Police Woman

Arrow Girl's next adventure was Bridge of Forever: (arc #36642), a level 19-20 Loyalist arc by @Darmian. On this arc, Chimera sends you to investigate the disappearances of several members of Powers Division. As it happens, Arrow Girl is a Praetorian character whose origin story involves working for Chimera, so .... of course I had to make a Chimera ninja themed costume for this arc. On the first mission Arrow Girl teams up with Officer Welks of the PPD to investigate the disappearances. The map starts entirely empty and we start off mostly clicking glowies to get clues, so there was very little fighting, but this actually conveyed the feeling of doing detective work very well. After we found a lot of clues, there was an obligatory ambush, which we defeated handily. After that, Chimera sent Arrow Girl to follow up leads by breaking into a variety of government buildings to steal evidence, generating friction with the other big-name Praetors. This all felt very true to the Praetorian dimension. At one point, while investigating the underground tunnels, I run into Mr. G, who claims to be there on Chimera's behalf to replace another ally who was a no-show. Sure! You look trustworthy! Mr. G helps Arrow Girl with her mission, clearing out ghouls and other sewer trash ... at least for a little while. When we're on the verge of rescuing one of the missing persons, Mr. G turns traitor. I guess I should've expected this. It's another day in Praetoria. After escaping Mr. G's treachery, Chimera sends Arrow Girl to break into one of Mr. G's cloning facilities to find out what he's really up to. And while there, Arrow Girl encounters... Arachnos?! All the clues have been pointing towards the missing supers being transported to another dimension for some nefarious reason, and now Arrow Girl has run across a cross-dimensional incursion from Primal Earth! Arrow Girl defeats the Arachnos boss and breaks their dimension-hopping hardware. Having discovered what happened to the missing people, rescued one, and stopped the Arachnos incursion, it's mission accomplished when she reports to Chimera, and the end of the arc. -- This arc really felt perfect for a level 19 Praetorian. I liked the way the investigations were set up, it really felt like we were doing detective work. There were a lot of chained objectives but they were on indoor maps and each objective seemed to lead deeper into the map, so there wasn't a ton of backtracking. Good use of Praetorian and Arachnos factions, none of them felt overpowered for my lowbie blaster. I liked the Praetorian lore and the obvious infighting between the various Praetorian factions. Chimera was kind of characterized as being a mean boss, but this is fully in character for a Praetor who regularly murders his subordinates when they get uppity. I would've liked an architect souvenir from this arc - it didn't look like it awarded one. I gave this arc 5 stars. Arrow Girl hit level 20 while playing through this arc, triggering Marchand to phone to tell her to go through the portal to Primal Earth - a perfect match for the story.

