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dracarus2013
Member Posts: 46 Arc User
Currently I'm using a Starfleet Tactical & I've reached level 16(just finished "Ultimate Klingon") & it stopped giving me missions. Also, I keep hearing people talking about setting up your crew & giving them jobs that can be done even if you're offline & also something about R&D? So I guess my overall question would be is if there are any Guides on these topics I can look at & what's the best way to start building myself up so I don't get my butt handed to me in higher levels??
Thanks in advance for any help given .. my IGN is ... Raith Va'lek.
Thanks in advance for any help given .. my IGN is ... Raith Va'lek.
Raith Va'lek(Federation Human, Tactical) -- U.S.S. Thalindor
Krayat(Klingon Alien, Tactical) -- I.K.S. Sa'Tan
Krayat(Klingon Alien, Tactical) -- I.K.S. Sa'Tan
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At your level you can easily go to Sirius Sector Block or Regulus Sector Block. Do you know what Sector Block you are in right now? do you know how to get to Sirius and Regulus blocks? go to either one of those and do some Patrol missions. Fly to some of the systems and when you get close see if an option comes up that says "Patrol System". Not all systems will have the options...major systems like Sol, Vulcan or Drozana. I recommend starting at the bottom of the sector blocks and just fly from system to system working your way up. I also recommend you do a bunch of them maybe 10 or so patrols. If you do that many patrol missions right now that you shouldnt have to stop at all during the rest of the storyline to 50. You dont have to do all of them right now though. Just know that when you stop getting storylines you have to do patrols to gain some levels.
For the other stuff that allows you to do missions when you are offline that is the Duty Officer System. Take a look at your minimap, at the bottom edge of it are some icons. You will see buttons for Zen Store, Dilithium Store, Duty Officers, PVE, PVP and Misc. Hover over them to see which one is which and then click on the Duty Officers button, the one with 3 heads on it. At the top click on Assignments, Roster and R&D (crafting) and just explore around a bit. Do that first and then come back with any questions that you have. There should be some how-to out there as well, probably in the duty officer subforums.
http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/forumdisplay.php?f=251
Krayat(Klingon Alien, Tactical) -- I.K.S. Sa'Tan
Krayat(Klingon Alien, Tactical) -- I.K.S. Sa'Tan
The smallest zen package is 500 zen, but if you dont want to spend IRL money then go into the doffing subforum i linked above. Search around or start a thread asking about how to earn dilithium through doff "contraband missions". And you can also ask about what level you can start doing that stuff. I think you can start doing the doff contraband stuff at level 11, but double check in that subforum just to make sure.
After a few days of doing doff missions you may have enough dilithium to convert into 125 zen which can buy you 1 master key which you can then sell for 2.3 million energy credits. You do that and you will have a lot of 'playing around' money to buy stuff with.
If you intend to open them, be sure to look up their odds. http://sto.gamepedia.com/Lock_Box
At this stage, don't bother, very little of it would be useful to you right now.
2.8 ish - the result set of a search for master key in all lists higher, and some people don't think to check the keys option where it is about 2.3 million EC.
Sure, it takes a little longer to sell, and you need to fiddle your pricing around to make sure your sale isn't ignored like the cheaper ones are, but it does net quite a return.
Also about EC, if you're a free (silver) player and not a subscriber (gold) your bank has a cap of 10 million EC. It may seem like a daunting amount now, but a few master key sales can easily push you over that and there are no mechanisms in place to prevent you from performing any sales that will exceed that cap. You will lose any EC over 10 million that you earn unless you purchase the EC cap increase (to 1 billion) from the C-Store for 500 Zen. Just something to be aware of.
Joined January 2009
Hmm ok so then stick them in my bank & let them rot until what level about, would you recommend?
Krayat(Klingon Alien, Tactical) -- I.K.S. Sa'Tan
Joined January 2009
At least 40 - that is when you can use the ship prizes - but 50 is better for the remainder of the contents you are far more likely to acquire.
I downloaded & play the game through Steam, so I assume I am a Silver. I'm guessing I would need to subscribe through Arc directly then?
Krayat(Klingon Alien, Tactical) -- I.K.S. Sa'Tan
You know that dilithium you earnt? Well, if you keep collecting it and selling it for Zen, you will be able to buy the EC cap removal from the C-Store.
