Ukase

Another thing you can do is to bring out your HVAC and lore pets. The lore pets will fade after 5 minutes, but the heavy will stick with you overnight - and if zombies or nemesis come out in a zone event, odds are your rebirth will keep you alive, as will your HVAC.

By pictures alone, I suspect you probably spent about 100 hours on this, at least. Points for the creativity - and the endurance.

Fair enough. I appreciate your perspective. I think the reason the number isn't as high as some would like is because the original devs were concerned about the market. Let's say that we could hold 800 recipes. I'm sure, most would wait quite some time before they dealt with their inventory. In that time, I am curious as to how that would impact the availability of various recipes/salvage/invention enhancements in the market. I think this unknown, or the predictable scarcity is what kept the initial number lower than what you might hope for. Another reason has something to do with the servers ability to track everything. I haven't been through the code - wouldn't even know where to look or be able to follow the logic trail without some pointers along the way (unless the internal documentation is far better than what I'd expect), but I suspect if they multiplied character inventory storage by 10, then server storage would be impacted in some way. Nowadays, it's likely less of a concern than at the time of initial release. But if I were forced to guess, I'd think that's why. With the new HC management being on a volunteer basis, I can't fathom what kind of precision this might take. Is it as simple as finding the initial storage capacity of a level 1 character and adding 720 to that number, or is it simply finding the number 80 upon leveling 50 and adding another 720? I've no idea how they'd do it. If they did, they'd probably just start off simple by doubling initial character storage at level 1, then doubling the increase as we leveled up. It wouldn't get to 800, of course, but it may be easier to implement. <shrug>

A great idea!

How in the world? Why would you EVER need more than 80 recipes to store? Just craft 'em and stash 'em, or sell 'em. How hard is that? It should be a habit you develop as you level. You park your character in Ouro at level 1 to get the Chronologist day job badge, so at level 10, you start getting rare recipes to drop after each completed mission. At the beginning of your next session, you head to your base, you pluck out the salvage you need from your storage racks, and craft and stash, or sell. Takes...3 minutes. I don't get it. If you can't be bothered, just stash 'em in the AH. We get over 100 slots there.

Clearly, since someone can join an AE arc in the midst of a run, they have the ability to do this for TFs and Ouro. No question about it. As for Task Forces that give badges - no badge unless you were in each mission. Merits could be meted out in a slightly front heavy fashion to reward the commitment. For example - a 10 mission TF that gives 50 merits might give 7 merits for each of the first two, 5 merits for each of the next four, and the last mission gives zero or 1. It's a really good idea and should be considered.

Was this some private server? I never heard of it.

Interesting thoughts. Was discussing the Superior Winter-Os with a newer player earlier today. When I mentioned that Avalanche, made Superior gives 5% melee defense, they were stunned. I always thought it was that 5% that made them so valuable to most folks. I rarely...wait..I've never used Entomb, except in early levels. The Frozen Blast set isn't really anything special, except to a farmer. Same with Winter Blast. Blistering Cold isn't too bad, but I'll use Kin Combats more often than not, with two crushing impacts. What I'm surprised at is how cheap the Hero/villain packs are. I don't have the memory I used to - but weren't the ATOs costing like 350- 400 reward merits EACH, plus 25 million back in live, from a merit vendor? (the proc and the quads usually cost an extra 25-50 merits) Or am I confused? I completely understand that many players if they lack the resources have no joy in marketing or farming. I do understand it gets tedious. But why is EVERYTHING so cheap? In one year, I have more inf than I made in 3 years in live, and things cost ...1/10th of what they did. (So maybe I should have 10x as much?) We need things to work towards, and other than badges...we don't have that.

Why do you think this is way easier to get? Both are for sale at the AH. It's only easier to get because it's cheaper - if they were the same price, would it be easier? Or do you think it's easier because it's an uncommon recipe vs pvp?

