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ravenmorpheus2k
Member Posts: 103 Arc User
Hello
First up, I've done some searching via google and reading on this site and I can't find specific answers to my wonderings, so please forgive me for asking...
First query - I've been reading about dil farming, and it seems the best way to do it is by using the extra character slots to do it. Specifically with Klingon KDF characters.
However I'm a little confused by this.
To me it seems I would spend hours playing as these "alts".
I simply don't have the time to do that nor wish to spend the time doing that, and play as my main characters (I have a KDF Klingon and a Fed Human on the go at the moment, the Klingon is lvl 38, my Human is lvl 22).
I'm trying to get about 500k dilithium as quickly as possible to spend on stuff, so, question 1 - how do I use alts to farm without spending hours playing as them or constantly micromanaging them?
Query 2, again dil related - are there any Federation dailies that give you 1440 dil that aren't PVE/PVP? I note the Klingons have a few which don't appear to be PVP/PVE but from the list I've seen there are none for the Federation?
Query 3 - I don't wish to do PVP stuff (I know full well there's always people who've spent more money than I have out there with better kit just waiting for a noob to troll on, thus PVP in any sort of game has never appealed to me), I've tried doing a solo Starbase 24 PVE Fleet action in a private queue and made it to wave two and was swamped by KDF Warships so I gave up on that idea, and I'm currently satisfied with just playing the scripted missions and doing a few foundry missions, mostly for a little grinding to get some slightly better stuff here and there (mostly ship related).
Although I have a Constellation class ship, via a Commander rank upgrade free ticket I don't currently use it and I would be perfectly happy to stick to my current Constitution class cruiser (NCC 91717 USS Yorktown) and just upgrade it's slots, then when I get my free rank upgrade for Rear Admiral (if one exists at that level) to buy a Galaxy class ship (which I will name NCC 91717-D Yorktown D) and leave it at that (although I'd have to change my bridge crew to reflect the newer era ship - I currently have Scotty, Chekov, Sp'ock and Ross (occasional ToS Yeoman and Engineer) as my bridge crew).
So, Is there any point in the "endgame" for me, especially when a Vice Admiral ship costs Zen?
Last query (for the mo) - is there a way to remove the 9 prefix from the number of my ship(s) so that I could have my ship actually numbered NCC-1717? I'm guessing the answer is no, and I guess the reason it's not allowed is due to IP rights and all that, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
Thank you all in advance.
First up, I've done some searching via google and reading on this site and I can't find specific answers to my wonderings, so please forgive me for asking...
First query - I've been reading about dil farming, and it seems the best way to do it is by using the extra character slots to do it. Specifically with Klingon KDF characters.
However I'm a little confused by this.
To me it seems I would spend hours playing as these "alts".
I simply don't have the time to do that nor wish to spend the time doing that, and play as my main characters (I have a KDF Klingon and a Fed Human on the go at the moment, the Klingon is lvl 38, my Human is lvl 22).
I'm trying to get about 500k dilithium as quickly as possible to spend on stuff, so, question 1 - how do I use alts to farm without spending hours playing as them or constantly micromanaging them?
Query 2, again dil related - are there any Federation dailies that give you 1440 dil that aren't PVE/PVP? I note the Klingons have a few which don't appear to be PVP/PVE but from the list I've seen there are none for the Federation?
Query 3 - I don't wish to do PVP stuff (I know full well there's always people who've spent more money than I have out there with better kit just waiting for a noob to troll on, thus PVP in any sort of game has never appealed to me), I've tried doing a solo Starbase 24 PVE Fleet action in a private queue and made it to wave two and was swamped by KDF Warships so I gave up on that idea, and I'm currently satisfied with just playing the scripted missions and doing a few foundry missions, mostly for a little grinding to get some slightly better stuff here and there (mostly ship related).
Although I have a Constellation class ship, via a Commander rank upgrade free ticket I don't currently use it and I would be perfectly happy to stick to my current Constitution class cruiser (NCC 91717 USS Yorktown) and just upgrade it's slots, then when I get my free rank upgrade for Rear Admiral (if one exists at that level) to buy a Galaxy class ship (which I will name NCC 91717-D Yorktown D) and leave it at that (although I'd have to change my bridge crew to reflect the newer era ship - I currently have Scotty, Chekov, Sp'ock and Ross (occasional ToS Yeoman and Engineer) as my bridge crew).
So, Is there any point in the "endgame" for me, especially when a Vice Admiral ship costs Zen?
