dugfromthearth

just for fun I'm going to post along as I develop my second arc. Note my first arc was finished about a week ago (not that it will ever be finished), having been started during open beta. I'm hoping this one goes faster.

First arc has custom Skulls faction for higher level play. I wanted my next arc to be about the Hellions. Again, custom critters - higher level Hellions.

First thought was that Hellions would turn into demons - a pact with the devil. Second was the title Hellion Earth, pronounced like Hell on Earth. This led me to the idea of an alternate Earth ruled by Hellions - or a hell dimension.

the hellion description says that the low levels don't realize that the high levels really mean it with devil worship. So I decided to start my plot with a hellion finding out they were going to be turned into a devil and wanting out. Original thought was he would be the contact.

More investigation came up with Gregor, magic contact in Galaxy, who gives hellion missions. I have played arcs using regular contacts and liked the idea. So I decided to have Gregor be the contact, and the first mission is to rescue the hellion informant.

research shows a demon trapped in Mt Diablo, tied to hellions. So I decided to tie this arc to the Rogue Isle hellions.

missions planned:
1. mercy dock to meet/rescue hellion informant. Mention Longbow use it to meet informants in rogue isles. Maybe have a spawn of Arachnos for flavor.

2. burning building - hellions are doing demon ceremony, going to other dimension to become demons (hand waving of explanation). Burning building to destroy evidence. Have to find portal. Mention building in Steel Canyon - they do it a lot.

3. maybe mission in portal corp to get access to portal to Hellion Earth, maybe not

4. Hellion Earth. Some destroyed city map. Not sure what to do there.

5. Rogue Isle power station - where demon is trapped. Have to stop hellions from freeing the demon.

custom critters:
non-demon hellions.
demonic hellions
demons

can't decide if hellion girlfriends should just be girlfriends or should be demons as well for some more variety.

want to use hellion girlfriends statements in Hellion Earth, twisted to fit the alternate world.

not sure who boss should be if any. Maybe the demon you never see is the boss behind it all.

Yes, I found the Gadzul Oil and Egypt references in game and they didn't seem to go anywhere.

I am tempted to say Gad'Zul is another demon who is an enemy of Bat'Zul - but that seemed to be going too far into unknown territory.

I am using devil and demon interchangably. The Hellions may say devil worship - but the ones who talk about it aren't the ones who know what is really going on.

Here is my background plot for it:

The ancient Egyptians believed in a three part soul, one part was the akh. After death the akh needed to be given power, allowing the deceased to function normally in the afterlife – this was done by a spell called “cause one to become an akh.”

A cult turned from the normal spell, to one which gave them greater power in the afterlife – as an ally of demons (demons live in the underground river where the sun travels each night). The cult was called the Mesha Ahk (army of ahk).

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

Bat’Zul has attempted to find allies to free him from Mount Diable by promising power to a new cult of humans – the Hellions. While the Hellions can attain some measure of magical power in life, the true power is given to them upon death where they become part demon.

The demonic Hellions have been assembling in a hell dimension. They are to be unleashed upon the world to set Bat’Zul free.

One of the Hellion Blood Brothers who did not realize that the demon worship was real, found out it was and wanted out. He has contacted Gregor Richardson and needs to be rescued.

yes, it is very badly needed

I think they are destructible items

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Sorry to barge in like this, but what exactly are Challenge Missions? Are they like those Scrappers' Challenges with Lv54 Rikti Bosses?

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yes

specially constructed AV's, powerset mixes, that sort of thing

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That title makes me think of an alternate world/future in which the Hellions somehow conquer the earth. Kind of like those Portal missions where Nemesis or the Clockwork King takes over the world.

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that's what I'm going for.

