Lazarus

[ QUOTE ]
the hospital map has some serious spawning issues. for a long time the therapist would appear in the last room, with the allies in the front and the bad guy in the back room too. i have tried to solve this.


[/ QUOTE ]

Take a look at how many details you have an how many the map allows (ie. having 6 bosses in a map that allows 5 total.) MA sometimes lets you publish even if you've gone over the limit and doing so will cause your spawns to randomize no matter what locations they are set to. Sometimes details will fail to spawn as well due to this. You'll also get the randomization if you set a detail to a spot that doesn't exist, like Front on a map that only allows Middle/Back.

[ QUOTE ]
the little nightmares are much better with more than one person on a team. they tend to focus their siphon on one person. once the get that boost they are a sight to see... if i could remove that heal from their set i would.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't recall them healing at all. It's the stacking Siphon Power and Siphon Speed that makes the almost aggravating enough to quit the arc. Being sent to the slow cap repeatedly and seeing my Damage Bonus plunging into double-digit negative numbers is not fun and makes those little minions a drag to fight off.

[ QUOTE ]
the part with the knight running pell mell is both funny and not. there is not much i could do about that except maybe making him defensive. not sure if i want to do that...

[/ QUOTE ]

Never put allies on Aggressive. Fight Defensively already lets them aggro quite a bit, Aggressive makes their aggro radius much larger.

[ QUOTE ]
i am fair with the ambushes. it is too bad you got one of the triggers the first time off. i kind of like destroying the unhappy memories...

[/ QUOTE ]

Like I said, the Little Nightmares are so aggravating that I didn't want to risk summoning any more of them at all.

[ QUOTE ]
SS has always spawned in that last room, so i have never had problems with reaching allies in that mission.

[/ QUOTE ]

Run that mission enough times and she'll eventually spawn on the floor instead of the top of the staircase instead. I've used that map and the non-burning version a lot and I know that it's a coin-flip as to where the boss will spawn in that room. I don't know if allies are coded specially to have priority in the lower spawn point, but I have seen other maps where the ally accidentally spawned back behind the EB and was unreachable for the battle.

[ QUOTE ]
i thought i fixed that final room. they are patrols in that mission and one or two would spawn in that room which would make it crowded, to say the least. i thought i shifted the patrols to middle, rather than any where they would be trapped. now that i think about it there might be a battle that gets mixed in too. i will look at that.

[/ QUOTE ]

So that's why there were Shadow Shard Reflections in that room as well.

What is the secondary set on The Door? He is very, very resistant to Lethal Damage and took ages to kill. With all his illusions and aura effects I couldn't tell for sure but I suspect Willpower. Illusions on a AV is just nasty enough as it is.

Yes, level ranges is an announced feature of issue 15.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Dude! Spoiler warning on that kind of thing.

[/ QUOTE ]

You'll be devastated to know Jesus comes back to life.

[/ QUOTE ]

Wait, Jesus died?

Alright, I've finished my review of "Two Chicks at Once" that you had requested. I'll run "Curiouser and Curiouser" soon as payment for your review of "MacGuffin Delivery Service".

Oh and Vikki Vandale was pleased at being Miss December.

Arc ID: 83920
Arc Title: Two Chicks at Once
Author: @Interface
Description: Working for Lord Recluse, you discovery Longbow has launched a cunning and titillating plot to undermine the Rogue Isles. With your help, Lord Recluse will strike back in kind.
Rating: *****

================================

Character usead: Vikki Vandale, Level 50 War Mace/Willpower Brute
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50

================================

Mission 1:
The contact is none other than Lord Recluse himself and I can tell already from the tone of the briefing that there is little to be taken seriously in this arc. Especially from the part where they admitted that torturing a Longbow Operative consisted of locking him in a room with Becky the Tarantula Mistress for a few hours. I'm tasked with infiltrating a Longbow base and finding out who their new financier is.

I enter a Longbow base, of which I am informed is sparkingly new and very tastefully decorated. The Longbow are much more tasteful as well, and all female now I see. What is funny is that despite having annoying secondaries such as Devices and Ninjitsu, they're actually weaker than regular Longbow as far as I can see.

Still annoying though to have Web Grenade triple-stacked on me.

After searching the base over I found a crate and opened it to find, stacks and stacks of calenders featuring "well-equipped" female Longbow soldiers wearing...well...

I think I have an idea what their new source of funding is.

Mission 2:
After examining the calendars closely, Lord Recluse has decided on a course of action as this not only provides Longbow with greater funds but also a major Public Relations boost.

He decides to release his own "Babes of Arachnos" calendar and beat them at their own game. My next order of business is to infiltrate a Crey lab where they are reported to be working on several new, highly advanced products for enhancing the female appearance.

The mission entry pop-up was worth a laugh, but the author needs to pay a little more attention to their objectives. Single/Plural Nav Text is your friend!

The Crey lab was rather uneventful aside from the three items I picked up: a Jar of nanotech lotion, a book on increasing charisma, and a chest slider. The computer objective was oddly an Arachnos computer instead of a Tech one, so it looked really out of place. The mission could use some dialog and setpiece events to make it more interesting.

