What are the story arc missions for villains ???

[smnolimits43]

Ok, i've done Hollows, Striga Isle and Croatoa missions hero (blue side) to death.  Its time to try villain (red side).  Where do i start ??  Is there already a guide out there ??? 

[Astralock]

 

 

Enjoy the best side.

[UltraAlt]

19 hours ago, smnolimits43 said:

Ok, i've done Hollows, Striga Isle and Croatoa missions hero (blue side) to death.  Its time to try villain (red side).  Where do i start ??  Is there already a guide out there ??? 

 

Did you need a guide to figure out what hero missions to play?

 

Just make a villain and check what contacts you get offered. Always take a contact if a villain offers you a contact (I'm pretty sure that is always going to mean you are getting another villain contact.) That will keep you busy for a long time on the villain side.

You will know which missions to look out for that aren't strictly villain contacts. If they try to send you to First Ward, Night Ward, or the Rikti War Zone, you should know to avoid those Praetorian and Co-op Zone arcs (I'm assuming you already ran them as a hero as the game tries to funnel you into them).

 

But as far as hero side goes, have you tried sticking to Origin arcs and following the origin path while leveling?

I think you can probably do all of these by going back in time via the Ouroboros, but I'm not sure all the origin arc are there. 

You get mission arcs to battle Dr Vazhilok, the Clockwork King, etc.

 

If you get into Faultline at the correct level, you can run the Faultline Arcs and even run Penelope Yin's Faultline arc to get access to her dad's store.

If I recall correctly, there is a Boomtown arc as well.

 

 

Edited November 24, 2022 by UltraAlt
miswording correction

[Frozen Burn]

8 hours ago, smnolimits43 said:

Ok, i've done Hollows, Striga Isle and Croatoa missions hero (blue side) to death.  Its time to try villain (red side).  Where do i start ??  Is there already a guide out there ??? 

 

There is SO much more Hero content than three zones when leveling up.  I generally never run my characters through any of these 3 when leveling up.  As @UltraAlt mentioned, try using your origin contacts, or Matthew Haberdashy, and go to Kings Row contacts instead of Hollows.  And yeah, Faultline has great story arcs and will get you through the teens and into your 20s.  In the 20s there are SO many more contacts outside of Striga and Croatoa.  If you can't find any, use your "Find a contact" button.  And 5 radios mish's and a Safeguard mish will get you a new contact as well no matter what level you are.

 

As for redside - same thing... just create your character and pick / follow the contacts you get.  Unfortunately, with Villain-side, the contacts don't string together as much as or as easily as Hero-side and you'll have to do more paper missions / Mayhem Missions to get more contacts.  But they will take you through all the zones.  There are no "extra" hazard zones like there are Hero-side.

 

Good luck and have fun!

[MistressOhm]

CoV introduced the Newspaper as the means to gain new contacts, but it's now ridiculously easy to outlevel a zone contact before you even score the introductions... simply because doing three to five 'jobs' for the Broker and then a Mayhem (which was the progression for getting your first contacts in a given zone) now can level you thru the zone range with XP Boosts turned on.  This may have been mitigated with some contacts talking to you w/o needing the 'rep' that the Broker provides... but it's still an issue.  

 

You could turn XP gain off at certain points in order to keep from doing that, of course.  

Another thing I've done to maintain "continuity" is to start Mission Arcs (Dr Graves, Burke, etc) with BOTH contacts, as once you're in an arc, you won't 'outlevel' the contact.  Then alternate the missions in each arc.  This also eliminates the "come back when you're L10/15" issue, as you'll likely finish the first arc at the level you need for starting the second, and so on.  

 

And yes, hitting certain level milestones gets you those introductions that send you off to First Ward, and if you're a Rogue you'll get intros to other contacts for rogue-specific arcs.  

[UltraAlt]

10 hours ago, Frozen Burn said:

And 5 radios mish's and a Safeguard mish will get you a new contact as well no matter what level you are.

 

Really?! I didn't know that trick.

 

6 hours ago, MistressOhm said:

it's now ridiculously easy to outlevel a zone contact before you even score the introductions... simply because doing three to five 'jobs' for the Broker and then a Mayhem (which was the progression for getting your first contacts in a given zone) now can level you thru the zone range with XP Boosts turned on.  This may have been mitigated with some contacts talking to you w/o needing the 'rep' that the Broker provides... but it's still an issue.  

