Luminara

Stop trying to sound mysterious, everyone knows it's because green fire lizards bred uncontrollably and were sent there to keep the rest of Pern from being overrun.

Yeah, having their bases made of chicken wire and sheet metal probably wasn't the best plan for aesthetics... or security... or impenetrability... but you know the janitor who finds all of the loose change under the floor has got to be the happiest employee in the world.

You're correct that there's a difference in quality, but from my perspective, it's not because the quality was bundled up and hidden away in villain arcs, it's because arcs written later in the game's life tend to be more interesting, more engaging and made better use of old mechanics while adding new ones. And those are available on both sides of the fence. Both sides have bad writing and good writing. Of the villain arcs which I've enjoyed, such as Leonard's, they're not notably better in any way, by any objective analysis, than some hero arcs, such as the Nance/Adair arcs, or the entirety of the revamped Faultline content. Contacts do send you to other zones, though. They don't typically send you on a looped zone crawl, this is true, but is it, in any way, better to be sent to zone A, then called back to zone C, only to be sent back to zone A (Hardcase, for instance)? It doesn't make any difference if you cut B out of the loop, you're still zoning multiple times. The gated contact system requiring X newspaper missions each time one wishes to unlock a contact also skews the metric, since you're obviously not going to be sent to a different zone while doing that. Even if you're using the contact finder to bypass the gate, you're still going to end up digging into newspaper missions to compensate for the paucity of arcs at certain points, and instead of running from zone to zone, you're running from mission door to mission door. If merits are your goal, you're going to be running even more, since villain arc rewards are atrocious and you're going to fill the gap with tip missions, which can and do send you to other zones. Time spent running is time spent running, and it doesn't matter whether it's to A/B/C/B/A, or A/C/A/A/C or A/A/A/A/A. I also dislike the basic concept of using newspaper missions as fillers between arcs because it acts against the narrative which would otherwise develop. As a hero, one can progress from one story arc to the next, and use story-related missions from contacts, to level all the way from 1 to 50+, and create a detailed and self-contained narrative without ever touching the police scanner, thus creating a complete personal story which neatly fits within the fabric of the overarching story. That's difficult to accomplish as a villain due to the comparative dearth of contacts and arcs, and the requirement that one supplements the journey with newspaper mission filler content. Hero journeys in this game are fully-fledged and -fleshed out Choose Your Own Adventure stories, while villain journeys, in my experience, are slapdash pastiches poorly stuck together with paper-mâché. Good writing, as I know it (at the risk of sounding immodest, I think I know it rather well), shouldn't be comparable to an empty piñata.

Converters aren't invention salvage. Different type of drop using different drop rules. Let's not make the answer to the question any more confusing than it already is.

If they're only one level into grey, yes. If they're below that, no.

Further clarification: there are two categorizations for salvage: arcane and tech. Magic, mutation and natural origin critters drop arcane salvage. Science, technology and natural origin critters drop tech salvage. Nothing drops a specific salvage component. Nothing drops a specific rarity of salvage. The auction house is the only guaranteed method of acquiring specific salvage, due to pooling.

Teams are a social experience. I have social anxiety disorder. Oil and water.

I sincerely hope the HC team wouldn't be foolish enough to spend anything on Gremlins. They were terrible.

Menu > Options > Window (last tab) > Reticle (right under User Interface) > Player Health Bars > click until it says Show Always.

Miss streaks, endurance issues, gradually worse damage as one increases in level (powers don't deal less damage, but critter HP and mitigation increases while unslotted or poorly slotted damage remains consistent), limited access to powers due to lack of sufficient recharge buffs/enhancements, slow movement speeds, dislike of the feeling of being "weak" after having played a character at 50+, lack of interest in lowest level content, impatience (either played through the low level content hundreds of times, or new and wanting to run with the big dogs rather than be stuck at the bottom for weeks)... any or all of the above. I don't power-level my characters, I don't team, I don't farm, I usually don't twink (have on a couple of occasions) and I don't use the P2W buffs, so I'm pretty intimate with the shortcomings of the low level game. It's frustrating, it feels underwhelming and for some people, it's not enjoyable (this is a combat-oriented action MMORPG. sucking at combat shouldn't even be a possibility, much less so assured that there are mechanics in place (Beginner's Luck) and P2W buffs to fix that problem). That's why I play the market with every character, to make enough inf* to plug the holes on low level characters.

Don't tell me you lost your last pair of panties again. What, do we have to RFID tag these things for you? ❤️

Short term fluctuations are short term. If the prices remain high for a few weeks, then everyone can throw their panties in the air and run around like panicky NPCs (evidence of such behavior will be required in photographic format). Until then, go about your business as usual. 😛

So do I. I abide by a lot of restrictions I set for myself, leveling characters without hand-me-downs or inheritances, but not using merits or the AH is just out of the question. I earned the merits, I earned the inf*, I'm damn well going to put them to use making the game less frustrating by hitting the AH and fixing the problems I encounter (like missing over and over and over and over and over and over and over and over... fuck that noise, i'm not playing to test my patience, i can do that on the forums).

Which is why we all refer to you as Cuddles.

Now I can't stop imagining Shivans performing Guns In the Sky.

Gold retriever ≠ golden retriever. Man... I let that sit for FOUR PAGES, waiting for someone else to jump on it. Slackers.

That is an impressive use of the thumbtack feature. 👍

I'm just starting to work on a cup of coffee, so my brain is mush at the moment, but some form of lateral progression might address some of the issues you've raised, @Monos King. We already have lateral progression in a few ways. Badge collecting. Completing all of the story arcs, side missions (the detective and Madame Bellerose stuff) and personal stories in Dark Astoria. It's a different grind, one which players tend to be more open to accepting, and which feels rewarding when it's completed. More lateral progression of that sort might be an answer, at least for some players. An example jumping around in my addled skull (i'm really not worth a wet sock until the caffeine kicks in) is going back through old story arcs and adding... I don't know, 50, or 100 extra glowies, one per mission, something like the Letter Writer glowies in the Ouroboros arcs. Players would have to revisit these missions, or play them on new characters, in order to find them. Locating all of them unlocks... a unique souvenir (the badge list is apparently teetering under its own weight, rather not make it worse), or an otherwise inaccessible emote. Obviously, this wouldn't be feasible on that scale. They don't have the resources, that's just the way it is. But the idea of lateral progression has been working to provide a degree of satisfaction to a lot of players for as long as the game's been playable, so brainstorming something that's possible within the HC team's resource budget (meaning, something that won't make @Piecemeal or @Cobalt Arachne hate life) should be within the ken of the forum regulars. Just not me right now. Brain mush hurts, needs more caffeine.

You promised that to me... After everything we haven't shared, all we've never been through together, the good times and memories that don't exist, you betray me like this?! I feel so dirty. Do it again.

I thought it was a euphemism for cannibalism.