Good day, Joe and STOers! It’s been a busy week for me this past week, but I hope to kinda make up for it with some greed.
Pure, unadulterated greed.
…
Okay, I guess selling stuff at the lowest price to ensure it sells isn’t entirely greedy… 😉
Yes, you can make a ton of EC during the Summer Event just by participating in the different activities, but one shines above them all.
Do you want to learn the tricks?
Do you want to learn how you can get your Favor(ite) gear from the Exchange with relatively little effort?
Let’s dive into the meat of this post, then!
EVERYONE WANTS SUMMER STUFF!
The Summer Event, usually held in early July thru early August but delayed a month due to the COVID-19 pandemic, has a number of items players want. Things available via your Event Store or vendors on Risa include:
- Off-duty costumes.
- Food that becomes Tribbles when in your Inventory with any one of most of the other Tribbles.
- Kit Modules.
- Pets.
- Kit Frame (NEW THIS YEAR).
- Bridge Officer powers.
- Powerboards/Floaters (for competitions and most of the scheduled activities)
The currency for these is Lohlunat Favors. They’re earned from completing any of the Summer activities, with bonus amounts given outside of those times on some activities.
Lohlunat Favors are not bound to your character or account. Thus, they can be sold on the Exchange to players who want to buy the Summer items without participating in those activities or who want to finish off those last few Favors to buy these items.
TAKING ADVANTAGE OF DEMAND
Because players are willing to spend EC to get the Favors for their Summer items, you can take advantage of this to extreme profit.
As of typing this (8/19/2020 @ 10:47 AM Eastern), Lohlunat Favors sell for just under:
- 10,000 EC individually,
- ~950,000 EC per set of 100
- 9,875,000 EC per set of 999
For reference, it takes up to 1,000-1,500 Favors to get some of the best stuff in the Summer Event store, depending on the item at which you’re looking.
Those values also vary. I’ve seen individual Favors go for around 15,000 EC each, and I’ve had stacks of 999 sell for closer to 11,000,000-12,000,000 EC this year.
Regardless, you can take advantage of other people’s wads of EC to grab some of the big gear or traits you’ve been wanting, like:
…
A LOBI SHIP!?
Yes, a Lobi ship! There’s enough EC out there that, when combined with other promotions, Key sales, etc., you can earn a Lobi ship by “farming” Favors and selling them on the Exchange!
How? I’m glad you asked!
TIME VS. REWARD: PLANNING TO FARM LOHLUNAT FAVORS
The easiest way to sell Lohlunat Favors is in groups. I believe all Summer activities on Risa, when done during their specific time on the schedule, reward a minimum 25 Favors and a maximum of ~100…per character.
Some activities are only meant to be run on one character at a time. The Biathalon (combined Powerboard + Floater race course) and Powerboard Race are timed to begin at a certain point and accept no new entrants.
Others, like the Artifact Scavenger Hunt or the Horga’hn Hunt, can be done over multiple characters during their 15-minute windows as long as you’re fast enough to start, get them done, switch characters, and begin again.
Of those, the Horga’hn Hunt is the easier one. Inside of 15 minutes, you need to find 10 Horga’hns spread around the island. Each Horga’hn rewards 2-5 Lohlunat Favors and may reward a Risian Tropical Bird Egg that can be turned in at the Ornithologist (2nd floor of the Promenade) for a DOFF chain of raising birds either as pets or to turn in for Reputation/Fleet Marks you need.
The Horga’hn Hunt for a character ends when they find 10 Horga’hns, and the reward is 75 Lohlunat Favors (plus, starting this year, 1 point of Event completion toward the Summer Event, rewarding a Risian Weather Control Vessel [T6] + 8,000 scaling Dilithium per extra daily completion after getting the ship).
Let’s say a Horga’hn you find and interact with gives an average of 3 Favors. That’s ~30 from the Horga’hns themselves plus 75 from completing the Hunt = 105 Favors on a single character.
And if you’re fast enough, you can do that on another character…
…and another…
Pretty soon, you’ll have DJ Khaled motivating you to, “do another one! Another one!”
HOW TO TURN TOTEM FINDING INTO EC
STARTING OUT
If it’s your first time to Risa, go to the Floater vendor. Take a right at the first intersection on the Boardwalk, then head straight to the hut at the end.
Rent a Floater (essentially a Star Trek jet pack). It costs 1,000 EC and goes away after a short period of time (10 minutes? 30?). If you don’t have 1,000 EC, go run a Patrol and discard/vendor the loot you get.
Then go right behind the resort with your rental Floater, facing the volcano caldera.
My path is basically as follows (NOTE: It’s not exact, but it hits the basic areas where Horga’hns are found along the route I normally take):
- NOTE: There are two variants of where Horga’hns are placed. This is 1 of those 2 variants. Whichever variant you get, Horga’hns shouldn’t be far from the other variant’s spawn point; they should appear in the same general vicinity.
I’m using a much faster Floater than your rental, but the point remains: One trip around is worth nearly (or over) 100 Favors. It’s enough to buy your first permanent Floater.
- “But what about all the EC that represents!?” Hey, you gotta spend money to make money!
Open the Events tab of your Mission Journal, go to “Events,” then, “Event Store.”
Search for “Floater,” then buy any of the ones that cost 50 Favors.
