Ukase

I'm of a mixed mind on this. On the one hand, the grind to a trillion inf was interesting. It kept me engaged with the game. (I no longer have that much, as I've given away billions upon billions) That said, when I would do certain challenge characters that start with zero, I do recall the sting of not having the inf to get the enhancements I wanted. And I know at least most of the tricks in getting things about as efficiently and cheaply as you can get them. I can't imagine what it would be like to be as ignorant as I was when I first started. But then, I was so ignorant when I was new, I'm sure I didn't consider the learning curve, because all was had was TO, DO and SO, (and HOs). I think for now, let the struggle continue. But I am a bit biased, as I enjoyed that struggle.

So, no path is going to be super fast solo. But, hear me out. Imagine this: you have more than one account. Most folks have two. Or maybe that's just the folks I hang with. Further, imagine you have three. Let's say you and a friend have 3 each. Or, alternatively, you have a 3rd friend. No matter. You said solo, so assume it's just you and an alt account. Premise: each account has Heather Townsend unlocked, and you are doing this through Dark Astoria, NOT Ouroboros. This doesn't work as efficiently through Ouro. Menu-options- General Tab. In the very first section at the top, for the first 3 missions of Heather Townsend's arc, have this set to Enabled. Before you start the last mission (and for all I know you can change this before you complete the mission - I just always change it before I enter) Change that same setting to Disabled. Now, you'll select the first characters final mission from Heather Townsend. The 2nd character doesn't even talk to Heather for the final mission until after this first finale is over. So, after this first finale is done - both alts get the free emp merit, and the reward table. Then, you have the alt speak with Heather, get the next finale, and when you're done with that, each alt gets a reward table. So, yes - you did have to do the finale twice. But the first three missions, because of collaborative completion, you don't have to. Another lazy, but not entirely efficient way is to simply farm a trash character to vet level XX. Collect the emps from that, visit a merit vendor, and convert the emp merits to a transcendent, and email to your global. The character that needs the threads and the components can get the email, break down the transcendent at the merit vendor into emps, and craft away. Or, you can always just Vet PL the character in question up to vet level XX, and if you have any emps after the vet levels, use those. (assuming you're not vet level 75 or so already) For me, what I used to do was get 3 characters to 50, and not only do Heather Townsends arc, but all of the arcs, collaboratively completing all but the final missions. Beats waiting for a trial to fill up.

Yes, and no. While not exactly what you're looking for, there are some AE maps where you rescue an NPC. The NPC moves slowly towards the front of the map. The map is the same as the one you fight Atta in; so it's quite large. Not infinite, but large. You can go afk reasonably safe if you have a the proper build for it, but you will need a proper build. So, sure, you can literally take a call while your farmer burns stuff, following the npc to the front of the map. You will need to tab back in and make sure it's not stuck on some geometry. Try searching for Bloodom. You should see 3 options. You want the longest one. I think it says 45 minutes or so. And that's about right, too.

On the lighter side, or perhaps the regrettable side, you just reminded me of an invuln/stone tank I made back in retail days called....wait for it... Tat. The name had 2 purposes. I knew as someone who led teams that if you had some polysyllabic name that was a pain to type out, I probably wasn't going to bother with any /t action. So, I always leaned towards trying to keep the names fairly short. And, of course, in the character bio, Tat was not someone who had tattoos, or wore tattered clothing. He just had a yen for Colostrum. And you know the saying, tit for tat. It seemed funny to me at the time. Of course, in this day and age, I'd never resort to such naming conventions lest I get generic'd.

So, I completely get this perspective. And, the past few months, I think I have to give the benefit of the doubt to at least a couple of the usual nay-sayers. I'm not capable of really grasping how one thing might affect several other aspects of the game. One person pointed out to me in detail things it just hadn't occurred to me to consider. But man, it did seem to me like they slash every fun sounding idea that's posted. Ultimately, even if most ideas don't get used, I think it's still helpful. We never know when there might be something clever the rest of us hadn't thought about.

Alas. I have had so many bitter disagreements with several players on these forums. I did get a warning once to "chill". I can't remember if I chilled, or just proceeded to insult the player in question via DMs. If I did, it was because I honestly felt unreasonably disrespected. I can handle being reasonably disrespected, because I have to be willing to admit I'm wrong, when I'm clearly wrong. But if it's not clear...well, I tend to stick to my guns. The forums can be a fun place to visit...but man, sometimes, it's like a bad game of Risk Online. You think you're doing well, then SMACK. You're dead. Someone got your cards, and did a chain kill and won the game. I will have to send Snarky an in-game message since he only rarely gets on discord, assuming he sticks with his no more forum visitation policy. If anyone has a harsh word to say about Snarky, I promise you, he's really a stand up guy. He only plays a vampire in these forums and in-game. He's a lot like Colin Jost. He's real good at trivia if he knows it. Seriously - Snarky is a renaissance man. He studies German, music, tries to stay in some kind of athletic shape, too. And works a lot to support his feeding habit. Granted, it's probably making him look bad if I've got good things to say about him. So I take it all back. He's an evil vampire. Don't trust him.

