Category: Gameplay

For “Phalanx Prestige Day,” Velvet and P-Siren joined a half-dozen others to do the final story arc for Croatoa. Which was a lot of fun — no horrific risk/danger (vs, say, fighting a god), but still a goodly chunck of XP and influence and prestige.
(Velvet really needs to do her level — she’s halfway through 30 and hasn’t done the formal level-up from 29. Since it’s just Resist Elements on the docket, it’s not critical, but it’s getting personally irksome.)
In the evening, Psi-clone and Amorpha wrapped the Countess Crey story arc (quote of the evening, “Oh! She’s an AV”), which was quite satisfying.
Off on business again for three nights, so CoH-play may be a bit limited, damn the luck.

Nice get-together — 5:30p to 1:00a or so — for the Sara Moore TF. It was my introduction to the Shadow Shards and all the wackiness there.
Solid group — Psi-clone, Amorpha, Hyperthermian, Kinetica, Zepher-Storm, Puck Bunny, Shock.Therapy, and Li Nakamura. Had run with all of them previously except Li, and everyone was on their game. It was a Controller/Defender-heavy group (and a couple of the Controllers were Empathy secondary), so lots of buffs and heals, which worked out well. Indeed, only one Scrapper and one Tank.
Died twice, I think, and narrowly dodged the bullet (so to speak) several other times. Most folks took at least one face plant — Amorpha had three or four, I think — just due to the heavy firepower of Nemesis and Rularuishy things. But no chronic problems or intrinsic flaws in the group. Like I said, solid.
For myself, I thought I was able to serve quite well as a healer (including a number of Rezzes), while also getting my holds and pets into play. Plenty of excitement for everyone; we were all contributing members of the team.
And, for the record, the final mish was a lot spookier than I would have thought, and actually ended a lot more quickly than I’d expected once the AV was engaged.

1. When inviting, the leader does a tell first, and describes the situation when asked, before sending the invite.
2. The group hangs together, both in exploration and melee.
3. When Psi-clone says, “Gather for Invisibility,” they do.
4. Nobody has an egregious misspellings of their names, or l33tspeak, or CoV-refugee monikers.
5. People talk, strategize, consider, before they charge into certain doom …

And, as an early birthday gift, PC hit 43. Yay!

Since we’re actual houseguests this time of year, our CoX play is pretty constrained due to social graces — and the business and otherworldliness of the schedule out in Faerie is such that we don’t reliably get onto the system at normal times or for normal durations.
Add to that Margie’s use of the family laptop, whose graphics capability is, um, a bit limited (pretty much out of play for CoV, and marginal for CoH), and our heroics are more than a bit hampered.
That said, we managed to get on briefly over the past few days. Margie more than me, doing stuff with Blue Point, while I did some here-and-there activities with Lynne. We managed some teaming with Fazenda and Araware, which was fun, some Al McGordo and Christmas Present (taking advantage of the travel powers), and actually did some arc work with Psi-clone and Amorpha last night, finishing off (literally as well as figuratively) the Envoy of Shadows (and with the least pain to date).
After which we discovered that the suggestion we bring along a friend or two to deal with a Carnie bomb-planting plot was well-advised, as different bombs required simultaneous deactivation. Fortunately, Captain Atomyc was at loose ends and could (literally) lend a hand.

I was a bit frustrated that, between Vestry meeting and Vacation prep, I didn’t get a chance to get on to play last night.
But it sounds like it might have been a … frustrating experience, regardless.

Finally brought Velvet and P-Siren back online for a lengthy bit — Saturday’s Phalanx Prestige Day (something it might be fun to look at for the Consortia).
Overall? Pretty happy. It’s the first time I’ve done much of anything with VJ post-I5, let alone I6 (and ED), and even with all my resistances down to 3 actual Resist SOs, I was pleased with how resistant to most baddies she was.
Indeed, the only real problem I had was with — hell, I forget his name, big Praetorian running with Freaks. I ended up going toe-to-toe with him whilst the others were cleaning up Freaks, and ended up going down too quickly — and then, insanely, hit the “Go back to Base” button, which meant that the mission finished just as I was back at the Portal … Rrg.
Outside of that, and a bit of creakiness remembering the particulars of Taunting and how to draw folks’ attention and good stuff like that, it all went smooth as silk. Fun times.

