Why not craft your own kits? You don't have to be level 15 in every school. Rather, you just need level 15 in 1 school and then sell kits on the exchange to raise ec to buy other kits. The dil cost really isn't that bad in the end.
Why not craft your own? The failqueue only materials.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'm flying the breen carrier with the two breen sets (i'm doing a drain boat, and both sets do quite nice to make me good at doing so). Now that the winter event is over, I can no longer acquire the breen warpcore.
It took six (6) superior upgrade tokens to upgrade my breen mk 11 shields to mk 12. What did I get for my 2 million EC and 4k dilithium? 100 extra shields.
Seriously, 100 shields for 2 million EC and 4k dilithium? I'm not doing this ever again. I'll stick with my mk 11.
some items are not worth upgrading. I dunno... my shields are now at almost 1600 / face in a sci ship, at XIV gold (pure luck, I didn't farm gold on them). But there are different types of shields --- a regenerative shield with lower capacity won't gain a lot from XII to XIV. A covarient gains a decent amount.
There are other things that do not upgrade well... MOST rep consoles do not do much more when upgraded to XIV. However other things do quite a bit --- upgraded weapons make a huge difference, and upgraded specialty consoles like feet tac or sci are notably stronger at XIV.
It is much, much, much cheaper to craft your own upgrade tokens.
4k dil is not that much --- you probably paid 20-30k for many of your items. Its 1/2 a day's worth.
I know it's been said a million times but I'd like to see cheeper upgrades allowing me to fly a variety of ships.
For me there are so many ships in the game that look interesting to fly with different styles of gameplay and I'd love to try a bunch of them.
Its not so much getting the ships but the wepons and consols on them.
If it was cheeper to upgrade I'd like to do a torp boat, a beam ship, cannon boat, different types of each of those using diferent wepon type damage and do all this on different ships.
Problem is I could never afford more than 2 ships and one loadout on each ship if I'm lucky.
I just dont understand why they setup the system the way they did.
They arent getting more money out of me what they get is what I've determined I'm willing to spend each month in a game it would just make the game more enjoyable for me for a longer peoiod of time if I was capable of enjoying more that the game has to offer.
The alternative is to fly a variety of ships that are equiped with what I can find and upgrade nothing being a subpar player but with a variety of ships.
Anyway just seems odd that they decided to go down this route.
I know it's been said a million times but I'd like to see cheeper upgrades allowing me to fly a variety of ships.
For me there are so many ships in the game that look interesting to fly with different styles of gameplay and I'd love to try a bunch of them.
Its not so much getting the ships but the wepons and consols on them.
If it was cheeper to upgrade I'd like to do a torp boat, a beam ship, cannon boat, different types of each of those using diferent wepon type damage and do all this on different ships.
Problem is I could never afford more than 2 ships and one loadout on each ship if I'm lucky.
I just dont understand why they setup the system the way they did.
They arent getting more money out of me what they get is what I've determined I'm willing to spend each month in a game it would just make the game more enjoyable for me for a longer peoiod of time if I was capable of enjoying more that the game has to offer.
The alternative is to fly a variety of ships that are equiped with what I can find and upgrade nothing being a subpar player but with a variety of ships.
Anyway just seems odd that they decided to go down this route.
This. SO much this.
Its a double whammy death to alts and variety. If you want to have several chars that are up to speed, the grinding of spec points is going to be beyond stupid to accomplish. Gear can be done slowly over time -- its slow but not insurmountable, I have a full set of DBB and am working on cannons next --- and by the end of the year I might have DBB, arrays, and cannons all 3 all in antiproton, all crafted and shared across the alts. I can't deal with trying to have another damage type, due to the system. And if the crafted guns were bound to char, I would just stop playing entirely, but at least that much effort can be shared.
Even so, as you said.... we have to choose between having 1 char that is properly set up in 1 ship, or having a bunch of sub-par setups. That is a poor choice -- and because of the game content design, if I have to work on one as a "main" ... it has to be a tac, really.
Certain items gain random mods with increases in Rarity, not the Mark. Epic has fixed mods, though.
So for some folks, it's that taking their VR to UR on certain items where they can end up feeling as if they just got vendortrashed...
...it's why when I upgrade weapons from VR12 to Mk XIII or Mk XIV, I keep my fingers crossed I don't get the UR upgrade. I don't want to be vendortrashed.
