Ankylosaur

Thanks for playing the arc and for the kind compliments! So glad you both enjoyed it! Replies to Feedback As to map brightness, its an interesting point I've not paid attention to. Maps 1 & 4 are outside - does time of day change in those? Wonder whether they start synced with the zone you are in. I've always disliked map 5 but like I say it just fits too well. I might poke around though and see if there is some other map that makes it a better experience now. The ghosts in Mission 1 are supposed to speak to you when you approach, but because of the current (known) bug, they all speak when you appear on the map and you may not be close enough to them to notice them when you do. That's why I added the tip, but you really need to be right next to them (they're escorts) for them to show you the way... I added them originally because its a massive map to have a glowie on, but glad you found the crown. As to mobs appearing lower difficulty than the mission text, this mission is so old, that bosses could not be set lower for soloing when I first created it. So if Bosses are "off" then the Elite Boss is just a boss, and Calystix would be easier too. I tested it all with Bosses on though. As to rehash, its true - based off lore that bit is just part of the same story really. but when you have a tank that can spawn Slag Golems - you have to work that in somehow. Plus the Slag Golems are pretty perfectly suited to map 1 - more-so than anything that appears there in game. 🙂 I looked into the Nav bar bug and I think this may be an AE bug. In AE you can give multiple different objectives the same Navigation Text (Plural). In this case, both Elizabeth and Barracuda are set to "Captives to Rescue." This should then appear as 2 Captives to Rescue in the nav bar before you rescue one, then switch to the Navigation Text (Singular) which is unique to each of them (Rescue Elizabeth or Rescue Barracuda.) I checked the file and their text is correct, so it seems like it may be just picking the first in the list instead of the right one. Trivia It is absolutely true that all coral on earth spawn on the same night once a year - how weird is that? https://oceanservice.noaa.gov/facts/coral-spawning.html The group in mission 4 is actually from the lore - they just never appear in game so I got to design them all-custom-like. This is their second iteration as they were designed originally before the (very obvious to use) costume pieces they have today became available.

This is incredibly exciting and much appreciated! I have several from live that you have helped see the light of day again. Three have won one or more player contests. They all have hours and hours of work in them and they have all been updated since publishing them to Homecoming. (Updated as I moved several to my main account) Rularularian - 848 - @Ankylosaur The Serpent Beyond the Horizon - 854 - @Ankylosaur Save the Diver, Save the World - 855 - @Ankylosaur Condemning Croatoa - 25869 - @Ankylosaur Robolution - 25870 (Redside) & 27314 (Blueside) - @Ankylosaur

Made a few tweaks to this one, fixing a typo from Scrapyard's text (thanks for pointing out), getting more representation for Coral Warders/Sentinals, and introducing another Coralax minion... Also added a tip to the intro pop up to compensate for the "they all speak their intro text when you enter the mission instead of because of proximity" bug. In case anyone wants to give it a go, feedback is always welcomed and appreciated.

Sorry to hear you had to quit. Those are hard caves to find. When you enter Mission 4, the dialog box at the mission entrance is a message from Col. Flynn to go to the Nemesis platform in the middle of island and meet up with him. Like you did in Mission 3 with Commander Lefebvre, it is connecting with that escort (Flynn) that enables you to see the waypoint. (I don't think there is any way to set a waypoint without using an escort.) Doubt you'll run through it again, but if you do, that is probably the thing you missed. Meet up with Flynn and all will be well And if you do decide do decide to play it again and want to learn a bit more about the Shadow Shard before you play - head to Portal Corp in Peregrine Island, go into central building and take the elevator down - head right and go right through the portal (you do not need a mission first). Welcome to Fire Base Zulu!! Here you'll see the military and some of the "natives" which will make all of that make more sense. If you are really up for exploring - and maybe look up the location online - make your way to the Cascade Archipelago through a portal in Fire Base Zulu and check out Molepoint Charlie. Here is where Flynn, Sara Moore and others and the mission setting are.. Thanks for trying out the arc! Sorry you ran into a roadblock.

