Fury Flechette

Day 7: Sharkhead and Teaming

I last left Fara as she was finishing up her milestone objectives in Cap Au Diable. When I logged, she still have to finish up the Willie Wheeler arc who has a patsy of an elite boss at the end of arc, Ace McKnight, and finish up the underwhelming Fortunata Hamilton SoA missions.

Like many of you, while I was initially excited by the SoA special missions, I quickly grew disenchanted with them. The first ones involving Alan Desslock were fairly good; beating up on Jenkins, for example, is worth a good laugh. The SoA arc in the late teens and 20s really boil down to a series of find the glowie type missions which are uninspired, boring and have no real sense of tension. Still, they can be finished fast and if you have some sort of stealth. You can get three of them done in about 20 minutes total.

Before leaving Cap Au Diable, I wanted to also get the next costume slot by visiting the Face Maker and knocking out 30 Family and get both the temp stealth and Shivan pet in Bloody Bay. I look at Bloody Bay as a good measuring stick of a character's power. If a character struggles with getting a Shivan, they'll struggle soloing in the 20s. That's very possible with some character types such as some team-oriented defenders, controllers and corruptors (though many variants of the aforementioned ATs finish the Shivan challenge with no difficulty whatsoever).



Fara had very little difficulty in obtaining both the ore samples and defeating the turrets. The only real danger posed by the exercise were the NPCs in the zone which because of special PvP rules are far more formidable than the counterparts you'd encounter in PvE areas. As expected, the zone was almost completely empty even in prime time playing hours since players have essentially abondoned the CoH PvP experience. What you're left with now is primarily a "PvE" zone with some fairly dangerous NPCs and some rather powerful rewards that are outsized for the level of challenge presented. If some of you are avoiding entering a PvP zone due to a dislike for engaging other players, I assure you that you have little to worry about these days.

Having leveled to terror level 21, Fara entered Sharkhead. As she was missing the next badge in her quest of Invader, Fara quickly completed five mayhem missions and successfully robbed the Steel Canyon bank, getting the Steel Worker badge en route. Completing the bank mission leveled Fara to terror level 22. She also entered Siren's Call, and did a quick patrol to get her second temp stealth power. Oddly, she encountered a hero player but we largely ignored each other and the hero quickly entered a PvP mission instance and Fara proceeded to finish her patrol and leave.

At this juncture in her villainous career, Fara hadn't yet teamed with any other characters. I purposely chose to go more slowly so I could grab any badges I'd need for accolades and to be able to go through the SoA content at the native level for each contact. After leaving Siren's, I got a friendly tell from a player asking if I wanted to join a team.

I decided to accept the offer and Fara joined a team of two other SoAs and a stalker. As you all know, SoAs, if they take their leadership toggles, are a force to be reckoned with. Three SoAs pretty much made us all bulletproof. And the soldier spec currently used by Fara was a good contributor since she brought AoEs, a -res debuff and Wide Area Web Grenade. Soon the team expanded to include a DP/Kin Corruptor and a Demon Summoning/Dark MM. It was pretty much a slaughter house at that point, and Fara leveled safely to terror level 23.



Fara left that team about a half level away from 24 and her mandatory respec. She was just on the threshold of becoming a Bane.

Day 6: In Pursuit of Milestones

Going into day 6, I knew that a number of milestones were in reach. Before leaving Cap Au Diable, I always try to get a few things: two of the mayhem exploration badges needed for Invader, the Paragon of Vice needed for the Marshall accolade and Entrusted with the Secret, the badge that opens up the Ouroboros portal.

As I mentioned last time, Fara had previously opened Willie Wheeler as a contact and had finished the first couple of missions he offered. I then realized that Fara had yet to get the second mayhem exploration badge, Road Raged from the Skyway bank mission.

Fara completed three quick newspaper mission - selecting only boss defeat or rob the bar/casino type missions and abandoning missions that involved kidnapping or clicking glowies. As some of you may know, abandoning a newspaper mission gives yet a new mission for the one you abandon, and you can continue to cycle through them until you get one to your liking. Previously, you could zone to another area and come back to cycle them, but abandoning is simply faster.

