Organica

IT's back.

Or, at the very least, it's been tweeted that it's back.

Bonus character bio. ^_^ Still cataloging all of my characters, slowly.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-27.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 27


I have today off but I'll be at the convention by Noon (and I'll have to turn in my rental and go pick up my PT Cruiser this evening, assuming it's actually finally fixed by tonight). But I logged in this morning for a couple of hours. I spent my time working on my build for Swift Sky, and then Power Leveling her three more levels to level 38. My build is mostly complete to what I can actually slot at level 38, but I still have bids in for a few things. I spent some money this morning! Hope it went to someone who is still playing the game and can use it.

Usually I try to get pictures from whatever Task Force I did that day, but I'm often busy and forget, and even when I do remember, there's not always time to swing the camera around to get a good angle (and I wish the camera controls in this game were more robust). I don't usually consider taking pictures while I'm PLing, because PLing is not exciting, so it doesn't occur to me that pictures from it would be interesting.

But I was thinking today that I really enjoy just beating up on bad guys, even on a Council Earth map that I've run over and over. No other game is going to let me run at super speed, take a flying leap, land in a group of 15 oor 20 enemies above my level, and then unleash massive AoE destruction upon them, all while dressed as a ballerina girl, or a cat, or a barbie doll, or a demon, or (insert your character here). Just the act of leaping into the enemy group is a blast, I do that all the time and it's one reason I usually take combat jumping as a pool power.





So I thought, "I really like doing this, I should document it. It's one of the things I'll miss when the game's gone."

Also since I control the pacing and there's only my character to deal with, I can generally get better pictures. So here's a few of me smashing Council:

















I'm going to miss all of this.

Looks like AP33 is gone. I know it was there last night when we ran a Manticore, but it's not there this morning.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-26.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 26


The first thing I did tonight was scour my bases for IOs that I needed for Swift Sky's build. My bases are growing a bit bare in some respects, because of all my recently IO'd alts. I used to keep a lot of Miracle and Numina uniques lying around, but could only find one lone Miracle for Swift Sky. Also I need a bunch of Eradication, regular Numina, and Reactive Armor IOs for my build, which I've had in the past but not much t be found at the moment.

On the other hand I had some of the other stuff I needed -- all the Luck of the Gambler Defense and +7.5% rechage IOs I could want, full scrapper ATO set, Rectified Reticle set, Glad Armor +3% IO, Performance Shifter endurance IO (but not the +endurance proc), run stealth proc, and 3 of 4 pieces for four different sets of Kinetic Combat (I never have any of the damage/endurance lying about). Also full set of Basilisk's Gaze even though I haven't picked up Char yet. So my build is about half done.

I did a little more PLing of my scrapper. I accomplished three things: 1. Got Swift Sky to 35, 2. Got to 28 shards on Trinkets and proceeded to craft my Favor of the Well and my T4 Alpha, and 3. Got another purple drop, a sleep IO this time.

I like to drop my IO into a global channel to show off when I've got a purple drop. Since this dropped to Swift Sky, the one being PL'd, that account was on the laptop. Earlier I'd tried to alt for what I thought was an ITF being started by a friend, but the game had crashed on my main computer, and having Swift Sky still on the laptop I'd started to send a tell to the friend who I thought was starting the ITF (while I was logging back in on the main computer), before realizing they were doing some other kind of Nemesis mission instead. So I hadn't completed the tell, but in my chat bar I still had /t @friend sitting there. My laptop sits off to the side and has a weird keyboard (it was a German-made laptop I got cheap) and the numlock key is always on, and I tend to play in the dark so I can't see the keyboard (I have a bluetooth keyboard if I need, but nowhere to set it on the desk, so it's either in my lap or set aside). Suffice it to say, I hadn't bothered to clear the chat bar because it was too much trouble, and I might have sent my friend a blank message or garbage character message in the process.

So I tried to send to my global channel a link showing off my new purple recipe, but instead I sent it as a tell to my friend. Felt kinda dumb doing that, although he just made fun of it. But then, I figured, what the heck, and sent him my crafted purple from the night before. This had been a Coercive Persuasion, but after all of these PL runs Trinkets had 15 converters on her and I'd converted it into a nice Armageddon. So random stupid tell becomes nice purple IO!

