Making Money in STO

Hey fleeties,

Just a general question, cause I saw that someone has like 25million credits to give away. I'm not asking for any, no worries. I'm just curious to know what I should be doing mission-wise to get boat loads of credits. I'm sitting at like 500,000 and every mission I do just gives me gear and the only credits I seem to be getting is from selling stuff.

Is there something I'm missing? What are these mythical quests that give out credits?

Tour the galaxy is a good way to make a bit of ec. Otherwise selling drops is the way to go. Also selling the level 15 R&D items is an option. And finally quick cash by buying keys or ship modules using zen and selling. But obviously that requires real investment or a boat load of dilithium.

Tour the Galaxy can get about 350,000EC, it is a daily and can be done per character.

Doing Foundry missions for the loot drops is another way, can get about 200,000-800,000 per toon if you are lucky with the drops (though they did revalue some so 800,000 might be reaching now).

Doff assignments

The key to anything in this game is using multiple toons.

I don't pay for the game so I can only have 10mln EC and no other means of earning them than in game. I did Tour the Galaxy and I also look for some nice stuff on the exchange. For example I noticed that some medical rare or very rare modules are posted for much less than they are worth and usually bought for. I keep now my account at aroun 8mln and I have a rare mk xiii triage to sell when I drop below 3mln :) Just keep an eye on such deals.

Quote by Finka

I don't pay for the game so I can only have 10mln EC

I don't pay for the game but still have more than that :) I would have to check my inventory to get a more precise number, but I would estimate my current worth at about 8 billion EC.

Buying the EC cap increase is one the first things you should be doing - and no, it doesn't require real money. You pay with zen, which you can buy from other players from dilithium. You can't get serious about accumulating wealth if you're stuck at 10 million cap. Many items I sell bring more profit than that.

To what was already mentioned (sell stuff you get from the missions, tour the galaxy, crafting high level items, sell keys) I would also add:
- check the exchange for opportunities. Quite often people would list various items at a fraction of their market value. Buy and relist at a higher price. That's how I actually make most of my money.
- get missions that give contraband. You can either directly sell it on the exchange (at a range of 40-45k per piece) or turn it into dilithium, dilithium to zen, buy keys and sell them (which is more profitable but takes more times and requires you do spend your dilithium on a specific item rather than investing in other things you might be interested in).
- get missions that give you doffs. Every one you can. You can buy prisoners in a 4-6k range, and then exchange them to normal doffs through a mission. You can buy white doffs (if you don't have any) (20-25k) and exchange them to a higher quality ones in the Alpha sector. You can get refugees and use them in Asylum missions all across the galaxy. You will normally get a higher quality doff, often a blue one, which you can then sell on the exchange - and some specializations sell at really high prices (blue Technicians would normally give you several million EC for example, blue Research or Fabrication sell for around one million). Even if you only get a green doff, it's still a profit.

Crafting, crafting, crafting.

Sell stuff the rich players want. Because getting EC from the game (vendors or tour the galaxy) will keep your income at whatever maximum Cryptic wanted it to be several years ago. Rich players, though, have EC to throw your way instantly.

What to craft? Gear can make money. Rich players want good mods. That means [pen] [crtd]x3, [pen] [dmg]x3, [dmg]x4, or [crtd]x4 for weapons. Make mk ii, use a superior upgrade kit with a research boost (2x) and it'll go UR or gold with one kit and you can see if the mods are worth taking it to mk xiv with. For other gear, you'll just have to make it and check the exchange.

Superior upgrade kits are simpler, steady source of income.

There are also elite ground queues, which give salvaged tech to sell....

http://fleet.stonewallgaming.net/forums/guides-and-walkthroughs/74536-ground-combat-guide-walkthrus#86730

One other things which I think is a good starter are boff powers. You can buy them cheap, at a couple thousand EC - either at the Boff trainer at the academy or by buying cheap boffs on the exchange (or getting boffs through doff missions) and turning them into a manual. The market seems very inefficient right now, because many of those powers, which can be easily obtained, actually sell at the exchange in the range of 100 thousand EC.

