So I’ve been away from the game for a long time and it seems a lot has changed. I’ve been watching tons of videos but many of them seem to have old info. I started a new character on the KDF side and have made it to captain rank so far. I’ve had so much fun that I went ahead and got the lifetime sub. Looking for pointers on what I should aim for to get the awesome gear and stuff from fleet holdings. If anyone can point the way? I’m willing to jump on discord with anyone if you like.
I’m not all that knowledgeable about builds so I won’t go into that.
You can do most story content with just the story rewards. Some might be more challenging due to it. I would play with the different weapon types (beams, cannons, torps) to see which you prefer before looking to invest in a build. I do suggest on raising Research and development in all the areas. While the individual items you can make are not Super end game, it will allow you to get to at least a medium level of power.
Upgrading equipment to higher marks and levels can get expensive. The current suggested path is to wait until an Upgrade weekend ( they only happen a couple times a year though). My preferred method is Phoenix upgrades. You basically buy Phoenix boxes with Dilithium. There are some normal items you can get from the Phoenix store. But everything in there is on a per character basis. So if you want it on each character you have to buy it individually. The Phoenix Upgrade is at the lowest tier and you can downgrade higher level chits to lower level chits . Me personally, I’ll use the upgrades whenever during the year to get my equipment to MK XII and then wait for the upgrade weekend to finish it to MK XV and try for a gold level.
A lot of people think the Dilithium Exchange is broken. And from the view point of years ago it is. Right now there is no Surplus ZEN on the exchange. But there is a huge surplus of Dilithium on it. The current conversion is at the max of 500 Dil to 1 Zen. Currently there is 2.6 Million worth of Zen in Dilithium sell orders up. Which is why the Buy Zen tab is empty. As soon as someone posts an order it is processed against the outstanding Dil sell orders. So for right now there is no instant conversion now it is a matter of patience. I think the current turn around on it is 9 to 10 days but it has been longer. So If you plan to try to earn ZEN using the FTP model you need to plan ahead to accumulate it before your going to need it. Otherwise you’ll end up as a wallet warrior and have to buy zen if you really want to get something.
Mudds Market it something they added a few years ago. It is where they have been putting old event rewards some of which are META and allowing people to purchase them as an account unlock so all characters can have it. Never Ever buy anything from there at full price if you can help it. The normal prices are way overpriced. Pay them if you want but don’t tell anyone you did it or you will get an earful.
There is some basic stuff. See how it goes and if you have specific questions feel free to Post them here or PM me and I’ll do my best to answer. I don’t spend a lot of time in Discord so catching me on there is not likely to happen often
Mith
Oh I almost forgot, If you think you might be in for the long Haul, I would plan on doing the various Recruitment Events when they are redone. You can get some good Account and character items from each of them.
Also, Reputation when you get to level 50 is good to do as well. A lot of the reputation sets and items are considered just this side of Great.
Mith
That’s really good stuff to know. I’m starting to figure a few things out. I really like the antiproton heavy dual cannons. I’m to the point now though that I’m starting to get my butt handed to me on a few missions. I think right now I want to get several things from the fleet holdings stores. But I have to make a lot of fleet marks and dil. I haven’t even thought of it til now, but is there a fleet bank that I can grab some stuff from?
Generally I encourage you to run the events ( unfortunately they tend to be non stop most of the year - so you can get a bit burned out on them). Normally you have to do 14 or 20 to get the prize. But after that if you continue to run them after finishing it and getting the prize you then get Dilithium that scales with each subsequent day.
Normally depending on the events, I will use them to get one or two characters Reputation Marks. For example this last one, I got my KDF recruit more than enough marks in all the reputations to take him to Level 6. Speaking on that when you get a reputation to level 5 ( you get a Dilithium bonus normally about 32K except for Omega which is lower) . If you don’t have any characters that have hit level 5 in a reputation then it will take you 40 days to reach level 5. If you have any reputations at level 5 on other characters then you will only need to do it for 20 days to reach level 5. either way to reach level 6 will take 30 days after that.
If your not in need of Rep marks, then most of the time you can select Fleet Marks as a reward as well.
I’m not sure if you have any old characters around. But there is a way to transfer Dilithium from one character to another on the same account. Let me know if you want me to tell you how it is done.
Admiralty and Duty Officer systems can be used to make dil as well. Those however required investment in ships or Doffs to give yourself the highest chance to succeed and perhaps Crit the missions.
