Tips and Tricks

[Alaric]

just thought it might be nice to have a thread where we can post some tips and tricks we may have picked up about the game which some people may not know about. Here's a couple to start with:

Inviting your own characters to a super group: If you have a character who is a) a member of a super group, and b) has invite privileges, you can invite your own characters into the group. Just open the Social window, choose Super Group, and, in the area labeled "invite", type the full name of the character you're inviting (charactername@yourCOhandle). Then, log the character you just invited into the game, and accept the invitation.

Doing both the Desert Crisis and the Canada Crisis with the same character: If you're a Perk collector, just want to see your character beat every super villain in the game, want to be higher level than normal when you finish the Crisis, just can't make up your mind, or for whatever other reason you may want to, you can play through, and get full credit for, both the Desert Crisis and the Crisis in Canada for the same character! To do this, complete the Tutorial, then talk to Witchcraft to choose the Desert Crisis. Work your way through the Crisis until you've defeated Gigavolt. When the text appears about digging out, just cancel out of it and go to the mission door- it will look lke it's covered with debris, but it's still actually usable. Use the door, and pick "Return to Crisis" (or however it's phrased) from the menu. You'll find yourself back in the Desert Crisis. It will seem as if you haven't completed that last mission- don't worry about that. Go to the helicopter and use it to go to the Canadian Crisis. Go to the guy waving his arms around and press "z" to get the mission to speak with Justiciar (you may be able to just go to Justiciar and talk to him without talking the mission, I haven't tried that). Work your way through the Crisis, defeat Rakshasa, and exit into non-Crisis Canada. Go directly to the helicopter and travel to the desert, and talk to Robert Kaufman- this will complete your final Desert Crisis mission (finally!). And... you've done it.

[bat1987]

Good idea for the tread. Didnt know that you can play both Crises.

Nemesis missions I highly recommend doing this since you can get really useful items for the nemesis tokens you receive as a reward. Your nemesis` henchmen will spawn and drop the clue six hours (real time) upon completing the previous mission, try beating low lvl creeps to make them spawn, and if that doesnt work bust chairs at Harmon speech in MC (this can do wonders sometime). After two henchmen missions you`ll get one special mission, when you complete it you`ll get another one where you fight your nemesis. You`ll go through three of these cicles until you finally defeat your nemesis.

[GhostMachine]

Good idea for the tread. Didnt know that you can play both Crises.

Nemesis missions I highly recommend doing this since you can get really useful items for the nemesis tokens you receive as a reward. Your nemesis` henchmen will spawn and drop the clue six hours (real time) upon completing the previous mission, try beating low lvl creeps to make them spawn, and if that doesnt work bust chairs at Harmon speech in MC (this can do wonders sometime). After two henchmen missions you`ll get one special mission, when you complete it you`ll get another one where you fight your nemesis. You`ll go through three of these cicles until you finally defeat your nemesis.

Actually, you can also bust chairs and tables in the Ren Center. There are two different sections that have plenty of them, and they respawn pretty quick.

Oh, and one other thing; if you get a Nemesis mission that you don't like from a clue....tough. Dropping the quest and waiting six hours for another clue is no good, because you'll just get the same mission again.

[Alaric]

Escort Missions-

The first one or two you may come across, in the Crisis Zones, aren't so tough, but most players come to hate escort missions- those missions where you have to escort a NPC from one place to another while keeping him or her alive. No question, those missions can be tricky, but there are ways to make them somewhat easier.

1: Use your alternate builds! If your character has a passive slotted defensive power, switching to Protector build before starting the mission can help a lot. In Protector mode, you're better at attracting the attention of enemies, so they're more likely to attack you instead of the NPC. Your defenses are also increased in this role. You'll do less damage, but still enough to deal with most enemies easily enough. If you have any healing or buffing powers, switching to Sentinel mode before starting the mission can help you keep the NPC alive- you'll be much better at healing, buffing, and other support role stuff. Just remember, make sure your builds are up to date before changing builds. While you can do this manually, there's a faster way, if you aren't too particular about the differences between your builds. Open your Builds window- the little tab on the left of your powers with the icon that looks like a pair of glasses. Switch to each build and select "Update". This will give you four possible check boxes- Costume, Role, Powers, and Equipment. I generally uncheck Role and leave the others checked. This will duplicate the way your current build is set up to the build you're looking at. Then, you can manually make any changes you need to- slotting a different passive, for example.

2: Get help. I've encountered a number of kind people in the game who hover near some of the escort mission locations just so they can help people do them- healing the NPC, attacking enemies, etc. I myself have done this once or twice- I'm reluctant to attack enemies someone else is fighting without asking first, but I have no such problem using heals, buffs, and debuffs to help someone do a difficult mission. If no helpful people are around, you can always ask for help- either or the Freedom channel or more generally. Usually, one other person helping out is enough to make the mission a lot easier.

Note that, personally, I've never sought out help on an escort mission- I've gotten some anyway a few times, but usually I use the build switching method mentioned above. It works very well, most of the time. Still, I have to admit the having help works even better.

[Alaric]

Screenshots Made Easy(er): Reading another thread involving screenshots finally motivated me to try out the game's demo recorder. This tool, inherited from City of Heroes, is officially unsuppoerted, but better integrated into the game than its CoH ancestor, and can allow the user to get really good screenshots without having to take any while actually playing. Just follow the following step:

1: Enter the game as usual.
2: Enter the mission or zone you're going to want to take screenshots in (zoning, including entering a mission, seems to deactivate the demo recorder).
3: Type /demo_record name (name being whatever you want to name the demo you're recording- for example, demo_record Test1). (Note- I believe /demorecord will work as well.) A red "Recording" indicator should appear on the left side of the screen.
4: Complete the mission as usual, but don't exit yet. Don't worry about screenshot angles.
5: Type /demo_record_stop (NOT /demo_record stop) to stop recording.
6: Now you can exit the mission.
7: Exit the game completely.
8: Open the launcher.
9: Click on "Options"
10: In the "Advanced command line", type -demoplay name (for example, -demoplay Test1). Don't forget the -.
11: Start the game as usual.
12: Once the game loads, it will start running through a recording of the mission you just ran.
13: On the upper left side of the screen, there will be controls allowing you to pause, play, fast forward, and rewind.
14: Pressing F2 at any time will free the camera, making it completely independent of your character- very useful for getting the angle you want for a screenshot. Pressing F2 again will put the camera back where it actually was, and re-lock it to the character.
15: When freed, the camera can respond to various keys and mouse buttons. I find that it's easiest to manipulate using the w and s keys to go forward and back and the right mouse button to rotate the view.
16: Use "Print Screen" as usual to take any screen shots you want.
17: Click on the big red X on the left side of the screen to exit.
18: Your screenshots should be saved in the usual "Screenchots" folder in your CO Live folder.
19: Don't forget- the next time you want to actually play the game, you're going to have to open "Options" again and delete the "-demoplay whatever" line.

[bat1987]

This should make things easier, tnx.

[UnkoMan]

Wow!

That's really cool! Thanks Al. How'd you get to be so tricky?