InfamousBrad

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a good TPer can beat just about any other travel pool to mission spots.

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Teleport does a great job of moving in a straight line. Until you have to turn around, or until your PC has to load new textures to the graphics card, at which point you fall out of the sky and die. At least, that's what happens when I try it. And that's assuming that I have enough endurance to get there without having to rest en route, even with all shields and stealth turned off, which tends to not be true until I can slot the heck out of it. And for what? A travel power that offers exactly no status defense, so unless you're a melee user or a bubbler, you're still stuck with Leaping no matter how cool you (wrongly) think that Teleport is.

I mean, what's the answer? Take Aid Self for stun resist, take Health for sleep resist, take Combat Jumping and Acrobatics for hold and immobilize and knockback resist, and Hover so you don't fall out of the sky during the first lag spike or under heavy graphics load (not to mention so that you can turn around in mid air without falling). There, you've got everything covered, and you're ready to take Teleport. Except that never mind that (counting pre-requisites) you just used up 7 powers even before you started in on teleport, you also used up all four of your pools.

And that, I'm afraid, is why Teleport remains a power pool that everybody wishes that somebody else would take, but nobody takes for themself.

You can write off Summon Teammates. Nobody can possibly still have it by the time they get high enough level to make it into the Hive or the Abyss.

I know that people are going to push really hard on this, and I've seen how handy Recall Friend can be when you're in over your head and how fun Team Teleport can be in Siren's Call. But boy, shoo-ee howdy shucks, do not count on lots of people having the Teleport pool. The Teleport pool sucks in so many ways, gimps you so hard for everything else, that I doubt you'll ever see a day where more than 1% or 2% of all players have it.

Holding your breath waiting for Teleporters to show up is going to be like holding your breath waiting for high level Trick Arrow masterminds to show up, and for the same reason. I'm not going to say that there aren't any. I'm just saying that you may well go days between sightings.

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Outcasts should drop both tech and magic.

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I think a stronger arguement could be made for them being pure magic. Outcasts are mutants who trade in magic artifacts. The only "tech" they use is guns and simple weapons in the lower ranks.

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I understand your point, but if you skim the lists above, you'll see that Mutant Blood Sample, Stabilized Mutant Genome, and Mutant DNA Strand are all considered tech salvage, which would make it pretty funny if the most explicitly mutant faction in the game was one of the only ones that you couldn't get evidence of mutant superpowers from, in the same way that (prior to this patch) it was funny that the Clockwork didn't drop Clockwork parts.

I'll start in today on the level-band analysis. I can use VidiotMaps.com for the lists of what mobs are available for street sweeping, and I think I can remember the newspaper mission mobs, but I don't have data on police radio missions above the low 30s. Do you know where I can find a list of what factions are available as newspaper and as police radio missions in what level ranges?

Quick Commentary: Looks a lot better. When I'm less tired, I'll go through it again to make sure there's a newspaper/police radio faction in each range for tech and for magic.

Right now, though, three huge errors jump out at me (all of which I bug reported, and which I'll post in a second to today's patch notes discussion thread as well): Coralax, Legacy Chain, and Luddites, three explicitly magical groups, are dropping only tech salvage. I'm assuming that this was just an editing error.

I would also make a pretty strong case that, given their role as middlemen between the Warriors and the Hellions in the illegal magical artifact trade, and given how many players farm the Frostfire mission and how big that mission is, that the Outcasts should drop both tech and magic.

Updated. Address all questions and comments to that thread, please. Mods, please lock and un-sticky this thread.

