The Black Friday 2020 STO Guide!

Hello, and welcome back to Joe and STO after a looooong hiatus! I hope everyone has done well and is ready to get back to reading some random person’s internet opinions about Star Trek Online.

We have a 10-day slate of Black Friday sales in STO, so I wanted to hit some of the highs (and lows) along with at least one thing to possibly potentially keep an eye out for as we approach the actual Black Friday.

WAIT, WAIT, WAIT…WHAT’S “BLACK FRIDAY?”

For non-US readers or for those who do live in the US but aren’t familiar, “Black Friday” is the day after Thanksgiving in the United States. Because Thanksgiving occurs on the last Thursday of November, “Black Friday” could happen almost in the middle of the month all the way to nearly the month’s end (like it does this year, happening within 1 month of Christmas).

For businesses, this tends to be one of the biggest days that sets the tone for how their year goes. Businesses will put steeper discounts than normal on their goods and/or services to kick off the holiday shopping season, luring customers to buy (and perhaps buy more than they need, but that’s an overall marketing thing and not specific to STO).

The color part comes from old accounting practice when accounting ledgers were kept on paper with either red or black ink. If a businesses finished a period/year with less revenue than expenses they’re, “in the red,” which meant you’d use red ink to record those negative balances (some Spreadsheet programs default negative amounts to red text). If they end up with more revenue than expenses, they’d move, “into the black,” meaning they’d use black ink to show the positive results (like Profit).

Thus, “Black Friday,” is usually the day after Thanksgiving in which a business can tell if they’ll have a good year (black ink) or bad year (red ink), usually signifying one of the last big selling pushes of the calendar year.

(That’s not how it originally came to be, but it’s been this way since the late 1980s, so that’s at least 30 years of a specific usage so we’ll go with it).

STO’S SALES

This year, we have a number of different sales ongoing until at least November 30th, with some extending to December 3rd.

(Image is from this blog post announcing the Black Friday sale)

There are 8 different things going on in this sale. I’ll attempt to cover:

• The bigger winners.
• The larger losers.
• What to still be looking out for.
• Is it worth waiting for bigger deals on the actual Black Friday (November 27th)?

NOTE: All prices are given in US Dollars (USD). Convert those figures to your currency when considering if any certain purchase options are better for you.

NOTE 2: All information given below is opinion. When possible, information I don’t get myself will be sourced or I’ll note I don’t recall the source.

BIGGEST WINNER: ZEN CHARGE BONUS (Arc)/ZEN PURCHASE DISCOUNT (Epic Games Store & XBox until December 3rd; PlayStation until at least November 30th)

Zen Charge Bonus Changes

In years prior, this was the Zen Charge Bonus (screenshot from last year):

This year, it’s this:

Notice that the $20 (2,000 Zen) and $50 (5,000 Zen) get no additional Zen Charge Bonus ($20 doesn’t get any extra by default, $50 has a default 300 extra Zen). $10, $100, and $200 get extra, though.

• $10 gets +300 compared to normal (usually no extra Zen) and +150 compared to last year.
• $100 gets an additional 500 Zen (~$5) compared to last year.
• $200 gets an additional 1,000 Zen (~$10) compared to last year.

So this year, if you want to buy a 5,000 Zen item, you’d need to do 5 $10 purchases to get the most Zen, as 5 $10 purchases would get 6,500 Zen (5,000 base + 1,500 bonus) vs. 5,300 Zen for a single $50 purchase this year. That’s 200 Zen extra buying 5 $10’s this year versus just buying a single $50 charge last year. You could also spend $40 to get 4,000 + 1,200 = 5,200 Zen, leaving 200 left over (enough for 2 Keys).

Remember that you’re buying with extra Zen to buy stuff that’s discounted in the Zen Store (AKA “C-Store” or “Z-Store,” whichever you’re more familiar with), so you’re effectively getting larger discounts, allowing you to potentially buy more stuff on relatively less actual cash expenditure.

• For example, items that would have cost 10,000 Zen (~$100) now cost 7,500 for this sale. To get 7,500 Zen, you need to spend $60 (6,000 + 1,800). You saved $40, or effectively a 40% discount with 300 Zen left over.