Just after I got Swift Sky to 35, a Manticore formed and I joined on Trinkets. Wanted to get my high-damage scrapper out on a real TF for a change, instead of running around a Council earth map over and over. We had an electric melee/shield brute, and a mace/shield brute, and a street justice/willpower brute, but I still think I was the tank!

Finished our Manti in 37 minutes. That was my evening.

I won't get to play much for the rest of the week, I'll be at a con (Rainfurrest) so that may be all I have to add. Might do a little tomorrow morning and/or Sunday evening, we'll see.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-25.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 25

Tuesday I logged to do some more PLing on my new scrapper Swift Sky, but a WST respec trial run was forming and that sounded fun (well... apart from all the wait time in the reactor core) so I joined that. I was on One Divine Hammer, my mace/shield scrapper. I forget what level she is or what I got to, but close to 40 by now.

It was a really good team and a lot of fun, and predictably I found the very last sky raider out in the hallway where he'd ported. Anyway, had fun. Right after that an ITF was forming, but I was inclined to spend some time PLing rather than commit to an hour long ITF, and anyway it was only a day removed from a 2 hour 20 minute ITF. So I was a bit gun shy I suppose.

Little PLing got Swift Sky up to level 32 and got Trinkets to 25 shards. I had 3 notices of the well on her, so I really only needed 28 shards and I could break down one notice and craft my Favor of the Well for my T4.. I got three shards in a row to get to 25 and was really excited... and then I got nothing the rest of the evening. But I got another purple drop -- my third or forth in the last week, a Coercive Persuasion that I crafted before logging off.

The other thing I did was work up a build for Swift Sky in MIDS, but it was too late to try and actually implement it.

Goofy is the Roman god of the Underworld? Who knew?

/em has no idea what this thread is about.

Oh wait, figured it out. It's about three pages long.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-24.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 24


I've been on a few ITFs from hell in my time, and I don't know that the one I was on tonight would qualify as the worst. But it was probably one of the longest and weirdest.

To start with, I was PLing my new toon Swift Sky a bit (from 22 to 27 actually) and a friend asked me if I wanted to do an ITF. This was before he announced he was forming it. I don't know that I've ever done an ITF with this person, but I've run many other TFs with him, so I had no reason to be worried. But right after I joined, he proposed PuGing the rest of the team. That worried me a little. And I wasn't able to respond, because I had a sudden graphics glitch and decided to reboot. By the time I got back, he'd already started filling via the LFG channel.

I was on Forest Goddess, a Nature Affinity defender. My friend was on a corr. I suggested I could switch to some kind of melee type, but he said we'd be just fine. Anyway, I broadcasted to a couple of channels and two people I knew joined, so I wasn't that worried. We had two scrappers and a tank who didn't have taunt, but he was an invul tank with a lot of set bonuses showing.

Our leader gave up the star to someone who was 50 and after discussion decided to run at +1. We didn't have any incarnates on the team and a lot of sub-50's, but he figured we could handle it.

Our first problem came in the first mission, and it didn't seem like such a problem to me. Leader announced that when the door was unlocked he'd head up to the temple and ATT everyone there. He did this while we were fighting the last couple of guys in the tunnel leading to the outside, so we left 2-4 enemies behind, and we skipped the path. I know the group I normally team with likes to take the path, but not everyone does it that way. But one of my other friends threw a fit. "Why the hell did you teleport everone up here? I didn't know we were doing a speed run!" He was way overboard, the leader apologized, said that's the way he'd always done it, and then my other friend was still complaining in one of our global chat channels about it. I really thought he was blowing things out of proportion.

Anyway, in the second mission someone asked if we were going to wait for the ambuses, and when the nominal leader said yes, friend2 said, "So we're not doing a speed run anymore?" But anyway, mission 2 went well enough.

When we got to mission 3, friend2 asked what the plan was, and the leader asked what people wanted. This seemed to be his M.O. for the rest of the task force, let other people decide what to do. I said it was a good thing to be decisive and tell people what the plan is, and he asked me privately why he should say anything if we were just going to "be boring and steamroll the TF anyway". Well, for starters, you haven't said we're going to steamroll, or speed, or kill all, or go for shards/XP, at any point. That's part of the problem. Plus I like steamrolling an ITF -- at least, on a good team that can steamroll quickly and efficiently. We weren't that, exactly though.

