Apparition

You can get most of the Halloween badges by participating in zombie invasions, and by Null the Gull taking you to a special map to trick-or-treat on all year round. You can also deliver valentine's all year round.

Yeah, but it's already happening. Torchbearer, Indomitable, and Reunion have been slowly but steadily draining to Excelsior and Everlasting for the past year and a half. If they merged the servers, they'd have a good population again and have a better chance of keeping their character name than if just everyone moved to Excelsior and/or Everlasting. Plus, a server merge would prevent Excelsior and Everlasting from getting too big as the server drain from Torchbearer, Indomitable, and Reunion continues.

I'm just at the point where I legitimately cannot see a use for an all melee damage AT in the game as it stands now. There is content in the game which requires ranged damage, which makes Scrappers and Stalkers kind of useless unless they're Claws, Kinetics Melee, or have a ranged attack from their ancillary pool. There is no content in the game which requires melee damage. Between the Defense Amplifier and Clarion Core Destiny, mez protection is no longer an issue on "squishies." Blasters do just as much, or more, damage as Scrappers and Stalkers. I do see a limited use for tanks, but I want one that has very good protection against lethal damage, energy damage, and psionic damage, with full knockback protection and resistance. As far as I can tell, such a thing does not exist. I'm going to give a Shield/Energy Melee Tanker a try at some point, but if I don't like that, that will probably be the end of my melee experiment on Homecoming. As for why I delete characters... my original gameplan was to have: three buffer characters, three debuffer characters, three melee DPS characters, three ranged DPS characters, three tank characters, three Masterminds, three miscellaneous characters, and two farming characters. Grand total of 23 characters. I do not want much more than that as I don't see the point nor need for any more characters than that, and it would just get too unwieldy for me. Now I'm leaning towards three buffer characters, three debuffer characters, six ranged DPS characters, three tank characters, three Masterminds, three miscellaneous characters, and two farming characters.

Agreed. If Torchbearer, Indomitable, and Reunion merged, it would still have a lower population than Excelsior.

It seems a lot of your problems are from playing on Reunion. I know this will be an unpopular opinion, but now that Homecoming is nearing two years old, I think it may be time to start merging some shards. Homecoming no longer has the population to really sustain more than three shards. If you merged Reunion, Torchbearer, and Indomitable to one shard, you'd still have a smaller population than Excelsior.

Ahh, yeah. From what I understand, most of the players that were on Reunion have since moved to Excelsior.

Yeah. A couple of other MSR raid leaders on Excelsior feel the same way. Personally, I find that a plus, and find the other advantages offered by instanced MSRs too compelling, but to each his or her own.

My friends know that I've been off and on considering starting Hamidon raids in The Abyss on the Excelsior shard for about a year and a half now, since I co-lead Hamidon raids for a few years back on the Champion and Exalted servers prior to sunset. But: I'm only one person, and Hamidon raids require several leaders. There are already multiple Hamidon raids every day on Excelsior. I already lead two or three instanced Rikti mothership raids per week, and I get burned out of leading after just that sometimes. There would be no room on the calendar for it without overlapping something else, between multiple MSRs every afternoon and multiple Hamidon raids in The Hive every night. Heck, I already frequently get complaints about how close my Thursday night MSRs are in time to the nightly Hamidon raids, and they start a hour and a half prior to the official Hamidon raid start time. Edit: In the meantime, I now have a couple of characters on Indomitable for Hamidon raiding there instead of Excelsior, since they raid in The Abyss every night.

FWIW, I ran the Maria Jenkins AV arc on the same character over the past two days, and I did not acquire her as a contact afterwards. *Shrug.* You got me, babe.

Blue side privilege.

Yeah, who cares about the lowbies playing red side, am I right?

Like Placta said above, on Excelsior Hamidon raids aren't advertised because the zone always fills up before even the official start time, so there's no need to. The official start time is at 10 P.M. ET/7 P.M. PT, but I advise being in The Hive at least a half hour early. Most blue side giant monsters spawn on timers, typically every four to six hours. Kraken spawns in Perez Park. Babbage spawns in Boomtown, and also in Skyway City during Synapse Task Forces. Jurassik spawns in Crey's Folly. Jack in Irons and Eochai spawn in Croatoa. Lusca spawns in Independence Port. There is also the Kronos Titan, which typically spawns in Founders', and is a result of running a story arc from Crimson. Also the Council Goliath War Walker in Boomtown, which is intentionally spawned by defeating 20 regular Council War Walkers. Red side giant monsters include Deathsurge in Cap au Diable, Ghost of Scrapyard in Sharkhead Isle, and Caleb in Nerva. Unlike blue side, all three are intentionally spawned instead of random. You spawn Deathsurge by defeating 100 gremlins in Cap au Diable, (takes about 35 minutes solo). You spawn Ghost of Scrapyard by defeating 100 Scrapyarders in Sharkhead (which takes only a few minutes at level 50). You spawn Caleb by defeating 100 spectral daemons in Nerva but only during daylight. Co-op GMs include Adamastor (can be intentionally summoned once per hour in Echo: Dark Astoria by clicking on a temp power), and the Seed of Hamidon in First Ward. The Seed of Hamidon spawns every hour (I believe), and is the hardest GM in the game. It can be done with a full team of level 50 characters.