After completing the newspaper missions, Fara ran into the mayhem mission, jumped right to the exploration badge and straight to the bank. At level 18, she possessed fairly optimal enhancements, mostly level 20 common IOs or key set pieces, so the mission was a snap.

After going back to Boris the Russian, Marshall Brass finally opened up as a contact. His second arc, Echo Down the Aeons awards the Entrusted with the Secret. Fara pretty much blitzed through the first arc, gaining another level. With the two slots, I invested them into Frag Grenade, the power I grabbed for Fara at level 18.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking...Frag Grenade is sort of sucktastic. It does moderate damage, it scatters things all over the place and is endurance expensive. I know. However, I really wanted another AoE attack, and I figured with Wide Area Grenade, the scatter wouldn't be that bad. At level 19, Fara's slotting looks like this:



The slotting actually worked better than I thought it would. Wide Area Grenade + Venom Grenade + Frag Grenade + Heavy Burst killed even con minions outright and left +1s with a sliver of life that were easily picked off by Fara's single target attacks.

The only thing problematic with this strategy was that it was heavily dependent on the availability of Venom Grenade as a damage multiplier. In large mobs, I found myself waiting a few seconds for it to recharge instead of charging right in. This stop and go strategy may not appeal to some of you, but it worked for this character.

After getting through the first arc and then finally opening up Echo Down the Aeons, Fara came face to face to Professor Echo, an Elite Boss I wasn't certain that Fara could beat. I took the usual precautions, downing 2 small purples, 1 red and 1 yellow. I also had Fara use the Recovery Serum temp power and summon a Loa Bone zombie just in case.

I probably was a bit too paranoid because with the over cautiousness, the fight went better than expected. Dr. Aeon? went down surprisingly fast to an onslaught of Venom Grenade, Frag Grenade, Heavy Burst and Burst. That left only the Elite Boss Professor Echo, who was also heavily damaged by the initial attack. The Loa Bone zombie didn't manage to hit Professor Echo at all, but proved to be a good distraction since it drew attacks meant for Fara. Fara unleashed a couple of more salvos and the fight was done.

Professor Echo was defeated and Fara Fellstorm reached Terror Level 20, unlocking Epic Archetypes.



Please note that Professor Echo is an even con Elite Boss, not a -1. Fara leveled the moment of his defeat and it changed him from an orange con down to a yellow con.

In addition to that milestone, Fara also managed to accumulate over 100M in infamy with the last minute sale of an IO. Getting to 100M by level 20 was a personal goal and it was gratifying reaching that just a couple of minutes before reaching level 20.

AE tickets beats reward merits hands down. It isn't even close.

Barring good purple drops during level 50 TFs, there's no way a merit farmer can compete with someone who can make dozens (hundreds?) of bronze rolls in the same period of time.

I will say however that if you like teaming, getting merits via TFs is probably more fun than steamrolling patsies on the same city block map over and over again.

Day 5: My First Build Mistake

Because of a cancelled appointment, I had a few hours to pick up Fara from where I last left off. Slotting DOs made a significant impact in her offensive ability. While endurance remained a problem, I found that Fara could quickly defeat 3 even con minions with an attack chain of Wide Area Grenade, Venom Grenade, Heavy Burst and a combination of Burst, Single Shot with one or two chucks of Throwing Knives.



Reaching level 13, I was actually able to find, craft and slot the elusive Acc/Dmg IOs that were unavailable at level 12 (level 15 Acc/Dmg were largely unavailable but a small supply of level 16s were available). Two of these slotted in each attack, yielded 25% accuracy (far better than the 19% accuracy that she would have with a single DO) and roughly 44% damage (with 3 slots) and 63% damage with 4 slots. This small improvement in offensive ability meant that Fara didn't have to utilize Throwing Knives or kiting until attacks recharged nearly as much.

