Soulwind

My few 50's don't actually get a lot of playtime, as I'm an alt-oholic and spend more time on lower levels.

That said, I'll be unlocking the slot on all of my 50's (about 1/2 way done now), so at least when I do play them they won't miss out on any potential shard drops.

There's only 1 (or maybe 2) characters where I'll be spending any time actually TRYING to build up shards and components for, the rest will just get them whenever they happen to drop . . .

The default for screenshots is to not show the user interface. But you can change that with a slash command.

Here's the entry from ParagonWiki

Using the screenshotui Command
The default behavior of the screenshot command is save the image without the UI. This may be changed by using the screenshotui slash command. To save images with the UI, type the following on the chat command line:

/screenshotui 1

To disable capturing the UI in screenshots again, type the following on the chat command line:

/screenshotui 0

Well, I won't say I'm opposed to this; but I will say that I don't really see the need for it.

[And I'm speaking as one of those Non-TF running players who have done a ton of stuff without getting any shard drops. Out of the two characters that I've opened the incarnate stuff on so far, I've run 18 tip missions (set at +1/x3 to +1/x6 on a scrapper and +2/x4 to +1/x8 on a tank) and have gotten a grand total of one (count em! 1) shard so far.]

But it just doesn't bother me that much. I went in knowing that running normal content would only give me drops at something close to the purple-receipe drop rate (ie nearly never), so it's not like I've been surprised or anything.

And I know that if I ever really do get impatient about it, I can grit my teeth and run TFs to get there quickly...

So, as I said, I don't really see the need for "shard missions", but I wouldn't argue about them (as long as they are done at least as well as the new Rogue/Vigilante tip missions . . . those are really well done and quite entertaining).

Wow, for once my brain was actually right...and my search skills failed

After finding Quag Keep, I was certain that I had just mis-remembered the name
and didn't actually go through a full search for "Heroes of Zara Keep" (getting lazy in my old age I guess )

Yep, that's the book I've been trying to remember...

Thanks folks!

PS: Wow, I'm really out of touch with Donaldson's stuff. I didn't even realize he had written MORE of the Covenant series after White Gold Wielder. If there's ever been a more "unlikeable hero" in a series, I don't think I've ever encountered it. I'm not sure I'll be able to force myself to read any more....well I'm guessing Covenant himself isn't actually in the new books.

OK, I need to access the collective super-mind to get some assistance.

I'm trying to find a book that I read literally decades ago.

My brain wants to keep calling it "Heroes of Zara Keep", but I know that's not right.

(and I think I'm mixing in Andre Norton's "Quag Keep" - which is not the book I'm looking for).

Anyway, I can't remember much, but I think I've got a few tidbits dredged up correctly from the cesspool of my memory.

There's a bunch of folks from the "real world" who, at the moment of thier untimely deaths, are transported to a fantasy realm.

Each of them is placed under the care of different people and are trained in the realities of the fantasy realm.

There's one guy who is placed under a master swordsman and is trained as a warrior. He's given a special (ie magical) sword and I seem to remember that the first time he tries to pull it from the scabbard, there's nothing but a hilt. The blade being manifest only when needed or something?

And I definately remember that there's a girl who is sent off to live with a colony of wolves who gains shapeshifting/werewolf type powers.

(there are other characters, but I can't remember them...although I assume they follow the standard fantasy archetypes)

Eventually, all of them gather up and go on some kind of big quest.

Yeah, pretty generic in the description there, but I'm hoping somebody might have a clue as to the book I'm trying in vain to remember . . .

And Knowing Is Half The Battle !!!

(of course the other half is all blood, pain, and death...but there ya go)

Please don't take this the wrong way. It's not intended as a slam or anything.

But...

It appears that you just jumped in and started playing. There's nothing wrong with that (I do it all the time in new games too), but you've missed out on a LOT of information.

I would recommend that you make a new character (and also use the opportunity to try out a different type of character than you've been playing) and go through the tutorial area.

(you don't have to delete or abandon your main character either - there's plenty of character slots to use).

In Praetoria, be sure and select the conversation options that say you're new to the game.
With a Hero or Villain just select that yes you want to go to the tutorial.

While in the tutorial, READ EVERYTHING. There's a ton of the basic information, such as slots and enhancements and stuff, that you seem to have missed.

At level 10+, you can go to the University and take the Inventions IO tutorial which will also explain more about inventions and the market.

Welcome to the game and Have Fun!

Yes, adding Acc/x IO's to Choking Cloud will increase it's chance to hit.

CC's kind of an odd power to begin with.

It's got the normal base 75% chance to hit and then IF it hits, it's got a 50% chance of applying the hold.

On it's own I've found it to be a rather 'Meh' power, acceptable but not outstanding.
However, slotting in a couple of Acc/End and Acc/Hold IOs makes it a very nice power.

You've still only got the 50% chance of the hold actually triggering, but at least you hit with nearly every tick of the power...

There are actually several powers out there that benefit from the multi-aspect IO hole (like the Widow power Mind Link). The Devs even commented on Mind Link using Recharge/x multi-IO's to get around the doesn't accept recharge enhancers, so they are obviously aware of it.

Whether or not they intend to change these powers to prevent this is up in the air though.

And of course, as always, there's more to the situation than is apparent at first glance.

