Zhym

I'm learning that, yes. :) I was going to use this toon to play through all the Praetorian arcs and switch alignments several times, but now I think I really need a stalker so I can stealth past some of the large maps full of ghouls. The AR/Inv Sentinel also compares unfavorably to my DP/MC Blaster, who I've been having a...well, a blast playing. I keep trying to kick mobs away and it keeps not working because I'm not playing that character. So this is what I get for putting a theme build in Praetoria.

As someone who ran every red side arc not long ago, then went through with a toon who did most of the hero and villain missions by switching alignments a lot (that got narratively weird), I'll offer a different take: while there are some problematic red side story arcs, most of them tend more toward cartoon villainy. Some of the most fun arcs in the game are in the Rogue Isles—the problem is that most of those arcs are in the mid to high levels. The low-level missions don't do a good job of showcasing how fun being a bad guy can (eventually) be. The truly dark red side arcs are rare, IMO. "Johnny's Main Squeeze" (from Jezebel Jones (35-40, St. Martial)) is the worst, IMO. It's not dark so much as creepy: you're supposed to kidnap a woman who Johnny "Any Resemblance to Frank Sinatra is Purely Coincidental" Sonata has decided is going to be his woman—whether she wants to be or not. Yeah, I'll pass on the "accessory to sexual assault" story arc, thanks. Lt. Harris (5-7, Mercy Island) suffers from the same problem. The other arc that made me feel like I needed a shower was Westin Phipps (Grandville, 40-44)—destroying books? Really? I may be a villain, but I'm not a cretin! And that may not even be the worst thing about Phipps. But it's a well-written arc, IMO, and one that rewards reading the clues. But there are so many fun red side arcs. Some of my favorites include: Radio (Port Oakes, 10-14) and Television (Grandville, 40-45) Brother Hammond (Cap au Diable, 15-24). He's a Luddite—so you will never be able to call him. Because he's a Luddite! I love little details like that. Willy Wheeler (Cap au Diable, 15-19). Poor Willy. He wants to be a player, but he's so not. Dean MacArthur (20-29) and Leonard (20-29). This is where you can really start feeling like you're coming into your own as a villain. Plus, it's got a classic cartoon storyline and one of the tougher missions in the game, depending on your AT. Darrin Wade (Sharkhead Isle, 20-30). Yeah, it's pretty lame that of all the villains the live devs chose to kill off Statesman, it was this mid-level schmoe. Still, his arc introduces a lot of lore that comes up later, so this is still a worthy contact IMO. Operative Vargas (20-24). Vargas is what you get if an Arachnos soldier gets an MBA. His dialog is hilarious. Bobby Curtain (Nerva Archipelago, 25-29). This is for rogues only, but it's an unusual arc and well worth switching alignments for. Johnny Sonata (St. Martia, 35-39). Although I don't like Jezebel Jones's arc, Johnny's own mission arc has a really good story. Vernon von Grun (Grandville, 45-50). Now this is a cackling cartoon villain! I love von Gun's arc. Efficiency Expert Pither (Grandville, 45-50) Ambassador Kur'Rekt (Grandville, 40-44) Mr. G (St. Martial, 30-50). I think Mr. G's arc may be a better post-fall-of-Praetoria story than the hero equivalent. Recruiting a team of henchman makes you feel like you've become a real power. (I'd wait to do it at level 50+ after the Dark Astoria and incarnate trials, where it makes more sense in the overall story). Maybe it's blasphemy, but I think the red side endgame is much better than blue side. For heroes (mine, anyway), levels 40-50 are basically Tina McIntyre and Maria Jenkins, and that's about it. The other story arcs in that level range are really long and mostly date back to Issue 1—which means lots of unnecessary defeat-all missions and other mission-design sins that the devs were smart to move away from in later issues. But villains have so much to choose from at high levels. And the high levels are where things really get fun for a villain, especially if you held off on the Mr. G and Pandora's Box stories. Get yourself some minions, challenge Lord Recluse, beat up some heroes, and basically rule! Plus, the arcs tend to be short, which I prefer to the Issue 1 marathons on red side. I even like the patron arcs. Yes, they're all basically the same, and if "betraying" the patron is going to be such a major point (I mean, Scirocco in particular just won't stop whining about it), there ought to be a bigger element of choice. But they're pretty good at creating a feeling of moving up in the world of villainy. So, yeah. tl;dr: There's a lot I like about red side.

