Cobalt Arachne

Those leftover Trick-or-Treat mobs can only exist idle for a brief 60 seconds while also only spawning within that zone's possible level ranges. If a player runs into somebody else's mobs, in a zone where they are a threat to them, the only possible way they can be a danger is if they intentionally stop traveling to fight them by choice like any other zone mob spawn. Unless you're far below the level of the zone you entered, which is a choice a player made accepting the risks, there's not a realistic threat of getting killed by these leftovers. City zones are also enormous, numerous, and every one contains hundreds of mission doors to choose from to use for Trick-or-Treating. Zones are public spaces and everyone is allowed to use them however they'd like as long as they're not being disruptive per Homecoming's Code of Conduct. If one player doesn't like seeing evidence of others in a zone enjoying a seasonal event, that player is free to move to a less populated zone or server where they're less likely to encounter others. Expecting us to restrict or remove options from other players instead isn't realistic.

These elite bosses will only spawn if you are above level 25. If you do get one solo and don't want to fight it, you can simply run away and they will despawn automatically after 60 seconds. Trick-or-Treat enemies have a 3-second safety window after they spawn before they can do anything, giving you ample time to escape if it's not a fight you want to take. This addition was meant to make Trick-or-Treating in teams or leagues more engaging/lucrative/rewarding.

