90 Days to the Apocalypse - A Journal

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-18.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 18


I didn't get any good pictures from tonight, but here's what we did: a Katie Hannon Task Force, for which I brought Forest Goddess, who is now my main focus to get to level 50. By the end of the task force she was 39, so we're doing okay.

I play so many scrappers and brutes (who can pretty much all tank) that I sometimes wonder if we'll be okay if I bring something else. Often when I decide to play a defender, we have five of them, or when I pick a blaster there are three others and two corruptors. But tonight I was one of two nature affinity defenders and the rest of the team was melee except for a blaster. Anyway, this game really doesn't care what you bring most of the time as long as you're a good player and/or you've built your character well.

And there was one point on the last Mary MacComber wave where nearly the whole team was dead or at a sliver of health, but I was at more than 50% health because I'd chewed a bunch of inspirations. Tanking fender, go! But we avoided the team wipe and pulled through. The rest of the TF, of course, is more tedious than thrilling or dangerous, especially leading the hostage out of the caves that are invariably 100 miles deep and twisty like a copyright lawyer. That's another thing to be angry about the game closing: they never fixed Katie Hannon correctly. It's still too much work for too few merits.

Right after the TF we looked for Eochai and Jack in Irons and found both battling each other. We got 4 merits for killing them, but only the Giantkiller badge. And.. 50 feet North of where we killed them, we found both of them again killing each other. I've never seen that, we could have had a four-way fight if we'd realized. Again, 4 merits, but no badge for Eochai.

A bit later we ran a Numina, the WST this week. I switched to Princess Ozma since we needed a higher level to run it. It went well, we finished in 52 minutes with only 4 deaths. Now Ozma only needs a Manti for Task Force Commander.

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 19

Today was simple -- logged in, Freaky was starting up a Numina. It's the WST! So I joined with my level 38 mace scrapper One Divine Hammer. We had a good team, we finished in about 52 minutes, I got to level 39.5.

In the meantime CA was on a different (mostly PuG) Numina. Theirs was a bit slower. By the time we were both done, Jane had logged in, and wanted to... you guessed it... do a Numina.

So we did. I got Forest Goddess most of a level, nearly 40 now I think. We ran with only 5 people this time but it went fast, we were done in 40 minutes I guess.

That was my evening. ^_^

I'm hoping to get Forest Goddess to 50 by some time next week. I'm trying to figure out which other characters I'd like to work on in the coming month. One Divine Hammer, mace/shield scrapper, I will probably get to 50. I'd like to get Eternal Sweeper, staff/ninjitsu stalker, to 50, I only have 1 level 50 stalker. I may work on Death Ace who is 40 or Cupcake Overdrive who is 43. Other possibilities are a dual blades brute named Vashti Ahandra (don't have a level 50 dual blade) or my bane Barbie Bane or my crab, don't have a 50 of either.

I've kind of slacked off on my project to document all of my toons, but I did two more tonight, so here's my Crazy 88 toon Wall Street Brawler:

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-20.html


90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 20


Today we were supposed to run a bunch of Positron missions as part of one of the "Save CoH" events, I guess. But Zombie wanted to run an ITF, and I'm always partial to the kind of experience you can earn on an ITF, as well as a shot at a purple drop. So I logged in to Forest Goddess and headed to Cimemora.

I didn't take any pictures, but you've all seen an ITF before, not much new to see. ^_^ The impoortant information: started at level 39, turned on an XP Booster and a Windfall, got to level 41.5 and actually got a Hectacomb drop at the very end when we were doing the towers.

We were going to run a Numina after, but not enough people were interested so we put it off for another night.



I asked in one of my global channels if anyone knew where I was if I said I was looking at a movie poster for "Brass Monday". So... where is that? One person answered correctly in the global channel, most people ignored me I think, lol.

It's too bad there was never a Nemesis Task Force, I'd run it for a "Brass Monday" event every Monday, haha.

I took pictures of a few more of my older characters. Sometimes I run across a bio that I'd completely forgotten about writing, such as this strange little tale for Thorn Kitten:

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-21.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 21


Friday night I logged in to find that the Valentine's Day Spring Fling event had been turned on. I'm sure I have toons that could use the toga as a costume part -- but off the top of my head I wasn't sure who, so I decided to get a toga for Princess Ozma.

I joined a full group that was running the event from start to finish. For the hero side, I wound up being in charge, and then throughout five runs on the Snaptooth mission. Got the costume pieces, got all the badges including the red cap one which I didn't realize I was missing.



I didn't get a really good picture of Ozma vs. Snaptooth, but anyway.

Right after that some friends ran another Numina Task Force. I brought Princess Shinobu for that as well, but I've already run it once this week with her so there was no notice of the well awarded. Right now my friends are running Numina as often as they can (one is working on the WST badge) and I'm running out of characters that are at least level 35 that I want to get experience on.

We ended the night with an ITF run, for which I switched to Forest Goddess. I hit my usual XP boster and Windfall, and I gained 2 levels (up to 43 now) and got a Ragnarok drop. Can't complain about that! (I also got a Performance Shifter +endurance recipe )

Considering that my goal on Sept 1st was to play Princess Ozma and Forest Goddess to 50 and have fun with staff fighting and nature affinity/water blast, I think I'm well on my way to achieving that goal!

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-22.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 22

This morning my goal was to get a couple of my level 25-30 characters up to 35 so I can join a Numina or ITF with them.

Most of these characters are on my 2nd account, and I have several I want to play. First and foremost is Eternal Sweeper, my staff melee / ninjitsu stalker. I only have 1 level 50 stalker, but I like Sweeper a lot so I want to get her to 50 too. Then there's my crab spider Black Snake Sister, and my Bane Spider Barbie Bane, and my dual blade scrapper Vashti Ahandra. The first three were level 30, Vashti is only 26.

Anyway, my primary goal was to get one or two of them to 35 so I could do Numi with them. I logged in Trinkets my fire melee/shield scrapper and logged Eternal Sweeper on the laptop, and after an hour plus of PLing I managed to get Sweeper to 35.

