Hard to beat the study in contrasts of Friday night vs Saturday afternoon/evening.
Friday we were running the Transcendence Trial with the Storm Knights, bringing in Araware and Fazenda. Doyce (Pummelcite) was organizing it all, and it went off like clockwork.
And just about as interestingly.
Jackie had a character to teleport us through the Troll Tunnels, then Invis/Tport us into position at the obelisks. Touch, glow, and then tport past the central chamber up to where Koago was waiting. Wham, bam, XP ma’am.
I think it took us 30 minutes. Maybe 45. It went flawlessly, save for a single instance when Pummelcite ran too far out of a side tunnel and aggroed some baddies and I ended up taking a lava nap. That was in the second go-thru, when we brought in Mr. and Mrs. Azure.
The irony is, it went so perfectly it didn’t feel all that satisfying. Fazenda, though only two or three pips from 16, didn’t level. Mr. A. did, but only afterwards in the Troll Tunnels (Pummelcite was just short, too, so we did a little hunting). But there was very little challenge, very little suspence or feeling of danger. It was like shooting Koago in a barrel.
It’s hard to complain about success, and God knows I’ve been in enough Transcendence Trials that failed to not want to repeat that experience, either. But somewhere in the middle, struggling against all odds to succeed —
— which brings us to Saturday. The Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force, the first (15-20) SF in CoV, as hosted by the Consortium of Injustice.
(And let me just say I’m really jazzed by how the CoI has “taken off” — we’ve been seeing several characters at any given time running in the SG, and we were at around a dozen when I signed on this afternoon. Great group.)
The roster for the SF was Mister Thorne, Undone, Zot, Shadowslip, Alpha-Omega, Mastadon Rex, and Livid. Seven is a lot for a TF, but we all wanted to do it, so, what the heck. We also had some odd level problems — half the group was RSKed down to 20, and they were SKing the other half up to 19. We were stuck with a rotating lowbie who would not be SKed.
Strike Force “StrikeForceName” (how inspirational) had problems from the start. We were going up against, constantly, from my perspective, reds and purples, with occasional orange minions.
We died. And died. And died some more. The Light Brigade had nothing on us. We beat a path through the ether between the Cap hospital and VT’s portal. It was … brutal. I was in debt for almost the entire TF, though I still managed to level to 16. It took us six, painful, agonizing, multiple-deathed hours.
Things got worse when Livid’s compute problems finally booted the player/character mid-way through. Livid’s connectivity had been a real bear for most of the game (which made me, as her sidekick, more than a bit vulnerable). When Livid finally vanished, it meant that we were really imbalanced, and two of the low-levels were perma-gimped.
Worse, I had inadvertently left myself at the middle reputation level, which didn’t help things any (though it’s still, I think, a nasty, nasty slog).
The final mish, against first Infernal and then the ultimate bad guy, was no worse or better than anything else, except that there was only a single bad guy who was killing us in droves, rather than a horde of purples and reds.
Infernal was actually a lot worse than the final opponent, who was powerful, but who went down far more easily.
Hell of a group of players, though. Whether gimped or taking grievous damage or getting slammed to the hospital again and again, everyone hung in there. Nobody suggested we quit. Everyone (except those technically incapable of doing so) made it through to the end. We were a Band of Brothers, Normandy Beach-style. No weak links, nobody who was constantly messing up or causing us problems. It was just a bloody, bloody slog.
And we made it.
Bravo.
Now, let’s never do that again, either.
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***Dave Does the Game
As you may recall, the Sanguine Society undertook that SF on the same day. We had a group of five: two 20s, a 21, a 19 and a 16.
Things went fairly well for us. Bloodied Raven would scout the most direct path to our objective, often finding it on the first path he tried. This enabled us to avoid some of those huge groups of Longbow agents.
Infernal was a breeze. The two Stalkers hit him hard, dropping him by a good 30%, and six pets and a Corrupter helped finish him quickly.
The Arch Villain was tougher, mostly because he was in the middle of a lake of lava. We, the Stalkers especially, didn’t want to charge into the lava. One MM kept trying to draw him out, only to have him run down a different tunnel. Between that and the inevitable spills into the lava, our group was separated way too often. Ultimately, hopping into the lava to hack at him before hopping back out, over and over, proved to be an effective strategy.
