ABOUT MERITS AND PRIZES (Merits)

Merits are those “red star” currency you can expend inside the Timeportal (store).
Merits are gained through several ways:

-Dismissing crew
-Daily reward
-Calendar reward
-Fleet reward
-Missions

Early in the game your main source of merits will be calendar and daily rewards and mission, thought this is a very slow process. I’ll give you two big tips.

1. Join a Fleet: I wasn’t aware of this before and I tend to play alone, but joining a big fleet with players that routinely do daily missions will be an important daily source of Merits.

2. As soon as you reach mid game and (you have completed let’s say… Episode 7) you should have a big crew and you should have completed the common and uncommon crew members and raised them to full 2 stars because you will get copies of them.
From this point by dismissing this copies your Merit income (along with the fleet rewards) will skyrocket.

And you will be asking yourself… why are those merits so important?
Well because of the Honor Hall (store) inside the time portal. Push the Merit Icon to get inside.

The first thing you will notice is that there are several characters here:
Dr phlox 5 stars
Khaless 5 Stars
Crusher 5 Stars
EMH Doctor 2 Stars
Stargazer Picard 1 stars

All of this are great for your team, crusher 2 stars is pretty common along Kess, you won’t need EMH, and SG Picard is not an outstanding choice either, pick them when you are going to level up to 100 so you can complete collections.
Crusher 5 stars is the obvious choice since High level medics are the least common crew you will find.
if you happen by luck to have a good medic, pick Khaless if you need security and command, or pick phlox if you need engineering, science and some medical.

 Again EMH and Stargazer is not needed and only pick it when you are going to rise them for level 100 immortal, that way you will have free space in your barracks.


 Now what about the other prizes?

-Replicator rations: These are a waste of merits, you can use your excess of items as fuel for the replicator, avoid this choice like plague.

-Hologram training: These are common to come by doing anything literally and are not worth your merits, again, avoid this like plague.

-Honorable citations: Now thing are turning interesting, avoid buying the 2-3 stars citations. Is best to get a copy of the crew you are trying to get and fuse them. Nevertheless there are some “rare” crewmen among them (for example getting a kazon is pretty rare among green, but getting a picard or crusher or seven level 2  is pretty common, also getting a Chakotay is pretty common but getting an Owaga 2 is kind of scarce, getting a copy of “stargazer picard” by random is impossible, handle with care)
Bout I would say, don´t buy 2-3 stars citations.

Now, citations level 4 and 5 are worth it, since is kind of unlikely you will get several copies of an specific crewmate at this level.

 

SuperRare-Legendary Behold: This items are interesting because, theoretically you could get a cheap copy of a level 4-5 crewmate or a totally new crewmate, but...
but, because of its huge random nature you could end up with a horrible monster abomination or ridicule dressed alien, (I like Spacetheme stuff just a personal choice)

Or you could end up with a redundant crewmate, (let´s say you have two level 5 high command char, one high science and one high security, you need medical, engineering or diplomacy and you get a random high command char, again).

One great use of the random 45.000 merit 5 star crew is that, in case of you haven´t got not even one or just one 5 star chars, well: here is your chance to reinforce your crew.

Don’t overlook merits, remember, early is not very usefull but midgame will help you reinforce your 4stars crew and get some 5 stars crew

 

Enjoy,

Play long and prosper