Coyotedancer

Don't forget semi-obscure, public domain media references... Once upon a time I took to naming some of my gang after opera characters, for instance. There are some fun names to be had there, even if you aren't a particular fan of the music. (I am, so that just added an extra bit of fun for me. And it always made me grin when someone else recognized where Sarastro or Coppelius or Amneris' name came from. XD) Find an opera character who reminds you somehow of the character you're making, and have at it. "Figaro" was great for a flashy Sonic blaster with a high opinion of their own opinion. "Falstaff" was perfect for a big guy all about the Wine, Women and Song when busting bad guys was done. My "Rosenkavalier" was a handsome, young and slightly daft Broadsword/Shield scrap in formal dress and a domino mask... There's a lot of inspiration to be had if you go looking for it.

For every player who jut LOVES an endless grind, there's another who says "Dude. I have a life outside the game." Having to murder ten thousand Flumphs just to unlock the Wowzers Aura costume piece just isn't going to appeal to a lot of us. That's particularly true when half the point of the game is character customization.

She's a custom doll... who was absolutely modeled after Wednesday Addams. XD

The Crossroads map... I want that one in AE, too.

Kai's clones were just ANNOYING... both for Kai-prime on the red side and the White Thorn version blue-side. The clone system doesn't know what to do with Stalkers, see, so if you're running it on a Stalker character your clones (either in Dean's missions or in Keith and Jenni's-) will spawn as Scrappers instead. Bio Armor Scraps are a total pain in the rump. Knocking them down took for-freakin'-EVER. 🤣

Semnai has been slacking... And just for fun, Harry's Architect stats. XD

My farmer leveled outside of AE, either running with PI smash teams, or dual-boxed with my "other Brute", Semnai, on her scanner and arc missions... so Harry would actually have pretty average-looking numbers for a level 50 character, I suspect. Nothing he's done SINCE THEN has counted, but... at least at a casual glance he'd seem like Joe Average. XD I have to go see Sem's own numbers, though. Hers should be... entertaining.

Oh, I know. That was pure RNG Weirdness... and even funny on some level, in an "Oh, for pete's sake!"-kind of way. If I hadn't kept a running tally at the time, no one would have believed it happened. 😆

Well, my bringing up the recipe-thing apparently annoyed people and made them think I was QQing about "muh proofits!" or something (For the record, I'm not. I just farm for fun at this point, so the INF isn't really the issue-), so I'll just shut up about it... Even though I'm still seeing it happen on the majority of runs, regardless of map or who/what level the tag-along character happens to be. Oh well. Maybe Harry is just cursed with inherently poor luck, like those characters who can grind iTrials and DA arcs a ridiculous number of times and never see a single VR salvage drop... (Yeah. I have a few that that's happened to. Don't get me started on how long it took to get Xhelethe's T4s. Because I had to buy every single one of her Rare and Very Rare iBits. Every. Single. One. I kid you not. 'Talking about "improbable and flat-out weird RNG behavior"... That was the poster child example. XD )

I never run the same map twice in a row, for whatever that's worth. I farm for fun and that's part of what makes things interesting... Anyway, like I said, it's just something both odd and oddly consistent that I'd noticed while doing the dual-box thing over the last six months or so. If it's purely the RNG being strange? So be it... But "consistent" isn't exactly a trait that I normally associate with this game's RNG, and seeing something like the recipe drop disparity happening so routinely made me raise an eyebrow. That said, it was back to the usual pattern over my last two runs.... On the first, I had Harry in with Sokari again (Who's a 50 himself now, thanks to a bunch of unhappy Romans and time-travelling Space Nazis-). On the second, I tossed Harry in with Amset, who's in her 40's. ======================= First run: (Cult's Outdoor) Harry 47 recipes dropped in total (35 common, 7 Uncommon, 3 Rare, 1 PvP, 1 Very Rare) Sokari 56 recipes dropped in total (38 Common, 11 Uncommon, 6 Rare, 1 PvP, 0 Very Rare) ======================= Second run: (Brigg's Cave) Harry 36 recipes dropped in total (27 Common, 5 Uncommon, 3 Rare, 1 PvP, 0 Very Rare) Amset 52 recipes dropped in total (38 Commons, 10 Uncommon, 4 Rare, 0 PvP, 0 Very Rare)

It's from the end of the last mission of Jenni Adair's arc, which is the follow-up to Keith Nance's.

My Elysion bird-things could be rationalized as Natural, too, I guess... They're a species of humanoid predatory avians, after all, so flight and all that is just "what they do". But they're also Shard natives, so Magic pretty much by default, regardless of that. They're Naturally UN-natural. XD

Maybe... That's one of the things I want to play around with. 'Just did a run with Harry (50+) and Sokari (47) on Cult's cave map and they were almost even on the recipe count (Sokari got a purple, but no PvPs... while Harry got a PvP, but no purples. They were equal on uncommons and rares, and Harry actually had a slight edge on Commons for once. That's unusual.) I'm going to keep notes for awhile, just to see. It may just turn out to be a pure RNG weirdness thing... But I think having some actual numbers will be interesting in its own right.

