Kyksie

Don't forget Pride Month's official AE adventure, The LGT BBQ, #28172.

Snakes From the Isles - 41022 The level range for this arc goes down to 10, so I call Scarlet's Web again. The contact is Agent Hahn, of Longbow, who tells me that some snakes are attacking an office building in Atlas, go check it out maybe? Scarlet arrives, and finds that the office is, in fact, under attack by large mutated snakes. She joins up with Agent Mila, and... hmmm, why is that cop attacking me? I mean, yeah, I'm an Arachnos Soldier, wearing an Arachnos uniform and snacking on Spiderling Scout cookies as I fight, but... wait, now a businessman is hostile to me as well? Pressing on, Mila and Scarlet discover that the office has a huge hole in the floor of one of the conference rooms, right next to the boardroom table with "Have that hole fixed, mmmmkay?" memoranda for next weeks meeting. In the tunnels below, we fight more snakes, and Agent Dupre... who shouts "I obey my master" and attacks? This leads me to suspect that the snakes possess some form of mind control. My suspicions are confirmed upon meeting the snake leader, Mesmer, whose eyes glow with unearthly energy as he focuses his mind. Scarlet freezes, her eyes glassy. Her hands move of their own accord, unbuttoning first her top, then her- Whoops! Sorry, I must have gotten this confused with the other arc I was reviewing, Malaise's Mind Control Harem. Here, the player is immune to the snakes' mind control for some unspecified reason. We pummel the snake leaders and return to base. Seeking information, we meet up with Mongoose and pay his bar tab in exchange for information. Evidence suggests that Arachnos is behind it, so we raid an Arachnos base where mind controlled troops are dancing to flutes. Then we raid an airbase, and finally infiltrate the Snake caves to defeat the leader. Snakes From the Isles is a nice fun arc. There's a few minor spelling errors and some custom mobs are missing descriptions, but if you want to see Black Swan, Bobcat, and Diablolique wearing nothing but- Whoops! Sorry!

Publish the story when your friends want to play it. Take it down afterwards. Or, give it a description "Fire farm, WIP". it will be buried among the 84832942 other fire farms.

Make a custom group containing the badguys. Make sure the group contains only bosses. Find a small or unique map wherein the spawnpoints for a particular location are all together. Put all of your spawns in that location. For example, the green X's in this map are the front, white the middle, blue the back. If you use this map and set all the encounters to "back", the y will all spawn together in that room. Just make sure the map has at least as many X's as you have mobs.

Of Guns and Asa Ronan - 41018 The level range is 5-15, so Kyksie called up a friend of hers, Scarlet's Web. A low-level Arachnos operative, Scarlet often finds herself short on money for Drenched Donuts and Crunchyroll, so she takes on some odd jobs for extra cash. Their good friend Billy Heck tells her that a Marcone weapons smuggler has gone missing, so the family either wants their money back or his head on a platter, or both. Scarlet ventures boldly into the sewer, and finds the smuggler and his buddies chopped up into little pieces and stuffed into Major Flanders boxes. One of his henchman, Anastasio, was not among the Mobster McNuggets they found, so the Family wants a word. The PPD have him in a safehouse, so Scarlet kicks the door down and fights some members of a custom group, the 'Stingers'. Pressing on, she spots an unusual sight at the end of a corridor... ...what could that be? The hallway ends in a sheet of darkness black as midnight. Scarlet carefully holds a hand nearby, and feels nothing; no sound, no breeze, no heat. It's like a rift has been torn in the world. Squinting, she sees within the faint echoes of a desolate realm; rocky outcroppings scoured by an alien breeze, wisps of dust in shapes almost human. Gritting her teeth, she gasps and dashes through- and at once is standing in another room in the safehouse, but with a gaping hole in the floor. Shaking off the unearthly chill, Scarlet lowers herself into the tunnels below, finds and captures Anastasio, and drags him kicking and screaming through the unholy barrier and back to the surface. What follows is almost anticlimactic: we find out that someone with the ability to duplicate himself is behind the attack. Scarlet captures him, then takes him to the Marcone don for a sit-down, but he breaks free and summons more clones, so we pummel him. The clones are rather difficult at level 10; Scarlet soon found herself eating inspirations before every fight and resting afterwards. The mysterious assassin is Asa Ronan, and it turns out he and the don have history, but at least we get paid. All that pales compared to the few terrifying seconds spent in the place between worlds, where time, space and death merge into one. Of Guns and Asa Ronan is another very well written arc, chronicling the chilling depths one might claw though as part of ones struggle to earn snack money.

I'm not sure. They're not specifically marked as such.

What, am I the only one who refers to set bonuses as 'boners'?

Some maps have 'running screaming people' baked into the map. They can be targeted but not attacked.

If you want to farm, Electric Armor can cap Energy resist easily, and there are Energy farms. Capping S/L is harder but it can be done with Tough and set boners.