The next arc in my search was tagged both "Ideal for Teams" and "Challenging" and intended for a Task Force-like experience, which didn't seem like a good idea for my solo blaster. So Arrow Girl's next adventure was Dream Paper (arc# 6645) by @Zasani (fka Glazius), a heroic arc where you're sent to stop the Lost from breaking and entering an apartment complex. I also played this arc on the live servers, but that was a long time ago so I remembered almost none of it. Alfonse Rubel, a delivery boy from Steel Canyon, tells me about a gang of Lost breaking into his apartment building. Entering the apartment complex, I rescue a number of tenants, including Grandma Yan. Explosive arrows are not "best practices" for hostage situations, but it worked out Curiously, the Lost seemed mainly interested in stealing packets of medicine from Grandma Yan. Alfonse sent the "medicine" off to a PPD lab, and the analysis came back with a lead to a warehouse full of Tsoo. The Tsoo were remarkably Zen about Arrow Girl breaking into their warehouse and demanding answers; it turns out the "medicine" wasn't anything illegal, just some herbal alternative medicine one of them had made for Granny Yan. Going back to Alfonse, he tells me the PPD lab he sent the paper packets to was under attack! Arrow Girl just cleared out another attack on the PPD in the last arc. Why do villains keep attacking the poor police department?! *shakes fist at sky* In the police lab, Arrow Girl rescued a number of rather woozy and confused police and Longbow saying that they had gotten "exposed" to some substance. Finally she tracked down a lab tech who actually knew what was going on. It turns out it's the paper used to wrap the packets of medicine, not the contents at all! There was something psychoactive about the paper that mesmerized all the police people who looked at it, and this had something to do with why the Lost wanted it so badly. The "dream paper" was getting regularly dropped off by a Troll paperboy, so Arrow Girl went off to track this Troll down. I eventually find him deep in a Troll cave. He looks a bit sick, and his friends are not happy that I'm there. Once I fight off the other Trolls, the paperboy tells me he's trying to get clean from Superadine (which is why he seems sick). He's trying to go legit and was delivering the paper as a favor for a Mr. Blaloch, but he willingly tells me where he's picking up the dream paper - another warehouse, of course. In the warehouse is a ton of paper-making paraphernalia which all needs to be destroyed, over the protests of the Lost that are operating the paper mill. I run across the Troll paperboy again and he offers to help out; having a big muscly ally proves very useful for Arrow Girl. The Lost keep babbling something about Scripture and the Prophet, and we finally stumble across the Prophet himself: The Prophet / Mr. Blaloch seems a little mixed up, alternating between villain dialog and being a confused old man, the two personalities struggling for control. Exposure to the dream paper and/or the Lost had given the Prophet psychic powers, but he's not too tough, and Arrow Girl and her troll sidekick manage to beat him. Afterwards, Mr. Blaloch recovers from being possessed by the dream paper and seems to have no memory of what happened - though there are several loose ends that hint at future investigations. (Though I don't believe a sequel was ever published.) Overall I thought this arc had an offbeat plot but was well written and well balanced for a low level arc; mostly standard enemies with a few custom characters for bosses and hostages. I liked the minor characters that were introduced: Grandma Yan, her Tsoo grandson, and the Troll paperboy. I would've liked Blaloch to get a little more development before we meet him in the last mission, that would've made his possession (and eventual recovery) hit harder. Alfonse does name drop Blaloch earlier on, but it wasn't enough to give me any kind of impression of the man. The clues were well-written, especially the ones that told a personal story about one of the characters. The idea of the dream paper itself was very creative, and it made total sense that we'd check into the drugs before suspecting something about the paper. I gave this arc 5 stars. Arrow Girl finished the arc 70% of the way through level 19.

