Returning Player Diary
my lil RWZ Challenge vid
That was fun!
Thanks, ladies.
Screens forthcoming.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
well, my dum gui toggle didn't work, but here are a couple of shots anyway. =/
Pre-TF lineup!
Preparing to put the smackdown on Positron
He's in there somewhere....
me, Organica, Aurora Girl, one of Organica's pals and PUG'ers recruited via LFG. Full report later!
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Yay! It was a good time!
If only Sutter didn't suck quite so much in comparison, people might run it more. Also, Sutter doesn't give a bad-booty temp power, so there's also that. I took some screenies as well, I'll have to post them when I get home from work.
Carl and Sons @Aurora Girl (Pinnacle)
Yay! It was a good time!
If only Sutter didn't suck quite so much in comparison, people might run it more. Also, Sutter doesn't give a bad-booty temp power, so there's also that. I took some screenies as well, I'll have to post them when I get home from work. |
And to throw off the "Dev's hate villains" people
Orc&Pie No.53230 There is an orc, and somehow, he got a pie. And you are hungry.
www.repeat-offenders.net
Negaduck: I see you found the crumb. I knew you'd never notice the huge flag.
Nice thread Goat, I've recently got back in to the game and this has been useful for sorting out what all has changed and been added.
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I'm still getting surprised by stuff (although the sheer volume and quantity of my astonishment has leveled off), so I guess I'll keep on doing it.
So, the Kal TF was terrific.
Super fun and getting it started was easy peasy- put the boy to bed, logged in to a tell from Aurora, sent a ping to Organica, tossed a comment out on the LFG channel while she switched characters and before I knew it we had six slots filled. Organica has a friend who was up for it, so I passed her the star. One more LFG signal flare and we were full and ready to roll.
General comments:
Travel time is basically eliminated on this TF- nearly all the missions sent us to the ferry, which caused a short-circuit in the Old School part of my gaming brain. Every single time I was jumping away from the ferry, looking around confusedly for the next mission door only to find it was right back at the ferry.
Not to look a gift horse in the mouth, but I don't mind some travel when it's thematically appropriate. I'm not a fan of the pointless zone-hopping of the older blue TFs but this was tilted a *tiny bit* too far in the other direction. The ferry was one of the stars of the show. It gave me a little of the same feeling I get running stuff in the MA- never having to physically go anywhere for these missions in far flung corners of the game world was a bit immersion breaking.
Still....much preferable to getting sent to Crey's Folley to canoodle with 40 freaks.
We had a strong team and basically steamrolled 99% of everything that got in our way. One exception were the Midnighters, who prefaced some crazy attacks with BIG RED LETTERS flashing across my screen- I guess I was supposed to run away or something? Alas, brute lock is strong and some huge thing happened and we had some fatalities.
Happily, between our empath and various vet rez powers there wasn't much down time & after that initial wave of disaster we made short work of things.
Another tough nut was Infernal, who wasn't much trouble except when he was one-shotting someone. Again, not a huge problem with our various rez's.
Which made me consider the gameplay 'value' of death...debt isn't anything these days so the only remaining down side to dying is inconvenience- and if you don't have to hit the hospital and run back, there isn't even that.
Anyway.
Our only really tough fight was in the final mission at Positron's place. We ended up getting *way* too many robots mad at us at some point and they were doing some kind of damage I had no answer for. A team wipe was averted with a timely Assemble the Team from our empath. We all woke up, took the fight to Posi and made short work of things.
This was pretty much everything I liked in a TF- short, diverse, cool maps, fun enemies, very rewarding (I picked up a level + three nuggets) and fun teammates.
But my favorite thing about it was all the NPCs in various cutscenes having to address our team leader with a straight face.
eg:
Odysseus: A most admirable display of martial cunning, AE Baby. I salute you.
and the absolute best, given his travails with the entire system:
Positron: AE Baby! Return Numina to me and I will let you go.
Which admittedly tickled me more than it would most others, but still very entertaining.
So, a grand success all 'round, except for the failure of my GUI toggle bind.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Had fun last night. ^_^ Although I was afraid I messed something up when I used my att to summon the one guy who had hospital'd... one thing that kind of annoys me, you wait and wait to see if anyone is gonna teleport him back to the team, he tries to make a run for it without stealth and starts taking damage, I att him and I'm immediately told "No! I have recall friend!" Well, why don't you use it then?
