Good day, Joe and STOers! Coming next Thursday, we’re getting the 3rd run of the Klingon Recruit event. For those who have been around a while, perhaps you’ve made a Recruit(s) and are working on his/her/their objectives. That’s great! These aren’t meant to be completed quickly, so enjoy and take your time!
But if you’re newer or you hadn’t ever created a Klingon Recruit, you may be wondering why you ever would.
Today, I want to give a few priorities to help you focus your time and energies as well as some strategies to help get these objectives done more easily (even if not in the quickest way).
PRIORITY #1: “Unforgettable,” for Endeavor XP Bonuses
“1 MILLION XP!?”
I know, that seems like a lot! Let’s do a little math first, though.
On any given day, you have 3 Endeavors: Easy (Green), Medium (Yellow), and Hard (Red). They give (respectively) 650; 3,200; and 8,000 Endeavor XP each. So in any given day, you can get 11,850 Endeavor XP. Over 1 week, assuming you did all 3 Endeavors each day, you’d have 82,950 Endeavor XP per week, enough for 4 Perk Points.
If you then include the Universal every 2-3 days, 3 of those a week give a total of 1,200 more XP each week for a potential maximum of 84,150 Endeavor XP per week.
Simple division gives us 1,000,000/84,150 = 11.88 weeks, so let’s call it an even 12 weeks to get 1,000,000 XP.
You do get bonus XP for the Recruit (5% at the first milestone [100,000] and 10% at the 3rd), but this doesn’t considerably cut down on your time to complete the whole 1,000,000 XP. You cut about a week out of the overall climb.
“So why do this?”
Well, there are a couple reasons.
- Along the way, you do get Perk Points just for doing all the objectives. For spending ~3 months on the KDF Recruit just for the Endeavor Perk Points, you get 5 extra Perk Points to spend on the system. If you’re behind, that’s about 10 days’ worth of Perk Points you no longer have to get.
- The final reward is to open that 10% boost across your entire account. If a character(s) are better suited for a daily(ies) than your Recruit, once you’re at the end, you can use any character(s) and get the full 10% boost.
- All those Endeavor reward boxes can yield a small fortune in Dilithium and Energy Credits, which can help you with budget builds later in the game.
“But why? 10% doesn’t sound like a lot.”
Consider it takes 20,000 Endeavor XP to get a Perk Point.
At normal amounts, the total of Easy, Medium, and Hard Endeavor add up to 650 + 3,200 + 8,000 = 11,850 XP.
At the 10% bonuses, though, that’s now 715 + 3,520 + 8,800 = 13,035 XP.
That’s 1,185 extra XP, which takes ~17 days to get for 20,000 XP.
It doesn’t seem like a lot, but when you’re trying to grind out the system over the long run, any extra bit helps!
“Okay, but how do I do this? There’s a lot of damage-dealing Endeavors and I just don’t have the gear!”
This will take a while to build up, so I wouldn’t really focus this as the first thing. Once you’re better geared, yes, I’d focus this first.
First of all, check out the mission rewards for all missions in your journal. Some episodes offer full sets to help a weapon type (Plasma and perhaps Antiproton may be the only ones without a dedicated helper set in missions, but I’m not 100% sure on that) while others give a beam array, cannon, or sometimes an Omni-Directional/Turret weapon (that’s usually part of a set if that happens).
Second, do your Reputations. Almost all the standard Weapon types are represented in the Reward Boxes you get for filling in Marks, EC, and Expertise for the Daily and Hourly missions. Since they’re free, you might as well use them! Use the Exchange to buy weapons for any slots you still have open.
“But I only have 1 ship. How do I do this without clogging my inventory?”
Easy…get more ships.
…
You’re looking at me like you’re about to punch me, but that’s okay!
- The Exchange has a number of Tier 5 ships available. If you have Cross-Faction Flying, you can get Federation Mirror ships. Some Tier 5 ships are cross-faction, meaning a Klingon can fly them. Save up your Endeavor rewards to get a few of these. (This is from Page 3 of the Exchange as of late afternoon February 8th, 2023.)
So among that list, a Klingon should be able to use everything except the Mirror Universe Assault Cruiser, and that would only be if you don’t have Cross-Faction Flying yet (available when a Klingon hits Level 65…like perhaps your Recruit? 😉 ).
Plus, extra ships when doing Admiralty never hurt! - At Level 63, you get a Tier 5 Requisition. Because you’ll be doing another Klingon Recruit thing I’ll bring up later, get the B’Rel Bird of Prey Retrofit. It’s a bit light on hull, but it can Battle Cloak (you can hide while you’re fighting) and you can fire Torpedoes through its cloak specifically.
- Every Reputation you get to Tier 6, you can get a Fleet Ship Module for 100 of that associated Mark. Get 4-5 Fleet Ship Modules together and 20,000 Fleet Credits to grab a no-cost ship. (NOTE: Those ships don’t come with a Starship Trait and don’t have their C-Store version’s Console.)
- If you already have a number of C-Store purchases, claim then and start equipping them!
