A (newer) Giant Monster Guide by Glacier Peak

[Glacier Peak]

A (newer) Giant Monster Guide

Giant Monsters (GMs) are all over the City of Heroes, City of Villains, and even the Going Rogue worlds. Sometimes they show up out of nowhere, sometimes players have to do a song and dance to get them to come out and play. Inspired by @Ravenstorm's old Giant Monster guide, I wanted to put together a new guide that makes it easier on the player by sharing all of the publicly available details in one place and the tips and tricks that players can use if they want to make the GM hunting easier.

First, in this post I will share some of the tips and tricks that players can use to make the GM hunt easier.

Then in the next post, I will start with each individual GM that spawns in the game world (this guide will not include Special Event GMs from Halloween or Winter Events or GMs that spawn during or as a result of a Task/Strike Force or Trial), going in to detail about their background, spawn requirements, general location(s) (I recommend using VidiotMaps for exact locations or patrol paths), their spawn behaviors, and the current rewards granted for defeating them at the time of this writing.

I don’t know everything about how GMs work, so if I missed something or posted something factually inaccurate, please feel free to share and I’ll make the necessary changes.

Special thanks to the Gold Standard Discord for their review and Homecoming Team for the GM reward data!

Change Log:

Spoiler

12 July 2024: Guide first posted.

16 July 2024: Added Stewardship section and edited Paladin text error on card.

 

What time is it in game?

Are you hunting a GM that doesn’t come out until a certain in-game time? Wouldn’t it be helpful to know what time it is in-game whenever you want? Well you can with these helpful macros!

/macro_image "SuperSpeed_Burnout" "City Time" "citytime"

 /macro_image "SuperSpeed_Burnout" "Show Time" "showtime 1"

This displays the official time in game using 24-hr time in the system chat. Players can substitute the Burnout macro image with any they prefer.

Additionally, players can type “/showtime 1” to turn on or “/showtime 0” to shut off the time in game display.

How do I find the Giant Monster?

There are announcements in the Event Message channels (Hero, Villain, Praetorian, Event) in the chat tab. Make yourself a new tab for GM Hunting!

Now that you know the GM has spawned you need to start moving through the spawn locations to find it. You can smash Tab (the default target button) or you can use these nifty macros.

/macro_image "ChallengeStat_Master_Mode" "Target Search" "target_name [GM Name]"

Players can substitute the Challenge macro image with any they prefer. Players can edit “[GM Name]” with their desired GM target name and remove the brackets or they can create additional macros for targeting more frequent spawning GMs (Eochai, Jack in Irons, Arachnos Flier, etc.)

See spoiler below for all macros

Spoiler

Hero

/macro Jack "target_name Jack in Irons"

/macro Eochai "target_name Eochai"

/macro Sally “target_name Sally”

/macro Kraken "target_name Kraken"

/macro Paladin "target_name Paladin"

/macro Babbage "target_name Babbage"

/macro Jurrasik “target_name Jurasik”

Villain

/macro Deathsurge “target_name Deathsurge”

/macro Caleb "target_name Caleb"

/macro Flier "target_name Arachnos Flier"

Praetorian

                /macro Seed "target_name Seed of Hamidon"

 

'Stewardship' - Announcing and Clearing Spawns

Thanks to @tidge for mentioning this, I think it is worth including in this guide and is an important responsibility for players to keep in mind as they go about defeating Giant Monsters.

First, this is a multiplayer game - while many can demonstrate their uber build and destroy any GM solo with ease, it's also okay to notify other players in game that a GM has spawned. Waiting a few minutes or posting the location or forming a team - these are all good practices when hunting Giant Monsters across the in-game world. 

Second, GM hunting doesn't stop once you get the rewards! Some GMs will only exist one at a time and will spawn miniature versions of themselves that need cleaned up or else the GM won't spawn again (or the server resets). These include Jurassik (who spawns Rubble), Caleb (who has an entourage of ghosts who need to be defeated to reset the spawn), Babbage (some Clockwork might slip away from the encounter and hold up future spawns), and especially the Croatoa Grim Vale event. 

Lastly, I would recommend taking a look at the below Giant Monster Hunting: Merits and Good Stewardship post from @tidge that goes in to greater detail regarding the above topic.

