Apotheosis

Panzer Blitz: Hero from Hardship

2011-01-16T14:56:00.008-06:00

America coming out ahead on the Rikti invasion was good for all, but not without lingering hardships of its own. Turret: Army Navy was a Mom & Pop shop four generations deep in both family ownership and support for the troops. Never a soldier himself, Bartley Kronk held the reigns of the business, having seen the heart of his father before him broken wide open. When the war walls went up, the highways and sidewalks were redirected and Turret found itself sidled into a cramped corner of Brickstown. Bartley watched his father re-mortgage their home trying to keep Turret's doors open, only to have Icon absorb what was left of the Kronk family legacy. He slept every night in the back storeroom, the blue-green energy of Paragon's barriers seeping in through the window slats and what felt as if into his bones. Eight years on the wall, day and night, basking in the eerie, inescapable light of his family's very demise. Nevermore will the government wonder what it would take for a man to steer bullets with his mind.

Holy Crap!

2010-12-30T07:38:00.003-06:00

Yeah, that pushes Halftrack over the 1 Billion influence threshold. Damn.

Halftrack Incarnate

2010-12-21T22:25:00.002-06:00

Yes, that is a fully functional Uncommon Incarnate Boost slotted in Halftrack's Alpha slot.

Took a bit to get it, as I had to create the Cardiac Common Boost first, and then upgrade it with converted shards and task force awards. The end result though, is gratifying. Halftrack is freaking amazing now. Great damage, great recharge, almost untouchable with a self-heal, and mobile as all get-out now that he has the inherent Swift and Hurdle.

He's crazy fun to play. Hoo-ah.

Solo'd Infernal (Arch-Villain)

2010-07-18T23:08:00.002-05:00

Link to post on the forums:

http://boards.cityofheroes.com/showthread.php?t=230148

No temps, no inspirations, no click vet or day-job powers, etc.

WOOT!

Rocking 14

2010-07-18T13:29:00.003-05:00

Rocking the single-target, Slammer Sam is primed for soloing AVs. One IO enhancement remains for his end-game build.

Solo'd a Rikti Pylon in the War Zone with no difficulties. Tremendous single-target damage output.

Lucky 13

2010-05-30T08:48:00.004-05:00

Microcut hit 50 this weekend. Nice ride, fun character to play. Worthy successor to Windup Hero.

Deadnought

2010-03-30T19:25:00.002-05:00

Number 12

2010-03-28T22:46:00.003-05:00

Took longer to get Halftrack over the goal line than most, which is a good thing. With his leveling pact acting as a drag on his XP accumulation, I was able to really experience a lot of the higher level content with him without issue. He is perhaps the most dangerous Tank I have ever built, rivaling some of the Scrappers I play with. He is, I kid you not, one of the most proficient AoE machines I have played, even considering Patination and his truly staggering array of ways to burn things. Half can just stand in the center of the crucible and just hammer away over and over and over... Stunning performance that lives up to my high expectations.

Spoilers, Spoilers Everywhere - Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for Wii

2010-01-23T23:58:00.013-06:00

So, when we examine my personal gaming life and see druids getting squashed under dragon’s asses, sonic defenders completely financed by sugar daddies, and one questionable marital incident when I thought it well worth my time to download Hitler into my wife’s ongoing Sims game, I think it will come as no surprise that, despite my love for video games, I have actually finished so very few. Sure, the geek in me wants to build a digital tanker that plays as if he runs on geothermal power or crack and construct a high def’ master mage that could spit a full-bodied Hermione Granger out of my computer exhaust fans. But alas, much of my geekdom instead gets ladled into hand correcting my Klingon dictionary, writing a macro that pays all my bills at once, and repeatedly turning the Atari 2600 ‘Yar’s Revenge’ score over the 999999 mark back to zero. “Hmm, I am starting to like that Kenny G. song.”

Thusly, when I do finish a game, no less finish one in just a couple of weeks, it is nothing short of an unsurpassable personal triumph. This was the case with Star Wars: The Force Unleashed for Wii and I’d love to share my thoughts on the subject so as to pretend that it is at all important or that anybody cares. Can we give Michelle Obama access to the blog?

First, a moment of silence for some of the digital characters into whom I’ve poured the pure essence of life only to leave them stranded, mid-plot, possibly for all eternity.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider 3
(Playstation shit when I finally bought my first PC.)

Plavic Myrtleberry: Neverwinter Nights Diamond Edition
(Perpetually stuck in a poor game-save scenario that only loads him, empty-handed, into an enclosed cave with two fully grown and pissed off white dragons.)

Grenoble: Ultima Online
(Victim of the emotional response to an ugly 3D client.)

Grigg Rathskeller: Star Wars Galaxies
(Shot in a dark alley by the president of Sony.)

Gordon Whitefang: The Sims 2
(Potato chip addicted loser whose digital, bread-winning wife was lured over to a permanent lesbian relationship with my wife’s college sorority Sim.)

…and the list goes on.

The Force Unleashed, like most games creamed upon by LucasArts, attempts to successfully add to the epic plot lexicon that the franchise has become. The question is whether they get there as they had with an awesome Darth Maul lightsaber/quarterstaff fight or whether they copped to the business model of Dulocks (evil Ewoks) from the 1980s cartoon. The answer is a little of each, all the excitement of Darth Maul’s counter-insurgent entrance, all the lexicon value of Alien Resurrection. Similar to Knights of the Old Republic II and what seems as if it will be an option in the forthcoming MMO, Star Wars: The Old Republic, TFU allows you to play a Sith, their vehicle to conveying you, justifiably, to the best parts in this game, the completely freakin’ chaotic parts! While accessing the dark side is a relative newcomer to LucasArts player characters, its branded releases seem to parallel the rate at which most of my friends have grown cynical. So, kudos on the emerging market, George!

First, if you are going to take food out of your children’s mouths to buy new and kill civilians in wars over oil to power your childhood dream of wielding a lightsaber that’s not a mop or a stick, at least get it on Wii. I’m a fan of Wii for the motion technology, but its native bobblehead graphics, while clean, make me long for the blocky veneer of Tron Deadly Discs on Intellivision. For me to opt for a game on Wii over PC or PS would normally be like Rachel Maddow opting to give Glenn Beck a rim job, but for TFU, there can be no better technology. I’ve got lots of broken living room furniture to prove it! “Honey, those cats are going senile.”

Second, if you want them, research your lightsaber-like Wii controller attachments thoroughly. Part of my Christmas gift was a set of stunted falsies with plastic hilts and illuminating, packing-foam blades. The Wii controller fits into each nicely, both the red and the blue, locking into place and allowing open access to everything but the signal panel. The result, a decent feeling child’s replica for swordplay containing a controller that cannot communicate with game system. The signal gets blocked, badly. Fresh batteries correct momentarily, but are we gamers or are we my mother, a woman who once thought that yelling into her 2600 joystick like a microphone could better get Pac-Man to do as she dictated? The game plays fine, even preferably, without any controller attachments, a good thing considering that I play 12 inches from a china cabinet and never more than a pinky toe from a growling Yorkie who seems to sense the dark side in me as I play.

Like Wii Boxing, TFU uses both the Wii controller and the Wii nun-chuck, one in each hand simultaneously. This has a few logistical ramifications for TFU. To begin, it means that almost no matter what Wii package you’ve bought, if you want to take turns playing with your neighbor, the Pulp Fiction gimp enthusiast, you’ll likely need to buy a second controller or second nun-chuck, lest you catch him salivating over all the many complicated safety straps that dangle as you hand off system accessories. The game has a duel mode in which two players can pound on each other, lightsaber to lightsaber, but I have not yet played that. Nobody loves me. Well, not since I got this game anyway. I imagine duel mode needs both the controller and the nun-chuck for each player as well, especially if the mode permits force powers as in the scripted game.
Also, the nun-chuck plugging into the Wii controller means no space to use a Wii MotionPlus chip, the great chip, obviously invented by an old man with potency issues, that keeps your landlord’s kids from effortlessly carving your avatar up like a Christmas turkey by disallowing a number of the standard motion “cheats.”

Finally, while I’ve never been able to quite figure out why such a markedly wireless game connects controller to nun-chuck with a cable, TFU has further puzzled me with a new wired mystery. Somehow, when playing TFU, that cable is so short that my arm span is a definite issue, one hand threatening to yank the opposite shoulder out of its socket when I feel Rancor-infused excitement. At the same time, that cable is somehow so long that when the theatre nerd in me flourishes my weapon as would an extra gay Mercutio mid-battle, I then have to pause the thing to unwrap the massive tangle I create about my wrist. “There was no pause on the Death Star!”

Okay, so, bottom line, closest I have come yet to feeling like I’m using a light-saber! It’s money! The controller is a little less than the weight I imagine Luke’s hilt to have been, the saber part obviously only appearing on the screen and therefore as light as light (without attachments). Yes, I allot exactly 14 seconds per year to imagine lightsaber weights. While I long for the day when my hapless tinkering will create a real lightsaber that I’ll pull for the first time at night in a NYC alley to the shit-pants surprise of some retreating gang-banger, this game will hold me over for a long while. Sure, you can manipulate the toon’s melee style with simpler flicks of the wrist, sometimes even quite accurately, but if you came up as I did pretending the carpet was lava and sacrificing your virgin sister with a push from the sofa to save yourself, you’ll be sore from the full-on broadsword swings and thrusts that you know you want to incorporate into TFU.

The great news is this. While playing a Sith/Jedi in other LucasArts game designs had sort of spiraled into the classic D&D broken balance issue (how much magic is too much versus weapons damage), each aging game title either letting you focus on lightsaber battles or instead the force, this title seems a perfect mix of the two. There is an awesome bad-ass feel to taking out four guys with your lightsaber and then force pushing a huge conduit down the hallway to flatten three more.

And that’s where the Sith motif comes in. In my opinion, the hardest part about getting a game to FEEL like the films is representing the force as the silver screen had. You come away from the films with the childlike inkling that the force can be used to do practically anything. It is expansive, even expansive beyond what you come to realize are the very few particular ways in which the Jedi and the Sith actually exercised it in the plot. You leave the theatre a wide eyed kid somehow believing in UNLIMITED POWER and trying to make your Dad’s car float in the air using only your mind, especially if your new belief system led you to first push it into a swamp. (Ah, memories of time well spent.)

Game design rarely picks that up. It has limits. Frequently the devs relegate themselves to necessary programming and parameters that allow the force to be used on one object, but not the twenty objects immediately surrounding it. “No honey. I’m not pissed at you. I just want to propel that TaunTaun at this griefer’s head and Sony isn’t letting me.” The TFU solution? Fill every square inch of the set with objects not nailed down. Sure, you can’t pluck just anything off the wall with a wave of your hand. This game has the same limitations of any other. But who cares when you are levitating a giant rack to take cover from blaster fire or force pushing your own stormtroopers over a cliff just because they are in your way! Foreground guy gets smashed into an assortment of metal boxes. Midground guy gets squashed by a mammoth cylinder you sent rolling UP a ramp. Background stooges find out what happens when you hurl a three ton bomb their way using only your mind. Glass breaks. Droids blow up when they are slammed into walls. About three minutes into play the game map looks like my apartment after a week of ignoring chores. And that’s only the beginning.

When I went through the tutorial I was astounded. Not by graphics or script teasers, complicated moves or visions of gold bikinis. I was distinctly amused, almost to the point of being appalled, at how far the devs took the force powers. I said aloud to my wife, “Wow, even for a Sith, that’s just plain mean!” TFU seems to address every question a youthful you ever asked about Darth Vader that started with “Why didn’t he just…” Sure, the classics are there (Vader choking people without touching them; pushing a person by shoving your hand out in their direction; ripping things off of the wall and sending them flying.) And yes, the moves appealing to the video game world are there too (force sprint; force jump; blocking incoming blaster fire with your lightsaber). But why stop there? Hey, let’s pick that guy up using the force, and slam his ass into the ground, hard! Let’s plunge our lightsabers into the floor and cause a little local earthquake, just because we can. Here’s a great one, let’s pick that schmuck up, hold him in mid-air with the force, and while he’s up there, whack him in the head with a huge metal crate from the side. Heck, let’s slam two guys together in mid-air just because we can. Take that NPCs! AI is no match for the force. That electricity thing that the emperor can do? Yeah, we got that. We also have a version of it that can hit multiple targets at once! Youch! That move’s got some lexicon compliant name, but I like to call it FRY THOSE BASTARDS! Throw your light saber at a guy? No problem. The force will boomerang the sucker back to you with a really cool noise in your controller. Hey, why not dump all your force “mana” into just buffing you for the lightsaber fight? Devs? Ding ding! It’s in! Want to curl into a half fetal position, concentrate a moment, and just explode the force out into every direction? No problem. In fact, if you buy ranks in improving that power and concentrate long enough, you’ll first suck in everything loose object around you, causing all the junk to swirl like you are a gravity well, thereafter creating enormous projectiles that fly out in every direction when you release. It’s monster. Here’s one, use the force to pick up a heavy blaster cannon and let it float alongside you, shooting, picking off enemies while you train your lightsaber on them. All these moves are value-added keepers, horrendous in their implications, but soooooooooooo f’ing sweet.

Style-wise, though, I have to say, it’s hard to beat the move that makes me the giddiest. Designed around a Yoda move from Revenge of the Sith, TFU lets you hold an NPC up in the air using the force, throw your lightsaber at him, and impale the guy with it! Cruel, cruel, cruel. Just watching it makes you groan aloud…and then think of all the RL people you’d like to see that done to.

That’s what I mean about the chaos. The moves take a few scenes to unlock, in full, your first time out, and once unlocked it takes a little getting used to. Old guys like me really have to take the initiative in refraining from just picking one or two moves that we perform well and letting them carry us through the story. Get a handful of these under your belt and it’s like creating your own scene out of Star Wars. Blow the 20 inch thick door of its hinges, enter deflecting blaster fire, zap the ten guys stupid enough to stand in a cone in front of you with electricity from your fingers, quick parry the one of them smart enough to carry melee weapon, push his buddy into oblivion through the ship’s force field into space, send crates and chairs and barrels careening into the NPC formation to your left. Throw your blade at the protocol droid and blow him up. Smash Ike and Mike together mid-air, force double jump getting in one swipe on the airborne Mandelorian and one blaster deflection before ramming your lightsaber into the ground and knocking all the reinforcements on their asses. Hey, if that’s not incentive enough to be a Sith, break a few things in the process and reveal hidden collectible objects. Yes, greed helps! It’s a COV bank mish on steroids.

The lightsaber technique, by contrast, has less expansive design to it, but is equally as satisfying. For those of us a) aware that lightsabers in Star Wars are stylistically treated like broadswords, not foils, and b) aware that actual or staged broadsword combat works best on a five or eight point system, we might initially be a tad disappointed. (Unless you faked it in your college theatre troupe and spent years after lying about your staged combat certifications.)

Lightsaber combat in TFU basically works on a four point system, up, down, left, and right, with a thrust thrown in there for higher damage and visual variety, plus one parry to account for all parries. However, those four points plus extras, obviously simplified for general audiences, are layered over a very Hollywood-like automatic camera pan throughout play that well makes up for that dip in swordplay expectation. It is also true that there are multiple animations for each point on the broadsword system. So, camera pan layered over varied animations makes for a relatively complex set of possible moves in multiple directions. At least that’s how it feels. I turned down sex!

A word about the camera pan…I’ve been spoiled with innovative camera options in other games. TFU only allows the user to speed or slow the rate at which the camera pans. The player maintains no camera control apart from choosing where s/he moves the main character, the view panning after a few moments to arrive at everyone’s favorite view of their PCs ass. I recommend the fastest pan. Default is medium.

Still not enticed? How about a planet covered completely in junk and the “interesting” things that live in it. How about one where ignitable, poison gases burst out of giant plants? Want to fight an AT-ST? Jedi Temple in ruins? Cloud City? Oh, saliva on my keyboard just thinking about it.
Also falling on the plus side in TFU’s design is great music and what seems like authentic character voices (Jimmy Smits as Senator Organa) if not reasonable facsimiles of expected voices (like Vader and the Emperor). Keep an eye open for a near cop-out guest appearance by a very young Princess Leia and many NPC combatants belonging to species you’d expect to see only in a cantina on Tattooine or roaming the streets of Queens.

The story itself picks up between episodes 3 and 4, and deals with your PC as Darth Vader’s Sith padawan during a time when The Old Republic is being “reorganized” into the first Galactic Empire. (Your PC, btw, is played by an acting compatriot of mine. Yay! Should I tell him he sucks?) The writing is typical Lucas slush which weirdly aids your escapism while playing. The drawback to the chosen timeframe and the loosely strung together in-game movies are as they would be with any prequel. You know that Vader and the Emperor cannot die. You know you are not going to get decision making ability with regard to iconic characters. And, as is almost the requisite mantra of LucasArts by now, your Sith has a change of heart mid-plot. (Gag me with Bantha poodoo.) Altogether this makes for a flip-floppy feel to the plot in which the chaotic moves you can execute no longer fit with the Jedi way. Other characters follow suit as Lucas tries fruitlessly to create some mystery or suspense to which side they are on. No real mystery, George. When your first movies came out, the guys sticking my head in the elementary school toilet were the bad guys and offered little suspense apart from when they would strike, and flush, next.

Still, TFU does take a few plot liberties that are interestingly unexpected. For instance, big spoiler, it is Vader who actually starts the famed rebellion. He entreats your PC to the idea of overthrowing the emperor, as Anakin mentioned at the conclusion of Revenge of the Sith, sending you out “under cover” to make it happen. In a timeframe when you would also be hunting down the “last” of the Jedi, that makes for a good mix of notions. It is also the device through which you go over to the light side, feeling for those you’ve befriended and tricked.
Another novel implementation of the writing and time frame is the hefty number of just plain cool bosses you will face. With ever escalating difficulty, you square off Sith to Jedi, Jedi to Sith, PC to AT-ST, padawan to bull rancor, sane player to nutcase NPC who’s built himself a junk golem, and the list goes on. My favorite bosses are 1) the dark side girl who fights with two dagger-like lightsabers, holding each hilt with the blades pointed out like a knife expert and 2) the Mandelorian who shows up in this giant, flying, crab-like machine that’s immune to almost anything you throw at it. At the very end, you are even going to take on Vader and the Emperor. Despite the fact that you know they cannot be destroyed without changing the timeline, those will be the two toughest battles you face, AS THEY SHOULD BE. Watch for Vader’s helmet coming off when you’ve done enough damage!

Which brings us to the parts of the game that are neither great nor horrible, but just weird enough that they take some serious getting used to. The manners in which the bosses function are among the weirdness. First, there is a health bar for the boss at the bottom of the screen as you enter each boss battle. That would seem standard enough, but for the fact that they are somewhat meaningless. Almost none of the bosses are defeated as you’d expect, when the health bar reaches a true zero. Each instead has a different point on that health bar, a point prior to zero, that his/her defeat becomes possible. Don’t get me wrong, all the sets points seem placed well beyond the three-quarter mark on the health bar. Yet, why then have the health bar at all? It is not an accurate representation of how much longer you need to fight and therefore a difficult mechanism to strategize around, instead forcing you to go all out at every second of the battle, like marriage.

If the health bar trope seems bizarre to you, consider now your own PC’s death and how TFU handles player failure. As it happens, one of only two drawbacks to dying does not start out in an obvious way. Every NPC you kill gives you “force points,” a departure scoring system that is represented by blue light popping out of dead bodies and being absorbed into your own. Cult anyone? Force points are the points you spend to buy ranks in force powers and lightsaber powers between movies, customizing and improving your character as the story moves along. Different NPC types and different situational scenarios yield differing multiples of force points won, like bonuses. The main drawback to dying, even when fighting a boss, is a loss of some force points. However, there is nothing visual to establish that the loss has happened on a boss screen when it does happen.

