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Coming back to STO, bought two ships and...
ollie4
Member Posts: 15 Arc User
Arghhh!
I can't seem to buy any Zen with real money, and worse, I can't buy ship equipment or weapons with dilithium from traders or on the exchange?
Has something been changed, please help as I have a brand new Arbiter and Concorde class and they are both naked as a jay bird.
Thanks
I can't seem to buy any Zen with real money, and worse, I can't buy ship equipment or weapons with dilithium from traders or on the exchange?
Has something been changed, please help as I have a brand new Arbiter and Concorde class and they are both naked as a jay bird.
Thanks
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We need to know when you left, to sum it all up.
I didn't leave as such, I just didn't play the game much for several months. I logged back in about a month ago, and bought a load of gear with dilithium on the exchange (after trading some Zen for it), came back in last couple of days after having had the PWE email about these new ships, and bought them.
Am I now stuck scouring the galaxy for stuff to sell in order to obtain EC?
What you really want to do (in my opinion), is start doing as many dilithium rewarding missions, preferably the ones grating high levels of marks (Borg, Iconian and so on), and then get to work on a rep system that allows you to buy gear from the Rep-stores.
Alternatively, you can use the RnD rewards from the same missions, to level your RnD and allow you to build your own gear.
Realisticly though, for the average casual gameplay, most drops and rewards from replays are more than the gear you need. This is a Child-freindly game after all.
You can also (as long as your current gear isn't bound), ally yourself with a freind/fellow player, willing to upgrade your gear for you.
I do this all the time for my fleet members.
If you have enough dil for enough zen to buy 1 lockbox key, put it on the exchange for 3.8x million EC and you can outfit both ships.
I have to admit, despite 150 hours of STO under my belt, I still have no clue how any of it works, I just enjoy flying my ships, doing missions and playing co-op, I just collect ships and equipment and play. I have utterly no idea about the best build, DPS, doffs, boffs or anything of that kind, I just play it.
I don't even know if I am still in a fleet or what, as I haven't played routinely for a long time.
How do I obtain rep so I can buy stuff from the rep store?
Put it this way, the last real mission I have done was joining the Borg fighting lot in the Gamma quadrant. I would love to get all this amazing gear some people seem to have but I just don't understand the game well enough I'm afraid.
Cryptic isn't asking you to spend a cent on anything...
While it pains me to say so: Their F2P model is EXTREMELY generous... They basically let you get anything, and everything for free...
Yes, you have to work for your dil... But seriously: 1 Turnin of contraband (and the associated Confiscate mission to refil the contraband), 4 Queued missions, and 10 mins on a mining rock, will get you your 8K dil pr day, easily allowing you to get all of the gear you need for causal gameplay in a very short time...
NOW... If you CHOSE to spend money on Zen, and then converting it to dil, then thats your choice, but no one is forcing you to do so.
Any rep-mark rewarding mission is listed in The PvE queue, just under your minimap. Click any of them to see what they reward.
You've been gone for a while so I understand the confusion.
1) Start kicking off the daily R&D assignments because that way you can craft yourself some VR MK II weapons that you can upgrade to MK XIV on the cheap.
2) Start collecting reputation marks in PvE queues or battlezones, then kick off a daily reputation project in each. It will take a minimum of 40 days to fill out all the reputations. Each rep I think gives 50K dil upon reaching tier 5. The Romulan one is the only one that you need to complete a mission in New Romulus to get the dil.
3) Next week (10/22-29), play like a maniac because we'll have a whole week with a XP bonus. This happens rarely, and the grind otherwise to get to level 60 and spec points is horrible outside of the bonus weeks/weekends. If we get the 150% bonus, it's 50 minutes of constant play for a spec point which is great.
Frankly, MK XII VR gear will still get the job done, but you'll need some reputations traits, spec traits, and R&D traits to make your life easier.
Maxed out reps can knock out that 10 minutes of mining. Get a Borg alert or STF, a Tholian Alert and get both Romulan and Nukara Marks... maybe a quick trip through Deferi space...
So, I get some Zen, buy a lock-box key, flog it on the exchange and outfit both ships. That sounds like the best answer. I don't want to have some award winning ship, I just want a ship kitted out as I want it to go out and play as I do. I am neither that hot a captain nor that great at kitting out to worry about having any ultra-rare stuff or so forth, most of my gear is MK WII rare or whatever which is ample for my needs.
I don't mind spending a few quid on buying some zen to convert into dilithium, which is what I did a month or so ago when I finally bought the Oddy cruiser and kitted it out, only I find now there isn't a short cut way of buying gear with dilithium other than the exchange, which only uses EC, and I'm not sure how to get hold of EC apart from selling off stuff I collect on my missions.
I don't understand the game well enough to have a clue about fleets, R&D or Reps, or numerous other things. I can just about sort bridge officers and my skills trees, I remember buying some kind of STO starter pack but to this day still don't know how to use it. I bet a proper STO player must be rolling their eyes lol.
Thanks for the help so far.
That really is the only way to earn ECs.
The best suggestion I can give you then is: "Find a fleet, (there are more than a few recruiting in ESD, Romulan Command Center and First City Respectively), and ask them for advice"...
My fleet, Rattlers or any other friendly fleet, that is willing to help and teach you how to get equipped... There are more than plenty, who are happy to help, regardless if you're a PvP'er, Casual or a STF'er.
No, you can spend real money and kit out almost everything in the game. The EC economy has gone a little crazy in the last few months (since the Delta Recruit event earlier this year), but you can still earn EC by doing missions and selling items to the vendors. Once you are above level 50, you can run patrol missions and gather loot to sell. Once your gear is good enoug (mk XII green or higher), you can run them on advanced and start making decent returns. An average hour of playing will net you around a million EC doing patrols.