What you have to understand is that when folks go shopping for Widgets, they never take into account the cost of manufacturing that Widget, nor the payroll required to keep the Widget workers housed and fed with enough to save for a future. All they care about is if the Widget is useful to them. So...you can craft as many rare stun recipes as you like, but (these are orange, not red on my computer) they are only useful to a small fraction of the community. Supply and Demand is what is influencing the prices, not the cost of crafting to some unknown person or people. (We're all unknown people. Nobody has a clue what we crafted or put for sale. All they know is we're greedy for not listing them for 1 inf. Purple recipes may have dropped for you - but they have not dropped for me. I get them...pretty much every other day now that I've stopped farming. When I was farming, 3-4 a day was not a surprise. 1-2 a day was closer to average. If you search the forums - somewhere here I made a note of getting 4 purples within 11 minutes. Thought I broke something. Was just lucky. So, please, don't look at what dropped and assume that there was a stealth nerf. I promise you - you're just not that lucky. I, however, am that lucky.

I believe this statement to be false. Show me the patch notes, because I think I'd remember this.

This is what I don't get: Glad Armor 3% Def (all) vs. Steadfast Protection 3% Def(all)/Resist The glad sells typically 10-11M Sometimes, more, sometimes less. The Steadfast sells for 4-5M. Sometimes more, sometimes less. Both are slottable at level 7. While it's true the Steadfast caps at level 30, so the strength of the resist portion is capped at that level (unless you boosted, but it still wouldn't be a level 50 resist level protection), but the Glad Armor's extra only protects against tp in a pvp zone. Other than Chimera, I don't think any NPCs we face use a tp-foe. (And Despite all my characters having a Shield Wall and a Glad Armor, I still get ported in the Magisterium) So why should the glad armor be worth twice as much? Both drop in pve. Granted the set bonuses of the Glad armor are better, but still...

It's already been stated that inflation is a result of more funds being in circulation, thus diminishing the value of those funds. The solution is certainly not a simple thing, not the way CoH is set up. Suppose, for the sake of argument, there was a fixed set of influence in the game. (Scratching my head, trying to think how that would work). That would certainly limit inflation, but would it really help things? For the sake of argument, we cannot assume each player is granted a certain amount with their new account, lest scoundrels create multiple accounts to get multiple endowments. So...they start off with zero. And as of now - so do we! But...we are able to continually defeat mobs for xp and influence. And the mobs respawn, missions may get reset, so the path to inflation lies with repetition. right? All that said, I think a solution is fairly obvious. Since the current cap a character can hold is 2 Billion, why not find a way to limit that across all characters? Just suppose that ALL you could hold was 2 billion across all accounts? All those emails I have with 900 million in them, across my three accounts - I wake up and *poof*! All gone, except for for 2 Billion in each. Well, that certainly gives me an advantage...but suppose HC stated that only one account is now allowed. Or, that they encouraged all to have three accounts to make things equitable and fair. How might that play out? Well...I certainly would be a bit peeved at losing over 100 Billion. Costume Contest resources from player hosted events would either stop, or have drastically reduced prizes. The more I think about it, the more I think the Influence/Infamy/Information has run its course. We should exchange it for reward merits - the metric that truly defines how much we've actually played the content in the game. There's no rule that says an AE map can't award a reward merit or three, provided it met a certain level of difficulty. The problem is the smallest unit of measurement is 1, and who'd want to pay one reward merit for a piece of common salvage? Do you folks see what I'm getting at here? This in-game economy stems from...a GAME! It's really not that serious. I thought about writing a few more pages, but I think that would be TOO cruel. What I would encourage those that disagree with this nerf do is come up with a viable solution that allows entry level players to play the game they'd like to, rather than the way someone like me tells them they need to, just to afford the IOs to have the better build. (and if you're one of those that says SOs are just fine - they are - if you want to struggle more than otherwise. Candidly, IO set bonuses are a game changer for most players. You might be fine with 'em. If so, great. Me, I like the set bonuses and will keep chasing them.