Mission 3:
Lord Recluse informs me that there has been no shortage of volunteers and he didn't even need to convince them. However he needs a few more big names for the photoshoot and has run into some problems with Ghost Widow not showing up on film (or so she claims but nobody wants to press the issue) and the marketability of Barracuda, so it's up to me to convince Ice Mystral and Silver Mantis to participate.

First up is Ice Mystral and since Lord Recluse knows that she has a huge gambling debt from hanging out at the Golden Giza so much, sends me to get her debt marker and leverage it against her.

I arrive at a small casino where Johnny Sonata is hanging out and "talk" the old man into handing over the marker. He put up a fight but sure enough I got it, and boy what a debt it was.

Mission 4:
Black Scorpion informs me that the only way I'll get Silver Mantis to agree to the photo shoot is to beat her in a duel, so he told her that some punk hero called her out for a brawl. I go off to meet Silver Mantis and assume the role of said hero.

The venue is the Pocket D arena and the map chosen is the burning Arachnos base map. It's filled with Infernal's Demons for some reason and along the way I find Ice Mystral as an ally. Oddly she was guarded by Arachnos and once freed tells me that she looks forward to helping me beat up Silver Mantis, whom we met just down the hall.

I don't know why the author went with the Pocket D arena idea, really no special explanation was needed for fight as it's not like we haven't fought Silver Mantis for real several times already as a villain.


Mission 5:
The photo shoot is complete and soon the calendar will be on its way to stores all over Paragon. Lord Recluse even arranged for some late night cable ads.

Then he gets a call that Longbow is raiding the printing plant and sends me to make sure that they don't sabotage all our efforts. I quickly meet up with Ice Mystral at the entrance and head in to find Silver Mantis and then save all of the crates of calendars only to get ambushed by Miss Liberty herself! She wasn't too much of a bother with both Ice Mystral and Silver Mantis backing me up and with her defeated the "Babes of Arachnos" calendar ships and is a major success. I even got to keep one as a souvenir.

================================

The Verdict:
While the humor is mostly juvenile I still found it to be a very amusing arc. Your mileage will definitely vary. The only things I can suggest is to tone down some of the Devices usage on the Longbow (I don't think it's only the Nullifiers throwing all those Web Grenades at me) and to add some dialog events in mission 2 to liven it up. The author might also want to keep in mind that assuming that the player character is female may lead to some awkward moments, especially in the souvenir.

5-stars for the sheer fun and memorability.

Well since you already gave me feedback on "The Portal Bandits" when you asked me to do "Two Chicks at Once", I'll submit a different arc and run one of your other ones in addition.

Arc Name: MacGuffin Delivery Service
Arc ID: 1567
Faction: Family, Tsoo, Circle of Thorns, Carnies, Freakshow, Council, Paragon Police
Morality: Villainous
Level Range: 35-40
Difficulty Level: Easy-Medium
Synopsis: A routine late-night pawn shop robbery turns into a major ordeal when you pick up a mysterious little statue that everyone seems to want for themselves. You don't know what it does, why it's so important, or why you can't seem to just get rid of it.

Well I'm not quite sure if they're all epics, but they are in the 4-5 mission range.

Arc Name: MacGuffin Delivery Service
Arc ID: 1567
Faction: Family, Tsoo, Circle of Thorns, Carnies, Freakshow, Council, Paragon Police
Morality: Villainous
Level Range: 35-40
Difficulty Level: Easy-Medium
Synopsis: A routine late-night pawn shop robbery turns into a major ordeal when you pick up a mysterious little statue that everyone seems to want for themselves. You don't know what it does, why it's so important, or why you can't seem to just get rid of it.

Arc Name: The Amulet of J'gara
Arc ID: 1709
Faction: Tuatha de Dannon, Circle of Thorns, Fir Bolg, Void Demons
Morality: Heroic
Level Range: 25-33
Difficulty Level: Easy-Medium
Synopsis: A pair of Midnighters have disappeared while on a mission to Croatoa. What begins as a rescue leads to an assault on the Midnight Club itself and a battle for your own mind and soul. (AV present, Allies are provided.)

Arc Name: The Portal Bandits
Arc ID: 3326
Faction: Crey, Rikti, Nagan Hegemony
Morality: Heroic
Level Range: 35-50
Difficulty Level: Medium-Hard
Synopsis: A mysterious group has invaded a Portal Corp lab and sealed themselves within. The PPD has been unable to get inside and a hero is needed to enter the lab, defeat the invaders, and discover their intentions. (EB/AVs are present, an Ally is given each time. May be challenging.)

Might as well throw in parkin's word of the week: Arcanist.