An autumn's October greetings to all you do-gooders or evil-doers out there! It's that time of year again! ...what time you might ask? Spooky time! Oh yes! 🎃 It's almost time for the Homecoming: City of Heroes Halloween Event 2022! 🎃 October 4th - November 1st I spy some familiar and not-so-familiar faces... So, what new things does this year's Halloween event bring? I'm glad you asked! Each year, the fallen fae of the Unseelie Court attempt to invade our world by opening rifts when the spirit realm and the mortal realm are at their closest during the spooky Halloween season. Fortunately for us, they have been thwarted every year by the valiant efforts of Heroes and Villains who stop these spooky beings in their tracks! However, this year they've decided they will need to bolster their ranks if their attempts at world scaring are to succeed. The Unseelie Court's Hollow Reapers have devised a method to bring new levels of frightening to our world! These reapers have used their spectral scythes to widen the rifts, allowing even more powerful creatures of the night to invade when somebody is tricked whilst Trick-or-Treating! This can't be good... What does this mean for our brave Heroes and sinister Villains? 🎃 What's New in Halloween Event 2022? 🎃 New Trick-or-Treating Enemies! Five new Elite Boss enemies that can now spawn while Trick-or-Treating above Level 25! Ancient Vampires Spectral Werewolves Arisen Mummies Crone Matriarchs Hollow Reapers These spooky new Elite Bosses will reward five-fold experience and influence for each one defeated! Have any alts that still need some levels? Haven't tried out Symphony Control? Want to build a character for Advanced Difficulty modes? This would be a great opportunity to find some time to go Trick-or-Treating! Each of these new Elite Boss mobs also count for the older defeat badges. Spectral Werewolves count as both werewolf and ghost defeats. These new mobs spawn at a lower rate than other Trick-or-Treat enemies and were designed to be tough. For the best results, try Trick-or-Treating with a group! Looking for an efficient Trick-or-Treating spot? Might I recommend the motel near the hospital in Peregrine Island? 👀 Ouch! Best be careful, these spooky Elite Bosses are looking for unsuspecting victims to scare! New Halloween Event Badges! + Aether Rewards?! Five new badges for defeating each of the new Trick-or-Treat Elite Boss types: Vampiric Heritage - Defeat 5 Ancient Vampires from the Halloween Event to earn this badge. Spectral Anomaly - Defeat 5 Spectral Werewolves from the Halloween Event to earn this badge. Mummy's Curse - Defeat 5 Arisen Mummies from the Halloween Event to earn this badge. Unholy Cabal - Defeat 5 Crone Matriarchs from the Halloween Event to earn this badge. Reaper of Souls - Defeat 5 Hollow Reapers from the Halloween Event to earn this badge. Not only that! But each of these new badges also rewards 2 Prismatic Aether Particle salvage as a bonus, for a grand total of 10 possible on each character! Wow! Ten whole Prismatic Aether Particles that you can earn on every character! Costume Goodies! Fancy any of those Halloween costumes and wish you could keep them permanently? If you earn all five of this year's new Halloween event badges, you'll have enough Prismatic Aether currency to purchase one permanent Tier 1 Prestige Costume of your choosing from any of the BenevoLabs vendors found at Vault Reserve locations! Nice! The Halloween Salvage vendors are also offering a new limited-time Fir Bolg Prestige Costume, which will be available for the entirety of the month of October each year! The Fir Bolg prestige costume costs 10 Prismatic Aether Particles + 50 of each Halloween salvage type. All Tier 1 appearances have been added to the Halloween costume temporary power rewards pool, this year should certainly be diverse! The 'Halloween' in the Halloween costume temporary power names has been removed to make them easier to read in the power menu. Other Adjustments The Bored Guy and Bored Gal in the Dr. Kane's House of Horror trial have been given updated looks of their own. Trick-or-Treat Werewolves now throw coffins instead of rocks when using their Hurl power. 🎃 New to Halloween in City of Heroes? Check out the legacy spooky activities! 🎃 https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Halloween_Event Badges, Badges, Badges! There are a ton of event badges to be earned during the Halloween Event each year! Here's a list of all the badges up for grabs! https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Halloween_Event/Badges Zone Trick-or-Treating! https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Halloween_Event/Trick_or_Treat Go to any zone appropriate to your level range, click any mission door, and you'll be surprised with either a Treat reward or a Trick spook! Treats will reward a variety of things: Halloween costume temporary powers, these come in many flavors! Collecting many rewards badges! Halloween salvage that can be redeemed for an extra costume slot, a spider vanity pet, and more! Talk to the Halloween salvage vendor appropriate for you: Heroes: Annah in Croatoa Villains: Granny Beldam in Nerva Archipelago Praetorians: Acantha in Imperial City If you are wearing a costume power (Halloween or Prestige) while trick-or-treating, you can receive a Whispered Rumor tip mission that allows earning up to six badges! https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Mission:Tip_-_Whispered_Rumor Inspirations! Sometimes though, all you get is a rock... Tricks will spawn Halloween enemies! Worry not, as these enemies can be defeated for badges! Zone Giant Monster Hunts! https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Halloween_Event/Giant_Monsters For the duration of the Halloween Event, you can find the giant monsters, Eochai and Jack-in-Irons, randomly throughout standard zones! The pair are worth an exclusive badge for the first time defeating each, but every time they're defeated grants 6 Reward Merits to everyone who participated! After being defeated, a new Eochai or Jack will respawn somewhere in the same zone shortly afterward, so if you search the zone, they can be defeated many times repeatedly for lots of Reward Merits! Eochai is glad to get out of Croatoa for once! Zombie Apocalypse Zone Invasions! https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Zombie_Apocalypse Keep an eye on the Zone Event channels! Frequently during the Halloween Event's runtime, zones will be attacked by a Zombie Apocalypse! During this event, waves of zombies will spawn anywhere there are players and can be defeated for badges and experience! Group up somewhere with a lot of allies and mow down zombies for rewards! Don't stand too close to Police Drones though! Deadly Apocalypse Zone Events! https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Deadly_Apocalypse Keep an eye on the Zone Event channels! If a spooky fog and four banners roll in, it's time for a Deadly Apocalypse! In this event, players must coordinate to defeat enemies simultaneously at all four Banner locations marked on the map. As the Banner's defenders are defeated simultaneously at all four locations, the protection on the Banners will gradually weaken. Remember if there aren't people at all four banners fighting, you won't be able to make any progress! Eventually, the Banners will become vulnerable, and players can destroy each one for a total of four badges! Once all four Banners have been destroyed, a Greater Mystic Aspect giant monster will spawn somewhere in the zone! If defeated they will reward players with another badge and choice of a temporary power! Dr. Kane's House of Horrors Trial! https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Dr._Kane's_House_of_Horror Grab four allies and queue for the Dr. Kane's House of Horrors Trial from the Looking For Group (LFG) tab on your chat window! Face lots of spooky enemies and earn plenty of badges in this short trial that's only available during the Halloween Event! Tip: Prestige costumes also count for the 'Tricked Out' badge criteria! Atlas Park Zone Makeover! https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Atlas_Park_Seasonal_Changes#Halloween During the Halloween Event, Atlas Park will get a spooky makeover! Enjoy the change of scenery while it lasts! Eternal Night! For the last two weeks of the Halloween Event, starting on October 22nd, most zones will be covered by an eternal night! If you're interested in hunting for enemies that only spawn at certain times of the day like the ghosts in Croatoa! This is a great chance to get those badges! That's everything for Halloween this year! We hope everyone has a grand & spooky time playing City of Heroes! 🎃 Thanks Homecoming for being such awesome players! 🎃

I'll check on it, that is odd.

