Good day, Joe and STOers! I know, the next post was supposed to be about the Silik in comparison to the Seneca, but Tribble had a bit of a hiccup this past week so that’s on hold. Tribble’s back up and going now, but I committed to this being the next update, then I’ll record a run and post my Seneca F2P series update.
As you may already know, I’ve taken on a project to get a bit over 8,000 Zen from the Dilithium Exchange on PC. Part 1 highlighted the basic rules, and Part 2 provided the first week’s update.
This post will covers weeks 2 and 3 as well as why Ferengi Tour of Duty is a must-do Tour of Duty for a project like this.
The past couple weeks have been extremely nice for Dilithium generation! Here are the basic highlights:
OVERALL CHANGES TO THE ORIGINAL PLAN
- I now have a 13th character in the mix due to how much Contraband has come in, detailed below.
- I’m not chasing Endeavor reward boxes. This is not only because my time is becoming more limited but also because the following activities get me the Dilithium I need each day. This may change later.
- Daily Reputation projects (usually at least 2 per character, where available)
- Contraband turn-ins.
- Event runs, especially the extra days.
- Admiralty rewards.
As for how actual Dilithium production has come along, here are some details!
WEEK 2 (1/8 – 1/13) (yes, this was a 6-day week. Saturday was hectic!)
- Had 2 characters hit Level 10 in Admiralty tracks for ~20,000 Dilithium each (40,000 total).
- A few characters are working on unfinished Reputations. Theoretically, with the Ferengi Tour of Duty bonus Dilithium, I’d only need 3 Reputation dailies per character per day to barely exceed what I’d need to earn on a single character.
- A 13th character entered as I had a plethora of Contraband to turn in, which leads to the next major point…
- Contraband farming is coming along nicely! The stacks pictured below are the Contraband I picked up just this week (Sunday – Friday [have other committments that’ll keep a Saturday update/run from happening]). That’s 434 Contraband, enough to have 6 characters doing Contraband turn-ins for 2 weeks or 12 characters for a single week. Combined with the 230 already on-hand, 6 of my 7 Federation characters have enough Contraband for 3 weeks’ worth of turn-ins.
- As for the Endeavor boxes, I opened them all (plus an extra Universal Endeavor box I had on another character).
- 3,950,000 million EC, to be used on one character to get a number of Reputations built up (which give Dilithium daily, so it’s like an EC-to-Dilithium conversion).
- 13,000 Dilithium
- 6x 50-Mark of Choice boxes. If I use those purely as conversions into Dilithium, that could be 3,000-4,500 Dilithium, enough to give 3-4 characters a rest for the day if needed.
WEEK 3 (1/14 – 1/20) (moving my updates to Fridays)
- Federation characters are bringing in ~5,000 Dilithium per day between Contraband turn-ins, Admiralty rewards, and doing the Daily project on unfinished Reputation tracks.
- Klingons had a great week with their Contraband build-up, accumulating 482 Contraband in 6 days, averaging around 80 Contraband per day (2 weeks on a single character per day). Combined with the 29 already in the bank, that’s 511 Contraband. Split among the 7 Federation characters, that’s 73 Contraband each, enough for 2 full weeks on each character with a little left over. They already have 2 weeks of Contraband remaining, so they have nearly a month’s worth of turn-ins now. I may let my Klingons rest from Contraband farming for a week. We’ll see how my Dilithium-per-day calculations turn out.
- It turns out that, due to some mouse issues, I thought I’d lost ~70 Contraband, so I bought 54 to mostly make up for it. The 70 I thought I lost went to my Account Bank, so all my Federation turn-in characters now have 4 full weeks of Contraband turn-ins available.
- Those Klingon characters are averaging around 1,000-2,000 Dilithium per day on their own, which is low but on its own is on target for getting to my goal by around mid-October.
- The “Galactic Red Alert” hit its first couple extra days, netting 25,500 Dilithium (not counting the actual Red Alert’s Dilithium and the Marks earned). That’s nearly one-fourth of my account-wide need for the entire week!
- One character has run out its Dilithium Bonus Pool, but it’s at 9 of 10 for the next dil pool reward.
OVERALL 2-WEEK HAUL
With everything taken into account, including little slivers of Dilithium for dismissing an overflow of Prisoners on my KDF characters, I’ve accumulated 770,000 Dilithium with 2 more offers up for a grand total of 1,540 Zen.
So you see what kind of operation I can run when everything goes smoothly, so you may be asking how my Fed characters are pulling in nearly 5,000 Dilithium per day off relatively small Dil amounts.
The answer really is Ferengi Tour of Duty, and it’s the only thing I make 100% sure to build up even if I have time for nothing else (save Contraband turn-ins).
FERENGI TOUR OF DUTY: THE MATH BEHIND WHY IT’S WORTH ROTATING
The Ferengi Tour of Duty used to grant 30,000 Dilithium Ore directly. No need to do anything, just refine it down over the ~4 days it’d take to get the whole 30,000 Dilithium.
To help with the state of the Dilithium Exchange, that became a 30,000 Bonus Dilithium pool, awarding 50% extra Dilithium to practically all sources of Dilithium earnings in the game. If you wanted the bonus, you had to do more than just “10 and done” on the Tour of Duty.
When you think about the kinds of activities you do, this amounts to hundreds at a time: Normal TFOs (480 + 240 bonus), Reputation daily project turn-ins (500 + 250 bonus), and smaller-awarding Admiralty missions (as low as 75 + ~32-33 bonus).
You’d think it wouldn’t really add up, but what if you thought about thousands at a time?
Look at these numbers.
CONTRABAND
EVENT CAMPAIGN EVENTS
SEASONAL EVENTS (except Winter)
SEASONAL EVENT (Winter)
- NOTE: The “extra days” start on the day you claim the main prize of each Event and assume you can get 1 run per day, even on the final day which is usually a maintenance day.
If you just did 1 week of Contraband turn-ins and 1 week of extra Event days, you’re looking at ~94,000 Dilithium extra, or 188 extra Zen.
…still not convinced, eh? Okay!
Let’s be a bit more basic than that…a decent chunk of my Dilithium income over the past two weeks has been from toons with the Ferengi Tour of Duty’s Dilithium Bonus Pool active. That’s 770,000 Dilithium overall. Now, that’s mostly with a 1.5 multiplier in effect (100% normal + 50% bonus = 1 + 0.5 = 1.5), so if I instead divide by 1.5, I get ~513,333 Dilithium earned without the bonus. That’s a difference of 256,667 Dilithium (estimated), which is about a 513.33 Zen difference. In two weeks, without the Ferengi Tour of Duty active on almost all characters, I’d have effectively lost 500+ Zen in earnings. Expand that out over 2 months and you’d have lost 2,000 Zen potentially.
So when you consider how much relatively passive Dilithium earning there is in just the things that award thousands at a time, it really comes down to why you wouldn’t do Ferengi Tour of Duty (lack of ships notwithstanding). Even if you’re not going to turn your Dilithium into Zen, these numbers indicate you can get most of what you’d need with relatively passive playing.
Next time…a chance for YOU to contribute to Joe and STO’s ability to expand content coverage.
My next blog post (or the one after the next Seneca blog post) will be how you can help Joe and STO deliver a bit more content during the 13th Anniversary. You’ll even get to direct what I write, in a sense! (Yes, this will be a crowdsourcing article. I will say that zero content will ever be locked behind a paywall, though, so never worry about that!)
Until then, take care and continue enjoying Star Trek Online!
Joe and STO 