Agent White

I'd say the best choice is honestly to drop your difficulty to fight enemies at -1 your level. You might level a bit slower but in the long run it really doesn't matter a ton, and plus you want to have fun right?

I just hit my plant/fire to 20 and while it wasn't *too* bad, yes, if you miss too often they'll just eat you. Also any time a mission throws a boss or two at you up front you tend to be very squishy if you can't manage to lock them down fast enough (And no domination to ensure a fast lock). I finally got sick of it because I have things slotted kind of decently, but hitting a mission where the enemy spawns *mostly* yellows can get pretty frustrating when you start whiffing. In fact it was a mission up against a lot of Wyvern agents and Professor Echo that finally made me just say 'screw it' and drop the difficulty.

Otherwise all the advice is pretty sound, the seeds are the definite go to crowd control power. Don't be afraid to spam embrace of fire for the big damage bump to chew up a crowd faster. Time is your enemy probably more than most ATs solo.

The other thing I'd advise, and it will have to wait til you're level 20 and requires you to be a villain, but get Frenzy, the villain alignment power by affirming your alignment (That is, run 10 villain tip missions and do a Villain morality mission). After 7 days you'll earn it as a temporary power. It gives you a 100% domination bar when you like. Haven't got it yet m'self actually, but it's too good to pass up for a dominator

Yes, I've seen considerably more players running around on Victory.

















Unless I head to Praetoria >>

The developers have been playing too much Final Fantasy and Shadow Hearts

More than likely, once all 7 episodes are released I wouldn't be surprised to see them bundle them together at a discount normally, like the costume packs.

I do have to agree though, compared to First Ward which gives you several long arcs and multiple contacts, the SSAs are really not worth buying individually. If you're in it solely for the rewards, just buy the first one and run it once a week. Especially if you're a villain, ridiculously easy.

it depends if you're running hero or villain side too because there are some pretty key differences.

SSA1.1
First mission - The Circle character is a boss for Heroes, but Villains can talk and strike a deal (suggested for solo'ing).

Second - As said, pop purples and *run*. This is a mad dash before you get *swarmed*. Solo'able, but you might die at least once. Boss for both.

Third - Heroes do this completely by themselves and since it's mostly just an elite boss fight, you might die. My ill/rad controller got beat pretty hard, but managed it eventually. Villains, if they struck a deal, get a *very* nice helper NPC that makes this an absurd breeze. Lemkin can bring a beat down, but if you're halfway durable or can fly in any capacity, you ought to be fine.

SSA1.2
First mission - Night and Day difference. Heroes have a number of mobs followed by three big ambushes, though you get some very nice NPC support. Villains.. this mission is like 3 minutes long.

Second - Same for both. As said, mobs with glowies, but the mobs really aren't that difficult. At worst, turn down difficulty to -1/0x, the Rulu-shin will just spawn 3 at a time nearly all blues and they go down without much trouble.

Third - Heroes have a super easy time in the opening *so long as you do not piss off the guards*. Its just a glowy, then a chase and a fight against a few mobs and a weak horde, then the finale. Villains are *required* to upset the guards, but only really have to deal with 3. But then there's an extra boss in the vault that hits pretty hard. Melee classes shouldn't have a big problem, anything squishier though... >> After that it's the same as Heroside. The elite boss at the end might be more difficult for some. He doesn't really hit super hard, but he does like to spawn a natterling companion to bug you and he just has a *lot* of HP.

Brute should have no trouble. The controller... can probably solo 95%, but may just have problems dealing with the Elite Bosses. SSA1.1 villainside is probably the easiest to Solo because you get a very nice helper NPC in mission 3 if you cut a deal in mission 1. SSA1.2, Heroside is probably easier overall, villains get a super easy first mission, but their third mission throws in an extra boss in the middle.

Yeah, /releasepets will *kill* them, Dismiss doesn't, they'll just kind of stand around and if you try to re-summon they ones alive just go back to 'active' in your pet window. the command though works, it kills them and lets you re-summon them.

