Helpful advice for newer players
DScottHewitt
✭✭✭✭✭
in Ready Room
I'll say it out loud. On Thursdays, do the Elite Cadet Missions instead of Epics.
The Epics have a "best chance" of dropping a Legendary, but still it is iffy, and you get a Single Pull for each run.
Elites drop a Ten Pull of the Standard Boosts. {3* or higher.}
I got this today for my free Ten Pull for logging in:
50% Speed Ups, 3* or 4*.
Yesterday two of the Ten Pulls from Cadet Missions gave me these:
Two had a Legendary in them, and one included a Super Rare......
Back when I doing the Epics, I MIGHT see ONE Legendary, out of the six Single Pulls. Mostly you will probably get a 3* all six times.
Scott
The Epics have a "best chance" of dropping a Legendary, but still it is iffy, and you get a Single Pull for each run.
Elites drop a Ten Pull of the Standard Boosts. {3* or higher.}
I got this today for my free Ten Pull for logging in:
50% Speed Ups, 3* or 4*.
Yesterday two of the Ten Pulls from Cadet Missions gave me these:
Two had a Legendary in them, and one included a Super Rare......
Back when I doing the Epics, I MIGHT see ONE Legendary, out of the six Single Pulls. Mostly you will probably get a 3* all six times.
Scott
"The truth is like a lion; you don't have to defend it. Let it loose; it will defend itself."
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Comments
Most importantly:
1. Do not do 10x portal pulls for crew unless you are 100% certain that you have the available crew space for possible crew drops (through open slots or the possibility to cryo immortalised crew).
--> This means that if you do a 10x BASIC reward pull you have 1 open slot, or are willing to airlock any crew that come up except for the specific one you might be looking for.
--> This means that you have at least 2, preferably up to 4-5 open slots when doing a 10x PREMIUM portal pull, as you will most certainly get at least 1 4*+ and 4-5 3*s.
If you are looking to collect crew for the immortalisation achievement it is detrimental to be air locking large quantities of crew you do not own yet. As you continue playing and accumulate more crew through Voyages and events (or daily log-in rewards) there will be fewer crew you might want to get through a portal pull and so you can start doing them more often or with less space available.
For example, as a player who has all 1-3*s immortalised and around 35 immortalised crew active, I do a portal pull whenever I get one in the hope of immortalising non-FF 4*s (or adding starts to my 5*s). I know for certain that I can accommodate all 4-5*crew I pull by freezing up immortalised 4*s, and all 1-3*s (except 1 more Lursa) will immediately get tossed out the air lock for Honor.
So just let those portal pulls sit in the Time Portal until the day you are ready to open 1 or 2. Obtaining the immortalisation achievement levels will allow you to obtain Dil., which in turn will allow you to purchase a 3rd or 4th shuttle and more crew slots, which will make your crew base stronger. This is key for any f2p player.
I figured this out a couple of weeks ago on my own. I wish I had seen it when I was very new. I lost a lot of opportunities. Good advice.
1. Using an ad as a free warp (will play a mission you have 3-starred without spending chronotons)
2. Getting a second scan for free (resulting usually in some basic component)
3. Getting 10 more chronotons after claiming a chronoton boost
So, unless you are trying to get a few quick scans to complete the daily quest before time is up, it is ALWAYS best to use your ad watch to warp a mission that costs more than 10 chronotons. Usually I just find a character I am trying to level and leave high cost items for my free ad warp.
Took me a while to realize the way the ad watching is set up.
http://ssr.izausomecreations.com/crewcost.html is friend of your replicator - look for items that have awful chon and/or total credit cost in comparison to replication cost.
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Useful for other things too, just do not trust cadeting recommendations without checking. *looks on DS9 Hyperspanner* some of the are faaar from optimal.
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Never ever cadet DS9 Hyperspanners. Well, unless you can't even do EAS Elites but it will pass pretty soon.
Note that this is not possible on Steam
Here's one I forgot earlier and that I did at times but wasn't very smart ...
Do not use shuttle boosts outside of a Faction event (with minor exceptions).
