Back in the Saddle Again
Posted by Joshua on Jun 24, 2004
Back where a fiend is a fiend…
Yup, the splitter has apparently dried out, so I was back online last night, making up for lost time.
I actually ended up trashing the character (a Darkness power Scrapper named Dark Wednesday, whose backstory is that she's Wednesday Addams grown up as a vengeful vigilante) that got clobbered last time and re-starting as level 1 instead of paying off the experience debt. No, that's not the efficient way to do it, but I had been wanting to change the character's looks but hadn't bothered to restart because of the sunk costs. When I thought about it, though, pursuing a tedious mission (hunting 10 Circle of Thorns on the rooftops of King's Row) that would net half the usual experience seemed less fun than starting over and getting to fix the looks. One and a half fun hours later, I was back to level 5, and this time I know better than to pursue missions that will lead to King's Row before I'm level 6 or 7.
I also created YANC (yet another new character), this time an Energy Blaster: a very Maria-from-Metropolis-esque robot called Tin Lizzie. All I can say is, Wow, at low levels Blasters that do lots of knockback rock! Of course, the downside is if they keep missing and the baddie closes and stays close, it's time for a trip to the hospital. So remember, kids, always slot those Accuracy enhancements early! And let's be careful out there!
If anyone wants to join me, these new characters are on Champion. So the servers I'm usually are found on are Pinnacle (if Doug and/or Paul are around), Guardian (the Riverdale gang), Virtue (so far only Barbizon, and if I feel more like RPing), and now Champion (miscellaneous characters experimenting with power combinations).
Woe
Posted by Joshua on Jun 23, 2004
I just finished a tough mission in an office building in CoH, left the building, and found myself in the middle of a firefight between a bunch of folks way higher in level. Before I could even run, I got toasted by one of the baddies, and now my character has an experience debt to work off… just as I was about to start on that, though, a freakish downpour knocked out my cable modem connection. The Comcast techs think that some water got in a splitter somewhere, but they can't send anyone out to look at it until Friday morning. It might start working again as it dries out, but until then no CoH for me…
Pool Party
Posted by Joshua on Jun 17, 2004
In City of Heroes, sixth level is something of a milestone, since it's the first time that “Power Pools” become available. Initially you pick powers from your primary and secondary sets, which come from a list of those available for your class. Power Pools are available to all classes equally, and it's from these that you can eventually get such things as Flight and Teleport. You don't have to take any Power Pools, if you prefer to concentrate on getting the powers in your regular sets, but it allows extra flexibility.
RadStorm, MightyMidge, and Barbizon all hit 6th level recently, so got to choose from among the Power Pools. For RadStorm I chose Flight (which starts with the lowly Hover power–even slower than walking), and I'm really looking forward to true Flight. Even being able to hover up to the tops of buildings and look down on the city below is worth the price of admission. MightyMidge got Jumping, which will eventually let her leap tall buildings in a single bound. For now it just gives her a slight boost to her Jump, which I think will be useful, since it seems that the programmers actually bothered to give shorter characters smaller vertical leaps–or maybe I just stink at jumping, but it definitely seems like Midge has trouble clearing fences that the normal-sized characters just hop over. I suppose I could test that hypothesis by making a minimal size character… Finally, Barbizon took Fitness, which will eventually reduce the Endurance cost of all her powers; she's the only one of my characters that regularly runs out of End while fighting, due to the high Endurance cost of swinging that big old axe around.
I actually spent a fair amount of time last night on the Virtue server, just standing around talking in character, rather than going on missions. It was fun as a change of pace, but I don't think that I could do that for an entire night the way some of the rp-ers seemed to (or at least every time I wandered back to the central square it seemed like Cog Sprocket was still there, jawing away in character).
Roleplaying in City of Heroes
Posted by Joshua on Jun 16, 2004
Paul suggested to me that the “Virtue” server was the unofficial server for roleplayers, i.e. people who actually like to talk in character while playing and bother to make up origin stories, etc. so I headed on over and made up a character (a 7' tall Axe-wielding Barbie doll called Barbizon. Battle Cry: Cleavage? I'll show you cleavage!) and lo and behold, Paul spoke sooth. I was invited to team several times over the course of the evening (it was gym night, so I wasn't at the keyboard the whole time), and my teammates mostly did stay in character. One of the characters was a robot and somebody asked who made him (which at first I thought meant which RL player), but he had his whole back story worked out about his manufacturer and purpose. It was pretty cool, if you ask me. Certainly a change of pace from talking about aggro, rooting, mobs and the like.
I finished the night at 5th level. The Battle-Axe tanker has pretty slow attacks, and they take a lot of end, but it is very satisfying when they send the target flying backwards. Another thing I found out was that the server bleeps out (replaces with cartoon $^&%! symbols) God, but not Goddess.
I also had the misfortune to team up with someone who was either more of a newbie than me, very young, or just not too bright and ended up getting killed when she ignored my warning and jumped a bunch of guys much tougher than us. I got shot to pieces, and as my character was lying face down on the street I looked around and realized that she had run away and quit the team. You live and learn. Fortunately I was only 2nd level at the time, so there was no penalty for dying.
From Zero to Hero!
Posted by Joshua on Jun 15, 2004
I made a new City of Heroes character last night (so what else is new?) called RadStorm, a Mutant Wind/Radiation Controller and teamed up with Doug's Violet Anger and a friend of his playing a Magic Fire/Ice Blaster and by the end of the evening we were all 6th level. Boy that was a lot of fun.
Then I went and tried to bring Mighty Midge up from 5th level to 6th solo, on a mission in a cave full of zombies, and didn't make it. After almost dying twice, I was out of Inspirations with plenty of zombies to go, and had to flee the cave. Freaking radioactive goo that the zombies regurgitate seems to go right through Temporary Invulnerability. Does anybody know whether if I go back in the cave all the zombies will have respawned? That would mean I could maybe whittle them down, running out to get more Inspirations (basically CoH's version of potions), which is a little cheap (not that I wouldn't take it to clear the mission so I could get a new one). If they do respawn then missions like this would basically become an EP farm: as long as you didn't complete the mission you could run through it again….