I've been in your shoes, Kiramon. Trust me on that. I used to strive to get to t-4 for each slot - and still do, but now, it's not nearly as challenging, and here's why: I've been badging with my latest 50. Not sure what possessed me, as I already have Ukase, my ice blaster with all the badges available, 1531. (no bug hunter, despite my best efforts) Made Ukase Fire 2 weeks ago, and already have over 1000 badges. But what has really made the difference has been Master of Incarnate Trials, and the Dark Astoria path. Just play your character, and everything else will take care of itself. For those that don't care for the details, don't sweat it. But if you want more detail - it's in the spoiler.

There's a tab to click on at the top of this page called "Server Status". Click on it, it will tell you.

A pvp recipe may drop in any content, AE farms, Task Forces, Strike Forces, Street sweeps, hunts, ..and in pvp, of course. It's all random. They drop as often as any rare recipe would. As far as percentages go, I have no idea, nor concern. If I want one, I buy a level 10 pvp recipe (or as many as 50 of them at as low a price as I can) at level 7, boosted by inf from another character. Craft, convert to the one I want, slot it. The rest are sold as they are for 9-10m. They pretty much all sell within the hour, unless I got too greedy, or someone posted some seriously low prices for reasons that escape my logic. Then, if it's not a proc, like say I want to actually use the glad armor set for it's set bonuses, I'll catalyze them. 4m+2.5m is still cheaper than 9-10m from the ah. (And that 2.5 is opportunity cost, as I use ones that drop, borrowing from alts, as they only drop for level 50 characters.)

If I'm remembering correctly, on "live", the way it worked was this: On your character's first SSA, you could opt for a hero merit (if you had confirmed alignment prior), or 4xstandard reward merits (5), or a single accuracy SO, or 1 Astral merit. On your first run of each SSA, you had the same options. And, even on your second run of the same map (and only on the second run of the same map ONCE) you got the same options. After that, you had to wait 24*7 hours before you had the options for the merits. Example: First run of SSA 1 - 20 merits, First Redo of SSA 1, 20 merits Redo SSA 1 before a week is up, 5 merits First run of SSA 2 - 20 merits, Redo SSA 2 - 5 merits First run of SSA 3 - 20 merits Redo SSA 3 - 5 merits. and so on. But that was on live. If my memory of the short term is correct for HC, it's the same award table schedule with regard to the 4x5 merits. But, it would be nice to get a very clear explanation from an authority for those that lack the understanding.

For a time, I was playing my primary account, and having a second account afk-farm. Then I thought, hey, we're allowed to have a third account...why not? At night, I'd have 3 fire brutes doing afk-farming. It's just the asteroid map, so really, there wasn't much to do on my primary account. Craft and convert 4 - 6 recipes. (give or take). But, what I'd do is bring the 2nd account out, reset, put it back in, same with the third, then take care of the primary account. Put the primary account back in, then go to the second account, and whilst farming, bring out the work bench, craft and convert while the mobs burn around me. When done, sell, reset, the work on the third account, reset the primary account. Craft convert on the third account. Sell, reset. Bring out the primary, and craft/convert the 2-3 recipes it might have gotten, then log it off and play with the primary account doing actual stuff like tfs and what-not. In between missions, I'd reset - not craft or convert until the salvage was close to full. Clearly, this isn't for everyone. After a while, I just felt like I had more than enough inf and stopped using my primary account. Then, I ended up parking my badge character into a damage farm (both dishing out and taking it - took about 2-3 weeks) and played on the third account. After a time, the only reason I was playing the 2nd one at all was to farm threads for the super inspirations. Nothing quite like soloing an AV by grabbing super lucks, rages and ultimates at level 15. It got to be more work than fun, basically. So now, with my well over a hundred billion, I stopped farming altogether. I've been giving away about 1 billion a week here and there. And, the inf still keeps coming in from drops that I craft and convert. Certainly not the same pace, but who cares? I'm set at least for the next 100 alts.

