Questions about Salvage (recipes/IOs, etc)

[Tortuga]

There's a lot I don't get about this new fan-dangled stuff.

For instance, tonight I made a few lvl 50 IOs.  They cost me anywhere between 300k to 400k+ to build.  I go to Wentworths, and they're being sold for 100-150k.  This makes no sense.  Why would people sell these at a loss?

Any ideas?

Oh, and how do you guys feel about adding Invention stuff to the Power/AT forum?  It seems it would fit there.  I can ask an Admin if nobody seriously opposes.  Maybe at the same time, we can finally get the Callboard and Open Events forums combined.

Thanks, Tort

[MJB]

Adding Invention stuff to that forum sounds like a good idea to me.

As for combining the other two boards Gday is an Admin... and he plays CoH... ;)

-MJB

[BlueBard]

I'm good with both suggestions.

[Viking]

For instance, tonight I made a few lvl 50 IOs.  They cost me anywhere between 300k to 400k+ to build.  I go to Wentworths, and they're being sold for 100-150k.  This makes no sense.  Why would people sell these at a loss?

Any ideas?

The only thing that comes to mind is that perhaps someone wants to put lvl 50 IOs into the hands of his alt characters, who may not have the Influence and/or time to put them together.

Or it could be that some people just aren't paying attention to production costs.

[El Condor]

Oh, and how do you guys feel about adding Invention stuff to the Power/AT forum?  It seems it would fit there.  I can ask an Admin if nobody seriously opposes.  Maybe at the same time, we can finally get the Callboard and Open Events forums combined.

Great ideas, Tort!

EC

[Midnight]

For instance, tonight I made a few lvl 50 IOs.  They cost me anywhere between 300k to 400k+ to build.  I go to Wentworths, and they're being sold for 100-150k.  This makes no sense.  Why would people sell these at a loss?

Badges. There are over 50 badges, including an accolade, associated with crafting, each requiring "Invent X Enhancements." Basically, the badge whores are glutting the market with IOs, which is driving prices down.

[Uncle Yuan]

Sounds like a boon for those of us who don't care about badges!!   :thumbup:

[BlueBard]

Some things I didn't quite catch from the tutorial...

You can trade IO's just like any other enhancement, right?  But you can't sell them anyplace but Wentworths (none of the shops will buy them), correct?

I know you can't trade costume pieces at all (though you can trade the components that go into them).  What about Temporary Powers?  Is it possible to trade those?

[gdaybloke]

One thing on my mind, everyone's going nuts about getting their recipes for lvl 50 IO's... which none of our toons below lvl 47 can use... I'm wondering if there's a market for lower level IOs

[Midnight]

One thing on my mind, everyone's going nuts about getting their recipes for lvl 50 IO's... which none of our toons below lvl 47 can use... I'm wondering if there's a market for lower level IOs

Anything below 50 is glutted. There's more sellers than buyers. That said, you can get recipes below level 40 for a very reasonable price (100-5000 inf).

[Uncle Yuan]

Are recipes actual game objects?  Do you have to "physically" possess a recipe to create the object in question or are people just selling data?

[captainspud]

Physical objects.

[Viking]

I just puzzled something out on Invention Recipe drops...

Different Invention Recipes are apparently coded to drop for different events.  For Example:

Some recipes will only drop for defeating enemies.  (Ex: Edict of the Master, Accuracy/Endurance)
Some recipes will only drop for completing missions.  (Ex: Scirocco's Dervish, Damage/Recharge)
Some recipes will only drop for completing Task Forces (Ex: Luck of the Gambler, Endurance/Recharge)
Some recipes will only drop for completing Trials (Ex: Luck of the Gambler, Defense/Endurance/Recharge)

I did not realize that certain special missions counted as "Trials," rather than "Task Forces."  Specifically, the following types of activities are "Trials":
Cavern of Transcendence Trial
Respec Trial
Abandoned Sewers Trial
Eden Trial (given by Woodsman)
Hamidon Trial (raiding Hamidon)

I just wanted to point that little factoid out for those who are interested in completing sets.  We may want to try putting together a straightforward Respec Trial to see if we can get some interesting recipes to help each other complete Sets that we want.

[captainspud]

Two respecs were run last night. Great drops were found by all. :D

[Tortuga]

I haven't run the hero respec on any toon in a loooong time, so I'm in with Tort, Sea Spec, O'Shea or Hustle.

[MJB]

I'm in as well. Just name a time and day.

-MJB

[Funeral-Pyre]

I want more costume drops!

[Tortuga]

I was thinking about costume drops/recipe drops, etc.  So far, I have yet to acquire one costume recipe on any of my characters.  On the other hand, I've had approximately 10 rare recipe drops.  Most of those rare recipe drops came from TFs/Trials, etc.  Missions that you can do to get a rare recipe.

