Zhym

I tend not to start kitting out my characters until level 27, when the enhancement sets that scale to level 50 are available. Plus, I try to make most of my characters self-supporting (more or less), which limits how much I'm able (well, okay, willing) to invest at early levels. Until level 27, my characters have to get by on SOs. In the case of my Arachnos Soldier, I started slotting with IO sets right after the level 24 respec, because as long as I had to reslot all those enhancements, why not? So that could definitely be part of the drastic jump in fun level. But I've had some characters who were fun from level 1 (hi, ninja blade stalker and DP/MC blaster!), and some characters who were weak at early levels and gradually got better as they leveled (and I started adding IO set enhancements), and a few characters who were so bad that they never got the chance to level to 24 (I'm looking at you, kinetic combat/regen brute), but I don't think I can remember a character that was painfully weak at level 22 and really quite fun, actually, at level 24. And in the case of a SoA, I think it's because the character at level 24 is actually a completely different character than the one at level 22.

I mean, okay, he's kind of a sexist creep with the women. But the bros? Man, he just wants to hang out, help a dude out, and party and/or bond over drinks. I kind of want a Mission Architect arc where all you do is get drinks at a bar with Dean MacArthur. Kind of a "My Dinner with Dean" kind of thing. (Seriously, though. If you haven't played red side, you're missing out on the Dean MacArthur arc. It's fun and well-written.)

Okay. As they say these days: it gets better. I don't think I've ever seen a character shift so much from tedious at level 23 to fun at level 24.

I started up a Soldier of Arachnos based on this post. So far, he's made it to level 22, so not yet a Bane, and...well, he dies. A lot. It's sort of becoming his thing. Maybe things get better at 24, but 22 is painful.

Roger that. I tend to play my 50s enough that most of them either have Incan or can build it pretty quickly. Taunting, though, is usually just the tankers.

So if I want into the club, I need to bring out my tanker to a Hami. I usually go with the Nature/Sonic defender, because Overgrowth FTW (and because there are few things more boring than playing a tanker in a Hami that already has a full Team 1), but if I can get into a special club...

Hold on a sec. The important question here is—@Oklahoman has a chat channel?

Here's my layout, FWIW. This is on a 24" monitor; the UI elements are fairly large because I have old person eyes. It's a pretty basic layout—the only "major" change is putting the nav menu and map in the corner because it gets in the way too much in the top center.

I tried maxing everything I could, but nothing enabled the Desaturation effects option. Could be WINE, could be my Mac Mini's Intel 630 graphics card.

That seems likely. Mine is currently set to "N/A" and I don't see a way to change it. Is there a different option I need to set to enable this?

From what I can tell, my graphics settings don't seem to make a difference in whether Old School Vision or Retro Vision work. I normally run around with various Advanced Mode settings set mostly for performance that doesn't look too bad. But I tried disabling Advanced Graphics Settings and setting the graphics quality everywhere from Performance to Ultra, and still, Old School Vision and Retro Vision didn't do anything.

The "Old School Vision" and "Retro Vision" powers don't seem to do anything when I activate them. Is that happening for anyone else? I'm on a Mac, FWIW. I assume that's the reason (probably something related to WINE).

I just finished running this with one of the more silver-age toons I have (at least the one who isn't a tanker, because running arcs solo on a tanker is sooooo slow), and I agree—this is a great arc. There are a few typos or grammar/style issues in the text, but the story is top notch.

Woot! Glad you're back. BTW, I noticed something when editing the top post. In the "All That Glimmers" 3.x series, here are the mission numbers: All That Glimmers 3.1: Summonings in Nerva Archipelago [43022] All That Glimmers 3.2: Ninjas in the Wind [40394] All That Glimmers 3.3: Gods in the Planes [43537] Part 3.2 was published before the other two—May 2021 as opposed to August and September for 3.1 and 3.2, respectively. @Ankylosaur, what's the story there?

Right? If I'm on with my +3 Incarnate, it's almost certain that he's not only already done the MJ arc and met the Praetorians, but also saved the world from Mot and gone quite a ways toward thwarting Emperor Cole's invasion of Primal Earth.

BTW, this thread linked in Oklahoman's signature is directly relevant here:

I ran an 8-member blaster team tonight and got it, so it seems to be fixed now.

I almost forgot these guys: I created the second one after a big outage (due to Homecoming's hosting provider) a few years ago.

Great thread idea. Here's my main, 70s Man. I won't say his outfit wouldn't stand out in 2024, but he's wearing street clothes. He also has a fancier outfit for the disco: Then there's Mediocre Fred. He's inspired by a Smothers Brothers song. He's a werewolf. His human form started as the first guy below, but then I decided to play off of the name "Fred" and give him a bicyclist outfit. Finally, this is The Bureaucrat, with his standard outfit, ready-for-action jacket-free look, and a nice sweater vest for Casual Friday:

Is that from monster hunting in general, or specifically Scrapyard? Scrapyard was such a weird mega-event that I'm not sure what to make of drop rates on that one. But if the drop rate is supposed to be 10%, that would mean there's a 90% chance of getting at least one drop after defeating 22 GMs and a 99% chance after 44. There's a 50% chance at 7. So if we're seeing numbers in the 22-44 range without a drop (Scrapyard excepted), it seems like it's not a 10% chance, whatever the patch notes say. I haven't battled enough non-Scrapyard GMs to do those numbers personally, though.

I did quote that language at the top of the thread. :) And I've been getting reward merits at an insane pace—so it's definitely not the case that there's a 10% chance of getting the pet recipe every time you get reward merits. Whether that's WIA is a different question, of course.

I really enjoy teaming with my Kin/Sonic Defender. Teams love speed boosts, and Sonic has some nice debuff for when you aren't making everyone go zoom. I never feel idle or useless with that character. That character does have Siren's Song, which is a big AoE sleep, but she doesn't use it when teaming (because there's not much point). It comes in handy when she solos, though.

When I saw the title of this thread, I thought it was going to be about the average age of most Homecoming players. And then I thought, well, that's actually probably a bit low...

I ended up getting the pet recipe after about 160 kills or so. My working theory is that it's tied to the criteria for getting the badge: if your team doesn't get enough of the damage percentage, the drop roll doesn't even happen. But that's just a theory.

Before the latest issue dropped, it wasn't that hard to spawn Scrappy with a bit of Scrapyarder hunting and then take him down with a team of 4 or so. If that's still the case after Tuesday's patch drops, it shouldn't be that hard to get the badge. It might even be easier, since it seems like you have to be on a team that gets a certain percentage of the damage on him to get credit for the badge, and Big Damn Leagues actually make that harder to do.