Is there any way to switch a character from Praetorian to a hero or villain before level 20? I rolled up a toon with the intent of running him through all the Praetorian content, but I'm realizing that the AT (AR/Inv Sentinel, FWIW) is going to be a slog. Null the Gull doesn't offer what I'm looking for—is this just a delete and re-roll situation?

It might be useful to add level ranges to the above text—I hadn't realized that Twilight's Son had a level cap for his missions. For some reason, I thought everyone in Ouroboros was good up to 50+. So there I was, looking for something to do at level 35 after finishing Night Ward, and I figured I'd do Twilight Son's arc. Kind of a surprise when he had nothing for me! Shauna Braun and Martin Weintraub are both (25-29), and Twilight's Son is (25-34). The Major is actually available at levels (30-40). I agree that it's worth doing for vigilantes, most of whom are probably just fine not "arresting" people. But I found this arc less engaging than other vigilante & rogue arcs, mostly because of the dead drop and keyword structure. BTW, if you think The Major's story is in slightly bad taste, have you done the tip missions to go from Vigilante to Villain? Some of those are pretty dark. But they're also really well done, IMO—some of the best missions in the game from a character story perspective. I highly recommend doing the alignment round trip through tip missions at least once.

Sure! But ideally, the difficulty slider would accommodate both billion-inf IO'd exemping incarnates looking for a challenge and less powerfully built leveling toons who want to be able to complete the mission. If +4/x8 and solo AVs aren't enough to do it at the high end, then that's something that could use some work. But at the same time, a mission should at least be possible to complete at the "easy" end of the slider. This one, for my particular build, isn't.

I'm glad you enjoyed it! Obviously, I can only speak for myself, running the arc with a particular toon. That's not a bad idea, but IMO it needs more than the usual warning. IO sets have upped the power level so much that "<Arch-villain Name> is really tough, so you might want to bring some friends" translates to me as, "So you might want to turn the mission difficulty down from +4 on this one." This one needs a warning like, "No, really, I mean it—if you are trying to run this solo and you're not a fully-IO'd incarnate exemping down, just give up now." Obviously, it depends on the AT and powersets. I tried to run this with a toon (as I mentioned above, a level 30 Dual Pistol/Martial Combat blaster) who is taking the "slow path" through content. He has IOs, but not the most expensive ones. He's not min/maxed out, but I managed to get him to about 16% ranged defense, at least. His key to survival is damage and keeping everyone at ranged distance (or on their asses, or flying helplessly backwards through the air) through Ki Push, Dragon's Tail, and knockback effects. He dies quickly when overwhelmed with numbers in melee. I also have him doing the full-circle alignment path (through morality missions!) from hero to villain and back again; currently, he's a rogue in the process of redemption to a hero. He did The Graveyard Shift as a vigilante, and while it was challenging, none of the missions slammed him into a brick wall the way The Freakish Lab did. I'll put more specific notes about the arc in spoilers: Maybe it's just that I had the absolute wrong AT and build to try to solo this arc. But I also think that this is "Homecoming Hard," which means it was tuned to be challenging for people who powerleveled to 50, have fully-slotted powers full of IO sets, and are running the arc exemped down. Those toons will have a much easier time of the arc than mine did—and, needless to say, a toon from pre-IO-set Live, who would have just gotten access to SOs at level 30, would be paste on the floor of these missions. That brings up a larger question, I think, of what the target of a challenge should be. Is it the character who would have been expected in Live? Someone more current, who has access to IOs, but maybe not the most expensive of them yet, and is still leveling? Or is it a fully-IO'd incarnate exemped down? It seems to me like this mission was meant to be challenging to the latter, which makes it frustratingly impossible for my squishy blaster who is still in the process of leveling up.

