The Classic Hero Challenge

[ineffablebob]

Lady Oracle has been saved!

Getting to the mission would have been a real pain before Super Jump, as it was located in the middle of Perez Park, so I'm glad she waited to get captured until Classic Hero 2004 was L14! She didn't used to fight with you, but you also didn't have to lead her out of the cave, so I think the changes there are largely a wash. Although fighting two different Madness Mages - the named boss and the hostage guard - was a non-trivial exercise. Fortunately I had two break free inspirations that I'd been hoarding. Even so, both mages managed to get in big hits when the protection ran out, they put me to sleep, then ran up and exploded. Survived, but it was close!

 

Also completed the Clockwork captive arc by rescuing Lou's family. Fighting all those Clockwork really makes you manage your Endurance usage! Even though I've got an advantage over the old days with Stamina (again, offset somewhat by leaving Sprint on), it's still easy to end up tired after a few drain hits. I do all right as long as I stick with single target attacks, because I've slotted an End Redux in each of those, but it only takes a couple of Ball Lightning tosses to really drain the blue bar.

 

Picked up the Marauder badge for dealing 100000 damage along the way. Which wouldn't have happened in the real original game, since badges didn't show up until Issue 2, but it's a nice little progress marker.

 

Level 15 obtained! Starting to get the next round of contacts. Surely they'll give me nice easy places to go to start off with...

...maybe not.

[0th Power]

Breakfrees didn't exist in the original game...

Edited December 7, 2020 by 0th Power

[Rathulfr]

8 minutes ago, 0th Power said:

Breakfrees didn't exist in the original game...

I think they had different names/icons back then. https://archive.paragonwiki.com/wiki/Inspirations#Historical

 

 Discipline: Resist Effects
Slightly boosts your resistance to immobilization, sleep, disorient and hold effects for 120 seconds. Must be used before you are slept, held or disoriented, but can be used after being immobilized. (Replaced by Resolve.)

 Iron Will: Resist Effects
Greatly boosts your resistance to immobilization, sleep, disorient and hold effects for 240 seconds. Must be used before you are slept, held or disoriented, but can be used after being immobilized. (Replaced by Sheer Willpower.)

 Resolve Resist Effects
Frees you from some sleep, hold, immobilization, disorient, fear and confuse effects and slightly boosts your resistance to such effects for 30 seconds. This inspiration can be used even while under such effects. (Replaced by Break Free.)

 Determination Resist Effects
Frees you from many sleep, hold, immobilization, disorient, fear and confuse effects and slightly boosts your resistance to such effects for 60 seconds. This inspiration can be used even while under such effects. (Replaced by Emerge.)

 Sheer Willpower Resist Effects
Frees you from many sleep, hold, immobilization, disorient, fear and confuse effects and slightly boosts your resistance to such effects for 90 seconds. This inspiration can be used even while under such effects. (Replaced by Escape.)

[Rathulfr]

Break Free (and the others) replaced their predecessors in Issue 4.

 

• Resolve, Strength of Will, and Sheer Willpower Inspiration are now removed from the game. Break Free, Emerge, and Escape Inspirations will now protect you from all effects including Sleep, Hold, Immobilization, Disorient, Fear, Knockback and Confuse, and can be activated even while under such effects. New Inspiration consolidates all effects into one Inspiration. Can be used while under such effects. Old Inspirations now all act like the new ones.

[0th Power]

iirc, oranges weren't in the original game either.  or combining inspirations

Edited December 7, 2020 by 0th Power

[ineffablebob]

19 hours ago, 0th Power said:

Breakfrees didn't exist in the original game...

@Rathulfr is correct, there were similar inspirations before the change to Break Free and its ilk, which you had to use prior to the status effect hitting you. I even used mine before attacking the Madness Mage, as one did - although I actually lost out there since the protection doesn't last as long as it used to. Still made it through!

18 hours ago, 0th Power said:

iirc, oranges weren't in the original game either.  or combining inspirations

I honestly don't remember about the resist inspirations. I've been using them as they drop, but they're not my favorites. As for combining, you are correct and I have not been doing any of that.

 

Ideally, I'd have at least two each of heal, endurance, defense, and mez inspirations at all times. Of course, the game never drops what you want, so I'm constantly using one or two inspirations that I have too many of and hoping that the drops fill in the gaps.

