Hello, all, and welcome back to Joe and STO!
So you’re a newer player, leveling your Reputations up for the first time, and you find you’re about to hit Tier 5 in a Reputation for the first time.
…okay, fine, you’re a few days from going to Tier 5. Almost Congratulations!
“Yay! Extra Reputation XP on my alts!,” you exclaim about the Reputation you’re about to nearly max out.
But wait! Before you do that Tier 5 upgrade, you need to know something!
Get closer…
…closer…
…okay, maybe not that close. Your eye health is important, after all!
waits
Good. You’re close enough to read but far enough you’re not blinding yourself.
whispers There’s more to Tier 5 Reputation than a mere XP boost for your Tier 6 run and your alts.
“SHOCKER!”, you say.
“I shock you not,” I reply…and wonder why I’m replying to someone who’s merely reading this and not actually interacting with me.
BENEFITS OF TIER 5 REPUTATION
So, Tier 5 Reputation gives you a few perks and peaces of mind:
- Your future Reputation projects in that Reputation get double XP (200 XP becomes 400 XP for Hourlies; 2,500 XP becomes 5,000 XP for Dailies) if that’s the first time that Reputation has gone Tier 5 on the account.
- You now have access to almost all the Reputation gear projects, traits, and Rep store offerings you can get for that Reputation.
- You usually (Borg notwithstanding) get enough Marks, “Elite Marks”, Reputation Dilithium, and EC to do 1 gear project in that Reputation.
- You can continue on to Tier 6, which gives a few extra bonuses that I’ll talk about once I get there.
- You can turn in 50 of the Reputation’s Marks for 500 Dilithium, AND/OR you can turn in 3 of its “Elite Mark” (if the Reputation has one) for 1,000 Dilithium.
Of these, you have 3 big decision points:
- Grab some gear from the chosen Reputation, OR
- Continue on to Tier 6 for its benefits for that Reputation and its gear.
- Turn your Marks into Dilithium.
There are pros and cons to both, so I’ll give my opinion.
FIRST: Get Some Reputation Bonus Mark Pools
No matter which way you pick, get some Reputation Bonus Mark Pools.
Usually offered in 500- and 750-Mark pools, these items (which come from Lock Boxes, but there’s a smaller Rare one in the Phoenix Prize Pack offerings) give a 20% bonus to any Marks you earn. And yes, this is 99.999999999*gasp*9999% of Mark rewards in the game (if there’s an exception, I’m unaware of it).
That 20% also applies to the Marks given as a reward for hitting Tier 5 in a Reputation on a character. Each Reputation gives 750 Marks, so with a 20% Bonus Marks Pool, you’ll get 150 additional Marks (750 * .2) for a total of 900 Marks.
Why is that significant?
Here’s where we hit the decision points.
Tier 6 Reputation Build Track
If you decide to just continue chugging along toward Tier 6 (100,000 XP up to 250,000 XP), you’ll need 30 Daily project runs to hit Tier 6. (Below is a screenshot of me having already done 15 of the 30 dailies before refocusing on non-Tier 5 Reputations.)
If you didn’t have a Bonus Marks Pool active when you collected your Tier 5 upgrade, you’d be 155 Marks short…per Reputation where that happened (again, Borg notwithstanding). While this could just be 2-3 runs of a queue for that Reputatino (once a day so you’re also getting the default Daily Marks bonus) to get those Marks, that’s 20-45 minutes of time…versus 400-700k EC to have enough Marks to let as few as 3 Reputations (500 Bonus Marks Pool = 450 + 50) and as many as 5 Reputations (750 = 750 on the dot) only needing 1 queue at most each, and you could get those Marks during an Event (which are as constant as the Northern Star in STO).
Buying Reputation Gear Track
The 2nd thing you could do now is start buying some Reputation gear that goes well with your builds (Space and Ground).
Generally speaking, you get enough currencies at Tier 5 to buy 1 piece of Space gear. That generally means:
- 750 of the Reputation’s Mark
- 5 of that Reputation’s “Elite Mark” (if it has one)
- 40,000 EC
- 60,000 Expertise
- 32,000 Reputation Dilithium Boucher (NOTE: This Dilithium is a Voucher that is used in place of your actual Refined Dilithium and is not affected by the Ferengi Tour of Duty 10/10 reward).