It's also handy for necro if you want to Extract Spirit someone without waiting for a minion to die

I've also hit this bug when moving across Praetorian zones via the zone border, not just the trains, and sometimes when entering certain 'outdoor' missions that are just instances of a normal outdoors area. Usually going back out and popping back in fixed it too

Yep, that was the name. Ok, not new, just something I hadn't seen before. Thanks folks!

Hm, i thought word might have poked out about this, but maybe no one else has seen it yet. Or its not new and it's just my newbie-ness showing

As I said in the SSA1.2 thread, I ran into an event that prompted me to see if the new SSA was open. Going into Skyway city to run SSA1.1 I saw all these new spots around the map. Banner of Scorn, I think Banner of Mercy, and two others I can't recall the names of.

So, curious what it was I rushed over to check one out. I found a purple one, big banner with big purple glowing runes around it that started spitting out various horror themed monsters like a Hyrda look-a-like and a Devouring Earth rock monster (huge and small).

Reading the info, it sounded like I was supposed to wail on the spawns until the protections weakened and I could destroy the banner, and then go do so to the other 4, but I may have misread. After about 30 minutes the 'banner vulnerability' timer counted down and the whole thing despawned. So, yeah, that happened, and I probably did it wrong, though I don't think I was able to interact with the banner itself so, not really sure.

The rest of the text read along the lines of, you have to take out all 4 banners and a 'Greater Mystical Aspect' will spawn with appropriate map icon to show your distance from it. The fluff was something along the lines of The Circle of Thorns tried summoning something and it screwed up, but instead of cleaning it up they let it run wild for everyone else to clean up. The banners were also color coded, blue, green, purple, and red, which I *think* indicated the power of their defenses from what the text said. I was trying to tackle purple (Though it was spawning all whites and yellows)

Anyone else run into this yet then?

Ahh ok, see I don't run a lot of Task Forces. Thanks for clearing that up though.

And we could just refer to it as WWD1, WWD2, WWD3 etc. But yeah your way makes sense too since everyone is going to refer to it as the SSA

Damn the consequences? So, you mean let her get taken by the Talons and either A) Murder Her or B) Let her Go to Murder Other First Warders or C) completely bind her down and hope being turned into a Talon can be reversed. There really was no other options, we were told explicitly that Katie is pretty much dead set to be taken because she's a seer *and* pretty pissed off.

Yeah, no. Compared to doing something to her that she may dislike but is completely reversible, I'm pretty sure it's *less* evil than letting her be consumed by the vindictive and psychotic force pervading First Ward. It wasn't just stopping Katie from turning, it was turning on the network to protect *every* Seer in First Ward. Is the Seer Network pretty bad? Yes. Yes it is. But it can be turned off again, by you, Vanessa, or any other Carnival or Compound member.

But then I guess no one feels bad about Cerulean since we didn't have to choose something horrible to save him, we just murdered him and the other Carnival members. :P

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=274816

Just ran it an hour ago.

Magical theme. Midnighters, Cults, and a quaint little shop, oh my!

Is up. The contact in Talos Island was accepting missions, so I ran it not an hour or so ago.

Level cap seems to be 27, as I started it at 27 with my Necro/Dark Mastermind, hit 28 at the end of the 1st mission and remained exemp'ed at 27. Min level is 20 according to the market

How does it play out? Nabad, pretty fun actually and the finale, while not quite as epic as part 1, has a pretty awesome locale for the final battle. I actually ran the first SSA before I ran this, since the character hadn't done it yet. Actually what made me try if Part 2 was open was running into a Supernatural event in Skyway City. Can't describe it more than that since... well, I don't think I did it right XD But I think the new Halloween event is live. Ooor it's just a new event period >>

Mission 1 is short and just *nuts*. Just wave after wave! I don't look forward to trying to solo this with non-Masterminds, but shoouuld be plenty doable.

Mission 2, pretty quick and easy, honestly nothing much worth mentioning, waaay easier than part 2 of SSA1. In fact overall I'd say this arc is easier than 1, the only actual spots I had any trouble with were the end of mission 1 and the start of mission 3.