At the computer leader said he was going to pull the AVs... well actually, he asked if people thought he should, but he was encouraged to do so. This failed, and we defeated the computer with the AVs still waiting up top. There was general disagreement about whether they should be pulled down or we should just fight on the platform -- I'm all for fighting on the platform, especially since we'd already finished off the computer without pulling them, but I was on a defender, the tank decided to pull and the leader insisted that the turrets up top would kill him quickly. Anyway, we pulled, and didn't bother clearing the platform. Oh well.

Things got more interesting in the final mission. By this point, even I was annoyed that our leader wasn't really giving any instructions. Which path we took was essentially a vote. We got to Rommy and cleared around him, and leader said we should attack him where he was instead of pulling him to the grass -- he asked what good it would do to pull him to the grass, which just set friend2 off again in private channels -- anyway, we charges in, and here's where thing went from slow and sort of disorganized to downright stupid.

The tank couldn't keep Rommy taunted. At all. I don't really understand why not, Invulnerability has a very strong taunt aura and an invul scrapper can taunt Rommy pretty well, I've done it, friends have done it. But our tank couldn't do it. I think NA's debuffs tend to make enemies want to run, but what am I supposed to do, not debuff the AV? Most of our team was level 49 and Rommy was level 52, so that was a problem, we had trouble generating a lot of damage, but basically the main problem was Rommy ran everywhere, even under the ramps to one side of the platform. It was a nightmare. We had a dom on the team too, but she didn't seem capable of holding Rommy except on very rare occasions when she'd lock him down for, oh, 30 seconds.

At one point the scrapper who was the 50 placed in charge died, and then mysteriously vanished, never to return. I know things were going bad but I really hate people that just quit like that. That's one reason I prefer to run with friends, you know what they're capable of, you know how they like to do things, and most of all you know they won't bail on you.

The entire ITF took 2 hours and 20 minutes. We did stay around to clear the towers and part of the right path so that friend2 could get the final bubble to 50. Forest Goddess got level 44 and more than halfway to 45, so that was good I guess, but it was a long and painful 1.5 levels.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-23.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 23


To begin with, there was this picture in this thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...postcount=4786

This was posted in the "Costume Redesign Thread" because Storm_Seeker was trying to replicate that look.

Now, we are told that this is a male character, so the best replies were imaged of male characters. But I and a couple of others submitted female versions. Here's mine:



This was all a few weeks ago. This past week I came across this picture again, and suddenly I really, really wanted to make a character with this look. I know I've sworn off making new alts -- but surely one more couldn't hurt? I've only played titan weapons to 50 once, and that was with a sword. I know the set is no different with a hammer, but for me looks and concept mean a lot, so really, it does make a difference. After all, I have 5 or 6 different broadsword/shield scrappers and brutes because each one embodies an entire different concept/look.

The next step was the Virtue Name Watch thread. Well, actually, the next step was finding someone to delete. I have 48 characters on Virtue on each of my two main accounts, and while I clearly won't be playing all of those characters again before the game signs off, I don't really want to delete most of them. But I had a Street Justice scrapper named Tori Blackheart (sister of Tiffany Blackheart) who was all of level 4, and not likely to ever see level 5. And I already had a Street Justice brute (Megamisama) and stalker (Shinobi Shinobu). So into the dustbin went Tori!

Then the next step was Virtue Name Watch. Some people had "released to the wild" names that they'd been saving (hoarding) against the day they might use them for a good concept. I searched through said name list and came across Swift Sky, which I liked quite a bit.

Thus was my new scrapper born!






I gave her three different looks, so she's not always a near-clone of the original picture. ^_^

This will almost certainly be the last new character I create, and my goal is to get her to 50 as well. Maybe just by PLing most or all of the way there, we'll see.

I spent a lot of time Sunday powerleveling Swift Sky up to 22. Then a friend wanted to start up a Numina Task Force, so I joined that with Black Snake Sister. This was good -- in my rush to get more characters to 35 and Numi-capable, I'd completely forgotten that the actual friend who was running all of the WSTs for the helper badge wasn't going to be around for a while. But there's always someone running whatever TF is the WST, I suppose.

Anyway that was all I got to do Sunday evening, I was busy for most of Sunday until about 5 PM, so I only had a few hours to play.

