Zhym

I believe at least part of the reason custom maps aren't available is that pathing (i.e., how mobs and NPC move around the map) is sort of hand-coded into each map. Custom maps can really confuse the AI.

Out (or more accurately, both, but also out). When I re-ran it just now, Bocor was in the room with the urns (thankfully). The mission text says I have "45 minutes to find Bocor and get him out," so the escort part's not a surprise, at least. Of course, the warning about having only 45 minutes would have been more useful before accepting the mission. :) Not that 45 minutes is short—at 0/x1 I was able to run the mission, type this reply, and edit it, all within 10 minutes (but note that I'm not suggesting you shorten the timer!). BTW, my strategy on the replay, even at 0/x1, was that after I rescued Bocor I stealthed away as fast as I could to drop him and take on Utath by myself. Then I went back to escort him to the exit. Sometimes the NPCs are a lot safer if they aren't with me.

Good to see how this was supposed to end. I was running the arc at x4 on a blaster with no heals or group buffs. That made the surprise need to keep Bocor alive...problematic. We got as far as Utath and her minions. I took care of Utath. She took care of Bocor. I expected an escort mission; for some reason I didn't expect Bocor to be an ally with a death wish!

Come to think of it, this would be a great time for @TerroirNoir2 to take a break from regular programming and try out some of the holiday-themed AE arcs.

Are you going to post Engineria's adventures running around Atlas Park collecting presents, fighting the Winter Lord, and skiing the slopes by the Ski Chalet? ('Cause I'd read that...and probably add it to the list above as "Engineria's Holiday Special!")

Working for Recluse? Pfeh! My villain kicked that eight-legged arachnofetishist's butt (in an alternate timeline)! He doesn't work for Recluse! The two of them have merely reached an "understanding." Seriously, though, I'll have to check these out (and your reviews were great, BTW).

By that (sound) logic, there would be a tactical advantage to a War Walker having what looks like a "face" or a "head" but which contains no vital equipment. It might fool an attacker into thinking the head is a weak spot and thus wasting attacks that might have been targeted at more truly sensitive areas.

Mr. G makes his own fun. And friends.

How does that work with an Arachnos Spider soldier, anyway? Are their hands not armored? Are the gloves (gauntlets?) easily removable? And how would tarantulas authenticate? They don't seem to have hands anymore. And what about Mu Mystics? Aren't their arms and hands bound up? You'd think there's be better authentication method for a faction with a spider fetish! (No criticism of the story arc, @cranebump! Just some musings on how designing systems for Arachnos must be challenging. I bet Aeon could tell some stories...)

He somehow got hold of a Plot Weapon—the most deadly device ever known! (Even in the hands of second-rate bit player of an NPC.)

There's always the approach of having a mob say, "Activate Teleporter!" or something like that when defeated—lord knows official non-AE story arcs use that trick often enough (I'm looking at you, Market Crash).

Or they've been working with the Goldbrickers! See, Golden Roller upgrades every few model years...and repaints his old car...and, yeah, this theory isn't really holding up to careful inspection. Sometimes a junked-out car is just a junked-out car.

This. If you defeat all the Warhulks, you will be so buffed up that the Nemesis Monstrosity will go down fast. Poor thing won't even stand a chance.

IIRC, the mob that had the rez+untouchable power was named "Lieutenant"—it wasn't just a lieutenant-rank mob. But if there were multiple mobs named "Lieutenant," I don't know which one it was.

I liked this one a lot, @cranebump. It pulled a lot of the previous story together and moved really well. And we finally learn what the heck the "Mobius Strip" is. BTW, I ran it at -1/x8 so I could use my incarnate powers and have lots of mobs to shoot. It was a fun way to run it, although it meant that the NPCs mostly went down within seconds of being "rescued" (so if they had any great dialogue that would have come up later, I missed it). But I'm curious why the level range is set where it is. Is that dictated by mob choice? Because as long as I had my incarnate powers available, it would have been even better to play at +1/x8 or maybe even higher. It was made a bit more "interesting" by lots of the mobs having either enhanced perception or AoE attacks. Whatever it was, it negated my stealth, which is totally cheating. ;) A few other notes and nitpicks: The opening could probably use a reminder at the start of who the "Wards" are. It had been a few days since I played Mobius 3 and I'd forgotten (was it a Supergroup? A location? I only really figured it out in one of the clues before the last mission). The first mission had a comment about "black is my color" or something—my toon's costume was '70s-style avocado green and brown. Never assume. :) Typo in Part 2 intro: 'Gressman's the the "NG" in...' Mission 3 pre-acceptance says "see your Clues before moving on," but the Part 3 clue doesn't show up until mission accepted. Maybe that text needs to be at start of post-acceptance message? Or at end of mission 2? Galen and Dis still have generic Info text. (And maybe Aaron Ruegad?) Nitpicky pet peeve: "alright" in post-mission-3 text. I know it's everywhere in CoX, but it's not a word. There may be a glitch with when the mission into/exit text mentions the last Mobius report file. It shows up after Mission 3, but the "see your Clues screen" that seems to refer to it doesn't show up until speaking to the contact again after mission 4 (when all the clues have cleared). Okay, I could really do without the lieutenant rez+untouchable power. :) All of the "top floor" stuff (i.e. bombs) was on the floor just below the top. It took me while to find the third bomb—that's a pretty big map (OTOH, two of the bombs were right next to each other, so that made things easier) Some of the last-mission objectives weren't clear to me. For example, what's "clear the top floor" require? It was still showing as an objective after I'd "defeated" everyone (except Dis, who hadn't spawned yet). And there was a "set off the bombs" after I'd clicked all three bomb glowies. It remained until I completed the mission (by defeating Dis). Was there something I was supposed to do for that? So many Shadow Supers! And they have backgrounds in their info text! But no time to read the info text on each of them, alas. In text after 4th mission completion, there's a "see your Clues screen," but that dialog also clears out the clues for the mission. Looking forward to Part 5.