You aren't missing anything. In the immortal words of Roger Ebert: I hated, hated, hated, hated, hated that arc. Hated the stupid escort mission that only told you it was an escort mission when you got halfway through. Hated the endless waves of minions that kept spawning over and over. Hated the "Map not available" maps that had no reason to be mapless. Hated the way all the clever dialog would hit the screen at once—usually while you were trying to fight the aforementioned hordes of minions and didn't exactly have a leisurely moment for reading. Hated the massive walls of text. Hated the mission where you had to keep several trigger-happy NPCs alive through a long sewer map. But most of all, I hated how completely unbalanced it is compared to every other redside arc. Some of the writing is funny. But it's not worth it for how painful the story arc is to play. There's at least one mission that was completely impossible with my L30 DP/MC IO'd blaster (even at -1/x0). Not challenging, not incredibly difficult, but "there's no fscking way I can beat this guy solo, let alone with hordes of other mobs spawning during the battle." First time I had to autocomplete because of mission difficulty in a long, long time. And the arc is so. damn. long. The Graveyard Shift is a frickin' masterpiece compared to The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok. (Apologies to the author: I know a lot of work went into it. But it's just not fun to play.)

Hah! There's slow, and then there's crawling. There are only so many times I need to see the scenery of a tram station. :)

I'll second this. The story line is a classic of the genre and features a couple of challenging missions that use mechanics not seen a lot elsewhere in the game. It's a "must-do" IMO and well worth inclusion in the guide. Spoiler tags for the arc, in case anyone wants to be surprised when they do it: Roy Cooling's arc doesn't have to be done after the other two, but his last mission gives you an additional option if you did the other ones first. So I'd do them in this order: Keith Nance (20-29) > Jenni Adair (20-29) > Roy Cooling (20-29) I'd also suggest doing Mercedes Sheldon's (20-25) arcs. They're fairly short, have a good story, and are mostly stealthable. Christine Lansdale (25-29) has another strong arc that I think is the player's first introduction to a major villain faction: One final note: some of these are old-school arcs that will send you hopping all over Paragon City, so I'd recommend having some fast cross-zone travel powers set up to make that less painful.

Build 2 is a big improvement, thanks. Being able to get access to LRT by accessing any one exploration badge in the zone makes that much more useful, IMO. And the Fast Travel menu fixes the tray clutter issue. But the fast travel menu is also kind of a hack that highlights what I think is still a problem: multiple travel powers are treated as a necessity. As I said above, multiple travel powers are fine as long as a player only needs one of them. I don't think you're quite there yet with 10-minute cooldowns for the non-day-job powers—that will be a problem for a majority of users (by your own data!) unless people get all the powers.

I wasn't going to post my general feedback because others have captured what I wanted to say much better. But since you asked to hear from more than a handful of people: I love /enterbasebypasscode. I love how the community has built Transportation Zones that have made an annoying part of the game less annoying (I agree with those upthread who have said that "travel is not the game"). I love how easy it is for people to help other players get access to the transportation zones—just paste a single line as a command, and you too can use it! I find the new powers a poor substitute for reasons others have already raised: they're confusing, they're expensive (in terms of inf or opportunity cost in day jobs), they use up quickbar space, and using them with any frequency requires having all of them. The word "baroque" is apt. Having five powers to replace /enterbasebypasscode isn't bad by itself. Needing five powers is. So my biggest feedback is that any one of those powers should, by itself, be enough of a replacement. Then it really is about player choice, not making people work for all those powers. That means, IMO, cutting the cooldown timer on all the powers drastically (90s would be my choice). My other bit of feedback is that I'd really appreciate it if whatever eventually gets implemented lets us keep using the community-build transportation zones. Because those are awesome, and I'd hate to see them become ghost zones.

Which is a different problem: for people to do what they're used to doing, they need to manage at least two powers, including finding tray space for those two powers. It all seems a very complex way of implementing something that's not necessary. But that's not really my point. My point is merely that if you're going to invoke data analysis, the median isn't the stat you want to be looking at if you don't want to risk annoying half your users.

But "X uses in 10 minutes" isn't as meaningful a stat as time between uses. I may need it twice in 30 seconds, then not use it again for half an hour. That doesn't mean that being able to use it only every 15 minutes wouldn't be a pain for me.

