Ankylosaur

Congrats all! And thanks for running the contest, @Take One

I have thought of ways to make it more difficult, (e.g. all boss mobs surrounding them) but decided in the end it is not important. If you can take em on, well why not? 🙂 You have to take on many Arachnos leaders in the Glitters after all.

Serves me right for trying to kludge a "cutscene" - you killed the actors! 🙂

So, I finished All That Gleams above, but it is not my submission. While it does visit a reborn Praetoria, it is built upon so much story scaffolding as to not really stand on its own. I intended it as a bit of an epilogue, so it is a bit more expositional in how it unfolds - which makes it a bit less of a contender. Instead, I'll submit Ninjas in The Wind, which was originally written as a standalone and really is where I introduce the notion of a Praetoria reborn. So...

The level cap is somewhat mechanical. A mob that is designed to be challenging at level 20 is just not going to be challenging at level 50 if it has the exact same powersets. So unless they are planning on using Trolls at level 50 and want to make high level versions (like they did with any number of the mobs - look inside to see how they evolve) your only route is customs or forcing players to jump levels in an arc. To me, the former is the better end user experience. I think you will find most players are pretty accommodating about customs in AE so will overlook the faces. Spawn points are such an ancient wish-list item we have to assume that its just not easy to implement. There are some ways to do some creative things with escorts and conversations, but have their own quirks and limitations. Having an actual dialog type character in missions would be nice to have.

I'm working on one... All That Gleams 5.0: Redemption in Praetoria The Epilogue to the All That Glitters, All That Glimmers and even Police vs. Aliens, series it pulls the three together and is sort of the inverse of what you have been through. While those series all explore the impact of Praetoria on Primal, all the stories above have an impact on the post-Cole Praetoria. This explores that landscape and the impact you have had on the "reborn" Praetoria by participating in those arcs - just to put a bow on the various series. Two other "rebirths" in there too. Coming soon...

If you are looking for some custom trolls and skulls for higher levels - this should jump start you.

@Yomo Kimyata Thanks for this! I took a run at a build based on this and another I found and am loving it. Love the Force feedback proc idea. Some of my changes I ended up without an Epic PP and just SS and SJ so I could get more slots. I did take Spring Attack for fun, a slight splash of Knockdown crowd control, and for just one more Force Feedback that actually does trigger occasionally. I couldn't fund the whole thing yet, but looking among the unbuilt recipes from other toons I ended up with three each of Panacea and Preventative for now - both sets in Ablative I am using Touch of the Nictus for the Accuracy on DNA and Parasitic It's been loads of fun. Also - was it you who did the TO contest recently? If so - it was that that helped fund me as I leveled a new toon!

@Xandyr Thanks! I have a WP/Titan tank stalled at around lvl 40 - the animations are just SO SLOWWW. Have seen an Invuln/Staff in action and she seems pretty strong too (in that it is also set and forget). Maybe I will dust him off my old tank again too. On my first respec experimenting with this, I don't have maneuvers, or an epic pool. I ended up working in Spring Attack for fun and a proc. With that and the 3 staff KB powers I have 4 Force Feedback recharge procs going which helps a little to keep those healing powers up and available.

@Yomo Kimyata - liking the look of this build! I recently reached 50 with my staff/bio brute and went Leviathan for thematic reasons, but I see you make good use of the Artic Breath debuffs. I'm looking to start investing in some enhancement sets, and this looks right up my ally. A few questions though... no slotting in health or stamina - that works? hasten is two slotted because of the IOs? do you miss mercurial blow as a fast attack? do you actually ever use kick or spirit shark to trigger the force feedbacks? how survivable is this build? have you tweaked it since it was shared?

@Xandyr I recently got a Staff/Bio Brute to 50 and am trying to pull together a build from what was shared above. Would you be willing to share yours? I'm loving the combo - thematically I so want to keep spirit Shark instead of Serpent's reach, but not sure its worth it. 🙂

Congrats to all the winners! Thrilled to be selected and excited for the extra plays it may bring. So glad to hear that you all enjoyed Police vs. Aliens 2. (For more very different Nictusy goodness, give Police vs. Aliens 1 a spin too.) Also, thanks to all who tested and played - I am sure judging these is a very time consuming process.

@GM Impervium I am sure I will! (Though I am also fairly confident that I will have a hundred things to edit to make them gel with the "new canon" introduced by Page 3. 🙂 ) Said another way - I've answered all those questions in my own way, and if my answers are different than yours I either have to parallel universe mine or rework them to make them fit in. (e.g. I saw you shared a Goldbricker screenshot, and if my answer for "what's King Midas' story" / "what does Langston do" is different - which I can't imagine its not - I will have to figure out how to fit it in. And am already planning for that change.) But such is the risk of authoring!

