The Grim Heaper

There are hoods; in the costume editor under each of the major headings, before any of the options you can select the type (for heads, there's; Standard, Masks with hair, Full masks, Hats, Hoods, helmets, etc...). Cloaks are a little different though - you might find something close under robes or jackets (categories under the "upper body" heading), but I'm guesing you want a cape.

Capes are back details tied to a story arc given by the City Representative hero side, or Kalinda/Burke villain side (depending which one you picked), starting at level 20. HOWEVER, depending on what perks you have on your account (costume packs, veteran status) some cape styles/designs can be available at level 1

Well, there's Paragon Wiki, which has info on most major story arcs and the missions therein (Take out Frostfire), and just about any other info you want to look up. But unless the mission requires something specific, there's generally no need for a detailed walkthough... Have you been clicking on the glass doors? Defeating certain groups in that mission unlock doors that lead to elevators to go to the next floor; frostfire is on the third or fourth floor, if memory serves.

... Is it just me, or did a necro'd thread get necro'd? It was brought back to life after over a year of rotting in the grave, and then someone saw fit to perform the ceremony again 5 months after that.

The most obvious difference, setting aside the powers for the moment, is the aesthetics. DP, visually, involves a lot of gun fu, and bullets with widely curving trajectories. This is not inherently bad, I think the animations are quite well done, but for some it can break the immersion (Might want to fire up the costume creator, select dual pistols, and skip to the power customization - there you'll be able to preview the animations for her). Assault rifle has it's own visual issue though - the gun model. While there are several you can choose from, your choices out of the box are the original franken-gun, or several assault rifles that don't really look look like they should be able to fire grenades or flames...

The powers;
Both start off rather similarly, although the numbers probably set them apart a bit; [ST, low dam, fast recharge], [ST medium dam, medium recharge], [Cone], [targeted AoE], [ST, low damage, control]

From there, AR continues one with a snipe (not the greatest in mid combat without a few interrupt reductions, and even then is often not worth the extra setup time), a flame based Cone, and a location AoE (also fire), and finishes off with full auto, another cone (narrow, long recharge, heavy damage).

DP adds a unique power between the cone and targeted AoE, Swap Ammo, which adds 3 mutually exclusive toggles which can change 30% of the damage from lethal to the selected type. The different ammo types also impart different effects. Standard will often have a chance of knockback/down. Cryo will apply slows to targets. Incindiary will add additional fire DoT. Chemical does toxic (often less resisted against), and debufs enemy damage. The remaining powers are a short range high damage blast, a narrow cone, and finishes with a PBAoE

Overall, my views;
-Assault rifle tends to have a bigger focus on AoEs, particularly cones, which are not bad, but to get the most out of them, you have to learn how to fit as many enemies in the cone's arc as possible (generally, aim for a guy in the rear middle, and situate yourself accordingly).
-While DP with it's PBAoE 'nuke' and short range blast might have you standing closer to the dangerous melee range of the mobs (although if your secondary powerset is going to put you there to make the most out of it anyway, not necessarily a bad thing.) While at the same time pulling out of the mob to make the most of your cone. Ammo switching is a nice escape form "oh look, another smashing/lethal set", but overall I find most of the secondary effects to be a bit lackluster. Cold and toxic are almost always set aside in favor of fire's superior DoT, I generally only switch to them if the team's already mowing down groups like blades of grass, or if there's someone around with whom I can stack the effects.
(that said, I've not taken a DP though incarnate content, could be interesting adding the interface proc, as Gravitic, Paralytic, and Peactive can all stack effects with the ammo types.)

As far as I'm aware, it goes like;

• Mob capable of dropping shards is defeated
  • Players eligible to receive rewards (the team the player was on dealt a sufficient % of the damage to the critter. Player was in the same zone when team did this, etc)
    • drops other loot (Recipes, inspirations, salvage, enhancements) normally. Distributes to eligible players by RNG.
    • For each eligible player with alpha unlocked
      • RNG rolls to see if you picked up a shard.
    • Eligible players without alpha unlocked
      • No roll is made for shards at all, thus no increased chance for those with alphas unlocked

I could be wrong, but that is my understanding of it after reading various posts since incarnates went live. However it should be rather 'simple' to test if team mates without the alpha slot increase the shard drops for the rest of the team. Run a few ITFs (or, really, any TF) with 8 alpha unlocked 50s to determine the average shard drops (try to consistently run them similarly*). Now run one or two where you are the only 50 with an unlocked alpha (heck, only invite players below level 50 to be sure), and run them much like the incarnate team ran them*.

If those incapable of receiving shards still roll for them, but forfeit the shard to someone with the alpha slot unlocked, the second part of the test should net you 8 times the shards as an all incarnate team.


*Doesn't have to go the exact same, just don't ghost the first three missions one time then plow those missions on the next run.

While, yes, you could get a more complete picture by having everyone on the team use herostats and send you the data, we really only need your data.

I've refined the spreadsheet a little after determining what herostats can actually track. Basically the two statistics you need from herostats are "Villains defeated: you or team" (put this under K) and "Villains defeated: final blow" (this one goes under L).

you just need to "reset all statistics" at the start of the taskforce, and then jot those two numbers down (Plus number of shards dropped, and elapsed time of the TF) at the end of the TF.

