Jade Ivy

For me its a combination of overclocking and heat. After I lowered my clock settings and prevented my cpu & gpu from hitting 80 c, I havent crashed. Since it's summer, I have no ac, so I point a 9in box fan at my mobo.

Sentry, Organica explains why she is starting from 0 in the first post. Rather than me paraphrasing, please read the 1st post of this thread.

Im a speed sf addict, itf 11 mins, tin 16, apex 18, lgtf 22 mins, lrsf 23 mins. A majority of virtue teams prefer to kill all and if I try to form a speed run, half the members are still trying to kill all. Why join a speed run and ignore the leaders instructions?
Freedom redside has what I need. Beware freedom blueside. There are a lot of immature and entitlement-seeking players there. Note that this doesnt mean all blue players are teenieboppers running wild. If one is from a low pop server, expect to encounter immature players more often.

Shards have higher chance of dropping from Lts and bosses. If I were to farm shards, I would run missions that has easy to kill mobs and where I can force lts and bosses to spawn. Ex: rikti +1x8, council +1x8. The following mobs are harder, but seem to drop more shards: nemesis, romans, snakes. To save time, skip minions.
Another option is to farm the components you need instead of shards by doing speed Tfs. This is my preferred way of getting T4 alpha.

For that amount of time you coulda waited for an mm or def to help even if you had to wait for that player to finish his/her mission. With mm/def in tow, the sf can be done in 40 - 60 mins.
On every team that ive been on that claimed they can overcome reich, there's a misconception that vill reich is the same as hero reich. On teams that think that way, it resulted in 2+ hrs of mind numbing button mashing and the eventual team quitting. It is a waste of time to go w/o a mm/def since the chances of finishing is very very low.

you can also buy time cards at best buy and frys. I've also bought them from amazon and ebay. some online stores sell them, but I suggest to check the store address. If it isnt in the us, dont buy from them.

I keep 2 builds, 1 for exemp, the other for lv 50 content. The exemp build is a cheap build, costing around 200 mil or less. The incarnate build has all the fancy ios.
A fairly quick way to slot the exemp build is to buy lv 30 ios and cheap uncommon sets. I do suggest the following frills:
- lv 21 perf shiftr +end
- st prot +def
- kismet +acc
- st prot kb, if melee toon doesnt have a kb prot pwr

I am a west coast player and have played on freedom, virtue and exalted. Freedom is your best bet, since it has more west coast, hawaiian, euro, & aussie players than virtue and exalted. While waiting for the league to fill, I sometimes chat with the other players. The chat with euro players can be quite interesting. Google translate is my friend

A bunch of melee players and I did 3 ae tests (not fire) to determine how fast a particular power set can kill. The test has a 30 min timer and goal is to defeat all. In general-
SOs only - 1/3 of map defeated in 30 mins
1 - 2 bill build - 1/2 of map defeated in 30 mins
2+ bill build - map clear, 10-15 mins left on timer.
The game is built around SOs. 80% of the players I know use SOs till 50. then they switch to set ios.
it boils down to how fast you want to get things done, and how much you are willing to work on your build.
As for money, if you dont mind marketing, visit the market forums for money making tips.
The other option is to run tfs for merits and then convert to a hero merit. Use hero merit to buy recipes.

Thanks for the info, everyone! I'll shoot for S/L/E/N cap.

Hi All,

Is it better to soft cap S/L defense or positional defense on a Dark Armor brute? Thanks!

Let's examine how people look for teams:

1) Broadcast in a zone: lvl 20 blaster lft
What are the chances that the leader will see this?
0% chance = leader inside a mission or in another zone
50% chance = leader in the same zone

2) Ask in help:
[Sharkfan] Mclarge fumbled it and you know it.
[FarmerDell] BM farm lf paying lowbies 100 mpr
[Giants4ever] The replay says it all dude. it's good.
[Hammerhead] Its the coaches call
[Sharkfan] My dad was right there, and he has
a video to prove it.
[brute4hire] lvl 20 blaster lft
[FarmerDell] BM farm lf paying lowbies 50 mpr
[Giants4ever] Who's gonna a trust an amateur video?
[Hammerhead] They have crappy defense anyway.
Someone will score eventually.

If the leader is good at 'Where's Waldo?' maybe they'll notice...

