Speaking of badges …
I’ve started up what I guess is called a “project character”. One thing that’s bugged me with the 80-odd characters I’ve rolled (at least those I’ve advanced past Atlas Park) is that due to quickly outleveling the zone, I hadn’t ever done much of anything in Kings Row outside of missions from other zones sending me there. Aside from a few radio missions, I hadn’t done missions for any of the Kings Row contacts. I’ve also noticed a number of contacts standing around Atlas Park that I’ve never had any … contact … with. And Skyway City was sadly neglected, mainly due to the fact that Skyway’s level range matches Steel Canyon’s, but Steel has all of the “essential” stuff that Skyway lacks.
So I rolled up a Natural origin dual blades/willpower brute with the intent to thoroughly explore these “neglected” zones. The rules were simple: Turn off XP as necessary to avoid outleveling the zone, and run missions (including Radio and Safeguard missions) for contacts in that zone until they stop introducing me to new contacts in that zone. This is under the assumption that, when they stop introducing new contacts, that means there are no more missions available in that zone (this assumption was basically confirmed for me on the forums). Also, she’s getting no financing from my higher-level characters (she is a member of my personal SG on the Justice server, so she has access to the Salvage Racks, but that’s it).
So. This character, Asa Castrelli, is the daughter of a low-ranking Family member who crossed the wrong high-ranking Family member and found himself swimming with the fishes. That happened when Asa was a girl. Now she’s grown up and out for revenge, and her path to revenge is going to be through the “gritty” zones: Kings Row, Skyway City, Independence Port, and Brickstown.
First step: Atlas Park. In this zone she followed the “normal” path. Matthew Habashy, Sondra Costell, Aaron Thiery, and the first arc of the Shining Stars storyline. That cleared most of the AP missions (she’ll use Ourobouros later to come back and do Officer Fields’ arc, since at this point she had to choose between him and Sondra). This got her to level 8.
Second step: Kings Row. Since the only contact you get automatically in KR (heck, nobody in Atlas even introduces you to any contacts there, aside from Blue Steel, and he doesn’t count) is your assigned detective, Asa started with radio missions and then a Safeguard to get her first contact. When she got to level 9-1/2, I turned off her XP. Then she did every mission offered by KR contacts and any Atlas Park contacts introduced by KR contacts. She did this until all of the contacts she obtained in KR and AP stopped introducing new contacts in those zones. Some of them introduced contacts in Steel Canyon or Skyway, but she ignored those for now. Once they stopped offering new missions and contacts, Asa ran three more Radio missions and a Safeguard to see if the detective had any new contacts. He didn’t, and that was my cue that I was done with KR and AP.
Third step: The Hollows. Having been introduced to David Wincott, Asa started on The Hollows arcs. I turned her XP back on just long enough to reach level 10 (I wanted to train another defensive power), and turned it off again. She did Wincott’s missions, then ran a bunch of missions for Meg Mason, and then Flux. Soloed Frostfire (though it took two attempts, and I cheated a bit by pulling a self-rez power out of the mail when he killed her; she’d gotten him down to just a sliver of health before she died and I didn’t want him regenerating most of his HP while she Ninja Ran back from the hospital). That got her sent off to meet Julius the Troll, and she did his missions until he finally said, “No more missions for you until level 12!”
Fourth step: Being level 10, Asa could now return to Twinshot to do the second part of the Shining Stars arc, and that’s where she is now (actually she’s up to 11 now). I’ve turned her XP back on until she gets to level 12, so that when she finishes Shining Starts Part 2 she can go back to Julius the Troll and pick up where she left off.
I’ll only turn XP on as necessary, but in any case I will shut it off at level 14, as the next stop will be Skyway City North. She’ll clear that the same way she did AP & KR, then bump up to level 15, via radio missions and turn off XP again to go do the third stage of the Shining Stars arc. Again, I’ll completely ignore contacts in Steel Canyon or any other “shiny” zone.
So as it stands now, thanks to freezing her XP, she’s level 11 and completely tricked out with level 10 IOs. Inf-wise, she got extremely lucky when she posted two Simple Chemicals on the AH and somebody paid her 500,000 each for them, giving her some financial leeway. And that’s another benefit to freezing her XP - it gives her plenty of time to pick up lots of that low-level salvage that seems to sell for good prices. Also, thanks to all that time spent in AP, KR, Perez, and The Hollows, she already has the “Kill Skuls” badge (defeat 500 Skulls). Heck, my level 48 main doesn’t even have that one! I’ll note, though, that she did absolutely no deliberate, focused “street-sweeping/hunting” to get that badge. Every Skull she defeated was either part of a mission, or encountered while traveling from one mission to the next. Asa simply made a point of engaging every Skull she ran across while traveling. If they were in her path, they were going down, but she didn’t deliberately seek them out outside of missions. I have her travel by ground (using Ninja Run) as much as possible; she has a Rocket Pack, but uses it only when absolutely necessary. With so much ground-pounding, she naturally encountered plenty of Skulls while traveling.
And that brings me back to badges, specifically Exploration badges. My goal there is to get all of the Exploration badges in each zone, without deliberately hunting for them. She has to “find” them (along with the History plaques) “naturally”, while traveling between missions and contacts. I have VidiotMaps installed, of course, so if she passes near a marker while traveling she can turn aside to “find” it. She just can’t spend time running around the zone purely to find markers. As luck would have it, she “found” all of the markers in AP and KR this way — the missions eventually sent her near enough to each marker for her to find them “naturally”. Hazard zones are going to be the trick here, since those maps are completely invisible until you move through them, so she can’t even see the VidiotMaps markers unless her natural travel path happens to light them up. She could pass near one but never see it because she wasn’t quite close enough to reveal it on the map. But that’s one reason she ran so many missions for Meg Mason in The Hollows - she wanted to cover as much ground as possible. I’m counting on future missions into Perez to find the rest of the markers there. Only when/if she gets to level 50 will she go back to specifically hunt down any markers she missed.
It’s been fun so far 
I’ve got it set to levels 1-20, but since Arachnos is the only enemy group I could probably safely go 1-54 with it.