Why?
Shuttle runs increase in difficulty with each success (and decrease if you fail a lot). This is per faction and does not include shuttles run during faction(hybrid) events, as far as I know.
This means that if you boost a shuttle with a 3* DIP to increase success of a Federation shuttle, once you run out of those boosts your crew is even more disadvantaged, as the shuttles have become more difficult and maybe your crew hasn't increased in quality at the same rate, so you will likely start failing a lot.
Just ride the RNG and send out those shuttles at their natural success percentage ... this will allow you to improve you crew and increase the shuttle difficulty at a natural rate alongside that so that they hopefully remain synchronised.
We all have stories of failing a ton of shuttles with what seems to us high success percentages, but hey, it happens.
Exceptions
The exception I would put is that using a 0* or 1* Reward Boost is okay when sending your shuttles out overnight (you want to keep 2*+ for overnight shuttles during events). But remember to time them well, as your shuttles will take 9 hours and not 3.
So run the Elite (middle difficulty) missions on Thursday and save up the 10x boost packs to open one a day (meeting daily achievement target) and slowly building up you shuttle boost collection. Then spend those wisely during Faction/hybrid events to get you to higher ranks or earn those threshold rewards faster.
Good luck!
You can also use a time boost on your event shuttles you know you will fail... this will increase your Event points over time allowing you to run more failed missions instead of just the one in the standard 3 hour window. Double failed points is better than just one. That is if you have plenty of Time Boost available.
A helpful tip for those who have trouble with success in Event Faction Missions.
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Temporal Defense Initiative 2 (TDI2)
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When it comes to Officers, who to keep and who to work on, its all about Focus and Pick your battles. You will find out early on, that you have a limited amount of crew slots, and even with the Cryo, ability, its still quite limited.
I wish I would of never leveled up, pretty much any 1* chars? I wish I would of Only leveled up 2*s that were for cadet challanges, and only leveled up 3* chars that were for challanges or main cast crew, as they are most used in events.
I know people will say, that you need to freeze 1s and 2s and 3s for achievement purposes, and thats all find and good, but not the expense of losing more valuable crew. Besides if you airlock a 1 2 or even a 3, its not like you wont get the chance to get them again, and again, and oh yah again;)
Makes sure you check timelines, or many of other website info pages, when picking the best behold options, Make sure you try and find out your best crew options for guantlet, and make sure you have at least one good one for each of the skill types for gauntlet.
If you only do monthly card, or rely completely on achievements for dil, try and get the 3rd and 4th shuttle, as these eventually become a must for any decent ranking in faction events, if you dont want to be playing at a disadvantage.
These are pretty basic, but still wish I had known them the first week or two;)
How do you spend your credits and honor?
I tend to accumulate both, because honor seems to be a precious resource, and the only thing I regularly spend credits on is building items for crew, but even that doesn’t put a dent in how much I get. And honor seems too precious to spend on the wrong things... although my lvl 100 3/4* Dr Crusher could use a citation...
I think honor is best spent on legendary stars (citations or a behold if you want the thrill/despair of RNG). But I also use citations on event crew, like Duelist Yar this weekend.
Honor... my list by priority is:
1. Last star on new 4* crew that you need to freeze because you are out of slots. Long way before they'll appear in portal or voyages so worth it.
2. 50k to be held in reserve for 5th star on megaevent character for next megaevent
3. Kahless/Whatever next honor unique would be. Well, with Kahless going out it probably should be priority 0 for him.
4. Stars on uniques - gauntlet rewards, Kahless, megaevent crew, unique voyage drops - pretty much zero chance to get them in random pack.
5. Last star on old 4*/5* crew that you need to freeze because you are out of slots and all your FFFE crew are essential. I probably would never have enough honor for that.
6. 4th star on threshold reward in Faction Event that you plan to level and use immediately. Well, maybe it's 5 and previous one is 6.
7. Adding stars on useful new 5* character.
8. Adding stars on useful new 4* characters.
9. Adding stars on useful old 5* characters that are already in the general circulation.
Only on building items and for the replicator.