Last query (for the mo) - is there a way to remove the 9 prefix from the number of my ship(s) so that I could have my ship actually numbered NCC-1717? I'm guessing the answer is no, and I guess the reason it's not allowed is due to IP rights and all that, but I thought I'd ask anyway.
Thank you all in advance.
Post edited by ravenmorpheus2k on
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1) KDF is considered the Dilithium king due to high count of contraband availability and the 2000 dilithium per 4 hours DOFF mission to turn it in.
The best way I know with minimal daily work is to make 4 alts, get them to lvl50. Do the Daily Reputation items and get them to Tier5 in all 5 reps. Then cash in on Dilithium. If your main is already T5, you can provide the alts with tokens that double the Rep Points. The expedited timeframe is one month to make T5. Each T5 rep gives you 32k dilithium. 32k x 5 reps x 4 alts = 640k dilithium
2) There used to be in the exploration clusters, but with their removal, I am not sure how people are still farming FED.
3) 2 things here...First, if you continue to farm more dilithium by either more alts or kill alts and recreate to do reps again, you can convert Dilithium to Zen and even Zen to EC to get ANY ship you want for free.
Example: let's set the Dilithium/Zen ratio near current rates, about 150:1
Now take the 640k Dilithium we talked about in Query 1 and convert to Zen. That is just under 5000 Zen. If you've been saving the Dilithium from doing the STF's for marks you should be able to convert to 5000 easy enough. That is worth 2 ships or a three pack. If you want a lockbox ship, take the 5000 Zen and buy 5 R&D 4-packs. They sell for 7-8Million each on the exchange. At 7 million EC, 20 packs would get you 140Million EC. Easily enough for a narcine carrier, recluse or Temporal Destroyer.
The other issue: Be careful about how those BOFFs look in-game, Terms of Service state you cont have BOFFs that look like Trek actors.
4) No way to remove the 9, sorry.
**Sorry about the wrong info, it has been a long while since I collected a Tier5 rep and misread the STO Wiki.
As for dailies, I don't know off hand other than a couple in Breen space. Between doffing and the big dil chunks from reputation completions, I haven't worried about dailies in a long time and am not sure what still exists anymore (plus you get burned out doing the same dailies over and over and over).
As for your ships, you're going to be disappointed as you advance I think. You get a free ship at 30, and then your last freebie at 40 (which for you, i'm guessing you'll pick up the Sovereign-class). You do not get a free ship at 50. The Tier5 version of the Galaxy, commonly known as the Gal-R, costs money unless you have a lifetime subscription. Experienced players can make underleveled ships work in endgame content (Borg raids and such) because they know the content, but for your first character its probably a bad idea, as you'll be very short on weapons and bridge officer abilities. Holding out why you're still learning the game, probably you're just going to frustrate yourself.
Speaking of which, Commander-level does give you a learning option. The mission Temporal Ambassador rewards you with a Commander-level version of the Ambassador-class cruiser, which means you can spend your free upgrade token on an Akira-class escort. That way you can try out escort piloting if you like, and if you don't like it, you can switch right back to cruisers with your Ambassador instead. Its a handy chance to no-risk try something different.
A dil farming alt means you just log onto the toon earn 8000 unrefined dilithium a day and then refine it (you can only refined 8k a day). On a decently geared toon which you can gear up through episode repeats i will do 4 runs total all elite space. Elite cure, infected, khitomer and crystalline catastrophe where you pick nukara marks as your reward. Convert the 3 borg neurals to 1k dil, convert all omega marks into dil, convert the nukara marks into dil. All that converted dil along with the normal dil rewards you get from completing the instances is roughly 8k unrefined dilithium +/-. It takes me between 20-40 minutes to do all 4 runs depending on the quality of the 4 other players in the pug.
You dont have to do it all the time. But when you see something you need to buy that costs 30k, 150k or 500k dil then you go and farm dil on each toon and do as much as you can a day. And keep doing that for several days or weeks until you get all the refined dil you want to buy your item. Through the dil exchange it is possible to pool all your refined dilithium on any character that you wish. Once you are done then you can give the dil grinding a rest and just enjoy yourself.
Your other option is to spend real money to buy Zen. Then convert that Zen directly into refined dilithium. You can also indirectly convert Zen or dil into energy credits. Refined Dil can be converted into Zen through the Dilithium Exchange. Zen can be used to buy Master Keys on the Zen store. Those Master Keys can then be sold to other players or placed on the exchange where you get energy credits for them.