Arc ID: 119228
Arc Title: Hero Therapy! (TM)
Author: @Ridiculous Girl
Description: Do you have nightmares about the Vahzilok? Can't sleep because you failed to defeat that boss over and over again? Do you let your teammates down because you run away from Malta Sappers? Do clowns make you have an anxiety attack? Try Hero Therapy (TM)! Start today!
Rating: *****

================================

Character used: Zetsumei Mitsukai, Level 50 Dual Blades/Dark Armor Scrapper
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 20, 29, 40, 50

================================

Mission 1:
Normally I really hate it when the level rangs change during an arc, but it appears that this one will have good reasons for it. The Therapist here informs me that he will be subjecting me to some dream therapy to help me cope with the stress from a long career as a hero. While he won't name names, he tells me that I am far from the first of his clients to try this and that I'd be surprised at who some of the other clients are. We begin the treatment by having The Therapist hypnotize me so that I may confront my inner fear.

I find myself inside the Midnight Club and have been reduced to level 20. First things first, I go to find the Therapist inside the dream as he told me to. Inside the main room of the club I find some odd things, like Trolls arguing with Vazhilok Abominations and some Little Dream People. Searching around I find the Therapist being held captive by some Circle of Thorns.

Upon freeing the Therapist he informs me that my task is to confront my grade school librarian. He also tells me not to ask him why, it's my dream after all. He accompanies me as a passive observer and along the way to find the Librarian I came across a knight in shining armor who was being detained by Outcasts. The silent yet friendly knight joins me and assists me in defeating the Librarian, who oddly was only a Lieutenant.

The Therapist informs me that after conquering the Librarian she will be serving me in my dreams for henceforth and to expect the Knight to show up in every dream.

Mission 2:
We begin our second session and the Therapist tells me that we will be going deeper this time and I will be encountering tougher foes.

This time I am level 29 and inside the Abandoned Hospital. I come across a battle between Warriors, Banished Pantheon, and Little Dream People as I search for the Therapist, as well as a number of bodybags and piles of bones on the ground which apparently represent broken promises and ruined friendships.

I found the Therapist being detained by the Tsoo, although it appeared that he was tormenting them with stories. He informs me that this time I am to face my own Vanity. Along the way I freed the Knight from some Warriors and saw some Tsoo fighting Freakshow. Somehow I triggered an ambush of Little Nightmares, these were really annoying as they all had Kinetics. Having Siphon Power and Siphon Speed stacked on you 5 times is not fun.

Finally at the end of the map I found Vanity, who appeared to take the form of some sort of Greek goddess. She was a boss who used Archery/Trick Arrow and put up much more of a fight than the Librarian did.

I was told by the Therapist that the Librarian was supposed to be in this dream too but I never found her.

Mission 3:
It is time for the third session and the Therapist informs me that it will be the toughest yet. I am to confront a painful memory and once again the Knight will be there to help me, along with my conquered Vanity.

I enter a dream of a burning building and see the Therapist straight ahead, being detained by Council troops. This time everything is level 40 and there are Crey guarding people representing repressed memories. I free the Therapist and he tells me to go forth and defeat my Secret Shame.

I found the Knight again and ran into a common issue in a cramped map like this, the tendency for allies to aggro other spawns and run amok. This was made worse by the annoying Little Nightmares, who are triggered off of something (not sure if it's hostages or particular Dream People spawns or what) and them running around at high speed was causing the Knight to go wild.

I found Vanity right before the room containing the Secret Shame. This floor has problematic placement I know as she could very easily have spawned in the other room with the Secret Shame blocking your path to her.

The Secret Shame was a little girl with fire powers, an elite boss backed up by Red Caps. She spoke in some cryptic statements throughout the battle until her end.

Mission 4:
It is time for the fourth session and the Therapist tells me that it will be the toughest but I will have access to the Knight and Secret Shame for it. Figures that it ends up being in the sewers. Good thing I can change clothes at will in a dream.

I came across a parking meter and decided to smash it. This summoned a horded of Little Nightmares. After that I decided to leave destructible objects alone for the rest of the mission. It's a shame as there are a lot of glowies and destructibles in this mission but those Little Nightmares are so damn annoying that I'm discouraged from interacting with them.

I found the Therapist and he informs me that my last obstacle is a door that I must go through. I set off to find it. Just before the last room I found the Knight and Secret Shame. In the last room, which revealed that this was the Vahzilok Lab map, was The Door.

I had to collect myself a bit as the last room SUCKS! Right upon opening the door into the room we had aggroed a dozen foes who were all collected right behind it, this included Dream People bosses, which are Gravity Control and can stack a large number of slows on you. Then there is The Door, an Illusion AV who I assume is also Willpower judging from how little damage he takes and how he spotted us from halfway across the room and made things worse by summoning Phantasms and Spectral Terrors on top of us at the doorway. The Knight died fast and then I died, rezzed using Soul Transfer, and died again.

I came back from the hospital and stealthed into the room. The only reason I could clear out all of the other spawns in the room was because of a bug that allows The Door to keep aggroed on and attacking the now idle Secret Shame, who is happily being beaten to death. With the room cleared out I re-engaged The Door and killed him while he muttered on about this being experimental and the Therapist lying to me.

The Therapist congratulates me on completing the program.