There's really no bad build for doing PVE content, . You want to use all of one type of weapon (phaser, disruptor, plasma, tetryon, polaron, antiproton) and fill your tac slots with damage boosters for that type (you can get cheap ones of all of those on the exchange. The flavor of the month is using cruisers and regular beam banks along with beam fire at will, but honestly anything works - the old standby cannons/Dual Beams plus turrets works as well as beams for PvE.
The reputation system is on the main character screen (U key) on the Reputation tab. You complete gain rep marks for the various reputations by completing queued events or patrol missions related to that rep - for example, the borg events give out Omega marks, and tholian missions give out Nukara marks. The first mission you complete of each type per day gives you enough marks to complete the daily mission and one of the hourly missions for that reputation. I would recommend just doing the daily one and saving the rest of the marks for buying gear later. The daily/hourly missions also require some Expertise (which you should have plenty of - you gain XP along with skill/specialization points for everything you do in the game) and some ECs. Once you fill in the bast to start the mission, you will also get a reward box that contains a Mk XII ground or space item you can use or sell. If you do this daily for a rep, you will will unlock various rep store items to buy (for marks, dilithium, EC and sometimes other items) and traits you can slot on your traits tab.
If you want a good source of info in game, join the chat channels NOP Public Service and TTS - both almost always have experienced players in them who are always happy to help people with questions. This is an incredibly complicated game with dozens of menus and systems to learn - I've been playing since launch and know my way around, but even I occasionally need to ask questions in chat about things I have forgotten or never heard about.
I really should continue with the episodes and at least make a stab at completing the game at least up until the later episodes.
There is, it's just an extra step.
Take your Dilithium and convert it to Zen.
Use the Zen to buy Master keys.
Sell the Master Keys for EC.
That's how you convert Dilithium to EC.
As someone who was crazy enough to grind out a DELTA PACK... I'm pretty confident in saying that anything (short of sub/LTS perks) is possible with work. Its as simple as:
Time spent working on the goal will vary if you're converting DL to Zen, as the Dilithium Exchange can vary from day to day, and is directly impacted by any event that adds DL to the market.
Join a fleet and ask for advice. some of the advises in here vary in between beginner to casual player to end game veteran advise. eventually you'll need to spend dil or convert into zen to get the next thing but there is no point in going on a spending spree if you don't understand what you're building for.
there is just toooo much to explain in a response on the forum.
Yea... if you had not taken that quote out of context, you'd be right...
Now you just seem dumb.
The DS was closed because all the items there (except the hangars and such) were completely obsolete. You can still buy gear with dilithium, just in the rep and fleet stores instead.
It was closed to encourage/force people to Craft items. It had absolutely nothing to do with the games pay model or anything else.
The 8k cap is per toon, so even on totally F2P accounts it's 24k per day, and players who are really into it will use that to buy more character slots first so they can up that limit. Some of the more famous examples run 13 toons for more than 100k dilithium, which converts on average to 450-500 Zen per day. They have complex methods set up to minimize time per toon (such as taking advantage of rich dil claims and quick non-combat missions that have decent rewards) and can complete the process in a couple hours per day. At those rates it's not hard to end up with enough to not only buy every ship that comes out, but also keep your EC and Dil amounts capped in game.
Some people really enjoy doing that that stuff, oddly enough. Not me (I can't see doing that much work for $5 per day, although I have done a few days worth to see what it was like), and apparently not you, but enough people do to keep the STO economy going a lot stronger than most MMOs these days.
^ This. When I was working on the Delta Pack, I was character hopping across 6 characters. There were some periods where I slowed down, and one point I took a week off because of the flu. I also take full advantage of events like the Crystaline Entity and Mirror Invasion to work towards larger goals like ship packs.
While the 8k per character limit can be frustrating, I've learned how to work with it.
theres no reason you should not be able to buy Zen but the way you used to buy it might have changed.
go to the main web site here >
http://www.arcgames.com/en/games/star-trek-online/news and sign in.
click charge then choose game & server, that will be holodeck for sto.
from there you will be able to select how much Zen you want and the payment method, you will need to use paypal, skrill or paysafecard to make a transaction.
if you want EC buy lockbox keys and sell them on the exchange.
theres only certain places where you can use Dilithium to buy gear like the Dilithium store or through the reputation system.
if you have lots of Dilithium you can trade it for Zen on the Dil/Zen exchange to buy key and such.
personally I found the best way to get gear is either craft your own or in game drops then use the upgrading system to upgrade it as high as you feel you need up to epic.
I found mk14 rare to ultra rare to be ample, upgrading to mk14 is fine but upgrading quality is a gamble so it makes sense to try to stick to upgrading gear that is rare or better to begin with, you will need lots of Dil to upgrade stuff though.
When I think about everything we've been through together,
maybe it's not the destination that matters, maybe it's the journey,
and if that journey takes a little longer,
so we can do something we all believe in,
I can't think of any place I'd rather be or any people I'd rather be with.
* Save up and buy Zen in $50 amounts to get the extra 300 they throw in at that amount. If you can stand to, also wait for the 15% Bonus Zen weekend to buy them, you'll end up with $63 worth of Zen for $50, or more if you buy in the even larger bundles (although that's pretty crazy). These usually happen once a quarter or so.
* Save that Zen for 20% off Ship Sale weekends or buy ships on the weekend they come out to get the best possible deal. The savings will be enough to buy a Fleet upgrade for the ship.
* If you are going to buy keys to convert to EC, wait until they are on sale - there's always a 15% off key sale the weekend before the launch of a new lockbox, so watch for the "Last Chance Lockbox Weekend" events and watch for the sale that weekend or the one after.