The Grand Experiment, Update 5: Week 8…and DONE!?

Hello, Joe and STOers! I give you an earlier-than-expected update on the Grand Experiment for a few reasons:

1. There wasn’t much to talk about. A rather bland week, honestly.
2. I believe I’ve counted up enough Dilithium to end the run!
3. …but maybe not totally end it yet, just put it on hiatus…possibly.

So with the TL;DR out of the way, let’s get into the relatively sparce yet slightly detailed rundown!

NOT MUCH TO TALK ABOUT

Yeah, this is the extremely boring part of the update. You’ve been warned!

• The 13th Anniversary Event finished up. Over the last few days of it, from February 18th through the 23rd, I accumulated 6 days’ worth of extra Dilithium, earning ~139,500 Dilithium.
• Other than that, I just kept up turning in Contraband on 7 Federation characters and running Admiralty missions as I usually do.
• I did use a few characters to turn in Marks. All in all, I turned in ~2,300 Marks for a total of ~34,500 Dilithium after the 50% extra given from the Dilithium Bonus Pool (for completing the Ferengi Tour of Duty 10/10 line).
• Because of the first and third points, 7 characters were able to refine the full 56,000 Dilithium for the week.
• DILITHIUM TOTAL: 685,222 Dilithium
• ZEN EQUIVALENT: 1,370 Zen with 222 Dilithium left over.

If you’ve been keeping up with my totals, you should know I’ve farmed up 8,527 Zen over the past 2 months (or 8 weeks, however you want to count it). My original goal was 8,750 Zen. So I did some number-crunching and…

I’M ALMOST DONE!!!

So with some of these characters, it’s inevitable that they’ll have some leftover Dilithium. So, last week, knowing I was very close to possibly finishing, I created a part of the spreadsheet where I kept track of how much Unrefined and Refined Dilithium I had, the total, and how far off what was of the remaining total Dilithium I needed. And…well…here’s where I am right now:

As of this past Friday (February 24th) night, I’m within about 4 days of making my original goal that I was expecting to take over 300 days.

It’s almost over! The long-feeling grind is almost over! This 8,750 Zen combined with my Lifetime Subscription stipend of 500 Zen per month should get me to 14,750 Zen by the end of the year!

…

But am I really content with that?

THE DILEMMA: TO CONTINUE, OR TO LET IT RIDE?

So, obviously I don’t have all the Zen in hand yet. It’s got to get refined, and my final 2 sales (once I list the final batch) have to go through the Dilithium Exchange (which has seen its backlog for selling Dilithium crash from ~27 days on the first offer’s sale for this challenge to just under 14 days on the latest sale that cleared.)

But after that, I’m at a conundrum…do I continue the challenge by going for the remaining 6,000 Zen? Make it more a “no Lifetime Subscription necessary” type of challenge?

Or do I kick back, relax, and in December I’ll enjoy the fruits of my labor with a no-additional-cost batch of previously Lockbox/Lobi/Promo ships?

I’m tempted to continue it. I have 2-3 weeks’ worth of Contraband to restart on if needed, and I’ll be doing the Events for Dilithium regardless of the challenge.

But I have the 13th Anniversary Ship Reviews to do, so perhaps just take it easy and re-start later with some Dilithium already in hand to sell?

What does everyone think? Give this a rest, or go for the full 14,750 but take a break for the Reviews before starting back up in earnest?

Oh! The Tip-of-the-Update Section!

So, what’s my tip for a successful Dilithium-to-Zen run? Check your Reputations. If you’re a longer-term player, you may have characters who have Tier 5 or Tier 6 Reputations who are doing absolutely nothing with those Marks. They’re wasted resources, then!

But, when you go to your Reputations, you’ll find this “Turn in Reputation Marks” button at the bottom.

If you have at least 50 Marks or 3 of that Reputation’s “Elite Mark”, you’ll get a mini-store that lets you trade in Marks for Dilithium.

If you have old characters with Marks remaining on them, who knows? Perhaps you have 1,500 Marks on a character. That’s 15,000 Dilithium closer to your goal! Done the Badlands Battlezone enough times you have a ton of Terran Gravimetric Inducers? Those are ~333 Dil each in sets of 3.

If you think you’re close to your goal, or you want to turn them in now so your calculated Dil-per-week looks better, look no further than older well-played characters. 🙂

UP NEXT: Catch a Hydra By the Tail!

The next post on here likely will be my review of the Terran Hydra. I’m hoping to cover a bit more on this than I did with the Terran Eagle, but I’ll need to review what the build is intended to be and what I’ll need to get it to perform at its best before deciding on a direction.

Until then, take care and enjoy Star Trek Online in your own way! 🙂