 

 

Giant Monster Mini Pets & Monstrous Aether

• The following Giant Monsters found in city zones now have a 10% chance of dropping an invention recipe of a miniature version of themselves. This chance is rolled individually per character who received credit and is tied to the same drop table as the Reward Merits.

• Adamastor
• Arachnos Flyer
• Babbage
• Caleb
• Clockwork Paladin
• Council Goliath War Walker
• Deathsurge
• Eochai
• Ghost of Scrapyard
• Jack In Irons
• Jurassik
• Kraken
• Kronos Titan
• Lusca
• Sally
• Seed of Hamidon (Seedling)
• U'kon Gr'ai

NOTE: Only the zone version of these giant monsters drop the pet invention recipes. These invention recipes are not bound and can be freely traded or sold on the Auction House once acquired. Giant Monsters that drop Reward Merits now also drop up to three (1-3) Monstrous Aether salvage (amount depends on the specific GM defeated).

 Monstrous Aether 

• Monstrous Aether is account bound and can only be transferred to other characters on the same account and cannot be stored in SG base bins; It can be held one-thousand (1,000) at a time.
• Monstrous Aether can be converted at any BenevoLabs Hologram vendors into the following:
  • Trade ten(10) Monstrous Aether for one(1) random Giant Monster mini pet invention recipe from any of the listed above.
  • Convert three(3) Monstrous Aether into one(1) Prismatic Aether.

Edited November 11 by Glacier Peak

[Glacier Peak]

Giant Monster(s) Details (alphabetical order):

 

 

 

Edited July 12 by Glacier Peak

[Glacier Peak]

 

Edited July 16 by Glacier Peak

[Random Axis]

As an extremely minor nitpick in a great guide, the card for Paladin says "When defeated, Babbage will award 6 Merit Rewards..."

Edited July 23 by Random Axis
OP fixed by OP!

[Glacier Peak]

4 minutes ago, Random Axis said:

As an extremely minor nitpick in a great guide, the card for Paladin says "When defeated, Babbage will award 6 Merit Rewards..."

When you stare at something long enough, it gets harder to see the little things. Thank you for pointing this out! I'll swap the card with corrected text when I'm back at my computer. 

[tidge]

Including this link, because I've observed many folks clamoring to fight monsters but they leave messes.

 

 

[Glacier Peak]

36 minutes ago, tidge said:

Including this link, because I've observed many folks clamoring to fight monsters but they leave messes.

 

 

Oh wow! I can't believe I forgot about this. I appreciate you adding the link in. The biggest offender in my experience is the Grim Vale spawns that might wonder off or never make it to the battle. I'd like to include this in my original post if you're okay with that. 

[UltraAlt]

@Glacier Peak

I don't know if the "trading cards" were on a previous guide, but I really like those.

 

 

[Jacke]

@Glacier Peak, you might also want to add to the Goliath War Walker that defeating 100 regular Council War Walkers awards the "War Torn" Badge.

[Glacier Peak]

16 hours ago, UltraAlt said:

@Glacier Peak

I don't know if the "trading cards" were on a previous guide, but I really like those.

They were - back on live @Ravenstorm made them.

 

https://homecoming.wiki/wiki/Giant_Monster_Guide

 

Example:

Edited July 16 by Glacier Peak

[tidge]

Feel free to edit in the information about clearing (sub)spawns into the original post; I think it is pretty important information.

 

As a recent test, I saw that a Rubble (so the child spawn of a Jurassik Rubble, which itself is the child spawn of Jurassik) was left in Crey's Folly and I decided to leave it unharmed. Normally I clean those up. The server went more than 24 hours without a new Jurassik spawn, and it wasn't until I defeated that rubble that we got any new Jurassik spawns.

 

I know that several players use "Giant Monster Targeting Binds" to "help" them look for potential targets, but I think those do more harm than good... because those binds ignore the extras.

 

I'll also share another bête noire about would-be Giant Monster hunters related to the stewardship aspect. It is somewhat common that some time (6+ mins) after an announcement that a GM has spawned, that a player will use one of the global channels to ask if such-and-such GM has been defeated. I can understand that player not wanting to "waste time", but it takes less than 5 minutes to scan a zone for most GMs (Caleb can be the outlier, and zones with multiple potential GMs can take a little longer) yet if the player actually goes looking they might come across the extra spawns that also need to be cleaned up.