I switched to Black Snake Sister, but by this point friends were logging in and starting up task forces and stuff, so I only got her to 32 before I decided to join a Numina that Freaky was forming. This meant switching back to Eternal Sweeper on the main computer, and it also meant I had to level up fast, check my MIDS build so I knew what slots I wanted where, and I also spent time at the university in Founder's trying to craft all of the IOs that I had on me while the team was still forming. (Eternal Sweeper is one of those toons who I had level locked at 30 for a while so that I could run SSA's once a week and do random rolls on level 30 recipes -- she was nearly full on level 30 recipes that weren't crafted yet.)

I didn't use an XP booster this time -- Numi is a lot of stealthing missions and running around zones and not so much experience (except for the end bonus of course). I was still level 35 when we finished, but immediately another friend was starting up a Citadel, so I joined that. We finished that off in 1 hour 17 minutes, and I got to 36 and halfway to 37.

I went back to PLing Black Snake Sister. Having run Eternal Sweeper through a Numi, I was once again without a level 35+ character that I really wanted to run through another Numi with friends, which I expect I'll run at least once more before Tuesday. I wanted to get my crab to 35 for that. ^_^

Just as I was hitting 35, the Saturday hami raid was starting up. I switched back to Princess Ozma for this. We didn't get a lot of people to come out (no Zombie this week!) but we managed to pull off the raid anyway.

Spent some time in Ouro talking to another player that I've teamed with before, and that was pretty much it for my day. ^_^

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-23.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 23


To begin with, there was this picture in this thread:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...postcount=4786

This was posted in the "Costume Redesign Thread" because Storm_Seeker was trying to replicate that look.

Now, we are told that this is a male character, so the best replies were imaged of male characters. But I and a couple of others submitted female versions. Here's mine:



This was all a few weeks ago. This past week I came across this picture again, and suddenly I really, really wanted to make a character with this look. I know I've sworn off making new alts -- but surely one more couldn't hurt? I've only played titan weapons to 50 once, and that was with a sword. I know the set is no different with a hammer, but for me looks and concept mean a lot, so really, it does make a difference. After all, I have 5 or 6 different broadsword/shield scrappers and brutes because each one embodies an entire different concept/look.

The next step was the Virtue Name Watch thread. Well, actually, the next step was finding someone to delete. I have 48 characters on Virtue on each of my two main accounts, and while I clearly won't be playing all of those characters again before the game signs off, I don't really want to delete most of them. But I had a Street Justice scrapper named Tori Blackheart (sister of Tiffany Blackheart) who was all of level 4, and not likely to ever see level 5. And I already had a Street Justice brute (Megamisama) and stalker (Shinobi Shinobu). So into the dustbin went Tori!

Then the next step was Virtue Name Watch. Some people had "released to the wild" names that they'd been saving (hoarding) against the day they might use them for a good concept. I searched through said name list and came across Swift Sky, which I liked quite a bit.

Thus was my new scrapper born!






I gave her three different looks, so she's not always a near-clone of the original picture. ^_^

This will almost certainly be the last new character I create, and my goal is to get her to 50 as well. Maybe just by PLing most or all of the way there, we'll see.

I spent a lot of time Sunday powerleveling Swift Sky up to 22. Then a friend wanted to start up a Numina Task Force, so I joined that with Black Snake Sister. This was good -- in my rush to get more characters to 35 and Numi-capable, I'd completely forgotten that the actual friend who was running all of the WSTs for the helper badge wasn't going to be around for a while. But there's always someone running whatever TF is the WST, I suppose.

Anyway that was all I got to do Sunday evening, I was busy for most of Sunday until about 5 PM, so I only had a few hours to play.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-24.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 24


I've been on a few ITFs from hell in my time, and I don't know that the one I was on tonight would qualify as the worst. But it was probably one of the longest and weirdest.

To start with, I was PLing my new toon Swift Sky a bit (from 22 to 27 actually) and a friend asked me if I wanted to do an ITF. This was before he announced he was forming it. I don't know that I've ever done an ITF with this person, but I've run many other TFs with him, so I had no reason to be worried. But right after I joined, he proposed PuGing the rest of the team. That worried me a little. And I wasn't able to respond, because I had a sudden graphics glitch and decided to reboot. By the time I got back, he'd already started filling via the LFG channel.

I was on Forest Goddess, a Nature Affinity defender. My friend was on a corr. I suggested I could switch to some kind of melee type, but he said we'd be just fine. Anyway, I broadcasted to a couple of channels and two people I knew joined, so I wasn't that worried. We had two scrappers and a tank who didn't have taunt, but he was an invul tank with a lot of set bonuses showing.

Our leader gave up the star to someone who was 50 and after discussion decided to run at +1. We didn't have any incarnates on the team and a lot of sub-50's, but he figured we could handle it.

Our first problem came in the first mission, and it didn't seem like such a problem to me. Leader announced that when the door was unlocked he'd head up to the temple and ATT everyone there. He did this while we were fighting the last couple of guys in the tunnel leading to the outside, so we left 2-4 enemies behind, and we skipped the path. I know the group I normally team with likes to take the path, but not everyone does it that way. But one of my other friends threw a fit. "Why the hell did you teleport everone up here? I didn't know we were doing a speed run!" He was way overboard, the leader apologized, said that's the way he'd always done it, and then my other friend was still complaining in one of our global chat channels about it. I really thought he was blowing things out of proportion.

Anyway, in the second mission someone asked if we were going to wait for the ambuses, and when the nominal leader said yes, friend2 said, "So we're not doing a speed run anymore?" But anyway, mission 2 went well enough.

When we got to mission 3, friend2 asked what the plan was, and the leader asked what people wanted. This seemed to be his M.O. for the rest of the task force, let other people decide what to do. I said it was a good thing to be decisive and tell people what the plan is, and he asked me privately why he should say anything if we were just going to "be boring and steamroll the TF anyway". Well, for starters, you haven't said we're going to steamroll, or speed, or kill all, or go for shards/XP, at any point. That's part of the problem. Plus I like steamrolling an ITF -- at least, on a good team that can steamroll quickly and efficiently. We weren't that, exactly though.

