Didn't have time to read through the whole thread so I hope these haven't been mentioned:
- The guys in the red & white tights standing near Ms. Liberty are Hero corps trainers. They will buy your unneeded enhancments early on (felt like a dork when it took me till lev 11 to realize this 
)
- From lev 20 on the best place to sell your enhancments is Talos Island due to the proximity of all the stores..this remains the case all the way to lev 50
- Early on when your still short on INf. Always sell DO's & SO's at they're orgin specific store, they will always give more Inf. for them (this is also the case for training enhancments.)
- The only Zone with both Tram lines running is Steel Canyon.
- There is nowhere to sell enhancments in Kings Row or Brickstown (unless your orgin-specific contact is there)
COH/CoV - Virtue
8 Ball - Lev 50 Kin/Energy Defender
The Canadian Fist - Lev 50 Ice/EM Blaster
Omega Ghost - Lev 50 Robo/Dark MM
Ghostfall - Lev 50 Arachnos Crab Soldier
It may be self-evident, but you cannot move while you are mid-conversation. So if you see someone speaking to you and you see, "Hey, it's high level Clockwork WWWWWEEEEEQQWWWSSSSS", it's not because they can't spell... 
To get out of that quickly, hit ESC - but be aware that you may need to hit ESC twice (if, for example, you are replying to someone.)
Speaking of replying... if someone uses a Tell to you, you do not have to Tell back. Hitting the backspace key will automatically set up a reply Tell.
Something that I found terribly useful... in solo work or on solo missions, you can hit C to turn off the Chat window, making it a little easier to see the bottom left hand side of your screen.
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Something that I found terribly useful... in solo work or on solo missions, you can hit C to turn off the Chat window, making it a little easier to see the bottom left hand side of your screen.
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Now here's a thing. I used to use this all the time, but now that Update #2 is out with the new chat windows, something rather entertaining happens when I do this.
It's not when hitting C initially to make the chat Window go away - it's when I hit it again to bring it back. As you know, there's two windows, top and bottom - well, when it comes back, the top one is sized down over the bottom one, and can't be resized. So you can't see anything in the bottom window.
I can't work out a way of making it stop doing this, except to change zones (which seems to reset it nicely). Have you found this, and if so, worked out a way to make it go away?
Way too many for me to read, so nobody will likey read this either...
If you don't have your travel power yet and you need to climb a lot of stairs, the easiest way is to not turn at all.
Assume you're starting from the bottom of the stairs and the stairs ascend in a clockwise fashion (looking up the stairs from the ground).
Forward 'til you hit something (first step require a jump, for fire escapes)
Strafe Right 'til you hit something.
Backwards 'til you hit something.
Strafe Left 'til you hit something.
Repeat from the beginning.
It takes some trust and practice initially, but once you get it down, you can climb stairs *super* fast.
Oh, and one other trick... for stairs that start on the ground (missions, level changes in zones) the first set of stairs can be skipped with a simple jump!
I wish I'd known to choose powers out of my secondary. I am brand new to online gaming and to COH. My first toon, may he rest in peace, was a katana/regen scrapper. I picked all my powers for their "cool" factor. None of my secondary powers sounded cool. Fast healing? What kind of power is that? How am I supposed to use that to arrest people? "You better come along peacefully, hellion, because I'm a fast healer." Not only that, some of them didn't even give me a button on my power bar!
So I took my attacks and picked up cool things like recall friend, flurry, hover and fly. I took nothing from my secondary except my level 1 power.
I actually managed to get him to lvl 15 without his utter gimpness becoming too apparent. At lvl 15 I went into the sewers on a Vazh door mission with a full group of 8. I think I died 10 times that mission. It was ugly. You really have to build for offense and defense.
I've taken way more from this thread than I can contribute right now. But thanks to all who have added to this. Very informative.
Something that I have found when running around especially in the sewers where the tunnel passages alternate between the left and right sides of the path. Instead of turning left then going forward and turning right to go in the door just use strafe left or right. Its much quicker than turning.
And when you run into a dead end, running backward is quicker than turning around.
When you're far enough along & involved in the game to start binding keys to commands and self0designed macros on your own, you may also start to wonder how to remove a key binding...