Arrow Girl's next adventure was [Ordinary People 2] Hope and Bullets (arc #31903) by @cranebump, the sequel to [Ordinary People 1] Standard Operating Procedure. The Powers That Be are trying to take Detective Freitag off the Skullions case, and Freitag has gone off investigating on his own, with the help of a police cadet, and gotten into trouble. Detective Becktrees calls me in to help. I quickly locate and rescue Freitag. Based on the dialog, Freitag wants to find Willie (the police cadet that he dragged into this), but ... I convince him not to? This doesn't make sense to me, but I go ahead and lead him out, then find the police cadet on my own. She wants to download some files from a nearby database, presumably filled with valuable evidence. We get jumped by an ambush (actually, a boss spawns right next to me) and narrowly escape. After rescuing Freitag and Willie, Becktrees puts me on a stakeout in a suspiciously quiet neighborhood of Kings Row. I don't fully buy this ("nothing at all is happening in this neighborhood! IT MUST BE A PLOT!!") but somehow this hunch pays off and Arrow Girl follows some trucks to a villain base operated by the "Gatling Gang", the actual name of the mysterious "Hats" faction that first appeared in Ordinary People 1. The Gatling base has some evil research scientists doing .... something nefarious. I wasn't quite sure what (I don't think it's fully explained here, so I suspect it's a hook for the sequel), but they were determined to keep Arrow Girl from finding out. Arrow Girl rescued and teamed up with an Arachnos operative (he apparently was also investigating the suspiciously quiet neighborhood) and beat up Steve Gatling, the local Gatling boss. There was a pretty big ambush (or maybe 2 ambushes) that showed up soon after fighting Steve Gatling, and tbh the ambushers were meaner than the boss, though Arrow Girl narrowly defeated them. An awkward moment. They had a lot of knockback! Having cleared the Gatling base, Becktrees and I were patting ourselves on the back when the Gatling Gang launched a firebomb attack and a physical invasion of the Paragon Police Department headquarters! And Willie was in there, trying to decode the Important Files from before! (Drama!) Arrow Girl charged into the burning building to rescue Willie and stop the villains! We're done when I say we're done, buddy! After clearing out the Gatling Gang invaders, we found that Willie has been captured and taken to a construction site, where the Gatling Gang is massing in large numbers and apparently about to move somewhere. Arrow Girl and some other backup Kings Row heroes are sent to the scene! Steve Gatling, the boss from before, is back and suffers a beatdown from Arrow Girl and Acrobattle, one of the NPC allies (and reappearing from Ordinary People 1). Defeating Steve caused his even meaner brother, Larry Gatling, to show up. Arrow Girl and Acrobattle tried to take him down. Larry Gatling spawned as an elite boss for me, and hit hard with excellent accuracy (able to hit Arrow Girl even through 2 lucks). Arrow Girl was defeated twice fighting Larry until I decided I'd better round up all the other optional allies in the mission. Oh... Whipsmart again. Um, yes, we need you and your cannon fod-- your wonderful robots With all this help, we're able to dogpile Larry and finish him off, though it was a close thing; we lost Acrobattle and Arrow Girl dropped to 20% health at one point. After we defeat Larry he gives us an ominous clue: Overall impressions I liked Willie's arc. The story did a good job of introducing her and making us care about what happens to her. I think it'd be a little more powerful if Freitag helped the player find Willie in mission 1 (after all, he got her into this jam) and if Freitag were one of the optional allies in mission 4 (so he can react to finding Willie). I found the game mechanics in mission 4 to be especially frustrating. Despite Becktrees telling me that "We've got to save Willie" in the mission briefing, finding Willie doesn't even show up in my initial objectives for the mission; instead I have to "Arrest Steve Gatling (again)" (reasonable) and "5 getaway vehicles to destroy" (not important to the story, and also having 5 things to find on a huge outdoor map is kind of a pain). The chained objectives of Defeat Steve -> Defeat Larry -> Find Willie were frustrating because they could spawn anywhere on the outdoor map, so I had to criss-cross the map repeatedly; I ended up literally clearing the entire map to finish this mission, which felt like too much. I think narratively it might be better if the chained objectives were reordered to either Find Willie -> Defeat Steve -> Defeat Larry, or Defeat Steve -> Find Willie -> Defeat Larry. The custom characters were a little difficult for my squishy character, but not unacceptably so. I started to dread the "Knife" minions, who could see me at long range and run through my glue patches to try and stab me. There was a custom faction of entirely "Assistant" minions that staffed the ambushes in mission 2 and guarded vehicles in mission 4; since they all had dual pistols, their attacks repeatedly stacked knockback on my character, which was frustrating. I'd suggest mixing in a couple minion types with varying attack types. The final boss, Larry Gatling, was pretty hard for Arrow Girl, but several optional allies were provided and they were a big help. Minor typos and continuity errors (not serious, but listing these in case you want to fix them): I gave this story arc 4 stars. Arrow Girl ended the arc 80% of the way through level 18 (...with some debt).

Yeah, I think you're right that most people are playing their "main" or some other level 50 toon; that's one reason I thought it would be fun to try bringing a level-appropriate lowbie toon. It's made me much more sensitive to mission difficulty, that's for sure. My main character, a heavily IO'd level 50 blaster, would've beaten most of the enemies and ambushes that defeated Arrow Girl. As for what would've taken All That Glitters 2.1 to 5 stars for me: the game mechanics were fine, but I would've liked the writing to give me a stronger motivation for the earlier missions, and a better sense of accomplishment at the end of the arc. The arc starts with Burke telling me to go beat up Goldbrickers to find out what they're up to; I would've liked a reason why, some "probable cause" more than "They've villains". After finishing the arc, I had beaten up the boss, but it wasn't clear if I had accomplished anything. It would've been nice to clear my name with the police, stop Langston's expansion into Boomtown, helped out the oppressed workers, and/or have more personal stakes for getting revenge on the boss (he had never killed my partner, kicked a puppy, or anything like that). Ideally I should've solved whatever problem was presented as "the reason why we're doing this arc" in the earlier missions - a more definite climax to this episode (even if there are lots of loose threads leading to the sequels), rather than purely setting the stage for the next arc. I hope that helps!

