Another 1 to 50 in MA - Villain-style!

So despite the fact that Pro Payne and Eva Destruction are doing this better than I ever will, I've decided to jump onboard and try levelling a character from 1 to 50 using only the MA. I was planning on doing this without making a thread about it, but I figured that if I'm going to all the trouble of doing this, I might as well offer my meagre insights as I go. Hopefully, someone finds it interesting.

There are a number of differences on how I'm doing things:

1) I'm not taking review requests for now. I'm going to pick arcs in a relatively haphazard fashion from the millions floating around out there. I'll be looking for things at my level, ideally solo friendly with a bit of story or some other interesting hook. My logic is that there are thousands of arcs out there and unless their authors happen to post here, they might tend to go unnoticed. Hopefully, by pulling arcs at random from the ether, I might find a few heretofore unknown diamonds in the rough which you might enjoy. Or, I'll find some that are amusingly awful. Either way ... win-win.

2) I'm not reviewing every arc in detail. Often you will get a star rating and a few comments and that's it. The amount of detail I put into an arc review will be directly proportional to how interesting I find it, divided by how much time I have, minus the amount I need to sleep. If that's too much math for you, then you're my kind of people.

3) I'm playing a villain. I've heard villains are harder to solo, but nyah - I'm doing it anyhow. I'm going to stick to purely villainous arcs if possible, because they need more love. My guy is called "Taze Me Bro" and is an Elec/WP Brute.

4) My n00b will be showing. There are still a ton of things I don't get about this game - both in terms of the technical stuff and the story canon. Hopefully, this exercise will improve both. Part of the journey will be me sharing my complete confusion and ignorance which will, with any luck, be both sad and amusing.

So - wish me luck! Hopefully this at the very least cleanses the pallet a bit for the awesomey goodness of Eva's thread. Level 1 and ready to go!

If you are confused about #3, please see #4

Yeah I had read in a few places that reds were harder to solo than blues, but those comments must have been a few nerfings ago.

See? I'm learning already!

Brutes are like Scrappers on crack. Very much soloable. Your biggest problem with Elec Melee is sub-par single-target damage, which might make EB fights take a while, but they'll still be doable. On the other hand, once you get your survivability up to where you can add a few fake teammates, Build Up + Lightning Rod at full Fury is frickin' sweet.

Villains rocked at soloing right from launch and have only gotten better over time with the buffs to Masterminds, Stalkers, and Dominators.

So, first arc time! I set a few search parameters and hit the RANDOM BUTTON OF DOOM to see what I would get and up popped this little beauty:

No Holiday Spirit!
#180478
by @Lil Druid

The contact was the physical maifestation of Labor Day. The basic premise was that the lesser holidays were jealous of the more popular ones and wanted a villain (me) to knock off the competition. Sounds good so far! So now he says I have to do it because holidays can't hurt each other. Ummm... ok. And instead of attacking the holidays, he wants me to attack their daughters. Uhhh.. wha? And he also repeatedly notes that if I kill them, they aren't really dead because they are holidays. Uh-huh... so what I'm doing has no lasting effect... gotcha. Oy.

So mission one I'm off to hunt the Easter daughter... in a cave, obviously. I fight some fairly generic bunny minions and am doing okay. Then, about a third of the way in I realize that I forgot to turn my XP back on after the run to the AE. DOH. This prompted the following response:



Eventually, I die, fight more bunnies, ding, and quite easily kill the boss bunny. She is apparently late for something, and has dialogue which clearly relates of the White Rabbit from Alice in Wonderland instead of the Easter Bunny. [INSERT BUNNY MILKMAN JOKE HERE]

I take a quick run to the Arbiter to level up, because no Rest and no Powers makes Homer something something.

Mission two is Valentine's Day. I'm supposed to go to where they are making those awful chalk hearts and destroy them, along with the VDay daughter. I thought it was clever, and the mobs - unlike level one - are interesting and relevant. Why we are in a Tech map i have no clue, but I guess making chalk is more complicated than I had assumed.

The mobs here are brutal. They have the exact mix of powers which make we want to cut off my own hands and throw them at the monitor. One has range plus a heal which it uses frequently, the other is a thorny melee type and the other keeps putting Taze Me Bro to sleep. Frustrating, but manageable until I get sleeped at the top of a set of stairs only to realize I'm surrounded by a large mob who quickly kill me en masse. Grr... death #2.

When I go back in, I wisely decide to use the OTHER stairs, and voila - the Boss! Hooray! OH NO.. more sleep powers. GRRRR.



