Erydanus

Do you mean that everywhere you had selected the black color that's the top row and column of the color chart, 1A, had shifted to the dark gray next to it, 1B? Because I've noticed the game keeps trying to snap back to that and there've been a few times when I looked at bits of my costumes where I'd used black as an accent and I was surprised they were dark gray and yes, not the black color. Not stuff that had gone into live mind you, just in switching pieces in the costume creator it would jump to 1B from 1A if I didn't have the setting where the 2 main colors are applied to everything. So after making a costume, I typically turn that setting off and do hair and beard, belt, shoulders, cape, aura, etc. And that's when grayness keeps setting in.

I checked, and Night Ward was added in issue 23 so it was the last content officially released to live. This is surely something that would have gotten adjusted by the devs if the game hadn't been shut down. I did try to help a MM with this mission and walked into it already in progress and was similarly 1-shotted and I was also a MM. I did manage to help him escape and he reset it after and made everything blue and cleared it. I actually cleared it ok with my own MM (Beasts/Nature) but it was kind of dicey. Another workaround might be to start the mission solo and then have any additional teammates join so that the spawns are (hopefully) generated around a smaller team. In the end, there is one more option: use the complete mission option that you can only use once every three days. This certainly counts as a mission that is "bugged or too tough to complete."

If you're having too many visual effects close up, you could lower the particle count in graphics settings. That will simplify all visual effects until they go away entirely. That requires some playing with, turning down particle effects by category can make some buffs and anchors invisible. Shaving particle count down is probably better. IIRC the default is like 35k but can be turned up to 50k for maximum freem; going down to about 20 will declutter without too much loss of function.

Miz, can you run a virtual mouse program to fool it? What about an alternative input device? Mini USB touchpad? a mini mouse for netbooks? joystick?

I don't think it's technically possible really. You don't even see the same object as your teammates. Everyone sees a different rando thing. Trust me if I could control what Propel fires off it would be ALL FORKLIFTS ALL THE TIME.

This. I find this suggestion really silly and actually cumbersome. You literally walk up to this dispenser and select which items from the free selections you want - if you want ANY. What I think is maybe the real intention here is "pay 1 mil and claim the base teleport power on all my characters and be done with it." I can see the convenience of that but I don't agree it's something that needs to be done. A few influence sinks like this actually ARE good for the game. Things like buying the base porter and additional buff and prestige powers beyond the free selection (which is generous and balanced imho) actually do represent some extra power for the character. I think putting a modest charge for them is a good way to have people be thoughtful about how they want to spend their energies and their inf.

