Official Thread for Mayhem Missions


13th_Stranger

 

Posted

Ok, last night was my 3rd Mayhem mission, everything was going great, until I decided to try and rescue the villian. Darn police with their flash grenades kept chain blinding me. I couldnt hit anything.
So I got out of there and went to the bank. Got the loot and on the way out I ran into Minx as an elite boss (I'm solo btw set on 2nd diff setting, can't remember name of it) she owns me in seconds.
So I windup in jail, start pounding on the door, found out you can't rest in the jail cells. So I break out of jail with virtually no endurace and run into a cop boss protecting the prisoner, he beats me up and i'm in another cell. I get out skip the boss, work my way through the maze of the police station and try to beat Minx again. OWNED. break out of jail beat up the police boss out of frustration (cause I had my endurace gain power this time) then proceed to Minx again.

OWNED.....back in jail...time runs out before I get out again.

She was killing me in just a few hits, and I had all my toggles on plus a temp power toggle. I'll be using the frespec today to see if I can get my Brute to be more tankish this time.

SteelDragon - L34 - Infinity Server
Dark/Invuln Brute


 

Posted

lvl 38 MM dark/necro on relentless.

Got time bonuses, but couldn't figure out how they got calculated, seemed as if I got bonuses at first then rarely after I blew a up a particular items more than once or twice I guess.

Had a boss fire tank and lots of longbow decend on me while trying to run out of the bank and they saw right though my darkest night and promptly ganked me. I never saw the boss coming, I was on fire and dead is seconds (the longbow miniguns were chewing my @$$ up).

In jail, zombie I summoned ran out of my cell through the wall and were promptly ganked by a boss in that armor who then came in through the wall to beat on me too. He was one of the toughest bosses. Also, the police drones, what do they do?? They shoot like crazy and nothing hapens.


 

Posted

Let me restate. The time bonueses are not random. They are stacking and higher con objects give you bigger chains of time.
Object levels are locked so yes a crate can con purple to you becaues its stronger than your current powers are.
Think about it. In real life can you just run outside and punch a metal crate and expect it to esplode?
Also I think that the side missions are randomly seeded so one mish you could get a fire bomb but the next a pawn broker.


 

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i LOVE the fact that i can hit pedestrians with my /kin powers. Huge fulcrum shifts, always a target to siphon speed.... Oh glorious day!

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Probably something that would help with the "immersion" factor is if you hit a civilian it is "teleported" out. That way you are defeating the civilians, but not really hurting them.

I do love seeing level 1s running around.

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Say what? Oh no no no! I've been pushed around by civvies for way too long. They deserve to die. We deserve to see blood and dismembered pieces. You know, sort of like any console game...


Total Focus is a hold, right?

 

Posted

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So....The hero at the end of the mission Spawns at hero level instead of Elite Boss if set on invincible? Ouch, not sure if i like that, that means I'll have to reset my difficulty lower for each mayhem mission.

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Wait, I hear the Waahmbulance coming...


Total Focus is a hold, right?

 

Posted

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Let me restate. The time bonueses are not random. They are stacking and higher con objects give you bigger chains of time.

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While they might not be random, it's really hard to tell from the outset what you need to do to gain more time.

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Object levels are locked so yes a crate can con purple to you becaues its stronger than your current powers are.
Think about it. In real life can you just run outside and punch a metal crate and expect it to esplode?

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While this may be true, it doesn't make a whole lot of game balance sense to screw a lowbie with super-high con objects. The base object levels should really scale better with mission/zone level. Level 15 objects should not appear in a level 5 mission. Alternatively, the time reward should drastically scale with the difference between player level and object level, so that the time spent wailing on a +10 con car is actually worth it.


 

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The pool table is what I summoned during Propel. Did you know those summons actually STAY in the world now? And you can actually move them around? Sweet.

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So does everyone see a differerent object like they usually do with Propel?


Total Focus is a hold, right?

 

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The Hero that shows up to stop you is just too hard. Seriously, devs, rethink this... right now my only options are to drop the difficulty before every mayhem mission, and to solo only and not bring along teammates. I can't understand posts that read "Sure, I got pounded 10 times and reached my debt cap, but WHEE FUN!". Fun starts to drop off when you feel like you're hitting an insurpassable brick wall of frustration and futility.