Happy to do it! I've been enjoying @TerroirNoir's play-though write-ups, and this is as much for my own convenience as anything. :)

Anyone who's been watching this forum is probably aware of @TerroirNoir's long, detailed, and entertaining play-through of story arcs by @Ankylosaur, @cranebump, and @Darmian. But partly because the play-through posts are so detailed and full of screenshots, and partly because some people interrupt the program by jumping in and kibitzing about costume design, spawn hunts, and other fool-headed reactions (ahem), the threads can be hard to navigate. So, for those who want to follow along with each of the "channels" in order—or jump to a specific "episode"—here's a program guide linking to each post. I've also added arc IDs in brackets for those who want to play along. Channel 1: @Ankylosaur's "All that Glitters" and "All that Glimmers" All that Glitters 1.1: Missing in Mercy [35842] All that Glitters 1.2: Piracy in Port Oakes [35355] All that Glitters 1.3: Capitalism in Cap Au Diable [36056] All that Glitters 2.1.: Boom Time in Boomtown [34715] All that Glitters 2.2: Fortunes in Faultline [37097] All that Glitters 2.3: Terawatts in Terra Volta [34947] All that Glitters 3.1: Extractions in Eden [35058] All that Glitters 3.2: Suspicious Maneuvers in St. Martial [37948] All that Glitters 3.3: Calamity in Kallisti Wharf [36693] All that Glitters 4.1: Risky War g4m3Z in the Rikti War Zone (post 1) (post 2) [37513] All that Glitters 4.2: Privateers in Praetoria [37754] All that Glitters 4.3: Grand Designs in Grandville [38278] All that Glimmers 1.1: Death in Light Astoria [41592] All that Glimmers 1.2: Drowning In The Vigilant Isles [41906] All that Glimmers 1.3: Destruction in the Shadow Shard [42073] All That Glimmers 2.1: Shunting in Croatoa [42423] All That Glimmers 2.2: Banished in the Spirit Realm [42621] All That Glimmers 2.3: Incursion in Oranbega [42735] 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] - Stay tuned! Channel 2: @cranebump's "Ordinary People," "Leviathan," "Mobius," and More Ordinary People 1: Standard Operating Procedure [31902] Ordinary People 2: Hope and Bullets [31903] Ordinary People 3: The Last Full Measure [25396] Leviathan 1: Hollow Pursuit [37663] Leviathan 2: Hollow Ring [37990] Leviathan 3: Hollow Victory [38876] Leviathan 4: Origin [39090] Leviathan 5: Mantle [39744] Mobius 1: Full Circle [original: 52446, republished: 52954] Mobius 2: Much Madness [52203] Mobius 3: The Sign of the Five [53036] Mobius 4: Dempsey's Hard 8 [53047] Mobius 5: Auguries of Fate and Time [53480] The Bleed 1: Insecurity Measures [46658] The Bleed 2: De Pulvis Rediit (From the Dust Returned) [46891] The Bleed 3: Wave, Landing [47103] Potter's Field [55466] Noble Mettle Part 1: The Colossus of Rose [54705] Noble Mettle Part 2: The Hollow Crown [54786] Solace: Part 1 [61014] Channel 3: @Darmian's "Dark Deeds" Series and More Dark Deeds in Galaxy City: Part One [26756] Dark Deeds in Galaxy City: Part Two [26952] Dark Deeds in Galaxy City: Part Three [27233] Darker Deeds: Part One [28374] Darker Deeds: Part Two [28536] Darker Deeds: Part Three [29252] Darkest Before Dawn: Part One [29891] Darkest Before Dawn: Part Two [30210] Darkest Before Dawn: Part Three [30560] The Meteors [42079] Bridge of Forever (Imperial Power, Ch. 6) [36642] The Cassini Division (Imperial Power, Ch. 7) [37104] The House of Gaunt Saints (Imperial Power, Ch. 😎 [37489] The Spark of the Blind (Neutropolis Warden, Ch. 5) [40403] Damnatio Memoriae (Neutropolis Warden, Ch. 6) [41140] The Eve of War (Neutropolis Warden, Ch. 7) [41583] Spirals: Part One (Imperial Crusader, Ch. 6) [55109] Spirals: Part Two (Imperial Crusader, Ch. 7) [55358] Spirals: Part Three (Imperial Crusaser, Ch. 😎 [57197] I Sing of Arms and the Man [42617] - Stay tuned! Engineria's Holiday Specials! The Christmas Contagion [34661] by @Shocktacular The Yule Lads [34619] by @CurlyJim (@B'Hed) Secret Christmas S.O.S. [34930] by @aekolm Murder on 34th Street [45294] by @Charlie The Dance-Off that Saved Christmas! [44962] by @Clave Dark 5 The Most Wonderful Crime of the Year [45220] by @Defeat All Snakes (@boilinghands) I Hate Christmas Music [44913] by @Police Woman (@PW) Pandora's Gift Box [35033] by @Aranatta (@Optimus Time) Christmas Comes to Oranbega by @Takel (@TakelGryph) Interludes, Side Trips, and One-Offs Unscheduled Outage! [44780] by...um, me. I'll try to keep this updated.