You may need to elaborate...what do you mean by not pvp and not pve? you mean like doffing?
The last free ship token you get is at level 40. Right now those ships are good enough to do the current content. A lot of the ships have the same stats and boff seating as Zen ships sometimes even better. One of the advantages of the zen ships is you can claim multiple copies across several toons and they usually have something special like a console or something. You can also look on the exchange and search for "mirror" or "mirror universe". You can get some fairly inexpensive ships on there. Just because they are inexpensive doesnt mean they are bad. I just bought a Mirror Universe Science Vessel Retrofit and i prefer its boff seating to that of the Intrepid Zen ship. The mirror universe ship may not have a special console but thats ok with me cause i have plenty of my own that i needed to use anyways. The ship cost me 140k energy credits, right now there are ships on there that go for 60k, 80k 90k credits. Supply and demand is why you see the prices that low. The supply is really high and the demand is not always dictated by ship quality but rather player preferences and player needs. The mirror ship i bought was perfect for the ship that i was trying to build. It had a Ensign Tac and Lt Tac boff slots when the Intrepid Zen only has a Lt Tac. It has a LCdr Engineer seat while the Intrepid Zen ship only has a Lt Engineer seat. I sacrificed some Sci boff seating but it was very minimal and i was still able to build the ship i wanted.
Now the thing about these level 40 free ships and the cheap inexpensive mirror universe ships is they wont be upgradeable in Delta Rising which comes out in 3 days. But if you dont plan on doing the most difficult content that shouldnt matter. Since they made it so that some of the easier content is supposed to be doable with lesser geared ships. I dont know if you can do it in your low level Connie ship though. But maybe you can pick up a galaxy class and do the content.
At security officers (DS9, Granalda, etc.) you can 'Consign Prisoners to Labor Battalion', ten prisoners, two hours, 1k Dil. I don't recommend it though, as it has the highest chance of failure.
In the Eta Eridani, Pi Canis and Regulus Sector Blocks, there is a Military assignment for 'Forced Labor on xyz planet'; four prisoners, eight hours, five hundred dil (fifteen hundred on a crit.)
In the various colonization clusters (formerly exploration), there are "Forced Labor Camp" assignments that take three prisoners and five provision, I think about five hours time and give 350 dil.
2. Once you complete a certain mission in the Deferi storyline, you unlock three dailies in the Orellius sector block; I believe one of them grants 1440z.
1/2. For both KDF and Fed, there's the Foundry Spotlight missions and the 'Investigate Officer Reports' repeatable. with the right foundry missions, these can give you 2500 to 3000z a day in half an hour. I recommend 'Sword of the Kuvah'magh' for Fed and 'Vulture Wheel' or 'Raktijino In The Jar' for KDF.
3. That's more a personal thing that something anyone else can answer. Some people race to the endgame so that they can free-roam. Others prefer the storyline and start a new character whenever they reach the end of the scripted missions. As for ships, considering that there's some players out there who - in protest over no T5 Miranda - actually use their starting ships at endgame, I'd say that it's more a case of asking yourself 'What ship do I want, what ship do I like best?' and then deciding from there. You don't really - contrary to some people's claims - 'need' a C-Store or Fleet ship to play endgame, I have plenty of fun flying free ships like Vor'cha Retrofits and Vo'quv carriers myself.
4. Sort of. It has to be between 90001 and 999999, something like that, because CBS and such reserved all registry numbers below 90000 for possible usage in future Trek shows. You can, for example, make it 171717 or 171700, but you can never have a registry number lower than 90001, which means four-digit numbers are no joy.
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
You may want to check those numbers.
Aye. I'm aware of that, I gathered as much right from the start given the fact I couldn't use Enterprise as my ship name, and couldn't use the name Spock for my Science officer, hence I made the compromise of Sp'ock. I was surprised I got away with Chekov (full name Pavel Chekov) and Mr Scott (although I couldn't use Scotty) and also Montgomery Scott in the full name fields!
It really is rather irritating when IP rights detract from having fun.
Here's my attempts though, I spent all of 5 minutes on them -
http://i58.tinypic.com/etacyw.png
I would post that as a pic in this post but IMG tags don't seem to work!?
I did read a thread, believe it was on this forum, where someone used the randomiser and generated an actual Chekov. Sadly links to his pics were no longer working, I'd love to see how close it was.