There are two kinds of invention salvage: tech, and magic. This distinction has NOTHING to do with which characters can use that salvage in their recipes, nor which recipes they can make. The distinction between tech invention salvage and magical invention salvage relates only to which loot table (or tables) any given NPC uses. Whether defeated NPCs drop tech invention salvage, magical invention salvage, or a mix of both, is determined entirely by their faction:
<ul type="square">[*]Magic Only: Banished Pantheon, Cabal, Cap au Diable Gremlins, Carnival of Souls, Circle of Thorns, Fir Bolg, Ghosts (Croatoa), Hellions, Lanaruu, Minions of Igneous, Psychic Clockwork, Red Caps, Rularuu, Slag Golems, Snakes, Spectral Pirates, Tsoo, Tuatha de Danaan, Wailers, Warriors.[*]Tech Only: Arachnoids, Cage Consortium Guards, Coralax, Council, Crey, Devouring Earth, Dockworkers, Family, Freakshow, Gold Brickers, Hydra, Infected, Knives of Artemis, Legacy Chain, Lost, Luddites, Malta, Mooks, Nemesis Army, Outcasts, Paragon Police Department, Prisoners, Rikti, Rogue Isles Police, Security Guards, Shivans, Skulls, Sky Raiders, Spetzsnaz Commandos, Trolls, Turrets, Vahzilok, Wyvern.[*]Mixture of Magic and Tech: Arachnos, Clockwork, Ghosts (ghost ship), Longbow, Scrapyarders, Void Hunters.[/list]Within each type of invention salvage, there are three levels of rarity: common, uncommon, and rare. Within each combination of rarity and type of invention salvage, there are three "tiers" that correspond to different level ranges, which I am calling tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3. You can see this variation in the order in which salvage is listed on the consignment house. There are 6 types of salvage in each tier, rarity, and type, and they are clustered together. So, for example, of the 18 kinds of common tech salvage, the first six are tier 1, the second six are tier 2, and the last six are tier 3. They are, in the order they're listed at Wentworth's and on the Black Market:

Tech Common:<ul type="square">[*]Tier 1: Human Blood Sample, Inanimate Carbon Rod, Computer Virus, Simple Chemical, Brass, Boresight.[*]Tier 2: Improvised Cybernetic, Inert Gas, Scientific Theory, Circuit Board, Stabilized Mutant Genome, Iron.[*]Tier 3: Kinetic Weapon, Temporal Analyzer, Ceramic Armor Plate, Hydraulic Piston, Silver, Mathematical Proof.[/list]Tech Uncommon:<ul type="square">[*]Tier 1: Mutant Blood Sample, Heavy Water, Daemon Program, Chemical Formula, Polycarbon, Scope.[*]Tier 2: Commercial Cybernetic, Corrosive Gas, Scientific Law, Data Drive, Mutant DNA Strand, Steel.[*]Tier 3: Energy Weapon, Temporal Tracer, Titanium Shard, Pneumatic Piston, Gold, Chaos Theorem.[/list]Tech Rare:<ul type="square">[*]Tier 1: Alien Blood Sample, Enriched Plutonium, Source Code, Complex Chemical Formula, Plasma Converter, Heads Up Display.[*]Tier 2: Military Cybernetic, Reactive Gas, Conspiratorial Evidence, Holographic Memory, Mutating Genome, Impervium.[*]Tier 3: Photonic Weapon, Chronal Skip, Rikti Alloy, Positronic Matrix, Platinum, Synthetic Intelligence Unit.[/list]Magic Common:<ul type="square">[*]Tier 1: Ancient Artifact, Luck Charm, Clockwork Winder, Spell Scroll, Spiritual Essence, Runebound Armor.[*]Tier 2: Masterwork Weapon, Rune, Demonic Blood Sample, Alchemical Silver, Ancient Bone, Spell Ink.[*]Tier 3: Nonmelting Ice, Fortune, Ruby, Demonic Threat Report, Regenerating Flesh, Spirit Thorn.[/list]Magic Uncommon:<ul type="square">[*]Tier 1: Unearthed Relic, Temporal Sands, Clockwork Gear, Volume of the Obsidium Liborum, Psionic Ectoplasm, Soulbound Armor.[*]Tier 2: Ensorcelled Weapon, Symbol, Blood of the Incarnate, Alchemical Gold, Carnival of Shadows Mask, Living Tattoo.[*]Tier 3: Unquenchable Flame, Destiny, Sapphire, Psionic Threat Report, Bleeding Stone, Thorn Tree Vine.[/list]Magic Rare:<ul type="square">[*]Tier 1: Lament Box, Strand of Fate, Psionicly Charged Brass, Page from the Malleus Mundi, Psionic Manifestation, Symbiotic Armor.[*]Tier 2: Deific Weapon, Empowered Sigil, Black Blood of the Earth, Enchanted Impervium, Mu Vestment, Soul Trapped Gem.[*]Tier 3: Pangean Soil, Prophesy, Diamond, Magical Conspiracy, Essence of the Furies, Hamidon Goo.[/list]You have a chance to get invention salvage whenever you defeat any NPC that cons green or above except for Underlings and Objects. This includes times when you are exemplared or malefactored down to a lower level, including times that you are auto-exemplared such as in PvP zones or when you're a member of a task force.

