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Guide: your first end game ship on an extreme budget.

kronin#4685 kronin Member Posts: 325 Arc User
edited April 2018 in The Shipyard
So, you got your first character to level 50. Congratulations! Nope, no free ship at this level. Oh, you missed the free event ship, huh? And you don't have any real money to throw at this free game to get one from the Z-store? Not a lot of in game currencies, either? Fear not, I can help you. This is a guide to help brand new players with their first level 50 character get a ship that will get them though early to mid end game. (So you high DPS veterans, shoo, be off.) I am going to talk to you about getting a ship, setting it up with basic gear, and improving it as you go. You won't be starting off with the ship of your dreams, nor the best ship in the game. That said, there are a few ships that will see you through a lot of end game content and should be affordable to you, if you do the following.

Step one: get your economy in gear. I hate to tell you this, but, at end game you will be spending energy credits (EC) into the millions, and you will also burn though dilithium and zen. That doesn't mean you need to spend cash (as long as this game truly is free to play). If you haven't done so yet, stop reading, and search the net for how to make money in STO. I won't get into that here, but I will tell you what you need. First, you need the EC cap increase. Yeah, you do need this, because... Second, you'll need at least 20 million EC, maybe even 30. Prices on the exchange will vary. One way to help do this is to grind dilithium (DIL), exchange it for zen, buy some lock box keys and sell them on the exchange. Four keys should get you the 20m. But like I said, research this further.

Now that you have your 20-30 million EC, go to the exchange and buy a T5U curiser or Tac ship, and an upgrade token. I wouldn't recommend a science vessel to a new player, besides, they are even more expensive. If you want a cruiser, get the APU cruiser or the malon battlecruiser. If you want a Tac ship, get the Tholian Meshweaver, Kazon raider, Nihidron Destroyer, or the Sphere Builder Destroyer. (My personal favorite of this bunch is the APU cruiser, and I will use that as my example.) They used to sell for about 2 million EC each, but exchange prices are changing. Now you have a ship. That was the easy part. Like a kit, a ship is the empty frame upon which you build your perfect beast.

Let's talk about gear. Remember the good old days when you got your ship, filled up all the weapon slots with the same type of beam, maybe throwing in a torpedo or two, then filled the Tac console slots with the same console that boosted the beam type you used, and that was all you needed? Yeah. Good times. Those days are over. (Um, you have been using just one type of beam and maxing out Tac consoles to boost that type of beam, right? No? That will be our little secret, but start doing that now, ok?) Now you need to start building your ship around sets, fleet gear, mission and event rewards, reputation gear, and maybe even lock box and lobi gear, or some combination of the above. Fleet gear is great...IF you are in a fleet AND you have the fleet credits AND the dillithium to spend on it, which you likely don't right now. Same with mission reward sets...if you have unlocked those missions, and at level 50 you haven't unlocked most of those missions yet. Rewards from events you've already missed are not going to help you, either. I will also assume that you don't have the funds to use lock box and lobi gear. And, at level 50, you've only just unlocked the reputation system, and it will take you about a month to get a set from one of the reputations. (If you don't already know, a set is a specific group of weapons, consoles or gear that offer special bonuses and abilities only when they are used together.) So, what can you do?

First, we are going to equip your ship with basic gear that will get you started, most of which will just be place holders until you get better gear as you go. For a cruiser, I recommend using 4-6 polaron beams, 0-2 polaron turrets, and 0-2 photon torpedoes for your 8 weapon slots. (I like 4-2-2, but your mileage may vary.) For a Tac ship, I recommend loading up the front with cannons and loading up the back with turrets. You may aks, why polarons? Well, at this stage, you will have access to only one or two sets from mission rewards, and you should use only one of them at a time, because they are based on different weapon types. One set is an antiproton set, and is available only if you want to do the missions out of intended order. More importantly, I would wait to use this set until you unlock enough gear from the Iconian reputation to make it worth your while. Otherwise, you are left shopping on the exchange for regular antiprotons. They are the most expensive weapons out there, and you are on an extreme budget right now. Polarons are cheap and underrated, and they have another advantage that I will explain below. They also are boosted by a set from the DS9 story arc, which you may have unlocked already, or are getting close to. For now, get polarons and the Tac consoles that will boost them. Don't worry about rarity of them yet, just get MK XII weapons and consoles that you can afford. You'll get better stuff later. For engineering consoles, get some cheap consoles that will boost your health and turning rate. For science consoles, get some that will boost drain, control, shield healing, or whatever you can afford. Your shield should be a resilient or covariant, within your price range. Engine, core and deflector, just get something you can afford that you like. Again, all of this equipment will be replaced as you unlock better gear and get more money (in game, or real cash). Now that you have all of your basic ship gear, your ship is ready...or is it?

