Ukase

No question that Spider's posts were helpful. The Pentad was straightforward enough. The Swiss - ran into some glitch where after the first run was successful for a badge for the character in slot 2, the second run wouldn't initiate because it was stuck in some timer loop counting from 11 to 9, back to 11 seconds before it would start. We all quit, logged off, back on, and it worked fine for the remaining rounds and didn't show up again. It may be useful to know that patience is critical. When I say "round", I should further state that there are 3 rounds per "run", or Swiss Draw Match. The System takes some random choice (I guess) and pits 1 player against another in their own one on one duel. While this is happening, the system has pit two others against each other, until there's nobody else left. We all knew going in that the person in slot 2 would get the badge - win or lose, but felt they should win just to be sure. It left some uncertainty as to what the other contestants who weren't facing the winner should do. Doesn't matter. Exiting the map was a little fuzzy too. Once you lost, did we have to stick around until the system counted down to zero? No. Although, it being as glitchy as it is, those that faced the winner tended to wait until the system ported them out. There is a preconceptions that may or may not be accurate that if the winner leaves early, no badge. Given the headache that it is to get folks to do something so silly, why risk it? The second round of a run - if you lost, you remained out of action - and some were a bit confused, thinking they would fight 3 rounds. Only if you win! If you lose the first round, you sit on the sidelines, patiently until the entire round is over. To add some measure of comfort to those who've never done this but want the badge, follow Spider's pictures to the letter. It's quite simple if you realize the player in slot 2 will get the badge each run. And really try to remember to pick cage match. Finding someone in the Eden trial map often took longer than the fight itself!

This is really a fair question. Let's be candid. Many of us have leveled to 50+3, t-4'd our incarnates in a dozen or more characters. The paths to get there though - they can easily differ. It took me a couple of characters to get in an efficient groove - and I think the first dozen of my characters did this: Get explores for Atlas, Echo:Atlas, Echo:Galaxy, Kings Row, Perez park. (and the history plaques for Atlas Medallion) Run the fortune teller mission for Spelunker badge Start using the TFC task forces to level up, do various arcs when not doing tfs. At 30, run provost marchand at +4/8 with 2xp for some quick leveling - just that first mission. The allies do all the work. Maybe run some nemesis arcs when I hit 35, and do some MSRs. Tina Mac at level 40 Sig Story arc out of Steel at 40 until I get Unveiler Maria Jenkins at 45. Get Shrouded, Siege and Multi-dimensional and the rest of the explore badges for Freedom Phalanx. Soon, I learned on red side - the tfc equivalent is Invader. Just the explores in the mayhem missions. So, I transfer to red side and have my alt account set those up for my primary account. I stopped sweating the tfc task forces for the accolade now. I'll do them if they're a weekly, but otherwise - what for? If it's not for a badge, I'll pass. So, I stopped doing those TFC task forces. Recently I brought a character up through Praetoria, just for the change. Rather enjoyed it, and may do it again. I also have an alt on red side - which was a first. There's a lot of content there I haven't done more than twice. It's by far less pleasant than the blue side arcs, despite what other folks say. The writing assumes I'm some kind of punk, which I don't really appreciate. And worse, the story arcs are ludicrously short. Like 4 missions, and aside from a couple of them, they barely tell a story worth reading. But that's just my subjective opinion. Hideous scenery, although the music is more suspenseful. I also market when I simply am not in the mood to repeat content. Marketing can get old, too, especially when you don't need the inf. Now I do it so I can give more away. I just gave away 5 billion last week! That can actually be fun - but only when it's my idea. Badges - if you ever try to get all the badges on a given character - that will certainly change things up. I find myself doing PvP - something I ordinarily don't do. I find myself in First Ward and Night Ward - which are two of the most uninteresting zones I can imagine. Just too strange. When the first story arc has a goofy dog that talks - but still has a need to go "ki-yi-yi-yi", I just want to quit right then and there. Only the pursuit of reward merits and xp keeps me suffering through that drivel. Some may really like it - but it's not my cup of tea. There are some really excellent arcs - Number Six in RWZ is probably one of the top five - with Striga and Croatoa barely edging them out. Lots of folks hate the missions where you have to stop 30 fir bolg from leaving - but that's one of my favorite missions in the game! If it weren't for badges, I'd have missed out on these, so if you do get bored - make a badger. You'll either hate it or love to hate it. Or you might like it.

I vastly prefer PPS over Sprint. Watching a character sprint is the most ridiculous animation in the game. They plod; they don't run. I realize that slide looks a bit silly to some - but you touch my PPS, I'm gonna be pissed.

