The visual overhaul usually signals a legendary version incoming. This one should be relatively inexpensive as they go, since it has less "back catalog" than the last few.
Event is pretty cool. Very TOS. Devidians have stolen an Old One transmuter (the magic wand the witches from Cats Paw used to summon the giant cat).
Three steps, and idiots will hold up all of them severely.
Step one
Light candles - there's bonus marks for getting all of them). The skeletons are invincible unless they're inside the pentagrams cast by a lit candle. They are fully susceptible to mobility impairment outside of the circles, however, and those powers can't break on damage if the target isn't taking damage. So be careful with those snares.
Step two
Putting away books for a ghost librarian. Use the wrong shelf and all the other shelves are locked out until you fight a wave of witches, and the wrong shelves don't disable after one use. Ghost librarian gives hints - Audits, Taxes, and Financial Liability counts as a "spooky story," because it's a Ferengi horror novel, for example.
Step three
Actual Devidians. The boss goes through phases of invincibility, which are disabled by sabotaging two devices (up the stairs to either side of his starting point). You can only sabotage the devices while under the phase shift effect Devidians randomly put on you.
Two bonus objectives: Pet all the cats (scattered around, usually near doors as you progress), light all the candles (during step 1).
Watch the minimap - the path isn't linear and cleared paths don't close off so there's places where you need to backtrack and follow a different branch where people get lost easily.
First run took 25 minutes. Second took 6. Third took 40. People *really* need to know what they're doing and especially steps one and two can't be carried by one good player like 99% of STFs. Steps 1 and 2 especially can be massively held up by one idiot.
Oy, so it's as subject to idiots fucking it up as Remain Klingon was?
Way worse. Remain Klingon at least had the hacking thing where one player could eventually get you there by staying next to one ship. Steps 1 and 2 have mechanics that let a determined idiot (especially one with a lot of science magic powers or Iconian toys) stall the team almost indefinitely.
The 45 minute run I did had a science character keep a group of skeletons stunned inches from a death circle for almost three minutes. He stopped to type, "WTF?" and they walked in and got instantly fragged by everybody else.
I *think* it'll improve over the event better than Remain Klingon did, though. That mission, because one person could still carry, the idiots could just blast motherfuckers forever until they win and they never actually know how or why. That doesn't seem to be the case here.
It's a cool mission, adds some variety that the game usually lacks, but Jesus can it be a slog. And, hey, the reward is two things that you'll have to explain to the Clipboard Guy: A magic wand that summons cats and an intergalactic Q-tier reality warper who's decided live on your ship and keep you as a pet.
Looks like Shatner got overview effected hard and in the middle of what was a surprisingly moving statement Jeff Bezos sprayed champagne in his face. A better metaphor for Blue Origin I cannot make up.
"In a way it's indescribable, not only is it different than what you thought, it happened so quickly. The impression I had that I never expected to have is the shooting up: There's blue sky –" he paused as Bezos sprayed a bottle of champagne.
"Everybody in the world needs to do this. Everybody in the world needs to see it," Shatner continued. "It was unbelievable. The little things – the weightless – but to see the blue color (of the sky) whip by you and now you're staring into blackness. … And then it's gone. It was so moving. This experience did something unbelievable. I hope I never recover from this."
Edit: meant this for the Star Trek thread, not STO, but hell, it was a good quote I'm leaving it.
Ha my wife saw me reading this thread and she was like "don't start playing that again." and I'm like "no I just like looking at the ships." Which is 100% true at this point.
I would like some money because these are artisanal nuggets of wisdom philistine.
Two runs, second about 20 minutes, first about 40. First massively delayed by people refusing to shoot the thing that makes flying witches vulnerable (which is marked incredibly obviously), and by preparing skeletons outside the light. Otherwise, great fun.
If you’ve got a triolic enhancer, you can phase yourself in the final fight, and hit one of the required widgets. That may make things faster. If you ran with a pre-made team and had four enhancers, you could presumably trivialise that last battle..hmm.
It's too bad they didn't put the Spectres arc as part of the event. I'm sure a lot of newer players don't know it even exists and I'd really rather run that than do the same TFO for 14 days in a row. The whole "removed from the main tab because it doesn't meet our quality standards" thing never made any sense to me when New Romulus is a total mess and the Klingon War arc doesn't even make sense in its current state.