Since this is your first end game ship, you probably don't know about something called starship mastery. In short, the ship has it's own XP pool, and you must level up the ship. You can only do this once you have upgraded your ship with that upgrade token. The upgrade and ship mastery are what makes a T5U ship better than a T5. The APU cruiser has 4 levels, each making the ship more powerful as you go. What you should do now is get in your ship, go to sector space and play some red alerts. These are great for levelling up a ship. You will be matched up with four other players, and you will fight the Borg, Tholians or Tzen'kethi, depending on which one you pick. Do not apologize for having a bad ship. Most players won't know or even care. Just do your best. You won't carry the match, but you don't need to. Just follow your teammates, shoot what they shoot, and use your tachyon or tractor beams on anything your allies shoot. (You may use different tactics, if you like.) This will not only level up your ship, but will give you something called "choice of marks". These marks are needed to advance reputations and buy reputation gear. (Fleet marks are for fleet projects and fleet gear, but I will assume you're not in a fleet yet. If you are, talk to them about fleet marks.) Be careful when you choose your marks. Once every 20 hours, you get a bonus. So, it's worth it to choose different stuff each time, until that timer runs out and you get the bonus again. For now, your fist choice should be marks for the Lukari reputation, and your second choice should be Iconian for a ship you will build later.

Once you have your Lukari marks, open up the reputations window. Advance that reputation by contributing these marks, along with some energy credits, and skill points. In return, you get Lukari reputation points (which advance the reputation), some dillithium, and a box with a random thing in it. Now, you can contribute once every 20 hours, and/or once every hour. The 20 hour method is, by far, the most efficient way to advance the reputation, however, both methods each give you a box, and this will be important once you get the reputation to tier 3. In those boxes will be random gear specific to that reputation. Tier 0 and 1, it will be ground guns. Tier 2, it will be either a torpedo launcher or more ground guns. You also can discard what you don't want for a credit refund. At tier 3, it will most likely be a beam weapon for your ship, but could be a torpedo or ground gun. Tiers 0-2, just do the 20 hour contribution, but at tier 3, start doing both so you can get more boxes. What we are after are the piezo-polaron beams and piezo-photon torpedoes, and this is why I suggested polarons for basic gear. These piezo weapons have an ability that I call "damage to heal". With each hit, there is a 5% chance that they will heal your hull as you damage the target. This is very helpful in staying alive. As you open these boxes, you will replace your ordinary polarons and photons with these things. Being polarons, they will be boosted by your tac consoles and that Jem'hadar set from the DS9 story arc. If you got to level 50, and you're still a long way off from that story arc, don't worry. You will get by without that set. However, if you can scrape up another 3-6,000,000 energy credits, you can buy the Aegis set (impulse, deflector and shield) from the exchange. It's not the best set, but will see you through until you get better stuff.

So, once your ship is levelled up fully, and decked out with piezo-polarons and piezo-photons, and you have either the Jem'hadar or Aegis set, you are now ready for end game. But like I said before, this is not the best ship in the game. It is adequate, not OP. With this ship, you should now be ok doing most missions, pve queues, reputation battle zones and such. Do not expect to carry, and do not take this into PVP. While building this ship (and now that you have it), start chipping away at the Iconian reputation and really any others that you like or that people recommend. Keep farming currency, and watch for events and featured episodes that give you free ships, sets and gear. And don't be afraid to rebuild this ship for a better build, like an Iconian Antiproton build or Quantum Phase build, at level 60. Welcome to all the content that is end game STO, and start grinding and planning for that ship of your dreams.
Post edited by kronin#4685 on