According to the developers the odds of getting invention salvage are: minions 8%, lieutenants and snipers 10.64%, bosses and elite bosses 25.00%, and archvillains and monsters 43.22%. Which tier of salvage is dropped is determined entirely by the level of the NPC you defeat. The tiers work like this:
<ul type="square">[*]NPC level 4-19: Tier 1 only.[*]NPC level 20-25: Mixture of Tier 1 and Tier 2.[*]NPC level 26-34: Tier 2 only.[*]NPC level 35-39: Mixture of Tier 2 and Tier 3.[*]NPC level 40-54: Tier 3 only.[/list]For example, let's say that you're looking for Demonic Blood Samples. That's a Magic, Common, Tier 2 invention salvage item. This has a chance of dropping from any level 20 to 39 NPC that cons green to you except for underlings, objects, and those that are listed as Tech Only. However, since any of the NPCs listed as both tech and magical will drop half tech and half magical, your chances of getting a Demonic Blood Sample are doubled if you defeat NPCs that are listed under Magic only. Furthermore, if you defeat enemies that are level 20-25, half of the salvage will be Tier 1, cutting your odds in half; similarly, half the salvage from enemies level 35-39 will be Tier 3. So your best odds would come from fighting level 26-34 Banished Pantheon, Cabal, Circle of Thorns, Fir Bolg, Ghosts, Red Caps, Slag Golems, Tuatha de Danaan, Tsoo, or Warriors. Or else you can go to the zone(s) where people in that range of levels are fighting those enemies and offer to buy their Demonic Blood Samples directly from them.

Invention salvage goes into its own personal inventory, the size of which goes up as you increase in level from 3 items at level 1 all the way up to 50 items at level 45 and up. For most of your career, from level 5 through 35, the limit will be 30 items. Each character also has a Personal Invention Salvage inventory that can be accessed from Pocket D, from the Vault Reserve businesses in the same zones as the consignment houses, and from any supergroup base that has the necessary access item. This is one storage vault that is accessed from all of those locations, not one in each of them, and it holds the same number of items that you can carry on your character in your regular inventory. You may also choose to use some or all of your buy/sell/store slots at the consignment house for stacks of up to 10 of any one kind of salvage.

You can sell invention salvage, like almost anything else, at the consignment house. If you dump a whole stack of one type of salvage into a slot at the consignment house and put a price on it, that price will be multiplied by the size of the stack, the consignment house fee will be determined based on that amount, and you will pay that fee immediately. People then bid on and buy each individual piece, not the whole stack at once. So, for example,if you put a stack of 10 Luck Charms up for sale at the best price and somebody bids your price or above on only 1, or for only at most 3 of them, or for any number of them up to 10, you will sell them just that many and the rest will still be for sale. Or, if you don't want to mess with the consignment house, you can just go ahead and sell salvage to any NPC vendor that buys or sells anything, such as enhancement vendors or contacts or the inspiration selling bartenders in Pocket D. All such vendors pay a fixed price per item based only on the rarity of the salvage, not the level: common 250, uncommon 1000, rare 5000. A piece of common salvage from a level 4 NPC sells for the same price as a piece of common salvage from a level 53 NPC.

Should I assume that you're going to read the answer when you didn't read any of the above answers? Yes. The question is answered in the main body of the top posting, and at least once underneath it. Yes, you get salvage at the mob's level when exemplared down.

Sweet. I just finished a minor update to this guide, but I'll hold off for a couple of days. This is the best news I've gotten all day, the first thing out of all of the economic analysis I've written for this issue that they're actually going to respond to. I'm relieved.

