EarthWyrm

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Not really, it is just odd to see a thread with so many rates.

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Not sure why you would find it odd to see the thread has 159 rates when you personally account for 2/3 of them, and by bringing up the issue of rating, you encouraged those who would not normally rate a thread (like myself) to do so to counteract your admitted abuse of the system.

*shrug*

~Wyrm

Count me among the happy /fa players as well. My guy is sitting around 45.8, and I was dreading the slog to 50 because he's been so much work and chewed so many insp's thru the past 5 levels that I didn't figure I'd ever want to play him again once I got there.

But this sounds like he'll be able to handle things a little better and won't have to rely on repeated runs to Dr. Forrester to replenish between missions. That makes him a lot more attractive to keep pulling out after I hit 50 with him.

~Wyrm

Singularity is significantly more fragile. Had to be resummoned 4 times fighting even-level CoT on an Oranbega map, when I'd not had to previously resummon due to death even once since getting him (3 levels ago).

This was verified independently by another player, whose singularity died twice fighting Freaks in a Safeguard mission.

~Wyrm

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Unfortuantely whenever I try to milk MIs I get people coming by to steal both the pets and/or the MI.

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I believe as long as you do SOME damage to them you get kill credit. So plink them and let the wanna-be killstealer do the work for you.

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The problem isn't them killstealing the decoys, it's them killstealing the MI. I had that happen to me around 2:30 one morning, when I'd been milking the same pair of MIs on Peregrine for better than 2 hours. This idiot defender and her scrapper sidekick jumped in out of nowhere while I was repeatedly taunting the two to keep them in aggro range and spawning and killed one of the MIs, despite my having asked them to, "Please stop attacking" in tells. Then, when they moved to the second MI and I sent another round of, "Please stop doing that," the defender LECTURED ME on how "Some people have hunt missions and you ought to get a team if you want to get the badge, because this way will take forever."

Well, no kidding. And it takes twice as long with one as it does with two. (Functionally, it added an extra half-hour; it literally would have taken me more time to recruit a team to do carnies at that hour of the night than it did to finish the badge, yet still I get an earful from that know-it-all. Grr. Teach me to be polite...)

I'd managed to drag them away from their spawn spot, they weren't preventing anything else from spawning by me milking them... and you can't convince me that a level 50 stoner with purple rocks going around his head needs "help" from a defender and a scrapper to deal with two -2 MIs. It was just plain inconsiderate.

Still makes me cranky.

~Wyrm

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I'm not quite sure where the triggers are in there. I know there is the "you got near the vault." I suspect there may also be a "you smashed the vault" or a "you got near (or touched) one of the back-room safes."

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The triggers are all the red light beams you see around. If one hits you it triggers an alarm/ambush. There's 2 right outside the vault door, making them dang near unavoidable.

I ran my brute into the smash and grab after doing the bank and hit all the alarms i could just for kicks. Happily smashed away at the multitude of PPD that came pouring in until my time ran out Had some status/debuff issues, but not too many (he was 22ish at the time)

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Those are the triggers for the Longbow ambushes. I think he (she?) was talking about the ambushes of PPD that come later on during the smash-and-grab. They aren't triggered by the red-beams-of-doom, as near as I can tell.

~Wyrm

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yes, i see now how if you are in a good group then you should take this route. my go straight for the bank first I think works best when you only have yourself or maybe one or two people. I know personally that at the times I can rob Atlas or Kings I dont have enough attack power to sit there and attack every cop or object on the way,

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I don't think anybody was advocating that. I know that at least I wasn't. You can get to the bank with a minimum of carnage, but any time you see a Longbow speech-text show up in your global chat window, you need to stop and wait. Solo, it will only be 2 of them, and if you keep moving they will not only follow, you run the risk of triggering more ambushes.

Yeah, destroy what's convenient (definitely ignore anything that cons purple), pick up the easy time bonuses (it takes 5-7 cars to get 3 minutes, but one mailbox to get a minute, one news vendor to get a minute, etc.), and have fun with it.

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and as far as side missions go, theres been a few buggy times when i get the key but the door doesnt show up.

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You won't ever get a yellow door on the map when the side mission is a jailbreak. I've yet to see a non-jailbreak side mission that didn't give me a door, though, and I've run 80-100 mayhems. Not saying it couldn't happen or hasn't happened, just that I haven't seen it.

Gads. I think I need a life.

~Wyrm

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3) Make a straight shot for the bank, ignore everything on the way and get inside the bank.

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While I realize the guide is mostly in jest, this point is one that can't be emphasized enough. This tactic only works well if you are either flying or teleporting. If you're superspeeding, it's going to be horrible and you're going to trigger every single Longbow spawn between you and the bank. If you're superjumping, you're probably still going to trigger a lot of spawns when you touch down. As near as I can tell, the longbow ambushes trigger off the equivalent of invisible badge markers (the locations are very consistent), and if you walk/run over or near them, you will trigger the ambushes, and they will definitely follow you into the bank.

