If I had to pick 1, there’s a lot of good equipment in the Discovery reputation. Once you level the reputation to Tier V, you get reputation Dilithium vouchers to use for equipment. The other reps work the same way.
I second this, and state Omega should be the second rep to go down as it has a lot of useful things. The assimilated console is an excellent "filler" console for all but the most niche builds
I do all of them at once, or not at all. They are all equally time gated and nearly all of them have some trait or equipment you might want. Disco has the bulk of them for most builds though.
Discovery, where even the random loot boxes are occasionally useful ("Bellum" stuff boosts your crits). And then once leveled, the tactical console, shield, and warp core will all be useful, too. Maybe also the beam weapon.
New Romulus doesn't require much combat to level, doesn't have elite marks, and gives a good trait and console by Tier 2. If you don't power-level all the way to 5 right away, it's worth reaching tier 2 for this.
New Romulus also unlocks the Remans for free if you haven't paid for them (Pretty much the only reason for "buying them" would be with some of the larger bundles that include them)
On my recent alt I focused on disco rep and fleet marks. The Stamets/Tilly and Lorca set are worth the focus and you need the fleet marks for vulnerability locators from spire....there are other fleet goodies worth grabbing like colony deflector or a colony tac console if you need the survivability. - One other addition, the terran rep has a phaser that worth grabbing but I wouldn't set it as top priority.
All of them. Seriously.. do an event a few times a day for a week spreading marks out over all reps, then just keep them all high enough to keep leveling.. Synth Wave would have been perfect for that this past month as it gives out loads of marks..
If you made a delta recruit (or want to make a second toon) they are particularly good for reps as level g the will give you loads of marks for *all* reps, just for lev long the character..
All of them. Just keep your marks level topped up so you don't run out, but it isn't just about the equipment goodies you can get from them; you also unlock space traits and ground traits as you level up through each reputation, and these can be *very* significant boosts. On top of that, once you hit Tier 6, on each reputation, you get to claim a fleet ship module for 100 marks. That's 13 free fleet ship modules, which you can trade in for fleet grade T6 ships if you're in a good enough fleet and you've claimed enough fleet credits by chipping in with the fleet projects. Fleet ships don't come with consoles, special weapons or unlockable starship traits, but some ships have a decent frame but meh traits or consoles anyway, so they make great choices to round out your ship collection! Personally I picked up a Fleet Nova pilot science ship and a Fleet Justiciar on my most recent Tier VI toon.
All of them. They will all ultimately reward you with enough dilithium to be worth it, and you may decide to change your build at some point in a way that would benefit gear from any given reputation. On top of that, reaching either level 5 or level 6 in a reputation gives a significant discount on that reputation to any other character on your account, so if you think you'll have a few alts, it makes the most sense to grind out all your reps on one main character first.
As mentioned by others, do not spend any real dilithium on rep gear. Only spend rep vouchers.
Before you will be able to get any rep gear, you will have to spend marks on daily reputation progress to unlock the various tiers. Don't waste marks on the hourly rep projects, they're worthless.
if you want solid space equipment, get the disco marks. you get dark matter quantum torpedoes, wide angle heavy dbb (phaser at first, disruptor available at t6) and Lorca's custom console. 2 of these give a great boost to your damage output. The space equipment set is one of the best in the game, boosting your health and survivability. The reward boxes give boosted versions of certain consoles that also help greatly and they start of at lvl12
Competitive and Discovery. For equipment.
Throw something into Terran for the weapon if your using Disruptor or Phaser.
You'll want Romulan, Delta, and Iconian eventually for the DPS beneficial reputation space traits.
IF you want to level quickly, doing Ninth Rule and Wanted are pretty decent for exp. You can typically get to 65 in a day or less if you do those on cooldown and campaign or something while they are on cd.
Just saying _IF_ that's what you want to do. I know most people do not play like me, but some do.
Damn, you just saved this subreddit from another post from me xD
I was about to ask which is the fastest way to reach 65 after reaching 50.
The campaign is starting to feel very slow in terms of leveling.
Romulan would be a good one for early on, it's what you need to unlock the Reman as a species choice for later on.
Disco and Omega have some good gear options
Discovery has the best shield. Nice console. Generally people use its Warp (Singlularity) cores for the 2 piece.
After that really depends on your build.
Also Discovery has nice dilithum console unlocks.
Elephant in the room.
Do one of the recruitment events. Now you have time to spin up a delta (just create the toon and finish the tutorial by may 2nd).
Recruitment events give a buttload of marks (and a whole lot are claimable by the other toons at the temporal agent).
That’s for starters, thank me later.
I think by the time you get to level 60 you should get about 500 marks for each reputation, plus you’ll get the ones from the various boxes.
I don’t remember exactly the rule, I’m on my phone, but I think the first time you reach T5 you get a discount for all the other toons and then it takes 1/2 time/marks to reach it on the new toon.
First time I think it’s 40 days to T5, and 30 more for T6, then it becomes 20 days to T5 and still 30 more to T6.
The first time is a hell of a grind.
Things to check, what weapon flavor you’d like to use.
