any of what the OP does.
Let's see, I have a 70MB internet connection, and a decently fast computer. 25 minutes comes out to 1500 seconds. On average (tested with a stop watch, not guess work) it requires 22-25 seconds to switch toons. That is from the time you click options, change character, select the new character and the new character loads so you can interact with it. Using the low end of 22 secons, that is a total of 110 seconds spent just switching toons. Dividing the remaining 400 seconds between the 50 toons means that each toon has 8 seconds to que up the contraband mission.
It's doable......
the point however is, that even if you made this process 3 times more efficent, you'd still be able to get 2 times more dilithium if you worked for 25 minutes on your regular job. It is idiotic to spend time doing something in the game as efficently as possible, when there is an obvious and significantly more efficent way to get the same result in the same timeframe. It really requires a certain kind of stupid to boast about achieving something by repeating a process over and over in a game,
Let's see, I have a 70MB internet connection, and a decently fast computer. 25 minutes comes out to 1500 seconds. On average (tested with a stop watch, not guess work) it requires 22-25 seconds to switch toons. That is from the time you click options, change character, select the new character and the new character loads so you can interact with it. Using the low end of 22 seconds, that is a total of 1100 seconds spent just switching toons. Dividing the remaining 400 seconds between the 50 toons means that each toon has 8 seconds to turn in the previous missions, then que up both the confiscate and turn in contraband missions.
It's doable......
Edited for missing numbers and letters......translation, edited because I type about as well as politicians tell the truth.
That sounds about right.
You hit the doffing screen hot key, collect the mission, press F to open the dialogue with the contraband NPC, click the contraband mission, click the start button, start hitting escape and move on to the next.
Its pretty mind numbing but its very time efficient, and after like 25 minutes you've got your dil and can do whatever you want.
I hardly ever do it anymore since what would I even use the dil for, and once you've got 50 toons made and know you can get dil whenever you want, the need seems less urgent i guess.
It's weird to the see the pernicious problem of deliberate ignorance in the microcosm of sto. You wonder how people go through their lives never wearing seatbelts or refusing to take medicine or eat MSG or something, and then you see someone like Baudl and its like "oh its like that I guess."
you still haven't figured out, that you are doing it for pennies...be efficent as you like in STO, those 25 minutes are still a waste of time considering you can make 4 times that money in real life. If you are that desperate for dilithium or Zen, that method is still idiotic if you look at the big picture.
But hey, if you enjoy doing what bots do in your free time you might have the mindset and desperation for a chinese bot farm worker.
I just didn't assume there are people that insane to do this kind of work for pennies and call it efficent.
Why would you do labor in reality to pay money to get items in a video game? Items you don't even own?
It doesn't make any sense. I cannot wrap my head around it.
srsly? you are aware that the resource for both is time, not money. You are "buying" those ingame items with time, only that using that time getting dilithium ingame is a 2 dollar an hour job or less.
It would be different if the ONLY way to get an item ingame was with time playing the game, but dilithium and ZEN are explicitly not of that type.
srsly? you are aware that the resource for both is time, not money. You are "buying" those ingame items with time, only that using that time getting dilithium ingame is a 2 dollar an hour job or less.
It would be different if the ONLY way to get an item ingame was with time playing the game, but dilithium and ZEN are explicitly not of that type.
If 2 dollars is 200 zen and zen is @289 dil per zen, you're talking about making less than 60k dils/hr. Terribly low-paying grind, there.
Since this is video games and like a half hour of your time we are talking about, the only opportunity cost is that you could be doing something you enjoy more instead. But some people get a lot of enjoyment out of figuring out game systems.
I don't think we are talking about people enjoying the stuff they are doing. So if somebody enjoys admiralty/cycling through contraband toons/whatever, that's fine and dandy and all power to them. I know people who in real life enjoy finding sales, special offers and suchlike so they can save money - only the money they save is little compared to the time they spend finding those offers (and they don't have to). But they are having a blast whenever they find something, so the calculation will be different.
What I understood this thread to be about is: how to make zen effectively (via dilithium in game) to get to the fun part of the game quicker. And then the "mowing your neighbor's lawn" really kicks in.