At current rates, it will take 10 character days to do it.
Krayat(Klingon Alien, Tactical) -- I.K.S. Sa'Tan
It is possible to fall behind in level such that missions are not available. The story missions have a min level required to do them, and if you are 16 and the next one requires level 17, you can't see it until you level up! This is rare, but possible --- most of the time you will be at least the required level. It is also rare but possible to confuse the "pop up" NPCs so they don't pop up a message for the next mission. You can look to see if one is available by pressing the default key L and going to episodes, your current mission chain, ... and if there is a new one available you can get it to pop up the NPC and accept the mission from there.
Duty officers, once you get your first set, can be accessed from your mini-map menu, the button that is full of heads on the bottom. First, you have active duty officers to set up. This is in the overview / roster page where it has a button labeled "active space" or "active ground". You can slot up to 5 officers to give you small bonuses in space or ground combat. These choices are HUGE at higher levels, but early on, you won't have much to choose from that is worth using, just do your best you can study the high end officer setups when you have time to read the wiki or other web info sources.
Also give them assignments. You will see things like "scan a cloud for gas" which rewards you with some crafting materials. Once you find these assignments, its pretty easy to understand the interface. Each space sector has different missions, and they randomize once an hour or something but you have to go to some specific places to get some interesting missions. ALSO, important: under personal in the missions, when you are on a BASE like DS9 or Earth spacedock etc, you sometimes get missions to get a free bridge officer. These are important so you can slowly earn purple quality officers for free and store up a pile of "trainers" who have rare skills.
R&D is sort of but not quite a subset of the above missions. From the same place there is a tab for it, and here again once you find the interface its pretty simple to use. The aggravating part is you need quality duty officers to do decent crafting (R&D is crafting).
Find these interfaces and take a look, then ask questions if you do not understand it from here.
Crafting can help you as you level and esp alts, as you can soon craft purple quality weapons which mow down low level enemy (you are expected to use mostly green weapons until about level 40, then blue to 50, then purple...). You also need at least a few ranks of crafting to upgrade items under the new system, so focus on getting to rank 10 in all areas. There is nothing crafted except upgrade thingys that you really "need" to have. There are a few nice items, but you can get a buddy to craft those for you if it comes to that, such as the 360 beam weapons.
The game is sort of odd. What you need to do at low levels is try out different ship types, different weapon types, and get familiar with how things work such as officer skills in space (what do they do, which are useful) and so on. That is all. At 50, the reputation system opens and you will want to earn the top gear from that system, but you can't do it until then. Also at higher levels fleet stores have quality gear, so another thing you can do is earn fleet marks as you level up by doing a few fleet alert groups etc. If you reach higher levels (40+ really) with a sound knowledge of how to build a decent ship with officer skills and weapons and consoles etc that work together, you can do well with free/easy to earn gear until you can upgrade it with rep/fleet stuff. So the best thing you can do to prep for high levels is to learn the game, some of which is by doing, and some of which is reading the wiki etc.
That building also has a Personnel Officer, and if you speak with her and choose "Submit Request for Personnel", you can get assignments that give you free Duty Officers. Those assignments take 2 days to do, are repeatable, and have a 96 hour cooldown upon completion. I highly recommend grabbing those whenever they're off cooldown, because who doesn't like free DOffs?
Do note that General Recruitment and "Request R&D Assistance" requires 1000 Dilithium, so you probably don't want to do those.
Never. If you actually want something you will get it faster and more cheaply by selling the keys on the ah and using the ec to buy what you want.
For example, lockbox space ships (the jackpot prize) you need on average 200 keys to win by opening boxes, but they sell on the auctionhouse for only 180 million or so. Each key is (as I type this) 2.5 million ec. So, you can use 200 keys to "on average" get a ship, or sell 72 keys to guarantee you get one.
Not counting the ships, the average "stuff" you get in a lockbox is worth 200k or less ec, but the key is worth 2.5 million.
Sell the key, buy the stuff.
Actually, the opposite advice is better. Because of the upgrade system, it is cheaper and you have a vastly higher chance to get violet/gold gear by opening the boxes at mark 4 and upgrading from there compared to waiting for mark 12. Some people even have dedicated characters frozen at level 15-19 just for opening weapon boxes.
You can, however, just buy the boxes on the auction house for 1/10 the price of a key. So, still not worth opening a box.