The second drawback to PC death, (apart from the weeks it will take to unteach your daughter the four letter words that fly from your mouth), specifically in a boss fight, is that a boss will gain back some or near all of his/her hit points. That makes sense, but for the fact that different bosses gain back different amounts. It’s not like healing in COH where a conned NPC might regain life gradually and observably. TFU boss health bars simply jump to the new heath total just before the battle restarts. Earlier bosses tend to gain back fewer hit points, latter bosses gaining back almost full health, with a mix throughout the game between big gainers and small gainers. The result is that, dying during a boss battle early in the game, tricks a new player into believing that there is no drawback to PC death at all. It suddenly feels like T-Ball with no winners and no losers and garners immediate, uninformed, disappointment in the game. With no on-screen indicator that your force points have dropped, no knowledge yet as to how those force points will be used, and a boss’ health bar that so minutely jumps to a total very near his/her prior total that 40 year old eyes cannot see it, dying feels like nothing more than a minor annoyance. You find yourself fruitlessly trying to power through boss battles in hopes of taking down enemies in a single swoop, when a more strategic approach would still prove superior. As prevalent as this uninformed annoyance is when new to TFU, it’s amazing how much one’s strategic approach and muscle memory stay with the player. A boss battle that squashes you again and again your first time out, if replayed later, becomes one of the challenges that you can, in fact, topple with a single, satisfyingly complex effort. You become ready to take on the Sith Lords at Chase.

And now for the jeers. Wii, you were almost there, almost my first sensation of total Star Wars lightsaber immersion. Here’s where you went wrong.

“Force lock” and “saber lock” are the terms the TFU game tutorial uses to describe those moments in the film when combatants reach a corps-à-corps. In game, that basically means when your light saber catches at the same time the boss’ does, creating a temporary stalemate. In TFU this also applies when players attempt to use the same force power at the same time the boss uses it (for those bosses who wield the force). Deadlocked moments like these are handled with a sort of puzzle race. In the event of a lock, a 2D image of your controller appears on the screen and prompts you to twist the controller to different angles to match said image. If successful, a mid-battle animation begins with your PC getting the upper hand after breaking the lock. If you fail at the puzzle or are too slow, the animation and consequences are the opposite. The puzzles get more difficult and have shorter time spans as the game moves on. The “saber/force lock” mechanism is an interesting use of the controller in the game that forces a player to change up movement, but the on-screen, Wii puzzles completely remove a player from the fantastic Star Wars immersion we so crave.

Similarly, when a player reaches the mystery point on a health bar at which a boss can be defeated, direct control is lost, animations begin, and an on-screen, 2D representations of your controllers pop up and shut down to either side of the main view. In this case, Wii needs you to move the controller or the nun-chuck, whichever matches the image, in any direction, but in a left-hand/right-hand sequence that changes for each boss. The images will pop up several times over increasingly lengthy sequences. Match the sequence exactly, and the animation continues on until you win the battle. Miss even one move in the sequence, and the animation briefly shows you taking lumps before diverting again to direct battle control over your PC. Because of this diversion, many boss battles may run the sequence several times if you don’t die in the process of reaching it again. The novel part about this interface, again, is that it changes up controller play, and, in this case, that it really allows you to see the great animation pursuant to setting the Wii images on either side the main view. Using only peripheral vision, you can accomplish the task and watch your animated triumphs.

Other game shortcomings…short length, “narrow” maps, a tutorial that trains you on powers not yet unlocked in the game, no vehicles, no Jedi mind trick, in-games movies that immediately follow other movies, only three save game slots, and a save function that holds your last save point so long as you keep the game running or paused, but reverts you to the distant beginning of any unfinished scene if you shut the game down (in effect, not a save at all).

Other game pluses…findable Jedi and Sith avatars that can be Unlocked for duel mode, unlockable concept art, unlockable costume changes for your PC, Easter egg-like additions to your hit points and “mana” bar, various collectable lightsaber hilts, the ability to begin a second game with all your force powers unlocked once you’ve completed the game a first time, voiced bosses, and increasing numbers of NPCs.

Other plot sinkholes

The game re-establishes very well that lightsabers are more “civilized” than blasters. So, it feels correct when NPCs holding blasters are taken out easily. The flip side to that is that you will face NPCs who wield all kinds of melee weapons, funky swords, sticks, electric quarterstaffs and such among them. These are tougher foes, able to better parry you and better drop your life a few pegs. However, that means the lightsaber aesthetically loses something in the construct. Here your lightsaber can go through metal floors, burn through walls in the films, slice open metal crates, break glass, cut droids in half, sever limbs, but it can’t parry a wooden cudgel? Ah, the feeling of impotence. That’s what I look for in a game!

As you get higher in the game, NPCs become harder to kill. That’s normal in gaming. Tougher PCs have more hit points. Period. Yet, this die hard structure holds true for all the many forms of death in the game INCLUDING lightsaber victims. That means that bigger, non-boss NPCs can take multiple lightsaber hits. I have to admit that I have no working gamer solution to this. The alternative would be a far too overpowered PC, perhaps so much so that the game would be uninteresting. Still, there’s something about watching a non-boss who needs to be impaled with a lightsaber more than once to kill him that really nerfs my mental impression of a lightsaber, a mental impression I would have preferred to remain intact.

While never expressly explained, the early films leave a viewer with the impression that only the Jedi owning a lightsaber can wield it. The later films show saber wielding friendlies interchanging weapons. Later games start to change up lightsaber colors. TFU goes whole hog to break any such impression. Find lightsaber crystals of all different colors and change your lightsaber to whatever you want within those finds with no regard to the dark side or the light side. It’s a tad jolting to the geek mind. But, so was marrying a cheerleader!

4) No matter how enthralled a player is with the dark side for gaming, nobody, just nobody, wants to kill Wookies.

Overall best lightsaber and force powers game I have ever seen, played, or even heard of, if played on Wii. I cannot imagine that the other platforms would be nearly as satisfying, and for me, that’s saying a lot. Geek rank order, starting with the least, Lego robotics, Ren. Faire fan pages, rebuses, LARPing, Stephen Hawking, holograms, leetspeak, Gary Gygax, chaos math, internet porn, Star Wars: The Force Unleashed, Locutus of Borg, pinging free wireless internet access, Amanda Tapping, and Lord of The Rings.

New Vid'ya Card

2009-12-30T07:35:00.006-06:00

So, thanks to the generosity of friends and family this holiday season, I was able to accumulate enough gift cards to NewEgg to allow an upgrade for my video card. Here's the result...

Link below:
Sapphire Radeon HD 5770

Tom's Hardware and several other sites have reviewed it favorably. The things that hooked me on it were its modest size (not a behemoth like several of the other cards) and its energy-efficiency. A side benefit of that is my current power supply should have plenty of juice to run the new card. Some of the nVidia offerings, in addition to being freaking huge, required some hefty power inputs (some having dual 6-pin VGA power connectors). The 5000 series Radeons really seemed to offer the best mix at the price point. Oh, and they are DX11 compatible for later on (that requires Windows 7, though)).

All in all, not a bad option.

I attempted some performance scaling based off the graphics benchmarks charts on Tom's Hardware. For example, based on the Fallout3 FRAPS demo at the resolution I run on my computer (1680x1050):

Fallout 3 - 1680x1050, 4AA, 8AF, low quality
7900GS (256Mb) -> 38.5 FPS
8800GTS (320Mb) -> 100.6 FPS

Fallout 3 - 1680x1050, 4AA, 8AF, very high quality
8800GTS (320Mb) -> 17.5 FPS
5770 (1024Mb) -> 68.40 FPS

Granted, there are probably some CPU/memory/etc. differences between the two test runs in addition to the change in quality levels, but if I just look at the scaling...

8800GTS = 2.61X performance compared to 7900GS
5770 = 3.91X performance compared to 8800GTS

The product of the two is (2.61) x (3.91) = 10.2X, which means a Radeon HD 5770 (a current "low to mid range gaming card") has approximately ten times better performance than my current card. Granted, real-world scaling probably will have it running perhaps 4-6X performance, but still... Damn.

Also, the new MMO's (STO, The Old Republic, CoH: Going Rogue, etc.) all have updated graphics engines that I am pretty sure will bring my current card to its knees on anything approaching middle to higher levels of detail. We'll see how it turns out, as the Catalyst drivers for the Radeon HD 5000 series are notoriously cranky.

Rathskeller: The I.D. Badge Backstory

2009-11-15T14:31:00.001-06:00

Mutation Radiation Blaster / Enery Manipulator

It wasn't an alehouse in the traditional sense. Sure there was a questionable liquor license that faded in and out of existence on the regular, Guinness on tap, and a mug-centered superstition that the locals had cooked up about a haunted glass; but frequenters of The Bull Thistle Rathskeller came for the peppers and sauce. Old man Pappitt, the owner, grew one-of-a-kind chili peppers out back, making his ramshackle, dirt road, bar and grill a popular Mecca among none-too-hoity jalapeno enthusiasts. Impromptu pepper eating contests had become a bankable, daily occurrence and three generations of Pappitts came up working the hot sauce station at the end of the counter. The youngest was kept on as a bartender later and he did that well enough, but Ames Pappitt longed for a different Guinness. He dreamed of being the first person in history to devise a billion Scoville Unit sauce, a sauce that even feral Paragon fire imps would run and hide from. He never expected his attempts would go nuclear.

Scintillus: The I.D. Badge Backstory

2009-11-15T14:22:00.000-06:00

Kheldian Warshade (Level Pact w/Voyageur)

My thumb, as you call it, is both a tranfigurant and a transubstantiant, no more or less important to evolution than the sweet tooth or riverwashed dung. That you should ascribe it such high regard for opposing is to belittle the claw, the pseudopod, the articulated tentacle, and the many indescribable Kheldian lessons there are to be learned when one is pressed between forms. For in that space between states, escaping all lingual description, there are infinitive means through which to throw a simple lever or to simultaneously turn both keys in your arsenal. I ally with you as your protection, protection against your greatest hidden enemy, the psychological pitfall that is the oft touted belief in your thumb. This belief is predicated upon the rogue idea that, as a digit, it is functionally unique and that therefore everything human society has since created with it is similarly impressive. Such is fiction.

Thane of Wounds: The I.D. Badge Backstory

2009-11-15T14:16:00.002-06:00

Kheldian Peacebringer

Ours was a coenobitic enclave of pure Kheldian energies cloistered over an iron and ice comet we called Claeactal, circling the remote dead star Dapsturg. That's how far we had to go to remain free of it. I don't think you understand the draw to conjoin with humans. When both are present, when both are weak, it's almost involuntary, even feeling forced. You've humans free of Kheldian influence a world over. Their masteries and collective intellect pull the understanding of these hybridizations well toward hominid measure. All we sought was balance, Kheldians free of the mix to offer a greater, even opposing understanding of the dipods. Rikti may be your focus now, but our galaxy is oft traversed with xenophiles who've sampled Terran protein chains. The risk required seclusion. Who'd have thought compromised samples lay entombed at our comet's core? Of the enclave, nothing remains.

Rimfire

2009-11-13T17:24:00.005-06:00

Chatting with a RedName

2009-11-10T23:12:00.003-06:00

Halftrack Part III

2009-11-02T13:25:00.009-06:00

So, in my continuing quest to develop Halftrack, I wanted to create a 21st century equivalent costume for him. One both to give a more "modern" feel, but also as a contrast to the 1940's vintage "iron soldier" costume. I also was able to make use of the Cyborg HUD combat display to add some extra depth to the costume. It mirrors closely the color palette that I used for the tech shield, particularly the energy/forcefield section of it. All colors in the costume are on the olive drab/brown theme and blend consistently.

All three costume options have a macro with phrase attached to the costume activation:
Costume one is "Deactivating Hardsuit".
Costume two is "Activating Hardsuit Mk I".
Costume three is "Activating Hardsuit Mk II".

Additionally, I picked up as a merit reward an Unbounded Leap +Stealth recipe. I cashed in my veteran reward for the additional prestige sprints and picked one to slot the IO in. I now have a macro for that sprint as well that says "Engaging Active Camouflage". The stealth aspect is nearly useless for a Tank, particularly with the taunt aura, but I did want it to go with the new tech costume. It just fits for me, and fleshes out the character in more detail.

Halftrack Part II

2009-10-26T06:29:00.005-05:00

Rathskeller

2009-10-23T12:59:00.005-05:00

Also an outgrowth of post-surgery Codeine and black holes in my memory, I give you the very "should be in a parade" look of Rathskeller! He's a radiation, energy manipulation blaster, (thank you powerset proliferation for giving me something to try that Garthamatic may not have mastered yet) whom, much like The Thane of Wounds, I have no recollection of creating or playing. Judging by his level, he's newer, a major lowbie at this point. I've no backstory yet, but looking forward to the challenge of creating one after-the-fact. I also look forward to the challenge of NOT using the very obvious "yellow cake uranium" plot line his look screams for. Again, though I do not recall doing it, he's also my very first toon with changed colors on powers.

Scintillus

2009-10-23T12:39:00.007-05:00

The Dr. Manhattan-like Scintillus was created during uninterrupted mental health, pre-peritonsular abscess, as a new toon to play with Garthamatic whilst Orleans was on hiatus. While I think both Garthamatic and I are disappointed at his initial costume being my first cop, for time's sake, to a standard duds set, the backstory was fun, he is fun to play (my first squidy), and his leveling pact with Voyaguer (my first) has been real interesting. In the design page he skewed more green than the blue he shows in game, but that's neither here nor there. Garth's advice about "if choosing between a Warshade and a Peacebringer for the first time, go with the Warshade," has definitely held up as good advice now that I have two toons to compare, if for no other reason than the comparatively lesser marketing needs of the Warshade.

The Thane of Wounds

2009-10-23T12:28:00.006-05:00

There he is, The Thane of Wounds, Peacebringer. Wolvensense on medication is baaaaaddd!! I've no recollection of creating him or playing him, but somehow he's at level 11 and has the badge for teaming against and defeating Eochai. I like that the alien skull reflects light, how the Peacebringer powers give him those "Sunstorm" eyes on a skull that has no eyes, and the early flight power...all learned as I logged in to take these shots. Creating a backstory to justify him after-the-fact, has been fun. I'd like to write more.

Halftrack

2009-10-21T05:50:00.005-05:00

Bio is a rough first pass to get some thoughts down on his background and such. I need to rework it, as the first part doesn't really support the character hook well and it's missing a critical element. Specifically, that he's opted for a "retro" representation from WWII to try and serve as a symbol to the public of what we have lost... Specifically the common national unity and sense of pride that we felt in that era. A reminder that what was, can be again, particularly in these troubled times. I need to do some edits to get it condensed to capture that, as the character limit for the field really enforces brevity.

2.8B on Triumph

2009-10-20T22:22:00.002-05:00

Tallied up my liquid influence across the characters today in the process of cleaning the auction items out and posting new IOs for sale... Total is just over 2.8 billion influence across my main characters. Probably slightly more once the minor ones get tallied in. I have about 340M in IOs currently out on the market, so in about a week or so I should be over the 3B mark. Not bad for a side activity in the game...

Number 11

2009-10-18T22:58:00.001-05:00

Pushed Yardstick over the goal line tonight. Very solid Scrapper, and one I'll be happy to continue playing from time to time. Fun ride, to say the least.

Amongst the Clones...

2009-10-11T09:26:00.003-05:00

Took this just after hitting 40. Last mission in the Gordon Bower arc out of Brickstown. Lots of good stuff, and hard as well. Those Paragon Protector Elites really can mess up your day.

Yardstick

2009-09-21T23:06:00.002-05:00

Grognar passes the goal line

2009-09-19T09:00:00.004-05:00

Shots from the LGTF:

Saving States...

2009-09-12T22:48:00.001-05:00

Guy has got to "Man-Up" and stop getting his ass imprisoned...

Grognar Ascendant...

2009-09-11T13:46:00.007-05:00

Yep, been spending some time fleshing out Big Green (as my team mates call him). He's currently level 46 and pretty well locked and loaded for the rest of his ride to 50. Energy/Negative Energy defense is soft-capped at a hair over 46%, he's got absolutely massive regeneration with the Willpower set, Health, Numina's Unique, IO set bonuses, and the Regenerative Tissue Unique. Melee defense is at a hair under 20%, but respectable. Coupled with the survivability he drags with him, he's no slouch with damage output, chaining choice Dual Blades combos and powers together to boost damage and throw out some serious carnage. Endurance is a non-issue, which enabled me to stack heavy in attacks for Recharge, critical for getting the most out of the Dual Blades set, IMHO.

Recently, I solo'd a level 51 Rikti Heavy Suit (a +5 Elite Boss) with him and other than just taking a while to grind his ass down, it was no problem at all.

Here's some screenshots:

Grognar vs. Heavy Suit

Grognar vs. Freakshow

Original Costume (Valkyrie Blades)

Recent Costume (Red Cap Daggers)

Latest Costume (Rularuu's Fangs)

I really like the Red-Cap Dagger equipped costume. Gives him a very "brawler" feel and image in fights.

Staredown Busts out the 5-0

2009-08-02T23:27:00.001-05:00

Thanks to Rob for sharing the Ding! for double XP.

Some Screenshots of Late...

2009-07-15T23:28:00.010-05:00

"What foul abominations are these..."

"The ladies all loooove the armor..."

'The cusp of Hamidon..."

"In the lair of the Clockwork King..."

"Hangin with Nikola Tesla..."

"Trading Spaces: The Captain Mako edition..."

"Defiance..."

Patination hits 50!

2009-06-01T22:56:00.003-05:00

Yep, after a very fun ride filled with lots of education about how the hell to play a squishy Blaster, I finally leveled Pat up to 50. He's currently sitting on 45.24% Ranged Defense, global 57% accuracy bonus, and 40% global recharge (when Hasten is down). Recovery is solid and I can go non-stop with AoEs and single-target even in AV fights by de-toggling Tough and World of Confusion. Insane Blaster damage coupled with soft-capped Ranged Defense = monster on wheels, gentlemen. Very impressive end-product.

In case you were wondering, that's zero to fifty in two months, 12 days.

Cudgel Hits Hawaii

2009-03-21T22:30:00.003-05:00

Yes, the wrench-wielding, manhole cover toting hero finally hit 50 tonight.

Great ride overall. Solid team-Tank potential and Warmace is just plain fun with the AoEs and knockback/knockup and stuns. I'm probably going to put together a guide for the Forums on it called "Block 'n Bash - The SD/WM Tank" (working title).

Quadratic Man

2009-01-16T19:30:00.006-06:00

Current Level 35 Willpower/Dual Blades Tank on Champion. Possibly one of my favorite costume creations so far.

Completed the RWZ Challenge

2008-12-27T22:56:00.004-06:00

Link to post on the forums regarding this, complete with rules and video.

Level 54 spawn of Rikti, took me 4:12 to solo it. No temps, no inspirations.

Soloing a Rikti Pylon

2008-12-25T00:31:00.007-06:00

Yep, as crazy as it sounds, I've been tweaking my build for Windup Hero into an end-game Uber build. One of the standing Scrapper challenges is to be able to completely solo a Rikti Pylon without inspirations or temp powers. Tonight I pulled it off, screenshot below. Took me just under 28 minutes to do it.

Whoop-Ah! I'm still working on the build, as my damage output needs to climb a bit. A "solid" end-game build should be able to tackle this in under 20 minutes.

Windup Hero Costume

2008-12-19T13:12:00.003-06:00

Windup Hero Hits 50!

2008-12-19T09:13:00.002-06:00

The Galvanic Guardian MK II

2008-09-21T00:24:00.003-05:00

Costume slot 2 being used now...

Here's the classic Silver Age Costume:

Here's the updated version for the new millennium:

Issue 13 Announced!

2008-09-11T10:41:00.003-05:00

Okay! Writing our own missions? This is where Greg will get really out of control!

