Ukase

So, when I first read this, I saw the logic. It bugged me a bit, but now that I've slept on it, I see the flaw more clearly. Best rewards are great and all, but by this standard, this means I can just head to a lower population instance of PI, join the teams, and do literally nothing, but nudge my character every so often to avoid auto-logging off. It's just wrong. And yeah, I completely get that if I'm the active player, I should mind my own business. I'm still getting to blast the npcs, I'm still getting my prismatics and if I'm very honest with everyone, the reason it bugs me is because I'd like to do this myself sometimes. But I don't. If you're afk long enough for the white AFK bubble to appear over your head, and your team/league doesn't know why you went afk or when you'll be back - you're wrong. It may be completely innocent on your part - kid may have fallen down and started screaming. That's justified reason to step away. And I wouldn't expect any parent to pre-explain the reason before they left - but - it's still creating an opportunity for a player get loot while doing nothing - and I am doing my part, plus some of yours. In some context, going afk for awhile is perfectly understandable. But when I see the notes I've made on a player from the year before, or the days before, yeah, it's pretty clear what's going on. These are people that do this kind of thing habitually. This is just my take. I don't pretend to think the way others do. Opinions vary.

On Excelsior, one is too many, even if the population is less than 1100. (but that's my personal take, not a rule, as far as I know) On some of the lower pop servers, I'd think it might actually be encouraged. Context means a lot.

I don't F with 'em. A lot of times, we never know what's going on the other side of the keyboard, so I'm not going to be rude. And I don't fuss immediately; I'm talking about over 10 minutes or so. If I'm the league lead, I'm just going to send a tell, "Hey, you're taking up a spot that could be taken by someone who is going to be active. Give a shout when you return" If that constitutes harassment, I'll take the risk.

I need to add: A character that has access to the Core of the labyrinth. Now, these characters are not just for that purpose - but I do park 3-4 of them in the core so that when a new character seeks to master it, I can let them get all the motes, the plaques before the league forms. Generally in the time preceding MSR, or preceding Hami in the abyss. I also use the same characters to sacrifice themselves to the mino to find out what weapon he's using so I can get the mini-pet. (crazy as it sounds, I just think the icon is cool..I doubt I'll ever spawn the mini-pet more than once or twice. They have zero utility. But that icon looks great! And, I can tell myself the character has paid its dues, so to speak.

I did want to add this: perception is crazy. I have my 50 out, the character is already rogue. For whatever reason, he has no tips of any kind. I finally get a tip, and it's 3 tips in one. Wizard's weakness, a window of opportunity, and a standard alignment tip. Click/knock on a few more doors, I get another tip. Another alignment. A few minutes later, another. Oddly, set to 0/1, I've gotten 1-2 of each EB, 6 costumes, 20 of those 4 special event salvage - but no Whispered Rumor tip. I've been at it a good 20-25 minutes. I just figured I'd share that to let the OP know they are not insane, and the rng, while maybe not FUBAR, is certainly fickle at times. And I'll add this: I was up to 16 costumes collected, and still no tip. But I'd forgotten that an Arisen Mummy killed me, and I neglected to put my costume back on. I did, and 2 doors later, I got my tip. Don't be like me. If you get clobbered, put the costume back on!

My main has all the badges. I can't see remaking him, because getting those is a pain in the butt.

I think it's important to recognize that while I wasn't in the OP's shoes, rng is a fickle mistress. Rather than reveal 6 paragraphs of my own stupidity in prior years: Make sure you don't have a tip already. All the chaos, it could drop and you missed it, or maybe it didn't tell you. (Not my experience that it won't tell you, but who knows?) As stated, make sure you have a costume on. No costume, no tips. Make sure if you need one last tip because you want that last badge that you've changed your alignment to rogue or villain, and ToT in villain or co-op areas like KW. Other than that - it's ABCD, as a league leader told me yesterday. "Always Be Clicking Doors".

Opinions are certainly going to vary. Since I'm not new, and the game has changed a fair amount since HC opened the doors, almost making it a bit of a different game from retail, in some ways, I get to feel like a new player. Because once a month or so, I make a character (or three) that have to level up organically, starting from zero with no help from alts, I think I'm in a good position to answer this. No. Don't take 2xp. The reason why has nothing to do with the influence that you lose. It has more to do with the powers you've chosen, and how you might use them in game to keep from getting clobbered too often. Getting defeated happens. Many players laugh it off, which I guess is good, but a small number of those players have no idea how or why they got defeated, and never figure out how to avoid that from happening again. I'm not in the majority with my perspective, so please don't take my way as the only way or best way, it's just a way. Have fun while you're playing, but learn about your character. For every hour you spend in the costume creator, you might want to give equal time to looking at the powers you have available, and how best to use them. The problem is - as a new player, you really don't know what the npcs you'll face are capable of until you face them. And that is the rub that 2xp can rob you of. It gives your character experience while taking experience away from you, the player. It's useful to learn that Circle of Thorns have accuracy debuffs, defense debuffs, sleeps, holds, and a number of other challenges to overcome if you face a group of them. It's useful to learn that some npcs just slowly approach you, shake and then explode. It's useful to learn a lot of things in the game, and 2xp can rob you of those lessons. Now, a lot of us more experienced players - we've learned the lessons, and some folks even have the dialogue memorized and enjoy impersonating the sound of Molly Ephraim's voice when they recite dialogue from certain cut scenes. Amusing to hear, really. Alas, I was sworn to secrecy. But I digress. Don't take it. After you've been through the content a few times, then feel free to take it. At least then you're making more of an informed decision.

