FourSpeed

... must resist the temptation to make a Ted Williams toon ...


My toons will be around.

I am going to be dumping some stuff, and Granny Warbucks will be dumping
about 10 Billion into the Crazy 88's INFcinerator before the End-of-Days but
all of that is intentional, and nothing I'd regret going forward (if such a possibility
ever presents itself).

I'll also echo Nethergoat's sentiment - It's a fine thing you're doing here TonyV.


Regards,
4

Warburg is pretty ugly too. There are several level planes, and several isolated
sections as well. It's actually pretty easy to get stuck under there if you're
not careful. The layout is pretty weird even comparing with other "under the map"
areas.

For folks that have never been under a map, it's a kind of weird looking perspective
on the cities although, I personally find them cool to explore as each area is fairly
unique.

The one thing that made them bannable btw is this: From under the map, you can
kill mobs with complete impunity - you can hit them, but they can't hit you.
That's also true in PvP zones, which obviously caused quite an uproar when
it was discovered (probably about 10 mins after CoV was released - there were
a *lot* of map holes in those days).

Obviously, that activity is deemed exploitive, and hence bannable.

From a pure exploration perspective, it's certainly a place where the devs would
rather you didn't go, but I don't know anyone who got banned for just looking
around -- killing stuff from under the maps, yes - just exploring, not so much.

That said, I personally feel the Matrix Room IS the coolest place to visit in the
entire game, and I really wish the devs had found a way to use it in-game so
more folks could see it.


Regards,
4

I too was there for TR's last hurrah.

As for crying, I'm not much into tears, but it IS depressing as hell.


4

After pondering the ramifications for some time, I feel that the primary effect will
be a sudden, sharp decline in high level recipe and IO supply.

This will produce shortages for these levels similar to the paltry supply that we've
seen already in the mid-level ranges over the past couple years.

While some may see this as bit of a balancing trend, I see the complete lack of supply
as a driving force towards extreme hyperinflation if left unchecked. Demand will be
astronomically high, leading to equally high pricing, with no counterbalancing
increase in production to reduce the demand pressure. At some point, no amount
of money will be enough to purchase an item...

Of course, the secondary effect will be:

Fire and brimstone coming down from the sky! Rivers and seas boiling!
Forty years of darkness! Earthquakes, volcanoes!
The dead rising from the grave!
Human sacrifice! Dogs and cats, living together! Mass hysteria!

You know, the whole Ghostbuster thing....

Of course, those of us Ebil Marketeers with untold Billions will simply hire downtrodden,
unemployed heroes and villains to do the wailing and gnashing of teeth for us while
we sip our tea and search for lucrative opportunities elsewhere.


Cheers,
4




PS> Closing the CoX franchise seriously sucks. At this point, the only practical
recourse is to try to look at it with some humour, and move on... This post is my attempt
at doing exactly that....

Yep. I had that thought shortly after reading the news - I sure don't envy you that task

FWIW, I've enjoyed the heck out of reading about your shared adventures in this thread.


Good Luck and Best Wishes,
4

The surprise name I got recently was: Major Knockback for a (wait for it )
Energy/Energy Blaster.

Go Figure.

Regards,
4

You also may not have noticed the thread is 4 months old either

As for the mission in question, it is pretty challenging to solo it - doubly so if you
don't have any iStuff at all.

On the upside, if you do go the solo route, you don't have to worry about the
idiot NPC helpers aggroing everything on the map


Cheers,
4


PS> IBTL

I, for one, am glad to see the update, and happy to hear it worked out well for you

Cheers,
4

Making inf in the game is pretty much the easiest it's ever been.

The most *effective* ways in terms of earning speed and earning amounts
are:

* WW/BM: The hands-down winner. There are literally dozens of things you can
do here to make as little or as much as you like ... fast. They can be as simple as
just selling your drops, or crafting IOs, or flipping bargain items. Billions, in a few days,
is not all that difficult, and millions are basically unavoidable (even for bad marketeers)

PRO: Fastest, Scales Best, Can be "Fire-and-Forget" (minimal effort/time).
CON: Need Market Access, Need some initial knowledge, Need some basic skills.
The latter two vary depending on what approach(es) you take.

* AE Ticket Farming: This is probably the next fastest

PRO: Nearly as effective as WW/BM. Easy to do with "normal" gameplay (ie. run
missions, kill stuff, profit)
CON: Need AE access, Need to build an optimized toon, Need to find/create an
appropriate arc to maximize results. Can be (and feel) "grindy", and can be quite
time intensive (esp. if you go the random roll/crafting route).

* Content-Farming: This is basically the forerunner to AE farms. Probably a bit slower
than AE farming, but you can get purple drops - just one of those (if it's a decent one,
is worth ~200M-400M ... not too shabby)

PRO: See AE Farming
CON: " " " " (Typically needs an L50 optimized toon)

* Merit-Farming: These include R-Merits, A/V Merits, Astrals - ie. any kind of merit
that can be exchanged for a valuable item (recipe, enhancement, etc.)