At the computer leader said he was going to pull the AVs... well actually, he asked if people thought he should, but he was encouraged to do so. This failed, and we defeated the computer with the AVs still waiting up top. There was general disagreement about whether they should be pulled down or we should just fight on the platform -- I'm all for fighting on the platform, especially since we'd already finished off the computer without pulling them, but I was on a defender, the tank decided to pull and the leader insisted that the turrets up top would kill him quickly. Anyway, we pulled, and didn't bother clearing the platform. Oh well.

Things got more interesting in the final mission. By this point, even I was annoyed that our leader wasn't really giving any instructions. Which path we took was essentially a vote. We got to Rommy and cleared around him, and leader said we should attack him where he was instead of pulling him to the grass -- he asked what good it would do to pull him to the grass, which just set friend2 off again in private channels -- anyway, we charges in, and here's where thing went from slow and sort of disorganized to downright stupid.

The tank couldn't keep Rommy taunted. At all. I don't really understand why not, Invulnerability has a very strong taunt aura and an invul scrapper can taunt Rommy pretty well, I've done it, friends have done it. But our tank couldn't do it. I think NA's debuffs tend to make enemies want to run, but what am I supposed to do, not debuff the AV? Most of our team was level 49 and Rommy was level 52, so that was a problem, we had trouble generating a lot of damage, but basically the main problem was Rommy ran everywhere, even under the ramps to one side of the platform. It was a nightmare. We had a dom on the team too, but she didn't seem capable of holding Rommy except on very rare occasions when she'd lock him down for, oh, 30 seconds.

At one point the scrapper who was the 50 placed in charge died, and then mysteriously vanished, never to return. I know things were going bad but I really hate people that just quit like that. That's one reason I prefer to run with friends, you know what they're capable of, you know how they like to do things, and most of all you know they won't bail on you.

The entire ITF took 2 hours and 20 minutes. We did stay around to clear the towers and part of the right path so that friend2 could get the final bubble to 50. Forest Goddess got level 44 and more than halfway to 45, so that was good I guess, but it was a long and painful 1.5 levels.

I have a sneaking suspicion that Swift Sky will not be your last alt, given there are 65 days left.... ( ' ; I definitely like the first pic, great use of the superpack parts.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-25.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 25

Tuesday I logged to do some more PLing on my new scrapper Swift Sky, but a WST respec trial run was forming and that sounded fun (well... apart from all the wait time in the reactor core) so I joined that. I was on One Divine Hammer, my mace/shield scrapper. I forget what level she is or what I got to, but close to 40 by now.

It was a really good team and a lot of fun, and predictably I found the very last sky raider out in the hallway where he'd ported. Anyway, had fun. Right after that an ITF was forming, but I was inclined to spend some time PLing rather than commit to an hour long ITF, and anyway it was only a day removed from a 2 hour 20 minute ITF. So I was a bit gun shy I suppose.

Little PLing got Swift Sky up to level 32 and got Trinkets to 25 shards. I had 3 notices of the well on her, so I really only needed 28 shards and I could break down one notice and craft my Favor of the Well for my T4.. I got three shards in a row to get to 25 and was really excited... and then I got nothing the rest of the evening. But I got another purple drop -- my third or forth in the last week, a Coercive Persuasion that I crafted before logging off.

The other thing I did was work up a build for Swift Sky in MIDS, but it was too late to try and actually implement it.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-26.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 26


The first thing I did tonight was scour my bases for IOs that I needed for Swift Sky's build. My bases are growing a bit bare in some respects, because of all my recently IO'd alts. I used to keep a lot of Miracle and Numina uniques lying around, but could only find one lone Miracle for Swift Sky. Also I need a bunch of Eradication, regular Numina, and Reactive Armor IOs for my build, which I've had in the past but not much t be found at the moment.

On the other hand I had some of the other stuff I needed -- all the Luck of the Gambler Defense and +7.5% rechage IOs I could want, full scrapper ATO set, Rectified Reticle set, Glad Armor +3% IO, Performance Shifter endurance IO (but not the +endurance proc), run stealth proc, and 3 of 4 pieces for four different sets of Kinetic Combat (I never have any of the damage/endurance lying about). Also full set of Basilisk's Gaze even though I haven't picked up Char yet. So my build is about half done.

I did a little more PLing of my scrapper. I accomplished three things: 1. Got Swift Sky to 35, 2. Got to 28 shards on Trinkets and proceeded to craft my Favor of the Well and my T4 Alpha, and 3. Got another purple drop, a sleep IO this time.

I like to drop my IO into a global channel to show off when I've got a purple drop. Since this dropped to Swift Sky, the one being PL'd, that account was on the laptop. Earlier I'd tried to alt for what I thought was an ITF being started by a friend, but the game had crashed on my main computer, and having Swift Sky still on the laptop I'd started to send a tell to the friend who I thought was starting the ITF (while I was logging back in on the main computer), before realizing they were doing some other kind of Nemesis mission instead. So I hadn't completed the tell, but in my chat bar I still had /t @friend sitting there. My laptop sits off to the side and has a weird keyboard (it was a German-made laptop I got cheap) and the numlock key is always on, and I tend to play in the dark so I can't see the keyboard (I have a bluetooth keyboard if I need, but nowhere to set it on the desk, so it's either in my lap or set aside). Suffice it to say, I hadn't bothered to clear the chat bar because it was too much trouble, and I might have sent my friend a blank message or garbage character message in the process.

So I tried to send to my global channel a link showing off my new purple recipe, but instead I sent it as a tell to my friend. Felt kinda dumb doing that, although he just made fun of it. But then, I figured, what the heck, and sent him my crafted purple from the night before. This had been a Coercive Persuasion, but after all of these PL runs Trinkets had 15 converters on her and I'd converted it into a nice Armageddon. So random stupid tell becomes nice purple IO!

