Sigh. If you want to "WIN"* the game, follow mos of the advice on this thread. Especially the Scimitar guy, LOL. That is WINNING.*
My 2 cents: Hold on to your Zen for now. In the meantime: Enjoy the game.
Level in all three factions, different kinds of characters: Tactical, Engineering, Science. Some of the story missions are actually pretty neat!
Learn what it's like to play a tac Klingon in a glass cannon Bird of Prey, vs. a nearly unkillable fed Engineer in a cruiser, vs a sneaky 'secret-weapon-having' Romulan.
See if you enjoy the current DOFF system, though upcoming changes may make that 'differently' enjoyable...
Try some Foundry missions for a change of pace.
So much to do and find out about...
Once you've figured out what you enjoy about the game, and whether you like it or not, THEN spend the zen on WHAT YOU LIKE. Not what gets you the best DPS, or what allows you to earn the most Dil, or what other people think you should enjoy - find out what YOU like.
Otherwise, you'll never get out of it what YOU want - it will always be other people's needs you're fulfilling.
I'm done. Have fun!
* - that is not winning. You can't win. Funny that way.
Please reconsider ARC. Please make it optional, at the least. PLEASE.
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
I agree with those that recommend saving your zen for the most part. Right now you have no idea which faction or career path you will want to take. Leveling is incredibly easy so make a few toons. Learn about boff powers, ships, gear and doffs. Do some exploration missions ... Before devs take them away. Run through the story content. Pace yourself and enjoy the experience. You will be grinding marks and dilithium at end game soon enough.
I would suggest you stock up dilithium though. It looks like the market has peaked post all the fleet holdings and could crash with the massive sinks being added to 9.5 crafting. Dilithium is the universal currency and is used everywhere at end game. If you buy low and sell high you could even recoup your zen later and keep the balance!
Best of luck OP!
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Don't buy dilithium using Zen unless your are in absolute dire need for dilithium.
Dilithium can eventually be obtained while playing STO. All Doff missions give you a little bit of dilithium on success (mostly 5), but with the right Doffs you can get a critical success which increase that to 125 dilithium. Not much but if you build up your Doff roster properly you can increase your chances to get critical success more often. One mission to turn in 5 contraband to a station's security officer will reward 2,000 dilithium when the mission is completed (4 hours), but the trick is you need to get 5 contraband.
All factions have an opportunity to get contraband through various Doff missions, however, the Klingons (KDF) have the most missions to get contraband. My Fed toon can generally get about 3 - 9 contraband per day when I am actively looking for contraband missions. My KDF toon can generally get about 30 - 50 contraband per day when I am actively looking for contraband missions.
Do not focus on getting as much dilithium early in the game. As you rank up opportunities to get dilithium will become available to you. Most will be from daily missions with 20 hour cool down like asteroid mining and 3 dailies on Nimbus III that will eventually be unlocked after the appropriate story mission have been completed. There are multiplayer PvE missions that will eventually become available to you; a few of them will reward 480 dilithium. Ultimately at max level you can play elite STF (Special Task Force) Borg missions that rewards you with 960 dilithium. Doing a "Spotlight" Foundry mission daily (20 hour cool down) will also reward dilithium; the amount depends on the specific mission and how long it takes players on average to complete the mission. At a minimum you will get 1,440 dilithium, but at most you will get around 3,060 dilithium. A Foundry mission can be as quick as 10 minutes or as long as 60+ minutes depending on how it is designed.
Turn 10k of it into dilithium, that will buy you lots of goodies while you decide how to shape your career path; at 140dill/Zen, you'll have 1.4 million dilithium!
Expendables Fleet: Andrew - Bajoran Fed Engineer Ken'taura - Rom/Fed Scientist Gwyllim - Human Fed Delta Tac Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
Turn 10k of it into dilithium, that will buy you lots of goodies while you decide how to shape your career path; at 140dill/Zen, you'll have 1.4 million dilithium!
