Category: Gameplay

… how much gameplay you can get in starting at 7:30 p.m. rather than 9:30 p.m.

I’m not sure my situation is directly analogous to using video games for pain management, but I was very happy to have a few minutes to grab in Paragon last night.
First, a brief SK for Amethyst Crown in Kings Row with a level 19 Ice Controller fighting Abominations and other mid-range Vahz. Given how sketchy AC’s attack chain is (Hack. Slice. Punch. Punch. Punch. Punch.) it was both alarming and gratifying to be thanked by him for contributing my “higher DPS.”
Then a quick adventure with Fazenda and Araware wherein we discovered that running at Rugged wasn’t all that bad, even if there was a distinct orange cast to all those Skulls …
Fought a fire, briefly, just by the Steel Canyon Yellow Line. Discovered (a) hey, those Outcasts Hellions try to keep you from it! (b) unslotted Hover is sooooooo slooooooooooow, and (c) I dunno what happened, but no badge or award or anything.
Oh, and (d) squirting Skulls in a later mission with your still-present fire extinguisher pack doesn’t really do anything to them.
Nothing special, but needed fun nonetheless.

Had a great Synapse TF this afternoon — “Task Force Dexterity.” Actually, that’s a misnomer. Very little dexterity. Very much firepower.
Dinged from just over 19 to just over 21 (so no XP in the last few missions, but what the heck). And managed to grab 5 badges: Clockstopper, Gearsmasher, Keeper of the Peace, Synapse’s Cohort, and Tough.
I The team was a lot of blasters — Torchielle, Avocet, Lady Photon, and Toy Maker — along with one Defender (Agent Twelve), one Scrapper (Kazima), and one “Tank” (Peacebringer, actually, Emissary, who organized the soiree).
I had been concerned that we’d be too squishy a group, but it worked out great. Emissary kept the big baddies aggroed, Agent kept us healed, and the Damage-Dealers simply blasted/slashed them into oblivion. No melee lasted too long except when we inadvertenly grabbed more one group.
So, yeah, it’s a boring TF from one aspect (“ALL CLOCKWORK! ALL THE TIME!”), but it was a fun group of personalities, and we were so capable, especially once we got used to each other, that we practically took the final few mishes — including the Clockwork King himself — at a run. Even Babbage was a relative cakewalk (certainly no knockdown-dragout sort of endurance contest — we steadily just carved away at him and took him down with little problem).
Endurance was probably the biggest problem (aside from having to constantly step on Gears …). Early on I was suffering badly. Once I got some slots into Conserve Power and took Stamina, that stopped being a problem until we started running forward between encounters with no rest.
Even so, despite a few close calls, we only ever had one death, Emissary himself (done in by a Void Seeker — one cool thing about having a Kheldian along is the occasional different villain). But that was it.
Fun. And profitable.
Probably the last Kazima/Torchielle hurrah, though. We did a test (SKing) run of Torchy and Hildegard the other evening, and it just simply rocked the house (aggro management, baby)


Official post by Emissary, with better pictures, is here.

A few weeks back we were chatting with Mal and working with him to set up a Kheldian in the Consortium. Somehow the subject of reciprocating came up, and we ended up planning on Fazenda and Araware joining the Storm Knights.
Which, last night, they did, with a fun interview by Mal and Silver-Streak. I wanted to wait until we dinged 10 (and so were “serious” superheroes), and then things were delayed further by our applications getting lost in the Great Forum Crash of September 2005. But we finally got it all in place, and now we’re Storm Knights.
It’s kind of weird. Most of our characters are in the CoJ, which means we can be as negligent of them as we want to be (except PS/A, whom I feel obliged to trot out, at a minimum, every couple of days). Velvet and PC are in the FP, but they were our first characters, and it’s such a large group and they’ve been around long enough that they just feel like part of the background, and if they don’t come out often, it’s not a big deal. Lynn is in the Allies, but, well, they’re a non-group, right?
But now we have SG Obligations with another set of production characters. So I expect over the next few evenings we’ll be playing them relatively heavily, to establish our presence in the group (and Alliance), and will keep them in moderate rotation for a the forseeable future.
(I was … mildly dismayed by the relative lack of response, as a “newbie” in the group, to our arrival on comms. I made a particular effort with F. to say hi to everyone as they came along, toss in a few comments here and there, etc. I got one “hi” back, from Will, and a very nice set of private tells from Kin, but aside from that I might as well have been running hidden.
It’s an interesting, somewhat disturbing perspective. Next up, a request for help.