I kill the boss anyhow, then the first group then keep looking for these barrels of heart candies. The problem? The map is WAY too big - with lots of levels and elevators and nooks and crannies. Very annoying. But, soldier on I must! I work my way through a LONG passageway and eventually find ... the Boss? Yep, seems like the first boss was a settings goof up. This real boss is way harder and I barely get her down... then she calls in an ambush as she dies. Cue death #3.

Anyhow, after much more searching I find the barrels and finish this mission from hell. Back at Labor Day, he sends me after the Big Two: Hallowe'en and Christmas. They are apparently together for some reason, which is convenient since with all these customs, he could never squeeze 4 missions in!

Off I go to... an office building. Um.. ok. The mobs are back to being boring again. You have the two holidays with the most potential funny mob options and I'm fighting guys with pumpkin heads and two different kinds of tin soldiers. Also, a Jack O Sprite (whatever that is) which is even more confusingly female. Anyhow, the office turns to caves and I find the Hallowe'en boss and kill her without much ado. The caves turn into sewers (it all seems so Christmas-y!) and I find the Christmas boss, who again is remarkably easy to beat and hopelessly uncreative, as seen below.



And that's it. Mission done. Labor Day thanks me for being so evil and I think reminds me again that they aren't dead and have regenerated or something.. I don't know... I had tuned out by then. I gave the guy 2 stars with the comment that the dialogue was actually a 4 or 5 stars, but everything else was kinda 2-star-ish.

So there you have it. 2 stars. And now I'm almost level 4. I'll keep you posted as to my progress!

An entertaining read, good luck finding level suitable content though. I was up all night searching for arcs for my lvl 6 Stalker with the criteria 'my level', and all I ended up with were a whole bunch of 1-54 missions w/ AVs.

I found it easiest to select both my level and use keywords to find suitable arcs for my 1 to 50 villain challenge toon. Things like Mercy Town, hellion, skull, goldbrickers, coralax, lowbie or lfma and the like work like a charm.

Good luck

Solo all the way in MA...? Hmm.. you will not be able to manage anything with AV's then unless you set repp low. Mine are rather hard.

Would love you to try them though.

Okay, onwards and upwards!

For my next mission, I randomed a few times and got stuff I didn't want to do (exp farm missions, very longs with AVs) and finally I had to settle for the following:

Negavert Weapon Destruction Contract
#297905
by @Snapfire

Now, I knew what I was in for as soon as I read the Description. I tried to think of a witty, humourous summation but really - nothing was funnier than the desc itself. Here it is, completely unedited:

"A Hero force from the negaverse is here to stop the Negaverse Invasion Force. They have brought a weapon with them that will cause anyone from the negaverse hit by it to become normal, whiping out all of their powers and leaving them a hopless commoner. It is called the Negavert."

So I reach the contact, who is named Neg8, and he explains that we need to kill the hero, Negative, and "distroy" the Negavert Weapon. Maybe by now you have noted a nega-theme. It gets worse - ALL the customs are named like this. Negabeast. Negahunter. Negabeast Pack Leader. Negabeast Cub. Female Negabeast. All nega, all the time. And all their costumes are in black and white. And for some reason, they've all got werewolf heads. At no point is the Negaverse or any of this background stuff explained in the slightest.

So I hit the sewers of this large-ish, one-mission arc. As soon as I pop in, Neg8 calls out and says he's going to shadow me to make sure I'm doing my job. Only I don't see him anywhere. After killing a few nega-mobs, I find him and he starts following me. The very next fight forces me to fight two mobs at once becauseof their proximity and I suddenly realize that Neg8 has no intention of helping. In fact, after I die he (I kid you not) takes a leak (text only, thankfully) and sits down on a crate.

Now, a quick aside about me dying. Two things to note here. Number one, I'm starting to think Elec Melee was a bad choice. As noted, the single target damage is poor and since I don't yet have any AoEs, I just suck all around. To make matters worse, all the mobs here have Dark powers to which I have no resistance. My ToHit is debuffed into oblivion making it hard to land punches and build Fury. Plus, it makes the mobs evenmore boring and silly than they already are.

Anyhow, I carry on and eventually find the Negavert Weapon, which is actually a tiny weapon rack up against a wall completely unguarded. Instead of it being a destroyable object, it's a simply clicky-click and it says it's destroyed. Yeehaw. For those of you following at home, this was the main point of the whole mission... just in case you missed the excitement!