Does it work if you jump inside the cube? I believe that was changed to be a 'be inside the cube and jump' to make it less accident prone, since if I recall, when moving quickly the FX doesn't actually start playing fast enough and you could enter the exit zone before you could see it.

You aren't wrong, part of the thinking was with repeat content you'll be exposed to it more, but it can certainly be difficult to fully absorb all the details while on a team. Adding a 'story difficulty' option to TFs is something that's been on our radar, just another feature we have to iron the details out for and find time to implement.

Ah! I totally misread, my apologies on that! 😨

About the Dr. Aeon's Strike Force's length... There are two main reasons for that, one more simple and one more complex: First: The simpler, is that story in the Dr. Aeon's Strike Force was not written as a two-parter narrative and was meant to be a lore dense piece of content, but that should be expected for content that is the capstone finale of an existing story. The strike force was always meant to be the finale moment to the original Gold Bricker's story in Cap Au Diable, which never got a proper conclusion and the players never got to tango with big bad King Midas himself, despite numerous arcs about him and involving him. As a result, this means that for full enjoyment of the Dr. Aeon SF's story, it is best to have played all the Cap Au Diable mission arcs about/involving the Gold Brickers and have some familiarity with those stories since it obviously plays a big role in whether you can follow along and understand what is happening during Aeon's wacky inter-dimensional romp to settle the score. Second: The more complex, is that in City of Heroes there's always been a stigma that 'long content = bad content', and while older player availability as adults may be a factor certainly, that's a bit heavy-handed as the only reason when people use it with so much objectivity. I don't necessarily see longer content as an objectively bad thing; It allows for more build-up and anticipation on the way to the finale showdown with the mastermind, it often lets the player feel like they're part of something more epic, and let's us really flesh out the characters, locations, and story. Penny Yin's TF typically being a 15-30 minute romp makes me feel like I'm on a chore during lunch, not thwarting a major scheme of a villainous organization bent on my city's destruction; That is obviously a very subjective take, and I've run and enjoyed my fair share of Penny Yin's, but it was never the type of experience the Dr. Aeon's SF was aimed to be. Dr. Aeon's Strike Force was designed from the beginning to be a longer, more elaborate piece of content. Variety is the spice of life, and players already had lots of shorter content choices already. If a player wanted to pick a piece of longer content, they generally had to look at the oldest team content in the catalogue which is infamous for obvious reasons... (Looking at you, Dr. Quarterfield!) The real question is how & why bad longer content is actually bad: Older long content that has coined this infamy mostly achieved its length with frustrating/slow mission objectives: Lots of 'kill all' missions, 'glowie needle in a haystack' missions, 'rescue & escort' missions. I believe the real reason people don't play the older longer content as often is because the objectives can be very dull, they can't really be streamlined much, and they often contain copious amounts of padding to make the content bulkier when it doesn't make it any more interesting. All of those things mentioned are completely absent in the Dr. Aeon's SF, which is longer content by virtue of it's content richness, variety, and scope. With many considerations also taken to allow the team play the content to speed it up or slow it down as they desire, it is a very flexible piece of content, with speed PUG teams finishing it regularly in 30 minutes, and other teams taking longer by their choice, not by force, which I believe is the key difference.

This is exactly the case.

Because we wanted players to actually have new incentives to play the game and earn the costume rewards (or spend a lot of influence) instead of just logging in for 15 minutes to buy everything new immediately after Page 4 went live with massive stockpiles of existing currency and then go back to being 'caught up with nothing to do or work towards'.

Looks like the child FX for the Arachnos Soldier AR weapon FX were missed for the disjointed firing point fix. Just fixed it, so expect that to go out next patch.

