Blog of Heroes

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.

… for me to be posting, so I’ll sign off in a minute.
Finally managed to get on. Margie was in the midst of taking advantage of the free costume respec being given out overnight to use all her old costume respecs on characters. Lynn and Kazima both grabbed a second costume (Lynn having realized she’s getting prominent enough to actually put her aunt in jeopardy if she’s recognized), and we fixed the colors on Mrs Azure (a bit off since Margie rerolled the character).
Margie was going to do a little more costume tweaking, so I hopped over to CoV to play with Eliza Dee. Did a bit of soloing, did a duo mission with BD, did a very mediocre PUG with some folks two levels lower level (and two dozen points lower IQ) than me, dropped, got invited to another PUG that turned out to be pretty decent (except for the MM who did a lot of “pulling” with his robots before anyone was prepped).
And stayed up too late. 🙂

Well, both Psi-clone and Amorpha got the intro mission for the Organ Grinders story arc. Ran one of them —
— the other didn’t get the “shared completion” option. Ran the duplicate mission.
Went to the second (which we both also got). Ran for one of us —
— the other didn’t get the “shared completion” option.
Dunno of something’s screwed up with that code, or if there’s some other factor we’re unaware of, or what, but it’s irksome. Margie /bugged and /petitioned it.
Good XP, regardless. We’re both 2/3 – 3/4 of the way to 40. Yay.

Spent Saturday running Mister Ravenous and Charity at Home (or, as Margie puts it, “I understood there was to be Punch and Fry”) together through the wilds of Port Oakes. Lots of fun, and we got up to 11 by the time the day was done.
A few deaths along the way, mostly due to a rather, um, goofy PUG that we ended up volunteering to join Atom Smasher on. There were a couple of good players, a couple of okay players, and two extremely goofy and counterproductive Masterminds. And when a third one got recruited, A.S. opined that every one he meets lowers his opinion of the AT.
Which makes me think I need to do some running with Mister Thorne so I can be considered the best-played MM on the Rogue Isles … (certainly I’m already in the upper quartile).
I think, by the bye, that MM’s, as the “new, exciting” AT, acculuate lots of bad players. Especially ones who get the giggles watching their zombies dance to boom boxes.
The mission was interrupted just before the end by all the East Coast servers crashing. Yikes. Though it let us duck out of the team in a graceful fashion.
Charity does the typical “Defender” thing of casting buffs on random characters she meets. Though she does it by casting fire shields on them.
“You just like setting folks on fire, don’t you,” Mister Ravenous opined.
“Well, duh,” Charity retorted.
So it goes.