Event is pretty cool. Very TOS. Devidians have stolen an Old One transmuter (the magic wand the witches from Cats Paw used to summon the giant cat).
Three steps, and idiots will hold up all of them severely.
Step one
Light candles - there's bonus marks for getting all of them). The skeletons are invincible unless they're inside the pentagrams cast by a lit candle. They are fully susceptible to mobility impairment outside of the circles, however, and those powers can't break on damage if the target isn't taking damage. So be careful with those snares.
Step two
Putting away books for a ghost librarian. Use the wrong shelf and all the other shelves are locked out until you fight a wave of witches, and the wrong shelves don't disable after one use. Ghost librarian gives hints - Audits, Taxes, and Financial Liability counts as a "spooky story," because it's a Ferengi horror novel, for example.
Step three
Actual Devidians. The boss goes through phases of invincibility, which are disabled by sabotaging two devices (up the stairs to either side of his starting point). You can only sabotage the devices while under the phase shift effect Devidians randomly put on you.
Two bonus objectives: Pet all the cats (scattered around, usually near doors as you progress), light all the candles (during step 1).
Watch the minimap - the path isn't linear and cleared paths don't close off so there's places where you need to backtrack and follow a different branch where people get lost easily.
First run took 25 minutes. Second took 6. Third took 40. People *really* need to know what they're doing and especially steps one and two can't be carried by one good player like 99% of STFs. Steps 1 and 2 especially can be massively held up by one idiot.
Interesting thing, Step two apparently is randomized, or has some options on it.
I got the books the first couple of times.
After that I got a ghostly head asking me to make a potion by grabbing the right glowies on the assorted shelves and dumping them into the cauldron, wrong glowies trigger a wave of enemies.
The third one I saw was a bunch of spiders that needed to be killed before moving to the next area. Didn't really see if there were additional steps the other player got, or if it was just spiders.
Pretty nice touch I think. Gives the mission a bit of replay.
I've noticed the team is split in three rooms but I've been in the library every time.
It seems if one room passes the other doors open? Everyone gets out at almost the same time every run I've done.
I'd guess that's the case. All of the rooms are pretty flexible in how long you get kept in there.
Another book to shelve, another ingredient to mix, another wave of spiders...
Individually, each one only takes a handful of seconds but you could string as many together as needed until the "main" team finished their task or until a timer ran down letting the doors open on the next task.
Got the potion today, nice and easy. No excuse to get hung up there. Gives you a dialog option to repeat the last prompt and no guessing. Thing you need is said in green text, get that thing, put it in the only place it lets you. Put me in there alone, so no idiot to screw it up.
This morning, I realised that the free upgrade to MK XIII rep gear on my temporal agent was a reward for getting 10 Tier 5 reputations, not one Tier 6. And that the account-wide upgrade wasn't implicit, it has to be claimed as part of a reward box from the Temporal transponder - and from Crey, on all other characters.
Still, yay, I can now get MK XIII gear! Except...
Yesterday I burned far too much refined dil on Phoenix boxes for my agent, because I thought I had another 30 days to build it back up before I got MK XIII gear available.
Any standout bundles to pick up in that 35% off bundle sale?
Any odds on things going lower with Black Friday and Christmas?
(The Mudd's bundles are 50% off, but I mean, $300 on sale is still $300.)
The test server actually got a patch, first time in a long time. New Nova and Saber variants showed up among Terran ships, but the real interesting one is that EV suits no longer sit in the armor slot, but have their own slot. You get the stats from both all the time, and can activate your EV suit without breaking set bonuses or losing armor stats.
Character copy isn't working right for me, sadly, and my old copy on Tribble doesn't have the Red Angel armor, so I don't know how that will interact. Currently on live the Red Ranger Morpher occupies the same part of the UI that handles EV suit activators.
I started flying an Ambassador class on my Delta Recruit and what the shit the omni-directional phaser array is firing directly from the bridge bubble. It's like some overly eager security officer opens a window in the Ready Room and fires their phaser rifle while screaming "I'm helping Captain!" into their EV suit headset.
Got my cat transformer.
It’s mostly a gimmick, and it doesn’t Cat the hags in the TFO which is a shame.
