Agent White

Let's see.

General
1. Always listen to your leader
2. Don't be afraid to check your map, especially if you're new to a trial.
3. Level shifts matter.
4. Let the league know if you're looking for particular iXP. This can help determine what trial to run and the difference between a Lamda and a SLAM.
5. Stay with the group. Unless it's a trial where the teams split (TPN, LAM, etc) then hug up with the group where you can.
6. Heroes: Call to Justice. learn it, love it, use it.

BAF
1. Ignore the glowies. No one turns off the turrets, they're hardly noticeable and you get a badge (thus an uncommon) and an astral for it.

Lambda
1. Left is grenades, right is acids.
2. Don't touch the front door, Marauder will sometimes just leave if it's open and that's an insta-failure.
3. A successful tactic for the extra ADDs objective in the Marauder fight is to let a couple minutes tick by then closing all the doors. (BEFORE You aggro anything)

Keyes
1. Stealth rocks in this trial.
2. Knockback patches are handy for clearing away ADDs from terminal
3. Confuse can be handy for at least distracting mobs

UGT (50+1 min)
Nothing explicitly comes to mind. Hug the group.

TPN (50+2 min)
1. Know when AoE is okay. Initial stage, cameras hug the buildings. Inside, go nuts. Any phase outside with protesters, no go. As soon as they leave ('Fight Maelstrom' phases) go nuts.
2. Uncontrollable pets can't hurt civvies. (Controller/Dom pets, etc) Not sure about Mastermind/Lore pets.
3. During the Phase Maelstrom is popping in and out during the protest, anchored debuffs remain on him (til you're killed anyway). Between phases they'll detoggle though.
4. Telepathists spawn sequentially, so just start on one side and follow them. Same pattern every time.

MoM (50+3)
1. Tons of visual cues. Listen to the league leader for a description of each phase.
2. Like Maelstrom, the phase with Mother Malaise will keep toggle debuffs active on him when he disappears.
3. hug often, except the phases where you have to pay attention to that. (pink doom, world of suffering/silence)
4. carry lots of wakies and breakfrees and ally rezes.

DD (50+3)
1. Check the map, everything important shows up on it, from spines to hostages.
2. Spine phase, clear mobs, drop spines to 30%, then go for the kill, easy badge.
3. Pay attention to which mob you're attacking during hostages, you just want to aggro the mobs for the hostages you're going for.
4. Hug, tank, and spank the Sentinel.
5. Hug inside mot.
6. let 2-3 folks tag essences, everyone else dogpile Diabolique.

Stab stuff in the face. Rinse, repeat.

kiiiind of tempted to buy it and roll my first tanker.

kiind of.

Yeah it's implied there are small pockets of civilization left, I think there's even a reference to 'new vegas', and even one of the lowbie Resistance arcs has you smuggling people out of the city to -somewhere-.

It's pretty much just that the wilderness = Devouring Earth.

The Praetorian starting content and the continuation starts out as a 'several shades of grey' rather than the moral black and white seen in the Maria Jenkins arc.

However, that's about where the grey ends. By the time of the iTrials, it's back to pretty much black and white. Tyrant and praetorians evil, we good. smash. As has been noted before, all paths pretty much lead to siding with the Resistance, as morally reprehensible as Calvin Scott was in his 'freedom fighting'. Hoping that comes up eventually but not banking on it.

There have been some reprecussions, but none with any tangible effect (so far). Breaking the deal with Hamidon has yet to provoke the Devouring Earth into action so far and has just been used as more fuel for why Tyrant is bad. Given the evacuation effort, might not see any blowback in terms of civilian casualties, though I'm still hoping/expecting the Praetorian Devouring Earth to become an issue.

Actually, that's something I was thinking about the other day.

If Cole was truly the Well's Champion and had amassed all this power and all this tech what exactly was stopping him from turning it onto the Hamidon and the Devouring Earth? The praetorians can create massive plans to neutralize super powers and sterilize Primal earth but can't do anything against the Devouring Earth?

My -hope- is that future Praetorian content will show just how dead to rights scary the Devouring Earth and the Praetorian Hamidon are, but then that also presents a further question of why, if the Hamidon has tapped into the powers of an Incarnate in his transformation, why -he- wasn't made the Champion of the Well since he clearly is still more powerful than Cole.

Edit: And I do get that Cole was made the Champion from his brokering of the deal between Hamidon and Praetoria. But that still seems like a flimsy excuse if, this entire time, the Hamidon is still -smash you into paste- stronger than Cole.

Dark Astoria shouldn't be any surprise. The tables are -heavily- weighted towards common.

As for trials, ya, just bad luck I'm afraid. If you're looking for higher components, underground is definitely your best bet as it rewards a guaranteed rare/very rare for completion, next would be Keyes which has a higher chance for a rare.

Redside can get all that, it just means when they do, they'll be giving blueside the same thing. So when villains get a new strike force, heroes will be getting a new task force.

Since the Praetorian zones are starting areas, don't expect to see them updated with everything that's going on. They can't really update stuff everytime some new big event changes things, otherwise we'd see stuff like Steel Canyon wrecked up from battle Maiden's attack.

And, really, the DA arc pretty much just sums up the trials. The big points in every trial is pretty much we're taking down one or more praetors.

BAF - We beat up Siege and Nightstar, at the least disabling them, and wrecking the Empire's mind control facility

Lamnda - We take down Marauder and the Empire's biggest Weapons Depot.

Keyes - We take down Anti-matter (Though it's explicitly revealed in MoM we do not -kill- him, as we have Metronome lamenting we didn't) and stop the Keyes Island Reactors from going nuclear.

Underground Trial - Vanessa DeVore has uncovered -extremely- important information and is being hunted down by IDF and Devouring Earth. Taking Desdemona, we find DeVore's battered and lifeless body next to the avatar of Hamidon, an agent sent by the Hamidon to monitor the empire and ensure that Cole was keeping his deal.

TPN - Given the revelation from the Underground, we now seek to broadcast the news to Praetoria and alert the citizenship that Cole never stopped the Hamidon, merely brokered a deal with it. Maelstrom is put down.

Minds of Mayhem - The TPN broadcast is actually unsuccessful because Mother Mayhem turns on the seer network and basically mind controls all but a handful of -every living person in Praetoria-. Desdemona aids us in opening portals into the network where we pull out Penelope Yin, the conciousness of the real Aurora Borealis, kill Malaise (explicitly revealed in night Ward) and seal Mother Mayhem inside the network, effectively killing her.

So, ya, most of the Praetors, dead or missing. The populace aware of Cole's indiscretions and lies and in a panic. basically we've been systematically disabling a lot of the empire's key personnel and facilities. And then Dark Astoria happens. And then Dilemma Diabolique happens. Followed up by an upcoming incarnate arc in I23 that sets up the finale trial against Cole.

Edit: Oh and we can't forget the Apex and Tin mage task forces, which set up that we incarcerate Battle Maiden. No known word about whether Neuron and Boobcat were killed or arrested yet.

Yup, pretty much.

Tina Macintyre fits in there before Maria, as Anti-Matter's invasion attempt was the initial kickoff.