Heraclea

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You realize that this opens up the potential for a whole genre of MA arcs built around deliberately ridiculous dialog for its comedic value...

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This is a major part of my shtick. One of my current live arcs is a contribution: the question of which one it is will be left as an exercise for the student.

It's not an easy act: no matter how deliberately outrageous you make something, there will be someone who fails to get the joke.

Another issue seems to be that on certain outdoor maps, the accompanying mobs will spawn some distance away from the object in question, rendering it unclear that they "belong to it".

I have encountered this sporadically. Returning to the objective later, and the bomb will no longer be an invalid target.

I don't know why this is happening, but I have a suspicion. Does your map contain a large number of set features or goals?

Soul Train's origin story - forget the exact title - is also fairly easily run by lowbie characters. Except for one character, an elite boss that turns into a regular MA boss on Heroic - a duo team of a scrapper and defender all handled it fairly easily at level 6. The story is nicely done as well.

There are a number of maps available with two different styles - the ones I know about are the office map that turns into smooth caves. I think the sewer/caves are also available as well. That's as close as they come right now.

I made a sort of Statesman using the Valkyrie helmet and mask. The shirt and cape are still wrong, though.

Some characters are easier to do than others. I've already made a pretty good Doc Delilah clone. Sister Psyche is not hard. Others, like Statesman and Ms. Liberty, really need costume pieces that aren't available.

I know that. FWIW, if you take specific characters from a group that covers all levels, but where the individual NPCs are level limited (like Longbow or CoT) only those NPCs appropriate to the level will spawn. So if you only picked one or two, that's all you will get.

What I want, though, is for the characters to appear in non-combat roles without invoking the level limits. Statesman isn't going to be fighting you or fighting with you. He's going to get captured by Skulls and quivering in fear until you rescue him. How do I do this?

I know that all custom groups are defined as level 1-54 regardless of who is actually in them. I made a custom group of selected Longbows that cover all levels that seems to work properly.

I bought the Freedom Phalanx and other custom characters. While I can add Statesman and other characters directly from other screens, I cannot find the Freedom Phalanx among the standard groups to add them to a custom group.

I'm also having issues adding standard characters that have been put into custom groups in NPC roles in missions. I was able to add Faultline and Fusionette into a custom group to serve as talking only person roles. Now I can add them directly from the list of standard characters, but not out of the custom character groups. If added as standard characters, they invoke the level checks and caps, and I want to keep the mission friendly to low level characters. But in the custom group, I can add player created characters into non-combat NPC roles, but the standard characters that have been added there remain elusive.

Has anyone figured out a way to do this? Can it be done with hand editing?

Arc Name: The Great Chicken Caper of '09
Arc ID: 1334
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: Heraclea
Difficulty Level: Moderate - 1 EB
Synopsis: Mutant chickens are running amok. Must be a Nemesis plot!
Estimated Time to Play: Less than 1 hour

Arc Name: Anactoria's Descent Into the Underworld
Arc ID: 3338
Faction: Villainous
Creator Global/Forum Name: Heraclea
Difficulty Level: Difficult - 3 AV class foes in final mission. Tanker challenge.
Synopsis: Anactoria grew up in Paradise. She wants out.
Estimated Time to Play: Less than 2 hours

Arc Name: The Monstrous Regiment of Lesbian Hellions
Arc ID: 27178
Faction: Heroic
Creator Global/Forum Name: Heraclea
Difficulty Level: Moderately easy. Nothing above bosses.
Synopsis: You thought the Hellions were bad enough already? Check the plot of the Lesbian Hellion gang to subvert Paragon City's heroines.
Estimated Time to Play: Less than an hour

Given the premise, I tried to make "The Monstrous Regiment of Lesbian Hellions" friendly to low level players, and successfully soloed it without deaths on a level 4-6 scrapper.

The arc won't be everyone's cup of tea, though.

