Organica

More slots are good. I've only done the full crafting route on Mouse Police, but she has 34 recipe slots and 22 market slots. I like that! (And I forget how much salvage slots -- 80?)

I have a question. Since Virtue is my home server, and I'm doing stuff every night there, is there any interest in anyone actually earning experience/tickets/merits with their Crazy 88's toons, or are people mostly into marketing their way to fame, fortune, and influence destruction?

If I decide to run an AE mission for tickets, or I'm running a task force or Ouro arc, is it worth my time to ask if anyone is interested in joining?

10/01/10 Friday. I don't remember much of what I did on Friday, and I think in part that's because I spent a lot of time logging into all of my marketing toons and writing down how much money they actually had (and making sure they had stuff for sale so I could make more). I didn't write down the totals for any toon with less than 100 million. I didn't even total it all up, but by eyeballing it, I could see that I had about 6 billion or so influence, give or take, spread out over at least 20 different characters.

That's a lot more money than most people in the game ever see, but by the standards of some of the serious marketeers probably not uber-uber-rich. I also have hundreds of merits scattered across multiple characters and hundreds of crafted IOs in my solo SG base, so that allows me to outfit a new character pretty much any way I want. That was always my main goal anyway. ^_^

I went through this inventory in part because there's a new SG on Virtue called the Crazy 88's. This is a marketeer SG whose main goal is to become the number one SG on the server (as ranked by prestige earned) nearly entirely by buying their way there – by purchasing prestige with influence at the SG registrar. I wanted to see if I had enough spare cash to donate a billion to the cause, without making myself poor. I do. ^_^

MG started up an ITF at some point, and I joined that. It went pretty well. I rolled a bunch of merits on Tiffany and got some of the worst rolls I've ever gotten. Ah well, that's the breaks. I also spent some time running five hero tips for my MG I clone.

10/02/10: Saturday. I run into Chaos (one of the Crazy 88's marketeer types) at the market, and I decide then and there that I need to put my plan into action. I've had a character on Virtue since Spring that's perfect for the group: the Wall Street Brawler. I initially created him as a shield scrapper with the idea that when GR came I'd make a kinetics scrapper. With GR, I remade him as a kinetic melee/shield brute, actually. But he was still sitting at level 2 (haven't had a lot of time to play in Praetoria) and based on comments I'd heard, I wasn't sure I wanted a kinetic brute. Also I'm not as fond of shield defense as I used to be. So I remake him again as a kinetic melee/willpower scrapper, then get an invite to the Crazy 88's. I transfer money from multiple characters (so that I don't bankrupt any one of them), and then I log my 2nd account, and soon I'm level 20 and have 1.4 billion influence to play with.

I visit the SG Registrar. My options: donate 10,000 infulence, donate 100,000 influence, or donate 1,400,000 influence. Eh… where's the option to donate just a billion? I have to e-mail 400 million to myself to keep from donating everything I have. Moments later, I have more than 2 million prestige next to my name in the SG list. I've only ever had a million prestige on two different characters before – Tiffany and Mouse, and both of them have since switched SGs. That big number next to my name looks nice. ^_^

Apparently by the end of the weekend the Crazy 88's are ranked #38 among Virtue's SGs – higher even than any division of the SG that I'm normally a member of. ^_^

At some point in the day I also ran a Numina TF I think with MG and company, and I played MG I a bit but didn't finish up my five hero tips. I also ran the Freakalympics arc solo with Tiffany in 1 hour 19 minutes, and that includes going afk for a short bit. I'm pretty sure I can do it in an hour, which is what others have said it possible. I suspect a full team would just slow the whole thing down though.

10/03/10: Sunday. I finally get around to Shinobu Eden's Croatoa hunts, and get all the badges except believer. I have her camped out in Croatoa now. I log her in multiple times during the day to look for Sally, but so far she's been very elusive.

I finished up my tip missions for MG (random PuG team with some very cool people. Someone says, "Nice to see you again MG! I reply but really, I don't know if I teamed with them before or not, heh.) I and got her to hero status, quit the VG and joined the hero SG. After that I was still shy of level 25. I got a blind invite to a team, so I accept. Turns out they're running Vigilante missions. I don't mind since I've done my five tip missions for the day; they can't screw anything up for me. But the leader only states this when asked, then invites more people and doesn't warn them. He also goes afk without warning at one point, then halfway through the 2nd mission suddenly says, "I have to leave!" In the middle of this, he tries to convince two others on the team to join his SG. Yeah, that's the kind of leader I look for in a SG – one who blind invites me to a vigilante tip mission and doesn't warn me what we're doing.