I keep going and find the Boss a little later. He's perched on a platform surrounded by 2 mobs. I go straight at the boss, get him to half health, watch him group heal to full then get killed by the mobs. Grr. So i get back and try a new tactic. I ignore the boss and kill the mobs .. there, MUCH easier! Then I focus on the boss and have little trouble. At 1/4 health, the boss notes that I was able to get in a few lucky shots because he had to go to the bathroom really badly. Again for those following along at home, that's pee joke #2.

Anyhow, I kill him. Neg8, who has been silently following me and doing nothing continues to stare into space. Mission over. No souvenir and a one sentance congrats from Neg8. You're nega-welcome.

I gave this arc an emphatic one star with many comments to the author about why it sucked. I pray that he is able to read, but given the number of spelling errors in this arc, I'm not so sure.

On the plus side, I hit level 4 (yay, Ninja Run!) and on the down side, the mission was so mind-bogglingly awful that I forgot to take any screenshots. Oops. My bad!

So after that last fiasco you're probably thinking, "Well Supa, atleast it can't get much worse." Well, buckle up kids because the next random mission I found was:

To Settle A Bet
#203920
by @BBQ Pork

My contact here is Dr. Johansen, who wants me to help him steal Cryo-Bombs from a museum to help him settle a bet. Even though I don't know what the bet is, who it's with, what the stakes are, what the Cryo-Bombs have to do with it, why they are at a museum and what is in it for me, I accept, because really it's that or drop the mission. It would have been nice if a few hints had been dropped by the author though.

So it's off to the museum which, surprisingly, looks very museum-y:



I get an admission ticket as a clue when I get in, but the guards attack me anyhow. Either my skills of subterfuge are terrible or these are simply really edgy guards. Either way - my $20 is down the tubes. I fight a few guards and wander amongst all this museum stuff looking for Cryo-Bombs. With all the clutter, I wonder if I'll ever be able to find them. I stumble across a vault in the back... hmmm, now where are those Cryo-Bombs??!?!



A-ha! My keen detective senses finally managed to spot them! Back to the Doc!

Next mission, he wants me to free two villains captured at the Faultline Dam. Again, no information on the bet or what these guys have to do with it or why I should risk my neck to save them... but SURE! I'd love to help!

So off to the Dam, where I fight a bunch of creampuff Longbow types and find the first captured villain, the aptly-named Ice-Berg:



After rescuing him, he says "Thanks Pal" and heads immediately for the exit. You're nega-welcome... jerk. After a bit of wandering I find captive number two (also ice themed) and after saving her, she runs off without saying ANYTHING, which is even MORE rude. Mission over.

So now the suspense is killing me. Why were they at the dam? Does the bet involve poisoning the water supply? Between the Cryo-Bombs and the ice-themed villains, maybe they are going to freeze it? Doc mentioned the bet was with an assassin - maybe they are going to UN-freeze a former villain or ally frozen Captain America style at the bottom of the reservoir! Ooooo, that'd be cool!

So I race to the Doc and the bet is revealed! He bet the assassin that he could TURN THE RESERVOIR INTO JELL-O. I kid you not. Let that sink in. Read it again. He wants to turn it into Jell-O. For a prank. And he STILL doesn't say what the wager is or why I should help... but help I do.

Off to the sewers, where the green water is explained away by noting that some green gelatin was dumped there by the villains I freed. Ah - so I risked my life so they could dump a barrel or two down the sewer, and now I have to do the rest. Great plan. Basically, I now run around the sewer killing Longbow (I guess they are guarding the sewer under the reservoir... boy they don't show THAT job on the Longbow recruiting posters). I also have to find and dump barrels of cherries, peaches and gelatin into the water and set off the cryo-bombs. It is helpfully explained via clues that cherries and peaches are common ingredients in gelatin. Knowing is half the battle!

In total I am looking at 17 barrels to find and 5 bombs to activate, after which I set off the explosion to stop the dam pumps and allow the gelatin to harder. Thankfully, all of these are in two large rooms side-by-side. I'm TRIPPING over barrels. After the deed is done, Doc says one sentance indicating that it was a great prank, but temporary. I never do find out what the wager was.

After generously granting my one star, my only comment to the author was "Like Jell-O, this arc is very shaky and only amusing to children".

I'm up to level 5 now, but at this rate my frontal lobe will completely atrophy by about level 17. If I start typing like this:

"I rf da Supafnkdnk ahahahdfw wo$"

... then please arrange for me to be seen by a neurologist and empty my drool cup. Thanks!