My most recent arc is designed to be playable by low level characters, and seems to be: at least, I was able to solo it on a level 4-6 scrapper. Making lowbie friendly arcs is probably more challenging than making an unkillable Archvillain.

I intend to level the scrapper mostly on MA content (though the temptation to boost to 20 with Posi and Synapse will be strong). So something that is useful from 2 - 20 is what I am looking for mostly, right now.

AE System
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Welcome to Architect Entertainment -- Neutral
Death for Dollars! -- Neutral
Bare Knuckles of Rage (9304)
*

Character/Supergroup Origins
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Birth of a Fossil -- Heroic
*

Classic Super-Hero/Super-Villain
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THE BOMBER --- Heroic --- 16607
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Comedy
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The Extadine Lab -- Heroic
MacGuffin Delivery Service (1567) -- Villainous
ParaCon -- Heroic
The new and improved Lord Recluse Strike Force -- Villainous (though I wouldn't recommend against a hero )
The Fire Bunnies - Neutral, They are only bunnies after all...
You Say It's Your Birthday! (3630) - Neutral
Trademark Infringement -- Heroic (2220)
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Comedy/Drama
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A Super Team is Born -- Heroic
Attack of the Space Clowns (18749) -- Neutral
Cause of How Some Silly Stealed My Wings #1481 -- Neutral
How to Survive a Robot Uprising -- Heroic
Dr. Duplicate's Dastardly Dare -- Neutral
It's a Nice Day for a White Wedding (9059) -- Neutral
TURG FICTION: Ghost in the Machine, Act I - Heroic (althoughs romantic villains could try this too )
Rum Runners of Bloody Bay (3691) - Heroic
Have a Blap, Blap, Blappy Day Kids! (2019)
*

Crime/Gangs
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The Bravuran Jobs -- Villainous (16809)
The Monstrous Regiment of Lesbian Hellions -- Heroic (27178)
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Drama
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The Fan Club -- Heroic
*

Global Domination
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Axis and Allies -- Villainous (10597)
*

Heist
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Celebrity Kidnapping -- Villainous (20161)
*

Historical (Realistic)
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*

Historical (CoH Lore)
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The War on Superadine - The Regulators in their 1980's drug war (Heroic) (Arc 7959)
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Holiday
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*

Horror
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Dark Dreams -- Heroic (18914)
The Amulet of J'gara (1709) -- Heroic
Project: Perilous - Into the Chthonian Pit (#3586) - Neutral (Unless you happen to be a mad cultist, in which case, go nuts!)
Small Fears -- Heroic
*

Large-Scale Crisis
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A Hero's Halo -- Heroic
This Is War, Part I - the Revenge of Hro'Dtohz -- Neutral
Win the Past, Own the Future - Heroic
*

Magic
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The Magical Miss Fitz (5079) -- Heroic
Chains of Blood (5492) -- Heroic
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Military
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Redoubt Operations #1: Fires over Kalago -- Heroic

Red Storm Rising Arc 4912 Heroic
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Misc. Adventure
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The Portal Bandits (3326) -- Heroic
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Mystery
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Blowback (18575) -- Heroic
Dream Paper -- Heroic (13030)
Dream Paper 2: Restless Sleep -- Heroic (16797)
Dream Paper 3: Broken Dreams -- Heroic (13064)
*

Mythology
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Anactoria's Descent Into the Underworld -- Villainous
The War of Fate: Betrayal (19698) -- Neutral
The Seelie War -- Heroic
The Unseelie War -- Villainous
Tales of Cimerora, volume 1 : Of feathers and fur -- Heroic
*
The Aegis Affair - Heroic

Nemesis Plots
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Brass Reaver: Part 1 -- Neutral
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Player-Chosen Outcome
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Hunting the Dark Dragon -- Heroic
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Sci-Fi
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Adventures of the Space Marines -- Neutral
Adventures of the Space Marines 2 -- Neutral
Netrunner -- Heroic (14434)
Above Mars - Part 1: The Wellington -- Neutral
The Final Nemesis
*

Un-themed Survival/AV/Time Challenges
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The Meatgrinder -- Neutral
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I want to make sure that they need to be tanked rather than simply kited, is all.