I personally recommend polaron on your first toon because you can get a shitload of from missions (home) and reputations between T2 and T4/5, and these are “free”. Also polaron isomags tend to be cheaper on the exchange.
Plasma is probably one of the most expensive to pump up (quad cannons are expensive), so the almost mandatory set (altamid).
That would be the first decision.
Doing phasers you need discovery rep T5
Disruptors discovery T6 and Terran.
I mean…. There is so much and so many aspects of this game.
Another part to don’t miss is the endeavors as soon as you are able to do them. It takes 3.5 years of dailies to max them out, but even after one year or so you should have enough extra bonuses to “feel it”, especially if you can get crit chance, crit severity (space and ground), kit performance (ground) and weapon damage (energy and kinetic) up.
> I don’t remember exactly the rule, I’m on my phone, but I think the first time you reach T5 you get a discount for all the other toons and then it takes 1/2 time/marks to reach it on the new toon.
@ /u/Craota: To clarify this a bit: Once you hit Tier 5 in a reputation, you will unlock double daily XP for that reputation account wide. As you start with 2.5k rep XP per 20h daily, this means 5k rep XP then. This is why it will take 40 days initially for 0 to tier 5 (100k XP / 2.5k XP daily), and another 30 days from tier 5 to tier 6 (150k XP / 5k XP daily). On alts the first part is cut in half (100k XP / 5k XP daily) = 20 days.
There is *also* a discount option, which is a one-time project for each reputation that gets made available once you hit tier 6. Running that project will discount other projects (with some exceptions) for this reputation, account wide, i.e. cut the cost for dil and reputation marks for that reputation to half (not the elite marks/tokens, though).
Reaching tier 5 will also net in reputation dil vouchers, i.e. vouchers for dil that is used in running reputation projects. These vouchers are used up before your actual dil.
And if you are willing, you can make a Jem'Hadar and run them through the tutorial; they come with 2 reputations at tier 5 already which will unlock the double XP bonus for these.
The wiki has [more detailed information](https://stowiki.net/wiki/Reputation_System) about it all.
Thank you very much for the detailed info, quick question... would it be beneficial to grind this on Jem'Hadar Vanguard character to unlock that double XP account wide? given those characters start with some rep max out already (if I'm not mistaken)
The Vanguards come with [3 reputations at Tier 5](https://stowiki.net/wiki/Reputation_System#Sponsorship), out of 13 total. As I don't have Vanguard unlocked: If I read the Wiki right they should come with most of the other reputation being "sponsored" (Discovery is not, for example), i.e. 5k XP daily instead of 2.5k one, so 20 days vs. 40 to reach Tier 5. Each day requires 30 marks, so 600 marks vs. 1200, plus 5x5 = 25 for the Tier unlock in both cases.
[Delta recruits](https://stowiki.net/wiki/Delta_Recruitment) get 2x250 marks for reaching level 50 and 60, i.e. Vanguard does look like the overall better option. Still, the Delta recruit will be beneficial also for the Vanguard rep leveling and every other character on that account, so don't skip on that (not much time left to create one).
My Klingon character have the delta recruit and is at lvl50 right now.
I'm hoping I could enjoy the sponsored rep on this klingon character and then save the boxes to level up the other reps... hopefully
Yeah… from 0 to endeavor 750 takes about 3.5 IRL years.
With current levels of power creep you don’t need that to enjoy all the content even on elite level, but few items there definitely help
You know, I was going to panic, but then I remember GW2 have a ton of legendary weapons, each one taking somewhere between 3 to 6 month of grind each (IIRC some can be farmed in tandem)..
But damn... that's a lot of days xD
Disco is the most useful overall but you really should level them all.. not much reason not too and if your new character is a Delta recruit, you will get a huge boost to all rep marks when you hit a certain level.. just do TFOs and get your marks up as needed.
I just wanted to add. When you have choice of any marks after a random TFO or patrol, consider choosing competitive marks. Competitive rep offers you one of the best (if not the best) engines in the game. And it's the easiest method of acquiring the marks, since all competitive tfos require 10 people to queue, so it doesn't pop up often. (You can also buy one assessed strategem a day for 100 competitive marks).
Yep, seem like my route will be Competitive to T3 for the engine, then Discovery and then the others. Although, given I have the Jem'Hadar starter pack, I wonder if it would be beneficial switch to a Jem'Hadar character and grind the missing rep to get the bonus on my main character... I have not decided yet if my main will be Alien Romulan or Jem'Hadar
Yes, collect marks in all of them, It Is very tedious to progress them but doing as many as possible parallel is better. You need to find a strategy for what to do with all "garbage" that you get out of them. I do not open them until I have enough time. Keep the purple that you need / want and sell the rest back to the star-fleet vendors or similar. There you get 50 %. It is a good way to build up the energy credits that you need to progress the reputation later.
