Base Guide

What do you mean by grinding/farming?

By grinding/farming I mean finding an efficient way to gain currency or advancement in the game. When you take the time investment, combined with the difficulty of an activity and compare it to the rewards gained to find the most efficient content to play repeatedly.

But grinding is anti-fun, why would you make a guide for anti-fun?

A few quick reasons, first off not all consider it anti-fun. Secondly some people do not enjoy a particular type of content and just want to get it over with. Finally some players may be having a difficult time finding enough time or lack the knowledge to make the progress they desire. This guide is for their benefit.

Does STO promote farming?

Yes and no. It is true that some content has really good rewards when compared to others. However these tend to be limited in the number of times you can do them by either being once per day or having a cooldown or thirty minutes to an hour each time you play.

Why no mention of Doffs?

Farming with Doffs is a guide in and of itself that I may make at a later time.

Omega Marks

Infected The Conduit (Space Elite STF)

Duration (10 – 20 minutes)

Difficulty: Easy – Medium

Rewards: 60+ Omega Marks, 960 Dilithium, 1+ Neural Processor

Detail: This STF is relatively easy and the rewards are very high. Especially with the random chance to get over 100 marks or 11 Neural Processors. While it can only be done once per hour it is the best way to grind out your marks and/or dilithium.

Ship Tips: You will need to be relatively tanky while still having a high amount of damage. Also be sure to bring repair components as you will occasionally explode due to bad luck or a mistake.

Walk-threw: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=282071 by latinumbar covers all STFs and is a very good read before you begin these.

Spicing it Up

Khitomer Vortex (Space Elite) is also really easy especially once you get good with your ship. Cure Found (Space Elite) is a bit more difficult but not by much if you get good and have a solid group.

Avoid

Into the Hive and all the ground STFs unless you have a good premade. Pugging them is painful and simply not worth the effort. Also avoid Defaria as the rewards are simply not worth the time.

Romulan Marks

Tau Dewa Sector Patrol (Daily)

Duration (2-4 minutes per encounter, 5 encounters)

Rewards: 75 Marks when turned in during event hour, 60 otherwise

Detail: These missions are easy kill 5 waves of enemies. You can redo the same system five times in a row if you want to avoid travel time and will also get some energy credits for your troubles. Below are the best systems to run in my opinion.

Ship Tips: Most of the missions have swarms of enemies making cannon scatter volley amazing.

Gamma Eridon (Gorn): Sometimes use Aceton Assimilators which are annoying, and warp plasma

Narenda (Hirogen): Use subneuclonic beam frequently, Science Team clears it.

Japori (Nausicaans): The stinger fighters can kill your turn rate somehow, attack pattern omega clears it or just scatter volley them to death.

Spicing it Up

If you scan a few Radiation Samples on New Romulas you will get an additional daily mission where you goto five systems and scan the satellites doing the same mini-game. The rewards are decent for the time involved and it helps to get some variety in the systems you run, just be sure to ignore the Gelki Herding. You can just fly to the satellite and ignore the actual mission in the system. Also the Red Alert when it doesn't bug is pretty good too just be sure to bring weapon batteries.

Epohh Raising

Guide: http://sto-forum.perfectworld.com/showthread.php?t=469481&highlight=epohh by mimey2

Detail: While the amount of time and effort involved is minimal, the number of days it can take if you do not get doff crits combined with having to either travel to New Romulas all the time makes me not really care for this. It is great for an alt that just camps there but I find the rewards from the sector daily to be better overall.

Avoid

Azure Nebula Rescue and the other queue missions have terrible rewards for the time they take. The rewards on New Romulas aside from Epohh raising are also pretty bad but the missions are enjoyable.

Fleet Marks

Investigate Officer Reports

Duration: Varies

Rewards: 50 Fleet Marks, 960 Dilithium

Detail: This is a wrapper mission and rewards you for completing a Foundry mission. While some of the other methods of obtaining fleet marks provide just as many for the same amount of time investment they do not offer dilithium as well making this the best method. In addition you can do one of these every 30 minutes if you desire. One small thing to make a note of though is that after a point you will no longer get item drops or experience as there is a daily limit of about 750k-1mil EC value that will drop. My favorite Foundry mission(s) are listed below. Be sure to tip the authors who make these possible.

Battleship Royal: This takes 10 – 20 minutes to complete and gives out 250k+ EC worth of gear on top of the wrapper rewards. Entry is at earth spacedock just be sure to take a few weapon batteries to speed things up as you will get hit with Viral Matrix a few times.

