Calling All Badge Hunters!

Okay, so here's the down and dirty.

I'm working on A Complete Idiot's Guide to Badges. One of the things I'd really like to include in it is advice from the swath of players who have spent tons of time hunting badges. What techniques, tips, and tricks have you learned and/or developed to improve your badge-hunting skills?

Tips, tricks, and advice will be included in the guide in a special section with appropriate credit given. So if you have something to contribute, speak up!

Thanks!!

P.S. This isn't included in the Guides section because it's not finished yet, and I'm not promoting a completed guide. Besides, any replies would be useful to anyone reading the thread.

P.P.S. I'll be looking for folks to help proof-read the thing for accuracy, content, etc. If you're willing to help out, send me a PM.

There's rather a lot of badges to give tips on :
Maybe you should start by collecting the info based on the different catagories?

1. Try to find a partner/team from your SG just as interested as you are in badges. Competition is great, but cooperation gets you places you never imagined.
2. Research your Defeat badges, and take missions and contacts accordingly. Getting Defeats through normal play beats the heck out of farming.
3. Try to get your exploration and history badges together. If you're in Boomtown anyway, no need to go back later to click a plaque.
4. Ignore Vet badges when comparing badge count. It'll only stress you out.

1. Download the map patch from badge-hunter.com. It adds all history plaques and exploration badges as an overlay on your in-game map.
2. The easiest way to earn Man/Woman in Black (shivan defeat) is the mission in the intro to Obo arc.
3. Most accomplishment badges can be earned through Obo if you fail to earn them through regular play.
4. Perez Park is the best place for Skulls, Skull bosses, and Hellion bosses blueside.
5. The sewers or Terra Volta are the best place for Lost bosses blueside.
6. The Troll Tunnels are the best place for Troll bosses blueside.
7. If you hate waiting around for night in Striga for Council Vampires, try running the story arcs in Striga or a Hess/Moonfire TF.
8. Temporary powers you can craft in your base count towards the crafting badges.

That's all I can think of off the top of my head right now.

When solo I tend to fly between missions using peripheral vision whilst hitting the Tab key, and pick off the odd defeat badge villain as I go.

Get loads over time, help the poor victims on the street, and bump into things a lot.

My advice: don't compare yourself to other badge hunters. It isn't healthy.

- Join an active badge hunting channel on your server. If you can't find one, join one from another server to get answers to your questions.

- look at badges that fit well together when you're planning how to get them. In other words, there's no point hunting in the open to get Silver Bullet if you're going to run the Moonfire TF at some point.

- keep your eye on the real world calendar. There's no point fighting the day night timer of the game to get your BP Masks badge, if the Halloween event is coming in a few weeks and permanent night is about to fall.

In other words, badge smarter, not harder.

My advice would be to carefully choose the character that will be your badger. By the gods, I wish I could go back and tell myself years ago, "NO, NOT THAT ONE!"

Choose a character you like playing, that can do damage (and heal, if you want those badges), take damage, and easily navigate to specific locations (I prefer fly for that, but superjump is good too).

I can tell you from experience how hard it is to get healing badges with the Medicine pool tricorder. Oh, you can get them, and you can also build a house out of popsicle sticks.

--NT

Badges count defeats, not levels. Defeating a bunch of Banished Pantheon Masks at level 45 is a lot easier than defeating them at level 23.

Warrior bosses can easily be found on the northwestern-most island of Striga Isle, where Lars Hansen is.

Also, a hunt macro (http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=119031) helps when you are searching for those specific targets in large groups. (Apologies for the full link.. my html-fu is weak.)

Try to situate a television or radio near your PC when working on some of the more tedious defeat badges. Grinding away Marcone bosses in Port Oakes isn't anywhere near as painful if you've got something else to keep your mind on.

[quote=Lemur Lad;2285222]- look at badges that fit well together when you're planning how to get them. In other words, there's no point hunting in the open to get Silver Bullet if you're going to run the Moonfire TF at some point.]

This brings up a very interesting point. Certain taskforces and strikeforces are going to be very well suited to collecting certain badges. I freely admit that, despite having been around since April of 2004, I have yet to complete all the task forces. In point of fact, I have probably done less than a handful of them.

So, I could probably use a lot of help in beefing up my knowledge of which taskforces are good matches for badge acquisition. Some of that, I'm sure, can be gleaned from ParagonWiki (a prime research tool).

Quote:

Originally Posted by Lemur Lad In other words, badge smarter, not harder.

And that, my furry friend, is exactly why I'm writing this guide.

Not a "badge hunter," and I don't chase numbers, but one thing I *can* say is that one of the most enjoyable times I had *was* badge related - getting some friends together and doing a "tour" (as far as we could go - I think we were in the high 20s or low 30s at the time, pre-Croatoa, pre- lots of stuff.)

Stuff like that, make an event of it for you and your friends (or if you're on the right server, watch for the taxibot events) and have fun. Deal with the "have to work on it" stuff later. Enjoy the scenery.

See my Guides and Tutorials

Safeguard badges - Ignoring the group in the lobby and taking out the vault group before they breach the vault prevents the timer from starting, giving you all the time in the world to get that exploration badge and sides badges. (not sure if there as a similar thing for mayhems)

Low lvl "hidden" mobs on high lvl characters - If you have out leveled certain mobs like magma lord and corolax that only pop out when aggroed, get a team with a toon in their level to run ahead of you and just pick them off when they come out.

Quote:

Originally Posted by Forbin_Project Then it's time for them to get off the cross, use the wood to build a bridge, and get over it.

The first rule for Badge-Hunting should always be:

!.) Remember, it's just a game. Obsess over reality first. Whatever time you have left over is fine to obsess over "badging."