New to Level 50
Last Updated: August 2023
Congratulations, you hit level 50! Welcome to the beginning of the endgame. You've leveled up and filled out your skill tree and now the training wheels are going to start to come off if they haven't already for you.
What's New?
No more free ships: The free ship spigot you enjoyed if you weren't already using a T6 ship, where the game offered you a free ship every so often, will pretty much stop. There's one last T5 ship you'll be offered at level 61, but that's it. From now on, if you want ships at the more powerful T6 level, you'll have to buy or earn them through playing cyclical events.
Loot drops will stop increasing in mark. It'll be infrequent that will you get anything beyond Mk XII Very Rare and most drops will be less valuable than that. Loot drops from defeating enemies won't be a viable method of increasing your ship's power, in part because...
Game difficulty increases. The game's level-scaling takes a sharp upward climb at level 50. If you were chugging along happily blasting whatever came your way with whatever you found, this may be a very rude and unwarned surprise. If you're hitting the Delta Quadrant story missions around this time, this will be an extremely rude surprise.
Progression shifts away from leveling. The primary means of gaining power as a character in the earlygame were through leveling up, which opened up new bridge officer slots, skill points, and consoles on your ship. There's still some leveling up to do to fill out your specializations, but it's no longer the primary means of advancement. Now you'll move to acquisition-based methods of power increase, whereby you fill those slots (and acquire a few more) through spending resources earned through playing specific content in the game rather than just . . . playing the game.
Increased emphasis on multiplayer content. Due to the use of teamed Player-versus-Environment content (PvE) for awarding the specialized currencies you'll use at this point, you'll start interacting with more players if you choose to progress further. If you choose not to progress, that's fine, but you might find the difficulty wall much harder to scale without it.
What should you do first?
Start thinking about what kind of build you're aiming toward. Captain career does not matter, but the type of build you pursue will change your priorities. In this context, build refers to Energy (and most players choose this one), Exotic, or Projectile and we've linked our Basics guides for each of those to give you a brief overview. There are other more advanced build types like Tanks and Supports out there, but better to start with one of the others first.
Start the grind: There are several systems in STO that will take you more than a couple months to unlock fully. Start now, but try to pace yourself by focusing on the important ones to avoid burnout. It's not meant to be raced through.
R&D - If you haven't been focused on your R&D schools, there are some very specific projects you should be doing to level those up for unlocking some new items and traits. Choose the daily project that awards 6,000 R&D XP and slot it 3 times. It's better to focus on getting 1-3 schools leveled up to at level 15 (and stop there because level 20 takes awhile) before starting a new one. Here are the ones you'll want to focus on first depending on your build type:
Kinetic: Focus on Projectiles for the Kinetic Precision trait and Kinetic Amplifier batteries
Energy: Focus on Beams for the Beam Barrage trait if using Beams. If you're using cannons, still focus on Beams to unlock Energy Amplifiers
Exotic: Science R&D above all else for the Particle Manipulator trait that increases your exotic crits massively as well as Exotic Particle Flood batteries.
All builds: Engineering unlocks Give Your All, which is one of the better defensive traits if you're using low-cooldown Engineering abilities and most builds will be. Kits and Modules unlocks Technophile, which is a very solid ground trait, as well as the Penetrating Rounds ground trait.
Each R&D type grants a special type of consumable battery at level 10. All batteries have a shared cooldown, so only two can used effectively. Pick from the list below:
Beams: Battery - Energy Amplifier
Cannons: Battery - Targeting Lock
Engineering: Battery - Hull Patch
Projectiles: Battery - Kinetic Amplifier
Science: Battery - Exotic Particle Flood
There are also two ground ones, which we only recommend one; Large Kit Overbooster from Kits and Modules.
Reputations unlock at level 50. These reward systems offer you specific currencies called marks (along with another harder-to-obtain Elite currency specific to that reputation) from playing content themed around that faction that can be used to advance through their ranks and unlock powerful gear combinations. For example, the playing content against Iconians or their vassal races, either through Adventure Zones/Battle Zones or through teamed PvE Task Force Operations awards Iconian marks and Iconian Probe Datacores which can be used to unlock gear from that specific Iconian reputation. Prioritize running the daily project, which takes 20 hours to complete and takes some marks, to push each reputation up.
