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Based upon the hint link... I'm going to guess the first is about the start of porting critter costume parts to player use. The second has me baffled. Sonic Armor? Self-targeting for support set buffs? Wind Control with disappointing graphics?

That's why I said "loosely" related. Seeing the backwards compatibility of the launcher made me once again wish that Win 7 client bug was getting some attention.

That's great. On a loosely related matter: Has anything been done to resolve Windows 7's queuing issue with the character list?

Core also gives Healing and Mez buffs. So it's +4% Pet Defense versus +2% Defense for others and the 30' extra radius. Still not balanced, but then Incarnate abilities aren't well balanced in general,

This particular patch went live on April 21st. It's the Beta patch from April 5th that hasn't gone live (or even to staging) yet. I think the last two posts before mine were both meant for that thread. And this thread should probably be closed.

Apparently, procs don't work in Traps/Seeker Drones (at least on MMs). I tried Bombardment, Positron's Blast and Clouded Senses. None of them fired even once in basic testing. According to the Recharge on the pet power, all should have max proc chance.

Changing things in a way that doesn't make them clearly better is not a good idea. However, I think what's currently on Beta is clearly better than what is currently on Live. Most of the "improvements" suggested beyond the current Beta set either require significant additional work or aren't really a significant improvement, IMO. I'm curious as to what the dev discussions have been for the last month, and whether or not some of that significant work is being done or contemplated. As of now, I'd suggest that if significant additional work hasn't already been put into the upgrades, what's on Beta should go Live as is and any additions or improvements should be shelved for a later date.

Alternatively, they could simply lower the cost to craft higher level IOs. If they were attuned people would simply start crafting them at level 7 and not need anything but Common IOs until they started to slot sets.

Thanks for looking into that. I suspected it had something to do with the DB I used to build it, but was hoping there was a fix for that. I wonder how the heck Stalker Experimental Injection became an inherent, since it didn't even exist in any builds until recently and the only two MRBU builds I've used have been the 3/26 release build and the latest cutting edge build. I've heard the DB can be corrupted easily, but I hadn't opened it until after the problem arose (not since the olden days anyway, and I have separate installs for Mid's, Pine's and Mid's Reborn. Ironically, none of my old Mid's builds are broken, as none have Origin Pools to cause a problem. Anyway, thanks again.

I currently have 29 at 19- parked for the update (and 3 others parked as name holders who might be jump-started by the update). It's probably time to lower the parking level to 16.

Only two? All of my level 19- toons (at least 20 of them) are parked at the moment. I've been awaiting the next patch notes, but am about to give up on it and play a couple of lowbies current style (explores and arcs to get INF and go DO to IO).