Yeah, didn't think so. Thought I'd ask anyway. Again IP rights get in the way (only reason I can think of that they'd force you to have a 9 in front of your ship number).
I would actually pay a nominal amount to be able to.
I understand PVE to mean Player vs Environment, i.e. me vs AI and whatever effects the scenery has on my character/ship (like coldness, heat stroke, sensor interference etc).
I understand PVP to mean Player vs Player i.e. me vs another player who is online, so lets say me with my Constitution vs a Kllingon player in his Bird of Prey. Or more likely in this game a whole load of players all in the same arena at once battling it out.
PVE doesn't seem to work as a solo player, at least my experience of the Starbase 24 mission you can hail with my Constitution leads me to believe that.
PVP has never appealed to me in any game outside of racing sims, in fact it's the main reason I've up until now avoided MMO's.
To put it simply there's a term amongst tabletop wargamers (of which I have been one) called being "beardy" and that means to take advantage of every exploit in an attempt to get any advantage you can over your opponent, whether you're opponent is any good or not - I've come to conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that MMO's are full of people like that who exploit everything and farm to the death or spend shed loads of money, just to go beat up on some noob who hasn't or cannot do the same.
It's like FPS games like CoD/Battlefield are full of campers.
Hmm that's interesting. I was wondering if I can buy ships on the exchange but hadn't noticed a section that would let me do so, perhaps I've not scrolled down the left hand panel enough?
My Constitution at the moment isn't stock. I've got lvl 5 or lvl 6 stuff in the slots (because my current rank is Commander), and I notice the difference from when I first got the ship, but I am aware that the hull/shields probably aren't the best - I've read a lot of the threads about using the Constitution at later levels and also the lack of a T5 one, and I've borrowed a couple of ideas from the Canon builds thread and other Constitution build threads.
The next ships I'd like to get would indeed be a Galaxy class ship, also the Defiant (I forget what class that is), and the Sovereign class ship, if only to have a "TV/movie series collection".
You can probably guess I'm a ToS movies/TNG/DS9 fan more than anything...
I'll have a read of the rest of the advice but I think from what I scanned through that basically I'll have to spend the next 62ish days grinding to get the amount of dil I want or cough up real money (some £50 or more).
Ohh and in regards to the ship and the exchange dont worry about the filters on the left. Just make sure quality is set to all, rank is set to all, filter on the left is set to any. Then put in the search terms mirror or mirror universe and the ships will come up.
Not necessarily. You have to spend 62 days refining, divided by number of characters, but the grind, you can get a fair chunk of it out of the way just by playing. Get to 50 where you can start doing the reps, as each one (except Omega) rewards 32k for finishing it (48 if you wait till a dil-bonus weekend to do the end-of-rep mission), plus the dil you get for your rep dailies and the missions to get the marks, multiplied by how many characters you have. Build up your KDF character with a good doff roster of Tactical, Security (division) and Tractor Beam officers and just pick up contraband as you travel in sector space. Play around in the Dyson Battlezones and cap in an hour (once you get there).
If you make it a grind, you'll make yourself crazy. On the other hand, you can build a ship that kicks huge amounts of butt entirely out of free stuff and do any PVE content in the game that way, and then with the extra dil you pick up along the way, you'll still find yourself with enough funding to get a few toys now and then.
Yeah that's what I meant.
Thing I'm worried about is hitting level 50 and having nothing but daily missions, and non-solo play stuff. I.e. not having any of the scripted "campaign" left to do and little else besides solo foundry missions.
I am unlikely to play the game if all I have left is playing missions that require other players (i.e. fleet misisons or player vs player arenas).
Although considering my Fed character is lvl 22 or so and my KDF character is lvl 38 or so I guess that's unlikely, right?
I also can't get my head around the idea of stockpiling dil because you can only refine 8k per day, thus it's not even worth stock piling to trade for zen because it will still take me 62 days to refine 500k worth of dil to trade for the relevant amount of zen.
So I guess I'm just looking for quick ways to make 8k each time I play and I'll just have to accept it'll take me 62 days to reach the 500k figure I currently want, if I don't wish to shell out real hard cash for the amount of zen I want.
No it's PVP I'm not really interested in. The phrase spotty teens in their bedrooms with tons of cash to spend comes to mind when I think of PVP (no offence meant to anyone of course).
If I can solo PVE that's fine by me. I saw a youtube tutorial that showed you how to solo the Starbase 24 queue for example (in a private session). So I had a go. It just seemed to me in my Constitution that the Starbase 24 mission was impossible on my own once I reached the point where the 2nd wave uncloaks. I did fine on the 1st wave, albeit with the help of a couple of other Miranda class ships (think they were AI?)
