PW's war journal

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2/18/2010

Thursday

Played Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) on an ITF. This TF took a long time to form and felt rather low DPS; cleared most, finished in 55m 26s. On the bright side, I got an Apocalypse (DMG/RCHG/ACC) recipe drop.

Shield Maiden (22 mace/shield brute) solo'd through Serpent's Scheme, an AE arc where you battle a mysterious reptile cult. This was a decent story but needed a little more writing in places; I gave it 4 stars.


Friday

I played Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) on a Whirligig team running Maria Jenkins' Praetorian arc at +4 difficulty. We beat up Siege, Bobcat, Neuron, Battle Maiden, Black Swan, Malaise, Mother Mayhem, Diabolique, Infernal, Dominatrix and Marauder. I picked up an Apocalypse (DMG/END) recipe drop. I switched to Kyrie Eleison (34 fire/regen scrapper) for the very last mission against Tyrant, in order to get the Statesman's Pal badge (which Star Amethyst already had). We had a team wipe in the final room due to overaggroing most of the room onto us, but after regrouping we beat up Tyrant. This got Kyrie to level 35, where I took Revive; normally not a popular choice, but I'm not a very good regen scrapper and it feels like I die a lot. I figure I can just treat Revive as another click heal.

Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) joined a clear-most ITF that finished in 42m 20s; got an Obliteration (ACC/DMG/RCHG/END) recipe drop from a mob, which was a lucky find (it's normally a valuable Pool C recipe).


Saturday

I re-played Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) through Breaking the Barrier and Putting it Back Together, an AE arc where you cooperate with aliens to stop a dimensional portal crisis. The author had made a lot of changes to this arc since my first play-through, improving it a lot; I gave it 5 stars.

I played Thesia (23 grav/sonic controller) on a pickup Sister Psyche TF. We finished the first mission in Independence Port, then the second mission was in Steel Canyon. For some reason the team leader, a thermal controller, went to King's Row instead, and we had the following exchange in team chat:

[Team] Controller: why the hell did i go to kr?
[Team] Thesia: I dunno. Do you know how to get to Steel Canyon?
[Team] Controller: >.>
[Team] Thesia: The train should go there.
[Team] Controller: okay... lemme clarify something
[Team] Controller: don't speak to me like i started yesterday
[Team] Controller: ever.

This kind of rubbed me the wrong way. I was unimpressed by this controller's play ability so far (she had never applied fire shields on anyone and let people go to the hospital rather than rez them, despite having both those powers). After thinking about this, I ended up saying:

[Team] Thesia: That's big talk for someone who doesn't know the way to Steel Canyon :P

This resulted in me being kicked from the TF. I pretty much asked for it, since I willfully sassed the team leader after an implied threat. I guess I just couldn't let it slide. Another player also quit the TF after I was kicked from the team, and some minor drama was generated on LB channel as a result, though I tried to quiet this down (as a moderator I'm sure it's uncool for me to stir up drama). I did get called "immature" by a teenage player, which was pretty funny (but probably deserved!).

After hearing this story, a friend volunteered to form another Sister Psyche TF, which I joined. We formed an 8-player TF pretty quickly and everyone joked about getting lost on the way to missions. This second TF had a very strong team (good support and DPS) and finished in 1hr 10m, getting Thesia to level 25. Despite starting considerably later, we actually finished sooner than the TF I had been kicked from; I heard second-hand that that TF ended up taking 2h 30m.

Finished the night playing Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) on a speed ITF (23m 35s) and speed LGTF (26m 42s).


Saturday

Played Kyrie Eleison (35 fire/regen scrapper) and then Millie Volt (39 elec/elec brute) through the Valentine's Day missions, initially as a duo but eventually building up to a mid-sized team, to get the Beautiful badge and unlock the DJ Zero missions that give costume parts. This got Millie to level 40.

Arrow Girl (39 archery/dev blaster) joined a 4-player team doing low 40s missions in Peregrine Island. We beat the Psychic Clockwork King and got Arrow Girl to level 40.

Thesia (25 grav/sonic controller) joined a Citadel TF that finished in 59m 28s and got her to level 26.

Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) started soloing a flashback of Maria Jenkins' Praetorian arc, trying to pick up any Praetorian AVs I had missed. Solo'd Chimera and Shadow Hunter as EBs; had no problem staying alive (due to high defense and debuffs), but did have problems running out of END before I could kill them. Star Amethyst has decent amounts of ENDRDX slotted in her attacks, but it just takes awhile for her to kill stuff while solo, I guess. I started carrying more blues while soloing. I did luck into a Coercive Persuasion (CONFUSE) recipe drop while on this flashback.


Tuesday

I've gradually been buying up Kinetic Combat recipes from the market, mostly because Police Woman was nearing the influence cap and I needed to burn money on something. I probably soaked 1 Billion infl into various Kinetic Combat recipes, and started crafting them for alts and such. I did sell one Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) IO for 100M infl; had bought the recipe for 65M infl. With the 10M Wentworth's tax, that's about 25M profit, minus some crafting and salvage costs. IO sales are pretty erratic though, so I'm not sure it's a viable steady source of income.

Darla Doppler (36 kin/sonic defender) joined a kill-most ITF that finished in 38m 36s and got her to level 38.

Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) joined an "all-rad" ITF run by Whirligig; we could only find 7 players (4 defenders, 2 controllers, 1 corruptor) but we got to stack a lot of AM. Despite being so rad heavy, it actually felt a little slow moving relative to normal ITFs. I thought our DPS was a little low; partially due to being short a player, partially due to no DPS ATs (even with 7-stacked AM, most of us were starting at wimpy defender/controller damage), partially because AVs would run from us (maybe due to no aggro control). Cleared most mobs, finished in 54m 15s.

We tried forming an STF for a bit, but couldn't get critical mass, so ended up doing another ITF, on which I played Kyrie Eleison (35 fire/regen scrapper). This was still 7 players but with a more even AT distribution. Cleared most, finished in 49m 0s and got Kyrie to level 37.


Wednesday

Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) did a speed ITF; I again saw AVs running away from us a lot (team leader thought it was because we had no tank or brute on the team to taunt, I think maybe it's true) and this actually caused Romulus in mission 4 to run away from his Nictus and so he died without a rez, forcing us to kill off the Nictus AVs directly. Still finished in 25m 9s. Then followed a speed LGTF in 24m 5s.

I bought a few recipes for Yuki-Onna; got a Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control (RCHG/END) from the Black Market for 18M infamy; this recipe is always high priced, but I wanted it in order to complete a set of 6 Gaussian for +2.5% DEF to all positions. I also spent 240 reward merits for a Blessing of the Zephyr (KB protect) which gave me more ranged DEF. Yuki-Onna now has 43.67% range DEF when running all her toggles. Haven't quite made it to the 45% soft cap (need one more set of BotZ), but getting closer.

Solo'd Millie Volt (40 elec/elec brute) through The Galactic Protectorate - 04, an AE story about helping the human resistance (of another dimension) battle alien invaders. This seemed a good installment but could've used a little more content, and as "part 4" was starting to feel a little formulaic; I ended up giving it 4 stars.

Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) continued soloing a flashback of Maria Jenkins' arc, beating Nightstar as an EB. This gave her the Dimensional Warder badge; I ended up quitting the flashback since that's all I really wanted. Did some running around clicking plaques to get the Scholastic badge and Portal Jockey accolade. Then I did a flashback of the Spelunker mission (for 1 merit in 6m 57s) and clicked plaques for the Pupil badge, getting the Atlas Medallion accolade.

I joined an Eden trial with Star Amethyst; our team was 3 blasters, 1 tanker, 1 defender (me as dark/ice), 2 controllers (a kin and a rad), 1 scrapper. We had some confusion over what to do with the Quarry monsters (whether to kill them or drop them in a hole). We ended up killing them, then beat up some walls and collected ambrosia for awhile. Our scrapper never quite understood what ambrosia was for or why he needed it; he ended up getting splattered by the Crystal Titan as a result, but the rest of us were able to take the Crystal Titan down, completing the trial in 1h 1m for 7 merits and the Liberator badge.

While battling DE AVs and GMs I ended up wielding my evil moderator powers on LB, first warning people for talking about urine, then silencing someone briefly, before unsilencing him again. That seemed to stop that particular conversation and I even got a

[Tell] @Somebody: I totally deserved that. <3.

from the person I silenced, but it did spur some debate on why LB has moderators and whether they should actually be moderating stuff. Some people were for unrestricted speech while others seemed to prefer moderation. Since I sort of spurred this discussion with my action, I felt like I should say something. This is what I said:

[LB]PW: for my part, I got given this tin star and asked to help keep this channel nice, and it may ultimately be tilting at windmills, but I'm gonna try to do it

....

[LB]PW: I think it's a fair concern <name omitted>, but some of the nasty talk drives nicer people away from the channel, which is hurtful for the community .... so some moderation is helpful for keeping the community alive, IMHO


I ended up joining <name omitted>'s RSF after that. It looked like the team could use a kin, so I played Primadonna (50 sonic/kin corruptor) who had been on the shelf for a couple months while I worked on hero-side kins. The team was: shield brute, 5 corruptors (son, kin, pain, dark, rad), widow, bane. We did fine up to the last mission, where our first attempt at the Freedom Phalanx was a total wipe without defeating any heroes; I think this was because our lone brute unluckily died from the alpha strike and the rest of us squishies couldn't take the aggro of the angry Phalanxers. Our second attempt we all popped a bunch of oranges to take the edge off any lucky damage spikes; this went a lot better and we beat all the heroes up on that try. Finished in 1hr 5m and got a Nucleolus SHO.

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@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"

you forgot to mention that you managed to say a few things to shock whirligigers which is quite an accomplishment. also, that you have furthered your decent into corruption by joining our forums.

