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Refined/Unrefined Dilithium
samt1996
Member Posts: 2,856 Arc User
I'm very appreciative that we can earn anything without paying a dime but I have noticed a rather pronounced flaw in the Dilithium system I would like to address. I've been a casual player for five years and ive finally taken it upon myself to grind out six reputation systems to Tier 5 at once. So far I've been enjoying the ground battle zones immensely and finally upgraded my away team to fleet gear. My problem is this, I have several new item sets to acquire and although I can grind out a lot of marks in one day I'm capped at 8k Dilithium. Now, because Dilithium can be converted into Zen I understand why this restriction exists and I agree it needs to stay, even raising the cap would give little benefit.
My idea is that certain things like reputation and fleet projects will accept UNrefined Dilithium as well as refined, so that we can in fact grind out the desired amount of Dilithium needed for the items without upsetting Cryptic's generous F2P system. I know that it might hit Zen sales a bit for those who buy and convert to Dilithium, and that most people don't grind every Reputation out at the exact same time. But, I think the long term benefits would greatly improve the game and encourage me to spend even more Time and money on it!
Thoughts?
My idea is that certain things like reputation and fleet projects will accept UNrefined Dilithium as well as refined, so that we can in fact grind out the desired amount of Dilithium needed for the items without upsetting Cryptic's generous F2P system. I know that it might hit Zen sales a bit for those who buy and convert to Dilithium, and that most people don't grind every Reputation out at the exact same time. But, I think the long term benefits would greatly improve the game and encourage me to spend even more Time and money on it!
Thoughts?
Post edited by samt1996 on
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1) earn up to 8k dilithium on character A, refine that 8k diithium
2) earn up to 8k on character B, refine that 8k dilithium
3) while still on character B, trade that 8k refined dilithium for zen
4) log back onto character A, and trade that zen back for 8k dilithium
5) while still on character A, withdraw the 8k refined dilithium from your exchange balance
That results in 16k refined dilithium on character A, and you can repeat that same process with as many alts as you have.
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Like the nagus says, grind smarter. Get around the cap by making more toons and efficiently refining.
In the short term you are correct. In the long term Fatman is.
The subsegment that does not buy Zen, yes. Those that buy Zen have benefitted from the constant raining of dilithium since what, Feburary. I mean, I'm not opposed to the market being in the mid 200s or even in the 300s.
What would be best for me? Massive increases to ingame dilithium costs, a new fleet holding, and a way to buy spec points for dilithium. Drop the rate to 150 and I'll be pretty happy.
I just find it interesting that people always suggest the very thing that will diminish the value of their grinding.
I'm trying to get around time-gated grinding, I realize that's a key feature of most F2P games but I think it is avoidable. Time-gating is fine for Zen grinding but I don't think it's good for in-game item grinding. It's still rather difficult to grind out large amounts of unrefined Dilithium for most players, Keep in mind please that hardcore grinds like yourself and the Nagus make up a select few. Most of us simply don't have the time to do multiple characters.
They could pick and choose what would accept Unrefined Dilithium. For example, reputations could accept it while fleet projects are left alone as a refined Dilithium sink. BUT, the 8k refining cap would still exist. I'm not so inept as to think this would have no effect on the Zen exchange but I feel certain it would be a minimal effect. The number of players buying Zen for Dilithium is very limited as Dilithium needs are infrequent for most people, but there is always something new in the C-Store!
the more patience and more repeats u can do daily the less real money u may have to spend.
The sweet spot imo is 5 characters.
Build rep on all five toons. This will take a while. You will enjoy the game on atleast two toons but after that it gets a bit boring. But if you are trying to prevent buying with real money it's well worth the extra effort.
Once u can actually hit 8k dil per toon per day transferring that dil to your main is very easy.
Open dil exchange and buy zen at lowest cost possible that is 25 dil per zen.
Logout and move to main. Open exchange and cancel pending transaction...click withdraw .. And the 8k dill will be sitting in your mains dil refined reserve.
pS having atleast 3 characters in the same faction helps immensely especially since you can share store ships with all 3 at no extra cost.
Pps upgrading does take a lot of time and is dil intensive patience and sticking to one weapon type helps mitigate the issue a bit as you can concentrate all dill refinement to that particular weapon type. However selecting mods like crit d or crit d crit h across all weapons is difficult and is based a great deal on luck and lots of other factors. I'm not sure cryptic are going to make this easier as current end game is mostly pve and keeping things interesting rests a great deal on upgrading gear.
