Recipe

Overview

Recipes are one of the in-game rewards that come from playing City of Heroes that was added in Issue 9: Inventions

Recipes are part of the Inventions System. They are used to craft items useful to players such as power enhancements or temporary powers or respecs or costume unlocks.

A Recipe is required to make Inventions (except for Common IOs that have been memorized). You also need Invention Salvage, an Invention Worktable and Influence/Infamy.

A recipe can only be used once. Inventing the item associated with a recipe uses up the recipe.

Most recipes are for Invention Origin Enhancements, see that article for more information about IOs.

Recipe Drop 'Pools'

Main article: Recipe Drop Pools

Most of the recipes are collectible from simply fighting normal critters, and almost any has a chance of dropping one. Some recipes (Pool B) are only dropped from completing a mission. Most recipes can also be purchased with Merits or Tickets.

This makes 5 pools from which recipes are drawn:

Pool A: General Enemies

Pool B: Mission Completion

Pool C: Taskforce Random Recipe Roll (formerly Task Force/Strike Force)

Pool D: Trial Random Recipe Roll (formerly trial and Hamidon raid)

Pool E: Minions

Pool A is huge. Pools B, C, D, and E are small. Most Enhancement Sets have all IOs in Pool A alone.

Every five levels is a new table for each pool, so what can be found changes as you level. Not all levels have recipes in all five categories.

No recipe is tied to doing a specific task. This is done so people don't plan on farming AVs for rares. So completing any mission will award a random recipe from Pool B for that level, and defeating any foe, be it minion or boss, can award a recipe from Pool A for that level of foe, and so on.

Recipes from Defeating Foes

Traditional Pool A

These recipes come from defeating a computer controlled foe. The recipe may be common, uncommon, or rare. If a team defeats an enemy that drops a recipe, it goes to a random team member. The enemy's rank affects how likely it is to drop a recipe, with higher ranks giving higher chances (bosses more so than lieutenants, for example). The enemy's level does not influence drop chances, except that enemies that are too low in comparison to the player character, that con grey, provide no rewards at all (except reduced experience points). Drop chances aren't affected by the enemy's faction, either. None of these factors influence what kinds of recipes might drop or how likely they are to be common, uncommon, or rare.

According to Positron, the drop rates for Pool A (enemy) drops are:

Enemy	Rate
Minion	2.666667%
Lieutenant/Sniper	5.333333%
Boss/Elite Boss	7.999999%
Archvillain	either 100% or 0%, depending on the AV

Giant Monsters do not drop Recipes (but can drop Salvage). Underlings do not drop either.

When a Pool A recipe does drop, the Common:Uncommon:Rare ratio is: 32:8:1 (so Common is 78.05%, Uncommon is 19.51%, and Rare is 2.44%). (Again, from Positron)

In addition to Enhancement Recipes, there are recipes for costumes, temporary powers, and respecs:

Costume Recipes

main article: Invention Made Costumes

Costume items currently can only be used by the person who makes them. According to the documentation, making a costume item automatically delivers it to Icon or Facemaker for you to use. In other words, you can't invent a costume and then sell or give or trade that costume away. You can sell, give away, or trade the recipe and salvage for the costume, though. Once crafted, these costume pieces are treated like any other unlocked costume piece at the clothing shop and are now always available to be used on the character that crafted it. Prices for adding the costume piece fit the normal curve for costume changes.

Temporary Power Recipes

main article: Invention Temporary Powers

Temporary powers when crafted can only be used by the person who makes them. After they are created, the power icon should appear as normal in your tray and under the powers menu. Like all Temporary Powers, these have a set number of uses before they disappear. Unlike many of their brethren though, you can craft the same power multiple times (requiring that the first is used up).

These powers can not be sold or traded by Consignment House, but the recipe and salvage to make them can be.

Respec Recipes

main article: Respec Recipe

Respec Recipes currently can only be used by the person who makes them. They grant the character who crafted it a Free Respec to use at any time with /respec. You can't invent a respec and then sell or give or trade that respec away. You can sell, give away, or trade the recipe and salvage for the respec, though.

Purple Very Rare Level 50 Enemy Pool

It is unknown what the drop rate for the Very Rare Purple Recipes are. It is unknown whether they are part of the Pool A table or constitute a separate table. They drop only from foes that would ordinarily have a chance to drop a level 50 enhancement.

Very Rare Pool C & D Boss Defeat Pool

New to the game in Issue 14 is the chance for defeating a Boss (or Elite Boss or AV rank foe) to drop a Pool C & D recipe. This is a very rare chance to happen. This pool is weighted by usefulness, see Pool C & D section below.