- Once you get a good selection of crew and you've stabilised your crew quality, you will be able to level 4*s in a day or 2 ... e.g. I levelled the new Yar to 100 by the morning of Day 2 of this event ... once you start being able to do this you will spend a lot of money on equipping crew, especially if you have a backlog of lvl 1 crew and keep all the new crew that come in through events (as is the case for me).
- I replicate up to 4* items that have faction-heavy components (e.g. need a tonne of 0* Holoprograms or 1* Security Codes) ... I try to keep it at 1 a day max. and often go a couple of days without just to save credits.
Honor
Capt. Chaos and al103 are spot on in my opinion. I equate #6 with #1 though ... e.g. I purchased a citation for Yar when I picked her up as a threshold reward ... this have given me good benefits for shuttle success and will also allow me to cryo her as soon as the event ends. I'll do the same for the threshold reward next week.
A side note ... remember to add your citation prior to sending crew out on shuttles, can't add stars to them while they are on a shuttle/(voyage), but you can level and equip them.
Essentially if you plan to crio new threshold then it's #1 anyway and if not then it's not that much of priority to citation them in comparison to other things.
1 star on threshold character would rarely change your event standing anyway.
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Well, unless you are squad leader and you plan to share it. Then it's MUST HAVE option.
I agree with you here. I’m not going to use 18k honor putting a citation on someone I’m going to use for half of an event then never again. My honor goes strictly towards citations for legendaries and that is restricted to legendaries that are not in the portal yet. For example I just put 3 stars on Tilly. There are others I could have used them for but I can get them through portal pulls. I can’t get Tilly’s that way. I would use 100k if Emperor Georgiou were the new honor crew but since I’m convinced it’s Surak that’s two more citations for, I’m thinking Mirror Bashir or Captain LaForge. I’m finding engineering is the skill you don’t find many security and command with that have high numbers.
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Save your trainers, you'll need them somewhere eventually, even as replicator fuel.
When you're leveling up the crew, use them as your away team, put them on your ship and do space battle missions manually (do not warp them). Use the highest star ship you have so you can put 3 or 4 crew on it, you don't even need to match their skill with ship's battle stations. Use wiki to learn which space battles give most experience per chroniton invested (for example, E2M10 The Walls Have Ears costs 4 chronitons and gives 33xp to each crew, plus it drops useful 0* casings).
Unless you want to freeze the crew immediately, level it up to lvl 99 so you can fully equip them and keep them there. They will receive xp when you do away team missions with them, those that you didn't 3-starred yet. You can easily push them to lvl 100 with a few trainers when you want to freeze them.
Keep the eye on xp bar when using trainers when reaching 10 level thresholds, you don't want to use 500xp trainer if your crew needs 100xp to reach lvl 30, 40, 50 and so on...
Same. I would add that once you hit the point where shuttles return regularly and you can hit the 4 hour mark most of the time on voyages, stop buying trainers for honor. I, too, have been doing this only 4 months, but have now built up a significant amount of honor. I have over 80K, even after the probably 15K I spent on trainers in the first 2 and a half months.
Also, save your new crew pulls for when you have space. Use them all, all the time, until your crew is solid, then save them or you will run out of crew slots.
Actually, my advice maybe should have been specified as advice for F2P players, but anyone can find his own way, which suits them best.
The difference between us is that I'm slow pace player, mostly F2P, with periodic monthly card and saving trainers works well for me. I came back to the game in December after 6 months pause (been playing since the game release) and I can train several crew from 0-100 if I have enough chrons for missing items (and time) to do that. Actually, that's my personal goal at the moment, to immortalize at least one crew each day and I wouldn't be able to do that if I don't have enough trainers.
I don't buy them for honor, I think that's a waste and I rather buy citations for the crew which misses the final star.
Having several ships maxed up, my space missions ARE just clicking start and leave it to resolve itself without me even looking at it, so that's easy xp while doing something else. And, it's not too hard to get there.
Saving crew pulls is also a great advice, keep them until you have available crew slots.