3) Ask in global chans, SG chat, coalitions
Global chans can be chatty like help. SG/coalie chat tends to be quieter. If I'm running teams, I look here first.

4) Set LFT in Team menu
I tend to give preference to SG/coalition members. I'll look here next.

Then there's how leaders look for members.
1) Announce in zone. This is typically the zone where the mission is in.
2) Announce in help.
3) Announce in global chans, SG chat, coalitions
4) Look in Search

As someone who leads teams, a lot of players don't set LFT in the Team menu. How do I know? When I see them looking for team, I see them broadcast in zone, but when I look at the Search, they don't have LFT set. How are leaders supposed to find these people?
Granted, improvements could be made to look for teams, but if folks don't even use the available options in Search, how can leaders find them?

Ok, I'll log what I do on the servers that I have toons on and maybe roll a new toon on a server I haven't tried.

First up, the new kid on the (server) block, Exalted! This friday, at 9 PM PST, I get on my lowbie lvl 23 brute and check the help and global chans. Then I open the search window. Aha! I spy a purple colored name in Mercy, Miss Fortunata. Hmmm... lady luck on my side? I ask her if there's room and she says yes, then invites. Yay! There's 3 of us and later on, a coalie joins us. The enemy mobs were Legacy and Arachnos. Around 10:30 PM, Miss and Huggie Bear have to go so hugs go around and the team breaks up.
As I contemplate making a new team, Glacial pokes for interest in an ITF. I get on my kin and join. About 5-10 mins, Glacial gets a full team and Nocturne 1 leads us in a +2 ITF steamroll. We finish in 52 mins.
Since I want my vill merit, I decide to do speed SSA. A coalie and 27 lady crab joins and the three of us finish in 13 mins.
We decide to do the TV arc next, so off to GV. A scrapper joins us, followed by 3 more lowbies later. On average, the team size was 5-6 people. We play till 3 AM PST and end at the 'Freaks in TV' mission. Mobs were arachnos, malta, council, freaks and DE. The malta gave the most trouble, and our MM managed to get a debt badge. Diff was +1 or +2x8.

Going by alpha order, my next stop is Champion!

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Sat 9 AM PST, I log my lv 14 war mace brute on Champion and start looking around. Search shows less than 5 toons under 20. So I do Ashley's arc of running around meeting people. I check again, and find about 10 or so possible victi---, er, teammates. I advertise for DFB in Help, Mercy, PO and Cap. A couple were returning players, and so I explained what DFB was. There were 2 players that had 1 vet star. I can't tell if they're F2P, so I send these a tell: DFB wanna come? It has good xp and gives buffs as a reward. Accept invite to come, decline if not. These 2 players both joined and then quit 5 seconds later. Oh well.

After getting 5 folks together, we finish a KR mayhem since it was in progress then did DFB. After DFB, folks had to go, so with a team of three, we started Wheeler's arc. I throw out some tells from time to time and managed to get a 7 player team. At 1 PM, my tummy started grumbling, so had to go. Everyone leveled up enough to need new enhancements, so the team disbanded. My brute is a bar away from 20.

BTW, I'm a mostly redside player with just 1 or 2 heroes. It's easy to find teams on Freedom, so next stop, Pinnacle!

-----

After lunch, I head over to Pinnacle with my lv 15 kin. Search shows just a handful of players lvls 1-20. I streetsweep for a bit, do talk missions and check the market. Sales since double xp weekend nets a nice 1 bil which is more than enough for lowbie build. Search shows more players this time, but no leaders under lvl 30. There were a few above 30, but I figure I'd be too low to help.
I try to form a team to do the Golden Roller arc. Team starts out slow with 3 and reaches 5 after a couple of missions later. I suggest DFB and one player said she hasn't done it. So we do a DFB and she thought it was pretty cool. We finish the Golden Roller arc around 7:30 PM PST and my kin is now 20. It was about dinner time, so I say my farewells and the team disbands.
Mobs were CoT, Lost, Arachnos and Wyvern. The Wyvern were a bit annoying since they like to make me a pin cushion after transfusion hits. Breaking LoS helped keep me alive.

For tomorrow, I'm stopping by Protector.

