Diary of a Not Casual Player

09/17/10: Friday. I spent time doing more tip missions for Alting and for my other corruptor Beverly Chills, who finished the morality mission and becomes a rogue. With Alting I'm working on becoming a hero. I group with Alting and gain a couple of levels. Spent more time marketing. No TFs again tonight.

09/18/10: Saturday. More marketing and tip missions. My current goal is to finally take two older corruptors hero. I have a set of nine defenders and corruptors who are "buff bot" girls who escaped from an AE mission – of which at least four are level 43 to 46: Sonic Girl Seven, Bubble Girl Six, Ice Girl Eight, and Dark Girl Four. The two corruptors, who were created back in the Spring specifically to become heroes with GR, are Pain Girl Nine and Fire Girl Three. One's on each account and so to save time I dual box them through the tip missions, but at times it's very rough going. I also manage to get Alting to hero status. All of this, and a little marketing, takes up most of my morning, and then I head up North to hang out with my friends for the rest of the day.

09/19/10: Sunday. More marketing and tip missions. Pain Girl and Fire Girl turn rogue without problems – other than I've run the exact same morality mission four times in a row now. I know there's more than one for villains going rogue, but I've only seen a different one once.

All of these tip and morality missions take time and I've been doing most of them solo. I do group a bit again with Alting, but I'm itching to do some task forces; haven't done one for days. But first I log off and get in an hour of exercise, then after a few minutes online to check some market things I go to the store. When I log back on later, it turns out MG had started up a shard TF – Sara Moore. She'd wanted to invite me but I'd logged off just before that. Ah well!

I join a Numina TF instead with Shinobu Eden. The third mission takes forever – none of the stealthers can find the Envoy of Shadows. We would have been better off just fighting through the mission as a team. I eventually find him with Shinobu Eden employing "tanker stealth". After this the hunts take longer than normal, and we finish in about 1 hour 40 minutes – a very long time for a Numina.

In the meantime, while on the Sara Moore, MG is having me check the availability of names using my second account. She was interested in a name as silly as Alting, but "BRB" "AFK" and, for that matter, "BIO" are already taken. Also "WB" and "Congrats".

09/20/10: Monday. No TFs again tonight. Marketed a bit, then helped people out on a few regular missions. I did manage to get Shinobu Eden to 38 and Alting to 28, they were both pretty close to level beforehand. I assemble a team to take down Jack in Irons. I only need the five hunt badges and to see Sally a second time, and I'll have my Geas.

09/21/10: Tuesday. I'm tired of tip missions and regular teams -- I've been on too few TFs lately. If MG isn't running anything tonight then I'm going to run a Synapse and maybe something else. I get my exercise in early and log in by 5 PM ready for something. It turns out, MG wants to run another shard TF. The only one I need on my main badger is Dr. Q, and I don't want to start that on a weekday night. We decide to run a Faathim instead.

In the meantime my scrapper Shinobu Dragonheart is near a billion influence from selling crafted IOs from AE ticket bronze rolls – but I'm nearly out of tickets. I run through a quick AE mission and I get some really great rolls afterwards – 3 Decimations, a Mako's, an Oblit, a Reactive Armor Resist, about 10 others that I know will sell.

I don't have time to craft them – Faathim is starting. I bring my bubbler, because that's what MG wanted most. MG and two others are blasters; blaster like bubblers. But we're running with a stormy troller as our only healer. 3 blasters, 2 stalkers, a brute, a bubble defender and a stormy. Someone asks what the over/under is for deaths. I suggest 125; he takes the over, I take the under. After that I get to complain when anyone dies that they're trying to make me lose the bet.

Faathim is a long task force. Supposedly it can be done in 2 hours but our last one was nearly 4. Well into it, one person (who had been trying to join one of MG's shard TFs for weeks) complains about the seemingly endless "gather the keys" missions. "This task force is about nothing but keys!" When some malta show up, someone says, "Oooh! The plot thickens!" and I added, "I wonder if they plan to steal something that will take five extra missions to recover?" Two missions later, one person says, "Uh, you were kidding about the five extra missions, right?" Sorta – it's only three missions, with two fedex talk to Azurias in between.

In the meantime someone else in the SG had advertised for an ITF. "I'd join you if I wasn't on this Faathim" I said. I want to run my bubbler on ITFs. MG says I should just tell the leader of my team that my SG is calling and quit. Later the same person is advertising for a Manticore TF. MG wants to join. "Just tell your leader your SG is calling…" I say.

We finish in 3 hours 19 minutes, which feels fast after the 3 hour 49 minute one from a week or so ago. Only 93 deaths! It's only 9:30 PM, so somewhat predictably, MG wants to run a Manticore. I do, too. ^_^

I switch to Tiffany Blackheart for this, an MA/WP scrapper. She's in a SG that used to be about six people, but has dwindled to three people including me (the one toon only) and the two people who founded the SG, who log in maybe once every few days. I'd been reluctant to leave their SG –- one of them is still a global friend, and I had nearly 1 million prestige earned for their SG, but I haven't talked to either of them in maybe six months. I finally decide that I should move Tiff to the SG I actually play with.

We finish the Manticore in 48 minutes. We're usually quite fast on it, but that's maybe a new record for us. We have a couple of people who've never done a TF before – one is a bit disappointed that we skipped so many fights. She's near level so MG says, "We should do a Katie then. That's only 30 minutes." The new person agrees that this sounds good.

We finish the Katie TF in 24 minutes. In fact, I don't think we had a single death. People levelled, everyone was happy.

Wow. Definitely not casual. You spend more time writing about the game than I do playing it. Seriously! I envy you.

Other than liquor, this game is the only stress relief that I have. Sometimes, I combine the two if I really want to spoil myself.

I enjoy reading your experiences. Keep it up if you can.

Holy bananas and orange peels.... I have a lot of ground to cover if I wish to get out of the hardly plays area.... ^^"

Good show!

9/22/10 Wednesday: I logged on later than usual. I was a bit worried that I'd get sucked into a task force as soon as I logged on and not have time to craft and sell the stuff I'd bought yesterday. And I had good reason to worry: just as I logged in, MG was announcing the time of a Numi she'd just finished.