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2/22/2010

Thursday

Quick Katie (41 plant/kin controller) did a speed ITF (20m 57s) that got her to level 42.

Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider) did a speed LGTF (23m 0s).

Strong Woman (48 inv/SS tanker) did a Statesman TF with a team of 1 tanker (me), 3 blasters, 3 controllers, 1 scrapper. I was asked to play tanker for this, and being only level 48 and the first time tanking STF for me, I suspect it was because no other tanker players were around at the time. I think I mostly did okay in the earlier (easy) parts of the STF, except I was too slow to grab aggro on Dr. Aeon (I somehow managed to get web grenaded out of LOS from Dr Aeon and couldn't taunt him until the web grenade ended). In the final mission, I was able to taunt the 4 patron AVs and keep them all occupied long enough for the team to kill them, and was able to keep the Arachnos Flyer busy til it was killed, too. I was carrying 7 tier 3 Break Frees out of paranoia that Ghost Widow would hold me, but it never actually happened.

Lord Recluse himself, however, was really nasty. I survived for awhile eating tier 3 Lucks and Sturdies. This kept me alive long enough for the team to drop the red tower, but then I died and things kinda went to hell. I got into a hospital -> fly back -> taunt -> die -> hospital -> get TP'd back -> taunt -> die (repeat) cycle; it did not feel like I could tank Lord Recluse at all. I eventually started madly kiting, taunting LR from a distance and then hiding behind a tower, then running away and taunting some more. This felt very cowardly but kept me alive longer while keeping LR off the team. We eventually destroyed the yellow tower and the green tower and then Lord Recluse himself, finishing the STF in 46m 19s. Strong Woman got level 49, a Lysosome SHO and a Soulbound Allegiance (chance for build up) recipe.

I felt like I didn't do a good enough job of tanking Lord Recluse, so I spent some time thinking about why, and posted a request for help on the Tanker forum that garnered a lot of useful advice. In fairness, the team I was on assigned no one to heal the tanker (but this is not abnormal for STFs I'm on, so I figured I was still missing something) and our rad said that his debuffs on LR kept getting knocked off due to stuns from random minion aggro (which we apparently got from stray controller pets). Nevertheless I'm trying to gear up with better IOs/accolades and learn better tactics for the next time.

After that I played Mega (50 SS/will brute) on a Recluse SF. This went pretty well (I seemed to do better tanking this than the STF; of course, Mega is higher level and more heavily IO'd out) though we had a semi-wipe on Crimson when some ballista detention fielded me during the fight. I also found that I could use Hurl to drop Sister Psyche out of the sky in mission 3, which seemed useful. Finished in 37m 2s and got a Centriole SHO.

Finished the night playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) through A Hero in Need is a Friend Indeed, an AE arc for Dr. Aeon's 2nd Challenge, where you help Statesman deal with losing his powers. This started off pretty slow but I thought it had a good ending; I gave it 5 stars.


Friday

Police Woman got the Intern day job badge (for being logged out in Portal Corp) and the Scientist accolade, giving her a total of 626 badges.

Thesia (26 mind/sonic controller) did another Sister Psyche TF with Whirligig SG. Our team mix was 1 tanker, 1 blaster, 3 defenders, 3 controllers, and the blaster almost immediately disconnected and never came back. As a result our team had really low DPS, which made it something of a grind. Still finished in 2h 9m and got Thesia to level 27.


Saturday

Kyrie Eleison (37 fire/regen scrapper) joined a Manticore TF of mostly fire-themed Sisterhood & friends. We had 4 fire blasters, 2 fire scrappers, rad controller, emp defender. We cleared some and stealthed some and finished in 1hr 17m, getting Kyrie to level 38. Kyrie's white-recolored fire/regen powers got a "You're very shiny" comment from my team; which is pretty much what I was going for.

Mega (50 SS/will brute) did a speed ITF on a 7-player team in 27m 24s, then a speed LGTF in 25m 51s.

Samurai-ko (43 katana/will scrapper) did an Abandoned Sewer Trial in 26m 51s, getting to level 44.

Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) joined a Master of the LGTF attempt (is there really a MoLGTF badge? our team leader seemed to think so) with Whirligig SG. We cleared most mobs, not stealthing or deliberately failing anything. A squishy caught aggro from mitos in mission 4 and died, but we kept on going, ultimately finishing LGTF in 1h 23m.

Arrow Girl (40 archery/dev blaster) joined a Numina TF with Whirligig SG, finishing in 1hr 25m and getting to level 41.


Sunday

I solo'd Millie Volt (40 elec/elec brute) through A Demons Vengeance, a villainous AE story arc where you help a demon beat up various wizards that annoyed it. It was okay, but needed more writing and more stuff to do in the missions. I gave it 3 stars.

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) joined an ITF; we had a weird team makeup with 2 force fielders and no kin. So we weren't super fast but we were quite safe. Finished in 33m 4s and I got a Respec recipe drop. They seemed to be selling for 300M at Wentworth's; this seemed crazy high, but I went ahead and listed the Respec recipe for sale at that price (costing me 15M just to make the listing). But of course the price fell to around 200M shortly after that and I still haven't sold it.

Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) joined a semi-speedy LGTF. I had respec'd into TP Foe recently (mostly as a mule power to store more Blessing of the Zephyr sets in) and tried using them on the mitos in mission 4, but that trick didn't seem to work any more. Somehow our team messed up the final mission, failing to assign anyone to TP the squishies to the end of the map; since I had recall friend, I ended up attempting a run to the end to TP everyone else. (It helped that I was able to recall friend a dead person and vengeance off of them before beginning my run.) The team leader declared me "MVP" of the TF as a result, which was nice. Finished in 35m 17s.

Kyrie Eleison (38 fire/regen scrapper) joined a fire-themed Sisterhood team on a Synapse TF. We were a little slow moving (pausing often to sell and AFK and stuff) but didn't have any serious problems, defeated Babbage and completed the TF in 2h 39m, getting Kyrie to level 39.

After that I played Millie Volt (40 elec/elec brute) on a Whirligig clear-most ITF. We had only 7 players and I ended up AFKing through mission 2 to get dinner from a takeout place, which I'm sure slowed things down. Had a near wipe against the Phalanx Computer in mission 3, but a scrapper and stalker managed to drop the computer after the rest of us got defeated. The rest of the ITF went fine, though, and we finished in 54m 32s, getting Millie to level 41.

Mega (50 SS/will brute) did a speed ITF after that; had a teammate call her background story "intense". After beating Romulus in the final mission, the team split up, with 4 players going to each of the two towers. My sub-team got mostly clobbered, unfortunately, except for me, and I was surviving by eating orange inspirations; though a teammate said that "Mega is the last one standing, she probably ate the others". We finished the ITF but I forgot to write down the time.

Arrow Girl (41 archery/dev blaster) did another Synapse TF, this time with Whirligig. We had a pretty strong team (tanker, 2 defenders, 3 controllers, 2 blasters) and finished in 1hr 38m, defeating Babbage with no outside help. This got Arrow Girl the Task Force Commander accolade. I also got a level 20 Eradication (chance for energy damage) recipe drop.

Kyrie Eleison (39 fire/regen scrapper) joined yet another ITF; we cleared most. Our team mix (2 kins, 1 cold, 1 stormy, 2 scrappers, 1 blaster, 1 soldier) didn't seem to quite be working and we had a lot of deaths. I got a lot better at managing Moment of Glory and the various regen clickies (including Revive) as a result. The new MoG actually seems pretty good; with a huge RES and DEF boost for 15 seconds, it's kind of a get-out-of-jail free card for dangerous moments. The team wasn't sure if we could handle Romulus with our team makeup; but when Imperious aggroed unexpectedly on Romulus, rather than let him die I decided to MoG and rush in. I somehow survived this and we finished the ITF in 1hr 2m, getting Kyrie to level 40.

A friend had heard I was looking for a Gaussian's Synchronized Fire Control (RCHG/END) on red side and offered to sell it to me. He wanted to give it to me for cheap, but I didn't want to rip him off, so we got into this weird backwards negotiation on the sale price. I offered him 100M infamy, but he wanted only 25M infamy. I counteroffered with 50M infamy, then we finally agreed on 32M infamy. I used this to complete a set of 6 Gaussians for Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor), giving +2.5% DEF to all positions; her standing-around range DEF is now up to 41.42%.

The blue-side salvage market has felt a little soft lately, and I ended up diversifying by starting up trading of Kinetic Combat IOs. I had been buying Kinetic Combat recipes anyway, to keep under the 2B influence cap, then crafted them to put them in IO storage bins, so I had a lot of Kinetic Combat IOs sitting around anyway. Over the weekend I sold:

1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/RCHG) for 40M
1 Kinetic Combat (ACC/DMG) for 20M
1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END) for 70M
2 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END/RCHG) for 90M each

People seem to want these IOs; it feels like they've been selling at a reasonable clip for a decent profit.

I finished the night logging on Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller). I had left some buy orders at Wentworth's for her, some of which had filled; I got

1 Unbreakable Constraint (HEAL/RCHG) for 75M
1 Unbreakable Constraint (HEAL/RCHG/ACC) for 60M
1 Coercive Persuasion (CONFUSE/RCHG) for 7.7M

and some Performance Shifter recipes for smaller amounts of infl. Slotted 4 Performance Shifter (including the +end proc) in Spacegirl's Stamina power for +1.88% max HP and +2.5% recovery bonuses.

I finished the night playing Spacegirl on a pickup team that beat up Neuron and Anti-Matter for the Dimensional Warder credit.

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@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"

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Damn. I figured the Helen Keller thing would at least get a mention.

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Whirligig SG

7 mentions of Whirligig in 2 posts....how long before we make this official?