I have not upgraded any of my very rare Mk XII weapons yet. Do you mind clarifying what you mean by "vendortrashed" when upgrading to Mk XIII / MK XIV and getting the slim chance of the ultra rare upgrade? Doesn't that just add a random modifier to the existing modifiers?
For example, I typically use very rare Mk XII weapons with [CRTD]x2 [CRTH] modifiers. If they were to be upgraded to ultra rare wouldn't another modifier like [DMG] just be tacked on? Or is there a chance that the existing modifiers get scrambled and you end up with a weapon that has totally different modifiers?
If it was cheeper to upgrade I'd like to do a torp boat, a beam ship, cannon boat, different types of each of those using diferent wepon type damage and do all this on different ships.
The true joy of a torp boat is the extra fee you pay to upgrade projectile weapons.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I have not upgraded any of my very rare Mk XII weapons yet. Do you mind clarifying what you mean by "vendortrashed" when upgrading to Mk XIII / MK XIV and getting the slim chance of the ultra rare upgrade? Doesn't that just add a random modifier to the existing modifiers?
For example, I typically use very rare Mk XII weapons with [CRTD]x2 [CRTH] modifiers. If they were to be upgraded to ultra rare wouldn't another modifier like [DMG] just be tacked on? Or is there a chance that the existing modifiers get scrambled and you end up with a weapon that has totally different modifiers?
For some folks, getting that [Dmg] mod would mean they would buy the weapon again...hoping to get something other than the [Dmg] mod. They would not continue the upgrade process to Epic. They would try for another without [Dmg]. Once they got the weapon with their preferred mod...the old weapon with the [Dmg] mod...vendortrash.
I have not upgraded any of my very rare Mk XII weapons yet. Do you mind clarifying what you mean by "vendortrashed" when upgrading to Mk XIII / MK XIV and getting the slim chance of the ultra rare upgrade? Doesn't that just add a random modifier to the existing modifiers?
For example, I typically use very rare Mk XII weapons with [CRTD]x2 [CRTH] modifiers. If they were to be upgraded to ultra rare wouldn't another modifier like [DMG] just be tacked on? Or is there a chance that the existing modifiers get scrambled and you end up with a weapon that has totally different modifiers?
Existing modifiers are never touched. You only ever pick up a random mod going from VR to UR, and a set Epic mod going gold.
(Keep in mind we're talking about the top of the line best of the best equipment here.)
The ideal set of weapon mods for PvE is [CrtD]x4 or [CrtD]x3[Pen].
[Acc] is for PvP. [CrtH] is "at least it's not [Dam]", [Dam] is the worst.
[CrtD]x3 at VR means there's a 25% chance for [CrtD] at UR. You're 75% of the way to the best.
[CrtD]x3[Not-CrtD] means it's already locked in at not-best, and thus worth considerably less than the former.
I'm personally stunned by how little you get for taking something to Gold. Given the huge amounts of resources, EC and dil, the improvements to the items are disguistingly poor. The Spire Tactical consoles for example give you something like a 0.1 Crit H increase.
Really? That's it?
No wonder people can't be bothered with Gold. For the ULTIMATE GEAR, the improvements on the gear simply aren't enough. Again, Cryptic aren't giving enough back for the time involved.
For some folks, getting that [Dmg] mod would mean they would buy the weapon again...hoping to get something other than the [Dmg] mod. They would not continue the upgrade process. They would try for another without [Dmg]. Once they got the weapon with their preferred mod...the old weapon with the [Dmg] mod...vendortrash.
Okay.
I asked because you specifically mentioned that you keep your "fingers crossed" so you do not get the ultra rare upgrade when you upgrade to Mk XIII / Mk XIV. That basically implies you would be happy enough with very rare Mk XIII / Mk XIV. Even if you do get the dreaded [DMG] mod, at least your weapon does a little more damage.
Unless the purpose is to sell your upgraded weapon on the Exchange.
I asked because you specifically mentioned that you keep your "fingers crossed" so you do not get the ultra rare upgrade when you upgrade to Mk XIII / Mk XIV. That basically implies you would be happy enough with very rare Mk XIII / Mk XIV. Even if you do get the dreaded [DMG] mod, at least your weapon does a little more damage.
Unless the purpose is to sell your upgraded weapon on the Exchange.
