sponazgul

And this is the kind of feedback I love the most.

I ran it tonight, really enjoyed the challenge and some of the custom character/goons employed by Wade. I had never seen the map in the final mission, which added to the challenge (it took awhile to uncover the full map.) The mission map that had All The Patrols was quite a challenge! I was running this with my level 50 ice/poison controller The Chilling Joke, and it took a lot of hustle for me to manage the mob massing. Really enjoyed the challenge. (I might rerun this with one of my Stalkers.) I liked the living armor in particular. My only suggestion would be to consistently have the objective text provide some motivation. Instead of an objective that just says Overpower, have the objective say Interrogate Overpower I enjoyed playing the arc, and enjoyed Darrin Wade’s dialogue with me. That guy sucks and I was pleased to beat him up.

Another villain-ish arc that could use some feedback. If you've played the Allegedly, Your Death arc (under my in-game @First of Equals account) - this has a similar premise. In Allegedly, Your Death, you are a nocturnal vigilante getting a status briefing from your long-suffering butler. In this arc, A Night Rich with Promising Villainy, you're a costumed criminal (I assume costumed) with a penchant for poisoning water supplies and robbing banks, and your butler right-hand crony is giving you some criminal options. There are some thematic references to Allegedly, Your Death, but you don't have to play that arc to enjoy this one (I hope.) I was very careful not to break the Ocelot rule in this arc.

Just finished my polishing on arc 70016, Alexis Cole-Duncan Insurance, a canon-adjacent story arc that takes place roughly in the middle of the Who Will Die arc, Chapter 3 (redside version.) Unless you want to be spoiled by the events of that canon story, don't play my AE arc. But consider playing it if you've done that Warburg-centric arc. A quick note on why I did this arc - I wasn't Super Happy about a thing that happened during Chapter 3 of Who Will Die, and so I wrote this two-mission story to kind of put a twist on the events. Also, I wanted to make some missions for my villains and rogues to run. I'm sure I have typos and awkward sentences, and I apologize upfront for that, asking y'all to run the arc and help me with proofreading.

The Trick or Treat EBs always gave prismatics. I think they were introduced in 2023. I know I was working on getting prismatics pretty ruthlessly last October, and that it wasn’t a new thing.

Just so I understand, as an example you want my arsenal control/martial assault’s shuriken attacks to be launched from the gun. I wouldn’t hate that as an option, but I have to acknowledge that it would require a fair amount of animation work to make that happen for Dominator secondaries. I would use it if it was an option to select.

More importantly, doesn't have the Willpower that my scrapper has, but this is all good news. (My Beasts Mastermind also has Call Hawk) My question about why the duplicate of my Savage Melee scrapper has Call Hawk has been answered, I feel - that dopplegangers with normally all-melee sets get a ranged attack. Call Hawk just fit more thematically with Savage Melee than Throwing Knife or something (had my duplicate thrown a knife at me, I probably wouldn't even have reflected on that at all...)

this makes tremendous sense, thank you!

Thanks for the Call Hawk detail! Sadly, I’m a scrapper not a dominator, but at least there’s a Savage Assault element in regards to what I’m seeing. I was planning on checking out the alternate animations, it would be cool if I had the option to have the visuals of a Savage Melee attack be the hawk. Still, I would expect an NPC duplicate of me to have only my powers, and use the default animations…

Just felt the need to share a Savage Melee observation. I'm playing a Savage Melee scrapper, I am a Vigilante doing Villain alignment missions. I get the Villain morality mission where I meet future versions of me. The future version of me could summon a hawk to attack foes savagely, exactly like a Beasts mastermind. I don't have that ability! I chalked it up to maybe Future Me just being coded differently. Later, as a Villain doing Rogue alignment missions, I encounter a Nemesis Automaton of me who is Savage Melee (of course) but also launched a hawk at me. I had every power in the Savage Melee set except the Confront taunt power. My hypothesis was that the visual for the taunt was the hawk. I was wrong. At my next power selection, I chose Confront and tested it against some random thug. Nope, no hawk. Just me yelling. So I am very envious of the Savage Melee NPCs who have this ranged attack from the Beasts mastermind powerset. I want that, darn it!