And here's another obvious thing to do (though to do it efficiently, you would need several toons to overcome the daily dilithium refinement limits) - make keys.

At current prices buying 625 contraband costs 27.5 million EC.
Through Turn in Contraband mission that can be transfereed to 250 thousand dilithium.
At current market rate that would buy you 1126 zen, just enough to buy 10 keys (even without waiting for the key sale, which happens several times a year).
10 keys sell for 37 million EC.

That's 10 million profit. The bottleneck of course is the daily dilithium refinement limit, but even with just one character that's still something you can do once a month.

I'm guilty of spending EC on something I can get nearly for free like Robin mentioned. If I'm at Risa or wherever and need to change a boff power, then spending 100k on something I could get for almost nothing seems like a better idea that loading up the 3 maps it takes to get all the way to ESD to the boff trainer.

So there's an idea: sell cheap things to lazy players!

You can also get Gamma quadrant commodities cheaper in stacks of a hundred and resell them more expensive per unit in stacks of ten. I did that one way back in the day. You can look around and maybe find other items to do that to.

Another idea is to finish the colonization sequences and start getting those free purple doffs. You can't sell them, but you can break them down into white doffs at the academies or on New Romulus and sell those. 1 purple doff makes 27 white doffs, which would get you around 800,000 ec each time you crit that assignment.

Or you can just break down blue doffs from the exchange and sell the white ones.

Quote by alex284

I'm guilty of spending EC on something I can get nearly for free like Robin mentioned.

Yeah, well, so am I.

Make a Ferengi character, they get commodities at discount prices. Learn where to get cheap commodities, which vendor sells what. Many players, myself included, won't really bother to travel across the Galaxy, from system to system, to get them at the cheapest possible price, when they can be all bought at the exchange. I will spend more to save time. Check the prices, see what sells and what doesn't, making 100k profit on a single stack of commodities is not that extraordinary (actually, I don't put anything on exchange if I can't make 100k profit on that for that exact reason: I can use the slot more profitably. If it doesn't make me 100k, then it goes straight to vendor or fleet bank).

When it comes down to it, there are 2 ways to make money (ec) in STO:

1) Spend real money (buy Zen with cash, then buy keys/doff packs/fleet ship modules and sell them on the exchange)

2) Grind

The reason most people aren't rich on STO is because they would rather play than sell stuff (I actually enjoy messing with the market, which is why I'm generally loaded, but I know that's not for everyone ;) )

That said, there are some things you can do that don't take an absurd amount of time that can turn a healthy profit (or at least healthy enough for you to be able to get some pretty things every once in awhile)

The suggestion about colonization Doffs is a good one, in general, breaking down purple Doffs in to their components can net you a solid amount of cash, though using the colonization Doffs can be time consuming if you don't have Doffs that are good at criting those missions. So the lesson here is, any purple Doff will do (and breaking down blue ones isn't a losing proposition either). So here are some ways to get some blue/purple Doffs pretty easily:

1) Caitain Field Flight Training Doff Chain: This one will show up once a day after you've finished the chain and will award a Doff upon completion of the repeatable mission. The result is usually blue, and sometimes purple. A blue Doff breaks down into 9 white Doffs, which is roughly 250,000 ec when you sell them on the exchange.

2) Fleet Starbase: The personnel officer will sell you a random purple Doff for 25,000 fleet credits (it's a bit steep, but if you're rolling in fleet credits and want to change them to ec, this is an option). Do make sure to check the Doff itself on the exchange before you break it down, sometimes you'll get really good ones worth between 5-10 million ec, so breaking it down to sell whites to get 800-900k is kind of a losing proposition.

3) Buying them off the exchange. I know, this seems counter intuitive, but if you buy a crappy Doff, like a Warp Theorist or a Flight Deck Officer for 300-400k and then break it down and sell the pieces for 800-900k, that's generally worth the effort.

