peterpeter

I had the same question a few weeks ago, and i found a couple of good videos on youtube somewhere showing them off. I'm afraid I didn't bookmark it, though.

I don't really think of Watership Down as fantasy or sci-fi, but I voted for it anyhow. How could I not? It's the first book I remember reading, and it has been with me ever since. I can't comment on the movie, but I wholeheartedly recommend the book.

Well, they certainly are thorny. It's definitely an improvement. I like the casters a lot. I like most of the mages, but some of the color choices seem off to me. I think the death mages should be black and red, rather than... pink and purple? Those colors would work better for the madness mage. Psychic powers in this game have traditionally been pink for some reason. I would have given the ruin mage some brown, so he looked less like the ice caster. Why are all the belt jewels pink? I'd have probably gone with green there, since those guys don't have green eyes, and green is such a CoT color. They are constantly doing sacrifices with green flames and energy.

Minions don't use magic, like the casters and mages do. Minions should look less like the spell casters. I'd have left them alone, with their dull brown monk's robes. That was a good look for minions and initiates.
[EDIT: The more I think about it, the more I miss the old minions. That faceless brown robe thing was just perfect. It's such a classic look, from so many old horror movies. Maybe it wouldn't fit in so well with the new look, but I will certainly miss it.]

All in all, much improved.

With double xp weekend coming up, this might not be a good time to go shopping. People have already started hoarding common IO's to sell that weekend. In general I find that I can buy any level 35 common IO for 55,000 inf if I wait overnight except for End Mods. Those are crazy. Normally I'll buy a stack of 10 at 55k and then sell the extras for 151k and come out ahead. That works for the major ones, like accuracy, recharge, heal. The minor ones like jump height and slow can be bought for much less, and there's not much point in trying to sell them.

Ouch. That was painful to narrow down. I just voted against some books I really respect and some authors I really love, but ten votes doesn't go far. I chose to focus on the books that helped make me who I am, regardless of their impact on the field of literature or the world as a whole. I owe my sense of humor to Douglas Adams, and my wedding ring to Thomas Covenent.

Some series I voted against because they made it the whole series. I may have loved the first book or three, but I so hated the rest of them that I couldn't bring myself to vote for the series as a whole. But then two of Pratchett's Discworld books showed up independently, but not the series as a whole? That seemed odd. I'm sorry they had Jim Butcher's Codex Alera series which I never read instead of his Dresden books, which I love.

You asked about Hamidon, so I'll toss in another 2 cents. First of all, I like all of the ideas in your later post, especially the idea of having skeletons floating around in the goo. Reminds me of an old D&D monster, the living jello thing. Speaking of living jello, is there any chance that the body of Hamidon could work like water? If you enter the goo, you start floating and swimming instead of walking? That might also make it easier for melee folks to get at the mitos. [EDIT: And is apparently a very popular suggestion]

I think the problem with Hamidon is that it's static in the sense of not-moving. I admit I haven't been there lately, and as I recall it can be hard to see because of drawing distance stuff, but the actual blob doesn't move at all does it? It should be jiggling like jello, at least, maybe even crawling across the landscape so you never know where in the Hive it will be.

Just as a side note, if you're ever in a design meeting and someone says, "And then we'll make the players do that all over again! Twice!" please hit them for me.

I like the simplicity of Back Alley Brawler. He looks like a guy who is focused on dishing out justice, and doesn't waste time primping in front of a mirror.

The Woodsman has a unique look, with the leather and fur and horns and bare skin. He looks like someone who cares more about protecting the wilderness than helping human beings.

Tin Mage is quite striking, though he reminds me a bit of the Burl Ives voiced snowman in that one Christmas special.

Dr. Vahzilok is a bit gross, but unforgettable. He certainly looks like a mad scientist. I also like that he looks as tough as he is, unlike some of the high level AV's who don't seem to have any reason to be tougher than your average civilian.

Clockwork King: Who doesn't love a brain in a jar?

The email I received today said that someone "could" die, not that someone would.

Hey Honcho, welcome back. We're still teaming up on Wednesday and Sunday evenings if you're free.