Yes. There are minor things I'd change about PvP in this game if I were allowed to, but overall, yes.

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The impact of this is long queues for the tech item at Wentworth. The tech item being sold for insane prices.

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This is, of course, seriously exacerbated by the fact that people have just barely enough auction house slots to sell their manufactured items, uncommon and rare salvage, and unwanted recipes. Of the thousands of common salvage items per hour looted, look how few end up on the auction houses.

If the system goes live looking like this, what you're going to see is people of all levels standing in Atlas Park and in Port Oakes spamming non-stop for Boresights, in particular.

I'm working on refinining my own analysis (I'm a retired professional systems analyst) and recommendations, to be posted late tonight to give me a better chance of catching Castle's eye first thing Monday morning (with any luck). That'll appear separate from the guide update.

Quick Reply: revision coming. For now, add a few more groups:
<ul type="square">[*]Mixture of Magic and Tech: Hydra, Security Guards, Spetsnaz Commandos[/list]But the big deal is that I screwed up the level ranges. By not jumping in even levels of 5 all the way through, the game tricked me. It actually works like this:
<ul type="square">[*]NPC level 4-19: Tier 1 only.[*]NPC level 20-25: Mixture of Tier 1 and Tier 2.[*]NPC level 26-34: Tier 2 only.[*]NPC level 35-39: Mixture of Tier 2 and Tier 3.[*]NPC level 40-54: Tier 3 only.[/list]

Nuts, too late to edit in two obvious omissions:
<ul type="square">[*]Magic only: Outcasts, Warriors.[/list]

Another quick addition: I forgot Legacy Chain (magic only) and Wyvern (both tech and magic).

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Tech Rare Tier 2 is missing an item from the beginning of the list, should be a type of cybernetic.

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Thanks! It's Military Cybernetic; fixed above. Also updated to include Mooks and Shivans, both of which drop both magic and tech.

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Yeah. Average teen? Hm.... Mayyyybe. .../quote]
War Witch! You're still around, still doing zone design! YAY!

May I make a minor suggestion about this one? She's a Paragon University student; there should be a "P" on that uniform shirt. With that style of shirt, you're stuck with a tiny one, but it should be there anyway.

(Thanks for answering my long ago question, by creating this character, of what the school colors were for Paragon University! Any chance of also getting an NPC in a chearleading costume inside the Aeon U library, in a coral and amber uniform?)

What's the mascot for Paragon University? Is their team the Paragon University Statesmen?

Editorial Comment: There are flatly not enough Tech Only NPC groups. And some of the ones listed as both make no sense to me:
<ul type="square">[*]Devouring Earth: Isn't Hamidon a scientist, inside all that goo?[*]Freakshow: With the exception of the Freakshow/Coralax hybrids, Freakshow are only shown as using tech.[*]Goldbrickers: All of their dialog, where they list things that Midas has sent them out to steal, lists tech items. And they ought to be the opposite of the Luddites.[*]Nemesis: Isn't Prince Nemesis the ultimate tech villain?[*]Rikti: Isn't it a major plot point in the Rikti War that the Ritki have no magic?[*]Sky Raiders: When are they ever shown as using magic?[*]Vahzilok: Where in the Vahzilok story arcs are we ever shown Dr. V or any of his minions using magic?[/list]And on the other hand, it makes no sense to me that Longbow is tech only. Mage Hunter Zhukara has a story arc that specifically sends you after a magic user who works for Longbow. And this penalizes villains who run PVP zone missions, since heroes who do so get both tech and magic invention salvage, but villains get only tech.