For the record, I'm with "random is random", but if someone wants to test a theory that the random is either weighted or influence-able, more power to them. I just felt I needed to step in and push for more meaningful data and a decent sample size.

And just so we're clear: A spreadsheet like this. Colums K-Q and S-Y are optional if hero stats does not track them, but R and Z are mandatory. Time is only necessary if you wish to prove the original claim of the thread; that the LGTF is the superior task force for shard drops. "Team levels" could be shortened to 1 column of "# of team mates eligible to receive shard drops", and it would probably be more accurate as lvl 50s don't necessarily have the alpha slot unlocked.

Aah, yes... Hero side is full of legacy content like that, I'm afraid. Fortunately QoL improvements over the the years have made some of it less brutal than it once was. And to answer your question, there are four entrances - Atlas Park on the East, Steel Canyon to the North, Galaxy City on the West, and Skyway City is South. PS: Handy maps! There's also an in-game city map, from the compass window, open the map and select the 'city' tab (although it's a bit outdated, it can give you a general feel for how the zones connect)

Legacy content tended to send you all over the place and often into hazard zones like Perez Park. It was sometimes a tough slog trying to avoid the spawns on your way to a door somewhere in the maze. By about the release of Villains the design philosophy changed to more focused level range appropriate zones. Over time some of this has been applied to Paragon City, but all of the old stuff remains.

At level 5+ head to kings row, you should be directed to speak to a detective, he'll give you a police scanner contact that can be used for quick one-off missions in the same zone - running enough of these will fill the detective's bar until he offers you a Safeguard mission.

Also - if you tire of being sent all over the city;
lvl 5-15 The Hollows
lvl 14-19 Faultline
lvl 20-29 Striga Isle
lvl 25-34 Croatoa
All tend to have contacts that (generally) keep you in the same zone and have interesting story arcs. There's also a couple new contacts in Talos Island that you can speak to for some interesting arcs: Field Agent Keith Nance (20-29) and Roy Cooling (25-29).

Indeed, you'd still have entangle, strangler, roots and vines from your primary for damage and control. Every secondary for dominators has damage you could be doing, and controllers have useful buffs/debuffs that should be used...

(fly trap is iffy, you cant guarantee it'll contribute much to the fight. Most teams might not notice the exta healing the flytrap is providing rommy, but it could be the "one pet too many" tipping point on lower DPS teams. I generally dismiss it at the start of fighting rommy as a courtesy.)

No. Confusion does NOT make them friendly pets. Each confused enemy simply reverses what they see (and target) as friend/enemy. To all non confused mobs, the confused ones are still friends (despite being attacked by it.)

The power the healing nictus uses is a PBAoE (with a rather large radius); First it hits as many enemies as the power allows with a debuff, then heals as many friends as it can around it (not sure what the target cap is for either part). The heal is scaled to the number of targets that got hit with the debuff. To the nictus, any enemy you confuse is still friendly, it will not hit them with the debuff.

Even if you managed to stack enough confuse on the healing nictus to actually get it confused for a time, the wost that would happen is the nictus seeing the traitors/romulus/5thColumn/other nictus as enemies. debuffing THEM, and then healing the players.

Victoria Day in Canada (Monday, may 24th)

Yeah, unless you have some actual tracked data from, say, hero stats, compiled in a spreadsheet that shows aspects you feel are influencing the RNG (team composition, Number of personal killshots* on enemy critters) combined with relevant data like total enemies killed*, Completion time. And even then, the data might not be relevent unless you track a hundred+ runs. So far with the data samples ResidentX provided, one could just as easily claim that characters who's names start with "D" get more drops on average than characters who's names start with "L".

Number of shards per run just isn't cutting it when we don't know the variables involed in each individual run. Chiefly; HOW MANY ENEMIES WERE KILLED. This can vary from run to run, and since shards drop FROM enemies, it is something we need to know. A lower than average shard count could be from a team that just waited around for the stealthers to get the hostages killed (or assasinate the horsemen). While a higher shard count could be from when the non-stealthy team members start clearing the hallways while the stealthers do their thing.

And then, if you wish to prove that the LGTF has better shard drops, you need to run, say, ITFs a similar number of times, tracking the SAME statistics.


*possibly broken down into pet/minion/Lt/Boss/EB/AV/object - I'm not sure if available tracking programs can do this. I haven't messed around with this.

Turn XP off at lvl 1 and just run around atlas brawling Hellions!

20+ is probably overkill, but I've never really tried fewer, I always just keep placing them until the first one times out - using a combination of hasten and geas to get as many out as possible.

In theory - you could get quite a lot of xp from a baf if you delay finishing off the avs in each stage. In practice unless you state your intention to form an XP run it isn't likely going to happen spontaniously. On one such XP run, one team (mine) got enough to finish off the last 25% of my judgment and the first 30% of lore. We didn't end up finishing the trial successfully, but it was well worth it IMO.

No acids is easy (although The badge has never awarded).. Enough incarnate shifted players throwing judgements is plenty to deal with the ambushes.

It's the no pacification grenades that's tricky. You need plenty of debuff/buff and a few of the more exotic damage types to even bother trying with a pug. (or, I hear having the seer lore pets works quite well)

Well... Depending on if the cook in question handled the food improperly or, say, slipped laxatives into your meal... Although that would be more of a symptom of what you should be blaming the cook for.