Zen Purchase Discounts (Epic Games Store/XBox/PlayStation)

This year is, I believe, a flat 30% discount on purchasing Zen regardless of platform but still only for the $10, $100, and $200 levels. You don’t get any additional Zen beyond what’s normally given, but you get that Zen a lot cheaper than normal. Depending on how you play, this may be the better option.

Let’s compare a Zen Charge Bonus to purchasing Zen through the Epic Games Store, for example:

• On one of my accounts, I’m looking to buy the Titan, the Mirror Bundle [which has the Legendary “Galaxy Dreadnought” and a number of old event/Lobi Mirror-themed items], and 4x Character Slots.
• For all this, I’m looking at needing 7,548 Zen (normally 10,065, requiring a $100 charge for 10,000 Zen + change).
• Zen Charge Bonus from Arc would be 7,800 Zen (6 $10 purchases) for $60 tax free (Arc doesn’t charge me tax).
• Buying via the Epic Games Store, I can get 11,000 Zen (a $100 charge) for $77 after tax OR I can get 8,000 Zen (8 $10 charges) for $61.18 after tax. I could either get 200 more Zen for about $1 more OR upgrade to what’s normally the $100 bundle and get 3,200 more Zen for only $17 more.

Which is better for you may depend on what you’re wanting to buy and how close you are to a cutoff for $100+ in charges. I think PS4 and XBox are doing the same 30% discount, so this should hold true for console players on the discount part of the calculations.

• My Suggestion: You could wait until Friday, but I think I’d just put up with doing multiple $10 purchases than hoping there’s an overall Zen Charge Bonus that may or may not also be 30% bonus/discount on $20 and $50 packages.

OTHER STO BLACK FRIDAY WINNERS:

1. 20% Lobi Sale – The Lobi Store goes on sale at points between 20% and 30% off. No matter the percentage, it’s usually best to grab any ships or gear you’ve been wanting at these sales when they happen instead of waiting for a deeper discount. We had been getting them once a month for a while in 2020 and never higher than 30% off.
   • My Suggestion: While I said to never wait, we’re only talking until Friday. If they’re going to sweeten the deal, they’ll probably do it this upcoming weekend. If you need a lot of gear, perhaps a possible extra 5%-10% savings can all add up to getting 1 more piece of gear or an extra costume. The worst case scenario is you’ll still be at “just” 20% off until Monday at 1 PM Eastern.
2. 25% C-Store Sale – This is the 2nd highest overall store discount you can get. Buying now will usually not be a mistake. Why? Let’s assume you’re looking at 10,000 Zen worth of ships, items, etc., at normal price.
   • 25% off means this will all be 7,500 Zen.
   • 30% off means this will all be 7,000 Zen.
   • By waiting, you’d only save 500 Zen.

• My Suggestion: Since we’re only talking about 5 days, wait for Friday. If this were specifically happening on Black Friday or on Christmas/New Year’s Day, I’d say go ahead and buy. Realistically, 500 Zen can really only net you about 5 Keys. If that’s helpful to you (that would be about 40 million EC in funds for things like Lockbox traits or to go toward Lockbox/Lobi/Promo ships), wait. If it’s not, go ahead and buy with no hesitation.

3. C-Store Ship Coupon Gift Pack – These are generally an amazing deal. Usable on any ship in the “Tier 6” tab of the “Ships” section of the C-Store (yes, even “New Items” ships), they’re also tradeable/sellable (though not on the Exchange but in player-to-player trades and arranged in chat channels).

Let’s do a tad bit of math here:

• 3 ships can be purchased for as high as 9,000 Zen at full price or as low as 6,300 Zen at 30% off (the steepest discount any part of the C-Store sees, individual items and Mudd’s Market notwithstanding).

• The normal price on this 3-pack is 6,000 Zen, so that already sets you to an average of 2,000 Zen per ship.
• This bundle is subject to the overall 25% discount, so it’s 4,500 Zen, meaning each T6 ship you pick is 1,500 Zen, effectively 50% off.
• If you can get 600 Zen from converting Dilithium to Zen (which would currently take ~294,000 Zen @ 490 Dilithium per Zen), you could get this 3-pack for $30 (4,500 needed – 3,900 from 3 $10 purchases). That would put your 3 T6s at an average of $10 each out of pocket. For comparison, Tier 3 ships used to sell for $10 (1,000 Zen) each.

