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I tried maxing everything I could, but nothing enabled the Desaturation effects option. Could be WINE, could be my Mac Mini's Intel 630 graphics card.

That seems likely. Mine is currently set to "N/A" and I don't see a way to change it. Is there a different option I need to set to enable this?

From what I can tell, my graphics settings don't seem to make a difference in whether Old School Vision or Retro Vision work. I normally run around with various Advanced Mode settings set mostly for performance that doesn't look too bad. But I tried disabling Advanced Graphics Settings and setting the graphics quality everywhere from Performance to Ultra, and still, Old School Vision and Retro Vision didn't do anything.

The "Old School Vision" and "Retro Vision" powers don't seem to do anything when I activate them. Is that happening for anyone else? I'm on a Mac, FWIW. I assume that's the reason (probably something related to WINE).

I just finished running this with one of the more silver-age toons I have (at least the one who isn't a tanker, because running arcs solo on a tanker is sooooo slow), and I agree—this is a great arc. There are a few typos or grammar/style issues in the text, but the story is top notch.

Woot! Glad you're back. BTW, I noticed something when editing the top post. In the "All That Glimmers" 3.x series, here are the mission numbers: All That Glimmers 3.1: Summonings in Nerva Archipelago [43022] All That Glimmers 3.2: Ninjas in the Wind [40394] All That Glimmers 3.3: Gods in the Planes [43537] Part 3.2 was published before the other two—May 2021 as opposed to August and September for 3.1 and 3.2, respectively. @Ankylosaur, what's the story there?

Right? If I'm on with my +3 Incarnate, it's almost certain that he's not only already done the MJ arc and met the Praetorians, but also saved the world from Mot and gone quite a ways toward thwarting Emperor Cole's invasion of Primal Earth.

BTW, this thread linked in Oklahoman's signature is directly relevant here:

I ran an 8-member blaster team tonight and got it, so it seems to be fixed now.

I almost forgot these guys: I created the second one after a big outage (due to Homecoming's hosting provider) a few years ago.

Great thread idea. Here's my main, 70s Man. I won't say his outfit wouldn't stand out in 2024, but he's wearing street clothes. He also has a fancier outfit for the disco: Then there's Mediocre Fred. He's inspired by a Smothers Brothers song. He's a werewolf. His human form started as the first guy below, but then I decided to play off of the name "Fred" and give him a bicyclist outfit. Finally, this is The Bureaucrat, with his standard outfit, ready-for-action jacket-free look, and a nice sweater vest for Casual Friday:

Is that from monster hunting in general, or specifically Scrapyard? Scrapyard was such a weird mega-event that I'm not sure what to make of drop rates on that one. But if the drop rate is supposed to be 10%, that would mean there's a 90% chance of getting at least one drop after defeating 22 GMs and a 99% chance after 44. There's a 50% chance at 7. So if we're seeing numbers in the 22-44 range without a drop (Scrapyard excepted), it seems like it's not a 10% chance, whatever the patch notes say. I haven't battled enough non-Scrapyard GMs to do those numbers personally, though.

I did quote that language at the top of the thread. :) And I've been getting reward merits at an insane pace—so it's definitely not the case that there's a 10% chance of getting the pet recipe every time you get reward merits. Whether that's WIA is a different question, of course.

I really enjoy teaming with my Kin/Sonic Defender. Teams love speed boosts, and Sonic has some nice debuff for when you aren't making everyone go zoom. I never feel idle or useless with that character. That character does have Siren's Song, which is a big AoE sleep, but she doesn't use it when teaming (because there's not much point). It comes in handy when she solos, though.

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought it was going to be about the average age of most Homecoming players. And then I thought, well, that's actually probably a bit low...

I ended up getting the pet recipe after about 160 kills or so. My working theory is that it's tied to the criteria for getting the badge: if your team doesn't get enough of the damage percentage, the drop roll doesn't even happen. But that's just a theory.

Before the latest issue dropped, it wasn't that hard to spawn Scrappy with a bit of Scrapyarder hunting and then take him down with a team of 4 or so. If that's still the case after Tuesday's patch drops, it shouldn't be that hard to get the badge. It might even be easier, since it seems like you have to be on a team that gets a certain percentage of the damage on him to get credit for the badge, and Big Damn Leagues actually make that harder to do.

From the patch notes: What does that mean, exactly? I thought it meant that if you got enough credit on defeating a GM that you received reward merits, you also had a 10% chance of getting a recipe for a mini pet version of that same monster. But I joined Scrapyard Beatdown 2024 for a while today, and after defeating Scrappy about 70 times, I don't see any pet recipes. So now I'm wondering if I'm reading the patch notes wrong.

At least they're exploiting the new content. The first time I logged in after the patch went live, It wasn't 30 seconds before I saw someone in LFG looking for a fire farm. All that new stuff—and still, there are people just doing fire farms.

I usually find that Sprint + Athletic Run (or, if you're into weird running stances, Beast Run or Ninja Run) is more more than adequate for moving around missions. Combat Jumping adds a nice bit of vertical movement, and it also gives some defense and is a LoTG mule, so most of my characters have that as well. A jetpack gets me any flying I need.

Is anyone working on adding the Issue 27 Page 7 badges to this?

Wait—in Mage-Killer Tatiana's new arc, you're supposed to beat up Stephanie Peebles? Damn. I may have to skip that one. Beating up little old widows to take their wedding rings is a bit too much on the Westin Phipps side of villainy. (Seriously. Screw that guy.) And, yeah, I know that but still.

Interesting to see reactions that it was too long and too short. :) I agree with @cranebump, though, that it seemed a little too much for a "Personal Story." I figured it would be more like the Dark Astoria or Praetorian personal stories—a little bit of behind-the-scenes exposition that our characters couldn't be expected to be privy to, short and straightforward, maybe with a chance to kick some butt with a completely overpowered hero á la Emperor Cole or Anti-Matter. I agree that it's really well done. But I also agree that it would be more engaging if there had been a way to have the player's character be an actual protagonist instead of riding along for someone else's story. It's a problem I think CoX has fallen into at times: leaning too heavily into the lore and the major NPCs like Statesman, etc. I play because I want to play my toon, not because I want to be a bit player in some NPC's story. The great thing about CoX not being a Marvel or DC property is that none of our characters have to play second fiddle to Iron Man or Superman. So why would CoX introduce Iron Man or Superman equivalents for us to play second fiddle to? But I digress a bit.

Piercing Shot is lots of fun in the BAF iTrial, though. The escaping prisoners line up so nicely for it.