"Sister?" she asked. Well yeah, okay, I can do marketing stuff some other time. I join. While I'm at it, I tell MG that Sneaking (ResidentBaka, who was on the team) wants to do a Dr. Q this weekend. "I said it's a really short TF." "You're both liars," MG replied.

The Sister Psyche is not one of the shorter of the legacy task forces. These days I'd rank it behind Synapse as the second-longest of the six Freedom Phalanx TFs. That's the really bizaare thing about these six task forces -- the earliest one, Positron, was the longest one in it's old form; the second one by level is the longest of them currently, and then Sister, the third one by level, is the next longest. Citadel and Manticore are routinely faulted as boring, but you can knock them out in under an hour (Manticore especially). Numina can be done pretty fast too, if the team leader is good about directing people during the hunts. But why you'd make the longest TFs ones that lower-level players would join has always been a mystery. I do think they should rework Synapse if only for that reason, but at least it has never been as bad as Posi was.

But the Sister is always popular, because it's still low enough that the majority of people in your SG can join, and it's freakshow. Everyone loves Freakshow, even still today.

I dunno why. I happen to like Council myself. They're boring but very easy. ^_^

Anyway we finish in... something like 1 1/2 hours, I forget. And MG decides that a Synapes is next. Well, I need that for Task Force Commander on Shinobu Eden, so of course I join that too. That takes 1 hour and 40 minutes -- which is not a bad time really for a Synapse.

That was pretty much my evening, two long task forces. I did manage to get some recipes crafted and listed for sale before I went to bed. ^_^

9/23/10 Thursday: Nachos for Friday (at work) so I got home late after stopping at the store. I logged in for a little bit. I told MG that I wanted to exercise before joining anything, but while exercising I realized I'd forgotten the cilantro! How can I make salsa without cilantro? So I made another trip, then made salsa, then logged in pretty late. MG and company were already on a task force, I forget which one. Another Sister maybe.

When they were done, MG wanted to start up a Manticore. I really only had time for one TF tonight and wanted to join, but there were 10 people wanting in on it. We debated running two Manticores simultaneously, but then someone who really needed Numina for their TFC decided that she was going to start a Numi regardless. I and a couple of others joined her instead. As I said in coalition chat, " Numina's better than Manticore anyway. Giant Monster with Car for Club > Man in Suit". MG replied, "You're right! Now I want to do a Numi!"

Manti finished in about 50 minutes, and MG started up a Numi. Our Numi finished in 1 hour 11 minutes. I went to bed after that. ^_^

9/24/10 Friday: Got on early. MG asked me if I wanted to run to run that Dr. Quaterfield in an hour. Hmm... Friday night, starting about 6 PM... sure!

I've never run the Dr. Q before. It's the one blueside task force/trial that I still haven't attempted. We all knew it could take 5 or 6 hours. We got started about 6:30 PM. We had a really good mix for the team -- two blasters, two scrappers (I think), ResidentBaka's stalker, some support -- maybe another scrapper or brute, I forget. It was just enough support and tons of damage so that things moved along quickly.

There's really not much I can say about the task force itself. It's 22 missions, and a lot of them are defeat alls. When you get to the end, there's no AV. It's like the old Positron Task Force, only twice as long and boring. We made very good time though. We finished it in 3 hours and 40 minutes, and I got my badge for Mouse Police. That's badge # 823.

MG threatened to run another shard TF or two on Saturday.

9/25/10 Saturday. MG had actually said that she had things to do later today, but might run something in the morning. But early morning she's not on. Someone wants to run a Numi, but only two of us respond. I spend part of the morning in AE gathering tickets for my scrapper Tiffany Blackheart, since I haven't been marketing much with her. As a rule, I think all of my level 50's should be using their market slots to make money, even if i only log them in once in a while. ^_^ The AE mission I run is Council, and really, I'm in the mood to run a series of Council Task Forces -- CItadel, Hess, Moonfire, and maybe even Khan (because 5th and Council are not that far apart, really). Only a bit later I notice that someone in the Virtue badges channel had organized that very thing -- Council-o-rama, Citadel, Hess, Moonfire, and the 24th level respec mission (for some reason, don't know how that fits a Council theme).

Now I really want to start a Council TF, but the moment I say I'm about to say something, MG pops up. She's thinking of running something "soon". I wait. There's a Citadel starting, so finally I say that if we're not going to run anything, I'm going to join that. "We'll run something after your Citadel then," I'm told.

Leader says, "Tiffany's IO'd out, she can take point." Heh. To be honest, Tiff's a fully IO'd Willpower scrapper -- I can tank Council all day, provided that by "tank" you don't mean keeping them severely taunted. But run ahead and jump in first, gather them up for people to AoE? That's easy.

The Citadel takes just over an hour. After that I wait a bit more, but MG eventually logs off without starting anything after all. RL stuff wins out, for once. I have nothing planned for the day, and I'm still in a Council mood, so I start up a Hess TF. I get 6 people from the SG to join me. When I broadcast for the last spot, I get three replies. I take the first person to reply, and she joins and then drops out after only two missions. That annoys me just a little, since I had two other people who wanted to join in. Anyway, that takes 40 minutes or so, then I go roll my merits for the day, craft and put stuff up for sale. My rolls were all good, if not super-spectacular: Kinetic Combat triple, Decimation triple, Luck of the Gambler triple.

My big problem is that I've mostly been playing TIffany and Mouse Police lately, and they're both vigilante, so I can't do the Hero Merit thing. Ah, well!

When I log on in the evening I join a team with Alting and soon I'm level 29 and nearly to level 30. The PuG is somewhat dysfunctional though, setting an old mission and abandoning it, changing settings, and when the leader dc'd we ran another full mission without inviting him back or replacing him -- the new person in charge wouldn't answer any tells or give any reasons why, she just ignored everyone and continued the mission. I left after that, as MG wants to run a Posi2.

