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Hello, just some questions about the game
dracher
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
Happy new year to you all!
I am writing this post to ask a question that bothers me for a while now. I started playing a long time ago (I can't remember exactly but I think it was before Fleet HQ). After a very long break caused by some changes to the game, I thought returning to STO, but... I want to ask you an opinion about the current state of the game: how is the rep grind now? dilithium grinding still a pain? are there any changes to the ships in general?
Thank you in advance, and again I wish you a Happy New Year!
I am writing this post to ask a question that bothers me for a while now. I started playing a long time ago (I can't remember exactly but I think it was before Fleet HQ). After a very long break caused by some changes to the game, I thought returning to STO, but... I want to ask you an opinion about the current state of the game: how is the rep grind now? dilithium grinding still a pain? are there any changes to the ships in general?
Thank you in advance, and again I wish you a Happy New Year!
Post edited by dracher on
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Good changes - new R&D system, new levels, content is excellent, they're (Cryptic) is profitable
Bad changes - Less XP, longer progression, dill harder to get, zero communication for company
Rep grind is same amount of time but less resources. You dont have to go buy hypos and shield batteries anymore, just dump points once a day for a month.
Dilithium is still limited to 8k per day refining limit. There are more places to get it but they still make it so you need to buy zen and convert to dil if you need a lot of it.
More grinds have been introduced that take even longer, things like R&D that require you to click a button every day for three months.
Skill progression is also heavy grind now, not the quick level-up like before.
LOL, if you thought it was grindy back then you will be shocked by how grindy it is now. The only way to get end game gear is the upgrade system and it will cost you around 100,000 dilithium per weapon upgrade.
upgrade is somewhat costly. like rep/fleet isn't, but you can now make any gear you like end game gear. no more having to get fleet/rep gear... though it's still a really good idea. keep in mind you don't have to go for epic thats when it gets insane. very rare mk mk work well... actually for some very rare mk 12 works
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
If you are spending 100k dil per weapon you are doing it very very very wong. I did all 4 of my beam arrays for about 35000, got them to mk XIV.
Thank you!
And yes there are still lockboxes... onky difference is that they no longer drop T5.5 ships, rather T6s... well just the Delta boxand the future ones to come.
They added a new tier of T6 ships and some half-upgrades for some of the older T5
Cheap T5 like mirror ships and mission reward ships are not upgradable. T5 ships on the zen shop are 2000-2500 zen. You can upgrade one of those to fleet grade with a fleet ship module (500 zen or bought on exchange for credits), or buy a fleet version of some ships for 2500. Basically the same for T5-U upgrade, except its 700 zen for a single ship (500 if you have multiple ships to upgrade). Final price is between 3000-3700 depending on variables, but you still do not have T6 ship.
T6 on the zen shop is 3000 zen. They have not released any upgrade modules yet but there will almost certainly be fleet module at some point.
that or use the crappy upgrades....
My character Tsin'xing
rep grind is not bad. Once every 3 days you do 1 task (typically 15 min tops, usually less) and get 3 days worth of marks. If you have done it in the past, you can double the speed of rep gain for your alts --- I made a new alt and it is at t5 in all after maybe 2 weeks, roughly? It flew by. There are other horrid grinds, but rep isnt one of them.
Dil is very easy to gind, but it is still a chore. Your best bet is to invest in some alts to help distribute the load --- I have 3 alts that turn in contraband 3 times/day. Each turn-in char needs 2 more characters feeding it (kdf aligned chars..!). I dunno, for less than an hour a day I make maybe 20k dil / day, roughly.
Ships have had massive changes, yes.
First, there are 2 new tiers of ships: t5u, or upgraded tier 5 ships, get several passive abilities (like 10% to all damage or shield hit points etc). And t6 ships get this as well as a ship trait -- a new idea. Once you own and unlock (this is like an hour of playing the ship) a t6 ship's trait, you can use it on any ship after that! This sells more ships and lockbox keys and such; typically the trait is not a good one for the ship it is on (example, kdf cow cruiser has a cannon trait).
On top of that, ships now have 11 consoles (t6) and intel officers (new idea). Intel seats are a new thing that is hybrid, so you might have a tactica/intel or a sci/intel seat. These can either seat a regular officer OR a new on that can learn new skills. The intel skills are very potent, esp surgical strikes (30% crit chance for a short time) and override system safeties (power to all systems overcapped, you can hit 160+ power in weapons for example).
