Coyotedancer

You know... Those pleated skirts that lady-toons get? In white, they'd be fun for making an Ancient Egyptian guy. I'm also for the classical Greek look the OP's after.

'Have to agree with the others here, BB... While I do love what you've done with Berkeley over the years and admire the depth of your knowledge of the game world (Not to mention your memory for the details. I always have to go look this stuff up-), it's just not really fair to hold everyone to that standard. Not all players (Not even roleplayers who like incorporating bits of game lore into their character designs-) can reasonably be expected to have as serious an interest in exact time-lines and obscure details as you do. Even those who *DO* pick out specific niches in the lore to deeply dive into may not know much about other areas of the canon. I'm a pretty good example of that, myself... At this point I know the Oranbegan lore pretty much inside out. I play Circle mages. I like being able to make convincing conversation about ancient history and the whole nine yards. But I couldn't have told you the exact year Galaxy City was renamed. If I were making The Galaxy Avenger, I'd probably go looking for a general history of the area and it might come up in that reading, but if it didn't? I wouldn't necessarily know that it was an important detail. If I were someone who just wanted a connection to the game world and wasn't really interested in Deep Lore Immersion for its own sake, I might not consider it all THAT critical. So... yeah. It's not necessarily a Good Thing to demand that everyone put the same emphasis on exact history as you do. It's just not practical, and you'll end up losing out on interactions with what might otherwise be very entertaining players. I'm not going to have Tavaris refuse to speak to another Oranbegan character because their player got some possibly-obscure bit of the history wrong. It's not like I haven't willfully "bent the rules" on that myself a few times (*coughs* Kai's very existence-)... And honestly, I'm just happy to see someone else giving one of my beloved body-snatching ghosts a try. XD

Diary, I meet the STRANGEST people in Grandville... I had to pick up some new lab equipment for Vernon's project today (He *still* wants to do the Tentacle Monster thing, but Arbiter Daos agrees with me that it's a really, really bad idea. He said it's okay for me to keep hiding the detonation control unit's batteries for as long as I need to.) Anyway, I had to wait for the technicians to pack all the parts we needed, so I went to find a soda while they were looking for more duct tape. I couldn't find the break room... Those lab layouts are WEIRD... But I did find what sort-of looked like a giant popcorn machine. It had this big glowing green thing floating in it, and when I went in to look at it, it started talking to me! He said his name was Hamidon… Or a piece of Hamidon, anyway... and that he wasn't very happy about the bombs we put in Eden, or the way I wrecked his spires. He was really polite about it, though, so I said I was sorry for breaking his stuff. And I told him about the batteries. He thought that was pretty clever. -k ====================================== Dear Diary- When I was really little, my mom used to sing me this silly song about a yellow submarine. They sailed around a lot and eventually ended up finding The Sea of Green. I never thought that was a real place, but I think I found it today. O_O I had to go swipe... uhm, BORROW that is... some stuff from a Longbow ship and when I got there? The ocean looked like this: Now I can't get that song out of my head and I had to go find a ZooTube Video of it. It's even weirder than I remembered. And I should tell Feral about those Kinky Boot Beasts. After that, I went to meet my friend Becky for lunch. (Becky is a Tarantula Mistress who works for Vernon's boss, Operative Grillo. She's not really into Mad Science, but says working in the R&D division sounded more interesting than being stuck with some office job in Port Oakes-) When I got there, though, all of those Crystal Things and Mushroom Monsters and Walking Hedges and Rock Dudes that I'd caught for Vernon had gotten out of their containment pods! They were rampaging all over the place, trying to eat the other interns and research assistants! (Becky says they ate all of the Spiderling Scout cookies, too. Which was just super rude. >_<) So, she helped me round them all up again and put them back in their cages. We were both kind of surprised that her brain-stuff worked on some of those guys. I mean... "Dumb as rocks", and all. It all worked out, though. Even though Vernon's bombs didn't ACTUALLY turn anybody into anything monsterous, the Union of Scientific Evil was still impressed with his report and his ambition. They accepted his application for membership, and sent him a card and everything! He's a real Mad Scientist now, and not just an intern. I'm proud of him. ^_^ -k

Poison/DP (loves that toxic ammo) Corruptor. Mine? Shonokin =============================== Edited to Add, since a guess was made: Shonokin is a Dark/Willpower Sentinel. He's named after a species of human-like but inhuman creatures from the fiction of 20th century pulp author Manly Wade Wellman.