For some reason, binding a key to the 'nop' command is how you unbind the key. So to clear whatever you have assigned to Shift+Tab for instance, you type:
/bind shift+tab nop
...and that keystroke will no longer do anything.
Thanks to whoever I read that info from on the forums in the first place, but I don't know how common the knowledge is so I thought I'd try to spread it.
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Speaking of replying... if someone uses a Tell to you, you do not have to Tell back. Hitting the backspace key will automatically set up a reply Tell.
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I wish I had known this before I got to lvl 15... I always HATED tells until then because it was such a pain to type out the /t Insert Name Here, Insert Text Here. When someone told me about the backspace trick I was ecstatic.
You don't have to do the Hollows missions right away. Simply go meet David Wincott when asked, but do not accept a mission from him. Now go back to the contact who sent to you to the Hollows and you will be able to do his or her next mission and continue along the more traditional path.
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Air Superiority - nothing to add here....
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I like to solo a lot with my blaster and I always toggle between fly and hover when I'm fighting (I swear my feet haven't touched the ground since level 14). My strategy is usually to use build up, nail the boss as hard and fast as I can to take him down, then fly up to deal with fliers that come after me. If there's more than one, I use Air Superiority to knock their butts back to the ground, which is usually well out of aggro range at this point. Then I go down and do it again.
Edit: Some more stuff:
1. If you're a meleer and you're chasing that poor unfortunate mob that just doesn't want to be caught and pumelled, and of course running at it's back won't let you get a shot at him, try jumping over him. You'll often get that last shot off in the air.
2. If heading a long distance across a zone, first check with broadcast to see if there's anyone at your destination who can TP you.
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The Train drops you off and lets you on in different spots of the station. For the longest time I thought I actually had to go and touch the ground on the zone and go back in, you've just got to go to a different room in the station.
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LOL I thought I was going crazy when I first started used the train station.
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5. Something I just learned holding down the ctrl key and clicking on a power in your tray will set it to auto fire/active as soon as it recycles. (provided you have a target chosen and in range and available endurance).
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Is there anyway to auto-set more than 1 power at once?
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Something that I have found when running around especially in the sewers where the tunnel passages alternate between the left and right sides of the path. Instead of turning left then going forward and turning right to go in the door just use strafe left or right. Its much quicker than turning.
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3. Good grief, this may be the most important piece of advice in this thread: Learn to use your mouse! If you use the right button, you get free look. All you keyboarders need to evolve into the current century.
4. It's been mentioned before but I'll say it again. Don't Recall Friend someone without asking! Just the other day I was heading to pick up Awakens for a mission we were about to do but I got teleported across the zone before I could.
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- if you are an illusion controller and you are soloing DO NOT take out the last minion/lieutenant near the boss. I have yet to find a boss on a mission that could be mind controlled, so the only way to solo them is to dominate the minion and have them beat the boss down very slowly.
You won't get a lot of experience off the boss, even if you time it so you get the last hit in and it dies before it has a chance to fry you, but in some cases it is the only way to complete a mission solo. And as a controller you are used to this anyway, right?
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Decieve is a very useful way to lock down a boss for a solo illusionist. I almost always open by casting Deceive twice on the boss and letting him wail on some of his minions. Deceive lasts much longer than Blind and it can be cast twice (needed to get past the boss' resistance) without causing aggro.
Before level 18, taking white or yellow bosses is easy this way, and orange bosses if you have a good set of inspires to help you (you'll run out of endurance before you can finish one off).
After level 18 (phantom army), orange bosses are routine and red bosses well within range of a soloist.
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For some reason, binding a key to the 'nop' command is how you unbind the key.
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"NOP" is old-school shorthand for "No Operation".
Before reading about that bind here, I discovered through a little experimentation that you can also clear a key by binding it to "" (a set of empty quotes).
/bind , ""
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Is there anyway to auto-set more than 1 power at once?
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Nope. The devs don't want you to be able to walk away from your keyboard and let the game fight for you, so they only allow one autofire power.
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3. Good grief, this may be the most important piece of advice in this thread: Learn to use your mouse! If you use the right button, you get free look. All you keyboarders need to evolve into the current century.