The neverending waves of heavy ambushes loaded with a dozen debuffs are also too much. Why chuck 10 emp grenades when 1-2 are enough to completely drain me and take out my toggles? Why hammer me with so many glue arrows that I can't move faster than a snail? There's got to be a bug at play here... I hope.

Let's see, what else... I'm going to assume pets and villain helpers ignoring the enemy in favor of pounding on civvies is a bug and will be dealt with... and that the timer starting at less than 20 and bonus time being inconsistent is a bug... those things are minor. It's the overall difficulty that MUST be addressed before this goes live. It doesn't have to be insanely easy, but it should be doable by the casual gamers you're trying to reach out to.

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The hero is too tough? Well doh! Drop your rep level. I"m really tired of people who run with increased rep and then complain that their missions are "too hard". Really now, what do you expect, more XP for not very much elevated risk/challenge? C'mon now...


Total Focus is a hold, right?

 

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Well if you had run around blowing up everything and destroying everything I think you would have gotten a AV version of some hero.
I dont think you ever get a Boss hero except maby in the low levels but then again Im not sure. I just threw the B into my line of ranks becaues I wasnt sure if people got Bosses.
In my mission with the level 40's were I was SK'ed they got an EB becaues they all just beelined to the bank after sweeping the police station. However my level 22 MM got wailed on by a very angry strong valkyrie after looting the vault.

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Well there Mr "Brought it on yourself"... how do you explain my level 33 getting a LT! after blowing up half the zone and wasting the police station?

If you're going to look like an [censored] and be condecending at least have some clue about what you're talking about.


 

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I mean, if you were reading a comic book about a "named" villain robbing a bank in Metropolis and Superman showed up, I think you'd expect a really tough fight and possibly getting beat up by the "premiere" hero of the world.

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I'd expect a good fight, sure. The problem is, this isn't a good fight. This is one of the Giffen-DeMattis Justice League issues where the fight goes from the horrified villains looking up to see the heroes, to the next panel showing the villains on the floor, unconscious.

Moreover, you'll forgive me, but by level 40, I'd like to think that I'm past the point of being unable to solo Aqualad or Bucky. That Swan kicked my head in inside of fifteen seconds of seeing her, doesn't convince me that I've made the big leagues and the heroes are treating me as such. It makes me think, again, that the devs have a skewed perspecive of the signature heroes' place in the world if they're always better than us, period.

Now, for the Mayhem Missions (which are tied to level and zone), if the actual Phalanx members show up to fight me, no argument that they're EB/hero level to me. For them to be operating where they are, they should be of higher level. Synapse or Citadel shows up, I should be in for a rough fight, though the devs still need to look at their numbers to see if there's not something horribly wrong with these mobs (if the admittedly anecdotal evidence is accurate, very few mayhem missions featuring signature mobs are even killable, much less soloable).

The Vindicators? Bosses, at best. By the time my main villain hit 40, he'd beaten down Infernal on four separate occasions, and Aurora Borealis on two. Each time, these characters were Hero rank against me (faced them before EB, not that it'd help my fire/thermal corruptor much), often with a good five levels, minimum, between at least one of the encounters. It's not as ludicrous as Sea Witch (who somehow got significantly stronger between beatdowns), but it's still pretty ridiculous to argue that these characters are continuously in my league, much less my superiors.

So, what I'd like to propose is this. In missions (and no, not just Mayhem ones), if a Vindicator pops up, they're a lieutenant/boss spawn, with the exception of Ms. Liberty (generally portrayed as being in the Phalanx's level of power, if not Statesman's). The EB/Hero status should only go to members of the Freedom Phalanx, Ms. Liberty, Blue Steel, and a handful of other characters (Indigo, I can see, and Hero-1 if he ever shows up again).

Devs, think about this, okay? If the point of the Mayhem mission is to revel in our villainy, and the good guys not only send a Teen Titan to capture us, the hero can easily roll us, we're not only being insulted by the heroes, but by the game play. DC Comics rewrote Dr. Light because he was just that pathetic. Don't shape us up to be like him.


 

Posted

what if you had kryptonite


 

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* Objects gave time at random. Not sure if there is a cap on what gives you time or if it is dependant on the objects con, but we couldn't figure out why no time was being awarded for objects.


