The_Spinning_Top

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Hey The_Spinning_Top, thanks for the tips.

After some painful positioning of my chars, I managed to make this... What do you all think?

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Awesome!

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Hope you're still answering questions states!
You said you weren't doing anything with blizzard for now. I think this has been an issue for a long time and many ice blasters skip blizzard altogeather. I suppose my question is when will we see changes to it and what will it be?

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Blizzard is quite an effective power when you combine it with a tank who has provoke.

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Just a bump to make sure it doesnt get deleted due to inactivity...

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FYI, posts in the Guides forum don't get deleted. Happy happy, joy joy

*Runs off to make an avatar of me herding*

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Thanks. Didnt know that. Didnt want to loose the info

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I managed to shave 150K off your avatar by reducing the colours to 127 in Paint Shop Pro's Animation Shop. It still looks the same to me :-)

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Is that all?

I managed to half its size by using the GIF animator. Got it down to 100 colour or something. I just need to change the link to point to the 400k one as opposed to the 800k one.

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Will melees get the ability to hit a fleeing enemy from behind?


Can "Follow" be made to follow at the player's speed, rather than matching the target?

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I'd like to see this change. Or add another command called stick where the player on auto-stick stays as close as possible to the target.

Just a bump to make sure it doesnt get deleted due to inactivity...

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How about a way to refuse non SO enhancements, or non have any DO or training enhancements drop from +35s?

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Great idea. A toggle we can turn on that says auto-destroy trainers and DOs

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I remember reading somewhere that the idea behind Epic Power Pools would be to counter innate weaknesses.


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My innate weaknesses is pretty much vs any status affect except stun. So much for the unstoppable tank.

I'll have to pickup any Epic pool that gives mobile status protection. Range is the last thing I want.

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1
2. Fear changes are across the board. Any power with fear will change from "foe running away" to "foe cowering and not moving."


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Does this mean the fear component will be removed or modifed as well?

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No one wants to go to shadow shard or the crash site and I cant say I blame them.


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And that's why those zones will get some attention...

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I love both zones. I am currently grinding out my last 5 levels in the RCS and will goto the Storm Palace next.

Simple solution: swap taunt and provoke.

Us non-Inv tanks are FORCED to take a PP for ONE power. That's totally broken.

Specifically for the fire tank which I am most familiar with they added fear to burn. Which in turn forced us to get provoke. Its an artificial solution.

The designers either need to:

a) Understand that the game is about AOE and not single target and get over trying to dance around the issue (by not swapping provoke and taunt or by adding AOE taunt to all attacks)

b) Re-design the game dramatically so its not AOE based.

I prefer solution 1...

Alternatively add provoke affect to powers already in the primary line. Invincibility has a provoke like affect so why not make Blazing Aura a provoke power. I just hate wasting a PP for one power and not have any choice. Because I suspect whatever changes are made if you needed/wanted provoke badly enuf to pick up an entire PP for it in the past than even after the changes you will still want provoke. This is the most simple and elegant solution I have read on the boards so I wonder why its not possible?

And for those complaining that the new changes may cause a horde of monsters to swamp the tank - don't pull a horde then. Know your limits.
But as I said I disagree with the whole "punch = passive provoke".

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Is the level range just for the person actually getting the trial's mission? Or is there something that limits all characters that go in? Can you sidekick a person that is, say, 36th level?

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No sking and no exmplering when we did it.

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Not sure if you know this, but the titan can shoot crystals too. So just because you can fly, dosn't mean your safe...Learned that the hard way.

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Did NOT know that.

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We got a full group of 8 and did it about 2 days befoer patch 2 went live, so I'd expect to be oneo f the last to hear back, but I would in fact expect to hear -something-, at some point.


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Positron has said in another thread that if you did a TF BEFORE update 2 only the LEADER would get the TF badge. Its a limitation on datamining.

NO kill badges will be awarded pre-update 2.

Post update 2 everyone in the TF should get all the appropriate badges.

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... you can avoid Quarry attacking while fighting the rock wall by fighting im before attacking it.