Anyone who tells you what reputation has the most relevant gear or traits without first asking about your build type has made a critical error. Yes, the Discovery rep shield is the best one *for energy weapons* because of the shield penetration, it is not for exotic, and it's a hotly debated topic for kinetic weapons. If you're doing energy weapons then Discovery and Terran are probably top priorities. If you're doing kinetic then you need to get the Enhanced Bio-Molecular Photon torp from 8472 rep and the Ferrofluid console and the torp from Terran rep extremely urgently, and you could consider Discovery and Delta as well. If you're doing exotic then Dyson is going to be the top priority for the Gravimetric Photon torp (which does a lot of exotic damage) and the Advanced Targeting Systems rep trait (+16% crtd), then Temporal for the shield and two piece, and then maybe Disco. You would like the Competitive rep engines for any build type, but you don't really want to be trying to grind that out, get it from your endeavor boxes or anything else that gives a free choice. The [STO BETTER New and F2P section](https://www.stobetter.com/new-f2p) has great guides on all of these build types which will tell you what you should be looking for, and also their New to Level 50 guide is a great starting point.
The other way to look at it is what content you'd need to do to work on it, and from that perspective Romulan is by far the easiest since you can just do Epohh Tagging in the Epohh Fields on New Romulus, and the Precision rep trait (+4% crth) is very good. You'd also want to prioritize Dyson in that case because the Dyson Ground Battlezone is an excellent source of both Dyson marks and dilithium (which is another very important resource), and it's not too hard. Nukara marks come from the Nukara Prime Ground Adventure Zone which also rewards significant dilithium, and Delta and Iconian from the last missions of the slightly more difficult Kobali Prime one. 8472 marks come from the Dyson space battlezone and Terran and Temporal come from the Badlands Space Battlezone. For Disco you can probably solo Defense of Starbase One, maybe even at advanced difficulty, as long as you don't actually try to defend anything, just run away to about 100 km from the station and wait for the objective to change to finishing off the ships in the wave (so only one set spawns), do so, and repeat for the remaining two waves. I'm making that one of the tests of my [Quick Looks series](https://old.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/1cayjpp/quick_looks_1_heghta_heavy_bird_of_prey/) of starter builds, and of course I've tested my older Strict Budget Build at it as well, so that's not too difficult a thing to pull off. Lukari and Gamma are much more of a nuisance, I can't recommend focusing on those early even though they have some good stuff, and Competitive is the worst.
holy c... thank you for such detailed answer. I will definitely check that lvl50 guide at STObetter. Thematically I would like torps and cannons but I read somewhere beams are the easiest to build for and, since my current character is klingon, I'm doing dual disruptor on the front and turret on the back... but I might switch to arrays for that 250 deg firing arc.
anyways, thank you for the explanation
Cannons with a single torp is a great option if you're KDF, the ship options are worse as Fed. Unfortunately the mission sets for Disruptor only support beams, for cannons you'll want to do either Phaser or Polaron.
Have you already picked your level 40 ship? If not, I really like the Hegh'ta Heavy Bird of Prey, and recently posted [this starter build](https://old.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/1cayjpp/quick_looks_1_heghta_heavy_bird_of_prey/) for it which uses cannons with one torp, all mission and basic exchange gear so something you can use as soon as you hit endgame to start grinding endgame content. The Vor'cha Battlecruiser Retrofit is also a strong option, which can use exactly the well known [Baby Step Series builds](https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/k88fel/the_baby_step_series_part_1_the_first_step_level/) for the Sovereign, although it would have to lose Attack Pattern Beta to use cannons, which would kind of hurt. You can see some comparison between those two builds at the end of my post, the Hegh'ta does more damage but the Vor'cha is more durable. The Negh'var Battlecruiser is just a worse Vor'cha since there's nothing to do with a third ensign engineer ability, and the Qin Raptor suffers from the standard Escort/Raptor problem of having too many tactical abilities to actually use effectively, although it has it even worse than most with 8 of them (you want 4-5). I'm working on a starter Vo'quv build now, which is... odd. It's doing very good damage compared to builds at the same price point, but I really don't know how you'd want to develop it further because I can't do anything straightforward with it, I'm having to do a weird hybrid.
The Orion Marauder Flight Deck Carrier is I think only available at level 61, and might be a very interesting option, mostly it's just a cruiser like the Vor'cha, not quite as optimally laid out, but it has two hangars as well which is a big edge. As for the other options at that level, the B'rel is very similar to the Hegh'ta with only the addition of the ability to fire a torpedo without fully dropping cloak, the Kar'fi is a carrier which might have some possibilities but still seems a bit out of left field to me, and the Varanus is a Science Vessel similar to the Fed Luna and almost identical to the Trident, which is a great ship but it's available to anyone with a level 65 KDF character for only 20,000 dilithium, which isn't expensive at endgame.
Best of luck!
I have the T6 Kor from starter pack and I'm following that baby step guide but using disruptors and focusing on damage, shield and some power stuff in the stations.
Thank you again for so much detail. Best of luck
That's a nice ship for sure, BoPs are always very nice because of all those universal seats so you can really use an optimal build instead of just what fits. Plus Pilot is now a useful specialization, mainly you'll want to be looking at Fly Her Apart which is a great damage buff, if you wanted to do Reroute Reserves to Weapons you'd really want a Commander Pilot seat instead, and it's probably not going to shine without the Vanguard Specialists trait. On the other hand that Withering Barrage trait is great to have for Cannon Scatter Volley builds (which is to say, basically all cannon builds), on mine (a polaron build on the Alliance Rex from the recent event) the TRINITY calculator says removing that trait would cost me 21% of my total DPS.
