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What is the Arc Client?
Install Arc
A few newbie questions
in The Academy
So I'm brand new to this game, I think level 18 or so. It seems like most of the guides I find online are outdated by quite a bit, mostly from when the game was sub only or when it first went f2p.
From what I've seen so far the story missions sort of hand hold/give you all the equipment upgrades you need to progress, that being said, is there anything at all worth spending dilithium or more than very small amounts of EC's on at low level or am I best off saving til I'm higher level?
For an f2p is Zen the best thing to buy with dilithium or should I be saving/using dilithium on other things?
How important is having a Shared Bank? Is it something f2p'ers don't bother with, or do f2p'ers save up their dilithium until they can buy enough Zen in game to get it? If I were to spend a small amount of real money on this game, would Shared bank be the one thing I should buy?
I want to at least see how multiplayer works in this game, are there any multiplayer missions that are specifically designed for low levels, and if so how do I find them? Or should I just do more of the story and wait til I'm higher level to try multiplayer missions?
As I'm going from one mission to the next I often see random enemies on my map or areas that have random encounters, so far I've avoided them and just done the missions. As a low level are they worth doing, do they scale to level, or will I just be wasting my time dying over and over in them?
Thanks in advance to anyone that answers.
From what I've seen so far the story missions sort of hand hold/give you all the equipment upgrades you need to progress, that being said, is there anything at all worth spending dilithium or more than very small amounts of EC's on at low level or am I best off saving til I'm higher level?
For an f2p is Zen the best thing to buy with dilithium or should I be saving/using dilithium on other things?
How important is having a Shared Bank? Is it something f2p'ers don't bother with, or do f2p'ers save up their dilithium until they can buy enough Zen in game to get it? If I were to spend a small amount of real money on this game, would Shared bank be the one thing I should buy?
I want to at least see how multiplayer works in this game, are there any multiplayer missions that are specifically designed for low levels, and if so how do I find them? Or should I just do more of the story and wait til I'm higher level to try multiplayer missions?
As I'm going from one mission to the next I often see random enemies on my map or areas that have random encounters, so far I've avoided them and just done the missions. As a low level are they worth doing, do they scale to level, or will I just be wasting my time dying over and over in them?
Thanks in advance to anyone that answers.
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Second: Yes save as much as you can till you're 60 (65 soon with the new expansion). Dilithium becomes VERY important to upgrade crafted and mission gear later on (unless you wait for specific events) so save as much as possible at first and don't spend anything (zen/dil/ec) on something without informing yourself about whatever you're going to buy first. (the wiki page helps a lot there)
Lastly, for Multiplayer stuff you can play the entire game (including story missions) with a friend etc. Furthermore you can queue up for specific missions (called stf) if you click on the "three arrow" button below the minimap. There you'll find some missions of varying difficulty to get some extra dil/xp etc.
Also as for optional stuff in missions: unless you count a small experience boost worth it, just skip that until you get to more recent missions, there are often hidden accolades and some additional story tied to those in the later parts of the game.
Once you reach level 60 though, oh boy there is a lot more info coming, so again - don't overspend on anyhting before knowing exactly what you want/need otherwise you might regret spending money.
small edit: the EC cap should also be one of the first things to unlock if it doesn't carry over from the first time subscription - not sure on that one.
edit #2: forgot to touch on the account bank, yes it helps a lot if you're having multiple characters going and want to move stuff over all the time. Optionally you can always send mail with item attachments to your alts, so it's again just a quality of life upgrade over something that might restrict you completely.
In game; Dilithium is used to buy stock vendor ships up to T5, upgrade gear, used in Reputation system to buy gear, in Fleet projects and to by Fleet gear. Unless you are buying something from the C-store, Dilithium to Zen would be used to buy Master Keys that you then sell on the Exchange to get EC.
The Shared bank is useful for swapping EC and BoA gear between characters. If you only plan to have 1 toon, then it's not needed. The 1st thing to buy is the EC cap increase, the f2p cap is so low you'd never be able to afford anything good and your 'excess' EC just disappears once you hit the cap.
When I started my free account I had to buy 1 Zen from the Dil exchange to unlock some chat things, I forget what it was and don't know if it matters anymore; but just thought I'd pass that on.
