Returning Player Diary

Just finished Easton's arc & hit 16.

Good fun- not too long, not a ton of travel, although I was slightly miffed to be sent back to a map I'd already cleared to sniff through a garbage can, although the ambushes somewhat mollified me.

Fun finale in the dualing room, it was touch and go there for a bit as I suddenly came up against status effects & hadn't taken Static Shield yet, but having a tray full of medium purples can compensate for worse build errors than mine.

Well written, fun fights (after just whining about things being too easy in the last arc- glad I didn't touch my difficulty slider), all in all a nice short evening's entertainment.

If every arc in the game met this standard, I'd be a very happy camper.

thanks for the tips- I'm standing at the other Steel Canyon contact and will hopefully have time for a run tonight.

It's been a while since I ran Faultline so I'll check it out- also, as an elec/elec scrapper I'm finding that Clockwork just don't inspire the fear they used to. =P

I did pick up the First Ward, so I'll definitely be heading there at some point.

And I don't think I've set foot in Striga since it was first released....no, wait, I did that awesome TF with the giant robot one time. But it's basically virgin territory- another good tip.

No gameplay to report, but news nonetheless!
As implied by the golden hue of my name, I've rejoined the ranks of honored subscribers thanks to the benevolence of a kind soul.

My only *real* discontent with being a premium player has been the strictly limited number of character slots. As an inveterate marketeer and costume fiddler it's always been my habit to 'visit' a number of characters during any play session, checking their auction slots, messing with their look, maybe collecting a badge or to or running a mission.

This doesn't really work as a premium player, even one with what a genuine 'freemie' would consider a goodly number of slots thanks to years of vet rewards and last week's pickup of 10 character slots on sale in the market.

But when you have upwards of 50 characters you like to 'visit' regularly, Premium limitations make you take a long, hard look at who gets out of jail.

So the first thing I did was log in a bunch of favorite characters I hadn't been able to unlock.


Which took me a while!


I seem to have had a lot of market irons in the fire when I let my account lapse- alas, I have no freaking clue what any of my old schemes were, so it's just a lot of disconnected junk to me now. Happily, found quite a few slots with 10 stacks of valuable recipes picked up at steep discount- some I'll just re-list to get rid of, but it looks like some will be worth crafting to sell the IO's.

My entanglement in another thread about Tier 9 VIP costume bundles inspired me to pull up the VIP screen and drop some tokens on the fire/ice set, mostly just for one character- my stone/fire brute Saint Helen.

My idea for her was magma seething under a rocky crust, which I managed to approximate pretty well with the Mutant pack- dark brown skin, bright orange bioluminescent patches. But checking out the 'fire' options sold me that it was the perfect solution.

Dropped the tokens, logged her in and headed to the tailor.

MAN, that set has some sexy bits!
Played around for probably 45 minutes and came up with a look I'm fairly happy with, mixing the fire/ice stuff with some mutant pack bits. Ended up way closer to my original conception of her look, which is always nice.

Messing around with auras (I wanted that Seismic path aura for her) I came across a TERRIFIC 'volcanic' aura, which I didn't have- had to pick that one up.

Then I stumbled across the back pieces- man alive, that waterfall backpack is SEXY...and I have the perfect character for it.

I gave Saint Helen the 'erupting volcano' back thingie, which looks really cool.....but I'll probably lose it, as in the frenzy of creation I kinda forgot she was a fire brute. Once I got all her auras running things were a little.....crowded.

But the volcanic aura is a really nice compliment to the array of fire toggles- I made it a bright-ish yellow to make it stand out a bit. Really nice.


So, with all those reintroductions out of the way, hopefully I can get back to Lizardroid this evening.

PS:

Semi related, while surfing around I ran across this thread, The Path of Most Resistance- Journey Through Legacy Content. Tyger is (rather masochistically, IMHO) trudging through the old school content and issuing periodic reports- possibly of interest to followers of this thread.

Welcome back to the "gold fold" goat

And yea that topic about the legacy content was an interesting read.

As a reminder, now that you're a VIP you can play with the signature story arcs so check'em out

But be sure you reinforce your alignment on the character before you do to make sure you are eligible for the alignment merit reward. Basically each SSA gives you the reward table the first time you do it regardless of any timer. So your first time through you'll have seven rewards to claim (if you do all 7 arcs). The reward table consists of:

Alignment Merit (requires level 20+ and having affirmed hero or villain morality)
4x the typical Reward Merits (the typical is 5 but this reward is 20)
1 Astral Merit (requires VIP subscription, level 50, and unlocked Alpha Slot)
10 Incarnate Threads (requires VIP subscription, level 50, and unlocked Alpha Slot)

Each separate reward can be chosen once every 162 hours (6 days, 18 hours[1]), regardless of which episode is being played – all episodes use the same reward timer per reward choice, meaning four reward timers. (It's not exactly seven days to make it easier to obtain the same reward at the same time every week.)

However, each episode also grants one reward choice for free the first time it is ever played, which is outside the reward timer. Please note that the freebie choice is once ever, not once per reward type.

After a character selects their free and weekly reward, that option cannot be selected again until the weekly timer resets.

Basically your first time through could net you 8 alignment merits (assuming lvl 50- 7 one time rewards plus 1 weekly reward). You could of course take the one time rewards as whatever you choose though. I just emphasize the alignment merits because they are useful even at low levels. If you're doing them for the first time with a fresh 50 who has alpha unlocked its a great way to get a head start on incarnate advancement.

thanks for the tips!

I only have two characters that have done any alignment stuff, my stalker Mope & the Goat, so I'll run my hero through the process before I tackle anything.