Arrow Girl's next adventure was All That Glitters 2.1: Boom Time in Boomtown (arc #34715), by @Ankylosaur. This is a level 15-20 Vigilante arc, the direct sequel to All That Glitters 1.3: Capitalism in Cap Au Diable, where I'm sent into Boomtown to dig up evidence of a Goldbricker plot. Matthew Burke is my contact, and he tells me that Langston Corp and the Goldbrickers are operating a seemingly legitimate operation in Boomtown, and won't I go beat up some of those Goldbrickers to find out what they're up to? This seems like a rather weak reason to go beat people up, but Arrow Girl is an agent of Wyvern now, so of course she's in! Hello, fellow Wyvern agents! The Boomtown map is filled with optional Easter egg encounters which was pretty fun. I somehow got on the Council's bad side? Maybe this happened in an earlier episode? This guy wasn't a required objective, but I couldn't resist shooting some arrows at him. It didn't go well. After messing with the side objectives a bit, I eventually get back onto the main plotline, which leads me to a construction site. Langston Corp replaced a bunch of their human workers with robots, so on site are Goldbrickers, robots, and also angry fired workers who are protesting and/or rioting. These workers were in a custom "Union" faction and ... I really didn't want to kill them, they had legitimate grievances - but they were flagged hostile. (The story arc does go to some effort to explain why they are hostile - but I still felt like my character didn't want to fight them.) So I tried to achieve the mission objective (rescuing 4 workers that were captured by the Goldbrickers) while avoiding aggro from the Union. Since this was a large map with broken terrain, this was pretty hard and I had to backtrack over the terrain a few times before I could find all the hostages. A couple of the hostages mention that "Demolition Dan", one of the union ringleaders, had been captured and taken away by company security (that is, Goldbrickers). So in my next mission I find and rescue Demolition Dan, when suddenly... Ohhh no, a SWAT team is here to arrest Demolition Dan, and I end up having to fight them to get Dan out of this jam. So now Arrow Girl is wanted by the police! Ack! Meanwhile, Matthew Burke has sent another Wyvern team to investigate another lead in an underground Langston Corp base. Since they had no player characters on their team, now they need a rescue. Well, anything for a fellow Agent of Wyvern! Wait, didn't I just see you in Cap? (All that Glitters 1.3) Hey! What's wrong with attacking a villain base armed only with a bow and arrow?! The Langston base is filled with mad scientists and corporate fatcats, and beating them all up completes the story arc, along with giving me clues for future story arcs. Bold words for a guy that's been tied into a pretzel Overall I enjoyed the story arc and the level of detail that was put into each mission. There were a number of custom characters and custom factions, but they fit the story and none seemed overpowering for my young blaster. I thought the adventure hook for the first mission was weak (Goldbrickers are acting legit, go beat some up!). It was awkward and frustrating dodging the hostile construction workers; I suppose I could've heartlessly plowed through them, but it didn't feel right. (Strangely, I didn't have a problem fighting the SWAT team; they were asking for it.) The final mission where I got to rescue the Wyvern agents that I'd previously met in arc 1.3 was nice, but I felt like the arc ended in a weird place, with nothing really resolved. At the end of the arc, my character is wanted by the law, but never really figured out what the Goldbrickers were up to, and while she beat up a lot of Goldbrickers and Langston suits, I don't have the impression that I stopped whatever it was they were doing. All of this is probably developed further in the sequels to this story arc, but personally I think each story arc should be able to stand on its own, with its own beginning and end. Even if I don't fix everything by the end of the story arc, it would be nice to give the player some sort of "win" at the end, like shutting down Langston Corp's expansion into Boomtown, or helping the workers who lost their jobs. I also noticed a few continuity and spelling errors (all of these were minor, I'm just listing them here in case you want to fix them): * In mission 5 a Rocketman says: .... "they they" should be just one "they" * Hornet says he hasn't seen me since Mercy Island, but I just saw him in the conclusion to arc 1.3 in Cap au Diable. * The souvenir says that Delia Huntley sent me on the investigation, but when I played through the arc, Matthew Burke was the contact (he names drop Delia Huntley, but she doesn't really appear). I gave the arc 4 stars. Arrow Girl ended the arc a third of the way through level 18.