Current exchange rate is about 150 - 154 dilithium per 1 Zen.
Anyway, no need to waste dilithium on anything until level 50 when the reputation system opens up and you want buy certain rep gear as you are ranking up the rep system.
By then, there are many opportunities in the game to earn dilithium. At max level it is not very hard to earn dilithium ore and refine it to dilithium crystals (8k daily refinement cap). If I focus on getting as much dilithium ore as possible I can generally get 8k in 60 minutes with my KDF toon and less than 90 minutes with my Fed toon.
However, as I am leveling up a toon I do exchange refined dilithium for Zen so that i can purchase additional Doff slots.
Current exchange rate is about 150 - 154 dilithium per 1 Zen.
Anyway, no need to waste dilithium on anything until level 50 when the reputation system opens up and you want buy certain rep gear as you are ranking up the rep system.
By then, there are many opportunities in the game to earn dilithium. At max level it is not very hard to earn dilithium ore and refine it to dilithium crystals (8k daily refinement cap). If I focus on getting as much dilithium ore as possible I can generally get 8k in 60 minutes with my KDF toon and less than 90 minutes with my Fed toon.
However, as I am leveling up a toon I do exchange refined dilithium for Zen so that i can purchase additional Doff slots.
This is your opinion. Others are free to disagree with it. Some of us don't enjoy grinding dilithium and think it is perfectly reasonable to spend Zen on Dilithium. Prices are actually pretty good compared dating back all the way to start of Season 7 when they crashed when the fleet holdings were introduced.
As I said, I am speculating that amount of dilithium that can be brough per zen will go down because dilithium demand will go up in 9.5! So it might be worth stocking up now. The supply of dilithium meanwhile is limited to number of toons grinding dilithium * daily cap. That can't change unless tons of people suddenly create lots of extra toons and starting grinding more dilithium!
"With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censored, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably."
Mainly I play Tactical character and and am a fan of TNG and Voyager mainly if that helps people make more focused suggestions
Favorite ships from the shows are the Enterprise D and E as well as Voyager and that starfleet ship the doctor teleported to in the Alpha Quadrant that splits into 3 bits.
I prefer the free prometheus to the store bought one, its BOFF layout is better IMO. Definitely wait until you have been level 50 for a while before you spend your zen. What you like now might disgust you a month from now.
I like the avenger, the engineering heavy andorian escort, and the free prometheus for my fed tac. I also play the escort carrier, but only because I like how it looks and I have no need to be min-maxed to the highest degree.
Lifetime sub that hasn't really played since a month or so after launch. Have come back and made a new character since I wanna relearn game. So far i'm back on earth after killing that Cube in the first missions. Kinda wondering best way to use my 14000 zen I have atm?
Comments
My 2 cents: Hold on to your Zen for now. In the meantime: Enjoy the game.
Level in all three factions, different kinds of characters: Tactical, Engineering, Science. Some of the story missions are actually pretty neat!
Learn what it's like to play a tac Klingon in a glass cannon Bird of Prey, vs. a nearly unkillable fed Engineer in a cruiser, vs a sneaky 'secret-weapon-having' Romulan.
See if you enjoy the current DOFF system, though upcoming changes may make that 'differently' enjoyable...
Try some Foundry missions for a change of pace.
So much to do and find out about...
Once you've figured out what you enjoy about the game, and whether you like it or not, THEN spend the zen on WHAT YOU LIKE. Not what gets you the best DPS, or what allows you to earn the most Dil, or what other people think you should enjoy - find out what YOU like.
Otherwise, you'll never get out of it what YOU want - it will always be other people's needs you're fulfilling.
I'm done. Have fun!
* - that is not winning. You can't win. Funny that way.
It seems the vast majority of your most active players (forum regulars) hate the idea... and while that's a small subset of the playerbase, I think it's an important constituency.
THE PLAYERS DO NOT WANT THIS.