Leveling builds require much less planning than they used to. Inherent Fitness pool means that you do not have to plan to skip any primary or secondary powers to fit in Stamina. In fact if you take everything in both pools, you'll not have enough powers. You MUST take a pool power at 24 and 30 if you haven't taken 2 before then (not the case for the epic ATs). So the first question you have to ask yourself is do you want to take a travel power at low levels and delay an attack, or just go with Beast or Ninja Run? Since you do have the inherent fitness powers, swift and hurdle will make both those powers quite good. Do you want to take a recall friend, or maybe combat jumping? Do you want to take Super Jump? Do you want Hasten at 4? These are very flexible personal choices and are not going to hugely impact any leveling build someone gives you. If you wanted something unusual like cramming in the full fighting pool, leadership, stealth AND a travel power it would be an entirely different story. The time in your build when things are most questionable is the 1-12 spread, roughly. During this level range you have a new player accuracy buff in effect and mobs aren't very strong so slotting is extremely unimportant to worry about. You could just throw slots willy-nilly and fix it all later in the 20s. For your specific build there is literally only 1 slotting concern I would suggest and it is this: at level 10 take 20 merits and go to the merit vendor and buy yourself a level 10 Karma: Knockback Protection IO recipe, craft it, and slot it in Ninja Reflexes. (I think you can do this at level 7 actually as the recipes are +3 but you might have to wait until 10. Of course if you get to 10 by DFB you won't have collected 20 merits from doing story arcs yet so that is one reason to maybe level conventionally. A single arc of The Hollows will net you these merits.) Why? Your secondary's knockback protection is in Bo Ryaku which is a level 28 power and you will surely go insane without knockback protection until then. 4 points is plenty; knockDOWN is just knockback with a value between 0.1 and 0.9 and that's really the problem to look out for. You probably want a couple attacks right out of the gate and can pick up your defenses slowly; then again if you collect 3 of the prestige attacks (Nemesis Staff, Sands of Mu, Ghost-slaying Axe, Blackwand) that gives you 3 attacks right there. Those powers can't be enhanced but at low levels there is that starter accuracy "beginner's luck" buff that means that those powers will actually hit well right when you need filler attacks. Your origin starting temp power is ALSO good to use at low levels, it's damage is buffed like whoa and is as good as a regular attack the first few levels and weakens as you go up so it's like brawl by level 15. If you overlooked that as it's not put in your starting tray any more, take a peek. So again, you basically can't go wrong. If it were me I'd take 2 single target and 1 cone attack and then grab a defense or two. At level 10 take Kuji-In Rin immediately because it's a mez shield that's about the only must. I love Parry on broadsword and Divine Avalanche is similar for Katana. But do you need a defense buff at level 8 beating up Skulls? Doubtful. Do you need the self +endurance power when it's available at 16 now that you get Stamina at level 2 and there's an ability that produces inspirations on demand? Doubtful. But these powers might be more useful depending what content you do, say if you pick fights with a lot of clockwork and freaks. This is the kind of thing that's a real personal choice. So as someone who had Katana/Invuln scrapper and a MA/Ninjitsu stalker, here's what I'd pick. As far as slots well, use your best judgement I'm sure it'll be fine. Level 1: Gambler's Cut Level 1: Ninja Reflexes * cram in that knockback protection IO ASAP. As this is one of your major defensive toggles you may eventually want to move the KB elsewhere so you can focus on enhancing it but by that point you have other powers you could move it to like combat jumping. You don't need to have the power when exemped to keep the benefit. Level 2: Sting of the Wasp Level 4: Flashing Steel Level 6: Danger Sense Level 8: Shinobi-Iri Level 10: Kuji-In Rin Level 12: Divine Avalanche Level 14: Combat Jumping Level 16: Build Up Level 18: The Lotus Drops Level 20: Kuji-In Sha Level 22: Super Jump - if you do First Ward, you will want a "real" travel power about here. Level 24: Calling the Wolf Level 26: Soaring Dragon Level 28: Bo Ryaku Level 30: Seishinteki Kyoyo Level 32: Golden Dragonfly Level 35: Blinding Powder Level 38: Kuji-In Retsu Level 2: Swift - note that this can be slotted for both run and fly so if you take flying put that kind of enhancement in Level 2: Health Level 2: Hurdle Level 2: Stamina -3 slot this by 22 for maximum happiness

I did see someone having this problem and part of the issue was they had set themselves to +2. This mission is tuned to be difficult in the first place, so adding the +2 made it overwhelming. Rather than countlessly resurrect a better solution is to log off which will forcibly eject the dead player body back into the midnighter mansion; when you go to the hospital from there, you find out where the Midnight Mansion's rez point is. Re-entering the in-progress mission is still very difficult because if you zone back in without resetting it, an army is literally camping the door. Bug? No. Questionable mission design choice? Probably.

A similar thing can happen if you're desynched on the map. I couldn't click on the Mercy Island Arachnos flyer last night until I typed /stuck and got moved over 1 foot. Suddenly I could interact with the flyer again. The /sync (or is it /synch ?) command should also work.

No it doesn't auto save. You have to exit out periodically to save. In fact, I think you need to exit the base for a hard save but I'm uncertain of that. I lost a lot of work when the servers were new and unstable.

Yes I was about to say if you try to go back it will be flaky but if you click on the words Primary Powers or Secondary Powers you can toggle between those 2 choices under Powers. Also, if you want to skip picking playstyle and directly select Archetype you can do that.

Well, the performance gain for an SSD for anything that like, reads graphical map textures is pretty huge. Plus, the cost of them has really gone down as they become the trend. It's not an issue now. I just hit up Newegg and checked and they have 320 gig traditional hard drives that are in the $18-30 range mostly about $20. I looked up SSDs, and they have a 120 gig one (which is what my copy of Windows and COH is installed in that's ...well $22. (Meanwhile they have a Samsung EVO SSD that's 500 gig on sale for $78. Ooooh maybe I should replace my 2ndary drive that I keep MP3s on now...)

The problem I have with that in practice is the look-in effect. Like I had a large room and I put a small skylight in the center and put Storm Palace sky above it, 2x2 area out of the 5x5 box. When I walked into the room the sky light looked normal and then changed visibly as I got closer, and became magenta. In order to maintain immersion you'd have to put a room off far enough from the main base that you could drop multiple overlapping skyboxes to create a viewing corridor as you came to the doorway of the room. That much overlapping makes me leery of it being practical to do... but maybe I'm worried for nothing.

