In the game City of Heroes, players can team up for special missions known as Task Force, where 4-8 players run through an elaborate storyline / series of missions all the way up a Villains chain of command to the Archvillain of that dastardly group.

The advantages of a Task Force are that you rack up incredible amounts of experience and influence: Experience to getting the next Level, Influence needed to buy enhancements and inspirations. You also win enhancements along the way, and if you defeat the Archvillain, you win a Single Origin enhancement (very expensive!) well above the average level of the villains you've faced.

The disadvantages are that the TF can take about four to six hours, maybe half a day; and that people can drop out of a Task Force but cannot be brought in once it starts. A poorly built team could have troubles even getting past the first mission. While early on, very few Task Forces had been successful, as players' abilities improved, Task Force survival and success improved.

Blue Arc has done a couple of Task Forces by now (including an undocumented Task Force through Talos Island (Bastion contact), he's kind of my Task Force tester... And having seen from the Safe Harbor message board that a Numina (Founders Falls) TF was forming this Sunday, I signed on and showed up. Led by ADAM - 7 (Blaster), he called together myself, Divine Energy (Blaster), Hexxia (Defender), Childproof (Tanker), Little Eagle (Defender) and Haleakala (Controller). And we were thus dubbed...

Task Force Ruby

With contact Numina in Founders Falls (levels 35-40), you find yourself on about six missions against...well, it turns out everyone, although your true target at the end is Devoured Earth. Even though, much like the Positron Task Force earlier, you get a Greatest Hits medley of, well, all the bad guys you've hit before...

For example, our first mission was in the sewers fighting Freakshow. And we were going up against guys in the level 38 to 40 ranges too... And amazingly enough we were doing a good job of hitting them. It got a bit crazy here and there, a lot of action in a small cramped sewer tunnel, but we got through without any deaths and rescued the hostage at the end of it.

Second mission was a bit of a trip into Crey's Folly, a LONG trip, almost to the far west end of that map, all to fight us some Crey and recover their naughty files. Now that got a bit messy, as we were facing Crey AND Paragon Protector bosses, at times a room littered with Crey bosses all over the place. However, we cleared out the map and proceeded onward.

By the by, these first two missions only required us to a specific task (Rescue Hostage, or Find Files). However, ADAM insisted we fight through them: no sneaking aboot in Stealth mode for him. The third mission WAS a Defeat All Bad Guys mission (Find hero NPC Scout), so that wasn't much of a question from that point on. At that point, too, we got our first ambush (this Task Force is ripe with them, according to Artphobia's CoH site), as we had gotten separated and some of us waited at the door into the mission. This group was Nemesis, dressed up early 19th century soldier types, but we made good work of the ambush crew. It was the stuff indoors, however, that got VERY tough. Nemesis uses a boss type known as Warhulks, big massive machines that blow up when destroyed, with enough force to KILL anyone standing near them. Suffice to say, a few of us got caught in the blast radius once or thrice. Also problematic was that Nemesis have snipers THAT CAN SEE cloaked heroes, so our Stealth protections weren't working too well in some rooms. We survived, though. Yay, us!

At this point, Divine Energy moved on (family matters), although he logged off in full (in order to reset with the TF once he got back online). So he missed the next mission, into Perez Park (the forest maze, actually, DAMN its annoying!), and into a Circle of Thorns underground city. The CoT map was unique, or at least the first time I've ever run into a map where the CoT portals send players AT RANDOM to other ends of the map. Thankfully, we had Recall Friend powers and we regrouped as best we could. Again, we cleared out rooms, working our way into the final temple room to get our prize (a Shard of Kalak). And again, yours truly did a dumb thing and walked through a portal straight into a mess 'o CoT. Ouch. Death. I spent the remainder of that mission drowning my sorrows...
On a side note, this mission had the Envoy of Shadow make an appearance. Howver, this isn't the Arch-Villain Envoy, just some wannabe in a Mage outfit. We worked him over for his hubris.

At the end of that mission, we got what has to be the longest mission ever in a Task Force: essentially travel to nearly every map in Paragon and kill every major bad guy group on the grid. Clockwork in Atlas. Outcasts in Steel. Vahzilok in Faultline. Trolls in Skyway. Skulls in Kings Row. Sky Raiders in Terra Volta. Banished Pantheon in Dark Astoria. Warriors in Talos. Family AND Tsoo in Independence Port (where we ran into another ambushed that claimed Haleakala, sorry), Crey in Brickstown, Council (formerly 5th) in Boomtown, Ritki in FF, and finally Devoured Earth and Nemesis in Eden. Like I said, a Greatest Hits mission (I guess a fare-thee-well to all the previous bad guys we've faced over the months of getting to lvl 36). During the run throughout the maps, various players re-logged their computers due to a serious lag with the game. Thankfully, Divine Energy re-emerged from Real Life to continue the quest.

With that, we got the last leg of the mission: Find Woodsman! Find him! HURRRY! (actually, there's no time limit, so...)

First stop: Warehouse in Eden, where we found... nearly EVERY Devoured Earth you've ever seen! There were so many in fact you couldn't see what you were fighting! I just kept hitting the Tab key to target something and fired and kept firing. Damn, all the bright colors! Keep shooting, you'll hit something! And outside of the accidental aggro'ing that ADAM - 7 had early on, we really didn't face much death-like adversity at this point. We got our thing down good: send the Tanker Childproof in first and then fire at anything in weeds! And amazingly, with a lot of Devoured bosses in there, the ones I have trouble killing on a normal map, we did very well.

By the by, I realized we hadn't gotten a shot of Little Eagle by this point: she was playing her part as Defender by staying back and keeping us as healthy as possible. So, to prove she was there:

Second stop: deep in the forests of Eden's Hive, a cave mission (ugh, so hard to see) to find and kill the Archvillain Monster of the TF: Jurrasik. No relation to the movie, other than he's as big as a T-Rex and better at swinging cars aboot...

There's a photo of Jurrasik to the left, the sweet lil bunny of...KAPOW! OUCH! Kill him, Childproof! KILL! AVENGE US! Other than that, the mission was much like any other cave mission, especially at the end where the multi-level cave of confusion got us slipping through the holes in the floor right on top of the Greater Devoured lurking on the map (ouch). But we circled up, found the Woodsman, beat up his captors, and got the completed mission.

And so...

WE WON!

We exited the map, wandering about a Perez-ish forest, and right into a trap of hidden killer trees! Damn Devoured Earth! Killed half of us right there. All that work and more debt tacked on (I was lucky, I barely survived when the team regrouped and fought back).

And so, with many thanks to Safe Harbor, Blue Arc survives yet another Task Force. Yay. Now off to sleep....

Suggestions for running this TF:
1) Be prepared for the prolonged Grand Tour. One method of completing that is to send individuals to each possible zone while one villain set is taken out in one zone, sort of hopscotching the zones. The only places you really need to get the whole team together will be the last two stops in Founders and in Eden.
2) Watch out for that last door. It's always in the middle of a Perez-like forest maze surrounded by Level 38-ish Devoured Bosses. Even if you're a Tanker you'll have a tough time getting to the door. Best trick is to send someone with Stealth and Recall Friend to the door, and teleport people straight there. First teleport any Tanker(s) on the team there to provide aggro control of the Devoured if you're spotted.
3) While starting with 4 teammates is ok, given the toughness of the last few missions it's a good idea to run a full team and with a balance of ATs.

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