There are two kinds of invention salvage: tech, and magic. This distinction has NOTHING to do with which characters can use that salvage in their recipes, nor which recipes they can make. The distinction between tech invention salvage and magical invention salvage relates only to which loot table (or tables) any given NPC uses. Whether defeated NPCs drop tech invention salvage, magical invention salvage, or a mix of both, is determined entirely by their faction:
<ul type="square">[*]Magic Only: Banished Pantheon, Cabal, Cap au Diable Gremlins, Carnival of Souls, Circle of Thorns, Coralax, Devouring Earth, Fir Bolg, Hellions, Legacy Chain, Luddites, Red Caps, Skulls, Slag Golems, Snakes, Spectral Pirates, Tuatha de Danaan, Tsoo, Wailers.[*]Tech Only: Arachnoids, Clockwork, Longbow, Rularuu.[*]Mixture of Magic and Tech: Arachnos, Cage Consortium Guards, Council, Crey, Family, Ghosts, Goldbrickers, Freakshow, Infected, Knives of Artemis, Lanaruu, Lost, Malta, Minions of Igneous, Mooks, Nemesis Army, Paragon Police Department, Rikti, Rogue Isles Police, Scrapyarders, Shivans, Sky Raiders, Trolls, Turrets, Vahzilok, Void Hunters, Wyvern.[/list]Within each type of invention salvage, there are three levels of rarity: common, uncommon, and rare. Within each combination of rarity and type of invention salvage, there are three "tiers" that correspond to different level ranges, which I am calling tier 1, tier 2, and tier 3. You can see this variation in the order in which salvage is listed on the consignment house. There are 6 types of salvage in each tier, rarity, and type, and they are clustered together. So, for example, of the 18 kinds of common tech salvage, the first six are tier 1, the second six are tier 2, and the last six are tier 3. They are, in the order they're listed at Wentworth's and on the Black Market:

Tech Common:<ul type="square">[*]Tier 1: Human Blood Sample, Inanimate Carbon Rod, Computer Virus, Simple Chemical, Brass, Boresight.[*]Tier 2: Improvised Cybernetic, Inert Gas, Scientific Theory, Circuit Board, Stabilized Mutant Genome, Iron.[*]Tier 3: Kinetic Weapon, Temporal Analyzer, Ceramic Armor Plate, Hydraulic Piston, Silver, Mathematical Proof.[/list]Tech Uncommon:<ul type="square">[*]Tier 1: Mutant Blood Sample, Heavy Water, Daemon Program, Chemical Formula, Polycarbon, Scope.[*]Tier 2: Commercial Cybernetic, Corrosive Gas, Scientific Law, Data Drive, Mutant DNA Strand, Steel.[*]Tier 3: Energy Weapon, Temporal Tracer, Titanium Shard, Pneumatic Piston, Gold, Chaos Theorem.[/list]Tech Rare:<ul type="square">[*]Tier 1: Alien Blood Sample, Enriched Plutonium, Source Code, Complex Chemical Formula, Plasma Converter, Heads Up Display.[*]Tier 2: Military Cybernetic, Reactive Gas, Conspiratorial Evidence, Holographic Memory, Mutating Genome, Impervium.[*]Tier 3: Photonic Weapon, Chronal Skip, Rikti Alloy, Positronic Matrix, Platinum, Synthetic Intelligence Unit.[/list]Magic Common:<ul type="square">[*]Tier 1: Ancient Artifact, Luck Charm, Clockwork Winder, Spell Scroll, Spiritual Essence, Runebound Armor.[*]Tier 2: Masterwork Weapon, Rune, Demonic Blood Sample, Alchemical Silver, Ancient Bone, Spell Ink.[*]Tier 3: Nonmelting Ice, Fortune, Ruby, Demonic Threat Report, Regenerating Flesh, Spirit Thorn.[/list]Magic Uncommon:<ul type="square">[*]Tier 1: Unearthed Relic, Temporal Sands, Clockwork Gear, Volume of the Obsidium Liborum, Psionic Ectoplasm, Soulbound Armor.[*]Tier 2: Ensorcelled Weapon, Symbol, Blood of the Incarnate, Alchemical Gold, Carnival of Shadows Mask, Living Tattoo.[*]Tier 3: Unquenchable Flame, Destiny, Sapphire, Psionic Threat Report, Bleeding Stone, Thorn Tree Vine.[/list]Magic Rare:<ul type="square">[*]Tier 1: Lament Box, Strand of Fate, Psionicly Charged Brass, Page from the Malleus Mundi, Psionic Manifestation, Symbiotic Armor.[*]Tier 2: Deific Weapon, Empowered Sigil, Black Blood of the Earth, Enchanted Impervium, Mu Vestment, Soul Trapped Gem.[*]Tier 3: Pangean Soil, Prophesy, Diamond, Magical Conspiracy, Essence of the Furies, Hamidon Goo.[/list]Which tier of salvage is dropped is determined entirely by the level of the NPC you defeat. You can defeat any NPC from 4 levels below you and up, that is to say, any NPC that you would also get experience and/or influence or infamy for defeating. If you are exemplared or malefactored down to a lower level, you receive salvage at the enemy's level (but, reportedly, recipes at your own level). The tiers work like this:
<ul type="square">[*]NPC level 4-19: Tier 1 only.[*]NPC level 20-29: Mixture of Tier 1 and Tier 2.[*]NPC level 30-39: Mixture of Tier 2 and Tier 3.[*]NPC level 40-54: Tier 3 only.[/list]Example: Let's say that you're looking for Demonic Blood Samples. That's a Magic, Common, Tier 2 invention salvage item. This has a chance of dropping from any level 20 to 39 NPC that you can possibly get XP, inf, or both from except those that are listed as Tech Only, which in that level range means basically everybody but Longbow. However, since any of the NPCs listed as both tech and magical will drop half tech and half magical, your chances of getting a Demonic Blood Sample are doubled if you defeat NPCs that are listed under Magic only.

