Supafunkadunka

I'm starting to wonder what I got myself into here. By playing arcs pretty much at random, I'm getting stuck with all the refuse while you all play the ones that are well thought out by authors who are actually trying. I must be a masochist.

I started scanning for my next mission and came across another holiday one and, being a glutton for punishment, played it:

A Contract on Santa Claus
#100781
by @Floride

Snaptooth of the Red Caps wants Santa dead and you are offered the contract. Of course, no one ever says WHY he wants him dead, so if you are expecting a layered, complicated plot here just stop now. Maybe turn on CSI or go watch an M. Night Shaymalan movie. In the meantime, I'm hunting Santa.

Of course, Santa is being hidden by the Easter Bunny (for no real reason) and now the Bunny is paranoid someone will put a hit on HIM. Of course, he does what any reasonable egg-hiding animal would do - kidnap some Red Caps to intimidate them into NOT killing him. Genius!

So it's off to the office --> caves I go to fight bunnies again. Along the way I rescue a wannabe Red Cap named Scooter, who tags along for the rest of the mission doing pretty much nothing.



So I rescue the Red Caps and fight more bunnies until I find the Easter Bunny, who again is easy to kill. All the bosses here are LTs instead of real bosses, which made the fights easy and the XP anemic - by the end of this arc I had gained maybe 4 bars. I'm like level 5.6 now. Sigh. Anyhow, here's the bunny:



At the end he summons high tech robot bunnies to ambush me, but I just exited the mission - so nyah. There was a candy cane on the Bunny's body that listed Santa's address too. DUH - the North Pole. Everyone knows his address - I send him letters every Christmas! Er... I mean... MY KIDS send him letters... yeah, that's it. My kids.

Alas Santa isn't at the North Pole he's at the next most obvious place - Croatoa Farmhouse! So I'm told to go kill him and that the Red Caps from the last mission will be waiting for me ready to help! Of course, they weren't. According to my mission goals, I'm supposed to destroy Santa's sleigh first, even though no one had even mentioned this before. Thankfully, here's what i saw the moment I zoned in:



Okay, it's a TRUCK, but whatever. What luck, right! Huge map, find the target right away! Ah, too easy. I can't attack it - invalid target. Now I have no clue what to do, so I wander. It's a HUGE outdoor map too , BTW, and is littered with robo-bunnies:



Eventually I see some Frostlings! Ah-ha! And there's Scooter, waiting to be rescued! This must be the trigger mission which allows me to attack the truck. I free Scooter, head back to the truck - still no luck. CRAP. So I wander again. I kill some things. I check back - still can't attack the truck. I kill more things and head back - NOW magically I can attack the truck. WTF? Anyhow, sleigh go boom and then I have to rescue the Red Caps again, who finally showed up long enough to get captured again. Then I have to kill Santa:



... which was again very easy because he was an LT.

So I go back to claim my bounty and find out that they donèt have it. It's in a safe at the Faultline Dam. Christ, not THAT again. So mission 3 - off to the dam. The Dam is protected by Santa's Rein Dears, who are female minions named after the 8 magic reindeer - cute. The entrance message states the safe is "WAAAAAYYYYY at the back", so instead of running around looking at walls, I head straight to the back and find it. Thanks!

But what's this? The money is fake! I have to fight Snaptooth to get my bounty, because I guess he's just carrying around that exact amount on him. Snaptooth was cool because he throws little elves at you with barrels strapped to their backs. As the little guy was clinging to me and wailing away, I tried to snap a screenshot but as soon as I did so, I found out what the barrel was for:



After beating Snaptooth, it got even weirder. He calls out to the author of the arc to face me. Sure enough, after a minuteof searching I found Floride, and we discussed the finer points of arc creation:



Oh, and Scooter tearfully admits that he was in on the double-cross over the money and was setting me up. Of course, he DIDN'T DO A DAMNED THING for the whole arc, so I'm not sure what he was so upset about.

Anyhow, the arc deserved 2 stars, but I gave him 3. I think maybe my expectations are just dropping like a rock at this point.

I want to write a novel about that player bio.

So after that last fiasco you're probably thinking, "Well Supa, atleast it can't get much worse." Well, buckle up kids because the next random mission I found was:

To Settle A Bet
#203920
by @BBQ Pork

My contact here is Dr. Johansen, who wants me to help him steal Cryo-Bombs from a museum to help him settle a bet. Even though I don't know what the bet is, who it's with, what the stakes are, what the Cryo-Bombs have to do with it, why they are at a museum and what is in it for me, I accept, because really it's that or drop the mission. It would have been nice if a few hints had been dropped by the author though.

