Previously, on Van Hemlock...
The city of Cap Au Diable hides a dark secret. Beneath its brutally progressive streets, and responsible for it's wealth of cheap clean and abundant electricity, lies the volcanic prison of the demon Bat'Zul. Bound by the prayers and powers of a Jesuit priest, Padre Henri, the demon has lain dormant since the 18th century, until in recent years, the geothermal power plant experiments of Dr Aeon have begun to inadvertently weaken the demons bonds.
Three factions have become aware of the demon, and the staggering power it represents. The demon's bonds are weakening, and whoever can rebind it's will to their own, stands to gain apocalyptic power. The Circle of Thorns; arcane and eldritch wizards and sorcerers, hope to usher in a new age of darkness and fear, with the demon at the head of their armies of lesser demons and spirits. The Legacy Chain; noble and pure defenders of righteousness, seek to banish it forever. But an outsider, Virgil Tarikoss, has recruited a motley band of supervillains, going by the name 'Strike Force Cerberus', and has designs on the power of the beast of his own.
So far, Cerberus has eliminated the Circle of Thorns' attempt on the beast, driven back the Legacy Chain, and now stands unopposed, at the portal to the demon's prison dimension, and the world holds its breath. Can nothing stop these four malefactors unleashing terror on the world?
Well, as it turns out, a rather childish but fun Halloween event almost did! While waiting for the SF to reconvene, we learnt of the CoV Halloween festive offering, which seems largely to consist of Trick or Treating, and in my case, knocking on doors and then running away. Gentlemen... to Evil!
A simple but fun idea, you run around the city, clicking on the usually off-limits mission entrances. You get to do this once a minute or so and when you do, it'll either be a 'Treat', which can be the super-sized Inspirations, temporary powers that change your avatar into one of the various enemy groups out there, or event salvage parts, which can be collected for a free costume slot. Or it'll be a 'Trick', which consists of a small group of Halloweeney monsters leaping out of the door at you; vampires, werewolves, witches, and the like.
I think the idea is that you fight them, but since I tend to be invisible most of the time, the monsters were mostly just leaping out of the door, looking around, and shaking their fists angrily, muttering 'You damned kids!' a lot. Meanwhile, I was off to the next door. Some minor irritated zone chat to the effect that those of us doing this ought to do the decent thing and actually fight these monsters as we spawned them, rather than just leave them there where they could hurt visible folks, but, well, what can I say? I'm Evil! Mind you...they take a few seconds to hop out and become aggro, and pretty much everyone has a Travel Power that lets you get far, far away, very quickly indeed if you don't fancy a punchup, so it's not just a Stalker thing.
(Me, in a 'Malta Gunslinger' costume. I especially like the Hat and Mask combo! I may have to make an actual Van Hemlock Alt at some point. MMO Reverie For Great Justice! "...and then there was the years on Rallos Zek..." ZOCK! PAF! Zzzzzz... A Controller/Dominator, clearly... (I'm not a giant in that shot, by the way...Tarikoss and the portal are just Further Away!))
A fun aside, but the Strike Force all arrived, and... more procrastination! Forewarned is forearmed and all that, and knowing that this was a mission designed for two more players than we actually had, we decided to go with the advice of Commenter Glazius, previous, and lay our hands on some alien mercenaries, the Shivans.
These are obtained by completing the Shiva Strike mission in Bloody Bay, the L15-25 PvP zone. Scary stuff, but I actually spend quite a lot of time in here, but not for the PvP, you understand. Population in this zone, on a US server at UK peak is often negligible, and sometimes, its just me. I'm sort of resolved to 'have a go' if the opportunity does arise; a complacent and dozing Hero Player, not paying attention...that kind of thing, but on the whole, it a very big zone to hide two people in, travel powers make everyone move very fast, and the odds of coming across a suitable target by chance are pretty slim.
