FredrikSvanberg

Today I have earned as many rares and very rares as I did all the time since i20 launched until yesterday. Something seems to finally be working right.

No, really.

If you bring along 3 or 4 S/L-focused ATs they will still have plenty of work cut out for them just killing off adds. And they are all likely to have useful Destiny, Lore, Judgement and Interface powers that can affect Marauder.

Fortunately there's more to the Master attempt than just killing Marauder. You still have to get all the acids/grenades, and clear the road/courtyard, and turrets, and kill off the adds. So I'm sure that all of the archetypes you mentioned will still have plenty of stuff to do.

So... when you've got your sonics and rads debuffing Marauder's resistance and regen, wouldn't a bunch of scrappers, stalkers, brutes and tankers be nice for damage?

Or is there something else going on? I've never tried a MoLambda.

I believe there are several AV fights in those trials. I'm pretty sure your team can't destroy an AV before you can get one of your slower attacks off.

I don't really need Unstoppable on my tanker because, well, it's pretty much unstoppable as it is. However, on my Scrapper I love it. Because I can follow the crash with Hibernate and emerge fully recharged. Takes a bit of timing but that's half the fun.

Actually the most fun part of Unstoppable in my opinion is to see if I can survive the crash - either by killing everything before it hits, or by whatever trick I can use to get back in the fight if it hits me while enemies are still around.

I would love for Martial Arts and Kinetic Melee to share some animations.

As my two words I used "Devouring" and "Earth". I got hundreds of pages of results, so I trimmed them a bit to "final" and "my level", and still got hundreds of pages. I picked the following arc more or less at random:

Cold Science (#309015) by @Krimstone.

Description: A rogue AI program that is self-aware needs your help. Fight everything from cold tech security guards to evil ice scientists. Ideal for solo or groups. Friendly at most levels.

Contact: A storm elemental that claims to be an escaped AI. Speaks funny.

Mission 1

The AI sends me to investigate an "Arachnosos" Warehouse. Timed mission. I have to find batteries to refuel the AI. 2 power cells to find, find power transmiter (sic). I thought I was up against "Arachnosos" but in the first fight I'm also attacked by Crey and Axis Amerika troops. The intro popup said the warehouse was probably used by more than one villain group, but I didn't expect interdimensional nazis.

I open a "create" (sic) but it's empty. *sigh*. Fortunately they are all marked as "Empty Creates" so I can avoid the rest. I come face to face with the stereotypical, generic, bland TechnoForce security forces, who could just as well have been Crey. I only find one description among the lot of them. Not even the boss in the boss spawn has a description. I get ambushed when he goes down, and he assures me I have no idea who I'm dealing with. I must agree.

Two crates are marked "Find Power Cells" so I'm convinced I will have this wrapped up in no time. A few badly spelled clues which don't really tell me anything new are my sole reward.

I return to the AI in the nearby alley (yes) and zap it with the energy I found to recharge it. It tells me it "own you my life" and that there are more lives in danger. A whole bunch of AIs?

Mission 2

The AI is apparently called Merry (...). TechnoForce Corporation is a new science group that specializes in "cold sciences", whatever that means. I remember vaguely a lot of ice blasts and rains while fighting them. Maybe that's what.

Now Merry talks about some girl who was kidnapped 10 years ago (so TechnoForce isn't all that new?) and experimented upon. She was given the name Frozina. Merry was released by a rogue guard and now the AI wants me to find him. Oh well, why not. Merry sends me on a hunch to TechnoForce's top secret security office in Prez Park (Prez...) which isn't so secret that a newly escaped AI doesn't know all about it.

Moving on... I'm "infiltrating" the office by smashing everything in my path. My goal is to "Find David". Now that I can get a good look at the customs I notice that they look pretty cool, although almost all of them are blond with similar hairstyles. They look almost like clones. Still no descriptions except on a few of the boss variants. At least they are mostly sticking to the ice theme, which is nice. I see one boss using a flaming whip with no explanation in its description.

I find David, but I have to escort him out. And he's fighting! Nooo! I'll just let him die since he's almost dead from the ambush that spawned on top of us anyway...

I have let David die. I have FAILED. I go back to the "ally" and find the AI gone. I have no other leads, now that David is dead. Let's see what the next mission is.


Mission 3

Oh look, nothing prevents the AI from talking to me and give me the next mission. Fancy that. It has decoded some message I never got, supposedly from David. Now we're going to save Frozina, but only a former employee of TechnoForce called Dee Falcon knows where she is. I'm going to Crey's Folly where she is "posing as a Freakshow". I must admit I didn't see that coming.