I'm not sure why people assume that those that didn't care about the game stopped playing immediately on 9/1/12. Really, some of the friends who I haven't seen since then were very passionate about the game. I think some can't bring themselves to play because it hurts too much.

I said in my "90 Days" thread, that I can't get too emotionally worked up about a game. Sure, I've played it far too much, and I wanted to play it a lot longer. I was shocked when the news broke. I hope it gets saved or returns in some fashion. But I never expected to play it forever, and it will do me good to do other things. I just want to have fun in the game while I still can.

I used to play Second Life a lot more than I have in the last 3-4 years. I had good friends, we had a house on the water, secret caves, an underwater tiki bar... I spent a lot of time building parts of it, and it was really cool and I had fun hanging out with my friends there. All of that's gone now, and I'm not in close contact with most of those friends -- I can still log into SL but most of those friends moved on to something else (which... guess I did too).

I played EQ for 3 years on the Test Server, I had a very tight guild of friends and to this day I still occasionally post to our guild message board even though the guild has been defunct for nearly 10 years. I can't really go back to those characters and friendships either.

Nothing lasts forever. I had more invested in this game than any other, it was nearly the perfect game for me, and I wish it wasn't coming to an end so soon or so abruptly. I'll be sad, but I'll survive. I've done almost everything I could have wanted in the game, so I don't have a lot of regrets at least. ^_^

If I can find another game that allows most of what this game did that I liked, I'll be happy. If it's put out by some of the people who put out this game, I'll be even happier. Some of the things I want: A) Up-front character customization, B) The ability to group at any level, C) The ability to take on many enemies at once and in general feel cool and powerful, D) no camping, E) a market place I enjoy, F) Excellent communication tools, G) Great animations. That's for starters. ^_^

I do too!

And... I'll never hit 10,000 posts.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-22.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 22

This morning my goal was to get a couple of my level 25-30 characters up to 35 so I can join a Numina or ITF with them.

Most of these characters are on my 2nd account, and I have several I want to play. First and foremost is Eternal Sweeper, my staff melee / ninjitsu stalker. I only have 1 level 50 stalker, but I like Sweeper a lot so I want to get her to 50 too. Then there's my crab spider Black Snake Sister, and my Bane Spider Barbie Bane, and my dual blade scrapper Vashti Ahandra. The first three were level 30, Vashti is only 26.

Anyway, my primary goal was to get one or two of them to 35 so I could do Numi with them. I logged in Trinkets my fire melee/shield scrapper and logged Eternal Sweeper on the laptop, and after an hour plus of PLing I managed to get Sweeper to 35.

I switched to Black Snake Sister, but by this point friends were logging in and starting up task forces and stuff, so I only got her to 32 before I decided to join a Numina that Freaky was forming. This meant switching back to Eternal Sweeper on the main computer, and it also meant I had to level up fast, check my MIDS build so I knew what slots I wanted where, and I also spent time at the university in Founder's trying to craft all of the IOs that I had on me while the team was still forming. (Eternal Sweeper is one of those toons who I had level locked at 30 for a while so that I could run SSA's once a week and do random rolls on level 30 recipes -- she was nearly full on level 30 recipes that weren't crafted yet.)

I didn't use an XP booster this time -- Numi is a lot of stealthing missions and running around zones and not so much experience (except for the end bonus of course). I was still level 35 when we finished, but immediately another friend was starting up a Citadel, so I joined that. We finished that off in 1 hour 17 minutes, and I got to 36 and halfway to 37.

I went back to PLing Black Snake Sister. Having run Eternal Sweeper through a Numi, I was once again without a level 35+ character that I really wanted to run through another Numi with friends, which I expect I'll run at least once more before Tuesday. I wanted to get my crab to 35 for that. ^_^

Just as I was hitting 35, the Saturday hami raid was starting up. I switched back to Princess Ozma for this. We didn't get a lot of people to come out (no Zombie this week!) but we managed to pull off the raid anyway.

Spent some time in Ouro talking to another player that I've teamed with before, and that was pretty much it for my day. ^_^

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-21.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 21


Friday night I logged in to find that the Valentine's Day Spring Fling event had been turned on. I'm sure I have toons that could use the toga as a costume part -- but off the top of my head I wasn't sure who, so I decided to get a toga for Princess Ozma.

