Organica

Achievement: made a new brute, used 2 accounts to PL him to 25 in RWZ, and used tickets to random roll some good recipes.

Disachievement: !) Moved my scrapper to Atlas Park before moving my new brute from AE back across the RWZ, forgetting that this would break up the team and my new brute would have to run past level 35+ enemies at level 25 2) Also forgot I was going to open an Ouro portal for my brute, so I had to go back, 3) Also forgot that there were 50 people standing around in the base trying to form trials leagues, and my poor brute on my old laptop could barely move past them, 4) Also forgot I was set at +2/8 people when I went to do my tip missions on my scrapper.

For me, anything works... when I take them to RWZ and pair them with a scrapper from my other account in AE.

Which I did last night. I like playing on blue side, so when I want a villain AT I PL them to 20 so I can switch that much faster.

Last night in the Market channel, Chaos commented that "a trained monkey" could farm as well as the farmer he was watching.

I made the comment that "I wonder if 'Trained Monkey' is available as a name?" Chaos said it wasn't likely on Virtue... but after due consideration the idea that a character with the full name of "A Trained Monkey" would get some hilarious comments from random npcs was too much to resist.... IE "Look! It's A Trained Monkey!" "A Trained Monkey saved my grandfather!" "I heard A Trained Monkey took on the Council!"

So now I've used my last open slot on Virtue. ^_^

I'm in three different channels dedicated to TFs (on Virtue) and even at that, there's been noticeably fewer TFs being run. This weekend was better -- I did ITF twice, LGTF, STF, a CoP trial, and a redside hami raid... I think that was it. But yeah, it's been a bit harder to get on TFs in the last month.

There's no way to store recipes except on characters or in the market interface. Bin storage in a SG is for crafted IOs.

Yeah, the low reward is because you can speed the trial very quickly. My first couple of Eden Trials were speed runs that took 10-15 minutes to complete. I really didn't get a good feel for the trial doing that, but was able to do some longer runs later. It really does have an epic feel, because of the setting, but the fact that it's mostly on one gigantic map (well... several gigantic maps that link together... but certainly the largest indoor maps in the game, I think) is probably what makes it difficult to fix so that it can't be speeded through.

I have a toon locked at 41 for the Eden Trial (well... technically she's only 40 because we did 1 Eden Trial using her and then never decided to run it since... but I built the character specifically to lock at 41 for Eden). Hopefully I'll get to use her a few times that week. ^_^

But to your other question... you can "buy" a hero or villain merit every 20 hours with 50 regular merits and 20 million influence, and you can do 5 tip missions (alignment missions) every 20 hours... and after you reach 10 hero or 10 villain alignment missions completed you will be able to do a morality mission immediately, and your reward for doing that will be 50 regular merits the first time you confirm your hero or villain status, and 1 hero or 1 villain merit the second time and every time after that.

So, for example: My Night Widow Miss Shinobu. Once I was above level 20 (actually 27) I spent two days to take her rogue, two more days to take her hero, Two days later I confirmed my hero alignment and got 50 regular merits, two days after that I did it again and got a hero merit. I spent these. Then, having reached level 43 or 44, my build required that I complete Ghost Widow's patron arc for access to the Soul Mastery villain epic pool (technically any of the villain patron arcs open up access to all patron pools these days). So i spent 2 days going vigilante, 2 more days going villain, did Ghost Widow's arc, then spent 2 more days going rogue and 2 more days turning hero again. Full circle and back again!

After that, I confirmed my hero alignment, got the 50 regular merit reward, and after that I would earn hero merits again.

A bit later, having earned several hundred regular merits through task forces, I decided I wanted to buy a PvP Glad Armor +3% defense IO. These can be purchased for 30 hero merits. So I used my night widow Miss Shinobu to buy a hero merit every day, and do 5 tip missions every day (with a morality mission every 2nd day). In this way I earned 3 hero merits every 2 days. When possible I also did TFs or ran Ouro arcs so that I wouldn't run out of regular merits, and I had my 30 hero merits in 20 days.

