Death From Baloney (a journal)

I decided last week that my new task would be to run a character from 1 to 50 solely via DfB. I know others have done it, there's nothing novel about doing it, but... it's something I haven't done yet. And, since I have several accounts, why not do it on two characters? Heck, why not 3? Or... more? Six? Seven?

I actually have 8 different accounts. I only pay for two, but at the moment I have a third that's currently VIP, and a couple of the others have tier 3. And actually, a project like this almost helps me justify having all those accounts. Right? Er... right? Well... I said almost.

Okay, so I'm going a bit overboard here... but anyway last Friday I set my plan in motion. I'm going to document each run I make, and see how long it takes me to get these characters to 50 just doing this. Please note that this is not all I'm doing with the game, just something to do in my spare time... at least one run a night if I can, that only take about 15 minutes or so anyway.

But to start it off, I did quite a few runs over the weekend, and spent a great deal of time setting everything up. I placed all of my new DfB characters in my Ala Coracina SG that was my solo SG for Dilithium Flower in July (it helps me keep track of them all):



Each of these characters is from a different account. Some of them are only T1 and can't send tells or talk in broadcast. (My 8th account is a free account that already had both slots filled with characters I liked, which is all that saved me from doing this on 8 characters instead of only 7.)

I originally figured that there wouldn't be much to post about. I mean, I'm doing the same thing over and over. But actually the fun part is the other players that you run into... even standing around in Atlas people watching can be fun, because you see a lot of creativity and people trying out their latest character ideas. I figure I can find something interesting to post here every 4-7 days, maybe. And I figure with 7 characters, it might take me half a year or longer to get them all to 50. I'm not really sure, but I know things slow down a lot at the higher levels.

Hopefully I can find enough to write about to make this exercise interesting. I'm going to post one pic and bio each time I post here, so first up:

Moar Cowbell






I like a character with a bio... even something kinda lame, at least there's something to read when you click on them. So I had fun creating the bios for my seven samurai. I also made sure each bio said something about them fighting only in the sewers.

I made Moar Cowbell for the internet meme costume contest, but i never actually entered. But I happened to like the character a lot, so I tweaked his bio to mention the constant DfB runs, and away I go!

Moar Cowbell is a mace/energy aura brute. He's strong and pretty! (Well, for a bull anyway.)

8/3/12 (Fri) - Moar Cowbell - 1 run, level 7. Darkwave Surfer - 1 run, level 7.

8/4/12 (Sat) - Tokyo Kitten - 1 run, level 7. Darkwave Surfer - run 2-3, level 10, 12. Terran Angel runs 1-2, level 7, 10. Moar Cowbell - runs 2-3, levels 10, 12.

8/5/12 (Sun) - Tokyo Kitten - run 2, leve 10. Blackberry Crush - runs 1-5, levels 7, 10, 12, 14, 16. Moar Cowbell run 4, level 14.

Blackberry Crush was teamed with Carmel Popcorn and Doctor Tators. Consequently the team talked non-stop about food, and people were very hungry by the end of the run.

On later runs I teamed with Red Shirt Guy, a blaster who charged in first but strangely took 4 runs to meet his first death. I voted at the start to send him in first, and he said, "That's the whole idea!"

8/6/12 (Mon) - Clockwork Vixen, runs 1-5, levels 7, 9, 11, 14, 16.

Clockwork Vixen is a fire/mental blaster. Fire Blast is still one of the best things in the game, and your best DfB blast set no question. Fireball at level 4, Rain of Fire at level 6, Fire Breath at level 8. Call down the firestorm! Plus I got Psychic Scream at level 10, almost everything I do is AoE -- which is only a problem on those badge runs with the Vahzilok AV.

This team was convinced that there were hidden badges that nobody else had ever gotten, so we lured the Hellion AV onto one of his fire wards (which presumably did damage to him, but no extra badge) and then we killed the two hydra heads within 10 seconds of each other. I didn't have the heart to explain why, if there were another badge, people would likely have known about it before the DfB trial was even playable. In the end the leader was still convinced that the Hellion AV had a hidden badge that he hadn't figured out yet.

8/7/12 (Tues) - Terran Angel, run 3, level 12.

Only 1 run tonight. My team included Biermeister, whose battle cry (naturally) was "Trouble is brewing!"