Bottom line: 547 kills, everybody died one to three times, everybody levelled (except the 21, of course).
Ah, I forgot to mention! We also got the StrikeForceName bug, but if you watch the NPCs, they shout the correct name. We were actually Strike Force Titan.
Get everyone naturally to 19s and 20s and you can roll it.
First time I did it, with 5 and a wide range of levels we got squished pretty hard a few times.
Second time when we were all 19s or 20s we took the thing in a little over two hours with four of us and just smashed it.
Team the second time was dark/fire brute, sonic/fire corrupter, rad/rad corrupter, plant/ice dominator.
We rolled Infernal so fast I almost didn’t get a screenshot of him. Bat’zul himself took a couple seconds longer because we had an ambush come up behind us right after we aggro’d him so our attention was split, but still 0 deaths in the final mission.
IMHO, the two hardest missions are the two CoT ones.
Personally, I want to get my Champions Stalker up to 20 or so and do this so he won’t be out-leveling any content, he can get the badge, and a free SO or two at the end.
I’m certainly interested in trying this again at Level 19-20.
Bat’zul was actually pretty quick to take down, for us. We didn’t have any problems pulling him down into the main cavern, which avoided the lava problem, and once there our Stalkers and the Brute (plus the Boys) managed to finish him off quickly.
We were a bit Stalker-heavy, though that let us scout out a lot of the missions, including the outdoor map one. Undone having Recall Friend made for that being easier.
Being so stalker-heavy may have been our problem with Infernal. He had a damaging aura, plus those axe swings. The Stalkers went down too fast. And he just ignored the Boys and targetted me, which was both unsporting and lethal.
Toughest mish was, I think, the Technician kidnapping. Massive ambush waves of Longbow agents charging in on top of each other. Too many reds and purples at a single time. Way too many deaths on that one, for everyone.
It occurs to me, in rereading the above, that it seems unduly harsh on how the Transcendance Trial went off.
As an exercise in seeing how quickly and perfectly it could be done, it was excellent. The strategies and powers were perfect. Made earlier attempts I was on feel like game hunting with a big rock.
As an efficient method of getting the Transcendent Badge for folks (esp. at higher levels) that don’t have it, again, it was very good. We ran through two groups and still had time for other stuff afterward.
By the same token, as an challenge, it was … not. This was, essentially, stealthing a mission with elaborate mechanics and just doing the fight at the end. Not a trivial fight, but also not that major of a fight. Now, folks do that all the time. Heck, I do that all the time. Stealthing missions, esp. if it’s of a type and style you’ve done eleventy-dozen times before, makes perfect sense. Heck, we stealthed whenever we could during the SF yesterday. There’s no particular virtue in fighting and dying.
As the be-all and end-all of the “trial,” though, it feels like a cheat. Or, at least, it doesn’t feel like much has been earned, as though one learned the secret bypass to a story arc to jump straight to the conclusion, or got PLed to 40 without any personal effort, or were able to play Dr Vahzilok at level 40 and the ability to one-shot the good doctor. As a player, this felt like being handed a box with the badge in it without having actually *earned* it.
So … what’s the point, then? Did I really want to struggle through a ToT with plenty of face plants and no success? No, of course not. There must be a happy medium, though, of risk vs reward. Insufficient reward, and the risk is just a drag. Insufficient risk, and the reward feels devalued.
Or maybe it’s this — I like playing character, not just beating up on bad guys. The nature of what we did, or how we did it, meant we spent most of our time standing around, and most of that standing behind obelisks. I didn’t feel, when all was said and done, that I’d gotten to know anyone better, or that anyone had gotten to know me (or my character) any better. It was, effectively, a PUG (albeit an insanely well organized one).
All this still sounds like a criticism, and that’s not how I mean it to come across.
Yes….
That bloody Damage aura that dropped hide and then he dropped you.
That was why I went to the Arena to buy Purples, so I could stand next to him and pop him. Once I was able to do that, he went down quickly. If I do it again I will have to remember to stalk up for that battle.
Bat went down so quickly because he did not have the damage aura. 3 Assassin strikes took him down to a quarter HP really quickly.
Yes…the 6 waves of 16 Longbows. That did suck. But at least when we came back from the hospital, we were able to pull and clear them fairly quickly.
