Luminara

Heh. Mop pole. 🤣

The 60th anniversary is coming, and the last few series haven't garnered the acclaim of the previous ones, so it makes sense that they'd find a reason to bring back the most popular of the modern Doctors and tie up that hanging plot thread.

No. Inf* purchase only, and only through the AH. You can purchase most of what's in the packs, though, in other ways. Merit vendor sells Winter enhancements for reward merits, the Candy Keeper sells the winter buffs and Universal Travel recipes, et cetera. The packs themselves don't drop or sell in any other way than the Special Salvage section of the AH.

Ooo, drama. Better get my 3D glasses.

It goes poof. Unless something is passed from one player to another, it's created or destroyed, not recycled. When you receive a drop, it's created on the fly. When you sell that drop to a vendor, it's destroyed on the fly.

Expanding on this, it would require at least two accounts, as the maximum bid potential on a single account is 5000*200=1,000,000 transaction slots (and that's presuming the player levels every one of those 5000 characters to 50 to unlock all of the transaction slots, which just isn't going to happen). Presuming an average of 40,000 player-listed common salvage, that's another 4000 transaction slots necessary. So, roughly 5578 characters, 180 transaction slots apiece, two accounts. Switching between each of those 5000+ characters would require a minimum of 30 seconds, even with macros for the transactions. That would be about 47 hours of continuous activity, logging into each character, bidding on 180 stacks of salvage, logging out and logging into the next character. The sum total cost would be 10,000*10*180*5578=100,404,000,000 inf* spent on this attempt to capture the common salvage market, and that is, of course, presuming not a single person notices it and starts dumping common salvage in volume, and all this accomplishes is setting the minimum price at 10,000. The player then has to go back into those characters, spend another 47 hours logging in and out, to re-list all of the salvage at 100,000 inf* apiece, plus invest another 47 hours and another 5578 characters with bids for 99,999 inf* on common salvage, in order to actually drive the price up to 100,000. We're up to three accounts, 100,404,000,000 inf* plus transaction fees (which increase significantly when the player starts re-listing everything for 100,000 inf*) and continually incoming salvage from players, and 141+ hours, at the bare minimum. That's about 10 days of continuous logging in and out and making transactions on the market (with a little time each day for eating, bathroom breaks, and 8 hours of sleep). If all of that happens, and no-one sees the common salvage stock dwindling rapidly, no-one goes on a Brainstorm spree and unloads several hundred thousand common salvage, not a single member of the HC team pays any attention or responds to player PMs, then yeah, common salvage could spike up to 100,000 inf* apiece. Briefly. I say briefly because I have no doubt that the instant one of the developers did see what happened, they'd log in and dump another 10,000,000 seeded commons, instantly bringing the price back down to 10,000 and leaving the manipulator stuck with 10-11 million pieces of common salvage he/she couldn't sell at the listed 100,000 inf*, resulting in an enormous loss in invested time and inf*. Not happening. No-one's that dedicated to chaos or control, and even if someone really tried, the incoming salvage and developer attention would make it a pointless and hideously expensive endeavor.

If someone invests 100,000,000,000+ to purchase all 10,000,000 seeded commons at 10,000 apiece plus all player-listed commons, everyone alive has a bout of dementia and forgets that drops, base storage and Brainstorms exist, and the HC team decides not to dump another 10,000,000 seeded commons on the market, thus negating all of the work and time the manipulator put into the attempt to drive the price up to 100,000, that could happen. It's somewhat less likely than my sex life becoming something more than a fantasy, but it could happen.

Last year's sale was the final one.

AND A RUM METER! When the rum meter is empty, they all stop carousing and dancing and start fighting. And pirate bosses with PBAoE Confuses that make the player carouse and dance with the pirates! Yo ho, me hearties.

It has nothing to do with portals. I was nowhere near a base portal, a tram station, a ferry, an Ouroboros portal or any other transportation access point when I tested. The float notifications on minimum height characters appear near the top of the screen, instead of the center. Look at the screenshot in the first post, where the float notification is circled in red. That should be just above his character's head.

Ooo, cleavage. Interest piqued.

It's peek, not peak.