You simply cannot go wrong with Ice blast for a blaster's primary power set. You get a lot of options as to how you want to play it, too. You may opt to go the "blast-troller" route, or "blapper" route, or the much preferred by me, the standard blaster route. For secondary, there are some who don't see a lot of joy in the ice secondary, but you can always go for plant, mental manip, fire, atomic, or any of the others. Or all of the others. For me, I like Ice secondary, simply because of Ice Patch. Very useful when soloing large mobs. Easily perma'd with one recharge IO, hasten and a few LotG 7.5%'s. Oh! And Frigid Protection. It takes no endurance and gives you more endurance recovery than Stamina. It's an excellent place to slot an EXTRA perf shifter, or Power Transformation chance to heal. The thing about ice is the animations are so fast, that if you slot for recharge, you're going to be the best single target DPS blaster, built properly - but that all depends on slotting. You likely are already aware that you can't have the highest DPS AND be soft-capped for s/l/e with solid recharge. Another reason why ice blast is so good is that, like many of the characters we play, unless they're ice armor, they have very little resistance to cold damage. And almost none of them have any large resistance to the inherent slow/speed/recharge debuff. You don't really even need to slot for that, unless you're considering pvp. You can solo easily, if that's your cup of tea - and not just on 0/1 settings. If you've slotted for the appropriate toHit and Accuracy, you can go +4/4 fairly simply, and if you've got good reflexes, you might try +4/8 in the 40's. I would not get Bitter Freeze Ray, though. It can be useful, but only if you're patient and solo. On teams...it's the one power that has an animation too slow to be really effective. Does great damage, but given the animation, you could do better with other attacks. Other than that, all attacks are solid and worth getting in my opinion. And..I see you went with ice/time. Let me know how you like the secondary. I've got a fire/time working on the day job in ouro at level 1 currently.

I was thinking about The Hollows, a "hazard" zone. Perez Park has Kraken. Crey's has Jurrassik Croatoa has JJack and Eochai IP has Lusca (and IP isn't a hazard zone) The Hollows, given it's nostalgic presence in the game, seems to me it should have a GM. There are Hydra there, in the Red River...don't suppose we could get Kraken to appear in the Hollows, too? Or maybe Bat'Zul? Just a thought.

Would you believe I had to come back to this thread for a second character trying to get these badges? The difference 8 months makes to an old curmudgeon's brain. Silly me, skipped past the three rescues from Dream Doctor, now I have to do them through Ouro...

Seems to me, EVERY zone should have NPCs that are like this. They have the code, obviously. How hard could it be? What I'm not seeing is any downside from an implementation of this, but that doesn't mean there aren't any. I'm sure there's something, or they would have done it that way from the beginning. I will say, it's a hoot for me to find a +7 or +8 minion and slug/blast it out with them from time to time. Like those Nemesis Snipers on the rooftops in Founders, or PI. They're all alone, so no extra aggro to deal with. Pop a yellow, and see how I do. Four-five minutes, lol. A long time for only a fair bit of xp, given the level difference. Don't do this for the XP, kids!

I think you would be wasting your time. For one, there's [Return to Battle] a self-rez that likely everyone that knows about it, gets it at p2w when they start, unless it's their first character. Further, with the SG TP macro, if you don't have the self-rez, (or a wakie) you use that option to go to your base hospital and you're right back in the game. Most of those tp services were useful because we lacked travel powers until level 14. Now, we can avoid the npcs, either by flying overhead, zipping by them at Super Speed, which grants a measure of stealth, or just jumping past them. I'd be real curious to know this statistic: Average # of player defeats in the Hollows on a given day on HC vs Average # of defeats on a given day in the Hollows before the shut-down.