I can't speak for how things are currently, but when I started, I knew so little about farming, afk or otherwise, that instead of burn on auto, I had healing flames on auto, and was surviving, and since it was afk, that was good enough for me. Eventually, while just reading and chatting with folks, I figured out that I was missing more than a few things. So, instead of playing my spines/fire brute outside of AE, I was doing routine content. Unai Kemen, Maria Jenkins, all that stuff. I didn't want a fire farm build, because I still wanted to be able to burn up banished pantheon - who, as a faction, I learned are much, much harder for my brute at +4/8 than Freaks are. So, I tinkered around, and used a 2nd build and came up with a pretty good afk fire farmer for pre-page 4. Well, you know, it worked really well, so I made one on each server. And each one would use build 1 to level up organically, and then use build 2 to farm. Then page 5 hit, and I had some more thinking to do. I'd made the stacks of inf - which really came about more from the winter pack sales than anything else. But the afk farm method, while slower than active farming is scalable. There was a time when I had 3 afk-farmers running, while I played standard content on a 4th. And I would take the drops, craft, convert and sell them. Sometimes, I'd do the converting while burn is on auto and my character is in the map. Seems to be the best way to do it. Efficient. Then I do the same for each farmer. When the map's clear, they sell the loot, then craft the new drops. I'd make about 1/2B per character every couple of days, if memory serves. But, when page 5 hit, and the labyrinth hit...things in the market changed a little. Instead of lotg 7.5% selling for 7-8M, they started selling for 5-6, and now they're going for 4-5M. (patient bidding, anyway). So, the inf from marketing really isn't there, not like it was. My farmers are 50, so each IO costs almost 500K to craft. It's better to just vendor that stuff, and buy that recipe at it's lowest level and craft those. Cheaper crafting. The problem for me was, the salvage for the level 50 recipes was already on my character. I didn't have to buy salvage. So, I told myself the crafting cost was a wash. But now, with things getting even tighter, now I just vendor most of the rare recipes unless I know I can craft and sell them for more profit than the recipe. But the uncommons...I'm now at the point where I will craft those, because I have the salvage. Buying cheaper recipes, and lower tier salvage - I do that already on my level 1 characters that earn their way to a billion. So, now, I just use the farmers to push a character for some vet levels, or past a rough patch, like 35-40. I really don't like levels 35-40. Those 3 slots per level are so useful, but so much need for them, and other than Provost Marchand, I can't find an arc I like. And yeah, for me, crafting, converting...that's a bit tedious, but it's kind of fun for me. The farming? That's not very much fun. Not once I hit 50. Before that, I love watching the xp bar fill.

Enter the curmudgeon who yells because you thought about walking across his lawn. Don't do Posi 1 at level 8! Are you insane? Do it at 20, not level 8. At 20, because the TF caps at 15, and you'll get the powers you chose at 16, 18 and 20 while exemplared to 15. It will be much easier, and you'll even have a lot more slots to be able to contribute more than you otherwise would. Now, I get your logic, and I've also finished the dfb at 7. As I read your post, I follow your logic trail. But there are so many players that complain about how easy things are, I don't see them making things easier. But that's just my opinion. And around here, I have to pay people to hear it! It's obviously worth less than nothing. It costs me! <queue Snarky's promotional ad for donating to any of Snarky's causes>

Clearly, the folks at OVH need to slot for more AoE defense!

Love this idea.

If the rng gives them to me, I sometimes will swap them out with the level 10's my level 50's have slotted. They will still work if the level 50 exemps down. But yeah, I hear ya.

Make the pets a little smarter. This is probably a "me" problem for now, but there are no npcs, at least none that I can target, just a fog. It's in the Gordon Bower mission, defeat all ghosts. The pets seem to get blinded by the patch and just stupidly try to attack it. I can't even target it. Not sure how much of a pain this is to deal with, but it would be nice if they ignored it, or at least let me target it so I can kill it so they'll resume following me. My recharge is insufficient to respawn them after each patch without waiting around for it to recharge at this level.

This is interesting. I make an ice or fire blaster not so much because they're high dps, but because their activation/animation times on most of the powers "seem" faster than the others. I swear, Dark's effects make it look slower. That's probably all in my head. But if I could take ice blast for my powerset, but do the dark damage...maybe. But alternatively, I could take mace on my brute, and do dark damage...that might be interesting. I think what you might have in mind would be a blaster character is made. They choose a dark blaster. But instead of it dealing negative energy, or whatever dark dishes out, it would dish out fire damage. Or ice damage, or whatever damage the player picked. Everything else is the same. But, if everything else is the same, only the damage type - maybe a better option is to just visit the tailor and have the option to turn whatever effect your character has and make it look like the one you want. So, if you wanted your dark corruptor to dish out fire damage, you would visit the tailor on your fire corruptor and make the attack look like a dark blast attack. And nothing else changes. Only the color/special effects of the power you're using.