PRO: Minimal knowledge and effort needed. Run the appropriate content, get merits,
convert merits to valuable recipes, craft into IOs and sell, or just sell the recipes, profit.
It's a by-product of normal content play.
CON: You still need WW/BM access to sell (for best prices), some merit content is
gated (iStuff, for instance) and may require token tiers to access. It can get a
bit old running the same stuff after awhile (like AE and other content farms)

* Standard Game: Run missions, kill stuff, vendor your drops, profit.
PRO: Easy. Just play the game, sell whatever drops you get...
CON: Slow, slow, slow. If you have BM/WW access, sell there, *but* also look
at using it to make inf more effectively. If you have to vendor stuff, use RWZ store
(for best prices).


* Luck of the Draw: Costume Contests, Trivia Contests, Zone Games ("first to
find me in AP and say "Hi" gets 10Million"), or even some (clever, amusing, genuine)
panhandling can all get you some cash. Heck, several folks here have already
offered to send you some

PRO: Easy - if you can do what the reward requires
CON: Unreliable


In short, it has never been easier to get inf in the game. If you are a purely
free player (no access to anything other than normal Free Content), then you have
it no worse than the I1 - I8 days (pre WW/BM). Earning inf will be slow, but you
only need ~18M over your toon's entire career for SO's.

If you have WW/BM access, you're literally days away from being as rich as you
want to be. A little knowledge, effort and time is all it takes.

If you're looking for a very simple, very safe, beginner's approach to the WW/BM
market, feel free to read the guide in my signature. It's 3+ years old now, but it
works even better these days than it did when I wrote it. Also, there are a number
of very good Market threads right now, and a bunch of good guides there as well.

In any case, welcome back, GLHF!


Regards,
4

Interesting to see how we approach this from opposite (but not opposing) perspectives.

Using your puzzle analogy, I can be perfectly content with small groups of puzzle
pieces, each of which make their own "localized" sense - for instance, a tree,
or a building, car, person etc. - without knowing where that item fits in the overall
puzzle.

In the early days, you *could* (eventually) fit all those pieces into the bigger
puzzle and come up with a pretty good overall picture of "Paragon City" showing
where the various heroes and factions fit into the game's "history" and lore.

The problem I now have, is that Villains added another entirely new puzzle. Then,
so did Praetoria, Incarnates, Dark Astoria ... generally with little (if any) regard
for logical consistency between them.

To me, it's like having separate puzzles of Big Ben, Trafalgar Square, Stonehenge, etc.

Sure, they're all parts of England, but they don't actually *fit* together.

Or maybe, it's more akin to having 4 puzzles of San Francisco's waterfront from 1901,
1925, 1955, and 2005. They're the "same place" but they still don't *fit* together.

Our game lore has gotten that way imho. The evidence suggests that our "writers"
never actually considered if, or how, those pieces should relate in a homogenous
way.

So, instead, it's like they took all of those puzzles, threw all the pieces into the
same box, and said, "Here you go guys and gals - here's our world".

In that analogy, it simply isn't possible to put all of those pieces into a single,
coherent, and sensible picture anymore.

So, I give up on the overarching lore - it simply doesn't work, and I've stopped
trying to make sense of it anymore.

For me, the game's lore is, simply put, an unreconcilable mess at this point.

So, I just try to enjoy the smaller inset pictures and quit trying to figure out how
those rather divergent pieces got into the same puzzle box or try to fit them
into a single "Big Picture".


Regards,
4

Wait!

Prometheus is Obi Wan? Holy <Pancake>! I guess that Galaxy wasn't so far away
or so long ago... Hmmmm... Evidently, they joined Ouroboros before we did.

I have to agree with others about the whole "Well" crap... Yuck.

As for Prometheus, he just irks me. If he's so bad@$$, why doesn't he slap
the Battalion silly and be done with it? Oh, that's right, he's "furthering humanity"
with the whole "fire gift" shtick, all the while doing the "Ignore the God behind
the curtain" thing by witholding information or threatening us if we push too much.

Bah!

By and large, I don't believe him, I don't think he's working in our best interests
(or doing anything *useful* at all, in fact), and I'd rather he simply "cease any and all
supernatural activity and return forthwith to his place of origin, or to the next
convenient parallel dimension" to quote a phrase.

Which brings me to my question...

"The ONE thing I want to know": Why do I bother?

The lore is SO screwed up, inconsistent, and sometimes directly conflicting,
that I don't think it's even possible to make coherent sense of it anymore.

I used to enjoy the lore...but it jumped the shark a long time ago.

At best, I find these days that I can only look at small pieces (like a short story),
and deliberately ignore trying to fit them sensibly into the bigger (ripped, torn, and
moth-eaten) tapestry that is the Game's Lore these days...

YMMV.


Regards,
4

I think I saw one of the Keebler Elves in Sharkhead the other day...

The evil little bastige stole a cookie from a citizen I was going to mug (prompting
the arrival of several arachnos agents), and then he vanished into thin air (*poof*)
before I could pummel him into a mushy pulp for his insolence (and ruining my
caper).

Sure, sure, it was just a small-time heist, but I was bored between bank jobs...

Anyway...

As for the OP, have a beer, take a valium with it, and sleep for 10 or 12 hours.
The anger will surely pass (not sure we can fix the sense of entitlement, but I've
already exceeded my helpfulness quota for the month with my prior advice)


Cheers,
4


PS> Time to hunt down and beat the baking powder out of that <pancake> Elf...