Al McGordo and Christmas Present. Ran them from Levels 6 to 8 in a couple of hours. They work well together.

So, having a Fly power with various lowbie characters has certainly been —
— fun.
Enough so, that it makes me think that the big “Travel Power at 14” is a mistake. Sure, maybe don’t make it automatic from Level 1 (though it was fun hovering around Breakout), but …
… well, heck, super-heroes fly. They leap. They run really fast. Being forced to jog through the world for over a quarter of your career (level-wise) is, frankly, mundane, not fantastic.
I seriously think the devs ought to think about travel powers at a much lower level, by 10 at the latest, and without prerequisites (at least for the first one).
Meantime, enjoying the flight …

I’ve not quit CoX or anything like that. But I’m on the road, didn’t do too much of note Monday night, discovered the room broadband was out Tuesday night, and may face the same situation tonight.
I expect the rest of the month is going to be sketchy — we should have 1 or 2 CoH-capable machines with us out in Faerie over the holidays, but the nature of that place is such that I don’t expect to be doing a lot of gameplay. But, I could be wrong. We’ll see …

Margie voiced to me last night something that I’ve been slowly mulling over.
We’re getting close. Psi-clone and Amorpha are at 42 and on our way to 50.
Granted, there’s still a huge amount (of content and XP needed) between those levels — but, still, it feels like we’ve swung onto the glide path.
I’m already beginning to think about what will happen with Psi-clone after that. And the Consortium. And what alts I’ll start focusing on instead. (And, it occurs to me, whether I want to try a Kheldian. Well, duh.) And stuff like that.
Of course, the coming holidays is going to frell up our steady march to the sea here, but I definitely see that gleaming Hero of the City badge lurking there on the horizon. To mix my metaphors.

Option Paralysis is a phenominon that occurs when there are too many choices. In theory, you’d think that having a lot of choices would let you make an optimal decision, but in practice that often doesn’t happen because of indecision, because making the “best” choice begins to outweigh making a “satisfactory” choice, etc.
Like, last night. Amorpha and Psi-clone against some Carnies. No sweat. Under control.
Then we ended up in one of my least favorite maps (large room, couch set in one corner, cubes in another corner, glass-walled meeting room and coffee area on the opposite wall, lots of pillers). We started in, standard strategies —
— and things began to go all pear-shaped —
— and things began hitting me. Like hitting me for 90-100 points. Then 100-200 points. Then —
— Carnies running around all over —
— big freakin’ weightlifter in my face and girls throwing stuff —
And option paralysis set in. Any number of things I could have done. Crey freezing pistol would have been good to lock down the strongman. Call in Phred, or Phred’s Army. Bug out. Hit the phase ring. Hit the wedding ring. Pop various shield chicklets (since I was out of greens). Try —
Well, you see the problem. Any number of good things. And while I tried to decide I kept getting hit and trying to heal myself and eventually ended up chewing on carpet that tasted vaguely of stale cotton candy and popcorn.
*sigh*
Margie was extremely apologetic, as though it were her fault for not taking out the entire room. But it was really my fault.
Need to work on some of those stratgies. Maybe having three trays of powers and temp powers isn’t such a good idea …

