Agent White

So there you have it. You can street sweep to just unlock slots and earn threads for components, the 'radio' (IE repeatable) missions grant threads, and the story arc grants salvage and merits and gets to be repeatable via Flashback system.

Pretty snazzy. Pretty much what a lot of people were asking for, nice reasonable pace. And you can still just hit the trial queue for a combined bigger rewards.

Looks great. Only a shame it's probably 4-6 months away.

What strange future do you come from where technology is used for convenience?!

He'll get more glowy runes.


Like a codpiece.

yeah i've died at least once each time I've gone in. The first time will my controller I didn't know he immediately aggroed you, so my invis was useless.

The second time with my Mastermind, all my pets wanted to whack him instead of the generators, and he *really* chews up the necromancy pets.

One thing I did notice though is that, while Blitz hits like a tank, he's actually kind of slow, so my best advice is if he starts getting into melee range just run to the other side of the map and wail on the generator opposite him, he'll take a bit of time to get to you.

I wouldn't mind a few solo only missions, maybe 1 for each AT type or Origin (per side of the pond of course). Some unique lore and a badge or something.

But yeah, in general, the rest of the game's design is fine, being able to play solo or in small teams.

For the most part, 21.5 is live. The new iTrial is still waiting to get turned on though as they're still tweaking it in beta. Since the trial was supposed to be the centerpiece of 21.5 they kind of downplayed it.

Ok didn't know about the auctionhouse command, that's handy.

But the rest, the accolade is a PIA to get and not everyone has a SG to use, so this consumable is still useful for the general public.

Does make you wonder, since Ouroboros is technically already a Nemesis plot.

Right, the zone will be taking into account incarnates but I think for purposes of missions it will be from a starting point of 'Freshly 50' instead of designed for those people incarnated out to the gills.

Actually kind of makes you wonder if Mot himself won't be the zone event, like the seed of Hamidon was with First Ward. Giant skyscraper size monster poking around.

Then again, the Seed barely gets taken out as it is, maybe another one wouldn't be such a hot idea >>

Even with missions to be run so you can get 4x/8x experience, I still don't see it being equivalent to trials on an hour for hour basis.

And I don't think they plan to make *every* aspect of incarnate progress glacially slow for the solo path. iXP is solely used for unlocking slots, which by themselves do nothing. I think the main slow down we'll be seeing is with the incarnate components and empyreal merits. I'm really not expecting e-merits to drop more than say, one a day. Astrals and threads, or at least threads, might have a comparable rate, slower but not '1 a day' slow (not to mention that week to week you can always supplement with an Astral and 10 threads off the SSAs).

You could just forward me the .ppt files

Just being a zone slows down the progress versus the trial. Street sweeping for an hour is very likely not going to give you the same progress as an hour in a trial.

And? I don't think the zone is really being made for people that have already maxed themselves out. This is the non-trial path for building your incarnates, as in, you've unlocked your Alpha Slot with Mender Ramiel, where do you go next? Either run trials or go to Dark Astoria and start earning threads and iXP and components to slot abilities.

There'll probably be stuff for maxed out incarnates to run too. Though I'm a little curious how the repeatable missions and such will handle level shifts given they don't factor into your threat/security level.

Still though, it's intended as an alternate place to work on building your incarnates, not as a new challenge for your maxed out pleebs.

Intended to be done with leagues, even the smallest iTrial still has a minimum start size of 8. When people say the 'solo' incarnate path they're generally referring to a path that *can* be done solo, not one that's enforced as solo only. It's a misnomer to call it a solo path because it does allow for teaming, but it's also just easier to call it the solo path instead of the solo/small teams path. We could probably use the 'non-trial' path too, if it would please your anal retentive self.

The devs obviously understand what is meant since they didn't just design a bunch of single person only missions, they made a whole zone that sounds like it's going to fall in with the rest of the game's design, the ability to play by yourself or team up with 1-7 other people in a single team and street sweep or run missions. This is exactly what people were asking for.

So yes, you're 'right', it's not a solo path. But it's a path that it's possible to solo on, and that's all a lot of us wanted.


Also kitsune, I'd suspect the 51-54 enemies are just a leftover mechanic, since the incarnate system didn't exist before we could hit 50. I think it becomes just an instance of being able to outlevel us for terms of game balance. Now as for why they don't change them all over to 50+X, I'd say in part it's a matter of "it's not broken, so don't try to fix it", but likely also that level shifts are an incarnate thing, so handing out a level shift means the critter is incarnate. So, normal pleebs get to be up to 54, incarnate baddies get level shifted. That's my guess anyway

Then I guess it's safe to say the next Hazard zone will be Talos revamped as Mot's horde pushes outward

Source? As far as I've read, Cole and Richter found the Well like in Prime, only Richter ended up dead. No definite word he came out wielding both powers. The devs simply said 'someone' in Praetoria has it. I think if it was Tyrant I don't see why they'd bother keeping it secret