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I'm starting to think that this is intentional, the better to play to the mayhem theme. If it's steady or always awarded for everything, it's not going to feel frenzied or spontaneous. When villains go on rampages like this in the comics, they don't systematically target every piece of property in the area, they just randomly blow stuff up.


 

Posted

My mission ended while I was waiting for the hero to show up Like others I had 15 min instead of 20 to start mission. At first I tried beating up stuff but received no time bonus so ran to bank. As I did so I got a 30 second time bonus without attacking anything. I think I made the mistake of saving domination for the hero and fought a boss without it. I succeeded in killing the boss but it probably took too much time. Oh well, can't wait for test to go back up so I can have another go.


 

Posted

[quoteThe hero is too tough? Well doh! Drop your rep level. I"m really tired of people who run with increased rep and then complain that their missions are "too hard". Really now, what do you expect, more XP for not very much elevated risk/challenge? C'mon now...

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Sure thing. How do we get it below Villainous?


 

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what if you had kryptonite

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We don't know what/if any weaknesses the signature heroes have.

Even if we did... it'd have to introduce a whole new system into the game to account for those weaknesses.

I'd also hate to come with my kryptonite ray gun to have batman show up.


 

Posted

The hero is too tough? Well doh! Drop your rep level. I"m really tired of people who run with increased rep and then complain that their missions are "too hard".

The problem is if I set the difficulty low enough to keep the EB from instantly annhilating me (assuming that's even possible -- making that Statesman I fought an even con EB probably wouldn't have changed much), the rest of the mission becomes a snoozefest.

If Statesman is supposed to be so powerful no one can stand against him, he's got no business showing up in my missions. This is a game, victory is supposed to be at least a possibility.


Current Blog Post: "Why I am an Atheist..."
"And I say now these kittens, they do not get trained/As we did in the days when Victoria reigned!" -- T. S. Eliot, "Gus, the Theatre Cat"

 

Posted

I did 2 mayhem missions with my 40 brute - it was fun, some no-name hero shows up in the bank and I kick them around a bit. Third mayhem - wander around, blow things up, light some fires, mosey into the bank. Get the loot and wait for the hero. Numina? Uh-oh. Well, I took her out before, and she's still an EB, how bad can it be?

Later, in the jail, I had time to reflect on what exactly went wrong. Really, I think I could have taken her - just her. It was her and the psi cops that did me in - the stacking -recharge really took their toll.

But overall, I didn't think it was too bad - for a brute. I have a feeling my courrupters are going to have to make sure they rack up a bunch of bonus time to make sure they can get out of jail once (or twice ...) to finish off the EBs. Haven't tried my MMs or dominators - I think this might push my dom's to not being solo characters.


 

Posted

Just a warning, I tend to write alot when I post...



First of all, aside the new costumes and such, I literally died and gone to heaven in these mayhem missions. So much to destroy, so li’l time to do it in. Since I got an attention span shorter then a brick, I only scanned what was important.

Anywho, I try these mayhem missions, solo, on a team, low and high level villains. The higher you are the more carnage you can do. This brings out the li’l pyro villain out inside me, and yet, at level 6 destroying stuff, even solo, took a while if the objects are level 10+. While at level 40 all the objects I saw at level 6, are the same levels. Yeah there’s the level 1 stuff, like cardboard, phone booth and such, but I was under the impression, since we are suppose to destroy things, that we bonuses for causing mayhem. So, it seems at the lower levels you’ll need a team to get more time bonuses, or do that one, and only, side mission in Atlas Park (yes I gleaned this map 5 diffrent times and found only one side mission on all 5 Atlas mayhem mission runs), and then pull the heist. So will we see higher level objects to destroy later on, just for a challenge? ‘Cause as my level 40 villain I leveled Brickstown in about 15 minutes. Plus, I like the idea of a swat van, PPD barricade, and such.

As for time bonuses, I did see the :30 sec bonus for evading arrest a lot, ok no biggie. Yet, once I get a bonus for destroying X object, that’s it, for solo that is. However, on a team it seems you get a bonus for each member destroying the same object, one bonus per player that does destroy the X object. Location doesn’t matter, but if you help with the same object it seems you don’t get the multiple time bonuses. As a low level villain, I was leaving with 14 minutes left to spare, doing the only side mission in Atlas, plus the heist, while on a team, even with a few disconnections, we’re leaving with 2 – 4 minutes to spare. To me it seems they design this to have a team (5-8 man team), semi-split up, and cause mayhem. This ideal is what I’d love to test out later.