This is to say nothing of the bizarre longbow eagle death squads who hover above the bank and come in to gank you when you go through the door. I did one on Villainous last night with my 25 Corruptor (solo), and had 12 Longbow Eagles follow me in, PLUS two more Longbow for the standard "Entered the bank door" ambush. Best way to deal with those is to run for the mission exit, go out, and come back in; when I've done that, the death squad has gone away, leaving only the non-bugged portions of the ambush to come after you.

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6)Start breaking into the vault, pausing only to take care of what law enforcement officials want to try stopping you.

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There is an ambush that you can see the "We've got a situation" text for that spawns when you first come close to the vault door, and another ambush that spawns a block and a half away (it feels like) once the door is destroyed. The first ambush is whatever guards are on the bank itself, the second is the local constabulary.

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8) Take out the hero and his crew. If you did this solo he will only have two or three Longbow with him.

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Or one, on Villainous at level 25. I think it only gets up to 2 if you're running on the second or fourth difficulty setting, or if you have more team members (which is irrelevant, since you did specify "solo" ).

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Congratulations you finished your top priority of robbing the bank.

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Nah, you've finished your broker's top priority, which was you robbing the bank. My top priority is getting whatever's hidden in that glowing box, and trying to get stolen codes for the Warburg nukes.

Good guide. Don't take my comments the wrong way -- there's plenty of ways to do Mayhem, this is just what I've found that works best for me.

~Wyrm

Edited to add: there are at least 3 ambushes after you get to the vault door, with the second and third both being PPD. Found that out the hard way last night in the IP mayhem. First time I had one of those flargin' PPD Ghosts "Stealth Strike" me, too. Made me go, 'Huh? I thought hero-types didn't get assassin-strike abilities!"

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A couple of things I can point out here that may or may not be the case with the failed missions.

The hero WILL spawn if you give the hero enough time to arrive. Do not go far from the vault until the hero does arrive. I suppose it is possible that you might have gone beyond the hero's spawn point.

Secondly, when the hero does arrive, he or she is with a squad of Longbow agents. ALL of these agents must also be defeated to get credit for beating the hero. If one single agent is left behind, no credit. Do not leave the bank until you get the Mission Complete message.

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Related to this, remember that Longbow ambushes (which is what the hero brings with him/her) split up to go after the entire party (try it some time in a duo with another villain; have one person fly to the far corner of the map while the other walks around until a longbow ambush triggers; typically, two will come to the one who triggered the ambush, and two will go to the one who's nowhere near where the ambush spawned). If one villain was languishing in jail, then at least two of the longbow ambushers headed for the jail. It is very, very, important to have the entire team in the bank when the hero spawns. If you don't, the longbow will be all over the map, and you will find it very difficult to finish the mission.

~Wyrm

Thanks for the correction! I'd edit it to reflect that, but it appears I've passed the maximum edit time. I didn't know such a beast existed.

Glad you liked the guide.

~Wyrm

VI. Other thoughts

So, what’s left? Not a whole lot. In the end, I managed to milk the 40-45 contacts all the way up to around 45.6 before doing anything else. Now, at 47.5 (with only 7 or so bubbles attributable to double-xp weekend), I’ve completed one of my new contacts (I finished off the Patron arc), and have been running missions for Vernon von Grun and the Television (both of whom seem to offer a lot of missions, so I may start going through contacts more quickly in the near future). I’ve also run a couple of Peregrine Island mayhem missions, and even teamed up with one of my wife’s toons a few times (learning, in the process, that it’s a bad idea to lackey up a low-level stalker when you’re running on Ruthless, since boss spawns in mayhem missions will give you two bosses with two people on Ruthless, and that’s a lot harder than one!).

In the end, just remember that the point of this is to have fun. It’s a game. Use my advice, or don’t. I won’t be offended. But I found a way that worked to get me through a set of levels that I have heard a lot of people having trouble with, and thought I’d share.

Take care, and happy gaming!

~Wyrm

Topic V: Badges

Another thing I’ve found that helps me pass the time and earn a little experience is badge-hunting. I’m not saying that you ought to become a full-on badge lover if you aren’t already, but with exploration badges now giving a little XP, and with a couple of fairly challenging kill badges being required by contacts, you have the chance to engage in yet another set of activities that will keep your contacts live.