But it wasn't that big a deal apparently. One of those situations where, since I don't know the Strike Force really well, I wasn't sure what people were doing at that precise moment. Anyway it's really chaotic and I can understand that my friend was probably busy keeping people alive, and the other guy probably thought hitting the hospital was better than waiting... but usually waiting is a good idea in that kind of situation.
But I probably should have asked someone to teleport him instead of assuming.
Much chaos, much fun though!
my lil RWZ Challenge vid
haven't been on much, but tonight running a lowbie friendly AE mission we came across a Hellion dancing by a boom box.
After I 'arrested' him, the boy said
"Uh, dada....I don't think we should attack him when he's dancing."
"Okay, you're right."
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
I've been ragging on the Manticore TF in another thread, but everyone and their brother was forming them this morning so I thought I'd catch on with Caffreak, my just barely level 30 kin/dark defender.
I still wouldn't call it 'fun', but running it at base difficulty on a big team that knew what it was doing was much less tedious and much more rewarding than my last experience. Several missions were spent in relaxed discussion at the bricks train station while someone jogged off to stealth a mission or complete a hunt, then we'd re-convene for the next 'real' mission.
Hit 31 and nearly 32- I was close enough that I generally just go street sweeping for a bit, but soloing this guy doesn't qualify as enjoyable. Our last mission was in AP for some reason, and I had a notion- why not run a DFB for a couple of quick nuggets?
Put one together in about 30 seconds (literally- one message on LFG and I was swamped with tells, had to turn a couple of people down) and it worked a treat- hit 32 plus a couple of nuggets and now Caffreak is my first character to get Fulcrum Shift.
Wheee!
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Yeah, doing nothing but DfB is mind-blowingly boring and makes you a dunce on how to play, but running one once in a while is just silly fun.
That sounds like what I'd consider a more normal Manticore. It's not exciting, but it should be run fairly quickly and thus not feel too tedious. There are several things you can stealth or plan ahead for that speed it along.
my lil RWZ Challenge vid
Yeah, doing nothing but DfB is mind-blowingly boring and makes you a dunce on how to play, but running one once in a while is just silly fun.
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I've rolled up several defenders & controllers over the past couple of weeks, which I'd never have done in the 'old days'. But thanks to DFB/DIB I can get them enough levels to where they aren't absolutely painful to solo which is most of what I do. And with the LFG channel finding teams is just much simpler than it was in the old days.
That sounds like what I'd consider a more normal Manticore. It's not exciting, but it should be run fairly quickly and thus not feel too tedious. There are several things you can stealth or plan ahead for that speed it along.
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The second team I was on made a mockery of the whole thing- it was the team that *should* have had the slider turned up. I was expecting the worst as it was not one, not two, but THREE tanks, one brute, a couple of scrappers plus one blaster and my kin/dark defender.
But there must have been some heavily IO's builds in the mix because stuff was just evaporating. I barely got to use Fulcrum Shift at all- by the time I got to a spawn it was usually down to a few lieutenants & bosses with just a bit of health left. The shield tank in particular had some attack (I'm assuming Shield Charge) that just vaporised minions.
I got another level out of it, so not much to complain about. It was fast enough that I didn't mind feeling like a PL tag-along, and there was one really cool character on the team, Thunder Girl, who had a terrific golden age style costume. There was some entertaining semi-RP running banter even though this was on Freedom...all in all not a bad night's play.
Oh, and of course....ALTS!
I got a costume idea messing around online- something based on the old monochrome computer monitors of my youth, in particular the green text on black look provided by my old Epson CP/M machine.
Messed around with a couple of looks before finally finding one I liked. Tried out a couple of names, different powersets, until it finally occured to me that no set but Beam Rifle would do. Which I didn't own, so of course I had to immediately blow 800 points that I'd been storing up for the new round of Super Packs.
Ah well, easy come easy go!
Also, my son could easily have spent them on some kind of absolute garbage while he was busily burning up all my reward tokens, so CARPE DIEM!
So was born Cathode Ray, beam rifle/radiation (of course) corrupter.
I'm super happy with his costume and after running a couple of DFBs and doing some missions in Steel I'm almost in love with Beam Rifle (it's just so SMOOTH! and looks so GOOD! and OMG is disintegrate FUN!)
I'll try and remember to get a screenie tonight- he turned out really well. This might be one of those rare costumes I nail on the first try and never have to fiddle with.
On the marketeering front, turning crummy purples into great ones is both comically profitable and highly addictive. I've abandoned all of my other schemes and put everyone on the purple chase- it's too much of a good thing to last very long, and in fact I'm already seeing prices creep, creep, creep upward.
