Organica

The Hectacomb set is much cheaper than Apocalypse on the market. Just saying.

I run ambush farms sometimes on my EM/SD scrapper and I don't run at +4, even alpha shifted, I think I only do +3. I don't have rebirth yet either. My fire/shield scrapper build is now all but complete and I should be able to do exactly the same things with her... but yeah, +4/8 would be very difficult on either of them.

But I do okay otherwise. No heals, unless you count the Panacea proc.

Nobody's mentioned the rularuu?

I'm not sure how high LotG's will go... but in general powerset proliferation means lots of people playing new characters up, which means prices on valuable IOs across the board will go up.

As it happens, Desperate Guy and Turndown Girl are not just descriptive names, these are their professional superhero monikers. These two form one of the most dynamic crime-fighting duos in the city. Their ability to work together to solve crime is as striking as their complete inability to get along with each other otherwise. Despite this, they tend to hang out together in Pocket D when relaxing simply by force of habit.

I'm pretty sure you can only apply a code for each update/release to your account once.

It's nicely written, but as someone who has earned several PvP recipes (30 merits each) by running a morality mission every other day, I much prefer the one that I can do quickly. That's not the "One God Spider" mission, so I skip that one every time now. ^_^

Congrats! ^_^

As a new marketeer, your job is to keep the masses down... by... um, writing guides on how to get rich and stuff. Yeah, I don't know how we do it either.

Well, we're working from a base standard of 200 million in 2 days, per the OP. ^_^

I can probably make 200 million in 2 days times 10-20 marketeers. They don't all make that much money every two days, but I make at least a couple of billion a week or more.

Some of the Weekly Task Forces have been Manticore Task Force and Sister Psyche Task Force. Also Numina, can't remember if Citadel's cropped up. But those are certainly soloable by a well built character, if you find enough friends to help you start it. (At least one other has to remain on the TF although they can log out.)

I've had to adjust my marketing strategies over the last several months as the bottom has fallen out of some niches and others that always seemed too expensive to bother with have become cheaper.

I used to make a lot of money off of "low end" but popular damage sets like Mako's, Scirocco's, Touch of Death, Decimation, Devastation. A lot of that has very low profit margins right now, and I've moved "up" to things like Oblits and defense/resist sets like Reactive Armor, Aegis, Gift of the Ancients, Luck of the Gambler, some of the heal IOs. It's still very easy to make money off of Performance Shifter IOs too.

But yeah, if you want to make money FAST, you need to market 20+ toons at once like some of us do, or you need to set up the PvP farm. ^_^

I have a level 50 electric melee/shield defense scrapper, Sparks Fly. She has a nictus shield. It's very spiffy and cool looking. One of the cool things about it is that I had to earn it. I had to run ITF -- twice. Never mind that the ITF is a lot of fun and I've run it probably more than 20 times on this character alone.

You don't see level one characters running around with a nictus shield, and that is cool. In a game where you can look like almost anything you want to look like out of the box, I like having a shield that not everyone sees every day, that people may stop and think, "Wow, that looks cool, how do I get that for myself?"

I have a level 50 katana/regen scrapper, Mouse Police. She has a rularuu katana. It's awesome looking. I even wrote it into her backstory. One of the cool things about it is that not everyone has one. I had to earn it.

MMOs are all about finding ways to make your character better. In the vast majority of MMOs, that starts with having a cookie-cutter character with rather boring looks to start with. Then, as you gain new gear and stuff you get to look cooler, more powerful, less like the level one nobodies. The people that designed CoH rightly determined that even level one heroes are not meant to look like cookie-cutter boring clones, so they designed a game where what you looked like had virtually nothing to do with how tough or powerful you really were. Everyone can look cool at level one.

But! MMOs are all about finding ways to make yourself better. At launch, there were nearly no ways to do this, aside from leveling up to 40 and then eventually 50. But then along came hami-O's, badges and accolade rewards, and then invention IOs and new temporary powers, all kinds of things were added. Some of those things were special costume parts that had to be earned, through task forces, through raids. People have always complained about such "locked" costume pieces, but the fact is, they're still few and far between in CoH as compared to most other MMOs, and many players like having such rewards to look forward to.

Look, I have a brand new level 50 fire melee/shield defense scrapper. I created her about four, five weeks ago and managed to hit 50 on Saturday. I've only run an ITF with her once, so I need to do that again, because I'll get a cool nictus shield as a reward. I don't have Task Force Commander yet -- I still need the two Posi TFs. I'm still working on some of those other accolades -- I need to hunt Tsoo sorcerers, BP masks, and Circle of Thorn mages. I will probably go to the Shadow Shard at some point to earn my rularuu shield as well. And, of course, I've only just unlocked my alpha slot so I have a lot of incarnate stuff to do on this character.

I have things to look forward to for this character. I'm still finishing up her build. I'm working on earning 30 hero merits so I can buy a nice PvP IO (I'm at 19 a-merits at the moment). Each new thing I accomplish makes the character that much better, that much more complete.

As much as I like the combat system in this game, if I didn't have goals to achieve I would have probably gotten bored and quit long ago.

In point of fact, I did quit long ago, back before Issue 5 hit. There wasn't enough in the game to hold my interest back then.