As a high level villain, I started with 15 minutes on a heist to Brickstown, from Nerva, albeit the broker told me 20 minutes, I racked up over 45 minutes in time, that I decided to waste a few minutes, and I still, with 3 side missions and the heist pulled off, leaving with 30 minutes to spare. So as a high level, time isn’t of an essence, but clarification from the broker will be nice.

With the new AV/GM scaling, I am glad I didn’t try these mayhem missions in relentless. On live now, I can solo longbow bosses that are 1-3 levels above me, but on test, I was getting my butt kicked by a 1+ level longbow officer boss, as in whole 6 minion wipe in 3 seconds flat. I knew that these “heroes” will be harder, and a few posts confirmed this theory.

However, since I’ve tested on villainous, I also believe that these signature heroes appear only at certain instant maps. So far, port oaks seems to be atlas park, and Nerva seems to be Brickstown, and I need to test which one is founder’s fall, and so on. On the Brickstown map, as I stated prior, I leveled everything. Literally. If I can destroy it, it was in ashes within seconds. But, I didn’t get the signature hero, as someone theorized; instead I got some Lt. conning hero. Mind you I am a level 40, necromancy / dark miasma, mastermind while doing this. Can someone else confirm this?

While I have fun blowing up random junk, I found a few objects, target able, but intangible. Mostly near corners and walls. This is more of an annoyance factor, but plausible since the coding take some time to get it all down.

While everyone else that has a non-mastermind pet stated: that pet’s arggo the wrong objects, civilians, and just plain stupefied AI; I never think twice about that. Since on live pets get in an ADHD + sugar rush mode, even MM pets, time to time, I just adapted to that situation. (heck as my MM I am attacking up to 5 different groups at a time so what the add-on pets does has li’l effect on my tactics / status) However, as an MM I noticed that the additional “pets” will follow MM pet commands to an extent. Such as, I tell my minions to attack a target, distance makes no difference, and the add-on pet will attack the same target, at first, then the add-on pet gets bored after the target dies and goes on a killing spree. Yet, after we all regroup, my minions and the add-on pet, the add-on pet will follow basic MM pet commands again, to an extent. On live they, the add-on pets, are just some fat kid locked up in a candy factory going into ADHD mode while high on chocolate.

Now I read, over and over, how these ambushes are bugged, how they target you over the other minions, pets, etc. Perhaps I am wrong, but it seems to be coded that way. Yet, in these mayhem missions, it seems random on whom they’ll go after. Some times the mission holder, other times the closest villain. For an example: I was in a team, and being 2 levels higher I was killing the PPD for time bonuses while looking to see if there was any more side missions. The other members were pullin’ a heist then, so naturally the “hero” pops when they got the loot. However, instead of going after them as it was initially, it U-turned and decided to go after me. Not like I can’t handle, it but I found that odd.

While doing the Atlas Mayhem mission a few times, I did find out that it has one side mission and it was random. Rescue “insert name here” villain, smash and grab as the time bonus calls it, the kidnap, and random looting. Yet in Brickstown, I got 3/4 from that combo. I need to see if I can get more then 3 side missions in a mayhem cause they add to the fun. Plus the rocketpack from the Atlas mayhem is perfect for any low levels out there. The added HP temp. power ( +10% hp for 24 hours of game play, I believe is what it stated ), from Brickstown, will help in PvP, or in regular missions in general. Assuming that’s what you’ll get every time you complete those maps. I’ll need to do the others to see what they offer and test to see if we can get them back after they expire.

Now, I read in the interviews, and other dev posts, that masterminds will have a hard time on mayhem and hate it. Toying with thugs, and playing as my level 40 MM, I enjoy heists, a lot, and I feel the more attention I attract, the more villainous I am becoming. In fact I purposely attract attention, one for time bonuses, and second, mayhem missions are great EXP missions. In fact, just from reading the RV’s post, heroes can farm there all they want for prestige; I will take a mayhem over a RV, simply ‘cause I can get a lot out of it. If people really think about it, mayhems will also be good to farm prestige later on; they too, also have signature heroes on them. As my level 40 villain, I was getting 1-1.5 bubbles / bars of experience per mayhem mission, not including the temp powers. As my lower level villains I am getting a level – level and a half per mayhem. However, I am speculating now, so I need to test and compare the differences for prestige income and whatnot.

