Any recommended ways to catch up in gear and skill?

tagen

I seem to have painted myself into a bit of a corner. Without much time to play, I have spent what time I did have over the past 2 months running event missions (Winter and now Anniversary). It did not occur to me that as I gained levels through these missions, I was not also gaining better gear or better skills. Going back to regular missions now, the enemies have been MUCH more productive with their time and have learned new things that tend to quickly scatter me across space as a fine mist.

Since I now know that missions will scale to whatever level I am, I'm left with needing a way to get better gear and practice my playing in some way that will allow more normal progression. I'm not the best player to start, so the change makes on-level missions near impossible for me otherwise.

One suggestion was to find a players at a lower level and join up to run missions scaled to them. I am looking for any other ideas. I don't suppose there is a way to scale down without being grouped? (EQ2's chronomentoring system has spoiled me )

Thanks for any answers or advice you can provide.

davefenestrator

You can create a second captain and level them up slowly to practice just playing story missions. This is also a chance to see the Romulan, Klingon or The Original Series story missions.

postagepaid

Running missions with scaling can be interesting as if the high level strays too far then mobs suddenly start to spawn at their level not the lowbies. Also gear would drop for their level not yours so in that regards you won't find many upgrades from missions outside the actual rewards.

Learning counters for the new tricks enemies throw at you is something that will come with time just keep playing and keep an eye out for stuff they use.

Might be a better choice to mothball your current character and start fresh. That will let you learn fights/tactics and of course any gear that drops can be passed on to the other character either via account bank or ingame mail (just send to your own @handle)

You gain about a level per mission these days so getting up to speed shouldn't take too long.

nimbull

If you leveled up get the highest level of white gear you can buy from a vendor. If you crossed a point where you can get a new tier ship, grab one. You should still get skill points from leveling even in these missions.

tagen

nimbull wrote: »

If you leveled up get the highest level of white gear you can buy from a vendor. If you crossed a point where you can get a new tier ship, grab one. You should still get skill points from leveling even in these missions.

Oh I still get the skill points. I was referring to my own skill at playing.
I have not gotten any better over the last 10 levels, but the enemies have all sorts of new things for me to learn how to counter.

I will check out gear on vendors, though. I've gotten used to ignoring that in games since it is mostly low level junk, but if it is better than what I currently have here, I'll try it! Thanks.

odinforever20000

Id reply missions with ya. Id set the teaming at your lvl and got to town ;P

tagen

Thanks, all. I think I'll try starting a new captain and see how that goes. At the very least I'll get in more practice and feel good about being able to beat low-level enemies again.

odinforever20000 wrote: »

Id reply missions with ya. Id set the teaming at your lvl and got to town ;P

Heh. Well, if the other plan doesn't work, I may take you up on that. If only to get revenge on the ships that have blown me up more times than Trek writers blew up ships in time loop episodes.

jaguarskx

The best suggestion I can make is to simply create a new character and use that character to learn the ropes. Preferably in a different faction so that you can experience missions that are unique to that faction. Each faction has roughly 40 - 46 unique missions, but basically by the time you get to the Cardassian Struggle story arc all factions will merge to have the same exact story missions.

As you level up enemies start to become harder (as you have figured out), however, your enemies really starts to scale up as you get to about level 56. At that point really do become tougher and when you reach max level (60), enemies are at their deadliest. This is because beyond level 50 enemies begins to do more damage and have better hulls and shields. It is definitely possible to play the game with rare Mk XII gear when you are max level, but you need combat experience in order to do so. I have a max level character that is basically in that situation because I am waiting for a Double Tech Point Upgrade Weekend event to upgrade gear.

When you level 50+ I generally recommend new players to upgrade weapons from Mk XII to Mk XIV. The difference is pretty significant because that increases the base damage of weapons by 53%. Additionally, as a new player you likely will not have the resources to attempt to upgrade the quality of your gear so I would not focus on that. Simply get yourself some very rare Mk XII weapons and upgrade them to Mk XIV. If your are really lucky and they get upgraded to ultra rare or epic quality, then great, but do not focus on that.

Additionally, you should also upgrade your tactical consoles, it will not be a dramatic increase in damage. In fact it will be relatively minor, something like 2.1% per mark level increase but it helps especially if your ship has many tactical consoles.

As long as you continue to play the missions you will gain enough combat experience to go back to your original character. One thing to be aware of is that you must be at least level 10 play the current Featured Episode, Scylla and Charybdis, in order to collect 400 Anniversary Event Vouchers (1st play through only) that goes towards the Anniversary Ship. Be sure to go to the Reputation screen and slot the Anniversary project for the ship.

pwstolemyname

Honestly, this isn't half the deal people seem to think it is. Every one always gets so hung up on gear, but its the boff abilities, traits and doffs that make or brake you.

The only gear that will really make a big difference is the jump from mk XII to Mk XIV on weapons. Mks 0 through XII only increase values by a miniscule amount. Mk XIII and XIV give much bigger boosts (only on weapons, its still small on everything else).

Now of course replacing standard gear with reputation, lobi, fleet and R&D stuff will also have a big impact, but thats all end game stuff that lies outside of level progression any way.

So setting aside the aforementioned, if your having trouble, you don't necessarily need higher mks an rarity. Using a combination of items that synergise with each other and with your bridge officer abilities will make a far bigger difference then using the highest mk and quality you can find. In fact if you had a mish mash of ultra rares without synergy you would probably perform less effectively then all white mk XII stuff that works together,

I recomend you wonder over to the builds forum, make a post with what your using, ship, weapons, consoles, bridge officer powers etc, and ask for advice on how to improve it.

spiritborn

Yeah, it's rarely if ever a question gear so much as it's not using that gear correctly, all too often I've seen people with the latest lockbox, c-store, lobi ship with what look like rare (and probably expensive) weapons get outperformed by ME of all people and I'm not exactly an expert player I can only do around 30k average DPS.

Most story missions are intended to be played with bad gear anyway, since Cryptic devs cannot assume all players have best end game gear when the do those missions.

so TL:DR I second heading to Build Forum and asking there for advice.

salazarraze

OP, you just need to talk to someone in game that can help you switch out your bridge officer powers and probably make some minor gear changes. The majority of the time, players with requests like this have their buffs all out of whack.

tagen

Very good point about the bridge officers. I have not even looked at training or the additional officers I'd picked up while leveling in events. As for proper gearing and synergy with builds...yeah, that is part of the learning I missed out on along the way. I can pick things that enhance the weapons and damage types I use, but I am sure it gets more complex than that on the higher gear.

So far I have gone in and started a new Romulan, which is retraining me on the gameplay and also letting me see a storyline I have not played through before. (According to some in game, the one mistake I have already made was choosing to side with the Klingons. But hey, I'm still having fun with it, so I think that is a "mistake" I can live with.)

Thanks again.