Soulwind

I like Detonator.

Sure it's a 'more or less' worthless power, but [especially since fitness went inherent]
I've got the extra power pick (I don't bother slotting it with extra slots) and it's a bit
of extra damage out of a minion that's going down anyway . . .

Besides it makes me giggle like a little schoolgirl every time I use it.

That's a bug in Mid's.

Epic ATs don't have access to either the ancillary nor the patron pools,
but Mid's is giving Soldiers and Widows access to the Brute versions.

Yeah, not even close to his first run through as a hero.

[This character has actually gone full circle, since he's a praetorian born robotics/traps MM and I wanted Black Scorpion's patron powers on him. But he's been back as a hero since lvl 43 and has picked up about 600 million from Miracle uniques since then.]

Anyway, I ran the first set of tips last night in preparation of attempting to recreate the event. Hopefully I'll have the time tonight to run the next 5 tips and the 2 morality missions and we'll see what happens.

OK, so I had a strange result the other night and I wanted to get other folks thoughts/experiences before I log it as a bug.

I ran a Hero Alignment mission the other night. At the end, instead of getting my usual 1 Hero Merit, it gave me the 50 "normal" merits again.

A couple of factors:

This is a hero who has long since gained his alignment power.

This was NOT a change in alignment, and it was his 10th alignment mission.

It HAS been several weeks since he last ran a hero alignment mission.

During the run of the actual alignment mission, he got stomped on, and hospitaled.

While on the way back to the mission, I noticed that the other hero alignment mission
had dropped (he was doing the "one good spider" mission, and the other mission option
had dropped into his list).

Thinking to myself - hey self, I wonder if I can activate the other alignment mission too,
and do both. Now, I didn't expect that I could (I expected that the other alignment mission would be cleared out when I completed the first one - which it was)

But, instead of the normal hero merit, I got the 50 reward merits instead.

So now I'm wondering why.

Possible Conclusions:
1) There's some kind of timer on the alignment missions where if you go long enough between doing them it resets back to the 1st reward.

2) Having both alignment mission options active at the same time confused the system and it gave me the wrong reward.

3) ???? (profit?)

So, I haven't attempted to recreate it yet but I wanted to get some opinions from other folks to see if anyone else has had this happen.

Unless someone comes back with a "this is supposed to happen - its because of xxxxx" or a "it's an already known bug" type answer, then I'll attempt to recreate it and then log it as a bug if I manage to.

As far as I know, every recipe is available for purchase.

However, when you're buying a recipe directly the list is filtered by the level slider at the top. So if you're wanting to buy, say a Kinetic Combat recipe (which only goes to level 35) and your slider is set to level 50, then the Kinetic Combat recipes won't show up on the buy list.

The slider also controls what level the recipe will be when you buy it, so don't just set it to level 10 unless you really want level 10s.

As far as the purchase limits go: you can convert reward merits to alignment merits once per 20 hours and you can make one purchase (either a direct recipe or the 5 random rolls) once per 20 hours.

Why? I don't know. That's just the way the dev's coded it. I understand the conversion limit, even if I don't fully agree with it. I don't really understand the purchase limit, but I accept it for what it is.

Only in PvP.

Tough is Smash/Lethal resistance in PvE, but it becomes resist (all) in PvP.

If you're looking at it from Mid's - switch your PvE/PvP flag or else you'll be really confused about your end result numbers from all over the place.

To expand on that a little bit. Mender Ramiel is the holder of the mission-arc that unlocks your initial Incarnate slot (known as the alpha slot) [fyi it's the only slot available at the moment].

Once you've run the full arc and unlocked your Incarnate potential, you will be able to start gaining Incarnate Shards and Components.

Incarnate Shards can be used to craft Components and Components can be used to craft the actual "Incarnate IOs" that you'll be putting into your alpha slot.

The top-end Task/Strike Forces (LordRecluseSF, StatesmanTF, ImperiousTF, LadyGreyTF, etc) grant a Component as the end reward of the TF. In addition, you will be gathering Incarnate Shards during the TF as drops.

You can also get Incarnate Shards as normal drops from any mob that is level 50 or higher, although at a greatly reduced rate (it's higher than the purple receipe drop rate, but less than the normal rare drop rate).

