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How to get Zen with no real life cash involved.
artgravity
Member Posts: 18 Arc User
So, the wife and I were doing some math the other day, and we think we found a way to earn some Zen without any real life cash investment.
Please note that your mileage may vary. Prices quoted are the averages I've seen for a while, but that is always subject to change.
This setup starts with you already having some Zen. However, one can start with the 4.5 million credits and go from there.
Step 1: Buy a Lock Box Key.
Lock Box Keys run for 125 Zen.
Step 2: Sell Lock Box Key on Exchange.
This averages about 4.5 million Credits.
Step 3: Buy Contraband from Exchange.
On average you should be able to purchase about 150 Contraband.
Step 4: Convert Contraband into Dilithium.
There is a DOFF mission that converts 5 Contraband into 2000 Dilithium. This can be done once per day per captain. After 30 runs, you'll have converted the 150 Contraband into 60,000 Dilithium.
Step 5: Convert Dilithium into Zen.
The Dilithium to Zen exchange averages about 300 Dilithium to 1 Zen. That makes 60,000 Dilithium into 200 Zen.
Step 6: Keep any extras and restart Step 1.
If the numbers I have shown you stay accurate, you should now have 200 Zen. Use 125 to buy another Lock Box Key and the other 75 for whatever purposes you desire.
Please keep in mind, with a daily log in, this will take a month. And to buy a T6 ship would take over 3 years at this rate. If you want lots of Zen quickly, you'll need to determine what your time is worth. It may simply be easier to purchase the Zen.
Thank you, and I look forward to any comments or concerns.
Please note that your mileage may vary. Prices quoted are the averages I've seen for a while, but that is always subject to change.
This setup starts with you already having some Zen. However, one can start with the 4.5 million credits and go from there.
Step 1: Buy a Lock Box Key.
Lock Box Keys run for 125 Zen.
Step 2: Sell Lock Box Key on Exchange.
This averages about 4.5 million Credits.
Step 3: Buy Contraband from Exchange.
On average you should be able to purchase about 150 Contraband.
Step 4: Convert Contraband into Dilithium.
There is a DOFF mission that converts 5 Contraband into 2000 Dilithium. This can be done once per day per captain. After 30 runs, you'll have converted the 150 Contraband into 60,000 Dilithium.
Step 5: Convert Dilithium into Zen.
The Dilithium to Zen exchange averages about 300 Dilithium to 1 Zen. That makes 60,000 Dilithium into 200 Zen.
Step 6: Keep any extras and restart Step 1.
If the numbers I have shown you stay accurate, you should now have 200 Zen. Use 125 to buy another Lock Box Key and the other 75 for whatever purposes you desire.
Please keep in mind, with a daily log in, this will take a month. And to buy a T6 ship would take over 3 years at this rate. If you want lots of Zen quickly, you'll need to determine what your time is worth. It may simply be easier to purchase the Zen.
Thank you, and I look forward to any comments or concerns.
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A faster way would be to actually do some content and mill rep marks down into dilithium.
The Dyson Ground Battlezone has a good payout on Dyson Marks and even dilithium. Infected Space tends to pop relatively quickly for Omega Marks.
50 marks = 500 Dilithium. And if you have enough, theres actually a x5 and x10 variant of that rep project. Not only that, the "Elite Marks", ie Borg Neural Processors and the like, net you around 1000 Dilithium for 3 Elite Marks.
Admiralty, specifically the Klingon track, suppliments that income, and the Tour of Duty reward is 30k Dilithium, which if you're lucky you can get every 10 days as long as you keep hitting the Tour of Duty assignment every day.
Using the contraband DOff assignment once a day can help contribute, but relying solely on that alone is not an effecient means of gathering dilithium. As a F2P player who gets just about everything through the Dilithium Exchange, I've learned where the best sources are. While you can get close to the daily refine limit through Dilithium Mining alone (hitting both the public mine as well as a T3 Fleet Mine), running that many minigames can get tedious.
I actually ground out the Delta and Temporal packs, along with various ships and almost the entire C-Store wardrobe.
