Organica

The trick is that the contacts hero side are some of the oldest content in the game, and so they not only send you all over the place, but things aren't as intuitive, you aren't always told where to go next or who you should be talking to.

There are a lot of different contacts hero side, so you have lots of options. One good tip is to go to King's Row, talk to the police contact there (should pop up as a waypoint contact the first time you enter the zone), and get a police radio scanner. After doing 4 radio missions (they're kind of random, no story to tie them together, but they'll all be in the same zone) you will get a "Safeguard Mission" to protect a bank from robbery. Completing this mission successfully not only will give you a temporary power (a useful travel power at levels 5-10 and 11-15), but once you go back to the police contact he will give you a new regular mission contact to work with.

That's just useful information if at any point you don't have any contacts at your level, you can be introduced to one after running a few radio missions. ^_^

In general hero side (to the best of my knowledge) there are something like 5 different contacts every few levels (every 5 or so?), one for each type of hero, ie mutant, science, natural etc., plus lots of special contacts who are zone-based like Wincott in The Hollows -- so there are many options, you don't have to do them all.

My War Shade is a vigilante. ^_^ And I've teamed with heroic (or at least, roguish) SoA.

The SoA one seems especially odd to me... Soldiers of Arachnos... who are good guys. Mind you, the very idea behind an SoA character is he's already breaking free from what's expected of him, so maybe it's not so weird. But it would be fun if they had Arachnos agents/assassins hunting them hero-side the same way Quants and Voids hunt khelds. After all, I'd think Recluse would be a little miffed at them running around Paragon in their Arachnos armor/outfits. ^_^

I was wandering around Cap Au Diablo on my scrapper Mouse Police last night, and someone in my SG was starting up the level 15 Strike Force that begins in that zone. So I joined... and I was one of four scrappers on the SF.

Later in the evening we ran a Hess and a Moonfire TF over in Striga, and the team had three brutes.

I think that sort of thing is even more common right now than it probably will be in the future, since there are so many people who have crossed over specifically to get new badges. But it kind of made me laugh. ^_^

Cabbage crates are in the air!

Synapse is in worse shape than Citadel and Manticore. Citadel and Manticore can be faulted as boring, but you can do them inside an hour. Synapse, however, suffers from much of what the old Positron TF suffered from -- a massive slog through multiple defeat alls with relatively low-level heroes. It's the longest of the current Phalanx TFs. It does end with a bang, I'll give it that, but I don't think having a unique last map and two big fights at the end make up for the rest of the TF.

The Shadow Shard TFs are, of course, the most desperately abysmal TFs out there, but Synapse is a TF that nearly everyone in the game can do. In a perfect world, they'd all get an overhaul, of course. ^_^

They have to wait until I20!

I ran into a bug like this when I first went to PI after turning Rogue. Pets would zone with me but then stand around and do nothing. When dismissed, they would make the appropriate sound and speech bubble for being dismissed, but would still just stand there. When resummoned, nothing happened. I only fixed it by logging off and back on. I assumed at the time it was a bug related to switching from v-side to hero side.

Cool. ^_^

I took Squiddy Kitty vigilante as well.

We need to do an all-WS ITF or something similar.

How is it that you never got any replies for this? This is a perfectly succinct explanation of how to run the Sewer Trial, in rhyme no less! Very good! ^_^

I ran it last night -- my 4th time ever, and 2nd time successfully, and first time where it wasn't a random pickup group, but all members of my SG. We wiped out at the first kraken, but after that got our act together, worked together, and pulled it off pretty much by the book, even though several people hadn't done it before and a few not in 2-3 years. ^_^

That's just awesome.

I love my invul scrapper, softcapped for smashing/lethal, extremely tough, nearly tank-tough against many enemies.

So I respec'd one of my 50 MA's tonight (Tiffany Blackheart, MA/WP). I removed Thunder Kick and inserted Cobra Strike. That was all. I've always liked Crane Kick despite the knockback, and I've always hated Crippling Axe Kick for the animation (I don't really like the alternate animation much either), so I now have: Storm Kick, Cobra Strike, Crane Kick, Dragon's Tail, and Eagle's Claw (and Focused Chi).

This is on a build almost entirely taken from one posted to the boards last year by Zen Foo Du (at least, that's the title on the build). Tiffany doesn't have the numi unique, but after playing tonight it sounds like a good idea (and she's at 203 credits so it won't take too much work for me to purchase one). I did run low on endurance at several points though, which I don't remember being a problem previously.