ISSUE 13

Arm Strong

2008-07-25T06:21:00.004-05:00

Death Tracker

2008-05-05T22:32:00.001-05:00

Do you wanna ROCK?!

2008-04-20T07:46:00.004-05:00

Out of the wilds of urban New Hampshire comes the hard-rocking hero of the new millennium. With Scorpions and Metallica blasting from the rolled-down windows of his packed Gremlin, the Radon Rocker is here to show Paragon City what a little Old School Detroit Rock City can do...

His battle cry? "Time to rock out w my sock out!"

Some Screenshots

2008-04-17T06:25:00.005-05:00

See below...

Peltier Justice hits 50!

2008-04-16T23:32:00.003-05:00

Achieved the final end goal hunting Neuron in his technical warrens. Solid team, lots of fun. I'll probably still play Pelt for a while, as I'm now fighting AVs I have never seen before... Lots of solid end-game content left, but I'll likely start developing a new hero on Triumph to continue the Incredible Squad recruitment drive. Happy days... : )

GG: Deep Under Cover

2008-04-12T19:34:00.002-05:00

Hardware Ho!

2008-04-08T17:55:00.002-05:00

Yep, my new components arrived today. Plan is to do the teardown and installation Friday so I have time to dig into the upgrade and not put Tight Night in jeopardy.

I'm planning on getting the rig up and running with driver updates, etc. prior to doing any overclocking. I splurged on an aftermarket cooler for the processor after reading that the new e4500's come with a much smaller aluminum heat sink than previous e4000 series processors. The aftermarket cooler comes highly rated, and straddles the performance line between Eric's Zalman 9500 cooler and the stock Intel cooler. I'm hopeful based on the reviews and commentary on NewEgg.

Anyway, Rob should be inheriting my old motherboard, RAM, Processor, DVD and DVD-R drives along with a new GeForce 8600 GT card. Post-upgrade, his system should be running at comparable performance levels to my current PC. Given he tends to run CoH at lower resolutions than I do, he should be able to max out most of the in-game settings (200% world detail, etc.) without lagging his system. I was able to pull it off prior to getting my widescreen LCD, so it's very do-able.

Part of my desire to upgrade is driven by a look toward the future. CoH is a great game and we all have a good time getting together and playing it. However, Eric has recently been expressing some dissatisfaction with the way the game is heading. With other competition on the horizon and the ever-present potential for folks to want to try new stuff, it's highly possible we may transition to another MMO in the future. Given that possibility, I figured getting Rob and I up to a roughly comparable level to Eric's current rig gives us options if we ever decide to branch out a bit.

Personally, I dig the content and the low time requirement to hop in and play. Teams are generally easy to find and build, and most characters solo well. With the recent game additions and my increased access to higher level content and story arcs, I'm exploring more of the content in the game now. All that coupled with the enjoyment I get out of our Thursday sessions give me absolutely no impetus to try anything else. Particularly WoW. It's the elephant in the room, but somehow I don't want to commit to something that may be overwhelming and too deep for me... I tend to obsess somewhat about online gaming, and that may be too immersive a game for me. Particularly given my impending job change and increased family activities now that nice weather is here. Plus, who wants to be just another face in the crowd? I *like* playing a super-hero game. It's very different and a whole different vibe from the cliched "Elf, Dwarf, Healer, Mage, Tank" paradigm that a ton of other MMO's rely on.

Anyway, I no longer have BLOG access at work (it's been flagged as a "social networking" site and is now blocked as non-work content), so I figured I'd shoot out an update while dinner was cooking.

See you all on Thursday.

Mantlet's Bane...

2008-04-01T23:21:00.002-05:00

Idea for the character occurred after reading Rob's back-story on Obake. Since Malacoda is already meddling on the plane, I thought a tie to Mantlet that was more direct was in order. Since the paradimensional portal was an obvious plot device to link the two parallel dimensions (Freedom and Triumph), it was worked into the backstory. I originally started as a Fire/Thorns Dominator for concept reasons (demonic armor and all). The look of the thorns was amazing with the armor, but the powerset combo was not all that great. Fire is not a great control set, and the thorns was OK, but offered little secondary mitigation (the special effect was a -Def on the target hit). For a character with no resistance/defense, active control and damage mitigation turned out to be key. So, I scrapped that incarnation of Mantlet's Bane and formed a new one based on Ice/Ice.

This set is working MUCH better. The slows from the primary/secondary stack, and the tier 1 blast for the Ice secondary is the best of all the sets. Ice Sword Circle offers some early AoE for teams, and Hasten is allowing me to build Domination frequently. Overall, it's playing much more smoothly than the last powerset combo.

Ultimately, I would have wanted to go with a Mind/Psi Dominator just because that's Mantlet's weak spot. Problem is that it's a late maturing set with the lowest damage potential, so I opted to go with elemental damage, which is another (albiet less) weak spot for the Invulnerability Tank primary.

Peltier Justice hits Security Level 45

2008-03-31T12:44:00.000-05:00

Not much longer to 50. Got online with Peltier this weekend for a bit running teams in PI and leveled to 45 toward the end of the session. Build-wise, he's pretty much decked out. I still have to pick up Hibernate and PermaFrost, but neither of those are really significant. The build is tough enough that Hibernate is a little redundant and PermaFrost is mostly just to plug a hole in his damage resistance to Fire, a mule for Psi Resist IOs, and also slow resistance (for those damn Knives of Artemis caltrops) for better Tanking.

I'm reconsidering putting in Hibernate, since anything that can kill Peltier does so extremely rapidly. I was fighting Antimatter (L47 AV) and it seemed like he 1-shotted me at least three times. Could have been lag, etc. but Damn. In those situations, even if I had Hibernate, I doubt I could have clicked the power in time to avoid faceplanting... Part of the tradeoffs for a Defense based set, I guess...

Ghost Widow's Saviors

2008-03-28T00:09:00.001-05:00

Transference

2008-03-27T18:03:00.004-05:00

The ultra high-pitch of it made Atomic Vapor veritably wince. This sound wasn’t anything like the dry run tests he remembered. He was all the way out in Firebase Zulu when the alarm was raised. Implanted subcutaneously upon becoming a member of Apotheosis, the Super Group Red Alert Mechanism, SGRAM, had never been used before. Something had gone horribly wrong.

All the portals en route denied him access and he wondered if he was the first ever hero to seek entry to his own base through the sewers by way of a once contiguous concrete floor. By the time AV reached the secret base, pushing aside snapped rebar and rubble, he couldn’t believe his eyes. There’d been some sort of explosion. Emergency lighting was active, but strobing painfully staccato images across a darkened lair, a lagged slideshow of destruction and doom. Atomic Vapor had heard about rival leagues of arch-villains gaining the power to call down a nuclear attack from space, but surely this had not happened here. Apotheosis anonymity could never be compromised and the pulverized remains of whatever had taken place looked far from nuclear fallout or even a Rikti bomb.

The generator was strewn about the back end of the enclosure in hunks and shards, none larger than a volley ball, some embedded deeply in the cracked walls like buckshot. The inspiration collector had gone dreadfully dark and silent, all of its precious contents evacuated to thin air. Charred walls crumbled to black dust in starburst patterns well into the upended lounge. The thirteen ton vault door lay blasted from its hinges askew and precariously breasted over the corner of that same scorched room, rare salvage spilt and broken in piles where they’d chaotically come to rest. Trophy cases shattered, ceiling sections hanging chadlike from threads of once solid construction, more than one transporter bleeding caustic, viscous fluid which ate away the floor beneath them; it was as if the proverbial seventh seal had been opened. Still, items can be replaced, and nothing so trivial as the loss of a few big ticket appliances could stir this level of fear in the hero. No, the dread of the scene instead mounted in a tally of flesh and blood.

Super heroes pushed to the brink in battle often tap into unseen drive, a final burst of motivation that suspends combat strategy and pits pure good against pure evil to even ultimate demise. Since WWII and the first Rikti invasion, Paragon City had stacked the odds in favor of its super heroes with its HRS, Hospital Reclaimator System, ripping power-drained bodies away in the nick of that time when those paladins themselves refused to quit the fight of their lives. Sadly, going so often to the gaping maw of suicide by counter-threat, it’s easy to forget that even super heroes have limitations.

Orleans was unconscious and not breathing. Draped across Mantlet’s two arms like a tranquilized giant boa, it was obvious the HRS was off-line, at least here. Defiantly, energy seeped from Orleans’ hands, popping off secondary explosions and forcing Mantlet, dizzy though he was, to keep a tanker’s eye on the changing backdrop as he moved. Friendly fire could only make things worse. The tank was scurrying to find an alternate exit in all the smoke, peaked with frustration as his tainted armor helmet could not be removed to administer mouth to mouth.

Fjordbotten, abraised and bleeding blue, frantically tried to lockdown afterblasts at multiple workstations, electrics arching and semi-conductors melting down all around him. The air grew thin, but what little was left in his lungs would be no good to Orleans either, this blaster once having attempted CPR in the far wilds of Croatoa, only to freeze an innocent young girl’s lungs instantaneously.

Rickey Jackson had a similar dilemma. Blood from his head wounds streaming in helix patterns over the creases between his strained muscles, all extricated from his uniform, he’d slung Marzipan Fritter and Steel Blossom each over a shoulder in a double dead-man’s carry. Cut off from the portal lobby, no way of knowing it had been buried in an avalanche of cement, the transporters powered down, damaged, and now leaning like dominoes, he hoisted the two comatose bodies from fire and had worn the skin off of his knuckles pounding straight through a wall attempting liberation.

Cacaphony lay supine on the floor near the defunct reclaimator, thrashing wildly as if in the throes of a grand mal seizure. He could muster no sound from his implants, not even a simple “help me,” and the situation saw to it then that the few pounds and taps his helmet made against the cold, harsh floor were buried in the bedlam clamor of sparks, breaks, and crashes throughout the base. Inside his helmet, a graver story. Being naturally deaf, the subcutaneous SGRAM would not have been an option for Cacaphony, his, instead, attuned technologically to the implants that had made of him a hero and an artificial ear. All his superstandard gizmos knocked off-line, only the back-up powered emergency SGRAM kept whining at ten-fold it’s intended volume, skull-crackingly shrill and all encased in Cacaphony’s own head, a torture for him and him alone.

Cosmic Voodoo was pinned beneath a toppled set of reinforced shelves usually used to hold Flambeau’s endless community stock. Getting pinned was embarrassment enough for a gravity controller who could normally will the shelves to fly across the room, but that insult had only been added to severe injury. At best Voodoo was too stunned to manifest powers, but at worst he thought he could feel a small chink in his pate, bleeding out. Flambeau Noir, one leg broken, tried in desperation to urge the obstruction up off of his teammate using a single shoulder and everything he could do to tamp down his area effects so as not to fry a trapped Voodoo alive. This tank, however, as heroic by all measures as the others, had a longer history of wounds and pain. The matters his mind would have most easily thwarted, weighed heavier on the happenstance physicality of his body. His good leg didn’t want to cooperate and his back swelled into an arched position rocking up like clay in a kiln. As Flambeau’s bones creaked and popped, the adrenaline pumping through him sent most everything into spasm. The best he could accomplish without help was a motionless tableau, the shelf half-perched upon him, half squeezing the life out of Voodoo, midway from his goal but just enough to allow Voodoo to breathe. Flambeau hollered for help just before the emergency lights gave out altogether.

Those very few who could, wasted no time in blazing out random heals. It was disorienting, and of little use. Barely finding compatriots amidst the pitch and the toxic hazes, scattered as they were, the greenish glow of heals would veritably snow blind the heroes making each pause in their rescue efforts. The injured were too spaced apart for any concentrated fix, some cut off completely, and each pause was precious time that could not now be squandered. Heals, scarce though they were, did more harm than good.

Others en route, not yet aware of the accidental sewer entrance, Atomic Vapor was the only fully able body poised to mount a true rescue. His head on a quick swivel, his mind’s eye triaging the shrouded casualties around him, he came to a crossroads that every hero dreads. Who was the priority? What was the priority? How do you pick between friends, between heroes? Flashes of tragic permutation swept blank his normally keen mind. One, a picture of him lowering Voodoo into the ground alongside the famed but elusive Caste Iron’s grave. Another showed him frozen in a block of ice as the master villain Endotherm laughed over Fjordbotten’s dwarfed casket. Yet another vision centralized him in everlasting solo battle against the enraged ghosts of Apotheosis as they poured from a spirit ship in Talos Island. It was enough to make a hero numb in his tracks. There was no way to choose.

A few clicks and bleeps situated themselves in the explosive rumblings as Atomic took action. He’d pulled a trinket from its familiar hiding place on his costume and in no time an Ouroboros portal opened before him. The squared serpent was obscured to a nightlight glow beneath all the thick vapors, but it was enough for Atomic to step through in a flash. Flambeau caught a brief glimpse of AV leaving and allowed doubt to enter in. Purged of all inspiration, the shelves pressed on Noir crushingly, forcing him down to a knee. It was unlike any member of Apotheosis to take exception to a colleague’s methods, but to Flambeau, it simply seemed like AV had left them to fend alone. Mysteriously, it seemed to him the second such glimpse of an AV retreat. Thusly, Flambeau birthed a personal demon.

There was an abnormal stir in Ouroboros. Sure people came and went by portal as the norm, but it was rare any one would burst through in a display of sparks and smoke discharging just behind. This entrance foretold of crucial needs and visitors all stepped back from crystals, growing concerned and quiet. The interchange between Atomic Vapor and Mender Lazarus was brief. Lazarus wasn’t buying the story. Crystals would not be attuned to every Tom, Dick, and Hero that came through unannounced. Time travel was the stuff of greater “good” and not personal gain. Lazarus’ mission was clear and he dared not divert from it, that is, until Atomic Vapor breeched the professional strictures of herodom and slammed Lazarus’ face down in the pool like he was trying to drown a bag of cats. Ill affording the scene, Mender Lazarus attuned a new crystal and sent Atomic, hastily, back in time.

Matters of minutes proved matters of menace. Atomic Vapor had bought himself only the tiniest slice of leeway into the past. As best he could tell, he was in the Apotheosis base mere moments prior to the blast. That meant that not only was the clock ticking, but that if he didn’t come up with a solution, he too would be caught in the blast and negate his solo status as uninjured deliverer.

The base was loud and already vibrating. AV was right. There were no Rikti bombs in sight, no nuclear attack sirens filling the air. There was a bustle of hero activity in every room, but it was the workshop that was of particular note. On a widescreen mounted above rolled a 3D display mapping honeycombed models labeled with Mantlet’s unmistakable constitutional wit. The ones AV could see were marked as Victory, Liberty, Champion, Protector, and Triumph and all stemmed from a dodecahedron marked in larger letters for which Mantlet had chosen the name Freedom. Heroes were yelling above the tumult, half with soldier-like professionalism, half with the sporadic humor that fends off PTSD.

Fjordbotten was the first voice to rise above the ruckus. “I don’t know, Brother. Protector seems the eighth no-go and I don’t know how much longer we can power this experiment!”

Mantlet responded, “I’m telling you, I’ve got one on the Triumph block. It’s faint, but if we don’t make contact now we might never get another chance at this!”

Orleans loudly interjected, “Sounds like a bad time, then, to ask him if the Saints won the Super Bowl in there!”

AV could make out what looked like the severed outlines of an Ouroboros ingress pulsing spasmodically over a cross-hatching of bent Rikti portals. Force of habit twitched AV’s head around and over each shoulder scanning for an extra terrestrial Communications Officer or band of monkeys. None were in sight.

Fjordbotten, ever the scientist, remained in a countdown style mode of hollering. “4000 megajoules and climbing!”

Orleans flipped his assigned switches, but countered Fjord’s tone. “Uh Mant, I’d rather not be in two city-wide disasters in one lifetime. What’s say we wrap this up and have a parade?!”

Mantlet tuned them out. “Gus! His name is Gus!”

Fjord urged, “4500 megajoules, tacking!”

Orleans again, “Okay, tell Gus we said ‘hey’ and that we got a big ol’ megajoule problem on this side and he should maybe take a step or two back from the light!”

Mantlet still on his keyboard typing furiously, “He’s trying to step through. I’m telling him to stop and explaining as fast as I can type! Damned fingers!”

Flambeau reassured, “Mantlet, we should close now! I have the salvage! We can do this again!”

Orleans smiled, “What kind of a super hero name is Gus, anyway?!”

Marzipan Fritter peeped his head from around the corner. “My master, Dokkalfar says there is a hero that awaits everyone when the veil of life has been drawn back and the power of the other side revealed!”

Mantlet now sounded frightened. “Rickey, Steel, please take that kid in the other room!”

Atomic Vapor couldn’t wait any longer. “What on Earth is it?!”

Fjordbotten continued, “Paradimensional portal, beta test one, for the next ten seconds anyway! Mantlet, send, send, send!”

Atomic had never heard of a paradimensional portal. To be honest, he’d missed a few Super Group meetings. In another instance there might have been time for regret, but this one allowed for only a single mental certainty. Not knowing what it was, meant not knowing how to shut it down before the cursed thing would explode. Mantlet, magical to the end, seemed casually uninterested in the scientific advice flying about him, but duly enthralled with text messages popping up on his monitor from this Gus Faustian, this fellow that Atomic had no way of knowing was from an alternate reality King’s Row. Atomic Vapor felt a ticking clock pacing down to zero hour as if top dead center above his head. Inevitability has that heir about it. The actions taking place around him seemed evermore random and fruitless. Voodoo perused the community stock. Cacaphony popped into the base reclaimator from the heat of the warzone. No one seemed concerned that this questionable experiment might not end well.

Atomic took another turn, “Mantlet, you’ve got to abort! Get out of that hard tanking head of yours and shut this monster down!”

It was too late. All Atomic remembered was a split second of eye contact with Flambeau followed immediately by a quick flash of expanding, fiery light as his jaunt through time came to an abrupt end. He was ejected from the crystal’s aura, forcefully, flying back into the pool behind him, just as the explosion ripped through Apotheosis’ hideout. His unceremonious reentry drew in gasps from onlookers and a deceptively crooked smile from Mender Lazarus who peered down with an “I told you so” expression. The failure of heroes is often absent from the consciousness of everyday Paragon citizens, but among other heroes baring witness, there is no mistaking it. Crouched in the pool, charred and out of breath, hero failure looked just like this. What was worse, the time Atomic had spent in the past might have been better spent in this present, helping to oust his compatriots from their predicament. Whatever the situation in the base now, it was the situation they were stuck with. AV could only pray everyone had gotten out alive. A creepy, almost divine voice emanated down from the oddest Ouroboros buttress, announcing to all, “MISSION FAILED.” Lazarus might as well have hung a banner in giant red letters.

The waiting room at the hospital was like a scene from a Halloween festival. A very sexy cowgirl calling herself Boots was arguing with the stoic receptionist to let her in. She’d brought with her a band of rogue healers in every manner of dress who were under specific instructions to fan out and aid every member of her alma mater SG no matter what the cost. ER beds full, Rickey Jackson was getting his knuckles bandaged by a gaggle of nurses right there in the lobby. Atomic saw Mantlet wrenching his gloved hands in the now bent, plastic seat nearest the coffee maker. He made his way over and sat alongside.

In a frightened tone, AV braved the conversation. “How many made it here? How many did you get out?”

Mantlet nearly whispered, “All of them, I think. Everybody who had a switch to throw at least. They’ll be alright, I guess. We’ve got members in every ward this hospital has to offer, but they’ll be alright. It’s a sad day for justice.”

Atomic glanced back at the front desk. The famed hero, Silver-Suit was now causing a distraction while Boots’ clan dispersed like fireflies through elevators, air vents, and outdoor windows in a classic sweep and clear pattern. He turned his attention back to Mantlet whose chest cavity showed early signs of hyperventilating beneath his armor.