6million ec beam array. one toon that 6million
6 million ec beam arra for 6 toons and you just cut the cost to 1 mil per not a bad price
and if a glutten for punishment and run 10 toons like i have those new shiny crtdx3 (pen) beam weapons are actually pretty damn cheap .
all it means is you actually just saved some dil instead of trying to upgrade multiple sets. plus all your toons can grind a little faster wit hthe better tech.. earning more dil that you now dont really need
I guarantee I play much less than you think I do... I have 9 toons and often don't even try to hit cap on any of them. I barely find the fortitude to do more than one or two doffing cycles a day. Even then, I do it more for the R&D materials to sell.
In all reality I tend to spend more time chatting with my fleet or here on the forums than I do any sort of "grinding". While your asking for more dilithium market inflation, I'm getting 30k+ dilithium (and several million ec) in less than an hour. And that's me being lazy, the real super grinders have legions churning out a few million dilithium a week.
Again, your suggestion defeats the purpose of both the refinement cap and gear inputs as resource sinks. Play smarter, not harder.
My suggestion very specifically leaves the refinement cap with its purpose, converting Dilithium to Zen is the biggest reason for most to grind it so my suggestion leaves that untouched. To repeat myself again, they could pick and choose what accepted unrefined Dilithium input so it would not neccesarily mean game-wide changes.
Considering the above why not leave upgrading all gear using unrefined dil (the r n g system in place in anycase mitigates this aspect from becoming an exploit in anycase )and leaving everything else using refined dil. Unless of course the largest dill sink is upgrading gear.
It is when one intends to go for it. Well upgrade to mk14, even an entire build like the one with my delta is nothing if one has multiple alts supplying him with purple upgrades. Think we talk about some 300k Dil for an entire build so a good moth of Dil refinement.
However if the upgrades are supposed to be a permanent sink then one has to go for rarity upgrades. Aside from some shortcuts at low mk crafted weapons any reput or fleet items can get expensive beyond imagination.
Stuff like the kinetic cutting beam can easily cost 300k Dil by itself (depending on your luck) and that even includes the use of salvage techs as well as million of EC for rarity upgrade booster.
Heh, I play STO each day but some 100-150 Elite PvE are easily in order to upgrade a single item to gold so we look at a moth worth of play for a single item.
No wonder this Dil sink isnt working as cryptic intended. I dont see myself going for it at all with some 250 permanently used items spread over 9 chars.
Always bet on cryptic and realize that by the time you have an all golden build they have introduced new and better items to go for that trouble all again.
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Any changes to this system, doesn't benefit Cryptic really in any fashion.
Praetor of the -RTS- Romulan Tal Shiar fleet!
And this specificaly also means that all the systems that currently require refined Dilithium will need to stay that way, at least from Cryptic's point of view.
Also, allowing unrefined Dilithium to become more valuable is also what will hurt the "casuals" the most, since reaching the refinement cap is not their problem - but suddenly, they might not even be able to earn Fleet Credits because the heavy grinders just dump all thteir unrefined dilithium and fleet marks and complete all projects, while they can't spend anything.
The only way unrefined Dilithium could become more useful would be if it was used to get somethng that is more or less worthless or can't be traded:
EC would be problematic, since it would affect the EC Exchange and drive prices even higher.
People claim we have too much dilithium in the system and that we need a 'dil sink' to lower supply and drop the rate on the exchange.
Cryptic want to encourage people who can't wait to refine at 8k a day to buy Zen with $ instead of Dil.
So, being able to use unrefined dilithium for fleet projects, for example would REMOVE MORE dilithium from the game, it boosts the effectiveness of the sinks.
People could choose... 8k a day refining to buy Zen, etc, or a larger amount of unrefined poured into a fleet project, or some new dil sink that may be introduced in future seasons.
One of my fleet-mates has several hundred thousand in unrefined dilithium, he pays for Zen with dollars because refining that stockpile would take forever, even when he does refine it, he usually uses it for fleet projects or for crafting and upgrading weapons for fleet-mates, that he gives away FREE, because it's a way to use that vast pile of stuff.