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How about we substitute Story Arcs for Mayhem/Safeguards?

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Or better yet, have Safeguards be another option for reciepes! I have no problam with Story Arcs, other than the fact that they screw 50s.

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Absolutely! Now that I could get behind, more or less: have Safeguard/Mayhem missions also give Pool B parts, the same parts that story arc completion does. It makes sense; 5 police/newspaper missions followed by a tougher safeguard/mayhem mission is, after all, a 6 mission story arc of its own. To quote a different doctor, "I like this plan. I'm excited to be a part of it. Let's do it!"

Hmm. OK, Doc, I see your point. But consider what this does to people in the end game, because there already aren't enough level 45 to 50 story arcs to go around.

Almost by definition, somebody who is level 50 has run out of story arcs. They can't go back and do them again. This cuts them completely out of being able to earn those pieces. Now, by definition they could just go ahead and buy the pieces they need. But if the pieces are tied to the level range of the story arc, it's not as if anybody who's level 45 to 50 and doing those story arcs is going to have any to spare, now, is it? Compare the number of level 45-50 story arcs to the number of pieces that a character is going to need to complete their sets. If that number isn't at least twice the other, then the people who are still doing the level 45 to 50 story arcs aren't going to generate enough pieces to sell to the people who've outleveled them.

What you've done there is created a form of permanent scarcity, one that nobody can do anything about. Enemies can be farmed. Task/Strike Forces can be repeated. Trials can be repeated. There are, however, an absolute hard-coded limit on the number of story arcs allowed per character.

(If there were 5 or 6 times as many story arcs in the level 30-50 range as there are now, which is something we keep asking for, then we wouldn't be having this discussion, probably.)

But I do also want to ask one other thing about your reasoning. Does this game really need even more incentives not to street sweep? We already penalize street sweepers with double debt on defeats, deprive them of end-of-story-arc XP and inf, and deprive them of the free SO reward that all level 25+ story arcs give. As a result, the Hazard Zones other than the Hollows sit completely empty, and that little old lady whose purse is getting snatched is going to be standing there on that corner for a long, long time. Some of us would like to find a street sweeping team already, but it makes no sense for us to do so or for anybody to join us. And now you're going to create a new category of scarce object, one that there can not possibly be enough of to meet the demand, and only give it to people who don't street sweep? Is that really what you want to do?

Because the way things are going now, the only reason to have any enemies on the streets is for the "defeat n" missions, local color, and to give people hazards to navigate around on their way to a mission. Which is OK, I guess, but not really what some of us wanted. And how you expect us to be able to put together a team for the ubiquitous "defeat n enemies 5 levels above you that only spawn in groups of 8 or more" missions while stacking the odds against anybody wanting to do that as hard as you already have, let alone are planning on doing again here, I have no idea.

