BlakeTheDrake

Right then! Back at it, and yep, that fix did indeed remove the .ogg issue, so I'm not free to experiment once more. Thanks to everyone who helped with that! The 'Terrifyingroar' bit, I've already silence, and that works. The hard part's the 'other' howl that they ALSO do, not quite as often as that one, but still at a regular basis even while idling. The 'Wildcharge' seems like the most likely culprit, but... well, I've mostly been looking through the list from https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Modding/Sounds/Powers - but could that possibly be outdated? The one you mentioned there, BM_DIREWOLF_WILDCHARGE_01, isn't on the list at all. The Direwolf DOES have the Wild Charge ability, but that's tied to the same soundfile as the version used by the Howler Wolves and Lions - BM_WILDCHARGE_ATTACK_01. I already tried silencing that one, to no avail, but it also just seemed unlikely that this was it... after all, it's used by the lions as well, and they DON'T howl. They do occasionally ROAR, but I find I don't mind that as much, probably because it isn't as high-pitched and ear-splitting. However, if that list is outdated, that changes everything. There may be different sounds attached to Wild Charge for the three types of pets, now, and I can't silence them unless I know what they're called. If you're checking the actual .pigg files - can you possibly see what sound the Howler Wolves have associated with the Wild Charge ability there? For now, I've tried silencing both the above-mentioned 'WILDCHARGE' variants, and I'll see what difference that makes... UPDATE: BM_DIREWOLF_WILDCHARGE_01 did indeed work to silence the Direwolf's other howl! Now if I can only find the second howl of the appropriately-named Howler Wolves... BM_WILDCHARGE_ATTACK_01 doesn't work, I've now double-checked that. I also tried BM_HOWLERWOLF_WILDCHARGE_01, just for kicks, but no luck there either.

My take: Mastermind with Empathy secondary. Granted, when I picked that for my main, I didn't know about the Rebirth-trick - back in the day, the only way to get anywhere on the Healing-badges if you weren't a healing class were the powers from the EXTREMELY crappy 'medicine' power-pool. Still, it's working well. As a Mastermind Healer, I'm constantly grinding the healing-badges even while soloing, lessening the amount of grinding I'll have to do later. I can also grind three different badges while idling - just gotta pick a mission with continuous ambushes, set the AoE heal to auto-cast, and my pets to defensive - they'll automatically chew up anything that comes my way. Builds up damage dealt, damage taken and healing - and depending on the enemies, could even provide some mezz-time since you've got no resistance to that stuff... Most of the rest of the badges don't really care about your class. Though I WOULD suggest Superspeed for a travel-power! You can use the 'Premium' flight-abilities from the P2W lady to reach all the high-altitude exploration-badges, but having Superspeed makes is MUCH less frustrating to collect badges and plaques in underground areas like the Sewers, Praetorian Underground, etc.

Clever! But no. The demons - and basically every other pet - still uses the 'humanoid' rig, and can thus be made to do most emotes. The beasts... don't, and can't. Annoyingly, they can't even do the 'Animal' emotes, which you'd THINK would be right up their street!

Ah, this is all great! A possible fix for the weird .ogg issue, and a likely culprit for the endless roaring... I'll have to give this a look! When it's not 3AM and I can actually think straight! I do love this community, you know - no matter what your problem is, there's always someone willing and able to help. Almost like the place is full of superheroes or something...

So I guess YOU don't have any idea where that second howl is hiding either, then? Dangit. It's not just some random noise, though. Nor do I mind the occasional barking and whining either. It's a very specific thing that they do - a howl that applies a buff to them all. I can see the symbols floating around them. Honestly, if they just did it when first summoned, or during combat, I wouldn't mind. It's the fact that they do it every minute or two, all the time, whenever they're summoned... to refresh the buff, presumably. Point is, it's linked to some ability they have, so it SHOULD be straightforward, but... gah.

Haven't tried the command-prompt, no... but, I HAVE tried using TotalCommander, which is usually my go-to tool for when Windows refuses to do what it's told. And that has the same issue, so it's definitely not just Explorer. Bloody weird issue.

...not gonna keep putting edits in there. Long story short, I've discovered that my system somehow just cannot HANDLE .ogg files. I can download them, run them, play them, even copy them - but if I try to move, rename or DELETE them, everything freezes and locks up. I've searched for fixes online, tried something with the file directory, but it didn't help any. I HAVE found some hit-and-miss workarounds, usually involving a full reboot, but that's... laborious, to say the least. Enough said, it makes looking for the other howl by trial-and-error unfeasible. Can anyone help me? I've tried looking at some of the 'pigg-viewer' tools but it's all a bit over my head...

