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Part 4b: Converting Enhancements and Making Influence Continued As I mentioned earlier, the Miracle: +Recovery was sold at a lower than expected price. That's okay. In the auction house, there will be some transactions, where you will get a higher than expected price and some where you will get lower. The 1.5M influence was low but enough to fuel crafting of additional enhancements. I got luckier on my next transaction, turning another Sleep/End enhancement to a Decimation: Chance for Build Up, which sold for a cool 3M influence. That sale pushed Dagmar's personal funds to nearly 3.8M influence. This allowed me to craft four more Sleep/End enhancements to enhancements of greater value, among them a Luck of the Gambler: Defense/Increased Recharge Speed and a Performance Shifter: Chance for +Endurance. After selling these, Dagmar topped 10,150,052 influence. I decided to spend 312,384 influence on upgrading her now yellow and white SO enhancements before heading back into the Hollows and a meet up with Julius the Troll. In Part 5, I'll cover a return to the Hollows, finishing up another Twinshot arc (as xp filler) and more enhancement conversions.

Part 4: Back to Atlas Park, Level 10, Making Influence As I mentioned in Part 3, I decided to head back to Atlas a few bars shy of level 10. Level 10 is an important milestone. It brings: A mez protection power for many Brute builds An expanded inspiration tray (from 8 slots to 10) The ability register a personal Supergroup and to setup a base (really handy if you're a solo player) I won't go into a ton of detail on the Twinshot missions. They are intended as an extended tutorial for newer players. If you're a new player, they are worth doing once. However, if you're a veteran or even a returnee, these are skippable. The missions are designed to get you familiar with features in Atlas Park, King's Row and Steel Canyon. The missions require quite a bit of travel, and from a xp per time standpoint, pretty inefficient. They also contain some of the more irritating personalities in the game... The only mildly tricky thing for a new player in these missions may be in finding the secret door in Manticore's mansion. The door is the bookcase between the statue and the fireplace. If you hover over the bookcase, you'll see your cursor turn to a blue hand showing that it is clickable. Dagmar got the last bars of xp required for level 10 after finishing the last mission of the first Twinshot story arc. Going back to Ms. Liberty, I chose Wet Ice (yay, mez protection) and walked into City Hall to register a new Super Group, Dagmar's Army. Super Group registration allows for base construction, and on Homecoming, bases require no prestige with all options being unlocked from the start. That's a great change from Live in my opinion. Bases can be constructed to taste, but for something functional, you need an inventions table, salvage storage, enhancement storage, a merit vendor, a Tree of Wonders (or its technology equivalent). With a base like this, you can start utilizing the merits you have hoarded up to now. It also allows you to have a place to craft without zoning to Steel Canyon to use the invention tables at the university. To start making influence, start by converting your Reward Merits to Enhancement Converters. As mentioned before, you can exchange one Reward Merit for three Converters. Dagmar at level 10 has 34 Reward Merits. I chose to convert 17 merits to obtain 51 converters. One of the easier means to make influence on Homecoming is to buy up unwanted, less desired recipes, craft them into enhancements and then convert them into something of higher value. This requires very little market knowledge, and you'll see that my strategy is unsophisticated: buy cheap recipes, craft, convert them into something of higher value to sell on the auction house. I started with scanning the auction house for something cheap. I target rare recipes rather than uncommon recipes because many of the rare enhancement sets contain a higher percentage of valued enhancements. On the flip side, many other players know this and rare recipes are often more expensive to require. Further, to convert specifically to a valuable enhancement, you may have spend a lot more converter to make an In Set Conversion (which cost 3 converters per try). I looked at the Call of the Sandman sleep recipes and was able to obtain an End/Sleep recipe for 1,000 influence. Sending an opportunity, I put in a bid for 3 more and was able to procure 4 copies of the recipe for 4,000 influence. Rare recipes, require rare salvage so I sprung 325,000 influence for the Strand of Fate salvage needed to craft it. With these investments, Dagmar has 820,157 influence remaining. After crafting the recipe, you end up with a level 25 Call of the Sandman: Endurance/Sleep enhancement. These don't sell very well, so you click the Enhancement menu and then click the Convert button that is now available (it's grayed out if you don't have converters). Select Out of Set Conversion, and convert until you find something valuable. Upon the first few rolls, Call of the Sandman converted to a Miracle: Healing/Absorb/Recharge enhancement. Healing/Absorb/Recharge is valuable but not as valuable as the +Recovery proc in the set. Rolling a few times with the In Set Conversion setting toggled, and I converted the enhancement to Miracle: +Recovery. Unfortunately due to acquisition costs of the recipe and salvage, Dagmar didn't have enough influence to pay the auction listing fee to set a competitive price for the enhancement. In hindsight, I probably should have sold the Prismatic Aether I obtained during the Frostfire mission to raise the funds, but for some strange reason I didn't think of something so obvious. Gambling, I set the price at 10 influence and someone got a big bargain.