Without the same surefire reward for costume drops, I'm thinking they're even more rare then Rare recipes.

Granted, some of the people who play more often may see a different pattern.  It is random afterall.  Without a way to choose costume recipes as a reward, it seems unbalanced.

[Linda Richman]Discuss![/Linda Richman]

[gdaybloke]

I think people are hamstringing themselves in this respect - how many trials, tf's and the like have we been running recently, rather than normal play?
Each of those trials garauntee a rare drop at the end - rather than a common or uncommon. I think if folks had been playing normally, working through arcs etc, they'd see more of the uncommon recipes, which natch includes the costume pieces.

[Tortuga]

Very true, but the fact that you can do something specific in order to get Rare recipes makes them less 'Rare'.

All I'm saying is it would be nice if they added something like that for Costume recipes.  Last night, TW said they should have a TF/Trial for it.  I added it could be a Crey TF and at the end of the last mission you get to rummage through their equipment and pick a Costume recipe (given randomly, like Rare recipes are).  This at least would even things out somewhat.

[Viking]

Well, if I were designing a Costume-themed Task Force, I'd have a contact in Icon to kick it off.  The over-arching plot?  Someone has been stealing the latest costume creations, and plans to use them to frame various heroes in acts of villainy!  You must foil this evil plot and retrieve the costumes before the good names of assorted heroes are smeared!  Or at least before they get mud on that Fabio ultrachic original!

Naturally, this would give the perfect excuse for new Invention-based costume material at the end of the TF.

On a more serious note, I've been having Frozen Northman do a fair bit of Police Band and Safeguard missions, in addition to street sweeping.  Not a single bloody costume drop.

[captainspud]

Posi said that Cryptic did some data-mining after about two weeks, and they found that costumes were dropping at a rate far below what the devs intended. The numbers are wrong somewhere. He promised to look into it.

[Anastasiya]

I've had the good fortune of having two costume recipes drop since issue 9 went live, and I've purchased quite a few as well.  Here's what I've found just from personal experience - this is by no means complete information.  Please add to it. =)

Costume Recipe Drops: I've had two drops.  One was in a badge mission (pwnz) from a resurrected Freak minion.  One was in a timed Crey mission.  The badge mission was solo; the Crey mission was on a team of 3.  Both of these were missions from regular contacts - police missions have yet to give me any costume pieces, so I don't know whether or not you can get them in the scanner missions.  Loca Horse, also from the Babes, received a costume drop while street-hunting on a very large team.

Costume Recipe Sales: you can sell the recipe, but not the actual crafted item.  The recipes can be traded, gifted, or sold - including at a regular store.  If you have a costume recipe, be very careful when shopping from NPC stores, since you could accidentally sell something quite valuable (been there, done that, got the dunce cap).  The recipe is essentially the commercial version of the actual item, as the salvage used to create these items is all fairly common.

Price: costumes are not that expensive to craft - it's getting the recipes that's expensive.  They cost 5,000 influence/infamy to craft.  Getting the salvage for some of them can be expensive.  The salvage required varies for each recipe.

As a costume junkie, I'd love to be able to choose to get a costume recipe from a taskforce or trial.  However, that would significantly flood the market with costume items, and decrease their rarity.  The items were not designed as a perk for players as much as a way of getting significant amounts of money out of the City Of economy.  They want them to be highly prized, valued items that sell for top influence/infamy.  But like others have said, the numbers ARE low and they are looking into it.

In the end, the best way to get a costume item is just to do as many missions as you can, and keep on going.  The more foes you defeat, the greater the possibility that you could get a costume item.

I'm working on an actual guide to the costume pieces, including what ones incorporate special animations, auras, and all that crud.  I'll try to remember to post a link over here when I'm done.

[B A D]

Bleh. Six different toons, 3 Trials (Eden, Caverns of Trancendence, Respec) 2 TF's  (Statesman , KD Lang) and  a buttload of AV missions, and  I've gotten 1 costume drop. From a  Hydra Minion.  something's busted.

[BlueBard]

Bleh. Six different toons, 3 Trials (Eden, Caverns of Trancendence, Respec) 2 TF's  (Statesman , KD Lang) and  a buttload of AV missions, and  I've gotten 1 costume drop. From a  Hydra Minion.  something's busted.

Obviously we all should have been spending more time fighting Hydra spawn...

[MJB]

I have run STF's, Respec TF's, scanner mish's, AV mish's and just plain hunting with 3 of my toons since I9 hit and I haven't had the first costume drop.