================================

The Verdict:

For the most part this arc was well designed and engaging but had some glaring issues. This is the first one that gave a good reason for the level range changing over the course of the arc. I have seen that First there are the Little Nightmares, which should be toned down as they are really aggravating with having so many Kinetics powers on a minion and showing up in such large numbers. Secondly there is the final room with The Door, that encounter needs serious rebalancing as in its current state it is almost certain death the moment you open the door to that room for you and your allies, which makes it even more annoying when you have to come back from the hospital and have to face him alone now.

I still award 5-stars because I'm confident that the author will adjust these issues, so it'd be unfair to knock off an entire star for a single bad battle.

Changes made to "The Amulet of J'gara":
* Toned down the Claws set on the Pain Elemental. She was a bit too good at dealing pain.
* Added a mission between the Midnight Club raid and the final showdown. The big reveal is much less abrupt now.
* Changed the contact to Percy Winkley. He makes a bit more sense, especially in how he's standing right next to the Midnight Club door in Croatoa and Buck Salinger isn't.

[ QUOTE ]
Maybe those people that dislike Ventures reviews should quit reading his reviews?

Just a thought...

[/ QUOTE ]

Because it's not like there aren't other choices for reviews.

Changes made to "The Amulet of J'gara":
* Fixed some grammatical errors.
* Added some story elements to explain the plot better. The Tuatha de Dannon's motivations are revealed.
* Reworded the mission 2 debriefing a bit.
* Reworded the mission 3 briefing a bit.
* Reworded the mission 4 debriefing a bit.

[ QUOTE ]
freed first hostage. looks like some chained goals. good, that's always nice for unfolding a story inside a mission.

[/ QUOTE ]

Actually just use of the Plural Nav Text. Sitrix is at the back of the map all the time.

[ QUOTE ]
bah, Luis D'Artier is just a minion? He dies at first bunch of Tuatha, even though I had aggro locked down. He dives into melee anyway and dies to AEs. Kinda worthless as an ally and I feel a little less heroic losing him, even if out of my control.

[/ QUOTE ]

Limitation of the Midnighter Group itself. Buck also told you that they can teleport the Midnighters out, once the magic masking their location is dispeled so he didn't die. He was however trying to lead you to where they took Jeremiah deeper into the cave and wanted to help his comrade.

Anyhow, your mileage will vary. I never had trouble keeping him alive even when playing a Scrapper.

[ QUOTE ]

found Sitrix. the Tuatha delivered the Midnighteers to CoT for a reward? Hm. Seems a little unlikely and out of character. The Tuatha are supposed to be noble warriors cursed into bestial bodies. Mercenary work for Circle seems odd. Maybe better if they were manipulated by Circle spell guiding their bestial urges or something? Or maybe the Circle lied and claimed they could
free the Tuatha from the magics of the Red Caps.

[/ QUOTE ]

I wanted to leave some things vague in this arc, but I could add more if people are going to insist on having everything spelled out for them. Really the Tuatha's motivation is irrelevant in the long run.

[ QUOTE ]
And the mix of the fae magic of Croatoa and the demonic wizardry of Circle still seems odd to me.

[/ QUOTE ]

I guess. To me magic is magic.

[ QUOTE ]
so, Buck, hanging out in Croatoa, finds out about the attack before the hero fresh from interrogating the enemy about their plans?

[/ QUOTE ]

I cannot portray the travel time, but the idea was that the raiding party left just before you got to where Jeremiah was being held and that by the time you got back to Buck the raid was already underway. I guess I should just assume you are traveling instantly instead.

[ QUOTE ]

after all, if the Club could get a message out to Buck during the attack, wouldn't the Club have lots of allies on the way to help?

[/ QUOTE ]

He does tell you that more allies are on the way but that the Midnighters inside need help now so that is why you go in alone.

[ QUOTE ]
why was Mindskewer able to get the Circle into the Midnight Club?

[/ QUOTE ]

From the information she dredged out of Jeremiah's mind, as you were told in the clue he gave upon rescue. Villains get in with even less effort in Darren Wade's arc.


[ QUOTE ]
LOL. after the empath put Clear Mind on the Avatar of Initative, she ran off ahead of us! Appropriate!

[/ QUOTE ]

Amusingly, the Avatar of Initiative is an Empath. I should see if NPCs are finally using Thermal correctly as I never liked having to use Emapthy.

[ QUOTE ]
mission debriefing: Buck says the player hero looks shook up. might want to re-phrase. 1) makes assumption about internal reactions of hero and how they show it externally. and 2) would the character look shaken after recovering their Strength, Balance and Initative?

[/ QUOTE ]

Assuming they did recover them before the battle, those were optional objectives (hence the different text color). Also Buck is wholly unaware of that whole physic battle thing, as far as he knows the fight with Mindskewer took less than a minute from what was witnessed by the backup that arrived just as you fought her.

Now, let's see what I can do with all of this.

Maybe they are willing to meet with you but it there is a magic curse upon entering that limits your powers as a trap and since you need that info you have to go through with it anyways?

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
Flying Custom Mobs are immune to immobilizing effects which is a real treat for players with lots of knockdown attacks.


[/ QUOTE ]

Are you sure about that? My flying Energy/Rad defender regularly knocks flying customs out of the air.