What shard are you playing on? Hamidon raids are ran every day on at least Excelsior, Indomitable, and Everlasting. Unsure about Torchbearer and Reunion. Some Hamidon origin enhancements are very useful. They're a good way of boosting multiple effects. Especially since boosting non-purple and non-PvP IO enhancements means you no longer get the set bonus while malefactoring down. MSRs are also regularly ran on Excelsior, Indomitable, and Everlasting. Both zone and instanced MSRs are run on Excelsior, only instanced MSRs are run on Indomitable, while only zone MSRs are ran on Everlasting. They're a great way to get Incarnate threads and a decent source of reward merits. Zone MSRs, you can join at level one. Instanced MSRs require you to be level 35+ and have the Member of Vanguard badge, but have several advantages over the zone MSR. What is it that you would like to know about giant monsters? There are two signature story arcs. They start out differently depending on which side you play it on, (red side or blue side). Both are excellent and well worth doing. Tip missions aren't run as much these days as they were prior to sunset, but they're nice alternatives and a good source of reward merits. Dark Astoria is for Incarnates only, meaning you need to be level 50. It was originally intended as a solo method of gaining Incarnate abilities for those who were/are averse to Incarnate trials. What is that you would like to know about RWZ missions, and badges and accolades? Those are quite varied. Blue side, all of the Faultline story arcs are well worth doing as they are the best content in that side of the game, IMO. Red side, I recommend Veluta Lunata (ghost pirates!), The Radio, Seer Marino, Doc Buzzsaw, Darrin Wade, Vincent Ross, Slot Machine, Television, among others.

What shard are you playing on? Back in October 2019, an instanced version of the Rikti mothership raid was added to the game. It requires everyone to be level 35+ and have the Member of Vanguard badge. It is regularly run on Excelsior and Indomitable. You can read more about it here.

Maybe. Just repeating what I've been told by a few different people, although yours would make more sense.

From what I understand, Faraday Cage only provides ten points of knockback protection and no knockback resistance, which wouldn't be enough either, especially on its own. Yeah. It's one of the main reasons why I've been pushing to get knockback resistance added to the three, 'cause I honestly can't see the justification for excluding it anymore. The original justification is that the three (Dark, Fiery, and Electrical), have damage auras, so the penalty is no knockback resistance. But seeing as that was thrown out the window with Bio and Rad...

Yep. Not enough. Lord Recluse does 41 points of knockback, after the red tower is down.

Not that I know of. I tried about a half dozen different methods, and the only ways Lord Recluse didn't send my Electrical Armor Brute flying was to either have a Kin spam Increased Density, or hover tank.

Nope. Probably because short of having a Kin spamming Increased Density, hovering is the only way for a Dark Armor/Fiery Aura/Electrical Armor Brute/Tanker to successfully tank Lord Recluse.

I exclusively play red side. But, I also refuse to go into PvP zones for any reason. So I am unable to obtain the Born in Battle accolade. But, I can obtain Portal Jockey if I temporarily switch sides! I went to Null the Gull in Pocket D, and had my character's alignment temporarily switched from Rogue to Vigilante. Then I went to Ouroboros, and ran Tina Macintyre's "The Hydra Dimension" story arc via Flashback (level 40 to 44), for the Multidimensional badge. Upon completion of the story arc, I noticed that I now had Tina Macintyre as an active contact. I've done this dozens of times, and that has never happened. Her progress bar was empty, since I ran her "The Hydra Dimension" story arc via Flashback, of course. Curious, I went on to go back to Ouroboros, and run the "The Instant Army" story arc of hers via Flashback. I completed it, and opened up my contacts... and sure enough, Tina Macintyre is still listed there, but this time with a full progress bar. I can't even pinpoint this as an Issue 27, Page 1 bug, as I just did the same thing with another character last week, and that character never got Tina Macintyre as a contact.

Dual Pistols for life.

It was, otherwise I would not have explained it. Giant monsters no longer give reward merits in AE.

There are certain AE maps where you could insert giant monsters into. Some people figured out that if you add some helper NPCs (Kins ahoy), and a bunch of GMs into these particular AE maps, you'll be making gobs of reward merits in no time.

As someone who takes Hover, Fly, Afterburner, and either Super Speed or Speed of Sound on every character... no thank you. Those are choices that need to be made for every individual character, not handed out like candy to everyone. No one can have everything.

In all honesty, re-reading this thread, it sounds like you'd be happier on Rebirth if you're that unhappy with playing on Homecoming that you want to segregate the player population even more than it is already. It's more aligned with how the game was prior to sunset and sounds like what you're looking for.