Part 3: Beginning Hollows Arcs and Frostfire When we last left off, Dagmar had completed the beginning mission arcs in Atlas Park and was moving to the Hollows for the next set of challenges. The Hollows is actually an old zone (debuting in issue 2), but it was clear that the Live devs learned what worked and didn't work from launch. The Hollows is a hazard zone but with a small base surrounding David Wincott, the first contact, that provides a trainer (Foreshadow) and an enhancement store. I like the Hollows arcs because of the large number of merits that can be earned in completing them. Not only does each story arc earn you merits, there is a bonus awarded when all four story arcs are completed. It is with these merits that a character can become completely self-sufficient. First up, David Wincott. He's a contact that you must contact before level 10 or I'm not certain you will be offered the next contact in the chain, Flux. Dagmar started her Hollows adventure as a level 7 hero. Wincott starts you off with some street sweeping, first clearing some nearby Outcasts and then groups of Trolls, which can be found on one of the nearby hills. You will then be given coordinates to some Outcast bases. These are defeat-all missions. Athletic Run/Ninja Run and Jump Jet prove their worth here if you don't have a travel power. The two combined can easily help you safely navigate through the Hollows. With Dagmar, I decided to forgo a travel power until later, finding other power choices to be more optimal and fun. The missions are easy and straightforward. The difficulty is mostly in getting to them rather than completing them. Once you finish your last mission for Wincott, you are introduce to Flux. Flux is an infamous contact but he gives you the Defeat Frostfire mission after you do some street sweeping of Outcast and a base clear. Frostfire is typically the first elite boss most characters face. He's difficult because he's surrounded by an Outcast boss (Lead Freezer, Lead Shocker, etc.), at least one lieutenant and a bunch of regular Outcast mobs. Frostfire himself has increased hit points as an elite boss and has the ability to freeze you, which means that having a breakfree or mez protection may be necessary. The room itself has large patches of ice which makes maneuvering and character positioning difficult. Finally, the room is the last room in a large office instance, which means a lot characters may face the challenge low on inspirations. Dagmar faced Frostfire at level 9 and had not reached the level where Wet Ice (Ice Armor's mez toggle) was available. Further, while her inspiration tray was full, she had only had one luck (defense) inspiration and no breakfrees. I thought it was a worthwhile gamble to take on the elite boss because Dagmar had leveled as she fought her way to the room and the mobs therein conned one level lower than normal. Chugging the luck, one rage and a sturdy, Dagmar entered the room to do battle. A key is to try to slide or jump to a bare spot in the middle of the room to engage the enemies. This way, you won't slide around and be out of range for melee attacks. The fight was more anti-climatic than I thought it would be, and Dagmar defeated the entire room without taking much damage. Further, the clear of the mission, completed Flux's arc, earning additional merits as rewards. The arc also awarded a Prismatic Aether, which is a very rare salvage that can drop at the completion of a story arc. Dagmar was well into level 9 and had earned 34 Reward Merits. On hand, she still had 796k influence. Dagmar was a few bars away from level 10, a required level to both unlock Wet Ice, but also the minimum level to talk to Julius the Troll. I needed a filler arc, so I decided to head back to Atlas Park to do the Twinshot missions. The Twinshot mission arcs are honestly not worth doing due to their relatively low rewards (3 Reward Merits per arc completion) and because they require you to travel to multiple zones. I typically skip them, but having a choice of doing random missions in the Hollows via Meg Mason or just street sweeping, I decided on the Twinshot missions. The finale of the Twinshot mission is actually kind of neat as it has a Justice League versus the Legion of Doom feel. More on that later...

