Weekend Pictures

This is Villain-Fyre (you can tell by the blonde). I don't know why she was posing, but I do like the picture. It was taken before I (finally) turned up my resolution, so it could have been better, of course.

Yeah, it's kind of a "death picture," but it's a good action shot anyway. That's Keen Havoc in the foreground, Fyre dead on the floor with the minions and miners, and Mason, in the back ground, about to be hit by a shovel.

Mason, Fyre, and Captain Piett spent some time in Pocket D over the weekend. The facial expressions do not change in the game, but I'd say Fyre looks mad about something or other. With that crowd, it's a good bet.

I spent way too many hours in the RWZ on Saturday. Poor Fyre died, a lot. Here, she's helping to tear down a pylon.

The Rikti Giant Monster, U'Kon Gr'ai. Note the guy with the Most Mismatched Costume In The World, behind U'Kon's.... club? Gun? Sword?




The death picture! I think we were trying to spell out "help."

I always think it's kinda ironic when Fyre gets frozen. Even more, when she gets set on fire.

Luna spent some time exploring Sharkhead while the team waited for Kain. She found some Freaks doing some strange stuff. They were apparently baffled by this "strange item." Looks like a skelton to me, guys. With all the shooting, slicing, stabbing, burning, and exploding, it can't be a very unusual sight.

You can also see my obessive-complusive need to organize my inspirations (ugh, that orange is in the wrong place!) and Luna's lack of chat tabs. All the action in Guardian happens in team-chat, and only in team-chat. I never bothered to add or seperate anything else. I think every character I have has a different chat-tab set up. But, everyone's inspiration tray is nice and organized. No matter what. Yes, I will click-and-drag in the middle of a fight.

Lunatrix, in her goth look, making someone invisible. Probably Bomber.

RWZ Pictures

First, I kept seeing This Guy-- no, I don't remember his name. Groundsomething. Groundswell, maybe?-- all around thr RWZ, but just for a second at a time, so I never got a good look. I kept thinking it was Masonry. Then, I ended up on a PuG with him, and realized what I was seeing. He was a good player, and he could type complete words. But, he was no Mason.

This was the goal of the mission-- the Rikti AV, also seen in the Lady Grey TF. No, I'm not even going to attempt to spell his name. The guy in white in front of Blaze (again, I don't remember the name. Not a clue this time) was a tank with an interesting pulling strategy. He had the eye-lasers from one of the Epic power pools and pulled them right to him. He only used it to thin the herd around the AV, and then pull the AV itself out of the room. It worked pretty well.

This was the room we pulled the AV from, and one of the reasons I'm becoming more amused with I10 as I see more of it. The maps are just awesome. I wish I could have taken better pictures, but I did get quite a few anyway, to at least give an idea of what it looks like. I don't even have captions for the rest of the pictures of it, but I'll post them anyway.

Trying to give an idea of the size of it here. It was huge. Almost as big as the skyscrapers in the city zones.

Okay, yeah, it's a death picture. But that's not the point of this, though I see death pictures have become a trend. ;) It was one of the few times the top of the crashed ship was clear enough to get a semi-decent picture.

Villain Fyre and Will's "boys" starting to fight the Legacy Chain and the Scrapyarders to get to the Sea Witch, in one of my current least favorite missions.

And this is why it's one of my least favorite missions. Swarms of Legacy Chain and Scrapyarders once we started hitting the Sea Witch = teamwipe, including Will and Keen Havoc's minions. Fyre became one with a steel girder, but look at those minions. Ouch.

Fyre and Will watching the Rikti drop ships come in. I still love that green sky.

The Lady Grey TF

Apparently, "death" pictures are expected of me now. So, this is from the failed attempt at the Temple of the Waters SF. +6's make for lots of death. That's Luna, embedded in a hillside in a cave, in her new "goth" look. Luna will change costumes much more than my other characters. She's like that.

I think it was the third team-wipe when we decided to give it up, and move back to Hero side and the new Lady Grey TF. I'm so glad we did.

Blaze and Shadow Fall make for bad screenshots. But I tried anyway, because the maps were just so freakin' cool. We cleared this room (first mission? maybe second) but Blaze stopped to take one last look.

This was the mission were we had to rescue Penny-from-Faultline from the Rikti. Penny and most of the team are in the center, near the portal




Lunar Midnight, one of our Pick-Ups, Frost, and Blaze. Penny's suspended in the purple aura.






