Blog of Heroes

More fun and games on the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force, this time with missions 3-5 — Legacy Chain, CoT, and Longbow. Things went overall pretty smoothly with the first one. The second one had a few dire moments when patrols would wander along mid-battle, or when people got a bit overextended — one battle avoided being a TPK only because Ravvy got away at the last second (huzzah for Unyielding vs. the Ruin Mages). My recompense for that one was that a mapserv knocked Rav and Charity out just before the final battle and we missed the mission credit.
The 5th mish is the infamous Never-Ending Longbow Ambushes. The first time I ran this SF, it was an unending nightmare of red and purple mobs. This time it was yellows and oranges with an occasional red boss, but it was still unending and vaguely nightmarish.
Ravvy went down three times (once brought back up by his temp rez power). Others sufferered similarly. And the damned Longbow seemed to delight in hanging out by the front door.
Eventually, we managed to prevail by adhering to a few basic principles:

1. Pulling is good.
2. Corners are your friend.
3. Pulling from a distance to bring them around the corner doesn’t work if you intercept them halfway or stand there waiting for them to shoot at you.
4. Letting all of them concentrate their fire on you by running deep into the advancing wave is bad.
5. Looking around to see what others are hitting on so you can help concentrate fire on those targets is good. (Two mobs with 50% damage have twice the firepower of one dead mob and the other at 100%.)
6. It’s great if the bad guys are all clumped up, so you can be clumped up, too (which means you can concentrate fire and area heals can get everyone). It’s great if the bad guys are all strung out coming toward you, because that means you can defeat them in detail. It’s all good.

I fear Ravvy got a bit pushy about things, and people — some of them inordinately squishy — still seemed determined to . But, at length, we prevailed.
By which time it was a bit late to tackle the final battle against Infernal and Bat’zul. That’s for Saturday evening. Some tactical discussion beforehand would probably not be amiss …

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After that, we got on with Hildy and Torchy, natch. We started doing some stuff, then discovered that this was the Second Grand Alliance Pick-Up Meeting, which I felt vaguely guilty about not attending, but it was a bit late (in the night and the week) for roleplay and revelry for me.
We bashed Council robots and Devouring Earth, then called it a night.

Rebooted the Virgil Tarikoss Strike Force last night with much the same crew, many of them up a level or two. Strike Force Inferno still had a 15-20 spread, but close enough to be able to SK the lowbies.
First mish? Mister Ravenous was pleased to see pleasant shades of yellow and orange, rather than the angry red and purple that dominated last time out. We did suffer a TPK in that first going, against a room that was, in fact, full of reds and oranges and three purple bosses, all of whom annoying decided to come running after us at once. But, aside from forgetting my rez temp power, that wasn’t so bad, and we had cut the group in half and managed the other half easy-peasy. Charity was the resident healer, and did a fine job of it.
The second mish (CoT at the outdoor power station) was handled through wise use of our invisible stalker resources — and we relearned the lesson of pulling the folks you want out to the exterior of the map, rather than going in and dealing with wandering patrols (who always wander by at inopportune times, like when you’re hip-deep in opponents already) and spill-over to neighboring groups.
As mentioned, the level difference made all the difference in the world — especially with the SF being front-loaded as I keep being assured it is. Red bosses I can handle. Red minions with ultraviolet bosses, not so much.
Was still having endurance problems, even with an EndRed DO in each attack, if things went beyond a single mob at a time.. And going up against Ruin Mages, and being the Guy with Status Protection, it wasn’t like I could toggle any of my armor off. I forgot to try Doyce’s trick of auto-firing Brawl — I’ll try that tonight and report back.
By then it was around 9:30p, so we adjourned for the evening. Margie and I re-signed in as Torchy and Hildy and blew up a lot of Council and DE Real Good.

Hostess Heroes on Monday Munchies last night. First part of the evening was running around the low-level zones to pick up the badges and plaques needed for the Atlas Medallion, which I’m pretty sure everyone on eventually got (even those of us, ahem, who didn’t see it when it flashed across our screen).
From there, we headed over to Striga, where we ran both Peep and Ho Ho’s final wedding band mishes, then various and sundry other bits. Okay, ready to be done with Striga now.
Wrapped up with the pair of us and Brownie Points knocking over the last 800 xp Ho Ho needed to level to 27. Which was good enough, save that she’s dead broke and now has some empty and red slots to deal with. *Sigh* On the other hand, she suffered no deaths last night, despite being the sole tank, and continued to hone her Taunting. All of which (both brokeness and sturdiness) is due to her having already invested heavily in SOs.

As part of the Drive to Virgil Tarikoss, Ravvy and Charity ended up running back-to-back Skyway City Bank Robbery Mayhem Missions.
Oh, my. The fun.
Most Mayhems I’ve run in have been a big group, and the mobs have been dreadful. This duo (albeit set on merely villainous) simply strolled through. Travel power to the bank, run in, clear out the guards, take the loot, beat the wimp, exit the bank. Easy-peasy, and many minutes left on the timer.
Through the help of Margie’s maps, we pretty quickly found the side missions for the instance and did them, too — ransack the package, smash-and-grab at the weapons shop, kidnap the dude. On the two mishes we ended up having about 10-15 miinutes, at least, after the primary objective was done, and if we didn’t clear the zone in either case, we came close.
I was amused that if you blow up Stuff next to the law enforcement types, they take damage when it explodes. That makes it easier, in turn, to earn resisting arrest bonuses.
These were the first Mayhem Missions I actually enjoyed. Good stuff.
And by the time it was done, Ravvy had topped 19 (indeed, was 2 pips in), and Charity was just two pips out from level. So I think we’re going to leave it at that until Wednesday with them — since we’ll likely level-plus during the SF, and since we have magical res temp power that is good for 2 days in-game time, and I suspect those will come in hand on the SF, if memory servers.

By the time we finally got on, it was pretty late. Nonetheless, we did the whole Seer Marino / Ghost Widow / Wretch arc, which netted us both DOs and got Charity up to 18. If we can just get Mr. R to 19, I’ll feel more sanguineabout doing the SF next Wednesday …

Hildy and Torchy wrapped up the Croatoa content (except the TF) last night — and, in so doing, each dinged 32 — literally, with the final check-in to the contact. Woot.
(Inferno! Yeah!)
And thanks to T’lauro who jumped in to lend a hand on the second Protect the Henge from the Redcaps mish.

For Monday Munchies, we ended up running with the Devils Food gang. Which had a number of amusing moment, but was more than a bit frustrating:

1. Lag on Freedom was bad. Really bad. I was considering re-booting, but I kept hearing everyone else complaining, so I knew it couldn’t be all my computer’s fault.
2. The DF team (5-7 at a time) was fairly squishy. One brute (Dr. Frankenberry), a couple of Masterminds, a smattering of Corrupters and Dominators — and nothing resembling much of a healer most of the night except Maitre D’mon (Mastermind with Poison secondary, which is pretty piss-poor healing).
   The result was numerous partial or total party kills, and veering away from challenging missions.

For all that, it was, as usual, fun to play with others. And MD got up to 10, which was nice.