Regarding the busted Stalker builds with Force of Will and Sorcery. It occurs in both the release version and the cutting edge version (20.2605). Here is a data chunk and a link to an mxd file for one of the troubled builds. With these saved builds nothing I do will make it see the T1/T2 powers in Force of Will or Sorcery appear valid at any level. But with new builds they are fine. I can fix the issue by starting from scratch and making the same build, but haven't found any other way to make the builds behave. It's a rather narrow issue: Stalkers with FoW or Sorc pools only. All of those, and none of anything else. | Copy & Paste this data into Mids' Reborn : Hero Designer to view the build | |-------------------------------------------------------------------| |MxDz;1556;723;1446;HEX;| |78DA6594496F525114C7EF65104B69993AD181966A85527885B47B135B35A643AA2| |C6A9C5E9F7029D8171E7980B60E0BBF820BFD049AB8F10B1887EACA5DADFA1D34A6| |6AE2C6C4012FEFFC292434697E9773CFF03FE71E58D95EF43C3B7BFF24E33D0BBA5| |6A9A899AAA66F09D3B5AA556BA6A6DB1963DE0B355D336BB5686562C114A2EC92B6| |10FCD415A10BA19C320D2DA7666E19662EDCBC59147951AA082553280A3DD7FCE83| |F572A085394AA4AF3E05E330C5DC99485C805ACE319C3CC0AD5C8ABEB455DF758A6| |65A1958BA5CD6EBAD78B9B856AE874B998559AC532464D5757B44A55983B4352DF8| |CFC7FEE65F8AB3BD9B683B1B483D976C0DB44C71DF02EF1C83DE2E5A80CE356AC8D| |FDB4D3DD12F1683FB7F8C20B17999FFFB6D1DD1FA2FB2FF88FE8A9838C72A832BF9| |DF23BED3ECAE7EB2306903F9022F6CD8373C497B2AE13B1CE3DCA37F01EDC270E7D| |003F12873F115FC9581769B6B91E93A6E127C4D1A7C46B525B17F2777DA6B8D12FC| |4F057109AC2D03891264ECAE4DD14CBBB1B8FD0B803AFC8BC3D7467EF41CF13E839| |1204D1FB55E94BCF57E75EC447C05D79E1E7DCD2E7CF93EDD82658008BC4E337C02| |DE286CC1BA458168C90EDB5CCD74FB5583F6A54638C0DC23608BF37D22F84F70E6D| |20AF463C910573A0204677E54C830EA6C9BA23E87D04BD47D17314339846EF15597| |B0CBD8FEDD19B4CEF13DF4A0DE3D0308E9D9BC6CEC5B17371EC5C1C3B97C0CE5D97| |1A26113B89D8046213884D223689D824626F4A4D53146B9FF293CE59E89F85FE59C| |C6E40EE408C7A6531F4948DD277B2D1D34C82FCD26063C514CC5A7947B65F1EC652| |D8D314EAA551278DBA238EC3EF777DB4756E7CACD759BCC392EAB0A43B2C731D96F| |90ECB728765CD71F84BC0B865E9F2B1C6E42C6D076E798B79F024F5F7BD65E33C42| |33EE3D207E6BF78F91FF8F96CDC61FD0DBF43E24FA1E1157E372EEA879DE6DA9B3C| |E97DACE17DBCEEB6DE7A5786B96FF01EEFB053B| |-------------------------------------------------------------------| Rularuu's Creep (BS SD Soul Stalker).mxd

ALL of my Stalker builds that use Force of Will or Sorcery have this same problem. They have the first two powers chosen as invalid due to level and trying to change the order has no effect. If you try to replace the pool with Experimentation it colors Experimental Injection green and tells you that you cannot remove inherent powers so that the pool is stuck in your build.

Opp Gloom, Cloak of Fear and Burn on Brutes and Tankers were changed in Page 4 to take regular Taunt enhancements, but not sets.

I had an interesting bug occur with the latest release (3/26 11:20pm). I opened a Stalker build (Fire/Rad/Soul) and it had Mystic Flight and Spirit Ward as both improperly placed (though neither was). I tried swapping things around, but there was no combination that I could find to make it recognize them as legal. In the process I removed the powers and put in Experimentation as a pool. It showed Experimental Injection as being selected immediately despite the power being nowhere to be seen in the build. I could not remove either the power or the pool. I tried reinstalling the patch over the top of my existing setup but it made no difference. Oh, and as an aside... the power order for Stalker Radiation Armor is still wrong, with Fallout Shelter being listed as available at level 10 when it isn't actually available until 16.

It's actually misspelled inside the game itself as well.

All stores except Base NPC Quartermasters; based both on the patch notes and testing. They still drop.

I'd agree with that. However, the sooner you learn the Reward Merit system the better off you are going to be. Honestly, the biggest boon I think they could add for new players is the simple direct Reward Merit -> Influence option. Perhaps with a Merit Vendor tutorial that gives you 1 or 2 RM.

Using the P2W vendor, Merit Vendor and AH are pretty much essential to this game. I personally think doing away with the need to use the AH would be easy if they let you convert a Reward Merit directly to INF (say 200k). But not knowing about the P2W vendor is a major handicap, as is not learning how to spend Reward Merits. The explores in AP are really the only thing that is "arcane" knowledge. Faultline's Rare Salvage tutorial would obviate the need for that, but you're still going to need to know how to convert Reward Merits to INF to really keep yourself outfitted in HC's universe.