Edit: and if you're avoiding the upgrade system, it's cheaper to just buy the gear you want instead of a box or a key.
Good point.
Apologies to the op for going off topic.
@west, really? Every time I've checked it was far cheaper to buy a finished superior kit. 1 purple and 13 blue mats, running 110k to 400k for the purple and the blues getting used are all like z-particles (75k) or rubidium(120k), rarely beta tachyons (15k each).
Worked out to well over 1 million in materials to craft the kit compared to between 750k and 900k to buy off the ah in bulk.
Now, if there's a superior kit that uses trellium k and beta tachyons, hell that puppy'd only cost 150k each. But I don't think there is such a thing.
Edit, might have my specific matsmoff imy not at a computer just now to confirm exactly which is which.
I forget who posted about the lvl 20 Ship Selection but thanks for the advice I'll keep that in mind.
As for the EC/Zen/Dilithium Situation ... as stated previously, I can't really buy Zen using a CC or anything due to bills, so I'm stuck resorting to selling/recycling what i can for the EC & earning/minig Dilithium as I can & converting.
My last remaining question for now is on the best way to build up the ships skills .. between weapons, flow capacitors & etc in order to stay effective? I've noticed starting this level that I've been getting my butt handed to me & having to respawn a lot. So far i've been pourig my points into all the ensign level stuff .. mainly weapons, power to shields, flow capacitors & hull repair. Do i need to go back to Starfleet & respec or am i still salvagable?
Krayat(Klingon Alien, Tactical) -- I.K.S. Sa'Tan
Well honestly I tend to be more of a straight Tank type .. just run straight at 'em with guns blazing & hope the shields hold or regen fast enough. That said, a few people i've told this to on Teamspeak have told me to go with Cannons & High Yield Torpedos in front with Turretts Aft, & shields that have a high regen rate. As far as what type of ship not sure .. maybe a heavy escort?
Krayat(Klingon Alien, Tactical) -- I.K.S. Sa'Tan
If you are dying at lower levels it usually means you have not yet figured out the power of defensive officer skills. This may require going back to base to retrain your officers, which costs a tiny bit of EC (a couple thousand IIRC, might be just a few hundred, cant recall).
The staples for defense...
- tactical officer tactical team: this moves your shields instantly from the sides where you are not being shot to the sides that you are being shot on. If you can arrange to have most of the hits coming from one direction, the effectively gives you 4x shield capacity on that one facing.
- power to shields and science team. These heal your shields. One or the other, or both, whatever your ship can seat as lowbie ships are very limited. Engineering power to shields allows science seat for...
- hazard emitters! This clears off nasty hull burning plasma from evil romulans or borg, and it also heals your hull. It also clears off shield drain attacks.
How you build your captain's spec is going to vary depending on captain type and personal desires. But its usually good to have 6 points in "almost everything" so really when building your captain, a good generic approach is to find a few skills you can live without and put 6 points in everything else. Max/min builds are very complicated but a generic solid spec is quite easy.
http://www.stoacademy.com/tools/skillplanner/
Make sure to select your faction and career type, dont worry about filling in the ship type or gear. Underneath Faction-Career-Rank are several buttons: Space-Ground-Skills-Specialization-etc etc. Click on Skills and start filling that out to how you have it right now and how you plan on having it once you reach level 50. If you want to do primarily space stuff then you will want to spend 300K points on space skills and only 66K ground skills. But on the other hand if you want to do mostly ground stuff then you can put up to 100K max points into ground skills and that will leave you with only 266K space skill points. Once you are done filling it in save it and post the link on here. Once we've seen how you plan on spending your skill points we will see how we can fix it. It may be necessary for you to start the character over if your skill points are done really poorly. You can respec your skill points but a respec token costs 500 zen. If you are still only level 20ish it might just be better to restart a new character and delete the existing one you have. But wait until we've critiqued your skill points before you go deleting anything.
I have used the foundry to help level and found a google link about 2 foundry quests that help me level, are fun and also give me dil.
In foundry, search for a quest called " Investigate Officer Reports". I think you can also find it in your available quests in your quest log. Well, find that and then hail and accept.
Then search for "Sword of the Kuvah Magh" ,hail and accept.
I did those 2 quests along with some non combat foundry quests in between story missions and have always stayed on par for the quest levels.