Finally, all gear can be upgraded to MK XIV and can improve in quality (purple, purple II, and gold quality --- any item in game can reach gold quality with enough money sunk into it). This costs a f-ton of dil and other resources (money or crafting). Crafting is a big deal now: it unlocks captain traits, special consoles and gear, and you can craft really potent weapons with critdx4 (upgraded) being the top weapons in the game now.
My character Tsin'xing
Did it on Tribble early on used vendor upgrade modules, and it was more than 100k per weapon.
If you have a blue or a green weapon, I suppose it's fine.
first thing about the upgrade system: you upgrades ships at the ship SELECTOR not the guy that sells all the other ships.
T5U ships have one more console slot than their counterparts. a fairly comprehensive list of what gets what is here. this means that fleet t5u have a total of 11 console slots.
T6 ships have only 10 slots, but can slot intel boffs---boffs that can be trained in a new secondary category as an alternative to their regular role skills.
both T5U and T6 ships have ship mastery levels--progressive passive traits that unlock for that specific ship, but the t6 has a top level mastery level that serves as a special trait unlock you can slot and carry over to use on any ship. (IMO this is a far better reason to get the T6 than the intel boffs. Use the ship till you unlock the trait, then go back to your primary monster ship with the t6 mastery unlocked.)
There are a few ship traits you can unlock via the specializations system--which is how you level up post lvl 50--it's based on skill points earned instead of exp. Ship mastery increase is determined exclusively by skill points earned in a given ship in space combat; hit those PVEs.
Most of the prize ships can be upgraded for free, but mirror ships cannot be upgraded at all. Upgrade tokens for the non-prize ships are available at the Z store and the exchange.
The specialization system can give you major advantages in combat, both space and ground.
intel points slotted also unlock certain intel kit modules (available via the delta rep store tab) you can slot in the new personalized kits
and yes, lockboxes are still around. if you've got some of the original ones left in your inventory, you should be able to get a pretty penny for them on the exchange.
Working as intended ... if you're "Casual-Joe" trying to get better Gear through Advanced & beyond ... you're basically screwed now ...
The only advanced Pugs which might work are basically "Crystalline" & "Bug Hunt" ... don't even bother with Elite ... everything else probably doesn't even pop up anyway ...
As a casual player, I recommend waiting til you have time and resources to NOT BE A CASUAL PLAYER IN ELITE. You will likely cause many fails, as optionals are not optionals in ELITE, now. Other player will not be happy AT ALL.
I stay in the Normal queues where there is more toleration for people below 40kDPS. I am getting towards a routine 35kDPS, tanking, but the VAPE ship builds have really changed PVP and PVE.
To be perfectly honest, the game is no longer casual friendly which I feel was a big negative.
I enjoyed the days when I could just jump into a Que, and just have fun. Worst case scenario was we would fail the optional or it would take a long time to complete. With not having that much on the line people were nicer and didn't care.
They have taken a lot of steps to get rid of casual players and that's a shame. Elite STF's are pretty much dead, even if you can get a group they're not worth doing anymore. They increased the amount of time they take to complete, added 'optional' objectives that aren't optional at all because they cause you to fail if you don't complete them, and they reduced the rewards.
There are some good things about DR, but STF's are not one of them. Unfortunately, as a casual player, you're going to struggle.
Don't get me wrong, I can't even have access to elite STFs now, I am just level 51, but I don't think I will be doing any STF from now on.
Some are still do-able.
You should try Crystalline Entity Advanced, it's easy and never fails. Plus it drops the Purple Mat you need for Superior Beam Upgrades.
Infected Conduit Advanced still has a reasonable success rate as well.
The best way is to just look at the ques and join the 3 or 4 that have people in them. People are playing the ones that are possible to play and ignoring the other 95% of the ques.
So far, Cryptic doesn't seem to care, they have done nothing to try and get people to play the Ques. It probably won't change because they don't seem to care. There are still Ques you can play, you're just limited to 3 or 4, the rest of them are just decorative and never used.
Battlezones are still fun.. at least for now anyway.