I think when you find a group of folks who make things more fun, racking up vet levels is pretty mindless. (easy) I also think afk farmers can easily rack up countless levels while they do something else. But it's pretty simple to tell the difference between someone who really enjoys playing their character outside of the farms, look at their badge count in conjunction with the vet levels. As a general rule, anyway.

This is very cool. I'm happy for the players that get to join us. It's absolutely none of my business, but did they get to keep their SG bases, influence and stuff like that with the transfer? If so, that's really amazing. If not, I'd like to know that, too. I could drop in there and give some inf away.

Forgive the sloppy screen shot - But there are 2 accuracy percentages given, the 101.5 and (48) I assume you're referring to the 101.5. The 48% refers to the base unslotted accuracy? Seems like an odd value, if so.

I'm never going to celebrate NYE in New York City again. They really dropped the ball!

I am more inclined to consider titan/bio scrapper coupled with a fire/natty corruptor. The scrapper is survivable enough; and the damage is far superior to a tanker. And I just prefer the natty buffs to kin. Kin is exceptional, but it's really click heavy, in my experience. You're so busy using the kin secondary, you're not using much of your primary. Whereas, Natty tends to just let the buffs fly initially, and has nice debuffs as well. That said - a couple of exceptional players could likely take any 2 ATs, regardless of primary/secondary, and outshine two others with classic meta AT/powerset combos. Still, skill levels being roughly equivalent, I'd go with my initial suggestion, simply due to the click heavy nature of kin. I have some bias against kin, to be fair. Or maybe it's just bias for natty over any other corr secondary, with cold being a close 2nd.

This shouldn't be too much of an issue when you're teaming. Solo...you'll have to rely on a little inspiration, and of course, your experience. You already know what to expect. The one caveat I will speak of is the leveling of the corruptor, particularly as your secondary isn't something like radiation. Your endurance may be a little tough in the early levels, even with the the miracle and the panacea and the perf shifter. By the time you get to use a numina, if you're so inclined, you'll likely have the endurance handled. That's at least been my biggest struggle leveling the corruptors. The blasters, they have the sweet sustain. The corruptors are left to cheap tricks with START vendor and unique IOs, and the clever slotting for max end and end reduction, and of course, passive accolades.

Not sure if you've been playing enough to realize something about Kronos in Talos... Sometimes (anecdotally, it's rare) it's just one. But I've never been the first one to see one, but when I see the comment in LFG, I head on over, maybe it's dead already maybe not. I turn on the jets and look around on the hill; down the cliff, on top of the buildings surrounding the hill. Generally - at least in the past several months, I've seen as many as 15 of them spawn. Sometimes in pairs. Sometimes, just one. And then...they stop spawning, or a Babbage spawns...and that's usually the end of it. I never saw this on Torch or Indom, only Excelsior. So, blood-thirsty fanged one, I encourage you to just wait a few minutes and see if another appears. And then, remember the $loc command, as it will reveal the /loc coordinates in chat. Example: Kronos here $loc And what shows up is Kronos here 1124.4, -23, 555 that everyone else can link and go right to it to assist. (helps to say what zone for those out of zone) And when those folks arrive and it's already down, you can laugh at your coincidental hypocrisy.

Gonna cut you some slack there. Dealing with file structures and such..it's just not intuitive if you haven't done it more than a few times. And credit to those who painstakingly tried to get you through the process (@michiyo). It can be a challenge trying to explain things when folks typically have accumulated all kinds of stuff in all kinds of places. My own installation of HC:CoH is a mess. The additional installations of a few other flavors of CoH don't make it any easier. Some day in the future, probably when I upgrade my mother board and CPU to adapt to Windows 11 or 12, or whatever the version will be up by the time I have to abandon Win 10, I might endeavor to do fresh installs of everything. Certainly not any time soon!

I have edited my post to adjust them to just being useless to me. I get the jetpack at level 2; And I can level from 1-2 in the time it would take me to travel to pocket d, so yeah, no need for a Jingle Jet when I get a free jet pack.

One of these days, I intend to do a bit of a rabbit hole dive and determine just what this is? CCA? Like Tipper Gore was for records in the late 80's and early 90s? Making sure there's nothing too adult in them? Or is it something more sinister?