Mantlet shared, “It’s my fault, you know. I should have shut the thing down. I just had to get those instructions through.” He went on for a bit explaining how the signal to Triumph was the only one that had worked, that he never figured on contacting a non-hero. It wouldn’t make sense that a civilian could harness the power necessary for a portal of that magnitude and Mantlet had not accounted for the possibility. The very best he could hope was that the damage on the Triumph end was not as bad as here in Freedom. Heroes can take a punch. This blue-collar Gus and his magic book, though, deserved better than obliteration. “Had I not been writing my memoirs, had I not had those instructions handy, I would have shut it down much sooner.”

Mantlet shed as much of the guilt as he could and started naming off room numbers to AV. Flambeau was in 212, Marzipan in 617B. Steel, Orleans, and Voodoo were completely blocking out the attending schedules in surgery and the ICU. The list seemed endless. But, end it did and then all the helpless heroes could do was wait.

“Wait!” Atomic Vapor broke the silence. “Cacaphony, where’s Caca?!” It came to the blaster that Cacaphony had not been mentioned on that long list of fallen brethren.

Mantlet didn’t understand. His buddy defender had been off in the warzone and wasn’t on the roster for base operations. As far as he knew, Caca was still off bubbling tanks and knocking back Mesmerists over sandbags and barbed wire at Little Round Top.

“What do you mean?”

Atomic stood up. “I saw him! I saw him stream in by reclaimator just before the blast! He was there, I’m telling you! He was there!”

In less than a second, there were massive holes in the revolving glass hospital doors where Mantlet and Atomic Vapor had blasted through, supersonic.

Fjordbotten, still taming the base, saw the two come in. “It’s worse than we thought. I’ve got all stations either shut down or stabilized. The generator is no more, but emergency power is looking at 18% being systems nominal for the moment. We’ve got a new problem though.”

Mantlet interrupted, “No time for that, Doc. We need a hard target search. Cacaphony’s MIA. Atomic says the base reclaimator grabbed him just before the blast.”

Atomic was already turning over crates and barrels. Fjord welled up a bright starburst beneath his speedy feet and shot straight to where the reclaimator had been toppled. Mantlet swooped in as the search became more certain. There, jumbled amidst rubble and slag was Cacaphony, still flailing violently. His arms and legs thrashed and whipped around as if they’d no bones left in them at all. His back kept arching and releasing as if a bow being plucked. The floor about him was potted and marked up with harsh streaks of red and yellow, signs that he’d been scraping his costume in this catywampus manner non-stop since the blast nearly an hour ago.

Mantlet cracked the seal on Caca’s helmet and ripped it off leaving stripped wires and the brittle edges of computer audio cards protruding from the neckline. Tufts of tangled, sweaty red hair and beard burst from beneath the helmet and Atomic could see that so much blood had coursed through Caca’s dark skin that his face looked almost purple. Caca’s pupils were fully dilated, his neck swollen, and the remainder of his body only came to sudden rest in a highly reluctant fashion. Cacaphony let out a long, soft sigh and simply went to sleep. Atomic laid a hand on Caca’s forehead as he listened to Mant’s next orders.

“I want to know what. I want to know how.”

Fjordbotten, already running a diagnostic on the helmet, was on the case. “Well, this is part of it. His entire operating system is gone, just gone. Before you cracked the seal I’d say that everything else was in working order, but somehow the OS has disappeared.”

“What, you mean erased?”

“No, I mean gone. To delete master files like that, one simply drops the first code character from each file so that it is skipped by the booting process. The rest of the file remains there until overwritten or formatted.”

“Someone’s hacked the HRS?”

“No, that didn’t happen here. His software files are still present. Nothing’s been formatted, nothing added. It’s like his operating system was just lifted away. There’s no timing code structure, no log, nothing. SGRAM’s wailing away, but that’s it!”

Atomic chimed in, “It doesn’t make any sense.”

Mantlet lifted Cacaphony and carried him to what was once the lounge. Atomic turned a sofa rightside-up and the defender was laid out to much needed slumber in the peace and quiet of his God-given ears. Though Cacaphony would not have heard them, Fjord, Mantlet, and Atomic Vapor did catch themselves tiptoeing around as they moved past the couch. There were even unwarranted whispers. Respect is a funny animal.

Once back in the workshop, the three took a moment. Mantlet again lead the conversation. “Any ideas?”

Fjord offered, “Yes. One shucking off all coincidence as a matter of fact. Remember I said we had another problem? Have a look at this. Now, that file you sent through to the Triumph block, it was this one, correct?”

Mantlet nodded.

“The Complete and Unedited Instructions on Becoming a Magic Super Hero, a .pdf, no encryption?”

Mantlet nodded again, “Pretty much. You’re the scientist, Doc. I’ve got what I came on board with and what I’ve learned while fighting crime. Most of that is informed by the magical curse on this armor, not a schematic. Mainstream tech is a staple for me.”

Atomic keyed in, “So what? The guy likes Acrobat and Firefox. What’s that got to do with the price of tea in Warburg?”

“Well, look. This file is about 40 MB, tops, right? No graphics to speak of. Add that to how many texts, maybe ten or eleven, each less than a sentence or two in length? Well, that’s no more than 50 MB if we’re lucky.” Fjord paused.

Atomic again raised a brow. “I’m not following.”

“Now take a look at this back-up log. Mantlet you may have only sent through a few neat catch phrases on that really weak signal, but something else piggy-backed over. The log may be a shambles, ACSII here, corruption there, but look at the size of it. At the exact same time index of your 40 megabyte file, nearly 95 terabytes went through. I couldn’t even figure how that was possible.”

Atomic noted, “I don’t even think we have that much data in the computer core.”

Mantlet started in again, “We don’t. Our data is broken up to several independent servers over at Freedom Phalanx, refreshed on the half-hour. It’s so the Rikti could never steal one incriminating data block in a single attack.”

Fjordbotten came to his conclusion. “Mantlet’s right. I developed the system myself. Even the transporter pattern buffers are independent from the main computer core. We couldn’t reach 95 centralized and accessible terabytes of information in the half hour if we tried. But look, Caca’s operating system. It’s all stored on advanced flash memory compressed into squarish blocks, layered. Sure he’s sup’ed up, but his OS is finite, maybe a couple gigs worth of drivers, executables, and macros. The rest is all virtual memory.”

“Two gigs verses 95 TB. What’s the coincidence?”

“His storage capacity. In his tech’ memory blocks alone, 94.88 TB flat! Something was lifted out of his servos and sent for a ride to Triumph, taking his OS with it.”

Mantlet’s concern grew. “But you said, no hacking in the HRS. I assumed that meant no hacking at all.”

Fjord finished, “You assumed correctly. Nobody hacked a thing, good Brother. It would do no one any good to hack essentially blanked virtual memory, no good at all. Whatever left Cacaphony’s implants system…decided to go. It’s sentient. Your experiment provided it with its first means of escape and it chose to leverage that opportunity.”

Atomic Vapor’s head dropped. It wasn’t often that heroes found out they were dealing with a new threat, but when they did it was cause for quick reflection. He knew that if whatever this mass of memory could be was on the side of righteousness, it would have stayed around, made contact. It wouldn’t have taken an electronic leap that left a level 50 hero tortured on the floor. This thing, this ghost in the machine, would prove in all ways wrong.

Mantlet’s evil armor started pulsing. It was as if his interlocking plates sensed a new companion evil, taking physical glee in the idea that this threat was out of Mantlet’s goody-goody reach. Mantlet himself needed no reassurance that it was true. His armor told him all he needed to know. “What next then?”

Fjordbotten answered, “I don’t know there is anything we can do. We’ll get the base in shape. I’ll conference in the Alpine devs and reinstall Caca’s OS. With a little work I am reasonably assured the massive data burst will prove the culprit for the explosion, not our generator giving out. We all know where the gift shop is in the hospital. Hey, as horrible as it sounds, if we’re lucky, there would have been a similar explosion on the other end. Your new friend Gus may have paid a morbid price, but Caca’s monster would most certainly be destroyed in the process. Otherwise, something completely new would have been unleashed on the quantum personages of Triumph. Heaven help them if that happened.”

--------------------------------------------

“Mushi, mushi.”

Grammy Weist had dialed the wrong number. The assisted living facility she now treated as home was no stranger to its more Alzheimer’s skewed patients calling Guam or Haiti when ordering a vegetarian pizza. Much of that was the phone company’s fault. They never did take into consideration how changes in area codes impact the elderly. Grammy, however, was instead the repeated victim of a roommate who used the community telephone to dial partial numbers, Murray Hill 70844 and the like. Sometimes Grammy would pick up the wireless headset, not realizing a few digits were already keyed in, and accidentally finish it off with the modern area code she’d use to start dialing her nephew. She’d made acquaintances in Nepal and Luxembourg and today would be her first experience with Osaka, Japan.

It was 2 a.m. in Osaka and the power plant foreman didn’t take kindly to his staffers receiving personal calls that interrupted his never-ending high seas stories. He picked up the receiver, uttered a quick greeting, and when nobody answered in the two seconds he’d allotted for a story time pause, he hung up again and grumbled as if he could ever lose his place in the oration.

Before him, two trainees were all ears, bored to tears but daring not to let on as that could mean their jobs. Another three workers clacked away at keyboards and hardly wondered if Hirokoson would ever grow aware that they weren’t working at all. Toru was sending Kanji chat to some young Devo fan he’d been stringing along for months. Under their breath, Takei and Mioshu debated lame gaming builds as Mioshu used corporate bandwidth and a high security clearance to play one of his fourteen MMOs. With Hirokoson fixed on the trainees, and not yet even to the chapter in his tale whereby he claims to have seen a sea nymph, the three could watch cartoon porn and get away with it.

Takei looked straight ahead at his monitor while debating. He would tip his hand for nobody. “I am telling you. Those gremlin thingies, those machine ghosts or whatever they are cannot be mutants. The very fact that they are made of electricity means they are somehow technology or science based. Mutation is a twisted biology.”

Takei referred of course, to the view Mioshu had up in his game, a turn of the century release that loosely translated to Village of Villains. Mioshu had zoomed the camera angle onto a red entity of some sort that lived below a transformer and looked vaguely to be composed of arcing electrons. Mioshu, however, was of a different opinion.

“You can’t say that definitively. If electric bolts were somehow alive, they too would have an evolutionary process and that would mean mutation, not technology. I can make a mutant alt if I want and I’ll make him out of chemical solvent or fire or whatever the hell I please, thank you very much.”

Takei still kept his eyes forward. “Always thick headed. Look, my elf will be an elf, my dragon a dragon and if I need to throw in some flair, I have nothing against making a night elf or a gnome bard. Mutation based in lab science or tech’ is simply a bastardization of the fiction’s intent. You’ll be laughed out of your guild. And another thing…what’s with all the American servers? There are plenty of servers to log in to with near zero population this time of night and no lag right down the street.”

Mioshu remained undaunted. “Gaming is global. Get used to it. I don’t mind the local options, but whenever I exclude continental versions of the game, I am always relegated to my toons looking like children’s anime. I don’t know about you, but I think part of the whole experience is the different artistic take on villains worldwide. I mean, take this character for instance.”

Mioshu pointed out a toon he had up on screen. Takei could see in his peripheral vision that it looked heavily anime influenced and above its head he saw that Mioshu had named him something in English characters that read Wolvensense. The toon was obviously a ninja, black clothes, stealthy, face covered. It had a standard ninja blade from the movies and few features to distinguish it as anything else. The name had come from Mioshu’s hacker beginnings, a screen name he’d stumbled across while attempting credit card scams in his troubled youth. It was a plain-Jane ninja in austere, having climbed the gaming ladder to level 50 quickly without much time for frills or costume revamps. Mioshu hoped a name that defied translation would jazz the character into fuller meaning. Takei briefly pondered bringing to his lips a “so what” with the quick justification that anything ninja was going to be at least distantly anime influenced when the unmistakable jet engine-like roar of turbines shutting down shook the foundation of the entire plant.

Screens went blank. Red emergency lights spun to life and alarms of all kinds spilled into earshot as far away as the Chinese coast. Toru’s chair vibrated away from his station while Mioshu and Takei sprang to their feet and tried to once again get control of their stations. The trainees ran to the interior window trying to see what exactly was going wrong.

Hirokoson remained calm. “Okay, Takei, I want you to switch to auxiliary power and then secondary controls. I hope you have your keystroke sequences memorized because it doesn’t look like those monitors are coming back any time soon. Mioshu, reroute power through junctions 14, 237, and 612. Shunt the excess according to procedure. I don’t want any surges. Toru, get on the horn and scramble a specialists crew to the main turbines. Have emergency vehicles standing by at every exit to the building. I’m going down to assess and troubleshoot locally. Get it done, gentlemen. There are 17 million people showing up for work in the morning and they’ll have power if I have anything to do with it.”

What Hirokoson had not figured on was his heroic monologue extending too far into the emergency to be of use. Almost rashly, blast doors dropped one at a time throughout the plant cutting off sub-sections and forcing open the emergency shaft above the night shift operations team at their terminals. Hirokoson tried to smash through the glass with a chair making little headway. These men had an exit. The ones out on the floor did not. The overwhelmed trainees scurried up the tubed ladder without even attempting to normalize the turmoil behind them. Hirokoson found himself trying to holler orders through the glass for all personnel to diagnose and lock down if they could, to take cover if they could not. Toru gestured that the red line was down as Mioshu pushed back from his keyboard. At room’s center, sizzling up from between Mioshu’s keys like popcorn overflowing, were thousands of white beads of light, purple strings arcing between them, and a swarm of yellowed sparks blasting volcanically from the top of it all. Attention turned away from the glass and in on the phenomenon as grown men recoiled from the sight. It rose, popping off function keys and cracking the keyboard in the process. Higher it went, spilling over the edges of the counter and melting computer casings in a one meter radius. Toru bolted for the blast door, ripping off two of his fingernails trying to lift the slab manually. Hirokoson’s eyes widened as he went silent for the first time in months. Mioshu and Takei just froze; this wasn’t in the protocol handbook. The mass congealed, sizzling even more as it did. It was at once almost magnetic to flesh and antithetical to reason. Larger blast doors slid down over the glass. Whites of eyes seared in the simple act of looking on. Osaka Alternative Fuels would be front page news by daybreak.

Creases in the white, luminescent spume ignited thick shadows that bled and pulsed beneath its arcing, voltaic rind with glinting kernels maneuvering from the mound’s pith into cannonade eruptions high and low. Its electrified jots and tittles crackling, sputtering, fusing one on another and all to wrench the birthright of form. Mioshu’s jaw dropped. It was Wolvensense, brighter, enlivened, more stylish and apparisive, all the beckoning things his in-game ninja should have been. Its contours winced incessantly, still scalding the air around, as it drew from its nebulous core a solid steel Sarasin’s blade. The notch at Mioshu’s throat, it spoke English, “Where…is…Robert?”

Mioshu’s English was rusty, and that cost him a deep slice to the jugular. Toward Takei the monster tilted, “Where…is…Robert?”

Takei hadn’t taken a second language and for that choice his head was dispatched from his body. Localized thunderclaps still giving out all around it, the ghost from the machine poised in ninjitsu stance, trained next on Hirokoson. The foreman was quivering. Under his navy trained breaths he kept sputtering only the word “mononoke, mononoke,” seagoing folklore for demons. Toru tried to tune to Hirokoson’s frail whispers, but as fear would have it, he instead thought he heard “obake, obake” a similar mythological construct better fitting this horrifying bloodbath. Hirokoson mustered soldieresque courage before the question was even posed and charged the radical, black-eyed beast empty-handed. One could have hung a medal over the protrusions from the manner in which he got run through.

Ornamented with increasing detail and figure, tracer combustibles ever rocketing about it, the mutant ninja stalker purposed his blade last upon Toru. The poor loner attempted to refute the question thricely before it had even been asked.

“There are heroes here to stop you, you know? Your world was created in our image.”

“What do you want? Truly! What is this Robert to you?”

“Have you no heart?! Honor you no code?! ”

The hilt of the blade formed into an ornate grip. The aberration’s malformed outline took on fleshlike textures as fountains of grayed light pulled from its victim’s corpses into its contorted polestar. Its dark glare beamed into Toru’s weeping eyes. “Where…is…Robert?”

Toru, struck with the sudden flashes of wisdom reputed to immediately precede an intrepid demise, slowly raised a finger and pointed directly at the obake. The finger shook in terror as Toru’s sightline clicked back on the disheveled keyboard from whence the obake had travailed. His lips parted to answer and that was the last thing they did.

Extra IOs in the Bin...

2008-03-19T19:27:00.005-05:00

OK, I got pretty lucky tonight on the market. I went and did a series of rolling 10K bids for pre-crafted Level 25 Set IOs. I picked up 9 of them, mostly oddball ones, but useful. Defense, resistance, pet damage, melee damage, targeted AoE, etc. They are in the bin, feel free to use any that look attractive. Stuff like Red Fortune, Titanium Coating, etc.

Total expense was 90K for all 9, so you can reimburse me if you have a guilty concience or want to be sure you are paying your own way. The -Knockback IOs are still in there too. Grab one if you want them.

See you on Thursday.

Flowchart for Scrappers

2008-03-18T17:07:00.002-05:00

So what's your favorite Archetype?

2008-03-18T13:50:00.000-05:00

Simple enough question, given the changes CoH has seen over the years and our growth as players in the game... What's your favorite(s)? Why?

Peltier Justice hits Security Level 39

2008-03-17T13:58:00.002-05:00

Yep. Got to spend some time online after the kids went to bed this weekend. Amy was quilting, so I was Tanking. Peltier continues to impress me with the resiliency of the Defense-based powerset. Good defense coupled with Regeneration and Smashing/Lethal resistance from Tough yeilds a strong Tank indeed. I'm beginning to appreciate why it has a good reputation on the forums.

The Fire Melee secondary also has some good synergy with the Ice Armor primary. Icicles is a PbAoE and adds to the AoE love from Combustion and Fire Sword Circle. I'm in the process right now of 6-slotting all three with Scirocco's Dervish enhancements for the +3.13% Psi Defense set bonus on each. Coupled with Weave, the Steadfast Res/Def IO, and Combat Jumping, this will bring my Psi Defense up to about 25%. Not great, but a damn sight better than nothing.

And it looks like I'm going to need it. I SK'ed with a group of 41's over the weekend and was Tanking +5's no problem. Freaks, Council, Nemesis, you name it. That was, until someone pulled a mission with Carnival of Shadows. Ouch. Double Ouch. Those temptresses with heavy face paint and colored lingerie spanked me hard. Unbeknownkst to me at the time, the Ring Mistresses have a special attack called the Mask of Violition (or some such) that acts as a progressive Defense debuff. Stack that with the Fencers and other Psi-wielding enemies, and I was getting slammed. I faceplanted 5 times on that mission, and it was a short one. I was suitably humbled.

I had not planned on working on Psi Defense/Resistance until the 40s, but I'm starting early to try and get a jump on it. Probably a good idea given the expense and scarcity of the Scirocco's set recipes.

Oh, and Energy Absorption is a GREAT power. I've been looking at the Combat Numbers data for the power, and in a large spawn, I can click it, get 100% of my endurance back, drain about 1/2 of my oppenents' endurance, and gain about +11% Defense to all but Psi attacks. With a 41% base Defense, that shoots him up to +52% which is significantly above the "soft cap". This means opponents have the default 5% (minimum) chance to hit him, akin to rolling a natural 20 in D&D. Now THAT is some serious damage mitigation.

See you all on Wednesday, I'm looking forward to some Incredible Squad action...

More shots of Peltier Justice...

2008-03-14T11:54:00.003-05:00

Additional screenshots of Peltier Justice and his costume below...

The new crew...

2008-03-14T11:50:00.000-05:00

What the...?

2008-03-01T21:32:00.003-06:00

I'm playing around with the blog settings. That dead center shit was really irritating me.

