Bright

See that girl in my avatar? The one with the big, feathery wings? Yeah... Almost all of my characters are like Shade, there. Most of them are members of a species of winged fliers. They're their own transportation.

Not that Mei'jin would say no to a steam-powered pony if Nemesis wanted to give her one. (Mei is supposed to be a Nemesis operative keeping an eye on Arachnos. I've always wanted a pet Jaeger for her, but a cute brass pony would do.)

As for the "non-Birdbrains"... Mister Bibbles and Mister Mistofolees are both cat-familars using purloined magic to look human. Bibbles belongs to a Cabal witch, while Meff belongs to a lazy sorcerer. (Their humans are rather sweet on each other, but the two cats are fierce rivals-) I imagine Bibbles borrows his mistress' broom on occasion, while Mistofolees makes use of his master's flying carpet.

Mameshiba, the very chibi Littlest Bane, is a product of Mad Science. Like the original WSPDR Saturday-morning cartoon character he was modeled after, he just jumps. He's too short to pilot a black Flier.

Alshain, the barrista Warshade, is from Striga. She knows how to hotwire SkyRaider gun skiffs. Kephren, on the other hand, is a siren. She's not so saavy about all this modern-world techno-stuff and never learned to drive... She just takes the train.

Anu, the winged bull, and Beans, the stink-bug, both fly.

Cholula, my Nightwidow, is a biker chick. I can't imagaine her with anything but a Very Loud Motorcycle.

I like the journey... right up to the moment that journey ceases to be any fun. (That is to say, the point at which continuing becomes a repetative, stressful, and often frustrating grind-fest.) At that point, I just want "the journey" to be over and done with so I can move on to something more entertaining, and maybe actually ENJOY playing that character for a change instead of feeling obligated to run it through a well-nigh-endless series of PUGs, speed runs and raid-fails, which I don't find the least bit fun.

So far the Devs have done a really great job of turning the entire "end game system" into exactly the kind of journey I'd rather avoid completely or get over with as quickly as possible. It's been about as much fun for me as dancing on a fire ant nest, and shows no sign of improvement.

So, yeah... While I agree that the journey CAN certainly be fun, it can also be a serious drag.

I'm still finding individual little details of the world that surprise me occasionally...

A really big mushroom beside some rocks in the northern hills in Croatoa, the rowboat under the dock in Port Oakes that you can get in, one beach on an island north of Grandville that has a collection of starfish on it that are different from all the others, another beach on a neighboring island with an abandoned boat on it, some of the graffiti in Saint Martial, a place with a perpetual swirl of leaves in Perez... That kind of thing. 'Just little environmental oddities that you could pass a hundred times without noticing.

I don't have any characters with powers I limit based on their costumes (They don't tend to have themes along those lines-), but I definitely have one with a particular summon that I'm picky about.

My red-side main is a rogue Stalker named Grey Kestrel. Out of a collection of about 30 toons in total, she's the only one I really run as a dedicated role-playing character... Which is what dictates how I use her Patron Pool summoning power. Her Adept, Cardinal, isn't played as "Generic Mu #37". He's supposed to be a distinct individual; Kestrel's partner, best friend and (thanks to her absolutely ludicrous recharge numbers-) near-constant companion. She's very protective of him.

Given that, I'm reluctant to drop him in the middle of a meat-grinder. If I'm running a mission or TF with Kes that I know would shred the poor guy faster than you can say "That looked painful. o_0" I don't use the summon. Cardinal will never show up in the Apex taskforce, for instanance, or on a Mothership raid before we've secured the bowl. They're just not situations Kestrel would want to involve her friend in, knowing that he's more fragile than she is herself.

Silly from a game-play standpoint? Well, yeah, maybe... But it's a role-playing thing. It doesn't have to be practical.

If I were your veng-bait, Firebeam, I wouldn't find it rude. I might even chuckle over it...

I'm easily amused.

Way-back-when (and I do mean "way back"... like, i1 a-week-after-the-game-went-live way back-) I made two toons on FCM's account. One was a defender based on an old tabletop Shadowrun character of mine, and the other was a cat-boy scrap (Or as close as I could get to one, anyway, since males didn't have cat ears as an option in those days-). I don't think either of them ever made it past about level 3. MMOs were just not my thing at the time.

Their names were Brightfires and Mister Mistofolees.

Humorously, many years later now, versions of both of those characters are sitting on my account. Bright is still a Rad defender, and eventually made it to 50. The current Meff is an Illusion/Kin controller in the 20's. With cat ears.

I'm very uncomfortable playing with people I don't know, so I tend to avoid PUGs at the best of times. I have no clue how the Incarnate Grind has affected lowbie pick-up teams on Liberty.

One thing I have seen, though... Most of my friends list are spending their time on their 50s, grinding for shards. If FCM and I weren't very good at duoing this game, or if all of my current "in-progress" toons weren't reasonably solo-capable, I'd be at a total loss when it came to leveling my current alts.

I intend for all of my 50s (I have 22 of them-) to have at least an Alpha common slotted, just so I can play through the new Incarnate content with any of them without being at -4 to everything and its sister. I'm not in any real hurry, though. Most only have the slot opened at this point.

Of those 22, the six or seven I play most often are likely to end up with Uncommons somewhere down the line, just by virtue of occasional TFing and shard drops.

So far only three of my characters have Rares... My red and blue side mains (Grey Kestrel and Palrah, a stalker and a tank-) and my favorite Scrapper, Ashirion.

I'd like to eventually get a Rare for Shade in Shadow (hero-side KM stalker-) as well, since she's my Alignment Tip runner and the level shift would come in handy. Neither she nor Ash are ever likely to see a Very Rare, though...

No one in my crew has a Very Rare yet.

I'm only looking at getting VRs for Pally and Kes, who are both in the "hunting 32 shards to craft a Favor" stage. Frankly, Very Rares simply require far too much WST- and Shard-grinding for me to even consider bothering with it for anyone else.

I suspect it'll be a similar story once the other slots open up. Anything I *have* to do to get to gated content I'll do with all of them. The favorites will get a little more attention, and only the two mains will see full Incarnation.

I was gonna say I didn't have any villains who used red... Then I remembered Kestrel's fetishy red lightning and leather "Mu Babe" outfit.

So much for that.

I would be sad... I'd miss playing around with Pally and the other birdbrains.

And then I'd wander back over to Aion and start rebuilding my two or three favorites as Deva.

I play on Liberty, which is a medium-population server... but I was still surprised I got Suzume (for my winged FF/Rad defender) and Anu (for my Shield/Mace minotaur tank).

I've never built a toon with farming in mind.

Now, my favorite DB scrap *can* farm reasonably well, and I'll admit that I keep a copy of Harvey's demon mission on him for the purpose of finding common magic bits for crafting when market prices get crazy... But i just don't have the patience to slaughter demons by the thousand in pursuit of purples or anything like that.

My blue-side main, Palrah, is my dedicated badge-monkey, and I've had pretty good luck with him... He's a WP/DB/Pyre tank with a solid, though not quite top-of-the-line, IO set build.

He does decent damage for a tank, and is still tough enough to handle most things on his own.

Stalkers also make excellent solo toons, though some EB/AV fights are tough with them. (Shivans and other temp powers usually solve that-)

As others have said upthread, though... Fly is your friend for exploration badges, and some form of stealth is also handy. (Pally has Invis, but even a stealth IO can be helpful.)