Hellions become demons after death and they take over another dimension. They are building an army waiting to take over the "normal" Earth

there is probably a better name.
an arc about Hellions turning into demons

I like the name Hellion Earth - which works as "Hellion" and "Hell on Earth"

I'm not sure if Hellion Earth makes that obvious enough (or if it needs to be obvious) - Helli-On Earth seems to hokey

listos version: online polls are useless, whether in game or not

great information

I'll check out your arc as well when I get a chance

My arc was too big for me to include much text descriptions (every word I added, I had to delete one). But I removed a mission and now I have extra space.

The arc is my custom Skulls - and while the names and look time them to the Skulls, I want to add more details to tie it to existing lore.

Any details about Skulls - names, dates, places, etc that I should be sure to include?

I rarely read enemy descriptions - it is too outside the story for me. I'm assuming the enemies don't have big tags with their descriptions on them.

I do read clues and such.

I have a few captives in my arcs

some are in the green captive glow so they float
some have the captors doing the pantheon casting - so they glow
some are in the red fire cage

you can also have the captors be a different type then the others

so I have GraveDigger Initiates roaming around, but the ones holding the captives are Summoner Zombies. So if you see a summoner, you know they are with a captive.

I used the Burning Forest. It made a great spirit world.

Someday it will be back.

it really depends on what you want.

I avoid arcs with EBs and AVs - and I play on heroic so they are scaled down anyway. I have no interest in being defeated or chewing a stack of inspirations.

I want to see the story, not how tough someone can make their villains.

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Clue order is determined by the goal-creation order. Put simply, Goal1's clue will appear above Goal2's clue, so set up the goals in the orders you want their clues to be revealed.

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I hope they put a way in i15 to reorder the objectives or clues without having to delete and remake the objectives all over again whenever you want to change the order. Especially in an arc already published before you knew about this caveat, so you cannot simply edit the file to reorder them.

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this

I can't find a map to do this

I've tried casinos and such - but I can't get rid of all of the hostile spawns on a small map.

A big map would make it annoying.

If you do something like this - the description of the arc needs to make explicitly clear that this is pure story and not for xp

as in cowboys and...

I am thinking of doing a guide - because I feel like it more than any perceived need.

I am wondering if anyone has done a guide already or has any tips they would like to see in it.

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Also I tried a /ninjitsu ambush (it is punishment for answering a riddle wrong) - the mobs stealthed up to range, threw daggers, then moved into melee.

It totally blew the whole stealth attack feel

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What they can do is make it more obvious what's going on. When you click PLAY on an invalid arc it looks like it works, but you don't actually start the arc. The system should tell the player that the arc is invalid, and then notify the author of the problem.

The invalidated arcs should then be "grayed out" or otherwise be made inactive.

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Amen to this. Notification and greying would be better than everything on hold.

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I agree - if they could determine which ones were invalid this would be much better

Back to Valhalla
Story Arc ID: 146307

I quit this in mission 1 fighting the EB. I didn't care for it, but it is about kobolds, and knights and valhalla.

so let me see if I understand

the arc is stored in a plain text file. So you don't really need CoX to create arcs. You would just have some sort of random arc generator that wrote out the text file.

Then you could plug that into CoX and play it.

It is a very interesting idea. You need to figure out what is important to you. And I suggest first creating a sort of "stub" version.

Just use pre-generated villains it can plug-in, pregenerated objectives, that sort of thing. Then you can see which things you need to rotate to make it really interesting.

as a note - the captured in a fire cage looks good, you don't have to use the green glow

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Imagine how great history would have played out if people quit trying to improve things after the first attempt.

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imagine how great history would be if they mass produced cars and everyone drove them before they worked correctly

I am wondering if all published MA arcs should be put in a hold status after patches. Not unpublished - but made unplayable.

The author would have to go back in, edit and save the mission to make sure there are no errors. That way we wouldn't have unplayable missions in the play list.

As an added "bonus", if an author does not care enough to edit and republish their missions, it goes out of the list. So it would help clean out the mission list.

Editing and republishing an arc takes very little time if it isn't broken - and is necessary if it is.

But if there are a lot of patches it might be annoying - if you forget and your arc is not available.