yes, it still works but it's 45days plus for a trade, and it's going to keep going up over time :(
There is a high supply of dil and not much to spend it on, there is a low supply of Zen and lots of things to buy with it.

I put in an order of around 5k zen back on the 28th of Sept...

It cleared just yesterday, so its about 6+ weeks now in terms of a wait, when it used to be 5-10 day wait in the first half of the year back when the exchange was sitting around 6-8mill (its now over 13mil, and it was under 12mil only a few weeks back).

The issues appeared to start around the time Cryptic mentioned the layoffs and transfer to Deca, I guess a number of the big dil buyers bailed on the game thinking it was over? or we got a ton of new farming bots pop up since the dil shot up like crayzie overnight almost where it had been stable for at least a year and they just havent bothered to combat what ever way they are farming it.

I dont see it getting any better, anytime soon... stick that dil up, but just dont expect it to give anything back before you actually wanted it. ie dont plan for upcoming sales, but for the next lot of sales after them.

They really need something to soak up all that Dil. I'd wager that players would pony up Dil for in game benefits like reduced TFO cooldowns.

Dollar bills soak em up thats what.

I turn in 500 zen at the end of the month for lifer and instantly get 250K Dil back.

OR 10 dollars in zen to convert to Dil. Instantly. Etc.

HOWEVER if you tried to convert DIL to ZEN against THIS market, its broken, its going to be weeks of waiting.

The market is failed. Theres no working with it both ways as we used to do in the days of 50 dil to zen.

Theres nothing compelling on sale right now. Or any upcoming sales including Christamas. The META is also frozen on keys about 12.7 at most. It will collapse in a few weeks back to 12 or lower millions each.

In short the game is failed or FROZEN rather. The only thing that UN♥♥♥♥S the game is actual US Dollars flowing TO The Devs instantly. Anything else that tries to convert DIL to ZEN instead of dollars will take you weeks of waiting to transact. Its failed. Frozen, Kaput etc.

Eventually the free player base will simply say ♥♥♥♥♥♥ and move onto some other game where theres no waiting involved anymore.

Everything has been upgraded so I dont need that many dil anymore. Whats left? Grinding assignements? Or admilarity? Oh please I am bored to tears.

Whats left? Posting here about how sad the game product is getting without anything compelling to call you from your life to sit and play with it for a few minutes? Its boring. Dead.

Its actually dead Cryptic.

Originally posted by OnyxGuardian1337:

Is it even possible to earn Zen any more? 13 million+ requests to buy at the max price of 500 dilithium each.

Possible, yes. The Exchange is still functional. (Other posters are going to misuse "broken", "frozen", etcetera... these are not technically true.)

It is however a waiting list situation, because the active exchange rate is at the price cap. That's why you don't see any zen sitting in the Exchange - it's not because "nobody is selling zen", it's because any zen that is offered is instantly sold to the oldest backlog order.

My last two dilithium sale orders (posted in August) each took 23-24 days to clear (with backlogs of 6.9 and 8.4 million at time of posting). One of the other posters mentioned a dilithium sale order from late September being completed this week.

Based on my prior experience - and please understand that this is just a rough estimate - it usually takes 3-4 days per million backlogged (in other words, the expected throughput is 250K-330K per day... in my last ten sales, eight of them fell within that bracket). With the current backlog being 13 million or so, that would work out to a rough estimate of 39-52 days, meaning an order placed now will likely be filled somewhere in the week of Christmas or the following week.

Then thats a drag on the entire economy of the game world. Having to wait for assets.

Some of my use of words is somewhat clumsy regarding the very slow throughput of the exchange currently.

I keep remembering back years when we had thousands of people in the game day and night around the world and the exchange was the hottest place in the game. Keys were 3 mil, zen was 50 dil. So 8000 dil daily got you some keys. Eventually you could buy a key for 90 zen. And really got things moving.

and 116 A model sniper rifle was the hottest weapon to craft and sell at that time in those days. That model weapon would shoot anything that is seen by anyone on your team anywhere in the game. Through planetary walls even. Eventually that got evaported from the game.

Originally posted by Eggy:

They really need something to soak up all that Dil. I'd wager that players would pony up Dil for in game benefits like reduced TFO cooldowns.

That or turning it into Lobi Crystals.

If the wait times get too long they may just close the game down. If want to keep playing sto you may have to donate/spend money. This could be people buying zen do not dil anymore thus causing dil/zen market to crash. There are items that upgrade items to max that do not use dil thus maybe causing the need for dil to go way down thus crashing the market.

Dil->Zen order placed on 2024/10/04 has just paid out, that is 42days. Working but slowly.
There are still people buying Zen from Arc, just very few people exchanging it for Dil.

Originally posted by markdb92:

This could be people buying zen do not dil anymore thus causing dil/zen market to crash.

This isn't the case. I've been running dilithium sales against a capped market sporadically since it first capped in June 2021, and the amount of zen being sold (judging by waiting time divided by backlog) has been roughly constant during that entire time (at an average of 10,000 to 14,000 zen per hour).

The exception being the middle half of 2023, when measurements were not possible as the market came off cap after the anti-botting measures. Notably, though, *even while the backlog was dropping* in January-February 2023, the amount of zen being sold, by that measure, STILL remained constant. The market dynamic changed because the dilithium going in changed.

So it's very definitely being caused by an increase in dilithium going on the market, not a change in the amount of zen.

Think of it like your bathroom shower/tub (with keeping the drain open)... the drain remains a constant size, but if you turn the water on full blast, the water comes in faster than it can drain, resulting in the tub filling. Turn the water flow down, and the drain can keep up or get ahead.

Originally posted by badgerish:

Dil->Zen order placed on 2024/10/04 has just paid out, that is 42days. Working but slowly.
There are still people buying Zen from Arc, just very few people exchanging it for Dil.

As I said, the zen turnover has been roughly constant since it became player-measureable about 3.5 years ago. The changes in the backlog are caused by changes on the dilithium input side.

For the people who are trading Zen for dilithium, what are they spending the dilithium on mostly? Fleets? Crafting?

Originally posted by delta:

For the people who are trading Zen for dilithium, what are they spending the dilithium on mostly? Fleets? Crafting?

Not sure, but... it's a lot. I recently mathed out (for other reasons) what the dilithium cost was to level up a Fleet Colony from Tier 3 to completion, and with the maximum mine+armda discounts... it works out to around 100K zen... and we have 2.5 to 3 times that much moving *every day*.

just spend 10 bucks on zen lol. I'm always surprised by how cheep modern gamers are. 9 times out of ten if there's a complaint or a negative review about a game it's over the price. All the dilithium exchange is good for is buying zen and converting it to dilithium. It doesn't go the other way very easily, and that is by design so that you do buy zen instead of grinding it out. It is kind of a crappy thing to do, but zen is cheep. 10 to 30 bucks will get most anything.

This gamer is on a budget. To the penny every month accumulating cash which has been very important since inflationary times kicked in some years ago. Pizza tripled in price in my area. Its cheaper to bake the damn thing at home by half.

Originally posted by LunarSail:

10 to 30 bucks will get most anything.

The one ship I really want in this game would cost me almost $65, and that's assuming the pack comes back into rotation at some point, and also that it's discounted 75% like they sometimes are. If it isn't discounted it could cost me four times as much, and I don't know if it'll ever show up again either.