Infection From the Isles - 40876 40915 A nice fun arc. The contact is Agent Hahn, who was probably a business major before joining Longbow, because her intro is filled with buzzwords like 'onboard' and 'deep dive'. Supposedly, Arachnos has made a change to the Infected, allowing them to infect others, which would be pretty bad, implying Lord Recluse has been playing lots of L4D and Fortnite. The zombie part of Fortnite, not the battle royale part. The player contains the zombies, meets with Matthew Burke, kicks some Arachnoses, then captures Dr. Creed, shutting down the source of zombies. The story here is pretty good, although not really special. What makes the arc stand out is the use of details. Like, the first mission is filled with wandering zombies who use the "zombie walk" animation; in one of the later missions, there's an Arachnos lookout, and when you kick him, a voice from further on cries "our lookout saw something!" Little touches like that turn an ordinary arc into an awesome one. The only downside is a few minor spelling/grammar errors. EDIT: the author has since released a new version, which not only fixes the spelling errors, but after you complete the first and fifth missions, a Longbow task force led by Ms. Liberty arrive and start scrubbing the zombie barf up off the floor. I haven't actually played the new version, but I'm going to assume this is what happens.

If you use a small-ish or unique map, find one with only one spawn point with a particular tag; say, there's only one "middle" point. Put the boss there, then when he's defeated, the Final Form spawns there.

Good resists, a damage aura, a passive 20% recharge bonus, and it keeps your end bar full in several ways.

Pretty good, a few minor spelling and grammar errors.

Yeet - 24206 A week has gone by with no requests for arc reviews, and boredom is beginning to set in. Kyksie has recovered the Liquid Computer and the P.L.O.T. device from the Council several times this week, enough to write a whole arc about a cola machine becoming sentient. Finishing off her Tankburger and Freem Fries from Up-N-Away, she wanders back to the Architect building in Atlas, wiping her greasy hands on her pink leggings. Sighing, she pokes through the latest fire farms, S/L farms, meow farms, and farms with plots, but finds nothing in need of reviewing. As she plucks the last fry from the paper bag, a ketchup packet falls out and bounces off the 'more' button on the architect panel. Bending over to pick it up, Kyksie notices something... Dear Lord, could it be? A random mission button! No more waiting around for people to submit arcs to be reviewed... with a single click, we now have access to whole galaxy of arcs! Kyksie reaches out and carefully presses the button, and the display instantly lights up... "Yeet"? Sounds like some sort of code word, maybe CIA or KGB. She approaches the contact, who has chosen to remain anonymous, hiding behind a featureless hologram. The contact regards her cautiously, before beckoning her closer and whispering a single word... ..."Yeet" again. What could it mean, and why is her mysterious handler afraid to say more? Nervously, she steps into the portal, and finds herself if a dingy, abandoned office, tasked only with confronting "the yeeter". Who or what could it be? Kyksie runs into a few Fifth Column troops and kicks them into submission, but the leader bites down on a cyanide tooth instead of letting himself be interrogated. Sighing, she gazes across the mildew-stained floors, and spies a half-rotted cardboard box covered in dust. Carefully, she peels back the layers of tape, opens the box, and... there it is. The yeeter. Cradling it in her arms, she heads out of the office and back to the contact. Wide-eyed with surprise, he takes it in his hard-light hands, and turns to depart, but then turns back to Kyksie and utters a single word... "Yeet" is destined to be a classic, with clear, concise dialog, no spelling errors, no time wasters, and no overpowered mobs. Definitely a Dev's Choice candidate.

Any dependencies? Are you using a small or nonstandard map?

Interestingly, I may have played Ninjas in the Wind inbetween revisions! The first time I played it, one of the waypoints didn't appear, but when I tried it again it worked perfectly. As for the last mission in Spark of the Blind, no, I just hit the button, tried to kick the vending machine and left. A bit anticlimactic, but it works. Anyway, Spark of the Blind has the player working with Belladonna Vetrano to send Apex back to fight the good fight, while Ninjas in the Wind has you fighting collection agents from Chiba City or something. I don't want to give away too much of the plot of either, so I'll just say that both arcs are top-notch, with lots of dialog and clues and no time wasters. The former even uses the escort code to have NPCs comment on stuff. It's awesome. I came up short trying to integrate Kyksie's latest adventures into this, so let's just say that after completing both, she stops into Major Flander's and orders a Deluxe Bucket (you know, the one that the Freedom Phalanx did the ad for) but the manager says she's been abusing their 'heroes get free food' policy and only gives her a single order of wings, so she offers to clear out the Trolls that have been giving him trouble, then goes and kicks all the Trolls in the surrounding block, even though they weren't harassing the store, in fact they often stop by for Flambeax Fries after a Superdyne binge. The manager gives her the bucket because it's less trouble than arguing.

