Good day, Joe and STOers! You likely have seen the post where I said I was starting a new account to show a F2P player can grind out the Dilithium for a 10th Anniversary Bundle given enough time and patience.
Today, I want to get that series started with a look at why I’m going with the Jem’Hadar and how I change up my action bars (toolbars?) and BOFF setups to adjust Cryptic’s default setups to the way I play.
THE VIDEO
If you’d like to watch the video first, here it is. It runs ~53 minutes, and I’m not the best at any kind of combat, thus why I call myself the “Professional Noob” of STO.
THE EXPLANATIONS
So you may have watched some/all of the video, or you’re waiting for the break-down. I don’t blame you either way. Perhaps you can read up on this, then go to the video and see exactly what I meant.
“Why Jem’Hadar?”
With an Event getting ready to start (one that awards a Warp Core that helps with “Tour the Galaxy” and an Omni-Directional Phaser Beam Array for our Federation-minded alts in the future), I wanted to get into the Events UI as quickly as possible with a ship and some abilities that wouldn’t be strict hinderances.
If I were to start with any other character type, I could just go to Level 5 (or to where I leave a past setting or choose a faction with which to ally) and be able to jump into a number of queues (which auto-adjust everyone’s levels to the average of the group), but then those characters wouldn’t have a lot of ship weapon slots (so lower damage output even with an averaged-out boost), few decent Personal Traits, no Reputation traits, and few to no Skill Points in the player’s Skill Tree. I’d be shooting blanks compared to most other players!
Jem’Hadar characters, however, start at Level 60, with 2 pre-filled Reputations (so access to their Ground and Space traits), 1 fully-filled Specialization, 1 half-filled Specialization, and a ship with 7 weapon slots filled with Mark 12 (“Mk XII”) Very Rare (“VR”) weapons with somewhat decent modifiers (“mods”) to help their damage output and tons of Consoles to boost survivability, maneuverability, and damage. Oh, and plenty of Jem’Hadar Bridge Officers to allow you to get certain mixes of BOFF abilities across all available seats.
As well, they can start earning currencies fairly early. They’ll have near-instant access to Admiralty, Duty Officer (“DOFFs”), Endeavor, and the Reputation systems. Compared to other character types, DOFFs are around Level 13-15 (I don’t remember exactly), Admiralty is I believe Level 52, Endeavors are Level 60, and Reputations are Level 50.
So while you may learn the game a bit better on a low-level character, Jem’Hadar characters get you thrown straight into the deep end with something that can do Normal-difficulty content without the need to buy and upgrade a lot of gear.
“You start moving stuff around in the action bars (ability trays?) fairly early. Why?”
The way I play, I tend to sort my abilities by their cooldown timers rather than what they can do.
- Short cooldowns: Bottom row, I can hit a button, get the effect, and go back to the button mere seconds later to get the ability again.
- Middle cooldowns (1-2 minutes): Middle row, I want to be more careful with these, but I shouldn’t be too afraid to hit them if I were to need them. Brace for Impact and Evasive Maneuvers go here as well since, although they’re not long cooldowns, I only use them as necessary.
- High cooldowns (2+ minutes): Top row, these abilities are either last-ditch survival buttons or otherwise abilities that would be nice to have if they were on shorter cooldowns. In most PvE content, you only get to use these abilities once per map, maybe twice if you’re a bit slower or less powerful than you’ll be later in your STO play time.
Here’s a before-and-after from the video (sorry for the timeline line on both this and the After pic):
(In retrospect, the ability on “C9” can go away as that’s on the “4” button on the bottom tray.)
Then, in space, I’ll tend to put my self-buff/enemy-debuff abilities first, then firing modes, then heals. This way, if I use a keybind program to get those to fire sequentially with just one button press (instead of having to go for #s 0-9 all the time), I’ll have everything I need ready to go for a long chain of single-button presses.
But in general I also sort that by cooldown timer duration (meaning I need to move the Antiproton Sweep on “1” up a row and Attack Pattern Alpha up a row, as well).
Another before-and-after for the Space tray:
“You look like you don’t know what you’re doing. You get turned around a lot/you could have done X rather than Y/you’re not watching your health closely enough/[insert observation here].”
Hello! “Professional Noob” here! No, I don’t min/max anything I do. I’m slow to catch onto things going on in the maps, I sometimes lose where my character or ship is on those maps, and I don’t always remember when I have things I can activate when it’d be most beneficial to do them. As well, I haven’t run some of these missions in months or years, so what I think should be going on and what actually goes on are somewhat different more often than not.