I'd love to see the Petrovich brothers fleshed out. The Back Alley Brawler personal story left me curious as to who they are. They're also mentioned in a mission with Provost Marchand where one of the reformed Praetorians stop one of their plots. And I know Captain Petrovich is a villain contact, perhaps one of the brothers?

Part 2: Leveling up and collecting rewards There is no orthodox way of playing this game. I know of some players who have done some of these low level missions so often that they'd rather just power level their characters past this content. Others bypass this content by joining a Death from Below (DFB) trial. This is a trial which is advertised frequently in the Looking for Group chat and are designed for players levels 1 to 6. There is no maximum level for this trial so many players use this to boost themselves to level 10, the minimum level needed to join the Positron Task Force in Steel Canyon. If you're interested in a DFB, join one. The trial boasts a some unique badges, provides a good amount of xp and offers a boost to accuracy, damage, defense or recovery that lasts until level 22. I like the first series of missions. First, the missions are easy, don't require a lot of traveling to do (they all take place in Atlas Park), and yields you about nine merits at the completion of the full three series. The arc is also emotionally satisfying as you're the hero that not only prevented a larger catastrophe but also reunited a family. These arcs and the Shauna Stockwell arc you encounter later feel the most like being in a comic book, so it doesn't feel tired to me to do them. You start by ignoring your initial contact in City Hall (in Dagmar's case, Azuria), and locate Matthew Habashy a bit northwest of Ms. Liberty. The easiest way to locate him is go to your Contacts menu, click the Find Contact button and he'll be offered as one of them. Choose the option of being teleported right next to him. I won't illustrate this entire mission chain as it involves beating up Hellions and beating up more Hellions. Sprint + Athletic Run/Ninja Run will allow you to get to each destination point quickly. The arc also introduces you to an infiltration mission where disguised as a Hellion, you retrieve something within their hideout and then escape. It's easy and the Hellions won't attack you no matter what you do. After completing Matthew Habashy's arc, you're offered two contacts: Officer Fields and Sondra Costel. Feel free to choose either one. I personally prefer Sondra Costel's missions as they are against the Skulls and not against the Vahzilok. During the Sondra Costel mission chain, you'll encounter your second infiltration mission as you pretend to be a reporter who is seeking to interview a member of the Skulls. The mission arc ends when you, accompanied by a cynical hero, you take down a major crime operation run by the Skulls. The only tricky thing in this last mission is that final boss can only be reached by using a set of stacked boxes like stair to reach a floor. The boxes are stacked in an elevator and you need to jump to reach where the boss is waiting. The last contact in the arc is Aaron Thiery, someone who feels stand-offish and a bit unsavory. His missions involves a lot of missions overland, beating up mobs nearby, deactivating bombs and taking out Arachnos Pylons. Depending on your server, there may be quite a bit of contention for Pylons or they may be guarded by several Arachnos mobs, which may elevate the danger in taking them out. There are a couple of unguarded Pylons on one of the warehouse roofs that most players ignore. These can be taken out to fulfill the mission requirements. The arc ends when you stop the machinations of a potential traitor and reunite the Habashy family. It's a feel good arc and I like the little touches in the mission that shows how appreciated you are. At the end of this entry, arc, you should have 9 more merits. As with previous 5 merits, this can be quickly converted to influence by exchanging them to converters and selling them. However, I recommend holding onto these for now. After talking to Matthew for the last time, you'll get a chunk of experience as well. This should get you to level 7 or very close to that. Go ahead and level up. Below depicts what Dagmar looks at level 7. As a general rule for melee characters, I prioritize slots in the first toggle power (usually an armor) and then the slots go into attacks. You'll ideally want to have at least four slots for each attack so you can slot one accuracy enhancement and three damage enhancements. Slot no more than three of each kind of enhancement as they will offer diminishing returns after the third of the same type. At level 7, I will also start slotting enhancements to all powers. Despite what most players may think, your character benefits very little from enhancements from levels 1 to about 10. The mobs aren't that tough and accuracy early on determined by Beginner's Luck, which normalizes accuracy so that you'll have the standard accuracy of 75% at level 20. At low levels, your character often doesn't miss and will be less dependent on accuracy. Dagmar has around 950k influence so I slotted her powers with SOs. At low levels, SOs, or Single Origin enhancements, are extremely effective. The Live game was balanced against characters having access to less powerful enhancements so using these is a very easy way to increase the effectiveness of your character. Below is what Dagmar looks like at level 7. Each SO offers an enhancement of 38.5% since they are three levels above character level. SOs diminish in effectiveness as you level. It is why a lot of players find IOs, or Invention Origin enhancements, more appealing since they do not diminish in power as the character gains levels. Note that I think it's a valid choice of foregoing the accuracy enhancements in the attacks at this stage. Your accuracy, due to Beginner's Luck, is probably just fine. It's probably a mixture of old habits and an extreme dislike of missing that causes me to slot this way. Also, no need to slot endurance reduction in the Frozen Armor toggle. Frozen Armor expends .26 endurance per second and given that it is your only toggle at this point, it won't have a noticeable impact on your endurance. After shopping, Dagmar has a bit over 793k influence remaining. It's time to head over the Hollows to really start farming those merits for even more influence-making opportunities. That will be detailed in the next post. See you next post.