I get MG I to 25. Later I run Tiffany through the Freakalympics again. I want to do it in an hour, but things go horribly wrong. First mission, the boss is on floor 2 but apparently I had to clear floor 4 (the last floor) in order to complete the mission. That alone takes me more than twenty minutes of running around. The second mission I take too long locating the four bosses. In the fourth mission (I think) I find a guy I think is the boss, clear the entire room, only to realize I have the wrong guy. I finish in 1 hour 28 minutes.

Isaac wanted to run a Citadel, so we start that up. It turns out no one on the team can both stealth and teleport teammates. I really need to respec Tiffany to add recall friend. Anyway, because of this we do most of the TF the old fashioned way, fighting our way through everything, and finish in 1 hour 37 minutes.

Did some more marketing, and logged off sorta early for once. ^_^

I need to do this on a few more toons. I have it on four or five, but I market with about twenty toons. And I haven't done it in over a year so I think the bad memories have nearly all faded...

Well I don't think they mean within the same mission....

I had a toon named Wall Street Brawler on Virtue since last Spring. I remade him as Praetorian kin melee brute when GR came out, which was the plan, but since I haven't played very many of my Praetorian characters he was stuck at level 2, and I'd also heard that kin melee wasn't a great brute set. So I remade him a second time as a scrapper.

Joined the 88s, turned on SG mode, PL'd him to 20, handed him 1.4 billion and spent 1 billion of it at the registrar. That was what I did today. ^_^

I also spent a lot of time last night figuring out how much money I have on all of my toons combined... maybe 6 billion or so. So I'm down a billion now but I'm working on making more.

But I also have a few thousand unspent merits and hundreds of crafted IOs in my solo SG base, so when I say "I have 6 billion" that's just liquid cash.

09/27/10: Monday. I have a few goals for the week: run a "Council-o-rama" series of task forces (Citadel, Hess, Moonfire); get Shinobu Eden to 40 or even 41 and run an Eden Trial, and run one or more respec trials. MG never runs those, but I kind of like 'em, and I haven't seen anyone in the SG run one in a while. Maybe run an ITF at some point too, we don't run those very often either. Other than that, I just want to earn merits on Alting and roll for level 30 recipes.

When MG comes on I tell her my Council-o-rama plan. "Want to do that tonight?" she asks. "I have a level 22 blaster, we can run Moonfire and Hess and by then I'll be 25 and high enough to run Citadel!" This is a masterful plan, with one fatal flaw – Moonfire is 23+, and Hess is 25+ just like Citadel.

In any case, we do run all three TFs in a row – Moonfire in 1 hour 29 minutes, Hess in only 29 minutes, and Citadel in 1 hour 12 minutes. MG says, "I need to run Hess more often!" After that MG asks if I want to do anything else. "It's late, but I could go for our nightly Manti." Ooooh yeah, the nightly Manti!" MG replies. So we start that up, and finish in 59 minutes, even though people weren't taking directions well. "Everyone head to Crey's Folley, Tiffany head to King's Row," MG announced just before the rescue Councilman Birch misison. But when I get to the mission door in KR, more than half the team is in zone with me.

I ran the first two TFs on Alting, my locked-at-level-30 corruptor. The last two I ran on Tiffany because she's so much fun to play against Council or Crey. Afterwards someone wanted to run a Numina TF (second one of the night – someone else had run one while we were on the Striga TFs), and MG and others joined that. Before going to bed I converted 50 merits on Alting to a hero merit and rolled for five level 30 recipes. I got a Kinetic Combat triple, 2 Mako triples, a Mako double, and a sleep IO.

9/28/10: Tuesday. All of MG's toons appear to have the same name by using several L's and substituting capital I's for L's. All of the toons have "II" at the end of the name to make this even easier. MG runs two accounts like I do so MG can have conversations with MG in SG chat to "prove" that there's more than one of them. Monday someone had threatened to make an MG III. I liked the idea a lot and before logging off I had created an MG I. I wasn't sure that the other person would actually follow through on their threat, but when I log in Tuesday I find an MG VI standing in Atlas Park (with the "real" MG), and I learn that there's an MG III and an MG IV running about too.