I would suggest you stock up dilithium though. It looks like the market has peaked post all the fleet holdings and could crash with the massive sinks being added to 9.5 crafting. Dilithium is the universal currency and is used everywhere at end game. If you buy low and sell high you could even recoup your zen later and keep the balance!
Best of luck OP!
- Judge Aaron Satie
Dilithium can eventually be obtained while playing STO. All Doff missions give you a little bit of dilithium on success (mostly 5), but with the right Doffs you can get a critical success which increase that to 125 dilithium. Not much but if you build up your Doff roster properly you can increase your chances to get critical success more often. One mission to turn in 5 contraband to a station's security officer will reward 2,000 dilithium when the mission is completed (4 hours), but the trick is you need to get 5 contraband.
All factions have an opportunity to get contraband through various Doff missions, however, the Klingons (KDF) have the most missions to get contraband. My Fed toon can generally get about 3 - 9 contraband per day when I am actively looking for contraband missions. My KDF toon can generally get about 30 - 50 contraband per day when I am actively looking for contraband missions.
Do not focus on getting as much dilithium early in the game. As you rank up opportunities to get dilithium will become available to you. Most will be from daily missions with 20 hour cool down like asteroid mining and 3 dailies on Nimbus III that will eventually be unlocked after the appropriate story mission have been completed. There are multiplayer PvE missions that will eventually become available to you; a few of them will reward 480 dilithium. Ultimately at max level you can play elite STF (Special Task Force) Borg missions that rewards you with 960 dilithium. Doing a "Spotlight" Foundry mission daily (20 hour cool down) will also reward dilithium; the amount depends on the specific mission and how long it takes players on average to complete the mission. At a minimum you will get 1,440 dilithium, but at most you will get around 3,060 dilithium. A Foundry mission can be as quick as 10 minutes or as long as 60+ minutes depending on how it is designed.
Savik - Vulcan Fed Temporal Sci
Dahar Masters Fleet: Alphal'Fa - Alien KDF Engineer Qun'pau - Rom/KDF Engineer D'nesh - Orion KDF Scientist Ghen'khan - Liberated KDF Tac
Welcome to StarBug Online - to boldly Bug where no bug has been before!
STO player since November 2013
Current exchange rate is about 150 - 154 dilithium per 1 Zen.
Anyway, no need to waste dilithium on anything until level 50 when the reputation system opens up and you want buy certain rep gear as you are ranking up the rep system.
By then, there are many opportunities in the game to earn dilithium. At max level it is not very hard to earn dilithium ore and refine it to dilithium crystals (8k daily refinement cap). If I focus on getting as much dilithium ore as possible I can generally get 8k in 60 minutes with my KDF toon and less than 90 minutes with my Fed toon.
However, as I am leveling up a toon I do exchange refined dilithium for Zen so that i can purchase additional Doff slots.
This is your opinion. Others are free to disagree with it. Some of us don't enjoy grinding dilithium and think it is perfectly reasonable to spend Zen on Dilithium. Prices are actually pretty good compared dating back all the way to start of Season 7 when they crashed when the fleet holdings were introduced.
As I said, I am speculating that amount of dilithium that can be brough per zen will go down because dilithium demand will go up in 9.5! So it might be worth stocking up now. The supply of dilithium meanwhile is limited to number of toons grinding dilithium * daily cap. That can't change unless tons of people suddenly create lots of extra toons and starting grinding more dilithium!
- Judge Aaron Satie
With That Much Zen. You Can Do Whatever You Want. Wish I Had That
Problem. Have Fun..
Be Kind To All???
I prefer the free prometheus to the store bought one, its BOFF layout is better IMO. Definitely wait until you have been level 50 for a while before you spend your zen. What you like now might disgust you a month from now.
I like the avenger, the engineering heavy andorian escort, and the free prometheus for my fed tac. I also play the escort carrier, but only because I like how it looks and I have no need to be min-maxed to the highest degree.
well pm me ingame please