Plus, I’m using Cryptic’s default Mk XII VR gear, most of which I’m not used to using anyway, and this is up against literal swarms of enemy NPCs. If I had stuff like DPRM, “History Will Remember,” a couple Omni-Directional-style weapons, everything at Mk XV Epic, all my otherwise normal Reputation gear and traits, old Event items, a different ship, and a decent selection of Personal Space Traits, I’d likely do a lot better…or be about the same but done in a more spectacular fashion. 😉
“Why are you circling things, doing weird Xs with your cursor, and taking a while on certain screens?”
I had planned to do voice-over on this, but videos are approaching 1 hour long, so I’d be taking an hour to record the video and another hour (minimum) to voice over it all.
Here’s the basic key to why I do what I do with a cursor in this series’ videos:
- Circling: Something you need to be aware of.
- X’ing: Something you don’t really want to have available, or an unwanted reward (like R&D materials when we need EC and Dilithium).
- Staying on a screen for a while: Intending to point something out in the UI, perhaps an icon or a tooltip.
“Why did you pick the Klingon side with which to ally? Isn’t Federation superior (and usually cheaper on some items)?”
Honestly, they’re both about the same, but I won’t be aiming for Klingon-specific items much, anyway, so the financial aspect of that decision is a moot point.
What it does do is let us go Contraband farming later, which I’ll go into once I have a number of both Klingon and Federation characters set up.
Plus, in retrospect, Klingon characters have a wider array of ships to try with their Level 61 ship reward. While Federation characters can pick a Cruiser, Escort, or Science Vessel, KDF-aligned characters can choose between one of two Carriers, a Bird-of-Prey (an “Escortier Escort”) that can fire Torpedoes and Mines while Cloaked, or their version of a Science Vessel called a Support Vessel.
“What’s your trick to getting through this mission?”
First of all, don’t get frustrated. You don’t have a lot of cooldown management, haste boosters, passive damage buffs, etc., that you’ll likely have as you make more characters and more income and can afford those nice things. While you’re better off than a Level 5 character, you’re still underpowered compared to where you’d like to be. I’ll also make this advice fairly generic; although I’m using a Tactical character, you may want to use an Engineering or Science character, instead.
If you have a self buff or an enemy debuffing ability, use it/them ahead of any mobs, then use Area-of-Effect (“AoE”) weapons and abilities as much as you can until you’re down to a few enemies. Don’t be afraid to switch to your single-target weapon while your AoE-based weapon’s AoE blast is on cooldown.
Also, if you have any Engineers that can make Turrets or Mortars on the ground, those tend to draw at least a little attention while dishing out some damage at the same time.
If, over the course of playing more and coming back to Hur’q based missions, you find you’re afraid of them, I’d say stock up on any and all abilities that can create more targets. The more potential targets NPCs have, the better the chance they act like damage sponges for you, taking damage off you long enough to get more shots and abilities fired off and/or some time to heal yourself.
“Anything else I should be aware of?”
At the end, I look at the Dilithium Store and circle the 10-pack of Phoenix Prize Packs. As our Admiralty roster starts off low on Tier 5 and Tier 6 ships, the Very Rare tokens there will help shore up weaknesses in our Admiralty lineup. Plus, there are some account-wide unlocks (“Sompek” and “Prolonged” items along with the Tsunkatse Gloves) that would help our eventual alt characters’ setups to be slightly better than working with strictly default gear until I can get their Reputations up to Tiers 5 and 6.
Otherwise, it’s been about a week since I recorded that video, so best I can remember, there’s nothing that’s absolutely necessary. However, if you notice me doing something in the video and want to know why, feel free to post in the Comments and if it does turn out to be something significant, I’ll answer as best as I can. 🙂
NEXT TIME, ON “THE NEW PLAYER AND…”
I’m torn on what to do for my next post or two. The Universal Endeavor today until Friday is to mine Dilithium from the Vlugta Asteroid, so that’s likely next. Then, as much as I talk about Admiralty, I’ll likely do a post on that. Finally, I’ll need to post updates every so often to look at overall progress, so perhaps that can start in the middle of next week.
And I still have the Terran Styx to do, so I’m not at a shortage of what I could post about and work on.
So until whatever the next post ends up being, take care, and enjoy playing Star Trek Online!
“OH, AND ONE MORE THING…”
(If anyone knows of Columbo, you’ll get the reference)
I’ll be semi-collaborating with AllThingsTrek47 about a similar project he’s about to undertake. I/he/we may talk about our differences in approach, what our individual goals are, if we do much that’s similar, things like that, while working on our own series working toward what we feel is most beneficial to new or even returning players.
We’re not ripping each other’s materials or plans for our own use. Quite the contrary, I welcome a different perspective as 1) we all have different reasons for playing so one’s methods may not match another’s intent, and 2) I’m not even great at this game (insert the Marge “I just think it’s neat!” meme) so I may pick up stuff from him to help here or vice-versa.
Let’s grow the STO community! 🙂
Joe and STO 