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Didnt know that. Thought he spawned. Where is he on that floor?

Thanks.

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Gak! The level range is really that small?? Or was your group just within that range?

Great guide Top, and great screenshots as well!

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Its that small. One of our members missed out as he was too high and we had to wait for another member to level (and everyone slow down) to get it.

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bupkiss.

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Where do you get that badge?

Seems there is little info on the Eden Trial. Our SG and friends did it last night (two attempts only one death) so here is what we know:

Level range is 39-41. Main enemy is devouring Earth.

Mandatory class: Controller.

Pickup the mission from Spirit of Woodsman, in Eden. He is located basically right at where the dot for the Hive area is (the hive subsection of Eden, not The Hive zone).

First task is to kill 200 DE. Easy plenty around his area.

Next he will ask you to free 4 heroes and destroy the Titan and a cave wall will open up into the mountain. The maps for this Trial are pretty cool. After you oohhh and ahhh for a while find the nearest hole and jump down. The holes are one way and eventually loop back to the beginning. The drop points are safe. The ride down is also a lot of fun and good screen shot material.

Keep dropping until you come to a level filled with Boulders (the monster not the rock). It will also have the rib-cage of a long dead monster sticking out of the ground which is another give away. Dead ahead from the drop point is door 1.

Door 1 is a level 41 Archvillian and protected by ever spawning Boulders. The door itself is easy the trick however is to neutralise the spawns. As soon as the door is damaged the Boulders will drop Cairns. From what we could tell the Cairns fully heal the door and give it 100% DR to all attacks.

This is why a controller is mandatory. The controller can lock down the spawns or, worse case, lock down the Cairn. Once the Cairn is locked down it will not protect the door. If the spawns are locked down they will stop popping. Destroy the door.

When the door is at <25% a level 41 Monster will spawn on top of you. The monster is pretty strong and does a Footstomp that can hurt the squishies supporting the melee people. Its important for someone with taunt/provoke to lead the monster away from the door and engage it while the rest of the team brings the door down. Once the door is down kill Quarry .

The next section is the "Acid Pool Area". The pools will cause damage if you go into them. In front of you should be 3 bridges. The bridges should be filled to the brim with Greater Devourers and Mushrooms. The Greater Devourers (Gr Dev) drop Ambrosia inspirations (looks like a purple grape). You should farm the Gr Dev until you have 6 Ambrosia per melee and 2 per support staff. The more the better depending on how much time you got left. We had this number after 45m and clearing two of the three bridges. Once you are done move to door 2.

Door 2 is also a level 41 Archvilian. I thought this door was easier than the first. BEFORE engaging the door clear the approaches of the DE snipers (Lichens?) or they will cause hell once you attack the door. With the lichens dead attack the door. As soon as you attack Mushrooms and Gr Devs will spawn constantly. No trick here. Deal with the spawns anyway you want and destroy the door.

You are in the final stages now. You will be in a room with 3 columns of water falling from the roof. The place will be packed to the brim with Quartz, Geodes and all the other Crystal based DE. In the centre will be a platform with the Crystal Titan.

First things first. If you can stealth past the Crystals spawns head over to the left and free the heroes. Then clear the room of all the Crystals. Every last one. Pull them to the NPC heroes who will help you. This can lead to some fun pulling for your tank If you dont clear the room they will help the Titan when you attack. You dont want this as there are literally hundreds of them.

Once the room is emptied you are ready to take on the Titan. Use an Ambrosia and charge. Its a straight beat down fight with the Ambrosia on. Without the Ambrosia the Titan can Footstomp for 2k + (one shot kill everything).

Melees should melee and keep Ambrosia up at all times. Out of the 6 I had I used 5. I probably could of gotten away with less but I am cautious by nature and had them overlap each other most of the fight.

We found the support people that could fly were immune to the Footstomp You need to stay more than half-way up his body and you should be OK. If in doubt pop an Ambrosia.

When you kill him normal Crystals will spawn. Kill them and you win. You get a Titan Diamond Shard as a reward which affects two powers (like the Hydra Origin) and you should get a badge (which we didn't - bug?).