[/ QUOTE ]

-Fly and Immobilize are not the same thing, it just happens that several Immobilization powers also do -Fly (Web Grenade, Entangling Arrow). There are also several Immob powers that don't do -Fly (Chillbain, Fire Circle) and powers that do -Fly without Immob (Air Superiority, Glue Arrow).

[ QUOTE ]
All this said, maps that you don't have unlocked are orange.

[/ QUOTE ]

I don't recall locked maps appearing in the menus at all. The only time I've seen maps go orange in the menu is when I was changing the mission map and already had more details placed than those other maps allowed for.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
DDDDOOOOOOOMMMMM!!!!!!!!!

Oh and second after redname!

Ok, in all seriousness, I predict next Tuesday for open/closed beta. Because that's the day I will be unavailable, of course.

[/ QUOTE ]

There is no closed beta, only open

[/ QUOTE ]

It's clopen beta.

There needs to be a very good and logical reason for the exemping. Missions with crazy varying level ranges is something that I automatically take a star off for if there is no justification for it.

My rule of thumb is to pick a level range and stick to it. If it's a high-level arc, then no Legacy Chain, etc. If you must have that low-mid level group, then design the entire arc to be played at that level.

[ QUOTE ]
I was just told by @Femfury (my sg leader), that what makes Hard level Superstrength nasty is the combo of Knockout blow from Standard, Footstomp from Hard, both boosted out of proportion by Rage from Hard. I hadn't realized that Rage would be quite that effective especially against certain AT/power combinations, thank you for pointing it out! I now have the Midas-Touched bosses set to Standard Superstrength, and the Extreme Sonics I'd always kept them at. (No one seems to point out Extreme Sonics, it can greatly reduce resistances, but lowering the damage output should balance things out, and visually it's neat to have the big golden sonic field for a Goldbricker.)

[/ QUOTE ]

Sonic Debuffs + Rage + Knockout Blow = Very Dead Brute

[ QUOTE ]
What's interesting about Maestro, is that some of his sonic effects are still the old grey-colored, pre-golden visuals.

[/ QUOTE ]

Maestro had sonics long before anyone else had them. It appears that for a lot of NPCs their animations are hard-coded into them. You'll also notice this with Behemoths still using the old Flares animation from years back and Claws Scrappers like Mynx, Bobcat, and her minions still using the old Strike and Slash animations. Then there's Requiem and how his 5th Column version is still Dark Melee/Dark Armor instead of Warshade powers like this Council version, despite both being called a Nictus in their descriptions.

Arc ID: 59147
Arc Title: Shades of Betrayal, Acts of Salvation
Author: @Dr. Spoon
Description: Discovery of the Well of Evermore leads the Circle of Thorns to tap into another source of magic, but at the price of destroying the Unseele world & our own.
Rating: ***

================================

Character used: Amanita Infernis, Level 36 Plant Control/Fire Assault Dominator
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 33-36

================================

I noticed something that is sure to be very annoying right from the start, this arc has level ranges bouncing all over the place. As I said at the start of this thread, lack of level ranges is a big pet peeve of mine and a reason to avoid even playing arcs. As this one jumps everywhere from level 5 to 54 with three of the five missions in the mid-30s, I'm going to have to use my level 36 character to avoid most of these insane level jumps. Hopefully she can still defeat the EB in mission 5 that the description warns me about. Anyhow, this is a star deducted already.

Mission 1:
The contact is a man I have never seen before named Aaron Kinkay. He tells me that I've been summoned to investigate a series of abnormally high magical readings that have been going on for several months but have been impossible to track. Surely I have felt them as they cause power fluctations in those with superpowers.

Umm, no. My mutant powers have been working very nice and steady for the last several months. Apparently I'm supposed to just roll with this though.

Anyhow, Aaron (who apparently works for the Midnight Squad) is sending me off to investigate the Grim Vale in Croatoa and look for whatever the Circle of Thorns is up to as Aaron assumes that it is them.

I show up in the Grim Vale with the objective to defeat Sicarius, who happens to be just in sight of the portal I arrived through. He's currently surrounded by some Fir Bolg. I wonder if I just got lucky with the spawn placement because afer I dispatched him with some help from his confused pumpkinhead buddies the mission ended. He said something about casting a curse for Eochai to activate. I ran around the map a bit but found no other clues about.

Anyhow, Aaron tells me how powerful Sicarius is and how I was lucky to come away unscathed (considering that I curbstomped him) and that this is all bad news that the CoT and Fir Bolg are working together on something. Something about Sicarius cursing Hawks.

Mission 2:
So Aaron tells me that he has has the coin analyzed (Wait, did I miss something? What coin? There is no clue about a coin being found.) and that is has the symbol of the Well of Evermore on it. Then he tells me some stuff about the Unseelie that doesn't tell me anything except that their world lies parallel to our own. Their's and everyone else's bub. The Well is the source of all of the Unseelie's magic.

Anyhow, another spike of magical energy has occured under Founder's Falls and it has the same signature as that in the Grim Vale. Some large pillars have suddenly materialized and I need to go and destroy them as they are magical rifts that need sealing.

