If it was a loot drop, it would be in your salvage and you need to craft it in order to get access. If you saw the message after entering the game but before any loot drops, it’s a Veteran reward or whatever they’re calling them now. I’ve not played since Freedom went live for VIPs so I don’t know how to find those.
Quite welcome. I’ve been tempted to use that myself when visiting Wentworth’s at times.
Yeah, this is immediately upon entering the game for the first time after creating the character.
I think the only shorts (excepting tighty-whities from the Tights selection) are the boxing shorts. They can be recolored to whatever but they’re a vet reward and not available for new players. I’ve never made a shorts-wearin’ hero but I can see where it’d be frustrating for whoever else.
The chat window lists a bunch of messages when you log in, the specific costume piece you gained should be listed there.
It will also tell you any badges you may have earned if you got a new one.
There’s some martial arts themed shorts available in that section, too, but the selection of normal clothing is really limited. You can get a million different patterns of spandex, as you’d expect for a superhero game, but “civilian wear” is limited.
My personal costume peeve is how few of the outfit pieces and patterns can go on animalistic body types. Digitigrade legs, in particular, lock out virtually everything for the lower body category…kinda disappointing. My minotaur lady can’t wear the Roman legionnaire outfit without shapeshifting to normal legs 
Are all these costume set slots that are labeled “Earn in Game” or “Buy in Store” basically for different costumes that I can change into “at will”? I’m thinking those are good for putting together a “secret identity” outfit.
I’m having a great time with my Fire Blast/Fire Manipulation heroine, Flaminatrix! I had her learn to fly, and being able to blast the bad guys while hovering is a lot of fun. She just finished up the pre-level-10 Shining Stars storyline, up through Manticore (don’t want to spoil it for any who haven’t done it yet). Of course, having both Flaminatrix and Flambeaux on the same team is kind of redundant…
I’m still having trouble with moving forward — I’m so accustomed to moving in WoW by holding down both mouse buttons, and I’ve gotten in trouble with that in CoH because of how, if you hold both buttons down for a few seconds, you just keep moving even after releasing the buttons. In one instance I unintentionally ran my character right into a tight corner and was promptly surrounded by villains so that I couldn’t move out of the corner.
[veteran forumgoer pet peeve]Gosh, and here I thought all the names had been taken already and the inability to find a good one was going to drive new players away.[/vfpp]
Yeah, that trips me up sometimes too. It took a while before I realized that was an intentional feature and not an irritating bug. It can be handy if you have a long way to run, but given the abundance of travel abilities in the game travel doesn’t account for much downtime.
Yes, complete with “costume change emotes” like spinning Wonder Woman style, or drinking a potion. You can get new costume slots at tailors at level 20, 30, and 40; and a fourth is available by turning in special Halloween Salvage pieces to Granny Beldam in Nerva for villains (on an island north of the Natural store; a supergroup teleporter will drop you right there); Annah in Croatoa for heroes right by the Tram, off the edge of the platform; and Praetorians can turn the salvage in at Acantha in Imperial City on the hills near the Tiberian Bluff marker to the south.
I just use the WASD keys; in fact, it was CoX that got me used to using them.
Lol. This is how I came up with the name Ike Witt. I was trying to come up with a name for a character of mine in Guild Wars. I tried about 15 different names that were all taken, when I said “I quit”. Needless to say, a light went on and I’ve been using the name on-line for about 5 years now.
That was probably the best part of them creating a brand new server. I got some names I long wanted to use that had been taken on all the other servers literally years ago.
Hah! I can’t remember how many other names I tried before that one stuck. Naturally, she’s dressed in bright red and orange leather 
Oh, and I got her to level 10. Went 8-10 by doing one of the stories at Architect Entertainment called “Relativity Be Damned!” Very well done, and very fun. Alternate universe Einsteins!
Oh yeah, that reminds me that I’m supposed to check back in with Twinshot at level 10…
Coolness. I’m thinking she’ll need a “civilian” outfit and an armored version of her regular costume…
Having some fun, though I’m starting to get my butt kicked. Enemies definitely getting harder around level 8-9. I need more “punch” to my powers, though I did just get Flame Breath.
My Villain on Protecter is a Fire/Dark Corrupter named “Jaggy”. It irritated me greatly that I ran into the old naming problem and had to drop my preferred names. I’m also thinking that I might have been better off with Ice/Kinetics. Hard to say. I may try to make another just to experiment, and I’m not too high a level yet. My reasoning is that while I like Fire, I don’t get that much out of AoE, at least not yet. I’m a focus-fire kind of guy, and the fact that the ordinary mooks on Mercy island ALWAYS pair with a liutenant.
*I had in mind that he got his powers from a particularly unpleasant Aztec God, and is not happy about it. Unfortunately, he never read in the comics where the heroes inevitably get into a pointless brawl the first time they meet, so my personal story is that he was rescued by opportunistic Arachnos agents after thinking the good guys were out to get HIM. May go Rogue later on.
Definitely enjoyed the use of variable endings to my missions.
Thus far: Fire Wire, you == idiot == TRUE. Note to Self: don’t use the piles of cash as a memento(!). Note to Arachnos: As much as I enjoy your sloppiness, there’s no reason to stop trying to get me after the bank job.
Lt. Harris: Yes, you’re an idiot. I actually felt bad about abusing you, but only because you really belonged in a mental hospital, you raving psycho.