Using this strategy, Fara finished off the Dmitri Krylov arcs (both the Vahzilok and the Spetsnaz Commandos) and the Seer Marino arc.

I think the Seer Marino arc involving the origins of Ghost Widow and Wretch is one of the best written arcs in the game. However, I dislike how you're almost always shanghaied into completing it. Every contact at level 15 or 16 almost always have to talk to Seer Marino and just talking to her uses up one of the story arc slots. Yes, you can ignore the story arc, but I really dislike seeing that book icon in my open contacts window. I guess the completionist in me just resents it. What was particularly galling today was that Willie Wheeler, a Cap Au Diable contact that I opened, had me meet Seer Marino in Mercy Island who in turn sent me back to Cap Au Diable to talk to the Bloody Bay PvP liasion. Being an errand girl is no fun.

With the new IOs and better slotting, Fara breezed through the Seer Marino arc. I considered upping difficulty however endurance management still remained a problem. Fara could output an adequate amount of offense and has decent ranged defenses but struggles to sustain a good offensive onslaught. So for now, I left mission difficulty at the default level.



However, as I leveled up, I made my first slotting mistake. It's not a fatal mistake but it is suboptimal slotting, which is sort of irksome. I didn't realize that Venom Grenade was not only a -res power but also a good attack power on it's own. I didn't realize it until I put two acc/dmg IOs into and saw that the ticks of damage it was doing substantially increased. I quickly looked at the power in Mid's and was surprised that while it does slightly less damage than heavy burst, it's almost unresisted toxic damage.

I'm so used to debuff powers doing light to minimal damage that I didn't realize that Venom Grenade does decent damage in it's own right. It will eventually get more slots, but the character is quickly reaching the 20s and the slots that you can allocate at the levels after choosing fitness powers (hurdle, health) have already been slotted to other attacks. I suppose I could break out a vet respec, but I promised that I wouldn't use any special vet privileges. Oh well, lesson learned. For those of you following along: slot up Venom Grenade early.

Fara is now level 18 and is in the middle of the Willie Wheeler arc. Infamy wise she has around 50M and a lot of full market slots that haven't moved in a while. The 50M is plenty for now, and I'm hoping that the weekend can help move some of the stock. If not, I'll have to relist some of the stock to help move it along.

Day 4: Picking Up Again

Sorry for the lack of updates recently. July the 4th came and went and I found myself buried with work and chores. I managed to log in once in a while to check how the market was going but other than that hadn't managed to play much until today.

When I last played, Fara had leveled to 10 and picked up Tactical Training: Maneuvers. However, the key power to my all range strategy was Venom Grenade which is accessible at level 12.

Fara slogged through levels 10 and 12, doing the Brick Johnson missions, grabbing a new costume slot and changing her look. She definitely felt underpowered at this point and as many of you have pointed out, I probably should've grabbed Pummel. Oh well, what's done is done and I wanted to see how the build would go once I had the initial pieces in place.

For Fara's new look, I went with something understated. I figured that a would-be operative of Arachnos would have casual clothes that would be as functional as they were stylish. Fara really isn't a super heroine at this point, and I picked clothes that showed the fact that she's mostly guns, gadgets and a lot of guts.



After completing Brick Johnson's 3 story arc, Fara arrived at Cap Au Diable a few bars shy of level 11. She quickly polished off 3 newspaper missions, successfully completed the bank mission and grabbed Dmitri Krylov as her first contact.

Yeah, I know what you're thinking...Dmitri Krylov actually has probably the toughest low level arc in the game. Missions full of Vahzilok and ex-Soviet commandoes can be fairly tough, especially for melee oriented characters. However, Fara breezed through these. Once she reached level 12 and a had single slot in Venom Grenade, she was effectively able to two-shot (once VG hit) many minions. Also, while Vahzilok are rough because their vomit and explosions are serious hazards for melee oriented characters, they're not really that much of an issue for ranged characters. Kill the Reapers and Mortificators in each spawn and the zombies have some of the dumbest AI in the game. You can pick them off one by one and the zombie right next to them will often never aggro.

