Kill Ten Rats

Our City of Heroes static group marathon is over. Nine days. I knew it wouldn’t last forever, but oh the glory while it did!

Anyway, I had some work to do tonight, my brother was busy courting the ladies and Inhibit had some early work in the morning so we just ended it right there.

I am sure we will get together again in the future, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps the day after, but it will never be quite the same. It was great while it lasted boys!

Oh the drama, hehe.

[City of Heroes] All three of us managed to log in again last night for 90 minutes or so. We ran through the FrostFire (or is it FireFrost?) mission twice, once for me and once for Inhibit. My brother had already done it. Was suprised that killing FF one time did not complete both quests, but we did notice that the location for FF was different for each of us so that must have been why.

That mission was fun, because there were patches of ice all through the building. Trying to fight someone while sliding by them over and over again makes for some good laughs.

We also ran a few outdoor missions in Perez Park (my first time there). We had to “arrest” 10 Circle of Thorns for one of them. This was my first time fighting these creepy guys. Was quite interesting. I sure never tire of jumping smack into the middle of a group of bad guys. Tanking is fun.

Speaking of tanking, I’m starting to feel like I am best used for holding aggro by standing in the middle of them and letting them roast in my flames. My additional attacks only seem to use up my energy faster. I wonder how this will change as we go up in levels.

I spent some more time “burfing” again. Managed to get on top of one very high building, jumped to a 2nd and finally a third. the third building had a badge on the roof that you can normally get only by flying up to it. Was a nice challenge for me.

We only had one “death” and that was my brother. At the end of the evening he was level 10. Inhibit and I both hit level 11 right at the very end.

[City of Heroes] Managed to get my brother to take a break from his movie watching to log in for the evening. We ran a few missions in The Hollows and made it to level 10. Really feeling like a tank now, and the best is yet to come. We are really starting to gel as a group and it is working really well. It is interesting that the game play changes as we level. We have come across some bad guys that are using powers against us, like putting us to sleep. That is certainly changing things around.

Inhibit is really turning into a great healer and my brother is cranking out the damage. I love that as a fire tank I can see the bad guys dropping to the floor before any of us get a chance to take a swing at them. It really makes me feel like I am contributing. I also am really thrilled to jump into the middle of a pack of bad guys and start swinging. Feels a lot like I would think a superhero would feel.

I found a little bug of some sort, probably not a big deal. I have combat jumping, and I found out that I can slide right up any building that has a sloped side. I managed to get on top of several very high buildings just by sliding up them. I have decided to call it building surfing, or “burfing” for short. Or maybe “builfing”. Hmmm.

[City of Heroes] I should be attempting Super Day 8 as I type this but I wanted to fill out this short report before my brain goes blank.

SD7 involved just Inhibit and I as my brother was doing some real life stuff (yawn). Losing the damage dealer certainly slowed us down, but we still managed to get to level 9.

It was also during some sort of cool cave mission where I started to feel tank-like. We were taking on groups of 6 or 7 yellows and not getting the royal beatdown. It was great fun. Slow, but fun.

Now my brother needs to catch up to us! How about them apples?

This morning I had some free time so I logged into City of Heroes. Of course nobody from my static team was on so I just stood around looking at costumes. Eventually people started having costume contests. I entered three of them and won two of them. One was for “ugliest” costume. I logged on my ugliest alt for that one, hehe. The contest I didn’t win was won by a girl in a very small outfit. It basically looked like a swimsuit, a very small swimsuit. Also, some nice high level guy offered 100,000 influence to everyone that came up to him. I added him to my friend’s list in case I ever get a chance to pay him back.

Total profit: 230,000 influence. Not bad, eh?

[City of Heroes] Super Day 6 almost didn’t happen and it was my fault. My wife and kids had plans last night and I expected them home about the time I normally start gaming so I just did a little soloing in CoH. The time they were due back came and went.

I decided to give my wife a call on her cell phone and see how they were doing. I make the call but I hear her cell phone ringing upstairs. I go up there and see she forgot her cell phone.

Well, I know where she went and it was not far away so I figured I would drive out to see if everything was ok. I looked everywhere but could not find my car keys. Figuring she grabbed my keys accidentally, I looked for hers. Nowhere to be seen.

Well, I grabbed a spare set of keys (car and house) and took a drive. Thankfully they were there and all was well, they just lost track of time. And she did have both sets of keys with her.

By the time they got home and we got the kids in bed it was almost the time I normally stop playing. I logged in and found Inhibit. IM’d my brother and he said he would log in for a few missions.

We did two missions and my brother had to log out. Inhibit and I were close to level 8 so we just ran around town taking on groups of greens and blues. We both hit 8 and logged out for the night.

Nothing of note happened, just ordinary game play.

[City of Heroes] Five days in a row, something I’ve never done before. I wonder if my family still loves me.