I've been able to pick up 2-3 a day and sell them pretty quickly at my price point, barring losing a few tens of millions to irritating bid creepers. Really, when you're blowing 300m on a crafted IO who cares if you get it for 280m? If you're that worried about money just craft the darn thing yourself!
But this is the ultimate illustration of my longstanding belief that marketeers naturally gravitate to the easiest profit for the least work. I had various profitable schemes going on other characters- the Goat was doing booming sales on Steadfast -KB IO's for example, selling 15-20 a day for between 10-20m.
Which is a tidy profit and a nice gig, but that's 15-20 recipes to buy, a bunch of salvage to collect, a fairly volatile market (when I got in I was getting 30m per IO and got stuck with a whole bunch of overpriced junk I had to re-list, probably thanks to some other marketeer moving in and undercutting me).
So let's say I'm selling 10 of those a day for 10m. 100m, minus costs- figure about 1m each for materials, and however much for marketing fees.
80-90m in profits?
I'm consistently getting at least 130m in profit on each of the purples I'm moving.
So why buy, craft & sell 10 Steadfasts when I can buy, craft, convert & sell one purple for at least 40m more in profit?
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
First of, love the thread, especially your stories about your kid
I actually ended up running two over the last few days- it's what everybody was doing, for whatever reason, so I tagged a long.
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Wow, nice name, perfect fit for those powers. Can't wait to see the costume.
First of, love the thread, especially your stories about your kid
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Which reminds me...
As I've mentioned, lately he likes to scroll through my characters on various servers and have me read out their names.
The other morning I was making breakfast when he strolled in, bleary eyed, hair sticking up every which way, and said "Dada, you weren't expecting the Smelly Angry Bum, were you!"
Which is my ss/inv brute.
It's the weekly strike target so bonus xp at the end and notice of the well if your an incarnate. |
That explains that.
What, exactly is a 'notice of the well'?
I only have one guy with his alpha unlocked and haven't done anything with the incarnate system otherwise.
Wow, nice name, perfect fit for those powers. Can't wait to see the costume. |
That's the problem with being addicted to making alts- most of them you can take or leave, a few stick around, but every once in a while you hit on one you *really* like, and then there goes the play time for aaaaall your other characters. =/
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Aha!
That explains that. What, exactly is a 'notice of the well'? I only have one guy with his alpha unlocked and haven't done anything with the incarnate system otherwise. |
For most of the incarnate slots, you have a very common "building block" salvage piece that you can use to make common components, uncommon, rare, and very rare components. (Incarnate Shards for your alpha slot.) You use these components to craft the ability that you will need to place in your incarnate slot (once it is open/unlocked). There are four power levels, you only need three common components to craft the lowest level of a power tree, then you'll need an uncommon for the 2nd tier, a rare for the third tier, and a very rate for the top tier.
With me so far?
All of that applies to all of the incarnate slots even though the Alpha slot operates on a different "currency" from the others. For your Alpha Slot, you have Incarnate Shards, and you use those to craft your components needed for whatever Alpha power you've decided to make.
A Notice of the Well is a rare component for the Alpha Slot. You need one of them in order to craft your tier 3 power, and you will need two more to craft a Favor of the Well, which is the very rare component needed for your tier 4 Alpha Slot power.
You can only earn one by running the Weekly Strike Target, and only once a week (per strike target -- you can get two in a span of two days if the strike target changes in between). And only if you're already 50 -- otherwise you get a big dose of extra experience, and you get double the merits also, which is nice.
my lil RWZ Challenge vid
thanks Organica!
here's a couple quick snaps of Cathode Ray- doesn't look as good as he does in game, but my comp would blow up if i tried jacking the quality up any higher.
and with beam rifle drawn (thank you, Celestial Armor!):
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
here's a couple quick snaps of Cathode Ray- doesn't look as good as he does in game, but my comp would blow up if i tried jacking the quality up any higher.
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One thought though, I don't know if you've done any Incarnate trials on any of your alts or not, but for this character, burning 10 Astrals or 2 Empyreans on the Binary Aura may be worth a look.
Unfortunately, I'm struggling to find a screenshot of it in use, and 10 minutes of digging through the best costumes thread is turning nothing up so far.
<time passes>
Ah, here we go - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hz8exl1phJg the first aura in that linked video is Binary.
http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...postcount=7191 also has some pics of it in different colours.
Warning:
The above post may contain Cynicism, sarcasm and/or pessimism. If you object to the quantities contained, then tough.
