City of Heroes: Live Forum Archive

5th Column SF... Where the REAL Shard action is???

crayhal

By crayhal,
Posted on: 2010-12-28 10:54 in Freedom

 

Posted

So, last night I ran the 5th Column SF for the first time. I don't know why I hadn't tried this before, but usually my time is constrained and I don't have SF's on the brain. Anyway, long story short... we "lost."

I say that with no little measure of sarcasm, because even though Reichsman didn't go down, he decided to drop a whopping NINE Shards on me for the effort of attempting to take him and his people out. NINE.

So, if you're a villian out there trying to rock the LGTF for Shards, may I suggest a trip to Grandville. It was definitely worth it for me.

 

Posted

You don't have to do an SF to get shard drops. You can run papers and missions in cimerora. It's very likely that you will have the same drop rate, ie shard per minute. So far, my rate is something like 1 shard/10 mins. So if you spent 90 mins in the 5th column SF, you have a similar drop rate as mine. If you spent 2 hours, your drop rate is actually lower, ie, 1 shard/13 mins.

 

Posted

I like this SF for shards for 2 reasons. One, you are guaranteed the Dimentional Keystone at the end (if you want it), and the ambushes in the last mission are definitely an excellent source of shards. Not only are the foes mostly Smashing/Lethal damage and easy to protect yourself against, but when done "correctly", it's a good solid 15-20 minutes of nonstop killing. More kills per minute = more chances at drops => more shards over the given timeframe.

Besides those two points, I agree with crayhal that there is nothing about the rest of the SF that makes it stand out as opposed to regular missions, but comparing it to other TFs.. I get about the same increased drop rate from a "kill-all ITF", which also offers Ancient Nictus Fragment at the end as well.

 

Posted

I will also say on this particular run my shard rate appeared to be a bit up compared to some of the other TF/SFs.

@MarvelatMee and @COL Burn

24 - 50s
Too many ALTs

 

Posted

When everyone was doing the Lady Winter missions, I'd swear I was getting 3-5 shard drops per map. Tried it last night and only scored 2, but this might be an easy one to hop into and treat as a kill all, since it's so easily reset and allows for heroes and villains.