JMK without CAT
As someone who's going after JMK and is below 4m GP, I can't understand why CG decided to block people below 4m GP from getting CAT shards, seeing how Razor Crest is somewhat easily accessible in Fleet Store.
Is CG really not going to do anything about this GP gating?
Is CG really not going to do anything about this GP gating?
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I put a suggestion in discord, to allow <4M to enter event but to lessen shards to 10, have the refreshes remain the same or if they are also lessened to 10 reduce the Crystal cost by half and 100% upvoted it by time I wrote this.
But CG have failed to even acknowledge the hundreds of comments on the forum, Reddit and avoided the occasional mention on discord.
I put a complaint in because I spent money and 22k crystals, I received feedback it has been forwarded to development team but not sure they will do anything.
I think I will be 4M GP before we hear anything back, if we ever do.
What baffles me more is people defending the 4M gp gate, that just shows how much of an egocentric and individualistic a**holes can some people be.
Not hard to hit but still takes almost 2 years.
I'd say it was more of a complete slap in the face. If it was a 2M gp requirement? Sure, that's a middle finger. But 4M? Slap in the face. No doubt CG will soon raise it to 6M to protect the precious whales, which would be an utter kick in the nuts.
I see people in GAC all the time that have two or three Galactic Legends, but any character that isn’t directly related to attaining a Galactic Legend is level 1, no gear, 330 shards but only 2 or 3 stars.
I usually win because this means they’ve only got two good fleets, but I digress.
The point I’m making is that building a wide roster will get you to 4 million hella fast, but people are still stuck in the mindset of “bloat is bad” because it means you’ll be matched up against harder folks in GAC. That hasn’t been the case for a while now and folks are having a hard time adjusting.
There are like 300 characters and ships in the game, develop more than 50 of them, y’all.
But 1) it doesn’t affect your matches. And, 2) if your roster is too anorexic you won’t be getting That Big Character anyway.
Build a Rebel fleet, Bistan’s U-Wing is baller and Cassian’s U-Wing murders. Build a Resistance fleet, it holds decently and frees up a more offensively-oriented fleet for attacks. There are more than 5 Bounty Hunters.
My Stormtrooper Han is G9 and gives 15k power. That sounds like a drop in the bucket, but G9 is easy to get on any older character and you can put an awful lot of drops in your bucket that way.
Okay.
Then enjoy not doing Hard Conquest or Proving Grounds.
I think it's hilarious. From the beginning you are being told that this is a resource management game and if you don't make enough progress or you roster is not up to par etc. it is your fault for not managing your resources correctly and blowing them on unnecessary stuff and not focusing enough.
And yet here you are telling people to actually do that.
Next time someone asks for advice, will you tell them to watch where they put their resources?
I tried gearing up my untouched toons to G5 and Lv50 with mods on them, this happened. Last week when I was relicing GG, I know for a fact that I had more than 30 of this exact piece, now a quarter of my daily energy will be wasted on acquiring this gear.
And now @NicWester will whine about managing resources...
If you can't get CAT, you should get other GLs before getting JMK. It is poor resource management to get JMK before that 4mil gp threshold. SLKR, SEE, JML, REY are all better investments before 4mil gp.
4mil gp for proving grounds is perfectly reasonable
No, I'll just say do a 50-cost refresh when you need one of these and spend it all on Dark 1-A (normal) and you'll be set for life. Why would you think I'd hate on you because you're doing the thing I said you should do? Believe it or not, I'm trying to help you!
Anyway, that's what I did when I had converted them all to relic materials thinking that because I had hundreds I must not need them any more--then Inquisitors came out and all of a sudden I learned that you should convert down ALL BUT 50 of every piece of excess gear just in case!
But this is a real easy piece to farm and you don't need to have a bajillion of them. Just use a refresh on that node whenever you're out and you'll have enough to last you a while before you need to refresh again.