Comments

  • arionisaarionisa Member Posts: 1,421 Arc User
    I like most of what you put in here, however there are a few huge problems (IMO), the biggest one is this ....
    " Just follow your teammates, shoot what they shoot, and use your tachyon or tractor beams on anything your allies shoot. "
    That strategy is a sure fire way to accomplish nothing more than getting an AFK penalty. A relatively inexperienced player, such as the ones this "guide" is written for, flying a ship geared per your suggestion, will first of all, not even arrive at the targets location in time to get a shot off at all before some high DPS player has already vaporized everything, and second, if they do get a shot or two off, it still won't be enough to avoid an AFK penalty. Better is to head straight for any enemy group that no one else is going after, blast away and try to stay alive as long as possible. You accomplish two things, first, even if you have to respawn a few times, you still get enough damage in avoid an AFK penalty, and second, you get lots of practice in fighting large groups of tough enemies.

    Second one isn't really a huge problem, but I feel still needs addressed. A newer player that has to scrape up EC to be able to buy an exchange ship should buy the same type of ship they like flying (if they have a preference yet). A player that likes Sci should wait till they have enough EC and buy a Sci ship, not buy and practice in an escort/destroyer class just because they are cheaper. Yes, the cheaper ships means you get one sooner, however the skills needed, both in general piloting and in use of BoFF powers is drastically different. I would say (from experience) to buy and learn on the same type of ship you have developed a preference for.
    LTS and loving it.
    Ariotex.png
  • tom61stotom61sto Member Posts: 3,635 Arc User
    edited April 2018
    "Now you can buy a T5U cruiser or Tac ship off the exchange [with 4 Mil EC.]" Going to get very hard to do this anymore, as Cryptic is changing the way Infinity Lockboxes work by combining the box that had these together with the one that gives out much more useful and valuable Lockbox-grade T5-U with 11 console slots ships (~20-30 Mil EC on the Exchange). The APU was 5 Mil at the low end last night, with not a whole lot of stock on there with most of it a lot higher. Newer secondary prize ships, like the Lukari Scout Ship were well over 10 Mil each, and I expect it to get worse with the supply being pegged against much better ships.
  • tom61stotom61sto Member Posts: 3,635 Arc User
    "Almost forgot to mention, the APU cruiser, and (I think) the other ships I mentioned can be upgraded for free at space dock ship selector."

    The APU and other 'Secondary Prize' T5 ships do not upgrade free, unless you've upgraded another of that same ship on your account via a token, which costs a fair bit for a newbie (either Zen or EC off the Exchange). If you don't recall buying one personally, Cryptic did give one token away at the start of a Season some time back, though never again.
  • kronin#4685 kronin Member Posts: 325 Arc User
    @tom61sto
    Thanks for pointing those things out. I will have to edit my post. These things mean that it is even harder for a new player to get their first end game ships for free. One of my biggest complaints about this game is that new players have such a hard time getting their first end game ship, unless they want to spend cash on what's supposed to be a free to play game.
    @arionisa
    Thank you for saying that you agree with most of what I say. This being my first attempt at a guide, I was honestly afraid of players with more talent and experience ripping this thing up one side and down the other. If I may, my friend, I'd like to offer some counterpoints to your critique.
    About red alerts. Honestly, I find it odd that you have a "huge problem" with me encouraging new players to work as a team. Also, if a new player follows a better player into combat, it puts that newer player in a better position to learn from said better player. I've taken my advice and yours with good and bad ships, and here's what I've found. Even my worst ship has never gotten that AFK penalty you mention for not doing enough damage. I have never seen anyone one-shot a (fresh) Borg cube, nor mop up all the Tholians or Tzenkethi before I can even get to them, even if I'm flying a stock T5 cruiser. Flying solo into a fleet of above mentioned enemies with a stock T5 is a good way to get killed very quickly. One would die so fast that they really wouldn't learn much of anything. To be clear, there are many ways to play red alerts, and I'm not saying my way is best. Your milage may vary. Still, I think I've given good advice to new players.
    About ship selection. Another of my complaints against this game is that flying the low tier ships really doesn't prepare you for flying end game ships. At lower tiers, you can pick any ship, set it up as badly as you want, fly it any way you want, and it will still work. For example, when at T3, you can take a science vessel, put mixed weapons and tac consoles on it, and fly it like a cruiser, and it will still work. As you know, you just can't do that end game. T5+ science vessels have more BOFF abilities than low tier ones, and they depend on them a lot more. I would go so far as to say that science vessels, especially T5+, are the hardest for new players to fly. I do agree that every player needs to find their own play style and the ship that is best for them. However, to do that, one needs to do this experimenting at end game.
    Again, thank you both. Feel free to add more tips to help new players.
  • tom61stotom61sto Member Posts: 3,635 Arc User
    It's still possible to do end game content, at least Advanced queues and lower, in a freebie T5, though I'd recommend going way past 50 in the missions to get some of the better mission rewards. There's some survive-ability gear like the Trellium-D and Martok Defensive Configuration in later missions that will help with a T5 that lacks the scaling hull of a T5-U or T6 ship. For damage types, Phaser or Disruptor currently has nice mission reward gear that includes non-Tac consoles that buff that damage type and mission sets that have synergy with one of those two types.