Unrefined dilithium for fleet use would boost fleet upgrades, opening more store options to fleet members (that cost dilithium to purchase), and means they would need more fleet modules for all the cool fleet ships they can get from their new upgraded fleet shipyards. Modules bought with Zen for either $ or 8k refined a day.
By all means limit Zen purchases to the 8 k a day refined dilithium. You want more dilithium sinks, this idea is one.
Set a man on fire and he's warm for the rest of his life...</b></size></center>
Cryptic knows this, of course. Geko even said so, in a recent podcast, that they just want you to buy Zen, and convert it to Dilithium.
Mind you, Unrefined Dilithium is still better than nothing. But my approach is to just pretend it doesn't exist, instead of getting frustrated over not being able to touch it in a timely fashion.
Still, anything that allows a player to bypass the refinement cap would be the exact thing you say you want to avoid. And you know it's true otherwise you wouldn't add the "but not everything would use ore" clause. How is this different from wanting more refined dilithium in any form?
Nevermind, it's all just a wonderful idea. Sunshine and puppies...
Actually, you can do it slightly better. Instead of actually exchanging Dil B for the zen, make an offer that won't be accepted right away, and then cancel it. The Dil still goes into the Withdraw pool, but without losing that small amount due to the difference in the zen sell/zen buy prices.
Yeah. Except for certain Bonus Dil weekends (when I still had a bunch of Mining Claims left) or the days right after finishing a rep and getting 32k unrefined at once? I've never had a backlog in this game. And from what I've read in previous threads, there's a good % of other players who also don't reach the cap daily.
On the other hand I've got (now, due to the Recruit event) around 9 characters. Over the years, I've exchanged quite a bit of Dil for zen.
People that don't reach the daily cap are either doing it wrong, or are just plain lazy.
...or they don't have the time to play as much as you do. Or they don't structure their play sessions around "cap out Dil via this Super Efficient Process I've developed!", but rather around playing the content they'd prefer to each day. /shrug
Eh, whatever. All I know is that it's been said repeatedly over the years (in the endlessly repeated "I've got 40billion unrefined Dil! Increase the refine cap to at least 16K!" threads) that some large fraction of the playerbase doesn't cap out constantly.
Hence the "doing it wrong" portion of my post.
Well gee, I didn't realize not playing the GAME as if it were a second job is a crime! :rolleyes:
I don't believe I've ever heard of calling people lazy for NOT playing a game...
P.S. Either/Or Logical Fallacy.
Nice to see that you're the arbiter of how to play the game "right". :P
(And another one occurred to me - they do have plenty of time to play, and do focus on grinding Dil.... but only a couple days a week, so they use up any excess unrefined on the days in between. I could definitely see some people falling into that category.)
I do fall into that category.
What is ya'll's strategy for mining unrefined 8+k a day on one toon?
I have 3 max level toons, two to three more that I am farting around with. I rolled my first two during the head start week, the rest are Delta Recruits (those extra credits and junk are a good boost) I would love to start crafting my weapons for them all.
What thread are you reading?
Ok, depends on in what situation I find myself in.
When Im on my own Im used to doffing around the fleet Dil mine. If I throw the outcome of all assignments in a bag I guess I look at 1,5k (not counting contra so could even get a lot higher). Rest I get out of PvE. My key aim is to concentrate on most of the available mark types only one time per day per toon to get the additional bonus marks which translate to 550 additional Dil each run I make. Some of the maps are fairly pug-able when you are any good and the community gets better at it each day from my observation. CCA (1,6k) DRSE (2,3k) is currently what I pug most on my own so an income of 5-6k/day/toon is easy peasy in approximately 15 minutes of play.
When I happen to find myself in a good group or even with two players of my skill in team almost all PvE get fairly doable. BOSE, NTTE, BHE, VCE. All of them are in the 2,3-2,8k Dil range if you abstract the marks as well as the daily marks to Dil so run kinda 3 of them per toon and in addition with doffing the toon is full for the day in something like half n hour of play time.
So in short Im willing to "enjoy" the post DR contend for half n hour if I get 8k out of it but Im unlikely to bother with less.
Too bad they nefed the rewards of Borg STF to the ground. A year ago I had much more fun in game running those maps non stop while earning much less in sum.
Cryptic's loss and my loss I guess.
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Read it again.