No, that's the effect you get when you use the 'Tame Beasts' power - that is, the 'Upgrade' power itself. A nice, solid growl. It is as a RESULT of this, that the wolves start to emit loud, piercing howls on a continuous basis. As for turning off sound, I guess that'd be a solution - but, as Clave mentioned, that means you can't hear the glowies, which is a bit of a lifesaver otherwise! And I kinda' do wanna be able to hear the REST of the game too, for that matter. I don't even mind the noise in the middle of a raid or an event or something, when you've got 20 people all setting off their powers at the same time - it's chaotic, but it helps create the right kind of atmosphere, and crucially it doesn't last very long. What absolutely grinds my gears is when I'm just traveling around, opening glowies, talking to NPC's, reading clue-text or whatever, and my wolves insist on passing the time with an endless howl-off... what finally made me snap was the first mission of First Ward, which basically involved traveling around to 4 different very wordy NPC, then a brisk fight that ends with ANOTHER chat with an NPC, then dashing around for four MORE long chats... all while pursued by that persistent "AWOOOO! AWOOO! AWOOOOOO!" while I'm trying to read. >.< EDIT: I looked through that list on the wiki, and while I'm not certain how to FIND those files to check, I'm fairly certain that the relevant file is SOUND\OGG\DOG\DOG_TERRIFYINGROAR_01 - which is used by both the Howler Wolf and Dire Wolf pets. Question is, how do I go about replacing them? As you said, they're all wrapped up in .pigg files. EDIT 2 - EDIT HARDER: Nevermind, I managed to figure it out with a bit of reading! Just a matter of creating the appropriate sub-directories under 'data' and then copying that silent file in there as 'DOG_TERRIFYINGROAR_01', eh? Much quieter now! Thanks for all the help, guys! 😄 EDIT 3 - EDIT HARD WITH A VENGEANCE: Turns out, there's multiple DIFFERENT howls that they use, all seemingly tied to various temporary self-buffs... hence why they keep using them even out of combat. So, I'll have to hunt them each down in turn and silence THOSE as well. =_= If I had some real modding-chops, I'd instead just change those buffs to be permanent. I could live with them howling ONCE, when I initially train/tame them, and at this rate I'll wind up silencing all manners of howls that the game probably ALSO uses for various enemies!

My main is a Beast Master/Empathy Mastermind, and I was having a GREAT time with them - right up until I unlocked the last 'pet upgrade' power. Now that this is in effect, my wolves - both the small ones and the big one - howl loudly every 2.5 seconds. It is GRATING, especially when I'm just trying to read some mission-text. It is actively making me NOT WANT TO PLAY THAT CHARACTER. I can't stand listening to it anymore! There has to be something that can be done. An audio-file I can delete in a folder somewhere. A mod, maybe? There certainly doesn't seem to be anything I can do in-game, short of just turning off the sound altogether...

Thanks! Yeah, I'll probably 'remix' the scheduling a bit, so that I 'mostly' stick to my chosen faction, but switch just long enough to pick up the last one in each zone...

Ah, this takes me back! I wonder if the OP was actually dead serious, or just making a joking reference. People were talking about this back when I first joined the game, shortly after it launched. Before Red Side, before the Arenas, when Kheldians was the hot new things... Nostalgia aside, vehicle-based 'skins' for Superspeed and Flight powers (or even super-jump - some kind of pogo-stick mecha thing, perhaps!) would indeed be awesome. Or mounts! Activate Superspeed, and you hop on your horse - be it sleekly robotic, otherworldly, steampunk, or vanilla - or jump on a giant eagle to Fly! Would be particularly neat for the various 'cowboy' type dual-handgun builds, and for Beast Masterminds.

I guess it's too much to ask that I can 'do everything' AND maintain some kind of role-playing storyline throughout... yeah, I guess I'll just follow the guide, then. Can't be helped. Gotta say, though, if the original devs didn't want us to try and do all the mission-arcs in each area... they shouldn't have created Badges that are awarded for doing all the mission-arcs in each area. 😛

So... I've been pushing on with the storylines (slowly) and by experimentation answered the question that, I guess, didn't really come across in my original post... you actually DO have to repeatedly change sides, since outside of Nova Praetoria, contacts won't even talk to you unless you are (or APPEAR to be) on the 'right side'. Fair enough. But, I've got a new question - a very specific one, related to the final stage of the whole affair, Neutropolis. Things get... COMPLICATED there, for those who are ultimately loyal to the Resistance, what with Calvin Scott being A) The one who introduces you to the local Resistance contacts, starting the relevant storylines, B) The one you call to pass information to while working deep-cover within the Loyalists and C) The final contact of the Crusader Resistance Subfaction. So, my question is twofold: Firstly, exactly what do you have to do to avoid 'short-circuiting' the Crusader storyline? Is it just a matter of not taking any non-Introduction missions from him, or do you need to be more careful than that? Secondly, if you START with the final Crusader story-arc, then betray them to the Loyalists at the end, then do Responsibility (staying Loyal) and Power (switching to Resistance) before finishing as a Warden and reaffirming your dedicating to the Resistance with your final choice - basically RPing as a dedicated Warden - will you still be able to call in your activities within the Loyalists during those two arcs in the middle? I guess what I'm asking is whether anything might... HAPPEN to the final Crusader-arc Contact that'd prevent him from picking up the phone... >_>;