PvP Defeat Player Pool

New to the game in Issue 14 is the chance for a special PvP Recipe to drop from defeating another player (in the Arena or in a PvP Zone or presumably also in a Base Raid if that is ever reestablished). Once you get a PvP Recipe drop, there is a 10 minute cool down before you are eligible for another PvP Recipe drop. (This has nothing to do with Rep credit which follows it's own 10 minute rule.)

Pool E

In Issue 10, all Invention Made Costumes were moved to this new pool to increase their drop rate. Costume recipes no longer drop off any critter ranks except Minion. On the other hand, it is possible to defeat a Minion and get both a Pool A and a Pool E recipe.

Pool B

Pool B is for recipes dropped for completion of door missions. When completing a door mission, each team member has a 10% chance of receiving a Pool B drop [1]. Hunt, Delivery, and Talk-to missions do not qualify for this drop, but door missions in Trials and Task Forces do qualify.

Pool C and D

Completing a Task Force, Strike Force, or Trial used to grant a recipe drop. However, that changed in Issue 13. They now grant each team member a certain number of Merits, or, for certain Trials that offer a unique reward such as a Hamidon Origin Enhancement or a Respec, they give the player a choice between the Merit Reward or the unique reward. Merits can then be used to purchase Recipes. Rewards from Trials and Forces are on a cool down timer which means either not being eligible for the unique reward or for diminishing returns on the Merit reward.

Main Article: Merit Rewards

Pool C used to be for Task/Strike Forces and Pool D for Trials. However, the Devs never provided a list of events that they defined as a Task/Strike Force or a Trial which led to some confusion over the status of certain Task Forces and Trials. The Caverns of Transcendence Trial dropped a Pool B recipe instead of a Pool D. The Eden and Sewers Trials dropped Pool C recipes instead of Pool D.

That confusion over what was a Trial or a Task Force was rendered pointless to debate with the institution of Merits in Issue 13. Merits replaced the Task/Strike Force recipe drops. The player could then take the Merits to a Merit Vendor to buy the recipe they wanted or to take a 'roll' on a Pool C or Pool D table of recipe rewards.

See also: Trial Random Recipe Roll

Combining Pools C & D in Issue 14

And now with Issue 14, the concern over what is Pool C or Pool D has also been rendered pointless since the two Pools are now effectively combined in every way whether one rolls for them at the Merit Vendor or at the Ticket Vendor, or whether they drop from defeating Bosses.

Weighting Pool C & D

The combined C & D Pool recipes are now also weighted by usefulness. This means recipes from IO Sets which are used more by players (e.g., melee sets or ranged sets) are more likely to drop than recipes from lesser used IO Sets (such as sniper or taunt).

Mission Architect Tickets

When playing Mission Architect arcs, the normal drop pools are suspended and Tickets are rewarded in the place of drops of recipes and other loot. However, when an arc is granted the status of Hall of Fame or Dev's Choice, then the normal drops are returned, just like all other regular missions, including even the very rare Purple recipe drops.

Purchasing and Selling Recipes

Common recipes can be purchased at fixed prices from any Invention Worktable.

At the Mission Architect Ticket Vendor

Main Articles: Ticket Vendor, Tickets

A Bronze Roll will roll on a weighted by usefulness table of Pool A (uncommon and rare) recipes with rares 50% more likely than in-play drops (but no purples or Pool C+D) {the actual ratio of uncommon:rare for in-play drops is unknown by players}

A Silver Roll will roll on a weighted by usefulness Pool B table with uncommons having an 8 times greater chance of dropping than rares {same ratio for in-play drops and rolling}. Plus the Pool A Rare recipes are duplicated in this pool, too, so that they're not too rare and to fill out the Pool B list, which is relatively small.

A Gold Roll will roll on a weighted by usefulness Pool C+D table

At the Merit Vendor

Main Articles: Merit Rewards, Merit Vendor

A Rare Recipe Roll will roll on a weighted by usefulness Pool C & D table.

NPC Value

All NPCs that purchase recipes do so according to the same formulas.

Uncommon recipes sell for the 100 * level. ex. A level 15 uncommon recipe will sell to an NPC for 1500 influence.
Rare recipes sell for 200 * level. ex. A level 15 rare recipe will sell to an NPC for 3000 influence.
Common (non-set) recipes sell according to a slightly more complicated fomula described below:

Recipe level	divider
10-25	8
30-40	5.3
45-50	4

First determine the cost to craft the given common recipe. Then use the above table to determine the divider based on what level the recipe is. Finally divide the cost to craft the enhancement by the divider for that level. ex. a level 50 damage IO costs 464,400 influence to craft. 464,400 / 4 = 116,100, the price an NPC will give you for that recipe.