Your First Newbie Moments...

After chatting with my SG the other night, we were reminiscing out first months of CoH.

There wee numerous stories that made me chuckle, and since I'm in need of a laugh thought I'd ask Defiant to share their first newbie moments during their first month of City of Heroes/Villains.


Personally, I've been a perpetual newb for the most of CoH and there has been countless newbie moments... but one that sticks in the mind was my power slotting on my main, Captain Solaris.

After giving my good friend number9dream, my account to try maintain top healer in the first month of Defiant EU release whilst I was away, he had a peak at my build to realise my complete newbness as he unearthed that I had slotted...BRAWL!

I was truly shamed for such a travesty when I got back! In my defence I wanted to make him a melee alt, but with green energy'esque powers were essential... the only one that fitted that was rad/rad. Plus I was only lvl30 at the time so melee powers on a def was limited!


I'm hoping to see a few old boys/girls from EU release hiding in the shadows to emerge and share their stories!

Had a very similar experience with my first alt...

I didn't even intially understand how to 'use' an enhancement. I assumed that if it was sitting in your enhancement tray, that it was being applied to your character as a whole

I think I got all the way to the low teens before I finally rolled a second alt, and actually bothered to read the instructions in the tutorial.



50 months later, I'm probably still not much better at this game !!

Mine was I didn't notice the thumb bar at the side when adding new powers after a level up. Just couldn't understand why I couldn't have fly But everyone else seemed to have it.

My first Safeguard I have spent looking for others, 'cause suddenly everyone disappeared from map - of course I haven't known that you can enter in bank .

Hmm lets see....

On my first toon Maximus Prime, a MA/Inv Scrapper, I.....

Had to ask where the Hollows was in broadcast, after replies lead to a "D'oh!" moment as I forgot I had a map.

Didn't take Unyielding all the way up to the mid 30's. Though in my defense it still said I couldn't have it on with Temp Invulnerability and it would root you so thought it was abit pointless. That was untill I got on a team in Bricks where I saw an Inv/* Tank herd up a bucket load of freaks in a mission. Wondered how he was doing so well without being knocked about like me and saw he had both on at the same time, which lead to a swift respec.

Lived on enhancement drops, so still had alot of TO's and DO's in powers for a long time. If I remember right I only started buying and slotting SO's once I had gotten to PI and talked to Ghost Falcon.


Ah the good ol' days!

hehehe, i definitely remember noobing it up back in the old days by adding extra slots in to brawl and sprint! upon reaching the 25 region i made sure to get my respec

Also remember my first character and his power choices, can't believe i picked mind/empathy and expected to do serious pvp with him, talk about big mistakes >_< oh well he's still my favorite character anyway

Urhm, yup, 3-slotted brawn on my inv/axe brute.
Then my inv and my D3 got nerfed and I lost interest in the game. I learned not to build by guides but to build for fun/insanity. After more nerfs I ended up being pretty good and unusual on many alts without respeccing. Also it was fun to show off powers noone had ever seen, like black hole etc. Yeah, ED can't touch me!

I think everyone remembers the first frostfire mission. For me it was an endless series of debt and when we finally got to frostfire I actually never saw him. This was back when debt meant something and OMG the team whined a lot. I was probably the only one enjoying it. 6 months later I still only had a level 32.

Then came villains and I was reborn. The community team arranged a big battle in Sirens Call (not to mention the end-beta fight in mercy) and I saw it was good.

I still have "The Stalinizer" at level 30-something, with no arms (cossie bug since I haven't changed him for 3 years, hillarious wii mee-style). He was fun, because most people called him "Heay, Stalin" wich was censored and still is. One day he will bring Communism to Paragon. (Hint, GR, hint, hint)

While he's not 3-slooted with brawl, he's still slotted for damage instead of shields, which used to surprise Kheldians on the numerous TFs he's still managed to do.

Back then I also got a reputation for being a trustworthy bank. I probably made more inf transfers than most people have done in a life time and without ever asking for inf, during those transactions and TFs I recieved a lot of gratitude in the form of millions of millions of inf. ...which I foolishly wasted on others. Those where the days...

Noone told me about stores, DOs or SOs and they wheren't on the maps. I got a bit disappointed when I found out since I loved the simplicity of the game. Then came ED and inventions...

In the end, it took me more than two years to get my first lvl 50 hero and it turned out to be the least likely one (ill/rad troller) that I had rolled just to try out the Hollows TF, but I realised it was useful for...HAMI RAIDS! Good ol' hamiraids. Two years into the game I got to experience one and it was a defining moment of the game that is sadly lost forever.

