What are your favorite Newb/NOOB Moments

I, too, fell victims to entrance/exit confusion with the trains.

It took me around four or five days to figure out how to get out of a mission without running all the way back to the entrance door. I noticed everyone just vanishing, and finally, I asked, "How are you getting out so quickly?" To be fair, though, this was before there was an exit button, and you had to click anywhere on the compass bar except the menu or the info icon to exit, it's not like it was intuitive.

When I finally made my way to Kings Row, one night I noticed this odd little machine generating a huge bubble. It was just sitting there, not moving, and not protecting or being protected by anyone or anything. It was labeled "Shield Generator," and it belonged to a faction I had never heard of, something called "Sky Raiders." In hindsight, someone must have defeated all of the spawn, but left the generator there, which I ran across. I took a few swipes at it just to see what would happen, but I couldn't hit it, and nothing did. I just chalked it up as something interesting to figure out later, which I suppose I eventually did. At the time, I wasn't even sure whether it was friendly or not.

For a long time, I didn't realize that you could combine enhancements by dragging one from your tray over an existing one that was slotted. I thought that you had to slot it, then combine them. I honestly thought that if you had, say, four slots, then you could only combine up to the first three enhancements. I figured out how to combine that last slotted enhancement accidentally when I tried to replace one with a higher-level one and it brought up the combine interface.

After the revamped Hamidon, I took one of my characters who had Phase Shift there to get the badge who didn't have it. I Phase Shifted and started walking towards the badge. *BAM!* "Crud, I could have sworn that I phase shifted!" I went to the hospital, went all the way back to The Hive, and tried again. *BAM!* "Ahhh... I see now. Let me go load up on purples and get it that way." *BAM!* @#$%! They changed that too? (BTW, Hamidon completely ignores phase shift and all defense/resist damage effects. I felt like the victim of a Chuck Norris joke that night.)

I was not aware you could have more than one of a certain enhancement in a power until my blaster was well into the teens.

I had Burst slotted 1 acc, 1 dam, 1 rech, 1 end, 1 range...
I didn't know what an immobilize was, so I used Ring of Fire for damage. I couldn't understand why the fire ring wasn't showing up around Ogres' and Calibans' feet, but they were still taking damage.

Then there was the time I did the Vahz wasting disease arc. I ran into Dr. Vahz, saw that it said "Archvillain" (this was long before they would scale down to EBs for soloers) and thought, hmmm, I better eat some reds before I try to fight him. It did not end well.

I've just remembered the one big n00b moment I had.

I managed to level my MA/SR scrapper up into his 40's without choosing Practiced Brawler as a power, simply becuase:1 It wasn't a toggle and 2: It's recarege was longer than it's activation time. so I Didnt pick it becuase i thaught for those few fights I'd need it for I'd forget to use it anyway. I did, however, use Acrobatics to foil holds and knockback. so I wasn't a complete idiot!

This changed when I got invited into a group (which just never happened to me, I knew nothing of the lfg system or global chanels at the time) that contained another MA/SR scrapper. I noticed he kept doing an unfamiliar animation. Rather than ask him about it and reveal my total obliviosness, I checked out what effects where on him.

It was ofcourse Practiced Brawler, What supprised me, was that when the animation played, PB double stacked for a few seconds. Only then did it hit me, "Ofcourse you blithering idiot, recharge reduction enhancements!"

Needless to say I very quickly respeced my character after this encounter.

my first respec on my first character, a fire/regen scrapper, which I got around to after a few months in the game revealed two slots each in sprint and rest and three slots in brawl. Good times.

that's a good one Imoba!

=D

Let's see.

For some time I didn't realize you could turn off the apply-colors-to-all-parts function in the costume creator and was stuck with rather monochromatic heroes.

I once tried to helpfully use Recall Friend to bring someone to where the rest of us were waiting before the Boss; I neglected to tell him and he was teleported while running and promptly ran into the Boss and got faceplanted.

I was very nervous about using the tailor the first time, because I wasn't quite sure that doing so wouldn't cost real money.

My first controller was Earth/Storm, and I heavily slotted Gale for damage. Look at all those numbers! Small numbers . . .

My first time running the respec trial in the reactor room with a group of buddies (all new), they told me to take ALL the reactor coolant. I loaded up my power tray with all the coolants. Then they told me to just keep hitting the reactor with it till we won. So as the hordes killed my team, I stood there and shot coolant nonstop till they finally killed me. I had no idea why I was using the coolant in the first place. We all thought that you just use up the power and win, lol. Big time fail.

