Nethergoat

Okay, last night I had the Two Face coin flip-side to my 'perfect' Sutter run.

Ugh!

Happily, with a good experience under my belt I know not to blame the TF, but my team. This is the only TF I've ever had to quit, which I felt really bad about, but it had dragged on for almost 3 hours, two players representing most of our DPS had already bailed and our "leader" was one of those super annoying scatterbrains who *thinks* they know what they're doing when nothing could be further from the truth.

Example, in the two AV with exploding ghouls fight, the leader runs *right* past Riptide and attacks the one at the top of the stairs. Yeah. So now we have TWO aggro'ed AVs to contend with, along with waves of bombs. There were also many, many instances of said leader jumping ahead of where sanity would compel most players to at least pause, but we mostly muddled through until that last fight.

So we have 6 players left. At least a couple of my teammates have made some highly questionable build choices- the /traps doesn't have caltrops, which came up during the ghoul mission. "drop some caltrops on those stairs" "Oh....I skipped that one."

sigh.

And our bots/beam MM *hadn't taken Disintigrate*.

*boggle*

So, in spite of being tough defensively (I was on Almighty Dollar, my elec/sonic controller) we just couldn't kill stuff that fast. Or in the case of the final AVs, *at all*.

After about the third team wipe, with my wife demanding I come sit with her like I'd promised I would an hour and a half ago, staring at a wall of Sky Raiders & an AV that was fully healed from our previous attempt, I pulled the rip cord and bailed out.

I don't feel good about it, but that team would have had a rough time clearing the mish if everyone was a really, really good player on really well built characters- we were anything but, and I include myself in that description. I don't play Dollar much, and I haven't paid any attention to his build beyond "oh that power looks cool...huh, I guess I need a couple of slots here..." Which usually gets camouflaged on a team, but this was a rare instance where *everyone else* was just as haphazard and uninformed as I was.

It didn't help that I eventually figured out the team leader had their difficulty bumped. While the person who formed the team was set to base difficulty, they swiched with someone higher level before forming the TF, and they (predictably) had jacked it up.

Again, maybe not a problem on a good team, but disaster for this one.


Anyway, it was a mess. I lost count of our casualties. I died at least 3 times due to our "leader" deciding they were done with a spawn and taking off for the next one with enemies still standing. "Uh hey, where are you going, this purple jump bot is still feeling pretty spry!"
*splat*


On the plus side, I picked up several levels. It wasn't efficient, but at least it was 2xp and thus not a complete waste of time.

I'm done running +diff TFs with PUGs.
I'm checking the leader's diff every time now, and if it's bumped I'm walking.

I'll be sure to nose around when I get home!


I'm actually sort of having fun kitting out his build- I usually just use whatever until they hit the cap, then go shopping en masse. This piecemeal approach is keeping me entertained- nice to see little improvements in his performance as I run stuff.

Mine is level 25 & never has problems getting teams.

I much prefer him to my higher level emp/elec because the blast set makes him feel useful & fun in between buffing and throwing out the occasional heal.

more adventures in 2xp!

First, generic IOs on my field crafter:

I filled up a couple of Crazy 88's base bins with damage & end redux & endmod that I made for basically nothing- a few k for salvage from long-range patience bids.

The surprise hot seller is level 20 end redux.
I sold an entire tray load for over 1m, and they've been selling as fast as I can list them for 600k to 1m. Impatience for the win!

The other stuff is doing fine, but I overestimated my Endmod price & they're just sitting there.

But generics are all this guy sells, so I'll just let 'em sit.
Generally the post-2XP frenzy, when people pause to take a breath and slot all those new powers 'for real', cleans out whatever I wasn't able to move.

Purple supply has dried up, so it's time to either bump up my price point or wait out the 2xp frenzy. PvP IOs have been selling briskly and I've rebuilt my reserve of converters during the supply slowdown of 2xp.


R/e that Thunderstrike triple I picked up for merits, costing myself 1b in potential converting profits:

Poking around this morning I saw a crafted one had showed up at a weird level, picked it up with my first bid of 10m.

So, yeah- patience IS a virtue, folks! =P

I also grabbed Ray an LotG +rech to stick in Manuevers and was shocked at the price- got one on my first bid of 60m. A paltry SIXTY MILLION for an LotG + rech? What's happening to the world!! At that price I picked up another one for when I have a spare slot for Combat Jumping.


I now have two full sets of Thunderstrikes slotted & Ray is up to 15% ranged defense with Manuevers running. Put out bids on a set of Gaussian's to six-slot Tactics with, which will make my 5th 2.5% Ranged Defense set bonus once I finish off my other two sets of Thunderstrikes.

Also went on a spending spree and six-slotted Overcharge with the Malice of the Corrupter ATO. That's a two-fer for him- terrific ranged defense (3.75) and terrific recharge (8.75). Plus now I don't need to pick up a crummy targeted AoE set.

On the gameplay front I picked up a Yin TF, not because he needed it but because it was the first TF that crossed my chat window. Good team, fast run- 30 minutes.

And then, a moral quandry.

The core of the team was going to go on and run my favorite, Manticore. And it was a really good team- elec brute who could just jump into a spawn and laugh, another beam rifle blaster (which is always a lot of fun- bonus disintegrates all round!) & a good stone controller.

On the one hand, tedious gameplay.
On the other hand, imagine the positively DISGUSTING piles of xp to be earned mowing down all those purple Paragon Protectors.

So, double XP + the guarantee of a solid team won out.

It wasn't fast, but it wasn't slow- finished in about 1:30.
The xp was phenomenal and Ray finished the evening at level 38.


While relaxing on the couch after my strenuous gaming session, I of course came up with the idea for yet another alt- Mr. Ikebana, a Plant controller of some sort. A minimalist costume, white bodysuit with Organic Armor boots colored to look like roots, the off-center Plant chest detail & that one belt that's two coils that don't quite meet in the front, also colored like roots.

Sometimes they happen that way, one minute nothing, the next POOF! an entire character.

So this AM I hit the character creator. Surveying secondaries, I see Force Field and think to myself, "hey, didn't I want to make a FF character for running TFs?" But how to justify it for this particular character? Why, TERRARIUMS of course!

Finished his costume in record time since I already knew what it looked like & hit DFB. Just to be sick I pulled a super pack xp booster out of email and popped it.

Two runs, level 18.
Nice!

I figure I'll get him up to 20 tonight, then enhance him and start playing the "real" game...unless they're a Posi running when I log in. I'm always up for a Posi...

Jack is a toad.

the best thing that ever happened to this game was him taking NC's bribe to leave.