You might try "The Long Road Back" - arc ID 340454 when you hit the 10-20 range, but I'm not entirely sure how good a 'leveling arc' it would be. There's a lot of narrative, which would probably slow your progress some and quite a few custom mobs, which tend to give lower xp.

I ran it with my level 12 Stalker, who is equipped with nothing but TO's awhile back and never ran into any difficulty issues. Your brute should be able to handle it.

I also recommend Tangler's "Mercytown - the one with all the Fish," which is a great low level arc. I can't remember the level range.

I'm starting to wonder what I got myself into here. By playing arcs pretty much at random, I'm getting stuck with all the refuse while you all play the ones that are well thought out by authors who are actually trying. I must be a masochist.

I started scanning for my next mission and came across another holiday one and, being a glutton for punishment, played it:

A Contract on Santa Claus
#100781
by @Floride

Snaptooth of the Red Caps wants Santa dead and you are offered the contract. Of course, no one ever says WHY he wants him dead, so if you are expecting a layered, complicated plot here just stop now. Maybe turn on CSI or go watch an M. Night Shaymalan movie. In the meantime, I'm hunting Santa.

Of course, Santa is being hidden by the Easter Bunny (for no real reason) and now the Bunny is paranoid someone will put a hit on HIM. Of course, he does what any reasonable egg-hiding animal would do - kidnap some Red Caps to intimidate them into NOT killing him. Genius!

So it's off to the office --> caves I go to fight bunnies again. Along the way I rescue a wannabe Red Cap named Scooter, who tags along for the rest of the mission doing pretty much nothing.



So I rescue the Red Caps and fight more bunnies until I find the Easter Bunny, who again is easy to kill. All the bosses here are LTs instead of real bosses, which made the fights easy and the XP anemic - by the end of this arc I had gained maybe 4 bars. I'm like level 5.6 now. Sigh. Anyhow, here's the bunny:



At the end he summons high tech robot bunnies to ambush me, but I just exited the mission - so nyah. There was a candy cane on the Bunny's body that listed Santa's address too. DUH - the North Pole. Everyone knows his address - I send him letters every Christmas! Er... I mean... MY KIDS send him letters... yeah, that's it. My kids.

Alas Santa isn't at the North Pole he's at the next most obvious place - Croatoa Farmhouse! So I'm told to go kill him and that the Red Caps from the last mission will be waiting for me ready to help! Of course, they weren't. According to my mission goals, I'm supposed to destroy Santa's sleigh first, even though no one had even mentioned this before. Thankfully, here's what i saw the moment I zoned in:



Okay, it's a TRUCK, but whatever. What luck, right! Huge map, find the target right away! Ah, too easy. I can't attack it - invalid target. Now I have no clue what to do, so I wander. It's a HUGE outdoor map too , BTW, and is littered with robo-bunnies:



Eventually I see some Frostlings! Ah-ha! And there's Scooter, waiting to be rescued! This must be the trigger mission which allows me to attack the truck. I free Scooter, head back to the truck - still no luck. CRAP. So I wander again. I kill some things. I check back - still can't attack the truck. I kill more things and head back - NOW magically I can attack the truck. WTF? Anyhow, sleigh go boom and then I have to rescue the Red Caps again, who finally showed up long enough to get captured again. Then I have to kill Santa:



... which was again very easy because he was an LT.

So I go back to claim my bounty and find out that they donèt have it. It's in a safe at the Faultline Dam. Christ, not THAT again. So mission 3 - off to the dam. The Dam is protected by Santa's Rein Dears, who are female minions named after the 8 magic reindeer - cute. The entrance message states the safe is "WAAAAAYYYYY at the back", so instead of running around looking at walls, I head straight to the back and find it. Thanks!

But what's this? The money is fake! I have to fight Snaptooth to get my bounty, because I guess he's just carrying around that exact amount on him. Snaptooth was cool because he throws little elves at you with barrels strapped to their backs. As the little guy was clinging to me and wailing away, I tried to snap a screenshot but as soon as I did so, I found out what the barrel was for:



After beating Snaptooth, it got even weirder. He calls out to the author of the arc to face me. Sure enough, after a minuteof searching I found Floride, and we discussed the finer points of arc creation:



Oh, and Scooter tearfully admits that he was in on the double-cross over the money and was setting me up. Of course, he DIDN'T DO A DAMNED THING for the whole arc, so I'm not sure what he was so upset about.