It's odd that it shows up in the pet window, but other vet non-combat pets don't.

But he's pretty cool. ^_^

This is my first day in CoH -- 1 week after launch. I waited for the game to come out before buying it. I don't remember the name of this character, I deleted her within a couple of days. I believe she was a scrapper. But this was just me playing around with the costume creator and then checking the game out.



This is my first picture of Organica. The original Organica was a katana/dark armor scrapper, back when the only katana was the monstrous legacy katana and you swung it like a broadsword. I played this version of Organica for about a week or two, but at level 17 I was very discouraged at the high endurance cost of dark armor, and I didn't really believe that stamina would solve all of my problems so I deleted her and remade her as a katana/regen. I never looked back after that. ^_^



This is the regen version of Organica, doing what she did best. At the time regen was godlike, instant healing was a get out of damage free card, provided you didn't sustain really massive spike damage. This is a later picture because it's an alternative costume. When the game first came out you could only do one costume and never change it. I remember that the original Organica had a string bikini instead of a regular bikini, so there was a gap that you could sometimes see beneath the belt where the bottom of the costume didn't connect to the top. This bugged me a lot and caused a lot of anxiety, it was one other reason I decided remake her at 17.

I played Organica to about 37. That involved several levels of solo streetsweeping in the back of Brickstown, man many hours to gain one level, and I got very very sick of it and gave up on the character. I had another character by then that I liked better, my fire/axe tank Jalia, who herded and burned down massive groups of enemies and made it all the way to level 50. I did the old-style hami raid twice with Jalia.

I left the game after about a year and a half, with the intention of never coming back. More than a year later a friend talked me into coming back (she played with me once, then quit ). When I came back I started up on Virtue with Mouse Police, who was an alternate version of the Mouse Police I had on Pinnacle (who was level 27 at the time), but really was essentially an Organica clone since she was katana/regen. I played her all the way to 50. She became my second level 50 and my first level 50 scrapper.

Just this last year I managed to get Organica to 50 finally too. ^_^


Don't forget that in the bad old days, one of the things that was a big problem for a scrapper was how the game handled moving targets. If you were chasing an enemy and you were right on top of them, you were not actually in melee range according to the game. You had to be 5-7 yards ahead of them in order to attack them. This was quite frustrating for any melee character.

So I was checking through my characters last night, and I was shocked -- SHOCKED -- to realized that I had not logged in my level 28 dark melee/dark armor scrapper Mina Evangeline in 47 days. How could that be? I only just created that character! I mean, it wasn't as recent as last week, but... 47 days?

Mina was my new brute started this year that I was going to get to 50 to see what Dark Armor was like. Oh, sure, I got distracted by a few other projects since then -- I mean, there was this new scrapper... and then this other new scrapper... and then I wanted an awesome night widow.. and then I wanted to revamp my em/shield scrapper...

Okay, well I guess that could have taken 47 days....

Hello, my name is Organica, and I'm an altoholic. I'm actually not your prototypical altoholic, because I can occasionally focus and push a character to level 50. And I do play my 50's! (Some of them anyway.) I have something over 15 level 50 characters. But I have many more projects than I have time for. On Virtue, my home server, I have every possible slot filled on one account, and all but 1 slot filled on my 2nd account. That's, what, 71 characters? I was actually considering buying that last slot, and then I just hit my 48th month vet badge and was awarded an extra slot. Score!

I have a lot of characters on other servers too, but so far I haven't needed extra slots on other servers. And I still have a few level 1 characters on Virtue that I may delete if I get a better idea. Tinfoil Hat, Bid Creep, Minos the Hammer, and AE Baby might never see level 2.

So -- Mina Evangeline. This is actually a 2nd version of a character I created when GR came out. That character is named Eva Tepes. Both characters are young girl vampires loosely based on two anime characters -- Evangeline McDowell of Negima!, and Mina Tepes of Dance in the Vampire Bund (two fun manga). I liked Eva a lot, but I didn't like soloing in Praetoria so much when all of my friends were in Paragon, so Eva got stuck at level 10. Eva was also a scrapper -- dark melee since she's a vampire. When I decided to tackle the character idea again, I made a brute -- Mina Evangeline. I only have 1 level 50 brute, and 1 at 40, I need a really good one! Mina was my new project character for the new year!