Mission 3... the opening map is a bit laggy, aaand it's easy to miss where to go, I spent a few minutes stumbling through, royally cheesing off all the guards XD but after that it went smoothly. The wormhole jumping is pretty cool and it was a HUGE eye boggle moment when i popped out in the final. Luckily... it's mostly a tease, but I won't spoil it. It was my first time seeing him in game so it was pretty 'omg they didn't!'. Again it ends with an Elite boss who.. I dunno, my zombies didn't have much trouble with him, bit easier than Lemkin since he had the super speed and the mass PBAoE knockback. I'm not even sure what tricks, if any, this guy has.

And the story? It's alright, kind of interesting since it involves the Midnight Club and the Rulu-shin. It really focuses on Tommy Arcanus rather than Numina, in fact, I don't think she appears at all in the whole arc. And another hook with Mr. Teller in the back of a bar and some more foreshadowing.

The Rewards table is the same as it was for SSA1.

So how does it rate? Not bad. It doesn't have quite as epic as feel as the first one, but it's got some pretty decent flavor and there aren't any flaws like the first episode had. Everything is pretty straight forward and the mobs aren't too absurd (your mileage may vary, especially mission 1. WAVES!)

Yeah, I'll echo that it's kind of a shame that, given First Ward is meant to be a continuation of Praetoria and by extension give praetorian characters 20-30 level content before shipping off to Primal Earth, it was kind of disappointing that alignment and moral choices was thrown out the door.

Don't get me wrong, the arc is good. I really don't see saving Katie as that bad, since she can be unplugged fairly easy, and Noble Savage did come out of it. Though it did seem to just kind of stop, it didn't really feel as complete as some other arcs for some reason.

But yeah, the only thing that Alignment does is offer up some generi-contacts per alignment, which is ok for just general dinking about First Ward I guess.

Though, as has been cited in prior threads, Villainside doesn't make a ton of sense since you're invited by the Carnival of War to First Ward and end up siding with the Carnival of Light, generally *against* CoW. I mean for story reasons it somewhat makes sense (to avoid getting dragged into the whole Vengeance clique) but it seems like there'd be a better integration for Villains.

yeah I rolled a storm/sonic defender, went through all the Atlas Park stuff and finished at level 8 with no contacts.

I can kind of see why they did it this way, to encourage folks ot use the radio more. I have an ill/rad controller that's barely done radio and safeguard missions because he's been swimming in Contacts from the get go.

Really I think they've just made it match to Villainside a bit more, once I got past Mercy Island I had to do paper missions to pick up more contacts.

Well, til i hit level 20 anyway and you get about 4 dumped on you >>

oh i've just been clicking the status icon up in the corner, where you see all current effects, which doesn't tell me.

Ok, so I should be getting the powers soon. Thanks!

Just a quick question, I've got 2 alignment power countdowns for 2 characters ticking down, the wiki says it takes about 7 days. Is that real time or in game time?

And is there any way to tell how much time is left on the countdown?

Yeah I'm pretty sure the assumption is that Vanessa intended to do it. The player could not at any point until Serene was defeated, otherwise Katie and the other Seers would have been vulnerable to influence by the Talons. And as far as narration goes (at least for the game) you don't do 'wrap up post-climax' missions, the finale is the climax.

The seer facility was basically gutted. D.U.S.T., Arclight, etc, were all pretty well wiped by the apparitions, so I can't imagine they just left katie plugged in after the threat of the Talons was quashed.

the ending did seem kind of abrupt though and definitely left room for them to expand the story. It feels like you stopped *a* threat to First Ward, but didn't do much else.

Oh, wow you know this is actually a bit of a relief, I thought it was just my system XD

I can't offer much, but I can definitely say Necro/Dark is a pretty good combo, just got done running one through First Ward and jumping him to Primal Earth.

The only minor drawback to the heal is that it targets an enemy to do a -to hit (I think) but the heal effect itself is PBAoE, so you have to A) make sure it hits and B) be close enough to affect your crowd. It's really not a big issue, but it does hurt when you miss with it and lose some zombies. (Though that's what Extract Soul helps mitigate)

Tar Patch is also *golden*, offering a slow and -Res. Drop it in the middle of a mob and yell 'sick 'em' and watch the mob go down. I really wish I'd taken it sooner than I did.

But ya, basically /Dark offers a lot of nice complementary skills.