Perfidy

I have badged before. I will badge again. And when I use badge as a verb, my intended meaning is to convey playing with the specific purpose of pursuing each badge there is to get, not just the convenient/easy ones. What I want to try and find is a route, or path to take that allows me to acquire two badges in particular "organically", that is - I don't want to hunt for them on the open map. I want to find them in missions at certain levels. My pattern of play usually involves getting invader at any time between level 4 and level 22 or so. Then, I usually log on an alt that's a fire blaster, team with the alt that wants spider smasher and gang buster badges in pursuit of High Pain Threshold. After I get that, I will do a moonfire and handle the Atlas Medallion. I've been able to add Shauna something or another, a vigilante specific contact in IP, in conjunction with Stephanie Peebles arc to acquire or minimize the hunting involved for Gangbuster (200 family minion/lt defeats) but I can't seem to grab a mission with primarily spiders in it - due, I suppose to my poor knowledge of red side. I have done Aaron Thiery's arc - it has a number of Spiders in it, but at that low level, I'm lacking the efficiency. It's difficult getting a team for an actual mission, as opposed to dfb or a frostfire. Do any of you know of a contact or even a radio/paper mission that might contain primarily the Spider Ops critters? Preferably in the teens or 20's when I tend to be thinking about such things. Because I tend to park a character at 50, doing these things at level 50 doesn't seem like an appealing thought. I'd like to use the accolade powers sooner than later. Waiting until 50 to get them, that just seems like a waste of time for me. Since High Pain Threshold is a villain accolade, what do you red-siders do to get this badge? Just play and eventually you get the defeats? Or are there any tried/true methods that you seek out, aside from hunting them. I can hunt them easily enough, and get both in less than 30 minutes, but when the server population is a little high, I don't want to risk breaking the multi-box policy, so I was hoping for a simpler method that would get me where I want to go without waiting too long. I can get the Hard Luck badge at 30, and commit suicide in Monster Island easily enough, but I tend to want to have those two defeat badges by 30. Any suggestions?

I wanted to revisit this comment of mine. When I made it, the character was in the early 20s. Now, at level 39, on a solo mission, while the slotting of Liquid Nitrogen hasn't changed, perhaps the strength of the attuned set has changed the outcome. I did see it do some damage. The thing is - when leveling and I chose the power, the description, and the detailed info let me to believe this was a big damage dealing power. It's not. I still think it needs some revision or editing. I was going to bore you with my thoughts on each of the powers I chose, but figured it's just one man's opinion. I share it, and I open the door for someone to tell me I'm looking at it wrong and should look at it from a different perspective.

For me, Combat Jump is always on, unless I get defeated. But when I rez, I turn it back on. The only time I might turn it off is when I'm in the shard trying to use the geysers. I remember something about travel powers impacting how far the geyser puts you, and I don't want to overshoot, or fall short of the mark. (Though, even then those geysers are erratic) In missions, I tend to turn off SS and sprint both. I'll turn on sprint and SS when teaming for a speed run, tho. Otherwise, I turn them off. I might turn sprint on to get to the elevator to change floors.

Or, more specifically, the temp power that gets awarded when you finish her arc. I clobbered Stephanie Peebles for her "Wedding Band", the same temp you get for completing her arc when you're a hero/vig. So most folks who are familiar with this temp know that it's a pretty good one, even though it does drain end pretty well. My question is, if I switch to hero/vig, and complete her arc, do I get a 2nd wedding band? Another 2 hours to the one I have, or is it a case of all you get is one, you greedy fool? It's not that I expect most of you to know the answer, but someone might. And now you also know completing Mage-killer's arc will have you face Peebles in the finale, and you'll get the temp. Unless maybe you already did Peeble's arc and the game doesn't let you get both. Also, it might be in the patch notes, but as you all know, the patch notes are quite long. But, I don't know what did it, but completing Orpheus and/Mage-Killer Tatiana's arcs opened up the Hess TF for me. So there's some new info for those of you that don't read the patch notes. Or maybe it was an unintended consequence? Probably not. Guessing they figure you're not likely to do both blue and red side content, switching back and forth as some sort of completionist. But, I could be wrong.

