Organica

For those curious, I had a CoV Collector's Edition box, Going Rogue box, and Architect Edition box that I hadn't used the codes for yet. I was in the process of doing that when I saw this post and gave the AE code to V-Tron... should work, he said it updated on his web account but hadn't updated to the game yet but maybe he hadn't logged all the way out. Anyway, the other two codes turned two of my freebie accounts to VIP, so for whatever that's worth for me, it works at least.

Send me a tell @shinobu

To paraphrase Terry Pratchett from Soul Music:

People will always remember the costumes they never had a chance to create. And those will be the greatest costumes of all.

Thanks for everything Frei.

Take care Zwill.

Heh. ^_^

Sad for all the people out of work though. That's kind of what this reminded me of, the company I worked at twelve years ago that suddenly announced they were closing their doors, right after having moved to a new location (and having remodeled it).

But now the truth can be told, I guess!

But it's a limitation of the "two colors per costume piece" that is built into the game as it currently exists.

If you want a glow that's a separate color from the (boots, for example), then the rest of the boot has to be all one other color. Which would be okay I suppose, but I don't want to be limited to that either. I really like the Imperial Defense boots as they are, and to reduce them to all one color except for the tiny bits that glow would not make me happy.

Everything in the game is fun!

Except Masterminds.

And Peacebringers.

Nope, not me.

Well, that explains it completely. Very creative name, with no apparent creativity behind it.

My most recent creation, a Nature Affinity defender on Virtue. I started the character on Friday, well after the initial "grab a nature theme name" rush. There's a ton of "Mother Nature/Mother Earth/Earth Spirit/Earth Fairy/Nature Goddess" type names running around, and naturally "Nature Goddess" wasn't available, but "Floral Goddess" was... and so was "Forest Goddess", which I went with.

Kinda generic but I am surprised it wasn't already taken.

Congratulations!

Kinetic Melee is one of those sets I haven't played to 50. I have a toon named "Shinobu Thirty" who is a Kinetic Melee/WP brute, level locked at 30 forever in order to random roll recipes at that level. That doesn't really tell me how good a level 50 KM stalker can be, and I've heard that they're very, very good. My only 50 stalker is Street Justice/Ninjitsu, but that too is an awesome combo, and I have a lot of fun when I play that character (Shinobi Shinobu).

But the fun part is setting a goal like this to build from scratch to level 50 with a nice build, all in 30 days, and then doing it! And you pretty much prove the one thing I wasn't really able to prove -- that even starting without my considerable advantage of knowing the ins and outs of the market, you can still manage it. Anyone should be able to!

Congrats again, and thanks for documenting it!

Susan Sto Helit, aka "Susan Death", an interpretation by vidagr (links directly to their deviantart page)



Angela from Tetragrammaton Labyrinth.

Whether it makes sense as a weapon or not, it's pretty well established that the bad-***** of the world can make it work somehow. ^_^

(Of course, in the movie Hogfather they gave Susan a sword, "Death's second-favorite weapon", which is easier to carry around and threaten people with.)

My DfB project has been somewhat hit or miss the last two weeks, which is why I haven't posted anything... skipped quite a few days in between runs.

Anyway, the long slog continues:





Sometimes a simple and to the point bio is all that's needed. ^_^ I did most of these characters bios on the same weekend, so it's not like I spent a huge amount of time thinking them up. But I wanted each one to have something interesting or funny for when people looked.

8/20/12 (Mon) Clockwork Vixen, run 8 -- level 20

I took a break from DfB over the weekend (8/17-8/19) and spent a great deal of my time on a new crab instead. I was really taken by Myriad Silvre's Techni-Kai (posted in the "best costumes" thread) that I HAD to copy the character immediately. And, as I usually do when I feel so compelled, I first copy as closely as I can, and then I'm too embarrassed by having done so to actually use that costume, so I make another and try to deviate away from the original design so as not to be an obvious copy... without losing what made me like the original in the first place. Which is tricky, because I thought the original costume was just about perfect.