So it's off to the museum which, surprisingly, looks very museum-y:



I get an admission ticket as a clue when I get in, but the guards attack me anyhow. Either my skills of subterfuge are terrible or these are simply really edgy guards. Either way - my $20 is down the tubes. I fight a few guards and wander amongst all this museum stuff looking for Cryo-Bombs. With all the clutter, I wonder if I'll ever be able to find them. I stumble across a vault in the back... hmmm, now where are those Cryo-Bombs??!?!



A-ha! My keen detective senses finally managed to spot them! Back to the Doc!

Next mission, he wants me to free two villains captured at the Faultline Dam. Again, no information on the bet or what these guys have to do with it or why I should risk my neck to save them... but SURE! I'd love to help!

So off to the Dam, where I fight a bunch of creampuff Longbow types and find the first captured villain, the aptly-named Ice-Berg:



After rescuing him, he says "Thanks Pal" and heads immediately for the exit. You're nega-welcome... jerk. After a bit of wandering I find captive number two (also ice themed) and after saving her, she runs off without saying ANYTHING, which is even MORE rude. Mission over.

So now the suspense is killing me. Why were they at the dam? Does the bet involve poisoning the water supply? Between the Cryo-Bombs and the ice-themed villains, maybe they are going to freeze it? Doc mentioned the bet was with an assassin - maybe they are going to UN-freeze a former villain or ally frozen Captain America style at the bottom of the reservoir! Ooooo, that'd be cool!

So I race to the Doc and the bet is revealed! He bet the assassin that he could TURN THE RESERVOIR INTO JELL-O. I kid you not. Let that sink in. Read it again. He wants to turn it into Jell-O. For a prank. And he STILL doesn't say what the wager is or why I should help... but help I do.

Off to the sewers, where the green water is explained away by noting that some green gelatin was dumped there by the villains I freed. Ah - so I risked my life so they could dump a barrel or two down the sewer, and now I have to do the rest. Great plan. Basically, I now run around the sewer killing Longbow (I guess they are guarding the sewer under the reservoir... boy they don't show THAT job on the Longbow recruiting posters). I also have to find and dump barrels of cherries, peaches and gelatin into the water and set off the cryo-bombs. It is helpfully explained via clues that cherries and peaches are common ingredients in gelatin. Knowing is half the battle!

In total I am looking at 17 barrels to find and 5 bombs to activate, after which I set off the explosion to stop the dam pumps and allow the gelatin to harder. Thankfully, all of these are in two large rooms side-by-side. I'm TRIPPING over barrels. After the deed is done, Doc says one sentance indicating that it was a great prank, but temporary. I never do find out what the wager was.

After generously granting my one star, my only comment to the author was "Like Jell-O, this arc is very shaky and only amusing to children".

I'm up to level 5 now, but at this rate my frontal lobe will completely atrophy by about level 17. If I start typing like this:

"I rf da Supafnkdnk ahahahdfw wo$"

... then please arrange for me to be seen by a neurologist and empty my drool cup. Thanks!

Okay, onwards and upwards!

For my next mission, I randomed a few times and got stuff I didn't want to do (exp farm missions, very longs with AVs) and finally I had to settle for the following:

Negavert Weapon Destruction Contract
#297905
by @Snapfire

Now, I knew what I was in for as soon as I read the Description. I tried to think of a witty, humourous summation but really - nothing was funnier than the desc itself. Here it is, completely unedited:

"A Hero force from the negaverse is here to stop the Negaverse Invasion Force. They have brought a weapon with them that will cause anyone from the negaverse hit by it to become normal, whiping out all of their powers and leaving them a hopless commoner. It is called the Negavert."

So I reach the contact, who is named Neg8, and he explains that we need to kill the hero, Negative, and "distroy" the Negavert Weapon. Maybe by now you have noted a nega-theme. It gets worse - ALL the customs are named like this. Negabeast. Negahunter. Negabeast Pack Leader. Negabeast Cub. Female Negabeast. All nega, all the time. And all their costumes are in black and white. And for some reason, they've all got werewolf heads. At no point is the Negaverse or any of this background stuff explained in the slightest.

So I hit the sewers of this large-ish, one-mission arc. As soon as I pop in, Neg8 calls out and says he's going to shadow me to make sure I'm doing my job. Only I don't see him anywhere. After killing a few nega-mobs, I find him and he starts following me. The very next fight forces me to fight two mobs at once becauseof their proximity and I suddenly realize that Neg8 has no intention of helping. In fact, after I die he (I kid you not) takes a leak (text only, thankfully) and sits down on a crate.