I do story arcs, tip missions and paper missions solo and occasionally jump into groups with friends... I have a lot of favorite arcs. Hero-side, I'm fond of Library of Souls (Total bias there. I'm fond of the Oranbegans, get a big grin out of Akarist, and used to have a player character version of Ashton Fletcher. XD) and the Terra Conspiracy. I like all of the Vanguard arcs in the War Zone (I <3 Sefu. He's always been one of my favorite NPC companions-). Red-side we've got Oh, Wretched Man, which is great. (Wretch is another favorite NPC companion of mine.) Also Maros, Doc Buzzsaw, the most excellent Television, and the crack-pot Mad Science of Vernon von Grun. (I <3 Becky the Tarantula Mistress, too.) The Patron arcs also have their moments, though they're railroaded as all hell.

Dear Diary- Time travel is wicked cool... Even though it gives you headaches. B is doing some kind of summer intern hero-thing with the Menders, I think, and they asked him to go correct a problem in a place called Faultline. Since it's a lot more fun to fix stuff with your friends than it is to fix stuff alone, Scarlet Diamond and I went with him. (I had to pretend to be a hero or the menders wouldn't have let me in, though. That crazy bird in Pocket D made me a fake ID and everything. I was SOOO SHINY. XD) Anyway, we had to go find Fusionette first. She'd gotten into trouble with a bunch of those guys like the one who took off with my Tome of Hequat. Arbiter Sands was there, too... He's one of the Arbiters who works in Grandville... But I wasn't wearing my armor like I do when I'm running errands for Scirocco, so I don't think he recognized me. Right after we found Fusionette, she flew off and got beaten up by one of those big trash-can goons. (The Menders probably weren't very happy about that, but it wasn't OUR FAULT she was stupid. <_<) Anyway, we had to go and find someone named Doc Delilah next... And there were zombies EVERYWHERE! They weren't like those prison zombies we found in that government lab Sheep took us to, but there were almost as many of them and they kept trying to barf on us. And then explode. (There was a lot of barfing and exploding going on. A *lot* of barfing and exploding... It. Was. Gross.) When we finally found Doc, she turned out to be almost as crazy as Fusionette. She really didn't like those zombies very much, and tried to beat them ALL up. At the same time. It... didn't really work out. I kind-of started to wonder if everyone in that time line was already nuts, or if something about causality being messed up was just making them that way. But then we met Mr. Yin, and *he* seemed pretty sane, so... I don't know. I'm probably going to have to ask Master Maros about that. Once she got over being barfed on by about a hundred dead guys, Doc sent us to find someone named Castillo... Or "that flying numbskull"... Or "Captain Can't-take-a-Hint". One look at his outfit and we decided he was the REAL "Captain Hotpants". (Des and her outfit have *nothing* on this guy's wardrobe issues. Seriously. Who dresses like that?!) We punched him. A lot. And then his robot exploded all over us. (This timeline kind-of had a theme. A really, really explodey theme. <_<) Eventually, we found out that Arachnos was sort of behind everything. This night widow named Nocturne showed up and threatened to kill B. (Like I was going to let THAT happen-) We had to kick her butt like three times before she gave up. We decided that the only way to *really* fix things was to take out the guy who was in charge. So we went to the big base behind the dam to find him... I told Scarlet and B about the First Rule of navigating Arachnos bases. (It's, like, right there on page 1 of the Grandville Intern Orientation Guide... "Never use the subterranean tunnels".) But we sort of did it anyway. We had to smash an awful lot of spider-bots... And some Huntsmen... And Scarlet used her cool hurricane-thing to push goons into SO many corners so they couldn't run away... (We needed that because, even though nobody in Grandville likes to talk about it, the spider-bots are all TOTAL cowards-) Until, eventually, we caught up to the guy in charge. Just my luck it was Arbiter Sands. <_< I'm glad he didn't have a clue who I was, because I could get in really serious trouble for punching an Arbiter. I DID punch him, though. For being a jerk. And we assassinated his submarines, too. … And they exploded on us. XP -k