Even Facemaker, a low level Elite Boss, didn't prove much of a challenge. A couple of red inspirations and copious use of Venom Grenade and Wide Area Grenade (more for the -rech) made the fight pretty trivial.



The only thing that has irritated me so far about the experience hasn't been the character, but the poor quality of the Black Market. As you can see from my screenshots, Fara has easily managed to accumulate 50M to spend on enhancements.

At level 12, I was hoping to buy a pair of level 15 Acc/Dmg IOs for each attack, so Fara would have better than average damage and accuracy for her attacks until she starts upgrading again in her late teens/20s. I did a search for recipes and enhancements and was disappointed that there simply weren't any available. Actually, there were 2 available, a couple of Salov Acc/Dmg recipes which the seller wouldn't even part with when I bid 500k for them apiece. It's not like I couldn't afford 500k, but these are "throwaway" IOs that will quickly be upgraded, and designed to give just a modest boost. I just ended up buying DOs. :P

I think the reason why IOs such as these aren't available stem from a number of reasons, but could mostly boil down to the lack of market volume. If sellers could assume that their low level recipes would sell, they'd be more inclined to list them. However, since market volume is so low, they have no / little incentive to list things and hence availability becomes poor. In a sense, poor availability is a self-fullfilling condition that is fed by a perception that it's simply not worth listing things because stuff doesn't sell.

Anyways, I'll get off of my soapbox. I'm looking forward to the merged market that is coming with GR. Hopefully, I won't have as much of a gap until next update.

Thanks again for reading.

Day 3: Holidays Tend to Stop Progress

Not a lot to report. For the limited play time I had this 4th of July weekend, I managed to get Fara to level 10 by finishing the Mr. Bocor arc. Level 10 is a milestone because it not only gives your character more inspiration slots but also allows you to set up your own person SG if you choose. I went to Marconeville and registered up the villain SG, Virtue Free, a play on words since most of my characters are on Virtue server (Fara is on Justice).

Level 10 also opens up Brick Johnson, the next part of the chain for the SoA arc and it gives you the opportunity to open up the next costume slot at level 10. I'm already tired of the generic Wolf Soldier look so a new sleeker costume is something I've been looking forward to.

I also picked up TT: Maneuvers. With the low amounts of damage Fara's range attacks are doing, she's already burning through tons of endurance per every fight. This will make things worse for a while, but I can stand playing with having to pick up a ton of blue inspirations before every mission. If things get really bad, I'll probably pick up the recovery serum temp to supplement her already taxed endurance.

In my limited play time, I've also managed to up Fara's financial resources a tad. Currently Fara has around 36M, which is enough to set her up for life if she stays with SOs. I'm a bit more ambitious than that, so this is just the beginning of her vast fortune. It's definitely possible to make good amounts of infamy on the red market, but the opportunities are different and patience is a must.

It's all a lie! It's unpossible to make infamy using the villain market!

Nice job! And so fast too.

Day 2: The Terrible Pre-Teens

I logged on earlier today and found that my attempt at flipping Unquenchable Flames went well. I bought them at around 2,302 and they each sold for anywhere from 25k to 75k each leaving me with a cool 400k profit. Emboldened by that I bid on some Thorn Tree Vines at around 25k and let the bid fill as I played. More on that later...

We last left Fara as she just hit level 6 and had just grabbed Wide Area Grenade. As I mentioned before the strategy with her was to stay at range and use the Grenade and the modicum of defenses she possessed as a way to delivery damage safely. Using this, and a lot of kiting, Fara successfully completely three newspaper missions (against Mooks, Family and Hellions respectively) and received an opportunity to do a bank mission.

The first bank mission is another litmus test for me to see how viable a characters. Almost every villain with the exception of one was able to break open the vault before security had arrived (that one exception was a gravity/ice dominator that I had long ago). Fara broke open the vault door, collected the loot and and proceeded to beat up on Polaris Shift, the erstwhile hero that came to interfere.



