Citizen_Razor

Sorry for resurrecting my own dead topic, but I wanted to thank everybody here for their advice. I decided to go the "slow and steady" method and converted my hero merits into enhancement converters. It took a few months and some patience on the market, but I managed to flip about 40 hero merits into 13 billion inf (and three complete set of purples). I'm now pretty much set for a long time.

My initial goal was to get an average of 100 million per hero merit, and I far surpassed that goal.

So thanks, everybody!

Issue 23 just came out, so I'm putting "AE Baby" on the back-burner for a little bit. Once I'm done exploring the new stuff that came out with i23, I'll return to playing "AE Baby."

Arc Name: Two Tickets to Westerly (Developer's Choice arc)
Arc ID#: 374002
Arc Author: @PW

+0/x1, Boss Enabled. Currently Level 9.

Hey, look, it's a DC arc! And it's by @PW, whose arcs I have enjoyed in the past. I choose to accept standard rewards, and I'm off and rolling.

The contact is a Skulls Girlfriend, who tells me that her boyfriend went to quit the Skulls and haven't been seen since then. Will I help him out? Sure, why not?

After cracking some Skulls, one of them tells me that Roy (the boyfriend) ran off. Apparently he is a LARPer (Life Action Role Player), and he got some real magic powers from the Skulls and is now sharing them with his fellow LARPers. I find Roy's friend, Joe, but no Roy. Apparently Joe sold Roy out to the Circle of Thorn. The plot thickens!

So, of course, I'm off to fight the Circle of Thorns and attempt to save Roy so that he will be reunited with his girlfriend. After I finally save Roy ... of course the girlfriend is kidnapped next! Roy goes off alone to take down the Skulls, so I bid him a fond farewell and ... what do you mean, this arc isn't over yet? Oh right, I have to save both Roy and his girlfriend, then take down the big boss. Duh. So I do exactly that, and this story arc is completed.

I also ding Level 10 during the final mission, mostly due to the fact that I was able to use up my Patrol XP.

My rating: 4 stars. I did enjoy the fact that this was a series of four quick missions, so the pacing was great. But there was a certain element of "The princess is in another castle!" to this story arc. Still, as a lowbie story arc, it worked, and I liked that it went beyond simply "Hey look, it's a Skull! Beat him up!"

A couple "joke names" I was surprised to get:

LOLFreedom on Freedom
AE Baby on Liberty

Arc Name: The Lazarus Project (continued from last entry)
Arc ID#: 124906
Arc Author: @Flame Kitten

+0/x1, Boss Enabled. Currently Level 8.

And I'm back. Detective Freitag informs me that Dr. Summers wasn't the only person wanting to be Lazarus-ed into an Eidolon. There's also five other super-wealthy people. Freitag directs me to a section of sewers, and it's off to "arrest" some more Vahzilok. There is plenty to do in this mission, and I take down a "Lazarus Eidolon" with fire powers. I also destroy three regeneration pods, then head back to Freitag.

Apparently the Vahzilok broke Dr. Summers out of jail. So it's off to the police station to rescue people. One of the Lazarus Eidolon is leading this jailbreak, and this one has Psi powers. Looking at the clues, I'm guessing Lazarus Eidolon #3 will have Cold/Ice powers. This is a quick and short mission.

Now, it's time to dismantle this Lazarus project for once and for all. Of course Dr. Summers has transformed herself into a Lazarus Eidolon. Eidolon #3 does indeed have Cold/Ice powers. Now it's off to destroy Dr. Summers and her experiment, and the story arc is completed. I ding Lv9 right before taking down Dr. Summers, which makes that fight considerably easier.

My rating: 5 stars. I enjoyed this arc, and it fit seamlessly into the CoX universe. I can easily see this arc be used as a canon storyline. I liked how the powers of the slain newbie heroes from Mission #1 showed up as powersets of the later Lazarus Eidolons. Honestly, I didn't see any flaws here.

Arc Name: The Lazarus Project
Arc ID#: 124906
Arc Author: @Flame Kitten

+0/x1, Boss Enabled. Currently Level 7.

Hey look, it's the same person who did that arc about Duke University! Let's play another one of their lowbie arcs. It's got 738 votes and a rating of 5 stars, so that's a good start. The arc is five missions long, so I probably won't be able to do it all in a single running.

I start the mission, and apparently some newbie heroes (much like moi-self) have been disappearing. It's a Vahzilok Plot! I go in to check it out. The mission is nicely laid out, with plenty of clues to provide flavor. I had forgotten how hard the Vahzilok can hit at times, as AE Baby was constantly near death. She definitely had to eat a lot of inspiration. In any case, we find out that somebody named Dr. Summers has been sending newbie heroes to the slaughter. The Vahzilok are now harvesting organs of superheroes. Defeating the boss causes me to ding Lv8.

