Contacts and Bar-Filling

[PhotriusPyrelus]

So I've been working on a project.  I'm trying to level a character and get as many contacts as possible, and fill all of the 'relationship' or 'friendship' bars, whatever you want to call them.  Making liberal use of turning off XP.

My first attempt I got to about Faultline and there was one contact with whom I was one mission away from filling the bar.  So I restarted.  And I did about 3 more attempts not getting past level 10 for a number of mistakes (and discovering that the "origin" contacts in City Hall are, in fact, *not* locked to their respective origins, yay, more contacts!).  Now I'm just about to go into Faultline and *again* I have one character who is 1 mission off filling his bar giving me the "I have no more missions ever" text.

This is incredibly frustrating.  What am I doing wrong?!

Aside from story arcs, do multiple different contacts offer the same missions?  And if you do them for one you can't do them for the other?  That would make some degree of sense.  But how do I plan for that?!

I've really been enjoying my time back, but this 'challenge' (or OCD) is really vampiring all the fun out of my play.

[Glacier Peak]

Yeah, multiple contacts offer the exact same missions. If you're just doing this on hero side, you'll see the worst offenders from the Origin contacts. 

[Lunar Ronin]

Yeah, that is much more difficult to do blue side than it is red side, due to all of the Issue 0 and Issue 1 origin-specific contacts.  If you insist on doing this blue side, then I'd advise skipping all Issue 0 and Issue 1 contacts, and sticking with contacts from Issue 2 on.

[tidge]

FWIW, I believe that Blueside, it is impossible to be given all of the Atlas Park arcs without using Ouroboros. IIRC it is the later (on Live) arcs (Sondra Costel?, Officer Fields?) that you get either one or the other.

[lemming]

1 hour ago, tidge said:

FWIW, I believe that Blueside, it is impossible to be given all of the Atlas Park arcs without using Ouroboros. IIRC it is the later (on Live) arcs (Sondra Costel?, Officer Fields?) that you get either one or the other.

There is a pair of red side contacts that work the same.  Fire Wire & Dr Weber

They're low level in the 1-7 range which matches the blue side ones you mention.

 

On the OP:  Not all contacts can have their bars fully filled.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

1 hour ago, lemming said:

On the OP:  Not all contacts can have their bars fully filled.

Seems like the only winning move is not to play, then.  Grind to 50 and do arcs via Ouro.  What a bummer.

[tidge]

There are multiple other players who try to "do all the content, at appropriate level, by disabling XP". It's just that there is a limited amount of content that you can't do this for. For example, I'm not sure if it is possible to solo the Kheldian/VEAT arcs if you aren't one of those ATs.

 

There is sooo much content across levels, even setting aside the OG contacts, that it is IMO more a test of endurance to try to do everything than anything else(*1). I often skip doing any sort of DFB, exploration badge finding, and even SFs/TFs just so that I can remember to start doing Safeguard/Mayhem missions "naturally". It's rare that my blue characters end up completing more than one of Hollows/Faultline/Striga/Croatoa despite how much fun those arcs can be because there is so much to do.

 

(*1) Obviously there are some other tangible rewards (merits, temp powers, badge progression, level-appropriate drops, etc.) for doing at-level content, but I don't think such a thing is that different than "grinding" at any other level.

[lemming]

38 minutes ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Seems like the only winning move is not to play, then.  Grind to 50 and do arcs via Ouro.  What a bummer.

Just means those contacts don't have that many missions.   Others, you'll fill the bar and only be 25% done with what they offer.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

12 minutes ago, lemming said:

Just means those contacts don't have that many missions.   Others, you'll fill the bar and only be 25% done with what they offer.

I'm not speaking for anyone but me.  As tidge points out, there's other reasons to do it, and that's fine, but for me, the whole reason was to have a contact list full of filled bars, and the partly-full bars would and do irritate me no end.  This is fully acknowledged and admittedly a personal problem.  ::shrug::

Ouroboros lets you do the overwhelming majority of the content with actual story, right?  That'll be good enough.

[Eiko-chan]

4 minutes ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Ouroboros lets you do the overwhelming majority of the content with actual story, right?  That'll be good enough.

The contact bars do not remain filled after completing a Ouro arc, however.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

Just now, Eiko-chan said:

The contact bars do not remain filled after completing a Ouro arc, however.

Yeah, I'm totally fine with that if I plan to skip contacts in the "real" world and just do everything in Ouro.

All empty bars are uniform and thus more aesthetically pleasing than mostly full and few mostly-full bars.  Heh.

[Eiko-chan]

2 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

Yeah, I'm totally fine with that if I plan to skip contacts in the "real" world and just do everything in Ouro.

All empty bars are uniform and thus more aesthetically pleasing than mostly full and few mostly-full bars.  Heh.

Aha! I had misinterpreted your goal. I thought this was a "I wanna be friends with all the contacts!" goal, not "I want everything to be even and pretty!" goal. 

 

Carry on. 😁

[Lunar Ronin]

2 hours ago, Eiko-chan said:

The contact bars do not remain filled after completing a Ouro arc, however.