In this case it would be impossible to match the great name as well as the costume, but I found "Tech Goddess" available, created the character, ran up to level 8 or so... and promptly decided it was still too close to the original and at the same time not as good or interesting. So I started over with "Black Snake Sister" which is a song by Bloodflowerz that mentions Kali:

"Call me demon, call me Maria
Call me Kali, call me Venus
I'm your black snake sister"

I like this idea better because I'm always a fan of borrowing names from songs that I like, and it's a name I can like and it doesn't feel like a direct ripoff of Techni-Kali. Most likely I will revert to a less Kali-centered costume or two also, given enough time. ^_^

I did not join any DfB's, though it wasn't because I specifically avoided them and/or there weren't any going redside. Instead I started running the normal low-level redside arcs and was either always busy when a DfB formed, or was ignored (once) when I said I'd join. Anyway, I got to level 8 this way, and then through the magic of 2 accounts, a laptop, and killing many many virtual Council in the Rikti War Zone AE building, I made it to level 24 and headed out to run tips. By Sunday I was rogue, by Tuesday night I was a hero and at that point level 29.

At the same time I ran a lot of SSA's and tips on another character, and several TF's, but I did manage to get one DfB run in Monday night.

8/21/12 (Tues) Moar Cowbell, 3 runs levels 16,17,19

Tonight was Nature Affinity night, and mushrooms were growing on enemies left and right in the sewers. At one point I was grouped with four defenders, which is almost unheard of these days. Nature Affinity/Water Blast seems like a popular 'fender combo, or Nature Affinity/Archery (because shooting arrows is more natural, I suppose). Never saw so many eco-friendly nature-themed names in my life. But I have to say that the best name I saw or heard all night was a friend in one of my global channels, who created a Bots/Nature MM named "Coexistence".

I briefly wondered if people would pay me for the name Organica, or Earthsinger. Not that I plan to rename either, or delete either, or even reroll either as Nature Affinity characters...

For that matter, I have Briarose on Virtue too, and Nature Lass on Victory...

8/22/12 (Weds) Blackberry Crush, 1 run to level 20

8/25/12 (Thurs) Darkwave Surfer, 4 runs, levels 18, 19, 20, 21

By Friday I broke down and bought Nature Affinity for myself, and started my own Nature Affinity/Water Blast Defender, named Forest Goddess. This was on my main account which is T9, and I couldn't resist doing the waterfall backpack with the leaves trail aura, so much awesome in that combo, though probably getting overused presently. Anyway, I love this character! Nature Affinity just looks awesome, and Water Blast is still tons of fun (I still haven't leveled a Water Blaster past level 24, I have three now counting Forest Goddess and Darkwave Surfer).

Anyway, that kind of limited my DfB runs for another weekend... and stalled my work on my new crab Black Snake Sister. Ah, the travails of the altoholic!

I ran through DfB on this character too, of course. That's one reason I didn't do any runs on my official DfB characters... only so much of it I can take in one day.


One thing I've done recently is use my marketing toons to buy up all sorts of procs at the lowest level available. No purple or pvp procs, I want stuff that I can slot on my DfB run toons -- or at least, on those who can use IOs. Bids have been filling slowly, and I'm crafting stuff and tossing it into my Ala Coracina base so that my DfB characters have access to it. I crafted a bunch of level 25 generic IOs too, since having those slotted wouldn't be a bad idea. I don't need to worry about sets or anything fancy, I'm going to spend my entire life up to 50 in the low level DfB game, so mostly procs seems the way to go.

Anyway, it's still a work in progress, I haven't figured out exactly what I want to slot on these characters.

I spent a lot of the weekend playing Forest Goddess and my two toons from the DxP weekend, Cupcake Overdrive and Death Ace, who are now 42 and 38. Ran a lot of task forces on Sunday -- Penelope Yin, Numina, Manticore, Posi !, Posi 2, an ITF. Also a redside Cathedral of Pain run.

I did do a DfB run Sunday evening, but it was a badge run with 3 friends. We forgot to lock the team and we had two other people join us via the queue, but that was cool, we told them it was a badge run and they were good.

I have to confess that I'm a poor badger and haven't run any of my regular (my theoretically badger) toons through DfB or DiB for the badges. I took Sparks Fly through this time, and I saw that I had a purple recipe that I'd gotten earlier while PLing either Forest Goddess or Black Snake Sister (can't remember which). So just for the heck of it, I waited until we zoned into the trial and then pulled out my temp portable crafting table and crafted a purple recipe right there. I just figured that hasn't happened often in the history of Death from Below, heh.