The way it should be working, if IIRC, is that 0 Level, the enemies should vary from at level to no more than +1 level. So that would mean, conning from white (at level minion) to orange (+1 lvl Lt.). If you add "Solo Bosses", that might give you a few Red (+1 Boss). So if you are seeing no white at all, that's a bug, but I would agree that you should still expect to see Yellow/Orange for 0 lvl diff. If you go to -1, then everything goes down, so it should be mostly a sea of blue & white with the occasional yellow, and rare Orange (if you have set it to solo bosses) I routinely see a lot of variation, especially towards the upper end... But I do turn bosses on pretty much from the start, even when I keep the level at +0, so I don't doubt that accounts for some of it. Running primarily red side may also have something to do with it. The CoV content is often a little rougher a little earlier than the blue side's version (particularly the older hero arcs-).

Somebody got a windfall from me yesterday on a Glad Net piece... Thanks to the distraction of a giant furball of a cat walking across my keyboard and mousepad while I was buying the set for one of Kai's powers, I ended up paying 45m for it instead of 4.5m. Ouch! XD Ah well. It happens... Hopefully it went to a seller who'll put it to good use building something ludicrous.

You'd also have to ask yourself if you were willing to lose a character forever because of... oh, say, a mapserver incident in the middle of a ship raid or a bit of power-delay lag-spiking at the wrong second. Because that would happen. And if it was an automatic process there wouldn't be a "Wait, I didn't do that! Not my fault!"... Unlike taking the Iron Eagle approach and just deleting the deceased yourself manually.

I know you want it to be a fixable bug, Pax, but it really isn't something that's broken or related to the zone changes in King's Row... Depending on the map, that's just not unheard-of, as annoying as it may be. Likewise walking into a map you supposedly have set at +2 and finding a bunch of even-levels instead. I had it happen last night in one of my missions from Shadow Spider in Grandville. I backed that mission down to +1 because I knew I was going to have to punch Crimson in the nose, and *still* ended up with his entire room at +3. Ouch. And potentially a seriously rough fight if I'd been on anything but my KM/Bio Stalker. o_0 It just is what it is. It's not a bug... It's supposed to be a "feature". XD

Just one thing, unrelated to King's Row but important to remember about instanced ("door") missions... No matter what you set your difficulty to, there's going to be some variation in the levels of the goons you run into. Even set to +0, you may see anything from -1 to +2 depending on the map and spawn locations. (Atta's map in the Hollows is a great example of that-) That's not new behavior. It's pretty much always been the case, and it has nothing to do with the zone you're in... It's a property of the instanced maps themselves. Back when AE was new, there was a lot of discussion about the hows and whys of that. Some players liked the variation, some absolutely hated it, but the devs told us all that it was "working as intended".

"1 am L33T b3y0nd L33T!" Ah, fond memories... XD I like that arc an awful lot, too. Me? I've been giggling over Vernon von Grun for the last week. And Becky. Because Becky just rules.

Kaikara… KinMelee/BioArmor Stalker... "Semi-reformed" Death Mage's apprentice... Currently has a summer job as Scirocco's intern. Her Festivus list of Grievances includes, in no particular order: -Minion goons who run away like little babies (Every Longbow Eagle, Tsoo Sorcerer and CoT Spectral on Earth, for instance-) -Av/EB/Boss goons who run away like big babies (Mangle, Arbiter Sands, Castillo... She's looking at you. <_<) -Sappers. *Everybody* hates sappers. -Comm Officers and Death Shamans, because "extra goons but no extra goodies". (She considers DE Rubbles exempt from this Grievance, because they're so darn adorable.) -Cheaty McCheatersons (Like Granites and Death Shamans) who can somehow miraculously manage to summon their adds IN SPITE OF BEING ONE-SHOT ASSASSINATED BY A STALKER, IN HIDE, WHO THEY WERE COMPLETELY UNAWARE OF PRIOR TO SAID INSTA-JIBBING. >_< -... and Arbiter Daos. Because he's a jerk.