Meet Arrow Girl, agent of Wyvern! Arrow Girl's next adventure was Bricked Electronics (arc #6625), a heroic level 8-19 arc by @Zasani. (I also played this arc once on the live servers.) Mark Freeman, a hacker with mutant electronics sensing powers, finds something suspicious on a cell phone and sends Arrow Girl to investigate. The reasoning behind this is a little vague, but sure. Soon: The Goldbrickers are involved somehow! This leads me to raid a nearby warehouse where... there aren't any Goldbrickers. But there are some custom clockwork that have been refurbished by a local kid inventor! She figures I'm there to arrest her. Yeah, putting refurbished clockworks on the street is probably against the law somehow. But we come to an understanding, and she gives us a lead to the next location ... supposedly dumpster diving, but actually: The dump turns out to be occupied by a Council base where they're plotting some ... completely unrelated attack on the city?? Fortunately I manage to stop them from releasing the poison gas, which sends me back to the main plot with the Goldbrickers. After a couple more missions, I discover that the Goldbrickers were planning to rob a bank, and Arrow Girl manages to stop them. Overall, each mission was decently constructed with lots of clues detailing what's going on in that mission. Mark Freeman's dialog was well-written and referencing his mutant powers was a nice dip into the lore. The kid sidekick and her robots were fun. However, I felt the plotting was on the weak side. The initial incident "There's something weird about this phone" really didn't seem like something important enough that you'd call a hero to investigate, and I didn't feel like my character had a very strong motivation to follow up on the leads for the first 3 missions. Then we accidentally stumble across the Council plot to poison gas the city. This was interesting (if random), but it ends up being just a side quest. This felt weird because poison gassing the city is a much more serious threat than either the cell phone investigation or the bank job at the end of the arc. I gave this arc 4 stars. Arrow Girl ended up 3/4ths of the way through level 17.

Arrow Girl's next adventure was All That Glitters 1.3: Capitalism in Cap Au Diable (arc #36056), a Vigilante level 12-20 story arc where you help Wyvern stop demons from overrunning Cap au Diable. This is the third story arc in a series. I considered going back to play All That Glitters 1.1 first, but the earlier story arcs are lower level and wouldn't fit the rules of engagement that I set; so I decided to go ahead and start with 1.3 and see how it went. Off to Cap au Diable to help with the demon invasion problem! There were a lot of civilians and protestors roaming the streets, which I thought was a nice touch. Ow ow hot hot hot! After clearing the streets, my Wyvern contact sends me to the power palnt to deal with Bat'Zul himself. Fortunately, Wyvern and the Legacy Chain provide me with backup. Rounding up the various allies and leading them around caused me to clear most of the map, but it ended up being worthwhile when I finally track down Bat'Zul perched near the top of a smokestack. Getting my allies up the catwalks to reach Bat'Zul was a bit like parallel parking, but once the fight started, Arrow Girl promptly fell off the catwalk and the allies ended up doing most of the work while I ran back up. Bat'zul revealed during the fight that Duke Mordrogar and the Hellions were behind releasing him, so Arrow Girl's next mission takes her into the interior of the power station to track down Mordrogar and rescue some power plant workers. This has got to be a workplace safety violation After defeating "Duke" Mordrogar, I find out the real mastermind behind this is "Duchess" Mordrogar, one of the literal Girlfriends from Hell. We have a final showdown with her in the fourth mission. The arc reaches a climax with the defeat of Duchess Mordrogar. The Hellion plot is stopped, and everyone is happy! But wait, there's a fifth mission! In the final mission, Arrow Girl joined up with some Wyvern agents and go after the Goldbrickers, the Langston Corporation and a bunch of evil scientists. Archery power!! To be honest the fourth mission felt like the "finale" mission, and the fifth mission felt more like a post-credits trailer for the next arc of the mega-epic. Several characters and references from arcs 1.1 and 1.2 appear, and there's an explanation for how this particular story arc furthers the narrative of the overall epic. The arc is clearly labeled as being the third in a series, though, so I can't blame it for that. The Langston Corp custom NPCs looked good and didn't seem overpowered; the extra Wyvern allies certainly helped. Defeating the various evil scientists and reading their notes finished the story arc - along with giving me copious plot hooks for later story arcs in the series. -- I liked the large amount of detail in each mission and the ties to canon like how the PTS is powered and reusing Duke Mordrogar. The map selection was perfect, using the Cap and PTS maps made it feel very immersive, and there were a lot of great visuals along the way. I liked having allies to help with the AVs, though maybe the allies were a little too powerful against Bat'Zul; at my difficulty level, I had 2 EB allies and 1 boss ally that helped with the EB Bat'Zul. I did think that mission 4 was a more natural ending to the story arc, but I kind of get why a fifth mission was necessary to tie-in to the rest of the mega-epic. Overall I really liked this story arc. I gave it 5 stars. Arrow Girl reached level 17, and this arc also inspired me to give her a "Wyvern" costume.