Addendum: This guide was originally written during Issue 26, Page 6. A few days after this guide was published, Issue 27, Page 7 dropped. Page 7 has significantly changed the new character experience, so I've gone back through this guide and updated it. There may be some screenshots that reflect Page 6, but I've updated the narrative to better reflect what players will see in Page 7. *** There are a lot of really good guides on what to do when starting out. If that's what you're looking for, then this may not be for you. What I will be illustrating in the next few posts is what I do when starting a new character. I start every character with nothing. No transfers, No emailing influence to myself. Nothing. Even though I have billions of influence stashed away, I will show you what I do to start a self-funded character solo. For this experiment, I have created a new character on Everlasting. I have existing characters on Everlasting but for the purposes of this experiment, I'm going to pretend its my first character on the shard. If you're new to COH or are a returnee, this is basically your starting point. You choose an origin, an archetype, primary/secondary powers, a costume and a name. For this tutorial, I picked what I think is the easiest AT for the early level experience, a Brute. Let me introduce Dagmar the Loud, an Battle Axe/Ice Armor Brute. I click Next and I'm given the opportunity to choose to enter a tutorial. I advise entering the tutorial. It takes a couple of minutes and it offers you a chance to setup some things on your character. For this character, I chose Outbreak, making Dagmar a heroine who will eventually end up in Atlas Park. In the Outbreak, I setup the following things. Setup up power trays (changed in Issue 27, Page 7) Setup up chat tabs (optional) Open up the map menu and disconnect the map interface from the main navigation bar at the top. Buy two free powers from the P2W Vendor (Athletic Run/Ninja Run and Jump Pack) (changed in Issue 27, Page 7) New players may not be aware that the power trays are quite customizable. The power trays as of Page 7 come fully expanded as three trays. As before carets (the small triangles) on the trays allow you to compress or expand the trays and switch the trays displayed. You have 9 individual trays which can hold power icons, binds or macro functions (I won't cover binds or macros in this guide but they are easy to look up). How you arrange your powers are up to individual tastes, but I generally put primary (attack/control) powers in Tray 1, secondary (armor/buff/debuff) powers in Tray 2 and utility/misc powers in Tray 3. In Dagmar's case, Chop goes in Tray 1 along with Brawl and Apprentice Charm, while Frozen Armor goes in Tray 2. Sprint, and Athletic Run and other travel powers goes into Tray 3. When you're happy with how your powers are arranged, right click on a tray and Lock the Powers in the Trays from keeping from inadvertently moving around. You can also drag the power tray to any position in your game interface; it doesn't have to stay in your bottom right. As of Page 7, Athletic Run will now show up as a default temp power. Athletic Run is a great travel power and will allow you to traverse almost all the low level zones safely. Occasionally, you may need to click the Powers menu and click on the mini icons to have them display or manually move them onto your trays. Some powers don't automatically show up on your trays. Most veteran COH players know this, but this is not that intuitive. Chop, Brawl and Apprentice Charm is your very low level attack chain and will serve you well. Apprentice charm is a free, origin-specific power that all characters get. They vary per each origin. The Technology power for example provides a very short stun along with damage. They are short-ranged attacks, but don't overlook them in the low levels. With Brute fury, it can do respectable damage. As of Page 7, Apprentice Charm has a respectable 80' range and does more damage. Neat! The last setup thing you should do is setup monitoring for influence. Go to the Combat Attributes menu, expand base attributes and scroll to the bottom. You will see your current influence, which should be 0. Right-click influence and set to monitor influence. You should see a small influence display on your game interface. Once you have these setup, you're ready to finish the tutorial. Just follow the instructions and the way points will guide you to the next activity. Most veterans have done this tutorial so many times that it's probably muscle memory. Still, it's relatively fast and offers two large inspirations (a Rage and a large Respite). Keep them in your