Yes, all task/strike forces can be soloed. But not by all characters. Now, is it easy? Are the builds going to cost a fortune? ...I really don't know the answer to that. All of my builds have at least: 1 Numina regen/recovery 1 Panacea +hitpoint/endurance 1 Shield Wall 5% res (All) 1 Glad Armor 3% def(All) 1 Steadfast Protection 3% def(all) 1 Unbreakable Guard 7.5% Hitpoints 1 Kismet 6% toHit (it says accuracy, but it's toHit) Each of the two ATO sets. (6 each) Some builds get one set broken up for the extra recharge or hit point bonus. Most get a set of Avalanche Winter O's. Some get a set of Blistering Cold For a beginning/returning players, I think that will cost you more than what's comfortable. For someone like me that's been playing since..I think late April, or early May.. well, I have enough to make about 100 of these builds easily. Most of it's in my character email from the winter packs being on sale last December, in the form of merits (which I cash in for converters, use the converters and sell the IOs that were converted. Positron has two parts. The first part is very easily solo'd. All my characters from a defender to tank has solo'd posi 1. My tank had some issues with Dr. Vahz. Just not enough DPS. He wasn't hurting me..but I couldn't get him down more than 1/3. If I'd have been smart, I'd have used the TP macro, entered my base and gotten some large reds...but I don't think the tp macro had been released in the wild back then. My blasters, with a large luck have very little issue with Vahz. Synapse and the Clockwork Lord is super easy. Any character can solo this. It's like he gives up when he's at half health. Yin and Clamor -- Clamor is fairly easy, too. Citadel and Vandal - Vandal is one of those that was a bit hard for my tank to do enough damage, same with my cold/cold defender. My blasters, brutes, stalkers, scrappers, they have no issue. Manticore is probably one of the harder ones to solo, simply because there are two av - Countess Crey, and Hopkins after you beat Hopkins the first time. Hopkins is a joke, misses a LOT - but when he hits, he hits pretty hard. Judicious use of inspirations is encouraged. The Countess doesn't hit that hard, but she's still tough. Definitely clear that room so you have room to maneuver if you need to run away. Nobody says you have to stand toe-to-toe with an AV for the entire fight. Numina's Jurrassik is not overly difficult. I usually have more trouble with the DE bosses and the toxic spit of theirs. Nosferatu as an AV -- the only way I've ever beaten him was with my brute and my blaster's that kite him from out of reach. Crazy vamp just jumps into a tree trying to get me, jumps down, repeats, while I blast away. Yeah, I feel cheap and dirty doing it that way, but merits are merits. Nemesis as an AV is a bit of a joke. Just a lot of HP on him. Indigo as an AV is brutal and has always killed me at least once. Silver Mantis is tough for me. Without some solid inspiration planning, it's not going to go well. ITF - Soloing this tf is not overly hard. But, I can't do it in 30 minutes like some folks. But I got the MoITF today on my fire/fire blaster, Ukase Fire just today, Took me about an hour. And I did head to my base after I beat Rommy the first time to get some reds. I'm at level 50, I have t-3 lore pets, with barrier, so not getting defeated was pretty easy. Out damaging the nictus heal was kind of hard, because I couldn't pull him away from the healing nictus, despite my best efforts. Finally, I realized I'd left behind Imperious in the air on my way to the courtyard, so brought him into the fight, and he helped just enough. Probably cheating, but I still got the MoITF. Eden Trial - This is one I solo'd with my ill/rad. An expensive build with perma PA. I underestimated how many ambrosia I would need, though. On a team, only a couple. With my ill/rad, and only the PA for dps...I needed 12. 12 minutes to beat that Crystal Titan. Took me half that time to get to that point. I am unsure how I will do if I try to solo Apex or Tin Mage. The spawns are automatically 54, and while my characters would be level 50+3, I'm trying to imagine handling Director 11 and all his proximity bombs, not to mention Bobcat, Neuron, and two War Walker AVs. Pretty sure I can pull Neuron...but not sure how I'd handle it if I got more than two of them. I'll find out soon enough. So, yeah, you can solo most tfs if you take your time, use inspirations wisely. Until you know you have a solid character, getting a Vanguard HVAC, or Shivan, or a Warburg Nuke - all are viable options, unless you're on a Master of Task Force effort. (No temps, no defeats allowed)

On that, I'm pretty sure I got confused with one of the other private servers. Thanks!