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I'm tempted to say something impolite and insulting in reply, but let it suffice to say that I can do most things in just about any program more quickly by using the keyboard. Many of them more accurately, as well. The main advantage of a mouse is in ease of use, not efficiency of use. (Again, in most cases. In CoH, the mouse is, for example, much better for fine navigation, as it offers a degree of precision that the keyboard cannot easily match.)
BTW, you don't need to use the right button constantly. Just bind a key to ++mouselook and you can hit it, use the mouse to steer for as long as you like (without having to hold anything down), and then hit it again to get your pointer back when needed. The one side-effect is that your character won't turn around while mouselook is active - e.g., if you run by someone and attack them, you'll immediately turn back to your original facing after the attack. Depending on the situation, this can be either a big advantage (when travelling to avoid being sent off in a random direction after conning a mob) or a bit of a nuisance (never automatically turning around while in a big fight so you only see what's on one side of you).
The real most important point in the thread: Learn to use /bind!
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4. It's been mentioned before but I'll say it again. Don't Recall Friend someone without asking!
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Not such a big deal any more since Update 2 added teleport confirmation dialogs.
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I'm tempted to say something impolite and insulting in reply, but let it suffice to say that I can do most things in just about any program more quickly by using the keyboard. Many of them more accurately, as well. The main advantage of a mouse is in ease of use, not efficiency of use. (Again, in most cases. In CoH, the mouse is, for example, much better for fine navigation, as it offers a degree of precision that the keyboard cannot easily match.)
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Well duh, this is a City of Heroes forum, and I'm talking about City of Heroes. I have no doubt that you can navigate more quickly in Microsoft Word with hotkeys than you can with a mouse. But pick a first or third person game and I'll show you why a mouse is far better for accuracy/control/efficiency than keyboard.
A few things I like to keep in mind:
- Keep an Awaken on you at all times. Even if you're careful enough to never need if, a friend or teammate might!
- Multiple healers in a large group are very good!
- Before deleting enhancements or inspirations you don't want, ask if anyone else wants it.
- Pick ONE PERSON to lead the group (ie - pick the mobs to kill) in a large group. Aggroing 2 groups at once is BAD news.
- Be sure to have an enhancement inventory slot open when you complete a TF. Otherwise, you don't get your SO!
- We love the scrappers and blasters, but holding them back and making sure everyone has endurance, has used their buffs/inpirations, and are fully healed can make or break an attack.
- In addition to that, sometimes it's wise to snipe/taunt the smaller minions. Even if the whole group comes, they come in a line, and it's much easier to deal with them.
- High (really high) level heroes can have fun helping out low level ones! In the PP swamp, we had 2 VERY high level healers with Healing Aura on autocast in the middle of the swamp. A third ran around the ENTIRE swamp aggroing all the monsters. Pretty soon, we had 8 newbies in the middle of a giant Pool Of Infinite Healing taking potshots at 40 monsters that were busy attacking the high level heroes (and failing). Such fun. Such experience! =)
- Write a background story!! Or if you're terrible at that sort of thing, hire your younger brother/sister/whatever to do it! I've seen some absolutely brilliant ideas and humorous "info" on heroes. Ok, some rather lame ones too, but it's the effort that matters!
- And for that matter, come up with a good name. =P
- Read this thread. It's useful and funny. Ah, glad to see you are already doing it. =)
- Get your friends to play! Random folks are nice (and the people on CoH are quite nice on average), but it can't beat knowing the face behind the mask! (no pun inten... actually, that was intended...)
- Resolution settings can allow you to see much more of your screen, yet have that nav/chat/target/inspiration window up at the same time.
- Don't be a jerk, help out those in need, and apologize when you make mistakes.
Rumil
----
Phrydia - fire/emp controller
Broquen - force/dev blaster
Doc Rejuven - emp/dark defender
Super Speed + SuperJump = THE most fun super fast way of getting around. And the speed u get from superspeed stays with u in superjump.^^
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- We love the scrappers and blasters, but holding them back and making sure everyone has endurance, has used their buffs/inpirations, and are fully healed can make or break an attack.