I blame (Praetorian) Percy Winkley. Come to think of it, the pillar in the Primal Midnighter's Club only goes to Cimerora. Would what a Praetorian Cimerora look like, do you suppose? The same?

It didn't seem empty to me—or at least not inappropriately empty. It's a pocket dimension secretly holding The One Macguffin (or not). It makes sense that it wouldn't be teeming with people. And to the extent it was sparsely populated, that made searching for the Key Holders less difficult.

I wouldn't, personally. I find some of the Oranbega maps to be annoying—not on the level of the layer cake cave or the Council pool room, but they can get hard to navigate. Plus, my character always seems to get stuck on those damned torches. Falling-into-oblivion issues aside, I think that map works really well. And using the "Herald of Zoria" to mark where Zoria spawned was really helpful, too.

Angevin wasn't even with me when the endurance-sapping horde jumped me. The issue is more that my toon is an incarnate blaster who is fully equipped with the latest and best IO sets the market has to offer, so he does lots of damage and has good defense and resistances. What he doesn't have are heals or buffs to keep squishier NPCs alive (and most NPCs are squishier than he is). So while x4 makes it interesting, it also means NPCs don't last long. That's not just in AE—when I end up in one of those "keep the NPC with a death wish from getting killed" missions, I usually have to turn the mission settings down to +0/x1 to have any chance.

This is good advice. If for no other reason: the toon you like to play is the toon that will get badges. My badger is a blaster—DP/MC, to be precise, but the particular powerset choice isn't as important as being able to do lots of damage to lots of mobs all at once. The defeat badges happen a lot more quickly that way. But there are ways to get the all the badges with any AT—for example, the badges for healing others can be gotten by standing in a spot in Mercy Island with lots of Arachnos troops and auto-firing the Rebirth incarnate power. So mostly, just play a toon you enjoy. If you're trying to get badges, you'll be playing that toon a lot.

Hi! It's your friendly neighborhood big-opn-map-hunt-hating curmudgeon here! And this one...didn't bother me as much for some reason. Even though it is a big damn opn map and there are lots of nooks and crannies everywhere. I think it's that the keymasters—er, holders—have a story reason to be hard to find. Plus, this mission has a climactic feel to it (or at least it did until Mission 5 came along...), so running around the map to kill everything while hunting for the spawns felt more natural somehow. And it's a cool map that I don't see often (the only other mission I can think of that uses it is in Scirocco's arc). Fun story—well, okay, boring story, but fun to experience: I forgot to check my threat level and started Mission 1 at x8. That was painful. The Captains hit hard. And at least one of them had Return to Battle or some other rez power that made him invulnerable when he came back. Nasty. Anyway, I turned it down to x4 for the rest of the arc, and that was about right to keep things interesting but not overpowering. Then this happened: Yeah, that. Except instead of running, 70s Man's first impulse is to try to shoot everyone until there's no one left to attack him. It's usually a pretty good tactic, but this time it...didn't work. That was quite a rapid ass-kicking I received. Ow. BTW, Angevin's force fields were really handy. But at x4, he didn't last that long, alas. Nor did any of my other allies. Oh well.

That would at least solve the issue I had of not knowing whether "Check in with the PPD" meant I was looking for anyone in particular. And if it's Westbrook who's on the overpass...

First Ward and Night Ward really are great. So many little Easter eggs like that. It's kind of a shame there's not more reason to go to either place. They're good settings for the Level 20-40 Praetorian arcs, but after that there's not much reason to go back other than exploration. And "Recently Deceased Milkman" sounds kind of like a Monty Python sketch.