DreamWeaver

True - also try behind low walls, on fire escapes, dark back alleys, anywhere your enemy wouldn't normally expect to find you. Get familiar with the whole of the zone, find the avenues and gathering points your prey use, and exploit them. And like you said, don't overuse your lurk points

Telemining rather changes the tactics around though - rather than working a mobile hunter, you need to find a safe place, cloak up as much as you can, build a nice patch of mines and wait. Remember to put (a) caltrops and (b) yourself in the mine patch as a guard against Stalkers.

There's not really a comparison between Devices and Traps - having played an AR/Dev to 50 and a Bots/Traps to 40, Traps easily wins out.

Devices
- Web Grenade: meh.
- Caltrops: handy but hardly a lifesaver
- Taser: combined with Beanbag you've got a useful single target stun
- Targeting Drone: hit hard by ED, nice but far less essential
- Smoke Grenade: double meh.
- Cloaking Device: Invisibility... saves a power pool choice but that's it.
- Trip Mine: I've taken out AVs solo with enough patience and mines, not to mention a few Stalkers
- Time Bomb: Tricky to use
- Auto Turret: useful as a damage soak/pull mechanism but much less use without TP Friend

So in all, only really one "killer app" power - and no Build Up.

Now compare with:

- Web Grenade: still meh.
- Caltrops: handy, especially combined with...
- Poison Trap: mass hold, slow, and -regen? Yum!
- Triage Beacon: very, very weak power
- Trip Mine: as above
- Acid Mortar: lower damage than the Auto Turret but hugely useful debuffs
- Detonator (MM version): sounds fun, but takes too long to sacrifice a "damaged" minion and a healthy one's more use to you alive. As long as they don't get cocky.

Anyone know where I can find a pure PERL "what kind of X are you..." type script?

Zombies have the ranged attacks too - Vomit for the minions, Gloom for the Grave Knights, and the Lich is a great help - once fully upgraded he can heal himself, cone immobilize, cone fear, hold, cone knockback, and do a little damage to boot.

However, the basic Horde and Knights are significantly more powerful in melee and you may need to actively steer them into contact.

Drawback - you don't get a pet repair or heal with Zombies, but Dark works to their strengths. You do, however get a handy replacement pet if one keels over - use Dark Extraction on a fallen pet to get a powerful Spirit to help you out. Don't waste it on a basic minion if you don't need it - the more powerful the pet you Extract, the more powerful the Spirit is.

Plus if you go Zom/Dark, which is a pretty natural match, you can get not one but TWO bonus pets - you get a Fluffy at 38.

Thanks for the advice. I actually like O2 Boost - as a combined heal and demezzer in one, it doesn't give you the healing power of Emp or Kin but does get handy in a tight corner.

Ok, modded build...

01 Lift (NEXT RESPEC: Crush)
01 Gale
02 Grav Distortion
04 O2 Boost
06 Propel
08 Crushing Field
10 Air Superiority
12 Swift
14 Fly

...and planned thus far...

16 Health
18 Grav Distortion Field
20 Stamina (boy do I need stamina)
22 Freezing Rain
24 Hurricane
26 Wormhole
28 Snowstorm
30 Steamy Mist
32 Singularity
35 Thunderclap (A Disoriented enemy ain't doing damage, plus it should stack with Wormhole) or a pool power
38 Lightning Storm
41 Power Blast
44 Temp Invuln
47 Power Boost
49 Conserve Power

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What strange song is whistled late at night when everyone else is asleep?

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Quite obviously, it's "Show me the way to go home". Or perhaps even "Jailhouse Rock".

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And be worried if the cell-mate starts whistling the duel of the banjos from Deliverance.

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Or:

Time Is On My Side (Stones)
Born Free (Matt Munro)
The Birdy Song (Tweets) (obvious first sign of madness)

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Hmm, anyone in London know what the announcement is for pulling into Liverpool Street Station via Central line?

The first line of my novel is
"The next station is Liverpool Street. Changes here for the Circle, Bakerloo and Hammersmith and City lines, and National Rail Services."

To think I just heard it 2 days ago and forgot... :<

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Transcribed it tonight...

The next station is Liverpool Street. Changes here for the Circle, Metropolitan and Hammersmith and City lines, and National Rail Services.

So you just need to change Bakerloo for Metro and you are safe from tube-friendly pedantry!

Octopus

Squid

I vote Octopus - enough for polpo all'aglio for the entire state of Rhode Island.

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Shotgun armed and ready. This could prove problematical given that I'm in a meeting with IBM on Monday and my editor is attached to the part of my brain which wants to yell "You're overpriced and your product never works the way you say it will."

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Wuss. If that makes you want to scream, you've never dealt direct with Redmond. I remember... I... I... I cried. I wept like some grandmother. I wanted to tear my teeth out. I didn't know what I wanted to do. And I want to remember it. I never want to forget it. I never want to forget. And then I realized... like I was shot... like I was shot with a diamond... a diamond bullet right through my forehead. And I thought: My God... the genius of that. The genius. The will to do that. Perfect, genuine, complete, crystalline, pure.... *wibble*

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"The next station is Liverpool Street. Change here for the Circle, Bakerloo and Hammersmith and City lines, and National Rail Services."

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I think you're 99% on the money, but I'll listen out for it tomorrow.

Oddly enough, he's a newly-minted Sir as of the night before our story begins. I'm aware that by his level in civil service he'd be at least a KCMG (Kindly Call Me God) or GCMG (God Calls Me God), but Sir has a ring to it.

It also explains why he's late for work this morning, and, therefore, alive.

