Zhym

I'm really curious whether these three ran the Sister Solaris arc 100 times to get the Legatus badge. If so...yikes.

Television brings everyone together!

Hallelujah. I was getting darn tired of sliding off the track. My badger doesn't have flight powers, just a jump pack, but I'm fairly certain it took less time for me to make a cheap flight-maxed second build than learning to handle that course would have.

I'd recommend doing this badge on the Reichsman TF/SF as they can spawn two per mob (one boss and one LT) and it's generally far faster/more consistent. That defeat badge is not ASF-exclusive. The Ouroboros Initiation is another good one for this, if you want one to run solo. The mission selection, contact, and mission door are all there in Ouroboros so there's almost no travel time involved and it's quick and easy to re-run the first mission as often as you need to get all the 5th Column lycanthropes you need.

I completed that mission once for the badge, then ran it four more times, logging out to reset the mission after defeating Snaptooth each time. That smart-ass baby with low perception can find his own way back.

While running missions for the Beast Within badge, I noticed something weird with the graphics of the warwolves that replaced the soldiers: they tended to spawn with giant presents off their shoulders. The present does disappear after a moment, though. The warwolves also threw presents instead of rocks, but I figure that's just part of the Winter Event. Spawning with a giant present, though, seems like it probably wasn't the intent. 🙂

You're stepping on @Snarky's turf, there! For me, it's the costume builder. It's so fun to play dress-up with my characters and play with concepts...until I discover that the costume piece I want doesn't quite exist, or that what I want can't take a pattern, or that what I really want is three colors on a part and can only have two, or that I can't find what I want in the increasingly arcane menu structure and really long lists. It's fun...but it's also cumbersome.

There is one incentive to defeat the spawns, although it's more of a "be a good member of the community" type incentive (or, in the spirit of the holiday and the presents themselves, "Nice"). As I understand it, presents respawn more quickly when the snow beasts are cleared. Of course, a selfish player (hello, Vigilantes, Villains, and Rogues!) could decide that's other people's problems, and some do. But for people who don't want to be Naughty, there is that slight incentive to defeating the spawns. And the advantage of having them spawn at zone level is that at least clearing them is usually quick.

I agree. The way Homecoming is played today is so much different than even end-stage live that the original numbers no longer make sense; most of them can be achieved only through farming. Here's the progression I proposed when I posted about this a few months ago (well after the original post in this thread, I see, but before the necro): Badge Current Dmg New Dmg Tough / Stoic / Slammer 100,000 100,000 Indestructible / Hard Case / Big Dog 250,000 250,000 Adamant / Ironman/Ironwoman / Laughs it Off 1,000,000 500,000 Unbreakable / Iron Willed 10,000,000 1,000,000 Nigh Indestructible / Concussed 25,000,000 2,500,000 Invulnerable / Marvel of Modern Medicine 50,000,000 5,000,000 Immortal / Challenger of Gods 100,000,000 10,000,000 The idea is to roughly double the amount of damage needed for each badge and put the numbers at a level that could conceivably (but not always) be achieved through normal game play without farming.

Any advice on the “upper” run that’s more of a luge than the slalom? I managed to get the slalom badges a few months ago (fun fact: it doesn’t have to be the Winter Event to get that badge), but I can’t manage to stay on the advanced trail (I think it is). I keep sliding off the side and falling, and that’s it for any hope of hitting the time limit for the badges.

Here's another report. This time: Crey. The Issue 1 "Evil Countess Crey" arc (in Flashback as "On the Run" under "Justice Incarnate") includes both Gamma Tanks and Cryogenecists. Unfortunately, they're sparse, but the arc is so long and so chock full of Crey that you'll get lots of both if you can put up with the length. It took me about three hours on +0/x8 defeating everything that moved, and I ended up getting about 100 Gamma Tanks and 15 Cryogenecists (and 54 measly reward merits) out of the arc. Not terribly efficient for hunting. But that was solo, so it would probably go faster if you could get a group together. Also: I take back everything I said about ASF being a marathon. Compared to the Issue 1 story arcs, it's a sprint. Anyway, hunting in Grandville (in The Fab) probably makes more sense. Both Gamma Tanks and (less commonly) Cryogenecists spawn there. It took me about half an hour to tally about 50 Gamma Tanks and 5 Cryogenecists.

For characters who are already level 50+, the first mission of The Ouroboros Initiation (level 25-50) may be the best farm for The Beast Within (5th Column Lycanthropes). It starts right there in Ouro, so there's no travel time involved, and because it goes to level 50, it's easier to run at x8 (which you'll need to maximize the number of lycanthropes you get). I've only gotten about half a dozen per run, partly because it's so hard to keep from killing them before they change. But at least it's quick to quit the TF and restart it, so it shouldn't take too many runs to get the badge that way.

D'oh! That'll teach me not to be an overeager early (winter) bird!