As well, you can sell these to other players for EC. No, you can’t put them on the Exchange, but you can watch Zone Chat, be part of a trading chat channel, or go to the STOTrades subreddit to buy/sell these tokens. They’re going for about 250 million EC (give or take), so you could buy a 3-pack and sell them for the EC to get almost any Tier 6 Lockbox ship. Just keep in mind you’re trading off 3 account-wide C-Store ship claims for 1-2 single-character ships. However, if you find any that are well worth your time and effort to procure, it may be easier and cheaper to do this. Plus, I believe these are only once per account per time it’s offered, so if it’s offered again later in the holiday season you should be able to buy one (but don’t quote me on that).

4. Newly Released Titan Science Destroyer [T6] Is On Sale! – Oh…you’ve been living under a rock? Or maybe Lower Decks hasn’t hit your country yet. Let me review a bit.

In Star Trek past, Captain Will Riker’s adventures continued past the Enterprise-E on a ship known as the Titan. A contest was held for the ship’s design and it became the cover image of the Star Trek: Titan line of books. STO originally (or soon after release) put in the Luna class and made it available as a player level-up reward (Level 40, I believe?), a Mirror version, and as a Fleet version. However, all versions had been Tier 5.

All this attention on a book ship and…it’s never been canon. Both the books and STO are considered “soft canon,” meaning CBS could at any time make any part of those works canon or contradict it/them outright.

Fast forward to 2020 and Star Trek: Lower Decks premiers on CBS All Access (about to be Paramount+) during a marathon run of weekly new Star Treks from early August until around the end of this year. It’s a cartoon-based series, but it is part of the larger Star Trek canon.

The season finale, No Small Parts, features the following scene near the end (I would warn of Spoilers, but STO’s own blog post about the Titan‘s release tells us it’s in Lower Decks):

The Titan-class ship is a Luna-class redesign made as a Science Destroyer, meaning you can swap it back and forth between a Science Mode (Secondary Deflector, Commander Science seat enabled) and a Tactical Mode (Experimental Weapon, Commander Tactical seat enabled). It’s a T6 ship, so it’s capable of putting out decent numbers in the endgame even without an Experimental Upgrade Token applied (though it helps!).

• My Suggestion: If you want it, buy it. Let’s say we wait for a 30% sale; instead of paying 2,250 Zen, you’re paying 2,100 Zen. Is 150 Zen really worth not just going ahead and grabbing it now? As well, with the Zen Bonuses, this is $20 with some Zen left over, effectively a ~33% discount.
• (Suggestion #2: Since we’re talking about the Titan, take a peek at a couple of ZEFilms’ in-game cinematics on the Titan-class ship.)

Now, for all good there is some bad. I present to you…

The Black Friday Sales to Avoid (unless there are further discounts):