I’ve already mentioned the Venomous badge, required by Number 204. There’s another badge – much more painful – required by one of the 45-50 contacts, which you can do some work on in the 40-45 range. This is the “Infiltrator” badge, for which you must defeat 200 of Crey’s Paragon Protectors. (The contact – Viridian – also requires you to have the Tracer badge (for Tsoo sorcerers) and the Tank Buster badge (for Freakshow bosses); you may already have those, but if not, the Freaks you can at least get from paper missions.) The Paragon Protector badge is a challenge over on the hero side, but the heroes at least have zones where PPs spawn in quantity. There are apparently a few PP Elites that spawn up in the northern part of Grandville, in the Fab, but you aren’t going to be going after them any time soon; they’re 49-50 range. Fortunately, there are a few missions in the 40-45 range that will help. I can think of one in particular from Dr. Forrester that I kept in my queue for a while because it would give me 2-3 PPs every time I ran it.

But I get bored pretty easily, and I wasn’t about to run that mission 70 times to get a badge. I made some progress, though, and I suppose that since Viridian’s a 45-50 contact, I’m not likely to out-level him.

The important thing with badges, in this context, is really just that they break up the grind. The easiest way to run out of content is to do nothing BUT content. Anything you can do to avoid that – whether it’s beach-sweeping in Sharkhead or farming the odd mission for rare spawn-types – is going to help you keep from doing the same thing, over and over and over.

There are some good sites out there with information on badges. I won't bother linking to them, since about everyone knows where badge-hunter.com and badge-[censored].com are. Just Google "CoV Badges" and you'll learn everything you need to know.

Rule 5: If the missions start to feel like a "grind," find something else to do, either in the game or out. Badges worked for me, especially once I knew accolade requirements, so if you're into that, find out what badge channels exist on your server and join up!

Topic IV: Contacts

WARNING: There is information in this section that might be considered "spoilers". I stayed away from talking about actual story stuff, for the most part, but if you want to know nothing about the contacts going in, you're probably better off not reading this portion of the guide.

First things first: One of the easiest ways to run out of content very quickly in the 40-45 range is to have old story arcs open. Basically, the contact system works like this: Contacts have both story arcs and non-arc missions (for the most part). If you already have two open story arcs and get a new contact, they will give you their non-arc missions . . . and nothing else. You will talk to them, you will do everything they ask, and then they will stop giving you the option to be told about available missions. The annoying thing is, their contact bar won’t be full. You won’t be to the “kindred” level yet, you’ll still be futzing around as a comrade or some such.

If you have this happen – if any of the contacts (other than your patron, who will give you two more arcs after you hit 45) stop talking to you before their bar is full – then you need to immediately head back to the lower-level zones. Go to each of your old contacts, in person, and talk to them until you find one who will give you missions. You may be able to figure out which contacts are still open by checking your “Clues” menu to see if you have outstanding clues from anyone, but that’s not always the case. One of my greatest annoyances with CoX is that you don’t actually have to TAKE a mission to open a story arc. If you look at what a contact has to offer and decide not to do a mission (say, they’re offering you a timed mission, and it’s late at night and you’re ready for bed), but that mission would have started a story arc, you are now stuck with that story arc. It only takes seeing the mission description line, it doesn’t take actually beginning the arc.

Even if you do begin an arc, though, not every arc will give you a clue immediately. So you’re going to have to go chase through your old contact list until you find who’s holding out on you.

I’m going to assume, if you’re a soloist, that this isn’t going to happen very often. I mean, if you want to solo 40-45, you probably wanted to solo 35-40, and if you did that you pretty much had to bleed every contact dry. But if you’ve done something wacky like moved servers and left your old SG behind, or just decided that you wanted to be able to take your time and read clues and really enjoy the cool end-of-arc maps, that may not be the case.

From here on in, I’m just going to figure that you’ve not got open arcs. We’ll start with your welcome to Grandville.

There are two contacts you can access without doing any paper missions for your new broker, Wiggy the Brit. These are Arbiter Rein, who will introduce you to your patron, and Ambassador Kuhr’Rekt. I’ll deal with Kuhr’Rekt first, since the patrons are a potentially sticky issue.

Kuhr’Rekt is a Rikti ambassador who hangs out inside Grandville city hall. He has some fun missions and some cool temp powers, and gives you the chance to fight a couple of heroic types. He’s technically an unlockable contact, but the requirements for unlocking him are such that unless you’ve avoided getting any badges for 40 levels, he will probably talk to you. (I think the requirement is the “Native” badge, according to one site.) My only complaint about Kuhr’Rekt was that he spent so much time sending me to Nerva. I spent most of my early to mid-30s there, and while the zone has an interesting feel to it, nothing is convenient. Traveling in Nerva is a lot like shopping in a Wal-Mart supercenter; everything is there, but nothing is where you think it ought to be.

I finished Kuhr’Rekt first, then started in on paper missions to get my first “real” contact. I skipped making a decision about a patron at this point; I wasn’t sure if I even wanted to have one.