I've always hated it when people give "smart-ass", troll answers to questions asked in Help or the chat channels. I don't care how dumb the question may seem to you, it was a dick move back in the retail days and it's still a dick move here. Just answer the damned question honestly, or ignore it. >_<

Dear Diary- I had to go and pick up ANOTHER misdelivered box of wailers today... I think the Sup3rFr31ght guys just really, really aren't very good at their jobs. And their dispatcher won't stop telling me how great his new giant hammer hands are. And how he wants to show the whole entire world his "L33T" body-mods. It's starting to freak me out. <_< Anyway, this time they'd gotten the street name all messed up. The order that was *supposed* to go to the testing department of a company that soundproofs buildings. But instead of going to 2113 Recluse Park East they send the box to 2113 East Recluse Place. That's like, completely on the other side of Port Oakes! Turns out that address belonged to those Malta guys. They'd already opened the box. They tried to "resolve the issue" with a lot of guns and a flame-thrower, even though I told them that that proooobably wouldn't work. But... yeah. You know how Malta guys are. They didn't listen to me. When I left, they were still trying to put out the fires. And catch the wailers. Who were bouncing around all over the place with a couple of stolen Sapper guns. I did get a nice picture of the old Pirate Fort, though. -k ============================================== Diary, I'm kind of worried about Vernon... His project started out sounding fun and all, but I think he might be getting a little carried away. He says he wants to turn everyone in Paragon City into Tentacle Monsters. <_< I am SO not going to let him do that... Some of my friends live in Paragon City, and it would be really, really awkward if they all ended up like Pyriss. When I met her, all she wanted to do was punch me and set me on fire and then try to eat my face. I'm not going to let that happen to B, and Kit, and Aly, and Buddy and Sheep. I just don't know yet how I'm going to talk Vernon out of it... Mad Scientists are super weird about their "fiendish plans". I mean, look at what Lord Recluse has done with his tower. Grandville sort-of looks like somebody forgot to dust off all the cobwebs. -k ====================================================== Dear Diary- I was GOING to try to talk Vernon out of the whole turn-everybody-into-Cthulu thing, but I couldn't get a word in edge-wise. (Grant said he'd been like that all day. Practicing his maniacal rants and Seriously Evil Laugher in the mirror-) I ended up just hauling the Tentacle Monster bombs out to Eden like he wanted, but I *also* took the batteries out of his remote control before I left, so he couldn't detonate them. I'm sneaky like that. XD Eden was really pretty. It sort of reminded me of the forest around the Sanctum's portal in Saint Martial. Only a LOT bigger! Vernon was really disappointed when he pushed the button and nothing happened, of course, but watching him mope around the tower for the rest of the afternoon was better than having to explain to my friends why everyone was suddenly a Tentacle Monster. -k PS: While I was in Eden I got to meet a really interesting ghost. His name was Woodsman, and he sort-of reminded me of that guy who plays Aquaman. Only dark-haired. And with these big, shaggy reindeer-things instead of fish. He thought Vernon's bombs were really going to explode and all, and didn't believe me when I tried to tell him about taking the remote's batteries out. I had to disincorporate him. When he reforms and sees that everyone ISN'T covered in tentacles, he'd better apologize for telling those deer-things to throw rocks at me. >_<

Thanks! It's been a blast reading about Frank's adventures. ^_^

Welcome to the City. ^_^ For awhile, Mr. Coyote and I were among those "refugees". (I even made a blade/chaos-focused version of my favorite CoH Tank-) Eventually we both moved on from Secret World, but it was good fun for awhile there.

Don't make assumptions. I've been an RPG player and GM for many, many years. (My first tabletop game was "black box" Traveller, if that gives you any idea-) I'm currently running Exalted and playing 13th Age. When I say I can't play the game and RP at the same time, it's not a lack of experience in either. It's completely an issue of manual dexterity. I find it very difficult to type out a conversation while also using my keyboard controls to control my character. It's as simple as that. So... yeah. Watch it with that broad brush, Valor. Not everyone is a nimble-fingered multi-tasker with flawless coordination. :-*

Actually.... I can kind-of imagine Recluse ending up sitting on the floor, playing with the kitten and a piece of string when he thinks nobody is looking. XD

Exactly. Just the fact that my base code and the Sanctum's general information are out there means that it's an open base rather than a private one. The "lake house" is meant to be a quiet place for mystical types to do their thing, away from noisy clubs and nosy mundanes.

As much as I loved my PBs, I have to agree about the Photon Seekers... Making them more like the Seeker Drones might not be a bad idea.