1. Mudd’s Market 50% Discount – You can read up on my thoughts on the Mudd’s Market and what’s worth it and when (and I believe we’ve had a few additions, but the same basic logic there holds for any items added since). 50% is not the point at which I’d buy.
   • My Suggestion: Wait until there are deeper discounts. You really need 60%+ to make any of the items worth buying, and ideally you need 75%+.
2. Mudd’s Choice Pack of Dread – I’ve done 2 of these reviews, so I’ll spare a longer 3rd one with a shorter check-in here:
   • Hur’q Vecrid Hive Dreadnought Carrier: There are none on the Exchange, so this is the only place to get it. If I use the highest end promo ship value of 1.5 billion EC and a Key value of 7,800,000, it would take 193 Keys to get enough EC. That’s 19 10-pack bundles and 3 individual, which normally goes for 21,750 Zen but would currently be ~16,313 Zen. With a 50% discount putting this at 14,750 Zen and a 30% bonus/discount on Zen, this is literally the cheapest and easiest way to get the ship.
   • Tholian Tarantula Dreadnought Cruiser: Using the 2nd lowest value of 480 million EC, in Keys this translates to 62 Keys, meaning 7,000 Zen.
   • Paradox Temporal Dreadnought: Using 328,000,000 EC at the 2nd lowest value, in Keys this is 42 Keys or 4,750 Zen.
   • 2x Tier 6 100% Discount Coupons – This is 6,000 Zen normally, but for now 3 unrestricted use T6 tokens (nothing exclusively in Bundles or Mudd’s Market, though) goes for 4,500 Zen.
   • 50x Keys: Easy; this is 5 10-pack Keys so 5,650 Zen. However, at the current 25% discount, that’s instead roughly ~4,238 Zen.
   • 10x Ultimate Tech Upgrades: Considering these are usually found in offerings costing ~2,000+ Zen, we’ll call this 20,000 Zen. However, we’ve gotten Red Alert Weekends where the Buyout is 1,000 Zen, so we could now go as low as 10,000 Zen.
   • My Suggestion: You can find the value for this at the undiscounted values given you choose the just the Vecrid (meaning your other choices just add to the value gained), just the Ultimate Tech Upgrades chosen once, or getting all 3 choices as Master Keys. You could also go for the Tarantula, Paradox, and the Keys at the lowest end and save money on the current 14,750 price. However, be warned that none of these ships are a “meta choice” right now, meaning they’re not the best at what their category of ship can do. Most of their equipment and traits are nice but unnecessary at the highest end of DPS or Tanking. I’d suggest avoiding this unless you’re a fan of any of these ships. I could see buying this so you have an account-unlock Paradox to go with Mudd’s Stealing Time’s Verne and Klein choices if you got that pack for that reason.
3. Tzenkethi Ship and Items Bundle – This is a new Lobi bundle akin to the Plain and Simple Bundle. Rather than break down the contents, I’ll give some math and impressions on this Bundle.
   • The ship, last I knew, is still available for ~$30 as a single-character claim (and sellable in-game) from a Star Trek RPG digital book code.
   • The Vanity Shield may be a Bond to Account item, versus other Vanity Shields that are Bound to Character.
   • Normally price for this is set at 1,800 Lobi, it’s on sale for 1,440 Lobi. At full price, that’s at most 450 Keys’ worth of Lockbox openings, putting the Bundle at ~50,625 Zen! Remember to divide by 100 to get the actual cash price, that’s $506.25 under normal, undiscounted prices. At 1,440 and using the current 25% C-Store sale, that’s more like 30,348 Zen, or roughly $303.48 (without looking at Zen bonuses/discounts).
   • My Suggestion: Skip this completely. If you want the ship, you can spend the equivalent of ~3,000 Zen by spending ~$30 on a digital RPG book. Note, though, I’m unsure how long that promotion goes, so it may be not be available by the time you read this (even if it’s beyond 2020).

Just One More Thing…What to Look Out For

I almost forgot! So, I’ve made a bit of a claim that I felt they’d roll out the Legendary Starships Bundle at Black Friday and/or Christmas and/or New Year’s for a quick sale.

That hasn’t happened yet, but we haven’t hit Black Friday proper yet, either.

I’d still bet on it showing up for the weekend, but I won’t guess at what percent discount. It’s ranged from 19,000 Zen to 24,000 Zen, but I stand by my claim that it’s a worthwhile purchase. Just the Discovery era Constitution-class (a Promo ship) and the Crossfield-class (popular Lockbox ship with a Promo variant) would almost individually make up the cost of the whole Bundle, leaving you 8 other ships to explore for no additional cost. Just remember you’re not getting the original versions’ layouts; they’re slightly different stats and layouts but with their gear and trait(s) intact (plus an account-unlocked Trait).

It’s Black (Friday) and White (Christmas?)

I hope this helps you plan your purchases just a tad better for the roughly 6 days left (as of the time of this posting). It’s a mostly good sale with a bit of a double discount that may save you a bit more than you think.

I may put up something by the weekend showing some of my more specific C-Store recommendations, but we’ll see how the week goes.

Until next time, take care and have a great Thanksgiving (US) or rest of the week (elsewhere)!