[Snarky]

Honestly there is no way to recreate it on this server.  I got here after CoV but before inherent fitness.  And there is the rub isnt it?  Because as a lover of lowbie Brutes for over a year I juggled and struggled to keep my End bar filled lol

[Doc_Scorpion]

2 hours ago, Snarky said:

Honestly there is no way to recreate it on this server.

While it's true that it's impossible to recreate exactly, that doesn't mean it's impossible to recreate in spirit.  Bob's approach seems more in line with the (quite doable as they have demonstrated) latter.  Kinda like they're part of an ingame historical recreation society.

[Six-Six]

Question: Was Eagle Eye (Kings Row) a valid contact back then? I've set it to +0x1, solo Bosses and AVs as agreed. And I'm facing my first AV at level 8--Morana. can barely put a dent on her.

[Doc_Scorpion]

12 minutes ago, Six Six said:

Question: Was Eagle Eye (Kings Row) a valid contact back then?

No.  Eagle Eye is part of Shauna Stockwell's chain.  I don't recall offhand when she was introduced, but she's definitely not Issue 0. 

[Six-Six]

oh. ok. thanks 😃

[Mirai]

On 12/4/2020 at 12:29 PM, Vanden said:

You forgot about Dr. Vahzilok, who never appeared in the original Positron TF. Instead he was at the end of a regular story arc, which I assume is still in the game.

Although Dr. Vahzilok appeared at the end of the story arc, defeating him wasn't originally one of the objectives. You just had to click all the glowies. (Otherwise he would have stuck in my mission slot indefinitely, since I was a solo player.)

[Six-Six]

Another clarification (sorry): do we need to do the mission/arc to unlock capes and auras before our toon can have capes and auras? The Red side one is through Rodney in Cap (I'm afraid I'm not so familiar with blue side contact).

[ineffablebob]

8 hours ago, Doc_Scorpion said:

Kinda like they're part of an ingame historical recreation society.

I love that! The City of Heroes Launch Re-Enactment Society.

5 hours ago, Six Six said:

Another clarification (sorry): do we need to do the mission/arc to unlock capes and auras before our toon can have capes and auras? The Red side one is through Rodney in Cap (I'm afraid I'm not so familiar with blue side contact).

Capes were not available until issue 2! Yes, I know, it's hard to imagine no capes in a superhero game, but that's what we had to work with at launch! (The blueside contact is the City Rep in Atlas, FYI.)

 

Some general costume stuff: the only place to update your costume is the ICON in Steel Canyon, since the one in Atlas and the trainer costume options were added later. And they only accept influence, no costume change tokens! There were actually a lot fewer costume options of all kinds at launch, but I am no expert and don't have the patience to go back through the patch notes to see what was available back then. I just went with a pretty simple outfit for Classic Hero 2004 and figure I'd gone with the spirit of the thing, if not the letter.

[0th Power]

Icon wasn’t in the game i0 and you had one costume slot that you could change by rerolling. 
 

i1 patch notes

Tailor

Now your costume can change and evolve with your hero. At 3 locations within Paragon City, you can update your outfit - for a price.

At levels 20, 30 and 40, you can earn extra costume slots by performing tasks for Icon's tailors. Now you can customize your look on a daily basis! You may perform these tasks at any level after the initial level.

Edited December 9, 2020 by 0th Power

[Doomguide2005]

Just seeing all the changes in this thread that occurred before I even started in i3 ...

 

I was completely new to online gaming didn't even figure out what the heck an issue was until well after i4 dropped.

[ineffablebob]

7 hours ago, 0th Power said:

i1 patch notes

Tailor

Ah, my memory failed me, didn't realize that was issue 1! OK, no costume changes at all - hope you like your look for 40 levels!

[Six-Six]

Which shard are your Classics on? I'm on Reunion. I kinda like Acrobattle's idea of having a toon isolated in a diff shard from my other toons. 😃

 

[ineffablebob]

3 minutes ago, Six Six said:

Which shard are your Classics on?

I'm on Everlasting. I believe @Greycatand @cranebumprolled Re-Enactors too, but not sure which shard.

 

By the way, anyone who wants to do a Classic Re-Enactor team up, by all means hit me up in-game! @ineffablebob there too.

