The Grim Heaper

I call him Chromium Man - He stands for truth, justice, and the use of ultra mode graphics settings!

One zone that I've heard would be superior is the midnighter's club. Crafting tables / action house are both REALLY close to the zone entrance in cap/steel, and there's a store to sell at in zone.

Personally I like Pocket D for the ease of access. I'm never more than a PD-VIP-teleporter away.

Triumph is pocket D

RWZ is a fairly accessible coop zone, but I find it to be problematic should a Mothership Raid break out; All those people standing about looking for iTrials count against the zone's cap - so the zone fills faster, potentially fewer people in the bowl, and trials that end have their members split between instances.

Cimerora would seem to be (IMO) the superior alternative to Pocket D, as it is mostly used to form ITFs or farm the wall.

Seems to be running at performance levels around what it was before the previous patch. Whatever the devs did, they undid/fixed it.

Although 5 min ago marauder made a sensible yet annoying decision. He said "eff this" and jumped off into the horizon, never to be seen again. It's not like anyone was outside the walls either as far as I can tell. he just jumped for no reason.

I agree somewhat, although if there ever is a way to turn them off, I'd like for there to be multiple stages of off.

War walker's orbital strike? off - There's already plenty of visual warning, and it barely phases my more durable characters anyhow.

Marauder is enraging? off - Thanks for the message, but I can already tell from the objective window.

Marauders nova fist? on - as far as I can tell this thing can not be resisted or defended against, and the only thing that keeps you alive is the 1 hit ko prevention. Add to this, that with the power effects from (up to) 16 players and the melee types crowding around, the only way I notice when he jumps away half the time is that my powers stopped working, never mind see the visual cues that he's going to hit you with this.

Seige/nightstar warnings? on - sometimes if there's no tank/brute and their attention switches rapidly, it can be hard to tell whom those double rings are centered on. I know when I see "[my name] second warning" to back away from the group without having to check periodically if it is, in fact, my rings. (that said I do try to back away from any double rings i see anyway)

Yeah, if you aren't going to use a font that is easy to read, you might as well be typing in wingdings, because few people are going to bother trying to figure out what it is you've said. It just isn't worth the eyestrain. If you absolutely must visually differentiate your text from that of others; consider Times New Roman (no bold, or italics). It's easy enough to read and allows for a little flare. In size 3, it's even a little easier to read (standard size is a mite smaller than the board's standard font).

Kudos, OP, on dropping the colour. That was one step out of three. Next is dropping the bold. Because if there's one thing more annoying to read than comic sans, it's BOLDED comic sans (Bold, like italics and underline, is useful for headings, or emphasis on a few key words or phrases. Not the entire text). The final step is to stop using comic sans entirely - However with the successful application of the first two steps I might be willing to overlook the third.

As for The Lambda issues - simple instructions:

• Phase 1 - Clear all the mobs on the street. It isn't strictly necessary to clear more than the progress bar as far as I'm aware, but they are a source of threads and incarnate xp.
• Phase 2 - Clear the courtyard of mobs, hop up on top of the back of the facility, clear those two groups, and then destroy the wall's turrets.
• Phase 3 - defeat the warwalker guard (I wish there were more of them) and wait for instructions on which team goes down which set of elevators.
• Phase 4 - This part is tricky for the less durable characters, and those without some form of stealth. The low initial time means you don't have the time to take out all the enemies, only to focus on the crates/containers, and then move on to the next one leaving all mobs that weren't killed by the AoEs to chase after you. If you aren't durable enough to go off on your own, stick close to someone who is.
  • warehouse tip: following the green line on the map provided earlier, the fourth blue dot is inside a small room with two openable doors. It is often over-looked, and is the least defended of all the crates (few enemies spawn in the room, and the ones outside often get stuck on the doors).
  • 4.5 - after the cutscene, some leaders may want everyone to wait before heading into the courtyard to ensure everyone that has a temp power knows what to do with it. And/or to facilitate the transfer of all temp powers to one or two characters. Sadly this part is often ignored - and one or more players go through the door and start the timer against the leader's wishes.
• Phase 5.1* - Use acids on portals. If you have an acid, ensure no one else is near your portal - it is possible with timing, to waste two temps on a single portal. If for whatever reason you are a couple of acids short, there is a container that will respawn throughout marauder's fight.
• Phase 5.2* - pacification grenades. Ideally, announce your intention to throw a grenade at Marauder before he enrages. This lowers the possibility of two grenades being used simultaneously.
• Phase 5.3 - Beating on marauder. Keep beatin' on him until he's dead (sorry; 'defeated'). He'll jump around to different points in the courtyard at certain intervals. Just chase after him and resume beating. If you see red text indicating "Nova Fist! Back away!". Back the heck away! It's unresistable and will render everyone in range down to a sliver of health.

