Star Trek Online Tips and Tricks | Star Trek Online Energy Credit Tips | STO Tips

I’m writing this post to share with you how I’ve made 5,758,986 Energy Credits with a /played time of 6 days, 3 hours, 33 minutes, and 33 seconds. I want to start by saying that this is not necessarily a large sum of Star Trek Online Energy Credits, but I consider it to have been earned quite rapidly. Especially when you factor in that I was able to level up to Rear Admiral, Upper Half 4 in that same amount of time. This means that I haven’t focused exclusively on earning money, but rather, leveling. Some people may argue that Energy Credits are worthless in Star Trek Online. I, however, disagree. STO Energy Credits can allow you to purchase almost everything in game, including new ships. In addition, you can transfer the Energy Credits to other characters on your account. This would allow your new character to be outfitted with the best weapons and equipment from the very beginning.

Star Trek Online Energy Credit Tips

The technique I use to make Star Trek Online Energy Credits is one that I apply to a any game with an Exchange or Auction House that also has a way for you to sell to a vendor for a set, known price. In Star Trek Online, vendors will buy anything that you want to sell for half it’s value. The value is shown in the lower right-hand corner of the tool-tip you see when you hover over an item.

As you can see from this image of Impulse Engines MK X, the value is 45,000 Energy Credits. Half of which is 22,500 Energy Credits. This means that we could easily make our way to a vendor and offload the item for the half-value, but we could also try to sell it on the exchange to make more of a profit. To find out if our item is selling for more Energy Credits on the Exchange, let’s head over to it and find out. Open up the Exchange and click and drag the item to the ‘Search for name’ field.

Release the mouse button and the field will be populated with the items name.

Now, that was easy, wasn’t it. Just hit the search button and you can find out what items with that name are selling for on the Exchange. I chose the Impulse Engines MK X as an example because they allow me to highlight a few points I would like to make.

My first point, looking at the name of the item in the image we see that the first item isn’t the Impulse Engines Mk X, it’s Hyper-Impulse Engines Mk XI. The reason that the Hyper-Impulse Engines Mk XI show up in the list, is because the search term we searched for is contained in that item’s name.

Hyper-Impulse Engines Mk XI

As you can imagine, this same issue can crop up with Mk XII or Mk XIII items.

Now, we know that our Impulse Engines Mk X will sell for 22,500 Energy Credits to a vendor, but what can we get for them on the Exchange? By looking at the picture, it looks like we can sell them for 25,000 Energy Credits. But, as we’ve mentioned, those aren’t the same as the Impulse Engines Mk X that we have. Looking at the second item in the list we see that it is the item we actually have, meaning we can sell it for around 26,000 Energy Credits. Now here’s the real trick which, it appears, most people aren’t aware of. Price your items below the lowest price that you can find on the Exchange for your item. Even if you drop the price 1 – 2 thousand, or, on some higher-ticket items, 10 – 20 thousand, it’s a good idea. You may look at this and think, “no, I want to get as much for this item as I can.” I counter that argument by saying that you are only allowed to have 20 items total on the Exchange at a time (as of the writing of this post, it may increase in the future). This means that you need to sell your items that you post on the STO Exchange to make room for more to be posted. This isn’t rocket surgery, just good business sense.

My Star Trek Online Exchange Strategy

I want to share with you what I do after I return back to a starbase with a full inventory. Obviously, I head to the Exchange first off. I open the exchange and I start at the end of my inventory and work my way toward the beginning. I drag the last item in my inventory to the search field in the Exchange to populate the field and search for the item. Once the search is done, I confirm that the item’s displayed in the Exchange search are the same as the one I have in my inventory.. including rarity. Sometimes you can search for a green, uncommon, item that is in your inventory and you will get results that are all white, or common items. As far as I have seen, all uncommon items are worth more than their common counterparts. Once you’ve confirmed the items on the search are the same as the one you have in your inventory, look at the value of the item in the tool-tip and cut it in half. So if the item’s value is 40,000, you can sell it to a vendor for 20,000 credits. So you want to see if the items in the exchange are listed higher than half of their value.

Star Trek Online Exchange Strategy | Scenario #1

Let’s say that your search returned a bunch of results that are listed for around 21,000 Energy Credits. I don’t consider the 700 – 800 Energy Credits that you could get by listing this item and it selling worth it taking up 1 of your available 20 slots in the Exchange. So I would make a mental note to sell this item to the vendor and move along to the next item.

Star Trek Online Exchange Strategy | Scenario #2

Now, what if the items listed are posted for less than half the value? Well, I buy them all up and sell them to a vendor for a profit. You may think that this never happens, but it happens all of the time, especially at lower levels. So, lets say the search returned 4 items below the value of the item you’re trying to sell, so one at 17,000, one at 18,500, and two at 19,500. Buy them all, sell them to a vendor and make 5,500 Energy Credits with absolutely 0 risk on your investment. Just make sure that the items you are buying match the value you’ve calculated. Sometimes you may see that the value doesn’t match and only then realize that they are not the exact same item. Also, instead of just selling them to a vendor, you can try to post them back on the Exchange above the vendor sale price to make a bit more Energy Credits. However, I rarely see this work as usually items that are priced below their half-value on the Exchange are listed in great numbers, making for tough competition that is already under priced.

Star Trek Online Exchange Strategy | Scenario #3

What if the items posted on the Exchange are listed for double the vendor sale value? So, with this example, the postings on the Exchange start at 40,000 Energy Credits. This is perfect! What I do here is take a peek at how many items are in the list, 5, 10, 300. If there are only a few, I usually post my item a little more competitively. So, maybe I would post this item for 39,000 Energy Credits, or 39,500. If there are a ton of items all around the same price, I try to make my item stand out more by giving it a hefty discount. So, I would probably post this item for 37,000 or 37,500.

Star Trek Online Exchange Strategy | Conclusion

The primary goal, however, when I post an item on the Exchange is to sell the item. This is my number 1 priority. With only being able to post 20 items on the Exchange at one time, it is very, VERY important to sell them so that they can be replaced with other items. I always end up making a visit to my bank to deposit the rest of the items I have that cannot be posted on the Exchange. If I have an item that has been on the exchange for a few days and hasn’t sold, I pull it down and do the search / pricing again. Odds are good that someone undercut this item on the Exchange and others have followed suit. This means that my item was over-priced when people searched for it. I repost the item if I think it can sell, or I just vendor it.

Star Trek Online Tips and Tricks Contribution

I have a feeling that I will end up getting comments from a few Star Trek Online players saying something to the effect of, “I’ve played for 20 minutes and I have a billion Energy Credits, you’re a noob.” Well, that’s great for you, Mr. Amazing, but your comment wont make it onto my blog. I’m writing this post to try to help people that don’t know how to make a ton of Star Trek Online Energy Credits, not tell them how awesome I think I am, or how awesome you think you are. So, if you want to contribute, offer constructive criticism, or your own Star Trek Online Energy Credit Tips, make a clear comment to that effect. I don’t mind you telling me you’ve have 30 million Energy Credits, as long as you outline your method for earning them.