Category: Gameplay

So, what’s with the wandering monsters?
I’ve seen this primarily with human-type mobs — Hellions, this past weekend. A group will come wandering through the mish in this weird, crouched run. Looks very bizarre (first time I saw it, it was a couple of Bone Daddies, and I though, hey, must be part of their magic juju). If they run into you, well, then, they spot you and open fire. If not, they go gliding on down the corridor.
Funny thing is, it appears to be contagious. We saw one guy glide down a corridor, get caught in a mob that was waiting there, bounce around trying to find a way out, and then the whole mob turned wanderer and headed off.
Sometimes the wandering will end up with guys stuck in odd places, or climbing the walls.
Now, WMs is not necessarily a bad thing (indeed, it adds some spice, and makes sense from a game standpoint). But the way it’s implemented in the AI seems off — the movement looks very unnatural (they don’t run like mobs usually run, the sort of skate along in a crouch).
UPDATE: Aha. Finally found a reference to this in the Forums. It seems to be legit (actually patrolling) activity, coupled with poorly chosen movement animation. Maybe.

Friday afternoon I did a fair amount of work with Torchielle, getting her up a couple of levels as I worked with a pick-up team. Good fun, particularly once I got her travel power, Super Jump. I like her a lot, and would like to play her more.
Saturday and Sunday was, with Margie’s planning for the Cave of Transcendence trial (which is getting a lot of reaction in the SG forums), the beginning of a concerted effort to get Honeygun and Kazima up to speed for that trial, meaning lvl 14-15. Given that we were starting out at 10-11, that means work.
Most of the time, we ended up trioed with BD, in the guise of one of his Bas siblings (either an added Dark scrapper, Ciunas Bas, or a Dark defender, Dubh Bas).


Worked out well, even though we were running mostly endless warehouse mishes (to the point of having some idea where the mobs were going to be), be they Council, Hellions, or Lost. On the bright side, the mishes were all at level, meaning we were going up against white-yellow, with occasional orange, or (in one case) yellow-orange with occasional red (mmmmm, spicy Aberrent Rectors).
Anyway, by the end of the weekend we were in the 13-14 range, and I was busy revising my plans for what Honeygun needs to take, as she levels, over this week (more on which later).

Margie solicits participants in the Cave of Transcendence trial. Fun.

Margie was not in a good mood last night, after a long drive home. So she was ready to dive into CoH to get P-Siren up a level (to 18), and, at long last, get a travel power.
We had several Skulls mishes in KR, all of which ended up conning grey (for Velvet; green-blue for Margie). We got pretty skilled at simply bypassing mobs on our way to the mission goal.
We eventually went to a Clockwork mish Velvet had, and that was more like it. Everything was conning basically yellow for me, with the occasional white cog and orange cannon knight. “Good eats,” as Margie is wont to say regarding high XP. Though the mission was merely to find a clue (somebody’s trophy, lost to scavanging clockworks), we ended up going along, clearing stuff …
Margie dinged about 2/3 of the way along there, which was good, because, just as we got into Final Battle with Steampunk, the big clockwork boss at the end of the mish …
… Margie discoed. Hard. Couldn’t get back in. Couldn’t get onto the web. Couldn’t shut her machine down. Power cycled, and still wasn’t seeing the network. I ultimately intervened and got her back online, but I’d been forced, once my bubble went down, to take down Steampunk, which ended the mish. (I suppose I could have run away from him — should have done that.)
The result was not only did she not get a bunch of XP for both mission end and boss kill, but it prevented her from rejoining me afterwards (to clean remaining clocks), since the mish was over.
She was not pleased by this. At. All.
She did, however, go off and level and take (ta-daaah!) Teleport, which was the point of the evening’s exercise. She did some practicing, and can now zip across zones at full speed, which will be nice here on out.
I was just glad to have a chance to whomp on some “enemies of color.”
The whole process ran way, way late (like, officially into the Wee Hours) (especially when I still had to set up a backup on my notebook). Later than I’d intended, but I definitely wanted Margie to get that level in.

