Guide to getting Winter Event Skiing badges

This post is for anyone who thinks they are too slow, clumsy, or old to get the Silver, much less the Gold badges on the timed Ski slope. I'm recently 40, and now find myself to have all the split-second reflexes and reaction time of a giant Galapagos tortoise. I'm just now noticing things that happened Thursday.

Well, I found getting the badges on my toons was nearly impossible when just charging out of the gate - I'd miss two gates almost every time because I couldn't reach them from the previous. I'd just swoosh right past 'em without getting close, no matter how much 'A' or 'D' I pushed. Then I tried using SB from a friendly Kinetic and Super Speed. Surely those two powers combined could get me through any gate zipzipzip. WROOOONG! It made me swing around on the slope wildly and slew from side to side like a sidewinder on crack. On ice.

Slowly I tried every combination of buffs and powers I had until I hit on the right way to do it every time.

First you need a [u]single[u] Control buff. It is the most important element to getting the 2-3 gates you seem to always have trouble with. The most effective buffs to use are Inertial Reduction (kinetics have these) Super Jump (travel power - duh) or Zero-G pack (temp travel power). Yes the Zero-G pack works too. You Don't need to actually jump at any time on the slope. The buff just gives you a feeling like you were cornering on rails. You don't need to use the Strafe buttons at all, just hold down 'W' and steer with the mouse.

Next you need a little bit of giddyup. A [u]single[u] Speed Boost from a Kinetic is a guaranteed gold combined with one of the control buffs I mentioned, however I got gold on a couple of my toons with just IR and sprint, probably because of the Stamina pool powers.

Do it this way and with a few practice runs to get the gates cemented in your short term memory, you can get all three badges on every toon you have - Just don't expect to break any course records. Leave that to the smart-mouthed little creep in his mom's basement, wired on Red Bull and candy. He needs those small triumphs. Desperately.

I leave it up to you to figure out how to go slow enough to get Silver and Bronze once you start getting Gold on your first run.

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Mechanista 50 rad/rad Corruptor
Buster Braun 32 SS/Inv Brute
Mortua Manus 41 Bots/Dark MM
December Ashe 30 Ice/Fire Dominator
Umbra Sprite 32 Dark/Super Reflexes Stalker
Mister Large 30 Thugs/Bubbles MM
Dynamaxine 28 Electric/Stone Brute
Three-Alarm 19 Fire/Dark Corruptor

I just wanted to add to this.

There are a total of 13 gates, including the starting gate.

The first three are relatively lined up and easy. Sure, you can miss one on a fluke, but after a few practice runs, you should be able to make it through relatively consistently. Just remember as you go through the second one that you need to bear to the right to make it through the third one.

Gates four, five, and six are also lined up more-or-less in a row, though by the time you get to the sixth gate, you'll probably be going pretty fast, and it's tough to make the turn. This is where that speed boost or super jump comes in handy for control. Still, you suffer little penalty for overshooting the fifth gate. You'll swing out a little wide, maybe hit the rocks and bounce off, and you should still be able to make it through the gate.

After the sixth gate, things get a little hairy. The next gate is at almost a 90 degree angle, and off the edge of two short drops. There are two main ways to make it through the seventh gate. The first is to fall off the first drop onto the second one, get oriented in the right direction, and then go off the second one to the bottom. However, after some practice, you might be able to go through the far left side of the sixth gate and drop straight to the bottom at full speed. I won't lie, it's hard to line it up and nail that seventh gate using this technique, and if you're using both a super jump ability and a speed boost ability, you'll probably overshoot the seventh gate every time. If you can nail it, it shaves a couple of seconds off of your time. If not, though, you blow your run. If you choose not to try, you can still make it, though you will have a very small margin of error.

After going through the seventh gate, line up with the right side of the eighth gate. The reason why is because the ninth gate is waaaay out to the right side of the next drop. This is where speed boost or super jump comes in really handy. Without one of those powers, the ninth gate is almost impossible to hit. This is what happens if you don't have speed boost or super jump.

The tenth gate is relatively easy. Just nudge to the right slightly after going through the ninth gate, and you should be lined up. Same with the eleventh gate.

For the twelfth gate, you'll need to bear to the left. Depending on how fast you're going, it could be a little or a lot.

As for the thirteenth, it's the other gate that's almost impossible to make without speed boost or super jump. After passing through the twelfth gate, you have to bear hard right. The problem is that the slope will be pushing you hard left. Here is a video of Taxibot Belle demonstrating this. You've got to overcome the push. If you're pressing the forward key to try to make a good run time, you might want to consider letting go of it and just strafe right to coast through the last gate. Of course, if you have super jump or inertial reduction, it's easy.

Here's a video I took of Taxibot Belle in a sporting mood making a complete run. The only buff she has is one Inertial Reduction for control, and she turned in a respectable 22.5 seconds, even getting credit for missing the third gate.

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We've been saving Paragon City for eight and a half years. It's time to do it one more time.
(If you love this game as much as I do, please read that post.)

I was able to get all three badges on my toons with just Sprint and Super Jump activated. It's definitely doable...it just takes practice!

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Sultry Siren - The Cape Radio
Infinity - Sultry Siren, Mrs. Wentworth & more (5th Element, The Wentworth Country Club)Virtue - Lydia Chapman, Mrs. Wentworth, Anguisette., DJ Sultry Siren