Anyway, I logged in to find my brother and Inhibit ready to go. We hit the streets and talked to our contacts. My contact sent me from Atlas Park out to King’s Row to see another contact. That contact told me to talk to ANOTHER guy in The Hollows. To get there, we had to go back to Atlas Park and then The Hollows. Really, is it necessary to send us to talk to a guy only to have him send us back? Just tell us to go to The Hollows and be done with it.

The Hollows: what can I say about that zone other than it is a total mess. There is probably some backstory to what happened, but basically it appears the the entire middle of the zone collapsed into a giant sinkhole. Our contact in The Hollows sent us to a building on the ENTIRE OPPOSITE SIDE of the zone. Running there was an experience. We decided to split up. I ran around the sinkhole (which was not easy). I managed to avoid drawing aggro from any of the bad guys (twice my level so I would have no chance) and arrived at the door to our mission. My brother was already there and mentioned he was going to go afk for a smoke.

Inhibit somehow got stuck on a ridge and could not move. He filed a petition. My brother came back and I decided to jump up on a window to insure some safety. My brother saw me do that and joined me on the side of the building. But then he got the bright idea to jump to the next window and then the next. I told him to stay off the roof as there may be bad guys. Too late.

Down he comes from the roof followed by six level 14 guys. The run was on. We both managed to escape and I found a safe spot on the top of a garage to wait for Inhibit to get unstuck. Inhibit tells us that the petition is of no use (not sure if he was answered or if he gave up waiting) but he decided to get a bad guy to aggro and kill him. That worked and eventually he joined us back at the door.

The mission went well, other than my brother pulling a large group on us while Inhibit and I were resting. He is too gung-ho sometimes, hehe.

After that mission we had to go to another door, back on the ENTIRE OPPOSITE SIDE of the zone. We split up again, me taking the chicken way around the hole. Somewhere in the middle of the hole my brother said “holy *#$@” (the game cleans up language for us, how nice of them). He said that if we see an all white body to stay away. It killed him in one shot.

We finished up that mission and then I called it a night. I was tired.

At the end of the night, we were all level 7, or very close to it.

Things of note:

1. Being a fire/fire tank has a few drawbacks. One is that I don’t feel like a tank much yet. I’m still pretty squishy, but it is a lot of fun standing in the middle of a group of bad guys doing damage to them all. The other thing is that the flame visuals are getting on my nerves. A few times during the mission I was too close to a wall and the camera got pushed into my flames so I couldn’t see a thing.

2. To get to King’s Row, we took an elevated train. I mean really, superheroes taking a train?

3. Inhibit says the CoH’s customer service makes WoW’s CS team look good.

4. Either there are a lot less people playing than when the game came out or they changed how they instance zones. I used to have to choose from multiple copies of King’s Row, like King’s Row 1, King’s Row 2, etc. Since I have been playing this time I don’t recall ever having to choose like that which is nice because I don’t know how a team would coordinate that. Perhaps it automatically chooses the instance for a team based on the first person to zone. I don’t know.

[City of Heroes] Four days in a row. I didn’t have a good feeling when I logged in last night but I saw my brother was on and in a mission – solo. I asked him if he had seen Inhibit and he said that he was on earlier. So I kind of hung around for a while, not doing too much.

My brother remembered that Inhibit was online but with a new character. He had to try to remember the name. Finally he did and I sent Inhibit a “heya”. “HEYA” comes back and then silence. I add his new character to my friends list and see he is in a mission too. Waited a little while and was starting to think about calling it a night.

My brother says that he is going to log for a while, at the same time Inhibit asks if we are going to group up tonight. My brother decides to stay for a mission or two but he wants to go to bed soon and I felt about the same.

We did four missions in like 45 minutes and then my brother had to logout. Since my brother was a level up on us, Inhibit and I decided to do another mission or two. By the end of that we had all hit level 6.

Things of note:

1. Some guy ran up to me and opened a trade window. 10,000 influence. I said thanks and he said he likes to help “noobs” out. I took note of him being level 11. I assume he has a higher level character somewhere, but what is there to say I didn’t too? Oh well, free influence is free influence.

2. DarkNinja186 came up to me and made a joke about my name (which is actually very much a proper super hero name unlike this guy). He comes back and makes the same joke later. I certainly hope that the other 185 DarkNinjas are funnier than you buddy. But seriously, can’t people put a tiny bit of effort into their character names? And run it through a spell checker next time while you are at it, EvelDistroiyr77.

[City of Heroes] Last night was reroll night. We all logged into the game and started chatting some. My brother (scrapper) did not like the choices he made and wanted to start over since we were still rather low level. Inhibit and I thought that the two of us (controller and defender) did not make a very good duo for the times when my brother was not playing. So we all rerolled.

I now have a fire/fire tanker, my brother went with a ma/regen scrapper and Inhibit has an empathy/radiation defender. So far it seems like a much more solid group.

Still, three nights in a row we all managed to log in. That must be some kind of record.