I guess what I'm saying is that this isn't primarily an Inventions problem, but an overall problem with the story arc system. But there's enough out-of-balance with the story arc system, in both directions, that I'm not sure you should be tying any more critical systems to it.

Let me add some more numbers. I got curious; my (long abandoned) villain SG has a level 3 tech empowerment station and a level 2 arcane one. So I don't know the exact ingredients for the level 3 arcane buffs. But here's what I do have for the recipes for the various empowerment station buffs:

<font class="small">Code:[/color]<hr /><pre>Tech ... Mat Pow Proto H/w S/w Exp
Mystic/Arcane ... Elem Foci Glyph Ess ? ?

Confusion Resistance 1 1
Fear Resistance 1 1
Fire Resistance 1 1
Grant Invisibility 1 6
Increase Attack Speed 2 2
Increase Flight Speed 2
Increase Jump Speed 2
Increase Perception 2 1
Increase Run Speed 2
Knockback Increase 1
Knockback Protection 1
Lethal Resistance 1 3
Sleep Resistance 1 2
Slow Resistance 1 1
Smashing Resistance 2 2

Cold Resistance 1 4 1
Disorient Resistance 1 3 1
Endurance Drain Reduction 5 1 1
Energy Resistance 4 3 1 1
Immobilize Resistance 2 3 1
Increase Recovery 6 1
Negative Energy Resistance 4 1 1
Toxic Resistance 7 1

Hold Resistance 4 4 2 2 1 1
Psionic Resistance 10 3 3 1</pre><hr />

As a rule of thumb, you can build tech material, tech power, mystic element, and mystic foci out of salvage that drops from any mob. Tech hardware, tech prototype, arcane glyph, and arcane essence require salvage that seldom drops from lieutenants and mostly only drops from bosses. Tech software and experimental tech (and presumably the two arcane, mystical, magical or whatever whatsits the level 3 buffs require) use salvage that seems to very seldom drop, and mostly from bosses, elite bosses, signature heroes, and archvillains. And as a rule of thumb, you can estimate that it will take either 3 or 4 pieces of raw salvage for each one piece of the above that you refine.

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- Buffs cannot be stacked
- Damage Resistances are 5%

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Clarification (or update) based on my just having tried this:

The same buff can not be stacked on top of itself. However, you can have as many different buffs going as you want. For example, for my test, I was running both attack speed buff and lethal resistance buff.

Secondly, the lethal resist, at least (1 tech material, 3 tech power) was a lot more than 5%. At least 25%, maybe 30%, roughly equivalent to a tanker's Temp Invulnerability. I could spot the exact second that it wore off; the chain-gun lieutenant firing on me suddenly jumped from 2 per shot to 3 per shot. I didn't check the log to get the fractional part, but the difference went from "Health with 3 DO's was keeping up with the damage just fine" to "holy cats my health is vanishing fast" on a squishy.

And yeah, 2 tech power and 2 tech material for a roughly 25% or 30% rate of fire increase? Absolutely worth it. Cut right through the glue-grenade speed debuff, and the rest of the time gave me the equivalent of a 25% to 30% damage increase, equivalent to roughly one extra SO in every attack power. You were asking about perma-hasten? This is Hasten, no? All by itself?

That being said, in that same hour, I got roughly 8 raw salvage, or, about 1/3rd of what I used making the buffs for that hour. It's not long-term sustainable, and that's probably on purpose.

(Obviously what I need to do is use my solo-friendly characters to farm salvage for my not-so-soloable characters. And save up for PvP, too.)

Man, these things have got to be COH's best kept secret.

I noticed something odd. Winter Horde and Snaptooth give tech salvage. Mostly EChips. Why are their salvageable EChips in the snowmen? Is this a Camp Wannaweep inside joke, or a bug?

Other than the crashes that seem to be related to everybody and his dog being in the same spot at the same time, my only minor criticisms are that I think the Ear Muffs should have shown up under both plausible spots, both as ears and as detail 1, and that the disappearing and re-appearing cave map is actually even more annoying than the first test version where we only got the above-ground map. At least then I could still see my team-mates on the map.