Dr. Graves: You are pretty much the poster child for why I prefer my villains genial.
I’m actually wondering about some things. I often see nice vs. monstrous choices in missions. Some of them seem to matter, and some don’t. I love this feature, but is there a guide anywhere to what choices make a difference? I like leaving people alive because I like having more people around. Also, if I get introduced to one contact, can I still find the other and do his missions?
You can’t customize any of the MM pets in any way. Requested a lot, but hasn’t happened. But you can customize the other powerset you chose.
Another sad victim of Altitis. You will find a lot of fellow sufferers in the game. I have a mild case myself, only 60+ different characters right now. I am currently fighting the desire for a Time Manipulation character. I think I am losing.
The biggest complaint about the costume options over the last 7 years has been the inequality between the genders. Women get more options in shorts and skirts, but less in other areas like armor. Men basically get kilts, but more options in armor and suits. They both have had basically the same number of costume parts, but not the same parts. And both sides agree the options for the monstrous legs really suck. 
It is hoped that with less necessity to create entire theme of parts with Freedom, that the artists will now be able to make up some of those inequities.
On the downloader, it has a known memory leak. Unless you want to run 2 sessions of COH at once, go to File>Settings>General and uncheck the 2 boxes and set the dropdown menu to Exit Launcher.
The zone graphics in the game vary wildly. Actually all the graphics do. The original Paragon zones are very old and dated, the Rogue Island stuff is newer, and the Praetoria stuff is much newer. The tutorial and Atlas Park are of of course brand new, although I guess the stuff in AP is mixed, some new, some still old. As someone who can’t run Ultra Mode (I’m lucky I can still run the game. :p) I can’t see most of the differences. Although there are some see through buildings in First Ward I am pretty sure are supposed to be solid. 
The parts you get show up on the yellow Rewards channel. I have it, the System channel, the Error channel, and the various channels announcing zone events in a separate window so I can keep track of the more easily. I also have the various global channels I am on in a separate window, on different tabs, for the same reason. Then there is a window with a tab for teams/leagues/SG and a tab for the combat messages. It makes my UI a bit more cluttered, but keeps my communications sorted out.
It used to be a real pain to set up on new characters, but they added the ability to save your windows and chat channel setups to the Options at the bottom of the General tab. Now I just have to go there and load the default windows file, the default chat file, and the default Options file. Voila, everything set. You have to watch the system channel to be sure they load, sometimes you have to push the button a couple of times. But still much faster than doing it all by hand.
The joys of only having TOs and not enough of them. When you start getting DOs and the occasional IO in your build, things start improving. SOs really help things out.
You can check Paragonwiki. For the arcs, like Dr. Graves, they generally have the complete arc text and what happens in it. The brand new stuff may not be finished yet, since it is all done by players. OTOH, the open Beta gave a lot of time for getting it done.
And no, you can’t just go to a contact and start doing their missions. In some cases you will later be introduced to the other contact (That is especially true in the higher zones blueside.) but some you can only do by choosing differently with another character. Or possibly by using Ouroboros. Haven’t tried that yet.
[n3wb]Thanks for the tip… but what does any of this mean? [/n3wb]
These refer to enhancements, the circular icons you can slot in your powers.
TO = Training Origin Enhancement. Really basic. Only improves your powers by 6-9% per enhancement.
DO = Dual Origin Enhancement. So named because a particular enhancement can only be slotted by one of two origins (Magic/Natural, Tech/Science, etc). Improves powers by 12-19% per enhancement.
SO = Single Origin. You can only slot the enhancements of your origin. Improves powers by 23-38% per enhancement.
As you can see, they make a huge difference. 3 TOs gets you ~28% improvement at best, 3 DOs get you ~60%, and 3 SOs get you ~100%, and that’s only if you use three slots for a single attribute (damage, recharge, endurance reduction, etc). Also, by the time you hit 22 (which is when you get SOs), you’ll have accumulated a decent number of enhancement slots, which directly translates to more/varied power.
TOs, DOs, and SOs are level-relative. Each has a given level, and their power is dependent on yours, with a range of +3 to -3. If you have a level 18 DO and you’re level 15, it will give you a very high boost, but that boost will degrade to its lowest point until you’re level 21, and it’ll shut off entirely at level 22.
IOs are slightly different. They’re Invention Origin enhancements and are crafted by players. They do not vary in power, but they also don’t ever degrade or shut off. They’re meant more for moderate-advanced players, but they’re very helpful once you start getting comfortable with the system.
Aha. Thank you kindly. I got to play around slightly with the combining system, and I have picked up salvage. I have no idea how to use the salvage, though.
Also, got to say I absolutely love the superspeed. I would usualyl gof or flight, but superspeed seems to do most of what I need and is great fun. Sometimes hard to control.
Around level 10, you will get a contact pop up to tell you to go to the university in Steel Canyon [south] (for heroes). Doing a ten minute tutorial walk through opens up the “crafting” system, which is what that salvage is for.
I usually wait until level 12, in order to get a free level 15 crafted enhancement.
You can aution salvage, recipes, and unused enhancements at the auction house. It comes with a nice feature that lets you see what the last 5 winning bids for the stuff was.
Everything you need to know about enhancements in a nutshell (Not including IOs)
1 SO = 2 DOs = 4 TOs.
You cannot slot more than the equivalent of 3 SOs per power.
Don’t spend inf on TOs. Just use the ones that drop.