Another tip--Scroll to the bottom of the guild shop and you see those two gear nodes at the bottom, on the same row as Young Han Solo? Check those two spaces from time to time, you can get 5 mk2 and mk3 detonators and 5 mk5 weapon mods for super cheap. Gear levels 7-10 use a ton of those so you might struggle with farming them from nodes, but the price is NOTHING (100 guild tokens, I think 200 for the mk3 detonators) so you can buy your way past that speedbump no problem. I wish that had been an option when I was gearing up the bulk of my roster... The time I would have saved! But it is now, so take advantage of it!
The Mk10 thingamajig (the one that just gives 10 Tactics, but is also used in some g12 finishees) is also a pain, but that seems to show up in the stores more.
I think those are the big pieces of advice, let me know if you run into something I didn't cover here and I'll try to remember what I did. The thing I'll say is that, yeah, you're going to use A LOT of gear and credits. But the thing I figured out when I was leveling up all my characters from 1 to 85, and up to 7*, was that once you've done it? You're done. You don't need to do it again. So I spent a good couple months where at the end of the day I'd dump all my credits and training droids into one character and end the night with, like, 5 credits. But now I have all of them at 85 and my GP is huge so I never need to worry about being locked out of content because of that, and it takes CG so long to create characters that by the time they do, it's easy to drop the credits to bring them to 85. When they announce a new assault battle that needs Lobot at 7*, I'm ready to go.
You'll be ready to go, too, if you just follow my gaming philosophy--figure out what the design intent is and embrace it. The design intent of this game is to get you to unlock characters and use them for something--no character is intentionally useless. So unlock them and use them because, eventually, there will be a use for everything and everyone. The people who horde their resources always seem to be so miserable and resent having to spend any of them on anything. So just spend all of it on everything and enjoy yourself.
Step 1) If there's a red number here, get rid of it. Equip that piece of gear, add that star, upgrade that ability. Go to bed with no red notifications.
Step 2) Use Favorites and Journey Guide to prioritize characters. I said equip that gear, I didn't say equip it to just any old one.... Make sure the team you're working on gets it first if they need it. In this case, my current priority is GL Kenobi, so my main focus is on the last four relic characters I need. I do one cantina refresh a day so this'll take about a month to finish. In the meantime, since they don't need any gear, my g12 focus is on First Order because I think Finalizer is viable, but mine isn't because my First Order is bad, so since I'm working on FO I may as well work on GL Kylo. Once I hit r1 with a FO character I unflag them, they're done. That's why you don't see Phasma here, she's r2, so she's done for now. Then I have a Smuggler team I'm working on, so they're "done" when they hit G12, I'll unflag as soon as they hit that. Finally, any character I'm actively farming is flagged so it's easier to find them when they hit a star. All these folks get gear and zetas and omicrons before anyone else under them in the roster.
Step 3) It's okay to gear up and level up your characters. Here's the bottom of my roster, sorted by Power. If the goal is to get everyone up to the highest level, then you're going to need to put that Stun Cuff on them eventually, so why not now? As you can see, Iden and Eighth Brother are flagged, so if you look back next month they likely won't be at the bottom any more. They hold priority over all these other folks. Again: Go to bed with no red numbers, but that doesn't mean don't be mindful of where it goes.
Step 5) It's okay to change your mind and flag or unflag on the fly. You'll see Darth Talon has 16 shards, so I was farming her at some point and stopped. I stopped because I got the last Kenobi requirement to r1 and needed to switch over to permanently farming relic materials. I'll get back to her when I'm done. If you're going to bed with no red, you'll have more flexibility than you think because if suddenly I needed Sith Assassin for something I'm not gearing her from scratch, as you can see in the above screenshot. Okay, admittedly, starting from g7 isn't THAT much of an advantage, but that's the bottom of my roster. Here's roughly the middle of my roster--Before I started working on Smugglers I had been working on Rebel Fighters, and Mandolorian Scoundrels before them, so they're in the middle here. If suddenly there's a thing I need Rebel Fighters for, I can pick them back up and get them to Relic Whatever much, much faster than if I was starting from scratch.
