Is “Going Rogue” designed to be more challenging than the “basic” game? Or do the RNG gods just have it in for my main GR character?
I’ve got this level 11 Sonic Attack/Mental Manipulation character who is getting her ass handed to her repeatedly. The problem seems to be twofold: She keeps getting sent on missions where every single enemy is a level higher than her (with lieutenants everywhere), and despite having appropriate enhancements slotted, she can’t hit the broad side of a barn. Miss, miss, miss, miss… Seriously, I’m seeing maybe 2 out of 5 attacks hit successfully.
It’s widely considered to be tougher. Although better written and designed than the older portions of the game, with fewer kill-alls and such.
Well, level 11 is a little problematic; “Beginner’s Luck” (the sub-level-20 accuracy bonus) is weakening, enemies are getting stronger, and you don’t have Dual Origin enhancements yet. Getting to 12 and slotting DOs makes a noticeable difference; Training Origin enhancements are so weak that many people (including me) don’t bother to buy them and just slot the ones that drop.
Praetoria is definitely more difficult. The enemies use damage types that are resisted less and are just over all tougher than the primal equivalents at that level. Plus many missions have ambushes. I don’t know if it was intentional but it is true. It was even harder on release, they had to dial it back in patches.
In return for the toughness, we got a much better storyline for starting characters but now with the start of both Paragon City and the Isles being revamped, that isn’t as much of a big deal anymore.
Re Accuracy. I am convinced that a bug introduced during Going Rogue, broke accuracy on low level characters because I find I miss a lot more since then. One time I missed 11 times in a row which is supposed to be impossible (there’s a streak breaker in the code that auto hits if you miss a certain amount of times in a row).
Beginning characters have something called “Beginners luck” built in that is supposed to buff accuracy up to level 20. Sometimes it doesn’t feel that way.
Oh, about constantly running into Lieutenants; I’ve noticed that myself, that some low level missions suddenly seem to have far more than they used to. It could be a bug, or I could be fooling myself.
Okay, I may have overstated the lieutenants thing. Upon closer inspection, it was a case of the main “gateways” within a mission each being manned by a pair of level 12 minions. Their conning yellow to me combined with the way they were kicking my ass and my attacks missing repeatedly fooled me into thinking “lieutenants”.
It depends on the dialogue choice you make when you talk to him. There are some much bigger differences in the red-side missions that do the same sort of thing. The branching dialogue makes a real difference in how stuff progresses for you.
Jaggy has hit 14 and needs to get up to 15 to finish off Dr. Graves’ fight. I predict some grinding, as I can’t seem to find much in the way of missions anymore (for some reason). I am on the starter “storyline” thing with Alastor.
Definitely doing better after I switched to my second powers build and went with Rain of Fire. Doesn’t seem like much, but that stream of 1 damage ticks has helped me considerably. However, I can’t seem to get any useful DO’s yet - very single one is Science/Tech, dammit!
The result is that I’ve got almost no enhancements slotted, though I have coughed up the cash for a few damage augments. I think I defintiely need +accuracy on my x1.00 accuracy attacks, though.
Darkest Night is now doing much more for me, although some missions are just cruel. Even fighting at -1 level, the Dr. Graves missions where you have to be the “hero” for your fellows? My God, that’s nightmarish. I got stuck fighting two Snake bosses at once, and that was not going to work. I had to cheeze it by fleeing and pulling one away. Then I later had to do fight off one boss to 50%, then she fled and got replaced by another snake boss I had to kill! Ouch.
That was a rough day. I got it though. I think I need some more Invention enhancements to carry through, but I can’t easily find what I need. Problematically, supplies are low on the AH, but my stuff sells for much more to vendiors, so I have little reason to sell on the AH. Plus, this game has a horribly designed interface., which does not help.
Enemy types drop enhancements related to their own types. So Family (the mafia goons) drop Natural, Circle of Thorns (the wizards) drop Magic, Goldbrickers (tech thieves) drop Tech, etc. For DO’s, it’ll be the base type and one of its two related types so Circle of Thorns might drop Magic-Natural or Magic-Mutant but never Magic-Science/Magic-Tech. When you’re introduced to contacts, they often give a hint about what sort of faction that contact deals with (“She has some leads on the Family and Crey…”). If you’re a magic origin fighting a faction like Crey Industries, the only useful enhancements you’ll see will be the “reward” ones for defeating specific bosses, completing arcs, etc.
As you get higher in levels, this becomes less and less of an issue since your main source of income will likely be salvage/invention recipe drops and you’ll likely transition to using Invention Origin enhancements.
Word of advice: when you hit level 16 on a character, make sure you do the three Radio/Paper missions and the bank run (Skyway City) because it gives a self rez power that is probably the best power reward for Safeguard/Mayhem missions after the Raptor Pack in the game.