Just after I got Swift Sky to 35, a Manticore formed and I joined on Trinkets. Wanted to get my high-damage scrapper out on a real TF for a change, instead of running around a Council earth map over and over. We had an electric melee/shield brute, and a mace/shield brute, and a street justice/willpower brute, but I still think I was the tank!

Finished our Manti in 37 minutes. That was my evening.

I won't get to play much for the rest of the week, I'll be at a con (Rainfurrest) so that may be all I have to add. Might do a little tomorrow morning and/or Sunday evening, we'll see.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-27.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 27


I have today off but I'll be at the convention by Noon (and I'll have to turn in my rental and go pick up my PT Cruiser this evening, assuming it's actually finally fixed by tonight). But I logged in this morning for a couple of hours. I spent my time working on my build for Swift Sky, and then Power Leveling her three more levels to level 38. My build is mostly complete to what I can actually slot at level 38, but I still have bids in for a few things. I spent some money this morning! Hope it went to someone who is still playing the game and can use it.

Usually I try to get pictures from whatever Task Force I did that day, but I'm often busy and forget, and even when I do remember, there's not always time to swing the camera around to get a good angle (and I wish the camera controls in this game were more robust). I don't usually consider taking pictures while I'm PLing, because PLing is not exciting, so it doesn't occur to me that pictures from it would be interesting.

But I was thinking today that I really enjoy just beating up on bad guys, even on a Council Earth map that I've run over and over. No other game is going to let me run at super speed, take a flying leap, land in a group of 15 oor 20 enemies above my level, and then unleash massive AoE destruction upon them, all while dressed as a ballerina girl, or a cat, or a barbie doll, or a demon, or (insert your character here). Just the act of leaping into the enemy group is a blast, I do that all the time and it's one reason I usually take combat jumping as a pool power.





So I thought, "I really like doing this, I should document it. It's one of the things I'll miss when the game's gone."

Also since I control the pacing and there's only my character to deal with, I can generally get better pictures. So here's a few of me smashing Council:

















I'm going to miss all of this.

Bonus character bio. ^_^ Still cataloging all of my characters, slowly.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-34.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 34

Tonight was the first time I've actually played in a week. I was at a convention last weekend, and since coming back I've logged in twice but haven't actually done much of anything. Usually I've been logging in too late and there wasn't anything going on, or I didn't want to start anything. Amazing how skipping a few days can completely break you of the habit of wanting to log in at all.

That, and I've been busy playing games on my iPad. :/

Anyway tonight I logged in and joined a speed Khan with friends, followed by a speed Lady Gray TF. All in all only about an hour of gaming, probably less actually, but it was fun. Seven of us posed in front of the giant portal in the end room of the LGTF, but the pictures didn't come out so good for me. Still, here's the best one:



From left to right: Jennie Nova (me), Jane's fender (Olivia O'Conner I think), Zombie Broiler, Lord Jubei (Freaky), ah... Gems tank I think, joe's brute, and Ceeyou Someday (Cobalt Avenger).

Not pictured: Skippylabs hit exit early.

Apparently I can't log in to the main boards to post this there right now. So it goes. (posted to my blog a couple of days ago.)

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 35


I didn't do that much on Friday night. There weren't many people online and I logged in late I think. Freaky was planning to run all of the shard TFs for the weekend, so I decided what I really wanted to do was get Swift Sky from level 38 to 40. And... that's what I did. That's all I did, in fact -- just like I've done for the other 38 levels, I PL'd my new scrapper up two more levels.

At the moment though, Swift Sky has a nearly complete IO build, aside from the things I can't even slot yet. She's at nearly 40% smashing/lethal defense, and that's on a Willpower toon. She has a few endurance problems still, those need fixed, but that's Titan Weapons for you. But all in all I'm pleased with the character, and not at all disappointed in myself for having PL'd all the way to 40. I've played Titan Weapons on a brute, and I have a dozen or more Willpower melee toons by now. I know exactly what I want for this character and how to build her and play her.

I did some work finishing up her build, so that I'm completely ready for a shard TF Saturday. And that was it. I've had a cold so I decided to call it an early night.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-36.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 36


Well today I sure made up for a full week of not playing.

I logged in early in the morning and did some stuff with my scrapper Swift Sky. It wasn't long before Freaky was advertising the start of his Doctor Quaterfield Task Force. Well if you're gonna do it, might as well start early. ^_^

Aside from some costume missions, this was going to be my first run at anything with Swift Sky, apart from a lot of door sitting while my main account killed stuff. I was worried about endurance so I bought a bunch of inspirations on the market and I used a endurance drain resist empowerment buff just before we started. Which... rularuu don't really drain endurance, not sure if that was any help at all. Also crafted an envenomed dagger and a recovery serum temp power, that was more likely to help. But really, we had a kin on the team so I didn't have too many endurance issues.



Doc Q was Doc Q. We finished in 3 hours 22 minutes. I had fun -- I think everyone did. We had a good team, and we made good use of team transports and such.



Since there's not much to say about the task force other than it's very long, I took several pictures.





Swift Sky did very well. I kind of knew she would -- Willpower is the right set to use against Rularuu. Defense based sets are pretty screwed, those guys shred defense.

One thing that amused me was the end of the Task Force, I got the message "You have earned your first merits...." Probably not many people have recieved 122 merits for their first ever merit reward. ^_^

It's hard to get good pictures when you're in the middle of an 8-man Task Force, and concentrating on things other than setting up a good photo opportunity. When I joined Freaky's Sara Moore Task Force after a bit of a break, I spent the time while we were forming killing stuff in the Cascade Archipelago and taking better pictures of my character. In between I'd run my Founder's Falls costume mission and designed a new costume, which I kinda liked.









We finished the Sara Moore in 1 hour 28 minutes. It felt very fast after the Doc Q! I had fun on this one as well!