inspiration tray but don't use them. They can fetch good influence once sold outside of the tutorial and its an easy way to get starting funds. The tutorial also offers two enhancements (Talisman of the Initiate). I trash these right away because they have almost no bearing on your effectiveness and you'll out-level them almost immediately. Once you're finished finding the formula, rescue Flower Knight and beat the infected, contact Coyote again and enter Atlas Park. You'll end up right next to Ms. Liberty and you should train to level 2. This should give you the Rookie exploration badge (new in Page 7) and give you a jump jet fly power with 30 minutes of flight time. After leveling to 2, what I do is find a nearby low-level Hellion. They're adjacent to the fenced area of Paragon City Hall. Find one and defeat it. That will net you a smallish amount of influence. You will need that influence to sell your inspirations. Then go to your chat bar on the bottom left and type /ah. This will bring up the auction house. Drag the two inspirations you got from Outbreak, list each for 10 and get easy starting influence. The price you will get will vary quite a bit, but with little effort, I was able to get 54k of starting funds. 54k for almost no effort isn't bad, but it won't be enough to fund your character even in the short term. The next thing I do is to collect Atlas Park exploration badges (these are little plaques that you can collect by standing near them). Exclusive to Homecoming, collecting all the exploration badges in Atlas Park will reward you with 5 merits and the Atlas Tour Guide badge. Using Athletic (or Ninja run) and your new temp flying power, you'll be able to easily collect the badges and run away from potential threats safely. Atlas Park Exploration Badges (this link shows the location of each badge; note: wiki may need to be edited to account for the Rookie badge) If you want to become an avid badge collector, I recommend installing Vidiotmaps, a mod for the COH client which enhances the normal in-game map with location of each badge. If you've properly collected each badge (note: you do not need to have Tried and True or the Silent Sentinel badges in your collection), you should have 8 exploration badges. This will give you the Atlas Tourist badge and reward you with 5 merits. Note that the in the screenshot below was taken during Page 6. During Page 6, the collection of all the Atlas exploration badges also awarded the Passport accolade and the Long Range Teleporter power. These are still obtainable in Issue 7, but to unlock them requires a character to have 10 exploration badges. It's easy enough to take the Paragon Tram to nearby King's Row, find two badges and collect this accolade. But consider this optional. While you are collecting the Edge of Chaos badge in City Hall right next to the D.A.T.A. hall elevator, take the elevator down and click the portal to enter Recluse's Victory. Recluse's Victory is a PvP zone set in a theoretical future. As such it will award you a badge, Entrusted with the Secret and the ability to enter an Ouroboros portal. Using Ouroboros is probably one of the handiest fast travel abilities in the game, so you'll want to do this. Don't stay in Recluse's Victory. You're a level 2 and there won't be much you will be able to there effectively. Go jump through the portal again behind you and return to Atlas Park. Time to make some influence. Go back to the main foyer of City Hall and you'll soon spot an ATM-looking machine there. You can also find it via your map. Click the Merit vendor and exchange each of your merits for 3 enhancement converters. You'll sell those on the auction house for your starting funds. Like you did for the inspirations, type /ah and bring up the auction house interface. Drag your enhancement converters (you should have 15) from your salvage menu into the auction house interface. List them all for 10 influence. Don't worry too much about maximizing profit or listing them for more. You could do that, but the difference at most will be a few hundred influence; not that much in the long run. Selling them for 10 will allow them to be sold instantly. The converters sold for 65k apiece which nets 877,575 influence. Add that to the amounts earned from the inspirations and the random mob kill and Dagmar the Loud starts with 925,524 influence starting funds at level 2. Not too bad, especially considering that during Live play, 1M influence was considered quite a generous head start. In the next post of this walkthrough, I'll detail how to level up Dagmar efficiently, collect more merits and multiply the starting funds to something more substantive.