*5.1 and 5.2 can be skipped if it is an attempt at the master badges. This fact should be stated several times throughout the trial if it is a master run.

And lastly, as for why you're getting kicked... Dunno, I wasn't there and have few clues as to why that would be. But off the top of my head - If your roleplaying involves much use of chat/chatbinds, try to keep it to local or (if you still can) NPC. League (and to a lesser extent, team) chat are being used primarily to herd sheep. Constantly using them for things other than organizing the teams can cause people to miss (potentially) vital instructions.

Also, while I never have, I've noticed that often one or two players get dropped (crash, game bugs out and zones them out, etc) during marauder's cut scene.

And sometimes people get a little too close to Marauder&friends when using temps on the two portals closest to the mobs, and can sometimes spend 30+ seconds in the hospital due to the timer, while still holding an acid. It doesn't sound like that long, but it's practically forever while waiting for the portals to go down.

I think part of the problem is that (at least on lower pop servers like Triumph) most people are forming their leagues beforehand. On the spot, but using previously existing tools like broadcast, global channels and the search window. And will often hit the max players for the trial before hitting the queue. So not only do you have entire pre-formed leagues starting trials. But they must start the trials through the same LFG interface; once full they enter the desired trials queue, and (as they already have a league of sufficient size going) are immediately zoned into the trial. Short of a couple people quitting / getting kicked / bugging out, it doesn't tend to leave room for the odd single person using the queue to get in on that league. And because the entire league's wait time in the queue was effectively 0, it affects the displayed average.

So what does this mean? On any server that isn't freedom/virtue*, your best bet is still the global channels, and learning where everyone gathers for the current batch of incarnate trials. On Triumph we've been using Pocket D, although I hear other servers are using RWZ as the primary gathering place.


*this could even be the case on these two servers, but I'm assuming their larger population base means more people in the queue at any time. Also, I've heard that the LFG Queue often forms leagues with the minimum players, and the chance of a sufficient amount of those players being competent is often lower than in preformed leagues.

While switching to the NCsoft launcher may be a good idea in any case, I don't see what the trial would have to do with anything. Trial or full, Going Rogue or no Going Rogue, we all have the same client. The only difference is what our accounts have access to. And we don't log in until the game loads.

EDIT; granted - currently the clients are slightly different between Europe and North American accounts. But several people have two accounts to play on either server group. The confusion then would be about why you can't login, not why the launcher/updater is stuck at connecting.

EDIT2; Might be worth heading over to the Tech Issues & Bugs board (under the 'Development' heading). While people that frequent 'player questions' may be able to help you, the tech heads that know a lot about troubleshooting this game tend to hang out there. Also read through the Common Solutions sticky - some piece of advice in the Updating Problems section may be relevant to your issue.

He won't go away until you stop using comic sans.

Weren't the devs working on a web page at one point that would do this? Seem to recall something about the project being scrapped because it would take up too much of the servers' resources...

I'll [insert # here]th the global channels thing.

But sometimes the channels do die off. There's a limit to the number of players that can join any given channel, and they can get clogged by inactive accounts (Last I heard the auto-kick feature that was added still doesn't work). And occasionally the wrong person gets promoted to moderator, and they go on a little power-trip.

In either case, new channels get formed, life goes on. So join the current batch of active channels for your server, and enjoy the teaming.

First off, Paragonwiki, very useful for looking stuff up (If you ever google it, the 'Wikia' site is no longer actively updated). I'm not saying look everything up yourself - but it's a great resource, and I'll be linking to relevant pages as I go.