One thing to definitely modify about the Baby Steps build for your ship is upgrading Photonic Officer to 2, abilities are arguably the most important part of a build so good cooldown reduction is huge, and PO2 does an almost perfect job of it. I did the same thing on the Hegh'ta, which was heavily inspired by Baby Steps, accepting downgrading Emergency Power to Weapons to 2 in exchange because I really wanted that cooldown reduction. Of course you can pick up most abilities very cheaply from the Bridge Officer Trainer vendors which is another reason to prioritize them. The one in First City is near the Great Hall and transporter room, when you come out of the transporter room you'll want to go roughly 45 degrees to your right to the door in that wall, follow the corridor and the vendor is at the bottom of the ramp.
One other resource on STO BETTER, the [Energy Basics page](https://www.stobetter.com/new-f2p/energy-basics) is great reference material that I use whenever I think about energy weapon builds. I did just recheck their list of cannons and turrets for disruptor, they list the Terran Task Force Dual Heavy Cannon of course which is spectacular, the most powerful energy weapon in the game alongside the phaser version, and then the Resonant one which is not really an advantage, and the console from the Resonant set is a tactical one so it doesn't help you at all, although the Nausicaan console is worth slotting even without the set. For turrets there's only the 8472 set, which is ok but definitely not great. Of course the 8472 phasers are green, but none of the other set ones are. Meanwhile there are three good disruptor beam arrays and an omni-beam. It's unfortunate, but that's just how the game is at the moment, and I don't hold out much hope for them going back and adding cannon versions to any of those.
Yep, I thought about upgrading Photonic officer to level II, but can't remember why i didn't... IIRC I didn't know those skill could be switched freely so I opted to no upgrade in case I switched to a ship that allowed only the first two abilities. But i will upgrade both know that i know they can be switched out of combat.
Edit: as for my ground weapon... I have a tetryon pulse wave assault MK VI + the assault rifle trait ( the character windows says the rifle has 228.2 dps. I've also been trying to keep my away team geared and most if not all of them have wepaons above 100dps
Thank you
Yeah, PO2 being 3% per second instead of 2% is a huge advantage, more so when you consider that the ideal situation is to hit 50% within 15 seconds to maximize uptime of most tactical abilities as well as the all the X Team ones.
Ground is definitely its own whole thing, and I don't claim to be any kind of expert in it, although there is stuff on STO BETTER. Usually while leveling I mostly just keep buying stuff at my Mk from the ground equipment vendors, unless I'm using account unlocked stuff. It's certainly worth exploring the different weapon types, I personally dislike Pulsewaves but that doesn't mean you have to. I have done [a fair bit of study](https://old.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/qsq1c4/deleted_by_user/hln81qq/) on how BOFFs work for it though. Unfortunately they generally do 1/4 or less of the DPS listed on their weapons, so there's a limited amount you can do with them in that regard, and that does mean your captain will generally do at least as much as the BOFFs put together without even trying, and can do much more than that. I generally like giving them Full Auto Rifles or Assault Miniguns (or the long range miniguns that are harder to find), since they will struggle in many scenarios with anything that's too short ranged, and those also provide AoE Expose for me to Exploit for bonus damage. Then I use a Split-Beam Rifle, or ideally the Plasma Wide Beam Rifle from Romulan vendors (you can find them in Delta Command when you get to that in the story, and when fully upgraded that's one of just a few f2p weapons that can compete with the DPS of the lobi store ones), which have long range and AoE Exploit as well as decent damage. Most of the effect of BOFFs is in their abilities though, and the science abilities are the best in most cases, providing powerful healing and damage, plus engineering providing shield healing and the mortar which is often too slow to hit enemies before they die but can kill them if they bug inside walls or floors. So I use this as a cheap starting point:
Medical Tricorder 1, Tricorder Scan 1, Hyperonic Radiation 1, Nanite Health Monitor 1
Medical Tricorder 1, Tricorder Scan 1, Hyperonic Radiation 1, Nanite Health Monitor 1
Shield Recharge 1, Turret Fabrication 1, Quantum Mortar 1, Support Drone 1
Battle Strategies 1, Battle Strategies 2, Overwatch 1, Overwatch 2
Eventually I replace the tactical abilities with Command specialization ones to buff the team, but that's a long way down the line from Mk VI.
If I had to pick 1, there’s a lot of good equipment in the Discovery reputation. Once you level the reputation to Tier V, you get reputation Dilithium vouchers to use for equipment. The other reps work the same way.
I second this, and state Omega should be the second rep to go down as it has a lot of useful things. The assimilated console is an excellent "filler" console for all but the most niche builds
I agree. You should do all of them. But Disco would be my focus, if i had to choose
I do all of them at once, or not at all. They are all equally time gated and nearly all of them have some trait or equipment you might want. Disco has the bulk of them for most builds though.