 

If you - the general reader you and not @MistressOhm in particular - get a contact and you like their arc, you can go onto https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Main_Page , look up the contact, check their level range, and then go into the options menu and lock your XP at their highest level to stop from outleveling.

Which is a little more detail in looking into when to lock your xp if you want to avoid outleveling contacts.

 

You might also want to look at which contacts that contact can give you and check out their level ranges. Sometimes you can end up with multiple contacts in the same level range.

 

It's a matter of what the goal is; leveling, playing the mission arcs, etc.

 

6 hours ago, MistressOhm said:

Another thing I've done to maintain "continuity" is to start Mission Arcs (Dr Graves, Burke, etc) with BOTH contacts, as once you're in an arc, you won't 'outlevel' the contact.  Then alternate the missions in each arc.  This also eliminates the "come back when you're L10/15" issue, as you'll likely finish the first arc at the level you need for starting the second, and so on.  

 

As far as I know, the only way not outlevel a contact that you already have is to have the contact showing the book icon. If the book icon isn't there, then you can outevel then even if you have run missions for them. When you get the book icon seems different from contact to contact and some contacts seem to lose the book icon before the end of their arc.

 

 

[MistressOhm]

1 hour ago, UltraAlt said:

some contacts seem to lose the book icon before the end of their arc.

If this happens you never took the actual "arc" they offer.  Once you've accepted the first mission in an arc (book icon), you won't outlevel the arc (altho you might not get anything else from them. ))

Edited November 24, 2022 by MistressOhm

[smnolimits43]

thanks for getting back to me everyone

[Six-Six]

I strongly advice you to consult the wiki. If a contact referral choice pops up, just look their name up in the wiki. Sometimes one is better than the other in the sense that it offers a badge or that the other contact will be in your near future anyway. Also worth mentioning that some contacts need to be unlocked by certain badges or tasks. And these unlockable contacts have special badges attached to them.

Off hand, some of my all-time favourite arcs are:
Seer Marino (level 15)
Operative Wellman (before level 19)
Doc Buzzsaw--both arcs, Die by the Freak and Freakish Lab (available at 25 until 40)
Black Scorpion's entire 3-arc story starting with the Patron Pool unlock. Though I usually do Mako's 3rd arc through the Pillar for the free bane summon.
Dobb's Arachnoid arc.
 

[Frozen Burn]

10 hours ago, MistressOhm said:

...Once you've accepted the first mission in an arc (book icon), you won't outlevel the arc (altho you might not get anything else from them. ))

 

To be clear, even if you have the book icon, you CAN still "out level" the arc - it will still be available to you to run, but things may still con-grey to you depending on how "out of date" the arc is.  For example, if you still have Eagle Eye's arc (King's Row contact) and you never finished it and now you're lvl 50 - all the spawns will con grey (including bosses and the EB at the end) and mobs will not award anything - but you can still finish the arc, clearing it from your contact list, and get your Reward Merits.

 

If you're 1-4 levels higher than the arc, then you can at least increase the difficulty to +1-4 accordingly so things do not con grey.  🙂  

[Frozen Burn]

12 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

 

Really?! I didn't know that trick.

 

 

Yep!  Just like villain-side with paper/Mayhems - heroes can run 5 radios and a safeguard to get a new contact.  It's very handy for Praetorians who go to Paragon City who do not have many contacts available to them.  

[Glacier Peak]

Not to mention the awesome contacts red side that are unlocked by collecting certain badges! Great arcs across all zones - but I can't remember if they still require collecting those badges anymore...

[TraumaTrain]

I wrote a bit of an outline guide here for red side (is the best side). I still need to write up Grandville, but the rest is here.

 

It's a pretty good flight plan, especially if you want to see all of it.

 

 

[Astralock]

13 hours ago, Glacier Peak said:

Not to mention the awesome contacts red side that are unlocked by collecting certain badges! Great arcs across all zones - but I can't remember if they still require collecting those badges anymore...

 

Some of them still do.  Henri Dumont, Mortimer Kal, Archmage Tarixus, Kristof Jaeger, Crimson Revenant, Slot Machine, Arbiter Leery, Number 204, Viridian, and Television.

 

Doc Buzzsaw was unlocked in Issue 27, Page One.  Veluta Lunata was unlocked in Issue 27, Page Two.  Ambassador Kuhr'Rekt and Johnny Sonata were unlocked in Issue 27, Page Five.