Ukase

For me, a lot depends on where your badge character is in their badge journey. For my badgers that just needed the new stuff: Gave the Crimson arc a try - first mission set to 0/8, I got 4 sappers. Took me 3 minutes. Pretty sad result, so I went to RWZ, and between the Little Big Top Neighborhood marker along the west side of ...a depression, presumably where the mother ship was sliding in, I was able to use my target macro and find 7-10 sappers along that west side, ranging from badge 8, moving North towards Pt. Du Hoc. A lot faster, easier in my opinion. For the warhulks, got 49 in one single run of the SSA out of Steel, along with about 225 Jaegers. I knew the 2nd part would have more of the same, so I just killed all for the whole arc. Got the hulks at the end of mission 2. And at the completion of the arc, I needed another 200 Jaegers, so I just hunted them in PI; took another 5-10 minutes patrolling the docks. The Super Stunners took all of 5 minutes in Crey's Folley using a target macro. Killed them in melee, they rez'd, killed 'em again. 25 X 2, ez pz. Brutes - Found a ton of them in mobs of 8-10 finding a boss or two in the mix in the Chantry. Found more Natterlings in the Cascades. Maybe 45 minutes. Did a Faathim with a friend on another character to see how many we'd get - and it wan't many. Maybe 250 natterlings, 40 brutes. The immature PPs from the new villain arc: Set mission diff to 0/8 when you're in the council mission, the next one is the crey mission. This way, when you're done with the council mission, the next mission is already adjusted. You'll get 11 immature PPs when you take Hopkins down to about 20%. Five waves of 11. After the 5th wave, log off, back on, repeat. Then proceed to completion. If your badger needs fakes as well - The SSA is still the way to go, imo. But, you could just as easily do the nemesis story arcs and missions that give badges. The Super Stunners can be earned during a Yin, a Market Crash or a level 34-43 blue side respec trial. If you need those long shard tfs - may as well do those before you hunt the Natterlings or Brutes. As for Sappers, if you are inclined to do so - tons of them in the LRSF - the mission with Kronos in it - plenty of Zeus Titans in there, too. Most teams I'm on zip through this part though - so you may only get 2-4 sappers.

Glad to see the familiar name of @amygdala !!

Thanks. I have never heard of a "hard refresh" before, but that did indeed do the trick. (ctrl+f5, for Chrome, per Google)

I forgot the fee! Oh my! I am ashamed!

I appreciate this. Just an FYI - the text for Tarnished Star on the Web app is not correct. (not that it makes a difference to me, as I have it already - but it may to someone who looks to get it in the future) It currently states: Turn off the sprinklers before the timer runs out during The Graveyard Shift story arc. Below is what it should say: Tarnished Star - Fill every jail cell in The Zig during your life as a hero, before becoming a villain and releasing Bile during "The Freakish Lab of Dr. Vahzilok" story arc

I have a similar approach - but I don't buy cheap recipes. I use the drops from the farmers. The farmers already have all the salvage required. With one exception - my "marketer" will place low-ball bids for the pvp IO level 10 recipes (cheaper to craft). As I "get" a stack of 5 of a given needed salvage for the recipe, I'll reorder the same at a lowball price. This way, I always have the salvage on hand and just grab it as needed, reorder as needed. I have done the same with red fortunes, and other similar type "niche" items. Having the salvage in inventory on the AH speeds up the process a bit.

If that's the case, you may want to consider flipping the packs back on the AH either before they go on sale, or after the sale ends. Quick 15m profit.

If you re-read what I wrote, that's exactly what I do. 🙂

So, does a rose by any other name still smell as sweet? Not in this game.

Thanks, Mac/Not Mac. I am pretty sure I can afford 10k inf, lol

Well, I was - but the badge required door missions. It's annoying to turn toggles on. I wish they were all auto. Tough, weave, prestige power slide, Super speed, combat Jumping, scorpion shield, maneuvers, assault, tactics. 9 toggles. If I had my way, they would never turn off. I skip the intro to dark astoria and go direct to heather townsend in DA specifically to avoid being de-toggled. Hate it.

@America's Angel I thought those things turned off your toggles. I know the last time I got a void skiff, it de-toggled me - essentially making it worthless. No toggles in a pvp zone is not a good idea in my experience. Thanks for the tip, though.

On the whole, there's far more good than bad - at least from where I sit. I was going for the new badge and hit my key bind to toggle the jet pack...and I was thinking at first, I'd let time expire. I checked and saw all the temps that were disabled and immediately ordered a pineapple covered pizza in a clear act of passive-aggressive hunger.

Maybe it's my age, being busy ...but this last patch had a lot of good things..some things to get used to, for sure. But I went to bloody bay for the new badge (one door mission in each of the lower level pvp zones) and my jet pack didn't work. I paid good inf for it - and it doesn't work...and if that was in the patch notes, I missed it. Probably because I don't believe pvp is worth considering. But I might have read it anyway if there wasn't so much information about everything else. Can we go back to pushing out a page or two instead of a whole issue?