In any case, we know that Dr. Summers is behind this, so it's time to go and arrest her. The first clue I find tells me that Dr. Summers has terminal cancer, which comes as zero surprise to me. (The title kinda gave away Dr. Summer's motivation for working with the Vahzilok.) I collect the other clues, and capture Dr. Summers.

Unfortunately, it's getting late for me, so I cannot complete this arc. I'll train up at Ms. Liberty, then finish off this arc at a later time. But so far, so good.

Now that AE Baby is Lv7, it's IO time! I used another alt which was working on crafting badges to fully IO out AE Baby with Lv10 IOs (to avoid decaying enhancements). Now it's time to try out a new arc.

Arc Name: Too Clever By Half
Arc ID#: 378944
Arc Author: @Samuraiko

+0/x1, Boss Enabled. Currently Level 7.

The introduction informs me that this was created for Dr. Aeon's second challenge, and that it's very tongue-in-cheek. And AE Baby is off and running.

The contact is Vernon von Grun. He was working on raising the intelligence of the Devouring Earth, and something happened. It's up to me to find out. I enter the mission, and there's a bunch of friendly DE walking around sprouting all bunch of scientific theories. So far I've recognized Newton's laws of motion, Kippler's theory of planetary motion, Einstein's theory of relativity, and Schrodinger's cat, just to name a few. There are also in-jokes about various aspects of CoH (enhancements, AE, power profileration) when you destroy the destructibles. For me, the biggest flaw with this mission is that there were quite a few objectives spread over five office floors, which caused a lot of backtracking all over the place (particularly when I was trying to find the last two glowies). I finally find all the glowies, and it's time for the next mission.

For the second mission, you basically bust Longbow heads in an effort to find out what happened to Dr. Aeon. Apparently something happened with von Grun's experiment that caused Dr. Aeon and the DE to switch intelligence. There are also some "wanton acts of destruction" to do, but they're optional. This isn't revealed to you until you defeat the boss, though.

Apparently the Skulls captured Dr. Aeon, and he's now going by the name of "The Doc." I wipe the floor with the Skulls, take out some Longbow, and knock some sense into Dr. Aeon. Of course he's restored to normal, and this arc is over.

My rating: 4 stars. The first mission was somewhat frustrating, but overall this was a cute and a bit silly arc.

Arc Name: The Invasion of the Bikini-Clad Samurai Vampiresses from Outer Space!
Arc ID#: 61013
Arc Author: @Aliana Blue

+0/x1, Boss Enabled. Currently Level 6.

This arc promises to be a campy, Ed Wood-esque story. With that title, we're off to a good start. It's a three-missions arc.

The arc promises hilariously bad-acting, and it delivers. In the first mission, I am asked to destroy a "M-Bomb" and even when it goes off anyway, I am miraculously protected from the effects of the bomb anyway, but it's dangerous for everybody around. Or something like that.

In the second mission, I had to fight a bunch of zombies (including some Vahiloks). There were also bikini-clad samurai vampiresses, and a whole bunch of bad acting. It's clear that I'm "unwittingly" the main character in a film of some sort. In any case, I take down the mad scientist.

Now, it's on to the third mission, where I have to foil "Plan 10." (Get it?) I defeat the Monarch and foil "Plan 10." Apparently, alien samurai vampires had been plotting to take over Earth, only to be foiled by Ed Wood's horrible movies every time. In any case, this takes me to Lv7.

Overall, I enjoyed this riff on Ed Wood's work.

My rating: 4 stars.

Arc Name: Storming Citadel
Arc ID#: 379488
Arc Author: @MrCaptainMan

+0/x1, Boss Enabled. Currently Level 5.

The arc introductions warns me that I should run this at +0/x1, No Bosses, No AVs or the story won't work well. I, however, have boss enabled and I'm not in the mood to run all the way to the 4XP person to turn bosses off, then run back after the arc to turn bosses on, so we'll see how this goes.

It's a single mission. Citadel is in trouble, but Blue Steel is busy elsewhere. Alas, it falls down to me to save the day. I'm shrunk down to enter Citadel. This is also a timed mission, and I have 10 minutes to save the day. Positron is the contact, but his voice is off. I don't see Positron saying things like "Ah, yes, well, Citadel's Transverse Cycloid Inhibitor's really very small, and it's hidden away inside his, er, neck."

Also, apparently Citadel was built by Arachnos, since the inside of him looks like the Arachnos lab map. I found that kinda amusing, but I'll write that off as one of the limitations of the AE map options, since there isn't much one can do to show the "inside" of a cyborg.