I'd suggest that median time between usage isn't a good metric if you're trying to avoid player inconvenience. By definition, half the playerbase uses the command more than the median frequency—which means having the power be available only twice every ten minutes will put a crimp in the play style of half your users. A better metric would be based on how 95% of accounts use the command. Even that steps on the edge cases. I've occasionally had to use the Teleportation Zone in rapid succession. Usually it's because I selected the wrong zone in the menu (e.g., I picked DA instead of Echo:DA). Being able to fix that error right away instead of waiting five minutes was awfully handy. So I'd also suggest that what you should really look at is how 95% of accounts use the command 95% of the time. That's the number that won't be a pain to too many users. But if this is about fixing a game-breaking bug, not PvP, why have a cooldown at all? You're deprecating (or severely limiting) a command that improves gameplay immensely for a lot of people, myself included. I understand that there's a good reason to do that—but nothing about that reason suggests that a cooldown timer is necessary.

I'm a fan of Goldside. It has more mature writing and an element of player choice that a lot of the earlier content lacks. I'd chalk that up to being later-issue content, but that was Issue 18 and the Dr. Graves and Twinshot arcs were from Issue 21, so not all the writing got better over time. I'm curious whether even with XP doubling turned on it's possible to level a character to 50 doing only Praetorian content. Levels 1-20 are covered, obviously, and you can do First Ward and Night Ward from 20-35. When you hit 40, Tina Macintyre and Maria Jenkins have a lot of Praetorian missions, especially with the latter's big arc. And then the Incarnate trials are almost all Praetorian, plus there are some non-trial post-50 Praetorian arcs. But I'm not sure there's enough content between the 30s up to the 50 to do only Praetorian content.

Here's another update from the slow path. This time: Sharkhead Isle! Things really do pick up here. The Dean MacArthur and Leonard arc (it's multiple arcs for merit purposes, but one big story) really is great fun. It also includes one of the tougher challenges in the game in the "Army of Me" badge, depending on your AT. I wouldn't start with MacArthur and Leonard, though. There's enough content in Sharkhead that you could spend a loooong time paused at 24 if you try to do most of it (I did). Since MacArthur and Leonard are both available from 20-29, I'd leave them for later just to avoid spending more time than necessary with XP paused. I'd add Darrin Wade (20-30) to the list of worthy contacts. He doesn't require a broker's introduction, he'll introduce Lorenz Ansaldo, Vince Dubrowski, or Captain Petrovich (letting you talk to one of them without a broker), and he introduces some lore that will come up much later. Well worth it, IMO. I'd also suggest doing Lorenz Ansaldo (20-24) > Operative Vargas (20-24). You'll need to do broker missions to do both Ansaldo > Vargas and the Dubrovsky > Cage Crash > Maros arcs, but Vargas in particular is just a hoot. Vargas is a straight shooter with upper management written all over him. At least, he thinks he is. He answers the question: what would you get if an Arachnos operative got an MBA? Grand fun. I'd also suggest doing Vince Dubrosky, Lorenz Ansaldo, and Diviner Maros before Vincent Ross. Ross's arc (which is great) lets you have a side contact if you want—but only if you've already worked with those contacts. So do those three, then Ross. To avoid pausing XP for too long, and to maximize your options for Vincent Ross's arc, here's the order I'd suggest for doing the Sharkhead contacts: Darrin Wade (20-30) > Lorenz Ansaldo (20-24) > Operative Vargas (20-24) Newspaper/Mayhem/Broker > Vince Dubrowski (20-24) > Crash Cage (20-24) > Diviner Maros (25-29) Vincent Ross (20-29) Dean MacArthur > Leonard (20-29) Doc Buzzsaw (25-29) Pause XP at 24 until you'd done with Vince Dubrowski's arc, then level to 25 to continue with Maros. There are some other contacts here that you can do if you're a completist, but IMO aren't worth pausing XP for: Captain Petrovich (20-24) is another in the "wacky inconsistent accent" series of contacts. His missions are nothing special IMO. He introduces Lt. Chalmers (20-24), who isn't much better (Lt. Chalmers also has a surprise escort mission, which I hate—both the escort mission and the fact that this one doesn't tell you it's an escort mission until midway through the mission). Both Petrovich and Chalmers are poorly written, too. They aren't worth having to do a second round of newspaper missions and mayhem mission, IMO. Operative Kirkland (25-29) is introduced by Operative Vargas, but he's not nearly as much fun, nor does he tie much into the greater lore. Henri Dumont (20-24) unlocks with the Strikebreaker badge. His missions are okay. They don't tie into the greater game lore, but they didn't annoy me, either. Archmage Tarixus (25-29) unlocks with the Lorekeeper badge. If you do his missions (which are a basic "find the components of the MacGuffin and do a fight at the end"), you'll get the Blackwand—which you can also get for free at any P2W store. This version of the wand is slightly more powerful and has limited charges, but most people won't be doing this arc for the power. Finally, a note on First Ward & Night Ward. First Ward really is great—one of the best set of arcs in the game, IMO. IIRC, there are a few parts where it's different as a villain than when you play as a hero, or where you get different choices. So I'd say it's probably worth doing once as a villain. But it also breaks up the isles progression a bit and kind of messes with the old-school villain vibe (like most "cooperative" zones, the missions here sometimes shoehorn a villain into being a hero). I'm going to skip these zones with my slow path character, mostly because I've already done it as a villain already. But these zones will fit quite nicely with a whole game Praetorian path. So I'm looking forward to your guide on that topic. :)