Do it right, and you can hit your refine limit every day. If you have the patience and leveled alts, you can passively get more dilithium via Admiralty on them. Add in events like Crystaline, that's 50k Dilithium per character.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
You're actually better off just getting a real job and using that pay to fund your STO habit, you'll make far more Zen that way!
Never buy Contraband. If you are going to earn ECs, don't spend it on Contraband. If anything, spend your hard earned ECs on Omega Fragments so that you can craft Omega Upgrades and upgrade gear so that you can farm ECs more effectively. Contraband can be farmed by KDF characters easily through DOFFing.
Start with the 3:2 ratio. STO allows each account to create 5 characters for "Free". I strongly urge players to create new characters during XP Bonus Weekend as it will cut down the time needed to get characters to level 11 to start DOFFing in the game. As for the ratio, you want to create 3 Federation characters and 2 Klingon characters (not Federation-Romulans or Klingon-Romulans, unless it is your main character). Two or all three of the Federation characters will be turning in Contraband for 2,000 Dilithium Ore, and the remaining two Klingon characters will be farming Contraband. (Hint: Have each of your Klingons farm 250 Contraband. Once you have reached 250, give your two Federation characters that 250 Contraband and restart the Contraband farming process. 250 Contraband = 100,000 Refined Dilithium in 50 days.)
Your main character should be refining 8,000 Dilithium Ore a day. Of the 5 characters you own, the main should be hitting the refinement cap daily, which means you are doing DOFFing, Admirality, PvE Queues, Dailies, Missions, and Dilithium rich activities. This characters can also be farming Contraband, as well as turning it in, by doing the checking for Contraband DOFF mission as well as other DOFF missions that reward Contraband (see STO Wiki "Contraband" for more information on those).
Unlock the EC cap limit. When you acquire enough Dilithium to convert to Zen, purchase the EC cap limit unlock as soon as possible. This feature will allow you to save greater amounts of ECs, enough to purchase significant items off the Exchange.
Unlock the Account Bank. Again, when you acquire enough Dilithium to convert to Zen--after you have acquired the EC cap limit unlock--unlock the Account Bank. The Account Bank is a feature that will allow you to transfer items easily among characters. The biggest benefit is that you can transfer ECs among characters or store ECs in the Account Bank for future use. Like the EC cap limit, this will allow you to save greater amounts of ECs.
Purchase Additional Character Slots. Once you are established, you will want to add more Federation and Klingon characters to acquire more Dilithium and Contraband. To do this, you will need to purchase additional character slots. Again, you will want to create a balanced number of Federation and Klingon characters, and you will want to create these characters during XP Bonus Weekend.
If you're going to gamble, open lockboxes for the Dilithium Mine Claims. For the players who are trying to earn Dilithium to convert to Zen, the only valuable items from the lockboxes are the Dilihtium Mine Claims, which reward 5,000 Dilithium Ore (10,001 Dilithium Ore during the Dilithium Bonus Weekend) for completing the Dilithium Mine mini-game (a player needs to reach 735 points to get the full amount of the reward) . (IMPORTANT: Master Keys to open the lockboxes for the Dilithium Mine Claims should only be acquired from the Exchange using ECs.)
It takes time. Building enough Dilithium to get the Zen amount you desire takes times. It will not happen overnight. It will not happen in a week or a single month. The key to being success in getting Zen via Dilithium is to be persistent and a frugal. Spend only what you need to maximize your Dilithium and ECs rewards, and save all that you earn. Watch the Exchange and Dilithium Exchange for patterns so that you can obtain the most amount of gains. Be very selective to the products and services you acquire from your Zen purchases so that you get the most from all that hard work.
Remember the 190th and 41st Rules of Acquisition. Hear all, trust nothing. Profit is its own reward.
2. Fill all char slots with at least level 10 toons and start doffing...KDF if you want to earn extra contraband.
3. Once said characters reach admiralty level (52), start grinding Klingon and Ferengi ToD.
4. Actually play the game and earn much faster than you can refine.
5. Work and extra hour or two a week and buy Zen.
Wish it was that easy. Can't do it unless you actually INSTALL those games. Tried it and it wouldn't check off the quest because the game wasn't installed. Not wasting Hard Drive Space for that.
