Heraclea

Simon and Garfunkel - 7 O'clock News / Silent Night

The good news is that the hyperinflation that plagued the old game appears to be well under control. Setting price ceilings on salvage has helped a lot. The less than great news is that I find I have very little incentive to bring things like white recipes and white or yellow recipes to the market to sell. There's no percentage to it, in that both salvage and white recipes vendor for more than you'll get from the market for them, IME. With such things as yellow recipes, that's not the case, but in almost every case I think it's better to just hoard them until the salvage to make them eventually drops. Then I play converter roulette on them until they land on something a character of mine will eventually want. Depending on the urgency of that need, this will entail catalysts and unslotters to get a catalyzed version to a levelling character. I tend to acquire scads of useful enhancements but they're mostly level 50, unhelpful when you want to slot them at level 7 or 17. I am a habitual market avoider. I still don't see inf as a reliable store of value. It's generally something to pool and get rid of at the first opportunity.

I consider this a bug, and it is definitely a nuisance. Needs to be turned off, however that is done.

Greta Van Fleet - Age of Machine

Back on Victory, when I set out to make the ultimate tanker, I rolled Invuln/Dark Melee. So when I rolled Heraclea on HC, this is what I chose. Dark Melee boosts Invulnerability because its constant -tohit meshes with Invulnerability's scaling defenses, and its quick self-healing attack (when slotted as a heal, gives you 15-20% or more of your HP) also helps a lot. Other armors worth a look IMO are Radiation and Bio. Radiation is solid against the normal stuff, and excels at damage tyoes that often catch you unaware like Toxic. The T9 is actually useful; it brings debuffs to the table as well and can heal your teammates. Bio is an excellent choice for a player just getting started because it doesn't need an expensive build to be fun to play. (Dark Armor can also be fun to play, but needs an expensive build.)

Patti Smith - We Three Kings

Time for another, this time, Tragical History Tour...... Model: King Charles II of Spain HC creation:

Ottorino Respighi - Adoration of the Magi

Frank Zappa - Don't Eat the Yellow Snow

The Snowman - Walking in the Air

Lou Monte - Dominick the Donkey

Iggy Pop - The Passenger

The Clash - Guns on the Roof

Poison/Dark is the only defender that has really clicked for me. It helps A LOT that there are only three powers to cast on teammates, and one is a resurrect, and neither your spot buff nor your spot anti-mezz are really anything to write home about. Everything else is aimed at the enemy. The debuffs do not require fiddling with 'anchors', you just aim them at something and fire. I have many level 50 characters on TB. There are other characters that solo well, or that run story arcs well. That isn't what this one is for. But if you are up against an annoying archvillain, whether it's Mary Macomber, Reichsman, or Nosferatu, I will bring this character who exists to help other characters trivialize tough encounters.

New missions make more sense to me than 'hard modes'. On old live and on HC, powers have been balanced and rebalanced by fiddling with their activation and animation times. They cannot be aborted once activated. This means that one of the mainstays of other-game choreography - kill zones you must move away from - are a poor fit to the core mechanics of this game. Some of the later added content uses this. It is a perennial source of annoyance and failure.

This, and the new teleport and levelling taxes may also be having an influence, especially on players like myself who don't typically try to hold or accumulate inf.

A poison/dark defender is the only defender I ever really have been able to take a shine to. It helps a lot that while you have a spot heal and single target buff (anti-mez) that are nothing to write home about, just about all the rest of your powers are aimed at the enemy, Poison is a pleasant debuff set to play; no worrying about 'anchors', you just fire at whatever you target and the debuff spreads to neighboring mobs. Nicely unfussy and useful.

Red Sovine - Faith in Santa

The Zombies - Time of the Season

David Byrne - Loco de Amor

I have several characters that may have missed out. I always used to use Independence Port as my hub, since the Ouro dropoff and old SG dropoff were all much closer to the train, hospital, and other amenities than Talos would put you. Problem is, the characters who logged out next to the base portal in i26 had it moved out from underneath them.

Frank Zappa and the Mothers of Invention - Happy Together

The Turtles - It Ain't Me Babe

Les Baxter - Stone God

If anyone has an urge to create a character or a SG and give them a Latin name, I'm available to proofread it and make sure that it is roughly grammatical and means what you think.