Again, last night's playtime was hijacked by Icon, this time giving my fire/rad controller Three Mile Isleman a makeover.

I also finally figured out where the Super Packs I picked up a while back were, so I checked 'em out.

VERY NICE.
I can see how they'd get addictive fast.

I also found myself slightly bemused by the quality of the interface- the whole 'claim pack, flip cards, collect rewards' deal was much smoother and more involving than I've come to expect from Paragon over the years. In fact, the whole Freedom overhaul is top drawer...well, except for the clunky interface of the actual *store*, but we can't have it all, can we?

Anyway, had two packs which yielded a bunch of cool stuff- a couple of costume bits (this, I fear, is going to be my downfall...), an IO for a pretty cool sounding Mastermind set that insta-sold for 20m on the market (thank you, '/ah' command!) and weirdly, SEVENTY FIVE merits, which is more merits in one fell swoop than I've ever accumulated on *any* of my characters since they introduced the system.

Pay to Win, indeed! =P

But whatever, it's a pretty sweet system. I enjoy the randomness- I'd never buy most of the stuff I got directly, but as part of a game of roulette it's good fun.

My one gripe (of course, being how I am) is the rarity guarantee of one rare or super rare per pack- how are they rare if you know you're getting one?

I got two super rares in my two packs, the aforementioned Mastermind IO and some sort of crazy looking gun model for the tailor.

I'm staying away from Icon tonight, so I should be able to fit in a few missions.

I delete my characters when they get too high and remake the same ones. I have the costumes saved. But they release enough costume pieces in the couple of months between remakes that I still spend a long time fiddling with the costumes.

CoT pack was big for me because much of the stuff is so different

I love this thread.

As a costume guy, Goat, head to Ouroboros and talk to the new merit vendors there (separate ones for Astral and Empyrean merits) to see what costume bits they have. The exclusive path auras were enough for me to farm A and E merits.

--NT

Not sure if you are aware of this either:

Click on your Powers button (not the enhancement management screen) and look in the border. You should see Combat Attributes and now Incarnate Abilities. Check out the Incarnate stuff there under the Create tab. They added an entire end game to City of Heroes after all these years.

An unexpected afternoon nap for my son combined with the wife heading out on some errands let me hit Paragon this afternoon. Whee!

Poking around random servers I found my fire/elec brute Hellitosis and logged him in. I figured he'd benefit from the fire/ice costume stuff, but this time my intent to costume tweak was sidelined by gameplay.

He was pretty close to 24, so I did a bit of street sweeping. In the process of that I got a tip mission drop, and having not run one since getting back in the swing I decided to check it out.

I really like tip missions. They don't quite measure up to the better story arc stuff, but they're a big improvement on radios & most of the older content in the game. Ended up running a couple of them (forgot how much I hate Sky Raiders- engineers are as irritating as ever I see), leveled, hit the trainer and THEN fiddled a bit with my costume.

Adding costumes to the trainer was a stroke of genius on someone's part. So much more convenient.

Adding a power made me look at his enhancements (a fine compliment of generic IOs), which made me think "hey he could use more attacks", which made me /respec him to take advantage of Inherent Fitness. As much of a chore as that can be with high level characters packed with set IOs, it's no biggie when you have generics and not a tremendous lot of powers.

I had a good time with him, I may level him for a while and slot some set IOs. He had less than 50k on him- I assume I stripped his bankroll to feed the Crazy 88's INF-cinerator at some point. I'll run a few mishs and see if he gets enough drops to jump-start his earning....or I guess I can just gleemail him a few hundred million from one of my other characters.

I'm always forgetting about these modern conveniences!

Tonight's escapades:

Mostly logging in characters and tweaking costumes/checking market slots.

Logged in Joan of Orc, a level 4 brute I haven't played in forever and who'd escaped deletion only because I really liked how her head turned out. The rest of her, eh. A case of an idea the costume options at the time didn't really support, and costume dis-harmony usually prevents me from enjoying a character. She's so old there was no 'save costume' functionality- if there had been I'd have no doubt saved that head & promptly freed up that slot for other things.

But, tonight she served as an excellent culture-shock introduction to the re-designed Mercy Island.

Y'see, that last time I'd logged her off she's just leveled, so she was standing by the trainer at the old starting point. It was really disorienting logging in and having *nothing* there- no trainers, no Black Helicopter, no merit vendor. At first I thought it was the /sync bug making a comeback, but reality gradually dawned on me. I saw a contact who's name I didn't recognize attached to a waypoint all the way over on the other side of the map, a dim bell rang in the recesses of my memory and I muttered "huh, they must have changed a couple things!"

Navigating my way to the contact was a terrific exercise in confused dislocation- I can't tell you how many characters I've run through Mercy Island. After ED I briefly quit the game but picked up CoV, liked it and played villains exclusively until the arrival of Inventions, when the unfair disparity between the segregated markets drove me back hero-side.

So, that's a BUNCH of game hours logged in Mercy.
My memories of what and who went where were set in stone.

I did a literal double-take (and was nearly face-planted as I stood goggling like a Bornean tribesman suddenly teleported to downtown Manhattan) at the crowds of Longbow milling around on the street which had fueled so many of my halcyon memories of street-sweeping snakes on my way to this or that mission.

The rest of the zone was no more comfortable, swarming with Longbow, Legacy Chain and the only bit of familiarity, some puking Blighted.

I didn't have time to run any of the new mishs with her, and will probably be re-rolling her in light of the addition of more thematically appropriate powerset choices (she was Stone Melee because I created her before proliferation, and it was the closest I could get to a giant barbarian weapon). She may be the character that inspires me to check out one of the new powersets, specifically Titan Weapons.