If it's totally messed up for you let me know.

Incredible Squad CostumePossibilities

2008-03-01T18:33:00.013-06:00

I went to the test server and played with some things. These are the ones that made the final cut. I can do more later if we need to.

I borrowed heavily from the original X-Men and The Fantastic Four. Those are the only two Silver Age teams I could find that wore matching uniforms. I seem to remember more, but I guess that was more in the 80's with the breakaway mutant teams.

I really like these colors and I think the chest emblem is dead on. If you want to try different colors or emblems, however, let me know, especially if you are thinking of any comic book heroes we might want to invoke. Anyway, discuss.

Incredible Squad Costume Ideas

2008-02-29T16:45:00.007-06:00

These are the colors I was playing with last night. I don't have any screenshots of the designs because I forgot they don't save automatically from the costume screen.

So this isn't the design, just the colors and logo i was considering. I don't think serious design decisions can be made until after we run the cape mission, anyway.

I'll try to do some serious testing with different colors and styles over the weekend. Maybe solo the cape mission (on heroic) to get more perspective.

Click on the pictures to get better detail.

Yes, another new character...

2008-02-19T10:58:00.003-06:00

Yes, yet another hero on Triumph. I've been missing the action with Mantlet as a Tank on teams a lot (I guess I am very Tankish at heart) and I wanted to try something a bit different with AoE potential. So, after some investigation, I came up with Peltier Justice. He's an Ice/Fire Tank built for the Alpha Tank role on 6-8 man teams. At level 12, his current S/L Defense is over 25%, which is pretty good considering his level. I've been successfully Tanking with him on good sized teams and so far I am pretty satisfied with how he's developing.

Costume-wise, I went with a Tech background as I was remembering the neat helmets that they had on the old Battle of the Planets cartoon (also known as G-Force). The geo-shield has that nice hawk-beak kind of point on the lower edge and I was able to work it into a helmet with some accents to support it. I was also able to tie in both the Armored Pads (legs) and Tech Sleek (new with my latest vet reward) costume elements together. Both have a kind of honeycomb fabric texture that ties the two separate costume patterns for the overall look. A slate-blue and off-white were used for the body, as I like the cool colors for an Ice Tank's costume. Looks good with his armors up.

Anyway, he's IO'd out at the moment (no surprise) with some L15 set and common IOs. I was able to sell some common Tier 1 arcane salvage drops and do my flipping thing with Thunderstrike recipes to afford them. With a comfortable 2.5M left over after the IO/Recipe purchases, he's good for a while.

Hoping for the best, he's been a blast to play so far. And I dig the costume... : )

We really have to do better than this

2008-02-15T17:17:00.001-06:00

No bad words were found.

You have GOT to be kidding me...

2008-02-14T13:33:00.000-06:00

Weddings?! Really?

I'm going to hurl.

Orleans Then and Now

2008-02-12T10:56:00.002-06:00

A little slideshow of Orleans' various incarnations

Malacoda apparent...

2008-02-12T06:55:00.001-06:00

Does this mean Statesman can come back?

2008-02-11T17:56:00.000-06:00

After months of rumors, it has been confirmed by Wired that Marvel Universe Online has been cancelled.

More from MTV multiplayer and shacknews.

I wonder what the fuck Cryptic is going to do now.

Double XP Is LIVE!

2008-02-08T12:14:00.000-06:00

Hell YEAH!

Whoooooo!

Some of my favorite PA's ever...

2008-02-01T18:35:00.000-06:00

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/04/10
Now THAT is a monologue.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/07/25
Some hilarious commentary.

http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2007/07/16
They have penetrated our code walls.

Another Great Tight Night

2008-02-01T18:02:00.000-06:00

Yep, no surprise, but I found last night to be another great Tight Night with the Incredible Squad. It's exceedingly interesting to see our characters developing. As they do so, their powersets are overlapping quite a bit. ColdFusion is developing into a solid Tank with good aggro control. Cadabra is toughening up quite a bit and has some nice control elements and a single-target heal attack. Mr. Eclipse is really starting to show his potential with his holds and controls, with heals and debuffs to back them up. Even the Galvanic Guardian has a well-fleshed out attack chain that's dealing some significant damage. I can only imagine what kind of damage he'll be throwing down later on with Hasten near-perma and Aim + Build-Up to boost alpha strikes. On top of that, the electrical set(s) still have drains and holds that I haven't touched yet. Lots of potential there.

Overall, we are doing a lot better in missions now. Things are smoother and the amount of faceplants has significantly decreased.

One thing I'd like to work on with Troy is how to herd up a spawn. I'm normally not a big proponent of herding/gathering, but with the best Taunt aura in the game, he really can maximize his aggro control along with our AoEs by keeping the foes clumped and in close proximity. I'm not trying to say he's been doing anything wrong or poorly, but it took me a while to get the knack of herding, mostly from watching other Tanks do it. I was thinking he may need the same kind of visual cues to really get the hang of it. Just food for thought.

Oh, and the costumes are still one of the best parts of it. I see so many complex modern costumes that our Silver Age look is really (I think) distinctive. I'm looking forward to Level 20 since I'd like us to pick up matching costumes as a Super Group uniform. Something Fantastic-4 ish I think. Simple but allowing our character elements to come through. Anyway, give it some thought.

Thanks again, I had a great time.

Powerlessness

2008-01-28T22:15:00.000-06:00

Okay, so, when the job search is going more poorly than expected...when the wife cannot get a moment's sleep and still works all day...when the finances dangerously approach the zero mark... when the baby looks at you with tears in her eyes, it's kind of hard to feel heroic, even through escapism. Well, if you think that's a bummer of a feeling regularly, try waking up to just that reality after having had a lengthy dream about ice blasting illegal u-turners with my fists. Ugh! If only that were a job on Monster.

Double XP Weekend Feb 8th!

2008-01-24T13:16:00.000-06:00

Villains, prepare to plot your take over of the world in double time! Heroes, clean the streets of scum twice as fast! The ever popular Double XP weekend returns! Starting on Friday, February 8th following our weekly maintenance period, all defeat rewards, including experience, prestige and influence or infamy will be doubled! This will continue through the weekend and conclude the night of Sunday, February 10th.To discuss this announcement, join us here.

Server Upgrades

2008-01-22T08:57:00.000-06:00

Link to the thread on the Forums here.

According to the Forums, NCSoft is upgrading their server hardware in a series of cascading down-times across servers this week. Goal is to offer better performance and reduced lag for the upcoming (newly announced) double XP weekend, Valentines Day, real combat numbers, and "XP Curve Smoothing" (whatever that means). Looks like Triumph is being upgraded this Wednesday, so we should be OK for Tight Night on Thursday.

Sounds exciting to me, and I like that they are re-investing in the game like this. Lately I've been running into a bunch of new players online, so maybe this is a sign of a healthy business cash flow for NCSoft. That bodes well for the future of the game.

Reptilor on Triumph

2008-01-20T14:34:00.000-06:00

Well, as a change of pace I generated a new "teaming" character to fool around with on Triumph. I re-used the name Reptilor from Freedom, but with a decidely different twist.

The "new" Reptilor is a Kinetics/Electrical Blast Defender. He's all duded up in a tuxedo with a scarlet vest and matching bow tie. His body is slim for a neat tailored effect, but his skin is green reptilian with a matching smooth reptilian face with dull red eyes. He also sports a small beard to accent his mouthless face. Capping it all off is a black and gold Youjin headband with matching gold crystal crown and vampire ears. Overall, the effect is exotically formal and yet arcane at the same time. Which was exactly what I was going for with his Magic origin. The little light RP I throw in has him as a bit formal with an extensive vocabulary and some dry humor.

This is my first exposure to Kinetics, and frankly, I'm impressed and underwhelmed at the same time. Some of the base powers are absolutely great for teams. Transfusion is a targeted AoE heal centered around the enemy you hit. You need to hit to use it, but it's a STRONG heal. Siphon Power is also great, as it debuffs target damage by 25% and raises team damage (for everyone) by the same 25%. Coupled with Assault that I have running (18.75% damage buff), the team is routinely running with just shy of a 44% damage boost. It's significant and turns Tanks into damage dealers and Scrappers and Blasters just go nuts. Aside from those and the coming "big powers", SpeedBoost, Transference, and Fulcrum Shift... Well, I'm a little underwhelmed.

The set has two powers that are basically ghetto travel power replacement: Siphon Speed (aka SuperSpeed Lite) and Inertial Reduction (aka SuperJump Lite). Increase Density is a nice buff, but is really short so you have to constantly re-apply it. And Repel... Well, Repel is just crap, IMHO. That means out of your 9 powers, 3 are gimp, 1 is "meh", and 5 are good. The flip side of this is that since the "big 5" are so good, it gives some room to dip into the leadership pool without gimping your attacks completely.

Reptilor is now Level 9 and a potent force on the teams he invariably forms. Being a weak soloer, forming a team is the easiest way for him to get that XP bar moving. At Level 9, he's got Transfusion and Siphon Power slotted up. Attacks are Charged Bolt and Lightning Bolt for a 1-2 single target attack chain. I've held off on getting Ball Lightning since I don't want the aggro it generates until I get a bit higher. Pool powers are Combat Jumping and Assault so far. CJ provides some extra mobility and immobilization protection, which is good because I need to keep moving to keep my heals in-range of the team. Future power selections under consideration are Hasten at Level 1o, Speed Boost at Level 12, SuperSpeed (or SuperJump) at Level 14, Swift at Level 16, Health at Level 18, Stamina at Level 20, Ball Lightning at Level 22, Tactics at Level 24, Transference at Level 26, and Tesla Cage at Level 28... And so on.

I decided to go with Electrical Blast as a secondary because of the nice range and 30% chance for endurance return on the attacks. Currently I can spam both attacks and buffs non-stop without completely draining my Endurance bar. Once I grab Stamina and have Hasten running on auto, the secondary should give me margin to really go nuts with the primary. I'm designing the build to be essentially an offense magnifier for the team with stacking damage buffs, enemy debuffs, and better to-hits (Tactics).

The build is still developing, and I'm sure it will change as I get deeper into the power combination. That said, the character hook and the offensive nature of the Defender (a bit of an Oxymoron there, I know) make for a very interesting experience. We'll have to see how he develops. Oh, and Troy was able to invite him into the SG, so he's out racking up Prestige as well. Good times...

Great Tight Night!

2008-01-18T19:16:00.001-06:00

Just had to say it. I had a great time on Thursday. Having Troy playing as ColdFusion made a big difference in the team dynamic. It's also nice to see our characters rounding out as they go up in level. We are getting a nice mix of control and damage going, too. Mr. Eclipse is dealing some nice holds now and Radiation Infection is a noticeable debuff. Cadabra is doing some nice damage now and that Touch of Fear power is proving very useful. Having a Tank is also a nice touch, as ColdFusion is adding some aggro control that's going to be useful and keep Cadabra out of the hot-seat for a portion of the fight. Watching Cadabra and ColdFusion go to work was great.

On top of that, the post-respec Galvanic Guardian is a damage machine now. I'm seeing a side-effect of the Electrical attacks is that they have a chance of returning about 1/2 the endurance cost for the power when it hits. This helps his blue bar a lot in sustained fights. It also is useful because when Hasten is up (which it is a fair amount of the time), he has a non-stop attack chain between Charged Bolts, Lightning Bolt, and Ball Lightning. Zapp is nice for pulling and as a filler when other stuff is recharging, but the long animation time and fact it can be interrupted makes it used a bit less than other attacks once we get rolling. The new Defiance really favors a fast attack chain, and being able to 2-shot minions with a fast 1-2 attack chain is great. It's a BIG change of pace to sit back and just plink away, but the ability to watch the fight unfold and select targets accordingly is really neat.

I'm really looking forward to us hitting Level 15 on the characters, as that will open up Faultline and it's mission arcs to us. Lots of neat missions there with AVs and some great story-lines. Also, it has a selection of enemies that will be easier for us to handle. Vahz (that we fought a lot of early on) just utterly and completely suck. They do a lot of toxic damage that just about nobody resists, and the Reapers and Mortifactors have that dart attack with a big -Recharge effect to it. And that cleaver HURTS when it connects. And the Eildolon are plain nasty as well with the debuffs and stuns. Easy to see why people dislike them. We actually did very well considering the hordes we faced. In Fauline, you fight some Vhaz, but mostly Lost (who deal a lot of Smashing/Lethal that Ice Tanks have strong defense against) and some Arachnos (again, Ice Tanks do pretty well). As long as we don't get overwhelmed with too many opponents, we should be good there.

That brings me to another assessment of the team's development. We are going to be most effective vs fewer but stronger opponents. Cadabra has some great attacks, but the one AoE is only a short cone with Shadow Maul (discounting Death Shroud). ColdFusion will pick up Whirling Hands and Icicles (maybe), but neither are "knock your socks off" AoEs. Mr. Eclipse has some nice control elements and group effects, but AoEs aren't his thing either really. And Galvanic Guardian has Ball Lightning and Short Circuit (melee PbAoE), but again, neither are "uber" AoEs. What our foursome does have is some great single-target capability. That means that we'll do much better against say 6 +1 con enemies than we will 9 even-con ones. I was pulling missions one up from Heroic to get more enemies. Next time I'll bump it up one more for less enemies, but harder ones. Should suit our group much better and make missions smoother.

Anyway, all said, Thursday was a hoot. We are all finding our groove and it's going to be nice to watch our prowess grow as we level and our characters flesh out more. Good stuff. Really good stuff.

Ideas for GG's Licit Loot

2008-01-15T17:48:00.000-06:00

So The Galvanic Guardian has almost 19M sitting around from my limited time market experiment (or "Millions on 5 minutes a day!"). Lord knows I don't need it for anything...

I was thinking about a signature gift for each of the characters in our SuperGroup (Cadabra, Mr. Eclipse, etc.) Some of the ideas were: (see below)

Steadfast Protection -Knockback IO (Damage Resistance powers)
Steadfast Protection Resistance/+ 3% Defense IO (Damage Resistance powers)
Karma -Knockback IO (Defense powers, like Combat Jumping for instance)
Kismet +5% Accuracy IO (Defense powers, like Combat Jumping for instance)
Costume Recipe (wings, boots, etc.)
Impervious Skin 30% Mez Resist IO (Damage Resistance powers)
Celerity +Stealth IO (Sprint or SuperSpeed)

It would be a little token and improve quality of life for our characters a bit while we play without significantly imbalancing anything. What got me thinking about this is that Rob's Scrapper is going to have no knockdown protection for a long time. A single -KB IO would greatly improve his play experience without really impacting his character...

Thoughts?

Plan for 01/17/08 Tight Night...?

2008-01-15T09:17:00.000-06:00

OK gang, what's the plan? I'd like to get on the Incredible Squad for Thursday if at all possible.

The Galvanic Guardian is all respec'd now and his ranged-heavy build appears to be working well. I tested it on a few spawns in Steel Canyon, and it seems effective. The addition of the high-damage sniper attack Zapp! is showing some real merit. It has a crazy range, so I think I will be able to snipe at range now with much greater effect. I still want to pick up more of the melee attacks, but I pushed the ranged stuff forward in the build to complement our new tactical evolution that we are developing.

Let me know who's in and what (if any) issues folks have. Cheers!

Respec for The Galvanic Guardian?

2008-01-10T08:21:00.001-06:00

OK, here's the deal. I've been reading the forums and looking at how the new Blaster Defiance works. Based on the info, for every ranged attack you land, it provides a short duration 12.5% damage boost for your attacks. With a fast attack chain you can stack it to a certain degree. It also only applies to ranged attacks, and I *think* single target ones at that.

Considering the way our little quartet is shaping up, I am very tempted to respec GG into a more ranged-intensive Blaster as opposed to the mixed Blapper/Blaster I had envisioned. Partly this is because when I stay at range and blast away, it seems to be way more effective than when I charge in. Survival-wise it's also better for me.

The way our fights seem to be shaping up, we tend to have Cadabra charge in. As he does that, Mr. Eclipse lays down the holds/mez's on the group Cadabra is heading at. Once Cadabra starts throwing down, the rest of us alternate between his targets and any that are charging us in the back row. Past that, it becomes something of a melee.

As we get up in level, I would likely pick up more of the secondary powers, mostly since their damage is VERY high and they have some nice stun/knockback effects. This will also be easier once Troy gains access to Dwarf form on his Peacebringer.

Build I was considering looks something like this...

+---------------------------------------------
+ Built with SuckerPunch's Online Planner
+ http://www.cohplanner.com
+---------------------------------------------
Name: The Galvanic Guardian
Level: 21
Archetype: Blaster
Primary: Electrical Blast
Secondary: Electricity Manipulation
+---------------------------------------------
01 => Electric Fence ==> Empty(1)
01 => Charged Bolts ==> Empty(1),Empty(3),Empty(9)
02 => Lightning Bolt ==> Empty(2),Empty(3),Empty(9)
04 => Ball Lightning ==> Empty(4),Empty(5),Empty(5),Empty(11),Empty(11),Empty(13)
06 => Hasten ==> Empty(6),Empty(7),Empty(7)
08 => Short Circuit ==> Empty(8),Empty(15),Empty(15),Empty(19)
10 => Combat Jumping ==> Empty(10)
12 => Zapp ==> Empty(12),Empty(13),Empty(19)
14 => Super Speed ==> Empty(14)
16 => Swift ==> Empty(16)
18 => Health ==> Empty(18)
20 => Stamina ==> Empty(20),Empty(21),Empty(21)
+---------------------------------------------
01 => Sprint ==> Empty(1)
01 => Brawl ==> Empty(1)
02 => Rest ==> Empty(1)

Thoughts?

JerkHacking

2008-01-07T19:35:00.000-06:00

Just... Read it.

This is how it start's jerk hacking (dupin)

And now for something completely different...

2008-01-07T12:00:00.000-06:00

Had an idea for something new and very different for our CoH team. Stay with me here:

Lowbie arena night.

Yep. Low-level PVP action in the arena, either 1-v-1, free for all, or teams of 2-on-2.
Thought process is that it takes next to no time (a couple hours at most) to level a new character up to Security Level 4 or so. We could give people 2 weeks or so to get the character together (I know Rob's time limited in particular). Rules in place for the match(s) would be no inspirations and no temp powers. Troy could probably "ed-u-macate" us on the how-to's of the Arena (I've never done it). Trick of this would be for each of us not to know what the other people's characters are. I could fill the base Enhancement Table with whatever IOs/TO enhancements people want so there's no money concern. People would send me a list or I could just plop some high level enhancements there that you could grab and sell for the needed funding (thought it might be easier for me to do the buying, save everybody the in-game time).

Night of the event, we all log our "secret" PVP characters and head to the arena to see who's top dog.

Sound interesting? We could also do PVP Villain characters too (even more of a departure)...

Musings

2008-01-05T21:00:00.000-06:00

Much as that very old and very long email I'd sent out about things I think should be added to the COH game, anticipation as to the surprises that await players in D&D 4.0 this coming 2Q 2008 has made me think a little further. While we played the other night, I couldn't help shake the desire for metapowers, like metamagic in D&D.

Sure, I don't think a direct thieving of the D&D system is in order, though a maximize range or maximize power might come in handy on the Shadow Shard. Yet, the thought of gaining a temp metapower that allowed, say, two of my existing powers to be fired exactly at once was a little pipe dream I couldn't shake. The combinations could be infinite, but more importantly, they would be another functional chance at further individuating our toons beyond expansive slotting. Just thinking.

Then the mental list began:

1) Temp metapower allowing two powers to manifest simultaneously

2) Rogue-like temp power to absorb the powers of those around you

3) Temp power that shows the map location of any enemy type you are hunting

4) Temp metapower that makes one other temp power permanent.

5) Animation flourishes on the final blow of a battle.

6) A standing X-ray machine with large display panel in the hospital

7) Outer space missions.

