Sam on Maui

Well, I think its safe to say whatever rut we saw pre- and post- Season 7 is over, at least for trading volume. Wow. How long will it last? Not a clue. But, overall, it seems there’s a lot of people buying and selling Dilithium (although there’s a sharp dip recently – wonder if I messed up recording a number?).

Happy Valentine’s Day! This time of year I’d normally be complaining that City of Heroes was rerunning the same event as last year, and that Halloween plus Christmas got all the developer love. sigh Can’t do that anymore. So, be sure to enjoy your games, whatever they are, while they’re still around. Anyhow, enough of that, and onto the data!

Last October I posted a blog on buying Zen via Energy Credits . Well, since then the Z:D rate has changed dramatically, and I wasn’t sure how the requisite bits were being priced on the Exchange. Now, both of these factors are constantly in motion, so it was, and is, a snapshot at best. So, time for another snapshot.

Well, as an encouraging sign, the total volume seems to be doing pretty well these days!  In fact, it looks like we had a high point just a few days ago, but it didn’t seem to be a fluke so much as just a high point. Certainly, its not anomalously high. Offers to buy sell Dilithium seem to be up as well, but I don’t know if that’s because there’s more Dilithium to go around, or because folks are trying to get the price back down.

I’ve recently been wondering about how the market has been doing. Its all well and good to look at charts, but sometimes it’s a bit much to take in at once. So, I decided to break my combined chart down into its independent pieces. I also put in a line with the average over the measured period. While not exactly a baseline, its still a useful thing to see. So, as such, we’ll be looking at: Zen:Dilithium Exchange Rate Top 5 trading pools for buying Zen volume Top 5 trading pools for buying Dilithium volume Top 10 trading pools volume We’ll be covering the period from September 19, 2012 until February 2, 2013.

First off, let me apologize for missing a few days recently. In the general scheme of things, it should be okay since I’m more trying to track trends than anything else, but I’m still disappointed with myself. I’ve got my desktop back up and running, though, so hopefully everything will back to normal soon.

Is it really almost the end of January already? Geez. No wonder I’m remembering to write 2013 instead of 2012 on my paperwork. Sorry I’ve been out of the game lately; hopefully I’ll get my desktop back up and running within a week or so. I do miss gaming that isn’t on my laptop. Now, for data...

Just data today, folks!

Sadly, I missed Sunday, January 6th. So, there’s a data point missing. I do apologize for that! Anyhow, school is presumably back in session, the holidays are over, and there’s a little rise in the Z:D rate. Anyhow, here’s the data!

Goodness gracious, the market was the pits over New Years! karst was kind enough to point out that Z:D got as low as 1:87 on December 29th . Of course, if folks are having fun doing other things, I’m certainly not going to complain! I’ve been taking a break from playing Star Trek Online; got up to the Adamantine League in Playdom’s Avenger’s Alliance, got some excellent deals on Steam and Xbox Live Arcade, taking trips to Barnes & Noble, etc. But, you didn’t come here to listen to me blather, so without further ado...

Ho-ho-ho, Merry Christma... er... Happy Boxi... er... Hey, New Year’s is coming up! Well, the boring Western one. Chinese New Year won’t be here for a while yet. Anyhow, here are the charts for this week. We’re still seeing a pretty low Z:D rate, with the Zen and Dilithium buying rates having their ups and downs.

I play Star Trek Online with friends of mine on Maui. Sometimes we're just chatting online, sometimes we're running fleet actions, sometimes we're doing our own thing. Anyhow, I was pleasantly surprised with a $20 Perfect World gift card! What did I do with it? I bought two 10-packs of Master Keys, of course! Upon opening them? I received: 1 Very Rare Gamma Quadrant Elite Duty Officer 1 2,000 CXP Bonus Pool 2 10,000 CXP Bonus Pools 3 Rare Shield Packs 3 Standard Duty Officer Mini-Packs 4 1,000 Skill Bonus Pools 6 Gamma Quadrant Duty Officer Mini-Packs 151 Lobi Crystals So, now, I am over 3/4 of the way to my last Ferengi Marauder component. I'm utterly thrilled by this, to say the least. Moreover, looking at the rest of what I got? I've got a nice assortment of marketable items, plus things to help my fleet long. Merry Christmas, folks!