I joined a full group that was running the event from start to finish. For the hero side, I wound up being in charge, and then throughout five runs on the Snaptooth mission. Got the costume pieces, got all the badges including the red cap one which I didn't realize I was missing.



I didn't get a really good picture of Ozma vs. Snaptooth, but anyway.

Right after that some friends ran another Numina Task Force. I brought Princess Shinobu for that as well, but I've already run it once this week with her so there was no notice of the well awarded. Right now my friends are running Numina as often as they can (one is working on the WST badge) and I'm running out of characters that are at least level 35 that I want to get experience on.

We ended the night with an ITF run, for which I switched to Forest Goddess. I hit my usual XP boster and Windfall, and I gained 2 levels (up to 43 now) and got a Ragnarok drop. Can't complain about that! (I also got a Performance Shifter +endurance recipe )

Considering that my goal on Sept 1st was to play Princess Ozma and Forest Goddess to 50 and have fun with staff fighting and nature affinity/water blast, I think I'm well on my way to achieving that goal!

Sent!

Well, in a moment it will be.

I have to admit that I was a little disappointed that you didn't follow this up with more posts.

But I'm glad you did so well on this character, and glad you're having fun. ^_^ Just thought I should say that since nobody had actually responded to your posts. That doesn't mean people aren't reading!

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-20.html


90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 20


Today we were supposed to run a bunch of Positron missions as part of one of the "Save CoH" events, I guess. But Zombie wanted to run an ITF, and I'm always partial to the kind of experience you can earn on an ITF, as well as a shot at a purple drop. So I logged in to Forest Goddess and headed to Cimemora.

I didn't take any pictures, but you've all seen an ITF before, not much new to see. ^_^ The impoortant information: started at level 39, turned on an XP Booster and a Windfall, got to level 41.5 and actually got a Hectacomb drop at the very end when we were doing the towers.

We were going to run a Numina after, but not enough people were interested so we put it off for another night.



I asked in one of my global channels if anyone knew where I was if I said I was looking at a movie poster for "Brass Monday". So... where is that? One person answered correctly in the global channel, most people ignored me I think, lol.

It's too bad there was never a Nemesis Task Force, I'd run it for a "Brass Monday" event every Monday, haha.

I took pictures of a few more of my older characters. Sometimes I run across a bio that I'd completely forgotten about writing, such as this strange little tale for Thorn Kitten:

Just sent everything above out, hope it all arrives safely!

I see iTrials running every night on Virtue. I don't usually join them but I see them advertised.

Heck, on Sunday Whisper X's group was running a whole series of all-controller iTrials.

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 19

Today was simple -- logged in, Freaky was starting up a Numina. It's the WST! So I joined with my level 38 mace scrapper One Divine Hammer. We had a good team, we finished in about 52 minutes, I got to level 39.5.

In the meantime CA was on a different (mostly PuG) Numina. Theirs was a bit slower. By the time we were both done, Jane had logged in, and wanted to... you guessed it... do a Numina.

So we did. I got Forest Goddess most of a level, nearly 40 now I think. We ran with only 5 people this time but it went fast, we were done in 40 minutes I guess.

That was my evening. ^_^

I'm hoping to get Forest Goddess to 50 by some time next week. I'm trying to figure out which other characters I'd like to work on in the coming month. One Divine Hammer, mace/shield scrapper, I will probably get to 50. I'd like to get Eternal Sweeper, staff/ninjitsu stalker, to 50, I only have 1 level 50 stalker. I may work on Death Ace who is 40 or Cupcake Overdrive who is 43. Other possibilities are a dual blades brute named Vashti Ahandra (don't have a level 50 dual blade) or my bane Barbie Bane or my crab, don't have a 50 of either.

I've kind of slacked off on my project to document all of my toons, but I did two more tonight, so here's my Crazy 88 toon Wall Street Brawler:

Also noted. Did not get to e-mail anything out tonight so will do tomorrow for sure.

And I don't want anything back. ^_^ I am giving away stuff that has been sitting in my base, just in case I made a brand new alt and wanted to IO them. Most of my characters that are level 30 or above are at least partially IO'd already, and nearly all of my level 50's have a complete IO build. I'm not giving away anything that I was likely to use in the next 6-8 months anyway.

Got my stipend on my third account, 400 points. No token so far. Didn't check my other accounts for more points to spend yet.