Afterwards Jane wanted to run a Posi 1 & 2, spurred in part by the knowledge that my new character didn't have any of the Freedom Phalanyx TF badges, and in part because she had a level 11 toon to play. ^_^ We couldn't get anyone else but Cobalt Avenger to join us, so we ran both TFs with just three people. Finished both in just over 30 minutes! I think I got a very good picture of me vs. Doc Vahz... I was the only melee so it was easy to get a clear shot:



But that wasn't all! I spent probably two hours on a special costume contest/event. You had to make a level 1 character -- couldn't be higher -- and use the random button on the costume. Then you made your way to the hospital in Steel Canyon, and we did a run around the outer road of Steel Canyon using just sprint.

On the first run I was a bit confused about the course. I think a lot of people were. I cut across the grass North of the hospital, which I later realized was a shortcut. I also took a shortcut down by the yellow line tram (SE corner) and didn't realize it. At that point I was following the guy who was the apparent winner the first time, but we went around the inside of the tram rather than follow the road that goes around the outside of it, so that was a bit of a shortcut too. Although by that point we were so far ahead of everyone else it might not have mattered.

But! The leader just ahead of me was a stalker who had turned on his stealth, without realizing that was against the rules. So we ran again.

On the second run I'm not exactly sure what happened. The entire group of people were in a pack ahead of me, and then a guy was way behind them named Eletri-kin Tank I think it was, and then I was way behind him. Along the route you were supposed to stop if you saw anyone who was high level and might be a costume contest judge, so after I'd stopped a couple of times I couldn't even see the main pack anymore, just Eletri-kin way ahead of me. I followed him around and this time I know for certain I took the correct route the entire way. I was confused what had happened to all the people ahead of us, we never caught up to any of them, but when we reached the finish line, it turned out that we were the only two to make it there. So I came in second place again. Everyone else died, I guess, and started over -- it was quite a few minutes before third place showed up (the guy who had won the original race by inadvertently cheating). Two others made it all the way around.

This is one of those things -- I always made fun of people who couldn't cross The Hollows without dying back in the old days. It never seemed all that tough to me. And this was like that, I didn't die on either run, I got zapped once each time (once by a guy who'd chased Eletri-kin out into the street, so I couldn't avoid him). But most people found it really difficult to avoid dying, so I don't know why I'm good at that.

My friends won 3rd and 2nd place in the costume contest though. ^_^ Now we all have money on toons that are level 1 and can't e-mail yet. I reminded them to not just go and delete them!

Right after that, I joined a Khan TF. This turned into a Mo Khan attempt that was foiled by a single death when our MM who was stealthing to the final room was seen and killed. I thought, well, they can't see ME! since I was on my widow Miss Shinobu, who has superspeed. I headed off down the corridor, and most of them couldn't see me, but for some reason on the same corner where the MM died, one of them did see me. Grrr. But at least I didn't die, and we trounced Reichsman in very short order.



This is the kind of shot you normally get in an AV battle on an 8-man team, especially when it's a level 50 task force. It's kind of a cool shot in its own way I suppose, but you can't see details. That's my widow in the middle doing a spin attack.

And that was my big Saturday.

I really like reading your journal

Quote:

Originally Posted by Paladiamors I love you, I Burnt the Toast!

Glad people find it entertaining. ^_^

I almost forgot to add... Freaky ran another Doc Q in the afternoon, since some people that wanted to run it missed his early AM run. I really don't know how many people have ever run two complete Doctor Quaterfield TFs in the same day, let alone with a Sara Moore and (I believe) a Khan TF sandwiched in between them. Man's hardcore. ^_^

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-37.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 37


I slept in this morning and missed the Justine Augustine Task Force that Freaky ran. I'm not sure if I'm disappointed, or relieved. I logged in about 9 AM PST and figured they had already started and were probably in the middle of it, so when a random ITF advertised looking for people I decided to join. Right away I was worried, because I didn't know anyone, there were only two level 50s on the team (non-incarnates) and a lot of lower levels, and they were talking about running at +1 and maybe bumping it up higher if it was too easy. I sensed great danger ahead.

I was on Swift Sky and of course had to run to Night Ward to gain access to the Midnighter's Club. I mean, all I've done on that character was sit in a Council Earth mission and then run a few TFs. Other people on the team also needed to do the same thing, and weren't as fast about it as I was, so we were still waiting on people to get to Cimemora when Freaky advertised the forming of a Faathim the Kind TF.

Well, I immediately dismissed myself from the ITF which had not yet started, and joined the Faathim. Saved me from pain and torment, I have no doubts! ^_^

The thing about Faathim the Kind is that he doesn't have a phone. At all. Ever. Even after you've spent 2+ hours bouncing around The Chantry and Storm Palace, saving his bacon and defeating Lanaruu the Mad, he won't talk to you. All of the latter missions are in Storm Palace (except the one or two that happen back in Paragon) so the leader is left running back to the center of The Chantry to talk to the idiot, and then back to Storm Palace, ad nauseum. And you can bet we waited for him to go back one last time just so we could properly complete the TF after it was over.



We finished in 2 hours 12 minutes... but it felt a lot longer. One of our teammates got a migrane and had to quit. Anyway I tried to get a good shot of the end fight but Lanaruu is so tall and fighting his feet doesn't make for a great picture... I did my best.

I got one picture which I thought was cool enough that I left it in full screen mode. (Since it's pretty large I'm just going to link to it):

http://i218.photobucket.com/albums/c...fullscreen.jpg

Can't see that much but I thought it looked cool.

After this TF I had only 90 badges on Swift Sky, including 3 of 4 shard TF badges. That appealed to me a great deal so I had to capture it:





(These pictures were taken with me ninja jumping up and down on the hill in Talos Island, with the camera pointed straight up, lol.)

In the evening I logged in just in time to join the weekly redside Cathedral of Pain Trail. I showed up at just the right time -- after the instructions were finished, just before the actual start. I brought AE Baby of course, my go-to villainess. We whipped through the whole thing in about 8 minutes, no second takes, no miscues, defeated the AV without a respawn of the cubes. Cake!



Right after that we started up a speed Khan (pictured above), and the leader stressed that, if you were a rogue, you could NOT use Ouro or go to a co-op zone like RWZ because it WOULD kick you from the team.