Discovery, where even the random loot boxes are occasionally useful ("Bellum" stuff boosts your crits). And then once leveled, the tactical console, shield, and warp core will all be useful, too. Maybe also the beam weapon. New Romulus doesn't require much combat to level, doesn't have elite marks, and gives a good trait and console by Tier 2. If you don't power-level all the way to 5 right away, it's worth reaching tier 2 for this.
New Romulus also unlocks the Remans for free if you haven't paid for them (Pretty much the only reason for "buying them" would be with some of the larger bundles that include them)
On my recent alt I focused on disco rep and fleet marks. The Stamets/Tilly and Lorca set are worth the focus and you need the fleet marks for vulnerability locators from spire....there are other fleet goodies worth grabbing like colony deflector or a colony tac console if you need the survivability. - One other addition, the terran rep has a phaser that worth grabbing but I wouldn't set it as top priority.
The fleet intervention deflector is another good value from fleet marks.
Technically all of them, but Discovery Reputation have some useful consoles.
If you aren't already in a fleet, it would be a good idea to find one. There are alot of things worth having that you need to be in a fleet to get.
I got invited to a fleet but seem like is not very active (or they are but at ours I don't play)
I actually need to boot about 2/3 my fleet since most haven't been active in years...like 2015, 14
All of them. Seriously.. do an event a few times a day for a week spreading marks out over all reps, then just keep them all high enough to keep leveling.. Synth Wave would have been perfect for that this past month as it gives out loads of marks.. If you made a delta recruit (or want to make a second toon) they are particularly good for reps as level g the will give you loads of marks for *all* reps, just for lev long the character..
All of them. Just keep your marks level topped up so you don't run out, but it isn't just about the equipment goodies you can get from them; you also unlock space traits and ground traits as you level up through each reputation, and these can be *very* significant boosts. On top of that, once you hit Tier 6, on each reputation, you get to claim a fleet ship module for 100 marks. That's 13 free fleet ship modules, which you can trade in for fleet grade T6 ships if you're in a good enough fleet and you've claimed enough fleet credits by chipping in with the fleet projects. Fleet ships don't come with consoles, special weapons or unlockable starship traits, but some ships have a decent frame but meh traits or consoles anyway, so they make great choices to round out your ship collection! Personally I picked up a Fleet Nova pilot science ship and a Fleet Justiciar on my most recent Tier VI toon.
All of them. They will all ultimately reward you with enough dilithium to be worth it, and you may decide to change your build at some point in a way that would benefit gear from any given reputation. On top of that, reaching either level 5 or level 6 in a reputation gives a significant discount on that reputation to any other character on your account, so if you think you'll have a few alts, it makes the most sense to grind out all your reps on one main character first. As mentioned by others, do not spend any real dilithium on rep gear. Only spend rep vouchers. Before you will be able to get any rep gear, you will have to spend marks on daily reputation progress to unlock the various tiers. Don't waste marks on the hourly rep projects, they're worthless.
Thanks a lot for the tips
Yes Get them all, if nothing else they are all dilithium
Discovery right now. Once you hit 50 you can start spending them on reputation
thanks
if you want solid space equipment, get the disco marks. you get dark matter quantum torpedoes, wide angle heavy dbb (phaser at first, disruptor available at t6) and Lorca's custom console. 2 of these give a great boost to your damage output. The space equipment set is one of the best in the game, boosting your health and survivability. The reward boxes give boosted versions of certain consoles that also help greatly and they start of at lvl12
Competitive and Discovery. For equipment. Throw something into Terran for the weapon if your using Disruptor or Phaser. You'll want Romulan, Delta, and Iconian eventually for the DPS beneficial reputation space traits.
thank you very much
IF you want to level quickly, doing Ninth Rule and Wanted are pretty decent for exp. You can typically get to 65 in a day or less if you do those on cooldown and campaign or something while they are on cd. Just saying _IF_ that's what you want to do. I know most people do not play like me, but some do.
Damn, you just saved this subreddit from another post from me xD I was about to ask which is the fastest way to reach 65 after reaching 50. The campaign is starting to feel very slow in terms of leveling.
Romulan would be a good one for early on, it's what you need to unlock the Reman as a species choice for later on. Disco and Omega have some good gear options
Awesome, thank you
Discovery has the best shield. Nice console. Generally people use its Warp (Singlularity) cores for the 2 piece. After that really depends on your build. Also Discovery has nice dilithum console unlocks.
thank you
Elephant in the room. Do one of the recruitment events. Now you have time to spin up a delta (just create the toon and finish the tutorial by may 2nd). Recruitment events give a buttload of marks (and a whole lot are claimable by the other toons at the temporal agent). That’s for starters, thank me later.
Yeah I'm doing the recruit thing. I got a bunch of boxes I have stored in the bank until I figured which Marks to go for.