Yes, it was the Longbow groups we couldn’t avoid that that caused most of our deaths. At one point, I sneaked ahead and counted 42 in my line of sight. I survived (discretion being the better part of valor), but when the others got back, the remaining “Wrongbows” were camping all three corridors leading to the room containing our objective.
Yes, and Avo…
I really enjoyed the steady stream of Sanguinites that ran past us and into the portal while we took out post mission picture. ;P
Heh. I hadn’t noticed that.
I didn’t notice it either! Is the pic posted anywhere?
I don’t know who took it. I had thought that it was Margie that was on Photo duties.
But yeah, Black Pharoh, Spirit and Night Nurse went by. I think it must have been during your happy special Longbow moment.
Yes there was one group of 16 at one end of the hallway. 3 groups of 16 in the middle of the hallway. It took a lot of pulling to get rid of them.
I think that if I end up ever doing this with Gasta, I will have to make sure that I am at 16th for Rez.
Yeah, I’m glad I stuck it through for the badge and all — though that last fight against Infernal, especially, was very frustrating. Mostly because that whole “rotating” sidekick thing we thought about didn’t actually happen — which was my fault as much as anything else. Shadowslip was up against purples for the entire SF, which, while it lead to my leveling twice, nicely, meant I had a bear of a time hitting things. Much better at the end, but still..
Oh, and the NPC shouted “Strike Force Titan” at us too, so it is still a bug.
BD: Rez would have been handy. With lots of recharge rates …
KT: The rotating SK thing fell apart for a couple of reasons. First off, it was just administratively difficult to remember to do. Second off, the pool was actually limited to do it with; Mr Thorne would have been a pain to be down because of both my heals and it would have reduced the outside firepower. So, yeah, we ended up badly imbalanced and gimped as a team.
Definitely doing this again at 19-20.
AlphaOmega had it after he Leveled to 16th, but the TPK’s made that a bit overwhelming.
Yes.
I lost track of the number of times I went down. I’m thinking it was on the order of 5-6, but that could be low. After a while it just became part of the SOP, making me feel kind of Scrapperish.
If we go to do a second run, and ya PL Incendrix up closer to 20 (at 14 now), he’ll have a rez at 16, plus the Fire Armor more heavily slotted which sucks a lot of the damage output out of the last mission.
Haven’t decided on how team’y vs solo’y he’ll be yet, it’ll be either ‘Rise of the Phoenix’ (rez + nova), Health, Stamina or ‘Rise of the Phoenix’, ‘Plasma Shield’ (Fire, Energy, Neg Energy Resist), ‘Thaw’ (Clear Mind).
First time we ran the Strike Force (on Virtue, and jeez I wish the Virtue gang was rolling as well as the CoI folks — I feel vaguely cheated, rolling one of my favorite toons somewhere only a few people see him), the biggest problems were
1. Mismatched levels: Atom Smasher and Hedera couldn’t hit as much, Darkest Thorn was in the same boat, but gone most of the TF.
2. Difficulty settings: Keth was set to relentless, so we got owned the first mission, realized it, and he had to go reset his dial (you CAN do that mid-TF, and the LATER missions will be easier) after we got owned on the first mission multiple times.
3. Missing key abilities: “Acrobatics at 20″… god, how many times did I say that.
4. Big group. I can only remember five people, but it seems like there was six… Keth, Myca, AS, Hedera, DThorn… can’t remember, but weren’t their six?)
What went well was… the last two missions. Hed had AS leveled twice, and could start hitting things more effectively. Infernal was SO debuffed (*/rad, Thorn’s ‘dark’ powers, and Keth’s own Dark/* attacks) that he literally never HIT me with his axe for the ENTIRE FIGHT.
And the big fight’s in lava? Pfft. Who cares? 🙂
The second time, just four of us?
One really bad fight in Oranbega that owned us… that’s the only one I remember.
Longbow ambushes? Heh. That’s funny.
See, in the second run, the scientist we needed to lead to the computer was bout fifteen feet FROM the computer. I mean… it was RIGHT there. Easy, right?
Well, the guy decided he was following Hedera.
Hedera player went AFK right after the fight that ‘freed’ the scientist. So far AFK that I couldn’t call for her to come back.
The ambushes started.
They came, and they came, and they came.