Through various travails (mostly character rebuilds/restarts/replacements), our lower-level alts are out of sync, level-wise. The current “pairing” goals seem to be:
1. Psi-clone/Amorpha
2. Velvet/P-siren
3. Taste of Honey/Kazima
4. Torchielle/Hildgarde
5. Fazenda/Araware
6. Mr. & Mrs. Azure
7. Big Lungs/Star Protector
with Lynn Calodo and Fallen Twice rounding out the bunch as “unaligned.”
Problem is, at the moment, #4-6 (arguably 3-6) aren’t in sync, level-wise.
Thus, we spent the evening getting Big Lungs and Mrs. Azure both up in levels, closer to where they need to be. BL is there; Mrs. Azure needs a few more levels to catch back up with her hubby.
Problem is, Margie rebuilt her to be Sonic Defense vs FF Defense. And now she’s finding that the Sonic bubbles make her … a tad nauseous.
And so it goes.

Continued this evening with Velvet and P-siren, since we’d been doing well last night.
Beat up lots of pumpkinheads and not-really-wolves. Never too much of a problem unless I got more than, say, twenty of the Fir Bolg around me (given that my Resist Elements is pretty crapola right now).
Eventually got a Keen Temporary Power, the Rune of something-or-another, which basically zaps Fay for big damage. Kind of weird having Velvet as a blaster, but useful.
Then we got sent on the Mission from Hell. Or Faerie. Guard the Dolmen. Keep the Fir Bolg from slipping through it, which they are bound-and-determined, Taunt or PunchVoke or no, to do, doing little mini-wave attacks/samba lines on their way. We did pretty good for a while, but eventually they started coming from different directions and we had to pull back to where it was nigh-impossible to distract them from their cause.
Annoyingly, it can be up to 5-7 minutes between waves (based on my Dull Pain perma). Irksome.
Evidently the story line dead-ends there if you can’t beat it until you level beyond it (based on Amorpha’s experience). Before we do it again, we’ll be bringing in a few friends.
PS dinged 29. I’m about two pips from it. Yay.
I’d put it to bed for a week or so, just to wash the taste of the failed mish from my mouth. But with the Rune of whozits in my hand, it’s like having the Lollypop … you can’t stop playing until it’s gone.

… played after a very long day on the business trip and a very yummy P.F. Chang’s dinner, and a with a very sleepy head …
1. Went to Dark Astoria solo with Psi-clone (while Margie was finishing up some Star Protector stuff). Stealthed an Orembega mission, wrapping up a story arc, and then spending some time whomping baddies on the head with the lollypop for XP.
2. With Amorpha, fought a lot of Freaks who were trying to set a lot of fires. Again, much whomping ensued. Decided I will avoid Nemesis folks, since the are confuse-resistant …
3. After Margie signed off, sold stuff, visited contacts, listened to some odd CC chatter, went to bed.
And that was, I think, the End of the Lollypop.
Good to be home tonight.

Ate with various office folk at a very nice Trattoria in Old Towne Pasadena. Would rather have been there with Margie. By the time I got back to the hotel and signed into CoH, she was ready to sign off (after having done some Star Protector stuff).
Gathered a few people up to do some missions, and dinged to 35. Afterwards went out, cleaned my tray, took Resurrect instead of Hasten (which is what I’d planned, but, frankly, I’ve got a just fine rate of powers to spam around at the moment) (Resurrect, btw, gives a 90 second grace period for XP loss if killed again).
Afterwards, just because, I tracked down an unfamiliar icon in Talos on the newly downloaded fresh Vidiots maps (very nice, with added info, but with no indication of how to turn off the obnoxious ($) store symbols) and discovered it was an entrance to the Paragon Dance Party … which was deserted.
Out of idle curiosity, swung by the Arena in Talos, too. Had never been inside of one.
Beautiful. Pretty. Spacious.
Starkly empty.