Bad picture, partly from the effects in the mission, and partly because of my graphics quality. In the background is three of the four "Riders," the Rikti version of the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse. There was a fog throughout the mission, which intensified the auras around the Riders nicely.

My part of the "talk like a Rikti" inspired team, SYN-13. Yet another failed Crey experiment set loose to wander around Paragon City.

Invasion Pictures, and A Litte Info

Okay. One picture of... Team 3.1? The front guy is the Circle mage we were supposed to "rescue" from the Scrapyarders, who are, by the way, my current least favorite group. "Rescue" is in quotes because even though we freed them from the Scrapyarders guarding them, it didn't matter if they immediately died or not. And they did. Except for this last guy, only because he didn't have to fight anything. While we were there. We left him in the cave. That's Keen Havoc and the Tokyo Trio plus one, and Will's Boys. Out of the shot are Will and Schlachtfeld (and yeah, I had to go to Mason's blog to see how to spell that. German is not a language I'm familiar with.)

In the revamped RWZ, there are "pylons" that have popped up. First of all, don't get close on your own. They are perfectly capable of one-shotting. And they've got *range* There are... eighteen? in the zone. Once all are destroyed, the shields on the mothership will drop. The pylons will reappear after a certain amount of time, so the only way this is accomplished is with multiple teams taking down the pylons.

Once all the plyons are destroyed and the shields drop, welcome to the most chaotic Hami raid you've ever been on. There are TONS of Rikti on the ship. Teams will head toward the center of the ship, hopefully after planting at least one bomb per team. Bombs can be placed in the "duct work" of the ship by destroying "door" placed around the outside of the ship. Once you plant a bomb, RUN. They explode, you know. At least three bombs must be placed to spawn the ship's security chief, who'll appear as a GM with a name I can't remember. Supposedly, once the GM is defeated, there will be access to the inside of the ship. This, however, didn't occur while I was there.

Of course, there's lots more Rikti activity than just in the RWZ. You must be at least level 35 for RWZ, anyway. I saw level 54's on the ship itself. And given that Blaze cycled through over 400k in debt there, I recommend taking a 50, or at the very least a character you don't expect to level quickly. Expect debt.

This is an Invasion in Peregrine Island, while the Rikti were teleporting in. There was some lag during this, but nothing like the first night. I don't know if this was due to the time of day (late afternoon/early evening), that it was a high level zone, or that two days have given the shiny time to wear off, and there just aren't as many people out and about.

Blaze in the center of an Invasion. The nifty new shield graphics still entertain me. Also, the only good monkeys are dead monkeys. (Please, save the PETA warnings. PETA doesn't care about Rikti monkeys.)

A slightly less chaotic phase of the battle. New shields, some crazy invention set wings, and dead monkeys.

Blaze posing with new friends in the RWZ. The guy in the purple on the left is a Vanguard Soldier. The guy on the right is a Vanguard Wizard. (*watches as Vagz drools.)

Which brings up another important point. Some of the Vanguard costume pieces and some other things (which I haven't investigated much yet) are available to players. You can buy these things with Merits. Merits are earned through Vanguard by fighting Rikti. Merits will occasionally drop fighting Rikti during the Invasion cycles. However, EVERY Rikti defeated while on the Mothership will drop a Merit.

VERY IMPORTANT: You must do the first set of Levantera's missions until you get the "Member of Vanguard" badge before you are eligible for Merits.

My first run on the mothership, I must have missed out on hundreds of Merits. After we were teleported off of the ship when the raid failed-- after the GM appeared and resulted in the repeated of deaths of dozens of heroes-- I ran back and did the missions. It's mostly running around and talking to NPCS, and one Defeat 10 Rikti. Very quick.

So I10's... okay. I guess. I'm happier with I10 than I9, at least. The Lady Grey TaskForce does interest me more than most of the other TF's. And repeatable missions in the RWZ make me much happier than repeatable missions in the Shadow Shard. Costume pieces make me happy. No, not inventable wings or boots. There are 2 new costume pieces available that aren't armor. I have one character who might be interested in the Vanguard armor, and she's level 27, and likely to stay there for a good while. So, costume-wise, the issue is disappointing. Am I disappointed with the issue? No. Blaze and Blaster-Fyre will probably be spending a lot of my newly acquired free-time in the RWZ in the next few days. Did I hope for just a little more? Yep.