You can run daily projects in as many reputations as you care to, provided that you have the 30 marks, 15,000 energy credits, and 2,000 expertise to do so. Be aware that depleting ALL of your expertise to fill reputations will make it difficult to train bridge officers in new abilities. In this case, back off from reputations to refill this resource, and the way to do that is playing missions or task force operations.
The Basics guides listed above will provide much more detail about what reputations are best for which build type, but in short summary:
All builds should prioritize the Discovery Legends reputation for a variety of reasons, including engine/core/shield combinations, weapons, ground armor, EV suits, and reputation traits. This is the most important one.
All builds should try to acquire Romulan, Iconian, and Dyson reputations as well for their crit-boosting / healing reputation traits.
Energy builds will vary depending on flavor of energy weapon (e.g. Phaser versus Disruptor), but should all prioritize Iconian, Romulan, Omega, Gamma, and Dyson reputations for reputation traits or consoles. Temporal or Nukara also have situationally useful reputation traits. Additionally...
Phaser: Terran, Gamma
Disruptor: Terran, Romulan
Antiproton: Temporal
Polaron: Lukari, Gamma
Plasma: Romulan, Lukari
Tetryon: Nukara, but only for beams
Exotic builds should furthermore pursue the Dyson, Iconian, Omega, and Temporal reputations
Projectile builds should prioritize Omega, 8472 Counter-Command, Delta, and Terran Task Force reputations.
The Competitive Reputation is notable for having very powerful engines, especially for sluggish ships like big cruisers. This is the hardest reputation to level up due to the unpopularity of the content that awards its marks. If you're doing an event that offers choice of marks or get a choice of marks from boxes, this is a good idea.
As you can see, the least valuable reputations are probably Nukara and either Delta for non-projectile builds or Temporal for non-exotic or non-Antiproton builds. If you're not focusing on Polaron or Plasma, Lukari isn't a priority either. So if you're not building into those spaces, then you're probably okay to delay those and focus on other ones. Again, pace yourself for how much you want to play the game or else the grind can seem staggering.
Fully-unlocked reputations take 100 daily projects to finish for first-time players (it's shorter for new characters where the reputations have been unlocked on another character), but when you do, you also unlock a Fleet Ship Module and Skill Respec token for each reputation, as well as a nifty Vanity Shield for Space Barbie. It's thus worthwhile to unlock them all (eventually), since the Fleet Ship Modules are especially valuable for F2P accounts looking to pick up T6 ships.
The best places to earn reputation currency (marks) are as follows:
Borg: the Borg space TFOs are popular and easy. Infected Space and Cure Found are both easy to do and reward decently. Hive Onslaught can be a challenge for a fresh-to-50 build so I'd wait on that one.
Nukara: The Azure Nebula Rescue space TFO or else ground missions on Nukara, including ones in the Nukara Battle Zone as well as the Transdimensional Tactics ground TFO on Nukara. You will need an environment suit for anything on Nukara.
Romulan: The Defend Rh'Ihho Station ground TFO is excellent for these and pays well, especially on Advanced. Alternately, the Azure Nebula space TFO is a good source of these. There are several repeatable patrols around New Romulus that also award these in planets like Japori and Carraya.
Dyson: The Dyson ground Adventure Zone awards these and is pretty easy, but you won't earn many at a time. Alternately, the space TFO Borg Disconnected is okay and offers a choice of many kinds of marks, but doesn't pay that well and is timegated.
8472 Counter Command: You can acquire these easily in the Undine Space Battle Zone, but not very many at a time. Learning how to play the Undine Assault space TFO will yield far greater rewards. Alternately, the space TFO Borg Disconnected is okay and offers a choice of many kinds of marks, but doesn't pay that well and is timegated.
Delta Alliance: You can acquire these easily in the Kobali Adventure Zone, but not very many at a time. Usually if I'm farming Delta Marks, the Bug Hunt ground TFO is the path of least resistance. The space TFO Borg Disconnected is okay and offers a choice of many kinds of marks, but doesn't pay that well and is timegated.
Iconian Resistance: The best way to acquire these is via the Brotherhood of the Sword or Bug Hunt ground TFOs. The space TFO Gateway to Gre'thor is also an option. Some Iconian marks are available in the later stages of the Kobali Adventure Zone.
