Zhym

Okay—I'm gradually figuring this out. The markers I saw appeared when I "rescued" the guides (or met up with them—I actually can't remember if I defeated mobs or not). That makes sense. And it's a pretty clever mechanic. FWIW, that mechanic might be clearer with some objective text (e.g., "Lead the Spirit Guide to the summoning stone"). ETA: Although "Lead the guide to the summoning stone" would imply that there's an escort requirement, when that's not actually the case. So I don't know—something else to indicate that the guide just put a marker on the map?

Or maybe call it "Farmville." But it would be a forum for farmers (where farmers don't have to be lonely). Suitable topics would include farm-fresh builds, which AE arcs are best to farm, and—entirely incidentally—complaining about farming nerfs.

I guess I'm not seeing how they were supposed to work. In the first map, the "guides" just floated around and followed me. They didn't lead me anywhere. In the second map, the wolves (it's the wolves who are supposed to be the guides, right?) just stayed where they were. Were their locations supposed to lead me somewhere? My character has 85 ft stealth, though, so maybe that was a factor? Also, one (but, for some reason, not both) of the glowies was marked on each map. In the second map, I just found the second glowy by looking around for it and listening. They are novel! I like the idea. But in the mission, the lichen colonies spawned so many lichens so quickly that I was practically swimming in lichens in no time.

I ran through the first couple of missions of this arc and have a few more thoughts: I do think these would be fine (better, actually, IMO) without the escort aspect. The missions already involve finding glowies to summon the AVs and then "free" them. At that point, leading them to the exit is at best anticlimactic and at worst a PITA. (And while the first map is short—a good change, IMO—the second is very much not.) The "helpers" (or "guides") don't seem to offer much help or guidance. From what I can tell, all they do is follow you around and clutter the map. In the second mission, I thought it was bugged for a while there, with two AVs to "rescue" and lead to the exit. Clearly I didn't read closely enough, but making the objective text have two different goals (like "Rescue the Life Spirit" and "Rescue the Earth Spirit") could have made things clearer. And oh gods...that Baby New Year Croatoa map. Ugh. Just...ugh. Too many memories of escorting an ugly-ass BNY in that map. I suspect that the Lichen colonies may be part of the rating you're getting. Those things are annoying! If you must have escort missions, fighting escorts are definitely worse than non-fighting escorts in the second mission, IMO. All those lichens that spawn? The Finn MacCools both want to stop and fight them all. Dragging those guys to the exit point was a pain, IMO. They also seem to have a low perception radius and their "Hey, I'm lost" text is just a grunt. Those are just my opinions, obviously, based on my own preferences. But some of those might be part of why someone gave this a not-so-great rating.

A quick note on "All That Glitters" by @Ankylosaur, as I just started it. The description says, "Best played in the Mercy AE so you feel like you're there." I actually took that advice, went to Mercy, looked around for AE, checked the map...then remembered that Mercy AE went aspode in Page 4. No Mercy AE anymore. So maybe the description could use a small edit.

Oh, BTW? I love that Chris Jenkins is part of this arc.

Awesome! I have those other arcs on my to-do list. As for The Meteors, I actually did that one first, not having noticed the publication order.

I just finished it in the past day or two! It's a great arc. It does get a bit complicated, though. I need a recap. Heyyyyyy, look at this thread! Handy! Anyway, I'll save further comment until you're done with "Darkest Before the Dawn" pt. 3, except to say that there are still some threads that @Darmian left open for a sequel. So when's that gonna happen? ;) I may do @Ankylosaur's stories next. I'll be honest, the timed missions are putting me off of @cranebump's arc. I'm just not a fan of timed missions.

Look for "Nemesis Rex" under "Justice Incarnate (Level 40-49)." Personally, I find this much better for Nemesis farming than Pandora's Box ep. 5. Three runs should get you the badge. Just have good defense and resistance and avoid killing the minions and lieutenants so their vengeance buffs don't sack up and get you killed.

Well this is my mind, blown. I had no idea that the "rule of 5" was based on anything other than the bonus amount. And now I'm wondering about all those builds where I didn't bother taking a fifth (or even fourth) LotG +rech because I had 7.5% recharge bonuses elsewhere...

I took RoP on one character and got annoyed by the cooldown time since I can't just set it on auto-fire like I do with Practiced Brawler or Kuji-In Rin on my scrappers and stalkers. I later remade that character as a Defender instead of a Controller and haven't taken RoP since. I haven't missed it, really.

I haven't played this yet, but a comment on this:

But Maneuvers lets you slot all of that, too—and while the initial defense boost is lower, it scales up in groups. And it's available as the first power in the set. Fair point, but you're grouping some third, fourth, and even fifth powers in that list. Travel powers already make the third power available at level 4 with no prerequisites. And instead of making both Tough and Weave available immediately, maybe they could be done like the travel powers—Tough is available at level 4, and Weave requires Tough and one other power. Applying the same logic to other pool powers would allow Tactics, Aid Self, and Intimidate at level 4 with no other powers from the pool. That's it. Fighting, Leadership, Medicine, and Presence are the only pools where the third power still requires level 14 and one of the first two powers. And those pools all have first or second powers that are worth taking. But the real problem IMO is that Boxing and Kick are so useless (other than as a Kinetic Combat mule). I don't have any good solution for that, though—other than removing Kick and Boxing entirely and replacing them with something useful.