Anyhow, the arc deserved 2 stars, but I gave him 3. I think maybe my expectations are just dropping like a rock at this point.

The scary part is, that I am sure that I have played one or two of these. Even scarier, these were actually rather good compared to a lot of arcs I encountered. I am wondering what you will rate those arcs.

Okay, back at it! Today's spin on the Wheel of Awful landed on:

A Little Problem...
#36196
by @SamuelH73

The contact is a City Councilman who wants to hire you. Apparently some snoopy reporter has some damaging evidence against him and is poised to ruin his career. He wants you to steal the evidence, along with a few other things to make it look like a random robbery. He also notes that, being Saturday, this is a good time to go as the office is closed for the weekend. Apparently, news doesn't occur on weekends in the Rogue Isles. Also, the paper hires Longbow guards to watch the place. This is another sucky part of being in Longbow, and may be as boring an assignment as "Reservoir Sewer Guard" from arc #203920. Longbow: Be All You Can Be!

So I go to the office, bust some Longbow and get the evidence I need. When I return, he's so grateful that he not only pays me, but tips me off about another councilman who is secretly working with Longbow. I don't quite know how politics works under Lord Recluse, but I suppose this counts as a corruption scandal in the Isles. To make matters worse, they have a super secret base right in the city which he gives you the address to so you can blow it up! Of course, I could have found it by simply following home one of those shmucks who guard the newspaper building on Saturdays, but I digress.

So off to beat up Longbow again. First room I see this and groan:



They're like RATS in here. Of course, I felt better once I remembered that 1) Longbow are pansies and 2) My Fury will build really well in here. So anyhow, punch punch punch bomb bomb bomb mission over. Ta-da.

So back I go and I tell the contact that apparently I want to kick the Longbow-loving councilman's butt. I don't know why, but okay. He tells me he's already in Arachnos custody. "Oh well," I think to myself, "that's it then. He's getting whats coming to him and I can go have a latte." Nope. Apparently I decide to break into an Arachnos base and stop them from punishing the traitor so that I can kidnap him and punish him myself. Riiiiight. This arc has more plot holes than Michael Bay could explode a dozen helicopters through.

Anyhow, I fight the spiders for no reason and free the traitor, who promptly runs for the exit, I guess meaning I don't even get to kill him. End of arc. Oy.

I gave it two stars, if for no other reason that the author was trying and his spelling was okay. I also hit level 6. Hooray for Build Up!

Finally! My random process spat out an actual fic. Actual in that it was written by someone who posts here and who actually wants feedback. As always SPOILERS ABOUND. Be ye warned.

Quid Pro Quo
#82369
by @Hertz

So the contact is Lazlo, a fellow ex-con looking to help you out by procuring a fake ID for you, which apparently you need. In exchange for arranging this, he wants you to bust into Arachnos headquarters and expunge his criminal record, because I guess the spiders are helping the RIP with their I.T. services. At this point I'm thinking, "I could leave my house right now and get a fake ID inside of 3 hours for $100 Cdn. Why would someone take on Arachnos for one?", but more on this later.

I bust into Arachnos and fight a few groups of 2 or 3. Eventually I find a Vahzilok being held by Arachnos for no particular reason. After beating his captors he runs off and I get a clue indicating that the Vaz are always looking for fresh bodies. Hmmm, what a curiously random piece of information, I wonder if that will become relevant later on!

Continuing I eventually round a corner to see about 9-10 Arachnos in close proximity. Fresh off my Longbow-kicking experience in the last arc, I boldy leap into the fray! Aaaaaannnnnd...



I made it eventually and wiped Lazlo's record clean as a whistle.

So back I go to claim my outrageously over-valued fake ID. Lazlo tells me it's not ready yet, but before he hands it over he wants me to do another job for him. He wants revenge on the cop that put him in prison, so he wants me to attack the police station and beat him up... and while I'm there, check to make sure his record is really expunged. This tells me two things, 1) that Lazlo is REALLY paranoid about his record and 2) my fake ID is apparently encrusted in rare diamonds, because I can't think of any other reason I'd attak a police station to get one.

Anyhow, logic aside, I head to the police station. I beat up a bunch of cops, including the guy Lazlo wanted, AND made absolutely 100% sure his record was expunged. All it shows is his name and last known address.

So now I come back to claim my superwickedawesomemegatremendous fake ID which is TOTALLY worth all the felonies I'm piling up to get it. Sadly, Lazlo now informs me that his supplier jacked up the price, so now I have to PAY FOR IT. Clearly, I haven't done enough so he sends me to ROB A BANK to pay for the ID.