Terran Task Force: A trickle of these is available through the Badlands Battlezone, and you can earn the Elite marks from completing the final stages of that zone. Alternately, the Counterpoint space TFO is relatively easy and pays well.
Temporal Defense Initiative: A trickle of these is available through the Badlands Battlezone, and you can earn the Elite marks from completing the final stages of that zone. The Miner Instabilities ground TFO is difficult but pays well.
Lukari Restoration Initiative: Your best bet is to learn how to play the Tzenkethi Front space TFO well. You can do the Dranuur Gauntlet (space TFO) as well, but this pays poorly. The Gon'cra Battlezone can provide a trickle of these, but it rarely completes so don't count on it for Protomatter Microcontainers.
Competitive Wargames: There aren't many ways to easily get these. Taking these from choice-of-marks boxes or event TFO rewards is a far better bet. If you're lucky and can form a group, Twin Tribulations and Binary Circuit don't involve any direct PVP. You're just racing another team. Recommend you do them on Elite to maximize rewards.
Gamma Task Force: the Swarm space TFO or the Gamma Battlezone are the only real sources of these marks. You have to unlock the final stage of the Battlezone to earn Germanium Carapaces.
Discovery: Defense of Starbase One is the easiest mission rewarding Discovery Marks, though Operation Riposte and Pahvo Dissension are also solid if not on the longer side. Peril over Pahvo should be avoided at all costs due to bugs and low payout for time. There is no battlezone for these marks.
Specializations are the icing on top of skills. You can have a single specialization fully deployed (primary) and another one with only the first two tiers used (secondary) but you'll get the full benefit from both passives. They are unlocked by leveling up, but leveling up after 50 won't grant you new skills, it grants a specialization point. Our recommendation is that everyone start with Temporal Operative due to its versatility and usefulness for ground content, progress to Strategist, then Intel, Miracle Worker, and the last three after that. To fully unlock all specializations, it takes 180 specialization points, which represents leveling up 180 times. Again, there is no need to rush this, especially since Command, Pilot, or Constable specializations are rarely used and the only reason to complete them is that once you're done with them all you get Dilithium Ore when you level up.
Admiralty unlocks at level 52, and is the boring space paperwork of Star Trek Online. It can easily be a time sink, especially across multiple characters. You might be tempted to just ignore it altogether. However, this is a great source for specialization points, dilithium and other limited rewards.
Admiralty takes ships from across your entire roster, from shuttles to unused event ships, and essentially turns them into trading cards. Each one has numbers for Engineering, Tactical, and Science skills, generally based on the class of the ship. Each one also has a special skill that interacts with other ships you send on the assignment. With a wide variety of ways to acquire new Admiralty Cards, it won’t be too hard to get enough ships to fill up your assignment sots in one sitting. With a maximum of 9 assignment slots (eventually), and 3 ship slots per assignment, you can only use 27 ships at a time. If you start doing Admiralty more than once a day, you may find that some of your better ships are still on maintenance, or a cooldown after completing an assignment with that ship. Aim to do Admiralty just once a day and you will be generally quite successful. More than twice a day and you’ll be going through the best ships on your roster faster than they can cooldown.
Each of the four factions has a queue of 3 possible assignments, with 2 additional assignments on deck. All of these preview what the rewards for succeeding the assignment will be.
Federation assignments reward a higher value of skill points which will either level your character from level 52 where Admiralty is unlocked up to the level cap, or once at level cap start converting into specialization points (spec points).
Klingon assignments have a higher chance of rewarding Dilithium.
Ferengi assignments also have a higher chance of rewarding Dilithium as well as the useless currency Gold Pressed Latinum.
Romulan assignments focus heavily on R&D Materials.
Each faction also has a Tour of Duty assignment that takes 20 hours, so it can essentially be run once a day. There is a meter at the top that shows your progress on this assignment - and with good reason. After running all 10 of the Tour of Duty assignments, which increase in difficulty as you progress, you will be rewarded with a larger reward based on the faction you finished. Federation rewards 2 Spec Points, Klingon rewards 40,000 Fleet Dilithium Vouchers, Romulan rewards a few Universal Upgrades, and Ferengi rewards a 30,000 Dilithium bonus pool.