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colored text = mod mode
You actually only need the launcher installed, which is a few MB if that. Just close it each time before it can update or try to DL the game in question. I've made about 2-3K zen some far that way from just going through a daily set of quests. Takes minutes if that, for free Z's. I just add it to my daily grind for dil, EC, fledits etc.
I TRIED. It literally tried to download the whole game through Arc.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
> Admiralty, specifically the Klingon track, suppliments that income, and the Tour of Duty reward is 30k Dilithium, which if you're lucky you can get every 10 days as long as you keep hitting the Tour of Duty assignment every day.
> I actually ground out the Delta and Temporal packs, along with various ships and almost the entire C-Store wardrobe.
>
> Do it right, and you can hit your refine limit every day. If you have the patience and leveled alts, you can passively get more dilithium via Admiralty on them.
I seek more wisdom on this. I'm a father of two and most days only have time for about an hour a day in the mornings before work.
However I have accumulated 12 characters over the last few years.. Would admiralty be the best bang for my buck time wise to maximize my dilithium earning?
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
This basically sums it up for me. While in-game grinding (like going to STFs) is somehow connected so I am not as consistent about it, the amount of time I need kills me, which ties in easily with
Nope, it isn't. If only for the very reason it wouldn't work anymore, because for people to buy zen you need people who sell zen. (By the way, the same holds for any other exchange of goods between players). Every time you make a profit in this way, somebody makes a loss. There can be two reasons for making a loss: stupidity, or the simple fact that it isn't actually a loss for you, because you consider your time spent making these deals more worthy spent elsewhere. (For the record: I only once bought dil for zen when it hit 500, and it was something like 100 zen or so)
That being said:
Technically you get more pass tokens on a normal run than you need to skip missions until you reach the ToD. When Ferengi came up, I did just that - had 18 toons, needed 20 days to max out, had a ToD on each toon every day. I started with 50 pass tokens on all of them, most were at 50 or something like 47+ at the end (and would arguably have been 50 if it wasn't for the fact that you cannot exceed that value, so first +5 and then -5 will net a -5). However, variance is large, and one toon got into the teens during this time, so you may have to lose one every now and then when hitting a bad luck streak. Then again, if you get your ToD ahead of time (it can be the fourth and often enough is), you can then switch over to Klingon (or if you're playing Klingon: to Ferengi) and will slowly advance there, giving you another 30k every now and then.
Yeah, while it is possible to get Zen w/o using money, its not the most efficient way. Go offer to mow your neighbor's yard for money. A couple hours of that and you'll have a lot more Zen than the OP's method!
I know a faster methode. Responding to your phrase "I look forward to any comments or concerns"
1. Ask your neighbor (or some one else) if you can wash their car for 10$.
2. You complete task 1 in one hour.
3. You now can exchange that for 1000 ZEN.
Which is 13.3 times more ZEN earned and free to spend in 1 hour then your methode takes in 1 month.
Additional remarks: washing cars can be exchanged for any other job. If you repeat this daily you have approx 30000 ZEN each month to spend or 400x more then the 75 ZEN you can spend when using your methode. Even if you do a 1$ job e.g. sell a kiss for one dollar or, sing a song for 1$, or even win a bet with some one for 1$ every day, you will end op with 40x more ZEN te spend each month :-))
I too only have about an hour a day of game time and 12 toons.
And No, Admiralty is one of the worst methods time wise (for people in our predicament). Setting admiralty will take you at least 4-5mins per character (that's doing it super fast, and not managing your ships). Usually its more like 6-8 mins per character if your trying to juggle a roster of ships equally.
12characters x 5mins Admiralty set up = 60mins (There goes any actual game time you had). Poof gone. Hope you like click games cause that's all you'll ever do with incorporating Admiralty.
You'll never get to play content.
My advice to you (since we're in similar situations) is to stick to turning in Contraband on your 12 characters every log in. You'll be done in less then 10 mins and rack up 24k refined dil a day. And then you can go enjoy the game as you like for your remaining 50mins.
I tried for many months to keep up with admiralty and contraband on 6 FED toons (and contraband turn in on 6 KDF). After about 6 months of this it left me with no actual game time (running content, running queues ect) Only clicking the click games.