Mk XII to Mk XIII adds +40% damage strength (a typical VR Mk XII Tac console for comparison adds +30%). Mk XIII to Mk XIV adds another +70%. So going from Mk XII to Mk XIV gets me +110% damage strength (which in of itself would be equivalent to adding [Dmg]x22 to the weapon).
At some point, I'd like to do the upgrade to UR and then the upgrade to Epic. I'm in no rush, but I would like to do it. Going to Epic adds +5% damage strength and adds the [Ac/Dm] mod for +10% Accuracy/+5% damage strength. Personally, I don't believe it is worth the cost involved with the RNG involved. But regardless, I'm hoping that at some point they allow us to select the mods (or even turn weapons into frames with mods) sort of thing.
Yes, even getting a [Dmg] mod at UR would be better than having no mod at all. There would be the +2.5% damage strength from going UR and the +5% from the [Dmg] mod for +7.5%. But I would then never even think about trying to take it to Epic. And so if I started feeling that urge to go Epic, I'd need to buy or craft a version of the weapon.
The gamble with the potential of getting +7.5% damage strength after having gotten the +110% going form Mk XII to Mk XIV and dead-ending the weapon...that risk is just too much for me, personally. So I'd rather go without that risk of the +7.5%.
It's just a quirky thing. I actually had one of the 4 Arrays that I was testing something on go UR with [CrtD]. Two of them are VR14 and done...there's another VR13 that if I remember I'll try to VR14, hoping it doesn't UR [Dmg].
It might have been different if Hawk was still around and working on the mods still...but now who knows when or even if that will come to pass, eh?
Quirky, eh? Not wanting better because of the potential that's lost with that happening...
The random [threat] and [dmg] modifiers going up in quality make the item 'vendortrash' for many people.
Investing dilithium in a space set item and getting [threat] from a lucky quality upgrade really is a nightmare.
Tyr shall give me strength! For the glory of Tempus! I am the hands of Shar! Flames of Kossuth, protect me! Oghma, grant me knowledge! Lolth commands, and I obey!
Yeah, the epic thing is basically just 1 more acc mod on weapons.
I wish epic would get a bigger boost.
Its no wonder so few are even bothering to upgrade to Gold. You just don't get enough of a boost from it. Cryptic really need to look into improving the gears stats across the board for an Epic item.
They can't have too large a boost, otherwise we'd see even more P2W and power-creep whining.
Right now if you chuck in tons of resources you still get an improvement, but for those of us who aren't space-rich, the improvement isn't large enough to feel obligatory.
It took six (6) superior upgrade tokens to upgrade my breen mk 11 shields to mk 12. What did I get for my 2 million EC and 4k dilithium? 100 extra shields.
Seriously, 100 shields for 2 million EC and 4k dilithium? I'm not doing this ever again. I'll stick with my mk 11.
How exactly did you spend 2 million EC on this? 6 Superior Shield Upgrade items should cost no more than 90,000 EC. Are you buying your crafting materials off the Exchange instead of scanning anomalies and doing PvE queues for them?
I have a deep loathing of the upgrade system, and so far, I've refused to participate in it, beyond a few initial unpleasant experiences.
I find it costly, cumbersome, and confusing. I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I am an Engineer by trade, and considered to be fairly knowledgeable with math, design, process mapping, process control, etc.
If I'm having difficulty with this system, I can only imagine what it's like for someone who hasn't had the benefit of an advanced education and on the job experience. Hell, even the spreadsheets that players have posted to make things easier haven't alleviated the confusion and uncertainty.
The bottom line is that if Cryptic wants to ram this down our throats, they should at least make it simple to understand and as intuitive as possible. And while they're at it, making it more economical and fair would be nice, too.
Why not write a few tutorial episodes where an NPC walks you through upgrading each type of upgrade from Mk I to MK II with materials that THEY provide? (maybe this already exists, and it escaped my attention) And rather than rely on players to create homemade upgrade reference tools, why doesn't cryptic produce them?
Right now, it's like buying a high-end electronic device and not providing any instructions on how to use it or how it's expected to function.
As I've said before Cryptic wouldn't be Cryptic if they weren't cryptic.
Frustrating as it is, the random mods means more Dil (either through upgrading mk II items or through creating higher mk items) gets taken out of the system and people have more "reasons" to buy more Dil with Zen, which at some point came from real money.
This is my Risian Corvette. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
I'm flying the breen carrier with the two breen sets (i'm doing a drain boat, and both sets do quite nice to make me good at doing so). Now that the winter event is over, I can no longer acquire the breen warpcore.
