Greycat

I get them, then burn through most of it standing at PDH waiting for MSRs to start.

I'd say what I did with my first 50 (also an elec/elec blaster!) but... that was back in i3 and not as helpful now. (Answer: Went from zero to 1.1 million debt in a single hami raid. :) )

This is true. Which makes them perfect for "Shoot them not me!" :) My attitude with the temp pets is one of "any damage they can do, hey, I'll take it, but the distraction is more valuable."

And yet this mission's listed frequently in that other thread as one of the ones people autocomplete - which is why I'm asking why and what people are doing/seeing. (And throwing in what I do.) My *guess* is either they're rushing and getting both EBs (and having to deal with them with half END from Holz's attack) or not staying away from Honoree's melee. I kite him like crazy on something like my ice/emp (who, yes, did finish this solo as well.)

I don't tend to see this as a fight to be worried about. That said, I *do* do some prep work on it, and some of what I do might seem cheesy. But it works consistently for me. I also have to point out - "I don't do builds." I don't aim for capping things, perma-ing things, etc. At 50 (and I tend to run the arc right away, since to me the Incarnate XP earned on it is wasted once it auto-unlocks Alpha) I probably have a mix of sets, partial sets, and common IOs. Anyway - the way I run it: Prep work: I know it's fighting two EBs, and as stated I don't want to waste earning iXP on something that'll be auto unlocked, so I'm at base settings. I'm going for the end goal, not all the XPs. (True for the whole unlock arc. It's a "I want this over with," not a farm. Same reason I'll skip most of the enemies on the Trapdoor and 'meet us at the well' missions.) Just-in-case pickup - Nectambo's Curse Breaker. 250 vmerits. If you've run the RWZ arcs, hopefully you have this already - you'll want it in case Captain Holz's curse shot hits, because being stuck at half max END for five minutes straight *sucks.* Unless you need a break to get some coffee. Some sort of temp pet. While the extra damage is nice, I want one (or more) primarily to *eat alphas.* Shivan's free for a few minutes of work, War Wolf's from Striga if you're blueside, RV pet, HVAS (though I think that's a waste here.) in a pinch there's the reinforcement from P2W. You're going to dangle this out there as bait. Inspirations. Purples, greens, red, whatever you feel you need. Blackwand and Nem Staff from P2W if you don't have range, or not very powerful ranged ST. Running the mission: I just go ahead and clear the rikti in the first section. Cut through the tunnel to get to the second hallway where you fight Crey tanks. Then start paying attention to NPC chatter. The hallway layout does this, sort of: | ------------------ | (Short leg, long hall, then another turn.) Clear the short hall, clear most of the long hall - at this point, just before the last dogleg, you should see Rikti NPC chatter. (Repel:Invaders, I think.) I double back, usually meeting the first group as they exit the little tunnel you want through. Clear them, run back through the tunnel to the bridge - the spawn point for the "ambushes." There are 5. (If you're some powerset with trip mines? You can get a couple down between the attacks - they wait for the bodies from the last fight to fade.) They all spawn at your end of the bridge you initially passed over. THe last one's text mentions "mercy:none!" Clear them, run back to the hallway. Finish the enemies. Don't touch the debris pile glowy. That's what triggers the portals in the Honoree room. (As well as the EBs.) Clear out the - I keep thinking of it as the "stage." There'll be Rikti there, and an ambush of more rikti when you hit the far end. You'll see, if you did NOT touch the debris pile, that the room the Honoree, Holz, and the portals are in are completely empty. (Again, have trip mines? Use them along the front left and right sides of the front of the bridge. Not the bridge itself, and you can ignore the back.) Run back, click the debris, trigger the portals. Hit JUST the two (always two there are, no more, no less) in front and what few Rikti have managed to spawn in - from range. I don't want to aggro the EBs yet. (If you're traps, you won't see anything in front if you put down enough trip mines at this point. :) ) Summon the temp pet(s) in the entrance to the room, about half way. You don't want *them* aggroing either. Mastermind? Keep your real minions back out of the way. (Again, traps/devices? Set any goodies down on a preferred edge and corner first.) ST, non knockback (for sake of time, not aggro) attack on Holz from as far as possible, duck around the corner. The temp pet should be hanging out in the hall, right in line of sight for Holz. It eats their alpha, you fight, Holz goes down. Rinse, repeat for Honoree. (I'll tend to stay at range for non melee.) This tends to be the only place I need to use insps. Ignore the back portals. No XP. Unless you're feeling like seeing how many you can wipe out after that. Can be fun sometimes. Back to see Lady Grey, then fight romans and reflections.