I wonder who noticed these pillars show up in some cave under Founder's Falls to begin with. I also wonder why the entry pop-up tells me that my powers flucuate even more down here when a glace and my trays show me that I have the exact same powers as in the previous mission.

I find the first pillar (the same kind from the Hive mission Vernon von Grun gives) and see it's being guarded by hostile Midnighters. Huh?

Next I find an unguarded prisoner named Derek (group name Battle Hawks) who is friendly and apparently an Unseelie as his description says. Apparently this Garik mentioned in the objectives that I have to defeat is his brother. I couldn't see far into this tunnel so I don't know if he was there before I broke the pillar or not, although there is a clue about something escaping from the pillar when it broke so I guess he just spawned now.

Derek doesn't bother to introduce himself but does inform me that the Midnighters are really CoT in disguise. Thanks for clearing that up, of course he could simply be lying. Not like I haven't fought hostile Midnighters for the third time week with little justification. I'm going to bet that he's lying.

This map could have been smaller for sure, 9 pillars to destroy was a bit excessive. Also Derek, who kept getting lost and was not being very useful, was annoying me so I eventually just left him behind where ever he got stuck that last time.

Things got even more annoying when I got to Garik. He starts shouting at Derek, who is not even with me anymore, and talks about how he is a traitor and using me and to get out of his way. Hey buddy, I left your brother some hundred feet back that way, I'm the one here kicking your [censored] right now.

Anyhow, Garik was not nearly as tough as his description built him up to be. Without Indominatable Will on he was just as vulernable to my mezzing with Domination up as anyone else. Then the clue that I get on his defeat has Garik telling me his thanks for defeating Garik before he sends his body away. More speech from someone not even in the same part of the map as me. The author makes a few too many assumptions during this arc.

I went and cleared the rest of the map to get rid of the remaining 6 pillars I had still at that point and ended the mission.

So I get back and things are getting weirder when Aaron tells me that the infirmary is full of injured Midnighters and such and that he doesn't know who Garik and Derek are and what is going on. Big surprise there.

Mission 3:
So of course I've been played with a nice big idiot ball and have triggered the end of the world by fulfilling a prophecy where a mortal (why do you assume that I am mortal?) from Earth and an Unseelie have to work together to destroy the pillars, which actually were there to keep our worlds apart.

Also, the Unseelie world is being destroyed by this somehow and Derek has defected to the CoT (told you he was a liar) and both her and Sicarius have the Kalthor Keys that are needed to re-establish the dimensional barriers.

So Aaron and some Unseelie guy I've never seen or heard of named Javasha are off to get some of the keys from Sicarius (cause he's too tough for me, remember?) while I have to go beat up Derek and rescue Garik.

There is some tiny warning about bringing friend, but it is not highlighted at all. That better not be some sort of EB warning that can be easily missed.

Apparently this mission is one of the level range jumps as suddenly everyone is 37 and I have my Sniper power back. I charged through Oranbega and found Derek along with a few more Battle Hawks. The poor saps never stood a chance.

Derek had changed his appearance as well as description, which fills in a few details on his betrayal. However, his combat dialog made little sense. What the heck is he talking about saying "Sicarious would not dare betray me!" and "I will resist you Eochai!" The he gives me the keys upon his defeat and tell me to make Sicarius pay for his treachery. WHAT?

The clue about the keys don't explain anything about all that. Is this a case of poor map choice and objective placement? Was I supposed to know something before fighting him?

After searching the entire map over for Garik and finding no trace of him I found a glowy hidden in a corner back past where I ran into Derek. It's a message, carved into a stone for some reason, saying that Garik is free and coming to kill Derek. Okay...

So now Aaron informs me that Derek and his men are suddenly enslaved by Eochai, how did that happen?

Mission 4:
So now with the keys I have to rebuild the barriers, which involves me working with an Unseelie to activate a bunch of glowies. For some reason this mission is timed, did the crisis suddenly get worse after I had all the time in the world to fetch the keys? And what about the keys that Aaron was getting from Sicarius?

I see that the author has arranged for a CoT ambush at the door. Simple trick and good thing I am quick on the Seeds of Confusion but had I been a Mastermind I'd be pissed right about now.

I find Elara, who is Earth Control/Empathy shortly down the tunnel, just sitting on the ground unguarded with hordes of CoT in every direction. There are also 9 pillars scattered throughout these caves and I have only 45 minutes to hit them all. Of course it didn't take long to lose her somewhere around a bend. I didn't bother going back for her as I always found Earth Controllers to be really annoying anyway with their humongous screen-blocking graphics.

Anyhow, I activated all of the pillars and left the mission with 37 minutes left on the clock. I didn't bother to wait and chat with the CoT ambush that showed up after the clicking the last one.

I get back to Aaron and he tells me that not all of the teams were succesful in activating their barriers and that the CoT are still tapping into the Well of Evermore (Not quite sure exactly when that happened? Was it that brief reference to a new source of power back in mission 1's dialog?) Now my presence is required at the Midnight Club for an emergency meeting.