So far, when I just want to solo an arc to see what the creator has made, my go to character is a Dark Melee / Willpower brute. Gets to see everything close and can live through a great deal.

My main concern now is to immunize my mobs from holds / immobilizes and harden them enough that the minions will survive a blaster nuke.

So here's a handy tip. Put some kind of rudimentary plot and dialogue in your farming missions ---

[Orcish]: et voilà!

Here you go:

Random Title Generator
Free Writer's Plot Generator

Patrols just wander the floor they spawn on, independent of the player. If they are allies, they will fight any enemies they encounter. They can be used to insert flavor text, and will speak it when the player comes within range if they are still alive.

with CoT, I'd just make a hostage rescue with the mob that caps the level, and set the surrounding CoTs to do their ritual animation thing the way they always do. You could make this a not necessary for completion objective.

The map may help. If it makes any sense, I'd find one of the smooth cave maps that has one large round room in the back. That round room will be the likeliest spawn point of any mob set to spawn in the back, and often two or more bosses will spawn in that room if they are in the mission. This can't be guaranteed, unfortunately, since the placement options are not all that reliable.

I am probably going to start a new character that is meant to level mostly on MA content. I will probably pull one of my existing stories down and replace it with a lowbie friendly story, with mostly standard groups and the custom mobs set to easy.

I had wanted to write a mission showing Statesman, Lord Recluse, Ghost Widow, Positron, and so forth, at the mercy of Hellions. This apparently can't be done directly, because of the level checks even for non-combat NPCs, but of course custom mobs could be added to play those roles. This would result in a level 45+ mission being interposed among the missions capped at 15.

So long as I don't make the mobs in that mission tougher, the damage of the players ought to be boosted by the auto-sidekicking feature to make them equal to the mobs. But what about Beginner's Luck? Does it disappear under those circumstances? This would have the effect of putting the player under a more or less constant accuracy debuff versus MA mobs that are tougher than standard mobs. That might be vexing.

Is Beginner's Luck preserved based on the player's real level in MA missions?

No, the custom group for the mission was made entirely for that mission, and did not change. The mission was ported from Test and saved the day before from the last Test live version.

I have had arcs that increased in size after publication. "Lawyers of Ghastly Horror", ID in my signature, is published and playable but not editable, because opening it in the editor puts it over the limit.

Many of those costume pieces are very nice, and will work well not only with magical characters, but old-timey characters of a variety of origins.

But a temp power that has the random potential to impose a twenty minute debuff on other players? This does not seem wise.

I probably have a lowbie tanker on most servers, though many were made just to test costumes. I'd love to get the chance to get to play them, especially since almost everybody will be equally low in level until we get around to somebody's home server.

I am foursqure in favor of this as well. As a habitual player of tankers I would be, of course.

There have been many things added to the game over the course of its history. The statue in King's Row that memorializes a comic book arc. There really isn't a good reason not to. As other user events grow and prosper, they may eventually meet whatever criterion you might set. This one has had several milestones already.

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Magic
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Mystery
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*

Military
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*

Comedy
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The Great Chicken Caper of '09 - Heroic
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Comedy/Drama
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Lawyers of Ghastly Horror - Heroic
*

Crime/Gangs
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*

Classic Super-Hero/Super-Villain
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*

Mythology
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Anactoria's Descent Into the Underworld - Villainous
*

Character/Supergroup Origins
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*


Horror
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*

Holiday
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*

Sci-Fi
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Adventures of the Space Marines --- Neutral
Adventures of the Space Marines 2 ---Neutral

*
Un-themed Survival/AV/Time Challenges
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*

Historical (Realistic)
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*

Historical (CoH Lore)
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*


Drama
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*


Misc. Adventure
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*

Global Domination
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*




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