I don't farm myself, but I have absolutely nothing against them. Farmers listing their drops help to stock the auction house with goodies, and that's a strong plus in their favor as far as I'm concerned.

Dear Diary- Remind me never to take an office job with Crey. Those guys are just RUDE. >_< Somebody from their bio-sciences research and development division heard about that wrecked-up clone lab I found in Praetoria City, and wanted to ask me what it was like, so I went to their office in Grandville to talk to him about it. I guess he forgot to tell the receptionist or the security guys that I was coming, because they didn't want to let me in. They sent this thing they called a "scorpinoid death-stalker" after me... SCORPINOID!!DEATHSTALKER!! Seriously. They really called it that. It kind of fell apart when I punched it, though. (MindWyrm says that it was probably some new guy's prototype design, and they must have run out of development money before they could armor it properly. Because those Crey suits aren't supposed to crumple up like soda cans. Even though this one did.) I sort of feel bad for smashing it now. 😞 Anyway, since I couldn't find the guy I was supposed to talk to, I went to HR to see if anyone knew his office number. The only person I found there was one of those weird Rikti aliens. She said her name was Kelly. And then she tried to melt my brain. I really, really *need* my brain, so that didn't end well for anybody. And I still didn't find out where that guy's office was... I wanted to try the lab next, but the security goons there were even more obnoxious. They wouldn't let me past the second floor. Anyway, I finally just gave up. If Intern Steinmann seriously wants to talk about clones and labs and giant tentacles and things, he can send me a text. I am *not* going to go back to that office. >_< -k ==================================================== Mad Science is the BEST Science, Diary. ^_^ I ran into Vernon in the Grandville tower this morning, and told him that I was still kind-of miffed about that "wrong portal" business the other day. Vernon blamed Grant for "incorrectly recalculating the acceleration of the dimensional vortex's quantum divergence" (Whatever the heck THAT means-)... and Grant said that Vernon was a "spikey-haired crack-pot who couldn't tell the fourth dimension from Arbiter Sands' frappuccino". Vernon really did seem pretty upset about something, though, so I asked him what was wrong. (He may be a nut... I mean, you know, MAD SCIENTIST and all... But he's a sweet guy.) He told me that his boss wasn't taking him seriously, and that he was afraid that the Union of Scientific Evil was going to reject his membership application again and that if they did he'd lose his Doomsday Weapon Development Grant. So, I said I'd help him with his project. That's what friends are for, right? 'Should have known he was going to ask for Tentacle Monsters. Lots and LOTS of Tentacle Monsters... And some of those Rock Dudes. And a few Killer Mushrooms. And one of those Walking Hedge things. I spent waaaay too much time in smelly caves today. -k PS: The sunset in Grandville was really pretty, though.

Not all of us have the coordination or manual dexterity to both conduct an extensive in-character conversation *and* play the game at the same time. (Heck, some of us can barely do that while our characters are standing still! Ask anyone on the RP channel what my typing is like. XD) So, they may not have been ignoring you or avoiding doing the IC-thing. They may have just been concentrating on kicking goon butts and not becoming Veng-bait.

There are LOTS of us around. We are legion... In more ways than one! XD Though I've been trying very hard to stick to a smaller number here, I was definitely in altaholic territory back-in-the-day. I had something like 60 characters by the end. I did tend to get them to 50 (eventually-) and to finish them with decent builds at that point, but it was sometimes a ridiculously slow process. I pretty much always had four or five in various states of "working on it" at any given time, and I'd bounce between them as the mood struck. I got a lot of "Wait. Do I know this bird? When did you build an [AT/Powerset X]?!" from some of my friends. Now? I've only been here about a month and I already have four, in spite of my best efforts NOT to go alt-a-palooza. <_< Granted, I've pretty much abandoned two of them to concentrate on leveling and equipping the other pair, but that *still* means it's taking me twice as long to get them to any particular point as it's taking some of my (much) more focused friends. Those two are 45 and 43 now. The abandoned pair are 32. That's the down-side of altitis right now, when we're all still trying to get re-established. 'Having your more focused buds say, "Hey! Let's go join that BAF/MoM/Underground iTrial!" while you're still trying to get to 40 because you're dividing your attention.