I arrive at the bank to find that the recession really HAS hit the banking industry pretty hard:



After some confusion, I realize that I've actually decided to stick it to Lazlo and kidnap his family to make sure I get my fake ID. Given the ridiculous escalation of stakes over this crappy ID, this actually seems perfectly logical. Anyhow, I'm at the Skulls hideout. I find his daughter quickly enough, who thankfully is in the hands of two very dependable babysitters:



I kidnap her, then go back for Lazlo's wife. Obviously, once I go back to Lazlo he's changed his tune and says he's going to personally go get that ID ASAP! Clearly though, the stakes have not been raised nearly enough here. I mean, attacking the governing militia, then raiding a police station, then kidnapping? Peanuts. We're talking a FAKE ID here! To make sure Lazlo hurries, I apparently decide to give his family to the Vaz for safe-keeping, seeing as they are always looking for fresh bodies. HEY, THAT INFO WAS IMPORTANT AFTER ALL!

It's never really indicated what the next mission is. There doesnt seem to be anything left to do exactly, but I hit "accept" anyhow. I find myself in a sewer where apparently I need to negotiate with the Vaz about giving them Lazlo's family. Once I get it, it's full of Skulls - Lazlo has sent his goons looking for his family. Now I need to rescue the Vaz boss from the Skulls so I can sell him the wife and daughter. Evil seems even evil-er when it's uneccessarily complicated!



So I save the Vaz, make the deal and head back to Lazlo, eagerly anticipating my new fake ID! Of course, Lazlo doesn't give it to me. Seems I've beaten up all his goons, so he wants ME to go get his family from the Vaz and then we'll make an exchange. I have a vision of my shiny new fake ID locked into a metal case handcuffed to Lazlo's wrist until we meet in an abandoned warehouse somewhere. Ooh, maybe Robocop will bust up the meeting like in Robocop 2!

As it turns out, the Vaz haven't been the best hosts to their guests. I found a few of them swapping beauty secrets with Lazlo's wife:



His daughter was similarly zombified. Understandable, Lazlo is pretty upset about the whole thing and I have to beat his sorrow out of him. Really, it was for his own good. Finally, after destroying the entire man's family and committing a city-wide orgy of violence, I get my beloved fake ID and the arc ends.

I gave it three stars with the asterisk noting that it could have easily been a 4 or 5 star arc. If my villain were doing all this for a briefcase full of diamonds or the identity of my mother's killer or the antidote to some slow-acting poison which was slowly wearing me down, then this arc would have been awesome. It was well written otherwise, with great details and intriguing twists and turns. It was very creative and - more importantly - unique. In the end though, the fake ID thing just made it silly, and ruined the whole "dark downward spiral of evil" vibe.

I used the ID thing myself as well. It is pretty important considering that you are supposed to come straight out of the ZIG and dumped into Mercy Town. With not much more on you then a soiled costume. A place where you can only leave once you mysteriously convince a few Drones and Guards that you are not to be zapped into oblivion. Normal people have to stand in line, show off their papers at Mercy Island Fortress, the Ferry immigration Service (ever seen that shanty town outside? That could have been you). And the fun doesn't stop there, ever been to Grandville and their immigration lines? The Fake ID helps you there. You can cut lines there and nobody tries to kill you. And every time you talk to an arbiter or a Quartermaster guess what, they want to see ID. Worse they want to see not just any Fake ID, they want to see an ID that is indistinguishable from the real thing. Your $100 Cnd won't give you that. And these police officers are more the kill first, interrogate the corpse later variety. Do you want to bet your live every time you flash your ID?

I assume that normal Destined Ones probably get those from Arachnos themselves by working for Kalinda or a fake one from Burke. Those who fail, end up rioting at Mercy Fortress trying to get home. I used my Fake ID ploy for you working for another organization who can arrange things, change records at the right places and who got the clout to assure that bribed officials stay bribed. Considering how needed those things will be, well worth a few felonies.

However, your review opened my eyes that I need to emphasize the: "You want one thing" more.

All valid points re: the ID, but if that's the take an author is going to use in their arc, they need to really hammer home why this is so vital. The vast majority of people playing these arcs (myself included) haven't read nearly enough backstory to just intrinsically understand that. My main complaint was that - no matter WHAT the mission goal is - the player needs to feel like what he/she is doing is commensurate to the reward. I didn't get that from Quid Pro Quo and it diminished what was an otherwise excellent arc.