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My 50s:
Agent Alpha - Kin/Rad 'fender
Shirai Ryu - MA/Regen Scraps
Dark Joule - Dark/Elec 'fender
Kid Frag - Ice/Eng Blapper
Shurai Ryu - Fire/Kin Troll
Psychogenic Fizz - FF/Psy 'fender
Proud Member of:
MDK
The LEGION
Whirligig

I really enjoyed the Synapse TF we were on together on Sunday. It was full of old friends and chat about the old days and some really great stories.

A leisurely Sunday TF, ahhhhhh.

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Stone Tanks are denied :stares at PW: =O_O=

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2/26/2010

Monday

Sold a couple Kinetic Combat IOs, an ACC/DMG for 30M and a DMG/RCHG for 40M. Bought 5 Kinetic Combat (ACC/DMG) recipes for 5M each, 5 Kinetic Combat (DMG/END) recipes for 45M each.

Kyrie Eleison (40 fire/regen scrapper) solo'd Lars Hansen's "A Madman's Council" arc for 8 merits and unlocked the Ernesto Hess TF contact.


Tuesday

Sold 2 Kinetic Combat (ACC/DMG) IOs for 30M, 1 Kinetic Combat (DMG/RCHG) for 40M.

Lady Arachne (50 wolf spider) joined a speed Recluse SF (34m 46s) and got a Membrane SHO. Did some crafting afterwards and slotted a Luck of the Gambler (DMG/END) into her Combat Training: Defensive, making a set of 3 for a +1.13% hp bonus.

Started San Min, a newbie MA/willpower scrapper with a theme of being a patriotic hero of Nationalist China. I have a scrapper with a similar concept on Triumph already, but thought starting over would be more fun than server transferring. Solo'd newbie missions to level 4, played through Suppression, a loosely re-imagined "Wizard of Oz" AE story arc (gave it 4 stars), then solo'd some more to get to level 6.

Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) did a speed ITF (26m 15s).


Wednesday

Sold another Kinetic Combat (ACC/DMG) IO for 30M. Writing about routine individual sales is kinda dull, so just going to note big ticket sales/purchases and general trends from now on.

Shield Maiden (22 mace/shield brute) solo'd the villain cape mission and did a Steel Canyon mayhem.

Kyrie Eleison (40 fire/regen scrapper) joined a Dr. Quaterfield TF with mostly Whirligig SG. We had one defender disconnect repeatedly and eventually give up on playing; the rest of us did 12 of the 22 missions, after which it was really late and we agreed to continue the TF another night. Unfortunately some people quit the TF instead of simply logging out; after we realized this, it was decided to abandon the TF and restart it from the beginning sometime in the future. Nevertheless this got Kyrie to level 41.


Thursday

Someone I knew asked me to join a pickup Manticore TF he was forming; he asked for a tanker but I had a hard time believing we needed a tank for Manticore TF, so I volunteered myself to play a kin defender instead (Darla Doppler, 38 kin/sonic defender). We ended up with a team of 3 scrappers, 1 peacebringer, 1 rad controller, 2 kin defenders, 1 rad defender. As a high(er) level character, I got given the star in order to super-sidekick everyone to the maximum level for the TF. On this team we had a scrapper who asked not to be SB'd, then quit after mission 1 since he was out of time; he didn't really seem to understand what a TF was. His quitting the team bugged out the TF; finishing the second mission, we instantly were given the same mission again. I got the team to all try calling Manticore, and the original team leader was able to call him again, which broke us out of this cycle. Despite these hijinks we finished in 58m 1s.

AEntertainment Tonight on KJSR radio did a review of my Two Tickets to Westerly story arc. They really disliked the nickname I had initially used for the big end boss (I'm kinda glad I changed this recently due to some other feedback) and felt the story wasn't very true to the official canon; of the four reviewers, they variously scored it 2.5, 4.5, 4.5, and 4.5 stars. Sounded like they gave it a fair shake, though, so I can't complain.

Playing Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) I joined Whirligig SG for a Sister Psyche TF (1hr 29m), a Statesman TF (1hr 9m, got a Lysosome SHO) and an Imperious TF (cleared most, 45m 13s). I didn't really need the TF badges on any alt (clearly, a sign that I need to start more alts), and the team was buttering me up by praising Police Woman's mad Full Auto skills, so I had a good time playing my main character for most of the night.

Finished the night tinkering with my Attack of the 50 Foot Villain story arc, trying to solve an intermittent problem with triggered objectives not always spawning. I think this is really a bug with the AE system, so isn't easy for me to solve with the tools we're given, but I tried moving objectives around and simplifying the sequence that they're triggered in, hoping to minimize the chance of this weird bug occurring.

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@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"

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3/2/2010

Friday

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) did a Numina TF. I was one of the few players with stealth, so I got assigned to stealth missions. On the "Locate Scout" mission I had a heck of a time finding Scout; I had never realized before that there actually is no mob named Scout in this mission, it's just an anonymous war hulk that you're supposed to get. Otherwise the TF went fine, finishing in 1hr 7min.

Millie Volt (41 elec/elec brute) did an Imperious TF. For some reason I got 2 reward merits just for entering the last mission (in addition to the regular TF missions) but I have no idea why. We cleared most of the TF, finishing in 1hr 1min and getting Millie to level 42.


Saturday

Indigo Ifrit (50 fire/rad corruptor) joined an Imperious TF, about half speed players and half pickup. Finished in 34m 8s, which wasn't bad but got a "Geez this group is efficient" from one of the pickup players.

I restarted Linda Lightspeed as a rad/nrg blaster. With the idea that she's a light-based hero, I recolored all powers to brilliant white with a tinge of blue; I think this looks good on both the rad blasts and the energy pom-poms. Solo'd to level 3. A friend spotted me and invited me to a team, which turned out to be an 8-player team doing level 49 Praetorian missions in Peregrine Island. I tried to say I was too low level for that, but he said I should be fine. After one mission I had leveled to 6 and was feeling intense PLing guilt, so I told the team I should really go, because I wasn't high enough level to be helpful. They insisted that it was okay, and I should stay! So I ended up staying; I rationalized that I was the only damage AT on the team, so they needed my DPS. I took AoE powers when I trained up, to help kill stuff faster; Irradiate is great, but Electron Haze feels like an awfully narrow cone, so not sure I like it. We beat Black Swan, Mother Mayhem, Malaise, Infernal, Dominatrix, Marauder, Tyrant and Chimera. This got Linda to level 17 by the time the team broke up.

I played San Min (6 MA/will scrapper) on a 7-player Sisterhood team doing radio missions. Clearing an entire Skyway safeguard mission got San Min to level 13.

Some players of my Attack of the 50 Foot Villain AE mission had run into bugs where the triggered objectives to fight Goshilla and the giant Mecha wouldn't spawn correctly, preventing the mission from being completable. I spent hours and hours trying to debug this; changing maps, moving around and/or deleting objectives, etc. For some reason, triggered spawns on outdoor maps just seem buggy; it doesn't seem limited to any one particular map, but there does seem to be some correlation with outdoor maps. I need an outdoor map for this mission, though (it would be silly to be 50 feet tall and indoors). I tried a version where all objectives were spawned at the start of the mission and none were triggered, but this version felt like it lost any sense of plot that the mission originally had, so I couldn't live with that. I ended up making all the triggered objectives optional (so you can still complete the mission even if some don't spawn), making it a "defeat all" (which seems to only count the mobs that were spawned at the start), and using a smaller map so that defeating all of the mobs isn't so onerous. This seems to work okay so far, but I'll probably need to test it more to be sure, since these spawning problems are somewhat intermittent.

Testing heavily with Mega (50 SS/will brute) got me a lot of tickets; I burned some of these on 2 Gold ticket rolls at 3700 tickets each, getting a Touch of the Nictus (ACC/END/RCHG) and a Malaise's Illusions (chance for psi); haven't checked their price at the Black Market, mostly because I doubt they are worth much.


Sunday

Strong Woman (49 inv/SS tanker) joined a badging team that beat up Anti-matter and Neuron in a greyed out mission just for the Dimensional Warder credit.

A friend asked me to help fix some arena duels for the sake of badging credit. I brought on Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) and we met in Pocket D, taking turns forfeiting duels to give each other badges. This felt pretty cheaty, but it worked. I got the following badges:

Arena Duelist
Strawweight Champion
Flyweight Champion
Bantamweight Champion
Featherweight Champion
Lightweight Champion
Welterweight Champion
Middleweight Champion
Cruiserweight Champion
Heavyweight Champion
Suepr Heavyweight Champion

This gets my badge count up to 637.

In the afternoon there was some actual real PvP in Warburg. I ran over there with Police Woman. AR/dev is not exactly a PvP build, but it's what I'm used to playing. Most of the PvPing was just a big free-for-all furball on the beach near the Longbow ship. I scored a few kills against squishies, then had some inconclusive skirmishes against a regen scrapper. I couldn't actually out-DPS his regen, but he couldn't actually close to melee range with me (I would web grenade him, then bounce away to somewhere he couldn't reach). Since we couldn't kill each other, we teamed up! More people trickled into Warburg as time went on; a bunch of blasters (psy, sonic, even another AR), a couple slippery stalkers, a couple tankers and scrappers. An emp defender even showed up and joined us, which gave us a pretty unfair advantage but heal decay kept it from being too overpowering. Killed a lot of people, died a lot. I got a level 50 Panacea (HEAL/RCHG) recipe drop, which was really nice; Wentworth's has it selling for around 200M. I should probably sell it (it's fantastically unlikely for me to assemble a set of these) but I'll probably end up squirreling it away in my base or something.