After a long dry spell while the folks were out visiting for the Labor Day weekend, got back into the CoH thang with a bang.
Got home early enough that I had a chance to play a bit with Big Lungs while watching over Katherine. Fun with sonics, and had a passerby express admiration for the name. Meanwhile, Margie reset Star Protector to be Sonic/Rad Defender. Eventually, the two of them are intended to run around together.
After dinner, once Margie was on, we brought on Psi-clone and Amorpha. Started off with some impromptu RP with Healing Rayne, followed by …
… well, followed by discovering that I really needed to download the newest version of HeroStats to work with I5 properly. Which was annoying to discover but painless to remedy.
Woo-hoo! Took a trek all the way across Crey’s Folly to do it, but Psi-clone got the Lollypop.
Which is very cool, but has its problems. First off, annoyingly, it doesn’t seem to be affected by Containment — which means my Spectral Wounds does nearly as much damage (up front) as the Nemesis Staff, which is just kind of wrong.
Second off — well, PC is just not a blaster. He’s not all about the smiting. Thus, giving him a Big Gun just means that he’s going to shoot it at someone who will then shoot back at him.
Still, it’s very cool, and I’ll be making maximal use of it over the next few days.
Demonstrations of the second point came up a bit thereafter. We were heading to a mish in IP, when someone sent out a broadcast about a Giant Octopus …
Amorpha and I tracked it down in the SW corner of the bay. I, of course, wanted to lay into the critter. Margie, being the planner that she is, started trying to gather together a team, etc., etc., all the right strategies. So I fidgeted. And waited. Sure it was going to flee. Positive another team was going to get to it first.
And then we were ready! And I charge in! And zapped it with the staff! And …
Bam. Thwack. Zorch.
Dead in the water. Literally.
(Grumbles.) I flew back as fast as I could (which, given the speed of Fly is maddeningly slow). I did, though, get back after just one tentacle had been taken down.
After that, it was a lot of fun. Zoom in. Zap with the staff. Zoom waaaaay back out. Heal. Heal. Heal some more. WTF, there are no other healers on our team of 8? Evidently not. Zap. Heal.
Rest.
Lather, rinse, repeat.
By the end of the battle, I hadn’t quite cleared off my debt (dagnabbit) — and Amorpha had died once, too — but I’d gotten …
Three badges.
Devilfish, for being on the team that did the most damage to Luska the Giant Octopus.
Unyielding, for clearing 500K in debt.
Medic, for healing 250K of damage.
Lots of irony in that particular combo of badges.
A Giant Octopus. Too much frelling fun.
Did a bit more together after that, and ended up about a half-hour short of dinging 35. But that should come tonight … 🙂

Another event of yesterday when I’d signed on as Velvet in the late afternoon after getting home (and cleaning up the guest room): the Ghost Ship showed up in Talos.
Now, this isn’t too wildly unusual, except …
… I’ve only actually seen it once.
… I’ve never actually fought any of the ghosts (though Margie/Amorpha had)
… the Ghost Ship was stuck.
Yes, stuck. It was off on the western edge of Talos, “aground” just short of the wall. Just sitting there.
Spawning.
Velvet jumped in, started fighting, quickly learning how many of her toggles needed to be turned on against those little buggers. (Actually, given that they have negative energy attacks, I think, most of her toggles probably weren’t all that useful).
Punch, punch, punch, superjump to the next group, punch, punch, punch.
Amorpha showed up. We teamed. She finished her badge. She left.
Punch, punch, punch …
There were probably a couple dozen heroes over there — between it being late afternoon for half the country and most folks on busy building sonics and archers over in Atlas/Galaxy, it was a much lighter crowd than I’d have expected.
Punch, punch, punch …
Ectoplasmic!
Badge in hand, I departed, too. Fun.

Per CuppaJo this morning:

Heroes –

Issue 5 is here! Tomorrow morning (Sept 1) we will be distributing one free respec and one free costume change to all characters. This gives you time to use any current free respec you have since tomorrow’s respec will overwrite any unused free respec.

Again, that is tomorrow – Sept 1 that these will be distributed.
It’s unclear if that means that I5 is live right this second, or will be as of tomorrow.
(It appears to be the former.)
Hmmm. Bad night to have to clean for guests arriving tomorrow. 🙂
On the other hand — given the “free costume” token, I’d steer clear of Icon in Steel any time through the weekend. And the one in IP may be pretty swamped, too.

Got on with Psi-clone and Amorpha last night.