Okay, here's a question:
I have a problem with my screenshots.
I have a widescreen monitor.
If I take a screen & alt-tab to look at it, it comes out fine.
If I quit out of the game however the screens get compressed- they are no longer widescreen, but square.
That happened to my Ray screens above, but this is what I can't understand: how is that possible when I alt-tabbed, 'saved as' with Irfanview, uploaded to Imageshack & posted here without quitting the game.
When I posted them they looked fine.
When I checked back this AM, the were compressed and square.
HOW, LORD? HOW IS THAT POSSIBLE!
GRRR.
Well, I'm getting a new (to me) vid card from a friend next week, maybe that will solve the problem. It should also let me run Ultra Mode, which should be fun.
So last night the wife was out on the town with some friends & I found myself with a big chunk of free time. After I put my son to bed I logged in to do a little marketeering and maybe catch on with a TF. Having run a couple of Manticores this week I was after anything but (it's less irritating on a good team, but still not anything I'd chase after).
I was on with my level 39 grav/ta controller Bad Guy Controller when someone advertised a Posi 1. Why not, I thought- it's fun & should get me up to 40.
Another weird team- a tank, two brutes, two controllers (me and a fire) a Kin defender, a scrapper & a corrupter. Are people becoming allergic to ranged damage or something? I was tempted to swap out for my fire/fire blaster but didn't want to lose my spot- the guy leading the team seemed a little squirrley. Plus, any chance to level a grav/TA must be seized with both hands.
I haven't actually played this guy in I don't remember how long- at least a couple of years. He was originally a duo parter with my pal's fire/mace tank (this was when Burn was making everyone run away) which is how he got to level 39. He's weird, but super fun on teams- the LFG channel may mean he gets more play time. He's slotted for my own entertainment, not necessarily for efficiency- I stuck as many procs as I could in his various AoE debuffs. He's packed to the gills with Achilles Heels and various others.
Anyway, it was a fun, pretty quick run until we got to the final mission.
This chat exchange will tell anyone who's run the TF how it went:
leader: okay, don't touch the door yet.
(insert anarchy and chaos)
brute: Uh, sorry, I didn't see that until I opened the door.
leader: great.
So, predictable team wipe.
But it led to a really fun fight once we re-grouped, with a veritable Super Sized logjam of ambushers outside the door. I grabbed a couple of Team Inspirations from my email & filled the rest of my inventory with giant defenses & accuracies from base storage, and once we cleared out a space at the foot of the stairs the melee began in earnest.
Total anarchy, super fun.
We lost the brute and scrapper, but eventually whittled the mass of foe down to a managable size. With my big yellows I was able to land stuff even through the overlapping bubbles and a steady stream of purples kept the various ghosts and demon lords out of my grill (he's got Hover with a stealth IO slotted and spends most battles hanging out over the action just out of melee range).
Tactical Note- when you're a flyer, Entangling Arrow is a really great power- after this particular fight I found myself thinking 'geez, I should find some slots for it!'
Headed inside, didn't have much trouble with the spawns in the atrium, then it was time to fight our dopplegangers.
This is pretty much the only 'boss fight' in the entire game I have wired- you all gang up on the squishies one at a time, then beat down the hard targets once you have numbers on your side.
Alas, this particular team didn't get the memo.
As we were standing on the stairs working out tactics, the brute went all Leeeeeroy Jenkinssssss on us and bum-rushed the enemy. I stayed where I was, figuring we could just let him get killed then TP him back for a rez and debriefing, but *everyone else* charged in after him so I thought "what the heck!"
It was a horrible mess & another team wipe, of course.
We were actually holding our own until the /kin started speed boosting our adversaries...ugh, what a mess.
As with the the ambushes outside, once we regrouped things went much better. I nabbed another couple of team inspos, we chose our target to start out on (the kin, of course) and with this tiny bit of organization were able to saunter comfortably to the finish line.
Not exactly efficient, but our two major screw ups led to one of the more fun battles I've had in recent memory, so no complaints.
One question about my grav: occasionally I'd bonk people with a telephone pole, or dumpster and I'd get an IMPACT! notice over my targets head- what the heck is that? Some kind of damage bonus, I assume, but of what nature?
The greatly improved cast time on said power is greatly appreciated- things still died before my rusted out car got to them, but with much less frequency than in the olden days.
So, another night, another fun TF. Got a level, made some friends, picked up a couple of badges.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
If you use Lift or Propel on an enemy after using Gravity Distortion (I think it's a 12 second time frame) on then Lift and Propel gain bonus damage equal to 2% of their non-containment damage.