    Though, the trying other types of ships for playstyle determination issue is still problematic. You should get at least three faction-locked character slots to try things a little bit, however, KDF has no free Science ships, and Romulans have only one. Do new players have free slot for TOS-Fed nowadays, giving a total of 4?
  • kronin#4685 kronin Member Posts: 325 Arc User
    edited April 2018
    Before writing this guide, I did an experiment. I took a new character, and levelled him up doing nothing but missions. The idea was to see how far I could get doing missions and nothing else. I did no Doffing, no pve queues, no patrols, no events, nor anything that would give me any XP. I also avoided featured episodes, so I could play all the campaigns in order. He is in the DS9 story arc, and almost at level 50. So, to advise new players how to build a ship, we need to assume that they won't have access to anything after DS9. It may be possible for a good player to play end game content with the free T5, especially if that good player already has some account wide unlocks from events, or other gear that a new player doesn't have. Within the restrictions mentioned in my guide, such a player would still be under gunned and respawning a lot. A new player doing this would have a much harder time. I can tell you from my own experience, it's not fun. At level 60, cool things like the Sunrise mission become available. But level 50-60, new players are stuck with a sub-standard ship and hardly any cool gear, if any at all.
    I only have one account. (Are we allowed to have more than one?) So, I can't say for sure if new players start with four character slots. However, when TOS dropped, they did give us a free slot. So, I am guessing new players get four slots.
    Post edited by kronin#4685 on
  • ihatepwe735ihatepwe735 Member Posts: 337 Arc User
    @kronin#4685

    Players who choose a cruiser should probably select 270° beams, Escort based players should use 45° cannons on the front, and 360° turrets on the back.

    I haven't found that torpedo's bring anything to the party.
  • postagepaidpostagepaid Member Posts: 2,899 Arc User
    I'd agree with the point made about flying what you know and enjoy will be better than learning a new ship type. A sci vessel is only hard to fly if you've stuck rigidly to escorts or cruisers until t6, if you levelled using sci ships then they should be familiar enough.

    Encouraging them to buy a ship is fine but you forgot to mention that its worth grinding out those tokens for the freebies that come around each year.

    The quantum phase torps pack a nice punch and are my go to option for my f2p account characters as well as those on PS4. The set is phaser based so also marries well with the omni and console from the nexus mission. The dyson rep torp is also a decent option that can be got fairly easily. Pretty sure all factions get a boff with torp spread 3 which will nestle nicely into a tac oriented cruiser.

    One of the other things I do is check FE rewards and if its a set that will make for a good stepping stone for my playstyle then I'll make sure to run on the lowbies, which will mean they have gear to level up with as well. If its a set of shield, engine and deflector then doing so will save someone from having to buy the aegis.

    You also skipped the suggestion that if there's an event such as the invasion or breach happening to make sure to run it for the rep mark rewards. Couple of runs a day of that will net you enough tokens to cap out several reps, especially handy for those reps that lack a BZ or patrols. Even if its a rep you'd never use the reward dil can go towards gear from other reps or zen conversion for a ship, longterm project but better to start early on saving for that sale.

