BurningFist_EU

You're not supposed to like being Rick Rolled, dammit!

I used to have a Native American archery/devices Blaster and this is how he looked, more or less.

Or alternatively could always try this look.

You can also skip getting a travel power until at least the 30s if you get all the temp travel powers from Mayhems and other missions.

Fair enough. It's interesting to read that you had a lot of success without Placate and encouraging to see that even with the tight builds that Stalkers are cursed with there's still room for playstyle-led power choices.

Placate is also a useful power for taking an opponent out of the fight while you are fighting another. Especially useful when soloing I find.

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Regarding Smoke Bomb... it'll be great if they've fixed it since it's a multiple target Placate. At release, it was broken and didn't work. I don't know if they've fixed it yet, check the release notes.

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Ah that makes sense. I got it on Cao Qin and although it was useful for emergency getaways I never seemed to get a Placate going with it. In the end I respecced it out for Blinding Powder, which I've come to love in its own right; a Stalker can never have too much control.



On the point of Caltrops, I'd say defintely get it. It's another control power that can be invaluable in just about any fight you'll get into. If you're overwhelmed by melee enemies, drop Caltrops at your feet and they'll start trying to get away (slowly) rather than attacking you. Even if you continue attacking them they won't fight back.

Same goes for ranged attackers; if you or a squishy team mate are getting shot, run up to the shooters, Caltrop them and explain to them that Stalkers can scrap to a not insignificant degree, especially against enemies who can't fight back.

You can use Caltrops to interfere with a pulled spawn, you can use them to aid a getaway, you can even use them for extracting stones from horses hooves.

I'm a big fan of Caltrops; use them inventively and they'll be one of the most useful powers you'll have. My advice is if you can get them, do.

I made my Stalker because I wanted an IC enemy for Fist, plus I know Martial Arts inside out and Ninjitsu looked interesting. Also, scrapping is king

Unfortunately he's been stuck at 45 for ages because soloing is completely futile (AS, Hide and Placate are all unreliable at high levels for various reasons and Defender hit-points aren't enough for low-damage scrapping) and teams aren't easy to come by unless we have a concerted VG effort.

The bit on the official CoV site that says that Stalkers are the ultimate solo AT for villains is about as wrong as it gets.

That said, me and Tuft have duoed our Stalkers in big teams since about level 15 and together they have been absolutely devastating, but solo or just duoed without a team it's marginal to say the least.

[Edit] You can play on Villainous but it's stultifyingly boring with no risk or worthwhile reward.

Blaster motto: Glory comes face down.

Sounds like it could be a bit of fun. The RV event on the test server ages ago was a good laugh.

Oh and WB, Ravenswing

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I'm not so sure Heroes could have any justification for holding people like that - and certainly not for beating them up repeatedly .p

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Sure they do:

"These are some of the most dangerous people on the planet. We feed them, give them medical care and allow them to worship. And no matter what the liberal media say waterboarding isn't torture."

See, easy.

Gratz to Coile and Stasis and everyone else who finished.

I've not had much opportunity to right since Saturday with one thing and another so I'm taking my 43k+ words and starting the editing process. It's a shame not to hit the 50k after getting so close but I'm more than happy with getting this far. The biggest problems I had all stem from not having a plan beyond a few cool ideas and really vague here-to-there story. What I've got now is a whole universe of WW2 dieselpunk loveliness, around ten solid characters and over 40k words of the story that introduces it all.

Thanks for the compliment Mutha, that excerpt is one of the bits that wrote itself. The bits that I sweated over are the ugly parts

Hmmm, it's looking distinctly unlikely that I'll make the 50k by tomorrow night now. I've got over 6,000 words to write and a busy day tomorrow so writing that much will be difficult, especially since I seem to have lost my thread on the bit I've been working on.

Unless I get a spurt of inspiration this evening I'm gonna call it quits on hitting the wordcount for tomorrow and start the editing process ready for December's NaNoFiMo.

I'm back at the keyboard after two days of no writing and have over 7,800 words to write in three days. That's far enough away to be painful and too close to not finish. Wish I'd got some more done yesterday though.

I read what I've written so far last night and there's some diablolical writing in it. I keep having to remind myself that its only the first draft and that next month it'll get a lot tighter. There're also a couple of chapters that are necessarily bitty but need to be restructured so they don't come over as disjointed. Hehe, I can almost hear my inner editor counting off the seconds until midnight on Thursday

7,836 words to go and I think that's all the writing I'll be able to get done before Monday.