Another thing I didn't see coming was a warehouse full of colorful ravers dancing. Ok, some of them seem to be fighting. A few customs and recolored standard mobs in here, treating me like another party-goer instead of an enemy. Nice touch. Some of them are still hostile, which seems strange.

As usual nobody has a description, except Dee Falcon, who has Clamor's description since she's using that model. Another stupid escort-to-door... but at least Cla- Dee didn't die in an ambush. Yet. Let's see if she can make it back. Ok, she's not a combatant so the 400 ambushes that spawned can't kill her. Most of them got stuck on the friendly mobs too.

Dee tells me the adress to the lab where they are holding Frozen Girl (I thought her name was Frozina), so now we're going to a tech-lab map I guess.

Mission 4

Overcoming death for a moment, David takes Dee to "safty". And this is where things turns weird. When Frozina was a baby her DNA was mixed with a blue dragon's, which somehow has allowed TechnoForce to develop so many "cold technologies" so quickly. She is Merry's best friend but she has never seen anyone outside the laboratory. She might be a little confused when we find her. Probably not as confused as I feel right now.

Oh yeah, some guy we've never heard about before, the Dragon Protector, is tracking Frozen Girl (they just can't make up their mind which name to use for her) with some cybernetic implants. I'm sure this is all very important.

I was right. It's a tech-lab map. I have to Find Frozen Girl and Destroy Dragon Protector. Seems easy enough. I find Frozen Girl and ... it's another escort mission! That's what I get for just running past all the enemies using Brute Stealth. *double sigh* At least she has a description, but it's no good. Miraculously she survives the by now mandatory ambush.

She implictly trusts me, the guy who crushed and burned all the people she has ever known and is screaming at her to follow me NOW! She complies without betraying me, which I had expected. Plenty of surprises in this arc.

Now to find Dragon Protector. The Protector turns out to be a Malta Titan, and when it goes down it says "Link to dragon terminated" which immediately confirms my suspicions that I haven't seen the last of the Dragon Protector. *triple sigh* Trudge, trudge, trudge. Finally we arrive at the exit, and Frozen Girl asks me to take her to "Marry". This is beyond english as a second language problems now.

And as a final surprise it's all over. "You did it! You are a Hero!" Ok, AI-program. If you say so. At least I didn't have to fight Dragon Protector again. Oh yeah, that quote above? That was the whole end debriefing.
Well, the story wasn't all that interesting but it wasn't terrible either. The spelling really ruined it for me. Nice custom mobs though, even if most of them didn't have descriptions. At least they followed a theme and seemed to be balanced. That might have been my incarnate-brute being his usual unstoppable self, though, so don't take my word for it.

The greatest surprise? No Devouring Earth.



I'll add my arc #1152 "The Doctor Returns" to the list. It probably needs some fresh paint but it was last updated around issue 17 or whenever we got clone technology so it shouldn't be terribly outdated.

Here's my entry:

Arena: (#456200)

Gladiator fights in the arena have degenerated into a propaganda tool in the cold war between the U.S. and the Rogue Isles.
You have been assigned as security during the World Championship in St. Martial.

Intended for VEATs and other villains loyal to Arachnos.

We just finished a Posi 1 about 10 minutes ago. None of us received the Notice of the Well reward. We all got the double merits, and the one of us who wasn't level 50 got the bonus xp reward. Just a heads up for people thinking about doing this TF for the Notice.

Petitions were sent, so far no reply.

I wish they had put cut-scenes in a smaller window on top of the game, as actual movies, that can be clicked to shut off or dragged to the side. That way the TF or trial can go on while whoever hasn't seen it before can watch it, and everyone else can just click it to shut it off.

There's a different ending I would have used for all the paths.

Loyalists:
"Cole is planning a great purge of the ranks of Powers Division. Only those he considers irreplacable and who have remained perfectly loyal to him will remain. The rest will be destroyed. Unfortunately you're not on the list of irreplacables. You have only one chance, Loyalist: flee to Primal Earth and hide until the Emperor changes his mind."

Resistance:
"Cole is planning a great purge of the ranks of Powers Division. Only those he considers irreplacable and who have remained perfectly loyal to him will remain. The rest will be destroyed. Naturally you're not on the list of irreplacables. While we would normally have thought this was great and looked forward to a surge of new recruits from former Power Division types we can't trust most of them and we don't have enough psychics to hide them all from Mother. Sorry to say this but your usefulness as our man on the inside is over. We're not hanging you out to dry, though. Here, we have a portal to Primal Earth. It's a rough place but we think you'll do fine. Please let them know about our plight and try to convince them that not all Praetorians are bad, okay?"

I crash quite frequently when entering/leaving/moving inside the trial instances. Sometimes I get a message that looks like this, or similar (not always the same file):