Link to Kyksie review of this in a different thread (some potential spoilers) so here's the key quote... "Rularularian is another perfect arc, with top-notch writing, lots of atmosphere, and no time wasting. Everyone go play it." Thanks for the endorsement, Kyksie!

Thanks Kyksie / Bloodfire Wytch! Appreciate you giving it a run through and very much appreciate the endorsement. As you enjoyed it, would love your take on: Rularularian - Arc ID: 848

A few more people have played and ranked this highly - thanks! Spoilerish I recently made some tweaks to a few of the mobs to integrate even more of the serpent mobs into the metamorphosis process making for an even richer and more varied mob set. Inspired by a combination of the Mercy Isle Serpents, ancient Egyptian gods, Thor Heyerdahl, and the Yuan Ti, I still love this one and think it is one of my top two arcs - give it a go if you want something inspired by the lore.

Republished as "Robolution (Red-side)". I had always toyed around with the idea of doing both a blue and red version of this same arc. I was able to change the contact from Arachnos to Longbow, swap the Arachnos Siren's Call for the other Siren's Call map, change the McGuffin from an Arachnos Destroyer to a Longbow Caraphract, make some text variations, and publish a step-child heroic version while keeping the basic story viable. So now there is also a "Robolution (Blue-side)". Go save the day heroes! (and those who just want to explore the variant for the variant's sake.)

Kyksie did a run through of this arc and posted in a different thread - just linking it here...

Had several people play this and leave comments - thought I would share and respond here. Thanks so much for the feedback! Thank you @AskME - So glad you enjoyed it! Posts like that make my day. If you want another at around the same level I think this and "The Serpent Beyond The Horizon" are my best. @Eildath, Hope it was "Hard!" good? If it seems misbalanced or there are things I should tweak let me know! @Ma1function - So happy you enjoyed and thanks for the bug catch! I had swapped a patrol from Rularuu enemies to Longbow allies and forgot to change their alignment! Fixed it... @purrfekshawn - thanks for the feedback! I checked to make sure I don't have any "Boss Flees" triggers there and I don't so not much I can do here - we can just chalk it up to the AI. Thanks all for the feedback and SOOO happy you enjoyed it and spending your time in my missions...

While an established bug, I feel like it appeared in the penultimate or even last version of CoH on live. Said another way - it was a still a fairly new issue when the servers shut down.

Love Kyksie's mission logs! I was proud of a few things in Croatoa - the fact that you could actually solo a GM and I had a lot of fun with all the triggered events and some custom lore-based mobs and heroes you fight like the extra witches, midnight squad, Montague and Warwitch . Looks like I need to work on their dialog though - trying to put some personality in through their word choices, but it appears like it missed the mark. Should Kyksie ever want to get back to some blueside work and her Freedom Phalanx roots, Rularularian is probably my best arc with The Serpent Beyond the Horizon being a close second (though I worry the contact / dialog for Serpent will not sit well with Kyksie). Based on her screenshot - Kyksie is right in range of those level-wise. Again - love hearing about Kyksie's journeys - thanks for sharing and exploring my arcs (and for the feedback)!

Thank you for the playthrough and feedback! Was thrilled to find it had been played and glad you enjoyed it. (You encountered the bug with Danny and Suzanne rebelling where they don't actually attack you. 😕 ) I tried to find a voice for Zane but may have missed the mark there on him and Col. Duray. Thanks again - made my day to read your experience of it, I also have another villainous arc "Condemning Croatoa" if Kyksie is looking for more lore-related Arachnos work. And if you are looking for any blueside missions - would love to hear your experience for any of my arcs published under my ankylosaur account.

