Grouchybeast

It wasn't you buying a bunch of Runes for 5,000,000 today was it? I saw the string of last sold prices, and really hoped that whoever did it was just impatient and hadn't typoed.

If you want to get xp while working on defeat badges, then you can use Ouroboros. Find a mission which will exemp you down to the appropriate level, then street hunt for your defeats. You won't get end-of-mission bonuses, obviously, but you will get xp and drops. For a slower ride to the badges, you can even pick faction-appropriate missions in Ourob, but for boss defeats that could well be a lot slower than hunting in the streets, depending on your AT and difficulty settings.

As far as I understand it (and cross-checking in the wiki), Purples are a Pool A drop. Just a Pool A drop with a very low drop chance. Pool A contains Common, Uncommon, Rare and Ultra Rare recipes in a fixed ratio. It might have changed, but I'm pretty sure that's been tested on live and found to be accurate.

It depends entirely on how fast your character can kill bosses compared to lieutenants.

The drop rates for Pool A recipes (of which purples are a subset) are as follows:

Minion - 2.666667%
Lieutenant/Sniper - 5.333333%
Boss/Elite Boss - 7.999999%

So, if it takes you any more than roughly 50% longer to kill a boss than to kill a lt, you're worse off with bosses on the map.

I haven't noticed a particular shift myself.

If you were last around about a year ago, you might've last seen the game when AE was the big thing. Due to squashing of high-gain XP exploits, AP is no longer a seething mass of people looking for AE teams, and people have spread out through the zones again. With regards to bases, there's a bug in the search system at the moment which reports people in bases when they're actually in missions.

Possibly silly question: have you remembered to set the level rage when you search? The list truncates, and while I don't remember how it sorts by default, you might be getting a biased view if you're only looking at a raw 'search all' result.

For serious. I logged in at 4am today, and out of curiosity I did a Find blueside. 48 visible characters! And all genuine-looking names, too, not random gold-farmer gibberish. Does no one on Defiant ever sleep?

The Complete Collection edition has the following in-game items which are not in the Expansion:
• Alpha and Omega themed costumed sets
• Alpha- and Omega-themed auras
• Four stance emotes
• The Shadowy Presence invisibility power

There will be a pack available to buy those items for people who bought the Expansion version. The price of that pack has not yet been set. Information taken from here.

Paragon really aren't too bad for things like that. I got my 18 month vet badge in February, and I only started playing CoX to pass the time until Diablo III came out.

I've recently been flipping level 50 common IOs to get starting money for new blueside characters. Put in very low bids (and I mean around the 10,000-20,000 mark) for the more popular types of level 50 crafted common IOs, and relist around 300,000. It's very low-stress, as all you have to do is drop into WW every now and then to relist whatever has been bought. I do it when I log in and out, as I want the WW day job badge anyway for the TP.

It isn't going to make you rich, but it'll get you a few million with very little effort. Caveat: I don't know how well it would work redside, as it's been a while since I looked at the BM.

Of course, there's the even simpler method of spending AE tickets on a piece of rare salvage. That will net you a couple of million, and there are some really fun low-level arcs in the AE.

Is Frostfire really that tough solo? The last time I went through the arc solo was on...a fire blaster, I think, and he didn't seem to give me too much trouble. Of course, at that level you've probably dinged twice between entering the mission and finding him, which helps :-)

When the initial info about GR was presented at HeroCon, people were told that *probably* there wouldn't be another Issue between I16 and GR. However, there was a chance that the devs *might* be able to put out a mini-issue including the Ultra Mode upgrade if it was ready for release before GR. I think they've more than delivered on what wasn't even a promise.

I hope it includes badger hunters. I mean, I don't have anything against them. Heck, I am one. But the phrases 'a slap in the face to badgers' or 'hordes of angry badgers' never fail to make me smile.

Flipped items of salvage or recipes have two bites taken out of them by market fees before they're consumed in crafting. Therefore, flipping acts as an inf sink and reduces inflation. Yay, flippers!

I like that. It could even use the XP bar, so that the bubbles filled up at whatever rate was deemed appropriate, and then instead of levelling, the bubbles emptied back to zero and the game dropped a merit.

They can use the same magical system which allows characters to deliver a prisoner or hand over an item by phone to a contact.

Plus, if WW and the BM can somehow manage to move items and inf across parallel realities which are absolutely impossible for any character to travel between, I think they can telephone me a Luck Charm.

I know it so totally isn't the point, but my inner biologist is yelling, the humans are okay? When there are no animals? Don't you know what an ecology is?

This is also one of my problems with scripted failure in games. All too frequently it isn't just depressing, it's stupid and annoying, as well.

That makes me so sad, in a completely irrational and ridiculous way. I love writing, and I love writing long, and I want to say, no, you can do it! It isn't as impossible as you think! I have friends who said exactly the same thing, that they couldn't write long, plotty fiction, and in the end they cracked it, and then wondered what the big deal was.

But I know that, really, it's like meeting someone who doesn't like chocolate, and having the urge to give them a slab of really excellent chocolate and tells that that yes, you will like it! You will! Just try it! You'll love it. Which, as I said, is irrational and ridiculous. You can show people how to do something, but you can't make them *enjoy* it. And with hobbies, that's really what matters, in the end.

Aaaaanyway, back on topic.

I don't think that's entirely true. If it were, then the only invention sets which would exist would be the ones with the best bonuses. In fact, the devs went to the trouble of creating, in most cases, rare sets with the highest bonuses, and uncommon sets with related but lower bonuses. Which suggests to me that, as in other areas of the game, they intended to provide invention system content both for people wanting long-term, difficult goals, and for people who wanted to access the system in a more casual fashion.

That is, at least, how I use it. Characters I really love, and believe I'll keep playing frequently long-term, I'll outfit over time with the shinier sets. Others that I'll play less regularly, I outfit more quickly with cheaper sets. And the ones I decide to abandon get common IOs.

Quick recharge single-target buffs like the 2 FF bubbles can be stacked after zoning. IIRC, this is because the games doesn't track who applied a buff through zoning. So at the least, increasing the duration significantly would require adding the code to track buffs or remove all buffs on zoning. Otherwise, it would be possible to zone repeatedly and build up a ludicrous amount of DEF. In fact, a quick-moving team would accumulate multiple buffs anyway.

Now you're just being silly. Supply and demand? Don't you know the only cause of high prices is market manipulation by ebil marketeers?

It's pretty easy if whoever goes to Boomtown has ranged aoe, because so long as you've done any damage to the Council, it doesn't matter who actually kills them. Without ranged aoe, it's an absolute swine.