Of course, the reason you'd want to use Ouro is that the second-to-last mission is in Peregrine Island (all the others are "board train" missions) and you need to be in that mission to get the temp power to use on Reichsman. But these days there's the tunnel system, and there's one right below the tram in Founder's, and it goes straight to PI. Problem solved, right?

Well... mostly. Once you exit that mission, the final mission is another "board train" missions, and most people naturally head to Ouroboros to do it. Our leader was a rogue, so he had to hoof it to the other end of the island where the boat and tunnel portal await. Only someone on the team suggested that there was a tunnel portal near the arena, which is much closer. Except... that portal doesn't go anywhere but to Dark Astoria. Which is a co-op zone. Which means... our leader got kicked from the team.

So we finished the AV fight, then we ran again so that our leader could get to the end. It's a fast TF if you speed it, 20-30 minutes. I think the second time around we hit 22 minutes. On the first run I was using Swift Sky who was by then 45 and made it to 46 by the end; for the second run I went with Megami Hime, who is my titan weapons/willpower brute. Much different from a titan weapons/willpower scrapper! Well, I have taunt for one thing... plus it's not a giant hammer, it's a sword! These things are important!



I think what I really like about the above picture is the giant robot on one side blazing away, and the little leprechaun on the other side scheming and doing nothing of course, but he's right there in the foreground. You can see Megami Hime swinging the excaliber sword too.



For the end of the evening a friend ran a Hess TF, mostly with people grabbed from the Looking For Group and Help channels. Several of them had never done it before, and it's a fun task force so they had fun and that's all good. ^_^ Swift Sky is very close to 47 now, I had a very productive weekend with her!

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-38.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 38


There weren't a lot of people on tonight. I figured I could join a Khan TF pretty easily (last night that it is WST) but our first attempt drew only three people so we decided to try again later. In the meantime, I went to Ouro and ran "A Madman's Council" which unlocked Hess on Swift Sky. Not long after I was done, Freaky had logged on and was forming a MoKhan. So I joined.

We had at least half the team filled by people from LFG/Help channels, and you never know what you're going to get doing that, especially for a Mo run. But actually it went really well. We had a tank, a brute, three scrappers, two trollers, and a defender -- at least one of them was nature affinity, which has such nice buffs. We pulled Reichs down to one corner and had the brute tank the other four AVs separately, which worked. The NA did that mushroom spores debuff toggle when Reichs was being pulled and he stopped halfway to the tank and went straight for the NA, but we quickly got things under control (that debuff REALLY pisses enemies off though!). In the end we were successful, Master of 5th Column Task Force achieved!

This was actually my 99th badge on Swift Sky, although I hit 100 and 101 at the same time (the WST helper one, and the one for 100 badges too). I don't think I have MoKhan on any other toon -- I've tried for it a few times but overall I'm not a big one for Mo badges. So it amused me even more that Swift Sky has it with so few badges overall.

Then we took down Seed of Hamidon in First Ward with a 6 man team. Again, something I've never done, and a fun badge to add to Swift Sky's small but increasingly distinguished collection!

I hit 47 on the Khan, which allowed me to slot hami-O's (Cytoskeletons in three defense powers). Yay!

You have some really great costumes!

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-39.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 39

It is getting harder and harder to find enough people to do what every it is you want to do in the game. I have to wonder what it's like on other servers, because Virtue remains one of the most populated servers in prime time on the West Coast, and yet I see so few people. The weekend was quite busy, we even did a redside Cathedral of Pain on Sunday, but come Monday and Tuesday it's a ghost town.

Tonight when I logged in I checked the global channel that I'm an Op for -- MG's Taskforces -- and there were three people total including me on. I checked Brickhouse and there were only two people including me. I checked Whisper X, which has always been a much bigger channel that gets a lot of use for iTrials and such, and there were maybe 9 people total on in that one. Some people were trying to form an Apex but there wasn't enough interest, so they decided to wait and see what came up later. In the meantime I saw someone in LFG advertising for a Numina, and I wanted exp on Swift Sky and I need most of the Freedom Phalanx TFs so I joined up.

This went well, we finished in 45 minutes. I was a big worried when most of the team was at half health in a normal battle with Freakshow in the first mission... but things went well from there. Although we didn't have a lot of direction during the hunt sequence, and what little we had was ignored. The leader basically said (at the very start of the TF), "Here's the order: perez, atlas, steel, kr, sky, faultline, bricks, crey, tv, ip, boom, talos, founders, eden. We'll just go in order from the top, I'll do perez, Arrow does atlas, etc." I was the third person on the team so that meant I had Steel, but of course when the time came we had other people who immediately shouted that they were heading for Steel too, and from that point people just went wherever they wanted. Ah well.

Around this time Freaky was trying to form an Apex, and once they had six people they gave up trying to find more and were simply looking for fillers. They still needed one filler so during our hunt phase I logged in my other account on the laptop and joined long enough for them to start. It turned out they did a successful six-man Master of Apex run. ^_^

After our Numi we ran a Manticore with mostly the same people, but with a different person in charge. They set it at +2, but it still went fairly well until the final mission. Here, things kind of unraveled a bit. First, two people ran to the very end of the mission where Hopkins the AV was, then were unable to teleport anyone to them, then died, then rezed, then died again... both eventually just decided to wait while the rest of the team cleared our way all the way to them. How very... helpful.

Then, I was charging ahead trying to lead the rest of the team to the end of the mission as quickly as possible, but the rest of the team kept pausing to kill every single thing they saw. So at one point I found myself with 5 or 6 Paragon Protectors on me, and nobody else helping. Once we got past that, we cleared the middle of a large room, and while I charged into the next hallway, the rest of the team decided to clear the corners and balconies of the large room. So once again I found myself going up against 5 to 6 Paragon Protectors at once, and these were level 38, +3 to me. I did die that time, but hit my Return to Battle and managed to finish them off, with the help of one of the people waiting at the end of the mission who could now see me and decided to actually backtrack and help out.