Something to note while breaking down Doffs... pay attention to what is valuable. For me, there's not many that are worth worrying about, because the margin of error is low (i.e. a green trader is worth 100k, but the 3 whites will be worth between 60-100k, so it's not worth worrying about). But there are a few that are definitely worth paying attention to: Blue (and green) technicians, the blues generally go for 1-3 million a piece; Blue damage control engineers, around 750k; Blue Research Lab Scientists, 500k; Blue Fabrication Engineers, 350k.

Another unfortunate reality of STO's economy is that it works like any other capitalist economy, the more money you have, the easier it is to make more. There are some ventures that are high risk/high reward in small quantities, namely opening doff and weapon packs, and to a smaller extent lockboxes, that flatten out in larger quantities. If I spend 5 million ec on Doff packs and open them up and sell the contents, I will probably lose some money, but if I spend 100 million ec and do the same thing, I will probably make 10-15 million more than my original investment off the deal (and upwards of 200 if I get lucky).

It's all about prioritizing what you want to spend your time doing, and for most people, that's playing the game, which is a great choice. In those cases, selling drops helps, and playing the elites so you can sell salvaged tech is a sustainable way to make sure you have enough money to function. If you want to buy the big stuff, and don't want to spend real cash, try setting aside a little bit of time each time you play to work on getting money. Breaking down a purple Doff and listing it all on the exchange will only take like 10 minutes, so if you do that each couple of days, you'll end up ok.

A couple other random tips:

1) Make sure you clear out your exchange notifications from your mail. I used to sell so much stuff that when the mail server broke on the launch of New Romulus, it completely crashed by game because I couldn't go delete my messages (I finally created an account on another PWE game just so I could log in and clear my mail).

2) Don't spend too much time pricing out the white doffs, it will make your life miserable if you try to look up each doff individually. Establish a baseline and sell all doffs of that type for the same price (i.e. look up a random tactical doff, and then use that as your price for all tac doffs, be it energy weapons officer or projectile weapons officer).

Happy money making!

How I made my Billions

Honestly, the biggest thing I did was always check my ship gear on the exchange before selling it. The market, like all markets, are erratic and based on emotion. I sold three MK VI tetryon beams last night for 100k each. Insanity! But that's what they were going for on the exchange. So always check the 'value' of a ship item on the exchange before selling it to an NPC.

Also, as mentioned before, the lazy player is your best friend. All consumables, from the small hypo, to the ship auxiliary battery, I save in my inventory, and when I get 20, I sell on the exchange, full value.

My biggest tip, but it takes long term commitment, is selling lock boxes two cycles past their drop. So all of my year of hell lock boxes go to my mules, to be sat upon. Here is an example
January - Lock Box A is released, horde and sit upon them
March - Lock Box B comes out, horde and sit upon them
June - Lock Box C comes out, horde these, but begin selling Lock Box A (but not all of them, only half of the lock boxes each cycle).

I still have a horde of Tal Shiar lockboxes that I sell for wicked amounts of money. This strategy only failed me twice, when a lock box was released and no one was ever excited for it ever again. Also, if you think you wont play this game longer than a year, then this strategy is moot.

I only play for fun, not to make ECs.

I'll bet if epohhs from the Winter Event were somehow tradeable between players then I'm sure that people would pay a lot of ECs for them so they can do all sort of pleasant and unpleasant things to them.

if no one suggested you can use exchange(auction house) selling and buying stuff can earn a lot of credits since there isn't any fee on exchange and ppl often miss count zeros here I bought keys for example more then few times for zero less then it should have been so u can look every now and then those items where ppl miss counts zeros often

i offer escort services

DHC optional :blush:

Quote by robin

Quote by Finka

I don't pay for the game so I can only have 10mln EC

Buying the EC cap increase is one the first things you should be doing - and no, it doesn't require real money. You pay with zen, which you can buy from other players from dilithium. You can't get serious about accumulating wealth if you're stuck at 10 million cap. Many items I sell bring more profit than that.

You were perfectly right! A few days after I read your post I decided to trade in some dil for ZEN and buy the cap... It was the best thing I could buy with ZEN! I went up till 40mln EC just because I could and there was no limit. And I could finally afford some things over 10mln which was out of reach before.

Seriously, that was some very good advise. Thx :)