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Oh yeah - I'd always thought Council dropped Science. Anecdotally, I got two tech SOs in a radio mission in Steel vs. Council. So, there's that. I'm wondering if the HC devs just opened the field on drops across NPCs. Anecdotally, it seems like that.

Truth is, Flea, I've not allowed myself to do that. The reason would be that it's like going to the supermarket and getting what you want, instead of just going out and hunting for it. Granted, AE tickets are earned and not given. So, there's certainly room for gray area. But for me, I just want to see how the game treats me from an rng perspective. I do want to make one thing clear - if/once this character hits 50, all restrictions are lifted. As for your all SO challenge, when does that meet?

Hard to see, maybe. Level 11, just finished Frostfire. Got a Shield Wall End/Defense. I lack the salvage to craft it - and odds are, given the rare required, I'll be toting this thing around until level 50. I could sell it as is...but I've nothing to spend the proceeds on, as the challenge forbids the use of AH to buy anything. The common IO recipes, I lack the salvage for those, too. Should be interesting, the next few levels.

I'm at level 10, and for a science character, the drops (Flux is contact - what can I say, I'm a traditionalist) haven't been good as far as enhancements go - but happy with the IO recipes. Will soon see how the salvage drops so I can craft that heal IO. I've got no heal enhancements at all yet.

I have considered it - but level 10-12 is when the common IOs drop. I've got 51k so far, and if I have the salvage, that will be close to crafting the accuracies and recharges. But I am going to try and hold off for level 15s, rather than 10's since even without 2xp I outleveled them fairly quickly last attempt. Good thought though!

Interesting. My experience has been that only Trevor Seaborn and Hugo Redding and Hayley Philips gave that mission outside of Ouro. But, then again, I've been relying on Paragon Wiki which is likely outdated.

I can't use the Heal/absorb - wrong origin, but I can use that recipe! My first one, at level 9. Crazy that I'm more excited about this than a purple, lol.

I thought about gold side, but in the near future I have a gold team activity and wanted the content to be fairly fresh. But, it's definitely food for thought.

Actually -- this got me looking at all the other day job powers - and logging off in the store grants an enhancement upon mission completion - so that's where my character is at the moment.

Catalysts for reasons which escape my logic only drop when you're level 50. So, they're out until then.

So far, I haven't used it, because, well, expense. But then, I haven't sold anything other than enhancements that don't align with my origin. In my mind, I was thinking once I own the enhancement, I'm not buying it. I'm not going to the store or using the AH - but you raise a fair point, so I won't be using it. I'm at level 9 now, and if I slot any newer enhancements, I'll post a picture, but so far, the drops have been for other origins. Clockwork are supposed to drop tech or tech/science or natural/tech, but I kept getting natural/tech DOs, which this character can't use. I did get a raptor pack from the Atlas safeguard, though. When I get high enough, I'll actually run the SSA 1 for an accuracy SO, lol. And I will run it twice to see if it will let me get the SO twice. Can't believe I'd ever take an SO over 20 merits, lol.

I keep reading that red side missions don't have you going to zone A, then B, then back to A. Have you done Graves, one of the earliest arcs? Yeah, it does that. Done Black Scorpion patron arc? It does that too. There's a host of red side arcs that send you all over the place. I keep reading that the writing is better. Um..that's subjective. There are a couple of good arcs where the writing is decent, and that's really about it. Maybe 3 arcs total. Again, it's really subjective. I doubt anyone seriously expects quality writing in this game. If you do, (again, subjective) be prepared to be disappointed. There are no excellent stories in this game. None. A few mildly amusing ones, but that's really it. But, then again, who am I to say what's quality? I only know what I like, and none of the stories in this game are worth my time to read them. I play in spite of them, not because of them. The atmosphere/ambience on red side is dismal and depressing. No villain worth their salt would be there because there's no money there. The place is a slum. A real villain would be in Founders, where the loot is. Now, that's a nice neighborhood for a villain to have some fun! Those are just my thoughts, and well, they're shared by a number of people. There is one thing Apparition said that I do agree with: On average, the players on red side are typically more competent. You don't see villains standing around having their spandex assessed, that's for sure. They came to play and do so, on average, better than the blue siders. But, that's subjective, and a lot has to do with the gaming experience you're after. I personally feel like Red side should have been a pvp expansion. You go to rob a bank, and hero has to pop in to stop you. Actual player or an NPC that would give a fair challenge. The way it is now, the only difference between villain and hero is the alignment and the location and the npcs that are being fought. Other than that, it's pretty much the same gaming experience.

