Robotech_Master

And by the way, if you haven't already bought it yet, I'd advise getting him the $1.99 Freedom sale purchase that's going on through the end of the month, then Going Rogue. That will give him another month of paid play and another $5 worth of Paragon Points to spend. But you have to get the $1.99 first. (And since there's no way of gifting those serials, you'd basically have to create his account for him, give him the userID and PW, and tell him to change it.)

And to note, he will still have access to Praetoria if he doesn't subscribe. Which is what you said he was largely interested in. Praetoria and Incarnates are not the same thing.

Indeed, given how long it can take some people even to get to 50, he could be quite happy for months playing the free game, and only end up subscribing when he gets to 50 and wants to do the Incarnate content.

Funny thing about common vs. uncommon Trial salvage: "uncommon" salvage is actually more common than "common", because there's something that moves particular trials a notch up on the rolls table (I can't remember whether it's number of players or something else) and makes it more likely that you'll roll uncommon than common.

Is there any way that we can buy this as a gift for somebody else?

While I don't know that I'd say Pinnacle is dead dead, I do have to admit that it's a lot harder than it used to be to find people of my own level around when I'm doing a pickup team. It used to be that I could /search and find a zillion people of my own level that I could drop a tell to and say, "Hey, want to join a Level <X> mission team?" Now I find myself in a similar position to the OP from time to time. (Part of it is probably that a lot of people are off playing their still-relatively-shiny-and-new Praetorian characters, and hence don't show up in the /search screen from the hero side.)

This is not a case of me wanting someone else to run something. This is a case of me running something (and I run PUGs frequently enough that I wrote a guide on how to do it well (see signature), thank you very much) and having a hard time finding enough people to fill the team.

Now, to be fair, this is somewhat ameliorated by the way that sidekicking/exemplaring and difficulty setting have improved—I can invite as many lower- or higher-level people as I want without having to worry about being able to pair them with mentors, and higher-level people still get XP and access to powers 5 levels ahead so I don't have to feel embarrassed about asking them to join a lowbie team. And I can fine-tune the spawn levels enough that I don't have to worry about filling the team to get as many mobs as I can handle. But it still makes me long for the halcyon days when I had to narrow /search parameters down considerably to keep from hitting that 50-character limit—and makes me hope that CoH Freedom will bring more life back to the servers in general.

Also, don't worry too much if you miss some content. Indeed, it's pretty much impossible NOT to. But apart from being able to make other characters to go back and play through it, you can also go "back in time" to experience it through the Ouroboros flashback system.

The best way to get Shards, for what it's worth, is just to adventure. There's a chance of getting a shard whenever you fight even-con or better mobs (I think it's even-con or better, it might be blue or better), whether you're exemplared or not. There's a better drop chance with bosses, so one of the best ways to rack up a few is to do the Imperious Task Force since there's a higher-than-average number of bosses in that.

And the trials are a great way to build up salvage, Incarnate XP, and threads to use for constructing bits of salvage you don't have. As well as earning Astral and Emperean (sp?) merits that can be used for other things. But one thing that hasn't been mentioned yet is running the Weekly Target Task or Strike Force. It's a great way to get a Notice of the Well once a week--and once you've crafted your third-tier Alpha (well, two third-tier Alphas, since you need a second third-tier to combine for a fourth-tier), any subsequent Notices you get can be broken down into 40 Threads, which equals two common Incarnate salvage items.

Does this mean they finally fixed that bug where other team members don't show up in the same map with you?

Inspired by this guide, I got an Electric/Shield scrapper from level 22 up to level 45 over double XP weekend. Totally sweet! I especially like the way that most of the Shield powers really don't need much slotting. It meant I could six-slot just about everything I took from my primary, and still have some slots left over to toss around into things like True Grit that can provide a little additional benefit.

One thing that's worth mentioning, and that you might want to update the guide to cover, is that in I21 Super Jump is getting a tier-5 power that's yet another short-distance teleport damage splash attack. So a Shields/Electric super-jumper might be able to put together a triple whammy mob-murdering attack chain.

Has the history of the Shadow Shard ever been laid out coherently? All you really get from doing the Task Forces is a lot of poetry that is kind of open to interpretation and doesn't really say a whole lot.

Did the Shadow Shard used to be another counterpart of earth, like Praetoria, and then something blew it to pieces? How did humanity survive it getting blown to pieces? Why are there all those suns and stuff?

I'd love to read a complete explanation.

Is there any way that the last mission of the Terra Volta reactor respec could get some love? The last half hour of it is pretty much an exercise in boredom. The way it goes now, a crowd of enemies appears at a door or two, gets soundly trashed in about thirty seconds, and then we have several more minutes of bored waiting until another wave shows up. (And for whatever reason, the mobs often spawn at -1 or -2 levels to us, even when we have the difficulty set to +1.)

The villain respec is a lot more challenging and less boring. It would be nice if heroes could have something like that. Or at least have a few more baddies to fight while we wait out that half hour of boredom.