Last week, as Psi-clone came out of the Hollows into Atlas, he looked up and …
“Hey! A blimp!”
“Where?” BD messaged back.
I flew up to it, but was vaguely disappointed that it didn’t have any logos or “messages” flashing on its sides.
Now you can read more about the blimp yourself.

Managed to get on and play with Margie for the first time in a few days, which was very nice. Both Psi-clone and Amorpha dinged to 17 after three pre-TF-so-blue-and-green door mishes.
It’s actually a bit scary that PC is now only a level below Velvet, who’ve I considered my “main.” I haven’t been playing her much, though, to let Margie get P-Siren up to her level (to which end, P-Siren is now a member of the Freedom Phalanx).
I also brought made up some file folders for the guide print-outs I’ve made for my various alts, which should make the leveling process a bit easier in the future. I *should* use CoH Planner to lay out where I’m going with these guys, but even with the guides, I still find myself changing my mind sometimes about what seems the most needful based on the experience of the level I’ve just completed.

Signed in briefly as Velvet last night. Quick checked the Global Friends list, most folks were on, and … there was Avocet.
No, not on the list (well, yes, there, too), but standing right in front of where I’d appeared, at the Steel Canyon side of the Boomtown gate.
We chatted a sec, then I bounded off to sell some stuff.
Swapped over to Truly Unstable, went running from Galaxy to Atlas to Kings Row …
… and ran into Avocet again, standing in the tram station, as his Power Fists alt.
We chatted a second, then I ran off again.
I signed off again shortly thereafter. But by that time if I’d run into him one more time on the way upstairs to bed, I’d have not been completely surprised.

Went on our (Margie and my) first Task Force last night, Positron. Pictured, left to right:

• Myself, as Psi-clone (Controller)
• Lee, as Light-Bringer (Peacemaker)
• Boulder Dude. as Mofo Firefly (Blaster)
• (Positron, as The Control Voice)
• Doyce, as Gilly (Tank)
• Margie, as Amorpha (Scrapper)

Now that I think of it, I can’t recall Lee’s character name precisely, 3-odd hours later. More on that below.
So it was a pretty well-balanced team, and, all told, once we shook out, a pretty effective one. Gilly died, um, four or five times, while I got my now-primary role as Empathy Guy (i.e., the team healer) down (and Gilly refined her Tank stuff for the group). Of course, I died in there once. As did LB. As did Mofo (though, to be fair, that was on the way to the first mish). I think only Margie came through unscathed.
And, for all that, everybody dinged. Indeed, PC was just barely at 15 when we started, dinged to 16 midway through, and was about 75% to 17 by the time the TF was over.
(I took Group Invis at the level, which, along with Deceive to soften them up — Murk Eidolons and exploding Embalmed Abominations were the most fun for softening — made me feel like I was carrying my own weight. I’m really not a very good Defender.)
We all got our complimentary SOs at the end, too. I got a very nice lvl 18 accuracy; Margie, I think, got a recharge time.
Three of the group flew; Amorpha and Gilly had Superjump. We did end up criss-crossing several zones, most particularly the Steel Canyon that Positron hangs in, but including Perez, Boomtown, and Skyways. Oh, and the Hollows, once. We fought Vahzilok, Clockworks, and Circle of Thorns (which is, by the end, part of the point of the TF) and in office buildings, caves, sewers, and … hmmmm, interesting hi-tech settings.
Technology-wise it went pretty well. Occasional lag. Margie had horrible performance problems at the very beginning — which turned out to be her thrice-bedamned Norton AV kicking in for its inexpicable Friday Night Magic. I discoed once (during the final photo shoot). Everyone else was, I believe, pretty stable.
Fun time, in sum. A good group to work with, certainly, not to mention entertaining (I wish I’d kept a log of the dialog; Lee, in particular, is a hoot online). And we ended at …
… well, we started at about 7:40, and we ended at …
… um, 3 a.m.
Why, yes, that was only about three and a half hours before I began this post. Welcome to the world of having a four-year-old in the house …

Vahzilok are bad.
Go up against too many vomiting Vahzilok, and you will die. No matter how buff a Scrapper you are.
Have a distracted healer (e.g., one who’s actually a Controller with Empathy), and you will die a lot faster. Especially when he’s busy getting vomited to death, too.
Pull them off, pick them off, deal with small groups, watch your health, don’t be afraid to run.
Just some thoughts …
(screen cap of A Chorus Line via Boulder Dude)
(And Psi-clone still managed to ding to 15, despite dying twice on the mish.)