And yeah, before anyone says it, I know this is an MMO and you're not really supposed to solo it but I have more fun as a solo player - for a start there's none of the waiting around for others to join or do something.
No, I meant that I've not seen a section for buying ships, like there's a section for buying ship weapons, or food, or the other stuff that's listed down the left hand panel.
I guess I should go back in and play some more. **Captain Morpheus rushes off to check the exchange** Lol.
Well I had a look. And there's nothing that really grabs me on the Federation side of things, apart from maybe the Mirror Universe version of the Sovereign cruiser. There is a Klingon cruiser but I'm more of a Bird of Prey fan. Plus I don't have the EC for any of them yet - the Mirror variant Soveriegn cruiser was going for 250k!!!
How do people get those ships to trade anyway, are they awarded in a mission?
Are you shopping around for both your KDF and Fed toons?
A price tag of 250k actually isnt that much. If you are already level 50 you can easily get 8000 refined dilithium a day. If you only have 1 character at level 50 then for 3 days refine 8000 dilithium for a total of 24000 dilithium. Now go to the dilithium exchange and exchange that refined dilithium into Zen. At the current rate 24000 dilithium will convert into about 150 zen. Now that you have 150 zen go into the zen store, click on items on the left and buy one master key. Go to the exchange and post that master key up for sale. Right now you can sell it for 2.1mil energy credits. And if you undercut everybody on the exchange, even by just a little bit it will sell very very fast.
Did you know how to earn 8k unrefined dil a day? or you need help with that too? if so what level is your highest character?
Oh I see. I just stuck my lockboxes on the exchange, because I don't have any keys, and I don't think I currently need whatever comes from them (not that I even know what they can contain!?).
I have a Federation Human who's on lvl 24 currently and that's who I've been playing as the past few days, I started with a KDF Klingon however and got him to lvl 38 before I started my Federation Human, not sure what I need on him, as I wasn't all that clued up when I started him but he's got a lvl 30 free ticket Bird of Prey (can't recall what it's name is at that level but it has a variant which is purchasable on the C-Store iirc).
I just found the price tag of the Mirror Sovereign a bit much, but then I was thinking in terms of buying a Sovereign from the C-Store or Shipyard (in which case I might as well have bought a non-mirror one from the C-Store or Shipyard), not in terms of EC.
I think from the advice given I can make 8k dil a day, I have been making a bit. I just don't like the idea of waiting 62 days to get to the 500k amount of dil I'd like to have. I'm not sure in 2 months time I'll have the enthusiasm for playing STO or I'll have completed the scripted campaign and have little to do.
The limit of 8000 dil a day for refining is just too low, quite simply, to work considering that even - for example - the cheapest dilithium-purchasable items are over 7000 and more commonly items can reach up to fifteen or over thirty-thousand dilithium. A player will on-average end up earning far more dilithium than they can refine simply because of that refinement cap and usually out of frustration end up resorting to spending real money to buy Zen and exchange it for already-refined Dilithium just to avoid long waits to refine all the dilithium they need or just to get the Zen they're looking for. Unfortunately, this is unlikely to ever change since it's one of the big moneymakers they have...
^Words that every player should keep in mind, especially whenever there's a problem with the game...
Get a Fed, a Rom, and a Klingon each to 50 before you worry about dil. You don't actually need any until then. Once there, have each one start working on a different reputation and just do one mission a day each (and by being 3 different reps, it won't be the same mission over and over again). You'll get 480 from the Academy daily, plus 480 for a normal mode mission, plus 340 for the daily reputation project, which across 3 toons is 3900 a day just for playing. After 40 days thats 156,000 dil, and you'll have finished 3 reputations for another 144,000 (if you wait til a dil weekend to turn the last one in). Or have each character do two reputations, alternating each day, for 288,000 (6 reps to choose from after all). Then each character can sponsor the others and they'll be able to rep up at double speed. Within 90 days or so, you'll have over a million dil and all your reputations done.
But don't worry about dilithium until you're 50. Nothing you can use it on yet is worth buying. Wait till it matters. For now, just enjoy the story missions and learn the mechanics. Toys are no substitute for understanding.
https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCT9lpRvUQoKOJf5cAbNiTCA
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Captain Bi Shonen's official Thread! http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?p=22866531#post22866531
Hi, welcome to STO.