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Sunday, 3 PM PST, I dust off my lv 19 kin on Protector. Search reveals a lvl 15 leading a team in PO. I send tell but get no reply. I wait around a bit, selling junk and buying IOs. I search again, but didn't find a leader between lvls 1-30. I do a couple of missions from the Golden Roller and find another player who wants to team. After advertising in Help, another player joins with his friend. When the team is about 5 players, I suggest running DiB. However, the MM doesn't want to play MM anymore, so we decide to run DFB after the MM makes a new lowbie. We do 2 DFB runs and then 2 DiB runs. However, for the 2nd DiB, we only had 4 people and had a hard time at the AVs. The blaster quit after several team wipes, so we didn't complete the trial. Dinner was ready, so I decide to finish up at lvl 22.

Last stop is Triumph!

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The some of the ip of the hero system is licensed to a rival hero mmo. Some, as in the hero system ip serves as a 'skin' over the game mechanics which was originally targeted for mar#cough# univ#wheeze# in the rival mmo.
Hence, samuraiko's unfortunate facepalm moment.....

Another bad sign is life players selling their accounts. A new player can buy the lifetime account , the old player gets money back, and the game gets no money from the new player. Just do a google search for WTS (game) lifetime account.
The holiday deal mentioned before is pretty good. Sometimes you can get a good deal with time cards

this isn't the first time the scammer has done this. He will broadcast the item in a zone or in help and wait for a victim to bite. I have seen that name on freedom, virtue and exalted.

Here's mine: Death Revolution, Dark/dark brute

In death, there is nothingness and silence. But because there was nothing, there was a void, one that waited to be filled. The void sought power to fill its emptiness and thus, was attracted to the strongest power of all: life.

The void siphoned life from any living creature, man or beast, until a form emerged from its dark consumption. Under the cloak of darkness, she awoke. Memories of the lives of those that fed the her hunger flashed through her mind. She licked her lips, as if to taste their final movements of oblivion. Eager to taste it again, she caught the first man who crossed her path and watched him die slowly in under her death shroud. More followed. Somehow, it was not enough to capture her victims in the binds of her midnight grasp and watch them die. She wanted to see them struggle, to fight for their lives. So she sought stronger prey. Unaware of her own mortality, she fought carelessly until the first jolt of pain lanced through her body. Instead of anger or fear, she felt a wild exhilaration. More, she must feel more.

Soon, she began to encounter more enemies known as Arachnos. Many wolfspiders fell to her shadow punches, so drones and mechanical spiders were sent to fight her. Since machines lacked a soul, she learned how to draw upon their energy source to heal herself. One particularly large group managed to overcome her, but by reaching into their nearby souls or power, she managed to revive herself. After several dozen or so Arachnos littered the ground around her, a ghostly woman appeared and motioned the rest of the group to fall back. She attacked this phantom lady and was surprised to be restrained by a storm of screaming souls that bound her limbs. Her eyes followed the path of the souls to the arm of her opponent.

The lady's voice rang cold in her ears. "Little one, your rampage is causing too much inconvenience and must end. If you think you can't be stopped, I will simply trap you in an armored crate and drop it in the nearest lava pit. You will have no one to siphon life from. I can easily do that."

She glared in defiance at those pale pupiless eyes. Those eyes seem to bore into her soul. "However, I have been watching you. Every time you fall, you rise again with hunger in your eyes. Why rise to fight and fall again and again in a revolution of death?"

The fey lady paused as if waiting for a reply. When none came, she crossed her arms and cocked her head to the side thoughtfully. "There is no doubt that you are strong, but are you strong enough to master this hunger or will you let it master you? If your brain has a glimmer of intelligence, then come with me, for I have traveled the paths of life and death. Arachnos will give you opportunities to sate this hunger and perhaps, you will discover what it is you truly seek."

With an elegant wave of her hand, the lady dismissed the souls trapping her limbs and she fell to the ground. Then the lady turned away and spoke, "Follow if you choose."

She got up and followed to live, seeking to die.

1 year vet here. on my first level 50, I only slotted drops and didnt buy any enh from vendors. It took me 2 months to get to 50. I even did itf with 50+ empty io slots.
is it possible to play the game without any Sos?
Yes.
SOs are nice to have but not necessary for free, premium or vip players.
Your wife has you, so just email her inf like suggested before. As a lady, I would also advise to not worry about SOs and do something special for her today.


I do have f2p friend. I suggested the following:
- logout at ferry for enhancement bonus
- logout at vault/city hall for inf bonus

Is there something in particular that you want to streamline?