Ugh. Canes are largely useless (to me), aside from the recipes from the Candy Keeper. Sure, folks might pay a bit of inf for them - but retrieving them from my email is soooooo tedious. I think I lose inf just by taking the time to pull them out, lol. At least, I would if I were still neck deep in "ebil market" manipulation. But, I've made the big stacks, now is time to just give some away here and there to our favorite vampire on occasion, and maybe to a few of those folks who like to hold the squirt guns and herd kittens lead leagues for various trials/raids. And the occasional noob that thinks 10M is a lot of inf. And, actually play, without tabbing out to check on an afk farmer.

heh, a lot of my self-funding alts will visit this vendor year round. I have no idea why, but there were some long-standing bids for 3-5M for these recipes when the IOs were patiently bought by some folks at 700-900k. It's nice to have some utility for other-wise fairly useless candy canes.

My father used to tell me, "When in doubt, do nothing". To this day, I'm of a mixed opinion on how good or bad that advice is. Sometimes doing nothing can cost you. For now, I think nothing is a good idea with respect to effort to change these sets. Do I like the idea of making all sets 10-50? Very much so. The idea they weren't that way from the initial placement is beyond me. Why the original dev team thought we'd be slotting those is unknown to me. But, that's where we are. Does having Stink of the Manticore available at level 10 make it a more viable set? Not so much. Most folks aren't going to use that set, outside of the damage proc until level 30 anyway. Well, scratch that - for reasons of your own, many of you don't use sets until 50. I guess if I were blinking and found myself 50 that fast, I wouldn't either. But, since I solo more often than not, it's generally not that fast for me. But, making Touch of Death, or Kinetic Combat range from 10-50, that sounds more useful to me. Did the devs really anticipate us doing respecs at levels 35, 40 and 50 to change out these sets? I can't recall unslotters being around. If they were, it was a Free 2 play option, only available in the final year or so. I don't like the idea of changing the set bonuses of any set I'm currently using. Would I want to have to do a potential respec because now I want to use 6 slots instead of the 5 I have? Of course not. Even if was for the better of my character. I've trimmed a lot of characters from my stable. Deleted over 50 level 50's in the past few months because they weren't played in the past year. But still, the tedium of even looking at character builds to determine if they'd need to respec or burn unslotters - no thank you. But I'm just one guy. I'm sure I'm not alone in that specific regard, though. Others in this thread have come up with interesting options, so perhaps something will come of it. I'm not forward thinking enough to come up with any strong logical reasons as to why or why not.

I have a few categories, so to speak. The first shout out would go to @Snarky because he is amusing. Especially when he's not trying to be. A real renaissance man - studying German and music in his spare time, doing Pilates and some basic weight lifting to keep old age from catching up to him. (Run faster, Snarky!) The second is harder to articulate. In my experience, behind every good leader are good people who help that leader accomplish the goals. Now Guardian Maiden leads a hami on Tuesday nights - but also helps in the afternoon hamis when they're not leading. But it's not the Tuesday lead that gets them the shout out, it's the assistance they provide the other hami leaders when they're not leading. And GM isn't alone in this category. I'll likely butcher this name, and probably leave some folks out - @Lauciannacan perhaps elaborate a bit if she has time, I read somewhere she's fairly busy outside of the game this week. But there are a collection of players that seem to be quite useful. Wispur, Queen Maya, Deidre in the Disco, and lord help me...I can't recall the name of the other character that shouts the /loc for those 2 folks who got in, but can't fit on the league, letting them know where the Giant Monster scrum is, and where the staging area to tackle hami is. And as magical as the Goddess is with her many macros, without those folks helping her with the timely incans (in the labyrinth/murder room, too!) I suspect things would be quite a bit more challenging. Guardian Maiden is usually one of the tanks, and the other two..(I cannot recall at this time but I know Will is in one of the names somehow) Tanks are often doing thankless stuff, and it's easy to forget how badly things would go without them. And there's a Screaming Scuttie - I have no idea if they add any strategy but the commentary is usually silly, which is generally appreciated. Oh - special shout out for Amethyst Angel who read my comment that I was 36 prismatics shy of going mini-mode (or something like that) and they tried to gift them to me! I imagine they had never checked my global and was unaware I'm quite capable of buying all the prismatics if I want to. It was really a selfless act. Or maybe they don't visit the forums. Or just didn't care and had a bazillion prismatics. I know my alt that holds most of my stuff has a bunch, but this character was going to earn them. And lastly, @Bionic_Flea. Flea has probably forgotten more than most of us know about CoH. And still knows more than most of us. He is really selfless on the help chat channel, and must have City of Data, HC Wiki and who knows what other sources of information he has available - but I don't think there's anyone that has helped more people in that channel.