At the same time, the five people who had failed to follow me had a near full group wipe, which only confirmed for me that my scrapper was tougher than our two brutes. But anyway, we all managed to meet up at the AV in the end. It's not like Hopkins ever gave any team a hard time, ever. I mean EVER.

So yeah... at the very end there, the legend of the PuG reared its ugly head. "You cannot deny the awesomeness of the PuG", one of my global channel friends said. ^_^

But the good news is I got Swift Sky to 48. Less than 2 levels to go! I think I should run a Citadel or Yin tomorrow night...



During the rescue the councilman in King's Row mission, I went to Crey's Folly for the Kill 40 Crey hunt that happens right after. THIS is how you prepare for that! Kind of reminded me of the old days herding enemies into containers with my fire tank.



Oh look, it's the least fearsome AV in the game, with the possible exception of the Hellion in Death From Below. You can tell the fight has just started because he's not held yet, and that happens about five seconds into the fight and then he pretty much stays held for the rest of the fight.

Right after that Jane wanted to do a DFB badge run, and I had my "random" level 1 character that I'd made on Sunday. I'd changed the character's name to Vashi and gave her a better costume, but I probably should have changed it to "Annoying Stormy" or "Clueless Stormy" because that's what she'll be if I ever get her high enough. Anyway on our big badge run we screwed up on the first and hardest badge, by letting a cadaver get killed by a proximity bomb. Right after that people wanted to bail to hopefully join an iTrial (they'd been waiting for enough people to log on so that they could actually run one), but Jane still wanted that badge we'd missed. I switched to Tiffany Blackhearrt on the theory that I'd be more helpful and MA was mostly single target anyway. Other people switched, and before we started most of the other people came back because there STILL wasn't enough interest to form an iTrial yet. We got the badges on the 2nd run, and that was pretty much my evening.

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-40.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 40

Tonight before logging in I started to archive my "Zero to Awesome 2" thread. Right now I'm just saving it to a rich text file, but with the ability to edit my posts I can save the original text including photo links, so I should be able to reconstruct it in my blog later fairly easily. I did the first two pages -- it's kind of a time consuming process, but if I do a bit at a time I should get it done in just a few days.

One thing I noticed was that someone had asked why I didn't do things the easy way or take obvious shortcuts, and it occurred to me that, if you follow that kind of thinking to its logical conclusion, you get Swift Sky. PL'd to 40, IO'd with money from my marketing toons and IOs I had in storage. ^_^ I like doing things that way too but it doesn't really demonstrate something that anyone in the game can do. The point of my zero to awesome threads was to show how literally anyone could come up with a great build by level 50, and do it all in one month.

Anyway tonight when I logged in the first teaming opportunity I saw was some global channel friends who were running the last mission of Serpent Drummer's Rikti Warzone Arc. That sounded like some quick experience and not a long time commitment, so I joined up immediately.

Just after getting into the mission someone else was forming an ITF. I would have preferred the ITF, actually, but I didn't think that was a good reason to quit so I said nothing. And, actually, the final mission was really fun. You face Lord of War Hro'Dtohz, an AV, in the same final room that you get on the Lady Gray Task Force. That means it's a big room filled with rikti, so it's a massive kill-fest on a good team, which we were. And then Nemesis shows up so you get a second AV and a lot more people to bash. I had fun. ^_^




Not long after that a friend wanted to run a Penelope Yin TF to help him get his character to 50. I need that for TFC so I agreed. Once we started, we were informed that it was a speed TF and he wanted to finish in 20 minutes. We actually took 24. I'm not a fan of speeding the Yin TF for whatever reason (one reason being that it's not long no matter how you run it), and it seemed odd to suggest a TF because he wanted experience, but then to speed through it. But he hit 50 in the final fight so I guess he knew what he needed, and at least he announced it right at the start. I would have liked more experience but I also just wanted the badge so no worries.

And it turned out that it was a good thing we were speeding it because some other friends were starting up another ITF just as we hit the final room. Yeah, now THAT'S what I wanted! By this point I was 4 bubbles from level 49 and I figured a good run with an xp booster would get me to 50. But I actually forgot about the xp booster until we were partway into the first mission, and I didn't hit 49 until halfway through the 2nd mission, so it was looking iffy whether I really could hit 50 or not.



One thing about the team -- I was almost the only melee on the team. We had a brute join late, and I was glad for that, but it was a tauntless brute so we were about equal as far as tanking went. We had three nature affinity defenders, a fire/kin controller, a dark controller, and fire/rad corruptor. Needless to say, my willpower scrapper was not only capped for defense but capped for resists and with a nice hit point buffer from NA's absorb buff. I felt pretty darn tough. ^_^

Things went well and we finished off Rommy and cleared the towers... and I was still just a bit over 1 bubble from 50. I took a break, and came back later and ran the walls for a short while and hit 50 that way, then I went to Ouroboros and did my Alpha unlock mission.



Another evening successfully wasted!

One thing I noticed running the wall... Swift Sky still has endurance issues when solo. I'll have to use my Alpha to address that, since I went for the pyro epic pool instead of the one that might help me with my endurance.

I also finally came up with a bio for Swift Sky just last night:

One thing I'll miss about these forums is all your journals, Organica! There was a looong stretch of time where I was reading the market forums almost non-stop, and the advice I got from you and all the Crazy 88 members was huge in helping me to enjoy this game.

I had the pleasure of meeting several of the marketeers in-game on my "civilian" account. But this one post from your Zero to Awesome journal made my cold, capitalist heart leap for joy:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showp...&postcount=125

That one chatty player you mentioned? That was me! I was so excited to have an anonymous cameo in your posts, and not only that, you liked my bio! Glee! (I was playing on my Dual Pistols corruptor Shoots and Giggles at the time.)

So thank you for the journals and especially that one small, happy memory!

That's awesome! I remember that too, in Cap Au Diable I think at the market. Neat!