1. Did the Level 30 costume mish. PC spent an absurd amount of money to simply take off his jacket and roll up his sleeves. I’d really love to come up with something “heroic” for him to wear, but he’s just not the Spandex type, and I’m not thrilled with the non-Spandex uniforms on him. So he’s stuck in various forms of mufti.
   Margie did some stuff with Amorpha I’ll let her describe.

2. Amorpha dinged 35.
   Psi-clone might have as well, except for getting freaking killed by a Crey attack after we got the costume mish. This despite (a) warnings by Margie not to exit Icon until after she was outside and (b) having Empathy and green chicklets out the wazoo. As I’ve said, it’s a game of mistakes. Dagnabbit. First death for him in some time.
   One Crey Juggernaut we missed tracked us all the way back to the Talos train station where we were having a nice chat with Shock Therapy. We disposed of him there with no more debt.

3. More ambushy goodness from the CoT as we pursued some magic gewgaw or another in Brickstown. Didn’t die that time.

Margie was busy with building a new character (Hildegard, a replacement for Ebon Maze) as well as testing some respec changes on Amorpha in anticipation of I5, so I spent the afternoon and evening play sessions with Lynn Calodo.
Despite being only an Ally, I had little trouble finding folks who were interested in my help by, well, asking if anyone was. That included getting SKed way over my level (from 13 to 25 or so), which was fun except for the whole Lack of Travel Powers to Get Across IP thing.
Still, had fun, and managed to ding Lynn all the way from just into 13 to 6 pips into 14 (and now I can actually Travel via Super Jump, so I’m a happy camper).
Let me think: afternoon was teaming with Caledonian and Darkest-Nite. Evening was teaming with Steel Giant, briefly with Callypsa, then later with Chaos Girl and Tejavo (?).
Endless slog against Devouring Earth, though, the last mission running at least 2 hours of non-stop punching against orange, red, and purple DEs. At that, I think I was still useful.
Avoided the copious open chat on Noelle being kidnapped (I’ll leave the irony of that event’s timing for the conspiracy-minded out there). Preferred the light RP of our own sessions. And the XP, of course.
Lynn’s doing great in her role as my “unpartnered alt” for when Margie’s otherwise busy. Only died once yesterday, and that whilst soloing — as with most scrappers, she can be unexpectedly fragile sometimes. But still fun to play and team with, even though I’ve now seen Lesser Devoured a lot closer than I ever have with Psi-clone.

So I’ve been planning for Honeygun’s return for a while now. A while longer than I’d planned, if that made sense. But recently I started doing stuff with her new self, Taste of Honey, and Margie’s “companion” charcacter, Ebon Maze, on a casual basis.
Then the suggestion came up of doing the Transcendence Trial this weekend (before I5 hits). And it was suddenly, horribly, blindingly clear that Honey must do that. It was the obsession that had driven her to extremes, that had gotten her into trouble, turned her into a Dark/Dark Defender, and now (it was obvious) she needed to do this to reach personal completion — and maybe even get her a bit out of the trouble she was in.
So this past week became Get Taste of Honey Up in Levels Week. She was at 9. Over the course of the week, we managed to get her up to 12 — barely enough for the trial, but …
Friday night would be the big push. Then Margie suggested that we should do Positron. We could duo it, get Big Prizes, and get Honey up into comfortable level range for the Trial, which schedules had pieced together for Saturday.
Well, it was a great plan, and would have been still better if we’d managed to get started before 8:30p. At that, it was great fun. Margie brought along Kazima, who would be doing the Trial, so as to get back used to her. Positron takes three to begin, so Margie was recommended to Lady Photon as a starter, which was fine, since she’s always fun. We just got started kind of late.
Lady P ended up rejoining us on the second mish, and ran through to the very end. It all went great, aside from wrapping around 4 a.m., and at the end of it, Honey was at 15, the top level for the Trail. W007! Perfect!
Too perfect, as it ended up.
I made a few intentional design decisions with Honey as we proceeded. I’d decided a while back on Recall Friend, but as I played with Stealth, and thought of the Trial, I realized that Invis was a must for the tunnels. So that’s what I took for 14, rather than a travel power. Hated life, but I knew …
Margie did all the leg work and organization for the Trial, since I was (a) the Mystery Guest, and (b) not in the CoJ, and thus not in SG or Coalition Chat.
It was a faboo group — Honey and Kazima, Hyperthermian, Synoptic, Kinetica, Dubh Bas, Mal Bot 2300, Shock Therapy. And the Trial went flawlessly (once we shuffled players to actually have someone along who *had* the mission, which is why we ended up with a Malbot). Honey’s powers were perfect. I scouted the Troll Caverns (since I didn’t have the map any more) on Invis beforehand, and went straight to the Trial entrance to bring the group to her (as soon as she remembered to drop Invis). BD’s Dubh Bas — another Dark/Dark — also had RF, so he was able to help with gathers.
We went in, we cleared out the main floor by the numbers — Hyperthermian at the center, everyone else blasting/punching/slicing away. Then Honey started Invising into each tunnel, RFing folks to obelisks, etc. In the two cases where there were CoT right at the Obelisk, I brought Hype in to clear them out.
Two tries to click the Obs simultaneously, and we were on our way.
Prepped outside of Koaga’s door, then charged in in and knocked him on his ass in under 30 seconds. Piece o’ cake.
Only two regrets from the whole shindig:

1. No time for RP with Honey. Folks were mostly concerned with the mechanics of the mission (understandable) and Honey was key to the mechanics thereof and doing a lot of running around. And I hadn’t had as much time to do the player/campaign prep as would have been ideal, either, so most of the players on the team weren’t in tune to what was going on (and I’d inadvertently spoiled the surprise for BD earlier in the week). So the RP for her was perforce limited. Still got a bit in — tearful eyes, and the like — but a lot less than I’d been hoping for.
2. Stupid auto-exemp bug! Stupid, stupid, stupid. Level 15? Sorry, no XP for you! Good thing both doing the trial and getting the badge were important for Honey, because she got jack-all for it (which, to be fair, was true for most of the player). Still, felt somehow … cheated, since it was a bug. Rrg.

Still, again, it was perfect. Already talk of doing it again with a bit different set of character and/or players, though I’m not sure Honey will want to go through that again.
Got Kitten down to bed after that, then played a bit more, but I found myself nodding off around 10:30p (having had to get up around 7:30a for Kitten), and bailed out early.
So, where now for Honey?
Oddly enough, I was complaining after the Trial to Margie that I was finding her power set annoying — having to hit for a Heal is a PitA. On the other hand, as I was running Psi-clone later, I found myuself missing Tar Patch and Recall Friend, so maybe it’s not so bad.
The Invis is great, and, even I5-nerfed, will be helpful for her. That means waiting for another full level to 16 for a travel power — and it’s a power I didn’t originally have slotted for her. So not sure what’s going to happen there.
Also need to think about pairings. Honey and Kazima work well together, but that leaves Torchielle out in the cold again. Margie’s ambivalent about Ebon, not sure what’s going to go on with him.
But at least Honey’s back in the game. Now I just need to write up some stuff for her — a *lot* of stuff — and maybe get some folks involved in that.
But no more Positron at 8:30p. That’s just crazy. 🙂

Sure, it’s a lot easier down at the lower levels, but it was still kinda cool that Fazenda and Araware managed to ding two full levels tonight (starting just in 6, ending just through 8).
Even managed to have some unexpected interaction with Malcalypse and Shade Dancer.

Ran the Manticore TF on Saturday night. As a TF, it was pretty successful — took us about 4-5 hours, I think, with only two deaths (both Amorpha, and both kind of fluky).
Gameplay-wise, it was only so-so. Since we had a higher-level Illusionist, Panik, with us, as well as a couple of other folks with area holds, a lot of what Psi-clone brings to the table was pretty limited. I basically stood back, fired off Leadership, and did Healing and RA for folks (all of which was also available from others).
It was kind of disturbing, thinking about how PC’s build does or doesn’t lend itself to large teams, vs. the duoing that I usually do with him.
Task Force write-up is here.
In other weekend news, did some running around and leveling with Fazenda/Araware. Current plans are to get them to 10 and apply for the Storm Knights.
Made a brief pro forma appearance with the Azures last night; Margie is pretty certain she’s going to restart the Mrs. once I5 goes lives, doing her up with Sonics rather than FF. Not sure if that means I’ll be PLing her via SK, or if I should restart the Mr., or what.
Had a rather keen idea related to the Transcendence Trial yesterday, and took steps toward implementing it. That’s going to be a challenge, depending on timing.