While I did take one (Spider’s Kiss ftw!), I realized once I got to 45 that it would have been harder to make it to 45 without spending at least a few bubbles toward the end grinding papers if I hadn’t. If you’re really interested in the content, there’s not much reason not to take a patron; they offer something different (I wasn’t wild about some of GW’s missions, but that’s all right) and, depending on the patron, maybe some other random coolness. In addition, depending on your reason for choosing the patron, you may find yourself in some interesting situations, which can help you get inside your character’s head. (Ignore that comment if you aren’t a roleplayer, since it won’t make much sense; but I am kind of an old-school roleplayer, and like having my character faced with tough decisions, even when they aren’t things I can really decide about given the game parameters. That being said, I don’t remember having any of those moments from 1-40, but I had at least two from 40-45.)

The second contact I actually took was Terrence Dobbs. I took Phipps on the test server prior to I7’s launch, and had this horrendous visceral reaction to his first couple of missions. Which, I suppose, is a testament to the fact that they’re doing what they’re supposed to do. I had almost talked myself into skipping Phipps entirely, but realized how foolish that would be. So while I didn’t take Phipps first (or even second), I did take him and run his arcs.

To note: It is possible to not run more newspaper missions and just be introduced to your contacts by other contacts. This is true, I think, even for the first-tier contacts (Dobbs, Phipps, and Korol), so that it’s theoretically possible to only run 5 paper missions and one Mayhem in Grandville.

It should be clear based on the previous discussion that I discourage you from doing this. If you blow through all your contacts, you really will have no choice but to grind. I made myself do enough paper missions to open all of my first-tier contacts, then another for good measure. I’d have to go and count temp powers to see for sure how many I ended up doing, but since I can think of at least seven times I did the “Raiding” mission (shotgun, wave scrambler, heavy rock, flame thrower, web grenade, tear gas, and “something” which I guess was the game’s way of saying “You’ve already got the temp power we randomly generated for you, so you don’t get anything this time”), I’m sure I may have run even more.

With Dobbs’ arc, keep an eye out for Biff; if you don’t have a Shivan Shard to help take him down, you may want to recruit a friend. Other than that, it’s an interesting arc that I never really felt reached any kind of conclusion. Three stars.

Regent Korol is one of my pet peeves from this range. I kind of THOUGHT that I ran three story arcs for her. If I did, she never acknowledged my work, since I never once got an arc completion bonus, nor did she ever give me a single-origin for my trouble. I don’t know if she’s bugged or if she doesn’t actually give story arcs, though I suppose I could check my souvenirs to see if I have any from her. Tech support, when I /bugged this, said that I had “gotten the appropriate reward,” which I really couldn’t interpret. Does that mean I got stealth xp, or does it mean Korol just doesn’t give arc completion bonuses? The world may never know.

Then there’s Westin Phipps. My character hated this guy. Hated him enough that he failed one story arc on purpose, then shrugged when he failed a second arc. (A pair of +2 bosses you aren’t supposed to let escape, one room away from the entrance, is a pretty cruddy thing to do to a brute.) Of the three arcs Phipps offered, I only succeeded at the last one. Then he started giving me non-arc missions, and would have kept giving me more if I hadn’t gone and hit 45. My Phipps bar is never going to be full. Oh, the horror, that we’ll never be “kindred.” The man is scum. He’s one who, if you’re interested, will really give your character something to chew on. I hate him, and everything he stands for, but his arcs are probably some of the best in the game. (As an added bonus, one of the missions I chose to fail was a map full of Longbow, with a fairly squishy elite boss at the end; rather than just start the mission and let the timer run down, I took advantage of the presence of so many “bonus XP” types and cleared the map three times by exiting and resetting before the timer ran out. Again, if you’re going to be stuck with repetitive content, choose your own.)

Your second-tier contacts in this range include Mage Hunter Zuhkara (three arcs, plus a non-arc badge mission), Arbiter Daos (two arcs and a couple of temp powers), and Dr. Forrester (one arc and a badge mission), so if you’re either a badge hunter or a temp power collector, this set of contacts is going to be important to you. Like I said earlier, I only finished Zuhkara after hitting 45. I liked her arcs, and am surprised more people haven’t objected to her the way others object to Phipps, since she’s about as close to “racist” as you’re going to get in the game. She’s got a serious hate-on for magely types, which makes me wonder what it’s going to be like to play my magic-origin Brute through her content whenever I get there. I’m assuming it won’t be any different, though it would be kind of cool if it were. The best thing about Zuhkara is the last mission in her last arc; it’s one of those maps that I’ve never seen before, the kind that the devs seem to only roll out for the end of big story arcs and some strike forces. I didn’t really understand everything that happened in that last mission (I think there’s a bugged NPC in it), but I gleefully smashed my way through it, then settled in to let a couple of Ice Thorn Casters beat on me for a damage badge while I went to work. When I got home, I saw that I’d managed to make it all of 15 minutes before I got disconnected from the server. Oh well.

