Hello, Joe and STOers! In this little tutorial, I’m going to show why you want to try to wait for an Upgrade Weekend before upgrading any of your items (unless you’re buying certain items or completing Galactic Red Alert Events that come with an Ultimate Tech Upgrade(s)).
HOW TO UPGRADE AN ITEM – VIDEO
As I’m going to try to do, I’ll post a video(s) of what you need to see, then I’ll type out what’s going on and what to what you need to pay attention as I visually demonstrate the upgrading process.
First, here’s the video of the “Before” for upgrading, including how to get the coveted Phoenix Upgrades to get your gear to Mk XV as efficiently as possible (yes, my focus is Mk XV, regardless of quality. In my experience, the biggest boosts to damage output come from just getting most of your weapons and passive-stat Consoles up as high in level as possible. You can work on getting the last bits of goodness out of the rarities later.).
HOW TO UPGRADE AN ITEM – READABLE
In the video, I have 4 “Rare Prize Token – Phoenix Prize Pack.” This is the rarity level at which you get Phoenix Universal Tech Upgrades (“Phoenix Upgrades”).
Phoenix Upgrades provide 38,400 Tech Points, usually enough to get a Mk II item up to around Mk X or Mk XI. This is three times as much as a Superior Experimental Tech Upgrade (that are separated into their own types such as Beams, Projectiles, Science, etc.) but at only ~2.122 times the cost if you buy these at 40,000-per-10-boxes and get extremely unlucky with all Rare tokens. (Superior Experimental Tech Upgrade table picture taken from STOWiki.net’s Gear Upgrade System page).
As a side note, Very Rare, Ultra Rare, and Epic tokens can be downgraded at a rate of “1 higher rarity token = 2 of the next lower rarity token” all the way down. As you’ll likely get a number of Very Rare and Ultra Rare tokens on each 10-pack opening, this 4,000 Dilithium-per-Upgrade average may not be the same every time. For example, opening 10 Phoenix Prize Packs and getting 5 Rares, 3 Very Rares, and 2 Ultra Rares could instead become instead 5 + 6 + 8 = 19 Rare Prize Tokens, all becoming 19 Phoenix Upgrades for 40,000 Dilithium total, a per-Upgrade Token cost of ~2,105 Dilithium per token, costing only 300 Dilithium more for 3x the Tech Points per Upgrade used.
You’ll then see me go through how to get an item into the Upgrade window, how to select your desired upgrade token, and how to get the item to upgrade.
In this example, I’m upgrading a Tactical console: the Morphogenic Matrix Controller. Consoles are among the easiest items to Upgrade as they tend to only take maybe 5 Phoenix Upgrades at most outside of an Event. One will usually get it from Mk XII to Mk XIII; another 1 from XIII to XIV; then 1-2 more to get to Mk XV. Usually you’re only upgrading Consoles that are already Mk XII, so I’m not covering going from Mk II.
In this video, I only show getting from Mk XII (Mark 12) to Mk XIII (Mark 13) to show the difference in upgrades used before an Upgrade Weekend compared to after.
You’ll notice that afterward, it would only take 1 more Phoenix Upgrade to go from Mk XIII to Mk XIV with ~15k-16k Tech Points remaining. That may mean 1 more Upgrade from that would get to Mk XV, but with my bad memory, it’s likely going to be just shy of 100% upgraded and you’d need a 2nd Phoenix Upgrade Token to get to Mk XV.
MY PERSONAL GOAL WITH UPGRADES
While I’d love to be a min/maxer, I just don’t have the time or resources to build up multiple high-end characters.
So I split the difference a bit when needing to upgrade multiple characters’ gear. Mk XII feels too weak, but the expenses to get to Mk XV Epic (outside of Ultimate Tech Upgrades) are too rich for my blood.
So my goal in upgrading gear is to get it to Mk XV, perhaps with a rarity upgrade on anything that’s not a Console.
Gear effectiveness increases quite considerably from Mk XII to Mk XV (though not all stats will jump up with Mark level). Rarity/”quality” increases do help a bit more (both for general stats and adding a modifier to non-Console items), but you’ll see your biggest gains in the Mark levels.
It’s this mindset why I only go from Mk XII to Mk XV with this Morphogenic console.
UPGRADE EVENT UPGRADING – VIDEO
Now here is a video showing the upgrade from Mk XIII to Mk XIV (Mark 14) and from Mk XIV to Mk XV (Mark 15).
UPGRADE EVENT UPGRADING – READABLE
You’ll notice this time, we’ll have 92,317 Tech Points rather than 53,917. That means the Upgrade Weekend Event is active.
You’ll also notice we went essentially straight from Mk XIII to Mk XV without needing another Phoenix Upgrade at Mk XIV. This is why you wait for an Upgrade Weekend when you can help it: Instead of needing 3-5 Phoenix Upgrade Tokens to hit Mk XV on a Console, you only needed 2 during the Upgrade Weekend. Expand that out to 5 Console slots, and instead of needing 15-25 Phoenix Upgrades, you’d only need ~10. Depending on how many Phoenix Prize Pack 10-packs you’d planned on buying, you’d be looking at tens of thousands of Dilithium saved by waiting.
“WHAT IF I CAN’T WAIT?”
I’d recommend upgrading Consoles first, as they’ll take the fewest Phoenix Upgrades regardless. I’d then save the Upgrade Weekends for your other gear as, aside from Kit Modules, I believe most every piece of gear takes considerably more Phoenix Upgrades to jump from 1 level to the next.
“IS THIS THE MOST OPTIMAL USE OF UPGRADE WEEKEND?”
Likely not. For that, you’d want to search out other STO content creators, forums, Reddit, etc., to get much more in-depth calculations.
If you’re trying to min/max the systems in this game, I’m not your content creator. I try to save you something compared to most suboptimal plays/resource uses, but I’m nowhere near versed enough for the best way to approach everything in the game.
“IS THERE A PATTERN TO WHEN UPGRADE WEEKENDS HAPPEN?”
The pattern seemed to be every ~2.5 months going back to last December, but this last gap was ~3.5 months, possibly due to the Summer Event. So generally, I’d say if you want to do a bunch of Upgrades at once, wait ~10 weeks. That should mean the next one hits around early November.
BETTER LATE THAN NEVER
My apologies for not getting this out in a more timely manner, but I hope this will help those researching Upgrade Weekends/Events going forward. I’ll try to remember to reference this when the next Upgrade Weekend hits, whether for PC or Consoles (PlayStation and XBox platforms).
Until next time, keep on enjoying Star Trek Online!
Joe and STO 