Now, a quick aside about me dying. Two things to note here. Number one, I'm starting to think Elec Melee was a bad choice. As noted, the single target damage is poor and since I don't yet have any AoEs, I just suck all around. To make matters worse, all the mobs here have Dark powers to which I have no resistance. My ToHit is debuffed into oblivion making it hard to land punches and build Fury. Plus, it makes the mobs evenmore boring and silly than they already are.

Anyhow, I carry on and eventually find the Negavert Weapon, which is actually a tiny weapon rack up against a wall completely unguarded. Instead of it being a destroyable object, it's a simply clicky-click and it says it's destroyed. Yeehaw. For those of you following at home, this was the main point of the whole mission... just in case you missed the excitement!

I keep going and find the Boss a little later. He's perched on a platform surrounded by 2 mobs. I go straight at the boss, get him to half health, watch him group heal to full then get killed by the mobs. Grr. So i get back and try a new tactic. I ignore the boss and kill the mobs .. there, MUCH easier! Then I focus on the boss and have little trouble. At 1/4 health, the boss notes that I was able to get in a few lucky shots because he had to go to the bathroom really badly. Again for those following along at home, that's pee joke #2.

Anyhow, I kill him. Neg8, who has been silently following me and doing nothing continues to stare into space. Mission over. No souvenir and a one sentance congrats from Neg8. You're nega-welcome.

I gave this arc an emphatic one star with many comments to the author about why it sucked. I pray that he is able to read, but given the number of spelling errors in this arc, I'm not so sure.

On the plus side, I hit level 4 (yay, Ninja Run!) and on the down side, the mission was so mind-bogglingly awful that I forgot to take any screenshots. Oops. My bad!

Don't be naive - The Monkey Island series is 100% Nemesis! All those minigames with their sequence memorizations are diabolical, subliminal mind control primers. Once the Secret of Monkey Island is finally revealed to be a series of flashing lights on computer screen, the neural programming will be activated and hordes of mindless slaves will take over the world!

It's terrifying! The only thing that lets me sleep at night is the knowledge that there is no way Canada is a Nemesis plot. Whew!

Oh sure, I make an arc about the health care debate and I'm the anti-christ, but Lesbian Hellions? No problem!

I'll try and check this arc out tonight though

So, first arc time! I set a few search parameters and hit the RANDOM BUTTON OF DOOM to see what I would get and up popped this little beauty:

No Holiday Spirit!
#180478
by @Lil Druid

The contact was the physical maifestation of Labor Day. The basic premise was that the lesser holidays were jealous of the more popular ones and wanted a villain (me) to knock off the competition. Sounds good so far! So now he says I have to do it because holidays can't hurt each other. Ummm... ok. And instead of attacking the holidays, he wants me to attack their daughters. Uhhh.. wha? And he also repeatedly notes that if I kill them, they aren't really dead because they are holidays. Uh-huh... so what I'm doing has no lasting effect... gotcha. Oy.

So mission one I'm off to hunt the Easter daughter... in a cave, obviously. I fight some fairly generic bunny minions and am doing okay. Then, about a third of the way in I realize that I forgot to turn my XP back on after the run to the AE. DOH. This prompted the following response:



Eventually, I die, fight more bunnies, ding, and quite easily kill the boss bunny. She is apparently late for something, and has dialogue which clearly relates of the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland instead of the Easter Bunny. [INSERT BUNNY MILKMAN JOKE HERE]

I take a quick run to the Arbiter to level up, because no Rest and no Powers makes Homer something something.

Mission two is Valentine's Day. I'm supposed to go to where they are making those awful chalk hearts and destroy them, along with the VDay daughter. I thought it was clever, and the mobs - unlike level one - are interesting and relevant. Why we are in a Tech map i have no clue, but I guess making chalk is more complicated than I had assumed.

The mobs here are brutal. They have the exact mix of powers which make we want to cut off my own hands and throw them at the monitor. One has range plus a heal which it uses frequently, the other is a thorny melee type and the other keeps putting Taze Me Bro to sleep. Frustrating, but manageable until I get sleeped at the top of a set of stairs only to realize I'm surrounded by a large mob who quickly kill me en masse. Grr... death #2.

When I go back in, I wisely decide to use the OTHER stairs, and voila - the Boss! Hooray! OH NO.. more sleep powers. GRRRR.



I kill the boss anyhow, then the first group then keep looking for these barrels of heart candies. The problem? The map is WAY too big - with lots of levels and elevators and nooks and crannies. Very annoying. But, soldier on I must! I work my way through a LONG passageway and eventually find ... the Boss? Yep, seems like the first boss was a settings goof up. This real boss is way harder and I barely get her down... then she calls in an ambush as she dies. Cue death #3.