I agree it would be nice. There would have to be some way of actually converting the slot from the standard costume system to the NPC costume system that VEATs use for slot 1. That might be a serious technical challenge. But eventually my Widow will be 50 with both Fortunata and Widow builds and I'd like have separate costumes for those builds.

Those are very good tips Chase! In pretty much all things there is an interrelation between Time, Convenience (Accessibility), and Money. The faster you want something the more you have to pay! The more convenient you want it (i.e., meal delivery) the more you have to pay. You're willing to wait on something (wait for a sale) you save money. You want something exotic, you can get it with lower convenience - you have to maybe special order it or buy it from Amazon from someone who doesn't have them fulfill their sales so you have to wait and pay for conventional shipping. Once you realize there's this triangular relationship guiding purchases both in real life and on the auction house, you can take the best approach for your needs.

Try alt tabbing away from the game and coming back. I have rarely had this happen to me and the issue was just that the window didn't actually have focus. In fact alt-tabbing just once fixed it - real clue is the window is up and the sound is not playing. If you alt tab and sound starts you just restored focus. Probably something like the task bar wedged explorer invisibly on top or something like that. Note I've had this happen in other games too -- it's just a thing that can sometimes happen in Win 7.

I get that the server page says there aren't queues for login but still, when you're on that loading character selection page it says you're in a queue if you go to leave. I haven't actually SEEN a queue in quite a while but even when I did I'd leave the login queue page and then I'd be on the character select loading screen for 5+ minutes and if I went to back out it'd give that "leave place in queue" message. So is it possible that Win 7 is just not being handled correctly at all by the login server somehow? I do sometimes load the character screen in 30-90 seconds but that is abnormally fast for me. Three to five minutes is routine. Even last night checking sales on a character on Everlasting and then switching back to Excelsior - five minutes.

Yes but my point is that at level 25 I probably only have 4 slots in my typical power like a hold so I want to maximize THOSE slots. (I spread my slots out while leveling and add them as I need them.) At level 50 I will have 6 slots in my hold and I will completely redo my build complete with the fortune I will have made by beating up skulls and taking their enriched plutonium (what?). So I say, don't wait. Start immediately and save yourself the SO costs and take advantage of the flexibility now. And if you have the $$ to overwrite lower level IOs with higher level IOs while leveling, go for it.

I don't agree with SRMalloy's post, especially about it not being valuable at low levels, but I'm not going to debate it; just acknowledging the difference of opinion and moving on. To me Frankenslotting is about cramming as much enhancement as you can in as cheaply as you can. Sometimes you can snag a first or second tier set bonus but that's just gravy. At low levels when you maybe only have 4 slots in a power, using a bunch of 2part and 3part IOs may let you get as much enhancement as 6 conventional IOs if you're lucky and the sets you have to work with offer good pieces. Some IO sets are formulated in a way that they don't have the breakdown of pieces you may want for Frankenslotting; but then, there are sets formulated in such a way that they actually work very poorly in a particular power and you'd never be able to full set them at endgame without great waste anyway. Frankenslotting also allows you to maximize enhancements by mixing in pieces of sets you might not use, saving you money; or getting you enhancements when you otherwise might not be able to afford them. Right now a lot of melee and ranged set pieces even in the 20s are going for multiple millions. Suppose your attack has a bonus effect like defense debuff or chance to sleep. You can dig out useful bits from non attack sets and then finish with generic damage IOs. For example I used to have an electric melee/elec armor brute. His attacks had a tiny chance to sleep so they took sleep sets, taunts, and endmod sets on top of melee damage. A typical slotting I'd use for him would be a sleep set Acc/Recharge and a sleep set Acc/Endredux, a single melee set Dam/Endredux, 2 damage IOs, and a proc for fun. The sleep set pieces were cheap and let me get an SO worth of accuracy and end redux in the attacks in a time I was really short on money. I also like just using multiple copies of the same 3part in powers. Like for a spammable area heal, if you can get the Heal/Endredx/Recharge bit from 2 different heal sets you just got 1 SO of enhancment for each of those 3 parameters in just 2 slots. (Using level 25 IOs, that's 32% of each which I consider equivalent to an SO.) The catch here is that if you use rare sets then the cost typically goes up both for the recipe and the salvage they take. To continue the example of slotting something like healing aura, if you got 4 mixed heal/endredux/recharge pieces you'd up with 65% of each of those parameters which is like 6 slotting in 4. However, it would probably be quite spendy to do that. An alternative would be to combine the heal/end/rech and the heal/rech piece from 2 different sets, probably Triage and Harmonized healing. You'd end up with 32% endredux, 73% heal, and 73% recharge time. That's still the equivalent of 1 end, 2 1/5 heal, and 2 1/5 rechage. That's still the equivalent of more than 5 slots of enhancement in 4 actual slots, plus you do get 2 set bonuses. If you do it with higher level than 25, you will get better results but even doing this fairly low level you're getting all the bang you would from SOs and then some. As far as cost efficiency I would just start Frankenslotting at 22 with level 25s generic and set IOs, and as I level I use any I could make from that level up through the current level. Since you're not worrying about set bonuses exemplaring isn't a factor and you can just use whatever you can get. Even mostly using generic IOs and filling in just a 2 or 3 parters to shave waste off the build is great. (I am SO a fan of 1 acc, 2 damage, and 1 acc/dam in a favorite attack.) Then, at 50 you can redo it all from the top, sell off the IOs you leveled with and upgrade. At 50 you're probably going to be looking more at either true set slotting or what I call hybrid slotting. Hybrid slotting is when you're sort of Frankenslotting but you're doing it more seriously and trying to get some set bonuses. Like using the same 3 pieces of 2 different or comparable sets. You might even be mixing in Hami-Os at that point but using the splits of set IOs lets you hoard the slots to put them in. For example if I were a dark defender at level 50 I might slot Shadow Fall - which provides significant defense to all as well as resistance to cold, negative, and psi - with 3 pieces each of a resistance set and a defense set. Resistance/End, Resistance/End/Recharge, and Resistance from a Resistance set; and Defense/End, Defense/End/Recharge, Defense from a defense set. The totals are about 52% to both defense and resistance (and thats in the ED range for those parameters with 56% being the cap you'd land on if you 3-slotted it plainly), 91% endredux (and it's an expensive group wide toggle so this isn't overkill), as well as 42% recharge time. (Bringing it down from 15 to 10 seconds to reactivate if something goes wrong). You also get 4 set bonuses.