This is what my search looks like: "Text: SFMA; my level" (where my level has ranged from 12 to 16 on this run, so far). Then I manually filter these search results further by skipping all the arcs that are "level 1-54" or otherwise have a level cap above 20, since most such arcs are poorly balanced for a level 16 character. I've been trying to work through these from top to bottom in the search results, so highly rated arcs with lots of ratings (well, 20ish, anyway) show up for me first. My search, despite being so simple, only comes up with 3 pages of results, which is actually a pretty manageable number of story arcs to look through. Hope that helps! Happy hunting!

Yeah, Spirals: Part One was level 1-24 so strictly speaking was too high level for Arrow Girl's rules of engagement, but I didn't catch that at the time. The difficulty is probably fine. Arrow Girl's next adventure was [Ordinary People 1] Standard Operating Procedure, a level 15-20 heroic story arc by @cranebump where you get tasked to stop some mayhem occurring in Kings' Row, and this leads you into fighting a new street gang. Arrow Girl started off rescuing some hostages in a building in Kings Row. The rescued hostages don't help out, but they sure have opinions about how I'm doing things. Arrow Girl rescues another satisfied customer While clearing the building, Arrow Girl ran into the "Skullions", a new street gang that apparently split off from the Skulls and Hellions. They have a lot of custom characters but are mixed with regular Skulls and Hellions so don't seem too bad. A lead from the Skullions causes my contact, Detective Freitag, to send me to Prince Kiros Nandelu's estate. I'm excited to see Prince Kiros used in a story arc, but for some reason Freitag keeps talking about "Powers Division" on this arc, which seems weird to me ... as far as I know, "Powers Division" is strictly a Praetorian organization? Arrow Girl manages to rescue Prince Kiros, but it turns out the villains have made off with his precious Cullinan diamond! For the third mission, Freitag sends Arrow Girl to look for the missing diamond, along with another hero, Whipsmart, whose AI does not live up to his code name. Arrow Girl heals one of Whipsmart's robots who was left parked in a burn patch while the mastermind charges the street gangers with a beam rifle. We don't find the diamond, but we do find a clue leading us to Port Oakes (I think? the fourth mission says we're going to Port Oakes in one place and Mercy Island in another). There, Arrow Girl clears the docks and part of a ship, eventually defeating a Skullions boss. I don't know who this Pyranna chick is, but she clearly knows Arrow Girl After defeating Pyranna, we have to destroy the portal that she mentioned in dialog, which was guarded by the mysterious "Hats" faction that the story arc has been hinting at. After that, we finally find the diamond laying around on the ground. I feel like this could've been explained a little better; Freitag explicitly told me that finding the Cullinan diamond was my highest priority, but "Find the Cullinan diamond" didn't even become one of my objectives until near the end of the mission. Instead I had to Defeat Pyranna (a villain who had never been mentioned before showing up in the nav bar), which then set off a series of chained objectives. The teleporter objective was referenced in Pyranna's dialog, but it wasn't clear to me why the diamond just spawns as a clickable glowy after breaking the teleporter. I noticed the first three missions had plentiful clues explaining every step of the way, but the fourth mission didn't seem to have any clues until the very end. In the fourth mission I also noticed there was a "Link up with Acrobattle" objective that appeared in the nav bar when I entered the mission, but instantly completed within a few seconds (maybe because he had no guards?) - not sure if this was intentional. Finding the Cullinan diamond finished the story arc, but Freitag tells me about some loose ends (another missing jewel, and the continuing mystery of the "Hats" faction) as teasers for "part 2" of the epic. -- Overall I liked this story arc, and I liked the links to canon characters like Freitag and Nandelu. Freitag's voice in the mission briefings seemed just right. The Skullions gang seemed interesting and not too overpowered. I liked the snarky dialog from the rescued captives in the first mission. I was confused by the references to "Powers Division" and I think the fourth mission needs some work, it doesn't seem quite as well-polished as the earlier missions. I gave this arc 4 stars. Arrow Girl ended the arc 45% through level 16.