[ineffablebob]

Got Classic hero 2004 to 16 fighting a lot of Clockwork. She now has "Health" and went by the Skyway store to slot in a heal DO. Then I took Kong Bao's first mission - defeat a Circle of Thorns boss - and darn near died. An even-level Ruin Mage is a mage hassle for a solo teen defender! I ended up using 8 of my 10 inspirations, including a pre-emptive Break Free, and it was still a close call. After that, I figured it was a good time to do something simpler:

It's easy to end up with a mission slate like this, hunts all over the place, since every contact wants to give you hunt missions. I tend to collect them and then spend a few minutes clearing them all out at once. I've also noticed that the L15-20 contacts suddenly are very interested in getting things done quickly - I've gotten several timed missions.

 

And then, there was this:

Yep, that's two orange bosses right out of an elevator. No chance to kite or pull, and one of them is a Tsoo sorceror with Hurricane. Run away! Had to leave the mission, street sweep a little to level up to 17, upgrade to L20 DOs (ran out of influence, but I got most of them), and then go back. Two yellow bosses is dangerous but doable - used up almost a full slate of inspirations again and spent some time being bounced around by the Hurricane, but eventually prevailed.

[Greycat]

2 hours ago, ineffablebob said:

I'm on Everlasting. I believe @Greycatand @cranebumprolled Re-Enactors too, but not sure which shard.

 

By the way, anyone who wants to do a Classic Re-Enactor team up, by all means hit me up in-game! @ineffablebob there too.

Everlasting as well. Haven't really had a lot of play time (mostly to just being worn out after work - I was surprised I stayed awake through an MSR the other day.)

[cranebump]

3 hours ago, ineffablebob said:

I'm on Everlasting. I believe @Greycatand @cranebumprolled Re-Enactors too, but not sure which shard.

 

By the way, anyone who wants to do a Classic Re-Enactor team up, by all means hit me up in-game! @ineffablebob there too.

My classic toon is on Torch. Most of my characters are on Excel, however. I wouldn't have issues transferring, if teaming were involved. Right now, I'm only level 9.

[cranebump]

4 hours ago, ineffablebob said:

 

Yep, that's two orange bosses right out of an elevator.

I think our Classic Re-enactor motto should be MFGA--"Make Fear Great Again.":-)

Edited December 9, 2020 by cranebump

[ineffablebob]

Hey, this looks familiar...

This time, though, there was room to run around. So I popped a bunch of inspirations and went after them, managing to take down our friend Mr Ting. But the damage output from that Outcast boss was just too much, as the inspirations ran out and all the fire damage - including from his imps - threatened to overwhelm me. So, back outside, a little street sweeping, level up (18) and then back inside to smack him down. Then the very next mission from that contact was all +1 Tsoo, including the boss. Fought through a bunch of minions and Ancestor Spirits, nearly dying, but once I saw the boss was +1 it was time to give up. They can have that warehouse for now, I'll be back at level 19.

 

Took Speed Boost when I trained to 18. Even though it's useless to me soloing, I expect I'll join a team at some point! Meanwhile, in other news...

It's so hard to social distance when you're a hero! Fortunately the disease lasts for only one mission - which might be a change, I seem to remember it lasting longer - so I headed right into the lab. There were a lot of +1 Vahz, but they pull pretty well, and I made heavy use of the "hit the embalmed then run away while they explode" shortcut. I had my closest call yet against Patient Zero, though. Even-level boss, fought him with one accuracy and two defense inspirations...and he hit me like they weren't even there, had me one damage tick from death. Ran all the way to the elevator for a rest! Went back, same inspirations, this time he only hit me once and he went down. Disease cured! Now my contact wants me to go burn the bodies, but the Doctor may be down there, think I'll hang on to that one for a level or two. Not that I plan to fight him, but I'd like to minimize the chance of getting hammered if I accidentally aggro the big guy.

[Grouchybeast]

13 minutes ago, ineffablebob said:

It's so hard to social distance when you're a hero! Fortunately the disease lasts for only one mission - which might be a change, I seem to remember it lasting longer - 

Yep, if you hang around on the Vahzilok forums you'll find they're still full of Mortificators and Eidolons complaining about the Great Wasting Disease Nerf.