So I’ve done RP stuff on CoH before — usually just staying in character, or maybe applicant interviews, or occasional chit-chat centered around missions. But last night I actually dove/was dragged into a major RP thread.
Insidious.
I think I’ve kept away from a lot of serious RP in CoX because (a) a lot of the RP I see in CoX drips of melodrama and romance novel class writing, (b) I like to feel I’m getting my money’s worth from the game, not from a chat client, and (c) I tend to duo with Margie and, in fact, prefer to game with her, which limits my availability for such things.
There’s also the concern about imposing my plots on others, or vice-versa. I’ve seen that done, badly, too many times in my months on CoX.
That all said, it was fun. Psi-clone got yanked into Midnite Tempest‘s storyline, and it turned into something a lot more elaborate (in terms of how it intersects his own tale) than I’d anticipated. I have no idea the extent to which it will go beyond an hour or two of chat last night (and, to be honest, I’m not sure I want it to go much further (see a-c, above), but if I helped p.MT along with things in her story, I’m happy to have done so.
At the very least, it was kind of keen to be able to use the CoJ base as a backdrop (a couple of rooms worth, in fact).

In response to a request from Puck Bunny, Psi-Clone and Amorpha joined a team with her, Kinetica, Noelle Frost, and Shock.Therapy — with, for a while, Agent Seven and Kessa, too — to take on first Anti-Matter, then Marauder, then various and sundry Carnies.
Not bad. It’s a fun group to play with (even if Noelle was all angsty over the Kid Galahad thang). We had a few deaths (Anti-Matter was the toughest, by far, abetted tactically by some “I’m feeling suicidal” roleplay and a bit of Level 50ness), but ultimately prevailed, and both PC and A. dinged to 42. Huzzah.
Ran off to do some scheduled RP with Midnite Tempest, only to be interrupted by a critical call from work. Alas.

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.

BD needed help with a PB mission (the Psychic Clockwork King), so Psi-clone and Amorpha joined Puck Bunny, Noelle Frost, Shock.Therapy, and Kinetica (the latter 50s exemplared down to our 41-42 level) at Portal Corp.
A pretty fun mission. There were three controllers, a bushel of pets, one defender, one blaster, one scrapper. That meant Amorpha took point. Invis. from me kept us relatively stealthy going between groups, and we have very little trouble with them (except for Kinetica, who was prone to being killed by anyone she failed to nuke). Between Shock and myself, folks stayed buffed and healed. Pretty straightforward. The PCK went down in just a few minutes.
After we cleared the rest of the map and headed back, Noelle had to leave, so we headed on to a Crey mish that PB had. Things were a bit dicier there — a massive number of Crey tanks, and a good sprinkling of Paragon Protectors. The groups were large enough, and close enough together, that we ran into problems, including Kin going down a few times, my going down at least once, and a TPK when we inadvertently aggroed a veritable flock of Crey tanks.
I probably shouldn’t have brought out Phred, in retrospect — some good added firepower, but he triggered melees before we were ready more than once. My bad (and probably the most egregious tactical blundering of the evening).
Still, ended the mish out of debt and the evening a couple of pips higher than I’d been, so it was all good. And it was good to team up, too. I love duoing with Margie (she’s an excellent player and partner), and soloing can be some fun, but there’s enjoyment in team-ups that I’ve missed of late — more chaos, more voices, more chances for things to go wrong and for things to go right. And when it’s all good players (like the team we were on), it’s even more fun.
I’m looking forward to the TF this weekend, and there’s another team mission that Araware and Fazenda might be going on shortly, too. Should be fun.