So, if you want to get slotted up with your initial Incarnate ability quickly, you can run TFs.
If you don't want to run TFs (I don't), you can still get there just from doing normal stuff; it will just take longer.

[fyi 4 incarnate shards can be used to craft any common level component, with higher requirements for the uncommon and rare components. It takes 3 common components to craft the Common-level Incarnate IOs, with again more for the uncommon and higher IOs]

Currently, only the Common and Uncommon IOs are available - the rare and very rare IOs will be opened to us eventually.

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So, short answer after the long winded one:
1) Run the Mender Ramiel arc
2) Do TFs or just play normally from that point on
3) [eventually] Craft the Incarnate IO(s) you want to use

OK, you're lazy.

Just Kidding

While I don't really see the need for this, I wouldn't be opposed to it.

The only real problem that I can foresee having to constantly update the reminder text every time they add (or change?) a TF/SF.

I mean it's hard enough to get minor spelling errors and incorrect power descriptions corrected now (and don't even get me started on patch notes ), having one other relatively obscure area to remember to update all the time . . .

I've done this one several times with no issues, and several times where it won't complete.

There's almost certainly a hole in the geometry somewhere that a couple of mobs are getting into (sometimes), but I haven't been able to find it yet.

I agree that it would be nice to be able to choose both regions as exit points from Oro.

But I'm guessing that there were/are technical reasons they didn't add that option into the Oro. exit. (since they did add it to Pocket D and Vanguard)

This happened to me last night. Played all morning with no issues, then came back in the evening and had this happen.

There's several threads over in the Technical Issues forums with probable cause and viable solutions.

What appears to have happened is that at least one of the update servers has the wrong version of the game on it. If you get unlucky and hit that server when loading up the game, it "patches" you back to the incorrect version and everything stops working.

If you look in the version.ini file you'll see a version ending in xxxxx.x.xx.x.x.24 if you've got the wrong version and xxxx.xx.x.x.x.xx.27 if you've got the right version.

To fix: delete the checksum file, delete the prv file, delete the version.ini file and then force a re-update to occur.

If you want to, you can force the updater to hit a specific server (which we know has the correct version on it) with this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\City of Heroes\CohUpdater.exe" -ps 64.25.34.144

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I'd expect that things will be "properly" fixed very soon, as it's now Monday and the folks should be getting into the office and fixing things quickly.

Thanks for all the advice folks.

I ended up actually building BOTH and doing a quick run to lvl 10 on each.

Obviously, lvl 10 isn't a real indicator of full-power, but it was enough for me to
decide to stay with the Defender version. He's quite fun.

I do still want to give a Corruptor a good try, it's the one AT that I've done very little with.
I did an energy blast/(something, don't remember now) Corruptor right after CoV came out, but that's about it.

Hmm, maybe a Fire/Cold or a Rad/Rad . . . Dr. Deuterium, my Rad/Rad Defender, could make an interesting Praetorian version as a Corruptor . . .

I assume at least one person has done this already, and it's just fine, but . . .

Has anyone encountered any issues with doing a respec AFTER slotting in an incarnate boost? I've decided on some additional tweaks I want to make to my newly slotted up incarnate and I want to make sure there aren't any "gotcha's" waiting in the wings.

I've got a concept theme for a Sonic/Sonic. I don't really play Corruptor's much and I'm trying to decide if I'd rather him be a Corruptor or a Defender.

So, I'm looking for thoughts from folks who might of played both.

Based on the "final build" I have in mind, both are pretty close defensively. The Defender version has about 3% more actual defense and ranges from 6% to 16% better in resistance (16% s/l, 6% everything else). Noticable, but easily worked around.

Offensively though, I'm just not sure. Does the larger base damage and Scourge on the Corruptor make up for the extra 5% -resistance per blast that the Defender gets and the extra 7.5% -resistance from sonic siphon?

This character will be mostly running with a small (3 man, sometimes 4) team and will rarely, if ever, be on a full 8-man team. Plus some solo running, but I'm not really too worried about solo...anything can solo reasonably well.

Agreed.

I'm sure that many/most/all of us are hoping that when customization is eventually added to the power pools, that a "No FX outside of PvP" option is added along with the actual customization options.

Combat Jumping, Super Jump, Fly, Super Speed, Hasten, etc.