Alas, I was distracted by another idea. Last year I became obsessed with a series of characters whose back story is that they've all escaped from an AE PL mission. They are all "buffbot" girls, they all look exactly alike and have various buff powers: Rad Girl One (def), Kin Girl Two (def), Fire Girl Three (corr), Dark Girl Four (def), Empathy Girl Five (def), Bubble Girl Six (def), Sonic Girl Seven (def), Ice Girl Eight (def), Pain Girl Nine (corr), and Poison Girl Ten (mm). Just what an altoholic needs, ten new characters at one go, huh? I actually have played Bubble Girl to 50, Dark Girl to 46, Sonic Girl to 45 and Ice Girl to 44. (The others have largely been ignored so far -- most of them are around level 20.)

Aha! But why can't one of them have learned a new job? Why can't one of them have learned to be a fighter, a scrapper? So I created Scrapper Girl One and took her to 35.

And then I was distracted by the lure of big AoE damage, and created Trinkets, a fire melee/shield defense scrapper. I played her to 28.

And then I decided I wanted a kick-*** night widow, and turned to Miss Shinobu, a level 27 night widow that I'd created last Fall. I actually focused long enough to get her to level 50 and kit her out with a very expensive build, and even played her for several weeks after that. She's currently one of my favorite level 50s.

But it's hard to remain focused. My current project has been to completely rework my electric melee/shield defense scrapper Sparks Fly and give her an even more expensive build. I'm nearly done with that, and Sparks has become as much fun to play as Miss Shinobu. Most nights I've been playing one or the other.

In the meantime, I've kind of avoided all of the new trials and am way behind on badging with Mouse Police (my only real badger), I've failed to get any character a tier 4 alpha slot (Nina Ballerina and Miss Shinobu are closest), and I have all kinds of other alts that I'd like to get to 50 at some point.

Where I'm going to go next is anyone's guess. I could go back to Mina, or Trinkets, or Scrapper Girl. But I have so many other alts that I want to play! I have two blasters in the 40's, my fire/kin from 2004 is all the way to 39 now, my mm is 45, I have several mid-level tanks that I'd like to level some day, and I have plans to level at least one stalker, one corruptor, and one dominator to 50 since I've never done that. But I'll probably create a brand new character and get them to 25 or 35 before doing something else.

Anyway, I need a few stories from other altoholics so that I can feel like I'm not alone. What's your latest characters, or what have you been working on lately?

Wow, I might actually get some use out of Shinobu Eden, my made-to-run-Eden-Trial character.

I made her last Summer. We ran Eden Trial once with her, and my friends decided that, on reflection, they really didn't like the Eden Trial anyway. So we haven't run one since.

But yeah, I really wish they'd fix that.

Ran Moonfire last week. We run that one fairly often.

Over the last 2-3 months I've spent approximately 7-10 billion on my night widow and my electric melee/shield defense scrapper (still polishing off the scrapper's build). So if I had an extra 50 billion lying around, my scrapper's build would be finished NAO, and then I might embark on a new awesome build project or two... I have a fire/shield scrapper I'm leveling up, and my fire/kin troller. Or I'd try something else. Most of my current toons have very good IO builds already, about six or so have fully purpled builds so I don't really need to rework most of them and especially not the ones I play regularly. But a new toon might be fun, I like having a project.

Other than that I'd spend some money to establish nice bases for all of my little sattelite SGs and VGs on various servers that I don't play on all that much. (This is one of my long-range goals anyway.) And I'd probably buy up a lot of purples and pvp recipes as cheaply as possible and put them into storage. ^_^

Really, the hard part is going to be getting the chance to run whatever TFs are new to you... lots of people are running the two trials, comparatively few people are running TFs right now. ^_^ But the newness of the trials will wear off soon I think.