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Bonus Character Name Ideas:

Plasma Spork (I misread a friend's character name of Plasma Spark)
Task Force Dawg (A friend has a "Task Force Dog" who invariably needs to go out halfway through any TF)
Liquid Misery (Was listening to "Only Happy When It Rains" by Garbage. Pour some misery down on me...)
Sleep Blaster I just think it's funny how they continue to blast while asleep.
Bracketless Avenger "He roleplays as someone who doesn't need brackets to talk out of character".

how many times did you do the Vahz AV for the badge? In my experience it is very rare that someone does not take out a cadaver.

and are you starting your own or just joining others?

Not sure when Moar Cowbell was on his Vahz Badge run, but he helped me on mine. I had a 20+ level character I drove through Prae for the badges. Moar and a few others helped me get the Vahz badge on "SuperSnark" (my answer for the easiest character for me to run in the game, a SS/Will Brute. Since I am using it as a vacation character I decided it would be good for my long term badging goals.) We got the Cadaver Counter badge in that run. Initially I thought we missed the next badge for killing all the minions first before making the Lost a non-prophet organization, but then realized I had run the sewers once before in the day (without getting the Vahz badge).

Anyways I love the Moar Cowbell character. I have yet to see anything Christopher Walken has done that is not spellbinding. Weapon of Choice is one of the best videos of all time. The watch scene from Pulp Fiction....wow. So, to see that bull walking up, lol. I need to find a way to make a tribute for Moar Cowbell in my Bull themed SG "Cow Palace". That was my 1st thought when I saw him in Atlas lol. Edit: Hmm, maybe combine the bull with the Liberty Bell theme....

I love that you came up with a bio that actually explains why she does that TF over and over, and only that. I makes me imagine a whole underground community of people who, as you say, clean up the place in between their real life.

So three days off for DxP weekend during which I leveled two characters on my newish Dilithium Flower account -- Cupcake Overdrive, an electric melee/willpower brute, and a brand new street justice/willpower scrapper after the Saturday sale of that power set, Death Ace. Cupcake hit 36 and by this evening was up to 39 and partially IO'd, Death Ace made it to 35.

And then Monday I was back to running DfB at least once or twice a night. As my characters approach 20, the levels are starting to come more and more slowly. I wonder if I'm really going to keep doing this to 50, even on one character let alone seven.





Clockwork Vixen was one of my throwaway characters mostly made on a temporarly VIP account to add an extra body to one of my solo Super Groups. But the character appealed to me, so I conscripted her for this DfB experiment. The bio just kind of flowed from the basic concept... she's a clockwork, so someone built her, she's cleaning the sewers, so that must have been her task...

8/13/12 (Mon) Blackberry Crush - runs 6, 7 - levels 18, 19

I teamed with a person who talked nonstop, and on a lot of very weird topics... kind of like they were high the whole time. Their name read as "roid" but with more creative spelling, but that didn't do anything to dispell the you-are-high sense that I got.

Another weird thing was that on our second run at the Hellion AV, someone said that there was no water in the sewer. And they were right! Don't know why. The water came back as soon as we zoned to the next part.

I took a picture though it may be hard to see, but I'm standing on dry pavement where there's normally water.



8/14/12 (Tues) Terran Angel - run 6, level 18

We only had 6 people for this run. It was late at night, 10 PM PST, and it was hard to find enough people to join.

8/15/12 (Weds) Tokyo Kitten, runs 3,4 - levels 12, 14

8/16/12 (Thurs) Clockwork Vixen, runs 6,7 - levels 17, 18



One of the best costumes I've seen on my DfB runs was actually when I was running Cupcake Overdrive on DxP Friday evening. I don't know if I got a really good picture of this guy, but the costume was amazingly grotesque. Plus he swung a shovel. His name was Mukk.



This character had a name like Gobling or something similar. Very cute.



On one run, the only guy who had any bio at all was this guy. Hmm... someone went to a lot of trouble to write this, it seems!


Bonus Name Ideas:

(Names/ideas are not guaranteed to be clever)

Sweedish Scrapper/Sweedish Stalker -- roleplay as a character who constantly exclaims, "Bork bork bork!"
Oliver Twister - water blast/storm corruptor
Beersmasher - I don't know why this name appealed to me enough to write it down but it did.
Sticking Around - Staff Fighter
Sargent Snafu
Miss Mapserver
Bubble Bath, Miss Calgon, or similar name - water blaster with the battle cry of "Calgon, take me away!"
Denephew Twin brother of Denise.
Starker - the naked stalker. (probably not a good idea, actually)
NecroNummyCon - Carries the cookbook of evil
Just Go Nuts - would have to be a blaster or scrapper I think, or brute.