Bruised Violet, my now-level-9 Magic Dark Melee/Dark Armor Brute, just finished the third stage of the Dr. Graves stuff (I think third; met the other contestants, annoyed the Arbiters, came back to do the first stage of the actual competition). She also did the initial Lt. Harris chain. I say “initial” because I left him alive at the end so I assume he’ll show up again later.
I love the visual for that ability. It surprised me the first time Flaminatrix used it, because I was expecting a smaller radius and a visual effect similar to the WoW warlock spell with the same/similar name. Instead, it looks like actual rain that is fire.
+damage and +accuracy are the first enhancements I try to slot in each attack power, followed by recharge reduction. As far as obtaining enhancements, hie thee to Architect Entertainment and run some of the stories. You’ll earn tickets that you can spend on DO enhancements (make sure to select “Architect Rewards” when you select a story). The best part is that the same DO enhancements that would cost you a few thousand Inf/each at a vendor cost only 35 AE tickets/each from the AE Ticket Vendor.
The issue I’m having with Wentworth’s is that the items I find don’t seem to have “standard” vendor prices and so I’m not sure what price to set when I post something. Obviously I want to try to get more than I’d get by just selling them to a vendor, but … there’s no way to see what a vendor would give me while I’m standing at Wentworth’s. So I got me a spiral notebook, and I visit a vendor to see what they’ll give me for each item, and then write everything down, and then go to Wentworth’s and post everything for a bit more than the vendor price.
But then I made another problematic discovery: the vendor price changes depending on what zone the vendor is in, apparently. I’d picked up some enhancements and recipes that I wanted to sell, so I checked with a vendor in, I think, Skyway City, and wrote the prices down. But I didn’t actually get to Wentworth’s until I was back in Atlas Plaza and by that time I’d picked up a few more things I wanted to sell. So I checked with one of the vendors there, and discovered that the vendors in AP were offering considerably lower prices than the vendors in SC. So that kind of screws up my “formula”. I think I need to check my prices at a vendor in the highest-level zone I can safely enter. I think it’s going to take me a while to master Wentworth’s.
Ah, that’s good to know. I’ve just been choosing from the missions offered based on which one looks most interesting in those situations where the contact offers a choice between two missions or two different contacts to be introduced to. I’ll need to figure out which enemies drop Mutation enhancements, since I seem to have more Mutation origin characters than anything else. Trolls? The Lost?
I tried a couple more 5-star-rated AE stories with the “solo friendly” keyword last night that left me wanting to track down and punch the authors. One was in an office building where I fought a series of ridiculously easy, identical minions, and then at the end there was a completely impossible-to-beat-solo-at-my-level super elite archvillain Mastermind who I couldn’t even get close to because of his minions.
The second was a ridiculously long, convoluted maze of tunnels (the “magic” set) where I spent over an hour just trying to find my way, killing identical minions all the way through and exploring every square inch of the place, only to discover that either the author forgot to actually add the boss (the only mission objective), or hid the boss in such an obscure place that even my thorough exploration couldn’t locate her. Though I think that author just needs a stern talking-to rather than a punch in the nose; judging by the brevity of the mission description, the atrocious grammar and spelling, and the incredibly lame attempt at a “subtle” gay joke, I suspect “very young kid designed this”.
I also had to laugh at myself for one story I picked. I neglected to check the “My Level” box when I searched, and I’d gotten used to the stories having a “1-54” level range and scaling themselves to my level, and I neglected to actually look at the level range. So it was quite a surprise when my level 19 character entered the mission and was confronted immediately with a pair of level 31 enemies! The most surprising thing, though, was that I actually managed to defeat one of them before turning tail and running back out the door
Melee characters: I’m having much, much better luck with Brutes than with Scrappers. Maybe I’m misunderstanding something, but the difference between the two terms suggests that “Brutes” feature slow but powerful attacks, while “Scrappers” are weaker but faster. But I’m getting frustrated with my Scrappers because their attacks just seem to have too long recharge rates. My one Stalker character has the same problem. As a result, I’ve had to eschew taking a Power Pool travel ability at the first opportunity in favor of a third attack ability, just so I have something better than Brawl to use while waiting for my two initial attacks to recharge.
Mutation is a tough one because there’s very few mutant enemy types. I think The Lost are as high as it gets (5th Column werewolves used to be but they were changed to Science). For DOs, you might want to go with Magic or Natural and hope to get the -Mutant DO. You’re kind of out of luck for SOs but you can always make money to buy them plus you’ll get them as a reward at certain points.
I don’t want to oversell the difficulty; my first 50 was a mutant Defender back before the Invention system so SOs were the best we could get. It’s nothing crippling but I thought you’d want to know so you didn’t waste a bunch of time looking for high level mutant groups.