Now civilian abuse was something I wanted to do since they get in the way in the old heist, but now I can shoot, hold, fear, knockdown, or whatever I pleased with them. However I’d love it if I can “kill them” but I am very satisfied just knocking the living daylights out of them. Yet, I do see a semi-problem, I am shooting them from a distance, they’ll bite the bullet and walk off like they are all super powered, and whanot, but the instance I get 2 feet too close to their personal bubble space, they run off like chickens with their heads cut off. In a way, I was expecting them to cower, maimed in some fashion, or run for cover after you shoot them, not pretending to be Statesman in disguise.

While I am a MM while testing this, I never had a problem dieing, killing PPD, or whatnot. In fact, I haven’t gone to jail once, but my teammates have. From my point of view, I feel that they take on more then they can handle, and not utilize their minions appropriately or in general trying to be the “fury”. Then again, this is all about causing mayhem, so, not my debt, not my worry.

While I know we are suppose to test new content, I was under the impression that these mayhem missions are random. However I got them every heist I am able to pull. So, in the future, are we going to choose a bank heist, expect random heist / mayhem missions, or implementing mayhem missions so that they are our heist missions from now on? I am hoping for the last option ‘cause I really love these mayhem missions.

~MP


 

Posted

I'm going to withhold the majority of my opinion about Mayhem Missions, however, a few things need to change:

1. Mayhem missions need to be optional, not required to open contacts. We have been led to believe all along that these missions would be -optional-, when clearly they are not. Heists are difficult enough for some ATs to handle solo. Mayhem missions for the same ATs are completely out of the question. Having to "unlock" all your contacts is enough of a pain in the butt already, without Mayhem Missions replacing heists to make it even more difficult for the solo player.

2. Mobs. Should. Not. Spawn. In. The. Prisons. Seriously, this is just sadistic. Being sent to the mayhem prison with its super-reinforced doors (much harder than any prison doors I've encountered in any other mission, hands down) is hard enough without having to face 10-20 mobs waiting for you just outside the door the minute you break out.

3. Prison Dampening Field (anti-TP) should not interrupt Rest. This is part of #2. Breaking out of those doors is hard enough, due to their increased strength...having to do it in an incredibly short timed mission without the ability to rest for faster end-recovery is simply unacceptable....-especially- when you have to face the aforementioned 10-20 NPC mob outside the door.

4. Citizens should not be targettable if you can't damage them and get them to go away. I'm all for not dealing violence to civilians...but if I can target them, I expect to be able to kill them to remove them from my targetting window to reduce the amount of 'targettable item spam'.

5. Cardboard Boxes, Barrels, Crates, etc should have a chance of containing random inspirations. It's simply a better incentive for destroying these items, since they give no exp, and aren't as cool to watch get destroyed as vehicles and fire hydrants.

Overall? I don't care for them at all. They can be a fun lark on the side, but as a portion of the content that I am -required- to complete (if I hope to do anything other than run newspaper missions for 50 levels) I find them seriously lacking.


 

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Mayhem missions need to be optional, not required to open contacts.

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You get the contact whether you succeed at the mission or not.


 

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Mayhem missions need to be optional, not required to open contacts.

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You get the contact whether you succeed at the mission or not.

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You still have to go in, face ambushes, and waste 20 minutes for time to run out.


My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout

 

Posted

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Mayhem missions need to be optional, not required to open contacts.

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You get the contact whether you succeed at the mission or not.

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You still have to go in, face ambushes, and waste 20 minutes for time to run out.

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Or, well, 15 minutes since they keep seeming to start out with less time than the broker says you should have. And I could be mistaken, but as far as I know, the ambushes only occur when you're doing stuff. If you don't do anything I don't think you get any ambushes. So if you REALLY don't like Mayhem Missions (which, I personally don't understand. I love them, even if I think the difficulty is scaled a fair amount too high), you can just go in, make a sandwich, and come back and have your contact. Kind of like going to a mission using Fly.