I join with Alting hoping to hit 30. MG's not at max level for the TF so she puts me in charge, but this doesn't work as Alting has never done Posi1. Anyway most of what I remember from this TF was that the one non-SG person was never on the same page as us, and kept asking why we weren't doing this or that. "We need to stay together!" "We're just grabbing these bombs, hang on." "Don't we need to get those outside bombs?" "Already got them." "We should take out that lower group next." "No, we just need to find the runner and we'll be done here." "We need to take up a defensive position and not run all over the map!" Well okay, that time she was right -- we aggro'd the whole map and died. But mostly I think she was expecting a different style of gameplay than what she got with our group, so there was some mutual frustration on both sides I think.

And she would send me tells about how crazy the other people were, but the other people are the same people I play with every night. ^_^ Mind you, MG and LL like to play their blasters like tanks -- at least, they like to run in ahead of team and go nova immediately, and this style of play doesn't change just because they're too low to have a nova yet.

After that MG wanted to run a Manticore. Heh, what else is new? I switch to Shinobu Eden, hoping to hit 40, but I don't quite make it. The TF went smoothly until the crey hunt in Bricks, when a supernatural event spawned and we had to wait it out. After that it took forever for the two-man team in King's Row to actually find Councilman Birch. Despite these delays, we finish in 1 hour 10 minutes.

Before logging off I ran Alting's level 30 costume mission and roll on about 75 merits and the bulk of 7000 tickets. I like level 30 recipes -- in fact, I think I'll keep Alting at 30 for a while so I can do more merit rolls. I dump a bunch of recipes onto other toons and e-mail stuff to myself; too much stuff to deal with right at the moment.

9/26/10 Sunday. I log on not really planning to spend my whole day gaming. But somehow that tends to happen when it's not my plan, unless I have concrete plans for something else first.

I log onto Alting. My plan is to finish rolling tickets for her and to design a new costume, but when a SG mate asks if I want to join them in Bricks I say yeah. Almost immediately I wonder why... I don't want to level past 30 and I have other things I wanted to do on this toon. But teaming with people in the SG is fun, so I turn off exp and join them.

Almost immediately our SG Leader is broadcasting for a Moonfire TF. Hmm, I'd rather do that -- part of the idea is to stay at 30 and roll as many merits at that level as I can. He's not starting right away so I finish up the mission and leave. Eventually we get the Moonfire started. SG Leader is not at max level so he puts me in charge. Why do I detect a pattern here?

One person is impatient and wants to get going. "I don't have a lot of time here guys," he says. "You do realize this is a task force, not a series of missions?" another asks. "Yeah, I know, but I also know it can be done in about 50 minutes." But in our very first mission this guy disappears and doesn't come back. Annoying. On the other hand, the task force takes us 1 hour 32 minutes, so he probably wouldn't have stayed until the end anyway. But I don't like starting TFs with people who aren't prepared to finish them.

Alting is good at stealth and teleport, good at support and does very decent damage. I'm not sure why I haven't played a corruptor up this high before -- they're fun.

During the TF MG comes online and says we're going to do a Justine Augustine TF today. Ugh. Really? But Sneaking needs it (ResidentBaka's stalker), so of course I agree to help. But after the Moonfire he's not online yet so we start up a Posi1. MG isn't at max level for the TF and puts me in charge. :/

Half the team is PuG, and that's a problem, because we're not all on the same page, people keep going afk, several of the toons are low level and probably not well IO'd... I state that I'm going to stealth to the end and teleport everyone. So far, so good. I reach the end, port the first person, and by that point the rest of the team is dying because they didn't wait. Then someone teleports me back to the team. WTF? So I head back to the end of the mission and start porting more people, but someone aggros everything and we have a team wipe. I wait for the mobs to clear, rez, and... someone teleports me to the begining of the mission again.

At this point I'm getting really pissed off and let the team have it. Probably did not make a good impression on those that don't normally play with me, but our ineptitude was getting ridiculous. The person who had ported me the second time -- not sure if they'd done it both times -- was a warshade who apologized and said it was their son who was porting me for fun, and they'd told him to stop it. :/

Anyway I had to turn my teleport prompt on and step away from the keyboard for a couple of minutes.

The rest of the TF went better but I wouldn't say it went great. One of the two Warshades went afk in the final mission for more than 30 minutes. I dc'd and came back, so MG was in charge and I think she kicked him. Ten or fifteen minutes later he apologized and asked me if I could invite him back, which of course was impossible.

We had several team wipes on the final misison -- I don't think I've done a Posi1 yet that didn't have at least one there -- and we finished in 1 hour 40 minutes with 60 deaths. "You guys suck!" our SG Leader declared when I announced it. I had to agree.

Immediately we start up the Justine Augustine TF. SG Leader is on the team, and MG and ResidentBaka and LL. For once I'm not in charge. MG is directing people where to go, and things move very fast. It's still not a great TF, but we manage to finish in only 1 hour 20 minutes, with 13 deaths -- much better than our Posi.

And... MG, Leader and crew immediately start up a Statesman Task Force. "Really?" I ask. Because MG typically runs the Freedom Phalanx TFs, the Striga and Croatoa ones and the shards, but very rarely runs ITF and seems to almost never run Lady Gray, Statesman or Khan. But our Leader likes running the harder ones so it was probably his idea. "You're not up for a STF?" he asks me. "I need a break," I reply. "I've been online all day -- since before you started that Moonfire." He says, "I have too. I've been online ten hours!" Ugh. These people!

In the evening I log back in. I spend a lot of time crafting and storing level 30 recipes. I ask how the STF went – very well, I'm told.

MG starts up a Citadel. I want to join, but I also am in the middle of market stuff that I want to get done. Anyway MG doesn't ask me specifically about it and it's good for other people in the SG to get in on some of the TFs that MG runs. By the time I'm done and they're done, it's 9:30 PM, and I'm hoping MG wants to run something else. "Nightly Manti TF starting!" she says. "I like how that sounds, I think I do need to make it a nightly Manti Task Force." I join of course.