Missions scale to your level, if people of higher levels join you they can either get scaled down to fight at your level or stay at their level and carry the low level person through missions.
The Random missions in space you see... I don't think they scale, so avoid them until you are at their level or better. There used to be enemy ships that would CHASE you across sector space and if they caught you, you got entered into a battle!
My question is... do you plan to spend any real money on STO? If so there are things you can do that help a lot vs buying things piecemeal. Subscribing for a month gets you some unlocks you'd have to buy and it'd cost you more than 1500 Zen to get. (assuming Gold level is the same as it was when I last bothered looking at it. Having a Gold Subscription is only really useful while leveling a character due to perks received during leveling. Honestly, the best way to do it would be to subscribe for a month while you level a toon (just make sure you get it done in that month), then go back to Silver and just buy whatever perks you lost (if there are any?) .
I'll have to look a bit more into the EC cap and EC cap increases and what they cost too and maybe see if I can find some other newbie or someone playing an alt that doesn't mind playing slow with a newbie for a few missions, seems like there isn't much in game chat, but maybe that's because I don't have any of the unlockable chats yet or because I haven't tried on the find team list yet.
A few more questions:
I read in several guides that when you get your free ship at level 10, 20, etc. (the only two I've gotten so far) that you get choices of different types. So far for me there's only been one ship each time that I've been able to choose, all others cost zen or dilithium. I am a Romulan allied with Klingon's, is it because I'm a Romulan that I only have 1 choice as the actual free ship?
As a Romulan will I be able to cloak/equip cloaking on any ship that I get, or just the base Romulan ones?
One of you mentioned sending items as attachments in mail to alts as an alternative to having a shared bank. Does this also work with EC and with BTA items, or only items that could be traded?
The whole duty officer thing is a bit confusing so far, but I'm fairly certain I'll be able to figure it out with a bit more practice, but somewhere along the line, I think in the crafting tutorial, I got a whole bunch of emergency duty officers that have no skill if used as an active ground or space officer but can be used to craft and do duty officer missions. Are these just extra duty officers that you get for free and aren't as good as other ones or?... Also what's the approximate death rate for duty officers based on the level of risk it gives for casualties?
Only unbound stuff can be mailed, I believe. If it's account bound you'd need the Account Bank.
Same with EC, no way to transfer it other than the Account bank or a trusted friend.
There are pros and cons to having multiple toons.
Pros: Can make/refine more dilthium/EC each day. Can play each faction and do play-style for each as you desire.
Cons: Each grind is multiplied by # of toons. I have 8 toons and it can take 3hrs just do Doff/Admiralty and Borg RA for all for them. More toons mean more gear needed. You may want to get each toon an expensive ship, so more $ needed. Honestly, at this point, I wish I only had only made 1 toon! Most of my toons get no love anymore due to time.
The emergency doffs are just fillers to help you get started, you should trash them as you get 'real' doffs.
Only white/common doffs die on missions. The rest just get sent to sick bay for awhile.
Just be careful, some missions tell you you are getting rid of doffs and then you want to not stick in one you don't want to lose! Ones like Officer Exchange or Helping colony blah blah. Those missions will have red text telling you that those doffs will be lost at the top of their mission page.
The "One Captain Retrain Token per rank" is pretty good thing as you rank up. Chances are you'll want to retrain at least a couple times. If you have already ranked up on your current toon and DON'T have any special items on that toon, I'd say delete that toon (after mailing/account banking any goodies/monies you can), then re-make it after you subscribe so you don't miss out on the stuff you get while leveling.
I kinda want to at least try Klingon, Fed, and Fed allied Romulan just to see the different stories, even if it takes me a long time and I end up only playing one toon beyond that.
I've been selling all the infinity lock boxes I get for about 6 or 7 k each. maybe I'll start saving some to sell later.
Not sure what I'd do without cloaking, as I find myself having to cloak fairly often when totally outmatched in missions, but I'm sure some of that is because I'm new and some because the ships I have so far are small and designed to use cloaking so... Guess I'll find out sooner or later.
it does not matter. play as whatever you feel like and fly whatever interests you. despite how some of the dps hero types act you really need to be a crazy min/maxed god.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
> I am new as well with a question, does it matter what career I choose, tactics, eng, science? I really would like to try science first. I have no intentions to PvP. strictly run story and PvE daily missions.. Thanks in advance I cant post a new threads yet,
You can pvp in sto, but the game really isn't balanced or designed with pvp in mind.