I do understand your stance on wanting to gather stuff in game items via in game methods. Although they still require other players to use external money, but that needn't be your concern. But when you say you cannot wrap your head around it, it suddenly somehow becomes your concern, because your method rests on stuff you don't get. But in the end it's a matter of personal preference - I cannot get my head around how some people listen to Nicki Minaj, yet there she is, selling her music quite successfully.
As for me, when all bills are paid at the end of the month, there is still enough money left. And while I know the feeling of having worked for something and then getting it, or achieving a threshold, and revel in it, this is not what I come to this game for. Sure, I'll grind, when I feel like it, or when I get the feeling I am falling behind on some curve. But I get my "success kicks" elsewhere enough so that I can decide to go here do what I want: pewpew stuff, see my toons develop, and so on.
Your mileage may vary, of course, and apparently it does. But the concept as such shouldn't be too difficult to get.
My mother was an epohh and my father smelled of tulaberries
I don't do the Dilithium grind, or the rep grind, or any other grin for that matter. I play the game for fun, an grinding isn't fun. I've got lvl 60 DR toons that still haven't completed more than a few reps, and some level 60 AoY toons that have yet to play Nimbus. I might be one of the rare few but there is nothing in this game I need badly enough to quit having fun and start grinding instead. If I have some extra money, I might buy me some zen, if I ain't got extra money, I don't. That new shiny will still be there when I do eventually have enough, if there's not something even better by then. And now it's "ranting" time
I see a lot of, to me, laughable suggestions popping up. Offer to wash your neighbors car/mow their lawn etc ? Has anyone over the age of 12 actually tried this ? Some people will pay a young kid just to reward them for their ambition. Most people will just tell an adult to go away and don't come back bothering them anymore.
Work a few hours overtime ? I'm 57 years old and the jobs I have seen where you can work a few hours overtime any time you feel like it are almost as rare as uber ship drops from lockboxes. Overtime is usually either forbidden other than extremely rare "emergencies" (most places), mandatory for all (a large number of other places, mostly manufacturing) or rare but voluntary. The overtime is done by the salaried employees, who don't get paid any more for the extra hours worked (been there, done that).
Get a part time job ? Sure, knock another 3-4 hours a day off of your already limited play time, but hey, that tiny amount of play time you now have left you can play with all the newest shinies from the money you are now making.
I realize I am over exaggerating the situations, done deliberately to counter point the extreme over simplification of the suggestions to begin with.
I doubt that there's anyone that thinks that you can you can make more zen doing anything in game that you can by earning money working. The Dil exchange rate along with the refining cap puts a hard limit on Zen you can "make" per day in the game. There is no real limit on the amount of Zen you can buy with cash earned from working. And I have yet to see one of these topics come up with the OP asking "how can I cut back on my STO playing time and earn more real life money ?". Yet every time someone does ask how to earn more Zen in game, there's always the ones who pop in and suggest that they not play STO and get their Zen some other way. Ib this case the OP specifically asked for ways to get Zen with no real life cash involved, and still got those telling them to go earn some real world cash and buy zen......
Okay enough ranting.....
I do contraband when I get around to it, Admiralty if/when I feel like it, but I mostly just play the game, have fun, and make do with whatever Dil I end up getting. Parking a few alts at the security officer makes contraband the most time effective means, for me, along with that, I have plenty of HDD space and I do the Arc quests mostly daily. With the exception of a few games which require me to actually let them fully load, or use task manager to close them before then. It only takes a minute or two and is a quick and easy source of "free" zen.
easier take 15 miuntes to run admirality on 10 toons. Gather Dilth sell on excahnge get new ship in as little as two weeks. So easy it's scary no need to do any of what the OP does.
Not to nitpick but there's no way you do 10 admiralty runs in 15mins.
Comments
@taylor1701d THANK YOU. This is exactly the guidance I was needing. I'll give it a shot tomorrow morning!
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
If you worked his hard at actually getting money....
I’m homeless now, but I was able to buy the temporal 3 pack, which was totally worth it. Now I’m eyeing the MW ships.
I spend most of my time playing at library, so the weather isn’t really an issue for me. Some days I get a crit at the soup kitchen and get a double serving of protein, meaning I don’t need to scavenge for my evening meal to max out on the daily calorie limit of 1600. Playing video games is really sedentary so that saves me looking for food too.