Anyhow, after much more searching I find the barrels and finish this mission from hell. Back at Labor Day, he sends me after the Big Two: Hallowe'en and Christmas. They are apparently together for some reason, which is convenient since with all these customs, he could never squeeze 4 missions in!

Off I go to... an office building. Um.. ok. The mobs are back to being boring again. You have the two holidays with the most potential funny mob options and I'm fighting guys with pumpkin heads and two different kinds of tin soldiers. Also, a Jack O Sprite (whatever that is) which is even more confusingly female. Anyhow, the office turns to caves and I find the Hallowe'en boss and kill her without much ado. The caves turn into sewers (it all seems so Christmas-y!) and I find the Christmas boss, who again is remarkably easy to beat and hopelessly uncreative, as seen below.



And that's it. Mission done. Labor Day thanks me for being so evil and I think reminds me again that they aren't dead and have regenerated or something.. I don't know... I had tuned out by then. I gave the guy 2 stars with the comment that the dialogue was actually a 4 or 5 stars, but everything else was kinda 2-star-ish.

So there you have it. 2 stars. And now I'm almost level 4. I'll keep you posted as to my progress!

If you are confused about #3, please see #4

Yeah I had read in a few places that reds were harder to solo than blues, but those comments must have been a few nerfings ago.

See? I'm learning already!

So despite the fact that Pro Payne and Eva Destruction are doing this better than I ever will, I've decided to jump onboard and try levelling a character from 1 to 50 using only the MA. I was planning on doing this without making a thread about it, but I figured that if I'm going to all the trouble of doing this, I might as well offer my meagre insights as I go. Hopefully, someone finds it interesting.

There are a number of differences on how I'm doing things:

1) I'm not taking review requests for now. I'm going to pick arcs in a relatively haphazard fashion from the millions floating around out there. I'll be looking for things at my level, ideally solo friendly with a bit of story or some other interesting hook. My logic is that there are thousands of arcs out there and unless their authors happen to post here, they might tend to go unnoticed. Hopefully, by pulling arcs at random from the ether, I might find a few heretofore unknown diamonds in the rough which you might enjoy. Or, I'll find some that are amusingly awful. Either way ... win-win.

2) I'm not reviewing every arc in detail. Often you will get a star rating and a few comments and that's it. The amount of detail I put into an arc review will be directly proportional to how interesting I find it, divided by how much time I have, minus the amount I need to sleep. If that's too much math for you, then you're my kind of people.

3) I'm playing a villain. I've heard villains are harder to solo, but nyah - I'm doing it anyhow. I'm going to stick to purely villainous arcs if possible, because they need more love. My guy is called "Taze Me Bro" and is an Elec/WP Brute.

4) My n00b will be showing. There are still a ton of things I don't get about this game - both in terms of the technical stuff and the story canon. Hopefully, this exercise will improve both. Part of the journey will be me sharing my complete confusion and ignorance which will, with any luck, be both sad and amusing.

So - wish me luck! Hopefully this at the very least cleanses the pallet a bit for the awesomey goodness of Eva's thread. Level 1 and ready to go!

Okay so I've updated this and submitted it to the contest. I tried to correct as many of the issues raised thus far as I could without impacting the things people liked. I think I've struck a good balance, but would still really appreciate some feedback.

Contest or no contest, I'd still like to have a solid arc published regardless.

This is done for legal reasons. There are very strict lottery and gaming laws for companies when it comes to contests, and because this is sponsored by NCSoft itself, they have to abide to avoid potential fines. Even though the reward is virtual, the penalties wouldn't be.

I'm guessing that Australia is excluded because NCSoft is set up in North America and Europe and thus able to hold contests within those jurisdictions (subject to local exclusions, like Quebec or Puetro Rico). If there were an NCSoft Australia with Australian servers, you'd be allowed. As you are on a different continent, you are kind of up a creek when it comes to contests.

TANGLER - Thanks for the input! Responded in my thread, so I don't continue to hijack this one.

Crey Geneticists are easy to take down, but I find it annoying that they will rez other mobs if you give them the chance.

As for Tsoo Sorceror hate, I would agree. HOWEVER, my Ill/Emp found them handy when I used Decieve. They would port all over the room attacking mobs I hadn't even seen yet. Once there was no one left alive in range, I'd Decieve them and then they'd just sit there and let me kill them.

Juicer Chiefs are a pain as well.

The screenshots from this most recent review really makes me think I need to do more research on map selection. Mine seem so boring now

Anyhow, if you have time/inclination, I could use some help. Still n00bing it, but trying!