We Need Original Content - 39992 I generally don't review 'challenge' arcs, but I hit a wall trying to come up with a story hook for Ninjas in the Wind and The Spark of the Blind (spoiler: both are excellent) so I jumped into this and... eh. Set in the Frostfire's Party Palace map, this has swarms of custom mobs with names like "sonic noises" and "spines regen", with bosses named "I'm difficult" and "Blow Me (up)", plus wandering mobs from random groups like Red Caps and Praetorian Clockwork. Mob dialog consists of head-scratchers like "I'll give you a cookie to stop!!" Seriously it feels like the author let his 9 year old nephew write the dialog. I took my Crab Spider in and found it effortless at 0x2, then bumped it up to 0x8 and left after two minutes because every single mob had Smoke Grenade or Detention Field.

This happens to me once in a great while. I think I have screenshots if it would help.

How about The Worst Article on the Internet. The slideshow is out of sync with the text and I hit a spelling error after five seconds. Seriously, MSN, just give up.

Freakshow 2.0 - 40266 After debriefing the PPD and FBSA agents regarding her latest triumph over the Clockwork King, Kyksie took the express turbolift from the conference room to the command center of the Super Best Friends' high-tech base. Helping herself to a chicken wrap and Greek salad from the catering table, she settled into the form-fitting armchair and tapped the touch-sensitive datascreen. A map of Paragon City appeared, overlaid with green and red markers indicating potential trouble spots. Sipping her mango protein shake, Kyksie zoomed in on the Skyway City map, calling up a panel of statistics detailing recent activity by the Trolls... ...is what you would have read if this took place in an ideal universe, where the FBSA and City Hall gave heroes the resources they need. In reality, Kyksie sat in an uncomfortable folding chair in front of row of public access computers at the Steel Canyon branch of Paragon university, checking her email and catching up with her friends on Capebook. The homeless guy in the terminal next to her grunted and scratched, his screen displaying something about Mynx, Swan, and an illegal Crey vaseline factory. Kyksie finished off the Almond Joy bar she obtained from the lobby vending machine (c'mon, it had been hanging by a corner, if she hadn't kicked the machine like that someone else would have) when a Crime Alert popped up, something about Freakshow in Skyway City. Sighing, she logged off, stole one last glance at the unholy tableau unfolding at the station next to her, and headed off to catch the monorail. 1) Kyksie arrives in Skyway to find it overrun by Freakshow. Synapse and Mynx aren't there, so she squares her shoulders and makes with the kicking. Yep, it's a defeat all. Because they're Freakshow, many of them get up afterwards and need to be kicked again. After a bit, she noticed that some of the freaks have newer and shinier implants, which fill them with zest and vigor, because *all* of these 'cyber freaks' get up for round two. Kyksie spends fifteen minutes scouring the multi-level freeway of Freaks before returning to the library. 2) One of the Freaks dropped his phone, with his address for Amazon deliveries. Kyksie heads for a warehouse, kicks more Freaks and finds more equipment. One of the boxes had a shipping manifest, so she follows the address to... 3) St. Martial, where she kicks a Praetorian commander, who drops clues leading to... 4) Neutropolis, where she smashes a suspicious truck, containing the address of... 5) A high tech lab, where she hacks computers, kicks Praetorian scientists (who have no offensive powers, so no XP/INF), breaks some fabrication machines, and defeats some war Walkers. She tried kicking a Praetorian vending machine, but only Cole Crunchies and Tyrant Toffee drop out ("The sun never sets on flavor!"). She eats them anyway. Freakshow 2.0 is a rather bland and generic arc, with a few bits of fun dialog, but dragged down by the defeat-all time waster in act 1.

I vaguely recall hearing on live that the algorithm they use is glitchy. In particular, if you log off with a an AE arc active, all time logged off is counted.

An all-my-alts supergroup solves all these problems, but it prevents you from joining an actual SG.

As long as we're on the subject of 'stuff clipping into other stuff', in northern Steel there's a skyscraper that's embedded into another one high in the air. Given that this would probably be difficult to fix, maybe the best way to address this would be to add a badge and backstory, much like the Ishmael story. Maybe one of the buildings had an office that was secretly a Circle of Thorns hideout, like on the Synapse TF, and the mages cast a spell to animate the water cooler so it would make them iced tea, but the spell got out of hand and animated the entire building, and it fell in love with the building next door and tried to make babies with it, but the spell wore off halfway.

It's quite beatable on a fully tricked out character. The thing is, as soon as a guy dings 50, the first thing I want is the Alpha unlock so further XP can go toward higher Incarnate unlocks. So, a character attempting it is likely running on crappy 45 SOs.

People have already mentioned these, but... The Honoree mission from Mender Ramiel, Not only is is hard (two EBs with swarms of adds) but it will almost always be undertaken by a character who has just turned 50, and does not have their 50 enhancements set up. The bombs 'n' hostages mission from the 'join the Vanguard' arc. Actually I'll autocomplete any mission where you have to find multiple hostages on a wide open outdoor map.