Usually, I setup my box and sign outside the library. People who frequent libraries are usually more socially conscious and will reward players 5 or 10 dollars at a time. There was another guy, a KDF player who tried muscling in on my territory so we PVPed for the spot and I won. Lucky me!
Once I’ve got 10 dollars I have to walk to the bank and make the deposit. That can take up to 45 minutes both ways. Once I’m back at the library I take the money I’ve earned and buy as much zen as I can. I can bring in anywhere from 1000 to 5000 zen a week if I don’t get arrested.
These other guys spend all their time and money on drugs and alcohol, which makes them total deviants in my book. I try to talk to them, telling them how I went from nothing to Fleet Admiral with just a little hard work and ingenuity, but they never want to hear it. They’re total addicts but can’t admit it to themselves.
Not me. I’ve travelled to dozens of alien planets. I fly ships that would make Bill Gates and Warren Buffet weep. And I wouldn’t change a thing.
This. The OP doesn't understand opportunity cost. I don't mean that as a slam. It's a hard concept the first time around. As a kid I intuitively got it (I was in my mid teens before my parents thought maybe my allowance should be more than five dollars a month, which back then was two to four hours minimum USA wage) but never had the words for it until I worked my way through college.
If you put the time in per the OP, you are walking away from thousands of RL dollars to make your QOL better and leave something behind for your kids or your relatives' kids.
And that is a bad use of your life. Cryptic doesn't demand anyone do this. But addiction and fear of walking out the door can and does.
> nccmark wrote: »
>
> It always amazes how hard people will work to stay poor and earn free "stuff".
> If you worked his hard at actually getting money....
>
>
>
>
> This kind of ignorance I can never wrap my head around.
>
> It takes about 20 minutes a day to get 100k refined dil. What is the point of a video game if you pay real money to get stuff in it?
Ignorance? Your words are foolish.
It takes a lot longer than 20 min to earn 100k zen. Stop lying.
And the value after all that time? This is the equivalent of rummaging for nickel deposit cans and making 30 cents an hour.
I'm not offended at all. I do a tiny bit of grinding now and then when I feel like it, since getting that 30,000 dil from admiralty or a reputation is fun. But to me maxing out dil income by spending an extra hour a day grinding in the game day in day out is not fun, it's work. And real-life work pays me much more than I could ever possibly grind.
while 100k might be possible, you need many chars on your account who can refine the limit of 8k each day (it is a little more as a subscriber)
contraband gets you 2k per char, and you can do it only once a day. It would already take you longer than 20 minutes to even log though all those chars only to klick the doff assignment. and you'd still only get 2k refined dilithium per char per day . So the contraband thing requires you to have somewhere around 40 chars to make it work as you described it. My estimate would be that you need to log in for 3-4 minutes to get contraband and do the doff mission at the very least that multiplied by 40. So you are more in the range of 2-3 hours to get 100k refined dilithium.
It would be simpler to get rich dilithium claims and do them each day to be able to get 100k dilithium in 20 minutes. And even that takes longer than 20 minutes.
So 100k refined dilithium is a work of hours (especially if you use only contraband), not minutes. Hours you could be earning a multitude of what you do ingame in any job because 100k dilithium is still just about 350 ZEN. Less than 4 dollars an hour, assuming it took you only 1h, which can't be the case because of game mechanics and other limitations. In other words, you are "working" for around 2 dollars an hour to get "cheap" ZEN with contraband.
You could literally get 3 times that amount of ZEN (at least) if you did the same amount of time in overtime at work and took the overtime money and bought ZEN every day with it.
sure, whatever...enjoy your 25 minutes
It's doable......
Edited for missing numbers and letters......translation, edited because I type about as well as politicians tell the truth.
All bickering aside, if this is true, I would love to "know more".
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
the point however is, that even if you made this process 3 times more efficent, you'd still be able to get 2 times more dilithium if you worked for 25 minutes on your regular job. It is idiotic to spend time doing something in the game as efficently as possible, when there is an obvious and significantly more efficent way to get the same result in the same timeframe. It really requires a certain kind of stupid to boast about achieving something by repeating a process over and over in a game,
you still haven't figured out, that you are doing it for pennies...be efficent as you like in STO, those 25 minutes are still a waste of time considering you can make 4 times that money in real life. If you are that desperate for dilithium or Zen, that method is still idiotic if you look at the big picture.