Someone did mention a serious use case though - for where the last enemy in a wave dying triggers the next wave until a timer is hit (like the technician stage of the Terok Nor TFO). If that last enemy in the first wave is always a cat, you can just chill out until the timer expires.
In enclosed spaces like the last Terran episode it can be pretty strong and shut down a whole group. Even in open spaces, follow it up with an AOE nuke, especially a kinetic one like the chroniton volley or the secondary fire from Leck's knives. You have a narrow window between every enemy's shields dropping and them scattering from the fear aura.
I'm not sure if it'll stay out of my bank, maybe after I spend on the elite upgrade for the extra device slot, but I think another combat pet would be more generally useful.
T6 Nova console: Nucleogenic Igniter. +Starship shield regeneration and Starship control expertise. PBAoE Radiation DoT, Healing aura from enemies. Each foe within 10km gets radiation damage ever sec for 15 seconds. Allied within 2km of an affected foe gets hit points and shield regen. 2min recharge.
T6 Nova trait: Synthetic Good Fortune. Passive + 25 starship sector speed. On activation +5 starship control expertise and +.05% critical chance for 5 minutes(stacks up to 40 times when using pilot and control abilities)
T6 Saber has new experimental weapon. Gatling Emitter. Rapid non-stop damage after spin up. After 3 sec lock on kinetic damage X4 per sec to foe until no longer valid target. 8 second recharge.
Troyius Protocol. Haste, Beam damage and Unkillable, then hull+shield heal and stealth. For first 6 seconds +30% energy damage 125% haste with energy weapons, unkillable. For remaining 8 seconds weapons offline, stealthed, restores 3% of max hull and shields each sec. When activating a hull heal +2% crit chance for 10 sec. 2 min recharge
T6 Saber Trait: energy Overdrive. +100% flight speed and turn rate for 10 seconds. 10%-50% all damage with energy weapons for 10 seconds for using beam skills like beam overload
In enclosed spaces like the last Terran episode it can be pretty strong and shut down a whole group. Even in open spaces, follow it up with an AOE nuke, especially a kinetic one like the chroniton volley or the secondary fire from Leck's knives. You have a narrow window between every enemy's shields dropping and them scattering from the fear aura.
I'm not sure if it'll stay out of my bank, maybe after I spend on the elite upgrade for the extra device slot, but I think another combat pet would be more generally useful.
I don't know if my brain will be able to process a broadside beam escort but those both look like fun little ships. Definitely grabbing that Da Vinci at the next sale.
In enclosed spaces like the last Terran episode it can be pretty strong and shut down a whole group. Even in open spaces, follow it up with an AOE nuke, especially a kinetic one like the chroniton volley or the secondary fire from Leck's knives. You have a narrow window between every enemy's shields dropping and them scattering from the fear aura.
I'm not sure if it'll stay out of my bank, maybe after I spend on the elite upgrade for the extra device slot, but I think another combat pet would be more generally useful.
My disappointment that I couldn't Cat
Admiral Leta or Noye
during Ragnarok was boundless.
in an aside, I am very amused that "Cat" has immediately become the widely-accepted term/verb for the use of this item.
I was expecting maybe a more dour town, but instead its Bajor with blackjack and hookers strippers. Even the twisting of the conversations with the residents is good. Kinda wish there was an easy way to go back there without having to run through the Jaberwock mission, but then what is there to really do there.
About as much as there is to do on regular Bajor, really. There are a few social hubs like Bajor around that are so old I don't think most players even know they exist. I've always seen a lot of complaints about Jabberwocky but I've never understood the hate because it's a quick enough mission and MUCH better version of Bajor. Mirror Badlands were a nice touch, too.
Ok, so, reputations. Theres a lot of them.
What ones are worth worrying about? I've got tons of mark boxes from Temporal Agent stuff, which are worth trying to level up? Do any of them give really cool unique stuff?
0
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
edited October 2021
DISCO rep is probably the best bang for your buck
However, if you've picked an energy type for your ship that narrows things down a fair amount (eg Temporal has pretty solid Antiproton weapons)
Competitive is essentially a write off due to not great items and marks/elite marks being a massive pain in the arse
Competitive has some fantastic engines for weapon builds, though. If you get in the habit of doing endeavours then you can rack up quite a few mark boxes that way and even purchase the elite tokens with them. That said you don't really lose out much by skipping them.