Well, there's still the "Why does the mission owner get fewer drops than their tag-along?" question, but that's been going on for awhile now. If it is, indeed, A Thing... it may or may not ever get looked into. It can't be all that high a priority for anyone.

Just look at that adorable little face. ^_^ She sounds like a most excellent pup.

So... Bloody Rainbow, solo with Harry at +4/x8/with bosses: Common Salavge-118Uncommon Salvage- 15Rare Salvage- 10Common Recipes- 42Uncommon Recipes- 10Rare Recipes- 4PVP Recipes- 2VR Recipes- 0Enhancements- 25 XP- Harry is XP-locked at vet level 100, so (NA)Raw Inf- 27,528, 245

Spiffy! I really am curious about that, and if it's related somehow... I'll see if I can dig up that Bug forum thread, too. ETA: Here's the Bug forum thread on the "less drops for the leader" issue...

Though I don't hit those maps solo with Harry very often, I'll start keeping numbers when I do if you guys want. Another data-point might be useful, That said, while I don't know about another INF or drop nerf in general, I *have* definitely noticed one real weirdness... Something that's been mentioned before on the Bugs forum. I often dual-box, and there's a VERY consistent difference (That is to say, too consistent to be nothing but RNG jerkishness-) between the quantity of uncommon/rare/very rare recipe drops that the "leader" (Harry) gets on any farm map vs. what the secondary character ends up with. When I ran Harry (mission owner) and Sefkhet (lvl 50 tag-along) together on Cult's big Freakworld map Sunday morning, for instance, he ended with 6 assorted u/r/vr recipes. She had... I want to say 15 or 16. That was a wider gap than average (I'd say it's typical for the secondary character to get at least half-again more drops than the leader, with double not being all that uncommon-), but the general trend has held for months. Their number of common recipe drops were a lot closer, for reference. Salvage and INF, likewise. She slightly edged him out on enhancements, but there's never been a large enough difference between the first character and seconds there to make as much of an impression as the difference in invention set recipes. Like I said, though I haven't been logging exact numbers, the difference in the recipes has been large, noticeable and absolutely consistent for quite awhile. I wonder if what some of you guys are seeing is related? If there's a tangle in there somewhere that's affecting the number of drops the mission owner receives there might be circumstances where that hits solo mission owners just like it does Harry when he's half of a duo. 'Just a thought. [For the record, I always run +4/x8 with bosses, and I tend to bounce between Brigg's cave map and Cult's various missions when I'm dual-boxing. Bloody Rainbow is just annoying with two characters.] ETA: 'Found some notes I took when that thread in the Bugs forum came up, just to document the recipe weirdness... I didn't date them, unfortunately, so they're no good as references for exactly when something might have gotten strange. Bloody Rainbow (Harry/Oreviel) U/R/VR Harry 7, Rev 10 2551 (Harry/Bahir) U/R/VR Harry 8, Bahir 12 2551 (Harry/Bahir) U/R/VR Harry 4, Bahir 10 Cult's Outdoor (Harry/Deigan) U/R/VR Harry 9, Deigan 16 Cult's Outdoor (Harry/Narada) U/R/VR Harry 7, Narada 13 Though the exact percentage of the difference varies, which I would expect given our RNG, you can see what I mean about the pattern... the fact that there IS a difference... being consistent.

You're not alone in that. I know a few people on Everlasting who see the main draw of the game in "social RP". They spend most of their active playing time doing that instead of bashing goons, and so... a year-and-change into the game... most of their characters are midlevel at most, with no real plan for ever seeing 50. For them, that's just not the point of being in the City. All this build-stuff, and the power-level conversations, and the debates over Incarnates, and the back-and-forth over buffing or nerfing Power X or IO set Y? They couldn't care less. And while I may not personally understand their perspective, it *IS* still a perfectly valid way to do "the City-thing". Takes all types, right?

Dex is great fun, though, and keeping up with him was definitely a good test for my defender's build.

That would be Everlasting

Same for me. I'd say my "average" for the gang is somewhere in the 250/300m-neighborhood... a little more for some, a little less for others... depending on AT and what I'm going for. It's really only the favorites and the off-the-wall "concept builds" that tend to creep up into the "pricey" range. 500m+ for a favorite is justified, I think, I'm not a devoted enough farmer to toss that much at every single member of my crew, though. Not right out of the gate, anyway.... Given enough time without new alts demanding resources, though? Who knows. Maybe someday I'll have revised and updated all of them to that point... But it hasn't happened yet. XD

One easy solution to the Texanism issue? Make an alt who's from Dallas. (I'm Southern and spent quite a few years living in the mountains of western North Carolina. I made a character from eastern Tennessee for those days when I want to let my Inner Appalachian shine. It's good fun. XD)

'Been trying to throw some quatloos into the collective pot for over a year now... and FINALLY, for the first time, today I actually got there in time to do it. I swear, you guys are some seriously fast-moving donation-puppies. XD BUT... Success! At last. 🧐

Nothing to stop a badly-written arc from being upvoted by its creator's friends and SG-mates, either. A hot mess written by a well-known player with a large, supportive SG or an extensive friends-list would likely surpass the star totals of a good but obscure writer's arc faster than we could say "Popularity Contest".