This will keep you from needing to visit the Floater Renter on that character, allowing you to start the Hunt in the spot you choose instead of either having to start from the vendor or logging in early to grab your rental floater.
Next, buy any non-Baseball food item from the Summer Event store along with a basic Tribble from the Exchange. This will give way to a Lohlunat Tribble, which will increase your flight speed and inertia on the Floater during the Summer Event. The link to the Tribble will tell you what foods specifically will make a Lohlunat Tribble, and you can find that food in the same Event Store as the Floaters.
Repeat this process on each character you intend to run through the Hunt. My experience has been that 3 characters can do the Hunt in the 15-minute window using this setup.
SPEEDING UP
With 3 characters getting ~100 Favors each per Hunt, it’ll take 9 Hunts and 1 character doing a 10th Hunt to get 1,000 Favors.
Now…buy an Impulsive Floater.
“BUT THAT EC! THAT’S 8-9 MILLION EC!”
Trust me, you’ll get 1k Favors a lot faster by spending some 1k bundles now.
Impulsive Floaters are the fastest Floaters you can have. Combined with the Lohlunat Tribble, you’ll be doing 2 runs in a bit over the time it took you to do 1 run prior. That means more characters can join in on the Horga’hn Hunt fun!
How many more?
…
Would you believe 4 more?
Repeat that process of grabbing 1,000 Favors, get them to the character that needs them (in-game E-mail or Account Bank), and buy an Impulsive Floater on that character. You’ll want at least 4 characters, maybe 5, to have an Impulsive Floater for the best speed to get done as many Horga’hn Hunts as you can.
Here’s a timeline of my personal best speeds for runs for which I kept track of times when starting out the Summer Event on my alt account:
- NOTE: It was not, in fact, later that week but about 2 weeks later…meaning now. :p
The math on how many characters can run this is also recorded:
I will note that I’ve been doing 5 characters (1 of which is still on a Superior Floater, one step below Impulsive) with about 60-90 seconds left on the timer, and I’m not very optimal. You might find a better path, practice it well, and get 6 characters in. The more the better, but I feel 4-5 is comfortable.
TIME IS MONEY!…WELL, EC REALLY, BUT YOU GET THE DRIFT
Knowing that I can run 5 characters per Hunt, netting around 500 Favors, and knowing that’s around 1,000 Favors in 2 runs, I set out to do something I’d only done one other time this time last year: buy a ship from the Exchange.
Last year, it was the Discovery-era Miracle Worker Flight Deck Cruiser (the predecessor to and superior version of the Legendary Temporal Flight Deck Cruiser) and the Miracle Worker D7 Flight Deck Cruiser. You can read about those exploits separately in the links provided above.
What I’ll do here is show a timeline of my Summer adventure in trying to grab a Tholian Iktomi for my Science character, with whom I’ll build a canon Voyager for my next Canon Playability series.
Doing this, plus timing an R&D promotion sale well, I was able to get about 275 million EC. I admit, I had the advantage of betting on an R&D Promotion happening to speed up my EC acquisition.
But let’s say that didn’t happen. I got to ~114,000,000 EC from selling Favors, leaving ~251,000,000 EC to go.
- With 19 days to go, I’d have needed around 13,200,000 EC per day to make what I expected the Iktomi to be. That’s 4 runs at 5 characters each to sell 2 stacks of 999 each day.
- At ~9,000,000 EC per stack of 999, though, I would have been done in 14 days, leaving 5 days’ grace.
FAVOR(able) CONDITIONS NEEDED
Now, it may seem like you’ll get 8-9 million EC per stack of 999, and perhaps 1 or 2 of you will…then others enter the market.
The first day I tried selling Favors, a stack of 999 was going for close to 11 million EC. Lately, I’ve had to sell closer to 8,750,000.
The more supply of Favors that’s on the Exchange, the lower the price for them. That’s great for the consumer, bad for you.
If I were to suggest something, because this is coming out less than 2 weeks from the end of the Event…work on getting 5 of your characters to have an Impulsive Floater and a Lohlunat Tribble. Then take some sample runs around the island during a Hunt, finding your best route and rhythm. A couple suggestions can be found at these links (none of which is my original work):
That gives you 3 routes to take so you can find the path that’s best for you.
Then, next year, plan your own shopping spree.
A bunch of consoles?
Some traits?
That one ship you’d been eyeing since it released?
If you can do your hunting (and math) well, doing this from the start of Summer Event 2021, you’ll have no problem getting what you want. It’ll just take time.
SUMMER DAYS…DRIFTING AWAY!
That’s all I have for now. I’m doing some runs of my own to grab a few more things before Summer ends, and I’m waiting on an Upgrade Weekend to make my final set of runs in the Canon Defiant. Finally, I still have to finish the Event Ship retrospective.
That’s a TON to do, so don’t be surprised if you don’t read anything new for a while.
But I’ll be back…I’m not dead yet! 😉
(NOTES: The image of the Tholian Iktomi were taken from the announcement blog for the T6 upgraded release of the Tholian Orb Weaver (a T5 ship); and I’m not saying 100 Favors can become a Tholian Iktomi, I’m just getting the idea across that Favors can eventually becomes a Ship, with the blog telling how).
Joe and STO 