There are also missions on the Fleet Dilithium Mine that can help you earn Dilithium. Most people ignore it other than on Bonus Dil weekends. But for someone with out a lot of characters it can be helpful.
Since you are LTS you now get the automatic 8K dilithum refinement now. Which helps. The only limitation on that is it will only do a max of 7 days then stops. So If you have a character with a Big pool of Dil to refine you need to log them in once every 7 days to not miss refining.
Mith
What ship do you recommend. I’m in a t6 Kor BoP but I’m cutting it close on many ship missions. I can deal out a tremendous amount of dps but if i get overwhelmed it feels like i don’t have the hull to handle. I have access to a lot of other ships that I can purchase but I can’t figure out which i would do better in.
I don’t have much experience with cannons. I’ve mainly been a Bean Boat captain using FAW and BO. So I tend to go towards cruisers.
One thing to do is make sure you have trained up your skills for both Space and ground
Look at the following website for info:
They also have the same type info for Beams and Torpedo and Science builds. Also they have a list of possible builds based on ships as well.
Mith
Loved the info! It’s been tedious to find current build info, but I found this nice gem. https://www.reddit.com/r/sto/comments/ok1fur/x1_cannons_vs_beams_2021/
Glad it helped. Truthfully the mechanics in the game haven’t changed dramatically in years. Mostly they have just been doing non stop events to keep people logging in (They hope) and introduce new ships and lockboxes. The last new thing they put together was really the KDF Recruitment. And they updated the gamma, temporal and Delta recruitment events some but they were not really reworked much.
The main thing is to decide what weapon style you like then find ships that play towards it. WHen you have the credits and expertise I definitely suggest training up your Bridge officers with all the standard skills that are available. It will give you more options as you experiment with different ships with different Bridge Officers Stations.
Also the other thing I forgot to mention with Reputations, is that as you level them up you get additional powers you can use to maybe fill in gaps where you are having issues ( like survivability you could slot some things to increase your ship hull and or ship hull regen). This is on your character’s traits panel. Then there is space skills and ground skills. And Ship slot power you can slot. These come from leveling up T6 ships to level 5 ( and some to Level 6)
Overall I would definitely say shields are never up long enough to benefit from regen or increase capacity so I wouldn’t bother with things for that. So I tend to use Hazard Emitters over Science Team most of the time. Unless I am doing an endeavor for that system. This only shows up when you get to a higher level (can’t remember if it is level 60 or 65). As you complete them you get perk points you can spend. The only real irritation with that is it randomly picks three skills from both Space and ground and you can only pick out of those three to increase. So you are at the mercy of the random number generator. But the bonuses you get in this system apply to all your characters. So it is something to maybe pay attention to as you get more comfortable with the game.
Mith
Oh and the only real changes to the builds happen when they release new consoles and such as the rewards for the events they run. They haven’t ever rerun an event and had the same reward (other than like specialization point and ultimate upgrades ) like they are doing for the next weekly event for the Red alert that is starting tomorrow after downtime.
They hold onto the old event rewards with the thought to put them into Mudds Market and overcharge for them as an account unlock. Like they did recently with the Kobyashi Maru Space device which was an event reward from years ago.
Mith
I have started to play with dual heavy cannons. I’m starting to see how all the console slots synergize with the build and weapon choices. Now i gotta make way more credits, fleet marks and dil seems way easy to get. all the good stuff on the exchange is way expensive. But i guess if you’ve been playing for 6 years it’s not a problem…lol. I last played in 2015. Got a engineer to 52 and I don’t’ know what happened. I gotta figure out all these traits and boffs again. With your help and interwebs I’ll get there.
Well an update on the Reputation T5 to get a source of Dil to upgrade your stuff.
They just killed that off with the patch on Thursday. They changed the T5 reputation rewards from unrefined dil to rep dil vouchers. However the vouchers only work on the equipment coming from the reputation projects. They will not work in the reputation stores. those still use your normal refined dilithium.
I lucked out as I had just finished my T5 reputation on both my KDF recruits a week or two ago.
We will see how things go from here. Overall I fell with all the recent changes that STO is becoming less Free to Play with the ability to work your way up if you invest the time into Free to play, but is now FTP but be prepared to open your wallet and buy Zen if you want to progress at any decent rate.
Mith
yeah I saw that update and got the same vibe. I’m just a casual player and spend some zen now and then for stuff. But I’m still relearning things. I’m not sure how all the changes are going to increase the player base.