As for career choices, all can be fun. Any career can be viable in any ship. In space, it mostly comes down to your skill tree build, your gear, and what bridge officer skills you train your minions in.
That said, certain ships do synergize better with certain careers, so if you're going to be min-maxing, you might consider that, along with your playstyle. Do you want to be a space wizard, or do you prefer using weapons? If weapons, do you prefer energy weapons or torps? If energy weapons, do you prefer strafing runs with cannons, or circling your prey with beams?
Or do you have an undying love for one of the ships? Did you grow up watching ds9 and now you need to captain a defiant? Or tng and the Galaxy? Etc.
How you want to play will determine what ships you use and what career will be best for you.
> Thanks, all good info. I think I'll play a bit more as f2p then decide if I want to spend a little bit. If I do I'll go with the one month sub and use the 500 Zen from the sub to buy the EC cap increase back. I'll probably just make sure I don't get the last rank on current toon so I can at least get one respec token (assuming they're btc) if I do decide to spend a little. Save up dilithium to buy ships and maybe buy a ship or two with real money a few months down the line.
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> I kinda want to at least try Klingon, Fed, and Fed allied Romulan just to see the different stories, even if it takes me a long time and I end up only playing one toon beyond that.
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> I've been selling all the infinity lock boxes I get for about 6 or 7 k each. maybe I'll start saving some to sell later.
>
> Not sure what I'd do without cloaking, as I find myself having to cloak fairly often when totally outmatched in missions, but I'm sure some of that is because I'm new and some because the ships I have so far are small and designed to use cloaking so... Guess I'll find out sooner or later.
In story missions, you should only rarely be totally outmatched. Have you figured out you can change your power levels yet? I'd recommend full weapon power, then the rest in shields, till you get your groove.
Yeah, I generally switch based on what I'm up against. It seems like most story missions the space combat is woefully easy, then every 3rd or 4th mission there's a battle where I'm either up against something way stronger than me, or up against several that are all about the same strength as me.
I'm about to start trying some of the other daily missions and event missions, but not sure how I'll do on those. I'm trying to get one char to at least level 40 and a few others to at least level 20 while I have my 1 month sub.
Actually since shield seem to go down almost instantly (especially against borg) most people seem to run the default power levels at 100/25/25/50. 50 to aux for hull healing and sci powers and leave shield regen and engines low. Sadly, passive shield regen is just too pathetic, you really use boff powers to boost them up and that uses Aux.
> bustertod bustertod#6732
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> wrote: »
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> I am new as well with a question, does it matter what career I choose, tactics, eng, science? I really would like to try science first. I have no intentions to PvP. strictly run story and PvE daily missions.. Thanks in advance I cant post a new threads yet,
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> it does not matter. play as whatever you feel like and fly whatever interests you. despite how some of the dps hero types act you really need to be a crazy min/maxed god.
yeah not interested in the min/max god stuff, just want to go through story missions slow grind rep and find a couple daily's I like... that's about it. I wont be doing any serious gaming or (Hardcore) stuff been playing MMO's for far too long. Looking to make this my new home because of the low Req's the game needs... buying a $299.99CAD laptop Wednesday, just so I can travel and play. thanks for the info though I appreciate it a lot!
there was supposed to be a "don't" in there somewhere.
then sto should be fine, sto kinda doesn't have the hardcore content... I mean it does but you have no reason to go for it. story gear is actually useful and because of the upgrade system you never have to go get the new hotness gear to play just throw some pheonix upgrades at whatever you prefer. hell one of my feds flys a ship with the borg set which is one of oldest sets in the game.
there is a reason why people say space barbie is the real endgame.
if I stop posting it doesn't make you right it. just means I don't have enough rum to continue interacting with you.
then yeah, play which ever seems like you'd enjoy it the most. like i told the other dude, As for career choices, all can be fun. Any career can be viable in any ship. In space, it mostly comes down to your skill tree build, your gear, and what bridge officer skills you train your minions in.