Heraclea, you're right - I just finally accepted that. 🙂

Added my arcs mentioned above so updated that post with the arc IDs. Hope you're still looking for canon based arcs :)

Orb Weaver Zane (Agent Zychowski) has left you a message. He wants to speak with you about a mission to recover stolen Arachnos (Longbow) technology. It's never a good idea to ignore an Orb Weaver, (Longbow Agent) is it? [SFMA] This arc takes place after the events of the Ernesto Hess Task Force. ---- Originally published this days before the shutdown was announced, it definitely is complete, but something I may still refine so feedback is welcome. It also lent itself to having two versions, red and blue. It took some re-writing, but by trading out the contact, the mcguffin, and swapping the first map's with a red version with a blue version of the same location, plus a few other little tweaks, I was able to make a blue version from the red. Feedback welcomed and encouraged!

Arachnos has been interested in the magical potential of Croatoa for some time, but can't gain access to the area. Rather than let the heroes get their hands on it, Arachnos wants to help the Red Caps shift Salamanca completely to the Spirit Realm. Will you be the one to help them? --- Finally just accepted there would not be a way to get more slots and published this under another account. Great to have it live! This story was sort of the reverse inspiration of my arc that brought the Coralax to heroes; this brought Croatoa to villains (back before any of the alignment options). Your contact is Veluta Lunata, who is slowly working her way back up into Ghost Widow's good graces. https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Veluta_Lunata She wants to help the Red Caps complete their plan (that basically heroes are constantly thwarting) and needs your help to make it happen. SPOILERISH As with most of my arcs I tried to do some things new for me at the time. I set up a scenario where you solo a Giant Monster with ally support. While it is quite possible to defeat him and worked, it was time consuming to collect the allies, so I have since made that optional. (I'm even thinking of scrapping it altogether). I also had some fun with destructible objects and triggered events. Plus it was fun to create a bunch of in-game well known named NPCs that don't appear in stories, here, as enemies for you to encounter. Hoping you'll enjoy it! Feedback welcome and encouraged!

+1 for more slots - still just at 3 here.

I had a mission where I had the player rescue a number of people who were allies, only to have them rebel. If memory serves, they all then turned on each other as well as me and killed each other in moments. Not what i had wanted at all. 🙂

Have not been on or awhile, so even though it was from many days ago, it was a pleasant surprise to get feedback on this arc: "That was epic. Great work!" Leaving feedback is most appreciated!

Thrilled someone finally played this! Thanks for the five stars!

I would love to have more mission slots like I had back in the day. I think this can just be turned on... The Ticket vendor used to let you unlock Mission Architect items using the tickets you earned from stories. Though not listed at that link, I thought it also let you buy additional Story slots - I had a total of 6 if I recall, meaning I bought 3 more. (The linked page does say it is missing some items). Regardless, it looks like you could buy slots in the paragon market: https://paragonwiki.com/wiki/Mission_Architect_Story_Slot I suggest turning the Ticket Vendor feature back on, and like the P2W vendor, making it free of just a few tickets, Addressing Storage Cost Concerns It occurred to me that a reason to not do this might be committing to the amount of storage that the additional slots might use - and though storage is cheap it is not free. I have noticed that missions currently support about 4 times the amount of content as before. One of my missions, Rularularian, used to be at 99.7% of the file size limit. That mission was chock full of mobs and content. On Homecoming that same mission, reloaded, was about 25% of file limit. So if there are concerns about the additional slots taking up more server space, I suspect you could pretty safely presume very few people will ever use all the new space allocated. Plus there is a an obvious workaround for me, I could just load my additional missions onto a different free character. I am pretty close to doing just that, but if someone likes one mission, I hope they would try another from me, so putting them under different globals is not my first choice.

Brock Samson, Dr. Girlfriend, and The Monarch from venture bros could be good too? And invader zim? He could even get away with a crab backpack

More Thundercats? Ho! (e.g. Panthro and Cheetara) Oh and Squirrel Girl as long as we are on an animal theme. (Eat Nuts and Kick Butts!)

And of course Domination - some save it for times like that - to break free from a mez, or lock down difficult mobs. Others pop it as soon as possible. Getting hasten will be handy to keep Domination up more often (as it is possible to fill your bar before the power has recharged). I don't really know the Dark set, but some things that get often skipped on Controllers, like group sleep, can be helpful too for those times of soloing panic.