Costume pieces as rewards are part of those goals, part of what keeps me playing, part of what keeps me interested in a character, one of the ways I can "improve" said character. I actually have multiple characters with such rewards -- not only my em/shield and katana/regen scrapper, but also a level 50 broadsword/shield scrapper with nictus, rularuu, and Vanguard weapons; a broadsword/regen scrapper with nictus and rularuu swords; various characters with Vanguard weapons and the costume change emote, all of which I unlocked well before I was able to earn the Vanguard pack.

Oh, that's right -- I have the Vanguard pack now, so even that wasn't locked off behind content forever.

So for all of the people that seem to think the world is coming to an end because a new set of armor is locked behind content, I say If every costume option in the game were available at level one, the game would be less interesting. That's right. I'd have fewer things to look forward to, fewer ways to advance my character, fewer things to work towards, and fewer ways to look, for want of a better word, "epic".

Maybe someday you'll be able to buy a nictus shield and broadsword with cash or reward points or whatever. I kind of hope not. But until that day comes, I'll feel cool walking around with mine on display, and I'll feel cool every time I draw my rularuu katana. I haven't earned/bought any of the new incarnate armor yet, but amazingly enough I think having one armor set that distinguishes you as an incarnate is a good thing. And no, I don't want to see a level one walking around in that armor. And yes, it looks really cool -- that's the whole point.

I do understand that all the costume customization available at level one is one of the strengths of this game. But it does not break the game to have this one armor set available to incarnates. Or at least, to level 50s who have at least one incarnate somewhere.

It gives me something new to work towards. ^_^

(I'm less convinced that the new auras also needed to be content-locked, but eh.)

I would say that Dr. Manhattan in the Watchmen is essentially an incarnate. He's multiple times more powerful than any other super powered person in that universe, so much so that he's no longer human. (I thought of him because of your Alucard example: "I am very disappoointed, Veidt. Restructuring myself after the substraction of my intrinsic field was the first trick I learned... did you think it would kill me?")

Jean Grey as Phoenix becomes an incarnate, I'd say. ^_^

Probably Sailor Pluto is an incarnate.

That's kind of how I view incarnates: not gods, but far above mortals.

I like the trials, I don't run them over much, I like that the game now has end-game content beyond hami and ship raids and a few extra-tough Tfs/SFs. I think it makes sense that end-game trials have some sort of special reward. I know people will complain that they want the reward without running the end-game trial, but if you make the end-game trial rewards available without ever running the end-game trials, then they aren't really rewards.

I like that there are things in the game that you can't have at level 1.

I know you were all wondering this, so I did some checking, and according to my research:

Great Googly Moogly

...is available as a character name on Victory, Pinnacle, and Liberty. And possibly the German and French servers too, I didn't check those two.

In a related note:

Nattering Nabob

...is available as a name on Victory, Guardian, Virtue, Infinity, Protector, Liberty, Chamption, Triumph, Union, and Defiant.

Sadly "Nattering Nabob of Negativism" is probably too long. Otherwise I feel he'd be the perfect archenemy for the hero known as the Great Googly Moogly.

Bah, I don't waste space in my base for storing salvage. ^_^ /em bids 200,000 per piece of common salvage, comes back 15 minutes later.

I just like to do things in order, so what I'm doing on my current toon is placing bids for the salvage I'll need for the next round, listing the stuff I crafted this round, and coming back the next day to craft more and then repeat. It's not fast and I'm not making a ton of money while I'm doing it, but it's easier for me to keep track of. Money isn't much of an issue for me anyway, and I like to use as much of my base storage as possible to store crafted IOs.

With the new half issue I'll probably be too busy the next couple of weeks to worry about this anyway.

1. You're going to feel weaker in Praetoria where you're at no matter what AT you're playing. Praetorian missions are just generally harder than the older missions found in the rest of the game. So that's kind of two strikes against you currently, because you're at a location where finding teammates is more difficult and where it's harder to solo.

2. As everyone has said: in other games, healing is vital to high-level encounters. In CoH, healing is useful in low level encounters and less and less useful the higher you go. This is a game where people can solo entire groups of enemies and deal massive damage; the support characters that are most wanted at the high end of the game do things that makes it easier to do massive damage more quickly. Defenders/Corruptors/etc can still be very awesome support characters but healing winds up being one of the least of your abilities, except in certain specific situations. Making enemies weaker, increasing ally damage, increasing defense and resists, replenishing people's endurance are all things people tend to appreciate more. ^_^

You can add people below 25 to an Ouro arc if you start them from the SG base crystal. ^_^

I've rarely made use of that though. I did run two Ouro arcs last night, but I was doing it solo and moving as quickly as I could for the rewards. Generally someone who wants to run a PuG team using regular mission content has to plan ahead and have a couple of contacts started so that he doesn't suddenly run out of missions, or have to make the team wait while he runs back to the contact. It just takes more planning and work, but I know people still do it, I was on a team like that just last week.

I *am* currently working on field crafter for two toons -- doing it the slow, steady way. Of course, the both happen to be toons on my 2nd account.

I really would like to have it on all of my marketing toons at some point... I've earned it on two toons this year already. But I only work on it on one or two at a time to prevent myself from going mad.

I hit level 50 on my latest scrapper, a fire/shield, on Saturday. Sunday I ran Mender Ramiel's arc, then later in the day while solo I did this: hunted Fake Nemesis and Rikti Monkeys in PI, ran the level 30-34 Ouro arc Freakshow Wars, and ran five tip missions and a morality mission.

When I was done I had 5 shards. Not a lot, but for just doing normal stuff I thought that wasn't bad. If I was desperate for shards, I'd probably go run a few ITFs or an STF. ^_^