(As Mr. Twain would say: write what you know about. )

Proper MI5 please - need to know what geographical divisions they operate under and what a Greater London section head would be called.

Chugging through first intro scenes. Anyone have any proper information about MI5?

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So far, I've got: "I don't know anything about the Boer war!!!!!"

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To the Googlemobile!

Wiki: First Boer War

*reads* *raises eyebrows a bit*

...your spellchecker is so going to hate you.

Bah, dreamweaver was taken, so my username is weaverofdreams if anyone wants to say hello.

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With any luck, Joss Whedon meets Marianne Keyes...

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And they have beautiful, talented babies who are locked up the BBC building for all enternity, made to write endless amounts of awe-inspiring, jaw-dropping literature?

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It's a nice thought. But I'm simply tuning my waveforms in with a Psychotronic Macrocompensator and attempting to channel both of them at the same time.

There is just one problem - when you take on Joss's waveforms, you tend to get really easily distraoooh! Dangly string! *pounce*

...and if anyone else needs an NANOWRIMO 80x80 avatar, lemme know.

Mine is called Champions of London, and does have a heavy spandex influence but with room for tragedy, comedy, colourful characters and general silliness.

With any luck, Joss Whedon meets Marianne Keyes...

Looked at it, but I'd probably spend more time setting it up JUST RIGHT than actually scribbling

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And there's always a book by your bedside to nick ideas out of. Dan Brown, I'm looking at you!

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*ponders employing a squad of ninjas to drop Iain Banks novels into Dan Brown's room just to hack off all the math-obsessive fanbois - read something with a PLOTLINE, damn you!*

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Are your chocolate hoards well stocked?

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No. However, dieting does give me enough focus and inner turmoil to write something truly dark and gothic. Plus enough spare for a new Cure album.

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Do you have enough coffee or other highly caffeinated beverages at hand?

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*strokes blessed brushed chrome steel of the sacred cappucino maker*

That's a yes.

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Do all those wonderful people who'll be supporting you for the next month (known as friends) know not to bug you with party invites or that thing called 'social life'?

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No. They will, however, be providing me with inspiration and feedback, and I'll be spending enough time on trains and in expensively grim Travel Taverns away from them (and Paragon) where I can catch up.

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For the life of me I can't recall what happened to the Naboo starfighter chocolate replica, tho.

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That's a double abuse of chocolate - it shalt not be shaped into any form but the sacred black monolith, and certainly not into vestiges of rubbish movies.

Mind you, if it came with a miniature Jake Lloyd I'd have happily bitten his head off.

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Oh and DW, not a word before November the 1st or the guilt monkeys will get you. Alraedy had to tell FG off

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The guilt monkeys practically live here anyway. I just had the seed of an idea and had to put it down there and then. Got a couple of other bits kicking in notebooks...

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His Snake On The Plains.

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Ouch. I knew SOMEONE was going to, I just didn't know who...

"I knew it wasn't going to be a good day", thought Emily.

Emily took pretty much anything as a bad omen for her day - gloomy clouds over the river, suspicious pigeons loitering in groups, the cat spraying over her pillow again.

"The great thing about being a pessimist", she'd said once, "is that you get plenty of nice surprises when things go right, and you're never disappointed when they go wrong". People had laughed, and she'd laughed along, but it was true. However, this was turning out to be a disappointing day even by her standards.

The ground was rough, sticky, and dirty. She hated wearing suits, but Emily had just had this one bloody cleaned and couldn't quite figure out why she'd wanted to lie down in it.

There seemed to be a lot happening around her, but she couldn't see or hear very much. Insubstantial bodies seemed to flit in and out of vision, and there was noise - a great, round, ringing, roaring noise - that filled her ears... but it seemed comforting, like a pillow pressed over them. She couldn't hear what people were saying, but there seemed to be a lot of activity.

Emily needed to get to work. This was making her late, and she hated being late - it was embarrassing, dropping her eyes as she scuttled through the workplace with catcalls and questions if she'd finally got lucky.

But the invisible pillow seemed to be pushing into her chest now, and the ground wasn't as uncomfortable as she'd thought. The only bad thing, in fact, was the taste. Salty, like cheap smoked bacon, with a faint trace of rust.

A face suddenly appeared in focus - right up close. So did a hand. And a voice.

"Lady, we gotta GO!"

She held out her hand and he took it, pulling her upright, and that was a mistake. Violent waves of pain shot through from her legs to her shoulders as abused muscles started making their presence known, snapping her mind back to where she was.

Oh god.

Working quickly, blocking out all but what needed to be done, the pair of them gathered up more people - a guy in a suit, incongrously draped over a bench, a pretty girl whose blond hair fell around her head like a halo as it rested on the wall, and a young guy in a turban, still clutching his courier bag like a shield.

That was the first day that Emily, Michael, Lance, Francine and Terry met. It wasn't a great day. But that was the day.

Okay, here we go. 50,000 words in a month works out at 1700 a day, which is a lot...

...apart from being a great name for a band, it's what I'm trying out at the minute.

The story so far:

01 Lift
01 Gale
02 Grav Distortion
04 O2 Boost
06 Propel
08 Crushing Field
10 Air Superiority

...and planned thus far...

12 Swift
14 Fly
16 Health
18 Grav Distortion Field
20 Stamina (boy do I need stamina)
22 Hurricane
24 Steamy Mist
26 Wormhole
28 Thunderclap
30 Freezing Rain
32 Singularity
35 (Undecided... Tornado or Snow Storm?)
38 Lightning Storm
41 Power Blast
44 Temp Invuln
47 Power Boost
49 Conserve Power