I started a newbie MA/ninj stalker to attend the Kumate level 5 PvP event. The rules limited you to being a level 5 martial arts toon; I went with a level 5 MA stalker reasoning that having 3 attacks (Thunder Kick, Storm Kick, Crippling Axe Kick) would massively advantage me over a level 5 scrapper (who gets Cobra Strike instead of Crippling Axe Kick). Plus if they allowed Hide, that would just be ludicrously broken at level 5. PvP in Warburg had me running late on making and leveling up this character, so I held my nose and played an AE farm arc long enough to get to level 4, then ran to Pocket D for the event. Unfortunately, no one else showed up, so it got called off. I guess this is understandable, as it's kind of a pain to create and level up to 5 a character you use for only one event. Oh well!

A Rikti War Zone raid was starting at that time, so I brought on Millie Volt (42 elec/elec brute) to join, figuring that elec armor should be really good against Rikti (with capped energy resist and moderate lethal and psy resist). Despite that I got squished a few times (there's a LOT of Rikti there) but nevertheless got around 300 Vanguard merits, 2 reward merits from the Master at Arms, and about half a level of exp just from fighting.

When the leader called on us to jump into the well in the center of the mother ship, I said, "My god! It's full of stars!" Which made me suddenly realize that, wow, 2001 was awhile ago. This made me say on a chat channel, "It's weird that my science fiction had 2001 and 1999 as futuristic dates that we'd have space travel and stuff," which left me open to a joker cracking, "Or Prince songs!"

Millie went on from RWZ to join a 4 player villain team working on getting mayhem exploration badges. We did the Brickstown mayhem, Founders Falls mayhem and Peregrine Island mayhem missions, with some paper missions in between, that got Millie the various badges and level 43.


Monday

Quick Katie (42 plant/kin controller) did a clear-most Imperious TF organized on LB, finishing in 47m 56s and getting Katie to level 43. With the new slots I put 2 Blessing of the Zephyr in Superspeed (+3.13% range def), completed a set of 6 Gaussian's in Tactics (+2.5% all def) and a set of 6 Red Fortune in Maneuvers (+2.5% range def). This gives Quick Katie a total of 34.97% range DEF while hovering; still not close to the cap, but she definitely seems more survivable.

While playing Quick Katie on an ITF, someone was doom-saying on LB channel about how no one plays on Liberty any more and how there's no teams to be had. I pointed out that I had joined an 8-player team within 15 minutes of logging in, but he persisted, insisting that no one plays on Liberty. I had seen 3 or 4 TFs being formed in the background on LB during this time, though, so this just didn't seem justified. This ended up leading to the following exchange:

[LB]Doomy person: fact are the population of liberty in particular is rather moribund compared to even a month ago
[LB]Doomy person: 146 non hide blueside being 5th is not happy happy joy joy imho
[LB]PW: Sorry can't hear you over the sound of my team smashing stuff
[LB]Another person: Thanks, PW, for reminding me why you are awesome. heh

....which I thought was pretty fun. Thanks!

Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) did a speed ITF in 22m 14s.

Linda Lightspeed (17 rad/nrg blaster) did a 6-player Synapse TF with Whirligig SG. This team was a little weird because it was all squishies (4 defenders, 2 blasters). I decided that I was the tanker, or at least a scrapper, and ended up rushing into mobs to attack them. Fortunately, the defenders were very good (I usually had fortitude and SB and debuffs on the bad guys) so this was pretty survivable. We beat Babbage (with one rad outside the team helping) and finished the TF in 1hr 52m, getting Linda to level 21.

---

@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"

3/8/2010

The "Going Rogue" preorder finally opened up on Tuesday, causing me to squeee! (someone on one of my chat channels said "I think PW just had an in-game orgasm"). I immediately bought one, which unlocked the Dual Pistols powerset. I rolled 4 dual pistols toons: an emp/pistols defender, a traps/pistols defender, a pistols/kin corruptor and a pistols/dark corruptor. The defenders got a lot more play, mostly because it was easier to find teams on blue side. By the end of the double exp weekend, Mystery Girl (empathy/pistols) got to level 34, Spy Girl (traps/pistols) got to level 29, but Viva la Revolution (pistols/kin) and Mina von Heksung (pistols/dark) only got to 4. Of these four, I think I like traps/pistols the best; the traps debuffs and FF Generator are really nice. I do like empathy/pistols too (really like Fortitude and AB), but found I suffered from what a teammate called "empathy guilt", i.e., when the team overaggros a ton of mobs and I couldn't keep players from dying. I would guess the corruptors should get good at higher levels, but didn't play them enough to be sure.

Over the double exp weekend, I was surprised at the number of people I normally team with who wanted to just plain farm and PL. I find farming and PLing to be too boring and guilt inducing, so I turned down about 4 invitations to join farms. It felt like I was getting plenty of exp doing normal teaming though.

I kinda got out of the rare salvage flipping market in order to invest in high level Thunderstrike recipes, crafting them and re-selling them as Thunderstrike IOs. My reasoning was that, hey, tons of dual pistols toons who need range damage IOs - should generate a lot of demand, right? So far this has generated a moderate amount of revenue for me, but it's not as much as I hoped; selling IOs just doesn't give me the same kind of volume as selling stacks of salvage. On the bright side, as a side effect, I now have a ton of Kinetic Combat and Thunderstrike recipes and IOs for my personal use.

There was a moderate amount of drama on LB channel over the weekend. I've decided to stop explicitly mentioning in this journal the people I end up moderating on LB, because I don't want people purposely trying to get me to silence them just so I'll mention it here. Due to the continuing drama, I decided it would be a good idea to post the rules (for myself) that I use when moderating. I'm somewhat sensitive that the other moderators may not (in fact, certainly don't) use the same rules so it can result in people playing mommy-daddy with us all, but I don't have a good solution for that.

Misplaced my detailed notes for Tuesday and Wednesday, but on Thursday, Linda Lightspeed (21 rad/nrg blaster) did an 8-player pickup Sister Psyche TF. Our support was two not-very-good empaths, one of which logged and didn't come back, the other quit midway through the TF to join a RWZ raid. They were actually not very effective, so having our support players disappear hurt a lot less than you might expect. Finished in 1hr 32m and got Linda to level 24.

San Min (13 MA/wp scrapper) formed an 8 player pickup team that ran through the Midnight Squad arc. This team was incredibly blaster heavy due to dual pistols becoming FOTM; everyone on the team kept saying "San Min needs to get a gun too!" as I was the only one without. We had 2 wipes on the Lady Jane mission due to the CoT just being really tough for us at that level, along with Lady Jane helping to pull more mobs. This caused us to fail the mission, but we still finished the arc and unlocked the Midnight Club. A couple teammates had hit 20 so we did their 2nd costume mission before the team broke up, having gotten San Min to level 19. I solo'd a bit to get to 20, and helped a Sisterhood team beat Babbage.

Mystery Girl (newbie emp/pistols defender; rerolled from a semi-retired FF/nrg defender) solo'd to level 6, then joined a Sisterhood team in Croatoa doing Buck Salinger's arc; we had a couple wipeouts against Tuatha but generally did fine. After that team broke up, Mystery Girl joined another team running Talos radio missions and did the IP safeguard. This got her to level 26. This was pretty crazy exp, but I was doing quite a lot of healing and buffing to earn my keep, so I didn't suffer too much PL guilt.

After that I played Shield Maiden (22 mace/shield brute), hoping to get some exp on red side. I ended up forming a pickup team that grew to 8 players and ran a ton of missions in Sharkhead isle. Unlike blue side, there were very few pistols characters on red side (partly because only corruptors get it, partly because it's probably harder for pistols alts to level up quickly on red side). This team went really well and Shield Maiden got to level 29. We also managed to take down Ghost of Scrapyard with one team, and "Hammer Down" seemed a perfect badge for Shield Maiden, who wields a big hammer. Later that night, Shield Maiden joined a team of 4 corruptors looking for a brute to hide behind, and we did some missions in St Martial that got her to level 30.

Spy Girl (newbie traps/pistols defender; rerolled from a semi-retired MA/ninj stalker) joined lowbie teams that got her to 13, got the Fortune Teller mission badge and the Atlas and KR safeguards, then joined a Liberty Force SG team in Rikti War Zone for the last part of Dark Watcher's story arc, getting her to level 21. With the crazy exp Spy Girl had leveled so fast that I felt like I had messed up her build (I took too many attacks too soon, just to see the pistols animations) and so I burned a veteran respec to straighten it out. I decided to take Grant Invis and regular Invis from the Concealment power pool, mostly as in-character choices for Spy Girl, who I figure should be able to stealth teams around. I took Swift but postponed Stamina; as a traps/pistols she just doesn't seem to burn enough END to need it. One difference I noticed was that you can no longer Grant Invis the Force Field Generator; I know I used to be able to do that with my AR/traps corruptor. As a result, stealthing through missions with Invis, my toon can sneak by fine, but the mobs start shooting at the FF Generator as it floats by (doh!). I usually ran away quickly so I'm not sure whether this actually drew aggro to me as a result. No idea why that changed; perhaps a silent traps nerf.


On Saturday, Mystery Girl joined a pickup team that a friend was running; we did a Founders Falls mayhem, which had some weirdness in it (a couple of us managed to fall through the map and into empty space beneath the terrain). After that, we started on Madeleine Casey's story arc, fighting large numbers of Carnies. Our team only had one level 40 (the rest of us were super-SK'd up from the 20s and 30s, and one person was level 4) and so our actual power level was way too weak to handle Carnies. In the first mission we had 3 team wipes against Carnies, mostly due to careless overaggro; we could handle a single Carnie spawn pretty well, but two groups always wiped us. I stuck it out til the end of the mission, but the next mission was also an outdoor Carnies mission; I couldn't handle another mission like that, so I dropped from the team. Still, I did get to level 28 and the Illusionist badge as a result.

