Zhym

The parts I never really got about ITF until you explained them are the bits about being told to "Consult the Oracle" (because that's part of the dialogue that Imperious has with only the TF leader?) and why they're involved. I honestly had no idea until now, for example, that the reason we take out the cyst crystals is to de-power Romulus. But you're right that none of those nuances are really necessary to get (or enjoy) the gist of the story. BTW, I think one of the best TFs in terms to laying out the story for the whole team is the Miss Liberty TF. Here's what I know about the plot in that one: Lord Recluse is building something that will buff him to an even greater power level. Dr. Aeon has a "brilliant" plan that will trap the TF in a future where Lord Recluse has conquered the world. Unfortunately for Aeon, he really needs to record his gloating victory monologues in advance. There's some stuff about the thorn tree and having to beat Dr. Aeon again, but it's not important to the plot. Mostly it's a chance to beat down some B-roll archvillains. Despite the heroes' efforts, including defeating his top lieutenants, Lord Recluse's Web is completed! Bow down before his POWER! Or, y'know, take down two or three of the towers, put the hurt on Recluse, and save the world (again). Whichever. The plot is straightforward, and most of it is conveyed through cutscenes. I mean, we all know where Arbiter Sands goes to get a decent cup of coffee, right?

I agree that ITF's story is a little more suited to team play than ASF is, but I've played ITF I don't know how many times now and this is still all I know of the plot: Imperious needs our help! (I know this because his name is on the TF). A bunch of scantily clad Sybils need to be rescued! (Despite their profuse expressions of gratitude, my heterosexual male character just lets them...run off?) And Sister Solaris needs to get to the altar (and we've only just met)! Okay, now there's something with Kheldians and cyst crystals that we need to destroy and the traitors don't want us to destroy for...reasons? There's a whole mess of Cimeroran traitors that need to be walloped, including lots of cyclopes and minotaurs. Hey! The 5th Column are involved in this somehow with a BIG DAMN MECH (that, alas, never gets out of its scaffolding). And, hey, Romulus Augustus is in this too, and—Requiem? We beat Romulus Augustus down, and he has failed. But wait! He is...NICTUS! The champions will be a feast laid before him! (I know this because of the cutscene. Also...no; no they will not. Romulus will go down. Frequently, in some runs.) I guess I do know a lot about ITF, but I wouldn't say I've really grasped the story except that it has something to do with the 5th Column building a big damn mech and buffing Romulus with nictus power-ups. Which, to be fair, is still probably fairly close to the full plot, which is a lot simpler than ASF's story.

They do count. But you cannot make another one if you have one of that type. I think... Empowerment buffs are the cheap way to craft more inventions, but @KaizenSoze is right that once you have one, you can't make it again until the previous one expires. There are 25 of them and they expire after 90 minutes of in-game time. I found them to be a pretty good way to make progress towards the Master Craftsman and Fabricator badges while still playing the game instead of spending lots of time crafting. If you make a list of the salvage you need for a complete set of 25 empowerments and get into the habit of stopping by a base to fill up again when the last set expires, the badge progress is pretty steady if you play the toon a lot. Plus, most of the enhancements themselves are pretty handy (with the exception of Increase Knockback and, if you think you'll end up with any escort missions, Grant Invisibility).

I don't know, but I'm so glad we have them around to tell us we're playing the game wrong. Here I was, having tons of fun, not realizing that I wasn't supposed to be! Sorry not sorry.