I played Tiffany just two days ago and a friend commented on the bio, he said it was the only bio he'd ever seen that involved chess. And I still play AE Baby of course, I played her Sunday for the CoP.




90 Day to the Apocalypse -- Day 41


I refuse to admit that I've created any new alts since Swift Sky. Nope, not happening. And the character Shin Random that I created for that "Random Costume Level 1 Steel Canyon run" competition doesn't count. Even though I renamed her and gave her a better costume.

So.... anyway tonight I logged in and there were other people online, but nobody seemed to want to do anything. When I said, "Someone needs to start something!" Freaky just laughed. I decided to go to Cimemora and run the walls, both to see how good at it I was now (better, my endurance problems aren't as bad when I'm doing this at level 50) and to hopefully get a few shards (eventually got 4).

I was thinking about new alts not just because Swift Sky was now 50, but also because I had become confused and thought the Double Experience weekend was this weekend. Hrm. Not that I don't have a lot of other characters I should get to 50 instead of making new ones anyway. But I had fun running around the walls in Cim killing stuff, waiting for something more interesting to happen. I really do like Titan Weapons a lot, once it's properly slotted. It's one of those sets that you really can't appreciate until you fully IO your character, but then it's awesome.

CA said he was standing in Dark Astoria watching tumbleweeds. I said I was watching surgeons fall from the walls in Cimemora. That's because the most fun thing to do with the surgeons is to hit them with the Nemesis Staff and watch them sail out into open air. Zombie came and hung out with me for a while -- I know I was there for more than an hour because we're both serial fortune tellers and we read each other's fortunes at least 3 times. But when I suggested starting an ITF, Zombie said he was sick and wasn't going to stay on long, and nobody else said anything. So eventually Zombie logged, and I logged.

And I didn't go to my third account and use my saved points to buy Titan Weapons and make a third TW toon, because I said I wasn't going to make any other alts after Swift Sky. I admit to nothing!

Later I came back and... I certainly did not log in to my new Titan Weapons/Electric Armor brute on my dark shinobu account, and I didn't immediately join a Death From Below team and get to level 7, and then run the newbie Hellion arc and part of Twinshot's arc. Nope, didn't do any of that. And I don't have any pictures or the name of my new alt because I already told you, I haven't got one.

Then I helped Jane and company take down Jurrasik in Crey's Folly. This was on Swift Sky. I noticed right after that, inexplicably, Swift Sky had a mission in Crey's Folly. This mystified me because I PL'd the toon to 40 and haven't run any solo content on her. but a little investigation revealed that it was the Penny Preston store unlock mission, which I'd clicked on by accident while trying to sell to her a few levels back. So I completed that, and that was my evening.

And the only question is, do I stick with the Atom Smasher, or maybe buy the Excalibur Sword? I mean, hypothetically... for my new alt. If I had one. Swift Sky has the rocket hammer, Megami Hime has Excalibur. I don't like repeating myself, but Excalibur is really cool looking. Of course, I haven't even looked to see if any are still for sale.

And why would I, since I certainly don't have a new TW toon?

http://postalvalhalla.blogspot.com/2...se-day-42.html

90 Days to the Apocalypse -- Day 42

I spent a little time backing up more of my "Zero to Awesome 2" thread. It's a lot of work, but I'm nearly done with that one, then I want to do the original Zero to Awesome thread, and maybe my other market threads -- the 30 random merits in 30 days one at least.

Tonight was giant monster night. I started off running the wall in Cimemora again because nothing was going on -- well, actually my friends were already on a Citadel, which I would have liked to join but I logged in too late. Then Shimmer started up his weekly Friday night Mother Ship Raid. Once upon a time I never joined that because the zone would fill up too quickly, but these days you can join at any point if you want. By the time I hit the zone they were already on the ship and planting bombs. I decided to plant a bomb before asking to join, so seeing that the three left-hand grills were taken care of, I ran to the fourth grill and helped someone take it down. I figured whoever it was was going to plant, and ran to the 5th grill, when Shimmer sent me a direct tell to go back and plant the 4th bomb because they didn't have enough teams. At once Commander! Heh, Shimmer's very sharp, he spotted me and what I was doing instantly, then sent me an invite which I clicked on after the bomb was planted.



The raid was fun. I earned a couple of shards (3 I think) and over 500 vanguard merits, with which I purchased a heavy since they're kind of handy to have. Swift Sky does well on large teams with support. Not so well in long fights with little support, my endurance problems are too great. I need to get my Alpha slot filled and see if that fixes the problem, otherwise I ma need to go back to the drawing board and pick a different epic power pool.

Speaking of which, my bids on the last two pieces for my build filled today -- Apocalypse and Ragnarok, I have a set of 5 of each in fire blast and fireball now.

After the raid nothing else seemed to be happening so I logged for a while and I went to exercise. When I logged back in later, I joined a four-person team to take down the Kraken.



(Most of my pictures from this evening are pretty crappy, sorry!)

Anyway this turned out to be a monster hunting team that had already killed Jack in Irons and Babbage. We headed to Crey's Folly next and took down Jurrasik. Then they were wondering what to do next, and someone said we could summon Adamaster if anyne could afford the recipe, but I'd already bought one while they were typing this. ^_^ 500,000 for a monster summoning recipe, that's chump change for me!



There were only three of us by this point (Whisper X was running a MoUG, so we'd lost one person to that). I used my Vanguard temp robot.

After Adamaster we looked for Jack and Eochai but neither were up, but we found Lusca in Independence Port. We eventually had a full team of 8 to take Lusca down, including an old friend who logged in and sent me a tell, "You really DO long in still!" I basically said, Uh, I log in almost every night, where've you been? Anyway, he admitted he hasn't been on much and must have missed me, and also tried to offer me his cash hoard of some 15 billion since he wasn't planning to do anything with it. But I have billions of my own that I probably won't be able to spend, so I declined. I'm obviously the last person who needs it. But maybe I should have taken it and given it away to other people, or burned it at the Crazy 88 bonfire on October 31st.



I still say Lusca is worth more than two measly merits!



That was my Friday.