    Would a new player really have done no doffing at all while levelling up? I think most would have had a nosy at it and noticed that the engineering missions can produce consoles, engines etc. A bit random to rely on but no more random that grinding out lukari rep boxes.
  • captainwellscaptainwells Member Posts: 718 Arc User
    I only have one account. (Are we allowed to have more than one?) So, I can't say for sure if new players start with four character slots. However, when TOS dropped, they did give us a free slot. So, I am guessing new players get four slots.

    I have two accounts on console, both lifetime memberships; currently running thirteen maxed out characters between them.

  • kronin#4685 kronin Member Posts: 325 Arc User
    I did forget to mention cannons for tac ships. I'll do that in the edit I'm going to do. I implied beams for a cruiser because I said I was using the APU cruiser as my example. As for torpedoes, I have had great success using one or two of them, especially if they are part of a set. But, they are situational. Your milage may vary, which is why I recommended 0-2 of them.

    About events, I did not forget to mention them. I said "Now you need to start building your ship around sets, fleet gear, mission and event rewards, reputation gear, and maybe even lock box and lobi gear, or some combination of the above." and "Oh, you missed the free event ship, huh?" The whole point of this guide was to help players at level 50 build an adequate starter ship for end game that uses none of the above mentioned gear. To clarify, I did mention using the random boxes that you get without spending dilithium, but I avoided using reputation sets. All reputation sets cost dilithium, which a new player doesn't have in abundance, and you have to wait until tier 4 to get those full sets. The Quantum Phase and Nexus sets are excellent, but not available at level 50.

    Doffing is fine. I never said a new player shouldn't do it. I only mentioned that I ran one character as an experiment to see how far one can get in the campaign without it. I think a new player should Doff. It's a good way to get some easy currencies. Still, you won't get any sets or anything special out out of it.
  • cbrjwrrcbrjwrr Member Posts: 2,782 Arc User
    For a new player, I would very much advise against buying anything to use for EC - a capable ship can be built out of mission reward gear, if you know what you are doing.

    Which is the thing you are much better off doing - spending your time learning how to play the game, because taking your first character to 50 teaches you very little about how to play, and if you whip out your resources at this point, you will end up with remorse when you find out there was much better.

    Example builds abound; the important thing is to understand what the parts are for.


    What CAN be done is looking into resource generation. As I am most qualified to write on EC: (So far, my Ferengi has only made a loss on 2 items in the past month, summing to ~100k EC, which is nothing compared to the over a hundred million in profit I've had... Although I am so wishing I had invested in Vonphs when I had the chance right now)

    EC, contrary to the opinions of many players, is actually the easiest resource to get - this game is filled with billionaires. The trick is you get them to give you some of it by offering something they want.

    Right now, for a new player, starting from very little:

    8k Dil buys 800 Infinity lockboxes. (and pretty much fills your inventory) These retail right now at 5.5k EC each - in a month or so, they'll be worth closer to 3 times that, potentially, it depends on how many people have the same idea.

    With the added advantage that if you spent that month or so doing your homework, you'll now have a much better idea of how to use those millions of EC, and compared to the Dil->Zen->Keys/promo packs route, saved a freaking ton of Dil. First example, of many, situations where poor use of resources and poor understanding of the market leads to remorse and horrific expense.

    Let's talk about the good old key route for a moment - it works. No question. But, at current prices, each key costs 29,362 Dil, and sells for 4.549m EC. Well, buying Infinity Lockboxes for Dil and selling those straight for EC to get the same amount of EC costs 8400 Dil. (unless you've got a discount, my Ferengi buys them at 170 Dil for example, although I don't know why...)

    I'd say paying 3 times over the odds is a great example of buyer's remorse - especially given Dil is much more valuable than EC.


    Let's say you're a Fed and you want to go full phaser beam arrays for the relatively canon look.

    Right now, the cheapest endgame beam (that is, phaser with [Pen] at Mk XIV - re-engineering means you tune the other mods to suit your CrtH/CrtD ratio) is 18.9m EC.

    Now, the simple answer is you buy Infinity lock boxes for Dil, then sell them on the exchange for EC.

    Right now, Infinity lock boxes are cheap.

    We have an upcoming Upgrade Weekend starting on the 19th.

    This upgrade weekend, because of the increased player generated supply, will hopefully reduce the price of the weapons just as you've shifted your infinity lock boxes if you are selling them now rather than holding out for later. Alternatively:

    How to manufacture them:

    Get a character to level up beam crafting.