Mukk does look cool

I think the best compliment I can give people on their costume is that I couldn't tell it was a player because I didn't think you could make a look like that

My DfB project has been somewhat hit or miss the last two weeks, which is why I haven't posted anything... skipped quite a few days in between runs.

Anyway, the long slog continues:





Sometimes a simple and to the point bio is all that's needed. ^_^ I did most of these characters bios on the same weekend, so it's not like I spent a huge amount of time thinking them up. But I wanted each one to have something interesting or funny for when people looked.

8/20/12 (Mon) Clockwork Vixen, run 8 -- level 20

I took a break from DfB over the weekend (8/17-8/19) and spent a great deal of my time on a new crab instead. I was really taken by Myriad Silvre's Techni-Kai (posted in the "best costumes" thread) that I HAD to copy the character immediately. And, as I usually do when I feel so compelled, I first copy as closely as I can, and then I'm too embarrassed by having done so to actually use that costume, so I make another and try to deviate away from the original design so as not to be an obvious copy... without losing what made me like the original in the first place. Which is tricky, because I thought the original costume was just about perfect.

In this case it would be impossible to match the great name as well as the costume, but I found "Tech Goddess" available, created the character, ran up to level 8 or so... and promptly decided it was still too close to the original and at the same time not as good or interesting. So I started over with "Black Snake Sister" which is a song by Bloodflowerz that mentions Kali:

"Call me demon, call me Maria
Call me Kali, call me Venus
I'm your black snake sister"

I like this idea better because I'm always a fan of borrowing names from songs that I like, and it's a name I can like and it doesn't feel like a direct ripoff of Techni-Kali. Most likely I will revert to a less Kali-centered costume or two also, given enough time. ^_^

I did not join any DfB's, though it wasn't because I specifically avoided them and/or there weren't any going redside. Instead I started running the normal low-level redside arcs and was either always busy when a DfB formed, or was ignored (once) when I said I'd join. Anyway, I got to level 8 this way, and then through the magic of 2 accounts, a laptop, and killing many many virtual Council in the Rikti War Zone AE building, I made it to level 24 and headed out to run tips. By Sunday I was rogue, by Tuesday night I was a hero and at that point level 29.

At the same time I ran a lot of SSA's and tips on another character, and several TF's, but I did manage to get one DfB run in Monday night.

8/21/12 (Tues) Moar Cowbell, 3 runs levels 16,17,19

Tonight was Nature Affinity night, and mushrooms were growing on enemies left and right in the sewers. At one point I was grouped with four defenders, which is almost unheard of these days. Nature Affinity/Water Blast seems like a popular 'fender combo, or Nature Affinity/Archery (because shooting arrows is more natural, I suppose). Never saw so many eco-friendly nature-themed names in my life. But I have to say that the best name I saw or heard all night was a friend in one of my global channels, who created a Bots/Nature MM named "Coexistence".

I briefly wondered if people would pay me for the name Organica, or Earthsinger. Not that I plan to rename either, or delete either, or even reroll either as Nature Affinity characters...

For that matter, I have Briarose on Virtue too, and Nature Lass on Victory...

8/22/12 (Weds) Blackberry Crush, 1 run to level 20

8/25/12 (Thurs) Darkwave Surfer, 4 runs, levels 18, 19, 20, 21

By Friday I broke down and bought Nature Affinity for myself, and started my own Nature Affinity/Water Blast Defender, named Forest Goddess. This was on my main account which is T9, and I couldn't resist doing the waterfall backpack with the leaves trail aura, so much awesome in that combo, though probably getting overused presently. Anyway, I love this character! Nature Affinity just looks awesome, and Water Blast is still tons of fun (I still haven't leveled a Water Blaster past level 24, I have three now counting Forest Goddess and Darkwave Surfer).

Anyway, that kind of limited my DfB runs for another weekend... and stalled my work on my new crab Black Snake Sister. Ah, the travails of the altoholic!

I ran through DfB on this character too, of course. That's one reason I didn't do any runs on my official DfB characters... only so much of it I can take in one day.


One thing I've done recently is use my marketing toons to buy up all sorts of procs at the lowest level available. No purple or pvp procs, I want stuff that I can slot on my DfB run toons -- or at least, on those who can use IOs. Bids have been filling slowly, and I'm crafting stuff and tossing it into my Ala Coracina base so that my DfB characters have access to it. I crafted a bunch of level 25 generic IOs too, since having those slotted wouldn't be a bad idea. I don't need to worry about sets or anything fancy, I'm going to spend my entire life up to 50 in the low level DfB game, so mostly procs seems the way to go.