Discovery has a pretty decent shield + warp core combo and a console or two. Everything else is sort of spread out and depends on your build. Gamma has some decent stuff for phaser and polaron etc.
+1
SnicketysnickThe Greatest Hype Man inWesterosRegistered Userregular
one general tip for Rep gear though, if you can hold out until tier 6 (maybe 5?) you can get a significant discount on the gear in a given rep, via a project
Once you’ve got a reputation to tier 5, it’s “sponsored” for all other characters on your account, who can then increase that rep at half cost (well, double rewards actually). You can also buy an account-wide gear cost discount for that rep at tier 6.
If you have a temporal agent character, once they get most of their reps to T5, account wide rep gear is MKXIII by default, which I gather is a hefty savings in upgrades from MKXII.
I held off crafting rep gear until I’d T6’d everything on my main (for the gear discount) and had T5 for most of my Agent - for the MKXIII upgrade.
As far as I can tell, Disco shield/core is the hotness, for its massive hull regeneration benefit at 2PC, along with the Fleet Colony Deflector (for crit), and the Disco fire control
Console.
Competitive Engines apparently also meta for triggering a manoeuvrability boost when you trigger some tac powers or Eng heals. I never had trouble getting the Comp marks from Events, but gather it’s a pain to get them otherwise.
The Assimilated Console/Cutting beam from the Borg rep get mentioned sometimes too.
I gather the Iconian rep is a solid 4PC if you don’t want to mess about.
So, yeah, level them all, but if I had to pick 2 it’d be comp and Disco.
Something that would have been nice to know about the Reputations earlier, you can grind them all up at once, so long as you have the marks.
It seems obvious in retrospect, but at the time I was grinding my Omega rep up to 6, I thought it was one at a time.
I run the daily TFOs for the bonus marks, maybe login to a couple random draws for fun, then start the 20 hour rep mission before I log out. I occasionally run short on a flavor of mark, but it's easy enough to get back a surplus.
At the moment I'm Tier 4 in most reps, getting close to 5 for many of them.
Posts
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
https://sto.fandom.com/wiki/Fleet_Nova_Science_Vessel_Retrofit
Looks like it's available with fleet ship modules from a regular ship vendor, with extra skins available via lockbox or dilithium.
Three steps, and idiots will hold up all of them severely.
Step one
Step two
Step three
Two bonus objectives: Pet all the cats (scattered around, usually near doors as you progress), light all the candles (during step 1).
Watch the minimap - the path isn't linear and cleared paths don't close off so there's places where you need to backtrack and follow a different branch where people get lost easily.
First run took 25 minutes. Second took 6. Third took 40. People *really* need to know what they're doing and especially steps one and two can't be carried by one good player like 99% of STFs. Steps 1 and 2 especially can be massively held up by one idiot.
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
Way worse. Remain Klingon at least had the hacking thing where one player could eventually get you there by staying next to one ship. Steps 1 and 2 have mechanics that let a determined idiot (especially one with a lot of science magic powers or Iconian toys) stall the team almost indefinitely.
The 45 minute run I did had a science character keep a group of skeletons stunned inches from a death circle for almost three minutes. He stopped to type, "WTF?" and they walked in and got instantly fragged by everybody else.
I *think* it'll improve over the event better than Remain Klingon did, though. That mission, because one person could still carry, the idiots could just blast motherfuckers forever until they win and they never actually know how or why. That doesn't seem to be the case here.
It's a cool mission, adds some variety that the game usually lacks, but Jesus can it be a slog. And, hey, the reward is two things that you'll have to explain to the Clipboard Guy: A magic wand that summons cats and an intergalactic Q-tier reality warper who's decided live on your ship and keep you as a pet.
Edit: meant this for the Star Trek thread, not STO, but hell, it was a good quote I'm leaving it.
pleasepaypreacher.net
If you’ve got a triolic enhancer, you can phase yourself in the final fight, and hit one of the required widgets. That may make things faster. If you ran with a pre-made team and had four enhancers, you could presumably trivialise that last battle..hmm.
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
Interesting thing, Step two apparently is randomized, or has some options on it.
After that I got a ghostly head asking me to make a potion by grabbing the right glowies on the assorted shelves and dumping them into the cauldron, wrong glowies trigger a wave of enemies.