My slow path through red side (inspired by this thread) continues. It's been pretty compelling overall, and a much different view of the game than you'd get powerleveling through. It feels a lot more like what I remember from live (though without nearly as much travel time and getting my butt kicked). IMO, Bane Spider Rueben, Seer Merino, and Brother Hammond are the best of the bunch in this zone. Hammond's in particular is jolly fun. I like how unlike most other contacts, you can never call him—because Luddite! The Shelley Percey > Marshall Brass set of arcs is pretty good, too. So is Peter Themari > Willy Wheeler. I have a soft spot for poor Willy; he wants to be a player, and he so isn't. OTOH, Dmitri Krylov is—how you say—just plain silly, and not in a good way, with a poorly written Russian "accent" and a story arc that doesn't really connect to anything else. And Golden Roller is easily the weakest of the "object" contacts (which include Radio, Slot Machine, and Television). (I know, Golden Roller isn't really an object, it's just a guy in a car. But you're still interacting with an object to get the mission, so I'm counting it as part of the object contacts.) You can avoid some newspaper missions by doing Ashley McKnight's Origin of Power arc as soon as you hit 14. She'll introduce many of the Cap au Diable contacts, including Peter Themari, Dmitri Krylov, Marshall Brass, Golden Roller, and Willy Wheeler. She doesn't seem to introduce Shelley Percey (at least, according to the unofficial Homecoming wiki). So you can start out with Shelley Percey and Marshall Brass. Byt the time you're done with them, you'll have paused XP at level 14 and can do Origin of Power and/or use the "Find Contacts" button to get all the other contacts you need. OTOH, Origin of Power is pretty lame and involves a lot of travel (make sure you have a travel power before starting it). So some folks might actually prefer grinding newspaper missions. Finally, having finished all three of Dr. Graves's arcs, the best I can say about them is that the third arc wasn't quite as terrible as the first. And it does tie (clumsuly, IMO) into the broader story. But I consider it eminently skippable.

I'm not sure if this is the same bug, but here's what I got: 1. Accept Mr. Bocor's "Take out Hellions" mission. The way that's supposed to work is you defeat 10 Hellions (anywhere), then it creates a new objective with a mission door. 2. Accept "Defeat all Hellions" in Billie Heck's "Give 'em Hellion!" arc. 3. Do the Billie Heck mission, defeating at least 10 Hellions in the process. Bocor's mission will switch to the new objective ("Defeat all Hellions in hideout"). But when back on the Port Oakes map, that mission does not have a door anywhere.

I agree that the snakes are underwhelming. But at least those missions are short. I'm running through the Port Oakes missions now, and after clearing gangsters out of ship after ship, I'm starting to have fond thoughts of snakes. I misread this as a contact chain: Vendetti, who would introduce Bocor, who introduced The Radio. Bocor does introduce The Radio (so would Mikey the Ear, at the right level), but Vendetti, Bocor, and Billie Heck are all introduced independently by the Broker. I've only done Vendetti and part of Billie Heck so far, but you made a good choice omitting Heck. His story arc is pretty tedious so far: a defeat-all in a large office map and a ship's-hold kidnap mission. It looks like it might get better after this, though. Still, with each of the three contacts (Vendetti, Bocor, and Heck) requiring three newspaper missions and a mayhem mission to unlock, I'd argue that it's probably only worth doing one. Otherwise, that's nine newspaper missions, three Atlas Park mayhem missions, and a long damned time pausing XP at level 9. So I might suggest phrasing the quoted line as something like: Angelo Vendetti (5-9) and/or Billie Heck (5-9) and/or Mr. Bocor (5-9) > The Radio (10-14) Or just omit Vendetti and Heck entirely, or relegate them to short descriptions as "Other Contacts" under Port Oakes. ETA: The Billie Heck arc kind of grew on me. It still doesn't make much sense, but after those first two slogs of missions, it was kind of fun. Doing both Vendetti and Bocor might be a bit much, though, since they both have a lot of "defeat all the Hellions in the office" missions, which gets old. But they also both have badge missions, so some players might want to do both anyway.

