Zhym

It's probably accurate to say that gambling in the U.S. is at the very least highly regulated—to the point where the easiest policy for a game like Homecoming (which is still of shaky legitimacy in terms of IP rights, remember) is just to say "no gambling." Saves a lot of lawyers' fees that way. And personally, I'm not really a fan of making gambling a thing in-game. First, I'm not crazy about the image of "heroes" whiling away their time at the craps table while crime is going on outside. And I also remember what happened in Puzzle Pirates years ago when they added poker tables—suddenly a large number of players just sat around playing poker instead of playing the rest of the game. It did a lot of damage to the ability to team up in a game where soloing was rarely an option. Then again, unless the payoff is better than AE farming, that may be a baseless fear.

I love Ki Push (especially followed by any sort of gunshot power—I keep meaning to make a macro that activates Ki Push while my character shouts, "Pull!"), but I've lost count of the number of times I've Ki Pushed enemies into walls where I can no longer target them. It seems to happen in tunnel maps a lot.

I wish I knew what the logic is behind whether Guides use their swords or crossbows. I had a good run going before the last server restart with a pair of Guards who were quite accommodating and never switched from the swords. Starting the mission again post-reboot, it seems like one or the other is always switching to their crossbow, even though they're standing right next to me.

Oh right. I keep forgetting about AE.

Darn it. "Rufus T. Firefly" is already taken as a character name. And I've been curious about this—what do characters who never leave Praetoria do after about level 35? I assume you can still do the First Ward and Night Ward arcs without leaving gold side, but what then? Ouroboros is closed to Praetorians, right? Can they join iTrials? Or do you just stop playing that character after the Night Ward arc?

Huh. Just shows how much difference a secondary can make (or how opinions can differ). My DP/MC blaster has been an absolute blast kick joy to play. Just all kinds of fun.

An SJ/WP scrapper was my first character on Homecoming. I had a grand time playing him, but I don't return to it that often. Part of it is that I didn't really have a grasp on enhancement set slotting yet. Every now and then I think I should respec and re-slot him, but then I remember what a pain the respec interface is, and that I've got a bunch of other characters I enjoy playing as-is.

Oh my. That has to be the winner. If you ever wanted to play CoH by mail, this combo might just be slow enough to do it.

Also, at a very basic level: any IO set is going to be better than SOs or IOs. For example, slotting a six-slotted attack power with common IOs can get you about +97% damage and +42% each to accuracy, endurance, and recharge at level 50. An uncommon IO set will give you roughly 97% damage and 69% to accuracy, recharge, and endurance, plus a whole bunch of bonuses to your combat stats. Those bonuses may seem minor, but they can really add up when most of your powers are slotted up with IO sets. As @Snarky and @Doomguide2005 said, it's almost impossible to screw up slotting. Which sets you have matters much less than having sets at all. The wiki page is great for figuring out what the bonuses from each set are. Some people get into "frankenslotting," where they mix and max sets to maximize certain bonuses. Others are fans of making "proc monsters," which maximize damage through "proc" enhancements that add bonus damage. But that's advanced-level slotting. Even basic slotting will improve your character tremendously.

Here are a few guides that might help:

Thanks for this. It's made running CoH in the background for AFK badge farming much less stressful for my computer.

Buy? They won't even let me in to Drenched Donuts! Every time I even try the door, I'm told that I cannot enter!

I think this is right. I had my UI zoomed in ('cause I'm old, and functioning eyesight ended up not being one of my superpowers—or even normal powers) and couldn't read the badge names. When I reset the UI to 100%, the badge names were all visible. I'm guessing the UI scaling changes a lot of variables that not everything handles well.

I dunno; having seen a lot of "olde style downtowns" pop up in the suburbs, complete with faux-weathered facades, that part seems pretty believable to me.

Kristof Jaeger is like the proverbial pie-eating contest where the prize is more pie.

Just to clarify: I know the count doesn't reset with each badge. I just meant that if I were starting with zero damage, it would take a little over nine days of damage farming with CoT Guides to go from no damage-taken badges to having all of them. I'm at almost 69 million damage taken now, so I should have the badge sometime Tuesday unless I stop farming and, I dunno, actually play the game.

Well, that plus listening requires a different sort of attention than reading. You don't have to look away from the battle to hear someone say "WHOA!" But really, anyone who is paying attention and listened at the start of the TF should be watching the health bars at that point anyway, not all the FX on the screen.