Gorn Minefield (Random Daily Wrapper)

Duration: 10-15 minutes

Rewards: 960 + 480 Dilithium, 50 Fleet Marks, 1-2 Purple Mk XI Item

Detail: This is another wrapper mission but it is a random daily and is not available every day. When it is though be sure to run it as the rewards are excellent. Just make sure the team scans all 4 mineral samples to get the rewards.

Dilithium

Detail: The best part of the season 7 reward changes is that you tend to get Dilithium while doing other things and so you should not have to worry too much about grinding this. Keep in mind the best way to get dilithium is to run the elite space STFs and do the conversion projects via the reputation system.

Daily Missions: http://www.stowiki.org/Dilithium#Missions is a great list from the wiki. To increase efficiency take the mission but do not run it until the next day, then you can do them, turn them in and retake them and do them a second time to reduce travel time.

Breen: You may want to bring a Science Team as Subneuclonic beam is annoying

Eta Eridana: If you do any of these make sure it is the Alhena mission for the consumable reward and the follow-up mission is very quick and easy.

Energy Credits

Detail: This currency is just not a good idea to try and grind directly. You are better off grinding Dilithium to exchange for Zen and selling things like Master Keys on the exchange. With that said though some missions do reward a larger amount of loot than others such as battleship royal and the more ships you blow up in general the more credits you get. Other than that if you are good at placing 1^st in Fleet Actions like Gorn Minefield and Starbase 24 you can get a lucky item that will sell on the exchange.

Experience

Mirror Event (Queue Event)

Duration: 10+ minutes

Reward: ?? Dilithium

Detail: When this event is active it is time to break out that low level alt and get a few quick levels.

Explore Strange New Worlds (Daily)

Duration: Varies

Reward: 1,440 Dilithium

Detail: While there might be faster ways of gaining experience I like to earn dilithium while leveling and this is a great way to do so.

Warships

Currently DPS is king. Some may debate this but it is true. And while Escorts tend to be the best DPS ships new ships are constantly added that blur the line on ship types. For example is the Chet Grell an escort or a cruiser?

So I propose a simple classification to the ships I recommend players use, Warships. Any ship that meets these standards is a warship and is ideal for current PvE grinding/farming.

- Equip Heavy Cannons
- Can keep a cannon skill and attack pattern active
- Turn rate high enough to keep DHCs on target.

Not very complicated and many ships qualify. Granted their are some with better performance than others but any ship that meets those criteria will be very effective. As for builds here is a general framework to use when selecting consoles and boff abilities to use but feel free to customize it to your liking.

Consoles
Engineering: A Monotanium Alloy and one or two Neutronium Alloy will greatly increase your survivability.
Science: I really like the new embassy Emitter Array consoles with [-Th] & [Pla].
Tactical: As many +Energy type for your weapon as possible.
Universal: Both the Assimilated Module and Zero-Point Energy Conduit consoles are amazing and should be on every ship. Some of the other consoles are sometimes useful like Theta Radation but I find passive bonuses to be superior the majority of the time.
Field Generators: Are vastly over valued. While they do increase your shield capacity it is not by that large of an amount typically less than half of what they list. In addition they do not increase the regeneration rate or resistance of your shields. In my experience it is far better to have stronger heals with Emitter Array consoles or to simply use the Science console slots for universal consoles. Simply put unless you are exploding in under five seconds of enemy fire that console is not improving your performance. This is of course just my opinion.

Boff Abilities
Cannon Rapid Fire/Scatter Volley:  You should have two copies of one or one of each. Both are very effective and the choice is more of a style or personal preference.
Attack Pattern: Two copies of Beta are my preference most of the time as they provide the highest damage increase. Delta is good if you lack hull resists but I find it's cooldown to be cumbersome. Omega is simple amazing but has a much longer cooldown than beta. I tend to either use a pair of Beta or a single Beta and two Omega depending on ship.
Tactical Team: This is key to keeping you alive. Two copies and you will still have a 5 second gap in shield distribution between them but it is better than the alternative.
Emergency Power to Shields: This doubles your survivability. Two copies if possible.
Hazard Emitters: Clears plasma fire and many other debuffs, increases hull resists, and restores hull. A single copy is usually enough.

Other Abilities: Their are many other abilities that are good to use depending on the ship. Torpedo Spread, Auxiliary Power to Structural, Reverse Shield Polarity, Transfer Shield Strength, Eject Warp Plasma, and more. Experiment and see what works best for your particular setup.