Most of last evening was doing some more running around with Amorpha and Psi-clone, trying to get them to about the same level (and finally succeeding, leaving Amorpha about 35% of 14th level behind me).
Most of the running around was split between a Boomtown Clockwork hunt (with Psi-clone, flying, providing recon as well as drawing at least one pack of trolls unintentionally during a sloppy landing) and running up and down in Steel Canyon.
One death in that time, when Amorpha got into too thick of a pack of Outsiders and Psi-clone lost track of the Brick to keep him under control. Much running, sniping, and controlling later, I was able to rez Margie’s character and let her have the coup de grace on the Brick.
Most amusing point: running past the Green Line rail station at the north end of the zone and spotting — gah! Purple Council types, including one of those hoverbots and a trio of similarly nasty things that I was slugging out with Velvet as SK last weekend. Yikes! Not sure how they got there, and they weren’t actually chasing anyone (unlike the Zenith War Valkyrie and company that came tromping through Kings Row the other evening), but it was a bit jarring.
Best news with Margie’s ding — she now has an official Travel Power, Superjump. Which, with Psi-clones Fly (great, flexible, a real endurance hog) led to the attached picture, once Margie figured out how to get high enough up on a neighboring building to jump to the top of the statue.
Meanwhile, OFFICER is back to being the same level, pretty much, as Deep Dark Earth, so they can go out duoing.
Margie wants to get P-Siren xped up to closer to Velvet‘s level, so they can go out duoing again as well — we really need to get her into the FP SG, so she can do some stuff with them and “catch up.” That means a lot less Velvet time for the nonce, alas, though I might do some “on the air” chit chat to keep her presence up (she’s currently having a bit of a personal downer, having seem some Evil Labs during the weekend that reminded her of some bad decisions she made when she was younger, so that explains her being off the air the past few days).
Meanwhile, the in-laws are out for the weekend, which means a lot less CoH play. Though they do tend to go to bed early … 🙂

Lots o’ stuff:

1. Velvet Jones got to run around during the big Council-bash for the Freedom Phalanx. SKed into a quartet running around in high-level (30ish) adventures amidst such fun bad’uns as Devouring Earth and Crey and Vampyri-creating installations and other spiffy stuff. Eek!
   On Monday, I ended up spending a fair amount of time bopping around Velvet’s favorite hunting ground, the north end of Steel Canyon by the Boomtown gate. Good hunting, fast repops. No deaths, lots of running-out-of-endurance stuff, and enough additional XP to get within a bubble of 19.

2. Amorpha and Psi-clone did a lot of running about, too, including a fairly harrowing jog across Skyways. Managed to get us both up a couple of levels, including getting PC up to 14, which means …
   I can fly! I can fly! I can flyyyyyy!
   Ahem. Fun.
   Actually, it’s a really good duo, scrapper/controller. Current favorite pair for us to go out with.

3. Last night, we had a special family night — dinner out and then The Incredibles DVD. Late by the time we got Kitten to bed, and our cable was acting pretty wonky (at least with Champion — I’d blame it on the server, except that the modem kept resetting, and even when we tested some stuff out on Infinity, it kept resetting there, too).
   As to that test, we forgot that Triumph was the official local alternative server, but we did some test running of Mr. and Mrs. Thunderclap, the storm/katana ninja couple I mentioned a while back. Good stuff so far.
   Interestingly enough, you can team on Coyote’s mission in Outbreak, but you only get XP for your mission.