I wish I'd taken a screenshot. But I didn't. I see the system message about Jurassik, and I zone into Crey's Folly, and from 800 yards away, my target macro picked up Jurassik. From 200 feet away, the macro has the same format, just Kraken where Jurassik is within the same macro, and it doesn't pick him up. It makes monster hunting a bit annoying. Now, if someone says this is a feature, or that Kraken has stealth, fine. But I've never seen that, just evidence of it.

Not to get into politics, but Bluesky leans to the left. I could say more, but won't.

Sorry, this is soooooo subjective. If I'm being completely open and vulnerable, the only characters I really love to solo are my fiery armor brutes and tanks. The rest of them can function solo, but a team lets them have a bit more flexibility in what they can and can't risk. So, I'd go fire/* tank. Or */fire brute. Now, if you want to break out and team up even a little bit, plant/dark controller. Ice/fire blaster, water/ice blaster, fire/ice blast, water/fire blast. Fire/natty corruptor is a lot of fun on teams.

The sad thing is, the only real fair way to do this is for folks to communicate, and the really hard part is to understand that some folks simply have: time constraints knowledge gaps influence shortage ignorance on in-game norms of behavior, if there is such a thing We all play differently, with different goals for our characters. I suppose the last one - it's tough to agree on what should be the norms of behavior. I don't have any authority to say "do this, don't do that." I can certainly ask, or discourage one behavior or another. But if it's within the CoC, it's all okay. And that's just something we all have to come to grips with. It's like in the hami raid in the abyss. The last run of the day, probably 10 people just log their characters out before the buds are cleared. This is an attitude problem. In very few cases, some may have been pushing the window on their available playtime. But still, why do the rest of us have to clean what is essentially part of their mess? But there's no stopping this behavior. I can gripe, bitch and moan about it - but that just makes me the bad guy. I have 16 level 50's at present that will be going for the prismatics, via ToT. I have 6 that are not level 50. I consider that fair. A few of those 6 are close to 50, so maybe it'll change. And I will take one 50 on the first day, and grab as much of the halloween badges and goodies as it can get, then I'll bring the lowbies in, and then I'll bring the rest of the 50s. I think it's the latter part of the event that more 50's are needed.

As someone who told you about Cosmic Council maybe 5 years ago or so, I never thought in a million years you would get the badge bug, or take the star. You have grown, sir! I was so proud of you, I even sent a message on General Chat which I don't even monitor. Well done!

Ah...I remember the good ol' days when I'd buy the recipes for 1.8-2M, craft, convert and list for 9.7M. And often get 12-15M!! I was making a billion a day..not every day. But most days. I don't know who's willing to spend 4.4M to list for less than 8M. After the salvage cost, and the cost of converters, the profit margin is slimmer than it's ever been. I still have my lowbie bids on the recipes. And one of them has filled in the last two weeks. Whomever is doing it - recognize this folks: There are 54 of those recipes. Now, there's only so many slots in the AH they have. Are they using 9 characters, and each character has 2000 bids on each recipe? I really would have thought if they were bidding in stacks of 10, more than just one would have squeezed through. My lowball offer isn't that low! So whomever it is - they have a lot of inf tied up in those bids. A LOT.

Badges like this can drive sane people mad. First, you get the contact organically, or you get Dean through Ouro. You complete his arc. Then you begin to work for Mr. G, either organically or through Ouro. During the 2nd mission of Mr. G's first arc, Dean's words should appear across your screen in some kind of chat bubble. When you finish this mission, you go to Sharkhead and talk to Dean BEFORE you select the third mission. You then should be able to find Dean on his knees in the 3rd mission of Mr. G's second story arc. Again, step 1: Be sure you've completed Dean MacArthur's arc. step 2: talk to Dean BEFORE you select the third mission of Mr. G's first arc. If you've done steps 1 and 2 correctly, in the final moments of this first arc, you'll see Dean interrupt Yin's camera time. Look here to read the distinction between following the steps and not following the steps. Now, if you see Dean interrupt Yin, you know you've done things in the right order. If you don't, you might as well re-start. Sadly - this doesn't get you the badge Honorary Bro/Sis - YET But, if you did it right, it lays the groundwork for getting it in Mr. G's 2nd arc, 3rd mission.

I have to echo this. Some players are just ...skilled. More skilled than most. Their positioning, their target selection, their reflexes...all that stuff. I used to think that aside from speed of movement, I was one of them. Then I learned enough to figure out I'm not. Close, but not quite. I might overlap a bit, depending on content if I'm on an ice or fire blaster. Only a bit.

Not me. Sounds interesting!

This is actually my latest version. I have a few Fire/natties, specifically for hami raids. But this one is the latest, and I think it's the best one, but I wouldn't want to level this one organically, either. Fleur de Leigh- Corruptor (Fire Blast - Nature Affinity).mbd