Once that's done – about an hour if I remember right – Isaac wants to start up a Sister. Isaac joined our SG last week after reading this thread. New toon, now high enough to do Sister Psyche, and apparently you can form one after 10 PM in our SG. ^_^ It's late and I know I should get to bed. "You don't want to do a Sister?" MG asks. "That takes more than an hour, right?" I reply. "It's only an hour!" MG promises. "Invite her before she has time to think about it!"

So yeah. Sister Psyche, which takes a good 1 hour 40 minutes. I stayed up waaay too late.

If I wasn't writing things down in this thread I'd never remember what I'd done two weeks ago, or even a week ago.

9/3 to 9/27 -- 24 days

3 Posi 1
2 Posi 2
1 Synapse
4 Sister
3 Citadel
7 Manticore
5 Numina
1 Hess
2 Moonfire
2 Katie
1 Dr. Q
2 Justine Augustine
2 Faathim
1 Imperius
1 Mender Lazarus
(2 Failed CoP attempts)

37 TFs in 24 days. I should figure out how many merits that is....

09/27/10: Monday. I have a few goals for the week: run a "Council-o-rama" series of task forces (Citadel, Hess, Moonfire); get Shinobu Eden to 40 or even 41 and run an Eden Trial, and run one or more respec trials. MG never runs those, but I kind of like 'em, and I haven't seen anyone in the SG run one in a while. Maybe run an ITF at some point too, we don't run those very often either. Other than that, I just want to earn merits on Alting and roll for level 30 recipes.

When MG comes on I tell her my Council-o-rama plan. "Want to do that tonight?" she asks. "I have a level 22 blaster, we can run Moonfire and Hess and by then I'll be 25 and high enough to run Citadel!" This is a masterful plan, with one fatal flaw – Moonfire is 23+, and Hess is 25+ just like Citadel.

In any case, we do run all three TFs in a row – Moonfire in 1 hour 29 minutes, Hess in only 29 minutes, and Citadel in 1 hour 12 minutes. MG says, "I need to run Hess more often!" After that MG asks if I want to do anything else. "It's late, but I could go for our nightly Manti." Ooooh yeah, the nightly Manti!" MG replies. So we start that up, and finish in 59 minutes, even though people weren't taking directions well. "Everyone head to Crey's Folley, Tiffany head to King's Row," MG announced just before the rescue Councilman Birch misison. But when I get to the mission door in KR, more than half the team is in zone with me.

I ran the first two TFs on Alting, my locked-at-level-30 corruptor. The last two I ran on Tiffany because she's so much fun to play against Council or Crey. Afterwards someone wanted to run a Numina TF (second one of the night – someone else had run one while we were on the Striga TFs), and MG and others joined that. Before going to bed I converted 50 merits on Alting to a hero merit and rolled for five level 30 recipes. I got a Kinetic Combat triple, 2 Mako triples, a Mako double, and a sleep IO.

9/28/10: Tuesday. All of MG's toons appear to have the same name by using several L's and substituting capital I's for L's. All of the toons have "II" at the end of the name to make this even easier. MG runs two accounts like I do so MG can have conversations with MG in SG chat to "prove" that there's more than one of them. Monday someone had threatened to make an MG III. I liked the idea a lot and before logging off I had created an MG I. I wasn't sure that the other person would actually follow through on their threat, but when I log in Tuesday I find an MG VI standing in Atlas Park (with the "real" MG), and I learn that there's an MG III and an MG IV running about too.

My MG I is a corruptor. I decide to spend the night getting to 20 and working on my tip missions. With 2 accounts this takes me until about 8 PM, by which point MG and the SG have apparently run a Hess TF and a Manti TF and someone else in the SG ran a Katie, and MG was starting up a second Manti. I join for the Manti which takes us 1 hour 2 minutes (the first one was only 48 minutes). I guess we suck. After that, MG and Lucy want help getting one of Lucy's toons from 28 to 30 (so she can run a Manti of course!), so I help them do that. Then I converted 50 more merits for Alting (who'd been on the Manti) and rolled 5 more recipes – nothing really exciting once again, Scirrocco's triple, Decimation triple, Entropic Chaos triple. Bleah.

Every time the SG leader sees me online with a toon that isn't in his SG he bugs me about it. I like the SG quite a bit, but I have 12 characters in the SG already and I have to log them in at least once every two weeks to avoid having them kicked out. (I've kicked myself once so I could invite someone else.) I run two accounts that are both close to full on Virtue, so that's more than 60 characters that could be added to the SG. I can't add all of them. Also, and I don't make this argument to our SG leader, but frankly I've got several years and maybe 10 million prestige invested in my solo SG. It exists for me to play with my own base building ideas, and more importantly, it exists for the 9 IO storage bins that I make heavy use of in my marketeering endeavors and to IO out my own toons. Even if I were a leader of a division of our SG with my own base, I wouldn’t have 9 bins of private IO storage. ^_^

In other games, a single character can store a lot of stuff. In CoH, there's only so much a single character can store. Having your own SG base helps a lot.

9/29/10: Wednesday. My goal for the night is to get my new MG I corruptor to the morality mission and turn rogue. I turn down an invite to a Manti TF to do this, but then later MG advertises an ITF. Hmm, we don’t' do those enough. I say I want to come. I log in Tiffany and soon I'm in Cim and on the team, but then a curious thing starts to happen. The team leader, War, makes MG leader and quits the team. Someone else gets invited, but then MG make me leader and quits the team. Someone else quits saying they're going to join a different ITF. Hmm, I've seen this before – too many people were promised positions on the team, and the leaders are trying to satisfy everyone.

War rejoins, I make him leader again. Someone else quits, MG rejoins. War makes MG leader and quits. MG makes me leader and quits. I decide quitting is the popular thing to do, so I quit. MG asks me how many are currently on the team, I say I don't know, that I'm going back to what I was doing before. "I don't want to do the ITF if you're not doing it," she says. "Uh, you were on the team before I even asked to join," I reply.

