[Verizon Galaxy Note 3 Q&A, Help & Troubleshooting] DrPhant0m:
Thank you for your in-depth response!

I literally just called BestBuy, and asked if they had any Black Note 3s, and if they could check the sticker on the box and see if the "S/W Version" ended in MI9, or other. They had 3 MI9s. I was as surprised as you.... but I'm sure none of their iPhones have been on the shelf longer than a few days. :rolleyes:

As for the rest of the information you gave me... I'll try to respond to each section in short order.

Updating radio/modem:

I've rarely seen a benefit from updating radios and basebands and the like as far as reception goes... but I saw in one post that MJE was preferable because they fixed a lot of stuff. I drop a lot of calls... so I didn't know if that was considered "having a problem" that might be fixed with an update.

anti-rollback:

Yes. I believe that Verizon/Samsung blacklist the previous bootloader upon OTA, resulting in a soft brick if you try to rollback. I don't know the details of how... but I do know why. This is one reason why I'm so cautious to OTA above MI9. I know I can't go back.

Custom Odin file:

I could follow directions to do it... but I'm not prepared to be the first. I don't have the understanding of the purpose of each file packed in the tarball necessary to make one on my own. In fact... a post in the URDLV thread gave instructions (user was GalaxHE or something) on unpacking a stock and a modified tar, swapping some files, and then baking a new tar (all using the cygwin script terminal)... and I couldn't finish the process because some of the files weren't in my Verizon tars... and I didn't know enough to be sure that it was OK to move on without it. I wasn't going to march on leaving out files... that seemed like a brick and knox trip waiting to happen. The user that posted the process said to try it without the files, but I wasn't willing to "try" anything, I wanted to be sure. My device was only like 12 hours old at the time.

Acquiring an original RDLV kit:

I'm not quite sure why you suggested this part. I've already used the original RDLV files to achieve root on my phone. Actually, there was a site that had pre-modded MI9 files to download and flash in Odin, rather than using the URDLV script to make them yourself. (I don't know why this isn't more popular, other than the dev getting more credit for it... which of course, (s)he deserves.) I'm rooted on MI9, with safestrap 3.71 installed. Is there still a reason for me to acquire the old RDLV files? What good would they serve me?

MI9-specific vulnerability:

This is the first time that I've heard advice to keep MI9 because as it has special benefits. (From a root/rom standpoint, at least) In fact, if you browse the installation steps for most of the Note 3 ROMs, you'll see most of the devs instruct you to update to MJE, and then re-root using Kingo or vRoot. I HAVE heard (and took advantage of) a vulnerability with the ability to turn on wifi tethering after seeing a "stop right there... you're not paying for this feature" message. Could this be the MI9-specific vulnerability you were thinking of? If there are others, I'd love to know them.

URDLV on MJ7 and MJE:

The URDLV page is in the Note 3 General (carrier-agnostic) area... so there are people from all over the world posting in it, including the OP. I didn't see anywhere in the URDLV forum that specifically said it didn't work with MJ7 or MJE, unless either of those is a 4.4.2 release... and I'm pretty sure they're not. I read nearly the entire thing while trying to root my MI9. (at least the most recent 75%) You can see several of my posts from last week there, including my final success story of using the old RDLV technique. I saw others that were getting the same failures that I was on MI9, and maybe a few on newer builds, though I was ignoring the newer MJ* stuff. I'm not sure if I saw any success stories on the newer builds.

Now... in the OP of the URDLV page there's information on how and if it will work... and my interpretation is this: URDLV WILL work on "MJ4 or higher" releases, but will result in a KNOX trip. It also says that it will NOT work on kitkat (4.4.2) releases. It says that first, in large red letters. Again... I don't think Verizon has released 4.4.2 yet... so I presumed that all verizon releases were rootable, though MJ7 and MJE would trip knox. ---This is actually what made me wait until I found an MI9 before buying one... but I didn't yet know the codes, and I didn't make the connection that I was redirected to URDLV, and what I was reading didn't necessarily help me with a Verizon phone. The OP is referring to all Note 3s... and not specifically about those from Verizon.

Before I bought my phone, I assumed that URDLV would work, based on the OP... I knew I'd need some tech savvy to do the scripting stuff... but I had confidence. It wasn't until URDLV kept failing that I looked through the rest of the thread in detail. It seemed to me that no one with a Verizon Note 3 could get root at all... and everyone that took the time to post an update resorted to Kingo or vRoot. Whether they were fully aware of the risks, or if they did it on blind faith, I can't be sure. That's a different story... see my "Kingo/vRoot" section below.

Conclusion?

So... it seems to me that I might as well stay on MI9. I'm fine on a stock rooted ROM for now, though it pains me because I was always crack-flashing different ROMs and nightlies on my S3. I'll have to swallow it for now, though. Like I said before... if the reason for the OTAs were to patch the rooting techniques... then Verizon can shove MJ7/MJE. I will be in a quandary, though, when the kitkat OTA comes out, which would give me a reason to update. I was on CM11 (4.4.2) on my S3, and it was nice that KitKat supported NFC payments natively, and Verizon couldn't do a damn thing to stop me from using Google Wallet's tap and pay.

Thanks again for your time and attention. I still welcome others to comment, though.

Kingo/vRoot (my aversions to them)

The jury is still out on whether it steals info from your phone for nefarious use... but I've avoided it because it sounded like they could take enough of the information from your phone to clone it (like they do on TV... lol) and use anonymously. On the bright side... If they're phishing thousands of phones, then who knows if your number will ever get picked. I hate to sound paranoid or anything... but there's a big possibility of profit from selling valid information for cloning phones... sold on in less-than-legal forums like silkroad. "I knew a guy" a long time ago that used to buy credit card numbers online, and use a magstrip writer to overwrite blank giftcards that you can pluck off the shelf in a grocery store. He bought a lot of stuff on other people's dime. This would not be too different... except for the fact that instead of your CC company calling you and saying you've been compromised and a new card is in the mail... your phone number could be used to detonate a bomb or something in a terrorist activity. That's not cool.