All you need to do to start out a new toon with adequate INF is: Learn to use the Merit vendor to convert Reward Merits into Special Salvage such as Boosters or Converters. Learn to use the AH to sell that special salvage. Learn to use the P2W vendor to acquire the free Jump Pack or Steam Jump power. Memorize the location of the 8 exploration markers in Atlas Park (getting the explores in Mercy is harder - so even my villain toons start in AP to do this, then hit Null to go red-side). Once you've done that every toon can start with 1M INF or more. Which based upon my testing will keep you in +3 SOs until level 11 even if you upgrade them every time you level up. By then I'd earned another 28 RM, worth some 7M more INF. Which in turn would be enough to keep me in valid SOs until 22 and leave enough to acquire IOs at that time. I could possibly even stretch that to IOs at level 27, though I'd only have about 3M to keep me in SOs until then, so I'd have to be judicious in the use of the Upgrade button and instead just buy most of my SOs from stores. Bottom line... just doing the AP explores and playing 3 story arcs (Twinshot, Wincott and Flux) provided enough earnings to mean I could be at SO level of performance all the way to 50 by just earning enough to buy IOs to fill new slots. Which amounts to just a few hundred k INF per level.

The tutorial addition certainly wouldn't hurt. Though I'd rather give players who don't want to use the AH a better option instead of just making it a tiny bit easier for them to learn to do something that they'd rather not do at all. Something such as converting 1 Reward Merit at a Merit Vendor to 200k INF. That's about the same as selling Converters at 74k or Boosters at 1.11M.

Well, a whole build of new ones at +3 to your current level. Making it so that you had the option to only upgrade red enhancements would avoid a potential noob trap of upgrading too often, which eats a lot of INF. I think it looks worthwhile to keep yourself at +3 into the low-to-mid teens, since it's still cheap, then switch to only upgrading when everything goes red. It does seem to move the "time to IO" level from 22 to 27 when you can start buying almost all sets. Otherwise the big boon is to level 1-11 with a lesser bonus to 12-21 that is probably evened out by the number of slots available so that it is a pretty significant and smooth upgrade to low level play. For those who don't PL all their alts to 50+3, or even 22, this is a nice improvement.

I did a bit more testing on cost to upgrade SOs with the new system. My first test was to take a level 25 BS/SD Brute and give her a second build using level 25 SOs then check the cost to upgrade those to 28s. It cost 1.21 million INF to upgrade 41 IOs. My 2nd test was to take a level 22 version of the same toon, buy her L25 SOs, then add powers/slots/SOs before upgrading everything each level to 25. At level 23 I spent 1.06M to upgrade 38 IOs to L26s. At level 24 upgrading 39 SOs cost 1.12M. The 41 SOs at 25 cost the same 1.21M to upgrade from 39 27s and 2 25s to 28s as it did to upgrade all 41 from 25s to 28s. So the overall cost was 3.39M vs 1.21M. I think it would be more appropriate for the upgrade cost to vary by the number of levels upgraded. It seems odd to me that upgrading from a level 25 to 28 costs the same as upgrading from 27 to 28. The cost of the +3 added seems about right, with the +1/+2 upgrades quite a bit steeper than I think they should be. Ideally, it shouldn't cost nearly three times as much to go 25-26-27-28 as it does to go 25-28. If +1 were roughly half the cost of +3 and +2 around 75% I think it would be more reasonable. +4 or more added levels would naturally cost more. Whatever the actual cost is though, I don't like that it's the same regardless of the number of levels added.

And the Arachnos QM too. All sell TOs. Any others hiding in the weeds of the long list of NPCs? (The Nurse, another vendor, doesn't sell enhancements.)

I wanted the actual names to look one up in the base editor so I could test all of those that are supposed to sell TOs.