8) A wall of fame in the Pocket D tiki lounge

9) A temp metapower that allows existing powers to fire off in sequence without cheating at keybinds, but that is interruptable.

10) A temp metapower that gives you a special toggle that doesn't target your next enemy, doesn't target your next friend, but target's the NPCs that have aggroed your teammates only from strongest to weakest.

11) A temp metapower that matches your profit on a market sale, doubling your influence as a great trader.

12) A temp metapower (flourish really) that uses any power with a bright flash to temporarily burn the shadows of those in the fight onto the surrounding environment.

13) A temp power that reflects NPC powers of a certain type back onto the NPC who manifested them.

14) A temp metpower that allows our team to view a camera panning instant replay of the last battle with all names and brackets turned off as in a film

15) A temp metapower that allows visible power manifestations to change colors while in battle

16) A metapower that can customize an aura

17) A temp metapower that allows you to try a fantasy power slotting without a full respec or the actual enhancements

18) A temp power AOE that mixes up everybody else's keybinds while in range.

19) A temp power that allows you to change one other hero's status, temporarily to villain.

20) A temp metapower that allows an "Uncle Istvan" affect. (Deflects all your damage to another friendly on the team.)

21) A temp power that quotes interesting and powerful lines from the U.S. Constitution, The Declaration of Independence, The Pledge of Allegiance, and other meaningful moments in U.S. speeches every fifth manifestation or so as you pound on baddies.

22) A temp metapower that allows you to choose a favored enemy for more damage on that gang.

23) A temp metapower that doubles the effect of the power of your choice.

24) A temp metapower that allows your nova, health, and end' to fully recharge immediately after expending it once.

25) A temp metapower that allows one power to keep being used after end' reaches zero.

26) A temp metapower that allows you up to 12 teammates on a TF.

27) A temp power for PVP villains that automatically sends a multiple angle screenshots of a hero's death to the email associated with the hero's account.

28) A temp metapower that allows a blaster's blast to go straight through the first NPC target, eviscerating it, to do normal damage on the target just behind him.

29) An anti-grav temp AOE power that causes all NPC foes to hover at slowest speeds

30) A temp metapower that offers a menu of death animations for NPCs to be applied to your existing powers. Hence, when you deal the death blow a foe bursts into ashes or burns or gets quartered or crumbles into tiny pieces of ice or changes to a permanent statue, etc.

Ater Custos in Action (video)

2008-01-05T13:33:00.000-06:00

This is an example of Ater's combat style that I wrote to Rob about. I used the RWZ since the spawns there are sizable and Ritki have somewhat typical AI response to melee and ranged combat threats.

Greg's Quick Guide to Working the Consignment Market

2008-01-03T10:33:00.000-06:00

OK, so you're a brand new hero. No influence to use to power-up and play with the big boys? Look no further. Here's a quick guide to affording those "special" recipes and enhancement that you are sure would make you more Super than you already are.

Step 1: Starting Fresh

OK, you just stepped out of the Outbreak zone and you're wondering what to do now? It's actually easy. Hit your first contact, get a mission, and hit the streets. Here's the most important part: SAVE those two big inspirations from the tutorial. Once you have a pocketful of influence from defeating lower level foes, Sprint on over to the Consignment market. Post the "Big Red" Inspiration first. Lowball your sell price at 5 influence or so. It should sell immediately. Get the influence from the sale and then post the "Big Green". Post either at 5 influence, or use your current funds to cover the listing fee of 5% and list it for higher. When it sells, you should have between 5K-10K worth of influence. Plenty to buy inspirations and Training Enhancements from contact(s) or the Field Trainers.

Step 2: Salvage Enters the Picture

Any character can solo easily at low levels. Atlas Park is best "startup zone" for this, I'll hit on why in a moment. As you defeat enemies, etc. you'll get more and more powerful. Around level 5, foes start dropping salvage when you defeat them. Here's the kicker. Hellions drop Arcane salvage. Clockwork drop a mix of Arcane/Tech salvage. Vahzilok and Skulls drop Tech. Don't fight Vahz or Skulls if you can help it. The Tier 1 Arcane salvage is worth a lot (Luck Charms sell for 25K each). Just play as normal, sell all salvage you get at the consignment house. Post at 5 influence just to be sure you don't lose money. If it doesn't sell immediately, don't sweat it. Go do something else. Keep doing this as you level and after buying TO enhancements you should have about 20K or so left over by Level 8-10.

Step 3: Starting to Work the Market

Head over to King's Row. You'll be going there anyway to run Safeguard missions for the temp travel powers. When you have a spare 5 minutes or so, head over to the consignment house. Here's the start of your market journey to riches. Identify common Tech salvage (under the auction menu Salvage -> Invention) that shows White in the list. Ones I like to focus on are Hydraulic Pistons, Circuit Boards, Kinetic Weapons, Silver, and Ceramic Armor Plate. Put in bids at the max of 10 items (sliding the circle on the bar below the bid entry field to increase the quantity to 10) at 5 influence each. Fill all of your bid slots on the auction house with these 10 piece salvage bids. Quick and easy. Wait a couple minutes (get soda, go streetsweeping, whatever) and check the auction house. There should be a BUNCH of salvage you have bought. Get it off the consignment house and head straight over across the parking lot to the area where Blue Steel is (less than 100 yards). Sell all that salvage you bought.

With roughly 30 salvage slots on your character, buying at 5 influence and selling at 250 nets you a profit of 7,350 influence per run. Your first time doing this, you can probably make 3-5 back-to-back runs, placing new bids as the old ones are filled. That's about 25K influence in 5 minutes with virtually no startup capital required to make it work. It's also easy. Place the bids before logging off. When you log in, you're still at the auction house, so just grab the salvage you bought while you were logged off and then sell it. In a couple nights/sessions of 5 minutes here and 5 minutes there, you can amass a goodly amount of influence.

Step 4: Crafting for Profit

When you have about 150K in your pocket from buying/selling salvage, you are ready for the next step. Buy recipes and sell the crafted enhancements. I like to start with Thunderstrike IO recipes. They are common drops, have great set bonuses, and offer good enhancements (out of the 6 set Ios, 3 of them are triple enhancement bonuses), making them desirable. The enhancements also sell for reasonable prices, making them attractive to higher level players who don't mind paying for the convenience of not having to mess with the crafting system.

As to the mechanics of this, go to Recipes and select the Ranged Damage sets. From there select the Thunderstrike group. At the top of the auction window, just to the left of center, there is a drop down menu to screen the auctions that should say "For Sale and Bidding". Change that to "For Sale Only". That will only show what's available at the market. Now cruise down through the list, opening up each recipe as you go, level by level and checking it out. Start with Acc/Dmg/End and then move to Acc/Dmg/Rech and then Dmg/End/Rech. Those are the three most popular for people buying. Now cruise through the recipes, avoiding the L50 recipes (they cost twice as much to craft, ~490K influence). You are looking for ones that have recipes for sale but have zero (0) bids against them. These are the opportunities. Place "lowball" bids of 10K against one and wait a few seconds. Usually nothing will happen and the bid window will update to show items for sale and 1 bid now (yours) outstanding. When this happens, cancel your bid. You get the money back, so no loss. Continue doing this, sequentially placing bids for the opportune recipes. Since some people sell recipes low to get more influence (listing fee is less), you can snag some great bargains. This morning I grabbed 2 for 10K in less than 5 minutes. Usually it takes me about 10 to look over the list and cycle bids. It goes fast once you are used to it.

Once you get a recipe at that great price, look at the salvage required. Should be 2 commons and 1 uncommon to craft. Buy those items, don't worry about scrimping on cost, I generally pay "market rate" of 250 for commons and 1-3K for the uncommon. With salvage in hand, be sure you have enough influence to craft the IO and then some left over (~30K or so) to cover the listing fee later on. Head over to the plaza with Blue Steel and take the doors behind him to the roof. From there, hit the SG Base portal and head to the crafting station next to the vault. Craft the IO and then head back to the consignment market. List it there for as much as you can cover with your remaining funds, up to a max of 85% the lowest last listing price for the IO (you can see this in the bid history window for the item). Most Thunderstrike IOs sell for around 1M-1.5M, so this is a great way to get you rolling on the way to funding IO sets and other expenses. Note it may take a day or a week to sell that IO, but when it does, you have enough to bankroll your upgrade plans for quite a while.

Step 5: Expanding the Operation

This next step is really not required for anyone. It's largely a "for fun" exercise and may be used to try and afford those "Uber" IO sets and Unique IOs that are tickling your fancy. With Ater Custos, I started at step 5 with just a hair over 5M influence. At the end of a week and a half (once a day or so for about 15 minutes), I had (discounting the purple IO I sold for 15M) turned a 23M profit. And that's discounting the roughly 6M worth of items up for sale or roughly 1.5M worth of outstanding bids.

Here's the approach I took (and I am sure there are others). Apply the methodology in Step 4 on a broader scale. Start with 2 IO sets: Thunderstrike and Crushing Impact. Both are sought-after sets with great IO set bonuses and solid enhancement benefits. Crushing Impact is actually the hottest ticket item here, so tackle that one first. Skim the list of IO recipes for the Crushing Impact set the way you did previously, identifying the "opportunities" that have few (less than 10) or no (rare to see this) bids. For the opportunities, place standing bids of 300K at a QTY of 2 per bid slot. Continue this for as much as you can afford. Now, you can also "mix it up" by then using the methodology for Step 4 (getting those 10K gems) and then going back and placing standing bids of 100K at a QTY of 2 per bid slot for the Thunderstrikes to round out your market coverage. This is essentially setting your nets to see what swims in. You can now log off and check your bid status daily/whenever. 15 minutes is all you need to crunch this out.

Once you have snared some recipes, buy the salvage to craft them just like in Step 4. When I place the IOs up for auction, I try to find a "reasonable" price and list it slightly lower. For example, if a Thunderstrike is listing for between 1M and 1.5M, I would probably list it for 910K. Posting lower than your competitors is essential, since the market awards the sale based on lowest posting price (910k would win the sale over a competitor posting at 1M) and if there is a tie in price, is awarded to the oldest posting. Rationale for the 910K is that lowball bids won't get it, but it has a good shot of undercutting people just slapping bids in at the current sale price (based on the last-5 sale history window).

Repeat this process, checking the market bids/sales and crafting as needed. In a short amount of time, you'll be raking in the influence, as the net profit on each sale is between 800K and 2.5M influence. All without "grinding" for hours on end in hazard zones and with very little risk (it just may take some extra time to sell some items, but be patient).

----------------------------------------------------------------------------------

So there it is. Take it or leave it, but there should be some good information in there if you are looking to make some money and spend time playing without worrying about financing you enhancements. You can dabble a little or as much as you want, it's up to you. No exploits, no cheating, just honest trading with other players over a week or so can get you where you want to be. If you have questions or need clarification, just let me know. Oh, and please don't disseminate this to buddies online, etc. Let's keep this in our little SG for now.

Ater Custos hits 50!

2007-12-30T23:58:00.000-06:00

Yep, hit Security Level 50 tonight with some folks I know on Triumph. If we have any problems now, we can call in the "Big Guns". It was a wicked fun ride with Ater and he's a champ at soloing and large teams. To be honest though, I'm a little disappointed, as there's not a lot more for him to do other than "go out and have fun", which is fine. Anyway, thought I'd let you guys know.

Speaking of Cadavers: The Origin of Cadabra

2007-12-29T19:55:00.000-06:00

Speaking Of Cadavers

“Rent controlled” were the only two words he needed to hear. Sandusky was to become a relic of his past while Paragon City a foothold to the future. An era had begun. It wasn’t that Sandusky didn’t have its charm, but a young man can only take dates to The Rutherford B. Hayes Library and Presidential Center so many times before his limited romantic creativity would show through. Paragon promised performance artists and chocolate baguettes and booze cruises and the never-ending chance to be an accidental extra in the latest Scorsese film. The decision was anything but tough, wartime or no.

At twenty-six years of age, Gus Faustian had only made it as far as Cleveland, round trip, and for that he took his passport, just in case. Now, his grandmother was going into a home and her apartment in The Gish was available at 1954 prices. The excitement of the prospect fell only a hair short of overpowering Gus’ concern for Grammy Weist. Her health was okay for the most part, but she’d come to the states fresh off the boat from Turkey and still had a hard time with complex English sentences. Gus wondered how she would get along when questions about meds and therapies would arise. All the better reason to be close to her.

Most of Gus’ belongings fit into five boxes square, leaving as much room in the trunk of his ’85 Datsun. In true bachelor style he drove hundreds of miles bereft of pots, plates, utensils, vacuum, cash, map, dress shoes or clean underwear. His boxes instead contained little more than random hobbyist trinkets; two Harry Potter books, Clive Barker’s Imajica on DVD, his GenCon busting red deck replete with goblin skirmishers, a couple D&D tomes with dog-eared corners on pages about druids, his Terry Pratchett collection, a poster of Rivendell, the cassette soundtrack to Xanadu, a ceramic Disney Pinocchio, and a framed certificate from the International Poets’ Society for his award winning piece on tiromancy. It wasn’t until all his prized possessions were collected together in one place that Gus noticed a theme to his likes.

Grammy Weist’s place was sort of an oasis. Similar to other residences in The Gish, from the outside one could still see the unmistakable traits of an old meat packing plant once converted into overpriced condos. Now those condos were illegitimate workfare apartments containing city dwellers otherwise mimicking the social decay of greater Kings Row. A simple, uninformed walk to the train could cost a thrill-seeker his life. Yet, on the inside, Grammy’s place looked like something out of a roaring Deco magazine spread, immaculate, tasteful, and high-end in every regard. Ornate white trim bordered every floorboard and doorway bubbling up hand-carved, non-repeating reliefs shaped like flower clusters and winding vines. The mock copper ceiling was stamped out in countless squares each of which encapsulated simple geometric shapes, complimentary to the next square by forty-five degrees, the whole plate covered in a low-gloss, white enamel that spread broken light from each room’s differing chandelier over the bumps in the pattern. There were wall sconces that looked to be burgled from the Chrysler Building, beveled chair rails and imported wainscoting that would make Martha Stewart weep, and even the added bonus of a wrought iron spiral staircase that ascended to a second level. A sitting room and a den each contained Vermont marble fireplaces further warming the vaguely gold interior along with dark red throw rugs and deep cherry wood furniture. Gus had never seen an actual settee or a sideboard until now. The same could be said about the very tall, pull-chain toilet in the bathroom whose tank was about two inches from the ceiling. Foyer, library, dining room, standing wet bar, roll top desk, vaulted archways, solid silver trays and tea settings, fine china in a massive Americana hutch stationed strategically distant from the grand piano across the apartment in the salon, it was as if Gus had stepped into a different dimension. Every classic item in the place had been positioned to draw one’s eye to the next. This wasn’t just an apartment. It had lines, class, and a soupcon of understated glamour. Homier than a museum with delicate design and decorative technique falling mere notches short of clutter, to Gus such a fragile and well-kempt environment could only mean one thing…PARTY!

All the nearby power lines made cell phone reception on Grammy’s street a joke. After checking in on her and the case workers at the assisted living facility, Gus spent the day riding the rail and ringing up every number in his full SIM card. Sure, Sandusky was days away, but for a place this nice and this large at this price to suddenly open up to the hard core party circuit, people would hitch if they had to. Gus would have called it a house warming, but house beering seemed the more accurate notion.

Three nights later the rave was in full swing. Of course, one’s network of like-minded friends when that one travels on the Xanadu soundtrack, more for ONJ than ELO, meant that by “rave” they were really talking about a soiree barely two degrees of separation from an alcoholic spelling bee. It was a night of mixed and low-market Canadian ales and Buds, bottled, not canned. The evening’s conversations, as inebriated ones tend to do, spanned subjects as egghead haut as quantum physics to others as base as the theory of orifices. In place of the tokeables and decent acid your average biker might find at a get-together, Gus’ gathering had at least ten homespun games that required Scrabble tiles, a lightning-round-only Pictionary station and a bughouse version of backgammon being run tournament style in the salon. Impromptu karaoke quartets broke out randomly while competitive attempts to slide the helix railing on the staircase became the night’s greatest challenge. The scene, as was, barley warranted mentioning that the party was devoid of female presence.

A wise-ass man once said that a good buzz is the sudden, jarring awareness that time cannot be measured in seconds or minutes. Long about the part of the evening when the average blood-alcohol content was .23, Gus was way beyond the bell curve. He’d been striking creatively lewd positions on the chaise lounge for high res’ digital posterity when a loud crash came from the upper level. Gus’ reaction was first delayed by the secret Heineken flowing through his veins and then further pushed off by the strung out realization that he had no idea what anything in this apartment cost. Thereafter, he darted up the spiral staircase, though to any onlooker he more meandered over and around invisible groundhogs than he did dart. The top of the spiral let out into the library, a somewhat dark and still chamber, replete with first edition texts and a décor that made even health nuts want to throw on a dressing gown and smoke a big pipe. Three cronies had made their way up around the monstrous oak desk in the library to debate the Dewey Decimal system and to joke about having murdered a fictional butler, Clue-style, a butler whom at least two of them were sure was a monkey. With the bleary-eyed homicide reenactment had come a few too obvious footprints on the desk blotter and the punch drunk “discovery” of a slide away panel in the ceiling. The panel had been punctured by a less than pointy head, crumbling to the ground in pieces and allowing nested stair sections to roll out in a horrendous series of thumps.

Gus tried to muster a clear string of verbal outrage to befit the sight, but took pause given the beer gas bubble seemingly crammed halfway up his chest, mid-belch. Frakes was in a leather armchair laughing hysterically at the irony while William, Sandusky’s Beavis quotes champion, attempted to mitigate. William explained in sentence fragments, each beginning and ending in “dude,” all about the butler monkey and his perilous demise at the hands of brown bottle fiction. Frakes, having finished a seemingly endless guffaw, then interrupted and rolled back in time a single subject to instead explain how they were previously debating etymology, a dangerous, room-wrecking subject by all counts. Gus tried to be responsible, but a few angry steps toward the trio layered adrenaline onto his altered state, again failing to form any actually audible sentence, but succeeding in a mysterious gimp. Meanwhile, Arnold Radich, of fly unzipped fame, jumped back several lines of dialogue in an apparent attempt to make everything okay by explaining from the inebriated beginning.

Arnold had begun with how this library reminded him of his 4th grade library which was all Dewey Decimal and newly offered that Frakes was a Library of Congress man, himself. There had thusly been a lengthy pretzel stick sword fight over said schism before the conversation turned to Admiral Dewey and thereafter to all things named after other things, quite the think tank agenda. Somewhere beyond Martin Luther King Boulevard, all the ships named Enterprise, a random kid named August, Muppets coming from puppets, oranges, Swiss cheese, The Red Hot Chili Peppers, New Jersey, and a near kick boxing match over the fact that everybody had claimed a different word origin for abracadabra, they had soon decided to ask the butler. After all, any such Clue-looking room should have a butler and anybody rich enough to have a butler could afford a monkey. A court stenographer’s head would have imploded.

Having heard Arnold out, Gus realized that a good scolding and the filament of logic he’d be able to graft onto his dismay just weren’t going to play to this audience. His attention instead turned to the unfurled staircase. Gus approached it with wonder. He didn’t know there was an attic. Who had ever heard of an apartment with an attic? Plus, if this had been a meat packing plant, what unsightly atrocities would have been dismal enough to need an attic? The ravers, realizing that they were probably off the hook, under the auspices of Arnold’s liquored reminder, bounced back into the abracadabra debate. William re-upped his claim that it was from the Hebrew, ha-brachah, meaning “The Curse.” Arnold pointed to Aleister Crowley as the originator while Frakes gave a list of possibilities, two of which included lines from Bewitched reruns, original Darren notwithstanding. Gus barely slowed down as he fit his more certain two cents in.