I played Mina von Heksung (newbie pistols/dark corruptor on Triumph) on a 7-player MA Arc Finder channel team. I found that running a level 2 red side toon from Mercy Island to Rikti War Zone (where this team usually plays AE in order to be co-op hero/villain) is actually quite hard, but I made it with only one death. We played an arc called South Side Story about Skulls and Hellions; this was full of very cool looking custom Skulls characters that were much too tough for us. After two team wipes (that I was present for ... I think there were more before I got there) we gave up on the arc. Next we tried an arc called Dhahabu Kingdom and the Indelible Curse of Hate, where you travel to an African kingdom to help lift an evil curse. This arc had good looking costuming and had a pretty neat story. I gave it 5 stars.

Spy Girl (traps/pistols) solo'd through the Midnight Squad arc, heavily relying on her Invis powers; then joined a 6-player pickup team that had a wipeout against Council when the team split up. Went on to join a Synapse TF (4 blasters, 2 controllers, 1 tanker, 1 defender), beat Babbage with some outside help and finished the TF in 2hr 12min.

Quick Katie (43 plant/kin controller) joined an Imperious TF; this was rather slow to form as people who joined kept bailing on the team and needing to be replaced. Finally got going and cleared most; it was a bit of a bumpy ride with lots of death and vengeance, but finished in 1hr 12mins and got Quick Katie to level 45.

Mystery Girl (emp/pistols) did a pickup Synapse TF (3 blasters, 1 stone tanker, 1 scrapper, 3 emp defenders). I was rather uneasy at having 3 empaths on the team; we all had fairly different builds though. I was buff-heavy with some heals and a mix of pistols attacks; the second emp was a pure healer who never attacked, seldom buffed, and mostly healed; the third emp was an offender build with only healing aura and resurrect (but never healed that I saw) and the rest pistols powers. Also of note, our tanker did not run any of her defensive toggles, instead using pure HPs to tank. You would think this would be a terrible strategy, but it actually seemed to work since we had a lot of healing support. Sadly our tanker felt sick and ended up quitting near the end of the TF. We managed to finish in 2hr 18min (we skipped Babbage), getting Mystery Girl to 30. I also got a compliment on her costume and concept; a teammate commented on the "classic thing" she had going.


On Sunday I played Alice Slaughter (37 db/wp brute on Triumph) on a MA Arc Finder team; we played It's a Mad Tea Party which was an Alice-in-Wonderland themed mission with nothing to do in it but take pretty screenshots (not really a story at all) and To Serve Cookie where you help an incoherent Mesopotamian monster battle food inspectors. I gave both of these arcs 3 stars, which was probably overly generous.

Shield Maiden (30 mace/shield brute) joined a pickup villain team in Grandville that got her to 31.

Mystery Girl (30 emp/pistols defender) joined a pickup hero team in Peregrine Island that got her to 34. I burned 60 merits on recipe rolls when she hit 33, but got Ghost Widow's Embrace (ACC/HOLD/RCHG), Sting of the Manticore (ACC/INT/RNG) and Entropic Chaos (DMG/END/RCHG), all of which seemed pretty junky to me so I haven't bothered checking their value yet. Briefly swapped to Darla Doppler (38 kin/sonic defender) when our team kin left and a new emp joined; got Darla to 39 and the Multidimensional badge.

I joined the Sisterhood TF Marathon, playing San Min on the Synapse TF (1hr 57m, finished as level 25), then Spy Girl on the Sister Psyche TF (1hr 53m, finished as level 29) and finally San Min again on Citadel TF (1hr 2m, finished as level 26). This was great fun, but the organization time before each round was unfortunately very long (30m to 45m just waiting for people to trickle in, then organizing them into balanced teams). This actually forced one of the players on my Synapse TF team to have to quit early due to running out of time. Nevertheless it was a pretty impressive community achievement, with 4 (nearly) full teams starting each of the TFs for the whole day.

I finished the night playing Shield Maiden (31 mace/shield brute) for the last crumbs of double exp. I solo'd the IP and Talos mayhem missions, then did Why We Fight, a comedic story arc depicting Arachnos propaganda material. This started out a little slow and I thought the framing story didn't connect the missions together strongly enough, but it had some really funny material in the middle and later parts of the arc. I gave it 4 stars.

---

@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"

3/9/2010

Millie Volt (44 elec/elec brute) joined a clear-most ITF, finishing in 53m 50s and getting to level 45. While doing this ITF, there was more drama on LB; it was kind of meta-drama about a previous mod-smacking, and I had to wield my tyrannical moderator powers to stop the bickering. I know I wrote in my last entry that I wasn't going to write about moderating bad behavior any more, but I've found it's become too much a part of my game experience to simply omit, so I dunno if I can stick to that. The ITF team leader joked that he should tell the people on LB to shut up so that I could pay more attention to beating up Romulus (who we were fighting in the last encounter of the ITF at the time). At least I think he was joking; modding chat channels does hurt my DPS.

I did get a couple private tells in support of my authoritarian actions so far, which was nice. I also made it a point to express support for one of my fellow moderators, who has been getting ganged up on. I'm all-too-conspicuously aware that next month the mob will probably be calling for my head for modsmacking purple dinosaur porn or something equally silly.

After the ITF, Millie joined a red-side team doing Ghost Widow's patron arc, getting to level 46. I switched to Shield Maiden (31 mace/shield brute) for a bit after that. We beat up Citadel and Lord Recluse, and got Shield Maiden to level 32.

My Thunderstrike and Kinetic Combat IOs, which were moving rather slowly over the weekend, suddenly started selling like hotcakes. I had to check Wentworth's several times over the course of the evening to replenish my broker inventory, and I ended up making 500M infl on Monday, the largest single day gain I've had since getting involved in market manipulation. My theory is that no one had time to buy IOs while double exp weekend was actually going, but now that it's over, people are slotting up their new level 50 toons, so demand shot way up.

Thunder Girl (50 elec/SR scrapper) joined a Whirligig team on a clear-most ITF. As sole meleer I was sort-of the tank, though a mastermind with a tanky build insisted on taunting AVs onto him. Which was fine, as he seemed able to survive it (we had a ton of debuff which probably helped too). Made me wonder if I should work taunt into Thunder Girl's build; though my scrapper builds are awfully tight, so it would be hard. Finished in 52m 43s.

Before calling it a night, a couple friends who had just finished the Midnighter arc invited Mystery Girl (34 emp/pistols defender) for the last mission, which gave her Midnight Squad access.

---

@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"

3/11/2010

Tuesday

I continued struggling with making my AE mission Attack of the 50 Foot Villain spawn mobs correctly; I'm convinced it's a Mission Architect bug that is preventing objectives from spawning sometimes. I changed the map around a couple more times to try and work around this, but without much luck. Despite its bugginess, I like the Nerva fountain island map the best. This is because climbing up out of the water and stomping around a tiny little island really gives the "You are Godzilla!" feeling that I'm going for.

Millie Volt (46 elec/elec brute) joined a clear all ITF, finished in 48m 47s and got Millie to level 47.

Shield Maiden (32 mace/shield brute) joined a 6 player pickup team doing the Mako patron arc. We beat up Calystix as an AV after a hard fight where the team nearly wiped, but we awakened mid-fight and jumped back in. Also defeated Captain Mako as an AV and got Shield Maiden to level 33.

Quick Katie (45 plant/kin controller) joined an 8-player Whirligig team doing Praetorian AVs. We beat Black Swan, Malaise, Mother Mayhem, Diabolique, Infernal, Dominatrix, Marauder, Tyrant and Antimatter (though Antimatter was as a grey mob on an old mission one player had been saving just for this purpose). We then farmed Fake Nemesis in PI long enough to get everyone the Unveiler badge. A teammate gave me a complement on Katie's costume, and this all got Quick Katie to level 46.

Spent some time late at night tinkering with my Two Tickets to Westerly story arc. I had originally submitted this for Dr Aeon's Second Architect Challenge, which required the level range be 5-10, but I've gotten multiple players who complained that this level range was too low. So with the contest being over, I tried increasing the level range. Started out making it 5-14, but I found that at level 14, the Circle of Thorns mission started spawning those horrible ACC debuffing ghosts. So I lowered the level range back down to 5-12, which seemed low enough that the ghosts would no longer spawn. A level cap of 12 didn't really seem a lot higher than the level cap of 10, but once I had done it, I figured I may as well leave it that way. I also changed the enemy group in the second mission from standard CoT to a custom "Corrupted LARPer" group that had mostly lowbie CoT but a few lowbie Warrior swordsmen in it.


Wednesday

At work, I was thinking to myself, Corrupted LARPers are too silly, I should change them back to being normal CoT as soon as I get home. But during the day, Two Tickets to Westerly was made a Developer Choice arc. I was totally surprised! It was a good surprise, though!

When I got online that evening, I had a ton of players congratulate me, and tickets were falling on me like rain all throughout the night as people tried out my arc. Being made a Dev Choice arc pushed Two Tickets to Westerly to the front page of the MA interface (at least for now) and gave it huge publicity. I think over 20 people played and rated my arc while I was on, most giving it 4 or 5 stars, which was really nice. There were a few people who gave it a low rating with no comment; either they hated it or they were "ratings griefers" (which MA authors tend to grumble about and I used to think were mythical, but maybe they exist), but I didn't let this bother me too much, as most people left pretty positive feedback.

The Dev Choice award also gives me space for another story arc, which is really nice (I've been having to unpublish old arcs when I want to make new ones). Curiously, my AE interface now says I have "(7/8)" arc slots filled, where yesterday it said "(8/8)"; the Dev Choice arc is in another category now called "honored arcs". So technically it doesn't increase the number of arcs I can have by one, it simply doesn't count the Dev Choice arc towards my total. That may work out to be exactly the same thing, but I thought that was noteworthy.