-MJB

[captainspud]

I'm seeing a pattern here... I'm not sure if there's actually a misconception, but I'll clarify anyway just to be sure:

ALL costume drops are from Pool A. Pool A awards are for killing bad guys. Different mob ranks can have different odds of giving you your pool A drop (not the real numbers, but let's say, 2% for a minion, or 5% for an LT, or 100% for an AV), BUT, after that roll has been made, ALL drops have the same odds of being common/uncommon/rare. An AV may be guaranteed to give you a recipe, but that recipe still has (again, not the real number) an 80% chance of being a common.

I'm seeing a lot of people commenting on what stuff they've done (trials, TFs) or what situation they were in when one dropped... THIS IS ABSOLUTELY IRRELEVANT. Costume drops award for killing guys. And that's it. It doesn't matter whether you're in a mission, or what type of mission it is, or what enemy group, or ANY of that. The ONLY thing that matters is the number and rank of enemies you've defeated.

If you really want costume pieces, make a team of 8 and run missions on Tenacious. It'll give you hordes of the lowest-level minions; your team should be able to plough through them at a very quick pace, compared with possibly actually having to work to kill +3s on Invince. If you want costume pieces, your ONLY focus should be on a high kill count. That's it. The quality of the opposition should be as low as possible, as high quality mobs only decrease your kill rate.

Running on Invince? Don't complain about lack of drops. It's not a direct relationship, but XP quality has MORE OR LESS a direct inverse effect on drop quality. Kill stuff that's terrible XP and no challenge, and you'll increase your odds of picking up recipes, simply because you'll be killing at a higher rate.

Another misconception I've seen a lot (more in-game than on the boards) is people saying, "Costume pieces are rarer than rares!". This is also false. Costumes make up, let's say, 5% of the uncommon pool at level 50. I could get a real number, but I'm lazy. In my play pattern, which has been very TF-heavy of late, I end up with about an equal number of uncommons and rares. If we were restricted to pool A only, I'd have about 20% as many rares as uncommons, but Pool B (mission), C (TF), and D (Trial) rares can be "forced", so even though the odds might only give you a Pool A rare drop once a week, you could run a respec every night that week and "force" a rare drop which, going only on intuition, makes rares seem more plentiful than they actually are.

I got a borderline-fail D- in Stats last year, so I'm not going to try to throw together a technical explanation here. But the simple version goes like this: Your odds of getting A RARE, not caring which one, are much higher than your odds of getting A SPECIFIC RARE. People who are desperately hunting costume pieces want A SPECIFIC UNCOMMON, but will sell probably 95% of the uncommons and rares they pick up. So mentally, it seems like you're getting an endless sea of rares, while not getting any costumes. But remember, costumes are simply another piece in the uncommon pool. You're after A SPECIFIC ITEM in the uncommon pool, but all rares are the same to you (namely, junk to be sold), so it seems like costumes are rarer than rares. However, look at it this way-- instead of running your in-your-head math using all rares, arbitrarily pick one specific rare set. Numina's Convalescence, for example. I've never picked up a costume piece, but I've never picked up a piece of Numina either. And while I've been aware of probably 12-15 costume pickups, I've been aware of less than five Numina pickups.

Do the same excercise yourself-- pick a few rare sets, and think about how many drops of each you've witnessed. I'd wager that they've been much lower than the number of costume drops you've witnessed.

[Tortuga]

Do the same excercise yourself-- pick a few rare sets, and think about how many drops of each you've witnessed. I'd wager that they've been much lower than the number of costume drops you've witnessed.

Zero = Zero

Holy cow! He's right!!

[captainspud]

Actually, I'd only be right in that case if Zero < Zero. ;)

[Ephemeris]

I just puzzled something out on Invention Recipe drops...

Different Invention Recipes are apparently coded to drop for different events.  For Example:

Some recipes will only drop for defeating enemies.  (Ex: Edict of the Master, Accuracy/Endurance)
Some recipes will only drop for completing missions.  (Ex: Scirocco's Dervish, Damage/Recharge)
Some recipes will only drop for completing Task Forces (Ex: Luck of the Gambler, Endurance/Recharge)
Some recipes will only drop for completing Trials (Ex: Luck of the Gambler, Defense/Endurance/Recharge)

I did not realize that certain special missions counted as "Trials," rather than "Task Forces."  Specifically, the following types of activities are "Trials":
Cavern of Transcendence Trial
Respec Trial
Abandoned Sewers Trial
Eden Trial (given by Woodsman)
Hamidon Trial (raiding Hamidon)

I just wanted to point that little factoid out for those who are interested in completing sets.  We may want to try putting together a straightforward Respec Trial to see if we can get some interesting recipes to help each other complete Sets that we want.

Is there a website or link where we could find a complete list of drops in each pool?