Brutes are tougher in raw states but require “rage” to build up. As rage builds from attacking or being attacked, their damage ramps up so you’re somewhat dependent to keep on the move and in combat to keep yourself doing the maximum damage. Scrappers are always at the top of their game damage-wise but have less hit points and defenses to start. Once you’re high level and fully enhanced, the practical differences become much slimmer.
As a result of this, Brutes actually benefit from having some quick attacks so you can always be building rage vs all slow “heavy” attacks.
You’re killing yourself with the vendor comparison stuff unnecessarily. Vendors buy three things from you: TO/DO/SO enhancements, salvage, and recipes.
For recipes:
You can either choose to vendor white recipes or craft them to use or sell. White recipes are freely purchasable at the university, so most people don’t bother to buy the recipes themselves off the market when they’re mass-crafting. Crafting and selling dropped recipes can be profitable since you’re not spending the money on purchasing the recipe from the university, but it takes some time and effort.
Yellow and orange recipes are a little trickier and may require comparison shopping, but you only need to do that at Wentworth’s. Most common yellow/orange recipes will only be selling for 10k or less, but occasionally the IO you can craft from them is worth significantly more (of course you have to account for the salvage used in crafting as well).
In general, recipe crafting is dicey at low levels, but much more stable at 50. The only exception are special IOs, like stealth or +End or +Rech, which are actually worth more at low levels. That’s for the advanced class, though.
For salvage:
IIRC, vendor prices are always 100 for white salvage, 250 for yellow, and 1000 for rare. You’re almost always better off selling on Wentworth’s; while white and yellow tend to go for 10-100 inf on Wentworth’s, orange tends to go for 100k - 4 mil, so it evens out and this way you save on places to go.
For TO/DO/SO enhancements:
Just vendor them. Seriously. Unless you want to use them, go to the nearest NPC who’ll buy them and unload. Don’t comparison shop. Nobody wants them on Wentworth’s. You won’t sell for very much and you’ll waste auction slots trying to. You will save so much time by just vendoring enhancements (and not bothering to look for the best price) that the extra drops you’ll earn from spending time playing instead of shopping will make up for it.
Regarding Brutes vs Scrappers:
Brutes are slower in that Fury requires some time to build up, but if you can maintain a high level of Fury they’re pretty hard-hitting. Scrappers don’t have a gradual build-up, since their Critical Hits are random chance, so they have a much more consistent damage output that’s a fair bit higher than Brutes at rest but a little less than a full-Fury Brute.
Defense-wise, both Brutes and Scrappers have the same base defenses, but Brutes can be pumped up to Tanker max levels given enough effort, while Scrappers cap their defenses at a lower level.
Scrappers are by no means weak, mind. They’re simply more consistent, putting out the same damage with their first attack as with their last, while Brutes need to maintain a constant momentum to be awesome. In the long run, they’re pretty much equal; it’s just a matter of which playstyle you prefer. It’s entirely possible to not click with Scrappers but love Brutes and vice versa.
I believe that Rikti take over for the Lost in Mutation drops at high levels.
[pet peeve]Fury, it is Fury that Brutes build. Rage is a power in the Super Strength powerset that makes the set really rock. [/pet peeve]
Close. According to Paragonwiki, it is 250, 1000, and 5000 for vendoring Invention salvage. It is important to check what the going price is on the consignment house for all of it. While most common salvage doesn’t go for much, there are pieces that sell very well. Alchemical Silver is usually in the mid 20k range.
You may want to sell stuff on the consignment house even if it doesn’t go for much. Selling 50 Salvage pieces gets you the Scrounger badge and +2 to your salvage inventory size. Selling enough of anything can increase the number of slots you have at the consignment house. There are other badges that can also increase your salvage, recipe, and selling amounts.
You’re definitely right in that quick attacks are actually more useful for a Brute. A Claws Brute is a scary, scary thing, since Claws has some incredibly fast attacks. A general tip for starting Brutes, in fact, is to have Brawl on auto until you have enough attacks to make a chain. That way, whenever you’re not actually attacking with something strong, Brawl keeps your Fury bar from fading.
But yeah, Scrappers and Brutes start out with the same defenses but where Scrappers cap at 75% for resistance, Brutes cap at 90%, same as Tankers.
I thought I was probably off, but I was going from memory. And yeah, I typically will just dump my stuff for 10 inf each unless it’s 10k or more, and then I’ll start matching the last 5 sales minus a small undercut.
Vendoring salvage is a last-ditch thing, only if you just really don’t want to deal with the auction house.
Rikti are science, not Mutations. Which makes little sense once you’ve gone through the plotline but there it is. Likewise, Devouring Earth are science, not mutant.
Trust me, I tried everyone back when I was leveling that Defender.
Huh. So apparently free to play is active now. Is the main SDMB group still on Virtue? I just created a Gadgets/Ice Defender named Daimon Kringle (Son of Santa).