Arrow Girl's next story arc was Spirals: Part One. (arc #55109), a Crusader-faction story arc by @Darmian where you're tasked with finding a mole that's been leaking info on the Resistance. Arrow Girl rescued a crotchety old Resistance leader who wasn't real thrilled to see her. Arrow Girl followed a lead into the Ministry of Information, where she encountered numerous Imperial bureaucrats and nearly got taken down by "friendly" fire from another group of Resistance fighters. Later, Arrow Girl teamed up with the Resistance and had a tough battle against Powers Division. One of her allies fell in battle and shouted encouragement with his dying breath. Arrow Girl shares a quiet moment of introspection with the other Resistance members before the final battle. Showdown with the Olympian guard. (I really liked this visual, with the giant abstract sculpture framing the shot.) This story arc was also a little hard for Arrow Girl as a level 15 blaster. There were a number of custom mobs, but they were mostly not too bad, except that it seemed like all the bosses and elite bosses would self-rez after death, which was pretty annoying. The custom mobs were mixed with standard mobs, and allies were provided in several missions which helped on the difficulty. However, numerous ambushes did make it rough for Arrow Girl, and she suffered 2 defeats from those. The missions themselves had very complex mechanics where objectives would trigger other objectives (and spawns of mobs) which would trigger yet more objectives. It's easy to make this kind of mission annoying due to the amount of backtracking required, but the missions were set up with a natural progression of initial objectives in the front, and later objectives in the middle/back of the map, with each objective clearly labeled. As a result, the complex daisy chain of objectives went off like a Swiss watch. The writing was terrific, with the contact and the allies doing a good job of portraying the amorality of the Crusader faction, and plentiful clues explaining the plot details and even providing info for team members who aren't the leader and can't read the mission briefings and debriefings. I loved the various connections to the in-game Praetorian lore. I was disappointed that there were so many loose ends at the end of the story arc, but then decided that since I had willingly started an arc with "Part 1" in the name, I shouldn't be judgy about that. So overall I thought the arc was a little high on difficulty for this level, but the writing and the mechanics outweighed that. I gave it 5 stars. Arrow Girl ended the arc at level 16 and picked up Glue Arrow. I'm hoping that dropping a slow patch as a pseudo-control might help her survivability against the tough groups of mobs I'm starting to encounter.