As someone who solos more often than not, I can tell you - you're in for a long ride, and you're at the mercy of the RNG. There are 6 incarnate slots. Alpha, Judgement, Interface, Lore, Destiny and Hybrid. We get 120 threads at vet levels 1,2,4,5,7,8,10 and 11. You've seen the post that breaks down the vet levels that get you 5 to 20 emp merits. My suggestion, though unpopular, is to use shards for your alpha slot and threads for the rest. The reason is - while threads drop more often, you need more threads, too. Even still, threads outpace the drops of shards. But, you need 5x as many threads! Yes, you should do all the Dark Astoria arcs. Heather Townsend Mu Vorken Max Praetor Duncan Dream Doctor But don't forget about Sister Solaris, Number 6, Belladonna Vetrano and the fairly recently added Sister Valeria, also in Cimerora. You need to know that Max doesn't offer an award table, so personally, unless I want the associated badges, I skip as much of his arc as I can. So, all in all, that's 8 contacts. Each contact gives 1 emp merit, 1 random common component, and an award table. I couldn't tell you how the table is weighted, but being solo or teamed makes no difference. If you just run the 8 contacts that give an award table and an emp merit (not Max) you get 8 emps, enough to make a rare if you didn't get one in the 8 tables. And 8 common components (enough to make 2 and 2/3 of any t-1s you want. After that, you have to repeat the content through Ouro. How many times is up to the RNG and you. Now, if you have more than one account, and you check the server population, you can multi-box and collaboratively complete all but the last mission of each arc. Say you have 3 accounts. That's now 24 reward tables instead of just 8. Just be sure the server isn't over 1500, and really, because people can log in at any time, to be safe, I'd wait until the server pop was below 1000. And, be warned, it's tedious and not very fun. Far more fun for me to just do it with one character at a time. The vet levels come by playing, so sooner or later, you will get there. If the ambition is t-4 in all, then with the assumption you use shards for the alpha, you need: 5 very rare incarnate components or a combination of very rare components and between 30 and 150 emp merits. See what I'm saying? If you got a very rare from a reward table from 1 of the 8 contacts, that means you only need 120 more emp merits. You also need 10 rare components, or a combination of rare components and between 8 and 80 emp merits. You also need 10 uncommon components. If the RNG snubs you, you'll need 600 threads to make them. Or, you might get 8 uncommons and only need to burn 120 threads to make the remaining 2. Each t-4 incarnate enhancement will require 13 commons, or 260 threads. None of these values include the alpha. You can use threads for the alpha, of course. The level shift for a t-3 alpha helps a lot. But after that, I would definitely wait to do the rest until I finished the other 5. By that time, you might organically have the shards you need. And if not, you can mix and match as you go. If you can stomach teaming, a hami a day gets you 4 emp merits and usually, anecdotally, 1-2 shards. If the league clears mitos, possibly more. An MSR or any level 50 tf will get you shards as well - but we know you want to be solo, so no sense going over that, I guess.

No idea what you're referring to. I looked in the Graphics tab - there's no setting for Visscale.

I posed this question in beta forums - and was told I didn't understand the gravity of the situation. Silly me, I thought it had something to do with the geysers I was using to get to the top of the ski slope in pocket d.

So, this is what I did. And I'm approaching 60 years of age. Slowly, but still approaching. Not a million years like some of the undead around here, but old enough to find some of the technical stuff daunting. First, I downloaded the CityMod Installer. I didn't want to do this. I just wanted to manually update the specific pages, but the Bicentennial meant that was going to more work than I wanted to do. So, The CM install comes in a zip file. So, all I did was click on it. I don't know what it did, but it installed. Then I ran it. The only two mods I wanted were the new pop-menu BadgeSetList that was pretty much the same thing I'd been using, just had the new stuff in it, and the updated VidiotMaps. Neither worked. So, when all else fails, read the directions. Damnit! I hate reading stuff. I like to skim, gloss over. Not read. Anyway, once I uninstalled the old copy of VidiotMaps and deleted the old badgesetlist from the data folder where it used to be, the updated maps and the updated pop menu both worked. I have no idea how helpful or time wasting this was, but that's all I did. Seems like you could handle that. File structures is a fancy way of saying where stuff is on you computer. The instructions make it pretty clear where the default locations are. If you still have trouble, I suspect someone like you has friends smarter than me that can help you out. Worst case, find a 5th grader. This stuff is like super simple for them.