Mission 5:
The meeting happened off-screen, so it's back to Oranbega to break the CoT's link to the Well. I'm to fight some CoT mystic named Kilcarsadur who is reputed to be as bad as Baron Zoria and I've been given some magic diadem to protect me from illusions. There was however no highlighted text in the EB warning. I'm also back to level 36 for this mission.

As I enter I hear someone named Javasha shouting in the distance. I guess I will have an ally after all for this mission, one with a fight I'll likely need one in unlike the previous missions. According to her description she quit her post during that meeting that I didn't see and is really an accomplished swordswoman. Being DB/WP and having enhanced perception, it took mere seconds for her to run off and leeroy everything within sight.

I don't see any mention of this Kilcarsadur, just Defeat Sicarius and dispel some shields and channelers. I ran into some custom CoT, some sort of Behemoth/Hellfrost hybrid the description claims but they were nothing to worry about long as I locked them down immediately. The little Daggerwings were little more than an annoyance.

I left her to go play and clicked on those three Shield things (which were Arachnos safes) and suddenly spawned Garik somewhere nearby. I have no idea where he spawned as I went all the way around the map and killed Sicarius in the meantime.

Finally found him way at the back of the map standing there idly in a room with the 4 Channelers and some CoT monsters around him. I killed the monsters, freed him and clicked the Channelers.

Which spawned Kilcarsadur...somewhere. Apparently all the way back at the beginning of the map. Good thing it's a rather small one. Not that it didn't prevent me losing Javasha several times along the way. Meanwhile my Domination bar is dropping...

Eventually found Kilcarsadur (who is using the Baron Zoria model) in some random corridor and both Javasha and Garik charged right up to him... and then did nothing. Yep, for the entire fight they did nothing but act as targets for his Twilight Grasp heal. Audrey the Giant Flytrap and I did all of the work of defeating that EB. I don't know what caused my allies to go idle like that two feet away from him after charging past me and getting right up in his face.

So the CoT's link to the Well of Evermore is broken and unfortunately both Javasha and Garik are stuck in our world. Sucks to be them.

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The Verdict:
While the author did an otherwise fine job of trying to tell a story, this arc has a lot of flaws that annoy me. First there is the lack of an attempt to normalize the level ranges throughout the arc. This is really annoying as it is quite easy to work around really and is going to be frustrating for players who are not inside the intended level range of the arc. I know my 50's would be really annoyed to be 32, then 50, then 37, etc. This is an annoyance that a lot of players share.

Then there is the missing details. Sometimes they are filled in after the fact, but it really doesn't the initial HUH when dialog like that Derek had in mission 3 occurs. There was no explanation at all, no mention beforehand of Sicarius betraying him to Eochai or anything that I can see or remember. There is too much telling rather than showing going on in here.

The allies were also rather useless in most cases, and the dialog in mission 2 makes me feel like a bystander in a feud between the Boss and the Ally, which I didn't even have with me. I know someone is going to call me a hypocrite and claim I did that in "The Portal Bandits", except that never do my bosses act like they're ignoring the player. In fact in both cases they don't even mention the ally for that specific reason.

I also didn't like the mention at the beginning of these magical fluctuations affecting the powers of my non-magical character, which is a case of the author trying to write some of my motivations for me. The author needs to rethink some of the assumptions they are making about the player when writing the dialog for this arc.

The author also needs to work on their spawn placements and some other aspects of level design. Was it really necessary to have 9 pillars in both missions 2 and 4? If so, why is the map in mission 2 so much bigger? Why does Garik spawn in a room you have to run all the way around the map to get to once you trigger him? Why does Sicarius and Kilcarsadur spawn in random hallways instead of proper rooms? If you need to select a different map to make your spawnings work, by all means do so.

Total score: 3 stars

Arc ID: 1153
Arc Title: Chocolatier Wars!
Author: @Electroanagesia
Description: An upset at the World Chocolate Exhibition made European chocolatiers targets for villainy! The one who controls the creative confectionary geniuses controls the Future of Chocolate! Every chocolate lover has a stake in that! (EB in 3rd mission, but ally to help with it.)
Rating: *****

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Character used: Anna Nethema, Level 50 Dark Melee/Fire Aura Brute
Difficulty: Tenacious (Diff 2)
Level for Arc Playthrough: 50

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Mission 1:
I've been contacted by Maestro and he is offering to pay me handsomely to stop the feud going on between the World's great chocolatiers as fine chocolate is one of the few pleasures that he has left. Well his money is as good as anyone else's so off I go!

Maestro sends me to the Fruit Infusion wing of the World Chocolate Exhibition, where the Goldbrickers are trying to kidnap some of the chocolatiers and force them to work for King Midas. Since this is a level 50 arc, the author has made some custom Elite Goldbrickers and they do look pretty good, despite lacking the jetpacks and sonic weapons. Still, I wonder why people insist on trying to remake existing groups for a new level range rather than just fitting their arc into the range of the existing groups.

The map is a warehouse, I'm a bit unsure if this is part of the exhibit hall or if this is where the Goldbrickers took them too. Amusingly the German, French, and Dutch chocolatiers speak in their native languages and the Goldbrickers are just as confused as I am. I free all of the chocolatiers and score some rather interesting chocolate samples. Strangely, there was a cart for Pumpkin infused chocolate in the Fruit Infusion wing. Pumpkin isn't a fruit!