Thought I had fixed this; I'll check again.

Hmm, assuming maps that have a Vault Reserve present out of bounds (since those stores are library objects the vendor is added literally anywhere they are used); I'll make the Vault version of that vendor just not have any shout text.

I don't think there's a way to put a preview image like that into the store interface, but what you can do to preview the costumes is buy the 14-day temporary version found on the Halloween vendors as a way to demo them. The Halloween vendors and event have already been updated and include all the new costumes in Tier 1.

I've improved the positioning offsets for where the Rularuu Mace (and a few others with the same issue) sits on the back of Male/Huge costumes for next patch so they don't lean as far away from the torso. It should be positioned very similarly to your second screenshot. Unfortunately, I can't revert the size, as it needed to be increased by approximately 20% in order to accommodate the two-handed Bane Spider/Mace Mastery animations. Example of how it'll sit next patch:

Given the seriously bizarre state of things, and the totally inconsistent introduction, we may end up just making her unlock for owning the Sister Valeria arc completion badge instead to ensure she's accessible on every character and no matter how you do the arc. I can't see anything in her contact data or Sister Valeria's that would explain the level of inconsistency we're seeing here.

Okay that IS bizarre; I'll keep digging. 🤔

We've figured out the issue here is that if you do Sister Valeria's arc by going to Ouroboros instead of talking to her in the zone. Since Ouroboros mode does not offer contact introductions, she can't introduce you to Alexandra Sideris after the first mission. Looks like this is working as intended and, unfortunately, there isn't a way to do a dual unlock condition. The solution here will be to go talk to Valeria in-person and complete Mission 1 of her arc outside of Ouroboros, it will then unlock Alexandra Sideris for you. Edit: Apparently something else is going on, continuing to dig into it.

Probably not, I just wasn't aware of it until your post. I'll check on it... It may end up being a part of a post-Page 4 patch though.

Why that response? I explained how the payout numbers were calculated. Just noticed my typo lmao. Haven't had my morning caffeine yet. 😴 Thanks!

Originally it was decided using the count of AV-types you fought... But looking at the list again, and after the ITF had the extra AVs added + the ASF's original list actually included the optional ripple AV you can skip... If we exclude those, the list is actually fairly equal. Advanced Difficulty Dr. Aeon's Strike Force required AV fights: Cauldron Champ Frobe Princess Zoe Golden Roller Mr. Rodney Apex (Counted since while technically skippable, only doable by failing the ripple timer at 45 minutes, which isn't practical.) Ripplesurge Princess Zoe Mr. Rodney King Midas Dr. Zeon Advanced Difficulty Imperious Task Force required AV fights: Requiem Romulus Augustus Romulus Phalanx Computer Laeva Dextro Vandal N.Romulus Augustus kill #1 N.Romulus Augustus kill #2 N.Romulus Augustus kill #3 N.Romulus Augustus kill #4 I'll see about bumping the ITF's PAP payout to be equal to the ASF's.

Good find, especially on a release candidate, those HM-only conditional triggers were definitely working at one point, I'll have to dig into what changed. Thanks!

Something about that Excalibur makes me crave some watermelon. 🍉

The only real fix for this is likely going to be forcing the cutscene to play from farther away, the way it was set-up was kind of lazy in that it just triggers from the proximity of players to the mob's spawn location, but as you can see if you bypass the outer limits by teleporting in closer than expected the system has no way to know which ones should and shouldn't be spawned and does both. This was likely due to the lua script change to make the cutscene variable between modes. The dialog he uses in HM is slightly different and so the script controlling that setup is different from before. Will thinktank a fix for this.

Incarnate/Advanced Difficulty Cimeroran Traitor lieutenants had their Shout of Command (Ally +Res(Disorient, Hold, Sleep, Immobilize, Terrorize, Confusion), +Perception) replaced with Rallying Cry (Ally +DMG, +To-Hit, +Crit). The reason for this was to make the enemy group more controllable, as LTs won't be prone to free all their comrades when they hit 50% health. Cimeroran Traitor bosses still have Shout of Command like before, which they drop at 50% health, but are less likely to hit that very fast and interrupt controls being used to manage the mob pack's alpha.