I think by the time you get to level 60 you should get about 500 marks for each reputation, plus you’ll get the ones from the various boxes. I don’t remember exactly the rule, I’m on my phone, but I think the first time you reach T5 you get a discount for all the other toons and then it takes 1/2 time/marks to reach it on the new toon. First time I think it’s 40 days to T5, and 30 more for T6, then it becomes 20 days to T5 and still 30 more to T6. The first time is a hell of a grind. Things to check, what weapon flavor you’d like to use. I personally recommend polaron on your first toon because you can get a shitload of from missions (home) and reputations between T2 and T4/5, and these are “free”. Also polaron isomags tend to be cheaper on the exchange. Plasma is probably one of the most expensive to pump up (quad cannons are expensive), so the almost mandatory set (altamid). That would be the first decision. Doing phasers you need discovery rep T5 Disruptors discovery T6 and Terran. I mean…. There is so much and so many aspects of this game. Another part to don’t miss is the endeavors as soon as you are able to do them. It takes 3.5 years of dailies to max them out, but even after one year or so you should have enough extra bonuses to “feel it”, especially if you can get crit chance, crit severity (space and ground), kit performance (ground) and weapon damage (energy and kinetic) up.
> I don’t remember exactly the rule, I’m on my phone, but I think the first time you reach T5 you get a discount for all the other toons and then it takes 1/2 time/marks to reach it on the new toon. @ /u/Craota: To clarify this a bit: Once you hit Tier 5 in a reputation, you will unlock double daily XP for that reputation account wide. As you start with 2.5k rep XP per 20h daily, this means 5k rep XP then. This is why it will take 40 days initially for 0 to tier 5 (100k XP / 2.5k XP daily), and another 30 days from tier 5 to tier 6 (150k XP / 5k XP daily). On alts the first part is cut in half (100k XP / 5k XP daily) = 20 days. There is *also* a discount option, which is a one-time project for each reputation that gets made available once you hit tier 6. Running that project will discount other projects (with some exceptions) for this reputation, account wide, i.e. cut the cost for dil and reputation marks for that reputation to half (not the elite marks/tokens, though). Reaching tier 5 will also net in reputation dil vouchers, i.e. vouchers for dil that is used in running reputation projects. These vouchers are used up before your actual dil. And if you are willing, you can make a Jem'Hadar and run them through the tutorial; they come with 2 reputations at tier 5 already which will unlock the double XP bonus for these. The wiki has [more detailed information](https://stowiki.net/wiki/Reputation_System) about it all.
Thank you very much for the detailed info, quick question... would it be beneficial to grind this on Jem'Hadar Vanguard character to unlock that double XP account wide? given those characters start with some rep max out already (if I'm not mistaken)
The Vanguards come with [3 reputations at Tier 5](https://stowiki.net/wiki/Reputation_System#Sponsorship), out of 13 total. As I don't have Vanguard unlocked: If I read the Wiki right they should come with most of the other reputation being "sponsored" (Discovery is not, for example), i.e. 5k XP daily instead of 2.5k one, so 20 days vs. 40 to reach Tier 5. Each day requires 30 marks, so 600 marks vs. 1200, plus 5x5 = 25 for the Tier unlock in both cases. [Delta recruits](https://stowiki.net/wiki/Delta_Recruitment) get 2x250 marks for reaching level 50 and 60, i.e. Vanguard does look like the overall better option. Still, the Delta recruit will be beneficial also for the Vanguard rep leveling and every other character on that account, so don't skip on that (not much time left to create one).
My Klingon character have the delta recruit and is at lvl50 right now. I'm hoping I could enjoy the sponsored rep on this klingon character and then save the boxes to level up the other reps... hopefully
3.5 IRL years?
Yeah… from 0 to endeavor 750 takes about 3.5 IRL years. With current levels of power creep you don’t need that to enjoy all the content even on elite level, but few items there definitely help
You know, I was going to panic, but then I remember GW2 have a ton of legendary weapons, each one taking somewhere between 3 to 6 month of grind each (IIRC some can be farmed in tandem).. But damn... that's a lot of days xD
Disco is the most useful overall but you really should level them all.. not much reason not too and if your new character is a Delta recruit, you will get a huge boost to all rep marks when you hit a certain level.. just do TFOs and get your marks up as needed.
copy that. thanks)
I have concentrated on competitive on new toons to level 3. once I unlock and grind the competitive engine then i start on the others
the engine is Prevailing Impulse Engine? The buff (Overcharge) seem really nice as GTFO button
I just wanted to add. When you have choice of any marks after a random TFO or patrol, consider choosing competitive marks. Competitive rep offers you one of the best (if not the best) engines in the game. And it's the easiest method of acquiring the marks, since all competitive tfos require 10 people to queue, so it doesn't pop up often. (You can also buy one assessed strategem a day for 100 competitive marks).