I'm at one of those "hmmm, what next" bits which have stalled progress a few times. Hopefully a day's break will loosen up the creative juices and it'll all run smoother when I get back to it.

I don't understand how I ever thought some of these set pieces would fit in a single chapter.

Two and half thousand words so far today which leaves me on 8,604 words to go. I really need to get that 604 words off (at least) tonight as I may not be able to get much writing in tomorrow, Sunday and Monday.

I laugh at how many words over 50k my story will run to

EDIT: And because it's been a while here's a new excerpt. (might be a bit grisly)

I can't listen to any music when I'm writing, it's just too distracting. When my brain starts drying up any sound becomes amazingly intrusive. House alarms, kids shouting, drunk students shouting, the damn computer fan; all these things have caused me tremendous mental anguish at times.

I would just like to say that that Dark Room app that Coile and Maynia found is brilliant.

It's so much easier to be productive when Windows isn't seeping into your consciousness with web browsers and games and work.

I noticed on the NaNoWriMo forum that December is NaNoFiMo

Even if I hit the 50k by the end of November I'm still going to be a long way from finishing the story, so there'll be a few of us who are still battling with ourselves to write enough words each day to move it on.

I also know that once my first draft is finished and the editing phase begins I'll probably lose at least a quarter of my NaNo word count. These days, when I find a phrase that uses 8 words to do the work of 3 I keep the 8.

Bit of a slack day yesterday but I made up a bit of ground today.

12,972 words to go.

I know what you mean about characters doing their own thing and messing up planned chapters. In my notes I have "Chapter 4- 2nd battle, Russians push Germans back" but on the day it spread over into 3 chapters and the Germans ended up counter-attacking.
And I thought they were disciplined ones.

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That's it. I want a Mac. Or this ported to Windows. Or does something like this exist?

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Following a little link tucked away in a corner there leads to this thing, which looks rather like a Windows version. ^_^

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Excellent find! No more Dreyfuss like twitching when Word loads up

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That's it. I want a Mac. Or this ported to Windows. Or does something like this exist?

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That looks pretty handy. Sounds like someone else is tiring of the cluttered, overbearing interface of their word processor


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Does anyone remember Dumbo? I'm starting to feel like the train when it struggles to get up the hill. I'm hoping the top of the hill comes up soon, and waiting patiently for the "woo-woo" of the engine.

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The only part of Dumbo I remember is the Pink Elephants on Parade bit and I'm saving that for when I've dinged 50k

Anyway, I just caught up with last night's deplorable effort and brought my word count up to schedule. I'll have to get another 2,000 in tonight to keep up though.

14,977 words to go. That's bound to sound closer than it actually is.

Whoops, that got later than planned. Anyway, looks like ignoring the plot-block worked, that's 2,000 shiny new words spread across two entirely unrelated chapters

16,955 words to go.

That's two days of very little progress in terms of wordcount and I've reached something of an impasse plotwise. It's not insurmountable but it has become something of a brick wall from where I've been writing to over the past week. Rather than try and bash through it I've decided to pick up a thread from later in the story and start on the scene setting chapter that kicks Part 2 off at the same time.

As has happened before, the bit that's been tying me up for the last couple of days will probably untangle itself while I'm not looking.

18,918 words to go.

/blogmode

Impressive going there Max.

Today I've written a total of 370 words but did a bit of editing and paragraph shifting too. I now have Chapters 1 to 8 finished and the scene setter for Chapter 9 is written. I think I'm going to have to do some proper planning for these next chapters but thats not a bad thing. It'll give me something to do when the words aren't forthcoming

19,748 words to go.

Another good session tonight but now my brain is a mess. I can't even write the 118 words that would bring my total up to 30,000. That one battle scene came in at over 7,500 words and it pretty much has to be split over two chapters. I haven't read it through yet to see how well it reads, to be honest I won't be able to face it for at least two days

One thing I'm aware of is that I'm this far into the story now and my main villain has had one line, no action and no impact on events yet. I have established all of my other characters now though. Except for Balak the Uzbek who got shot in chapter 2 and is still in the hospital. Oh yeah and Tataryn the Cossack who doesn't show up until later.

Anyhoo, 20,118 words to go.

Also I put up a new excerpt. It's from later in the story when the Germans have fielded their Aufrechtkriegsmaschines to swing the Battle of Kursk.