I hear the Shadows Shard's lovely this time of year!

[MonteCarla]

In an hour or so, the Weekly Task Force ticks over to the much-maligned Dr Q. Task Force, and I'll complete the last mission and be 244 merits richer! 
I thought I'd give a little review of each of the 4 Shadow Shard Task forces, since they had a certain negative mystique about them before I took the plunge and did them.

 

Dr Q. (40-45) - 122/244 merits, 3 hours solo
This is the longest task force in the game at 22 missions. It starts with 5 hunts (eg defeat 50 Rularuu at Point X-Ray) amongst the instanced missions, and the missions are nothing to write home about. It's basically like 3 hours of messing around in the shard (which I do enjoy as a Roger Dean fan) and doing the most basic radio missions, including quite a few defeat-alls. 
But... it has no AV at the end, so anyone can solo it. It gives the biggest merit reward in the game, and while you're doing those boring hunts you'll often find Fake Nemesis in pairs for a bit of badging goodness. Point X-Ray is great for this. (I'm at 30/100 without really trying now, just taking out pairs who were visible when I entered or exited missions, or I saw while hunting.)
You get exemplared to 45, so you keep your incarnate powers. If you play at +0, the many Crey you face will be half and half suits instead of power-armor, which makes things easier, unless you're badging for Gamma Tanks or something.
Soloing a task force can be done over several days of course, so you should break up the grind if you have a few days where that character doesn't need to team with anyone.
You'll often hear negative talk in chat about this one, but its really just 3 hours of dull-ish radios with a big payoff. And that got me from 43 to 46 on my TA/A Defender.

(Competes with Tinpex as the weekly. Lucky for me I'm not fond of that, but I now others are)

 

Sara Moore (40-50) - 64/128 merits, 1-1.5 hours teamed
This one is a proper adventure. You'll need a team because you fight Ruladak the Strong at the end, in a rather cool and scary special map in the final mission. Its about an hour, and you end up hunting a fair few Nemesis in the Cascade Archipelago, which helps getting Unveiler for the Freedom Phalanx Reserve Member accolade. 
The Cascade Archipelago with its bloody waterfalls is the most vertical map in the Shard, and second only to the Storm Palace.
This one has always felt like a "cosmic" Justice League/Avengers adventure.
(Competes with Synapse for the weekly, accolade hunters! A tough choice, but this one's more fun!)

 

Justin Augustine (44-50) - 42/84 merits - 1-1.5 hours solo
The first half is the dullest thing ever. Go round the Chantry like a clock, defeating 50 under-levelled enemies at each point, then click on a monument. Thrill to being sent back to Firebase Zulu to click on many groups of monuments for Dr Boyd! About half way through you actually get to fight enemies of your own level (CoT) inside an actual instanced map. Reveal is an absolute must here. I recommend solo-ing this one, if you want to just for completeness or the merits when its weekly. I got a team together for this on my first time, and kind of regretted it.
One thing I always enjoy in here is finding groups of Brutes standing on high points and shotting at the Chantry in protest at its presence. Just a nice little idle animation that they have. Yeah, that's the highlight.
No AV's here, just a few CoT mages with more than usual hit points, that can be tedious on a low damage AT.
(Competes with the ITF for the weekly, in what may be the best TF ever vs the worse ever, so good luck finding a team!)

 

Faathim the Kind (44-50) -73/146 merits 1.5-2 hours teamed
This last one's intense. You fight multiple AV's (Malaise, Mother Mayhem, Nemesis, Baphomet) and eventually Lanaru the Mad. There's lots of Nemesis along the way for the Unveiler badge. And it takes place in the dark psychedelic grandeur of the Storm Palace, unlike the others which are in the "nice" orange parts of the Shard. 
This has the full Avengers: End Game feel, and is a whole lot of fun with a good team.
(Competes with Yin as the weekly, do this first to maximise your bonus merits!)

 

Temporary Powers from the SMART vendor.
If you forget, remember the vendor in Pocket D will talk to you when you're on a Task Force, unlike the Atlas Park one. 
Reveal - definitely get this to clear the maps for each zone. Especially useful for the two solo-able task forces.
Team Transporter - makes navigating the Shard nicer in a team.
Mission Transporter and Assemble the Team - these two double as a second Team Transporter nicely.
Defensive buff - gives you some mez protection if you don't already have any, which makes soloing Rularuu groups much easier.

 

Happy psychedelic hunting!
 