I finish my rogue tip missions for MG I, and I run into a familiar problem – I street hunt for forty minutes, but my morality tip mission refuses to drop. About that time MG asks if I want to do an Eden Trial. Oooh, my first chance to use Shinobu Eden on the trial she was designed for! Once I'm on the team, it turns out there's someone who's 41 who is leading which is good since Shin Eden is still only 39.

We run into a problem that I encounter sometimes with my SG – everyone rushes headlong into everything, when sometimes rushing is not the best idea. It works on easier TFs that we run all the time, but it's a bad habit that's hard to break. We decide that we have enough special ambrosia inspirations even though some of us (me for example) still don’t' have any and we haven't distributed them or taken an actual count. We rush ahead and free the hostages and I ask if we want to clear the lake first. "No, just clear a path to the titan. Now go! Don't melee him!" "Don't melee him?" "I mean other people, not you." There's a lot of confusion as people charge forward before we've talked about what we're doing. All the DE on the lakes swarms us (predictably) and the team wipes.

So we agree to clear the lake, but while we're doing this part of the team decides to pull the titan back to the caves. Team wipes again, as half of us were still clearing the lake. Someone pulls him again while I'm resting. "Shinobu, get up! He's here!" I die really fast. I'm beginning to think that invul was a really bad choice for a character specializing in the Eden trial – there's a lot of psy damage to contend with. But I'd tanked the titan on my invul tanker before so it seemed like a good idea at the time. I die another time because I only have one ambrosia left, and don't use it immediately. I hit our base to grab more, but there's only one in storage (along with like 80 Essence of the Earths, for whatever reason).

By this point people are annoyed, and one person makes a comment about needing a tank that doesn't constantly die. This stings a little because Shinobu Eden is very well IO'd for level 39. We have four blasters on the team and a defender, and they're all dying very fast, quite possibly because we insist on fighting the titan back in the cave instead of up on his platform (where there's a ledge for squishy types to duck down behind). I'm trying my best to face him away from the team, but it's usually too late, and then I'm tanking without support. "You do realize his rainbow punch extends 300 feet." someone says, Sneaking I think it was. MG sends me a tell, "Actually, I don't think I like the Eden Trial very much."

Anyway we rally and try again. nearly everyone dies immediately, but this time I and one other team member hang on and manage to keep fighting. My health nearly hits zero, but I use the last of my inspirations, Dull Pain repops, my fury bar is maxed out, and with just the two of us we kill the titan. That makes me feel a little better about my "always dying" brute. ^_^ And everyone says it was fun. Eh… if you say so. I did hit 40 on Shinobu Eden.

I go back to the rogue isles, join a team, and soon my morality mission drops. A bit later MG I is in Independence Port. That's enough for me for one night!

09/30/10 Thursday. Since I didn't do many TFs the last two nights I'm up for anything. I want 50 merits for Alting so I can convert and roll them. MG wants to run a Hess TF, and then a Manti. And then a Hess again, and then another Manti. We usually do a Manti in an hour, and she thinks we can do Hess in 30 minutes. And our SG Leader claims that we don't farm.

One person in the SG joins us simply because they recognized the name Alting from this thread.

First Hess, not everything goes perfectly. We finish in 38 minutes. "Not fast enough!" I say. "That was the fastest I've ever done it!" someone else replies. Heh. On to Manticore! This one takes us 1 hour 2 minutes. I convert and roll my merits: Oblit quad, Kinetic Combat triple, Blessing of the Zephyr KB protection, Ghost Widow proc and Devastation proc. That's probably my best hero merit roll yet.

I switch to Tiffany and we run Hess again. This time everything goes perfectly. We finish in 28 minutes. Success! And that's with MG being the only one who could both stealth and port others.

I'm not sure if MG ran another Manti afterwards or not. She went afk for a bit, but someone else in the SG was starting up a Manti. I did some marketing, got my level 40 costume for Shinobu Eden, and log. I still need to finish up my kills for the Geas of the Kind Ones on her, but Friday night will probably be busy.

We almost had that prismatic pansy on the first go, but the problem was we didn't farm enough Ambrosia. Hell I didn't have any when we entered the Titan's chamber, and most people had one max.

Oh well, if it went off without a hitch it'd be boring!


Also that frickin' rainbow footstomp. Man, Fightin' the Titan is a rainbow of pain.

10/01/10 Friday. I don't remember much of what I did on Friday, and I think in part that's because I spent a lot of time logging into all of my marketing toons and writing down how much money they actually had (and making sure they had stuff for sale so I could make more). I didn't write down the totals for any toon with less than 100 million. I didn't even total it all up, but by eyeballing it, I could see that I had about 6 billion or so influence, give or take, spread out over at least 20 different characters.

That's a lot more money than most people in the game ever see, but by the standards of some of the serious marketeers probably not uber-uber-rich. I also have hundreds of merits scattered across multiple characters and hundreds of crafted IOs in my solo SG base, so that allows me to outfit a new character pretty much any way I want. That was always my main goal anyway. ^_^

I went through this inventory in part because there's a new SG on Virtue called the Crazy 88's. This is a marketeer SG whose main goal is to become the number one SG on the server (as ranked by prestige earned) nearly entirely by buying their way there – by purchasing prestige with influence at the SG registrar. I wanted to see if I had enough spare cash to donate a billion to the cause, without making myself poor. I do. ^_^

MG started up an ITF at some point, and I joined that. It went pretty well. I rolled a bunch of merits on Tiffany and got some of the worst rolls I've ever gotten. Ah well, that's the breaks. I also spent some time running five hero tips for my MG I clone.

10/02/10: Saturday. I run into Chaos (one of the Crazy 88's marketeer types) at the market, and I decide then and there that I need to put my plan into action. I've had a character on Virtue since Spring that's perfect for the group: the Wall Street Brawler. I initially created him as a shield scrapper with the idea that when GR came I'd make a kinetics scrapper. With GR, I remade him as a kinetic melee/shield brute, actually. But he was still sitting at level 2 (haven't had a lot of time to play in Praetoria) and based on comments I'd heard, I wasn't sure I wanted a kinetic brute. Also I'm not as fond of shield defense as I used to be. So I remake him again as a kinetic melee/willpower scrapper, then get an invite to the Crazy 88's. I transfer money from multiple characters (so that I don't bankrupt any one of them), and then I log my 2nd account, and soon I'm level 20 and have 1.4 billion influence to play with.