Hmm, let me see...

I must admit that this isn't exactly my "favourite" newbie moment, but it's true nonetheless; Playing on a small teaming including myself, a tanker, a couple others I can't remember and an empath. We're all a fairly high level - 45 ish.

I notice at some point that the empath isn't dishing out any buffs. I check his build and he has in fact got every single one included. Eventually, I send a tell; "Err...you should really give the tank fortitude, you know."

A couple of moments later and I get the reply; "How do I do that?" ... Even if he were an actual "newbie" by level 45, he should have grasped the basic concepts ... Unfortunately upon further investigation, he had the Six Months Veteran Badge. Kind of saddening really I guess...woops.

This was a week ago and was only the second time I'd ever done Hamidon. And the first time as a tank. I was appointed to lead the charge and tank Hami on the second bloom. I charged in and....faceplant.

I had forgotten to eat my EoE. Was quite embarassing to go down in like one shot as a granite tanker in a zone with an audience of 50 people.

I made a Dark/Rad Defender before Issue 2



But no, really, I did a lot of stupid stuff. I'm just glad nobody was around to watch me do it xD

I did the tram thing for a few months, and I'm very sure I bugged it at least once.

I bought shiny new training origin enhancements at level 7, not knowing they weren't worth it.

I forgot to level between levels 2 and 6 (they didn't come nearly as quickly back then). It was mostly because I was having too much fun. The first time I played the game, I went at it for 8 hours straight.


I was ghastly afraid of anything above my level for a good while. I had exactly no idea of what my limits were.

It's actually kind of forgivable because, throughout my 20's, I was relegated to fighting things a few levels below me. I couldn't do my missions because they were frontloaded, and nobody wanted me on their team because I was a Dark Defender, so I had to wait until I out-leveled them. Hunting on the street, though, I couldn't defeat enemies that were my level.

You imagine being a Dark/Rad Defender with no help from your primary but an unenhanced Darkest Night (you couldn't enhance the -ToHit due to a bug), Shadowfall (which slowed you and didn't allow resistance enhancements), Twilight Grasp with an animation twice as long as it is now that was also weaker against higher-level enemies (yes, the heal amount scaled), blasts that used significantly more endurance than they do now, and incomplete slotting due to being unable to afford a full set of IOs (nobody could until their mid/late 30's). My only saving grace was Petrifying Gaze (which was a lot better back then).

Then imagine that missions gave 1/3rd the experience they do now and were filled with +3s at the beginning and -5s at the end. Then imagine that you got twice as much debt when you died as well as considerably less experience from bosses and LTs.

Somehow, I still managed to love this game.

I had a couple when I was just starting the game...

I'd only been playing for about 5 or 6 hours when I discovered a brilliant exploit to get easy xp - just complete most of the annoying clockwork mission I was on and then, just before completing it, logout and back in and the mission is reset.

I must have done that about 5 times before getting bored - which probably explains part of my aversion to farms - but it was easy-ish xp for a very new blaster who seemed to be more glass than cannon and hadn't the confidence to try teaming yet.

And a couple of days later I got teleport as my first travel power - but didn't know you could chain it before fully materialising and so kept get falling damage every time I took to the skys. Other than the odd in-mission jump to ledges/balconies I only used it for jumps at ground-level, which probbaly took me as long to arrange as running did as I had to be careful not to tp into a spawn.

It took until about late-20s/early-30s before I found out you could chain them... Still think that the hovertime for tp is far too short though.

Years ago... first toon. I used my zombies as meat shields and didn't took the pet upgrade. I thought... "They die anyway". Respecced it in as soon as I found my think error.

I was lvl 30+ during the times with the same old debt and had been playing for months already on my mm when I finally discovered that you could place inspirations on the pets. WTF!

Oh.. and when I finally came to Paragon City on my first Hero... I to bugged the train for not being able to enter. :S I am starting to think the devs should change the trains to be both exit and entrance. Way to many people have this.. hehe

Last night an SG member asked me if another SG member was on. I guess he never saw the list of SG members. But if I start on people I have met... this list will become veery long. Lets leave it on the three I made myself :P

My favourite newb moment, well, lets just say it involved the old MoG and Psychic Clockwork...

I had the "train problem" only once. I was a solid level 50, had been playing for months, and had mis-zoned. I think I ended up in Steel Canyon when I'd wanted Skyway City. or something like that. Anyway, I just turned around and clicked on the train doors. Then cursed when the dialog box wouldn't come up. I did this for a couple of minutes before my wife said "you're in the exit room".