By using a Reputation Mark Bonus Pool, that 750 Marks becomes 900, giving you 150 Marks left over. This doesn’t have to be wasted.
Conversion into Elite Marks
I didn’t mention this as a benefit because it only helps when you’re trying to get Reputation gear.
Some Reputations’ queues are so painful to queue for that they’re nonexistent. If you can’t queue for them and run them at Advanced or Elite Difficulty, you can’t get the Elite Mark for that Reputation’s gear.
Enter the conversion “upgrade” project!
If you’re either uncomfortable getting into Advanced content at minimum or you can’t run queues for that Reputation (for any reason, including real-life time constraints), you can turn in 100 of that Reputation’s regular Mark (that you’ve been using for the Daily and Tier Upgrade projects) into 1 of its Elite Mark. For most gear, this means 200-500 Marks to get 2-5 of the respective Elite Mark.
With 150 extra Marks (and who knows, perhaps 50+ leftover already), you can at least knock out a day/an Advanced-level queue run per Reputation.
Dilithium Conversion
Veterans have likely all done this at some point: you build up a character just enough to not hold up a queue’s progression just so they can run Reputations to Tier 5 and BAM! You get these as options:
At the bottom of any Reputations where you’ve hit Tier 5, you’ll see a button for “Trade in Marks.” Ideally meant for characters who’ve maxed out all their Reputations and gotten all the gear/items they want from it, you could use this as part of your Dilithium grind.
For every 50 regular Marks you turn in, you get 500 Dilithium (or with the Ferengi Admiralty’s Bonus Dilithium Pool, that’s 750 Dilityhium per 50 Marks). If you have “Elite Marks” remaining, every 3 turns into 1,000 Dilithium (or 1,500 with the Bonus Pool).
So let’s take the Marks rewards: 750 regular Marks and 5 Elite Marks.
- 750 Marks = 7,500 Dilithium
- 3 Elite Marks (leaving 2) = 1,000 Dilithium
- TOTAL: 8,500 Dilithium
I believe 10 Reputations do this exact mix (Borg gives fewer; Nukara and Romulan have no Elite Mark), so that’s 85,000 Dilithium per character (or 127,500 Dilithium with a Bonus Pool or two active) just from this.
If you use a Bonus Marks Pool, you get 150 more Marks worth 1,500 extra Dilithium per Reputation for 15,000 extra Dilithium (and you’d need a couple full Dilithium Bonus Pools for maximum Dil from this).
What Would You Do?
If it’s my first character or my primary character, I’d focus on combat effectiveness. You’ll ultimately want a frustration-free queue experience as far as you can ensure, and you only have control over your stuff. So for the brand-new account, I’d focus on getting better gear ASAP. You can always reload the Marks over time (Events, queue runs, Patrols, Endeavor rewards giving Choice of Marks boxes, and Recruit rewards once those eventually get built up [currently, no Recruit events are running at the time of this post]).
If it’s a character you’re not as combatily invested in (is that a term?), I’d go for the Dilithium. That’s what the character is essentially there for at that point: to do the super easy stuff to get the easiest rewards possible with very minimal combat investment involved. This is what makes Jem’Hadar characters so inviting: they give you ground and space builds that, with relatively minimal investment, can do just enough damage output to contribute meaningfully to queues, allowing you to grab Marks through queues and Patrols easily at Normal difficulty. (Your characters with the higher “combat investment” will do higher-level difficulty content, usually Advanced- or perhaps Elite-level TFOs).
Next Up: The Jem’Hadar Escort Build Overview
The T6-X2 system and Tribble being down for a while have me onto the next bit I feel I need to do: that long-overdue Jem’Hadar Escort build that I’ve put together completely Free to Play. It won’t be the best, and pieces I’m sure are still missing, but it’s functioning better and faster than when I first teased it. I’m hoping to have that out by late next week.
Until then, take care and continue enjoying STO!
Joe and STO 