Lunar Ronin

It depends on your play style, honestly. Some people prefer to hang back, others prefer to get in the mix of it. If you have the spare power slot, yeah I'd say Combat Jump is worth it as it costs very little endurance. Again, it's the small amount of defense combined with muling the defense IO enhancements.

Hover is useful for a small amount of extra defense in combat, and as a defense IO enhancement mule. That said, if you intend to primarily use Speed of Sound, I would go with Combat Jumping instead, for much the same reasons as Hover.

Since there's been a lot of discussion over the past month on the forums and on a couple of Discord servers, I thought that I would put together a helpful guide on how to disable Group Fly, Speed Boost, and Team Teleport. I hope that people find it helpful!

As explained multiple times in this thread and again four posts above yours, a developer has said that making Group Fly and Team Teleport off by default is a non-viable solution due to spaghetti coding.

A. It was explained back on live and again in the early years of Homecoming that moving the ability to block Group Fly, Speed Boost, and Team Teleport to the options menu was a non-viable solution because they require tokens granted to the character in order to override the powers, which requires interaction with a NPC. B. It was explained by Captain Powerhouse three years ago that switching Group Fly and Team Teleport to opt-in is also a non-viable solution, as doing so would prevent the abilities to work on henchmen which is what they're primarily used for today. C. There's been a loading screen tip for the past three years: "Annoyed by Group Fly? Talk with Null the Gull in Pocket D!" So unless people have completely ignored loading screen tips for the past three years, few people can legitimately say that they don't know about the Null the Gull option. D. The simplest solution would be to grant other NPCs in other zones the abilities to disable Group Fly, Speed Boost, and Team Teleport. Give it to trainers in Atlas Park, Mercy Island, and Nova Praetoria. Add a NPC with it in The Hive, The Abyss, Rikti War Zone, Cimerora, and the instanced mothership raid. This has been asked for for three years, but it hasn't been done for whatever reason. Of course, even if it were ever able to be done, people would still whine and complain, but they should be summarily ignored.

It partly depends on which shard you play on. Many Excelsior players will try to speed run everything, and even try to force it when you're the team or league leader. It's one of the main reasons why I left the shard. On the other hand, things tend to be ran nice and slow on Indomitable, with nary a Fold Space or Incandescence Destiny in sight, with The Underground Trials that take slightly over a hour. It's quite nice.

Fair game. You entered a PvP zone, with plenty of warning that PvP may happen in the zone. Now can you politely request that the naughty PvPer leave you alone? Sure. It however doesn't mean that he or she needs to abide.

The stuff posted on the forums is indexed by search engines, and is easily accessible without requiring an additional account other than the Homecoming account. That's a point in favor of forums. Discord, you're at the whims of Discord. Like many social media companies, Discord has begun using AI moderation. There's been many complaints on Reddit the past few months of Discord randomly banning people. And if you're erroneously banned by Discord? Good luck getting your account back. Also, yes, you can search Discord, but it's complete butt compared to a forum's search, and especially an actual search engine which indexed a forum. I've been told by young Millennial friends that the Homecoming Discord is better than the forums as well, with more knowledgeable and more friendly players. So I started regularly observing it over the past eight months. It's not any better than the forums. I've seen plenty of stuff said on the Homecoming Discord server that is just plain wrong. Quite a few people that hang out there also tend to be a bit on the toxic side. I've seen people pilloried, piled on, and bullied out of discussions. Much like the forums. The only differences between the Homecoming forums and the Homecoming Discord are that the players that hang out on the forums tend to be older, while the people that hang out on the Homecoming Discord tend to be younger. And the Discord server is harder to search.

The only difference between the forums and the Discord server is the average age. The forums have mostly older players, the Discord has mostly younger players. Both equally as bad and as good.

Yeah. The vast majority of groups that run advanced modes are speed runners, and by and large they are not going to form PUG groups as PUGs will more than likely just slow them down. The small amount of people who run advanced modes in steamroll/kill most fashion will also not, by and large, form PUG groups as they take a significant amount of time and they don't want people who will quit two or three missions in. I just don't think that they're content that are suitably PUG-able, and will remain under the purview of specific groups.

It's not that no one runs advanced modes, it's that the people who form advanced modes do so in private Discord servers (there are at least four that I am aware of), and not in the LFG channel. Not sure what, if anything, can be done about that.

Really excellent and thorough guide on Kheldians, Bill. I hope that you put it up on the Homecoming Wiki as well, whenever you get a moment.

Most Apemage teams will run through the sewers, spiking the pylons and moving on. If your team you are on is doing similarly, you don't engage the mobs. Now that toxic defense is a thing, you either team with someone who gives +toxic defense, and/or team with someone who gives +toxic resistance, and/or team with someone who gives +absorb, or chew purple and orange candies, or have one or two people put up Barrier Destiny as soon as you enter the sewers, or buy defense and survival amplifiers as a last resort. In regards to Bobcat, if Neuron is downed first, Bobcat will enrage and do a lot more damage. The trick is to either take Bobcat down first, or get some absorb and/or defense and/or resistance from teammates or Barrier Destiny. Basically, it comes down to teamwork, inspirations, and/or Destiny powers.

