The Grand Experiment, Update 1: Week 1

Hello, Joe and STOers! Earlier this week, I posted about a plan to get enough Zen for a Mudd’s Choice Pack by the end of the year, having to get what I can within 300 days in case the Dilithium Exchange is backlogged ~60 days by the time I make my final offer for Zen.

These won’t be extremely long blogs (and not pretty with pictures, unfortunately), but I hope it’s enough detail to let you see reasonably about how much I’m doing and how effective it is.

CHANGE FROM INITIAL PLAN

1. I’m using 12 characters instead of 10.
   * I used 1 extra Federation character for Contraband turn-ins. Since it’s being logged into daily, it’s also doing Admiralty as well as Reputations as current Marks and upcoming Mark Boxes allow
   * I’m using 1 extra KDF character to farm Contraband. Contraband farming has been extremely useful, but I’ll need to see if this extra KDF (who isn’t Level 4 in Marauding and doesn’t have a great DOFF lineup) will continue or just turn in others’ Contraband. Or I may grab some better quality DOFFs to hit the Contraband DOFF missions better.
2. I’m not buying Contraband like I thought I’d need to. I had enough Contraband earned in 3-4 days to give 3 characters a week’s worth of Contraband each to turn in. This may mean I can use the EC to buy Contraband to help make up for low Dilithium-earning weeks (like this upcoming week as it’s a 2-week Galactic Red Alert for PC but there won’t be enough completions in the first week to get the Event’s extra Dilithium from daily runs).

WEEKLY UPDATE

So what did Week #1 get me? Quite a bit, actually. For running and checking Admiralty once a day (a couple days had 2 checks as I was still setting up my exact lineup of characters), running Duty Officer missions that award Contraband, and running the Winter Event for some extra day Dilithium, we’ve got…

• DILITHIUM: I earned and refined ~221,000 Dilithium across 12 characters. This is equivalent to 442 Zen.
  • That’s ~99,000 Dilithium ahead of where I need to be for an average week to make my goal. I went ahead and posted that Dilithium for Zen, but my plan on sales is to post every month at longest and perhaps every 2 weeks at shortest.
  • To be fair…January 1st – January 5th were extra Dilithium days on the Winter Event. That’s likely ~87,500 extra Dilithium that normal farming methods would not have gotten. Still, that would be ~11,500 Dilithium more than planned. That’s not a lot extra, but beating a goal one week allows some leeway in a future week. 😉
• EC: I stashed away ~5,387,000 Energy Credits. As the primary use for this is Contraband purchasing and assuming a price of 62,000 EC per Contraband, I can buy ~87 Contraband, enough for 2 characters to get a week’s worth of Contraband turn-ins.
  • Some EC has to go to Reputation daily projects, so this isn’t the full extent of EC earnings for the week. A chunk of that should come back in vendoring the gear from the Reputation reward boxes.
• ENDEAVORS: I did not open any Endeavor boxes. That will likely be part of Week 2’s update. I am attempting to do as many Hard-difficulty dailies and any Universal Endeavors that are relatively easy to do. This week has 2 Easy, 3 Medium, 4 Hard, and 2 Universal Endeavor reward boxes.

NEXT POST: Combat Testing an 8-weapon 2-hangar Ship for the Seneca Build Series.

My next post is intended to be a continuation of the Seneca F2P build series, looking at an 8-weapon 2-hangar ship and how much difference in performance those extra 2 weapons afford us. If I can get the time, I’ll test and parse a both 5/3 2-hangar ship and a 4/4 2-hangar ship.

Until then, take care and continue enjoying STO!