Howdy (ugghh why does my carriage return never work in the threads.....that would be the return/enter key for those who don't know what a carriage return is)... Anyway I have been playing now for about 4 months and have come to understand a lot. One of the things that escapes me is the SIB. Everyone tells me to make sure that I can first use the weapon and that it has an SIB. Then I get told to make sure that it is maxed that way I use it economically. The problem I have and it just may be my misunderstanding is that once the weapon or tool for that matter is maxed out the SIB no loner exists. It says ' not anymore'. So what I am trying to find out is which one do I really want to go with. For example on the Law 21- I am at 100% for hit and 92.1% progress fro damage. So meaning if I use it I will have an SIB for the damage and not hit but I won't be economical, or I could use the law 13 and be economical and forget about SIB. My question realistically which one is better per say. To break it down even further is it better to go for SIB when I am that close with a weapon and increase my skills faster or is it better to progress slowly? The second question I have and no one may be able to answer the exact reason, but wondering if I missed something. I see weapons on the auction that have very little if none on durability left meaning they can't be used (limited weapons) yet folks are selling them and people are actually paying for it. Can you melt them down-refine them per say or what? In a game of real cash economy it would seem very pointless to pay money for something you can't use to further progress your way through the game.
The short answer from my perspective it is best to use a weapon you have maxed or nearly maxed. No one that I know of has been able to quantify the actual skill gain bonus obtained while using a weapon in its SIB range. But is a simple matter of maths to work out how using an unmaxed weapon affects ur damage per pec (dpp), damage per sec (dps) and therefore your cost to hunt. Entropedia provides tools for doing this. In my view the really great thing about SIB weapons is that you can max them at much lower levels than non-SIB weapons (which max at lvl 100). A longer and more equivocal answer is that it depends on where your priorities lie. If you want to hunt efficiently to make your peds go further then maxed is the correct approach. If you want to skill faster then it could be argued that you should always use weapons that you are still in SIB for. My problem with that is we don't really know how much benefit you get and I would still counsel choosing weapons that you are not far off maxing, to minimize the cost impact. And if you want to maximise skilling per ped, well I don't know. Without the quantification of SIB benefit it's very difficult arrive at a definitive answer. Now as to low TT weapons, well I guess the question is how close to minimum condition are they (min condition is 3% of max TT). People do scam inattentive or new players by selling useless crap. But a weapon that is at 10% TT for example, is still usable. Limited weapon MU is presented as a % of TT to allow different TT valued weapons to be compared. My only real word of caution is to consider how low condition impacts effective MU. Say you buy a weapon that is at it's Max TT value of 100 ped and you pay 200% MU (200 ped). You are only going to be able to use 97% of it's TT value and then will be left with a 3TT weapon at minimum condition that you can sell back to the trade terminal for its TT value. So the 100 ped MU you paid is used up in 97% of the max TT. Effective MU% = 100 + 100*(100/(100-3)) = 203.9% If you had bought that weapon at 50% condition then the equation changes: Effective MU% = 100 + 100*(50/(50-3)) =206.4% A weapon bought at 10% condition: 100 + 100*(10/(10-3)) = 242.8% So I would always preference a high condition weapon over a low condition weapon, assuming similar MU.
Thanks for the reply Kikkijikki (that's a lot of K's) after reading your post and read through more posts on different forums etc. I think I have made the decision to use only maxed out weapons. The money spent to get my skills up faster to be able to handle the bigger creature sooner is not worth it in the end. I find myself burning through weapons way to fast and the return on the investment to curb the amount in deposit to keep me going is not there. So for me its going to be a slow pace from here on out. I have found through research that hitting laser (23) blp(22) laser pistol (16) (all hit), mining (10) survey(9) prospect(9) and crafting also when I have the funds in a little over 4 months has been leveling a little to fast and missing out on some of the key points of the game and the enjoyment of it too. As for the TT value of the limited weapons your spot on which was my point I never saw the logic in buying a lower conditioned weapon, it just seemed like you would be spending more money and after looking at your calculations you proved it. Again thanks for the response it was very helpful.
Very nice answer Kikki. Here is a short version, for those who haven't had their coffee yet. Using a gun while in SIB period is about as eco as using a UL gun at a low level. The amount lost to this uneco hunting, even on a low level gun will be hundreds of ped, by the time it has broken. In theory this lost ped could have been used to buy enough skills to bring you to a maxed level on said gun. I'm not sure if MA added this SIB period to simply rip people off, or if they genuinely think it's useful. Either way, it's a very expensive way to gain skills. And less-than-full TT guns appear on auction because they were looted that way, or crafted that way intentionally. Both are typically purchased by people low on ped, that can't afford or don't need a full TT gun. Nothing wrong with that.
The above answers summarize the issues well. If skilling is faster during inside the SIB period, then it is not by much, and not worth the ammo you waste especially at the lower end of the SIB period. Not only is your damage less but your fire rate is also lower... it's just better to use maxed weapons whenever possible. You can use the entropia tracker client to measure the actual damage your weapon does and get a better feel for what these eco numbers actually mean. Low TT guns which have no tier increases would be from someone crafting them without residue. As KikkiJikki said, they may not be as economical, but might be useful if you want to try out a gun without having to pay out a couple hundred ped.
Neil - As someone else has already said, another way below-full-TT items with tier 0 get onto the market is undoubtedly from mob drops. I suspect that this is the main route, as many items have better MU than residue does - so the crafter gets a better profit that way. This is especially the case for anything that uses either leather (whips, IIRC) or any animal oil (which includes musca armour and undoubtedly others, but I don't have the BPs to check). This is because tailoring scraps and animal oil residue both have MU barely above 100%. In any case, if you want a below-full item and there's one on sale - does it really matter where it came from?
Since I am the OP let me clarify by what I meant when I talked about the less than full TT value weapons on the Auction. I am not talking about the weapons you loot and half 1/2 their tt value left and people put them on the auction. I get that, its the game you loot a weapon like that. The ones I am talking about are the weapons or tools that are limited that lets say has a tt value of 110 ped. its on the auction with a value of 1.10 ped and they are trying to sell it at around 27ped. Why go through trying to sell something that someone will get what a couple uses out of and that's it. My entire point was that it is taking up room and cluttering the auction. I just don't see the point in it. It doesn't make sense to me was all I was saying
Well, in that case, with those numbers, the seller is clearly just hoping to make a quick buck off of a buyer's mistake or misclick. It's just one of the many sleazy selling practices you'll find in the auction house.