Sure, the lrtp recharge could be shorter, but here's what I think you may not be taking into account: Before: click sg base macro - load in (5-10 seconds, depending on your system) run to the portal for where you're going (5-10 seconds, depending on base set up) go to desired zone, page load for another 5-10 seconds After: LRTP - go direct to zone - 5-10 seconds. So, we do save 15-30 seconds depending on variables with the lrtp. Again, yeah, I get the point on a 10 Min recharge. Don't really see why it wasn't instant. BUT - if you have day job for monitor duty, and you get the base porter from p2w, as well as the sg portal temp, you're going to be able to move around just about as quickly as before, if not faster - once you get used to it. Maybe not in all cases, but in more than a few. And yeah, I get that it can be annoying to get all the explores for a zone and one badge in each zone you'd want to go to. Fortunately for me, I love the merits and do that with all my characters anyway. 26 zones, 5 reward merits each..that's not chump change if you sold 390 converters from those merits. (or used them to convert trash into gold like I do) I have to continually remind myself that the base macro was something we were told we weren't supposed to have. I heard rumors about how it got out - and see a tip in mission loading screens telling us about it...so while that's confusing and maybe contradictory, (in my head), I'm grateful I got to use it as long as I did, and I can still use it within the new parameters. It really isn't that bad, I promise!

I agree on the maps. I had more fun solo than on a team. On the team it seemed to take forever. Like 5 hours. It was only 75 minutes, but it felt much longer. Solo it was 40 minutes and lot more fun for me.

I think a better suggestion is to remove them entirely. No colons followed by a closing paren (is paren what you call one of them?) No odd < or O/. We are mostly civilized people blessed to have language and the written word. Let's use full words, complete sentences and try to cut back on a lot of these abbreviations, too! Half the newer players have no idea what they mean in the first place. On the one hand, I get it - you're fighting while recruiting and trying to keep the team full. Who's got time to type all that stuff out? But on the other hand, you're there, walking your ugly dog and in my yard. On my lawn! YOU CLEAN THAT UP AND GET OFF MY LAWN!

I checked to see if winter packs had gone on sale. They had not. Logged in my badger, got most of the badges, then took a break, and got the rest, then started on the second badger. Still day jobs and what not, so no real rush on that one or the others.

If you had every badge - you need to make sure you also have done Freakalympics.

Yay, done! Now on to the next alt...

I anticipate the packs to go on sale this coming Tuesday. I intend to take note of how many are available for sale before the shut down, if I can. I'll be really curious to see how many are bought - and then, when the sale ends - how many go back up for sale for the easy 15M profit ---that may not be realized for a few months.

I agree, it makes sense. It just seems like a lot of things to have accomplished prior to getting a badge. Even folks who get "ALL" the badges may not have done the Freakalympics arc. It's a lot, especially if you look at how involved something like an accolade is - but with the accolade, there's a permanent buff. Of course, nobody put a gun to my head and said - "You must get this badge!", but when you're a badger, just having a new badge is pretty much just like that. 🤣

lol, I think the problem is that with the new patch - many teams now are all blasters. I'm not sure what you mean by the part I put in bold. Unrewarding for who? you, as the designer, or us, as the players? Jack Emmert, the original dev, made everything with teaming in mind. I never agreed with that, because teaming is more often that not a crap shoot. When you find a good core group of folks that beat the odds (which you wouldn't find without teaming) it becomes more enjoyable. But sifting through PUG after PUG to find that core group (or SG)...that's not fun at all. And even when you do find them, not everyone is available at the same time on a routine basis. This is why all content should be made without teaming or soloing in mind. How's that done? Beats me! I just hate to see content geared towards teams. Not everyone is a social butterfly. Is it odd that I found doing it solo more fun than on a team? Probably, lol.

When you are a badger, you tend to eagerly anticipate new badges. This was no different for me. While there was a lot to be desired with both arcs - I fully acknowledge I only have myself to blame. I couldn't be bothered to test the arcs on Beta. If I had, I might have mentioned that pitfall about Mistah-Static or whatever his name was, from the Freakalympic arc not being part of a badger's usual leveling path. But then - that's the beauty of it, isn't it? If each new badge were as simple as an exploration badge, most badgers would get bored. If everyone can get them easily, then there's really not much point in having them. I suffered through the Graveyard Shift on a team of 4 earlier today. Later, when solo, it was much more enjoyable as the mission holder. The maps were crazy - but fun, simply because most of them were either rarely used in game, or very different. It could be because when solo, I can take more time to look around, as opposed to trying to zip through. I think it's fair to say that both dev teams, old and new, have done fantastic things - and some things that leave many players scratching their heads wondering what kind of drugs were being used. In HC's case - these folks are not getting paid. I am grateful, as are most people to just be able to play. An SG I belong to had an AE origin story contest for our characters...and I made one. I promise you - creating cohesive arcs that are entertaining without being too easy, nor too hard - that's not a simple thing. If you think it is - I strongly encourage you to do some AE arcs that aren't fire farms. We could use some! (that is not to suggest my own AE effort was at all cohesive or entertaining. I did it for laughs) I get that the OP is trying to be constructive. The problem is - when you preface a comment with "as a new player", it can be difficult for other players to buy in to your perspective. But maybe we need to try harder. Without new players...the community doesn't grow.

My apologies. On discord, someone said the cells were full...but when we ran a second time, we were missing the freak from Freak-olympics. That arc offers no badge, so I never ran it. So, ran freak-olympics and re-ran the arc and got the badge. The requirements for this badge are kind of ridiculous, when you think about the steps we take to get the passive hp/end boosting accolades - which aren't as involved as this one badge. That said - the immature PPs are over the top and the best thing about both arcs.