Step 5) Smugglers are "done" at g12? First Order is "done" at r1? Yes, because right now my main priority is GL Kenobi. I have all the characters geared, so I need something to do with my g12 gear--First Order. Aside from Veteran Han and Sith Trooper all my FO are G12 so I need something to do with my g11 and lower gear--Smugglers. When I finish Kenobi's requirements First Order will become the new priority, then some other team will become the new G12 priority, and so on and so on.
Final advice: It's also completely okay to break your own rules. This is a guideline for your standard day-to-day, but stuff happens and your day-to-day changes. For example, I kind of lied in Step 5. What I'm actually going to do once the last Kenobi requirement is finished is unflag everyone, stop equipping gear on anyone, do 5 Light Side refreshes a day to unlock him ASAP, flag him, and farm exactly the gear he and only he needs to hit r1, simultaneous to that farm Fifth Brother in cantina until Kenobi hits r1 and then farm all the signal data he needs. Once that's done, get Darth Talon and Fifth Brother to 7*, then any character I have that's reliced will be bumped up to r5, because r5 is the new g12, just as g12 used to be the new 7* a million years ago. Then, and only then, will I go back to the prioritization listed above. But that's the point of all of this, right? You set up an SOP because it's a Standard Operating Procedure, so it's what you want to do when things are operating standardly, yeah? Sometimes things come along that aren't standard, like me hitting Kenobi or CG announcing that r5 will be the minimum for future Solo Journey characters. Gearing and farming everyone in a targeted manner leaves you MORE flexibility than just hording and not spending anything until the announcement is made.
Genius here, it only got introduced when people already have the GL or mid way through farming and midway through farming CAT hence the moaaaaaning.
What about the 400 kyro battle computers and 300 stun gun salvage that are only farmable from dark side? Can't get them while ticket farming for JMK.
I don't have a lean roster by any means, but I think what you describe is possibly the slowest way to get anything actually done.
For myself, I do just level every toon to 85, because credits are not an issue, and I gear them until they want a mk3 holo projector, or a piece of core gear (g6-7 usually). I also level up skills until an omega is needed. Early game I would stop when a purple was needed but they become plentiful. This is just to increase gp for TB deploying.
I keep my credit balance about 20M to make sure I will never be short, but buy mods if over 20.
My general rule is to buy items from shops to return me to 3 of the full item available, as a way of prioritising what to buy, except GAC currency is always for kyros. There are a few items that I'll just always get, as they are in such demand, like mk6 med kits.
I use 2000 as my normal zero for most of the currencies, so that if there is just that one piece needed to finish something immediately I can get it, and when the high priority piece happens to turn up in the SSC store every refresh of one day, I can buy them all by converting other currencies to SSC for that day. Usually just the gal war currency is enough for this, then it rebuilds to 2000 quickly.
Apart from shard farming, normal energy (3 refresh per day, of course) mostly goes to kyros, all other gear turns up from shop farming and other rewards at about the same pace as kyros farm up.
Just offering a different perspective. I would not call my method hoarding by the way.
Anyways, the 4M requirement is COMPLETELY ARBITRARY. We can discuss how "easy" or hard it is to get to 4M but that completely misses the point of how terrible of an idea it is to gate CAT (and Conquest Hard) behind such a rediculous number. The fact that you cant even buy her from the conquest store anymore is also mind-boggling.
CG is just whale baiting. I would be interested in hearing them (not some sycophants) come up with an explanation as to why the 4M requirement makes sense.