It varies from AT to AT. But - typically for my ranged characters: Influence (Naturally!) Max HP (my current working theory is blasters can benefit from HC's elevated HP for blasters. A lot!) ToHit (Only on blasters with a snipe) Damage Bonus (I don't pursue it from bonuses, but I have a chance for build up proc and want to see when it goes off) Stealth Radius (pve) (I won't kill all unless I have to. I like my xp from mission completions and story arc completion bonuses.) Ranged Defense (Some blasters die a lot. I don't - and monitoring these tells me if I've been debuffed more accurately than the debuff icon in the buff bar) Smashing Defense Energy Defense Smashing Resistance (This is just on to remind me to re-toggle after exemping, really. It's not like this changes. ) Farm brute will have the same except no worries about stealth, nor ToHit. I check fire defense and fire resistance - but since they're only in a farm ,I don't monitor these once I know them. Tanks I don't really worry about the numbers once I notice they're capped.

Anecdotally, I've got to disagree. I'm farming much less, simply because I already made a good bunch before the nerf. And the nerf was minor. What did sway me to stop was that the prices people were paying dropped, so 1) the inf I have is worth probably 10% more than what it used to be and 2) seeing smaller sales numbers just doesn't make it worth the time for me, even if I add 10% in my head to the total. But, I did do a farm run on the traditional asteroid Comic Con map - 2 purples, a rare, 3 yellows. In one tiny asteroid map. And, I was on my fire blaster. I popped barrier, my hybrid assault, munched some reds, and 90 seconds later, the map was mostly clear. All I wanted was to get one inspiration drop - but the badge won't award unless you do a ticket run, (found out later) so I clicked the glowie and did some searching here on the forums to learn just that. Purples, rares - they are very rare and rare, respectively. If they dropped frequently for you in the past - you were simply fortunate. When I was afk-farming all day and night - I did get a purple or two a day, pretty much every day, although some days I got none. But in my recent re-visit - based on these complaints, I haven't had an issue. I still get 3-5 recipes, some rare, some uncommon, occasionally a very rare. So - from where I sit, there's no issue. I honestly see no difference. Something to consider: Anecdotally - my drops improve if I change maps every two to three runs. The first run of the 5 is usually pretty dry. The second and third are usually much, much better. I don't usually do the fourth, but when I do - my salvage caps if I forget to craft while in mission 3. Most of the time, I'll pick a different map. But that's just my experience with the rng. I've also gotten a royal flush well over a dozen times in the past dozen years living close to casinos on the Gulf Coast. It could be luck - or it could be the frequency of attempts. I don't think it's superior strategy in farming, as it should make no difference in drops as long as bosses are in the mission. Your experience will certainly vary. I just share those things because they might be helpful. I doubt it - but I've never seen the code. Even if I knew where to get a copy, I'm sure in the zillions of pages of code, I'd have no idea where to look for it.

Yep. Please bear in mind - never set it up - so it might take me a minute. Hopefully, someone with more experience with it may drop in and help out.

Looks like there's more than a few of us. As mentioned earlier - the Swiss Draw, which requires 8 folks, 3 rounds per, a total of 24 rounds - it will take some time. Tomorrow night at 7pm central is when we said we would try and get that done. If there's not enough, I'm sure we have some folks with 2nd or even 3rd accounts that can fill in, and if there's too many - some can work on Gladiators and the the duels for various "weight class" badges (which are basically level ranges) If it ends up being me setting things up - it will take some time as I've never done it before and will have to tab out and read through Spider's notes.

Overheard on my way through the hollows: [NPC] Fallen Gunner: No, I didn't call you stupid. I said your comment was an oxymoron. It's a rhetorical figure in which incongruous or contradictory terms are put together. Am I the only one who reads the books we swipe around here?

I appreciate this bit of advice. Candidly, it didn't occur to me. Not the idea, nor the concern about the leader looking good when they're clearly not good. But I guess they'll never improve if someone doesn't share the knowledge. And I'm sure your approach would go over better than my "Are you nuts?!" exclamation that I wanted so much to type out this morning.

Is it going too far to suggest this not be one of the weeklies until it's fixed?

So..I was listening to YouTube in the background while I was playing. Got on a PUG for the Abandoned Sewer Trial, and in the midst of a fight - I could no longer target any rikti. When I tried, I would target the nearest teammate instead. (thankfully, it wasn't any kind of confuse, because my attacks didn't go off) I mention YouTube, because I was about to log off and re-validate, but figured I'd close YouTube first - and suddenly things returned back to normal so I didn't need to do anything. This had happened before, but when I was running a second account - I figured some pixel wires got crossed, and it went away when I shut down the 2nd account. I suppose this could be a memory issue on my end, but only because anything is possible - but I don't think it's likely.