 

Posted

I have a question that someone may be able to answer for me. I don't have a villain in position to test it myself.

Since Mayhem missions are the missions we need to do to unlock our contacts from our newspaper brokers, what happens if we fail the mayhem mission? Will our broker still give us a contact? Or will he/she not give us one because we failed? An AV/Hero type EB may not be possible for some ATs to beat on their own, so I'm concerned that players will be forced to group merely so that they can get their contacts.

Can anyone shed any light on this concern?


 

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I have a question that someone may be able to answer for me. I don't have a villain in position to test it myself.

Since Mayhem missions are the missions we need to do to unlock our contacts from our newspaper brokers, what happens if we fail the mayhem mission? Will our broker still give us a contact? Or will he/she not give us one because we failed? An AV/Hero type EB may not be possible for some ATs to beat on their own, so I'm concerned that players will be forced to group merely so that they can get their contacts.

Can anyone shed any light on this concern?

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You are given the mission, whether you succeed or fail. However, you must accept the mayhem mission to get the contact. I wish that was changed.


My arcs are constantly shifting, just search for GadgetDon for the latest.
The world beware! I've started a blog
GadgetMania Under Attack: The Digg Lockout

 

Posted

Mayhem Missions are optional - kind of.

How to Turn a Mayhem Mission into an Old-Fashioned Heist:

One: Go directly to the Bank. It's labeled on your minimap, and it is no harder to run around anything that might aggro on you on the way than it was to get to the contact in the first place, or to go anywhere else. Easier, if anything; you know that none of the mobs will be higher level than you.

Two: Deal with One to Three Small Ambushes En Route. There are unmarked spots on the pavement that trigger Longbow ambushes. One of them you have to trigger, it's at the door to the bank. But since you're taking the direct route, you should be able to get there triggering at most one or at most two of them. They are smaller than average spawns. They will chase you, but they do announce themselves in advance. So when you see the chat bubble, stop, wait for them to catch up, and kill them. (Solo on villainous it's 2 minions per spawn. Yawn. A couple of seconds per ambush.)

Three: Deal with the Bank Like You Did Before. If anything, it's easier. After you enter the second room, the last of the pedestrians should have run out into the street. And there are fewer guard spawns, maybe half as many as you're used to. Bypass or kill them and get to the vault door. Blow it up like you always did, click the cart full of cash like you always did.

Four: Deal with the Guard Ambushes Like You Did Before. Only it's even easier, because there's only two ambushes, not three. The first one will be a routine police or guard spawn. The second one will be a truncated, half-size Longbow spawn -- with a named hero. Since you ran directly to the bank without engaging in any Mayhem, this should always be scaled down to a lieutenant (pre level 20) or at most a boss (post level 20, not as sure of this part yet). To complete the newspaper missions that got you this mission, you had to defeat several of these types of spawns already.

Five: Profit. You're done, so click Exit. Elapsed time less than 10 minutes, probably. And, the first time you do this on a new map, you get an incredible temp power reward. And unlike in the old days, vault doors blown up and named bosses defeated count towards badges. Return to your broker, like you always did before, to get a contact.

Caveats and Variables: All of the above is known to be true for people pre level 20 running solo at villainous difficulty. Raising the difficulty by more than one means that the last mob spawn will have a boss, but then, at that difficulty, that should be familiar to you. After level 20, engaging in any Mayhem or raising the difficulty guarantees an Elite Boss, so take extra purple and red inspirations.

After level 20, taking in a team of 3 or more guarantees a signature Hero at full Hero/AV level. So if you just want to do a regular bank heist, get it over with in a hurry without any debt, and get on with running your regular missions, make sure your difficulty is set to villainous and do the job solo.

If on your way to the bank you pass a normal spawn of villains and you have any kind of stealth or invisibility (including temp powers), it's worth fighting them. (Solo on villainous it will be one LT and one minion.) If you find a key to their hideout (check your clues after the fight), you can run in, fight a half-spawn of Longbow who follow you in, and stealth through a very small map directly to a glowie that always rewards you with a new persistent temp power. This should take so little time and do so little damage that it shouldn't affect your chances to keep the end-boss at the lower difficulty level.

(Note: This part of my notes towards the comprehensive Mayhem Missions guide that I'm working on.)