Fort Darwin was a great, memorable starting location. No, it wasn't Atlas Park, but you weren't a hero—you were a virtual nobody. Sure, Arachnos busted you out of the Zig, but just so you could prove yourself against a whole bunch of other virtual nobodies. The Issue 21 changes broke the flow of Mercy Island, IMO. Starting at little Fort Darwin meant fighting your way through the broken slums with the massive walls of Mercy looming ahead of you. Just getting through Darwin's Landing to get to Mercy was something. When Issue 21 put starting villains right there in Mercy, there was almost no reason to go to Darwin's Landing anymore let alone Fort Darwin, which was virtually forgotten. You can still see some vestiges of Mercy Island being designed for a Fort Darwin to Rogue Isles Ferry progression. For example, the Darwin's Landing side of the giant wall has big "MERCY" signs telling you where the elevator doors go. Up topside, there's nothing—the game assumes you know what those are and where they go, because most of the players would have started on the other side of those doors. I often wish there had been an Echo: Mercy Island that preserved the original design.

Thanks for this! I recently created a villain to run through CoV somewhat old-school style (but with a few of the P2W powers and enhancements, because I'm not a masochist). This guide will really help. I do have a couple of comments about this from the early going: It's not entirely obvious, but the Breakout tutorial will give you either Kalinda or Matthew Burke as a contact. You can do both, but I don't think it's worth pausing your XP to do so. You end up with a lot of missions that look a lot alike: jump into a snake hole and kill all the snakes. Their missions aren't exactly the same, but they can seem like it (the only difference between some Kalinda missions and Burke missions is the name of the boss snake you're supposed to kill). After you're done killing snakes for Kalinda, she sends you to Mongoose to...kill more snakes. When youre done killing snakes for Burke, Doctor Creed gives you missions against Infected and Arachnos, so there's more variety. Although Kalinda sets up the "Destined One" arc, in terms of the actual gameplay I'd take Burke. It might also be worth noting that whether you take Kalinda or Burke as your initial contact makes no difference once you're out of Mercy Island (as far as I can tell). Either way, you'll get sent to the same brokers in Port Oakes. Re: Lt. Harris, I agree about his arc being distasteful and a little dark for this game. OTOH, if you do his arc you get a chance to clear the Longbow out of Fort Darwin. As someone with lasting memories of sending weak newbie villains out of Fort Darwin only to scamper back to safety after a few kills—port Darwin really is well named—I appreciated the opportunity to kick all those smug candy canes the hell out of "my" fort.

Revert to the old version? If you've been using Time Machine, you can open Time Machine, scroll back to a time before the update installed, and restore the old version of the launcher. If you haven't been using Time Machine, you'd have to install an old version of the launcher manually, I assume. BTW, you can bypass the launcher entirely by executing "islandrum.sh" from the command line. Of course, that only works while the CoH client version hasn't been updated. But at least it lets me feed my addiction tonight while Manga works furiously on patching the launcher.

Thanks. I can revert to the previous version (hooray, Time Machine), but is there any way to prevent Island Rum from automatically updating itself? Or should I just chill for a day or so and hope for a new update soon?

I don't even get an "Install" option. It's just stuck at "Scanning":

This all sounds pretty exciting. One request from a security paranoid Mac user. Could you test the new launcher to make sure it works on an account that doesn't have admin rights? It took me a while to get Island Rum working that way, and I have a sneaking supicion that any upgrade process for the new launcher is likely to freak out, run into a corner, and cry if it doesn't have full admin access to everything. Thanks!