You can still buy the core if you have the items. The Store under the Events Rep has both the Winter and Summer Event available. Checked last night and was still there.
'But to be logical is not to be right', and 'nothing' on God's earth could ever 'make it' right!'
Judge Dan Haywood
'As l speak now, the words are forming in my head.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
Comments
Why not craft your own? The failqueue only materials.
some items are not worth upgrading. I dunno... my shields are now at almost 1600 / face in a sci ship, at XIV gold (pure luck, I didn't farm gold on them). But there are different types of shields --- a regenerative shield with lower capacity won't gain a lot from XII to XIV. A covarient gains a decent amount.
There are other things that do not upgrade well... MOST rep consoles do not do much more when upgraded to XIV. However other things do quite a bit --- upgraded weapons make a huge difference, and upgraded specialty consoles like feet tac or sci are notably stronger at XIV.
It is much, much, much cheaper to craft your own upgrade tokens.
4k dil is not that much --- you probably paid 20-30k for many of your items. Its 1/2 a day's worth.
For me there are so many ships in the game that look interesting to fly with different styles of gameplay and I'd love to try a bunch of them.
Its not so much getting the ships but the wepons and consols on them.
If it was cheeper to upgrade I'd like to do a torp boat, a beam ship, cannon boat, different types of each of those using diferent wepon type damage and do all this on different ships.
Problem is I could never afford more than 2 ships and one loadout on each ship if I'm lucky.
I just dont understand why they setup the system the way they did.
They arent getting more money out of me what they get is what I've determined I'm willing to spend each month in a game it would just make the game more enjoyable for me for a longer peoiod of time if I was capable of enjoying more that the game has to offer.
The alternative is to fly a variety of ships that are equiped with what I can find and upgrade nothing being a subpar player but with a variety of ships.
Anyway just seems odd that they decided to go down this route.
This. SO much this.
Its a double whammy death to alts and variety. If you want to have several chars that are up to speed, the grinding of spec points is going to be beyond stupid to accomplish. Gear can be done slowly over time -- its slow but not insurmountable, I have a full set of DBB and am working on cannons next --- and by the end of the year I might have DBB, arrays, and cannons all 3 all in antiproton, all crafted and shared across the alts. I can't deal with trying to have another damage type, due to the system. And if the crafted guns were bound to char, I would just stop playing entirely, but at least that much effort can be shared.
Even so, as you said.... we have to choose between having 1 char that is properly set up in 1 ship, or having a bunch of sub-par setups. That is a poor choice -- and because of the game content design, if I have to work on one as a "main" ... it has to be a tac, really.
I have not upgraded any of my very rare Mk XII weapons yet. Do you mind clarifying what you mean by "vendortrashed" when upgrading to Mk XIII / MK XIV and getting the slim chance of the ultra rare upgrade? Doesn't that just add a random modifier to the existing modifiers?
For example, I typically use very rare Mk XII weapons with [CRTD]x2 [CRTH] modifiers. If they were to be upgraded to ultra rare wouldn't another modifier like [DMG] just be tacked on? Or is there a chance that the existing modifiers get scrambled and you end up with a weapon that has totally different modifiers?
The true joy of a torp boat is the extra fee you pay to upgrade projectile weapons.
For some folks, getting that [Dmg] mod would mean they would buy the weapon again...hoping to get something other than the [Dmg] mod. They would not continue the upgrade process to Epic. They would try for another without [Dmg]. Once they got the weapon with their preferred mod...the old weapon with the [Dmg] mod...vendortrash.
Existing modifiers are never touched. You only ever pick up a random mod going from VR to UR, and a set Epic mod going gold.
(Keep in mind we're talking about the top of the line best of the best equipment here.)
The ideal set of weapon mods for PvE is [CrtD]x4 or [CrtD]x3[Pen].
[Acc] is for PvP. [CrtH] is "at least it's not [Dam]", [Dam] is the worst.
[CrtD]x3 at VR means there's a 25% chance for [CrtD] at UR. You're 75% of the way to the best.
[CrtD]x3[Not-CrtD] means it's already locked in at not-best, and thus worth considerably less than the former.
Really? That's it?
No wonder people can't be bothered with Gold. For the ULTIMATE GEAR, the improvements on the gear simply aren't enough. Again, Cryptic aren't giving enough back for the time involved.
