Zhym

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!

If you’re fixing grammar issues, I’d be inappropriately happy if someone could replace all instances of “alright” with “all right.” I don’t have a list of all the places “alright” Is used, but it shows up a lot. One place I do know it appears, just because I’ve done the mission so often, is in the Heather Townshend arc. In the first mission, there’s something like, “Alright, I’ll take from here,” as a response in the opening exchange in the cave. Then there’s “Alright, I’ll check out the Tsoo,” in a later mission. There are many more throughout the game. 🙂

It looks like the trigger for this option is Master Midnight's story arc, "Revenge: Serve Chilled." I ran one of my toons through it in Orouboros, and the next time he ran the Heather Townshend arc he suddenly knew a lot more about the Talons. Mystery solved!

After that it's the same Part Two dialogue that you get after "I'm all ears if you have an idea" in the other branch.

Isn't that what the "Chipped Talon" badge is? Or is there a different one? I'm thinking maybe it's based on completing the First Ward (or Night Ward) story arcs.

In Heather Townshend's arc (you know the one—it's the one we've done over and over and over to get incanrate components quickly), one of my toons has a response option that the others don't have. After the first mission, when she asks, "Do you have any idea what caused these women to transform?", the only option for two of my toons is, "No, not in the slightest." But my other toon can also respond, "I have a feeling it's a group called the Talons of Vengeance": Paragon Wiki doesn't list that as a reponse option, either. So I'm wondering what triggers that other option. The toon who gets that option did all the First Ward and Night Ward arcs, so maybe it's something in there? I thought it might have been the "Chipped Talon" badge, for defeating a certain number of Talons of Vengeance, but that didn't make any difference. Thanks!

Is it actually possible to drop a mayhem mission? I can't find any way to do it.