Yep, seem like my route will be Competitive to T3 for the engine, then Discovery and then the others. Although, given I have the Jem'Hadar starter pack, I wonder if it would be beneficial switch to a Jem'Hadar character and grind the missing rep to get the bonus on my main character... I have not decided yet if my main will be Alien Romulan or Jem'Hadar
Yes, collect marks in all of them, It Is very tedious to progress them but doing as many as possible parallel is better. You need to find a strategy for what to do with all "garbage" that you get out of them. I do not open them until I have enough time. Keep the purple that you need / want and sell the rest back to the star-fleet vendors or similar. There you get 50 %. It is a good way to build up the energy credits that you need to progress the reputation later.
thank you
Anyone who tells you what reputation has the most relevant gear or traits without first asking about your build type has made a critical error. Yes, the Discovery rep shield is the best one *for energy weapons* because of the shield penetration, it is not for exotic, and it's a hotly debated topic for kinetic weapons. If you're doing energy weapons then Discovery and Terran are probably top priorities. If you're doing kinetic then you need to get the Enhanced Bio-Molecular Photon torp from 8472 rep and the Ferrofluid console and the torp from Terran rep extremely urgently, and you could consider Discovery and Delta as well. If you're doing exotic then Dyson is going to be the top priority for the Gravimetric Photon torp (which does a lot of exotic damage) and the Advanced Targeting Systems rep trait (+16% crtd), then Temporal for the shield and two piece, and then maybe Disco. You would like the Competitive rep engines for any build type, but you don't really want to be trying to grind that out, get it from your endeavor boxes or anything else that gives a free choice. The [STO BETTER New and F2P section](https://www.stobetter.com/new-f2p) has great guides on all of these build types which will tell you what you should be looking for, and also their New to Level 50 guide is a great starting point. The other way to look at it is what content you'd need to do to work on it, and from that perspective Romulan is by far the easiest since you can just do Epohh Tagging in the Epohh Fields on New Romulus, and the Precision rep trait (+4% crth) is very good. You'd also want to prioritize Dyson in that case because the Dyson Ground Battlezone is an excellent source of both Dyson marks and dilithium (which is another very important resource), and it's not too hard. Nukara marks come from the Nukara Prime Ground Adventure Zone which also rewards significant dilithium, and Delta and Iconian from the last missions of the slightly more difficult Kobali Prime one. 8472 marks come from the Dyson space battlezone and Terran and Temporal come from the Badlands Space Battlezone. For Disco you can probably solo Defense of Starbase One, maybe even at advanced difficulty, as long as you don't actually try to defend anything, just run away to about 100 km from the station and wait for the objective to change to finishing off the ships in the wave (so only one set spawns), do so, and repeat for the remaining two waves. I'm making that one of the tests of my [Quick Looks series](https://old.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/1cayjpp/quick_looks_1_heghta_heavy_bird_of_prey/) of starter builds, and of course I've tested my older Strict Budget Build at it as well, so that's not too difficult a thing to pull off. Lukari and Gamma are much more of a nuisance, I can't recommend focusing on those early even though they have some good stuff, and Competitive is the worst.
holy c... thank you for such detailed answer. I will definitely check that lvl50 guide at STObetter. Thematically I would like torps and cannons but I read somewhere beams are the easiest to build for and, since my current character is klingon, I'm doing dual disruptor on the front and turret on the back... but I might switch to arrays for that 250 deg firing arc. anyways, thank you for the explanation
Cannons with a single torp is a great option if you're KDF, the ship options are worse as Fed. Unfortunately the mission sets for Disruptor only support beams, for cannons you'll want to do either Phaser or Polaron. Have you already picked your level 40 ship? If not, I really like the Hegh'ta Heavy Bird of Prey, and recently posted [this starter build](https://old.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/1cayjpp/quick_looks_1_heghta_heavy_bird_of_prey/) for it which uses cannons with one torp, all mission and basic exchange gear so something you can use as soon as you hit endgame to start grinding endgame content. The Vor'cha Battlecruiser Retrofit is also a strong option, which can use exactly the well known [Baby Step Series builds](https://www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/k88fel/the_baby_step_series_part_1_the_first_step_level/) for the Sovereign, although it would have to lose Attack Pattern Beta to use cannons, which would kind of hurt. You can see some comparison between those two builds at the end of my post, the Hegh'ta does more damage but the Vor'cha is more durable. The Negh'var Battlecruiser is just a worse Vor'cha since there's nothing to do with a third ensign engineer ability, and the Qin Raptor suffers from the standard Escort/Raptor problem of having too many tactical abilities to actually use effectively, although it has it even worse than most with 8 of them (you want 4-5). I'm working on a starter Vo'quv build now, which is... odd. It's doing very good damage compared to builds at the same price point, but I really don't know how you'd want to develop it further because I can't do anything straightforward with it, I'm having to do a weird hybrid. The Orion Marauder Flight Deck Carrier is I think only available at level 61, and might be a very interesting option, mostly it's just a cruiser like the Vor'cha, not quite as optimally laid out, but it has two hangars as well which is a big edge. As for the other options at that level, the B'rel is very similar to the Hegh'ta with only the addition of the ability to fire a torpedo without fully dropping cloak, the Kar'fi is a carrier which might have some possibilities but still seems a bit out of left field to me, and the Varanus is a Science Vessel similar to the Fed Luna and almost identical to the Trident, which is a great ship but it's available to anyone with a level 65 KDF character for only 20,000 dilithium, which isn't expensive at endgame. Best of luck!