8/28/12 (Tues) Tokyo Kitten, 2 runs, 16, 18.

I tried to get in a run Monday night on Tokyo Kitten, but crashed before the team was ready to go. :/ This is one of my freebie accounts that can't send tells, so it's a bit harder to join a team and it was late at night. Instead I ran her early on Tuesday evening and got in two runs.

These runs were fun because the leader was a catgirl stone troller with red colored rocks, whereas Tokyo Kitten is a catgirl stone dom with green colored rocks. We had two other trollers on the team and the AVs were generally perma-held.



It was like Christmas, the leader said. ^_^



One of the other trollers was this guy. I liked his look, even if it's sort of an obvious one for Nature Affinity. ^_^

I like Nature Affinity enough that I bought it Monday night (last day of the sale) on another account (the one with Dilithium Flower), and I'm going to create a Plant/NA troller. Just haven't figured out a name or look yet.

..............................

Lastly... here's some of the fun characters I've seen in the last week and a half:







Can't resist a good pun name... Salmon is very bad though, I told him so.



Thought this was a pretty good lava demon character.



If you're going to call yourself "Hot Tub Time Machine" then I really, really want to see a bio that explains the name!

Is it that time of the day again?

That "oasis" power (I forget the actual name -- Life Giving Spores, I think?) is unique among powers in the game as far as I know. It's a "target-the-ground" power like a pet (like the heal tree power in Plant Control), but it's also a toggle, so it stays up until you turn it off and it recharges very quickly so you can use it every spawn if you like. I've tended to be a bit conservative in my use of it, both because I know the intense graphics of the set can cause lag, and because when my two group buffs are up (particularly Bastion) then I don't need the healing boost, usually. But it's a nice power all around, I agree.

I think right now a lot of people don't realize what it does. I noticed a lot of people who did not particularly pay attention to it, or ran out of it right after I dropped it in a fight. I think as people become familiar with it they're going to position themselves to fight inside it if possible. I tried to drop it where the ranged people were when I thought they needed it, and on the tank when that person needed it (AV fight for example).

My 2 cents... I really like staff fighting, but I played a nature affinity/water blast character much of the weekend and right now I'm in love with the set. I want to try a plant/na troller as well, that sounds like a wonderful combo also. And I have to admit, a lot of my love with nature affinity is just the look. It looks wonderful. I love, for example, that when I use my single target heal a sort of flower/vine sash/belt appears on my own character for a few seconds. It makes me want to heal people as often as possible, heh.

I don't ever check things out on the Beta server, so while I'd heard the name "Nature Affinity" a lot, I really had no idea what it would involve. But right now it's one of the most fun things in the game, at least, if you're at all inclined to play a support character.

Same answer as the others: ITF, Mortimer Kai, new Posi 1 & 2, Yin.

And I also agree that Katie Hannon was fun until they F'd up the 2nd mission. That's a personal pet peeve of mine. I get that failing the first mission was a huge bug that needed to be fixed, and I can understand that they also changed the reward because it was still a pretty fast TF, but then they had to mess with a THIRD time and really ruin it. Because it's not "fixed" until you make it so people don't want to run it anymore.

As for old content, I'd put in a vote for the Eden Trial because of the maps, you don't see anything on that scale anywhere else in the game.

Also I just want to add that of the six original Freedom Phalanx TFs, the best was probably Sister Psyche. It had more variety than the others and wasn't too long, so it's kind of sad that they decided to revamp that one before Synapse or Citadel.

I like the part where the game has been wildly successful over the last year, but obviously people aren't happy and are leaving and it's probably doomed.

I also like the part where, in threads like this, the game is always doomed when it doesn't work exactly the way someone wants it to work, but it's never about them... it's about all the thousands of people who think just like them who are going to leave, thus bringing about said doom.

But just to repeat: the goal of any game is to make money, and this game has been very successful at that in the last year, while at the same time delivering more new content than... ever.

You can't please all of the people all of the time.

I run Unai's Council map when I want to PL a character, and when I get a purple drop I'm quite pleased. But frankly I can't imagine running it JUST for the drops.

But I guess I understand that some people can't imagine staring at the market interface for more than two minutes either.

Oh, btw... I bought Nature Affinity last night. With points I already had. From my VIP subscription.