That leaves PvP by prior appointment only; you need to ensure that tells and broadcast chat from the opposing faction is turned on (It's off by default), and then arrange to meet up some place for a bit of a duel. Mind you...my whole Archetype is about stealth, ambush and surprise, so announcing my intentions is a bit stupid really. I did do this once, and got jumped on by my opposite number, who neglected to mention that he has some kind of Perception (See Invisible) power, and two friends with him. Grr! I thought I was supposed to be the dastardly cheat! Hero indeed! Still, that's three people I've helped one point closer to their 'Have Beaten a load of Villains' Badge I guess, which must be one of the more tricky ones to attain. I'd hire myself out as a punchbag if I thought Influence and Infamy were freely exchangeable!
No, I'm mostly there because Villain side, there is not nearly as much zone variety, and due to the way the auto-scaling all works, Bloody Bay is good xp whatever my level, and sometimes drops recipes several levels above my real, un-exemplared L19. Also, running a few missions here beforehand, buffs all Villain Damage and Resistance, which makes the hunting a bit easier too! A chance of scenery, all in all, rather than Gank-Frenzied Bloodlust.
Annnyway, we all zoned into the place, and worked our way around the meteor sites, getting the required shards. Some of the fighting against the spawning Shivans was a bit hectic, but all fairly manageable. At one meteor site, we saw a 15ft scarecrow called Eochai, with ghost attendants - clearly another Halloween thing, but he was marked out as being very very difficult to beat (Purple - 'Giant Monster'), and probably needs two or more full groups to take down. I'm not sure I've ever seen that many people in Bloody Bay ever. We legged it and got the other shards. Then it was the Fire Base bit.
Whenever I try soloing this mission, this is the bit where it all goes wrong. The base has killable turrets that need...well, killing. Fair enough. What isn't fair is the respawn rate on the damned things - fast enough that it's extremely difficult for me to keep all eight of them suppressed by myself, and you can only do the computer bit if all the turrets are down. Group content basically, which is fair enough I suppose.
Anyway, Strike Force Cerberus was mostly up to the job, although it even took the four of us two goes to get everyone ticked off. Back to the Evil Scientist and presto, one Shivan Shard each. This item is a temporary power, with five shots of 'Summon Shivan Decimator, a short-duration ambulatory glob of ectoplasmic gunk with more, and more destructive, powers than I have, looking at the list! We zoned out, having not seen a single Superhero player in about half an hour there.
I guess, as in most mixed PvE-PvP MMOs, people aren't interested in the PvP bit at all until they've 'finished' the levels and got as many stats under their belts as possible, which makes sense I suppose. Is Recluse's Victory (L40-50) any more busy, or is PvP just not popular at all in CoX?
Back at the whirly portal thing, with reinforcements secured, an increasingly impatient-looking Tarikoss finally sent us on our way, into the demon's icky prison hell.
(Avon calling! That indistinct smudge center-left is what I look like most of the time. The pros (Being invisible to pretty much every mob in the game, irrespective of level) do outweigh the cons (Two wasted hours in the costume creator) on the whole!)
A charming bijou fixer-upper, all done out in the 'glistening flesh walls and huge bone teeth motif' (popular with excitable Level Design devs everywhere), it was also home to a large congregation (flock? herd? parliament?) of demons, and distressingly, an advance expeditionary force of Legacy Chain goons. This particular faction always annoys me, mostly because their rank and file caster-mobs bear a great resemblance to the stereotypical 'WoW Human Male Priest/Paladin look'; similar hair, moustaches, beards, outfits, etc, and this makes me just want to smash faces, for some reason. Anyway, as well as a huge number of these, they're also being lead by 'Infernal', a very muscular NPC Superhero, who seems to be all about demon hunting and banishment. He'd come to the right place, but unfortunately, was in our way. The ensuing argument got out of hand very quickly and turned to fisticuffs in very short order.
He's another 'Purple' grade monster, of the 'Hero' grade, and took one hell of a beating, by the end of which we were mostly exhausted, and barely able to face the following scripted rush of demon minions. Some excellent AoE targeted heal work, and a truly awe-inspiring damage output form our Brute and we'd won. That bit at least. Infernal, with his dying breath, tried to warn us that Tarikoss is not all he seems. Big surprise there, but we're kind of committed at this point, being in Hell and all.