And we held this damn room… the three of us, with Hedera and the scientist like… FIFTEEN FEET from the console he needed to reach. I couldn’t move her, cuz I couldn’t leave Keth alone for two seconds (brute’s having a much harder time, IMO, holding aggro) to do so.
I lost TRACK of how many waves we stopped before she got back.
But we held. 🙂
That… was a pretty frickin’ cool moment.
((Dave, don’t disagree with you on any particular point on the Cav o’ Tran trial. In a very real sense, it was exactly as you described: an exercise in minimalism and efficiency — blowback from getting schooled so many, many times on that bloody thing and wanting it to go down like clockwork.
Final times, from the moment of clicking on the contact:
1st time: 23 minutes, 0 deaths.
2nd time: 21 minutes, 1 death.))
Boring? Yeah, probably 🙂
You want effort with a sense of accomplishment?
EDEN TRIAL! WOO! Love that thing. 🙂
Eden Trial….
So many people promising me that one…so little follow through. ;P
Numina…Shadow Shards…
Same.
—
As to Virtue.
I think the intitial bad vibe because of a few people really put the Kibosh on it. Sooooo want to move 19 over to Champion. 19 should be ready for the SF this week since he is 4 pips from 15. Two “kill all the longbow” missions in a row really helped out on sunday.
Gasta is in the same boat, and should be ready this week as well.
…on Virtue, and jeez I wish the Virtue gang was rolling as well as the CoI folks — I feel vaguely cheated, rolling one of my favorite toons somewhere only a few people see him …
Yeah. Ditto Mister Ravenous and the (V-version of) Eliza Dee.
Which didn’t stop us from rolling a couple of more toons there last night …
… he had to go reset his dial (you CAN do that mid-TF, and the LATER missions will be easier) …
Annoyingly enough, I didn’t realize that Thorne was at Malicious (I believe) until I’d already taken the final mish.
I lost TRACK of how many waves we stopped before she got back. But we held. 🙂 That… was a pretty frickin’ cool moment.
Yes. Those are the life-and-deathish sorts of achievements that make all the problems and glitches and nerf-arguments and other problems with CoX worth it.
… blowback from getting schooled so many, many times on that bloody thing and wanting it to go down like clockwork.
I understand. (Lord, how I understand.) In retrospect, it was a matter of my own expectations — I was mentally and emotionally geared up for the standard endeavor (trusting that we’d prevail, of course) and the *experience* wasn’t what I’d expected.
And those times are awesome, as are the death counts.
(Technically, two deaths, since I decided, like an idiot, to try to rez since you guys were struggling against the Igneous — and it was Margie who pointed out, in horror, as she saw me doing so, that I was rezzing in a frelling pool of magma. *Sigh.* Fortunately, I think it was a “free” death.)
. . .
I think the intitial bad vibe because of a few people really put the Kibosh on it.
Agreed. Which is a real shame. If I were running at any less than 125% these days, I’d organize a CoI annex on Virtue and try to make a “fresh start” there.
As to Eden (“Yea, brother!“) — after the snippet of SG chat last night, I restrained Margie from running PC/A (since we’re both 41) so that we could look up the details.
We are ready to schedule time for it. Or to be scheduled into it. Or something.
Give me a time, and I’ll be there for a Numina TF, Eden Trial, or a Shard TF. Loving all of those, much fun. Just too distracted / lazy to actually plan / organize.
I believe that PC/A have actually outleveled Numina (35-38), which means we’d have to get Velvet/P-siren up from 29 to do it (which isn’t likely to happen at the moment — I’m passing indifferent to running tanks right now, and Margie’s still got a major mad-on for how the I5+ nerfs have hit Force Fields).
But Eden and the Shard stuff — we’re in line for. Along with several story arcs. Since we’re half-way up 41, though, we should probably do Eden sooner rather than later …
Well, you can always auto-exemp them into Numina, get the badges (two badges? does the Jurassik there give it or do you have to find him in Crey’s Follow now?), earn a lot of Influence for 45 SOs, Prestige, and Salvage?
Well, yeah, I suppose we *could* do that … 🙂
Margie sent me her screen cap post-Strikeforce:
L-R: AlphaOmega, Mr. Thorne, Mastadon Rex, Virgil buddy-buddy, Zot, Undone. (A rare unHidden glimpse of the latter two.)
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