It's a simple QoL change. I can't possibly be the first to suggest it. However: Tough and Weave are both really useful. They appear in lots of builds. Most of my characters have one or both. Then there's Boxing and Kick. The last thing most characters need is an extra, weak, single-target melee attack power. But we take one of them because we have to to get to Tough and Weave—and then ignore it. So why not just let us take Tough or Weave directly without having to take Boxing or Kick first?

Yeah, I had to remove my base portal TARDIS too. I wonder what part of the patch caused this.

The "dead" levels are usually where I take the "dead" powers I need to get other powers (I'm looking at you, Boxing).

True, and also sort of a shame. It's an easy way to keep her dialogue tree simple, but after all my character did for Katie (or, in one case, to Katie), it would have been nice for that to have been more deeply reflected in our interactions. Compare that to Penny Yin. If you run the Mr. G red-side arc "The End of a Yin" after having done the Praetorian Resistance arc "My Best Friend, Rusty," Praetorian Penny Yin has a few heartbreaking things to say about your betrayal. I actually felt really bad.

I assume you've looked at this thread already? If so, my only other note is that the "Cool Customer" badge is for Crey Cryogenecists, not Cryo Tanks.

Yup! I confess to using this thread (or the story-specific thread) to remind myself where I'd seen that name before. Pretty cool callback. BTW, a note for @Darmian: it looks like the "Info" box for Operative Sariss has the text for Bane Spider Hugo.

It works out really well IMO. ETA: BTW, I really appreciate how the mission objective text highlights where those objective should be (i.e., [back], [front], [middle]). It makes hunting the objective so much easier. Well, usually, anyway. In the mission in the ship, the generator that was supposed to be in the back was closer to the front (and hidden behind a stack of shipping containers). Again: AE gonna AE; not much to do about it. But it's helpful to know where the objectives are supposed to be, anyway.

Oh, right! We just don't see it in action (then again, I guess we usually don't). Am I right that the meteor hitting Atlas Park in 1966 was also part of the plot because of the AE map choices?

I just wish AE gave us the option to experience some of the things first-hand that can only be described. I want to see the repurposed Arachnos Flyer, physically visit the Meteors' makeshift base in the Geneva Hotel, etc. Ah, well. AE is what it is. I've been impressed with how @Darmian has used various maps for different purposes (although I think I've done ITF too many times for me to see the final map from that trial as anything else).

I just ran this (prompted by @TerroirNoir's excellent and hilarious reviews) and was likewise wondering what was going on with the lawyers. I assume they're custom hostiles with no attack powers, so they just follow you around with no way to hit you. Clever. The mission intro text says something about trying not to hurt the lawyers, which added kind of a TPN-trial flavor and made the mission interesting for my AoE-heavy blapper. I think I managed to avoid killing any lawyers, but I'm curious—does anything happen if you do lay waste to enemy and civilian alike?

Correct on both counts. I wonder if there's anywhere that archives what the level progression looked like in Issue 18, when Preatoria rolled out. ETA: Looking at Paragon Wiki, the level progression seems to have been the same since 2004. So what makes leveling go so much faster now?

It's not an unreasonable expectation, but it's not one that's going to be satisfied in Praetoria. The Praetorian content wasn't really written with the idea that players would do all the content on both the Loyalist and Resistance side—rather, it seems to have been designed for replayability, with players able to choose different paths each time through. And that was with Retail's much slower level progression. Add in the faster level gains in Homecoming, and I've had to pause XP just to do all the contacts in one faction (e.g., Loyalist Power), much less all the missions in all four factions. Note that although you can do the missions through Ouro, you won't always have the option to check in with the contact for your "true" alignment that way. As you probably know, many of the Praetorian missions prompt you to call either Calvin Scott (Resistance) or Provost Marchand (Loyalist) when you're working undercover with the opposite faction. If your character isn't of Praetorian origin, you can't do either of these in Ouro missions. If you started life as a Praetorian, you'll always have your "true" alignment contact available, even in Ouro—but you have to go to them in person (you can't call them because while you're in FB, they won't show up in your contacts). But the opposite alignment contact will never be available in Ouro missions. And at some point Calvin Scott disappears from Praetoria, even in Flashback missions, so my Praetorian Resistance character wasn't able to contact him for secret instructions, either. (To be clear, though, Calvin Scott is available as a contact in the arc for which he's the main contact; he just doesn't appear on the map otherwise). tl;dr: You can do all the Praetorian content through Ouroboros, but you won't have all the options in that content that you have if you run it as you level.