Fara lingered around the instance of Atlas Park until she had reached terror level 8. I was hoping that the addition of Heavy Burst to her repertoire of attacks would round out a lowbie attack chain. At level 7, Fara could down an even con minion by using Single Shot, Burst and an application of Throwing Knives. It wasn't pretty but it got the job done. At level 8, I was hoping that the addition of Heavy Burst would be enough to start eliminating Throwing Knives from her attack chain. Unfortunately, I was in for some disappointment.

I leveled Fara to level 8 and picked up Mr. Bocor as a contact. I prefer Mr. Bocor (though I've done the other contact missions before on other characters) because his arc gives you a badge and a very underrated pet that scales as you level. While the zombies you summon aren't that impressive at level 8, they're fairly formidable if you summon them at later levels.

The first mission I got was to save Mr. Bocor's friend from the Circle of Thorns. There are a few variations of this mission. Sometimes, its a hostage rescue and the hostage finds her own way out. Other times, you simply have to defeat the leader of the CoT and hostage never even shows on the map. The version I got was the hostage rescue and escort back to the entrance mission. Bleh.

At level 8, with Burst, Single Shot and Heavy Burst, I felt confident when I entered this mission. That confidence faded quickly. Enemies scale sometimes at uneven rates and a level 8 minion can be noticeably tougher than a level 7 minion. This proved the case with the CoT as I noticed that even with Heavy Burst thrown in the mix, an even con minion wasn't able to be downed with Fara's attack chain. Worst yet, Wide Area Grenade proved to be terrible mitigation against +1s which were encountered in frequency. Fara cleared the map, with a few close calls, saved the hostage and completed the mission. However, I could see why a number of players don't like leveling up soldiers: Fara's offense and defense seemed anemic at this level.

Clearly, it's way to early to make a judgment against SoA soldiers, and I'm hopeful that with DOs or their equivalent, which can be slotted at level 12, that the power balance will shift again.

Oh and those Thorn Tree Vines proved pretty profitable.

Looks like the community already has you well covered. One of the best things about CoH/CoV is how helpful the community is in regards to new players. There's a load of information out there, and even ways to hook up with veterans for in-game help.

Anyways, welcome to the game, and if you have questions not covered in the thread, send me a PM or global tell @Fury Flechette.

Day 1: Getting Setup and the Market

Before starting up any character, there are a number of tasks that I do before I feel comfortable with it.

• Chat binds for global channels are setup
• User interface windows are set at 85% - 100% looks way to big for me and I like having the extra real estate
• Veteran powers are extracted from the badge window (a task I skipped for this project)
• Power trays are setup the way I want them to look.
• Key Combat Attributes are displayed. For the low levels, I like to see how much hit points, endurance and infamy I happen to have. Combat Attributes are accessed from the Powers menu.
• Finally, I go into the market and setup the transactions that will fund the character for the initial levels.

One of the easiest ways to get starting capital to fund your character is by arbitrage. That's simply buying something from the market and then reselling the same item to a quartermaster. A number of things can be sold for profit in this way. In the example below, I bought up a number of SOs which were listed for cheap and some rare recipes.

The SOs sell for around 10,000 or so apiece and you can hold ten of them. The recipes also sell for 10,000 but you can only hold four at level 6. You can opt to just buy up some items in this manner right from the market and just sell them directly to any quartermaster. Doing this for one run yielded around 127k in influence.



Once you made enough startup capital, you can start to do other marketeering. Common recipes actually sell to the vendor for quite a bit more than rare ones, and some of them can be bought for extremely low prices...if you are patient. I put in some lowball bids that will sit overnight.

In addition, you can also put in lowball bids for some salvage, which can be sold for a higher price later. This bid of marketeering is called flipping and often gets an undeservedly bad rap for being a mechanism to gouge other players. As you'll see in the examples to come, the players I typically gouge the most are the blatant flippers/market manipulators themselves. In the screens below, I'm buying up Unquenchable Flames for around 3k. Notice the last 5 prices. Someone is already flipping these for insane profit, and I'm simply cutting them off from the action and cutting myself in.