I thought this might be interesting for a couple of you. At level 7, this is what's slotted so far: I really wanted to upgrade those talisman damage enhancements, but the game wanted quite a bit to move those from level 1 to level 5, (when I was level 2) and I didn't have the inf. And, as you might imagine, the more enhancements you have slotted, the more it costs. I'll try to revisit with slotting updates every few levels without being too dull.

I've seen an uptick in folks using the teleport pool, primarily for the fold space option. I've no idea how it would play out for me, unless I could relocate them away from me. Unless I'm melee, ordinarily, I don't want to be in melee on a ranged character, unless there's a good reason to be there - like burn, hot feet, etc. Otherwise...I'd just as soon keep them at bay. I used to use TP foe back in live on my ice blaster with great success. Makes for a nice pull when you port them right onto ice patch.

Update - made a rad/dark defender, Lulu Palooza. (the aforementioned deleted Dark/Dark was called Lila Palooza - I already re-made that one with all the good IO trimmings, non-challenge route and another one called Lola Palooza) Went through the tutorial for surprisingly, two "talisman of the initiate;Damage" enhancements. They each give a 30% boost in damage, which is a pleasant surprise.

I almost feel like I'm cheating as I revisit this challenge. Forewarned is forearmed, as they say. So, my thoughts were to overcome the lack of end recovery. So, I'm thinking now of a rad/dark or sonic/dark defender. At 50, I'd much rather go sonic/dark, but the journey to get there...rad, with it's accelerate metabolism...kind of hard to pass that up knowing what I know now. I think I'll make both, if I can come up with suitable names. I actually entertained a water/devices blaster...but mids convinced me the secondary was underwhelming. Would love to get the drone on a defender or corruptor, tho!

I was stupified to see a defender can get a snipe at level 8! Moonbeam got six slotted ASAP, lol. It bugged me to go so slow, but I waited until the yellow circle went away before I'd fire again.

While it is true about the recipe drops from the ouro day job, consider this: You get a random IO recipe. Which I did. It was a hold...neuronic something or another. the proc is useful and can make you some inf. But for this character, quite useless. I only had one converter, lol. So, quite useless to me. I thought about keeping it until I had the salvage to craft it - but with a sale history that was lackluster, it was just not worth crafting for that character in this challenge. Also, consider that most of the good IOs - Preventative Medicine, Unbreakable Guard, Oblits, and the like - they're going to require a rare. And while I would agree that any enhancement is better than no enhancement, I think in this context (and only in this context), crafting those recipes would be a bad move. Better to have common IOs with no set bonuses that are at max level for that character then to have lower level set bonus IOs. At least, that's my current thinking. There may be a case where procs and the like are worth having at the lower levels. I suppose I could have allowed myself to "sell" the unattuned for X and allow myself to re-purchase at the same price, but it seemed to me to break the spirit of the challenge.

There are three tiers of salvage: common, uncommon and rare. There are three levels of salvage: 10-24, 25-40, 41-50. Within each tier, there are 6 arcane and 6 tech salvage pieces. Salvage drops are random, but NPCs do tend to drop salvage in a certain category, arcane or tech. As an example, if I do a freak map, like that huge Dreck map - the salvage I'll get will be 41-50 tech salvage and I might get common, uncommon or rare. The paragon wiki may list the drop percentages for a ranked npc, but I'd have to look it up and would rather not right now. If I do that demon farm map from Harvey Meylor, those are CoT npcs and they'll drop Arcane salvage. Again, the common, uncommon or rare will be random. Higher ranks may have a slightly better chance to drop an uncommon or a rare, but don't quote me. In some cases, you can right click on an npc and click on info and see what kind of salvage they might drop. There have been a time or two when I did this and got no result as far as salvage drops go. I can't recall the circumstance though. I do know that in AE, oddly enough, the salvage that's dropped in AE is both Tech and Arcane. There are probably some npc factions outside of AE that also drop both, but I don't know which ones.