Here’s an example of some of my ships:
You notice one says “PlasmaStorm.” That’s my Plasma Daily since it has the Plasma Storm Module. Another says “PolaronDefault”, so that’s my Polaron setup. “PlasmaPhasers” has 2 setups saved to it: one for Phaser weapons, another for Plasma weapons.
PRIORITY #2: “Slay Enemies of the Empire,” for T6 Ship
Secondly, I’d prioritize getting you a free T6 ship, that way the rest of the way all you need to do is add weapons and Consoles as you level up.
Convenience isn’t the only reason to grab this ship. It comes with a trait usually only available on some C-Store ships: Withering Barrage. It adds 4 seconds to the “uptime”, or time it’s usable after clicking on it, of Cannon: Scatter Volley Bridge Officer abilities. Once you’re ready to put together a serious ship build, if you decide on “Area of Effect” (“AoE”) and using Cannons, this will be a nice, free trait to have slotted to deal more damage for another firing cycle or two. And if there’s two things you learn are important to how effective abilities are, it’s uptime and cooldown reduction. You either want to use an effect for as long as possible and/or get its downtime reduced so you can fire it off more often.
I’ve written about this ship before, here: Analyzing our “Pretty Starter” T6 M’Chla Refit. While perhaps not a “true Tier 6” ship, it has a Starship Trait, it’s very much like the B’Rel Retrofit I suggested above, and it’s free. That’s not a horrible combination, I feel.
Plus, it’ll help with the next priority…
PRIORITY #3: “Hunter’s Instinct,” for Your Ability to Cloak and Damage Effectively
So maybe this isn’t so much a “priority” as it is a, “Super-easy-to-do-so-you-get-rewarded-well-for-it,” choice.
This section deals with getting Ambush kills. “Ambush” is the game term for you coming out of Cloak and dealing damage to enemies. Normally, this is a +15% boost to damage for 5 seconds. For a Klingon Recruit, it also tags enemies damaged under this “Ambush.” You have 1 minute to destroy that enemy to get credit for an “Ambush kill.” Your Klingon Recruit’s weapons will all say this:
If you’ll activate a weapon AoE damaging effect (like, I don’t know, CANNON: SCATTER VOLLEY with a ton of Cannon/Turret-style weapons?), you can get a wide area in which to tag all those enemies. Then, take your time (within the 1 minute) to finish off whoever needs finishing off.
The 3rd tier of reward grants to the Recruit a Bridge Officer that extends that Ambush duration by 10 seconds (generally to 15 seconds) so you can tag even more enemies with your weapons after coming out of Cloak, and the 5th tier gives a Critical Chance-increasing Duty Officer that’s generally a must-have (though in multiples) and fairly expensive on the Exchange, last I was aware.
Account-wide, you get a total of 400 Mark of Choice (given as a 50, 100, and 250), 5 “Elite Marks” (like Germanium Carapace Fragments and P.stellavatori Spore Canisters), and the Starship Trait Hunter’s Instinct (which helps lower Damage Resistance on enemies after you fire out of Cloak) and its Improved version for use on any character (including the Recruit).
I wouldn’t go hunting content to do this in, because the final focus is…
PRIORITY #4: “Worthy of Song,” for Marks of Choice and Gear
As you’ll likely be doing a lot of story content for gear, objectives, and just getting to know the story of Star Trek Online, you might as well focus on getting full Episode arcs completed.
I don’t have these done, but I’m also a long-time player who’s played through those episodes so many times I may go crazy doing them all again!
But for the newer player, this is a great way to do almost all the prioritized items above and a few of the ones I didn’t mention (Melee Kills…ugh…the first few tiers are fine on the required number, but the final phase is 2,500 total kills!) while learning the currently-intended STO story from the start through the Klingon Civil War (the final arc at the time before the current Mirror Universe arc, which has just concluded with Fujiwhara Effect).
Each completed Arc gives the rest of the account 25 Marks of Choice and 25 Fleet Marks, while it gives the Recruit 3 pieces of Rare- or Very Rare-quality gear.
I would recommend waiting until you’re max level to do the missions or perhaps open the reward boxes. I want to say the highest Mark level is either 11 or 12, which is enough to do Normal content decently well. Getting gear boxes at lower Mark levels is effectively a waste as you’ll need to replace it anyway at around Level 50-60.
The Nuts and Bolts of Klingon (Recruit) Honor
That’s about all I have here. I hope you enjoy focusing on the single character for a while. All you need to do during the Klingon Recruitment Event is get through enough of the tutorial to claim the Encrypted Klingon Receiver item, then you can take your time focusing on these and/or other Recruit objectives.
Oh…one last thing…Ko-Fi Page!
If you like this and/or other coverage I do concerning Star Trek Online, feel free to hit up my Ko-Fi page and drop a few dollars in. I’m trying to pay for the 13th Anniversary Bundle to do some content covering it, so anything you can spare helps! Plus, if you’re among the highest donators (assuming it gets funded), you can direct one of the reviews I do and possibly get a Personal Space Trait!
My Ko-Fi page is here, in this text.
I’m hopeful to have my next-to-last Seneca blog series’ post out next week. Until then, continue enjoying STO!
Joe and STO 