My MG I is a corruptor. I decide to spend the night getting to 20 and working on my tip missions. With 2 accounts this takes me until about 8 PM, by which point MG and the SG have apparently run a Hess TF and a Manti TF and someone else in the SG ran a Katie, and MG was starting up a second Manti. I join for the Manti which takes us 1 hour 2 minutes (the first one was only 48 minutes). I guess we suck. After that, MG and Lucy want help getting one of Lucy's toons from 28 to 30 (so she can run a Manti of course!), so I help them do that. Then I converted 50 more merits for Alting (who'd been on the Manti) and rolled 5 more recipes – nothing really exciting once again, Scirrocco's triple, Decimation triple, Entropic Chaos triple. Bleah.

Every time the SG leader sees me online with a toon that isn't in his SG he bugs me about it. I like the SG quite a bit, but I have 12 characters in the SG already and I have to log them in at least once every two weeks to avoid having them kicked out. (I've kicked myself once so I could invite someone else.) I run two accounts that are both close to full on Virtue, so that's more than 60 characters that could be added to the SG. I can't add all of them. Also, and I don't make this argument to our SG leader, but frankly I've got several years and maybe 10 million prestige invested in my solo SG. It exists for me to play with my own base building ideas, and more importantly, it exists for the 9 IO storage bins that I make heavy use of in my marketeering endeavors and to IO out my own toons. Even if I were a leader of a division of our SG with my own base, I wouldn’t have 9 bins of private IO storage. ^_^

In other games, a single character can store a lot of stuff. In CoH, there's only so much a single character can store. Having your own SG base helps a lot.

9/29/10: Wednesday. My goal for the night is to get my new MG I corruptor to the morality mission and turn rogue. I turn down an invite to a Manti TF to do this, but then later MG advertises an ITF. Hmm, we don’t' do those enough. I say I want to come. I log in Tiffany and soon I'm in Cim and on the team, but then a curious thing starts to happen. The team leader, War, makes MG leader and quits the team. Someone else gets invited, but then MG make me leader and quits the team. Someone else quits saying they're going to join a different ITF. Hmm, I've seen this before – too many people were promised positions on the team, and the leaders are trying to satisfy everyone.

War rejoins, I make him leader again. Someone else quits, MG rejoins. War makes MG leader and quits. MG makes me leader and quits. I decide quitting is the popular thing to do, so I quit. MG asks me how many are currently on the team, I say I don't know, that I'm going back to what I was doing before. "I don't want to do the ITF if you're not doing it," she says. "Uh, you were on the team before I even asked to join," I reply.

I finish my rogue tip missions for MG I, and I run into a familiar problem – I street hunt for forty minutes, but my morality tip mission refuses to drop. About that time MG asks if I want to do an Eden Trial. Oooh, my first chance to use Shinobu Eden on the trial she was designed for! Once I'm on the team, it turns out there's someone who's 41 who is leading which is good since Shin Eden is still only 39.

We run into a problem that I encounter sometimes with my SG – everyone rushes headlong into everything, when sometimes rushing is not the best idea. It works on easier TFs that we run all the time, but it's a bad habit that's hard to break. We decide that we have enough special ambrosia inspirations even though some of us (me for example) still don’t' have any and we haven't distributed them or taken an actual count. We rush ahead and free the hostages and I ask if we want to clear the lake first. "No, just clear a path to the titan. Now go! Don't melee him!" "Don't melee him?" "I mean other people, not you." There's a lot of confusion as people charge forward before we've talked about what we're doing. All the DE on the lakes swarms us (predictably) and the team wipes.

So we agree to clear the lake, but while we're doing this part of the team decides to pull the titan back to the caves. Team wipes again, as half of us were still clearing the lake. Someone pulls him again while I'm resting. "Shinobu, get up! He's here!" I die really fast. I'm beginning to think that invul was a really bad choice for a character specializing in the Eden trial – there's a lot of psy damage to contend with. But I'd tanked the titan on my invul tanker before so it seemed like a good idea at the time. I die another time because I only have one ambrosia left, and don't use it immediately. I hit our base to grab more, but there's only one in storage (along with like 80 Essence of the Earths, for whatever reason).