You don't. You will either spend time playing them or micromanaging them. That's why it's called farming. The amount of time you spend will depend on the number of alts and your farming strategy, such as parking your alts in one spot to use the Duty Officer system for a few minutes before switching characters or farming reputations or queues.
Here's a fairly decent (but not comprehensive) list of which content gives dilithium: http://sto.gamepedia.com/Dilithium
Most of those are from the PvE queue. For Duty Officer assignments that award the [Contraband] item that can be traded in for dilithium I'm working on an extensive list. Most of these are KDF-only assignments: http://bit.ly/STOContrabandAssignments
For other non-contraband assignments that are good for leveling your Doffing and getting some other good stuff:
http://bit.ly/STOGoodDoffing
http://bit.ly/STODysonDoffing
http://sto.gamepedia.com/Duty_officer#Obtaining_More_Duty_Officers
It is a widely known fact that "All" is a broken search category that will frequently not return the cheapest listings or will simply not work when specifying a rarity. For the cheap mirror universe ships, leave all the search settings at default and change your filter category to "Reward Packs" and search for the word mirror.
The vast majority of the end-game content is structured around playing with others. The PvE queues where you and a handful of other players team up vs the AI are where the majority of end-game currencies (mostly various types of Marks) are handed out. You can't earn any of these currencies from normal Episode missions.
Don't worry about PvP. You don't have to partake at all if you don't want to (I rarely do). It's not required for any aspect of STO's advancement.
SB24 is a beast for new players. The klingons in there love to spam torpedoes and isometric charges (and hunt in packs) that will obliterate your hull. You'll want good armor engineering consoles and damage resist abilities like polarize hull to take them on. You'll also want tactical team to auto-balance your shield facings, and a good hull heal or two like engineering team, hazard emitters, or aux to structural. Additionally tactics and piloting skill are extremely important when you don't yet have equipment that can faceroll SB24. Oh and I guess I should point out that you can't solo all of the queues. Some of them won't allow a private instance to be created without a minimum number of players.
You can do other things while you wait, like manage your Doff assignments, talk in zone chat (at your own peril, lol) or other channels, or careen around in the battle/adventure zones that unlock at level 50. (The caveat being, that you must be willing to drop what you're doing at a moment's notice when the queue pops.)
Judging by your aversion to playing with other players (who frequently are of questionable reliability) you might prefer the persistent adventure zones like New Romulus, Defera, Nukara Prime, and the dyson sphere space and ground zones. These persistent zones offer missions and objectives that can be completed in an open fashion with or without other players, and still get plenty of end-game currencies without needing to team up. You should also check out the Foundry section of this forum where a lot of dedicated players can tell you which ones are really good to play (the search interface in the game is terrible, so getting a human-curated list here is a good idea).
In fact the majority of the end-game content is locked behind level 50 (and soon there will be more stuff when the level cap goes up to 60) so you should probably get a character to 50 before passing judgement.
You don't, and you never will "need" anything from them. They're a gambling mechanism and optional content.
You can get a free Sovereign (or Galaxy, or several other ships) when you get your Fed to level 40.
However as was already pointed out, 250,000 EC is very cheap, especially for a full-blown starship. You can get a lot of EC by being an exchange hawk, or selling off an abundance of duty officers that you can get for free, or selling your loot to vendors at any major social hub, or converting dilithium to zen and then selling something from the C-store on the exchange.
Be warned though, as a silver player (non-subscribing) your EC bank is limited to 10 million so if you sell an item that pushes you over that limit, you'll lose the difference in EC and all future EC from sales until you either buy the 1 billion EC cap limit, or spend down your 10mil EC. (Like if you have 9,750,000 EC and sell something for 500,000 you'll only get 250,000 because the rest exceeds the 10mil f2p cap.)
You have three choices. Grind up, open your wallet, or stop worrying about it and play casually. Eventually the resources you gain from regular play will add up to the amount you desire.
This.
IMG tags are restricted by PWE. They only work in the Art of Star Trek Online subforum further down the main page.
Joined January 2009
- Google STOWiki and then bookmark it. STOWiki is your friend for basic information.
- Ask questions of other players whenever you find something you do not understand. Ingame, there are some people who are very generous with their time and information.
- Try things out for yourself. Experience and outright failure are sometime far better teachers than discussions.
- Lastly, play this game the way you think it should be played. If at the end of a session you had fun and you look forward to playing STO again, guess what? You played the game correctly!
