Ended up playing the Woodsman/Eden/Crystal Titan Trial (also here) last night. Loads of fun, helped tremendously by the facts that:
- Many of the folks playing had already done it, and so had some idea of the pitfalls (I can’t imagine tackling this thing otherwise).
- Solid team of characters. No weak links. Pesides Psi-clone and Amorpha, we had Hyperthermian, Shock.Therapy (Mal version), Kinetica, Hekuba, Puck Bunny, and Noelle Frost. Not much room for improvement there.
- DE still aren’t dropping emitters, which made the whole thing a hell of a lot simpler.
he final battle against the Crystal Titan is amazingly short for an AV battle (a good thing, too, since we had only two Ambrosia chits each, and I was busy watching my second one count down to about 5 before CT went down).
The Trial itself is a mixed bag. On the plus side, it’s short — 2-3 hours, I’d guess (the timer on the main mission is 4 hours). The set pieces are damned spooky. The story line is pretty cool. The villain is scary.
On the minus side — only a Devouring Earth fanatic (e.g., Amorpha) would not get tired of the critters after taking out the fortieth or fiftieth group of them. There are a few variation — the Lichen, the two Walls — but mostly it’s all DE, and, in point of fact, all rock/crystal DE.
Net? Absolutely worth doing once. Future repeats are dependent on the quality of the team. And it’s worth noting that varying teams might have varying results — we’d have been in more trouble, for example, without a very solid tank, or without a couple of empathy sorts, or without controllers to lock down the Walls and their spawn — and it would have taken even longer without Heroes That Go Boom, let alone, again, everyone being a solid quality player. Indeed, I’ll be interested in seeing how it plays with the next character I bring in, whoever that turns out to be.
It’s a Level 39-41 soiree, so PC/A had to autoexemp down. No XP, thusly, but good evening entertainment, nonetheless. The only hitch all evening was the “at least one person has to be the right level for the TF to start” maybe-bug, which meant digging up a 39-41 — hence Hekuba, vs Li Nakamura.
Yep…
On all of that.
I would have been so lost if we did not have folks that had done it before to lead us on.
It was a fun team all in all. Really bad jokes and song lyrics all the way though. 🙂
As a side note…I would love to have Trival Persuit game with the Player of Mal….just saying. 🙂
As a bonus…the mision that 76 had (Neuron) Puck hit 47.1. *glee*
Yeah, I suspect PB is going to ding 50 before PC/A, alas.
But … yeah, if you didn’t have a guide to read somewhere, how would you necessarily know or learn (except very, very painfully) about the Ambrosia, or the Lichen, or about any other number of nasty things that happen over the course of the Trial — all of which are things to fight through knowing about them ahead of time, but would be repeatedly fatal if they came as a surprise.
Huge fun last night. I don’t think I’ve laughed so hard on a mission in ages. Can’t even begin to think of some of my favorite lines, but I’m looking forward to glancing back over my chat logs and remembering them again.
Sounds like fun. When I did Eden, we had two players who’d done it before. There was a lot of standing around waiting while the Tank herded huge numbers of DE.
I think the only casualty we had was when Avo triggered a patch of lichen and dropped.
Gratz again to Puck! Avo will hit 50 very soon. It would probably be tonight, but I’m going to try to arrange to have some friends along, and one can’t make it then, so if I do anything tonight I’ll be exemping or badge-hunting. Perhaps tomorrow night for the Big Event.
Pre-congrats, Avo!
We did a certain amount of waiting for herding, but Hype did it in relatively small batches, one or two spawns at a time, vs. “Let’s gather the entire room.” That sort of tactic no longer makes sense (fun factor aside), given the limits on Boom powers. It wasn’t a real problem, to be honest, just repetitive.
Yeppers…
After dealing with A tanks that still thinks that they can hold more than 17 foes in agro…I am very happy with 1 or 2 mobs at a time.
Especially since Propel’s agro bubble doubled in size and duration with the last patch.
Also it was great fun to be funny and tell joke again after not being allowed to for the past two months.
Poor Avo was the victim of this while we waited for the others to show up to do the mission. First he had to suffer through 76’s patented groaner “Ewe” joke, and then he had to suffer though a bunch of really bad ones that I had heard over the past couple of months.
It was fun…FUN to be able to do that again *glee*!
The funny part was that Po76 went into periods of not typing because he was laughing so hard RL….and then he would come back, and as 76 not *get* the jokes. So much fun…the entire night long.
I simply do not understand how folks can type that quickly and accurately. I type pretty fast, but I couldn’t keep up (or even follow everything being said) what with, well, all the combat going on. 😛
It’s worse for me. I’m not a touch typist, and have to take my eyes of the screen. If you see me motionless way back on the map, it’s because i had to stop to reply to a message.
As for jokes… 76 and the others on the team a couple of nights ago were discussing Rikti monkeys and why they were there. Somebody suggested they might be looking for their calliope, which prompted this observation from Avocet: “I always wanted to date an organ grinder so I could have her monkey around.”
BWA-HA-HA-HAH! Still cracks me up whenever I think about it!
It’s not uncommon for me to see someone lag behind as the group moves forward because of stuff they’re typing. It’s the quips they make *in* battle that amaze (and/or worry) me (comic book traditions aside).
Practice.
Picture playing CoH, but all of your movement, all of your attacks, everything you do is typed commands ( “cast rank 4 magic missile at left arm of crystal titan” for example ). Very quickly your typing speed and accuracy improves.
MUDs, the Ultimate Typing Tutors