A Pair of Example Builds
Fleet Defiant, Tactical Captain
Weapons: 3x Disruptor Dual Heavy Cannons, Quantum Torpedo,  3x Disruptor Turrets
Equipment: 3 piece Maco Set
Consoles
Monotamium Alloy,  Neutronium Alloy, Assimilated Module
Emitter Array [-Th][Pla], Zero Point Energy Conduit
5x Disruptor Induction Coil
Boffs
Tactical Team 1, Cannon Scatter Volley 1, Attack Pattern Beta 2, Attack Pattern Beta 3
Tactical Team 1, Torpedo Spread 2, Cannon Rapid Fire 2
Torpedo Spread 1
Emergency Power to Shields 1, Auxiliary to Structure 1
Transfer Shield Strength 1, Hazard Emitters 2
- This build is pure damage. It can tank well enough and the doffs I use help but it shreds NPCs.

Steamrunner, Engineer Captain
Weapons: 4x AntiProton Dual Heavy Cannons, 3x AntiProton Turrets
Equipment: Maco Shield, Assimilated Engine & Deflector
Consoles:
Monotamium Alloy, 2x Neutronium Alloy, Assimilated Module
Emitter Array [+Th][Pla], Zero Point Energy Conduit
4x Antiproton Mag Regulator
Boffs
Tactical Team 1, Cannon Rapid Fire 1, Attack Pattern Beta 2, Attack Pattern Delta 3
Tactical Team 1, Cannon Rapid Fire 1, Attack Pattern Omega 1
Emergency Power to Shield 1, Directed Energy Modulation 1
Eemergency Power to Shield 1, Reverse Shield Polarity 1
Hazard Emitters 1
- This build allows me to tank even Tac Cubes while still putting out very high damage. I do not recommend actually using this build directly only as an example of what to use.

Duty Officiers
The sheer amount of variety here on what you can use is amazing. For now though I am simply going to list a handful that I find very useful.
Shield Distribution: Even after nerf these guys have a great chance at a great shield heal.
Conn Officer: Two purples will allow you to run a single Tactical Team and increase the power of your attack patterns. Alternately if your wallet allows they can allow you to use a single AP:O 3 every 30 seconds.
Hazard System: Not a popular choice but I find the extra resistance buff effective.
Technicians: In combination with Auxiliary to Battery this can allow a ship with a single strong Tactical Boff to become a warship.

Additional Resources
The Hilbert PvP Guide has a quick over view on a PvE escort and is in general a great source of information located here

A great thread on the official forums is located here

Golden Rule

The information on this page is for improving your game play experience. After all this is a game, not a job, and you should be having fun! To that end if any of the advice contained here would interfere with you having fun and enjoying the game IGNORE it. If you love your cruiser with beams fly it. If your science vessel who heals and CCs puts a smile on your face use it. If you get a giggle from seeing blue plasma fires spawn because of your tetryon cannons with romulan consoles use them. Even I do.

Ship Equipment

Most MMOs use a tier system for the endgame gear and I shall do the same for ease of use.

Tier 1: This is what you should get to begin doing Elite STFs. It is the basic gear that all VAs should have.

Tier 2: Mid-Grade gear but still really good. With this stuff you are at 99% of potential performance.

Tier 3: For those who want that extra % of damage.

Energy Weapons
Tier 1: Either green+ Mk X+ weapons purchased from the exchange or alternatively weapons from episode replays. Dominion Cannons, or Plasma-Disruptor Cannons are both very effective although the Plasma-Disruptors are superior.

Tier 2: Mk XII Polarized Disruptors found on the exchange from Temporal Lock Boxes or the Romulan Reputation Mk XII weapons.

Tier 3: Fleet Weapons with either the [Acc] or [CritH] mod.

Shields
Tier 1: Either green+ Mk X+ Shield Basic or Covariant with a [Pla] mod from the exchange or Jem'Hadar Resilient Shields work well.

Tier 2: Mk X Maco Shield from Omega Reputation is amazingly effective.

Tier 3: Mk XII Maco, Omega, or Honor Guard are all good although I feel Maco is the best.

Engines / Deflector
Tier 1: A green+ Mk X+ Positron Deflector Array.

Tier 2: Mk X Assimilated Deflector and Engines from Omega Reputation are very good, or Mk XII of the set with a bonus desirable for your build.

Tier 3: Mk XII Assimilated or Mk XII of the set with a bonus desirable for your build.

Weapon Energy Type: Not all energy types are equal and when given the choice on which proc to aim for this is how I rank them from overall DPS potential.

1) Disruptors will lower the target's resistance increase all damage against it from everyone.
2) AntiProton will increase critical hit chance by 2% and is always good.
3) Polaron drains target energy reduce their defense, damage, shield resist and regeneration.
4) Plasma adds a small damage over time to target hull.
5) Phaser can disable target shields or any subsystem.
6) Tetryon can drain a minor amount of shields.

While many might feel tetryon is stronger I must disagree. Anything cube or smaller will loose their shield facing on the first salvo and when your hitting for thousands of damage every second draining a hundred shield is not going to matter much.