Low-effort Dilithium takes time.

I’ve been slowly working towards amassing Dilithium and Zen, but pretty much want to keep it on a low-effort basis. Generally, when I’m playing, I want to sit back and relax. I’m just as likely to go away from my keyboard, chat with friends, etc., as anything else during my STO time. As such, going through Task Forces really doesn’t work for me. If I need to pay active attention, I’m not going to be doing it.

Thankfully, I’ve found that the Duty Officer system helps me work towards my goals. And, at least for the time being, I’ve got a reasonable way to bring in dilithium with relatively little effort. It does, however, take some time per-session.


Generally speaking, I’ve got a few mission types I look out for; missions that either give higher than normal dilithium rewards, or ones that can reward me with Contraband. Such missions will always get the best Duty Officers I can can provide in hopes of not only getting a successful resolution, but to maximize my odds of a critical success.

While this might seem obvious, you might be wondering, “why Contraband?” The answer is a single Duty Officer assignment – “Turn in Contraband.” This single assignment requires 5 contraband, takes 4 hours, and rewards you with 2,000 dilithium. Now, while you can only do one of these at a time, the restriction is per-character. As a result, I put the contraband into my account bank/storage so all of my characters can access it. Because its cross-factional, I tend to run my Klingon-side character in a small circuit near Omega sector for Marauding assignments. Usually I’ll run out of eligible duty officers before I run out of assignments, but that’s okay.

For instance, last night I was able to 15 contraband, which I put into my account storage. 3 characters drew from that lot and did the “Turn in Contraband” assignment. This morning, I woke up and was 6,000 dilithium – 38 zen @ 1:154 – richer. So, with relatively little work, I was able to get 75% of my daily dilithium ore refinement quota for the day.

Easy, low-effort, but it takes time. And, that’s okay. I enjoy the Duty Officer system, so earning all my dilithium this way rolls two good things into one!