    Once this is done, you'll then need to buy lots of Magnesite, Trionium Gas, Hydrazine Gas. 999 stacks of the first and third are dirt cheap, Trionium is 10x those. Investment of at current prices 320k EC.

    Now, each 3/3/4 of these you have is crafted beam array. So, 249 beam arrays.

    Hopefully, your crafter will be able to reach high enough skill that they can reliably churn out VR beams before the upcoming Upgrade Weekend. (incidentally, for more EC generation, it is a good idea to buy superior upgrades now, they'll be worth more in two weeks) They probably won't though, so realistically, double the expenditure on materials.

    Once they can, you sort through your beams, looking for any VR ones with a [Pen] mod. (the other mods don't matter yet, you'll be re-engineering them later once the beam is Epic, as this is most resource efficient)
    [/i])

    You then apply ONE upgrade to these beams. All of your other beams are scrap.

    If it does not go Epic on this one tech upgrade (it should get to Mk VIII if you wait until the Upgrade Weekend, which you should[) it is a failed weapon - don't push it to Mk XIV hoping it'll go in the end, this is ridiculously expensive to do; only equipment you have no alternative with, like Reputation gear, should be put through that.

    Hopefully, out of those 249 beams, you'll get one go Epic - total cost now, at current prices, is around 3m EC and 53k Dil (and at this point, you now understand why people recommend getting the Phoenix Tech Upgrades, as they are much more Dil-efficient - this is one of these moments where you will get remorse over having bought before doing your research. Sadly, it'll probably be a while until the next Phoenix Box, so you can either wait, or pay over the odds) which via contraband, is 4.5m EC to obtain. (keeping EC the constant, given we're comparing the cost)

    If you are not picky about must be Epic and instead want to settle for UR, you won't need to repeat the process as you should have got enough beams go right.

    So, with luck, for the price of one beam array on the exchange (and in this case, it still needed re-engineering) you have 2 beams, and if you can get the Dil, reliably able to generate more.


    I remember when I first started this game - I had difficultly making into a few hundred thousand EC. I remember the days when
    Fed mirror T5s were going for 100k-200k EC (Someone probably made hundreds of millions of EC on those with the launch of Admiralty...) and it took ages for me to get that.

    These days? 5 minutes on my Ferengi and I can set up that kind of income without even trying - yesterday morning 5 minutes sorting listings before today's infinity lock box goes live, get into the game to write this post and she's made a profit of a million. Which isn't bad, considering it was rush-selling stuff before the infinity lockbox drops again...

    The most important thing is to learn and do the research. I learnt how to make EC rather clumsily - I had a Ferengi I made back in 2016, with the goal of getting her to earn her way to a D'Kora. It took a month to generate the 26m she needed.

    Now, because I've learnt the game better, I've had days when she's had that 26m in profit in the last month. And part of me regrets that - that day was someone, correctly estimating that Cryptic would put T6 Temporal sci ships into the next Infinity lockbox, buying up all the stock, which included 5 ships I had bought at 20m each, targeting a resale of 25m each. (I wanted a quick return) Now, these ships are worth 3 times what I paid for them originally, and as supply dwindles, they'll go much higher.

    I bought a Vonph earlier - it was 66m, 2m below market value of the time. You look at where the Vonph is now thanks to the changes of the infinity lockbox, and you find that the same ship now costs 197m.

    Both of these events were perfectly foreseeable, especially the first; the problem? I didn't want to tie up that kind of capital for so long; lesson learnt as it has cost me what could have been 250m profit. I'll stop here, as this post is getting rather long, but the key point to drag it back to the point is do your research and learn what works.
  • tom61stotom61sto Member Posts: 3,635 Arc User
    cbrjwrr wrote: »
    8k Dil buys 800 Infinity lockboxes. (and pretty much fills your inventory) These retail right now at 5.5k EC each - in a month or so, they'll be worth closer to 3 times that, potentially, it depends on how many people have the same idea.