CLAN DESTINY
Arc ID: 349053
Level: 30+
Length: Long
Keywords: [open to suggestions here]
Enemies: Rikti, Freakshow, Devoured Earth, Longbow, Custom
Description: Heroes are always supposed to do the right thing, but what happens when "the right thing" is a choice between two evils? When the line between what is the greater good and the necessary evil become blurred, morality is put to the ultimate test. What will you decide?

So I just finished running this and thought I'd give my impressions. I've tried to avoid spoilers, but there may be a leak or two here and there. BE WARNED.

Penelope sends you in to find CK after all the Clockwork stop working. Of course, my first thought was to simply call Best Buy and see if they were still under warranty:



After being assured by customer service that they were NOT, it looked like I had to do things the hard way.

Mission 1 was pretty simple. Too simple, really. It looked great, and all the broken Clockwork really set the whole thing up nicely, but there was only a teeny tiny bit of combat where really, there could be much more and it still fit with the story.

So CK is in dreamyland and now you are stuck there with him. Mission 2 has you going through the looking glass and into CK's dream. This mission has a few humourous moments and more combat, though most is fairly easy to avoid if you want to. CK kicks more than enough butt helping you out - so no worries.

Best part about Mission 2? Clockwork donuts. Tasty, but a little greasy:



So it's back to Penelope and now you get sent back into CK's head but this time, it's less funny and more trippy. You are led through a series of very minor tasks which very nicely give you background on CK and his motivations. This mission is where the arc really shines IMHO. Visually it's spot on and the tasks really hammer home some quality story elements. A+ on this one for sure. There is even combat in there to mix things up a bit.

So Mission 4 comes and you have a choice to make about CK. The last mission is pretty straightforward if you opt to fight CK. If you chose -like I did - to fail, your options aren't as obvious. At first I decided to kill time destroying the wierd rock things, but after a dozen or so I got bored and wasn't sure it would do anything anyhow. Not being terribly bright, I didn't see any way to fail aside from letting the time run out. That was a LONG 45 mins. I would suggest you adjust the mission to allow for a quick fail if the player wants, or people will opt to fight CK simply out of not wanting to wait.

So here is my assessment:

1) Still a few spelling/grammar things to tighten up. I won't list them, but just give it a good read over -they are fairly obvious.

2) Easily soloable. Again, too much so. There was no real challenge here. More fighting won't take away from the story.

3) Very good story. Started off as kind of a fluff comedy piece and then flipped around in Mission 3 to become darker and more personal - though somehow it didn't seem so abrupt.

4) Great dialogue. Penelope was funny and well done, and CKs made sense and changed slightly as the mission grew more serious in tone.

5) As it pertains to Dr. Aeon's Challenge, I don;t think it meets the theme very well. The challenge was to force the hero to do something evil for the greater good. In this arc, we are given the option of doing something good for the greater evil, or doing nothing for the greater good. Really, after Mission 3 I felt like doing nothing would be better for the world AND CK, so it didn't feel like I was doing anything evil at all.

I gave it 4 stars. A very good arc, but maybe not so much for the current challenge.

Well, in fairness, I'm not exactly a 1337 solo spec over here. For someone who actually has any business soloing the mission, it might not be so bad.

I did like the Minotaur though, up until the point he cracked my head open with an axe.

I tried to review this for you, but got my Ill/Emp butt handed to me three times by the Minotaur on the first mission. I'll try again if I can get a group together.

MA n00b here. I've only just found this thread and LOVE what you're doing here. Actual feedback is 100% what I need, as I'm still new enough to be making plenty of mistakes. I'd really appreciate a review of my Dr. Aeon's Challenge arc:

CLAN DESTINY
Arc ID: 349053
Level: 30+
Length: Long
Keywords: [open to suggestions here]
Enemies: Rikti, Freakshow, Devoured Earth, Longbow, Custom
Description: Heroes are always supposed to do the right thing, but what happens when "the right thing" is a choice between two evils? When the line between what is the greater good and the necessary evil become blurred, morality is put to the ultimate test. What will you decide?

Be as blunt as you need to be. I want to make this better!

Let me know if you'd like me to review one of yours in return.

Looking for feedback on mine before submission, if someone would be so kind.

CLAN DESTINY
Arc ID: 349053
Level: 30+
Length: Long
Keywords: [open to suggestions here]
Enemies: Rikti, Freakshow, Devoured Earth, Longbow, Custom
Description: Heroes are always supposed to do the right thing, but what happens when "the right thing" is a choice between two evils? When the line between what is the greater good and the necessary evil become blurred, morality is put to the ultimate test. What will you decide?