Anyway, I played Linda Lightspeed (24 rad/nrg blaster) on a Whirligig team that did Moonfire TF in 53m 19s, getting Linda the Vampire and Werewolf badges and level 25. Then played Spy Girl (29 traps/pistols defender) on a Whirligig team doing Citadel TF in 1hr 9m. I'm liking traps/pistols, but kinda miss the martial arts version of Spy Girl; she had a better background story and I just plain like the MA animations. I might have to start another martial arts stalker sometime.

After that I played Mega (50 SS/will brute) on a speed ITF that finished in 32m 31s, and Kyrie Eleison (41 fire/regen scrapper) on a 7-player clear-most ITF finishing in 47m 58s and getting Kyrie to level 42.

Police Woman (my main character) got the Midnighter day job badge (for being logged out in the Midnight Club) and the Alchemist accolade. Did some market PvP at Wentworths (picked up ~200M infl or thereabouts, going to need to spend some soon) and moved to a new day job location at Icon.

Finished the night debugging a problem reported in my Papers and Paychecks story arc, where a custom enemy group I made was only spawning bosses. This mission used to be working, but I suspect a new bug was introduced in some recent patch. I think it has something to do with having some standard enemies and some custom enemies in the same enemy group. Fixed it by replacing my custom Nemesis Automaton group with just the standard Nemesis Automaton group; I had originally made the custom version to edit out all the Warhulk mobs (which I didn't want) but figure I'd rather have Warhulks spawn than for the mission to be bugged.

---

@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"

3/12/2010

Played Darla Doppler (39 kin/sonic defender) on a clear-most ITF. We had two kins and I found I was keeping SB on everyone and the other kin really wasn't buffing much, which is a pet peeve of mine, so I admittedly hassled her for SB more than I normally would (I feel a lot more justified in asking for SB when I'm SBing them). Nevertheless finished in 49m 30s with no serious problems; this got Darla to level 41 and I started on the Force mastery pool, taking Power Build Up. Power Build Up is a power I've never quite understood how to use well (I end up basically using it as another build up) but everyone seems to say it's really good.

Played Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) on a speed ITF, finishing in 34m 50s.

I had to do more channel moderation on LB and ended up silencing a couple people who were behaving badly. This resulted in my first serious blowback from being a moderator as someone I silenced retaliated by kicking me from a chat channel that he is a moderator on. While intellectually I know this was a pretty childish action that I ought to let slide, it really bothered me and left me rather grumpy and anti-social for the rest of the night. I ended up turning down several team invites, instead trying to use Mids to make a respec build for Blond Justice that works in an AoE like Fireball or Exploding Shuriken into her build; but her build is so tight that I'd have to ditch both Super Jump and One With The Shield in order to fit that in, so I'm not sure I'll go for it. Mids did seem to have some weird problem on start up and I couldn't get the automatic updater to work; after two tries I ended up just declining to update since I didn't really need the latest version for a broadsword/shield scrapper.

Switching to red side, I played Shield Maiden (33 mace/shield brute) for a bit. I had 40 reward merits saved up and bought 2 random recipe rolls and got my luckiest draw ever:

1 Miracle (+recovery) BlackMkt=100M
1 Numina's Convalescence (+recovery/+regen) BlackMkt=150M

On 40 merits, that's a ludicrous 6.25M infamy per merit (average is about 250K per merit). Felt like I might be on a lucky streak so I spent 7400 AE tickets on Gold recipe rolls, getting

1 Gift of the Ancients (+7.5% run)
1 Expedient Reinforcement (+pet resists)

I forgot to check how much they were worth, but they seemed not too bad. I started Save the Villain, an AE arc where you're rescuing some villain mastermind from his own robots. So far it looks like something of a novice effort; the gameplay is OK but the plot doesn't quiet work. I've been taking notes to try and suggest improvements.

My story arc Two Tickets to Westerly, newly tagged as Dev Choice and catapulted onto the front page of the AE interface, has been getting a lot of attention and people playing it and leaving favorable comments. I think it shot up from 36 plays (before being Dev Choice'd) to around 80 the last time I checked. This has been really nice.

---

@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"

3/16/2010

Friday

Played Shield Maiden (33 mace/shield brute) through Save the Villain, an AE story arc where you save an NPC mastermind from his own robots. The arc had plot problems (I could never quite figure out why I was supposed to be helping this guy) and game balance problems; I ended up giving it 2 stars. After that I started a pickup team (got up to 7 players) in Nerva doing Crimson Revenant's story arc. We had a near-wipe against Longbow after a mob with a debuff anchored to it ran away, but recovered and beat up Mynx (as an AV), Back Alley Brawler (as an EB), and a Talos mayhem where we fought Aurora Borealis (as an EB). This got Shield Maiden to level 34.

Quick Katie (46 plant/kin controller) joined a clear-most ITF that finished in 42m 53s. I got an Absolute Amazement (chance of tohit debuff) recipe drop; not sure what good this IO is, but it's still a purple drop. Went on to do an STF with 1 stormy, 1 cold, 1 empath, 1 rad, 1 kin, 1 blaster, 1 scrapper, 1 elec tanker. Finished in 1h 20m, got a Golgi SHO and level 48.

Finished the night playing Mystery Girl (34 emp/pistols defender) exemped down to a level 26ish Sisterhood team running missions in Talos for a bit.


Saturday

Shield Maiden (34 mace/shield brute) started a 4-player pickup team running missions in St Martial; did another Talos mayhem and got to level 35.

Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) joined a clear-most all-shield ITF (6 scrappers, 2 tankers). This was a very fast moving team with meleers often leapfrogging spawns so as to not have "their" mobs KS'd by teammates. I thought the lack of debuff would hurt us against the AVs, but we beat up Romulus & friends with no problems. Finished in 39m 56s and got an Apocalypse (RCHG/ACC) and also a Luck of the Gambler (DEF/+7.5% def) as recipe drops, which was insanely lucky.

Yuki-Onna (50 ice/cold corruptor) did a speed ITF in 27m 45s.

Kyrie Eleison (42 fire/regen scrapper) joined an 8-player team doing Praetorian AVs. We had two tankers, one of which switched alts to be more useful and the other of which went linkdead, and so somehow I ended up tanking Infernal on my regen scrapper. I managed to survive this through inspiration use, MoG, IH, and naked aggression. After that mission I switched to my tanker, Strong Woman (49 inv/SS tanker), and we beat up Chimera, Shadow Hunter, Nightstar, Siege, Bobcat, Neuron, Black Swan, Battle Maiden, Malaise (whose psy AOEs beat up half the team), Mother Mayhem, Diabolique, and another Infernal. This got Strong Woman up to level 50.


Sunday

The market for Thunderstrike IOs was hot after double exp weekend, but seems to be getting soft now, so I'm starting to cycle those out of my market portfolio. I still have a ton of these stockpiled in my SG base, but I figure they'll be useful someday so it's not too bad.

I played Mina von Heksung (8 pistols/dark corruptor on Triumph) on a 7-player MA story arc team, doing Headhunters - an OPA Adventure, a lengthy battle against the Skulls. I felt this arc started out strong but started to run out of steam near the end (the last two missions didn't seem quite complete). I gave it 4 stars. This got Mina to level 13.

Played Darla Doppler (41 kin/sonic defender) on a 7-player clear-most ITF. After seeing Darla in action for a bit (SBing, FSing, blasting, nuking, transferencing for more END, etc), a teammate complimented me on "a really effective build", which was nice. Finished the ITF in 50m 6s.

San Min (26 MA/will scrapper) solo'd her way through Tobias Hansen's and Lars Hansen's arcs in Striga, getting to level 28 and unlocking the Hess TF.

Mystery Girl (34 emp/pistols defender) joined an 8-player pickup team, mostly squishy with a couple of force fielders (though only one was actually casting buffs). This got Mystery Girl to level 35, the War Wall Defender badge (from a mission) and a compliment on her costume and background story.

Shield Maiden (35 mace/shield brute) did a clear-most ITF that finished in 46m 54s and got her to level 36.

The lead mod for LB posted the results from the LB channel poll. I was a bit surprised at how many people favored stronger moderation of the channel; you wouldn't guess it from some of the anti-moderation protestors you see on the forums and the LB channel itself. I've previously committed to upholding whatever the channel poll results were; I'm a believer in democracy, and it seems to me that the poll is the best gauge that we've got for what the true "will of the people" is. So it looks like I am obliged to be a little stricter on moderating the channel. It remains to be seen if I can survive the fallout from doing so; but it seems to me that the poll results are pretty clear on what people want.


Monday

Linda Lightspeed (25 rad/nrg blaster) joined a 5 player 1st hero respec. We actually had 6 players initially, but the sixth player was a fairly clueless level 1 player who we had to explain couldn't actually do the respec. I got a costume compliment from a teammate. While in the Terra Volta reactor, I managed to accidentally blow up a proximity bomb that got our empath killed (oops!); the mobs that were aggroed on her immediately came to kill me, though, so karma was satisfied. Finished in 48m 26s and got Linda to level 26.

I've been discontent with Spy Girl as a "hero"; her original background story was that she was infiltrating Arachnos, which made a ton of sense as a villain, but didn't work at all for a hero, and I hadn't been able to come up with a blue-side background story. I still like traps/pistols, though, so I didn't want to delete her. I ended up buying a rename token, changing my traps/pistols Spy Girl into "Adventuress", a vaguely Lara Croft-like pistol-packing heroine, while remaking Spy Girl as a lowbie MA/ninj stalker. The new Adventuress (29 traps/pistols defender) solo'd the cape mission to get to level 30.

I had a tantrum in the Robo's Lounge channel over people continually dissing the pro-moderation LBers. I ended up saying something like "calling people names because they don't agree with you is really narrow minded". So far nothing really bad has happened to me over that, but I am guessing this will end up becoming a source of friction. Ironically, I had made a joke there last week that "If there's anything I can't stand, it's intolerant people!" which...appears to be true.