I'm on a Windows 7 computer and the way it works for me is if it's off hours and I login the character screen comes up right away. If it's peak times it takes several minutes and if I back out to select another server it says "Do you want to give your place up in queue?". As I said before, I think we're queued but it's just not telling us.

Additionally the sky options in the place object menu are only 5x5 square instances. The view of the sky only applies while you are IN that perimeter so if you put one in a room but then look into the room from an adjacent hall or door outside the sky shown will be whatever your base's default is. If you set multiple boxes next to each other you'll experience a fade out/fade back in effect as you move from one to another; overlapping may work better but it gets messy fast. It's much better to use the base default sky command instead. I'm not sure what a good use of the placeable skyboxes would be but my guess would be for making a room off to itself special.

Arresting a supervillain by throwing a forklift at them.* Bird is #2 (and possibly doing that as part of its DoT). _____ * Gravity Control, Propel in case you didn't know.

My personal take on the name policy is that it is a good policy. It is very smart of our hosts to implement an aggressive policy and implement it pretty early. I was reading on an unrelated forum and was absolutely aghast when someone commented about going and "reserving" the names of more than THREE DOZEN of their old characters. I thought to myself, "You ass." That is like walking up to the cookie jar and instead of taking 1 cookie, maybe 2, you grab the whole jar and walk off with it to eat later. I get it. I GET IT. You want everything you had before back, and you want it right now. Understandable. But unreasonable. Everybody who was playing before had the same traumatic experience. We are all so fortunate to have this opportunity back. And we have to BE REASONABLE ADULTS and share this resource. And that means only creating characters we actually intend to play in a practical timeframe. You want to roll an alt for a planned thing with friends next week, be my guest. You want to camp on 30 names you will work on from now until next year, it's a moral wrong in my judgement. MORAL WRONG. Because at that point you are preventing others from having the same fun that you want, and your fun is not more important than my fun and my fun is not more important than the next player's fun. We all need to take our cookie, sit down and eat it, and then come back for seconds.

I dispute this statement. 32% vs 33% is not significant enough to refer to level 25 generic IOs as being outperformed. Two and three part set IOs markedly exceed SO values at that point. Also while it may be better to slot end redux in this character's attacks it's always worth actually looking at the end cost of any toggle because thorughout all the sets there's a couple that are abnormally expensive.

Also this is NOT a "SCORE" change this is from the original devs. That said I have been looking at the hero-side epics for the villain ATs and they're often quite lackluster. The stalker ones for instance seem to be a copy/paste of the scrapper pools and are, in my opinion, significantly not as good as the original villain ones. So don't sweat it about being too easy.