Your sentiment is correct, but your details are not. The builds are actually quite easy. They're basically your easy and boring pre-Enhancement Diversification build, where you slotted one accuracy SO enhancement and five damage SO enhancements in every attack and called it a day. Except now you're slotting two Hami-O enhancements and four procs in every attack and calling it a day. Essentially the same thing, 20 years later. They're also not reliant on having a pocket Defender, (well, not most anyhoo). They're reliant on either stacks of large or super inspirations in their in-game e-mail, or reliant on Barrier Core Destiny and a couple of Cold Domination Corruptors.

There aren't any issues with Windows 10 that I'm aware of. It works just fine for me on a Windows 10 Pro computer and a Windows 11 Pro computer. Out of curiosity, are you able to download any of the mods manually? Try downloading this with your web browser on the computer you're trying to use the City Mod Installer on.

Did you just install it? You have to re-open the City Mod Installer after just installing. If that doesn't work, try clicking on "Refresh" up top.

Yeah. I personally know at least three people that have been wanting to make and play Warshades for over two years, but won't until the Changeling exploit is remedied because they don't want to use an exploit but feel that they will be forced to do so on teams. I pointed them to play Kheldians on the Rebirth server instead, although only one has done so.

Bingo. I've been seeing nearly a month of people complaining, whining, filling up over a dozen pages of forum threads, attacking people that use Group Fly and insulting them... all because their problem was already solved years ago, but they won't take the two minutes to do it.

I hear you. I'll give a personal anecdote: I left Homecoming towards the end of 2022. I was seriously burned out from both playing and leading content (including advanced modes), and I felt like I reached an impasse with the majority of the Homecoming player base, who seem to only care about speed, efficiency, and rewards. Things I care little to not at all about. I'm nearly 50 years old. I don't care about speed at all. Seriously, I don't. I take the average of how long a piece of content should take without speeding it at all, and then I add an extra hour to that mentally to give myself time for it. As long as we fall within that, I'm good. I care about efficiency very little. I care slightly about rewards, but only slightly. Everything on Homecoming is very easy to come by, and I can get level 50 characters with top tier Hamidon origin enhancements, purple IO enhancements, winter IO enhancements, and everything else easily enough. What I do care about is the experience, and taking in the content. For me, skipping 80% of content and rushing it as quickly as possible is just not enjoyable. At all. I honestly feel cheated at the end of it. When the NC deal was announced in January, I came back. I formed my own group on the Indomitable shard, one dedicated to steamrolling/kill most content, not speed runs. We've been doing pretty well. A couple of friends I made in my new group both told me that they did Dr. Aeon SF speed runs with others, and hated it. They are like me, and both felt cheated out of the experience. So we did a (regular) Dr. Aeon SF steamroll/kill most. It took roughly two hours and 20 minutes, but it was a blast! We had a lot of fun. My point is this: Not everyone enjoys speed running. While most people who currently do advanced mode content are speed runners, there are some people who don't enjoy that and prefer to do things the long way. Find them, and make your own team if you want to do advanced modes without meta character requirements. Start with 1* or 2*, and work your way up if you're interested in doing that. As said in this thread, 4* advanced modes can be done quite successfully with non-meta characters, it just takes longer. Find people who are willing to put in the time. They're out there.

The last word from a developer on Group Fly was this. - Let me quote the relevant part:

I just use Defense Amplifier and/or Clarion Core Destiny if I want mez protection. I use Flight instead of Sorcery because Afterburner makes Fly faster than Mystic Flight, stacking Hover prevents Fly from drifting (last time I checked, you still drift with Mystic Flight), Hover is a lot more efficient than Mystic Flight if you want to fly in combat while granting extra defense, and the Flight power pool acts as a very good defense IO enhancement mule. To each his or her own. My point was that Mystic Flight isn't any better than Fly, and the Flight power pool is largely fine as is other than Group Fly.

Yes, so Afterburner, which is built-in to Fly, makes Fly faster than Mystic Flight.

Fly being slow depends a lot on the map. I find that only people with Teleport beat me to missions in Grandville, and not by much. 😛 Seriously, an enhanced Fly with Afterburner is faster than Super Speed was four years ago.

Exactly. Flight is a great power pool for defense IO enhancement mules alone. And in no way, shape, or form is Mystic Flight superior to Fly. Mystic Flight is nice if you want a slower version of Fly combined with Combat Teleport, but it's significantly slower than Fly, and with the Flight power pool you get Hover, which you can either stack with Fly to get fast flight with no drift, or use on its own to get flight and extra defense while in combat without using a crazy amount of endurance unlike Mystic Flight. The Flight power pool more than justifies itself as is. There's no need for change, outside of Group Fly.