“No, it’s from Turkish, and the Turks take it from Aramaic. Avra kedavra, ‘What I speak is destroyed.’ Even Latin takes its word for corpse from kedavra.”

The library went silent. Real partiers aren’t accustomed to a sudden serious tone or an argument that makes even mediocre sense, especially when that sense comes from the drunkest one of them all. Now the attic stairs and Gus’ ascent were center stage. Gus peeped his head and eyes just above the rim of the opening, his footsteps creaking the whole way. It was dark, very dark, the kind of dark that swallows up light hungrily. The space inside might have once been larger, given the full, interlocking stair sections that had telescoped into a standard flight, but was now penned up into a single, cramped room the size of a modest, walk-in closet. Each corner was within Gus’ arm’s reach and he hadn’t even attempted to pass the fourth step from the top. He’d expected insulation and beams, wood with an exposed galvanized nail head or two, but the room echoed like stone and smelled more like the hollow innards of a mossy stump. As Gus smoothed his full arm length over the floor of the room, it felt clean, surprisingly clean. There was no dust or grit rolling around, not a mouse dropping or stray splinter. Doing the same with his opposite arm drew out a similar pristine slice in the pitch when it, almost startlingly so, touched something. Gus grabbed and drew his elbow back into the library light to reveal a full folio sized book.

The text looked more than ancient, it looked other-worldly. The characters would fade onto and off of the page, sink into the browned creases and rise again as if floating through mud. On the taut, leather spine, calligraphic scrawl, barely legible, scrabbling out only a few cryptic words. The first atop, a conundrum, the word Grenoble. And if that didn’t sound foreign enough, beneath it was twisting the more mysterious word, Felucca.

Of course, most of the dancing glyphs could be explained by the fact that during the last few hours, Gus shared more in common with a pile of hops than he did with any human smart enough to read. Given that and the rather anticlimactic emergence of a book from the secret room into a library otherwise filled with books when guests would have preferred a mummified pigmy or a treasure map to Hallie Berry’s underwear drawer, the find got shelved in the starker reference section for Gus to revisit later. The party lasted two more days.

The following Friday, Gus had reached that triumphant moment when the last beer bottle makes it into the recycle bin. He would have had the cleaning done sooner, but three day party equals two day hangover, both of which he’d spent visiting his grandmother. Today would be his first chance to look in the paper for a job. Gus grabbed the Paragon Times from the floor in the hallway, brought it to the breakfast table where he’d set out cold pizza and grapefruit juice, and began perusing every other slot between the endless gal Friday ads. His eyes settled upon one opening for a grill man at the Green Gables Café when somehow the shape of those letters reminded him of the old attic book from five nights prior. Beer had then quelled any semblance of curiosity, but midway through a semi-stale bite of his double chicken and onion slice, the question mark hanging over his head was too much to live with. Gus ran to the library.

Today, while faded and vague, the letters seemed to move around far less. In truth, they didn’t move as much as they did morph in form. Gus blamed his astigmatism and the fact that he’d left his glasses in Sandusky, but even so, that didn’t explain what looked like Cyrillic letters shifting into Egyptian hieroglyphics and then into alephs, kalephs, and spotty daggesh fortes. For a moment, he swore he saw a Greek delta just before it changed to both Roman numerals and what an eighth grade trip to a reservation allowed him to remember were Cherokee notations. Gus actually spent some time musing over whether or not this was angelic script before the forms became more recognizable. English, it had hit and stuck on plain English, every page.

The book read now as a chronicle, the chronicle of two personages named Grenoble and Nacht who’d ventured through a land called Felucca replete with dark magic and monsters. The story spoke of a great black pearl shortage that saw man and beast traveling to the far corner’s of unknown realms, and Felucca seemed to be the riskiest among them. While Gus didn’t understand a great deal of the entries, several spoke of something called a Moongate, which, as best as Gus could ascertain, was a portal to another dimension. It was the only means of entering Felucca and frighteningly, one of the only ways back. Many of the entries were fully chronicled while others were obviously interrupted quite suddenly, further indicating the danger of a Fellucan pilgrimage.

Gus poured over the text for an entire day. There was just something captivating about it, something documentarian about the manner in which magic was described, Ultimata, the author called it. Grenoble, the writer, in amidst the many entries about Nacht coming to his rescue, took tangential time to describe spells and the origins of magic. Most didn’t make sense, much in the way Harry Potter fiction was a free-for-all of amateurish continuity. Yet, throughout the read Gus came out feeling empowered. He was not only absorbed by the passages, but felt as if he’d been gleaning some richness from the words. Barely aware of how much he was skimming, he still came out at the end of each canto feeling the accomplishment of memorization and the pride of a job well done. It was weird.

While most of the spell sections lacked common sense, canto thirty-three was of particular note. It included a description and illustration of a Moongate. Gus realized he had seen something very similar before. The pictures in the paper of Rikti portals looked quite like the Moongate illustration, somewhat round for the sake of balanced energies, but stretched so that hominids might walk through erect. Gus’ eyes dead stopped on this page. He felt rushes of concern and wonder as his blood pulsed boomingly. He momentarily thought this was somehow a hidden solution to the Rikti conflict before allowing sharper thought to drive the train. Surely Rikti portals were in some way technology based. What if this was an instruction booklet to an alternative? What if this book could magically create portals that would allow the U.S. Marines to beam into the war zone and thieve the element of surprise? Rikti advantage over non-supers would be completely eclipsed. Gus had found newer purpose and allowed the waves of endless possibility to roll over him as he studied the entry.

Grammy Weist had made it seventeen weekly bingo sessions before the boredom of suburban golden years took shape. She’d begun insisting that Gus come twice a day as opposed to his normal singular visit. Gus, of course, readily obliged despite his double shifts at Pizza Hut and full nights spent mulling over the Moongate passages. While the treasured visits slowed Gus’ progress in understanding the entry, the truth was he’d been about as successful as a level three gravity controller trying to take on a Peregrine Island Warhulk. English text or no, The Chronicles of Grenoble and Nacht in Felucca left him baffled. It wasn’t as if black pearls and sulfur were lying around the parking lot of the Galaxy City Blockbuster and these were ingredients the alleged Master Mage, Grenoble, had strewn across several pages. Gus had tried to improvise with Circle of Thorns salvage purchased at bargain basement prices from the black market, but to no avail. Moongates, portals, whatever the canto was trying to document, it seemed an exercise in academics only.

Come the first Saturday of double visits to the home, Gus had run out of new things to tell his grandmother. The Hut had no new toppings. Employee of the month was going to have to wait again. The Datsun had become uninteresting conversation two decades prior. He was somewhat doomed to listen to the tales of Ruby and Tallulah, Grammy Weist’s sesqugeneric suitemates. His quality time torture began about six p.m. and visiting hours weren’t over ‘til ten. The conversation started with a story about getting her first set of dishes for free, one at a time, from the Rialto movie theatre watching serials on the silver screen. The next time Gus feigned workable consciousness, the story had moved on to the evils of standard airbags and flame retardant pajamas. An epoch later, Grammy was on to the muscular boatswain’s mate, Bill Haden she’d met on her trans-Atlantic voyage, a man who’d last vied for her affections before she met and fell in love with Gus’ grandfather, Wilbert, at Ellis Island. Fifteen minutes remained before the nurses would kick him out for the night.

Grammy finished on a new track before the evening drew shut. Much out of character for herself, she’d started in on questions to Gus that took him off guard. His mind still pondered the Moongate conundrum, but his face was the perfect poker shape to con Grammy into receiving it as full attention. She asked how he liked Paragon and the apartment. She asked if he’d been dating anyone special and a few less than noteworthy inquiries about Gus’ preferred type. She even briefly took one accidental segue out into the conversational realm of radio shows and Inner Sanctum, before bringing her focus back to her grandson’s distractions. Short only two minutes to lights out, Grammy Weist hit with a stumper that Gus translated as,

“Gussy, I can tell you’re preoccupied. You really should tell me what’s wrong so I can work a grandmother’s magic.”

Gus had no idea how to sum up weeks of decrypting a completely foreign and near nonsense text in a two minute schpiel. For that matter, he didn’t know whether it was something he’d be willing to reveal to his grandmother at all, what with the gaping hole in her ceiling. It was just easier to skirt the issue, and adding guilt onto guilt, that’s just what Gus did.

“Grammy, I’m just worried about how to take care of your place properly. You’ve got such great stuff. It’s nothing really.”

Grammy Weist sensed the deflection, but as sharp grandmothers do, she rolled with what was made available. Gus continued to listen through her thick accent, still hearing her meaning more than her sounds.

“Well, Gussy, it’s simple really. A place for everything and everything in its place.”

Gus gave only one kiss and one hug before running to catch the yellow line.

2 a.m. and sick of all pizza permutations, Gus tried to keep Ben & Jerry’s drippings from splattering the Moongate diagram. All around him at the table were Paragon Times archives, on loan, describing Rikti portals, plus a few too many dictionaries of the Occult. At that point Gus had even resorted to treating D&D accessories as source materials. Logic was a long way off. Frustration was more familiar to him than excitement. All other concerns were not so much as a blip on the radar. Failure was ever-present. About to fall asleep in the chair, Grammy’s advice shone through the mental mess. “A place for everything, and everything in its place!” It was as if the shape of those very words formed a skeleton key that would unlock margins and reveal the pith of the mysterious Chronicle. There was something in that passing pleasantry that simply felt as the missing piece of a puzzle, the last brick in a wall. All his research and numbing attempts at clarity had hopped over one important detail. He never used the book in the attic space.

Carrying the folio two handed, he lumbered hurriedly up both the spiral and extended staircases. He needed no light, as by this time all his Moongate attempts were memorized times over. The attic was still dark and the makeshift apprentice lurched into the blinding pitch surer than ever. Gus placed his hand on the book and intoned a litany of presumed incantations, front to back and back to front. Nothing. He mustered his best guesses at Latin pronunciation and Greek inflection. Still nothing. Confident, Gus looped words piecemeal from different incantations into almost nonsense strings of gibberish. Come 4 a.m., the attic remained a dark, motionless room. Gus slumped into the blackest corner, again dismayed. Odds were, by now, that if there were any reality to this book, he’d have randomly stumbled across a working conjuration by now. Monkeys would be writing Hamlet first, at this rate. He let out a sigh of defeat and almost jokingly quipped aloud, “Abracadabra?”

Gus didn’t know if it was the plain word, or the word spotted on the end of his long verbal mantra like punctuation, but the ensuing quake didn’t give much time dwell on the question. Painted china rumbled in place throughout the apartment as raw power was pulled in electric slivers from every junction box in a one block radius, piercing the attic walls and dancing in space. The chandeliers could be heard rocking in rooms far off and dusty pebbles of brick and mortar violently shook from the building in a pattern that sounded like sudden rain. Shadows ripped up from floors and swirled upward into the boxy room like dark dust devils filled with smoke. Carpets cringed on the floor as the whole structure shifted slightly with a loud crack that was heard for miles around. Gus had to fight the impetus to jump down the stairs and run clear back to Sandusky. And then, an illuminated split in the very air before him blazed fourth in an orangish glow. It had finally worked.

The split was not as round as he’d expected. Surely, Gus had done something wrong. The portal, if that’s what it was, looked more squarish and awkward. The light it emitted looked to be attempting linear shapes, but burped up random bubbles and dark patches that made it read as uneven and in some ways broken. The fibers on Gus’ sweater pulled toward the opening and his hair yanked forward. The air around him whooshed by as it to got sucked into the opening, carrying with it every speck of dust and every remnant of pizza odor left in the home. The sheering drag summoned him closer, pulling at his sneakers’ grip on the floor, underscoring the idea that if this wasn’t a portal, it was indeed some kind of pure vortex. There seemed only one way to find out.

Gus stood. He reassured himself that Grammy would be fine and that an event like this would be nothing in comparison the triumph of trying it out. He had no idea where the shaky portal might lead. If a Moongate, perhaps he too was off to Felucca. If not that, perhaps the Rikti home world where certain death would await. Whatever the cost, the prospect was too attractive to refuse. Gus readied his stance, opting to jump headlong rather than step, and took a moment only to pray. Wind rushing, dust blasting his eyes, Gus’ prayer was just about through when his concentration, dulled as it was, got interrupted by a series of audible beeps.

It was his cell phone. He thought of ignoring it, in fact, he thought hard on that more than once. Yet, it wasn’t a call. His ring tone was set and stuck on the unenviable stylings of Rick James’ Superfreak. This beeping was different, and a vibrant curiosity in the cell phone signal abyss that was King’s Row. Even at that, the undulating faux gold light just one step away should have been enough to ignore the cell, but let’s face it. Cell phones just need to be answered.

Gus yanked the contraption from his pocket and flipped it open in one smooth motion. He cocked his wrist toward the light of the magic portal as if to see better. Loose papers flashed up from the apartment below and got swallowed in the light. Gus leaned back from the urgent pull. The cell phone signal, five bars strong, clearly came from the pillar of light. A few savvy thumb gestures letter, Gus had revealed a bizarre text message. The sender identified himself only as Mantlet. The title of the message came through in all caps as WARNING! Gusts growing, thumbs dancing, Gus responded.

The warning spoke of a band of Super Heroes that called themselves Apotheosis and the danger they tried to fight via something called Ouroboros. The text was a bit fractured and hackneyed, but one thing was certain, Gus had never heard of any hero named Mantlet. Level 50 heroes were in the paper everyday and it was hard for a commoner to escape their notoriety. Though this Mantlet claimed to be from Paragon City, Gus was sure that he was either a trickster or from someplace altogether different. Gus’ return texts scoffed at the sender’s claims and only barley served to push a dialogue forward. Winds swirling around him, it was all Gus could do to analog back, engrossed just as much in the increasing pull of the light as in the mysterious texts from the “other side.” Only the word, WARNING had stayed his feet with reason.

This Mantlet claimed a goodly number of questionable truths. He was supposedly hold up in some secret Apotheosis lair, typing away at a workstation while conducting experiments. He stated that he’d acquired the ability to slapdash together a Rikti portal device from salvage and wildly made the additional claim of being able to time travel with yet another device. His hypothesis, as incomprehensive as it seemed, revolved around opening a time travel portal inside a Rikti portal, and the fear that it could lead to a result he called “paradimensional,” a wartime front for which the U.S. was not ready. He conducted experiments in secret in hopes of relaying warnings to heroes in the honeycomb of polydimensia, rallying them to a cause of a unified Paragon offense. To date, this one signal was the only he could establish. It was all a little too much for Gus to digest, but he couldn’t deny that it was happening. The bottom of the staircase began to lift a little from the floor. The desk blotter had flown up and just missed Gus’ head before getting engulfed. The instability around him was growing, strongly, and now he was faced with trumping these potentially bogus and time-eating texts by signaling back that he was just a man, not a super hero. With said message went explanations as to the book, the portal, Gus’ intent to enter, and what was certainly building to an explosion of some sort if this Mantlet didn’t leave well enough alone.

Mantlet worked fast. Short texts came in reading only, “No!” and “Wait!” and a quick “Please!” Gus humored them, despite the fact that the oak desk in the library had just shifted. He could hear glass breaking and what sounded like faint pig squeals twisting through the wind. The ceiling began to vibrate. Gus’ skin started to ripple over his muscles. Whatever this Mantlet character was going to do, he had about ten seconds to do it or Gus was going to take his chances stepping through and talking face to face.

Gus was wrong about those ten seconds. In only two, the blast of light slapped closed with a horrendous snap and threw him, bodily, back down into the library, crashing over everything in his path. All the moisture spinning through the air condensed into tiny bits of sleet and dropped on him as if thrown from a bucket. Papers slowed from the breeze and again sought out the assuredness of gravity. Grammy’s place rang its way to eventual quiet again like the after-tone of striking a piano key or tuning fork. Gus sat up in the stillness, nose bloodied, forehead cut in more than one place. About six feet from him was the folio, the whole Chronicle perceivably intact. Gus smiled a bit as he reached for the cuts on his head, sucking blood back with a sniff. At the very least, with the book, he could try again, perhaps with better results. Today though, it looked like he was more meant for Band-Aids, a hot bath, and another two-day round of cleaning Grammy’s apartment. Gus tilted his head back, managed a more relaxed sit, and squeezed his nose shut, grabbing a blank tax form to be used as a tissue. Success was success, no matter what the outcome.

The silence seemed almost unbearable now. It sat and sat and asked nothing of itself but to sit some more. It settled in on Gus to the point where he could hear himself bleed. It was a long quiet stretched over thin air and sudden calm. Nonetheless, silence is only contained in moments, waiting out the next heartbeat or footstep to witness its own destruction. In this case, it gave way to a familiar beep. Gus brushed aside the pile of light trinkets that had come to rest to his left and grabbed his cell phone. It beckoned even as he lifted it. He checked for new text, uncertain as to whether there’d been enough time to zap through any message of gravitas. There was one, new entry. It offered no text in the body, only an attachment. This mysterious Mantlet must have been at the ready to download it at a moment’s notice. That said something about both him and the contents. The “To” field read only “Triumph,” the “From” field, “Freedom,” apparent codenames both. It wasn’t until Gus had fully fiddled with his menu to open the attachment that he realized what it was. He had to scroll to get the full length of the entire title on screen, but there was no mistaking what it said.

The Complete and Unedited Instructions on Becoming a Magic Super Hero

Triumph Update

2007-12-28T13:10:00.001-06:00

So, a quick update on what's going on with our SG on Triumph. See below for details.

Firstly, our SG base has expanded some. I dropped the startup multipurpose room and added an Arcane Power and an Arcane Control rooms. We now have power a-plenty and a fair amount of control as well for the base. With that extra capacity, I was able to modify the base layout a bit and add a second teleport pad. The second pad goes to Faultline and either Skyway or Galaxy City (I can't remember which right now).

I'm saving prestige now for an Inspiration Storage item and an additional Enhancement Storage table. After that, I'm thinking an additional teleport bay might be in order.

As far as characters go, Ater Custos is about halfway through Level 48 and has access to all the nice Portal contacts for AV missions in Peregrine Island. Also, I've been using him to experiment with playing the market a bit. After a week of leaving stuff up for sale (starting with 5M influence to his name), he's now up to 43M influence. That does include the 15M from the sale of that Purple IO, but crafting/salvage costs were substantial, so the net profit from that was somewhere around 11M. So, bottom line is I think I have a line of sight on some good techniques to work the market if we need influence for anything. Nice thing is that they are not time intensive, maybe a 1/2 hour a day, if that, to check the market and do some quick crafting.

I've also been playing Tankology lately, my Ice/EM Tank. I've been jones'n to get back Tanking since Mantlet and our 50s have been sidelined. He's up to Level 15 now after a couple nights (nobody was online for Tight Night this week, so I pulled him out for some Tank action). Ice plays differently than Invulnerability for sure, but it's entertaining. I've been experimenting with some different IO sets for him, as well. Focus is on aggro control and survivability and not on damage output. When he does his job on teams, the other team members catch little to no aggro and can blast/scrap away to their hearts content. He's gonna be a fun Tank I can tell.

Anyway, happy Kwanzaa and we'll see you guys later.

First Purple!

2007-12-28T09:56:00.000-06:00

So Ater Custos got, I think, our first Purple Recipe drop. Surprisingly it was off a L48 Wisp Overseer in the Storm Palace area of the Shadow Shard.

Crafted the recipe and put it up for auction, sold this morning for 15M influence. Not a bad windfall.

PDF chart for IO sets

2007-12-22T19:02:00.001-06:00

Found this on the CoH forums, thought I would post it here for you guys...

Invention_Sets.pdf

Ater Custos hits 46

2007-12-17T14:35:00.000-06:00

Yup. With the extra team runs and such this past week, Ater Custos hit Security Level 46 the other night. The end is in sight now, and power selections are locked down. His build now is as highly optimized as I can make it without dumping obscene amounts of influence into the build.