We've been around the block with this enough times that it's clear that some people need "official" rules. They know they can impose these restrictions on themselves, but a self-imposed restriction can be ignored. If the game forces them to play a certain way, though, if the restrictions are imposed on them by the game, they can't be side-stepped or disregarded. It has nothing to do with their peer group, they're not interested in making anyone else play their way, they just want themselves to be restricted in an "official" way so they don't have to deal with the temptation to break self-imposed rules. I do somewhat understand the problem. I've been trying to quit smoking for 15 years, since my left lung collapsed, and still haven't succeeded. Sometimes willpower just isn't enough. I don't see a separate server with a different set of rules happening here, but I can respect the request from that perspective.

Mind Link/Link Minds isn't flagged to ignore Recharge Reduction, it's simply not flagged to accept Recharge Reduction enhancements. Set IOs work because they're not categorized as Recharge Reduction enhancements, they're categorized according to the set to which they belong (Defense, in this case). HOs with Recharge Reduction are categorized as Recharge Reduction enhancements, so the power sees that and disregards the Recharge Reduction boost. As to why, probably time. Time was the most crucial factor in everything Cryptic and Paragon did, and it would've taken a lot of time to go through every power in the game, or every IO in every set, and add flags for acceptance/rejection of specific boosts in order to fine tune everything. They didn't have that time, so they accepted that some moderately exploitive workarounds, like using set IOs to reduce the recharge time of Mind Link/Link Minds, would exist. As long as they weren't game-breaking, they weren't important enough to spend the time on them. Victory Rush has a different restriction, it's actually flagged with "Strengths Disallowed: RechargeTime". It doesn't matter what you slot in it, it doesn't matter how much global +Recharge you have, that power's recharge time can't be changed by any means. Even Slows don't alter it. Basically, yes, Alphas are essentially just a multi-aspect enhancement "jammed" into every applicable power. Applicable is the key word. They only work on the aspects of powers which can be enhanced, and specifically enhanced by what they enhance. Charged Shield doesn't allow EndMod enhancements to be slotted, so neither Agility nor Musculature can boost the enhancement value. It's not blocked, there is no flag or special restriction that says, "Don't boost this", it's just that the power can't be enhanced for EndMod, so an Alpha EndMod boost isn't applicable.

Alphas only boost attributes for allowed enhancement categories in a power. Charged Shield isn't flagged for EndMod enhancements. It's the same situation with Mind Link/Link Minds. They can use Recharge Reduction from set IOs, but since they're not flagged to accept standard Recharge Reduction enhancements, as in TOs/DOs/SOs/IOs, neither Agility nor Spiritual adds X% Recharge Reduction to those slotted Recharge Reduction set IOs.

It doesn't.

I just tested a character that I have at the minimum selectable height, and the text is appearing about 3/4ths to 4/5ths of the way up the screen. Not all the way at the top like yours, but much farther above the head than any of my other characters. On all of the other characters I tested, the floats appeared in the center of the screen, and that included one maximum height character, with the float obscured by her head due to her height. My tests, in conjunction with your tests and other evidence, confirm that it's definitely related to character height, and specifically minimum character height. I don't recall any changes to character hit boxes or camera placement in any of the updates or patches, but that doesn't mean there weren't any. Something might've been adjusted under the hood that wasn't directly linked to these, but still affected them. Since I witnessed the same behavior on a character, I suspect that a reinstallation won't resolve the issue. I recommend increasing the height of the character until the floats are at a comfortable viewing point. You might try pinging @Naomi or @Cobalt Arachne after the holidays to see if they can find a solution, but... I'm theorizing that this is a direct result of the shorter minimum height and how the camera adjusts to match the character model, without adjusting the hit box. I think, based on other tests, the character model is only a visual representation, and the hit box itself is static. If that's true, then the only way to fix this would be to write new code to allow the hit box to be adjusted in synch with the height slider, and that would open up another set of issues, like characters slipping through newly accessible geometry holes, exploiting terrain to prevent critters from reaching them, et cetera.

Try adjusting your character's height. Save the costume file, then go to an Icon/Facemaker and talk to the NPC who allows gender and height adjustments. If you need funds, let me know, I'll cover the expenses.

My cats have informed me that this is establishment propaganda, and you are "The Man".