After I set these transactions, I logged off for the night, confident that Fara would have many sellable items to begin her journey of self sufficiency.

Day 1: Starting Out

A know a number of players who rush through the initial levels of a character as fast as possible. They'll either get themselved powerleveled by a friend or join a sewer/bank team to rush past the initial levels. I can understand the appeal. At level 1, your character has two powers, an origin temp power and gets to fight the CoH equivalent of the rabbits and rats you fight in typical fantasy MMOs.

I've always been a bit different and it has been a ritual of mine to solo the first 6 levels of any new character. There's a few reasons for this, but the primary one is to see if the character I created matches the concept which I envisioned. Character concept to me is important because I've found that the characters which are the most interesting in terms of background and costuming tend to get played more than those that are just an excuse to make yet another fire blaster.

The first few levels of this Bane feels like it has moderate offensive power and very weak defenses. I didn't realize how bad the Wolf Armor that came as the default secondary choice was until I got to look at the combat attributes screen. It offers 3% resistance. Bleh! Essentially, as an Arachnos Soldier, that means you have attack powers without any real defense.

I leveled up quickly in Alan Desslock's intro missions and picked Kalinda as my initial starting contact. I picked up Single Shot as my first choice, Burst as my level 2 choice, Combat Training: Defensive as my level 4 choice and then Wide Area Grenade for level 6. The idea was to have a way to immobilize foes from afar, attack them with ranged fire power and then have some defense to withstand any incoming fire.

By level 6, the idea came together decently, though not perfectly.



While in theory, it sounded nice, I found that you just don't do enough damage with single shot and burst before the Wide Area Grenade wears out. In your typical group of three minions, Fara managed to defeat one and two closed within range. Fara usually got a shot off one of the freed opponents, leaving her to deal with one fresh enemy and one that was wounded. While this strategem wasn't terrible, I found that the closed foes did more damage than Fara could usually stand. I found myself relying on kiting a bit more than I would have liked. Overall though, it was tolerable and Fara leveled to level 6 in about 40 minutes of play.

I'll just have to see how well this strategy plays out with more slots in both the attacks and Wide Area Web Grenade.

I'd like to introduce you to my newest character project, Fara Fellstorm:



Fara will be your hostess in what I hope will be an entertaining journey as I begin to catalog playing and leveling up a Soldier of Arachnos Bane. This journal isn't really meant as a guide but I hope that those who are following along with me will get something out of it.

I chose Banes partly because I've never built one before and also because I'm aware that they have a reputation of being under performers. I have taken a Night Widow and Fortunata both to the high 30s and found both relatively underwhelming. Both of them have sat on my account for months unplayed and I'm hoping that this Bane may finally spark my interest in the Soldier of Arachnos AT.

I have several goals with this character:

1. Increase my knowledge of the Soldier of Arachnos archetype, the Bane sub archetype in particular.

2. Have this character become entirely self sufficient in terms of infamy without twinking, transferring or accepting gifts. Some of you may be aware of my other thread where I went from 0 to a billion influence with an ice blaster. I hope to do something similar with this character and catalog how much infamy she has at every step of the process.

Two criticisms that were levied in my market thread were that I couldn't reproduce my results without using Mission Architect and I couldn't do the same redside. So consider that challenge accepted. I'll build a fortune without stepping into the AE building and I'll do it with a villain.

3. I will play the character as if I was a new player. So no vet powers will be used. I will use the powers given by the various purchasable booster pack because any new player could forseeably have those on day 1. So no Sands of Mu or Nemesis Staff, but yes to Ninja Running.

4. I have limited play time. At most I can probably play about 3 hours a day, and none on some days. It will be interesting how far I can get with this project prior to the release of Going Rogue, when I'll probably put it on hold while I salivate over the new content that will be released with the expansion.

Anyways, I hope you tune in.