Congratulations you just beat the Eden Trial.

Before: The Eden Kill Team
After: The Eden Kill Team

I did the Hydra Trial and got no HO or badge. Oh yeah and 128k debt. I am level 41 now and can no longer do the mission. Though my guildmates can for a level or two.

I petitioned it and I got a response that "not getting the Terra Volta badge is a known issue". Great but MY problem is with the Hydra badge.

Hopefully I can re-do the trial and get the badge/HO before we out level it completely. Its not like the HO is useful to me now its more to keep as a souvenir.

Its just a little frustrating after 5 attempts finally killing the Hydra and not getting any reward with debt to boot!

Also will we get credit for the "standing next to Hydra head" badge in the future when its put in game?

Thanks.

One last thing. An 800k file takes 1m 55s to download. Not so terrible. To be honest I dont know anyone who is still on modem...

Just used the optimised function for my avatar in GIF Animator. Cut the size in half. The easiest way to optimise your file is to use the colour selection. Since the avatar is so small you can cut a lot of repitative colours out. Dropped mine from 256 colours to 30 with no noticable loss of quality.

Something else you can try.

First, anyone who replied to this thread on dialup?

Second, anyone here using such an old browser that you must wait for pics to load before you start reading?

Finally, you only load it once then its cached either on your PC or at your ISP.

But point taken. I am working on optimising the anim now. Gif Animator has a few options I am looking at without reducing frame rate. But is a bit more complex.

Thanks all.

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I gave it a shot. Here's what I created. Whaddya think?


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Awesome. What she casting?

Sorry never used it. But from past experience Adobe products can pretty much do anything - but they aint intuitive

I tried about 4 different shareware packages (including LVIEW Pro which can do animated gifs) and they were all tedious to use. The Ulead one was far and away the best and the most intuitive (as in I didn't have to read the help function

Hope that helps.

I have had a few people send me tells asking me how I made my animated avatar. There seems to be enough interest to publish a HOWTO post on this. Its really quite simple but it took a bit of experimentation before I hit on the right combination of tools.

First and foremost read the screenshot demo guide. . I used demorecord, demostop and demodump to record the in game sample for the animated GIF. To make your life easy I recommend using the Demo Launcher program. This will let you dump the demo at a fixed rate and a fixed size. Make the demodump as small as possible (640x480 is the smallest) then dump the screens at 18 FPS.

Instead of using /demorecord you could use a program like FRAPS which is very good. But since the /demorecord does exactly what you want without having to download or play with more functions I recommend the former. Due to the nature of the dump (all .tga files) its going to hog your hard disk space. Mine took about 2 gigs of space so make sure you have plenty of room.

Your next step is you need to convert the actual screenshots into a format that can easily be manipulated. You could load each file and manually save them as gifs but my 10 second demo at 18fps turned into 600 .tgs screenshots. I recommend you use a batch conversion program of some kind. The best (and easiest one to use IMO) is LVIEW Pro. You can get a demo version for 21 days which should be ample time to convert your files.

Once that is done you need a good GIF Animator. I recommend the ULEAD one. I tried a few different ones but each of them had some sort of deficiency that would turn the project into an exercise in monotony (example, having to crop each individual frame). Again you can get a fully functional demo which lasts 15 days.

Now what you need to do is drag and drop all the frames into the animator. Dont use the wizard as it limits you to 60 frames for some reason. Edit the animation to your satisfaction. Now the marginally tricky part. You have to crop the file into an even sized box. So pick the dimensions you want (I used 300x300) and crop the canvas (from the edit menu). This should get a nice square with the appropriate parts of the animation showing.

The final step is to then resize the whole thing so it fits the avatar size limit which is 80x80 pixels. Save it and bingo you have your new animated avatar!

I hope people found this guide useful. One last tip to have a smooth animation your file will probably be relatively large (my animation is 800kb). Make sure you upload it to a host that wont charge you for downloads. If you are a frequent board poster your avatar will be downloaded numerous times over the course of a month.

Good luck.