I only found out about 6 months ago that you can combine enhancements that are already slotted. I've been playing since September 2005. I knew that the enhancement gubbins in the tutorial told you that you can, but I couldn't figure out how. Never had the guts to ask anyone, and I discovered it completely by accident.

Recently, several times, tried to use Base TP power inside Pocket D, cursed when it hasn't gone off, and then remembered the base portal.

Those are the only ones that spring to mind. I'm sure there are more.

I didn't know you could have more than one of a given enhancement in a power until I'd played for a few months. Up until that point, my scrapper's (MC Smackdown, white rapper/nuclear engineer who gained his powers when trying to invent the nuclear-powered microphone. I don't think I made a non-joke character until about my ninth month of playing.) attacks were slotted 1 acc/1 dam/1 rech/1 defense debuff/1 endredux in the high 20s. I also thought that the defense debuff SO made my attacks do more damage and spent a few days trying to figure out why they weren't.

Funny enough, a few weeks ago, I found myself slotting a low-level brute's attacks 1 acc/1 dam/1 rech/2end, so my slotting has sort of come full circle.

My first time playing, my contact gave me the mission to defeat 5 Hellions in Atlas Park. So I took off in search of Atlas Park. I remembered that there was a small lake nearby with statues in it, so maybe that was Atlas Park? Darn! No plaques or signs stating what the name of that park was. I started looking all over the zone for small parks, hoping to find Atlas Park. Nothing! Then I thought that maybe it was an industrial park, so I went to the industrial warehouse section and started searching around, looking for some kind of marker that showed where Atlas Park was. I finally broadcast "Where is Atlas Park?", and someone said "dude, you're in it!". I looked around and saw a small square with benches and statues. That must be Atlas Park! But there were no Hellions in it, just some scary Vahzilok.

As I sat there staring at my map, I felt a wave of embarrassment wash over me as I saw that the entire zone was Atlas Park.

We had a newb on a team where we were hunting Tsoo. The mission was to kill a character called black dragon or something similar. One of the Tsoo early in the mission said we had the wrong place. So we started making jokes about leaving, as we clearly had the wrong place and how we didn't see a dragon on the warehouse roof so maybe it was the wrong place, it's hard to hide a dragon etc. At one point this poor newb was offering to head out and see if he could see the dragon to check we were in the right place.

My favourite noob moment? During Issue 11's release...

I was never good with enhancments, I thought that once you got them in your inventory, their effect was immediete. So for two whole Issues I sat with the same enhancments in my inventory, with completely unslotted powers.

Eventually, I stumble across a team with Set Bonuses. When I ask "How'd you get the Set Bonuses?" the team leader shouted "Hah! Noob!" and kicked me.

Well, I know how to get them now! Thank you self-learning!

I started playing with CoV, my boyfriend had been playing since the beginning of CoH. I had two fairly funny noob moments early on in CoV.

First one was while I was playing my fire/fire brute. My BF comes up behind me and notices I'm using TP Foe to pulling people from mob instead of rushing in. He asks what I'm doing and I tell him flatly, its too hard to fight them all at once. Its at this point he also realizes that my level 8 brute is fighting mobs conning orange and red.

He asks then if I had increased my difficulty. I said no, not that I know of. He checks my mission listing and sure enough its set to Relentless. He asks me again and I insist no I hadn't. He then asked if I had talked to a Fateweaver and I said yep and when she asked how my characters reputation I said she's definitely Relentless. I hadn't read what the fateweaver was actually doing I just though it was a cool title.

The second one was a bit later I'd switched from the brute to leveling up a bot/dark MM. I was having a easier time at it and was in my 20's at this point. My BF comes to check on why I'm cursing at my computer. I tell him that the thing I'm fighting is taking forever to kill, but its just about to die finally. He asks what and low and behold I'm fighting an Archvillian Barracuda. I believe the conversation went like this.

BF: "What... you're suppose to fight them with a team!"
Me: "What really? Huh... WOO SHE'S DEAD!"
BF: *boggles* "How long did that take you...?"
Me: *looks at clock* "Urm 40 minutes. I died once."

See the thing is the whole AVs being EBs when you're set to a lower diff hadn't been added at that point. I had no concept of what a Archvillian or Hero was, I just thought it was like a epic boss fight in a game. And at the time I wasn't a fan of teaming with people except my BF, social butterfly I was not.