@Darmian thanks for the vote of confidence as well! The most "outside the lore" of mine is Adventures in Wonderland, and even it has an anchor in the in game reality (as much as the books do). My arc list is long, and a bit daunting, but if you ever want details about the areas of the lore the arcs explore let me know. Like @cranebump I often have questions that inspire me to explore an answer How did people end up in the Shadow Shard? Where did the snakes in the isles come from? What if people wanted to embrace Eden / DE as a return to nature / paradise? Who is gathering and supplying Arachnos, Longbow, the Family, and the Council with Praetorian Tech? How come Marshall has not tried to weaponize the Arachnoids? What is King Midas' story? Where are the Carnival of Light, Forlorn, and other evacuees calling home now? How come Arachnos is not trying to get new magic from Croatoa? Why isn't the Order of the Winds coming down on Scirocco and Ice Mistral? What does Langston Corp. do? (never did work in Gold Brick candy into that though I meant to. 🙂 ) Why does Port Oakes still not have a governor named by Recluse? What is Astoria like after Mot is defeated? Why did the Circle stop making appearances in Faultline and Dark Astoria (after they were revamped)? Why are the Nictus still hanging out on earth after thousands of years of not conquering it? And sometimes I just have an idea for a fun use of a mob or custom mob or map I have never used before that I try to shoehorn in. 😉

With Glimmers (the magic post-praetoria series) done, I wanted to go back and make sure the two paths aligned and complemented one another. In particular this comment had stuck in my mind.... It's true that as the penultimate arc, it is mostly you confirming suspicions and knocking ConDev down a peg before the grand finale. However with Neo Tokyo being revealed in the Glimmers path, that did give me a chance to integrate that better here and try to better prepare for the finale too...

Thanks for giving this a run and for the feedback! All of your feedback throughout the series has been super helpful, and as you know, even influenced some things. As to Marchand I struggled quite a bit on who should be the contact. Originally it was going to be the spirit world Vanessa DeVore since she bookends the Carnival of Light's involvement, but then she couldn't hand you the things you needed to compel the gods. Then it was going to be Hellewise since she has all the magic knowledge and knows about traveling dimensions/planes, but she has been a bit out of the picture to step in and take charge. In the end, I thought back to 4.1 and how Marchand is coordinating all of the special ops related to this, so he would have been in charge when Desdemona and Pendragon went missing on their op, and consequently - even though he doesn't know much about magic - he would bring all the resources to together to solve the problem. That's just who he is... It also helps bridge the slight left turn that 4.2 is. So as he is coordinating the ops he reaches out to specialists: Hellewise knows about the magic of the planes, Nadia about charms and compelling gods, and Archivist Jaena of the midnight squad about the history of the gods on Prime, the banished pantheon, and the Mu - it takes a team! Interpretation of the Gods Way back in 3.1 Hellewise talks about this interpretation of the gods. I'm with you though, its far from perfect - even just the Mu history alone has many different beings / dieties / sources of magic and sea gods seem to be around in different forms with Merulina's history suggesting she's not even a god at all but an alien. But, as you say, just cause the Mu wrote down with their interpretation does not mean its true - and I think its "true enough" for the purposes of this. 🙂 As to the fixes and typos - thanks so much! Will get to those fixed post haste.

Well, I'm pleased to say I finished what I set out to do - place the First Ward, magic using ex-pats in our world and see what happens. I am sure I will tweak it a bit, but I can call it done! Like the All That Glitters series, this series changes the game world, so I am considering doing a single 5.0 to tie the Glitters and Glimmers paths together in a bit of a capstone or epilogue. We'll see if I get around to it... All in all it was a very fun writing/creating experience. I planned this one out a bit more than I did Glitters, so it was a lot less haphazard in how the story evolved and its construction. I think overall it is probably tighter as a result too. If you give it a whirl, as usual I'm open to all feedback to make it the best it can be. Enjoy!

My mistake! Found her in the resistance. (Just a case of misremembering and looking in the wrong place!)

The carnival of Light used to have two versions of the "light" Vanessa De Vore - both are missing after the recent AE update. One of them was level 20-34 to correspond to the mob level. The other was an EB level 1-54 and did not have a mask. Both are absent now - maybe something to do with the Carnies mob rename and multiple Vanessa De Vores? No idea really but would love to have her back. 🙂

The new update with new maps and new high level Nictusy mobs (+ a contest) spun up my Kheldians vs. Nictus thoughts. I purposely avoided doing anything significant with the Council or with the 5th Column when I made the first one (except for a few Void Seekers). I started thinking about where Arakhn and Requiem are left during Primal Marchand's arc, and, well came up with a sequel for Police vs. Aliens! So what was a single arc is all of a sudden a little series: Police vs. Aliens 1: Nictus Exodus and introducing... Police vs. Aliens 2: Nictus Evictus!

Bit of a mad dash to try to pull this all together by the deadline, but here's my submission: Arc ID: 43278 Police vs. Aliens 2: Nictus Evictus @Ankylosaur Your old Transcended pal, Col. Buddy Bolton of the PPD, left a message on your phone. You haven't talked with him since fighting Nictus on Praetoria! Call him back to see what he needs?

In the latest update, the Cimeroran mob was updated to include a few boss versions of mobs that were there as AVs: Sister Solaris and Sybill Bramlett. It seems like they replaced the AV versions, which I suspect was unintended. Ideally we would have both a boss and AV version if available.

I think Sister Solaris and Sybil Bramlet's AV versions were replaced by Boss versions in the update in the Cimeroran group. They used to be available as AVs - Would be great to have both options.