I have felt this way before...and really it was just about the latest patch with the name policy began to be implemented that I decided to simply play my level 50 fire/natty. I am somewhere around vet level 38 or so. Got about 1220 badges or so. Somewhere around 200 hero merits. And the inf keeps rolling in. When you don't make alts, you don't have to sweat farming or marketing. Just do the stuff that might be interesting on a given day. A break from CoH isn't the worst plan. Just be sure to check in for new content so you don't miss anything.

This is an excellent point. And it would likely add an additional chunk of code if it were to be implemented. But wouldn't it be nice if all those sets went to 50 in the first place? Still, that is a good point and adds to a sound reason why it wouldn't happen - despite my desire to see it so. Since when are QoL requests "necessary"? He all but told me to in his reply to my post. Still, the "necessary" perspective you have on QoL additions to the game - think about that? What has been added that has been "necessary"? You don't think the portable SG base was necessary? It was a gift! (one I use many times through the day)

There's no point in my discussing this if this is your approach. "Need" doesn't enter into it. "Want" is the driver. Now, before you take exception - I stopped reading your post when I read this. It's just clear we're not going to agree on this - and that's fine. I know you know your stuff - and you're probably gifted with much faster fingers than mine. I just cannot enjoy the game going sans enhancements. Fortunately, I don't have to.

Slotting build choices, as you say, should (and do) require thought and effort. The thought and effort is on the sets chosen. Common IOs require nothing but the perfunctory 1-2 acc, 2-3 damage and 1-2 recharge and maybe an end redux. The "detuner doesn't seem necessary" - the OP never said they were necessary. The OP offered a solution to a problem that players often have in game. We use attuned sets because we see value in those sets over the common IOs. When you play a character that uses sets, and then take the sets out for common IOs, it's no longer the same character. It's a weaker character. Lower recharge. Lower recovery. Why set a player up for that kind of experience? It's obvious, a lot of players use these common IO and strip them out. But why even offer that as a way of doing things to a player who's already reached 50? The post is about the dilemma presented. The usage of common IOs doesn't address it, it just makes the OP's character a lot weaker if they happen to exemplar. A lot of players who don't level up with invention sets won't see the value in this detuner proposition. I do! But it would depend on how it would be implemented. Because the last thing I want to do is accidentally use one and detune something I didn't intend to.

Well, no, I would never tell players that just use SOs over level 30 have a trash build - but I would think it. Most of us already think it in terms of "good enough, but not what I'd use". That's not a secret. They're "good enough" for most things, but for certain content, unless the player is known for competence, it's not going to inspire confidence. I'm thinking of the OP's dilemma. Wanting to have your stuff boosted, but recognizing that unslotting or burning a respec to get the attuned out and replacing with level 50 replacements is a bit tedious and time-consuming. The idea of a de-tuner is a reasonably good idea, depending on the implementation and cost. It would solve the problem presented. Now - your solution could solve it - but not nearly as well, nor as efficiently. And, when the OP, who's already 50 does some sub-50 content for a weekly...the stats they leveled with...gone. Because they used your advice. The recovery they were used to - gone. Your solution is viable, but ultimately, the character the OP would be playing just wouldn't be the same character. It would be weaker. Or, as I call it, trash. As for the 2nd part, I hadn't gotten to Tyger's post yet. I'm not singling you out on purpose. I don't even pay attention to whose post I'm responding to. I'm just looking at the content of the post itself. Don't you worry, his take on the OP's suggestion is even worse. I recognize that the OP recognizes this is just a QoL suggestion. The world's not going to end if the idea is tossed out with the trash. But, I think there's some merit to it. It would be quite useful. I'm not sure how often I'd use it, as I'm not clear on is how viable the "detuner" would be if the cost exceeded that of 5 boosters- whatever that cost might be on any given day on the AH. Sadly, the market cost of various items vary with demand and supply, and as a result, it can add a layer of complexity to how said unit would be acquired. Through a merit vendor makes sense, but for all I know, they could have it be some kind of super-rare drop for dropping a contaminated that spawns in RV. As for me, my current character, a fire/natty corruptor has about 1/2 and 1/2 boosted and attuned. I have a supply of unslotters that I use before exemplaring. I've opened so many packs that I have well over 3000 of them because to click that many times to sell the surplus just takes too much time. So, I just burn a bit of opportunity cost inf when I exemplar and then replace the attuned with the boosted when I go back to the 50 stuff. And, sometimes, I even forget, I barely notice. But If I forget to slap the attuned back in, I notice that, particularly with end recovery.