I think the only contact I’ve not mentioned so far is Number 204. I saved 204 for last because I had such a hard time unlocking her.

You wouldn’t think the Venomous badge would be so hard to get. I know I didn’t. But it’s 200 toxic tarantulas. TWO-HUNDRED. Those are bosses. That do toxic damage. That nobody has great resists against. Being worried that I would outlevel 204, somewhere around the end of 43 or the beginning of 44, I made a new rule for myself: Whenever I was jumping around Grandville on my way to a mission, I would pause on the platforms that are up and right when you exit city hall and kill at least five of the big spiders. By the time I got to the last bubble of 44, I still had almost half the progress bar to fill, and I spent probably the last 2/3 of that bar doing nothing but hunting yellow and white toxics.

This is one where, if you get a chance to team up, you should do it. Teams for this make things go much more quickly, and while you get okay experience for the toxics, it was almost as boring of a grind for me as the endless paper missions in St. Martial. Plus, even with as careful as I’d been, I still managed to level about 3 toxic tarantulas before I got the badge. Thankfully, 204 still gave me missions (I’ve run one so far, and have another sitting and waiting for me); I’d been worried she was actually a 40-44 contact, rather than the 40-45 she was advertised as being. Color me relieved.

Rule 4: Manage your contacts carefully. If you have to unlock contacts, know what the requirements are and do what you can to fulfill them. If you’re worried you’re going to not have enough to do based on a given contact’s missions, don’t be ashamed to farm a mission or two. And don’t trust the contacts to introduce you to each other; earn them. You’ll be glad you did.

Topic III: Newspapers and Warburg (and Mayhem, oh my!)

It may seem odd to you, for me to devote a section of the guide to these missions when I’ve said this is what you’re trying to avoid having to do. The reality, however, is that there is not currently enough content to get you from 40-45 without doing at least some of these. If we don’t count Arbiter Rein (and we shouldn’t, since all he does is have you read plaques and introduce you to your patron), you have a total of six normal contacts, two unlockable contacts, and potentially one patron from whom you can receive missions in this range. I’ll go into the contacts in more detail shortly, but for now, let’s talk about what I think of as “filling the gaps”.

Ideally – and I think this is hard-coded, though the patron arcs may be exempt – you can only have two active story arcs going at a time. This means, by extension, you should probably only be working on two contacts at a time. This has a number of benefits, including (but not limited to) making sure that you do everything they have to offer before moving on. The drawback is that you’ve got this spiffy mission drop-down menu that can hold three things, so what are you to do?

I advise always having either a newspaper mission in your queue, or the ability to call Warburg to pick up a mission there. I’ll deal with Warburg first, because if you’re like me and didn’t get into this game for the PvP, your stomach may curdle a bit when you think about entering a PvP zone.

One of the rules I set for myself, when I decided that I was absolutely NOT going to run out of regular content before 45, was that if I had an open slot and a reason to go to St. Martial, I’d call ahead and get a Warburg mission. These have a number of plus-sides.

First, they’re all Longbow. Yes, that means dealing with Spec-Ops, but since they usually only come one to a spawn, you kill them first, then move along to whoever is the next most-threatening individual. Nobody’s as bad as Spec-Ops, to me, but hey – it’s just because I like endurance.

Longbow are nice because they’re worth 10% more xp than other spawns. And since you can’t get a mission in Warburg, as far as I know, that isn’t a “Defeat all Longbow” in some form (aside from the patrol mission, which gives you a hyperphase temp power that is worth having), they’re pretty good for moving your bar. You also get a bigger mission completion bonus for running missions in a PvP zone, even solo.

Getting to and from the missions can be a little hair-raising, since as you’re probably aware, Warburg is a free-for-all zone. That means that you’re fair game for Stalkers. Not as big a deal if you’re a Brute with lots of hit points, but a bigger deal for our squishier kin. The nice thing is, even when I have a somewhat slow load into the zone, I usually have 25 or so seconds to get to the mission door, and about the same to get from the mission door back to the zone entrance. I typically run out of time somewhere in there, but by the time I do, I (a) know that I’m clear, (b) have identified any potential threats and activated appropriate defenses, or (c) am already dead. However, I have NEVER been killed going to or from a mission in Warburg (or any other PvP zone, for that matter) when I didn’t elect to stop and fight. Make sure you have a handful of break frees available, and if you’re really worried, munch one before you head for the mission and another as soon as you step out the door. And if you’re really paranoid, then run the patrol mission first, get the hyperphase, and use it for the time that you’re going to and from the mission. Being intangible makes it hard for assassin strikes to connect.

The newspaper missions are another bag entirely. My advice is to try to mix it up a little. Yes, you could do nothing but the “Defeat [boss]” and “Steal the [glowie]” missions. You could even stealth to the end and just clear the last room, since that’s all you have to do to complete the mish.