Played Olivia Q (50 MA/SR scrapper) through The Galactic Protectorate - 06, part 6 of a lengthy saga about helping an alternate universe version of the Freedom Phalanx battle aliens who have occupied the earth. The enemies all had dark powers leading to massive ACC debuffs, and the story kinda scripts the player into failing, which I found to be something of a downer; I ended up giving it 3 stars.

Shield Maiden (36 mace/shield brute) joined a Master of ITF attempt, though our team was very support-light and I think the leader only set the "Master of" conditions in case we got lucky. We had a kin controller die in the very first mission, which quickly ended that illusion. Ended up continuing and clearing most of the ITF, finishing in 50m 51s and getting Shield Maiden to level 37.

Star Amethyst (50 dark/ice defender) did a 7-player speed ITF that finished in 25m 38s.

Spy Girl (new MA/ninj stalker) solo'd Kalinda's arc, Tangled Weave (an AE story about lowbie VEATs), Two Tickets to Westerly (my lowbie arc that recently got dev choice'd) and an Atlas mayhem, which got her to level 6.

---

@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"

[incinerate] right PW?

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/gignore @username is the best feature of this game. It's also probably the least used feature.
Can't get enough Hazy? /chanjoin robo's lounge today!

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Whirligig SG

3/18/2010

Tuesday

I was on Shield Maiden (37 mace/shield brute) and a friend on red-side invited me to team, then immediately gave me the star. I guess I'm a sucker because this resulting in me ending up recruiting and leading an 8-player team. We did Jezebel's arcs in St Martial, battling Carnies while going after the Missing Maidens (4 merits) and then Family and Longbow when going after Johnny's Squeeze (4 more merits). We had a couple team wipes against Longbow (I think due to their stacking debuffs) but otherwise did fine.

Some mild drama occurred on LB after I temporarily silenced someone. Some people were vocally complaining on LB, but I got private tells expressing support...so it sort of balances out.

Finished the night working out and executing a respec for Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper), as follows:

Hero Plan by Mids' Hero Designer 1.621
http://www.cohplanner.com/

Click this DataLink to open the build!

Blond Justice I16 respec: Level 50 Mutation Scrapper
Primary Power Set: Broad Sword
Secondary Power Set: Shield Defense
Power Pool: Fitness
Power Pool: Leaping
Power Pool: Fighting
Power Pool: Speed
Ancillary Pool: Weapon Mastery

Hero Profile:
Level 1: Hack

• (A) Mako's Bite - Accuracy/Damage
• (3) Mako's Bite - Damage/Endurance
• (3) Mako's Bite - Damage/Recharge
• (5) Mako's Bite - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge
• (5) Mako's Bite - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (7) Mako's Bite - Chance of Damage(Lethal)

Level 1: Deflection

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance
• (13) Luck of the Gambler - Defense
• (13) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed
• (39) Titanium Coating - Resistance/Endurance
• (40) Titanium Coating - Resistance/Endurance/Recharge
• (40) Titanium Coating - Resistance

Level 2: Battle Agility

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Defense/Endurance
• (15) Luck of the Gambler - Defense
• (15) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed

Level 4: True Grit

• (A) Miracle - Heal/Recharge
• (7) Miracle - Heal
• (9) Miracle - +Recovery
• (9) Numina's Convalescence - Heal/Recharge
• (11) Numina's Convalescence - Heal
• (11) Numina's Convalescence - +Regeneration/+Recovery

Level 6: Swift

• (A) Run Speed IO

Level 8: Hurdle

• (A) Jumping IO

Level 10: Active Defense

• (A) HamiO:Membrane Exposure
• (17) HamiO:Membrane Exposure
• (50) HamiO:Membrane Exposure

Level 12: Combat Jumping

• (A) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range
• (17) Blessing of the Zephyr - Run Speed, Jump, Flight Speed, Range/Endurance
• (42) Blessing of the Zephyr - Knockback Reduction (4 points)
• (43) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed

Level 14: Kick

• (A) HamiO:Nucleolus Exposure

Level 16: Against All Odds

• (A) Endurance Reduction IO

Level 18: Whirling Sword

• (A) Obliteration - Damage
• (19) Obliteration - Accuracy/Recharge
• (19) Obliteration - Damage/Recharge
• (21) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (21) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (23) Obliteration - Chance for Smashing Damage

Level 20: Stamina

• (A) Performance Shifter - EndMod
• (25) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Recharge
• (31) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy/Recharge
• (31) Performance Shifter - Accuracy/Recharge
• (34) Performance Shifter - EndMod/Accuracy
• (42) Performance Shifter - Chance for +End

Level 22: Build Up

• (A) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff
• (23) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge
• (25) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Recharge/Endurance
• (37) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Recharge/Endurance
• (39) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - To Hit Buff/Endurance
• (39) Gaussian's Synchronized Fire-Control - Chance for Build Up

Level 24: Phalanx Fighting

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed

Level 26: Disembowel

• (A) Mako's Bite - Accuracy/Damage
• (27) Mako's Bite - Damage/Endurance
• (27) Mako's Bite - Damage/Recharge
• (29) Mako's Bite - Accuracy/Endurance/Recharge
• (29) Mako's Bite - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (31) Mako's Bite - Chance of Damage(Lethal)

Level 28: Grant Cover

• (A) Luck of the Gambler - Recharge Speed

Level 30: Tough

• (A) Steadfast Protection - Resistance/+Def 3%
• (40) Aegis - Resistance/Endurance
• (42) Aegis - Endurance/Recharge
• (43) Aegis - Resistance/Endurance/Recharge
• (46) Aegis - Resistance
• (46) Aegis - Psionic/Status Resistance

Level 32: Head Splitter

• (A) Obliteration - Damage
• (33) Obliteration - Accuracy/Recharge
• (33) Obliteration - Damage/Recharge
• (33) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (34) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (34) Obliteration - Chance for Smashing Damage

Level 35: Shield Charge

• (A) Obliteration - Damage
• (36) Obliteration - Accuracy/Recharge
• (36) Obliteration - Damage/Recharge
• (36) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (37) Obliteration - Accuracy/Damage/Endurance/Recharge
• (37) Obliteration - Chance for Smashing Damage

Level 38: Weave

• (A) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance
• (43) Red Fortune - Defense/Recharge
• (45) Red Fortune - Endurance/Recharge
• (45) Red Fortune - Defense/Endurance/Recharge
• (45) Red Fortune - Defense
• (46) Red Fortune - Endurance

Level 41: Web Grenade

• (A) HamiO:Endoplasm Exposure

Level 44: Caltrops

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO

Level 47: Exploding Shuriken

• (A) Ragnarok - Damage
• (48) Ragnarok - Damage/Recharge
• (48) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Damage/Recharge
• (48) Ragnarok - Accuracy/Recharge
• (50) Ragnarok - Damage/Endurance

Level 49: Hasten

• (A) Recharge Reduction IO
• (50) Recharge Reduction IO

------------
Level 1: Brawl

• (A) Empty

Level 1: Sprint

• (A) Empty

Level 2: Rest

• (A) Empty

Level 1: Critical Hit
Level 0: Ninja Run

Main changes are:
* I dropped Super Jump, One With the Shield and Focused Accuracy, and picked up 3 powers in Weapon Mastery instead. This was to get a third AoE (Exploding Shuriken) to make my Shield Charge/Whirling Sword alpha strike even more devastating.. A friend asked, why not Fireball? A reasonable question, but I went with weapon mastery partially for thematic reasons (she already has a sword and shield; throwing stars make more sense than fireball) and partially because my elec/SR scrapper already throws fireballs, so this would be a change.
* I switched my melee attacks from Touch of Death to Mako's Bite due to shifting around where I was getting my various IO bonuses. One downside I've found is that Mako's Bite seems to have much less +DMG than Touch of Death; I started slotting level 33 Mako's Bites (because I like to be able to exemp down) and found a full set only gives like 89% damage, which I decided was unacceptably low. I've been buying level 50 Mako's Bites and overwriting the level 33s with them (I realize this is wasteful on infl but I'm too lazy to respec purely to pull the lower level IOs back out, and I'm pretty flush on infl so not too worried about wasting some). This ups the damage bonus on powers back over 90%, which feels better. (I figure if I need to exemp down, I can just play a different alt.) On the up side, Mako's Bite seems to have more +RCHG than Touch of Death, so my attacks will fire off faster than before.

After doing the respec and slotting up the IOs I had, I was still missing 3 Ragnaroks, the BotZ: KB and about half a set of Obliteration (from what I have listed above). But I had everything else, so I was still in pretty good shape. Placed a bunch of bids on Wentworth's to try and pick up what I was missing.


Wednesday

I ended up buying the 3 Ragnaroks I was missing from Blond Justice's build for 140M, 150M and 175M influence. Crafted and slotted them.

Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) joined a clear-most ITF. I offered to switch to whatever the team needed, but the team insisted they wanted Full Auto, so I spent the TF laying down withering AoE fire. This drew enough aggro to me that a teammate commented on it (I didn't die, but was getting healed a lot) and I rather flippantly remarked "They don't like bullets. Who knew?" Finished in 40m 33s and I got an Obliteration (chance for smashing damage) recipe drop.

Adventuress (30 traps/pistols defender) joined an 8-player team doing Crey missions. This was kind of slow going, I think because we were light on support; we had me on traps, a decent emp and a level 1 (or thereabouts) emp. Despite having 2 emps and my FF Generator the team seemed to have a lot of deaths, not quite sure why. After slogging through a couple missions I took a break.

