What's a decently quick way to get Zen?

[Snydergate]

I need some suggestions for getting Zen quick. I know about the dilithium exchange, any other way? I don't want to just buy it with real money either.

[Wobby]

Wow... why do people need to make a freaking flame war, and go this big off topic. All the Op asked was what was the best way to get Zen. Also the "Free" zen option, 9/10 times is just a scam, altho it will fill up your junk mail nice and easly!

[Elder Drake]

lol @ above flame war over semantics

OT-Cold hard facts about OP's question:

tl;dr version: My two cents, think long term and play the market. This will enable later fast turnaround profits to enable nearly any purchase

Wall-o-Text Explanation:
1.) The only way to get Zen (beyond those shady free Zen offers on the main site) is via the Dilithium Exchange. The market is 100% player driven and plays like a stock market with you posting Refined Dilithium for X amount of Zen (or vice versa). You can see the current rates and base your selling points from there with the bonus of absolutely no brokerage fees (awesome for the long term point below). Obviously selling outside those bounds will get you nowhere but if you sell at market value it is usually an instaneous transaction after posting.

2.) You can only refine 8k Dilithium/day, but that is per character. Lots of techniques for efficient Dilithium farming, simply Google something like "sto dilithium farming". To hit that limit, based on how 'in the zone' and quick you are, you are looking at realistically around 1 hour/character (less the better you get).

3.) Thinking short term fast gains is just not realistic imo. Let's look at a model that takes the market value I saw tonight as an example. Tonight I saw an average of 128 Dilithium/1 Zen. 100 Zen=$1 USD, most end game ships are 2500 Zen (or a pack of 3 of them for 5000). There are cheaper items of course (lockbox keys are 125 for example) but let's just say you want that one ship at 2500 Zen. If you bought the Zen tonight you would need (2500(Zen needed)*128(Dilithium for 1 Zen) 320000 Refined Dilithium. If you assume at best 30 minutes for 8k (being VERY generous there for someone just learning how to do it), you are looking at 20 hours of actual time spent solely collecting Dilithium, 40 if you average 8k/hour. That is the equivalent of working a full time job for one week, for one ship. (sure hope my math is right there but I believe it is...point regardless is Dil farming sucks for purchases).

4.) Thinking long term requires patience and some market savvy. Think of a snowball rolling downhill, gaining mass the longer it goes. Now think of that analogy with the Dilithium Exchange. If you play it like a day trader, watching for market tendencies based on time of day, day of the week and so on and get a mean for when it is good to buy, and then when to sell you will absolutely make a profit. The larger your investing capital (Dilithium that you do not sell but hoard for trading) you will, based on your market skills, see yourself skyrocket. That 320000 Dilithium figure above seems crazy right? It's pocket change for the market players that roll 1mil+ Refined, sit with thousands of Zen, hundreds of millions of Energy Credits (as uselsss as those are in this game, but that is another topic) have nearly every item you can think of in game, and they did it all free by being patient and smart with minimal effort beyond watching market points. (Note: Obviously subbing/lifetime members have different limits on how much they can accumulate overall but the number is absurdly high. Also, someone mentioned you can refine a bit more Dilithium/day if you have been subbed for a set perioud of active days or a lifetime subscriber...but I will assume you of course are not and it is only 1k extra and requires you to send a duty officer out on a 48hr assignment if I am not mistaken...so 500 whopping extra a day technically).

Longer than I sure in the hell intended but if you read the wall of text I hope it helps. Go long term smart (my advice) or pay for what you want short term. It is all up to you and the beauty of it is you can decide for yourself.

[Oneman728]

Truthfully I expect the Junk Mail from the Offers (Which is why I shunt it to my JUnk Mail address) I have earned a few Hundred Zen from them.

[searchin4reason]

the surveys are timewasters.most of them i had to do 1-2 surveys before i even got to the official survey and often times,i would get disqualified and not get any zen after 5-10 minutes.do not,i repeat DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME on these things,about one out of every 10 are actually going to give you something,most of them just run you through the survey and then boot you without actually giving you anything.

[Wobby]

nice necro....

[Stormstriker]

djgrrr7302007 a écrit :

the surveys are timewasters.most of them i had to do 1-2 surveys before i even got to the official survey and often times,i would get disqualified and not get any zen after 5-10 minutes.do not,i repeat DO NOT WASTE YOUR TIME on these things,about one out of every 10 are actually going to give you something,most of them just run you through the survey and then boot you without actually giving you anything.

Did you really have to necro a thread from 2013? I know Walking Dead is back in a week but bringing back a dead thread was not the way to honor that. lol Does the OP even care about this thread anymore after all this time?