By this point people are annoyed, and one person makes a comment about needing a tank that doesn't constantly die. This stings a little because Shinobu Eden is very well IO'd for level 39. We have four blasters on the team and a defender, and they're all dying very fast, quite possibly because we insist on fighting the titan back in the cave instead of up on his platform (where there's a ledge for squishy types to duck down behind). I'm trying my best to face him away from the team, but it's usually too late, and then I'm tanking without support. "You do realize his rainbow punch extends 300 feet." someone says, Sneaking I think it was. MG sends me a tell, "Actually, I don't think I like the Eden Trial very much."

Anyway we rally and try again. nearly everyone dies immediately, but this time I and one other team member hang on and manage to keep fighting. My health nearly hits zero, but I use the last of my inspirations, Dull Pain repops, my fury bar is maxed out, and with just the two of us we kill the titan. That makes me feel a little better about my "always dying" brute. ^_^ And everyone says it was fun. Eh… if you say so. I did hit 40 on Shinobu Eden.

I go back to the rogue isles, join a team, and soon my morality mission drops. A bit later MG I is in Independence Port. That's enough for me for one night!

09/30/10 Thursday. Since I didn't do many TFs the last two nights I'm up for anything. I want 50 merits for Alting so I can convert and roll them. MG wants to run a Hess TF, and then a Manti. And then a Hess again, and then another Manti. We usually do a Manti in an hour, and she thinks we can do Hess in 30 minutes. And our SG Leader claims that we don't farm.

One person in the SG joins us simply because they recognized the name Alting from this thread.

First Hess, not everything goes perfectly. We finish in 38 minutes. "Not fast enough!" I say. "That was the fastest I've ever done it!" someone else replies. Heh. On to Manticore! This one takes us 1 hour 2 minutes. I convert and roll my merits: Oblit quad, Kinetic Combat triple, Blessing of the Zephyr KB protection, Ghost Widow proc and Devastation proc. That's probably my best hero merit roll yet.

I switch to Tiffany and we run Hess again. This time everything goes perfectly. We finish in 28 minutes. Success! And that's with MG being the only one who could both stealth and port others.

I'm not sure if MG ran another Manti afterwards or not. She went afk for a bit, but someone else in the SG was starting up a Manti. I did some marketing, got my level 40 costume for Shinobu Eden, and log. I still need to finish up my kills for the Geas of the Kind Ones on her, but Friday night will probably be busy.

Sure, all the time. A few (how "cool" the name is may be debatable):

Alting. And also Alting (alternative spelling w/capital I).
Wallstreet Brawler (more refined than the Back Alley counterpart)
Rocker Girl (for a /stone brute)
Quantum Butterfly (grav/storm troller, of course)
Midieval Crisis (multiple personality knight, created for the "Midlevel Crisis" SG)
Double Donkey Motel (stalker)
The Amish Assassin (also stalker)
The Rouge Spy (kicked out of her organization for wearing too much makeup)
Harlequin Romance (carnival of shadows-style toon)

First of all, I disagree with a lot of people who wait until 47/50 to slot set IOs. (I'm looking at you, ResidentBaka! Heh). But I guess I'll start with a caveat: working on a build once you're 47-50 is probably a good place to start for people who are new to IO slotting.

Once you know how to assemble a build, I much prefer using level 30 IOs and assembling my build so I can start slotting it at level 27. This is because, as ResidentBaka explained, you exemplar much better. You keep your set bonuses down to level 27 with level 30 IOs, or to level 30 with level 33 IOs. And the difference between what a level 30 IO grants you and what a level 50 IO grants you is not really as great as you think. Some will slot at even lower ranges, or slightly higher, but for the same reasons. (The other reason I like doing this is that a level 30 version of a set IO is almost ALWAYS much cheaper than the level 50 version. Possible exceptions are for very popular-to-slot special IOs, such as the Luck of the Gambler +7.5% global recharge mentioned above.)

Now the next caveat: My advice is good if you're going to exemplar a lot -- to play with SG mates, to run lower and mid-level task forces, to run Ouro arcs. If all you really plan to do with your 50 is farm, run PI missions or run ITF, STF, Khan, then by all means slot level 50 IOs. If you're going to tank Recluse you probably want every last 1% you can squeeze out of your enhancements.