I ended up heavily rewriting mission 3 of A Warrior's Journey - The Flower Knight Task Force and submitting it to Smurphy's 20 billion inf contest to make a fun ITF-style story arc. Basically I've been adding a couple more AVs and making the missions a little more linear; in mission 3 I changed a "get the hostage, lead her out" to a simpler "clear to the hostage, rescue her, fight the AV". Did some testing with Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper), had some help from a kin friend for a little bit. I completed one test on default difficulty, where I seemed able to handle everything pretty well. I ramped it up to +2 x8 difficulty (which the contest organizer says he wants to run at) and I could still sorta solo but got beat up occasionally (despite being soft capped on DEF). I'm not totally sure exactly how difficult it needs to be without being too difficult, so I'm going to hope that that's about right.

---

@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"

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3/24/2010

Thursday

Spacegirl (50 mind/rad controller) joined a Lady Grey TF where we cleared most, but failed mission 3 -- albeit very slowly. In an ironic reversal, the teammate assigned to get Infernia killed, instead got killed by stuff aggroing around Infernia. Another teammate instinctively Vengeance'd our fallen teammate, and as a result, Vengeance'd Infernia went to town on the Rikti, clearing an entire floor of the mission, before another teammate managed to lead her through an elevator and into even more Rikti. Anyway, finished LGTF in 56m 43s and I got a tasty Hecatomb (chance of negative damage) recipe drop.

Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) solo'd most of the way through an AE story arc called Sisterhood (no relation to our Sisterhood SG as far as I know) which seemed to be about helping rescue members of an all-female SG from an evil organization that kidnapped them. I felt this arc had some pretty serious plot holes and design problems and ended up giving it 2 stars.


Friday

Blond Justice did a speed ITF in 24m 54s (I decided to track infl also, and I made 1.92M infl) and a speed LGTF in 27m 8s (made another 0.84M infl). Looks like ITF is much better infl for the time, even on speed runs; which makes sense because there is a lot more killing on an ITF.

Darla Doppler (41 kin/sonic defender) did a clear-most ITF in 44m 25s and got to level 43.

Kashira (31 db/ninj stalker) duo'd with a dominator for awhile, doing a Talos mayhem where we got wiped out fighting PPD on the streets of Talos. We recovered from that and were doing side missions, then weirdly when leaving one of the side missions, we somehow emerged in an empty part of Talos (the extreme southeast, where Banished Pantheon live in the "real" Talos) and there were invisible walls blocking us from getting back to the real part of the mission. This was very weird. Fortunately we'd already finished robbing the bank, so could just exit the mission.

The rerolled Spy Girl (6 MA/ninj stalker) solo'd through Night Calls the Weaver, a Dev Choice AE story arc that won the 2nd Dr Aeon Challenge. In this arc you fight Hellions and learn about the back story of a retired heroine. The arc had quite a lot of text to read in the various clues (and I found a few typos), but it was actually a terrific story that deserves the Dev Choice tag. I gave it 5 stars.


Saturday

Quick Katie (48 plant/kin controller) joined an all-controller themed Dr Kahn TF. We had 3 rads, 3 kins and 2 stormies. I thought Reichsman would be a problem for us, but we totally stomped the TF, finishing in 34m 44s.

After that I accepted a random invite to an 8-player pickup team, level 44ish, fighting Malta, and arrived on the scene just in time to participate in a team wipe. This seemed an inauspicious start, but we ended up abandoning the Malta mission and doing some other door missions that got Quick Katie to level 49.

Checking Wentworth's, I found Quick Katie had bought several Centrioles for 10K infl each and sold several Centrioles for 5M infl each. I actually make most of my infl by buying low and selling high like this, and usually figure it's not worth mentioning; but 10K to 5M just seemed ludicrous. Mostly I can't believe anyone wants Centrioles that bad. Anyway, I got into this because I wanted to buy a few Centrioles to slot up Katie's "Frost Breath" power from the Ice epic pool, just because the cone seems so short.

Mina von Heksung (13 pistols/dark corr on Triumph) joined a large MA Arc Finder team doing AE story arcs. First we tried Death by Snoo-Snoo in which high level amazon mobs (including at least one 1 AV) rushed the team right at the mission door and repeatedly wiped us out. After about 3 team wipes where we weren't able to even get past the map entrance, we gave up on this arc. It looked like it might be a cute mission, but with it being such a death-fest I felt I could only 1 star it.

After that we tried Rise of the Drakule, which was a campy vampire story arc. I was psyched to find that one of the NPC "Brides of Drakule" was, in fact, named Mina. The vampires were pretty dangerous (lots of dark damage and mez effects, which makes sense for vampires) and dealt us 4 team wipes, but nevertheless I thought it was pretty fun and I gave it 5 stars.

Finally we did Holding Down the Fort, an arc where you're basically running from one crisis to the next. I thought the variety of bad guys that you fought was interesting, but the connecting plot was a little thin; I gave it 4 stars. This all got Mina to level 16.

I got some feedback from Smurphy's 20B inf challenge on Flower Knight TF; it seems he thinks the enemies are too easy and he doesn't like the large outdoor maps. This put Flower Knight TF kind of in the middle of the pack for the arcs he's tried out so far. Not sure what I will do with this info yet; I am hesitant to make the arc too much of a death trap, and reluctant to mess around with the maps too much, so I'm not sure if I'll make further changes to try and compete in this contest. Will think on it.

Strong Woman (50 inv/SS tanker) joined a 6 player badging team in Firebase Zulu, getting the Unveiler, Visionary and Firebase Zulu Security Detail badges. Got a compliment on her bio from a teammate. This allowed me to do some running around for explore & history badges to get the Freedom Phalanx Reserve accolade (+187 max HP for a tanker).

Mystery Girl (35 emp/pistols defender) joined a Sisterhood team fighting CoT. We had a team wipe when we overaggroed 3 groups from various rooms in an office map, battled the Kraken in Perez for 2 merits, then fought some Nemesis and had one wipeout when we got split up and picked off by snipers. This team, being a Sisterhood team, was very pink; my emp powers were pink, and this was (I think) the first time I had seen pink dark miasma. This all got Mystery Girl to level 37.


Sunday

I logged on in time to be a late arrival at the Sisterhood Striga Event, playing Linda Lightspeed (26 rad/nrg blaster) on a speed Hess TF. The team I was assigned was packed with speed TF veterans, who stealthed most missions and had pre-assigned players to be in position for the various radar stations. Fortunately Linda had enough stealth to keep up, and her DPS seemed helpful. Finished in 21m 59s, which was the fastest time for the Hess TF at that event.

I had to kick someone from the LB channel during my Hess TF due to bad behavior, the first time I had taken such a drastic step and stirring up a certain amount of drama, but my speed TF teammates urged me to quit looking at LB and pay attention to the darn TF (for the sake of improving our time).

After that Adventuress (30 traps/pistols defender) joined a small team that turned into a Manticore TF. The TF leader was level 32; I expected the TF to spawn level 35s which would cause us trouble, but strangely it all seemed to be around our level. I'll never figure out how TFs decide what level enemies to spawn, I guess. We started with traps, TA and rad for support and our rad disconnected early on and never came back, but we managed to clear most and finish even with only traps and TA. Finished in 2h 2m and got to level 32.

TokyoRose (26 sonic/sonic corr) joined a pickup red-side team running level 50 missions in Grandville, getting to level 27.

(lost my notes for Monday - accidentally eaten by the washing machine)

Tuesday

A friend was bemoaning the total lack of Thunderstrike ACC/DMG/END and ACC/DMG/RCHG IOs on the red side market. I had been hoarding these on red side, gradually crafting these and selling them for a profit, so I brought on my villain who was selling them to check. Sure enough, all the ones I had on the broker had sold out. I made a couple of these for my friend and would've been willing to just give them to him (I have a lot of these hoarded) but he insisted on paying the market price (15M each on this day).

A different friend on a low 20s pistols blaster was complaining that he couldn't find a team, so I ended up bringing on San Min (28 MA/will scrapper) and inviting him to team up; this gradually snowballed into an 8-player pickup team. We did several AE story arcs, some of mine and some of his: Becky's Revenge, Talos Vice, Becky & Mandy and Papers & Paychecks. We had one team wipe during Becky & Mandy against a big group (or maybe 2 or 3 groups) of Carnies, but otherwise did fine, and San Min got to level 29 before the team broke up.

I solo'd Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster) on Malta: Impossible, an AE story arc where you're working for Crimson doing some very shady stuff. It pretty much destroys your hero's back story as you burn all your bridges in Paragon City in order to infiltrate the Malta organization; but aside from that, it was a good spy story with lots of intrigue, and some neat use of game mechanics. I gave it 4 stars.

Finished the night playing Blond Justice (50 broadsword/shield scrapper) on a 7-player speed ITF, which we finished in 26m 1s.

---

@PW - Police Woman (50 AR/dev blaster on Liberty)
TALOS - PW war journal - alternate contact tree using MA story arcs
=VICE= "Give me Liberty, or give me debt!"

---

Hmm, lets see, total numbers, unenhanced, but most of the good ones are unenhanceable anyway:

Debuffs:
-Damage: -120%
-Resist: -127.5%
-To Hit: -135%
-Defense: -165%
-Regen: -1500% (plus another -1000% for each EM Pulse, but only for 15s each)
-Recharge: -490%

Even with AV resists he should be well into the red for most if not all of those, and with a couple extra siphons he'll be at the -rech cap which means fewer of those cheating AOE lightning bolt nukes.

Buffs:
Capped damage obviously
Essentially infinite recovery
Oodles of +recharge
And to top it off Steamy mist gives 15% e/f/c resist unenhanced x two
Increased Density, if used, would give 18% s/l resist

Oh, and you all have pets to help soak up some of the aggro.

Gee, I can't imagine why Reichsman didn't give you any trouble.

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