Shockingly (not really) you can get just about anything fast and easy in STO if you got the cash to spend.
And let me get this straight...
You don't want to do multiplayer activities.
In a Multiplayer game...
What's my position?
That people should know what they're screaming about!
(paraphrased from "The Newsroom)
For this part specifically, what people are probably doing is running Duty Officer missions. KDF characters have access to Marauding instead of Diplomacy. Many Marauding missions reward contraband, and often Prisoners. Starfleet characters might rarely get Contraband from a Confiscate Contraband mission, or from inspecting a freighter. KDF captains who focus on Marauding missions can get quite a lot more of it than Starfleet captains. Once you have five Contraband, there's a mission you can get from an NPC in Earth Space Dock or on Qu'nos to turn in five contraband for 2000 dilithium.
You'd need to level the KDF captains enough to access Duty Officer missions, and then you can just park them in sector space or system space next to the Klingon homeworld. Log onto that character once each day, collect duty officer missions, and see if there's any marauding missions you can take. For a little more time invested, switch from sector space to the Qu'nos system map and take any other Marauding missions. When you get a stack of five, beam down to First City and turn them in to the security officer.
I would recommend holding onto any prisoners until you spot a "consign prisoners to labor battalion" mission. The mission from the Security Officer that lets you exchange prisoners for dilithium is honestly a terrible deal. It takes a large number of officers (ten, I think, half the contents of a full brig) and they have a really high chance of escaping. Which means you'd be trading ten prisoners for absolutely nothing.
On the other hand, if you don't care to wait until a "consign prisoners" mission turns up, the Security Officer will at least empty out the ship's brig, one way other the other. You could also sell them on the exchange, although I'm not sure what they currently sell for.
Once you have the duty officer system unlocked, you might be spending ten or fifteen minutes on a KDF captain shuffling duty officer missions. Maybe even less than that, if you just focus on missions that will reward Contraband, and don't change zones. Those captains will eventually start leveling up just from the duty officer missions, although that could be a problem if you decide to actually star playing them later, or using them to climb through the Rep system for the Reputation Complete dilithium payout. That is because KDF captains get their first few tiers of starship upgrades directly from story missions, rather than for passing a specific level. There are currently a couple of threads about this in various parts of these forums, mostly started by people wondering how they're expected to be killing level 25 or 30 enemies in the starting Bird of Prey.
Two notes on this.
1. Hitting level 50 used to correspond with the end of the single-player missions back when STO launched. These days, many new missions have been inserted into the regular story arc (notably the former Featured Episodes, the Nimbus arc and the Dyson Sphere introduction missions). The last character I leveled hit 50 somewhere during the Romulan arc missions, meaning roughly halfway (if not even earlier) in the overall story arc. Reaching 50 thus no longer means you'll run out of single-player content soon. Where exactly you'll be at 50 depends on how you gathered XP while levelling up - the more XP you gained outside of regular missions (for example, through doff assignments), the more missions you'll have left. And of course, we have an expansion on the horizon as well.
2. I would not worry very much about not wanting to play group content. I too am very much a solo player, and I've found that a lot of group content can still be played without any communication - the difference between having NPC allies and player-controlled allies is minimal for most of the easier PvE queues and for all of the adventure zones. Even the simpler Elite queues like Crystalline Entity and Infected: The Conduit (Space) can be completed without any issues provided the players understand the mission requirements, and these days - in my experience - most of them do.
Vice Admiral Mathrias | U.S.S. Utrecht (Blockade Runner Retrofit)
Vide Admiral Kyurin | U.S.S. Cairhien (Fleet Dreadnought Cruiser)
Vice Admiral Kiarl Leftrin | U.S.S. Aegir (Fleet Recon Science Vessel)
--= Starfleet Strategic Command =--
Well unfortunately, you are going to get to the point where you will be done with all the campaign missions because there are "only" about 80 missions as of season 9.5. In the past Cryptic used to provide a decent number of new campaign missions with every new season (before I started playing this year), but recently each new season only offered one "feature episode" rather than a string of missions. Due to the level cap increase of Delta Rising expansion, I assume that will be a few new campaign missions. But I think most of the story line will be advanced through either queued missions or adventure zones.
Like any game whether it is single player or an MMO; you are going to run out of campaign missions. No MMO has the budget to continuously release new content on a regular basis. Therefore, you will come to point where you have no more new campaign missions to do until the next season (~ 6 months later).