Now, I really don't think any of that answers your actual question. Where do I start? The only real advice I can give you is to pick a character of yours that you want to develop a good IO build for, then read the AT forums and look at other people's builds. Download Mids. Ask questions. Look at the types of set IOs you can slot in yor powers, and look at what the different sets available have to offer. Make a few builds (in Mids) just to experiment. Try and decide what it is you want to accomplish with the build -- do you want a lot of global recharge? Do you want high positional defenses? (Learning the difference between positional and typed defenses is good -- something I didn't understand when I first tried improving my characters). Do you want more hit points, more regen, more endurance recovery? Do you need knockback protection? The only way I learned to navigate these things (and, incidentally, learned what to sell on the market and what wasn't worth trying to sell) was by trial and error. I'm an old vet, and I used up all of my vet respecs trying to get the build on my main character Mouse Police right. And even then, I finally decided to scrap that build and start over. ^_^

But basically, playing with Mids, looking at other people's builds, and asking questions.

Basic Information to begin with, you can't slot two of the same set IO into a single power. So you can't slot a Sneaking Mission's Explosive Strike Accuracy/Damage IO (not a real IO set) with another of the same IO in the same power. If you want two Accuracy/Damage IOs in the same power (generally better than a single damage and a single accuracy), then you use two from different sets -- which is what people refer to as "frankenslotting". So, you could slot a SMES accuracy/damage/recharge with a Goat's Market Hero Blast accuracy/damage/recharge and a Fulmen's Influence Destruction accuracy/damage/recharge, and you'd have more total accuracy, damage, and recharge than you'd get from three single IOs.

You get set bonuses for different pieces of the same set slotted into the same power. If you slot a Sneaking Mission's Explosive Strike accuracy/damage with a damage/endurance and an accuracy/damage/recharge in the same set into a specific single power, you get whatever the bonus is for having 3 of that set slotted. (Which is +9% extra sneakiness, woo!)

Rule of Five This important rule says that you only can stack 5 of the same bonus and then any more of the same type of bonus will be ignored. So of you could slot 3 pieces of our imaginary IO set Sneaking Mission's Explosive Strike into five different powers, you'd have 5x9% extra sneakiness, or a total 45% sneakiness bonus. Which is a lot of sneakiness, let me tell you! Now let's say you also have 4 pieces of Goat's Market Hero Blast slotted elsewhere in your build, and the bonus for 4 pieces of that is also 9% extra sneakiness. You won't have 54% sneakiness added to your build, but still only 45%, because of the rule of 5. But you could still slot a set with a different bonus -- let's call it Zombieman's Scorched Earth damage set, that grants you a 5% extra sneakiness bonus -- and you can slot five of those as well, for 25% sneakiness on top of the 45% you have above for a 70% total.

One other interesting fact about this rule -- in order for it to take effect, the wording of the bonus must be exactly the same. What this means is you can actually slot 5 Luck of the Gambler +7.5% global recharge IOs, and also get up to 5 7.5% recharge bonuses from other sets, because the special Luck of the Gambler IO doesn't use exactly the same wording as all the set bonuses.

Or you can slot five of the Vanden's Vociferous Venom special +9 percent global sneakiness bonus IO with five set bonuses from your Goat's Market Hero Blast and Sneaking Mission's Explosive Strike. If they existed, I mean. Which the really should. ^_^

I inherited a SG on Freedom. Luckily for me the leaders all left, so I had no problem kicking out the lowbies that joined for two days and never logged in again. Unfortunately it has a stupid name, but that's the breaks. ^_^ I redesigned it and use it for ports and storage.

Sell was the right choice. Purples are going for outrageous prices right now. ^_^

Yeah, when I'm teamed with people who say, "My enhancements just went red!" and I know that for myself even generic IOs are generally only a stopgap measure until I come up with a real build -- well, it's hard to know what advice I could possibly give them. I haven't used SOs in so long I don't remember what it was like.

I do still have characters who have mostly generic IOs... but then, they're generally toons I don't play much. If I played them more, I'd come up with a nice set build.

There's a reason I like to play my 50's. They're really well built and fun to play!

I team most of the time, and I don't worry about experience. It comes in droves regardless. Actually one of the toons I'm playing right now is level 30 and has experience turned off.

Also, I think the original question should have been, "What the FREEM does FREEM mean?"

AC2 had visual sound effects. They had settings for no violence (no blood) extreme violence (lots of blood) or cartoon violence (boom! pow!).

Really, that would be a very natural thing for a hero game. ^_^