I suspect proceedings during this 'Legacy Chain' bit would have gone a great deal smoother if SOME JOKER hadn't decided to wear their Legacy Chain Halloween outfit during the fight! Throughout the pandemonium, there was this one specific Legacy goon that just wouldn't target when I pressed 'C'. (Remapped to 'Target Closest Enemy', Guild Wars style) I had 'Show Player Names' turned off at that point, for screenshotting purposes, and honestly couldn't spot the difference until some calmer headscratching, after the fight was over. 'Ohhhhh...' Still, no-one died (mostly because it won't let you 'Assassin's Eclipse' a teammate) and it was quite funny...in retrospect at least.
Next we needed to fight our way to five altars and, er....turn them off. Those are placed randomly down the far end of ten or so demon infested tunnels, and again, having an invisible scout like myself saved a bit of time fighting to the end of tunnels with no altars in. Unbinding the last of these altars sets off the big end set piece, Bat'Geoff Bat'Zul himself, emerging from a lake of fire, bellowing doom and all that. Quite well done actually. We tried to lure him back along the raised ridge at the entrance, to minimise knockbacks into lava, which does actually burn, but he is continually sending extra demons at us, and sometimes vomits up a cluster of Fire Imp mobs too. All quite hectic, and although nowhere near 'Shiro-Level', quite a protracted and tricky fight. As a purple 'Archvillain' grade mob, he has a tremendous amount of hit-points, and only my Assassin's backstab thing was making any noticeable impact on his health bar. Every now and then, I'd get flung off the ledge anyway, narrowly missing a swim in the magma, but my Teleport power makes a mockery of Jumpey Puzzles, and soon got me back into the thick of it.
Time for the reinforcements; three of us managed to get our Shivans out, and things went much better after that. The three turquoise goo aliens are very powerful for their level, and dish out a lot of extra damage, making them an indispensable extra to have in reserve for this kind of super-mission. Our remaining member didn't manage to get their space alien out, on account of them being dead, which was a shame, but possibly karmic, as they were the one arseing about with unhelpful fancy dress costumes earlier in the expedition! Heh!
Some hot Alien-on-Demon Action later, Bat'Zul collapses in a fiery heap. Victory for Strike Force Cerberus, and the dawn of a new age of darkness, fire, terror and fear for the rest of the world!
But wait...as the demon's physical form collapses, its spirit bellows out some parting words. Turns out that we've been tricked. Virgil Tarikoss is actually one 'Tarikoss the Vigilant', a rogue member of the Legacy Chain, expelled for being too direct in his methods of upholding a demonfree world of Good. No unholy and demonic power! This whole plan was a ruse, and Tarikoss has tricked us into binding the demon safely away for eternity, and optimally, sacrificing ourselves to do so. But the demon hates him more than us, and as a kind of revenge, releases us anyway, with the parting words:
"GO, AND SOW WICKEDNESS AND DESTRUCTION IN MY WRATH!"
Can't argue with that. Tarikoss the Whatever is surprised, but unrepentant as we return from Beyond. He can't do anything more to us, and we can't do anything to him, for fear of our accidental Heroism and Saving Of The World becoming general knowledge, a Bad Career Move where we live.
But we've all learned something here today. We have learned not to trust anyone, especially not quest NPCs in the Rogue Isles, who seem to have 'Betray' as a default action, and he has learned that in an MMO, if you stand about long enough with an exclamation mark/quill/arrow/ring over your head/around your feet, you can get people to do just about anything, up to and including invading hell and attacking demon lords...
And so we go our separate ways, and the status quo is maintained for another day. Damn you world! We'll get you next time!
All in all, a lot of fun, and probably manageable in one complete sitting of about 3-4 hours, if you don't meander quite as much as we tend to. Looking forward to the next one, but alas, unlike Guild Wars, there are only five of these in total, each of which is five levels of quite slow grinding, from the previous. This means we're unlikely to be able to do one of these a week, and I've no idea how long it'll take to reach the next. Until then, it's L20, Capes, Costume Slots, and more Halloweening about! Watch this space...