But hey, if you enjoy doing what bots do in your free time you might have the mindset and desperation for a chinese bot farm worker.
I just didn't assume there are people that insane to do this kind of work for pennies and call it efficent.
srsly? you are aware that the resource for both is time, not money. You are "buying" those ingame items with time, only that using that time getting dilithium ingame is a 2 dollar an hour job or less.
It would be different if the ONLY way to get an item ingame was with time playing the game, but dilithium and ZEN are explicitly not of that type.
If 2 dollars is 200 zen and zen is @289 dil per zen, you're talking about making less than 60k dils/hr. Terribly low-paying grind, there.
I don't think we are talking about people enjoying the stuff they are doing. So if somebody enjoys admiralty/cycling through contraband toons/whatever, that's fine and dandy and all power to them. I know people who in real life enjoy finding sales, special offers and suchlike so they can save money - only the money they save is little compared to the time they spend finding those offers (and they don't have to). But they are having a blast whenever they find something, so the calculation will be different.
What I understood this thread to be about is: how to make zen effectively (via dilithium in game) to get to the fun part of the game quicker. And then the "mowing your neighbor's lawn" really kicks in.
I do understand your stance on wanting to gather stuff in game items via in game methods. Although they still require other players to use external money, but that needn't be your concern. But when you say you cannot wrap your head around it, it suddenly somehow becomes your concern, because your method rests on stuff you don't get. But in the end it's a matter of personal preference - I cannot get my head around how some people listen to Nicki Minaj, yet there she is, selling her music quite successfully.
As for me, when all bills are paid at the end of the month, there is still enough money left. And while I know the feeling of having worked for something and then getting it, or achieving a threshold, and revel in it, this is not what I come to this game for. Sure, I'll grind, when I feel like it, or when I get the feeling I am falling behind on some curve. But I get my "success kicks" elsewhere enough so that I can decide to go here do what I want: pewpew stuff, see my toons develop, and so on.
Your mileage may vary, of course, and apparently it does. But the concept as such shouldn't be too difficult to get.
I see a lot of, to me, laughable suggestions popping up. Offer to wash your neighbors car/mow their lawn etc ? Has anyone over the age of 12 actually tried this ? Some people will pay a young kid just to reward them for their ambition. Most people will just tell an adult to go away and don't come back bothering them anymore.
Work a few hours overtime ? I'm 57 years old and the jobs I have seen where you can work a few hours overtime any time you feel like it are almost as rare as uber ship drops from lockboxes. Overtime is usually either forbidden other than extremely rare "emergencies" (most places), mandatory for all (a large number of other places, mostly manufacturing) or rare but voluntary. The overtime is done by the salaried employees, who don't get paid any more for the extra hours worked (been there, done that).
Get a part time job ? Sure, knock another 3-4 hours a day off of your already limited play time, but hey, that tiny amount of play time you now have left you can play with all the newest shinies from the money you are now making.
I realize I am over exaggerating the situations, done deliberately to counter point the extreme over simplification of the suggestions to begin with.
I doubt that there's anyone that thinks that you can you can make more zen doing anything in game that you can by earning money working. The Dil exchange rate along with the refining cap puts a hard limit on Zen you can "make" per day in the game. There is no real limit on the amount of Zen you can buy with cash earned from working. And I have yet to see one of these topics come up with the OP asking "how can I cut back on my STO playing time and earn more real life money ?". Yet every time someone does ask how to earn more Zen in game, there's always the ones who pop in and suggest that they not play STO and get their Zen some other way. Ib this case the OP specifically asked for ways to get Zen with no real life cash involved, and still got those telling them to go earn some real world cash and buy zen......
Okay enough ranting.....
I do contraband when I get around to it, Admiralty if/when I feel like it, but I mostly just play the game, have fun, and make do with whatever Dil I end up getting. Parking a few alts at the security officer makes contraband the most time effective means, for me, along with that, I have plenty of HDD space and I do the Arc quests mostly daily. With the exception of a few games which require me to actually let them fully load, or use task manager to close them before then. It only takes a minute or two and is a quick and easy source of "free" zen.
Not to nitpick but there's no way you do 10 admiralty runs in 15mins.
More like 35-40 mins.