Hit 41 with Amorpha and Psi-clone (and at about 2 a.m.), huzzah. Ran our first PI mission, dealt with Malta ambushers, dealt with Knives of Artemis, etc.
Actually, the Malta bit was amusing (in a “My God, we’re all going to die” way). We’d just finished doing some mission that was likely to torque the Malta off. We split up — I went to Talos to shop, A. went to Skyway.
“Huh. Ambush. Ow!”
So I began slowly flying that direction. She was at a store, and had ducked inside — but felt honor-bound to do something about it when she was healed because there were others outside dealing with her mess.
So I’m flying back over Skyway, slowly, and I can see her health indicator going up and down, and hear crashes and explosions and such from her monitors —
— and wham! red numbers roll up on me, too, and I toppled to the ground. Ouch.
Heal. Look. Nobody’s around. Fly to Amorpha, get there just as she wraps up the last of them.
Except, clearly, more are coming — I’d overflown them (nothing native to Skyway would be likely to shoot at me, let alone do that much damage).
So we prepped and waited, and here they came down the way, and before I could do much here comes the first wave of missiles …
Ouch.
Then the second wave.
Ouch.
And I’m staggering for the door to the store. Get inside. Heal. Rest. Explosions from Margie’s monitor. “I have the Titan. I have the Sapper.”
Stagger back out. Turn. Blind. Heal.
Whoosh.
Yeah. That was exciting. Now, who was the idiot who suggested that Malta story arcs for the 40-45 range might be fun?
For what it’s worth, Margie’s already decided she dislikes the Knives more. Yes, they see right through our Invis. (and go Invis. themselves), and they use those frelling caltrops with gay abandon. That said, they blind and turn as easily as anyone else, and I can Fly over the caltrops (though fighting at a ruinous Endurance rate), so I can think of far worse opponents.
That gameplay started later in the evening. During most of the day, we were running Mister Thorne and Undone, either by ourselves or with some of the other CoI, which was fun. Hit 14 with both of them so we have (huzzah!) travel powers (Fly and Tport, respectively, and are being made painfully reaware of just how Endurance-sucking both of them can be at the beginning) … 🙂

Finally wrapped up the Terra Conspiracy story arc last night, complete with AV, with Psi-clone and Amorpha. That part went swimmingly — I buffed up A. (who then could concentrate on the AV), then flooded Terra’s court with pets (including my Wolf Whistle), while using some of my other temp powers to shrug off the occasoinal nastygram. Once the riff-raff were cleared out, we were all able to concentrate ton Terra — who packed a big punch, but steadily went down. Boo-yah.
Less pleasant was a bit earlier, when we exited a Rikti mission and got ambushed outside. They weren’t anything we couldn’t handle, but I’d taken a bunch of damage before I realized what was going on, then started getting mezzed faster than I could break free and pop greens and heal myself and fend of the bad guys and get away and … with the mess aided and abetted by drones in the distance and a Rikti with a honking big blade in the foreground.
Down I went. Got back from hospital in time to help A. with the mopping up (she did fine, thank you very much). Rrg. That’ll teach me to tempt the CoH Gods.
Still, we finished a major arc, killed an AV, and I’m over half-way to 41 (A. is, of course, a bit further). And we’re beginning to get contacts in … (duh-duh-DUUUUUUUUHHHHH …) Peregrine Island. Eep!

I was in the middle of complaining bitterly that Eliza Dee had just gotten taken down in the middle of a combat with the final two orange bosses at the end of the mission, largely because my cursor click on a heal had (typically) failed …
When Margie, who was soloing with Hildegard went down in her last encounter in the mission …
… as the bad guy went down …
… and she got taken out …
… by the last
… couple of pips of caltrops damage.
She got the brownie.

Took Psi-clone and Amorpha out last night. We’ve determined that, no, shared mission completion hasn’t rolled out to CoH yet (and won’t until Newspaper Technology comes over, too), so we’re just proceeding with the story arcs we have, and t’heck with it.
The current arcs we’re on are … even on Invincible … not horribly challenging. Devouring Earth (with, whichout emitters, are even more pathetic). Council. Crey. Even the Rikti. We’re just rolling through them, and are even getting a bit lazy — not paying close attention to Invis. dropping, having Phred the Phantasm out all the time, etc. XP are decent, but we’re plowing through jello here, chewing through a pip or two nightly.
Heck, we had Zazi along with us last night for part of the adventure, and she didn’t have problems (SKed) either.
Not that I’m complaining too much about not dying all the time, mind you …

Both Amorpha and Psi-clone dinged 40 this evening. Huzzah!
In completely unrelated news, I set up the CoJ so that anyone could pay rent for the base. Since it has to be paid at City Hall in Atlas, doing it with some lower level characters might make more sense.