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Guilty...very much so.....lol
Then again I've been SK'd to a group of mid-40s and they were getting rather scared when my end bar wasnt mpving group after group....oops :P
Here's a few of my nuggets of wisdom
Don't throw enhancement slots around. Either 6-slot a power or leave it at 1.
Don't use Brawl. Just... don't. As soon as you exit the tutorial, delete Brawl from your tray and forget about it.
You NEED a travel power.
Solo street hunting is the best exp, but it gets boring fast. Street hunting with a good group is decent exp and a LOT of fun. Group missions are fun too, but it's often hard to find a mission that's good for everyone. Solo mission are mediocre exp, but they're (imho) the safest, since you can take it at you own pace. Doing _anything_ with a bad group is the worst.
Your group doesn't NEED a healer... but it sure helps. Two is even better.
A Tank is NOT a Scrapper with more hitpoints.
Do not, under any circumstances, enter Steel Canyon before level 10. In one of the devs few serious blunders, the SC hospital is a long distance away from the tram or any lower level zone, with many mobs in between. A low level char who gets killed in Steel is in _very_ deep doo-doo.
It's been said before, but I'll say it again; GET STAMINA.
Hasten is another power that almost anyone can benefit from. It's not a no-brainer like Stamina, but darn close.
Resist the urge to get a new wardrobe at level 20. You should be saving you inf for SOs at level 22.
I don't agree with some of these.
Brawl is good for the early levels as an additional attack and to finish off enemies that are in a very weak state, not needing to 'waste' a bigger power on them.
Powers can well be slotted in any fashion desired - each slot gives the same amount of benefit, so go with the ratio that you feel comfortable with.
A total makeover of one's costume at lv20 costs around 40k. That's as much as ONE SO. I'd gladly exchange one SO for a cool, new, additional outfit.
^^ Agrees with the brawl comment.
You'd be surprised how much I still use brawl. Countless bosses and their goons have gotten to see the handle of my katana up close an personal just before they go down. Great way to finish off a mob and not waste a more powerful attack.
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You don't have to do the Hollows missions right away. Simply go meet David Wincott when asked, but do not accept a mission from him. Now go back to the contact who sent to you to the Hollows and you will be able to do his or her next mission and continue along the more traditional path.
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Actually once you talk to The LT. You can go back to You King's Row Contact and he/she will give you another contact. I suggest getting at least to the 1st base part of the mission. That way if you get in a greta group thats clicking you all can go through the Hollows. Also at the end of the Hollow's arc you get access to DO's which is huge that early on.
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Well duh, this is a City of Heroes forum, and I'm talking about City of Heroes. I have no doubt that you can navigate more quickly in Microsoft Word with hotkeys than you can with a mouse. But pick a first or third person game and I'll show you why a mouse is far better for accuracy/control/efficiency than keyboard.
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*sigh* My mention of fine navigation (not necessarily all navigation!) was a specific example, not a blanket statement that mouse is superior to keyboard in CoH. There are a lot of things in CoH that I would never use the mouse for, such as activating powers, bringing up the map, or using inspirations. I can do all of these more quickly and accurately using the keyboard (and some custom /binds for the insps to free me from being tied to how they're arranged in the tray). I wouldn't use the mouse for much of anything other than fine navigation and clicking on objects if I didn't have to, but there's a lot of stuff that, AFAICT, cannot currently be bound to keys.
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Here's a few of my nuggets of wisdom
Don't throw enhancement slots around. Either 6-slot a power or leave it at 1.
Don't use Brawl. Just... don't. As soon as you exit the tutorial, delete Brawl from your tray and forget about it.
You NEED a travel power.
Solo street hunting is the best exp, but it gets boring fast. Street hunting with a good group is decent exp and a LOT of fun. Group missions are fun too, but it's often hard to find a mission that's good for everyone. Solo mission are mediocre exp, but they're (imho) the safest, since you can take it at you own pace. Doing _anything_ with a bad group is the worst.
Your group doesn't NEED a healer... but it sure helps. Two is even better.
A Tank is NOT a Scrapper with more hitpoints.