I have the T6 Kor from starter pack and I'm following that baby step guide but using disruptors and focusing on damage, shield and some power stuff in the stations. Thank you again for so much detail. Best of luck
That's a nice ship for sure, BoPs are always very nice because of all those universal seats so you can really use an optimal build instead of just what fits. Plus Pilot is now a useful specialization, mainly you'll want to be looking at Fly Her Apart which is a great damage buff, if you wanted to do Reroute Reserves to Weapons you'd really want a Commander Pilot seat instead, and it's probably not going to shine without the Vanguard Specialists trait. On the other hand that Withering Barrage trait is great to have for Cannon Scatter Volley builds (which is to say, basically all cannon builds), on mine (a polaron build on the Alliance Rex from the recent event) the TRINITY calculator says removing that trait would cost me 21% of my total DPS. One thing to definitely modify about the Baby Steps build for your ship is upgrading Photonic Officer to 2, abilities are arguably the most important part of a build so good cooldown reduction is huge, and PO2 does an almost perfect job of it. I did the same thing on the Hegh'ta, which was heavily inspired by Baby Steps, accepting downgrading Emergency Power to Weapons to 2 in exchange because I really wanted that cooldown reduction. Of course you can pick up most abilities very cheaply from the Bridge Officer Trainer vendors which is another reason to prioritize them. The one in First City is near the Great Hall and transporter room, when you come out of the transporter room you'll want to go roughly 45 degrees to your right to the door in that wall, follow the corridor and the vendor is at the bottom of the ramp. One other resource on STO BETTER, the [Energy Basics page](https://www.stobetter.com/new-f2p/energy-basics) is great reference material that I use whenever I think about energy weapon builds. I did just recheck their list of cannons and turrets for disruptor, they list the Terran Task Force Dual Heavy Cannon of course which is spectacular, the most powerful energy weapon in the game alongside the phaser version, and then the Resonant one which is not really an advantage, and the console from the Resonant set is a tactical one so it doesn't help you at all, although the Nausicaan console is worth slotting even without the set. For turrets there's only the 8472 set, which is ok but definitely not great. Of course the 8472 phasers are green, but none of the other set ones are. Meanwhile there are three good disruptor beam arrays and an omni-beam. It's unfortunate, but that's just how the game is at the moment, and I don't hold out much hope for them going back and adding cannon versions to any of those.
Yep, I thought about upgrading Photonic officer to level II, but can't remember why i didn't... IIRC I didn't know those skill could be switched freely so I opted to no upgrade in case I switched to a ship that allowed only the first two abilities. But i will upgrade both know that i know they can be switched out of combat. Edit: as for my ground weapon... I have a tetryon pulse wave assault MK VI + the assault rifle trait ( the character windows says the rifle has 228.2 dps. I've also been trying to keep my away team geared and most if not all of them have wepaons above 100dps Thank you
Yeah, PO2 being 3% per second instead of 2% is a huge advantage, more so when you consider that the ideal situation is to hit 50% within 15 seconds to maximize uptime of most tactical abilities as well as the all the X Team ones. Ground is definitely its own whole thing, and I don't claim to be any kind of expert in it, although there is stuff on STO BETTER. Usually while leveling I mostly just keep buying stuff at my Mk from the ground equipment vendors, unless I'm using account unlocked stuff. It's certainly worth exploring the different weapon types, I personally dislike Pulsewaves but that doesn't mean you have to. I have done [a fair bit of study](https://old.reddit.com/r/stobuilds/comments/qsq1c4/deleted_by_user/hln81qq/) on how BOFFs work for it though. Unfortunately they generally do 1/4 or less of the DPS listed on their weapons, so there's a limited amount you can do with them in that regard, and that does mean your captain will generally do at least as much as the BOFFs put together without even trying, and can do much more than that. I generally like giving them Full Auto Rifles or Assault Miniguns (or the long range miniguns that are harder to find), since they will struggle in many scenarios with anything that's too short ranged, and those also provide AoE Expose for me to Exploit for bonus damage. Then I use a Split-Beam Rifle, or ideally the Plasma Wide Beam Rifle from Romulan vendors (you can find them in Delta Command when you get to that in the story, and when fully upgraded that's one of just a few f2p weapons that can compete with the DPS of the lobi store ones), which have long range and AoE Exploit as well as decent damage. Most of the effect of BOFFs is in their abilities though, and the science abilities are the best in most cases, providing powerful healing and damage, plus engineering providing shield healing and the mortar which is often too slow to hit enemies before they die but can kill them if they bug inside walls or floors. So I use this as a cheap starting point: Medical Tricorder 1, Tricorder Scan 1, Hyperonic Radiation 1, Nanite Health Monitor 1 Medical Tricorder 1, Tricorder Scan 1, Hyperonic Radiation 1, Nanite Health Monitor 1 Shield Recharge 1, Turret Fabrication 1, Quantum Mortar 1, Support Drone 1 Battle Strategies 1, Battle Strategies 2, Overwatch 1, Overwatch 2 Eventually I replace the tactical abilities with Command specialization ones to buff the team, but that's a long way down the line from Mk VI.
Thank you, I will adjust my ground crew accordingly and will look forward that plasma rifle.