Mission 2:
Meanwhile Maestro has saved the chocolatiers in the Nut Infusion wing but something happened, Crey agents have appeared and stolen the Praline Crafting Machine prototype that was on display there. Maestro doesn't want that somewhere hidden and being reverse engineered for months, he wants his new Praline Chocolates NOW! He also wonders why a new wing has been added to this years Exhibition.

I track the machine down to another warehouse where I find some regular Crey units mixed in with the new Crey Conchers and Crey Chocolatiers. Oddly, the author made them both Dark Melee, which seems redundant.

I found the Praline Extruder at the end of the map (might want to make the names consistent) as well as some Elite Goldbrickers. The Goldbricker boss is obnoxious with the current Standard settings as he has Knockout Blow and the presence of Footstomp indicates that he is set to Hard.

Mission 3:
Maestro has discovered that Crey sponsored the new wing and that it's for chocolate made entirely of artificial ingredients. Even worse, he has discovered that they are adding ingredients to make the Crey chocolate addictive and all other chocolate taste bland in comparison. They have gone way to far this time.

I head in to destroy Crey's chocolate operation, smashing their machinery, freeingtheir test subjects and defeating the lead researcher. Just now I noticed that the Crey Conchers are Dark Melee/Dual Blades, they've been sticking to Dark Melee so much that I never saw the swords before. I wonder what the Crey Chocolatiers are now. Using two melee sets doesn't work well, especially is one is weapons and the other unarmed as the AI will tend to prefer the unarmed one.

Before long I found Maestro inside as I had expected to from the briefing. He's one of the most useful allies I've had yet in a MA mission to tell the truth.

There were two test subjects to free and unfortunately they had already been exposed to the Crey chocolate. Never again will they know the joy of real chocolate.

We reached the back of the warehouse and confronted the mad Doctor Hershey. With him defeated the Crey chocolate operation was destroyed and the world of fine chocolate was safe again.

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The Verdict:
I can see that the author was certainly having fun with this arc from the writing and the dialog. The missions were well designed within the limits of the tileset and what the author was attempting to portray, plus the setpeices and dialog made them quite memorable. I can see that the custom Goldbrickers were necessary due to the problems of overlapping level ranges between all of the NPCs involved, but they might need some rebalancing, especially that boss. The Crey Conchers and Chocolatiers could use some tweaking, as they are not using their powers very effectively and are rather redundant when using the same powersets for both Lieutenants and Minions. There were also some issues of redundantly repeating dialog in mission 3. All in all I give it 5-stars for being fun and memorable.

Going Rogue just looks like something that, to really be done right, should be an entirely new game from the ground up rather than just kludged into CoX.

[ QUOTE ]
You shouldn't describe an ally who later betrays you as someone with an evil heart and a penchant for double-crossing. In a case like that you should have a more superficial description, or even outright lies based on what the character is pretending to be like

[/ QUOTE ]

When you add a description to a Boss/Ally/Hostage detail it overrides the default description, so in such a case there is little excuse to not give the NPC a different description with each of their appearances as the story progresses.

I'd also like a running log of all the mission briefings, send offs, and debriefings for the arc. It's easy to forget something that was mentioned in one of those but no included in a clue, especially if you've split an arc across a couple play-sessions, and only the leader gets to see the debriefings as well right now.

[ QUOTE ]
Your supergroup quietly creates an organized team while you are asking in SGChat if there are any SG activities going on that you can participate in.

[/ QUOTE ]

[ QUOTE ]
As you log in you say Hi or Evening, no one responds, two minutes later another SG member logs on and say "yo" and gets a reply from everyone.

[/ QUOTE ]

This is why I don't join big SGs anymore and stick with small ones run by myself or close friends. The bigger it is, the more cliquey it gets and you always see that one "A-Team" of people that is always together and doesn't want to invite you or anyone else. The larger and older the SG, the greater the chance that the newcomers will be the "B" or even "Z" team.

[ QUOTE ]
[ QUOTE ]
One of the demons allied with the cult was Bat’Zul. He was imprisoned by Father Gerard Henri under Mount Diable.


[/ QUOTE ]

Two comments / quibbles:

1) I believe Bat'Zul and Father Henri are associated in game lore with "The Blood of the Black Stream," which is also associated with Gadzul Oil and Egypt. This is one of the zillions of avenues in CoX that was never sufficiently explored. TBotBS was supposed to provide a villain epic AT with an Egyptian flavor.

2) Aren't the Hellions associated with devil worship and not necessarily demon worship? I know devils and demons are sometimes basically the same thing, but sometimes they are not.

[/ QUOTE ]

1) The arc that establishes that in CoV involves the Hellios heavily and has a Hellion EB in it as well as a Herald of Bat'Zul in the same map, so it's not a far stretch to have an alliance on another Earth.

2) Far as I know there is no difference between Demons and Devils in CoX lore. We don't have Baetzu and Tanari like in D&D.