I advise against this, at least as your standard course of action. Stealthing/superspeeding/jumping/skateboarding through the mission will get you done, but it won’t get you a lot of xp. And xp is what you need, from non-contact missions, to keep you from running out of content.

The added bonus to running newspaper missions is that you get to run MAYHEM MISSIONS. (I capitalize them because they are, in my opinion, the best thing to be added to the game since I started playing. I (heart) mayhem.) Do five paper missions and head for Founders Falls, where the Devouring Earth wait with the keys to glory.

Here’s the short form of my advice on mayhem: Destroy everything that will give you time bonuses, kill everything you find, and try not to spawn more than one longbow ambush at a time. Do all the side missions, because single origins are good and temp powers are cool, or if that’s all you really want, just go straight to the “raiding” and “smash and grab” side missions. The kidnap one can be a pain (especially in FF, where the idiot can decide to stand in the middle of the canal and never move again), but by and large, mayhem missions are a great way to have fun, break stuff, and get xp.

I had been pretty impressed when I realized that my little 15-minute mayhem missions averaged about an hour to complete, and gave me about a bar’s worth of experience. However, I did some comparing and saw that in that same time, running standard missions, I would tend to complete around three-four, and get in the neighborhood of 1.2 bars of experience. So mayhem missions don’t offer you the same xp/minute as normal missions, but that’s not what makes me say, “Do Mayhem whenever you can!” What makes me say that is that they give you more xp per MISSION. Again, the way to make it from 40-45 without having to do long stretches of nothing but newspaper/mayhem/Warburg missions is to not run yourself out of contacts. Which leads me to my next two rules.

Rule 3: Always have three missions in your queue.
Rule 3a: Never have more than two missions from actual contacts in your queue.

Those of you who are astute will notice that what I’m describing as a way to keep from running out of content is, in fact, exactly what happens when you run out of content. If you want to run solo, though, there’s no way around it. My philosophy is simply that if you’re going to end up doing the repetitive missions anyway, space them out. Make it something that you do when YOU feel like it, between other missions, or to help build dramatic tension before you go into a big boss fight. And hey, the newspaper missions aren’t nearly as repetitive as they were any more, since in addition to the Council and Circle of Thorns, you’ve now got Freakshow, Carnies, and Malta who pop up in the papers – and the classic bank jobs. So you can actually use this content, which people complain so much about, to “spice up” the contacts.

It works surprisingly well.

Around the start of level 44, I ended up abandoning rule 3a. I hadn’t finished off Westin Phipps (I was waiting for the knockback bug to be fixed), hadn’t started the Mage Hunter, still had missions from Arbiter Daos, and may have had something else going on as well. Plus, I had less than a third of a bar for the toxic tarantula badge (Venomous) that you need to unlock Number 204. So while I kept three missions in my queue, I don’t know that I did any Mayhem after I hit 44. I’ve had Wiggy waiting for me, and now I’m hoping that I get to go to PI and tangle with Knives and Kheldian cops.

So use your judgment. If you get a ways into the leveling process and decide that you’ve got a lot of content left to see, go ahead and see if you can get three contacts going at once, and when you’re ready, go back to interspersing the paper missions and Warburg fun.

Topic II: Difficulty

This one is almost self-evident, but even so . . . If you want to maximize the xp return per mission (and doing this will make it take fewer missions to get from one level to the next, which will in turn make it less likely that you’ll run out of content), you need to be running on a higher difficulty than Villainous. I generally don’t recommend going all the way up to Relentless, simply because you will then spawn Hero and AV-class enemies solo, who will hand you your head. This leads to debt, which violates Rule 1 (above).

How high is a matter of preference. With my Brute, I was kind of all over the place for 40-42. I ran some on Relentless, but every time a contact said, “Make sure to bring help,” I got all pansified and dropped back down to Villainous. (It took me a little while playing to remember that I did, in fact, have Overload, and that aside from Biff, +1 Elite Bosses just weren’t that scary.) Then I tried running some on the second difficulty setting and the third, before finally settling on the fourth. I’ve stuck with Ruthless (I think that’s the name) all the way through late 42-45, and it’s been fine for me.

The thing to keep in mind is that “difficulty” is kind of a misnomer for what you’re doing. Raising your reputation affects one or two things; it affects the level at which your enemies spawn, and/or the number of them who spawn for you.

If you raise your difficulty to the second level, you will get the same level enemies you would have had on Villainous, but there will be more of them. (By way of example, running solo on the second setting gives you exactly the same spawns as if you were running a team of two on Villainous, in my experience.) In addition, things that are supposed to be Boss-class will actually spawn as bosses, where on Villainous, they spawn as Lieutenants. Elite Bosses, as near as I can tell, will always be Elite Bosses. But with respect to difficulty, are you okay with bigger spawns, but don’t want them to be a lot bigger than you, and would like to face the occasional boss? This might be the place to try.