Edited Monday at 03:20 AM by MonteCarla

[lemming]

Dr Q is a nice stroll TF, though on my blasters, I can blow thru at less than two hours easily.

 

With a team, if everyone has TT, MT, and ATT, you can get close to 90 minutes when used efficiently.

[MonteCarla]

Wow, that's impressive!

Do you get people lined up pre-emptively for the hunts as they come up, or are you just zerging through everything as a team?

 

[twozerofoxtrot]

31 minutes ago, MonteCarla said:

Wow, that's impressive!

Do you get people lined up pre-emptively for the hunts as they come up, or are you just zerging through everything as a team?

 

 

A lot of the folks who haunt the ELTFs channel know the drill, and I think getting a 90 minute time is fairly doable with zerging if everyone is locked in.

 

It certainly helps if there is a character with teleport or a maxed flyspeed and Incan on the team.

[Snarky]

The Shadow Shard.  I suspect this weeks Dr Q will be largely ignored as people run napserver events.  
 

I will be continuing on my solo journey through every contact in the game, with semi random breaks when i see a badge opportunity in LFG. (Level 19 800+ badges)

[Uun]

I like Sara Moore and Faathim, but in all my years playing CoH (going back to 2004), I've done Dr. Q once. I don't intend to change that. I've done Justin Augustine a few times, but it's got to be the worst TF in the game.

[Jiro Ito]

I did Dr. Q once early when I came back to Homecoming to get the badge, and again yesterday in time for the WST rollover when asked by some friends.  I can comfortably wait another 4 years before doing it again.  Maybe longer.  

 

 

[Skyhawke]

12 hours ago, Snarky said:

The Shadow Shard.  I suspect this weeks Dr Q will be largely ignored as people run napserver events.  
 

I will be continuing on my solo journey through every contact in the game, with semi random breaks when i see a badge opportunity in LFG. (Level 19 800+ badges)

 

I hear the napserver is housed in the back of a Mattress King in Wooster, Ohio.

[Player2]

Gotta log in and check the weather before tomorrow's insanity.

[GM Crumpet]

On 3/31/2025 at 8:22 AM, Snarky said:

The Shadow Shard.  I suspect this weeks Dr Q will be largely ignored as people run napserver events.  
 

I will be continuing on my solo journey through every contact in the game, with semi random breaks when i see a badge opportunity in LFG. (Level 19 800+ badges)

Everything's going to be on hold. Good luck on the MSR hami and labyrinth 🙂 

[Snarky]

14 minutes ago, GM Crumpet said:

Everything's going to be on hold. Good luck on the MSR hami and labyrinth 🙂 

Okay, it is April 1st. And I am the irreverent and suspicious (one and only) Snarky.  Pardon me if i do not accept this statement at face value…

[BassAckwards]

48 minutes ago, GM Crumpet said:

Everything's going to be on hold. Good luck on the MSR hami and labyrinth 🙂 

 

Edited Tuesday at 10:55 AM by BassAckwards

[MoonSheep]

On 3/31/2025 at 8:22 AM, Snarky said:

The Shadow Shard.  I suspect this weeks Dr Q will be largely ignored as people run napserver events.  
 

I will be continuing on my solo journey through every contact in the game, with semi random breaks when i see a badge opportunity in LFG. (Level 19 800+ badges)

 

when are the mapserver events? just sporadically like zone events?

[Snarky]

42 minutes ago, MoonSheep said:

 

when are the mapserver events? just sporadically like zone events?

They are UNENDING zone events with farm (arguably better) experience league wide.  You can 1-50 in about the same number of farm hours with no alt farming or finding farm drama.  There are luls in the day, but they run so often. 

[Bionic_Flea]

What if the Mapserver invades the Shadow Shard?

 

dun, Dun, DUN!!

[isawa koi]

My hot take is that Justin Augustine is worse than Dr. Quaterfield.

[MonteCarla]

On 4/2/2025 at 12:32 AM, isawa koi said:

My hot take is that Justin Augustine is worse than Dr. Quaterfield.

Totally agree. 🙂

Dr Q has the variety of doing endless Council missions with a bit of street-sweeping in between, activities which people might actually do outside the Shard.
Justin Augustine is like street-sweeping in a zone 10 levels below you for half an hour and then doing some radios. And to top it all off, I think The Chantry where Justin's task force takes place is Nemesis free, so there's not even any Unveiler bonuses to it.