Friday afternoon/evening …

1. Tried to make up for the OFFICER debacle of yesterday. Did much better, dinging up to 6 (so I can run with Margie). Duoed with a blaster who eventually asked how old I was, claimed he was a Canadian 10-year-old, and, when I said I was significantly older than that, asked if I was in high school or college …
2. Went out later with Velvet Jones, sidekicking Margie’s Carilian. Got involved in a Lost mish in Kings Row that turned out to have very nasty customers in it. Eventually called for help from the Phalanx, which resulted in Jackie bringing Shock.Therapy in to help, EXed down. Fun and profit for us all (well, except for Jackie).
3. Got tied in with a significantly higher level group (30s) who wanted a tank and were willing to SK me. Which was … interesting. I think I held my own, and did okay, but it was … interesting. Lots of settings and villains I’d not run into before — Devouring Earth, Freakshow, powerful hi-tech lairs with robots and guns …
   Fortunately, they took a mish in Terra Volta, which I couldn’t enter (minimum level 20), so I took the opportunity to put Kitten down while they were busy.
   Lots of running around in areas that made me Very Nervous. Fortunately I had Super-Jump, so that when the hero SKing me flew off to the mish, I at least was mostly above ground level …
   The brightest part — aside from running with a good group (and a good Defender / healer), and that truly was a joy — was that Velvet dinged up to 18. W00T!

The big drama over at the FP sounds like it is coming to a head tomorrow. We’re off to a church dinner tomorrow night, but hopefully I’ll get some game play during the day …

Not a good CoH day for me yesterday …

1. I took the standard Fifth Level Face Plant yesterday. Four levels, no problems, no deaths, competent character build and lots of downed bad guys. Fifth level, inevitably, the introduction to debt.
   In this case, the first death (yes, there were more than one) came as the phone rang just as I ran in to attack an orange Lost in Kings Row. Ring, ring, ring, damn, damn, damn, kick, kick, run to grab the phone, get back, red health, crap, run, run, run, run, draw stray shot from someone, down.
   *sigh*
   It was, at least, someone I wanted to talk to (Margie).
   The second one happened way too soon after that. Oh, look, Vahzilok, white and blue, no sweat, jump, kick, kick, kick, kick, hell, vomit, vomit, vomit, yellow, orange, ongoing toxic damage, run, run, eat concrete.
   At which point it was time to grab some dinner for an evening meeting I needed to attend.

2. Got back from the meeting, sat down, decided to run Torchielle with Margie’s Amorpha. No probs. Headed off for a mish, got to the door, went in.
   Torchielle runs over to the first corridor, peers down, sees a couple of blues. Nice. “Are you joining me?” I ask Margie.
   “I’m right here.”
   “Where?”
   “Right around the corner here.”
   Run back. She’s not there. Run back to the entrance, she’s still standing there.
   “I meant, join me in the corridor where those guys are.”
   “I’m right there, don’t you see me?”
   At which point we got lost mapserver messages (explaining the odd situation) and were down and out, watching the cable modem reset, reset, reset, on, down, reset, reset, reset …

We’ve been having CM probs again. Tech came out yesterday, but the service was up and they didn’t see any problems. Margie — who has the Comcast number memorized now — got on the phone and called Comcast again. She talked to a very nice CSR, went over the recent history, and he promised he was going to escalate it.
How nice.
So we went to bed. Which was probably good anyways, since I was dog tired. Too bad I didn’t feel I’d gotten anything accomplished, CoH-wise, before doing so.

Had fun last night …

1. Running OFFICER, trying to get him up to 6 so I can team him with Margie’s Deep Dark Earth. So far, a very effective Scrapper.
2. Running with Velvet Jones here and there, alongside P-Siren and Puck Bunny. This trip to Boomtown wasn’t nearly as scary as the last (having gone up three levels or more probably helps that), and helped fill in a bit more of the FP saga participation for me.
   I do need to run her on some higher mishes, though. The clockworks door mish was too low (top enemies blue), and Stan’s Marrowcrusher one was likewise. While it’s occasionally fun to just wade in without having to exercise any “stragedy,” it doesn’t do much to bump up the old XP count.
   On the other hand, it does cut down on the Involuntary Debt Accrual, so it’s not all bad.

3. Glad to see that Global Chat has finally progressed out of Beta. Now it automatically comes on, which actually makes is useful for tracking people.
4. Probably going to hold off on the husband-and-wife team until Issue 4 comes out, so we can take advantage of the cool new costuming/body bits.