It was a completely TRIBBLE experience, by the end it felt like a strange form of torture.
Its not worth the time in our situations. And sucks all joy out of the game.
Also the Tour of Duty 10/10 assignment averages out to about 15 days to get the 30k reward.
10 days is someone being extremely optimistic. So if you're lucky you "might" get the 30k reward twice a month, if that.
The payoff is not worth the time investment to run 12 toons through admiralty every day.
*Unless of course you don't work a job (which is not you) and can spend all day on STO (which is not you). In that case time is not your problem, your life is. And should re-evaluate how much time you spend on STO.
Don't get me wrong, admiralty on 1 or 2 characters helps... but anymore and your game time is eaten up by click games. Rather then playing content you like.
In my defense, I generally see a ToD pop up once a day, and that is usually only running one track so I'm cycling 8 Admiralty assignments.
normal text = me speaking as fellow formite
colored text = mod mode
I don't know why it has taken me so long, but this is an area I've never learned well.
Thanks Taylor. So I've done some research on Wiki about farming contraband (at work right now lol) and I can see which missions reward dilithium contraband, but they all seem to lead to empty pages, so not sure where I need to send my KDF guys. Are they mostly in the Beta quadrant?
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
In the meantime you should at least look for the "Confiscate Contraband from Crew" assignment on every toon. Which is found under the Personnel tab. No travel or map changes needed to get it.
Fed side its available like once every 2 days, and KDF (non-Rom) seem to be daily or just about.
Anyway, imho it is easier to just do doff missions and admirality to earn the dilithium because you average out to roughly 8k per day anyway this way and you get a ton of other stuff too. You need to invest time anyway no matter what you do, and if you want to get serious about earning significant Zen either way, any real life job is better investment of your time and you buy the ZEN with real money.
The resource in question is time, not the ZEN.
This is a fair point. While I have spent much more real money than I ever should have for those pixels, I wouldn't mind finding a way that works for me to reduce the amount...
Don't let them promote you. Don't let them transfer you. Don't let them do anything that takes you off the bridge of that ship, because while you're there... you can make a difference.
-Captain James T. Kirk
As I mentioned above, I tend to disagree. As in your calculation, I get the ToD about every other day naturally (i. e. within the first 8 missons/first 5 missions to come out of the unknown, since you'll have none in the queue if you just did it). However, on the days where they don't come naturally, I try to use pass tokens to get to them, so I have them daily. Generally I get enough pass tokens from the missions to do so, although variance can kill you here and you'll miss the odd day once in a while because you ran out of tokens. However, since we now have two 30k dil tours of duty, if you get it "naturally" and have assignments left, you can use them for Ferengi instead of Klingon, so every other blue moon you'll get another 30k from that track. (Or is it just 20k? Not sure). In the end, you may average a bit less than 1 ToD in 10 days, but certainly way more than 1 in 15 days.
Understandable. Although I always find the "spend real money for pixels" argument a bit squishy, considering that when I go to the movies I "spend real money for light and sound", too. It's a service, not a good.
And while I understand and appreciate the idea of not spending money in a game, please don't think, like some people on the interwebs do, that you are somehow "tricking Cryptic" doing that. Somebody paid Cryptic for that zen already, for every 100 zen somebody spends in game, they got their dollar. (Or less, on sales, and if you're not using dollars depending on exchange rate, yada yada, but I think you catch my gist).
dude, nobody was offended and yes the math is interesting. But at a certain point you also have to look at the bigger picture, which is that if you spend a lot of time doing ingame things that feel like working, you might as well just go and work in real life, which yields 100x more ZEN than "working" ingame.
On the other hand, if you enjoy exactly this kind of "accountent work", and many do, go ahead and play the game as you like.
Okay, here's a little track for KDF contra farmers; takes about 3-4mins
1. Starting at the Security officer on First City;
-Turn in Contraband (x5) - 2000 dil
-Check Doff Tab "Personal" for "Confiscate Contraband from Crew" - engage assignment
-Pick up "Establish a colony" assignment (under "Current Map" Tab) (x5 Colonist needed) = 500 dil
-Beam up to ship
Time:20-30 secs
2. System space Qu'Nos;
-Check top tab "Current Map" for the "Pick up colonists (x5)" assignment --- You'll need this for step 1 colony project
-Check Department Heads doff Tab -> First Officer Assignments= Marauding
Pick up any "Scavenge" assignments (avoid Scavenge minefield as I don't think it rewards Contraband).