The Romulan Upgrades aren’t anything special, and are far inferior to Phoenix Upgrades and Omega Upgrades, so I won’t spend much time on them. Klingon Dilithium Fleet Vouchers are simply refined dilithium that can only be used to contribute to fleet holdings (NOT fleet purchases like consoles and gears). Since this is restricted to just fleet contributions, it essentially ends up as just Fleet Credits. It also doesn’t impact your Dilithium refining limit and as such is an independent source of Dil if you need it for your fleet.
Each assignment also has one of several events that change up the required stats as well as rewards for the assignment. Successful completion, critical or not, will award the rewards for the event.
Dilithium: For most players, especially with only one main character that they run, Admiralty is a top contender for the best source of Dilithium per day.
The Ferengi Campaign has roughly 50% of Assignments that reward Dilithium, anywhere from 500 to 50. Getting a Critical Success will increase this value by 50%, so a 500 becomes 750 Dilithium.
6 different events reward 500 to 2,000 Dilithium in addition to whatever the reward for the assignment is. While you can’t see what events are on deck, you can start to recognize the few events that reward additional Dilithium when they show up. Events won’t get boosted rewards for a Critical Success.
Refinement Surplus - 500 Dilithium
Intermix Chamber Salvage - 500 Dilithium
Rogue Dilithium Asteroid - 500 Dilithium
Dilithium Dust Synthesis - 500 Dilithium
Lucky Vein - 1,000 Dilithium
Lucrative Mining Contract - 2,000 Dilithium
Depending on how assignments fall, expect to see typically at least 1,000 Dilithium per day just from various assignments and events.
Energy Credits: There are several rewards for Energy Credits. While nowhere near as effective as other methods for Energy Credits, expect to see a few million Energy Credits per week from consistent completion of Admiralty missions.
Experience: The Federation Campaign has no assignments that reward Dilithium, but rewards on average twice as much Specialization Experience as the other campaigns. The Tour of Duty also awards 2 Spec Points.
155,872 skill points are required to gain a Specialization Point. Once you max out Specialization Points, excess Specialization Points are converted into Dilithium at a rate of 2,880 per point.
Once you have max Spec Points, and the Federation tour of Duty is worth 2 Spec Points, which then converts to 5,760 Dilithium.
If you are short on ships on your roster, head to the ship vendor and purchase as many small craft as you can with small amounts of Energy Credits. This should net you somewhere around 8 ships on your roster, depending on what you have unlocked and Cross-Faction flying.
Use small craft as "pass tokens" to pass on missions you don't want or need the rewards for without spending the better ships on your roster.
Always try to be running a mix of the 4 factions as you get a daily Admiralty Experience bonus for the first mission from each faction you run daily.
Once you hit level 10 in a faction, this is no longer necessary and focusing on Tours of Duty should be the primary concern.
Focus on bridge officer stations over gear. You can skate by a lot of challenges with very basic gear and a good boff setup. The reverse is not true. Again, Basics has you covered.
Play the story missions If you've leveled naturally, you probably have plenty of story missions to do yet. If you like the story / immersion aspects, play through them slowly, taking sidequests to hit Task Force Operations to keep the reputation grind going. If not, go check out the Basics guide for your preferred playstyle to see what missions have useful rewards.
Complete endeavors if you can easily do so. Endeavor points add up (slowly) to a substantial bonus across your account. They also give fairly good rewards of Energy Credits, Mark boxes, and Dilithium Ore for a player new to endgame. These unlock at Level 60. There is a good guide to completing endeavors here. Some of them are significantly easier than others.
Consider joining a fleet. Some players want to be more social with other players and many fleets accommodate and encourage that. Others just want a store for items with "Fleet" in front of them and there are plenty of fleets for that too. That said, even joining a fleet just to buy fleet items can be incredibly powerful as, even at the highest tiers of Elite-conquering play, fleet gear is either competitive or outright best-in-slot for:
Most tactical console slots on energy, tank, or projectile builds
Most science console slots on exotic builds
Deflector on DPS builds (possibly not on tanks or supports)
Core on many energy builds
Fleets are also the only source for unlocking additional duty officer, reputation trait, active reputation trait, and starship trait slots as well as Elite hangar pets. They also offer cheap kit modules, secondary deflectors, certain types of duty officers, weapons, trait enhancements, powerful but expensive bridge officers.