I think I've downloaded the latest vidiotmaps update properly, as I'm able to see the marker on the map for the recent changes to Silent Sentinel and Rookie in both Atlas Park and Echo: Atlas Park. Also able to see the Bicentenial plaque locations. Well done, soldier. Now...to update the pop-menu on my system..

So, here's what I did today. I just happened to be in Sharkhead grabbing explorations to fill up on patrol XP. Someone shouted a recruit message for Scrappy. (The Ghost of Scrapyard) We defeated Scrappy over 10 times. I had something else to do, and when I left, they were still killing him. So, what did I get? 6 reward merits each time. No diminishing returns. I got 66 merits, and 11 "monstrous aether particles". So what did I do with those "monstrous aether particles"? I went to pocket D. First, I checked in with the holo labs vendor and learned I could exchange 3 of the MAPs for 1 PAP. On the AH, PAPs were listed at a little more than 2.5M each. The holo lab vendor said I could exchange 10 of the MAPs for a random mini-monster recipe. Like those things are useless to me, but in this game, people love things that are cute and useless. I took the risk and got a mini Kraken. Tossed it on the AH and saw them selling for 100M 15 minutes of killing Scrappy repeatedly for 100M. Beats farming every day of the week. Granted, eventually those MAPs are going to be everywhere, and the price of those mini-monsters are going to drop to about 10K, not 100M, lol. But in the meantime, I'm having a good chuckle.

Actually, we didn't get any xp at level 1, but at level 2, we did. I have recent memories of being level 9, wanting to slap the ATOs in, but couldn't. A quick trip to Kings Row and Boomtown for the explores, and I was there. The xp wasn't so over the top, but it was enough to notice. But, that's just this one guy's opinion.

The primary thing I don't like about it is with it the way it was before - I got a system message telling me how much XP I gained. With this new method, if I have 1 bar to go to the next level, perhaps the few badges I got from exploring gave me a bar of patrol xp. Perhaps they gave me 1/2 a bar. I have no way of knowing. It's ultimately not that big of a deal, but it just makes me wonder - "If something isn't broken, why fix it?" It wasn't broken. At least, it wasn't in my experience. Worked just fine, especially when I'd be level 21 and just needed 1/2 bar to get 22 to slot my lotg 7.5%. Those explores came in quite handy. But now, if I'm in the same boat - I don't know if I should grab one badge, all 8, or if I have to go to yet another zone to top off. I could, I suppose, hover my mouse over the xp bar to tell me how much patrol XP I have, but, even then, it's going to change every level as it supposedly reduces the amount you can get as you get closer to 50. What was the point of it in the first place? It was perfectly okay before. Granted, this is just my opinion, it's meaningless. But they asked for feedback, did they not?

I just use the base teleporter, and if that's not recharged, the sg portal. I can't think of any circumstance where I needed access to my base and one or the other wasn't up. I can honestly say, that other than my badgers, I've never pursued these, as they aren't useful to me. I already have access to my base with the press of a button. The patrol xp in lieu of regular xp would be okay, except it tapers off as you level, when you'd want it the most - at level 50, pursuing the vet levels. The juice isn't worth the squeeze, in my opinion. At least, not just for that. But since the reward merits are still there, it'll have to do. Not a fan of the change myself.

I'm seeing where the modder installed the latest popmenu pigg file in my system. My launcher is showing the identical settings as displayed at the top of the thread. Yet, my pop menu is the same as it ever was. Do I need to remove/delete the old pop menu?

<doh> Why didn't I think of that? Thanks!