1)"How do i get up to that +1 level after 50 or am i already there?"
First off, you will need a Going Rogue code applied to your account in order to access the incarnate system.

Within the past year the Incarnate System was released. Currently, to unlock the Alpha Slot, you must talk to Mender Ramiel In Ouroboros and run his arc (Some of his missions will send you up against Elite Bosses that may be difficult to defeat solo depending on your build/experience). Once you have the Alpha slot unlocked it's time to start running Weekly Strike Targets to get at least one 'Notice of the Well', and defeat lvl 50+ enemies for shard drops. Shards combine into Incarnate components which are needed to craft Incarnate Abilities to slot in your Alpha Slot. The third tier in the alpha trees requires a Notice of the well, and once crafted will get you a Level Boost (+1).

Note that in the forthcoming Issue 20, there will be additional Incarnate slots available, each with different abilities. The method for unlocking and equipping these new slots will be different, and will provide an alternate method of unlocking the Alpha.

2)"What can I buy with 100 million inf?"

This is a more tricky question, as the answer can range from "One single enhancement" to "Outfitting your character (nearly?) completely with Invention Origin Enhancements". Invention Origins don't degrade in effectiveness as you level up - a level 20 IO will provide the same enhancement when you're 50 as it did when you were 17, unlike TO/DO/SO which you must replace every few levels.

a: Common Invention Origin enhancements
these are fairly straight forward, they work like your standard Single Origins, but around level 30-35 they start outperforming SO's. But be aware that Level 50 IOs have a crafting cost of nearly half a million each, not counting what you may spend on the salvage.

b: Invention Sets
In the enhancement slotting screen, hover over a power and look for the part off the tooltip that says "Allowed sets" - those are the sets you can slot in that power. Next step is to research the available sets that can be slotted in in the powers you have. Head on over to Wentworths/BlackMarket to buy them. (Edit: Note that while it is often cheaper to purchace the recipe and the required salvage, sometimes the already crafted enhancements can be cheaper. Also don't be in a hurry, the "last 5" transaction list can be deceptive, often if you bid lower and wait a week they bids will be filled. One last market tip, don't be dead-set on gettting your set IOs at a specific level; often if you are willing to go a couple levels up or down you can get it for a fraction of the price.)

This is where it gets tricky when you have a budget. While you may be tempted to get entire sets for the bonuses; Some sets, and specifically some individual enhancements within a set can get rather expensive, so an alternative is Frankenslotting cheap set enhancements. What you miss out in bonuses, is often more than made up for in enhancing the values of your powers. Frankenslotting can also be used to maintain current SO slottting effectiveness in fewer slots, allowing you to respec and move slots around, or enhance aspects of your powers you might not, normally (Like, say, slotting End Mod in elec blasts)

Whatever you decide, general enhancing goals for most attacks
- Around 90% damage, 20-40% Accuracy, 30-60% Endurance Reduction, 30-60% Recharge reduction.
Varies a bit from power to power and personal tastes; fast recharging powers might need almost no Recharge reduction, some people like more accuracy to ensure they rarely go below 95% chance to hit, and some ATs are strapped for slots and might forgo a bit of damage to better slot other powers.

3) "What and where should I be running?"

Aside from the Weekly Strike Target, pretty much anything you want. Although I find the lvl 50 Task Forces (Statesman/Recluse, Dr.Khan/Baracuda, Lady Grey, and Imperious) to be good sources of shards.

Things you may want to do however are Run the Midnighters arc (from Montague Castanella blue side, Ashley McKnight red side) to gain access to Cimerora and the Imperious task force therein. Also, run the first mission from Levantera in the Rikti War Zone to get the Member of Vanguard badge so you can get the special rewards from mothership raids...

And since you've been away, there's a number of lower level story arcs that have been added that are quite good and accessible through Ouroboros. On that train of thought, if you have/get Going Rogue, I highly recommend running at least one character through Preatoria. The zones are beautiful (and a bit taxing on your computer depending on your settings), and the story arcs and missions are often vastly superior to most legacy content (although the new enemy groups are a little more difficult, and they were a bit heavy handed with the ambushes sometimes).