I visit the SG Registrar. My options: donate 10,000 infulence, donate 100,000 influence, or donate 1,400,000 influence. Eh… where's the option to donate just a billion? I have to e-mail 400 million to myself to keep from donating everything I have. Moments later, I have more than 2 million prestige next to my name in the SG list. I've only ever had a million prestige on two different characters before – Tiffany and Mouse, and both of them have since switched SGs. That big number next to my name looks nice. ^_^

Apparently by the end of the weekend the Crazy 88's are ranked #38 among Virtue's SGs – higher even than any division of the SG that I'm normally a member of. ^_^

At some point in the day I also ran a Numina TF I think with MG and company, and I played MG I a bit but didn't finish up my five hero tips. I also ran the Freakalympics arc solo with Tiffany in 1 hour 19 minutes, and that includes going afk for a short bit. I'm pretty sure I can do it in an hour, which is what others have said it possible. I suspect a full team would just slow the whole thing down though.

10/03/10: Sunday. I finally get around to Shinobu Eden's Croatoa hunts, and get all the badges except believer. I have her camped out in Croatoa now. I log her in multiple times during the day to look for Sally, but so far she's been very elusive.

I finished up my tip missions for MG (random PuG team with some very cool people. Someone says, "Nice to see you again MG! I reply but really, I don't know if I teamed with them before or not, heh.) I and got her to hero status, quit the VG and joined the hero SG. After that I was still shy of level 25. I got a blind invite to a team, so I accept. Turns out they're running Vigilante missions. I don't mind since I've done my five tip missions for the day; they can't screw anything up for me. But the leader only states this when asked, then invites more people and doesn't warn them. He also goes afk without warning at one point, then halfway through the 2nd mission suddenly says, "I have to leave!" In the middle of this, he tries to convince two others on the team to join his SG. Yeah, that's the kind of leader I look for in a SG – one who blind invites me to a vigilante tip mission and doesn't warn me what we're doing.

I get MG I to 25. Later I run Tiffany through the Freakalympics again. I want to do it in an hour, but things go horribly wrong. First mission, the boss is on floor 2 but apparently I had to clear floor 4 (the last floor) in order to complete the mission. That alone takes me more than twenty minutes of running around. The second mission I take too long locating the four bosses. In the fourth mission (I think) I find a guy I think is the boss, clear the entire room, only to realize I have the wrong guy. I finish in 1 hour 28 minutes.

Isaac wanted to run a Citadel, so we start that up. It turns out no one on the team can both stealth and teleport teammates. I really need to respec Tiffany to add recall friend. Anyway, because of this we do most of the TF the old fashioned way, fighting our way through everything, and finish in 1 hour 37 minutes.

Did some more marketing, and logged off sorta early for once. ^_^

Always fun to read. And yes, I'm THAT Chaos.

Welcome aboard Organica, warm your hands by the inf bonfire in the workroom and we can plot the downfall of the Casual Gamer!

=P

You know, I also accept infamy donations.

10/04/10: Monday. Mondays are usually slow but tonight was busy. At one point our SG leader was running a level 34 team, a Sister TF and a Synapse TF were both going, and still we had people logging in and asking if there was a team to join, or did anyone want to run a Synapse or Numi or ITF or Posi1.

After totaling my merits yesterday I began to wonder if it would be possible to earn 3,000 merits in a month. That's 100 merits a night. I think that's my new goal for October. It sounds crazy, but actually MG might already be doing that. MG has over 2,000 merits on one character right now. Me, I tend to spend my merits – I have one character with over 300 and 2 or 3 more with over 200.

But I did manage to earn more than 100 merits last night.

I started by running the Freakalympics solo again. I really want to accomplish this in less than an hour, but the first mission bedeviled me again. This time the first hostage was on the third floor, so I decided to gather up the other two, deal with the ambushes, clear the top floor, and lead them all out at once. Unfortunately the top floor was massive and the last two hostages were in literally the last two places I looked. The first mission took me 28 minutes.

After that, things went well. I finished off the whole arc in 1 hour 16 minutes. MG started up a Sister TF while I still had 3 missions to go, and then a Synapse was forming while I still had the (always very full) last room of the last mission to clear. But I moved fast and was able to finish, alt to Alting, and join the Synapse just before they started.

I announced when Babbage was about to be up and where. MG had a full team waiting for us when we came out of the mission – maybe even her Synapse team, I wasn't sure. Babbage went down in less than 30 seconds. ^_^ We finished up in 2 hours 8 minutes, a very good time for Synapse.

After that MG ran a "Hessicore", her new terms for nightly Hess and Manticore speed runs. Hess took 28 minutes, Manticore took 47 minutes. We were flying!

MG went off to run a Numina after that, but it was after 10 PM and I knew better than to stay up that late. Still, that's 143 merits for the evening. I earned 109 of them on Alting, still locked at level 30, and immediately converted 50 of them and did a hero merit roll. Oblit triple, Decimation triple, Touch of Death triple, Expedient Reinforcement triple, and – an Analyze Weakness, triple I think. So overall a very nice roll, but I'm still waiting on that Numi unique or LotG +recharge to drop.

While I was doing my Freakalympics run I e-mailed 250 million to the SG leader as a prize money donation for our upcoming Halloween party. I didn't hear back from him for over an hour, but he checked the e-mail just before logging off. "Uh… are you sure you want to donate this much?" he asks. Yes, of course I do. ^_^ I want good prizes!

10/05/10: Tuesday. I start the night with my fourth attempt at a Freakalympics in under an hour. The first mission is done in 13 minutes – my best start yet! I'm confident I'll do it this time! But other missions are in far-flung areas and take me longer than usual to complete. I finish in 1 hour 13 minutes – my best time, but still over an hour.