Time: 20-30 secs
3. Warp out to Sector space
-Check Marauding Tab once again for any missions (see bottom of this post for possible assignments you can find that reward Contra)
Time: 10-20 secs
4. Start flying towards Drozana Station - stopping at Ha'Mat system (no need to enter-just get the "enter system" dialog box to pop up);
-Check Marauding tab for any of the assignments listed at the bottom of this post. Pick up whatever assignments are available.
-continue on towards Drozana
Time: 20-30 secs
5. Stop at Genalda System (no need to enter it - once again just get the dialog box to pop up)
-Check Marauding tab for any assignments (see bottom of this post for possible assignments)
Time: 20-30 secs
6. Continue moving towards Drozana, and stop when the "Enter system" Dialog box pops up again.
-Check Marauding tab once again and pick up any assignments you find there.
Time: 20-30 secs
7. Refine Dil, and switch characters.
Time: 5secs
(The following day work backwards through step 6 to 1 and vice versa on day 3, ect ect)
Assignment list that rewards Contra; (Copied from Wiki)
Assignment: Inspect Civilian Freighter - (1 Success / 5 Crit)
Assignment: Barter Gold-Pressed Latinum for Contraband - (2 Success / 3 Crit)
Assignment: Confiscate Contraband From Crew - (1 Success / 2 Crit)
Factions Assignment: Strike Against Fugitive Support Network - (2 Success / 3 Crit)
Assignment: Investigate Illegal Gambling - (2)
Assignment: Disable "Insert Species here" Freighter - (1)
Assignment: Intimidate Unaligned System - (2)
Assignment: Scavenge Battle Wreckage from Skirmish - (1 Success / 3 Crit)
Assignment: Seizure of Federation Refinery - (2 Success / ? Crit)
Assignment: Raid on Industrial Complex - (2 Success / 5 Crit)
Assignment: Raid on Research Facility - (2 Success / 5 Crit)
Assignment: Raid Starfleet Foundry - (2 Success / 5 Crit)
Assignment: Raid on Mining Colony - (2 Success / 5 Crit)
Assignment: Capture Starfleet Ammunition Depot - (2 Success / ? Crit)
Assignment: Blockade Federation Transport Terminal - (2 Success / ? Crit)
There's several others that can be found that are not listed here, but they're just variations in name on the ones listed above.
You'll know them when you see them after a while.
There's also a bunch of assignments that can reward Contra on Critical Success but I did not list them for obvious reason. As you want to take as many assignments as you can that guarantee Contra. And not fill your doff list with ones that only have a chance at it.
Contra forever.
Last night, I was able to get between 10-15 Contra assignments per KDF character with this track.
FED Characters;
I just do the "turn in Contra" at the security officer and look for "Confiscate from Crew" assignment.
Refine Dil
Switch character
Time: 10-15secs
(run admiralty on your main if you feel up to it or have the time - add 5mins per character)
---
Enjoy the never ending supply of Contra.
Sell any excess you get on the exchange for EC's
Keep at least 100 contra on each character just in case you get lazy and don't feel up to doing the track for a few days or weeks.
Yeah, my mileage has varied.
I had burnt through like 30-40 pass tokens on several occasions just trying to force a ToD.
So, I don't even bother using them anymore because of those experiences. Granted, it is an RNG thing, and my RNG luck is like 0. So you may have had better results then I.
Just this week my Fed Sci went 4 days without a ToD (it was the 10/10 ToD KDF chain)
So that's why in my experience it feels more like 15 days.
*Just to be clear - I mean 15 days on average to go from ToD 1 to ToD 10, so 1 ToD/per 1.5 days.*
You make a really good point though on switching tracks when you hit a ToD early.. I'll probably adopt that method on the 2 characters I run admiralty on.
And maybe give the pass tokens another chance.. Might just had really bad luck.
Good tip.