Oh, before that, I'd taken on several GMs solo. Sure they where purple, but... I actually did solo one of Lusca's arms. She's my kind'a lady!

I remember, back then the game was.... fun...
...what happened? Or rather... what didn't happen?

Oh, btw, I've got the swine flue, so I might be a bit... you know...
...not kidding... It's pretty nasty!

I remember getting debt was such a big deal back in the day that friendships were tested because you got them into debt!

The anguish of some players resulting them in leaving a team because of it! Hahah

Nowadays, nobody bats an eye-lid since they disappear in a matter of seconds, especially when in an specially modified AE mission!

I thought I16 killed AE!
Oh, yes, first few TF's... people dropping off madly....

I'm so happy I never ever tried any of the Shadow Shard ones back then!

Cranked up the difficulty lvl on my first alt, a Tank, to Invincible during the very low lvls. I very nearly quit the game. I wish I had not deleted that alt though.

It was several months before I realised that you could combine enhancements to create a new one.

Previously I was always wondering why team members were asking for small red etc.

Swapping maps was an eye opener. Took me a while to realise what I was actually ready for and what not.

I still have problems remembering commands on the typing bar.

My first Scrapper got all the way up to lvl 32 until I realised that it was a good idea to have a travelpower...
Good thing I usually teamed with folks that had Recall Friend.

A /kin gave me sb repeatedly while I was by Miss Liberty in Atlas. I got angry and sent them a tell requesting that they "Stop hitting me." Lulzz...... what a newb!!

I had 4 slotted Rest.

Spending a week chatting in broadcast only after not realising what all the chat variants were and accidently clicking the broadcast option.
Many spent a long time trying to explain how to change chat options.
lmao

I seem to have a thing for bubbles. The 1st toon I ever created wasn't Kendai. In fact, Kendai was my 3rd toon that I created. My 1st character was called Xann, and she was force field/psychic blast.

After having read the instruction manual, I remember it saying somewhere to stick together at all times. When I made my first team, I took it almost too literally, suggesting that we should all even travel together from one mission to the next. This usually resulted in disastrous consequences to other new players especially in the hollows (before it was made the tranquil peaceful place it is now), as I'd just bung on Personal Force Field and happily run through lots of mobs, meaning anyone on the team stupid enough to follow me, well, DIED. Of course later when we got our travel powers, we gave up travelling together. Though of course, me, being a noob, thought that sprint + swift should be fast enough for travelling. Nooooo...

I didn't take deflection shield and insulation shield because I thought "Why take those 2 single-target bubbles when I could just take dispersion bubble later which gives defence to a group?" Of course, during these days, we hardly had anything to help tell us what numbers and how much buffs/debuffs etc were doing, unlike the right-click thing we can do over powers nowadays. I later learnt my mistake, realising that the defence STACKED and so I took the single-target-ally bubbles too.

I never realised until level 20 what to do with Enhancements. At the time there was nothing in tutorial to help you with it, and someone then told me when I was level 20 that you had to click 'Manage' and click and drag. As I was so happy I went and spent all my inf on training enhancements, without the knowledge of the much better SOs at 25...

Oh yes, and the 2nd toon I created was an emp, who I played like a blaster and charged in into almost every battle thinking I could just heal myself if anything happened, and survive. *cue Family Fortunes eeh-eeh sound* I was such a noobish emp, though I later learnt my mistakes, and people loved me for healing them. I then got bored and deleted him.

My 1st two level 50's were force field toons. I think that's noobish enough already... force field... is by far the WORST defender/controller set you could have. Non-debateable.

I think it IS debatable, everything that gives your team +Defense to most attacks is cool, specially Dispersion Bubble, which is great in RWZ raids... ahem... k, after derailing a bit the subject of this thread... I was sooo happy with my 1st toon when I got Hover... yay, I could fly! then hovering over Hollows, I noticed other more veteran players of my SG zooming past me aud making jokes about me being a turtle in comparison to them, that was the moment I was told that the REAL flying power was Fly.

I was played about two years before I accidentally found some strange new option. Hmm what is that channel search thingy? Then I find Defiant Events and got a new stage of playing with wonderful people.

I used to delete all my wakey inspirations cuz I could never get them to work, and then ran back to the Hollows from Atlas hospital.

"You got to dig it to dig it, you dig?"
Thelonious Monk

Chat caused me a lot of inital problems as i used local for everything and didn't realise there were other tabs like the useful "Team" one

Also my first sending to Kings Row. I thought this was a street address in Atlas , must of uncovered the whole map searching for a street sign before i thought to ask someone