Mob level doesn't affect drop RATE, but it does affect WHAT drops. There are different entries in the various drop tables (the lists that are picked from when a drop occurs) that are tiered by the level of the Mob.

So a level 10-20 Mob drops different things than a level 40-50 mob...but the chance of a drop occuring at all is the same. And the actual physical level of the drop (receipe in this case) is either equal to the Mob's level or at the max level that the receipe is allowed to go to, if dealing with set receipes. If dealing with Common IO receipes, then it's rounded to the nearest factor of 5.

As far as TYPE of Mob (ie minion, lt, boss, etc) - that DOES affect drop rates. For receipes the chances are minion = 2.67%, lt = 5.33%, boss = 7.99%. There are other rates for other types of drops, and it's possible to get several different typed drops at once from a particular enemy defeat.

There's also the guaranteed drops that some enemies/actions have, plus the various rewards and other drops that can occur (mission complete drops, story arc finish drops, etc).

A good place to look all of this up is - as always - paragonwiki
(do a search for Recipe Drop Pools and you'll find tons of information).

Well, it's just my opinion of course, but . . .

I've taken one character full circle from Hero to Villain and back to Hero again (because he's a gadget user and I wanted the black scorpion gadgets)

Frankly, both sides seemed about the same to me play-wise. I didn't find one side standing out as "better" than the other.

About the only real complaint I have with both sides is that I'd like to see a much wider set of NPCs that show up. I'm getting bloody tired of Mangle, System Shock (I think that's her name - the elec/elec brute), and that fire-blaster guy.

No
Yes
No (with caveat)

The caveat is that the chances of each particular drop don't alter with Team and/or Mob size, but since drops are shared across the team that means that teams will see less drops to a particular person on the team vs a solo player.

However, since teams can fight and defeat larger quantities of Mobs in the same time frame, there are more drops overall to share so it kind of equals out.

And to expand on the expand...

While you are a Rogue in Paragon City, you won't be able to do any Contact missions (you can gather contacts, but they won't talk to you).

You have to get your tip missions from doing Police Scanner (ie newspaper) missions, from street sweeping, or from joining a team doing someone else's hero missions.

Also - if you don't go down the alignment change path immediately, it's possible that you will end up with some Alignment Merits (villain merits for villains and/or hero merits for heroes), either from earning them or from converting normal merits into A-Merits. Whenever you do an actual alignment change (villain to rogue, rogue to hero, hero to vigilante, vigilante to villain) any existing A-Merits you have at that time will be DELETED, so be sure and spend any that you might accumulate before you switch alignments.

It's a cute story and nice of blizzard to show that they do have a sense of humor.

Of course we've had Coyote over in Outbreak for years . . . .

Christmas event is great and all, but I still want to see the

"Giant Radioactive Mutant Turkey Monster" running around for Thanksgiving

BEWARE The Gobbler!!!!

One other thing to remember is that the game engine CANNOT determine who got hit with a power in order to re-calculate the endurance costs (as you suggested).

Whether one person or 10 people get the effects of a PBAoE buff, it costs the same endurance.

So to do what you want would mean dramatically raising the endurance costs of the powers (ala the MM Pet buffs), and potentially the recharge times, making them quite inefficient to use if only one or two teammates would be getting the benefits. There would easily be times when you wanted to fire off a refresh of the buffs, but can't because it hasn't recharged from the last usage or you are too low on endurance...

Trying to compare it to Blaster secondaries is, as you said, difficult. There aren't any attacks that line up with each other to do the comparisons.

Doing a Blaster Blast to Defender Blast comparison is pretty easy though.

With the damage buffs that Blasters got a little while back, the gap between Defenders and Blasters got even wider than it used to be.

Currently (without the new 30% bonus) Defenders do approximately 57.7% of the damage with thier blasts that a Blaster does with the same blasts. With the 30% bonus (ie solo), Defenders do 75.1% of the damage a Blaster would do.

(ignoring Blasters Defiance bonuses - with those scaling and stacking it makes it really hard to define exactly how much damage a Blaster actually does)

Example: Energy Blast
Power Bolt (defender - team) 36.1 (defender - solo) 46.9 (blaster) 62.6 = 57.6% - 74.9%
Power Blast (defender - team) 59.3 (defender - solo) 77.1 (blaster) 102.6 = 57.7% - 75.1%
Power Burst (defender - team) 76.6 (defender - solo) 99.6 (blaster) 132.6 = 57.7% - 75.1%
Nova (defender - team) 176.2 (defender - solo) 229.1 (blaster) 305 = 57.7% - 75.1%

[Note that the 30% bonus scales up with level and doesn't actually hit 30% until level 20]

----

So, I guess you could take a Blaster secondary attack and say that if a Defender had the same attack it would also be doing 75.1% of that damage - but of course they don't have any of those attacks . . .

From what I understand, in the past the game didn't actually support SLI mode.

It would run, but it wouldn't really be in SLI mode and you wouldn't be getting the benefits of both cards.

I know there have been some persistant rumors that The Television (I think) has been testing various things to get real SLI mode working.

It could be that it's finally ready and being included in I19, but I don't think I've seen anything official about it yet.

If I had to make a definative statement, I'd say "eventually - but until it's officially announced, assume it's just another rumor"