I get the stun gun salvage from challenges and when they show up in the shard shop, and the battle computers are GET2 and Championship priorities. I will spend crystals on them if I'm lagging behind, that's why I've got about 7k right now, but, psychologically, I don't like spending crystals because before the change to GAC and Squad Arena I almost never had any and would spend what I got on refreshes mostly. I was always outside the Arena Chat and never wanted into the clique, so I was usually around 101-250. Now that I get a decent amount from Championships I'm learning that it's okay to spend them, but I still have a strong inclination to save those for good deals or character shards once the price dips below 80/shard. (It doesn't dip like that any more so, uh... I don't do that!)
Any number, or lack thereof, is arbitrary. 4 million represents a diverse roster though, so diversify. It's no more or less arbitrary than refusing to gear characters because they're "useless" when you can use any character for a bunch of things.
As I, and others, have said--work on ships. Your pilots will do double duty and get you there faster. Besides, the better your ships are the better you'll do in Grand Arena. The number of people who don't even have Raddus in Kyber is staggering. Without 6 fleets you lose. Without 5 GOOD fleets, you lose. If Raddus is your defense you win simply because it isn't a pushover and the other player had to put down pure jank just to beat your stuff, so you can undersize their fleets no problem.
These aren't hard and fast rules but they make it much easier to switch focus quickly if you need to and gear your characters as quickly as possible - the key is, if you start, make sure you finish (meaning bring the character to the minimum requirement or minimum usable Relic level). If you MUST switch focus make sure you immediately go back to the characters that you switched from. Switching focus is not advised but sometimes you have to - I recently put star killer on hold to switch to inqs. I'm almost done with them, then all resources will return to star killer prereqs (after GI is geared).
Spreading your resources only ends up giving you lots of barely usable (or unusable) teams, and increases the time between you and your goal of finishing an event or leveraging a strong team. Finish your farms - be great at a few things instead of bad at everything - the rewards will snowball over time
Usually I only have one character being farmed at a time, but the release of so many Marquis characters (and three ships!) in a row threw that off...
The way I figure it--and I'm not saying this to discount what you're doing, just offering another perspective--is that I need to do X sims for, say, Second Sister before she's maxed out. I can do five refreshes for 25 sims of Second Sister per day and really burn through that X value, or I can do no refreshes and do 5 sims of five characters for free. Since each character has their own X value, spreading it out like this means I'm burning through them collectively at the same rate but at lower cost.
I hope I explained that in a way that makes sense. I really shouldn't post here first thing in the morning before my brain starts working 😝
Yeah, I didn't go into efficiency vs opportunity cost here (or crystal price per shard) - there's a balance to be struck after which it's cheaper to buy the shards for crystals - 5x hard node refresh goes far beyond that.
Shard farming is usually a background activity in my routine - it's basically just a thing that goes on autopilot while I'm working on gear.
I usually have a set goal in mind and once I start working on a journey character, I focus on that and that only, nothing else.
And on that whole "bloating" your GP talk,
I really don't think that I can get behind the idea considering I started going for JMK right after I got my first GL, SEE. Maybe that's the reason why I don't enough resources to bloat my GP, but I just really hoped that CG would remove the barrier, or lower the GP requirements.
It's not like they haven't done it before, i.e. the required GP for Normal Conquest.
If you didn't have cat, or a realistic means to get her, you shouldn't have been banking on anything of assuming you would get her.
Just like you can't buy your way to Kam, wat, gk/traya/han, you have a gate to get cat or any conquest toon. 4mil gp is the line they chose for conquest and for proving grounds. It isn't where I'd put it but I also don't think it's unreasonable. Communication about it **** but I'm so numb to that at this point
I have 260/330 CAT shards, I was not assuming, I was partway through farming. Is that realistic enough? They removed my ability to.
It would be like them saying suddenly ‘oh your guild needs to be 400M to get KAM from this TB, to maintain exclusivity’, when people are already partway in 300M guilds.
Non of the other toons had moving goals as I have said many times. KAM has always been exclusive. But CAT was obtainable in normal conquest, packs and shipments for over a year THEN made retrospectively exclusive.