Three 4-slotted sets of Impervium Armor for +6.75% max endurance. With the Atlas Medallion accolade, his Max Endurance is 111.75%. His AoE attacks are a mix of Cleaving Blow, Tempered Readiness, MultiStrikes, and Scirocco's Dervish. All are at ED cap for damage, have in excess of +80% accuracy, and around an 80% endurance reduction with some -Recharge thrown in. Throw Spines also has +40% slow enhanced on it, since it produces the biggest slow effect when it hits. Tough is slotted with 3 Titanium coatings for the +Max Health and also a Steadfast Resistance/Defense for the +3% global defense boost. Weave is 3-slotted with two Gift of the Ancients for the +2% Recovery with an extra L45 Defense IO to hit the ED cap for the power. Lunge is 6-slotted with Touch of Death for the +2.5% global damage boost and the +3.13% Melee defense. Impale is 4-slotted with Thunderstrikes for the + 2% Recovery and +7% global accuracy boost. I respec'd out of Acrobatics and slotted a Karma: Knockback protection into Combat Jumping. It's not quite as good, but I plan on picking up a Steadfast: Knockback protection IO at Level 48. That should give Mag 8 protection, which will cover everything except some AVs and the Ritki Pylons in the war zone.

Overall, I have carefully tweaked the build and set bonuses to add +Max Endurance and +Recovery to offset the extremely high endurance load from the Spines/Dark Armor combination. Additional +Regen was added to the build to help with reducing reliance on Dark Regeneration, and Tough and Weave from the fighting pool have rounded out the Smashing/Lethal resistance and overall defense of the build. Solid defense values (not great, but they are the first layer of damage mitigation), good resistances from my toggles, a great healing power coupled with +Regen, and improved health (through set bonuses and accolades) all add up to a layered threat mitigation strategy that I swear by. It's proving to be damn effective, as I teamed with a random PuG last night on a Banished Pantheon map, and the mobs were all +3 to me but I could solo spawns sized for an 8-man team solo. The masks and shamans were the only real threats, and Ater has very high defense and resistance to Psi damage, which is what they were throwing out. Taking out the shamans with AoE and single target attacks came first, and then pounding on the masks while the husks staggered around me being shredded by my damage toggles. It was fun, to say the least.

Soloing in the Shadow Shard to fund purchases worked well. The spawns of CoT there are ideal for me to shred, as they are not resistant to Lethal or Negative Energy damage and vulnerable to stuns from Oppressive Gloom. Death Mages are still tough customers, but they go down quickly under a focused attack chain.

With Oppressive Gloom running, the only real threats soloing are Brutes, since the Watchers (eyeballs) have debuff ranged effects and the Brutes hit like a freight train. They are immune to the Stun effect from OG, so there's no damage mitigation there, it just comes down to Ater's slows, movement to keep them off balance, and AoEs to shred them down to size. Harder for Ater than for Flambeau, as Flam just pulls them in and hammers them. Ater needs some footwork to keep him in the green. Not hard, but a more active fight than others... Probably why I like them, as they are more of a challenge. : )

Anyway, Ater's teamed up to defeat about half the Praetorian AVs in the Portal missions. Let's see... Siege, Battle Maiden, Black Swan, Shadowhunter, Dominatrix, and Chimera. I'm working through my Portal contact missions to get to the remainder. Fighting AVs is tough. Dominatrix was an unbelivable bitch to fight. She's a grav controller and all the damage our team was throwing was nerfed like crazy. Like single digit crazy. It's like my spines were made of rubber or something. One of our team logged their /Rad Controller and managed to debuff her enough to slowly finish her off. Even then it was a 15 minute long marathon battle to put her out of commission. Ugh.

Anyway, see you guys whenever. It's holiday time and Rob's out of Tight Night until next year. Have fun and enjoy the Figgy Pudding. : )

Winter Event 2007 is now LIVE!

2007-12-17T14:31:00.000-06:00

See all the information here.

They've added new badges, looks like new costume parts, and a ski race down the slopes by the chalet.

I'm gonna be digging the new content with Ater Custos, as he has none of these badges.

Just A Tank vs. Brute Thought

2007-12-12T12:48:00.001-06:00

LOL! While I was always aware of the staunch mathematical difference between Brutes and Tanks in-game, not having a toon of my own that represented either class always left the visual difference up to just a slight sliver of fictional separation in my head. I'd think about The Incredible Hulk differing from Bane. I'd think about Ben Grimm differing from an Urukai or Juggernaut. Those differences in thought, however, were merely ethical differences for the most part.

Well, the other night, as Charlynn had kicked my snoring ass out of the room in hopes of getting Isabelle to sleep in the silence, I saw The Hills Have Eyes (1) for the first time. Okay, first, ick! Second, they might as well have called the movie "What it takes to make a Democrat a Republican." Fun. Yet, my God! That scene where the "miner" in the wheelchair says, "It's breakfast time!" followed by that brute coming through all the walls after the protagonist. It just wouldn't give up. The relentlessness of it! The unstoppable, blood lusting fever of it! Sure, I guess it's still a matter of ethic in my head, but the difference is no longer slight. Maybe I was tired, but the scene actually rattled me. I kept thinking about what the hell I would do in that situation (because coming up against nuclear mutant miners happens frequently in Queens). The answer inevitably came out as, "I would die."

Need help with Mantlet Respec

2007-12-01T10:26:00.000-06:00

OK guys, I need some help here. We have a Freespec coming on December 7th. I already have one on Mantlet, so it makes sense to use it before then (since you can have only 1 per character at any time). The help is I need to know what direction to go with for Mantlet.

When we get together with our "Big 3" characters, he plays two roles. First and primary role is aggro management for the team. This usually means trying to keep the heat on him so Orleans and Cacaphony don't get more than they can handle. Lately I've been a bit out of practice Tanking, which isn't such a big deal since Orleans and Cacaphony are much more durable in their old age then they were as young heroes. However, the second role Mantlet fills in our trio is that of laying down the damage and "soft control" with the knockback/knockdowns. Orleans pushes out great damage, Cacaphony does as well (but is somewhat hindered by the scaled damage for Defenders), but it seems like the damage Mantlet dishes out is a key element as well.

So, I'm at a bit of a crossroads. Looking at a respec'd Mantlet that can perform at Exemplared levels, I'm faced with a tough choice. First route is to focus on the "Tank" aspect of the character. Aggro control, defenses/resistances, and (perhaps most importantly) adding Psi defense/resistance with IO's and set bonuses. I have a draft build that drops Punch, Combat Jumping, and Resist Physical Damage and swaps in Boxing/Tough/Weave. This means one less attack in his attack chain, but with IO sets generating substantial Recharge bonuses over SO's, this may not be an issue (i.e. the chain will tighten up so the extra attack is not needed to fill it out). By 4-slotting Impervium Armors in Mantlet's Resist Damage powers, he gains up to 9.4% Psi defense. Since Unyielding has a -5% defense to all, this would mean his Psi defense would start at 4.4%. The Steadfast Unique adds +3% defense to all, bringing it up to 7.4%. Weave adds 5% unenhanced, around 7.4% slotted up. This brings Psi defense up to about 14.8% Scirocco's Dervish 6-slotted in Footstomp gives an extra 3.13% Psi defense, bringing it up to 17.93%. Problem is that this gets expensive and Mantlet only has 8M in the bank with probably 3M tied up in enhancements slotted (can be sold during the respec). Since Psi is the single biggest hole in the Invulnerability set, this would make him essentially able to viably Tank anything in the game for the team.

The other route to take is to focus on combat capabilities. IO set selection would be focused on +damage set bonuses, +Recharge, and endurance recovery/regen to offset the lower resistance/defense values in the build (compared to a more "Tank" build). Attacks would be six-slotted early to maximize exemplared performance. While I could probably squeeze in some Psi defense/resists, it would not be as robust a build.

Question for you guys is would you rather have more Tank, less damage or more of a Scranker build leading the charge? I could probably find some middle ground as well, but wanted to see what input you all had first...

Ouroboros Possibilities

2007-11-30T09:44:00.000-06:00

OK, last night was a blast. Even with Rob's random disconnection issues, I had a great time. Honestly, it's the most fun I've had with those characters since we hit Level 50 with them. The Ouroboros missions were entertaining and the commentary from the Menders was hilarious. Like "Just like old times, eh?" the first time you meet him in-mission. Great stuff. I had some ideas about the possibilities that Ouroboros opens up now...

Firstly, we have the chance to go back and hit some content we missed the first time around. Stuff bypassed for other missions, because we didn't know about them, or because the content wasn't released yet (i.e. Faultline). I'd be happy going back and revisiting some of those older mission arcs, since hey, we're not missing out on any XP anyway. We really ought to think about what missions/story arcs we should go back and do (Envoy of Shadow springs to mind, that was a blast).

Secondly, it's a good opportunity to go back and do the Storyteller mission with some of our characters that don't have the Spelunker badge. That's a key one that opens up the Atlas Medallion accolade and has a nice perk associated with it.

There's a great guide out there by InfamousBrad on the forums that answers a lot of Ouroboros questions. Link is here.

DB/SR Scrapper: Naga Teot

2007-11-29T09:33:00.000-06:00

Just like every other damned person online last night, I went in and created a dual-blade Scrapper. Rather than trying the Willpower set though, I went with Super-Reflexes, as it fit the character concept. Overall, the animations for the new set are exceptionally smooth and well-choreographed. The power selections I picked are also QUICK. The starting attack, unenhanced, recharges slightly slower than Brawl. That's fast. The new chained attack power combos look interesting as well, although since I'm only Level 2, I don't have the full 3-set combo yet. Very nice overall.

Cacaphony Rename Question

2007-11-28T01:32:00.000-06:00

Okay, for the first time since I created the character years ago, the correct spelling of Cacaphony (Cacophony) was available today. Who thinks I should get it changed?

Issue 11 Live Nov. 28th

2007-11-27T14:41:00.000-06:00

Per moderator LightHouse on the CoH Forums:

We are pleased to announce that Issue 11: A Stitch In Time will be made available on the Live City of Heroes servers on Wednesday, November 28th. All servers will be coming down for extended maintenance starting at 7 AM Eastern (4 AM Pacific) and we estimate they will be back up by 1 PM Eastern (10 AM Pacific).

Free Costume TokenGiven the debut of Weapon Customization in Issue 11, a free costume token will be granted to all characters on Wednesday, November 28th with the launch of the Issue.
Free RespecAdditionally, with the many changes to powers included in Issue 11, we will be making a Free Respec available to all characters on Friday, December 7th. Read the full announcement of that here.If you are not familiar with the many features included in the 11th free expansion to City of Heroes, click here to read the highlights!
--------------------
Lighthouse Community Relations Manager If you have a specific in game, account, tech or billing problem please contact our Customer Support team via The Knowledge Base "Ask A Question" page.

POLL: What's fun in CoH?

2007-11-27T14:33:00.000-06:00

So… Put simply, what do you like about City of Heroes?

° What keeps the "fun" factor up for you?
° What elements of the game/experience are the most rewarding for you?
° What activities are the most enjoyable?
° What character types and/or power selections have been the most fun?
° What are you still looking forward to that looks exciting?

Inquiring minds want to know...

Ater in the Abandoned Sewers

2007-11-27T09:32:00.000-06:00

Great news. I took Ater Custos into the Abandoned Sewer system last night again, and surprise surprise, he's doing OK against the CoT spawns there. The only spawns that give me trouble are the ones with four +0 (even-con) Death Mages. Their stacking debuffs and -Acc effects wreak havok with my attack chain. Plus, they AoE heal each other, which is frustrating when trying to whittle them down. Now that some of my attacks are running over 70% Accuracy, their accuracy debuffs hurt a lot less. (expanded text below)

The other spawns that con Green to Yellow are quick now, though. Oppressive Gloom keeps the minions staggering while I focus on taking out the bosses in the groups. I filled up on arcane salvage (no Rares, dammit) prior to leaving the sewer complex. Now I know where the CoT hang out, so I can see going back in the future to plumb those depths. Salvage/recipe drop rates are high in those spawns due to the high concentrations of bosses and lieutenants in the spawns. IIRC, drop rates are: minions 8% chance, lieutenants and snipers 10.64% chance, bosses and elite bosses 25.00% chance. So, for a spawn of 4 minions, 2 lieutenants, and 4 bosses, odds are VERY high you'll get at least on salvage drop, likely 2 or maybe 3 per spawn.

Now, salvage prices on the market, for better or worse, are much lower for arcane salvage now. Several of the common Tier 3 Arcane salvage (Ruby, Regenerating Flesh, etc.) are selling for 250 influence or so. Not a lot of profit there, but the Rare Arcanes (for the most part) are still running decent cash for the desirable items (see below for last salvage market status, blue side):

"Code" below is a 3 letter identifier:
Rarity (Common, Uncommon, Rare)
Level (Low, Mid, High)
Origin (Arcane, Tech).
------------------------------------------------------
Code..Name.....................Avg Price Change
CMA...Alchemical Silver............4,227 -31%
CLA...Ancient Artifact.............7,588 -3%
RMA...Black Blood of the Earth...141,405 -1%
CLA...Clockwork Winder.............5,636 -30%
RMA...Deific Weapon............2,178,078 +14%
RHA...Diamond.....................88,225 +11%
RMA...Empowered Sigil..........1,333,434 +5%
RMA...Enchanted Impervium......1,848,088 +22%
RHA...Essence of the Furies......748,505 +16%
RHA...Hamidon Goo..............1,147,593 -6%
RMT...Impervium...................21,589 +15%
RLA...Lament Box..................10,902 +21%
CLA...Luck Charm..................30,874 +19%
RHA...Magical Conspiracy.........684,944 +25%
CMA...Masterwork Weapon............6,385 +94%
RMT...Military Cybernetic.........16,201 -9%
RMA...Mu Vestment............... 830,343 -1%
RLA...Page from the Malleus Mundi..5,955 -12%
RHA...Pangean Soil.............2,778,108 -1%
RHT...Platinum.....................5,426 -71%
RHA...Prophecy.................3,398,058 +21%
RLA...Psionicly Charged Brass.....12,071 +57%
CLA...Runebound Armor..............6,676 -3%
RMA...Soul Trapped Gem.........1,354,609 +13%
CLA...Spell Scroll................10,679 +101%
CLA...Spiritual Essence...........10,485 +30%
RLA...Strand of Fate..............10,159 -47%

Good recipe drops are still the money makers in the market now. That's good, though, as recipes drop in missions and from spawns on teams pretty regularly.

Thoughts on Spines/Dark

2007-11-26T14:53:00.000-06:00

So, I've been regularly playing Ater Custos on Triumph (my Spines/Dark Armor Scrapper) and I figured I'd relate some observations that I have collected. See below for more info.

Firstly, the combination of Spines/Dark Armor is often reputed to be one of the "Kings of AoE". Most people (myself included) look at the set and say "A-Ha. That's because it's the only combo with an AoE damage toggle in both the Primary and the Secondary powersets..." Well, that's true, but only half the story.

Starting at a relatively low level, it's a hard choice between single-target attacks and AoE attacks. I went with a decidedly heavy AoE slotting, leaving the single-target attacks unslotted and picking up Impale later than most do. The trade off was the extra slotting in Spine Burst and Death Shroud, the two early AoEs that you have access to. In teams, this was fine, since I was using the AoEs to good effect and the single target attacks (Lunge, Sands of Mu, Brawl) as fillers. Soloing anything higher than even-level spawns with any numbers to them was VERY tough. Other Scrapper sets with a stronger single-target focus (Broadsword, Katana, Claws, etc.) are easier this way, particularly Kat/BS since Parry is a monster buff to your melee defense that can self-stack. You also pick up your nice Mez/Status effect protection (which doubles as your Psi resist) with Obsidian Shield.

In the late teens and early 20's, life improves quite a bit. You pick up your big self-heal (Dark Regeneration), which is huge in terms of surviving big spawns. You also get access to Quills, which slows and puts out almost twice the damage that Death Shroud does. It's awesome. And lastly, you get Stamina, which means you finally can stop puffing after every fight like a chain-smoking asthmatic super-hero. Stamina makes a huge difference. Also at this point you're dabbling in IO sets, mostly for the enhancement bonuses, and partially for the set bonuses. Sets like Tempered Readiness are great since they give +Recovery bonuses for 2-slotting them.

In the mid-20's to early 30's, life gets better. You pick up Ripper and Throw Spines, both awesome AoE cones… One melee (Ripper) and one ranged (Throw Spines). Throw Spines also slows the crap out of whatever it hits, everything moves in slow motion and their attack rate is GREATLY reduced. This is where you begin to turn into an AoE Monster in groups. Spawn diving and lighting off AoEs becomes a non-stop love affair on the right teams. You also NEED knockback protection by now, either in terms of -KB IOs or by picking up Acrobatics.

Mid-30s to late 30s are a joy. While squishy, the sheer amount of pain you deal out in teams is staggering. While other scrappers are taking out one or two opponents, you've leveled the entire spawn and the Tank is moving on. Oppressive Gloom is the other game-changer here. Once you pick that up you have a rediculously inexpensive PbAoE Stun toggle that makes minions around you stagger aimlessly while they get mowed down by your attacks. It's gorgeous. You start to fall into a role where you are wiping the minions out and other ATs are free to take down the Lieutenants and Bosses. Even in Arch-Villain fights, your slow effects make all the difference, as their attack rate drops wayyyy down, giving the team more time to hammer them.

All-in-all, an enjoyable but very different experience from the other Scrappers I have played.

Plan for 11/29/07 Tight Night...?

2007-11-26T14:47:00.000-06:00

OK, so what's the plan for this coming Thursday? I'm jones'n to get back to our Silver Age heroes on Triumph.

Oh, and what's the Scoop with Matt? Is he still out of the loop here (i.e. we should count him out)?

Triumph Remodeling - UPDATE

2007-11-26T11:55:00.000-06:00

The Triumph SG base is "done" for now, within the current power and control limitations for the base. I may do some cosmetic touch-ups, but it's pretty solid now. More info below.

The base of operations for the Incredible Squad now has:
- Entryway
- Multi-purpose room housing combo control/power generator
- Med bay with medical teleport pad
- Workshop with salvage rack, enhancement table, IO salvage vault, IO crafting station, and basic arcane workbench
- Teleport bay with single arcane teleport pad, beacons to King's Row and Steel Canyon

With all that stuff, we are at both the Power and Control limit (maxed on both) for what the "startup" combo generator can put out. To expand the base further will require separate Power and Control rooms with a Generator and Mainframe, respectively. In essence, the base is not expandable further without more Prestige (LOTS of prestige). Ater Custos is still chewing away at that, as he's L39 right now and is approaching 500K of earned prestige for our new fledgling SG.

Oh, and I selected King's Row and Steel Canyon for their accessibility. King's has access to Pocket D and a Wentworth's right next to the Trainer within spitting distance of the train. Steel has access to both Yellow and Green train lines and has a Wentworths and University right next to each other. Also, both are zones in the level range (for the near future) for Galvanic/Cadabara/Eclipse/(Troy's PB) to aid in traveling to missions and zoning. We can open up more beacons and swap them out as needed for flexibility in the mean time.

Things are looking up. It's no Bat-Cave, but then again, it's got better lighting.

Let's PVP Pre-Debt Wipe

2007-11-19T22:09:00.000-06:00

It's interesting that the debt wipe, while a great reward to launch yet another issue, is one not fundamentally functional for guys like us who play so often we are always working off our own debt anyway, not to mention the fact that we work so well together that we get so much less debt to begin with.

Anybody up for taking our level 50 toons out en masse and hitting some appropriately leveled PVP zones for a while, since we have the debt wipe coming anyway? Or, since debt doesn't quite matter to lvl 50s, perhaps our middling Freedom toons? I know we won't be on Thanksgiving, but let's look at what such time we have to play with.