By this point MG and company have started up a Sister Psyche TF that I wasn't able to join. I want to do something else that will take about an hour, so that I can finish about when the Sister should finish. I decide that maybe I should do the Freakshow War – 33 merits, several missions that are stealthable, looks like it could be done fairly quickly. I ask if anyone wants to join me but nobody does.

I finish that up in 1 hour 7 minutes. It's fast, but not as interesting as the Freakalympics with that cool final mission map. But a Sister Psyche – Freakshow War – Freakalympics run might make a nice "Freakorama" combo. ^_^

I'm not sure why people don't run Ouro arcs more often. Everyone jumps when you want to do a Sister Psyche TF, but nobody cares to run a Freakalympics arc. There's no AV, and there's no badge, but 34 merits is nothing to sneeze at and the final map is pretty cool. Run through Ouro, it's basically a task force in all but name. If they made the end boss an AV, added a badge, and placed a contact in the city and called it the Freakalympics Task Force, people would suddenly run it all the time.

By this point the Sister TF has failed – two people dc'd and didn't come back, two people quit. MG is waiting for me to finish, and we start up the nightly "Hessicore". Hess TF – 33 minutes. Manticore – 59 minutes. So that's 118 merits on the evening. ^_^ MG went on to a Numina TF, but I was good and logged off "early" again. Converted 50 merits for a hero merit and did another roll for Alting – nothing very spectacular, once again.

My rant for the day is this: Superspeed is not stealth, especially in a crowded tunnel. Stop pretending it is. Alting is a dark/dark defender with superspeed and a stealth IO, so I have 3 types of stealth going. I can bounce off of enemies and they don't notice me. But when the moron with only superspeed runs past, all the council open fire, and guess what? Their bullets hit me and suddenly they seem me. Then, when I get to my destination and want to teleport other people in, guess what? Your stupid superspeeding-only *** is dragging enemies in from the hallway and making it impossible for me to do my job. Do everyone a favor and wait at the entrance when we're trying to stealth a mission, or else invest in some real form of stealth. There are plenty of them available, it's not that hard.

10/7/10: Thursday. I sort of feel like Thursday was a wasted evening for me. (Wasted in game, I mean – you could easily say I waste all my evenings simply by playing the game ^_^ ). First of all, I converted 50 merits to a hero merit for Alting, and then accidentally rolled it for rare low-level salvage. So that's 20 million and 50 merits cashed in for salvage that barely sells for vendor price. Unlike most players, it's not really a huge hit for me – I earn more than 50 merits and 20 million a night – but it's still depressing.

I managed another Freakalympics run in about 1 hour 15 minutes – that seems to be a very constant time for me – but by then MG had started up a new static team that I'd promised to be on. We ran through the Hollows arc all the way to Frostfire, which took us late into the evening. Unfortunately, because they started before I showed up, I couldn't run my own arc at the same time, so I earned no merits. That was a bit depressing too. I had fun teaming with people but I felt I wasn't living up to my self-imposed goals.

10/08/10: Friday night I ran my Freakalympics and Freakshow War arcs solo – about 1 hour 15 minutes and then 1 hour 5 minutes. I joined a Citadel after that, and ended the evening with the usual Hess and Manticore. Really, I barely remember any of it. ^_^

10/09/10: Saturday I start the morning with my usual Freakalympics arc.

Afterwards someone in the SG wants to run a Hess TF. "Does anyone have the contact?" the SG leader asks. "I do," I say – on Tiffany at least, and Mouse. But the guy who wants to run it claims to have the contact too. That's great, as I can use Alting, who can both stealth and port others and who needs merits for another hero merit conversion & roll.

Once we get there, the leader discovers that no, Hess won't talk to him after all. (This, mind you, was after he went afk for three minutes halfway through forming the team, and without warning anyone. I had people asking to join and the leader wasn't responding.) He randomly puts someone else in charge who also can't talk to Hess. I'm having serious doubts about how this particular Hess is going to go. I log off and switch to Tiffany, and eventually convince someone to hand the star to me. Then we're off!

I try to direct people to speed things along, but Tiffany can only stealth – she can't port the rest of the team to her. We have one person who can stealth and ATT, and we use that once. On other missions we just fight our way to the objective. This actually doesn't waste much time – it's a high-powered, high-damage team. In the end we don't pull Hess, we fight our way up the scaffolding to him – and still finish in 38 minutes. ^_^

A bit later MG comes on and we run the daily Hessicore, which I run using Alting. Our "speed run" of Hess takes 36 minutes – nearly the same time as the half-speed run earlier in the day. Sometimes stealthing and porting people in takes just as much time as brute-forcing your way there as a team. Especially when it's a good team. Afterwards I head to Ouro and run "A Madman's Council", the arc that opens up Hess as a contact. Now Alting can start the Hess TF too. ^_^

In the evening MG wanted to run a second Hess TF – my third of the day. I decided to run this on Dark Girl Four, a level 46 dark/dark defender who can stealth and teleport. Alting is a dark/dark corruptor who stealths and teleports, so I figured Dark Girl would be the least confusing alternative. But of course, there were a few different power choices between the two so I was sometimes confused anyway. Maybe moreso, since they're otherwise so similar.

Before logging off I ran a Freakshow War arc in just over an hour. 164 merits on the day!

10/08/10: Sunday. I like scrappers. I have 9 at level 50, and my oldest Organica is now 47. I like melee in general -- I also have 2 level 50 tanks and 1 level 50 brute. I really need to level up a stalker – I have lots of low-level stalkers, but none even in the 20's. But scrappers are my favorite.

Recently I've really enjoyed playing Tiffany Blackheart, a heavily IO'd MA/WP scrapper. She's unstoppable. I want to duplicate that build with a different primary. I logged into several of my lower-level scrappers -- I have a level 22 Dual Blades/WP scrapper that I play a bit and get to 23, but Dual Blades doesn't seem powerful enough to me. Mind you, I've never played it at the higher levels, but… I'm just not sold on it.