After I burned through all my patrol xp on the character I was testing with, all the experience earned after that was an even integer, which implies double xp is in effect and it doubles the experience earned after all the math machinations based on enemy level adjustments. I was soloing, so there was no team division/boosts happening. I think the odd numbers I was seeing in earned experience previously was because of patrol xp.

WAIT. I think I figured it out. I was forgetting about Patrol XP adding half XP, which is going to mess up the calculations.

Fair, but before Tuesday during double XP, all the experience I was seeing was an even integer. If experience has fractional values, then I accept that explanation and maybe I didn't notice odd values. Although I am looking forward to the post-caffeine longer explanation.

Not AE, regular missions.

I am skeptical that double-xp is actually active at the moment, contrary to what is advertised. My characters are consistently earning experience in even increments and odd increments, when it should all be even increments (since double a number guarantees it would be an even number.) My characters demonstrating this result are soloing, and I don’t have the START vendor double XP on (which can produce odd numbers since global double XP and START vendor double XP ends up being triple-XP) I guess I would like confirmation that double XP is on, and a reason why I see experience point earnings that aren’t even-increment numbers.

I haven't, but I will! I just meant that I like reading your narrative description.

Great job describing mission 1 (even if you had to reference the George Clooney Batman movie - although the scene of Mister Freeze making a rotating ballerina figurine was really great, and deserved to be in a better Batman movie)

Thanks for the update!

Lemming was correct! Although you can have the Level shift be active if you are as low as level 45, since the +5 when exemplared gets you access to your Incarnate powers (and Incarnate status) (EDIT: I had misread Lemming's actual post - they made it clear that 45 was the floor - there was no need for me to say "Although...")

I’ll have to test lemming’s statement that the shift is available if you are 46 - 49. I know your incarnate powers are available. I’ll have to see if an even con minion is white or not. (EDIT: I misread and didn't go back and re-read - Lemming did say 45, the 46 was a reference to your level at 45 - the level shift gets you to 46)

Others have explained this already, but I like chiming in. the Tier 3 and Tier 4 in Alpha is a Level Shift. It applies as long as you are level 50 (not exemped down) the tiers 3 and 4 in Destiny and Lore each give an Incarnate Shift. It only comes active when you are doing incarnate content(iTrials, Incarnate story arcs like the Dark Astoria arc and Valeria’s arc in Cimerora) or are in a zone that triggers those shifts (Cimerora, Ouroboros, Dark Astoria.) I recommend monitoring your Level Shifts via Combat Attributes, just as a nice thing to know.

I have a Buffy homage named Most Likely To Slay, who I only play in October during the Halloween spookiness. I just created a character named Space Pirate Ghost, in response to the short Pirate themed event that just ended. He’ll be on ice until next September, if the event returns. I have a character who I created nearly two years ago just to hold prismatic aethers. Everyone emails them to the global and he collects them. I have a Rikti character who only plays in Mothership Raids (mostly) I consider all of these characters to be similar to the inclusion of the Phantom Stranger in the Justice League. He’s a member, never shows up at regular meetings, but every 5 years or so the JLA is facing some weird magical threat and the Phantom Stranger shows up. Because that’s his time to shine.

Hawk, welcome! Back in the original game, I had a character called Winged Curator, a guy in street clothes with a winged harness and a sword (I wanted to avoid a mace) - obviously a reference to Carter Hall.

Clave, thanks for running this recently and having the post come back up top. I will try the arc out as well.

There’s a guy on Excelsior who lobbies for people to use the LFG queue to kick off an SBB, without pre-forming a team. Has to explain for people to queue up solo with “willing to join” selected. I’ve successfully joined once. But every time, people chime in, telling the guy that he needs to do things the “right” way (gather a team, then queue.) Clearly, he’s trying to get folks used to blind-faith LFG queueing, but it’s an uphill battle. I’ve tried to join his SBBs at times, but once you queue, you are stuck waiting and that blows, not knowing if critical mass will happen or not. I often give up and just do one of my missions, which is reliable.