Arrow Girl's next adventure was Of Guns and Asa Ronan (arc #41018), a level 15-20 villain story arc by @cranebumpwhere you do some dirty work for the Marcones and run into a rival villain with a history of bad blood with your employer. I ran into some weird glitches early in this story arc; a couple times I ran into doorways that looked like this: Wha....? This looked like a clip plane issue, which is likely the game's fault, not the arc's fault. I could walk through them, but it was certainly disorienting. As a Marcone triggerwoman I ran afoul of a PPD special forces unit full of custom characters that were very hard to fight. Soon I had become rivals with the Multiple Man, who had illusions and clones everywhere. Ahhh! Not in the face! Fortunately I manage to defeat Multiple Man and break his equipment, so that he'll never be a problem for me again (...). While smuggling the captured Multiple Man out of the city, I ran into the black berets again. I'll mention again that they are REALLY hard for a level 15 - much harder than the canonical low level enemies. Lots of them have mez protection, some of them can mez, and this boss actually popped Elude or something similar (note my 7.5% chance to hit ... this is not cool for a low level arc). Finally in the last mission "somehow Multiple Man returned"... and even more powerful. Nevertheless I managed to beat the upgraded Multiple Man and rescue my employer and his (?) family, so it had a happy ending for everyone but Multiple Man. Overall I thought this arc was too difficult for a squishy character in the official level range of level 15-20. I maybe would've had more success if I were playing a scrapper, brute, or a level 25+ character; as a blaster I suffered 4 defeats, but eventually got through it with several hospital runs and heavy use of inspirations. The custom characters, with high defenses and mez protection, felt overpowered; maybe you could reduce their defense powers and/or mix in some generic PPD with the custom PPD characters. Fighting a jillion clones and encountering one false lead after another was frustrating, but it was probably intended to be, considering Multiple Man's powerset. I would've liked Multiple Man's clones to have a little more visual interest, though maybe they are based on the Phantom Army from Illusion powerset. I didn't like that the clues told me I had put a stop to Multiple Man's powers, but later he came back even more powerful; that felt like cheating. The story itself was pretty decent, and I liked the formatting and the use of clues, but I felt that it was overshadowed by the difficulty. I gave the story arc 3 stars. Arrow Girl reached the top of level 15 by the end.

Arrow Girl's next arc was Test for the Destined Ones (arc #19492), a villainous story arc where you get assigned to a buggy virtual reality training simulation. It starts out pretty slow with fairly generic missions fighting low level enemies, but then there's an interesting twist. Snakes, why'd it have to be snakes? Wait ... is this not part of the training simulation? Oops, Spoiler warning! Though the first couple missions seemed kind of slow, the later missions more than made up for it. I waffled between 4 and 5 stars on this arc, ended up giving it the benefit of the doubt and 5 stars. Arrow Girl hit level 15.

My next story arc to play through was Rewarded as a Loyalist Deserves (arc #37325). In this Loyalist faction story arc you're initially tasked to rescue some civilians and police from the Resistance, but it gets complicated and you end up fighting through a rogues gallery of most of the various Praetorian factions. A Syndicate boss hints that the person I'm trying to rescue may not be who she seems. Arrow Girl stumbles over a Destroyer rave in a helicopter hangar. This was a cool visual. Oooh, foreshadowing! They're gonna get me! I finally found her, the missing hostage that I had been trying to rescue for 4 (!) straight missions. Despite that, she didn't have much to say. Oh no, they really are out to get me! (Seriously, this set of ambushes was ridiculous at level 13.) Overall I thought trying to rescue the same hostage for 4 missions straight was a bit repetitive; one of the NPCs even lampshades this by saying "Sorry, your princess is in another castle." It was also rather confusing to figure out what side Nishimura was really on - I got the impression that she was a triple agent? But I could've used some clues or dialog that more clearly spelled this out. There were way too many ambushes - it was dramatic if I could manage to survive them, but as a level 13 squishy blaster, facing 3 ambushes at a time felt like too much. It was nice getting to see Praetorian lore and enemy groups explored, though. I gave the arc 3 stars. Despite suffering 2 defeats, Arrow Girl made it to level 14.

Thanks for the support! Yeah, I had been semi-dormant on AE stuff for awhile, but reading in another thread about how hard it is to find good story arcs for lower level toons inspired me to give this a try.

Arrow Girl's first story arc to play through is The Lazarus Project (arc #6554) by @Coulomb. I think I may have played this on the live servers, but I didn't really remember any details (it would've been around 15 years ago?). The Lazarus Project was a terrific story arc where you investigate some Vahzilok-related disappearances. Arrow Girl got to fight both Vahzilok and rich entitled jerks, both things I hate. I was a little worried that it might be too long an arc with 5 full missions (I know most authors like to max out at 5 missions per arc, but I don't subscribe to that). However, several of these missions were on small maps so it still felt very doable. Missing newbie heroes, you say? Arrow Girl is on the case! And I thought Aid Other would be useless when soloing! Sorry lady, but this really sounds like a First World problem to me. OMG I hate this guy so much. Rich, entitled Vahzilok!! The final boss! The dialog throughout this whole arc was excellent. I gave The Lazarus Project 5 stars. Arrow Girl finished the story arc at level 13.