I've already gone over how to buy Master Keys without spending a dime . But, because there are so many uses for Dilithium and Zen, suppose you don't want to use such a precious resource for buying Master Keys? This is perfectly understandable. So, how else can you buy them? Energy Credits! Many players are more adept at earning Energy Credits than they are anything else. If anything, once you become a Vice Admiral, the need for Energy Credits goes down. You can get most anything you want through enough play and a bit of luck. Moreover, as you go through the end-game content, you will continue to earn drops and other rewards. You will need to make use of the Exchange in order to really earn credits, however. Keeping track of changes in the game will also help you find needs other players may have. This is important, as the more necessary the item is, and the more inconvenient it is to get, the more its potentially worth. Additionally, if things fluctuate in value, k...

I believe it’s a little too soon to figure much out, however, its still interesting to look at. I’m really looking forward to seeing how things chart out for the rest of the quarter. After the holidays, and things have had time to settle down. That said? The November 30th changes brought about the ability open your OMEGA box regardless of OMEGA Reputation level (normally you’d have to wait until Tier III), Also, the ability to take on Dilithium-earning Reputation projects at any level rather than waiting for Tier V. Right now the overall amount being traded is higher than its been in a while, but at the same time the Z:D rate is also lower than I’ve ever seen it. It took a while for prices to come down, so I guess it’ll take a while for them to go back up as well. Certainly the people buying Zen like the current rate, but I’m a little surprised that the volume of people buying Dilithium is so high while at such a unfavorable rate.But, it is the weekend, so that could change on Mo...

Another week, another update! November 30th saw another update to increase Dilithium earning . Did it work? Too soon to tell. Prices are still incredibly low, and my sampling method only shows pools of offers, not actual transactions. Here’s hoping, though. By the way, you can follow me on Twitter for updates. I typically use #STOnomics as the hashtag for these. More charts after the break.

Ah, Thanksgiving. Since I’ll hopefully be busy cooking, eating and sleeping tomorrow with friends and family, I’m doing the tracking a day early. And, well, its still been a busy week! Yeah, YOWZA. And things aren’t done yet. Dan Stahl posted on the boards there will be more changes coming, and they’ll be increasing Dilithium earnings while decreasing a few Dilithium costs. There’s a lot more to it than just that, so read up!

Overall History With Season 7: New Romulus having launched on Tuesday, looks like we’ve got movement again! Obviously, its too soon to tell if it because of the new update (although that’s definitely a factor), or a return to weekends being a low price period. Just off the top of my head, however, I’m wondering if the relatively flat period represents people taking a break until the new update. Certainly, when I played City of Heroes, there was something called “the mid-issue blues” (or “blahs”). If you haven’t read the patch notes, now would be a great time to do so . One of the changes since test was they removed the Refined Dilithium requirements from the Reputation system. Previously, it would serve as another Dilithium sink, which made it unattractive to casual and alt-heavy players. I’m not sure how they compensated for that, as one of the purposes of that was to slow down the speed at which players could progress through the system. While the Reputation system was made to el...

I had a thought, and drew up another graph in Excel. While things have been relatively flat for the past while, I wondered how much variability was there? Looking back, there were four weeks where the market fluctuated tremendously during the course of a week. Two of those were wild fluctuations, followed by two lesser weeks each before returning to normal. I’m going to have to start doing some research if I’m going to speculate what caused these wild swings, though! Times like this I really wish I had more of a history for the market. It’d be really interesting to see how often this sort of thing happens.

If you're active in Star Trek Online's end-game, you owe it to yourself to read up on their changes to Task Force Omega . In addition, its really a great time to use the official forums and the Dev Tracker  or simply dive into the discussion concerning the blog . Go over the Dev Blog on TF Omega first, as that will provide some background for everything else. You might also want to use STOwiki.org to reference current values and rewards.

At the moment, Season 7 has plans to increase the costs associated with Reassigning Under-performing Officers. This is an area of concern for some players. Those who are looking for improved Duty Officers for the DOFF system are understandably upset, as are those who are actively working on starbase projects (higher tier projects sometimes require Uncommon Duty Officers in large quantities). So, are there any other options? Enter the Recruitment Duty Officer Missions.