This patch made Atlas Park winter-ready, but it didn't actually start the Winter Event. The first entry in the patch update threw me off, too, until I excitedly outfitted my badger (who needs all the Winter Event badges) with a scarf and ran to the chalet...to see no Father Time. Hopefully the Winter Event will start soon!

Looks like there was a bug that prevented Cortex from counting towards the Epidemiologist badge when defeated in the Graveyard Shift arc. The latest patch is supposed to fix that.

I, for one, am glad the devs dropped Page 3 over the Thanksgiving break instead of waiting. The fact that some flashback missions don’t count for challenge badges at the moment doesn’t seem game-breaking. Meanwhile, we have a ton of great new content to play during a time of year when more players have time to enjoy it. One question about how the updates reward tables will affect the challenge badges: will it be enough that the table contains at least 5 merits as an option, or will the player need to choose reward merits to get the challenge badge?

That’s a known issue. That mission is “very broken” and will be fixed in a future patch.

That's the answer to a different question though. "Will Homecoming be around for a while?" Who knows? It's been open to the public for over two years now and seems to be going strong, but a lot can happen. All the devs could get bored and wander off. The players could get bored and stop donating (and playing). The rights holders to CoX could decide they want to shut the server down. And yes, those of us who were there for the shutdown know that nothing is certain. But "Is the game still in active dev?" The answer to that is obvious.

Just be glad "Zero team defeats" isn't part of the challenge!

Thanks! I just scouted out those locations and added the coordinates of the spawns in my post above.

This has to be a troll post, right? I mean Issue 27 Page 3 dropped just last week. And OP wants to know if the game is still in active development. Short answer: Yes. Yes, it is. And welcome home.

For those of us who don't have VidiotMaps installed for whatever reason, do you happen to know the coordinates for each spawn location?

I don't know the spawn locations in the sewers. That would be really useful if someone could post that. But be careful in the Graveyard Shift. Salamander and Grey Matter (I think) are fighting each other in the barroom brawl. If you aren't fast enough, one of them can defeat the other before you get a chance to. BTW, here's what I know of the bosses that are needed for Epidemiologist and where they can be found: Dr. Meinst: DFB, Graveyard Shift Doc Buzzsaw: Posi 1 Cortex: Posi 2, Graveyard Shift, Abandoned Sewers Dr. Vahzilok: Posi 2, "The Vahzilok Plague" arc Newt: Graveyard Shift, Abandoned Sewers Malady: Graveyard Shift, Abandoned Sewers Grey Matter: Graveyard Shift, Abandoned Sewers Salamander: Graveyard Shift, Abandoned Sewers Pathogen: Graveyard Shift, Abandoned Sewers In order of TF/Arc: Posi 1: Doc Buzzsaw Posi 2: Cortex, Dr. Vahzilok Graveyard Shift: Cortex, Dr. Meinst, Newt, Malady, Grey Matter, Salamander, Pathogen Abandoned Sewer spawn locations: Pathogen & Malady: [1749, -322, -1635] Salamander & Newt: [2388, -128, 859] Cortex & Grey Matter: [-1508, -706, -192]

They do show up in ASF, but there weren't many of them. Part of the issue is that there's just the one Crey mission in ASF, and while it has the nine pre-populated Cryogenecists that I mentioned, the Gamma Tanks are just random spawns. I don't know the exact number, but I'd guess there were maybe a dozen or so per run. OTOH, they seem to spawn pretty regularly in 46+ content, so I'd probably go with the various Crey missions for this badge. They might also spawn with the other Crey in the Shadow Shard, but I haven't strapped on my rocket pack to find out yet.

Short of a "Tourist Mode" (which I mention upthread), I think a few design principles can help: Keep the plot simple Use cutscenes for the essential plot Put other plot points in captions Flavor text goes in NPC dialog BAF, of all things, is a good example of this. We all know the plot of the BAF iTrial—not just because most of us have run it a hundred times, but because we get the (pretty straightforward) plot explained to us at the start of the iTrial. Then we get instructions in captions as the iTrial progresses. There's a lot more going on in ASF than BAF, of course. And it does have some cutscenes that help explain what's going on. I think it could use a few more, though. For example, we get the resolution of the chip switcheroo at the very end, but that's the first most players will have learned about it. Professor Echo's dialog warning about Aeon's double-cross could be replaced with a cutscene, for example. The side-quest at Portal Corp. is another one where there's a (very cool) cutscene for the resolution, but no one but the leader gets the setup. By contrast, I think Becky is mostly done right: her chatter is flavor, so it can go in NPC dialog bubbles (although the first time I ran ASF, I thought she had a timing error in her dialog—well, monologue; only later did I realize that it was the team lead speeding through her chat). I know that "more cutscenes!" isn't something you often hear people ask for, but in a SF as long and involved as this one is, I think a few more would actually help.