Okay.
I asked because you specifically mentioned that you keep your "fingers crossed" so you do not get the ultra rare upgrade when you upgrade to Mk XIII / Mk XIV. That basically implies you would be happy enough with very rare Mk XIII / Mk XIV. Even if you do get the dreaded [DMG] mod, at least your weapon does a little more damage.
Unless the purpose is to sell your upgraded weapon on the Exchange.
Mk XII to Mk XIII adds +40% damage strength (a typical VR Mk XII Tac console for comparison adds +30%). Mk XIII to Mk XIV adds another +70%. So going from Mk XII to Mk XIV gets me +110% damage strength (which in of itself would be equivalent to adding [Dmg]x22 to the weapon).
At some point, I'd like to do the upgrade to UR and then the upgrade to Epic. I'm in no rush, but I would like to do it. Going to Epic adds +5% damage strength and adds the [Ac/Dm] mod for +10% Accuracy/+5% damage strength. Personally, I don't believe it is worth the cost involved with the RNG involved. But regardless, I'm hoping that at some point they allow us to select the mods (or even turn weapons into frames with mods) sort of thing.
Yes, even getting a [Dmg] mod at UR would be better than having no mod at all. There would be the +2.5% damage strength from going UR and the +5% from the [Dmg] mod for +7.5%. But I would then never even think about trying to take it to Epic. And so if I started feeling that urge to go Epic, I'd need to buy or craft a version of the weapon.
The gamble with the potential of getting +7.5% damage strength after having gotten the +110% going form Mk XII to Mk XIV and dead-ending the weapon...that risk is just too much for me, personally. So I'd rather go without that risk of the +7.5%.
It's just a quirky thing. I actually had one of the 4 Arrays that I was testing something on go UR with [CrtD]. Two of them are VR14 and done...there's another VR13 that if I remember I'll try to VR14, hoping it doesn't UR [Dmg].
It might have been different if Hawk was still around and working on the mods still...but now who knows when or even if that will come to pass, eh?
Quirky, eh? Not wanting better because of the potential that's lost with that happening...
Investing dilithium in a space set item and getting [threat] from a lucky quality upgrade really is a nightmare.
For the glory of Tempus!
I am the hands of Shar!
Flames of Kossuth, protect me!
Oghma, grant me knowledge!
Lolth commands, and I obey!
Its no wonder so few are even bothering to upgrade to Gold. You just don't get enough of a boost from it. Cryptic really need to look into improving the gears stats across the board for an Epic item.
Right now if you chuck in tons of resources you still get an improvement, but for those of us who aren't space-rich, the improvement isn't large enough to feel obligatory.
How exactly did you spend 2 million EC on this? 6 Superior Shield Upgrade items should cost no more than 90,000 EC. Are you buying your crafting materials off the Exchange instead of scanning anomalies and doing PvE queues for them?
I find it costly, cumbersome, and confusing. I'm not the smartest person in the world, but I am an Engineer by trade, and considered to be fairly knowledgeable with math, design, process mapping, process control, etc.
If I'm having difficulty with this system, I can only imagine what it's like for someone who hasn't had the benefit of an advanced education and on the job experience. Hell, even the spreadsheets that players have posted to make things easier haven't alleviated the confusion and uncertainty.
The bottom line is that if Cryptic wants to ram this down our throats, they should at least make it simple to understand and as intuitive as possible. And while they're at it, making it more economical and fair would be nice, too.
Why not write a few tutorial episodes where an NPC walks you through upgrading each type of upgrade from Mk I to MK II with materials that THEY provide? (maybe this already exists, and it escaped my attention) And rather than rely on players to create homemade upgrade reference tools, why doesn't cryptic produce them?
Right now, it's like buying a high-end electronic device and not providing any instructions on how to use it or how it's expected to function.
Frustrating as it is, the random mods means more Dil (either through upgrading mk II items or through creating higher mk items) gets taken out of the system and people have more "reasons" to buy more Dil with Zen, which at some point came from real money.
I do have 2 dominion polaron weapons, and I have no idea what mod they are going to get.
You can still buy the core if you have the items. The Store under the Events Rep has both the Winter and Summer Event available. Checked last night and was still there.
l don't know.
l really don't know what l'm about to say, except l have a feeling about it.
That l must repeat the words that come without my knowledge.'
My character Tsin'xing