Difficulty level three gives you the same number of enemies as on Villainous, but they are one level higher. A little more challenging, since they hit harder, but if you’d rather keep the number of things you’re fighting relatively low while still increasing your xp, this is a good place to be.

Difficulty level four (Ruthless) has the same number of enemies as level two, but one level higher. You’re probably seeing the progression by now. And the top difficulty, Relentless, has everything spawning at +2 to you, but the same spawn sizes as you got on Villainous.

(By the by, Dwimble has a great guide on the difficulty stuff, which can be found here: Dwimble's Guide)

It will take some playing around to figure out the difficulty where you’re comfortable, but I’m assuming you’ve probably already tried it out some, on the way to 40. If not, give it a whirl. My wife and I kept our main heroes on the first difficulty setting for around 35 levels before realizing that we were bored stupid, and running at the third or fourth difficulty setting was just fine for us. Don’t let the idea of it being more “difficult” throw you. Try it out and see what works. Trust me – it’s not that bad. Which leads me to the second rule.

Rule 2: Find the difficulty that both maximizes your fun and minimizes the likelihood that you will be stuck running repetitive content

Topic I: Teaming

I can already hear you saying it: “Wyrm, the title of this guide has the word ‘soloist’ in it. Why even talk about teams?” In fact, there’s no reason whatsoever to team up if you really don’t want to. Some people will say things like, “It’s an MMO, it’s designed for teaming.” Whatever. It’s a game, and it’s designed for you to have fun with. If you have no desire to ever team, you can skip this section. Otherwise, I’ve got a couple of things to say.

I did not go from 40-45 without teaming. However, I would estimate that I spent less than 3 hours total of the time it took me to gain those levels in teams. I don’t have anything philosophically against teams; heck, I wish I could find a great supergroup and get some regular teammates! But I’ve had mixed luck with pick-up groups, and while I’m usually happy to sign on to help take down a Hero, I’ve never seen as many faceplants as I did when I rode a pick-up group into somebody’s relentless Mayhem Mission. Before the timer expired, I had used my tier-9 uber-power twice, the Demonic accolade once, and had only managed to avoid getting any debt myself because when my endurance zeroed out the second time Overload crashed and all my toggles dropped, some kind Longbow dropped a grenade that stuck me in a wall.

Conventional wisdom says this: If you want to level quickly, get on large teams set to a high difficulty. Conventional wisdom is fine – to a point. But how large a team do you want to be on? Some people go for 8 members on Relentless and never look back. When a group is used to working together, that’s fine. Many (not most, and certainly not all) pick-up groups have trouble coordinating. You may also be lacking something vital – like, say, a debuffer if you plan on taking eight people into a Mayhem Mission that WILL spawn a Hero-class enemy in the end. Because, well, pick-up groups are exactly that. Pick-up.

I’ve made good friends through pick-up groups. But if I’m being honest, what I’ve seen out of a lot of PuGs in CoV is debt. And I’ve got to say that if you want to avoid doing the newspaper grind, one of the key rules is this:

Rule 1: Avoid debt.

It sounds easier than it is, I’m sure. You may be saying, “But Wyrm, I need to get Deathless (the achievement badge for paying off 1.2 million debt) for the High Pain Threshold accolade!”

If that’s important to you, okay. I suggest that starting around level 38 or 39, you set aside one play session a week where you wander your happy self into Siren’s Call, get as far up in the air as you can, and fall into a spawn of Longbow. Repeatedly. Then, when you’re debt-capped, go run some newspaper missions until the debt is gone.

If you’re grinding a badge, expect to grind for it. There’s no way around that. But if you don’t want to run out of content, DO NOT grind while you’re doing the content itself. Keep those goals separate.

The other thing about teaming is, sometimes it’s fun to not play the game by yourself. A little interaction isn’t a bad thing, and there are some cool people out there. A lot of them, even. So every once in a while, put up your LFT flag and see what happens. As long as you aren’t running your missions, this is another way to advance your XP total without running yourself out of contacts. As long as you get more XP than debt, and as long as you’re doing someone else’s missions, you will decrease the likelihood that you will run out of content prior to reaching the plateau that is 45.

It’s hard to log on to the forums and not come across someone saying that they’ve reached some point between levels 41 and 43 and run out of content in City of Villains. This is obviously frustrating, since while that doesn’t mean you have to resort to street sweeping (thank you, developers, for coming up with an alternative to that!), it does mean that you will end up seeing some amount of repetitive content. Whether this is in the form of newspaper missions or Warburg missions, doing the same thing over and over can get pretty dull. In fact, that grind is the main reason that I felt a need to write this guide. You see, I ran out of content somewhere toward the end of level 38, and did the entirety of level 39 running paper missions in St. Martial. It was mind-numbing stuff, but I was able to complete a mission (not “clear,” just complete), run to a random contact, pick up 2-3 more purples, head to the next paper mission, run to the end, chew purples, pound “BOSS_NAME and guards,” and be done in 5-6 minutes. Lather, rinse, repeat.