I also vote Brute. At low levels, fury will enable you to 1 shot most minions and almost kill lieutenants. This makes leveling smooth. You won’t need enhancements until level 10 or so, because the early missions are really easy and inspirations can get you past anything remotely hard.

Praetor Duncan walks into a bar. As she sits down, she looks up and notices three pieces of meat hanging from the ceiling. She asks the bartender "what's with the meat?" The bartender says, "If you can jump up and slap all three pieces at once, you get free drinks for an hour. If you miss even one, you have to pay for everyone else's drinks for the rest of the night. Wanna give it a go?" Praetor Duncan takes another look at the meat, then says, "I think I'll pass. The steaks are too high."

It's fine actually. Fun enough that I donate. Just because I find one part lacking doesn't mean there isn't much to love. I think TFs are fun, as is pre-level 50 teaming. I also realize that the current Homecoming folks had nothing to do with current state, and due to dev priorities, we're likely stuck with drinking the dregs from a literal well to grow more powerful.

Superman - empowered by Kryptonian physiology + yellow sun; early version was strong only as a basis of his Kryptonian physiology Hulk - created by accident via gamma radiation Dr. Manhattan - accident gives godlike powers Thor - god Professor X - mutant Magneto - mutant Scarlet Witch - mutant Thanos - probably a god Galactus - cosmic being

We're just going to agree to disagree. I think the lore is what lacks imagination. The Well of the Furies could have been something more euphemistic instead it's literally a Well, and it's mystical. It's the literalness of the lore which I find confining. Sure, you can hand wave a lot of this away, but at the end of day, you're a McGuffin-empowered Incarnate.

One moment that shattered some of my treasured childhood memories was learning about Midichlorians in The Phantom Menace. Before then, the Force was a mysterious power bestowed to a very few, and was something mystical in the space opera setting of Star Wars. Explaining it as a mass of microorganisms took all the mystique out of it. I think in some ways, the reason why vampire and werewolf mythology works so well is that they represent a hidden world in our current belief of how the world works. I think you reduce it as some sort of virus infection or genetic affliction, it become less interesting. In sum, over-explaining some things makes it less interesting, not more. I find that progressing as an Incarnate to be rather lacking from a lore standpoint. Your progress is not only not original - as Incarnates have existed before you - but dependent on a magical McGuffin. It's rather immersion breaking to have my tech-origin Bots/Trap MM have to chase vestiges of the Well to grow more powerful. It's also clear there are individuals and organizations that have power scaling equal to or beyond the Well (Ouroboros, Dream Doctor, The Battalion, etc.) Most of my post level 50 characters feel shoe-horned into a lore that doesn't really fit. Now, I'm not complaining about the mechanics to enforce a uniform way to increasing power to post-level 50. I just wish the story/lore was more mysterious and open to more interpretation. It feels like taking away creative agency. Instead of finding enlightenment, discovering the anti-life equation, ascending to the Heavenly Realm, etc., you are Incarnate number 10,243. It's boring and I wish wasn't so.