There was barely any opportunity to fight mobs inside the map, as they were chosen more for their aesthetic looks than to give the players a challenge. As a result, I wasn't able to get much XP or tickets from this mission. The only real opportunity for XP was the final boss fight. I, however, was already very close to Lv6 when I started this mission, so the small amount of XP was enough to bring me to Lv6.

As for the mission itself ... basically you destroy three objectives, then click on a glowie, then defeat the boss -- all within 10 minutes. Not that terribly difficult, but I was playing on a scrapper.

My rating: 2 stars.

Thanks for all of the tips and suggestions.

So, my toon finally got 35 merits.

What should I spend them on to get the most possible inf? A Lv10 PvP proc, or something else?

Any tips or advice would be helpful.

Thanks!

Arc Name: Chris Jenkins, Attorney at Law
Arc ID#: 204942
Arc Author: @Jophiel

+0/x1, Boss Enabled. Currently Level 5.

I was in the mood for something short tonight, so I figured I'd check this arc out. This arc is a single mission long. Basically, you have to beat up the Hellions hanging out in Chris Jenkin's law. You also have to "protect" his files.

This mission was decent, although the digs at the frivolousness of lawyers were amusing. I liked the snippets shown in the clues.

My rating: 3 stars.

Arc Name: The Blue Devils
Arc ID#: 468738
Arc Author: @Flame Kitten

+0/x1, Boss Enabled. Currently Level 4.

(Continued from previous time.)

I finally had some free time, so I thought I'd finish up the last two missions of this arc and post my final thoughts.

I wasn't really blown away by the story itself, but I could notice that the author clearly put a lot of time and thought into crafting this arc. The use of optional "vigilante" objectives was a neat touch, considering the limitations of the AE interface. I think the custom mobs were toned down, as they seemed to give a lower amount of XP. On one hand, since the arc was intended to be a Lv1-5 arc, I appreciate that the mobs were toned down. But on the other hand, it seemed as if it lowered the XP rate.

I also liked the map choices used for this arc. They were all reasonably small (good for a lowbie toon) and I liked the final map.

I ended this arc at Lv5, which opens up the Lv5+ arcs for me.

My rating: 4.5 stars. Normally I'd rate it 4 stars, but the small touches pushes it up a notch.

Arc Name: The Blue Devils
Arc ID#: 468738
Arc Author: @Flame Kitten

+0/x1, Boss Enabled. Currently Level 3.

This is a five-missions story arc. According to the introduction, there's a new gang by the name of Blue Devils who are trying to muscle in the Skulls' and Hellions' territory. I wonder if any of them graduated from Duke University.

In some of the missions there are "vigilante" objectives that you can choose to do if you want to play a darker hero. That's a neat way of getting around the lack of multiple branches option in AE.

Alas, I was only able to do 3 missions before I had to quit for the night. I will resume this arc at a future date, and give my final thoughts and rating at that time. I did get up to Level 4, so hopefully the addition of another attack will speed up the progress a little bit.

Arc Name: Go. Hunt. Kill Skuls.
Arc ID #: 158877
Arc Author: @Tahlana

This is a one-mission arc based on a forum inside joke. You basically go around and "kill Skul." There's also a few objectives, such as rescuing a couple of heroes and helping another hero find a door in a rock. You also defeat a mob named "Skul." Nothing too fancy, and it got me to Level 3.

My rating: 3 out of 5.

I don't know if anybody remembers, but a few years ago I had a review thread going on here. Unfortunately, real life got in the way, and that sort of went by the wayside. I've barely touched AE since then. The lack of dev attention to AE didn't help any.

However, I've gotten an hankering to play some of the AE arcs that have been created since the last time I touched the building. So I figured I'd fire up a new toon.

Shocking, the name "AE Baby" was available on Liberty. So now I have a brand-new Lv1 toon named "AE Baby." She is a Titan Weapons / Electric Armor Scrapper. I aim to level her up to 50 using nothing but AE story arcs.

I'm not looking for any farms, only legit story arcs. I'll be using the arcs listed in the "AE Mission Tree" thread. I'll be posting my progress, as well as my thoughts on the arcs I'll be playing, and my rating of these arcs. Bear in mind that unless the story is truly horrible, or a blatant farm disguised as a story arc, I'll always give 5 stars in-game. My rating posted here might be different, but the in-game rating will be 5 stars no matter what.

Caution: My posts here will most likely be erratic and sporadic. But what the heck, let's see how it goes.

This is relevant to my interests, and I wish to subscribe to the newsletter.

(In other words ... a PM with the information on how to change the loading screen would be greatly appreciated.)

I'm in! Just hope I can get on the team.