The third one I saw was a bunch of spiders that needed to be killed before moving to the next area. Didn't really see if there were additional steps the other player got, or if it was just spiders.
Pretty nice touch I think. Gives the mission a bit of replay.
It seems if one room passes the other doors open? Everyone gets out at almost the same time every run I've done.
I'd guess that's the case. All of the rooms are pretty flexible in how long you get kept in there.
Individually, each one only takes a handful of seconds but you could string as many together as needed until the "main" team finished their task or until a timer ran down letting the doors open on the next task.
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
Still, yay, I can now get MK XIII gear! Except...
Yesterday I burned far too much refined dil on Phoenix boxes for my agent, because I thought I had another 30 days to build it back up before I got MK XIII gear available.
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
Any odds on things going lower with Black Friday and Christmas?
(The Mudd's bundles are 50% off, but I mean, $300 on sale is still $300.)
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
Character copy isn't working right for me, sadly, and my old copy on Tribble doesn't have the Red Angel armor, so I don't know how that will interact. Currently on live the Red Ranger Morpher occupies the same part of the UI that handles EV suit activators.
But the worst part is that I kind of love it.
It’s mostly a gimmick, and it doesn’t Cat the hags in the TFO which is a shame.
Someone did mention a serious use case though - for where the last enemy in a wave dying triggers the next wave until a timer is hit (like the technician stage of the Terok Nor TFO). If that last enemy in the first wave is always a cat, you can just chill out until the timer expires.
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
I'm not sure if it'll stay out of my bank, maybe after I spend on the elite upgrade for the extra device slot, but I think another combat pet would be more generally useful.
As expected, they're T6 versions of the Nova and Saber, the latter's class named after the Da Vinci from the S.C.E. novels.
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
My disappointment that I couldn't Cat
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
in an aside, I am very amused that "Cat" has immediately become the widely-accepted term/verb for the use of this item.
Steam, Warframe: Megajoule
Let's Play Final Fantasy 'II' (Ch10 - 5/17/10)
the 2 BOff slots are HUGE, thank you
I was expecting maybe a more dour town, but instead its Bajor with blackjack and hookers strippers. Even the twisting of the conversations with the residents is good. Kinda wish there was an easy way to go back there without having to run through the Jaberwock mission, but then what is there to really do there.
What ones are worth worrying about? I've got tons of mark boxes from Temporal Agent stuff, which are worth trying to level up? Do any of them give really cool unique stuff?
However, if you've picked an energy type for your ship that narrows things down a fair amount (eg Temporal has pretty solid Antiproton weapons)
Competitive is essentially a write off due to not great items and marks/elite marks being a massive pain in the arse
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
Discovery has a pretty decent shield + warp core combo and a console or two. Everything else is sort of spread out and depends on your build. Gamma has some decent stuff for phaser and polaron etc.
D3 Steam #TeamTangent STO
If you have a temporal agent character, once they get most of their reps to T5, account wide rep gear is MKXIII by default, which I gather is a hefty savings in upgrades from MKXII.
I held off crafting rep gear until I’d T6’d everything on my main (for the gear discount) and had T5 for most of my Agent - for the MKXIII upgrade.
As far as I can tell, Disco shield/core is the hotness, for its massive hull regeneration benefit at 2PC, along with the Fleet Colony Deflector (for crit), and the Disco fire control
Console.
Competitive Engines apparently also meta for triggering a manoeuvrability boost when you trigger some tac powers or Eng heals. I never had trouble getting the Comp marks from Events, but gather it’s a pain to get them otherwise.
The Assimilated Console/Cutting beam from the Borg rep get mentioned sometimes too.
I gather the Iconian rep is a solid 4PC if you don’t want to mess about.
So, yeah, level them all, but if I had to pick 2 it’d be comp and Disco.
Goodreads
SF&F Reviews blog
It seems obvious in retrospect, but at the time I was grinding my Omega rep up to 6, I thought it was one at a time.
I run the daily TFOs for the bonus marks, maybe login to a couple random draws for fun, then start the 20 hour rep mission before I log out. I occasionally run short on a flavor of mark, but it's easy enough to get back a surplus.
At the moment I'm Tier 4 in most reps, getting close to 5 for many of them.