By the time we got Kitten to bed after Margie’s (last, for now) church adult ed dinner, it was about 8:30. Plenty of time for some CoH action.
Signed in as Velvet Jones to get the latest on the Somebody Killed a Bunch of Freedom Phalanxers saga. Got a quick invite from Boulder Dude to a mish with him and Avocet, but also got a ping about some “story” in the saga that I could pursue.
Decided to do both, with Margie in tow as P-Siren. Headed off to Hollows with my 16th level Tanker, Margie’s 15th level Controller, to help BD’s MoFo Firefly (13th level Blaster) and Avocet’s, er, Avocet (16th level Blaster) take on some Pumicites.
The consensus very quickly was that Tanks and Bubbles make a big difference when fighting rock-hurling earth elemental types. We pretty swiftly cleared the cave …
Well, then, we needed to go on to Avocet’s Troll Base #2 mish, which was nearby. That was a little bit hairier (since the mobs were 0/+1 to me), but nothing too difficult.
After that, we twisted the others’ arms into heading over to Perez Park for a sewer mish (see clue, above). Margie, alas, had disco/login problems on the way over, so we burned a good 15 minutes or more — and, because of the disco, we couldn’t get into the mish before she arrived.
Not that it would have been a big problem, and, in fact, it was likely just as well, since the mobs inside were -2/-1 to me — Lost, of various sorts — since it was a rather aged mish that Margie had on her pallette. Made for some good RP fodder for the saga, though.
Now at this point, it was 10:20p. Another mish? Margie said, “Sure!” since we were going back to the Hollows to do yet another rendition of Frostfire (Margie’s, this time, and fresh). Much faster to get there (time enough for me to bop ten grey trolls on behalf of Whozits the Mystic between Super-Jumps).
By this time, I have the place mentally mapped out (“Are there any bad guys up th –” “No! Move on!”), and it being Margie’s mish, the folks were blue/white to me. We pounded through the place without too much trouble (for the first time in the last three outings for me, FF wasn’t right up by the final door), and finally broke out …
… at about 12:30p. I have no idea what took all that time. Maybe I have the times wrong. But it was way too late by the time we turned off the light.
On the other hand, Velvet dinged to 17, P-Siren to 16, and MoFo to 14, so it was a profitable evening. And, yes, a fun one. And, yes, too long of one …

Various screen caps from this past weekend (give or take a bit) of gaming (click on them for full-size):

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First off, Velvet Jones atop the HQ in Atlas Park. From here I could see … well, a seething sea of blue hero names clustered on the plaza below.

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The Consortium grows, with Margie’s Carilian (and my Sister Chinook) joining up (left), and Margie’s Kazima, too (right).

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I call this series, “Drawing Aggro,” which is what Velvet practiced doing this weekend, in particular in a lengthy run with Stan’s Puck Bunny and Margie’s P-Siren.

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And last, but not least, the Blue Girls get a post-mission debriefing from a friend, who asked that his name not be associated with this image (it’s amazing enough that he stood still for the picture being taken).

Margie and I were pairing up with Kazima/Honeygun again last evening, looking for some good catharsis after a long day for the both of us.
We had a mish down in the south end of Atlas Park (one of the final Atlas missions, since we’re both up at 9, and we’re trying to clear out the mission screen). When we were done, Margie suggested, we could wrap up a Hollows mish she still had, which was way on the south end, by the southwest entrance from Skyway City, which happens to have a nearby entrance from the south end of Atlas.
Well, looked good to us. Last thing we wanted to do was schlep all the way back up Atlas, enter the Hollows by the “usual” Wincott door, then schlep all the way south in the Hollows. Been there, ran that.
Heh.
Skyway City is not scary to Velvet. She’s 16th now. No prob.
But to a couple of “youngsters,” all those level 10-16 mobs look awfully orange-red-purple-purple-purple. And it’s not exactly the easiest shard to get around in. It was a looooong trip cutting that short corner.
Once into the Hollows, though, it was relatively straightforward. The mish entrance was only a 100+ yards away. Of course, we had to get through a couple of CoT circles to get there, but they weren’t too bad. Got in, did the mish (Jewel of Hera), got out.
Hmmm. Man, that was a pain going through Skyway. Let’s just do what we should have done in the first place and take the long route through the Hollows up north to the Wincott gate. I mean, it can’t be any harder than the NW-SE corridor there we usually end up taking …
Except, of course, that CoT are like prairie dogs there, frequent and vigilant. And Margie stumbled into a pair of very nasty mages (the book-reading kind), fought rather than fled, and I was trying to support her from the ridge and y’don’t do too well against yellows when you’re asleep/held/stunned half the time, and …
… and then she was dead, and I was staggering away …
“I have a rez, if you want.”
“Don’t bother. They’re just standing over my body, healing each other.”
“Great.”
“I could go back to the hospital, which would get me out of here, but that would leave you by yourself.”
“Go.”
So I got to make the rest of the run (well, rather, the creep, peek, dash, stagger, stumble, crap-they-just-spawned-there, run, dash, flee) back up to Wincott, having discovered that more powerful nasties had moved in behind us closer to the south entrance. Great.
Maybe we’ll tackle something a bit less, ah, logistically difficult next time around.