Cobra Strike is awesome. The animation always looked awesome, but I never felt the power was worth taking before. But now... it's awesome.

Eagle's Claw followed by Dragon's Tail is great.

Eagle's Claw and Cobra Strike combined to keep a boss stunned -- also great.

MOAR DAMAGE -- also great!

Me likey! Now I have to see what I can do with my MA/Iinvul scrapper Shinobu Dragonheart.

I'm sure the more serious build guys can give you better advice than me, but it looks pretty good to me. You've got 161.3% recharge? Even on my fully purpled Squiddy Kitty I think I'm only at 183.5%, so that's not a lot of difference there. Though I do see a second purple set in there, that part won't fit under your 100 million budget probably. ^_^

Oh, and I can hand you the Oblit set, that should help. I did offer that as part of my first place reward also if needed, and Dechs didn't need it, but I forgot to offer it to you instead. I do have several Oblit sets stored away in my base, I think (some pieces I have more of than others, but one full set for sure that I can hand out).

Yeah I'm really liking all of this stuff so far.

There's one rogue mission where you team up with Desdemona (cool! And I was on my own MM so lotsa pets!), save a named hero type from assassination (Overdrive? I can't remember), defeat a named captor, and then Mangle (I think) shows up to try to finish off the assassination and you and Desdemona into the bargain. Now that was a cool mission! ^_^ Named enemies, named ally, named hostage, hero, villain, rogue all at once!

Oh yes. Westin Phipps. Mind you, I was trying to do vigilante missions anyway, but it was a very easy choice to decide to go administer some blunt trauma justice to him....

I'm finding for a lot of the missions it's easy to take the mindset of "villains need to face justice! And you can't trust Longbow to do anything right, they're corrupt!" The whole "I am the law" approach. But that doesn't work as well when it comes to abandoning people seeking your help. I suppose some vigilantes are only in it for selfish reasons and are probably destined to be villains, but I don't think any of mine are like that so far. Mouse Police uses a sword, and she doesn't just arrest villains, so I can envision her as a vigilante, but she's not evil. My War Shade Squiddy Kitty sucks the souls out from her enemies, so yeah, she's a rather bloodthirsty type too, but only against the bad guys.

On the flip side, when I turned my villain MM rogue, there were a couple of times where I thought, "Rescue this idiot? Why? I don't know them, why should I care?" But when I hit the morality mission, where the lives of innocent civilians were at stake, it was much easier to say, "No, sorry, not crossing that line, even if it pisses off Recluse himself."

I really like the bits and pieces you pick up about the various rogues you run into during these missions. I like Blast Furnace quite a bit more now. ^_^

Were you doing the hero version? Because I just ran across this mission and despite your warning, the temptation to take down Mr. Phipps (vigilante version) was far too great. And I did, no problems!

So I set out tonight to go vigilante on my main hero Mouse Police.

First tip: Frostfire (and friend) are trying to become more heroic! Frosty, a hero? But he's gone off and tried something very brave and foolhardy, and needs your help...

The vigilante option, of course, is to use the information given to you but ignore Frosty and his dilemma. Bleah. You think Frosty's ever going to try anything heroic again if I shatter his newfound faith in good and leave him to his fate? How can I abandon him?

So I went and saved Frosty. Ah well, turns out, becoming a vigilante is harder than I thought. ^_^

Huh. I hadn't even heard they'd made any changes. As someone with four level 50 MA sccrappers, I'm kinda interested in what's changed too. ^_^

(Haven't played any of them this week, either.)

Although this isn't related to your problem, we had a Rogue on our Blue Side team tonight, and we had a "train door" mission, and we all went to Ouroboros... but the rogue got re-tagged as a villain and was killed by the rest of the team (AoEs and pets and the like).

Ouroboros is not a co-op zone, but it seems like a real problem if rogues and vigilantes get flagged as enemies to their current team when they zone through there.

Not to mention, all of this new cool visual stuff is very tiring to look at. I'm used to maps and missions where I know the entire map at a glance, and don't have to think or even LOOK at stuff. Looking at stuff slows down my game, and causes strain to my eyes and brain. I wandered around Praetoria for fifteen minutes just LOOKING at stuff, and in all that time I didn't gain any experience!!!!

If you're going to make stuff look so cool, you could at least reward us with experience for looking at it!