It's a PVP IO. I think it's pretty funny that nobody even suggested the possibility of getting one by engaging in PVP.

lolpvp

I just wanted to share my plans, get some feedback, and hear what other people are planning.

Alpha: I went with spiritual, which I think is common for /regen. The combination of +recharge and +heal was impossible to pass up. I just slotted the core paragon yesterday.

Judgement: I'm working on Void, because it fits in thematically with shadow meld and the dark blast power I took. I plan to get the core final judgment, with the extra damage. I was briefly tempted by the -damage debuff in the other version, but I figure I'm a scrapper. Killing people is my debuff.

Interface: I'm planning on reactive, which I think is pretty popular among scrappers. Since it has a chance to trigger with every attack, I think I'll go for the 25% chance of debuff. On hard targets, I'm sure to hit them more than 4 times, so they'll probably be debuffed eventually. The extra damage will be extra fun on every target.

Lore: I'm planning on the Carnies, just for the fun of having Carnies tagging along with me. I admit that's silly. I might change my mind later. I'm still working on unlocking the slot. Eventually I'm planning on the version that has an untouchable buff pet. If someone is going to be dealing extra damage, I'd rather it be me than an NPC.

Destiny: I'm so far from unlocking this one that I haven't really given it much thought. The buff will affect me as well as my allies, right? Endurance and recharge sound good, but those aren't exactly my weaknesses right now. Defense and resistance are ok, but I've got MoG and Shadow Meld. Status protection is useless to me. And if I'm teaming with people who depend on a scrapper to avoid being stunned, then they're in trouble. Rebirth sounds very regen to me, and the +Max HP might be really useful. What do you folks think?

I was going to ask how much iXP you get from burning a thread, but I figured I had enough now that I could just find out myself. The GUI doesn't tell you until after you do the conversion (which is not ideal). It's 50,000 points. Obviously, the next question is: how much is 50,000 points? I don't see anything to tell me how many points I need total, so the number 50k is pretty meaningless by itself. Apparently that turns out to be about 3%. I went from 7% to 10% in Judgement and 11% to 14% in Interface. So about 33 threads, and 33 million inf, to unlock each slot?

Yes, I ran a BAF recently. Also fun. Seemed a bit simpler. As a scrapper, I couldn't do much to stop people from running away, which is frustrating, but only a couple got out and that wasn't enough for us to fail. I remember hearing about teams having trouble defeating both enemies at once there at the end, but with both HP bars prominently displayed, we didn't have much trouble.

I think the things I enjoy in this game fall into 4 categories:

* Running around smashing people in the face without needing my brain at all. I can do this on almost any mission, teamed or solo, as long as the enemies are dense enough, I'm playing the right character, and things don't get so difficult that I need to resort to thoughtful things like tactics.

* Talking to friends. Nothing much the devs can do about that one, but it's worth mentioning.

* Being involved in stories. Moving slowly, reading clues, making decisions about what my character does, what powers and costumes I have, etc. It all ties in to story and imagination. Sometimes the AE, though not much lately.

* Math. For whatever reason, there are parts of the game that are basically just math, and sometimes I enjoy them (and other times I'd rather turn off my brain and stab). For me, the market is usually where I head when I want to use math, data analysis, etc. Tweaking my build is similar, but usually less fun for me.

I finally got around to running the Lambda Trial last night. It was fun! I had no idea what I was doing most of the time, so I just chased after the other scrapper on the team and stabbed whatever he was stabbing. I thought I might as well share my thoughts on it.

* Starting: I had no trouble getting into it. I haven't figured out the whole league team building thing, but somebody on a global channel said they were looking for people, so I went to RWZ and he invited me. A few minutes later, I was in the mission. I like the idea of the team up tool thingy, but I've heard people say it doesn't work, and I still haven't tried it.

* Communicating with the players: I'd heard about the existence of a league chat channel, so I quickly created a new chat tab and added that and a few other things I thought would be useful. If I hadn't done that, I think it would have been even more confusing.