You've seen it, I've seen it. You're on a pug, and it's clear that the leader may have some knowledge, but not enough to convey to everyone else what to do. At what point is it okay to "take over" and give direction? I feel so badly for the others on this team. They tried hard, but the team lead gave no direction - and when he/she did, it was clear to me at that point, they didn't understand how the abandoned sewer trial worked - or their tactic was clearly too advanced for a team as inexperienced and squishy as the rest of the team was. I was the only one, a blaster, who didn't die. I could go into details, but it's really sad to think of how many times that poor dominator got chewed up by hordes of ritki and hatched krakens. The MMs fared no better. Only the brute did decently, dying only once. Curious to know when you folks would take over and start giving instructions. I waited too late, forgot all about server maintenance. Saw the message after we first started, figured an hour would be plenty of time. And it should have been - if everyone knew what to do. They did not. When the leader finally quit, then I took over - and we had the head down to half before the ritki repaired the gens, and we knew we wouldn't have enough time. A shame, really.

First - I really want to apologize. I missed this post! I just asked about these on the badge forum and was referred to it. It should be a sticky! Sign my new fire blaster up. And today is Tuesday...I'll send you a tell in game to see if you're on before hand.

I was curious about the Swiss draw tournament badge called Tournament Victor. I've gotten this badge once before, but either someone else was dealing with the match set-up, or I've forgotten how in my old age. Tried to get 8 folks, but only got a couple of others, and with 3, couldn't seem to get it to set up right so we could actually start it. Am I right in saying 8 people are required? I know 8 are required for Pentad. (though it seems like 5 should be enough with that name). Can someone refresh my feeble memory?

Welcome back. Have you learned/relearned about Ouroboros? No need to stop XP, you can revisit pretty much 99% of that content through Ouroboros. If you're not familiar with it, simply ask someone in the help channel, they'll break it down for you. In short, it's a zone where there are several crystals, contacts, where you can click on them, go in tf mode, solo or teamed, and be automatically exemped to the cap of that contact's arc. You can get there via someone else's ouroboros portal (temp power), Echo:Galaxy City, (via SG beacon) Echo:Dark Astoria (also via SG beacon). For those with villains, you can only access through Echo:Dark Astoria. You can get there on HC server at level 1, but can't do any content within until level 15. (on live, you had to be level 14 to make the trip.) But you can get there on HC, as stated, at level 1, and work on day job badge if you like. You can also go via someone else's portal and get the exploration badge on top of that arch, which "entrusts you with the secret", and gives you the portal. There's also a few missions that will give you the portal upon completion, but the only one I know on top of my head is the initial contact out of Faultline, Jim Temblor.

I suggest you start with the oldest character. Have a set of distinct ATs - ranged, melee, support, and cycle through the three of them as needed by the group you're in league with.

So glad you had that whim. Just ran into the same issue, and I know I got it on Ukase without issue, but Ukase Fire (got two purples in less than 2 minutes, lol) had trouble getting it, but got it within one Judgement upon entry in ticket mode.

This gets a bump because I'm pretty sure Yomo still has more inf than I do.

I have no characters on Reunion, but I'd make one to participate. I've actually been successful in getting to level 50 twice on a blaster with no defeats. And when I did get defeated eventually, 1 was during a hami raid, which was my fault for hitting inferno before the tanks jumped in the GM scrum to get aggro. The other time was on some crazy No inspiration, MoITF for time, challenge. Speed kills. And I could have lived if I'd waited 20 more second for my barrier to come up. Or had the option of munching a luck. Them's the breaks. I should add, that I would up the difficulty gradually as I leveled. +1 at level 10, +2 at level 20, +3 at level 30, +4 at level 40.

Some interesting thoughts. I posted...sometime during this year that it would be good if we took better advantage of AE for story driven content, since the content we do have, other than those new vig/rogue arcs from...page 3, I think it was, are the only new content we've got, outside of AE. I even suggested a contest, promoted by the HC devs. I think one thing that would be more easily done is to simply make AE story driven content more rewarding in terms of XP/Inf, along the same lines as non-AE content. So, how to distinguish from the farms - let the devs make a ruling on every story that gets 50 votes with 5 stars, or something like that. I would think flagging a given AE arc as "standard reward amount" would be easier than porting the arc to some zone.

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.