A lot of people will recommend a scrapper or a brute, but I'd recommend a stalker. Stalkers can be made very sturdy, and they have mez protection in their secondary. Stalkers have a few big advantages that will be of interest to you: they can hide and dictate how each fight starts; with assassin strike, they can eliminate or heavily injure the biggest threat in each encounter; boss fights become trivial. Stalkers solo very well. If you have limitations in moving a character around, this will be a good AT for you.

I'm reminded how truly original my concept / costume really is

What level range are you looking for? There are probably a number of suitable maps, particularly villain side. For low level, some of the Praetoria missions would be honestly hard at +4/x8 (anyone game for hunting down Shen and not avoiding the ambushes?)

I don’t bother slotting IOs until level 27. That’s when the dual enhancements (acc/dam for example )start becoming greater than what you’d generally get for a single attribute enhancement (all damage for example). Even with SOs, the game is super easy at those levels. I think twinking more is kind of silly. I will slot anything useful that is self-found or comes out of something I converted that I was going to sell. But no full sets until 27+. I level up characters the traditional way. I do have a stable of farm characters but don’t like to PL my own heroes.

The converter economy makes self-funding characters really easy and makes farming not really necessary. It almost works too well, to the point that the abundance of IOs may contribute to balance issues. I play some on Rebirth and soloed a Tanker to 50 there. The influence scarcity issue was as rough as I remembered it on Live. Over there, the low level market is dead so that cool orange recipe that could be sold for millions here is vendor trash.

A 20-year old MMO won't have a significant impact on a whole multi-billion genre

I played my very first Tips mission just a few months ago. And played since day 1 of live service. I think that’s mostly related to my own experience. I think I largely ignored the morality sub system and just played either heroes or villains.

Getting all the exploration badges in a zone nets you 5 merits plus the Passport accolade and Long Distant Teleporter power. Assuming, you toured 3 zones, that’s 15 merits. Edit: I think that tour is one of the best ways to help new players. The second best is having players switch to villains for all the mayhem badges that switches to the Task Force Commander when they return hero side.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results.” - Mender Lazarus So I'm one of those weirdos who plays through the low level contacts on each character. As I articulated in this thread, I start with Matthew Habashy, his follow-up contacts, do Twinshot's story arcs, head to the Hollows, and then head to King's Row for Shauna Stockwell and Eagle Eye. For most, I'll head to Faultline to start those story arcs unless I partake a Positron Task Force. Since I started on Homecoming back in April of last year, I've done this over 20 times, for each new character I've created. I think it's fair to say that many people will think this is quite boring. I've done this enough to know most of the glowie locations, and where hostages are kept (even on the large Troll maps). I completely understand the perspective of someone who no longer want to see this content and use Death From Below to blitz past these levels or just power level a character into the mid-levels or even to 50. There is no orthodox way of playing this game, and I'm not suggesting that playing through the content is the official, standard or orthodox way of experiencing the game. "A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step" - Tub Ci "Woah, I know kung fu!" - Nebel Elite Fist What is interesting to me is seeing a character progress. Powers which are terrible with the default slot and at low level can change dramatically when investments in them are made. I was amazed to learn that mass immobilize powers take on a completely different dimension with the ability to supplement them with procs. This wasn't something that was considered standard practice when inventions were launched. I still remember how many players considered procs to be under-powered compared to more traditional slotting conventions. Similarly, seeing a character start off weak and steadily grow in power by gaining new powers, new slots and enhancements is where I derive the most joy. I have power leveled a couple of characters to 50, tricked them out with the best enhancements - typically in the 500-700M range - and then been completely bored by them. I just don't have the same connection with them, and they are my least played characters. "Do or do not, there is no try." - Lord Recluse What Homecoming does really well is be a sandbox. Due to merit-based economy, I can quickly craft/sell to fund any variety of character I want. The same low level content poses very differing levels of challenge depending on AT and power choices. A character with ranged attacks and hover makes the Frostfire mission a cakewalk. Similarly some power sets seem just designed to overcome these easily. My level 11 Traps/AR Defender easily overcame Frostfire and then the elite bosses in Eagle Eye's missions at level 13. My level 16 Electric/Storm controller couldn't do enough damage to easily overcome the early elite bosses without resorting to prestige attack powers, lots of red inspirations and blues due to how quickly he burned through endurance. "You're a wizard, FFFF!" - Jean Luc Picard, Circle of Thorns Ruin Mage Seeing these differences first hand, and watching your low level character steadily gain power is what is interesting to me. Compared to some of you, I'm still a bit of neophyte in this game. Though I played quite a bit during Live service and spend quite a bit of time here and on other servers, I'm probably vastly underestimating how much some folks play this game, to the point they are quite tired of seeing some of the content. However, for me, there's quite a bit to explore. I haven't tried every power set or haven't had much experience much with certain ATs (Dominators, Arachnos Soldiers, Warshades, Stalkers). I know that there are some of you who continue to play due to a desire of seeing concepts take to life, or because you use characters as a means of story telling. I think we are sort of similar in that we appreciate this very familiar sandbox to see our creations grow. Anyways, thanks for reading this rather long meandering of why I play here. "Live long and prosper" - Sp0cK, Freakshow Tank Smasher