* Communication from the game: There was a huge amount of text coming at me during the Trial. I hardly had a chance to read any of it. I don't know what screen size or resolution everyone else uses, but the GUI takes up a lot of my real estate as it is. I really don't want to make the chat window bigger, or take time to scroll it around while fighting. The big flashes of text were hard to read because the first and last words of the sentence tended to disappear behind the GUI. Still, all I had to do was follow folks and hit stuff, and I don't need instructions on that.

* Navigation: For the most part I just followed people. I was grateful to have Ninja Jump at one point, or I couldn't have kept up just with superspeed (when bounding from turret to turret). And once or twice everyone vanished and I wasn't sure where they had gone. A little marker at the door to the next stage would have helped.

* Difficulty: There wasn't much. I got killed twice, but overall we stomped our way through everything without much trouble. Took under an hour, I think, although I was having too much fun to watch the clock.

* Story: We beat up Marauder. That's all I know.

* Gimmicks: I didn't really understand the grenades, but someone in League chat said to pass them to some other guy, so I did. I think. You can drag and drop temp powers like inspirations, right? There might have been some special attacks against us too, but other than Marauder's fist, I didn't notice them.

* Rewards: I got 11% progress towards unlocking an incarnate slot. Interface, was it? That's less than I was expecting. Do you really have to run that one Trial ten times over just to unlock the slot? The Alpha was unlocked with a single story arc. I also got 5 Astral merits and 1 Empyreal, and some threads. I'm still trying to figure out what that means. I also had a choice of components, which was a little annoying because I don't like being forced to make a choice when I have no idea what the choices are. I'm glad I got a something or other, and I don't object to being given a choice. I just wish I'd known enough to make an informed choice. Apparently I don't have enough of the whatever merits to unlock any of the fun costume/emote/trail things yet, which is a bit disappointing since they're just fluff anyhow, but that's ok. Overall prices look steep to me, but since I apparently earn Empyreal merits at the rate of one every few months, that's hardly surprising.

All in all I had a good time. It wasn't difficult or terribly confusing, despite a couple of deaths. It was certainly a target rich environment, which is always fun, and the foes were tough enough that I actually got to hit them. And it was all packed into a very reasonable block of time. The next time through should be even more fun because I'll be able to understand more of what's going on. A few more times after that, and I think it will start to get less fun. And I'll still only be halfway towards unlocking the next Incarnate ability? Oh well. So far, so good.

I started to put this guide together...

http://paragonwiki.com/wiki/How_To_Get_Stuff

but I ran out of steam by the time I finished inspirations. It's still on my to do list. Personally, I ran out of brain space when the empyrean thread whatever came along. It's funny. I was totally on top of the market. I mastered inventions with no trouble at all. The various kinds of merits struck me as silly, but I could handle it. I studied the Incarnate stuff when it first came out, and quickly got myself a nice Alpha thingy. Then they made more Incarnate stuff, and something in my brain just snapped. Now I know how the camel felt. I haven't played any of the Incarnate content since they added threads. It's just too much for me. If I play that content, I might get a thread, or some kind of new merit thingy, and I won't know what to do with it. Or even worse, I might get a choice of rewards, and I won't know which one to take. Caught between my fear of making a mistake, and my inability to figure out how to avoid a mistake, I'm paralyzed. I've only played low level characters since those new thingies came out, and even those not very often.

I realize it's dumb. On the other hand, it's a pretty common phenomenon in the real world. I'd like to think that if this actually mattered, I'd find a way to get over it, but since it's just a game... oh well. There are still story arcs in Ouroboros with no star beside them, so I've got fun things to do. I was hoping that maybe someday I'd catch up and master the intricacies of an increasingly complex game, but apparently I'm just going to fall farther and farther behind. With a full time job, an evening master's degree program, wife, kids, and trying to keep the house from falling over, I just don't have any more brainspace for this game, and what I've allocated in the past is apparently no longer enough.

Lots of good suggestions. I would vote for FREEEM but I'll toss in a few others:

Viper
Khan
Ivory Tower
Atlantis
Xanadu