How do I put this without coming off like an a$$...well, I probably lack the eloquence, so I'll just say it. Every player has the right to play they want to, to play in a manner that's fun for them. That said, for me, to not outfit my characters with what I think are the best IOs is crippling. I wouldn't respect myself to just play with SOs outside of a challenge concept. And yes, I DO judge other players if I don't see IOs in their build. I consider them casual players and not as invested in performing well. If that's the way you play - that's perfectly okay, it just tells me I am different than you and seek a different game experience. I run with a crowd of speeders. Gotta be able to keep up, and I want to be sure I'm contributing. Trust me, in comparison to my other characters, even at level 14, they are crippled. Steadfast Protection 3% Def Glad Armor 3% Def Shield Wall 5% resist Those three IOs can be slotted at level 7. And EVERY character of mine, outside of these silly challenges will have those slotted and more. By comparison, not even having an end mod DO enhancement, having to stop and rest after each fight...yeah, it's crippled. Super-crippled. It's hard to remember how ineffective characters were before IOs, but this challenge was a good reminder.

Try taking a gold sider to Talos through an SG portal and the same thing happens. (except you get ported to Nova) Working as intended as far as I know.

1. The only two negatives to this are your character will now be housing two builds worth of IOs. Switching builds can certainly be useful, but here's a recent experience of mine. I noticed that for a recent lower level tf, my rad/stone tank only had 1 attack, probably due to my making a second build specifically for tanking hamidon and just leaving that build as the active build. It had been some time since I've attended a hami raid, and I saw my macro for SB1, and had no idea what it was for, until I right clicked to edit to see what it was going to do. "Select build 1", which I knew was my initial build I'd used to level up. So, I switched the builds, was pleased to see two more attacks, but...because people will misbehave, and the devs have to account for bad opportunism, my ATT, Mission TP, Team TP...all were now recharging, even though they hadn't been used. (the other powers recharged fairly quickly) So, that's one negative (aside from having to source two builds, but I know that's not a problem for you. The other negative is if you have a habit of deleting characters. It's super easy to forget a character has two builds. You might respec the IOs out of one build, but will you remember the second one? I've made this mistake before. 2. Depends on who you run with. If you run with players you know to be competent, aim for recharge. In my group, most of the time I don't buff at all. I might give a heal or two, but I seldom need to do so. Occasionally, more of the casual players will show up and I'll have to buff. But, doesn't seem to matter with them. They're going to die because they just have no idea what they're doing, at least, that's the way it seems to me from my side of the keyboard. So, yeah, aim for recharge.

This made me laugh, because I am continuously amazed when my daughters use their phone ...to text me. They don't call, they text. And when they text, I call them. And then I say, you have a phone, why are you texting? TALK on the phone. That's what it's for and why it was invented. But, to your point, reading comprehension is a skill that is lost on many. The longer it is, the less likely someone will read the entire thing, and the less likely they'll grasp what you're trying to say.

I have seen a few players try to boost red side population by doing the following: Giving a token amount of inf ...1M, I think. Maybe 10M to new villains in Mercy. Free farms for new villains in Mercy. Free farms for villains in the level 10-20 range. Playing "hide & seek" in the red side zones for various prizes. With Null the Gull, I think these are short term solutions to long term problems. Most people are just more comfortable or prefer blue side for a host of different reasons. As a result, most people are vigilante and make the trip to red side when the opportunities align with their moods. When new content arrives, badgers and others will appear, do the content then revert back to old habits. I don't see a change. My best suggestion is to use the SG to full advantage. You have a decent idea of when your play time is, use the Content-request channel to ask for these tfs/trials/missions on a routine basis. You may not get 8, but you certainly won't if you don't ask. Alternatively - you lead the teams you want to have formed.

I respect your perspective, but I have done this challenge before. Everyone quits. And getting people to meet consistently for a specific time without such constraints is hard enough. And, golden rule - do unto others. I wouldn't want someone with a deliberately crippled build on my team in any circumstance. Why would I want to carry someone along with so many ways to be kitted out? It just wouldn't be fair to anyone else - that's the reason for the no teaming rule. Even a new player can afford a few enhancements given access to the market/AE, etc. But in my case, I was level 12, half of my slots were empty. It just wouldn't be fair to other players to carry me along. Additionally, with a "defeat you delete" proviso, teaming with unknown players is a HUGE risk. There are so many players who create chaos without meaning to, causing various team wipes due to one or more players splitting off and attacking a different crowd of npcs. No sense inviting that kind of risk on a defeat/delete character. Granted - if there were like-minded folks, that would be different, but how many people are that insane? Not many, and finding a consistent time would limit that pool even further. Thus the rule.