Anyway, it's still a work in progress, I haven't figured out exactly what I want to slot on these characters.

I spent a lot of the weekend playing Forest Goddess and my two toons from the DxP weekend, Cupcake Overdrive and Death Ace, who are now 42 and 38. Ran a lot of task forces on Sunday -- Penelope Yin, Numina, Manticore, Posi !, Posi 2, an ITF. Also a redside Cathedral of Pain run.

I did do a DfB run Sunday evening, but it was a badge run with 3 friends. We forgot to lock the team and we had two other people join us via the queue, but that was cool, we told them it was a badge run and they were good.

I have to confess that I'm a poor badger and haven't run any of my regular (my theoretically badger) toons through DfB or DiB for the badges. I took Sparks Fly through this time, and I saw that I had a purple recipe that I'd gotten earlier while PLing either Forest Goddess or Black Snake Sister (can't remember which). So just for the heck of it, I waited until we zoned into the trial and then pulled out my temp portable crafting table and crafted a purple recipe right there. I just figured that hasn't happened often in the history of Death from Below, heh.




8/28/12 (Tues) Tokyo Kitten, 2 runs, 16, 18.

I tried to get in a run Monday night on Tokyo Kitten, but crashed before the team was ready to go. :/ This is one of my freebie accounts that can't send tells, so it's a bit harder to join a team and it was late at night. Instead I ran her early on Tuesday evening and got in two runs.

These runs were fun because the leader was a catgirl stone troller with red colored rocks, whereas Tokyo Kitten is a catgirl stone dom with green colored rocks. We had two other trollers on the team and the AVs were generally perma-held.



It was like Christmas, the leader said. ^_^



One of the other trollers was this guy. I liked his look, even if it's sort of an obvious one for Nature Affinity. ^_^

I like Nature Affinity enough that I bought it Monday night (last day of the sale) on another account (the one with Dilithium Flower), and I'm going to create a Plant/NA troller. Just haven't figured out a name or look yet.

..............................

Lastly... here's some of the fun characters I've seen in the last week and a half:







Can't resist a good pun name... Salmon is very bad though, I told him so.



Thought this was a pretty good lava demon character.



If you're going to call yourself "Hot Tub Time Machine" then I really, really want to see a bio that explains the name!

Very nice. Now i somewhat regret deleting Amoebic Dysentery, my Water/Poison Corruptor that i was going to level entirely in sewers of one sort or another. Although his powers looked more than a little gross, so perhaps it's for the best.

Well, that explains it completely. Very creative name, with no apparent creativity behind it.

Is one of your characters "Death from Balogna?" Saw this last night when I was in the DFB. My wife liked that character's name.

Nope, not me.

that lava demon looks great

so are you learning any tricks to DfB as you play it so much?

I wonder if "Death from Bellow" is taken... seems like the perfect name for a Sonic Blast character...

Well, I was prepared to run this project for as long as it took... at least into next year, I figured, with the idea that the closer my characters got to 50, the more impressive the whole project might seem.

But obviously I'm not going to spend the last 3 months of the game running DfB over and over, just to get these characters into their mid 30's. I've identified 2-3 characters that I'd really like to play to 50 -- my nature affinity/water blast defender Forest Goddess, and my staff melee/energy brute Princess Ozma, and perhaps my staff/ninjitsu stalker Eternal Sweeper as well. I also finally went ahead and bought Beast Mastery since I had the points, and created "Dog Aggro" since I'd had the name reserved for months. I don't expect to play that character to 50 but I can have a little fun with him I guess. And other than that, I just want to try and run the TFs I really like and try anything I haven't already tried in the game before the end.

But for what it's worth, here's my other DfB characters that I had intended to post pics/bios of over the next couple of weeks. I spent time writing up the bios to try and make them entertaining, so at least I can post them:














As for what I learned from running DfB over and over? There's really not that much to learn, but I was surprised at how great people on Virtue were about the Vahz badge. Probably 85% of the runs I was on someone wanted the badge, and 90% of the time we got it. The few times we missed, people didn't speak up quickly enough. I think there was one miss by accident and only once where someone just purposely didn't go along with the request or ignored everyone.

A couple of these freebie accounts are now VIP. I don't know what good it'll do me, but I had an extra CoV Collector's edition code and a GR code that I applied yesterday.