I keep hearing about how difficult it is to start playing AO, how hard it is to make money and such. Having played for many years I probably forgot how it was. I Wanted to see again for myself how it was to start from scratch, with absolutely nothing, no help whatsoever, to find out how hard it is. I have now amassed my first billion credits! I was ofcourse aware that my knowledge of the game would give me an unfair advantage. So I decided to make it a bit harder on myself by not teaming and not joining an org until level 100 ish. I also declined any charity. And I sure was offered a lot from 9-30 ish! I also didn't babysit myself with my other toons and I didn't do any nuking/kiting/healing or anything. An occational mp buff was all I did for myself.
"Lorturban has played 7 days 0 hours 20 minutes 10 seconds"
1-24 I chose an MA since that's supposedly the easiest class to play. Got level 9 on noob island. Got as much armour and credits as I could. Then i did rk missions until 22 ish. After that it was subway till I dinged 25. I managed to loot and sell some morphing mems and froob tshirts for a few hundred k's. This was a major bump for my bank. Before that I had no more than 10k. And the premade imps were really expensive and kinda sucky too. I looted as much stims and kits of stim fiends in subaway. They really helped a lot.
25-60 I continued doing rk missions as well as killing stuff in totw. I also did some dailies and dyna camps. This part was a very boring grind. But not overly so. I looted as much stims and kits as possible in totw. I tried to farm purifying rods off the reanimator. But after a few hours I realized that it would not work. Sold one for 100k.
61-90 I did most leveling here on rk dynas. A red dyna gives 10% xp. So kill 10 and get a level as well as a decent chance of loot. I shopfooded everything I got. My gear at this time was still lowbie carb that I had bought off the shopping channel, black ma back and lowbie premade imps. I had 2 totw mems and the rest store bought ncu's.
I didn't upgrade these until I really needed it.
91-111 I continued with dailies and dynas. Around level 100 I had my first lucky drop. An enf 1he nano that got me 9 million credits. So I went from having max 150k to 9 million in one stroke. I decided to spend this money on an ai tank and some better impants. This increased both my survivability and my damage greatly. I learned that AC's really matter at these levels and the ai tank helped a LOT! I continued killing dynas. Sometimes up to level 155's. No more real luck though. Most of the loot was shop food. I also did some leveling on devourers near p7. This was my first trip to SL
I also joined my org at this time.
112-125 With my new ai tank and new awesome ql 130 imps I decided to check out sector 10 as I heard from org mates that money was good there. I died just 5 meter inside from an alien larvae. Undeterred I came back, this time packing the stuff from the unicorn that kills larvae. I followed other ppl around and started working on killing aliens. Apart from a few threats and allegations of training it went pretty easy to get to mid. Ppl were friendly with buffs and advise. Evey kill was a small adventure, but I eventually got it right and I could kill single aliens quite efficiently. It took me about 40 minutes before I got my first relay. I stayed a little while longer so that I had the relay as well as two bp's of fuel glands and the other round thingy to sell. This yielded me about 35m. I felt really rich now! I replaced most imp spots with symbs and I got new crit and evade nanos. I tried ely hecks but it didn't work so I levelled mainly on dailies.
126-150 I continued farming s10 as well as rk dynacamps. 10 bosses per level ain't that bad as they die quickly. I did the ely cata quest and it yielded 4 levels I think. More dailies and then a few bits of the scheol quest and I dinged 150. I kept farming and selling relays and the other stuff. I bought new symbs and eventually a d-chest, some ma ofab and three strong pieces. Now s10 farming was a breeze. I equipped a shen stick also and dmg went up even further then. I got to 150 by killing hecks.
I decided to ask for help with popping pb's. So I started saving them instead of selling. The first pop I had 6 pb's. It yielded a strong and some other cheaper bot. Second pop was yesterday. 28 pb's yielded 3 strong, 2 obs, 1 supple, 3 arithmetic and 2 endurings as well as a boatload of ice and augs. Together with the 250m I had from the last sale I now have just over 1 billion credits, in addition to the 3 strong pieces, d-chest and rather expensive symbs.
Conclusion: 1-75 ish was the real struggle. Credits were sooooooo hard to get. You have to be really economic and don't upgrade your gear too often. Just keep going.
I should add that there is quite a bit of afking in those days. probably around half. So.. 3.5 days played to get from 0 to 1000000000 isn't too bad imo. And it was also quite fun. I got to experience every little improvement in the toon. Not just sit on kite hill and wait. My end conclusion of this little experiment would be that technically the game isn't that very hard. What's hard is to know how to play and where to do. I can see how it would be very hard if you had no clue. The cure for this could be to get ppl to join orgs sooner. I see a lot of ppl running around orgless till level 100. There should be a way for orgs to advertize on noob island already, and perhaps to recruit there as well. Because knowledge is what new ppl need above all.
Fanx.