In the "What missions do you autocomplete?" thread, I kept seeing the Honoree mission from Lady Grey in Mender Ramiel's arc mentioned. And while it can be, for some characters, a hard fight, I don't think I've ever skipped or had to autocomplete it. SO, yeah, this - along with people complaining about Trapdoor - always makes me go "why?" Which is part of why I'm making the thread. What throws you? How do you run it? What makes you think this is difficult - or not? Answering this for myself and how I run it (since I think it's "tough fight sometimes but very doable") next, for comparison. (Did I write a guide on this somewhere? I kind of think I did... or planned to. Anyway.)

I run it as soon as I hit 50. My characters don't tend to be "fully tricked out," and as I've mentioned elsewhere, I don't tend to do "builds" either, so if anything's capped, I'm probably running a Fire tank and Fire resist is capped (which you almost can't avoid.) And I have the same attitude about the Alpha unlock - I want it through that mission arc so I "waste" (in my opinion) as little Incarnate XP as possible.

I keep seeing this mentioned and really have to wonder how people are running it. I may make a thread on that...

... can we do the same thing for plaques? Those are worse because you don't *have* a list - they're not named, you can't just see at a glance "oh, I need Egg Hunter." Just that you have X of Y plaques - which can be spread across any number of zones, including Echo zones. While we're at it - - Let's give the plaques names. Or at least sequence numbers. - Let the exploration badges and accolades highlight what you already have. Especially if you have things with a mix of explore, history, defeat, etc.

*raises hand* I don't. I love that mission, and try to get zero escapes - which I typically do. You can move around and get some groups before they escape, even on a lower damage character. Honestly I like pretty much all of the Croatoa arcs. What I autocomplete... hmm. The only one I can think of that I regularly do is the... second? one from Levantra where you rescue the longbow squad. Not because it's hard. I just find whatserface to be annoying. She can go save herself.

... also, you know those "useless" sleeps? They work *wonders* for separating the AVs out so you only face one at a time. Even if you have to reapply single-target over and over.

*shrug* It happens? You may not have noticed if you were using placed AOEs or had other targets to attack, as well - not sure what makes them choose to placate.

Yeah, the only ones you only need the same level to memorize are level 10s. After that it's two levels at a time.

*immature snicker*

Were you running the Kheld missions? There *are* some in there, as I'm recalling.

... are we sure this isn't just you with an alt account just *pretending* to be a newbie? *suspicious look*

Warshade-wise, it's worse during an invasion, since the bodies (as I recall) are set to vanish more quickly. (Might be just zombies, might be all, I don't recall.) So, yeah. I'd love to see "you started on a valid target, the power works."

Still can... in King's Row. Honestly I rarely have fun on invasions with any sort of lowbie. The critters might be "levelless" but they don't exactly *scale* well.

Hmm. Use the rings from the BAF trial?

*looks at hand* *hand stays on home row, so index finger is always on F.*

Having argued for the sonic change back on live, I'm glad these were changed - but with the "it's not getting reverted," honestly, I didn't look too hard for them on test. Having run across a mission vs Longbow in a specific environment on live, though (where it actually matters - -res vs a fire tank,) I realized I couldn't see these new graphic indicators. Mission was run vs Longbow in an office building with a fairly good size group of LB. Against the grey "carpet," it was really hard to tell these were in effect (and IIRC didn't move.) Could we make these a more noticable orange to fit the default player powerset color? (Or is one of our modders already working on that.)

There was an explanation for this... either long ago on the live forums, maybe in an interview or article. I'm fairly sure it was on the forums. From *really* hazy memory they thought it would be a good thing and more immersive/less distracting to fuzz the values, letting people focus on characters instead of numbers. (Something along those lines.)

Exactly. And I'm thinking of new alts, too. I already do a /bindloadfile on any new masterminds to get their pet control binds set up as soon as they log into a starter zone, and I set up certain things on certain types of alts in combat attributes as well (say, a tank might have defense/resists, a brute would have those plus damage bonuses, etc.) so I'd just /loadca brute (for instance) to have those just get set up right away.

So as I go about ... fixing.. the CA window on many, many characters, a thought occurs. We have a way to save window, chat, etc. Why *not* to save combat attributes window selections? Both as a default and saving to file with specific selections. /saveca - Saves a combat attributes window setting. You can add a filename after (/saveca defense for instance) to easily load a base set of stats for a certain type of character. /loadca - to load that CA window. Add the filename to load a specific one (which overrides any default.) /saveca on its own, with no file name, sets a base combat attributes window (say, current HP, level shift, XP to next level, inf) that will show up on any new character by default.

These are from the early, "Numbers? You don' need no stinkin' numbers" era of the game. Looking for consistency is like looking for an elephant in a bowl of rice pudding.