Good to know... but as Darmian said, running them in Ouro means you can't really do that whole 'Deep-Cover Agent' roleplay-angle, which I honestly find really cool. I'm a sucker for anything involving triple agents and lots of backstabbing. Besides, some of the missions actually play out a bit differently if you're playing them as 'undercover' and called the deets in to the faction you're ACTUALLY loyal to (for now!) I'd miss that, just relying on Ouroboros.

Thanks for the hint about Ouro crystals in bases! I was kinda' lost as to how I could access that from Praetoria, until much, much later. More to the point, what I really wanna know is... DO I need to strictly follow the guide? If I just switch back and forth between Loyalist and Resistance ONCE, to get the relevant Badge - as Grouchybeast mentioned above - but otherwise stick with just one side while running the other as an 'undercover agent'... (using, of course, XP Disable to avoid outleveling stuff) - would that still work? Even knowing that it's possible to get it via flashbacks, I still wanna do it properly, in one go, with at least one character...

Personally, I love the new 'variants' - Arcane Flight from the Sorcery-pool, and Speed of Sound from the Experimentation-pool, in particular, since they basically give you Flight+TP and SS+TP with a single pick. My original main - from back before these were added - was a Broadsword/Dark Armor Scrapper running Teleport+Hover, to deal with the whole 'dropping out of the sky' issue, as well as to compensate for the lack of knockback-resistance in the Dark Armor tree. So picking Arcane Flight with my new 'alternate universe' counterpart to him just made sense... Really, though, I've enjoyed Experimentation-Speed of Sound on an alt even more. Superspeed was always great fun, but had that one annoying issue that you lacked verticality, and could be seriously delayed by walls and buildings. Almost forcing you to take Flight or Super Jump as well - or at least Hover - since you could otherwise wind up getting completely stuck in some of the more vertical zones. So, getting Super Speed with a side-order of teleportation for getting over such obstacles... well, that's just perfect!

I spent a lot of time in this game, back in the day - but I quit a while before Going Rogue released, so all the 'Gold Side' content is completely new to me. Hence, I of course decided to start out as a Praetorian! But, the whole Loyalist/Resistance/Power/Responsibility/Warder/Crusader thing is a bit hard to get straight. I found out the hard way that, with Double XP on, I have to manually stop my leveling at several points to experience ANY of the four main 'storylines' fully, nevermind jumping between several of them - fortunately, though, I found a nifty guide in the Guides-forum to help with that... I'm still a bit unclear, however, on the distinction between actually SWITCHING SIDES, using the 'loyalty' events at the end of each segment of each story-arc, and just doing content as a deep-cover agent for the OPPOSITE side, reporting in to your handler about developments and sticking with them in the end-of-arc decisions. Like... there's four badges for finishing the four full arcs, right? Suppose I do all the missions, all the way throughout the three zones, but I do them all as a devoted member of the Resistance, reporting in at every opportunity, and always making the 'Resistance' choice at the end of each arc. Can you actually do that, or do you wind up unable to continue some of the Loyalist storylines because you haven't 'proven yourself' to them? And if you CAN finish them all like that, do you still get the Badges? I was... kind of a huge Badge-wh... hunter, back in the day. Figure I might as well pick up where I left off, especially with Going Rogue and Ouroboros opening up so many new Badge-hunting opportunities! 😛

Bit of thread necromancy here, but heck, I used to run a Zombie Mastermind in CoV, so it's on brand... As a completionist, I've found the guide at the top extremely useful for making sure I see everything Praetoria has to offer before outleveling it! But I have a question. The guide has you switching sides at virtually every chance you get - essentially playing as someone who either suffers from Chronic Backstabbing Disorder (keep forgetting to take those pills!) or someone with a Jekyll/Hyde type split personality. If you DON'T wanna do that... if you just stick purely to Rebels or Loyalists - perhaps just playing as someone who's a bit on the fence about whether ends actually justify means, or whether great power actually does come with great responsibility - and play the opposite content as Deep Cover Agent, reporting in to your superiors at every chance and always picking the 'right' option in the end-of-arc moral choices... (maybe just switching back and forth ONCE to establish your bonafides with the other side, and get that one badge...) ...can you still do all four full storylines? And get all four of the end-of-story badges?