I, for one, appreciate that Oklahoman doesn't use Discord. I used it once to get Really Hard Way (and possibly Triple Threat—I can't remember now if I got that on one of Oklahoman's runs or a RHW run), but I really prefer not having to fire up Discord to play CoH. I suspect that the BAF Keep 'em Separated badge is actually teaching people the wrong lesson: that there's plenty of wiggle room around the "same time" timing. Thing is, though, the timing on Triple Threat is a lot tighter and the AVs have much better regeneration. So people can kind of get away with not watching chat in BAF and still sneak away with the badge. In Magesterium, not so much. The timing for Triple Threat is so tight that it's hard to get even if everyone is paying attention to chat and attacking only when told. Without Discord, you need both a good group and luck to get that badge.

Thanks for this. I eventually figured out what I was missing about the CoT Guide method, which was that Rest caps regen (because of course it does—that's the point). My blaster has been enjoying the tender mercies of a couple of CoT thorns for the past several days, taking about 449,000 damage per hour. At that rate, it would take about 222 hours—or a little over 9 days—to get the badge from zero. So I stand corrected: it is possible to get this badge without multi-boxing (hooray!). I do still think that 100,000,000 damage is a bit over the top as a badge target, though, and am skeptical that anyone would get it through normal adventuring. Maybe a regen tanker could, after years of play, but Homecoming's faster leveling and greater number of alts makes even that seem unlikely, IMO.

I'm generally not a huge fan of most of the overarching game lore—it seems like the more a story has to do with the lore, the less agency a player has (I'm looking at you, Who Will Die?). And the game has already explored a lot of "What if?" through Praetoria ("What if Statesman were evil?") and time-travel portals ("What if Recluse won?"). But there are a few things where the existence of Ouroboros raises not only "What if?" questions but, "Why not?" The most obvious is, yes, the death of major NPCs, which the existence of Ouroboros complicates (usually resulting in some sort of timey-wimey rationalizations of why although we can change history, these events can't be changed). But almost any story arc offers a "what if?" For example, what if someone traveled back in time to prevent the development of portal technology on Primal Earth, thus preventing contact with Praetorian Earth? Does Praetoria continue on peacefully (if oppressively) under Cole's truce with Hamidon? Does the lack of portal technology change Primal Earth in any way, save for incarnates having a lot less to do? The First Ward story arc is also one where, once a character has gone through it all, there are several places where someone who finds out what was happening all along might want to go back in time and change a few things, or at least avoid some forms of carnage (I mean, at the very least you might be able to save Katie Douglas some additional trauma). As far as I know, there's only one flashback arc (Laura Lockhart's) that really plays with the implications of time travel. It's really well done though, IMO. And this isn't really a "go back and change the past" what-if, but what if Praetorian characters could stay loyalists when they come to Primal Earth? The options now are to go hero or villain, but either way, they eventually end up opposing Cole's invasion. But what if they, I dunno, agree that the invasion is necessary for the survival of both Earths? It would be interesting to have dueling iTrials: some trying to stop the invasion, some trying to make it happen.

After what happened to Overbrook, Eastgate, Venice, White Plains, Baumton, Astoria, and Woodvale—not to mention the level of everyday theft and property destruction—I'd expect that any insurance company in Paragon City has either long gone bankrupt or gotten very good at not paying out claims.

They're probably more for backup in case someone finally manages to take out Terra Volta or blow the Faultline dam. With the main sources of power being such juicy targets for villainous activity, is it any wonder that there would be a push for distributed solar energy at some point in the city's history?

You’re more concerned with the direction the solar panels are facing than the fact that they’re on a building in Dark Astoria?

Working from memory here, but check Events.

For SOs and basic non-set IOs, the simple rule is at more than three, the effects diminish sharply. For enhancement sets, that all changes because the enhancements typically boost multiple effects (damage/accuracy, damage/recharge, etc.) and are designed so that having the whole set won’t trigger ED. And a Hami origin basically counts as one of each of the two things it boosts. But with basic SOs and IOs, stop at three. I usually go for enhancement sets by the time any powers have 5 or 6 slots, so I don’t have a recommended basic slotting, but Dmgx3, Acc, End, Rech seems a reasonable approach. But really, you’ll get much better results out of an uncommon enhancement set, which shouldn’t cost much money.