So having done that, I realized I never, ever, wanted to do it again. When I was able to pick my Brute up again when I7 came out, I resolved to be more careful and not have to go into the paper grind at 43, or even at 44.

This morning, I leveled my Brute – my first villain to reach 40, and still my main – to 45. As it stands, I still have missions from Westin Phipps and Mage Killer Zuhkara to do, and only opened up one of the unlockable contacts after hitting 45. So I’m going to provide some advice, things I’ve gleaned from others on the forums, and just general pithy commentary on how you can successfully navigate from 40-45 without running out of content.

Perhaps the biggest disclaimer should be pretty clear: I’m writing this from the perspective of someone whose two – no, make that three – highest-level villains are all Brutes, with the next two being Masterminds. In other words, I tend to gravitate toward solo-friendly classes in CoV. The advice I give may or may not work if you play a Corrupter, and while it may work for a Stalker, it’ll take a while. As to Dominators . . . well, I don’t know. I’ve never played one past 14, so it’s hard for me to say.

The guide is going to cover several topics. These are, in no particular order:

I. Teaming
II. Difficulty
III. Newspapers and Warburg (and Mayhem, oh my!)
IV. Contacts (beware -- spoilers!)
V. Badges
VI. Other Thoughts

[ QUOTE ]
The only other option we have for Skull bosses (besides the rare newspaper mission) is Psymon Omega's Phobia mission in the 30-35 range (or is it 35-40? Can't remember his setting).

[/ QUOTE ]
Not so. Krylov's mission where he has you deliver civilians to the Vahz, even on the lowest difficulty setting and solo, spawns 3 Bone Daddies (and 3 Clockwork bosses-downgraded-to-lieutenants that spawn gears) each time you go through it. It's not pretty, but it's how my new badge toon got bot the Bone Daddy and Gear badges.

~Wyrm

[ QUOTE ]
Longbow only comes after you if a PPD sees you and then you run away from them enough so that they stop chasing. If you fighter every PPD where you find them, no Longbow will show up except with the Hero.

[/ QUOTE ]
I don't think that's right. I think Longbow spawns are triggered by locations (probably some kind of invisible badge marker or the like); there are locations on maps that I've done multiple times where I know that when I go near them, it will trigger the Longbow.

And to add to the list of temp powers that I've seen come out of Raiding (although once I didn't get a temp power, just a "You found something" message, which probably meant I already had the temp power it would have otherwise awarded), I've gotten:

Smoke Grenade (foe -Per -Acc)
Web Grenade
Shotgun
Wave Scrambler
Flamethrower
and the one I'm saving for Lord Recluse...
Heavy Rock

One other correction -- the guide mentions that time bonuses for various things range from 30 seconds to a minute. I've seen a number of instances where I get 1:30 for something, and cars I often get 3:00 for. I was working on a guide as well, but had thus far been too lazy to go in and record the times I was getting for everything.

~Wyrm

Thank you for the response, Posi.

I hadn't noticed that. "Bow Breaker" sounds like the badge you'd get for beating up Manticore, except that's Dead-Eye. I guess it's possible that both of these are "Defeat Signature Heroes" badges that got renamed between Guide and Live, but I really hope I don't have to take down Positron ("Destroyer" seems closest to "Annihilator") to get the same effect as the Atlas Medallion...

According to the Prima guide, "Annihilator" is required for the "Marshall" accolade, which gives +5% endurance. Unfortunately, the Prima guide doesn't list an "Annihilator" badge and I can't remember seeing one in the game (though my memory isn't always that great). Anyone know what this badge is, or is it just a typo? Or just a badge that's not in the game until I8, which would be unpleasant for them to tease us with...

~Wyrm

[ QUOTE ]
The /stuck command will work. At least if you fly up until you hit the bottom of the map. Also I think having fly on when you leave the police station will prevent you from dropping through the map.

[/ QUOTE ]
Useful information, but doesn't help people with non-fly travel powers.

~Wyrm

Probably nothing new here, but ran the FF bank robbing mission today. Went to the jail, freed (Silent Blade?), led her outside...

And fell through the map, into a weird blue Hades that /stuck only took me to the top of, and dropped me again. I've never spent that much time on 1 hp.

Had to log out and log back in, then couldn't figure out the rest of the mission (spent 5 or so minutes looking for the person I freed; is she even necessary?) and just ran to the bank.

Frustrating and disappointing.

~Wyrm