Achilles Heel: Chance for Resistance Debuff. This is a nice little IO proc. If it goes off, you reduce your enemy's resistance by 20%. I have two slotted on Mouse Police -- one in Gambler's Cut, one in Golden Dragonfly. I happen to think it's a pretty spiffy little IO.

I liked it so much that after I picked up a couple for Organica last Fall, I decided I should keep a few extras on hand just in case I need some in the future. I got mine for Mouse and Organica simply by putting in lowball bids of something like 6-7 million and waiting. So I put in a new lowball bid. And it sat there. And sat there. After several months, I upped my bid to more than 9 million... and it still sat there.

It seems, between the time I bought these for Mouse and Organica, and now, these things have become quite a bit more popular. The set tops out at level 20, and the level 20 proc goes for 30 to 60 million -- for the recipe! But wait! It's only a proc! I mean, correct me if I'm wrong, but a level 20 proc will reduce your enemy's resistance by 20%, and a level twelve proc will do the same thing! So why does it have to be level 20?

I admit, I was guilty of the same thing -- I'd been bidding on the level 20 IO. In theory there are many more of them for sale, and my lowball bids had worked well in the past, and also it wasn't something I really needed immediately, so I left my bids up and didn't worry about it. It took me a very long time to readjust my thinking. But two weeks ago I put in bids for 4 of the procs at level 19, and 4 at level 18, at a bid of 10,100,000.

In two weeks all 8 bids filled. ^_^ I now have 8 of these things in storage should I ever need them.

But I still have to wonder: what does the level 20 proc get me that the level 19 proc doesn't, that makes it worth 60 million instead of 10 million? It isn't even a "buy it nao" price, because there often aren't any for sale even at level 20. I think people just bid the highest level out of reflex, or don't even understand that there's no actual difference in how the different levels of the proc work.

Achievement: Earned 30 a-merits in 20 days and bought myself a Glad PvP +3% def IO. EM/Shield Scrapper build is nearly complete!

Disachievement: Haven't set foot in a BAF or Lambda. (Or is that another achievement?)

For example, the bid for 2 billion that I currently have out on a Glad Armor level 50 +3% def recipe. I had to place a temporary bid that got rid of just enough of my influence that when I claimed money from gleemail, I'd be at exactly 2 billion. Then I placed my 2 billion bid, and I was at zero -- until I reclaimed my other bid of my excess influence.

You have to be careful about what you bid on to store influence. So far, there have never been any level 51-53 set IO pieces on the game, so bidding on one of those is fairly safe. Some people suggest bidding lowball bids in a stack on something that actually sells (but for a lot of money) is a good alternative -- say, instead of placing a 2 billion bid on the Glad Armor piece, you place 2 bids at billion each. That way they're unlikely to ever fill, but if they do it's a really good deal for you.

But as this thead points out, bidding on other things to store your influence could be costly.

This is the character I'm currently working on, Sparks Fly, based on Fury Flechette's very expensive build with some tweaks and updated for inherent fitness. Mostly I'm not a build guru, which is why I borrowed from someone else's build and made adjustments based on comments in that thread. But it's a very fun build. ^_^

Build: Electric Melee/Shield Defense
Price Range: Stupidly Expensive
Goals: Soft-capped Defense/Recharge, good Endurance & Regen
Weaknesses to be improved on: None I know of, it's a very well-rounded build. But I haven't pushed it like some of you might. I think Hasten is not quite perma here though?
Incarnate: That's up to you. ^_^ Think I went Musculature for Moar Damage

It shouldn't.

I had my account lapse for less than a day, and I checked into it and I think less than 24 hours you're still good.

It's not just you.

Yes, I wasn't planning to sell these on the market. In fact if my 2 billion bid on the market comes through, I might even sell THAT IO off-market for 2.5 or 2.7 billion, assuming I've already purchased the ones I plan to use myself.

If I couldn't sell these off-market for more than 2 billion, then I believe buying Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharges and selling those on market would be at least as lucrative as selling 1 PvP +3% def IO on market...

(30 amerits = 15 LotG +7.5% recharge IOs or 1 PvP +3% def IO)