Here’s how I understand it. The Knives of Artemis are a mercenary group operating as an independent wing of Malta. They mostly appear in Malta missions, and have an annoying perception boost that lets them see right through stealth. They also like to carpet the floor with caltrops. During the Dark Astoria arc, you learn that the Knives of Artemis are being converted into the Knives of Vengeance (losing their caltrops and perception bonus in the process, it seems). Then you destroy the Knives of Vengeance, bringing both the Knives of Vengeance and the Knives of Artemis to an end. The Talons of Vengeance are a Praetorian Earth group led by Sorceress Serene and encountered in the First Ward series of arcs. It’s Serene and the Talons that have the whole Furies thing going on. If your character has encountered the Talons in First Ward (specifically, if you’ve done Master Midnight’s arc), a dialog option will appear with Heather Townshend where you speculate that the Knives of Vengeance have something to do with the Talons of Vengeance. Later (regardless of whether you’ve fought the Talons before) you learn from Praetor Duncan that the Talons had been recruiting the Knives of Vengeance to “purge the world of injustice.” The Talons show up as enemies in the Dark Astoria arc from that point on.

I managed to join a PUG badge run last night, so the Winter Event may indeed have been partly responsible for the lower ASF activity last week. BTW, this particular PUG badge run went amazingly well. I forget the exact composition, but IIRC it had a tank, a controller, and at least four blasters. On Malicious, it took a little under an hour (including the optional AVs) and we burned through pretty much everything. Still plenty of deaths, of course, but not to the extent that it was frustrating. Once you know the SF's tricks, a good team shouldn't have any problem getting the badges. I still want a Tourist/Squishy-Solo Mode, though, so I can click on all the things without slowing the team down (because there are so many things to click on).

Or a Defender. 😜 I've basically sworn off MSRs unless I'm badging or leveling, except for two ATs: (1) Tankers, because the Rikti pulling game is fun (especially for an Invuln tanker with the Psi hole), and (2) an Empathy Defender who can sit in the bowl and autofire Healing Aura (plus the occasional Vengeance, if I'm quick enough) while I chat. With blasters, it's just spamming attacks (the only minigame is timing the AoEs right when more Rikti TP in), and it's actively frustrating with melee toons (oh, hey, there's a Rikti! I'll just run over there and...oh, dead already. Hey, there's another one! I'll—nope, invalid target. Repeat for 30 minutes). I may have poured myself a drink in celebration when my Blaster badger did his 10th MSR for the Master at Arms and Demolitionist badges and so would never have to MSR again.

I'd really like to be able to make suggestions to NPCs. Not commands, because they're fully realized individuals with hopes and dreams of their own, but suggestions. Like, "Would you please come here?" or "Maybe think about not running off and attacking every hostile in your perception radius, if death isn't a thing you're actively seeking?" Polite requests like that. Oh, and I'd like a Portable Leash temp power for escort missions.

I really want to play @TheZag's version of the MSR Trial described above. Holy heck that sounds like fun.

I guess it depends on what you mean by PUGs and "connected." I've done all of the iTrial badge runs done as PUGs—MoBAF and MoLambda most often, but also MoDD and MoMag (on Excelsior, @Oklahoman leads all of these on rotation and seems to have them down to a science). MoUnderground, MoTPN, and MoKeyes are a little harder to find, but badge runs come up often enough—and with Keyes, the main risk seems to be fixed by having enough people with Incan. Other non-incarnate trials were even easier to do as badge runs—no temp powers and no deaths wasn't that high a bar, really. But the ASF badges are a lot more like the iTrial badges in that you need to do specific things to get them. But I imagine some of those PUGs may have come from a certain chat channel which I thought was at least semi-public, but maybe not. Anyway, as someone with a badger who has all the Mo badges except the new ASF ones, I hope getting them doesn't require being better connected.

Is anyone seeing PUGs for this since the initial flurry of activity last week? I was hoping to glom onto a group doing badge runs, but the only call I’ve seen so far was a group doing a Vicious run (I think) looking for a particular AT. That may be an issue with a SF mode that requires strategy and a balanced team: people might be less willing to run the SF with PUGs. Whatever problems folks have with TFs and SFs that can be burned down by whatever few randos show up, they do have the advantage of letting people form PUGs quickly and accept whoever asks to join, without too much worry that the whole thing will go off the rails (@Snarky’s experiences notwithstanding). Or maybe it’s just that everyone is doing Winter Event runs instead and ASF badge runs will resume after the new year.

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!