 

Not entirely true.  Contacts added after Issue 20 will have their bar filled up if you run their story arcs via Ouroboros Flashback, like Dr. Graves or Twinshot, or any other contact added after Issue 20 that you've been introduced to.

[PhotriusPyrelus]

37 minutes ago, Lunar Ronin said:

 

Not entirely true.  Contacts added after Issue 20 will have their bar filled up if you run their story arcs via Ouroboros Flashback, like Dr. Graves or Twinshot, or any other contact added after Issue 20 that you've been introduced to.

::twitch::

[KC4800]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't contacts used to work this way? You do the first mission or mission arc, they say you are trustworthy, they sell you inspirations and give you their  phone number. After their big arc, they'd call you a friend and sell you origin enhancements, of whatever origin they are, not you. Now no one sells you enhancements at all unless it's an origin store, like Serafina in Brickstown.

[lemming]

21 hours ago, PhotriusPyrelus said:

::twitch::

There are ways to be CDO here, but it's a minefield to get there.

[Luminara]

9 hours ago, KC4800 said:

Correct me if I'm wrong, but didn't contacts used to work this way? You do the first mission or mission arc, they say you are trustworthy, they sell you inspirations and give you their  phone number. After their big arc, they'd call you a friend and sell you origin enhancements, of whatever origin they are, not you.

 

Originally, no.  You had to run a few filler missions before a contact would offer inspirations, then a few more missions to unlock enhancements, and still more before you could call them (most were set to unlock calling simultaneously with unlocking their story arc, or after the first mission of that arc).  Origin dictated which contacts you received until the 40+ game, so you could always get usable DOs, but not always usable SOs, which was why the stores and store contacts were so important.

[Snarky]

On 5/19/2024 at 5:21 AM, PhotriusPyrelus said:

So I've been working on a project.  I'm trying to level a character and get as many contacts as possible, and fill all of the 'relationship' or 'friendship' bars, whatever you want to call them.  Making liberal use of turning off XP.

My first attempt I got to about Faultline and there was one contact with whom I was one mission away from filling the bar.  So I restarted.  And I did about 3 more attempts not getting past level 10 for a number of mistakes (and discovering that the "origin" contacts in City Hall are, in fact, *not* locked to their respective origins, yay, more contacts!).  Now I'm just about to go into Faultline and *again* I have one character who is 1 mission off filling his bar giving me the "I have no more missions ever" text.

This is incredibly frustrating.  What am I doing wrong?!

Aside from story arcs, do multiple different contacts offer the same missions?  And if you do them for one you can't do them for the other?  That would make some degree of sense.  But how do I plan for that?!

I've really been enjoying my time back, but this 'challenge' (or OCD) is really vampiring all the fun out of my play.

The HC Wiki is wrong 1-3% time on contacts.  Very Frustrating.  I have screwed multiple runs I have tried this with.  My grinder ones continued on anyways.  

 

On the Contacts by Level pages Blueside you want ONE from each Origin.  The others in that Origin group offer the exacts same arc, are not accessible, and are just there to make it seem like there is more content. Pages like this for each level range:

 

Category:Hero Contacts Level 5-14 - Unofficial Homecoming Wiki

 

Here is my spreadsheet.  There are still errors in this, but it has 99% of everything (not the new Striga, but probably everything else.)  Some of the level ranges are still hinky because they are from the HC Wiki.  BEWARE ranges ending in 5 or 10s.  They are probably 9, 14, 19. 24. etc.   The Wiki lists them wrong and you have passed their content. I think one random Blue contact ends all their stuff at 7-8 and I keep forgetting to update the sheet.

 

Oh, I promised myself if I ever tried this again I would stop XP at the START of Blueside Ranges.  Red works fine going to end of the range, but Blue....  aw jeez.

 

 

 

contacts CoH CoV.xlsx

Edited May 20 by Snarky

[Jacke]

Ah, yes, running Completist Toons.  Need to get back to working on mine.

 

8 hours ago, Snarky said:

BEWARE ranges ending in 5 or 10s.  They are probably 9, 14, 19. 24. etc.   The Wiki lists them wrong and you have passed their content. I think one random Blue contact ends all their stuff at 7-8 and I keep forgetting to update the sheet.

 

There's definitely Wes Schnabel that's broken.  Found that out from another Repeat Offender who runs Completists and had problems with him.

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Wes_Schnabel

 

DO NOT TRUST those Level ranges.  You unlock Wes Schnabel (and you better be still Level 9), you turn off XP and complete everything from him before Levelling again.  I think he only works for sure at Level 9.

 

 

 

Edited May 21 by Jacke

[Snarky]

8 hours ago, Jacke said:

DO NOT TRUST those Level ranges.  You unlock Wes Schnabel (and you better be still Level 9), you turn off XP and complete everything from him before Levelling again.  I think he only works for sure at Level 9.

 

words to live by Blue side.  complete all contacts as soon as you get them, with exp stopped.