Otherwise, woohoo!

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Here's a real kicker of a glitch. Was doing Frostfire and the mission had no ice or fire effects during the whole mission on the wals or floors. But the whole team was still slipping and sliding on.....bare carpeted floors.

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Along the same lines - all the graphics are missing in the Shadow Shard molepoints, as are the sand bags in Portal Corp. The items are actually there (you can play with people's minds by doing poses on the PI sand bags ) but are invisible.

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Yeah, I think there's some missing or broken textures. I verified all files and it didn't help, but I've got another example. Remember that very early mission to stop the Skulls from attacking a rave, the custom mission map that got re-used for Paragon Dance Party? A lot of the textures were missing from it, too. None of the laser beams showed up, the bar was invisible, and the chain link fence around one area on the dance floor was invisible. Solid items were still solid, I kept bumping into them, but they couldn't be seen. (Nvidia 6600GT, driver 91.47 if it matters.)

Unlocking new powers should have been on that poll, that would have been my pick. Costumes after that, and some of the villain groups after that. I'm thinking Sky Raiders, Freakshow, Crey, and Nemesis in particular, the science-fictiony ones. There just isn't enough steampunk or cyberpunk in this world.

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But they won’t consider (in game) it worth a lot of time/effort to create a space that’s customized for group identity.

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I think you've still missed the point. It's not that it isn't worth it to us to customize a base, Statesman. It's just that until the basic functional items are paid for, nobody can possibly afford it. And maybe not even then, not with rent as high as it is.

At 500 to 5000 prestige per decorative item, I can put in 10 or 20 or 30 decorative items. Or I can put in one more teleporter.

On a basic free base plot, there is just barely room for everything needed to make a minimally raid-capable base. It can just barely be fit in, and it almost takes exploiting to do it (namely, taking advantage of the fact that the arcane raid teleporter fits in a 2x2 room but the tech version doesn't). Even if someone could afford the 100,000 prestige to put in the smallest decorative room, there's no place left on an 8x8 plot to put it.

So unless bases were meant to be a feature of only the five or six biggest supergroups per server, you really, really have your costs out of whack here, I think. Please go back to my previous message, where I asked you to perform some basic calculations? Since apparently you won't do it, here, I did it for you.

A fully functional villain base, one that needs only three standard transporters and six beacons, costs 2,424,000 prestige. Except that I know I'm short by about 25,000 to 50,000 prestige, because I couldn't find the cost of the combat logs medical aux item. But let's round it down to 2.4M prestige before even the first non-functional item goes in.

Your average player seems to earn about 250 prestige per hour. So that's about nine thousand and six hundred player-hours of prestige earning just to install the basic functionality. And every, say, 5000 prestige decorative item just set that goal back by another 20 player-hours. And note that that's assuming you cram it all into the 8x8 plot, which can just barely be done: 1 entry room, 1 workshop, 1 power center, 1 control room, 3 teleport bays, 1 medical bay, and 1 vault. No decorative rooms, no place to put them. Add another minimum of another million or so prestige, another 4000 player-hours of prestige, just to add your first decorative room. Also note that that initial estimate of 2.4M prestige includes exactly zero defensive items for the base. Not one.

NOW do you see why nobody but the wealthiest and biggest and oldest supergroups decorates bases? It's not that the rest of us don't care about these features. On the contrary, when I first started a supergroup, I went all out on decorating it -- only to have my players compliment me on the design, and then ask me every day when we were going to get any new useful items for the base. No, it's not that we don't care ... it's that we can't afford even the first 500 prestige decorative item. Even in the hypothetical best-case scenario of a 75-person supergroup, with no alts, it'll take them 128 player-hours per person just to get to that minimum raid-capable base, 128 player-hours per person before they can afford to put in a table lamp.

So, um, no. You really don't understand what's wrong with the design here.

P.S. That estimated number of player-hours worth of prestige doesn't factor in the lost player-hours' worth of prestige each month to base upkeep. So these are actually very optimistic numbers.