I have several MA scrappers (four 50's in fact), two katana, two broadsword, one electric… I have a spines scrapper at level 30… my 50 brute is dark melee so I've tried that before… and then I have a fire melee/SR at level 50 on Victory, where I hardly ever play. I really like fire melee though. I decide that's exactly what I want – fire melee/WP.

So I buy two new slots and create a brand new fire melee/WP scrapper. Yay, just what I need – another new character to level!

It's Sunday morning on Virtue, and you'd think I could find a sewer team. Eventually a tank tries to form one, but when we're at 4 players and he struggles to find anyone else, he abruptly quits the team. I street sweep to level 5, and then decide to give in and PL myself a bit. PLing bores me today though. My previous alts I'd PL'd to 20, but right now I can't remember why. At 17 I can slot level 20 IOs. At 20 I can run my 2nd costume mission and alignment missions, and my last few alts have been villains. Those were my only reasons, right?

I stop at 17, spend time crafting IOs, and soon I'm in Steel Canyon on a team. And then, I remember why I normally PL to 20 – no stamina. It hurts less on a team though, and soon I'm 19.

I take a break, but later come back to my new scrapper. I want to get to 20, get quick recovery, and run my costume mission. I join a team advertising for new members. I quickly notice one guy has a single star above his name, and check notes – "NEVER TEAM WITH THIS MORON!" it says. Hmm, and I know exactly which guy it is too, the one that kicked me from a team a few weeks ago for complaining that his "rogue" mission was, in fact, a villain mission. Oh, and at the same time I notice this, he's calling out someone in /broadcast, saying how he knows that person and they should be avoided. Pot, meet kettle! But then -- what to do, what to do?

Well, he's not leader, and I'm not leader. I asked to join, and I only want to gain 2/3rds of a level. I decide I'm okay with teaming with him for the moment. And in fact he's a very good player, just a bit abrasive. I get my level and the team breaks up. But that was my first ever chance to refuse to team with someone based on a previous bad player rating – and I didn't pull the trigger.

Next thing I know, I'm being invited to a team by MG. "Hessicorina?" MG says, as soon as I join. "What?" I reply. "Hess + Manticore + Numina," MG says. "Oh, sure," I say. "Alting to Alting."

On the Manticore TF, my old friend DC comes along. DC is an old-school powerleveler, farmer, PvPer, and more recently a hardcore badger. The few toons he plays are always VERY heavily IO'd. This is fine, but he does like to show off, so at a couple points during the TF he says things like, "Yawn, softcapped for smashing/lethal," and "Doo doo do, not being hurt, la la la," and other things intended to remind everyone how awesome he is. It's a little annoying – he's not doing anything Tiffany can't do, but hopefully I'm not as obnoxious about it.

Maybe I need to invite him to the arena to see how awesome his toons really are. ^_^ But what I really want to do one of these nights is solo Manticore on Tiffany. I think I could do it, easily.

Someone in the SG wants to know if anyone has Kinetic Combats in the level 30 range. That's exactly the sort of thing I keep stored in my base. He needs an acc/dam, a dam/end, and a triple, and also three Scirocco's Dervish IOs. I have all but one of the Scirocco's. After the Manti ends I switch to Nina Ballerina, who is nearly identical to Tiffany (also an MA/WP scrapper) but who is in my solo SG. I pull what he needs and meet him in Atlas. "How much?" he asks. Well, here's where it gets tricky – I haven't checked prices on everything, but I know that the Kinetic Combat dam/end and triple are the really expensive ones, and I'm handing over five IOs total. "Is 75 million okay?" I ask. I’m pretty sure that's less than I could get selling them, but possibly more than he can afford. But hopefully he's been pricing these on the market before asking if anyone had some available. He agrees to the price, but only has half the money on this character. MG and company are waiting for me in Founder's, so I tell him he can give me the rest later. Actually, it doesn't matter too much to me if I get the rest – I like being able to help people by having this stuff on hand, especially when it's someone who wants to slot the same levels that I prefer, and I don't want to charge too much but I'm wary of becoming the person who hands out expensive IOs cheap to whoever in the SG wants them, because EVERYONE will come asking.

I join the Numi with Nina, who unfortunately can't stealth. We have 4 blasters, 2 scrappers, and 2 stalkers – things are obliterated at lightning speed. Tank? Support? What's that? We finish in 59 minutes. ^_^

10/11/10: Monday – MG wants to run a Hessicore early, if I'm available. I am, and we do. That nets me 51 merits on Alting, good for another hero merit roll – which mostly sucks when I do it, Unspeakable Terror, two Ghost Widow's Embrace, and two Mako's. I nabbed a Luck of the Gambler +7.5% recharge and a Blesing of the Zephyr 4 pts knockback protection on my Saturday roll, but my rolls for Sunday and Monday have been very sucky.

Just before we start the Hess, I notice we have 3 tanks. "It's too bad we don't have a tank," I say. One of them asks, "What do you mean?" There are other people talking to, so it's not clear who he's asking, but then he sends me a tell: "I'm a tank." Wow, thanks for the newsflash! I was confused about that! I'm not sure if he's just clueless or truly stupid. Two minutes into our first misison, he declares, "This is too low!" and abruptly quits the team. Okay then – confirmed idiot. I make notes, MG makes notes, and adds, "How not to be on my teams ever again." Level 50 tank, too.

Afterwards MG wants to start up our static team. The plan is to run this team Mondays, Tuesdays and Thursdays. This is going to make it very hard for me to keep up my pace of 100 merits a night, but after all I did promise to join, and it is fun. But I do kind of complain that I wasn't able to run the same missions as the rest of the team last time, so I got no merits at all. Even a few would make me feel better. While we're waiting I start in on Wincott's hunt missions, and we ultimately spend the evening running all of my missions for Wincott and Flux, ending with another Frostfire battle. Frostfire's a very long mission, it's 10 PM by the time we're done, but at least I'm on the same page as everyone else now. But that's just 15 merits on top of the 51 from earlier in the night, so I'll need to make that up at some other point.

In any case, everyone's about 14 or 15 now… we're going to outlevel the Hollows before we finish all of the arcs. That always seems to happen when I run the Hollows arcs.