Be aware that to fully unlock all the fleet goodies for a full endgame build, you're going to need a LOT of fleet credits, close a million. Unless you're injecting a lot of cash into the game, Refined Dilithium is not going to be easy to come by. If a fleet charges you 100K or even 50K refined dilithium before they open the store, find a different fleet. There are plenty of good ones, don't be stuck with the losers trying to take advantage of new players.
Play the Events. STO almost always has some form of participation-based event, which could be a smaller standalone item, or a bigger reward that pays out for playing daily (think 14/20 days), ranging from a new gear item to a T6 ship. Several events throughout the year are linked to a meta-campaign that encourages you to play the game daily over the course of several events to earn either 2 C-store T6 ships or 1500 Lobi Crystals or a Promo/Lockbox ship (aka the most expensive kind). If you choose the Lobi, Lobi gear is bound to the character that bought it. If you choose the Promo/Lockbox ship, that ship is bound to the character that opens it and is not account-unlock. C-store ships are account unlock. This will also help you on your reputation grind since whatever the event, they're all 1) fairly easy for a new player, and 2) award choice of marks which is great for some of those harder-to-grind reputations.
Unlock the EC cap. If on PC, you'll want to farm up enough Dilithium to convert to 500 Zen to unlock the Energy Credit cap. Sooner or later, there'll be something you want on the Exchange over 15 million energy credits (most good things are), so just set aside some Refined Dilithium toward that cause.
Things to Avoid
Categorically, do not do these things if you want to harbor your resources and enjoy the early endgame (midgame?) experience.
Don't play the game to the point of burnout: None of these things have to be done in a week, and some can't be done in less than 3 months. You don't need to blitz all 13 reputations at once. You don't need 1 million fleet credits in a week and you likely won't have the dilithium to use them anyway. Don't feel like you have to rush them or do all of them or even most of them at once. If you're intending to play the game long-term, it's a good idea to participate in the meta campaign to help progress your account with some otherwise very expensive goodies but try and pace yourself otherwise.
Don't throw your wallet at the game to make it easy. The biggest improvements players we tutor realize don't come from spending cash or resources at the game but rather understanding what works and why. This especially goes for lockboxes; do NOT open these unless you really want to watch lots of money disappear for very little return. We repeat, do NOT open lockboxes. Almost anything in them can be acquired more cheaply on the Exchange. Throwing money at the game without understanding how to use it just leads to expensive ships that still don't perform as well as the build you copied them from. Don't be one of those people who threw money at the Vengeance-class because of how it looks and how powerful it appears to be who are still below the average playerbase damage-per-second (DPS) on the most basic space measuring stick map. Some of us have done double or triple the average with completely free-to-play reputation and mission reward gear. And remember, do NOT open lockboxes.
Don't upgrade junk. Upgrading is one of the biggest resource sinks for a new player. Even if you're using relatively-efficient Phoenix upgrades and you should be, it's not worth your resources to upgrade starter gear unless you know you're going to use it long-term or it's part of an endgame build you copied from a reputable source. Reputable sources include this website if we can say so ourselves (especially the Basics guides), CasualSAB's YouTube Channel, and the DPS League. We've also curated a couple of builds from the STObuild subreddit that we'd recommend, Baby Steps for energy builds and the Strict Budget Build for exotic builds. Even if the gear item is recommended by a reputable source, I wouldn't recommend upgrading it beyond Mk XV (i.e. don't try and upgrade rarity or go for Epic) until you're more established and can wait for an upgrade weekend to double your efficiency.
Don't turn the difficulty up. Okay, if Normal is too easy, you can turn it to Advanced, but the thought of doing story missions on Elite in a starter ship makes me shudder and not in a good way. The jump from Advanced to Elite is rough.
Don't be afraid to ask for help. This game does not teach you how to play it. It expects you to figure it out for yourself with only the faintest amount of hand-holding compared to its complexity. If you're struggling even after searching through the various online resources, ask for help. You can use our feedback form below or post on the STOBuilds subreddit www.reddit.com/r/stobuilds.