Do not, under any circumstances, enter Steel Canyon before level 10. In one of the devs few serious blunders, the SC hospital is a long distance away from the tram or any lower level zone, with many mobs in between. A low level char who gets killed in Steel is in _very_ deep doo-doo.
It's been said before, but I'll say it again; GET STAMINA.
Hasten is another power that almost anyone can benefit from. It's not a no-brainer like Stamina, but darn close.
Resist the urge to get a new wardrobe at level 20. You should be saving you inf for SOs at level 22.
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Careful what you claim as wisdom... These statements directly contradict what others say, and also what experience says.
I'd disagree with most of these. The fellow after this original post also made some points, I'll reiterate and add:
- enhancements are as you need them. Some powers might not need to be 6-slotted, but could use a boost from 2 or 3.
- Brawl is VERY useful. Often, I find my enemies with just a sliver of health, and I'd rather save my blasts for the NEXT guy since a simple punch can end it.
- Soloing can be profitable, but that really depends on your AT. I assume the poster is a blaster or scrapper? Even as an offensive character, teaming with healers or controllers can GREATLY speed up kill rate and lower downtime.
- Large groups need a healer. Healers lower downtime, and the group doesn't want to waste time waiting for HP to go back up for one person. And in every group, there are always mistakes made, and healers are your insurance, or people end up dead.
- Steel Canyon can be safely entered if you are with a group or being SKed. Even if you get stranded, I've made my way through many times without initiating fights. You just have to be very cautious.
- A single SO is useful, but a new wardrobe can add much to a character's appeal. Since many of us play for fun, I think the new clothes greatly add to that.
A lot of things I learned from others (or the hard way) have been mentioned already. I do have a few items to add. My primary right now is a scrapper (Broadsword/Enhanced Senses), so bear in mind any bias that may cause.
The more people there are on a team, the more monsters in a door mission. Sounds obvious, but if you solo a lot it's a really big change to be part of a large team. More monsters means potentially a LOT more damage flying around. Consequently, if you want to do task force missions, go on some missions in teams first for the practice. I hadn't teamed recently as my scrapper before Positron TF (like in about 7-8 levels) and consequently died - a lot. I wasn't prepared for the radical shift in damage going from 3-5 to 20-30 bad guys at a time.
Get some abilities that can be used on/for other players. I was the sole melee person in my Positron TF, and we had four blasters. I felt about as useful as sneakers on a cat. I've been picking up Medical abilities since then, and plan to get Leadership abilities later down the road so I can have some more flexibility.
Get familiar with the locations of stores and the best route to them - that way you can visit them quickly without delaying your teammates on multi-mission groupings. Also, youll save yourself time when soloing.
When binding to keys on the number keypad, type Numpad and the number without any spaces between.
If you can touch type, make sure youre in chat mode before typing chat messages. Theres nothing quite like dropping most of your windows accidentally and taking off running towards a mob also. (R to Run, C to open/drop Chat, N for the Navigation Window, T for Target information these are the ones I have had the most trouble with.)
You can give (as opposed to trade) something to a player by clicking and dragging it onto the person.
A variation on the stair-climbing methods mentioned: On the stairs from one level of a zone to another, you have retaining walls which keep you from falling off the staircase. Standing on the steps at a 45-degree angle means you can just run backwards and forwards without the strafe that you have to use on fire escapes. (You hit the wall at an angle and slide along it until you reach the landing, then the same in reverse.)
With Issue #2, there is a vastly improved option for finding team members. If you start receiving invitations from complete strangers out of the blue, its because they have deselected the blue button labeled LFG. (They are then no longer looking at a list of just the people looking for a team.)
That's it, hope it proves useful.
A Silly little thing that I didn't see listed but comes in handy for me occasionally...
If you haven't invested in super leaps, super speed or flying and want to get across town quick without being bothered or having to run around building or jump over things, try running on the train tracks...I've found in a couple of cities at least the tracks cut straight across the town...Just start at the train terminal to get on the tracks, then run on the tracks over all obsticles...Nobody (except an occastional train) seems to bother or even notice you up on the tracks...
Like I said, it's a silly little thing, but seems to work well if you are putting off the faster travel modes in luew of more combat/defense skills.