So, rumble was that we were going to do a taskforce Saturday evening. Margie and I worked during the afternoon to get P-Siren up to 12th level snuff and beyond, so that she could participate (which also worked to knock off some debt with Velvet Jones and get her up to 15th, finally). We invited along Stan, who brought Robenmatsu 3, his blaster. Doyce had his new scrapper, [NAME REDACTED].
Since TFing involves a lot of visiting the TF-giver (in this case, Positron in Steel Canyons), the decision was that Velvet would be the team leader, since she now has Super Jump (which is so incredibly fun it’s worth the price of admission). The first mish for Task Force Manhattan was CoT stuff up in Skyway City …
… and they kicked our asses. We barely got out of the foyer, and that took two deaths and a hasty retreat back outside the building. Lots of seriously nasty spectral demon spirit bad juju types in there (click on the picture to the right for the full deal — Velvet, P-Siren, and [REDACTED], looking up at the nasty hovering over the balcony …).
After we barely managed that, and got upstairs and saw another room with still more, we invoked Lee’s Law (“This is crazy. We’re outta here.”) and left, cancelling the TF, and resolving to just clear out old missions.
Which we did, Stan firing up Zazi as his alt (thinking I was changing over to Psi-clone). Various mishes down in Kings Row, honing tactics (“Pull back! Let them come to us!”) and then off to the Hollows. There we picked up Avocet as blaster support, and basically ran the Trolls With Bombs mish three times for different players. The first two were walk-throughs, since the mishes were pretty old — all grey and green and blue and “I’ll take that flock on the right, you take the flock on the left, and we’ll meet at the flock in the middle” sort of thing. Low XP per body, but lots of bodies.
The third iteration, Avocet’s, was a lot dicier — yellows and oranges to me (who was still the highest level). That meant using tactics again, and when Velvet dinged up to 16 in mid-mish, at Doyce’s urging I left the mish, went back, trained up to get Taunt, and came back (love that Super Jump) and had fun experimenting with that.
Click on the pick on the right for a bigger shot of the Trollbane Five. That’s [REDACTED], P-Siren, Zazi, Velvet, and Avocet, and our omnipresent bubbles.
Good, good time, and enough to wash the bad taste of the failed TF (and my huge debt load from Friday) out of my mouth.
UPDATE: Redactions now unredacted.

I’ve started posting the current stable/cast of characters for myself and Margie off in the sidebar. I’ll update them (and their levels) periodically.
I’m vaguely worried that I’m not focusing enough on one (or maybe two) characters to keep pace with others, and that eventually folks will bypass me and go off together into the rarefied climes of the 20s and 30s and 40s while I plunk along with a variety of alts.
On the other hand …

1. I enjoy all the various people I have here, Velvet, PS, Torchielle, and Honeygun, as well as the others, each have a different feel to them. It keeps the game fresh.
2. As long as I have someone to run with Margie, I’m happy. Our biggest problem is, when teaming, finding a good Crunchy/Squishy pair, since both of us tend toward the latter to the former.

Anyway, there you go.