We have found Homecoming’s Forest Gump!

I think you could get pretty far with just the Carnival of Light options in the costume creator. Combine with the Gunslinger and perhaps Barbarian options and I think you can get very close to what you want without using Aether Particles. Here's a quick mock up.

I was on a PUG Positron 1 last night, and the team was a MM (no idea on secondary), a Traps Defender, me (on Mo'Hawk my Electric/Storm controller) and the rest melee, a mix of scrappers, brutes and tanks. It was a pretty great setup. With the FFG, Steamy Mist and various Leadership toggles, the group was above the defense soft cap. No one took any significant damage in any of the fights...as long as we stayed together. So the TF goes absolutely flawlessly. No one is taking any damage. Acid Mortar, Freezing Rain and other debuffs were making kill speed really fast. Anything that didn't die fast was either flopping around like a fish, locked down via a hold or trying to run away. This is when one of the brutes gets cocky. He leaps out of our huddle and dives into a big group of Clockwork. Goes to red hit points immediately and screams "heal!". Well, I'm the only "healer" on the team with an O2 Boost single-slotted with recharge. I run to the edge of the protective huddle and heroically hit him for 60 points of healing, moving him from red to dark orange. Didn't help much, and one of the Canon Princes pretty much puts him into the dirt the next hit. Now, that of course didn't teach him any lessons, and the sheer ease of the combat encouraged a couple of the other melee to follow his lead. They all face planted pretty quickly. Meanwhile, the characters sitting in the FFG/Steamy Mist peloton pretty much were still killing fast and weren't taking any damage. This repeated a few times, and few runs from the hospital later, everybody stayed huddled up. No one died again until we ran into the copies of ourselves. Note, kill the storm controller copy right away. He (me) used Freezing Rain on us as the opening move and we wiped.

Buy the cheap rare recipes and convert those. Buy at specific breakpoints - level 20, 25, 30, etc. Because some of the valuable enhancements such as Miracle +Recovery don't show up after 40. The lower level recipes are also cheaper to craft and on the average use cheaper rare salvage. You can convert uncommon recipes but the only ones that seem to sell are defense and resist sets. The folks who do this seriously buy as many recipes, converters and their associated salvage as they can, log off that character and then check back after awhile. Patience can save you a huge amount. I generally don't do that. I'm too impatient. I'll get a few cheap rare recipes, usually matching the rare salvage I have banked, use merits to buy converters and set aggressive prices to sell fast. I'm not maximizing potential profit, but I make enough to kit out any character as much as I want.