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Warning:
The above post may contain Cynicism, sarcasm and/or pessimism. If you object to the quantities contained, then tough.
From here it looks like 25%, so I'm assuming the 2% above is a typo
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Oh good, cuz I was gonna say "2%? thanks for nuttin' Paragon Studios!"
=P
Whatever stuff they did to grav, I like.
Had a lot of fun with him, even down at level whatever we were at- no wormhole, no Oil Slick arrow, no problem!
One nice thing about having ninja/beast run is when I exemplar down below my travel power I'm not totally screwed. In the old days I'd put it off so I could fit in Stamina and still have an attack chain, then I put it off because I could pick up the temp travel powers from the bank mishs, these days I put it off just because there's always some other fun thing I want.
The 'runs' get me around just fine in a pinch, esp if there's a kin on the team.
Also ran Cathode Ray through a DFB this morning, got him up to level 15 and selected 'Overcharged' as his title. I do love it when my thematic origin choice delivers the perfect character title- although I can't help thinking they should just let everyone have whatever title they want, or at least make it a store unlock for a couple bucks, like the capes & auras.
I remember waaaay back in the day I actually re-rolled the Goat from the thematically appropriate Magic origin to the totally inappropriate Technology because he absolutely, positively had to be The Nihilistic NetherGoat.
On the marketeering front, I scraped together a couple of stray billion inf for the Crazy 88's INFcinerator- someone passed us for #1 on Virtue and this stain upon our honor cannot be allowed to stand!!1 =P
Most of my inf was tied up on bids for crummy purples to convert, but if I cycle through enough alts sooner or later I find one with a billion or so lying around that I'd totally forgotten about.
Tonight I'm hoping to run another Summer Event or two before that wraps up, I'd like to get one of the KB to KD IOs for base storage if I can.
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Okay, didn't get any summer action in last night- maybe tonight.
Another thread got me thinking and when I logged in Cathode Ray, freshly 15, I figured I'd run a DiB for the heck of it. Folk were talking about how few DiB there are compared to DFBs. I think it's just a level thing, because my experience has been IF YOU BUILD IT, THEY WILL COME.
Shot up a few flares in /b and LFG & had a full team in a couple minutes.
It was a really fun time and showed off Ray's talents much more so than a DFB- he got to use all his powers and plus there were some targets hard enough that he got to use his /rad secondary for the first time ever.
Enervating Field for the win!
I almost single-handedly got us the Blood Brother (or whatever it is) badge for killing both the AVs within 30 seconds of each other. Once it split, I turned off Enervating and switched my attacks to the 'other' AV. Most of the team stayed on the original, and when he went down I re-toggled Enervating. We beat the timer & got the badge, didn't even have to strategize about it.
Picked up a level, not as lucrative as a DFB but much more fun at this stage of his 'career'. Next up, running a couple of missions!
I took a couple of screens to see if I could get them to not end up compressed, but nothing is working. I'll just wait for the new video card and try again.
I checked in on SilverRage, my street justice brute, before bed and caught a ride with a mission team. The guy advertised 'level 25-ish' yet somehow I got exemplared down to 18? =P
I gave it a mission and had fun, so I stuck around in spite of the misinformation. I was "the tank" on a team composed almost entirely of corrupters and defenders with one blaster in the mix, which was interesting, mainly since my defenses aren't all that yet. A couple of deaths, but plenty of opportunity to enjoy a pumped up Fury bar while surrounded by an ocean of foe while the rest of the team blasted away.
SJ, even at this low level, has pretty terrific AoE. With a full load of fury, the cone and the PBAOE were laying waste, and the stuns/knockdowns caused by waiting on combo points delivered some very nice mitigation.
Got him a level, up to 22, before the team leader called it a night and we dispersed. Street Justice is just a really fun set....but I'm not sure it's more fun than Beam Rifle. =P
The Nethergoat Archive: all my memories, all my characters, all my thoughts on CoH...eventually.
My City Was Gone
Nice thread Goat, I've recently got back in to the game and this has been useful for sorting out what all has changed and been added.
Heroes
Dysmal
Lumynous
Sam Steele
Pluck
Wile
Slagheap
Pressure Wave
Rhiannon Bel
Verified
Stellaric
Syd Mallorn
Villains
Jotunheim Skald
Saer Maen
Jen Corbae
Illuminance
Venator Arawn
Taiga Dryad
Tarranos