Of course, until they actually do customization for the power pools, it's a moot point.

In the past, I've always viewed the Self-Rez powers of Tankers and Scrappers as one of the "skippable" powers. Nice to have, maybe, but skippable in favor of more important selections.

Now, with the freeing up of several power picks due to Inherent Fitness, I've added the Self-Rez powers back into the build of several of my characters. And I've noticed a problem.

Of the 4 Self-Rez powers (Soul Transfer, Rise of the Phoenix, Revive, and Resurgence),
Soul Transfer and RotP have a short period of "untouchable" allowing for toggles to be turned back on.

Revive and Resurgence don't have this untouchable period. I've really noticed it in the past few days, as I've also been "pushing the boundries" on my Willpower Tanker to see how much he can actually handle.

Unfortunately, when he does get dropped, he is almost always in the center of a large group of enemies. Enemies which immediately target and blast him back to defeated again before the "stand up" animation of Resurgence even finishes, much less before he's gotten a chance to turn on even one toggle. . .

So, could we maybe get the short "untouchable" period that Soul Transfer and RotP have added into Revive and Resurgence? It would make those two powers perform much closer to what they are supposed to do (ie allow the Tanker/Scrapper to actually get back up and keep fighting!)

[I don't even want to get into the other secondary effects that make Soul Transfer and RotP so much better powers than Revive and Resurgence, but it would be nice if it was actually possible to use the Self-Rez powers to, I don't know, actually Rez myself]

I thought they were nicely done and interesting enough for me to give the full series a shot.

My wife, on the other hand, took one look at the first episode and at the moment where Optimus's face-shield slid back revealing a moving mouth/face she said "No. Just No." and walked away...

Sometimes, she gets hung up on the strangest things. (Which is OK I guess. After all she married me, and I'm one of those strangest things)

I could, maybe, see hiring a free-lance editor to apply his/her professional skills to a new writer's novice effort in order to make said effort look less like a novice manuscript.
(ie making it look more polished before trying to get it submitted for possible publishing)

In that case, though, I'd seriously want to see this so called editor's resume before doing anything (heck, I could run a manuscript through a spelling and grammer checker and call myself an "editor").

However, this really REALLY sounds like a scam: "Hey, I'll help you get published...all you have to do is hire my friend over here to edit your book for you"

In regards to a database....this really makes no sense at all.
A database of WHAT? What DATA is actually in this database?

There really seems to be both a (potential) scam AND a serious disconnect in terminology here.

I got an offer last night to run the new Tin Mage TF.

Seeing as the character I was on was actually in the middle of the "open the alpha slot" arc, I declined with an explanation that I didn't have the incarnate stuff done on him yet.

However, that got me to questioning and I'm not sure of the answer.

So: In order to avoid the "non-incarnate debuff" on these new TFs, do you just have to
have the alpha slot unlocked? Or does it actually have to be slotted with an "Incarnate-O"?

The mob levels (your level vs the mobs level) doesn't matter as far as drops go.

The type of mob (minion, lt, boss, etc) does have an effect on the drop rate.

The only thing the actual level of the mob affects is WHAT drops (the various drops
are level-gated, so a level 10 mob won't be dropping from the level 40-50 table), and
the actual level of the receipe that drops (it will be equal to the mob's level or at the
max level range for that receipe).

If all you are interested in is drops themselves, then go with +0 / x (as high as you can quickly handle). Increasing the mob levels is really just to keep things interesting.

The winter event is up on Test server now (has been for a few days).

It should be rolling out for the Live event soon.

What exactly is in it, that's different from previous years, I'm not sure of.

I haven't bothered reading through the test server threads on it as I like to be
surprised by the events, but it's all there if you want to go read about it.

If you are the only member in the group, then if you leave the group it will be disbanded and the name will open up again.

If I remember right, it's almost instantly released like character names are, but I have seen instances where character names sometimes takes upwards of 1/2 hour to release

(it's rare, but I've had it happen before. Of course, it could be that someone else snagged the name in the minute or so between delete and re-creation of a character....and then deleted thier character as well, allowing me to snag it back...but that seems rather convoluted and I'm more inclined to say that every once in awhile the update to the database just took a little while to filter out everywhere).