    While it usually works this way, this particular Infinity box is supposed to run until June for the Victory is Life launch, instead of the week or two for a usual run of Infinity. With it running that long, it's practical to just pick up boxes in missions and queues and hoard them until a couple of months into the DS9 Lockbox.
  • cbrjwrrcbrjwrr Member Posts: 2,782 Arc User
    edited April 2018
    tom61sto wrote: »
    cbrjwrr wrote: »
    8k Dil buys 800 Infinity lockboxes. (and pretty much fills your inventory) These retail right now at 5.5k EC each - in a month or so, they'll be worth closer to 3 times that, potentially, it depends on how many people have the same idea.

    While it usually works this way, this particular Infinity box is supposed to run until June for the Victory is Life launch, instead of the week or two for a usual run of Infinity. With it running that long, it's practical to just pick up boxes in missions and queues and hoard them until a couple of months into the DS9 Lockbox.

    That changes it a bit - no point purchasing in bulk for stockpiling them until June then.

    Another thing is that the exchange price of prize T5 lockbox ships have halved, meaning they are almost as affordable as where secondary ships are now.
  • tom61stotom61sto Member Posts: 3,635 Arc User
    I have been thinking about this for a bit longer, and I think rather than targeting a specific level, it might be better to target a specific place in the story, particularly the Delta Arc. Delta gives a lot of troubles for newer players still, even though it's been nerfed a few times since Delta Rising came out. Up until that point in the story-line, just using random found gear or an occasional focused tune-up by grabbing common gear from vendor and selecting better Bridge Officer abilities will work fine, but Delta arc is a sudden brick wall. Some of it is figuring out the tricks the Vaadwaur use (the white sphere things are not your friend), but gear and ship is an issue too. It seems to have been designed to push the new T6 ships when it came out, and going through it with a freebie T5 (without a '-U') can lead to a lot of deaths. I think at least the Solanae set is available by then, that'd help. There was a newer mission (with La Forge) that they stuck in after Temporal Ambassador that had a decent set, but I'm not sure where they moved that to. Jem'Hadar is a small help in damage, but it's not very good at survivability, unless the removal of crew changes to it having hull regen are a lot bigger than I think.

    On ships, the changes to the Infinity Lockbox has already knocked down the few remaining T5-U Lockbox ships still in it to be around 9 Mil when I checked last night. Not quite the one Key and have a ship, but not being much more than two makes them a lot easier to get for newbies. We'll have to see how low they go over this extended run of the Infinity. For a specific ship to aim for, the D'Kora I think is a nice step up over the APU, while still being a (battle) cruiser type ship.
  • kronin#4685 kronin Member Posts: 325 Arc User
    I chose level 50, because that's when you no longer get a free ship, yet you still need one. The ship I wrote up is not the best ship in end game. It's a starter ship that will work for a while. I honestly don't know if it will get someone through Delta. Maybe it won't. Maybe I should write a guide called "Your second end game ship" :smile:

    The mission you are talking about rewards a set featuring an Omni phaser, and it's a nice set. However, they moved that mission way past "Sunrise". The Jem'Hadar set is not the best, but it's one of the first ones you can get. It also works with the Piezo's and other polarons.

    On ships and the infinity box, I don't like what's happened. The cheap ships (APU and it's cousins) are no longer so cheap, and this really hurts new players, especially new free players. The other day, I went through the exchange and looked up all the T5U's. You are right. Many of them are now in a similar price range. The good thing about that is new and poor players having a better selection. The bad thing is that there are now no T5U's available for less than a single "key". This, and the cost of an upgrade token, means that the credit cap increase is a must, not just a good idea. I also agree that the D'kora is a nice ship. I have one for several of my characters, including my best main.
  • tom61stotom61sto Member Posts: 3,635 Arc User
    PC's F2P EC Cap was raised to 15 Mil EC at some point (PS4/XB1 have no EC Cap), so people should still be good for the T5-Us, unless they go a bit more expensive than the ~10-12 Mil they're setting at now before it's an issue. It looks like the 8-9 Mil price from earlier was a temporary shock from people opening their hoarded T5 secondary boxes, but we'll have to see what the multi-week Infinity box run will do. That's going to push people later in leveling before they can afford another ship, though.
  • dougarthurdougarthur Member Posts: 9 Arc User
    20 to 30... million? Jesus. I just recently broke 1 million energy at level 65 at thought I was suddenly doing well financially. 😳 Beginning to realize that much of this game is beyond me...
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