When you actually reach "end game" and you have nothing else to do other than Foundry Missions which there are only so many of as well, then you can simply wait for the next season to come, or create a new character and replay the campaign again. The Romulans have their own set of unique missions, and so does the KDF, however the unique missions only last so long before all factions starts to share main story missions.
I started playing STO because I liked the fact that a large part of the game is single player driven and I can play at my own pace. However, this is an MMO and because I generally feel the need to get resources to improve my ship (crafting system, reputation system) I play a lot of queued missions. The actual end game is a grind because you will be doing the same thing over and over again as a means to get better equipment for your ship or Dilithium for a new ship. All MMOs seems to operate like this (STO is my 1st MMO). If "grinding for better gear" is not your idea of fun, then it's best to stop playing STO when you have reached "end game" or as I said before, start a new character...
So I think my fears of running out of stuff to do were wrong.
As for dil farming I can now just about get 8k per 4-6hrs of gameplay as my KDF Klingon, and I can see that by using duty officers, sitting in Federation/Romulan space and doing marauding missions brings it in (or more to the point brings in contraband to turn in every 4hrs), but it means that I have no time to play as my Federation character or do the scripted campaign missions.
Here's what I can currently think of doing to farm dil -
Federation, Romulan and Cardassian Empire Defense missions = 4320
Turn in contraband (gained from marauding duty officer missions) = 2000
Pi Canis Alpha and Beta Sorties = 960 each so 1920
In total that's 8240. However I did that last night and it took me nearly 6hrs!
I could add 1440 to that total by doing a foundry spotlight mission, and then add some more for an officer reports mission, but again, it'd take another couple of hours.
So, I still fail to see how people can claim you can get 10s of thousands if not more dil in a shorter than 4hrs time frame.
Some of the ideas I read led me to believe that I could log into my character, do about 30 minutes or less of stuff and make a huge amount of dil (10's or 100's of thousands) - I'd like that to be possible, so that I can spend time playing the scripted missions and developing my characters, but I don't think it actually is!
Not that it really matters as you can only refine 8k per day!
well because you asked this question prior to the 14th of this month. as of yesterday it has all changed simply because of the difficulty increases involved.
now we are all going to have to learn it all again and figure out the best bang for our time.
because the dil farm grind is all about the largest return for time invested. so if you find a mission with a 60 min cool dwn but it only take 5 min to complete and another mission that take 10 min to complete with the same cool down. thats 15 min so 4 toons could do those 2 mission in an hours time. then the cool downs are gone and you take the same 4 toons and do it all again. so in 2 hours time you had over half the dil for the day for 4 different toons. in my post i stated in 4 soilid gameplay hours you can rake it in. now at the same time you have those 4 toons grinding run duty officer missions with them to get contraband by the end of the cycle the mission to get contraband is completed and you can start the turn over contraband missions on probably only 2 toons maybe 3 if lucky but thats another 6k dil. all in the same 4 hours thats 32k-36k refined dil in 4hours time depending on your access to a fleet dil mine of proper lvl . because the next day when you log in you collect the turn over contraband mission you started the prior day.
I did have a good guild not sure if I do still because I am in them iddle of the 3 hours of download on cable .... so we will see ... I suspect I do need a new one so If somone has a fun group that play regularly , please tell me!
Also ... Im not sure whats going on but I only see 1 option for delta quadrant rising equipment. And at 150 ish dollars canadian ... im thinking it will be a LOOOONG time before I buy it. OUCH! Is there no Starter kit for this one ? Will I be okay with the High end stuff from the original game ( I even have that rare borg from the pre order AND the one from the ultra hard borg instance. My old guild ran me through it to get her. ( Borg Science officer ) so I think that gives me the Science and enineer ... but Im not sure what has changed so I dont know QUITE what I need to start looking for ... Unfortunately I wont have the cash for 150$ of addons. Anyone got some suggestions for wepons and stuff from the orig ? I am getting the Romulan Starter , its not too bad . So Let me know what I should look for. Any help is apprieciated greatly !
Admiral Angelios ....
In fact i think on normal mode doing dungeons and storyline at level 60 it may be possible to use your level 40 free ships, the inexpensive mirror ships on the exchange (also has level 40 requirements), and tier 5 zen ships. I have a T5U which is a tier 5 upgraded ship with MK XII rep gear and so far at level 58 doing storymode and normal mode pve queues i can say that the bonuses i got from upgrading my ship from a T5 to T5U is minimal. I probably could have done the content without them.