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.

Among Task Forces, none of them match the sheer intense repetitiveness that Citadel TF offers. Unlike Positron - which is unduly difficult and demanding at such early levels - and unlike the first Shard Task Force in Firebase Zulu - which is unduly long on time and distance - the Citadel TF is mind-numbing due to players having to fight in nearly the same map tileset over and over again.

Part of the problem is that the bad guy group is the Fifth C...oh, right. German lawsuits. The bad guy group is Council, alien-enhanced mutated beings with evil designs operating out of a hollowed-out volcano in Striga Isle. They've been effective in setting up bases of operations in such places as Talos, Independence Port, Dark Astoria, Kings Row, and Tom DeLay's voting district. Council is a distinctive group in that they get their own base tileset (or map background/playing area) of an underground bunker, complete with half-polished narrow caves. So, obviously, a task force focusing on this group would have the team invading these underground bunkers. That's to be expected.

Just NOT ALL THE BLEEPING TIME! Sheesh! An abandoned warehouse could be available for a mish or two, maybe even an open park area accessible by train, but NOOOOOOO. It's gotta be tunnels, every time all the time! AUGH! Even the Striga Task Forces Moonfire and Hess avoid this trap by mixing in Troll Caves and Warehouses. Plus a hollowed-out volcano (WOOT!). But Citadel, poor Citadel, is stuck WITH THE SAME MAP OVER AND OVER AND OVER AND...

Actually I exaggerate. But read on and you'll see...you'll see...

This diary came about because of one thing: my Blaster mentor Mookie started chiding me for not being Witty anymore. Which stung me, so I asked why. Turns out she wanted me to keep writing more of these TF diaries and stuff, instead of focusing on meaningless stuff like football drafts and Tom DeLay's corrupting influence on our collective soul. Well, heck, I answered, I haven't done a Citadel write-up yet, so let's see if I can do that.

Mookie's been running a favored Alt of late, Funktastik (Tanker) which had just reached 27 whilst working the Striga Isle. I had two characters within range of the TF: Greystone Anom (another Tanker), and Witty Librarian (my Controller). I figured on the Controller to ensure our team had 1) balance and 2) a healer/buffer. From there getting a team gets dicier. We did get another group trying to form, so we merged efforts to get the 6-player minimum for Citadel. Bogardan (Tanker), Dr.? (Blaster) and da mots (Controller) were on hand to join up. Stuck for a few minutes on the sixth, Funk located Moon Tiger (Scrapper) over in Striga Isle and invited her on. And then we Mapservered. No, seriously. We all got booted for about 2 minutes before re-logging and... sigh. The bane of all Task Forces, thy name is Maperver...

VERSUS VANDAL, or WE WANT THE FUNK! / GIVE UP THE FUNK!

Once we had gotten our lineup, we started the Task Force. First up, door mission in Independence Port to Investigate 5th Co...uh, Council Base. Here's the first complaint. The TF starts in Talos, right? But then the next few missions are in IP, meaning travel time. You get this on almost all the TFs: they start in one place but force you to go running off to other maps. Annoying.

Equally annoying was when we found out one of our ppl, Dr?, was a Level 29 player without a fast travel power. Ayeah. Well, it IS legal for people to design their characters however they wish, but still...getting to 29 without a travel power?! Either he relied a lot on teammates with Recall Friend or... Anyway, we found we had to wait for Dr? because noone had Recall Friend in their power pools. Waiting is tricky for tankers and scrappers, and the next thing we knew ZOOM they were off beating up bad guys.

Level 33 bad guys.

Level 33?! The highest good guy was 29. We should be getting Level 31s. What happened?

What happened was a teammate had left their fighting Reputation at a high level, rather than reset to a generic Heroic setting that is suggested for any TF run (unless said TF run was led by Level 50 Tankers with nothing to lose). It affected the scaling of the bad guys to where they were 5 times higher than what Moon Tiger could hit, and even when we SideKicked her to a teammate she still had troubles.

Not that it bothered Funk or Bog. They were Tankers. They live for this, right, Funk?

Yup. They live for it. Into the mosh pits, people! We got Nacht...oh right. Lawsuits. Carry on.

The run through the base (and the tunnels, and more tunnels, and yet another set of tunnels) was a pretty long slogthrough, and more than a few deaths occurred at this point of the TF. But defeat them we did, and we soon found evidence in the form of travel brochures and phone logs with lobbyist groups to prove that DeLay was receiving improper gifts. Oh, we also found a clue involving some sinister plan by the Council.

Once completed, we waited in Independence Port for the next mission assignmnet. Funk, team leader, had to hurry off for the contact while the rest of us discussed selling off enhancements. In order to ensure no lost time, I made a trade with Bogaran for a good number of his Enhs, hopefully for the amount of influence it would have cost to buy those. Finally, Funk reached the train station and received the next mission, a "Defeat All Soldiers" mission.

It was the same door we just exited. This, interestingly, has happened before. Adding to the humor was, as we stepped through the door ONE MORE TIME, we received a game intro that the place smelled of fresh paint, as though the Council had returned to their defeated compound and and freshened it up for re-use. Heh. This time, we left NO PRISONERS! We defeated each and every...

Ouch. Got killed at this point. Funk had gone AFK for 2 minutes, but we charged in thinking we could do alright with only one tanker. Wasn't that way, and in fact half of us died (TWICE) during the battle in this particular room. A lot of it had to do with the bad guys still two levels well above where they ought to be. But still, we were game, we soldiered on. Like Dr.? here, firing away with fire blasts of eternal damage...

Except that this is the last you will see of Dr.? for the rest of the photo diary. He logged. We worried for awhile it was a Mapserver, but he never logged back on. Moon Tiger also disappears at this point. Rumor has it she was offered an undercover assignment at a Cosplay convention to help put an end to illegel Furry activities, but that was just rumor...

Undaunted, as we could finish a TF with 2 Tankers and 2 Controllers, the remaining teammates cleared up the second door mission and received one of two missions that DIDN'T involve a Council bunker: Take Parts to Farheed Abdullah, located in Steel Canyon.

And this is Farheed. He's the contact right at the Atlas/Galaxy train station. There are two things that happen during a delivery run: first is there's an ambush waiting somewhere that you can either avoid or fight through; and second everyone else sells off their enhancements and waits for the delivery to unlock the next mission. Only one person is needed to deliver, and as I have speed power I volunteered.

The next mission was 'Defeat Base Leader & Guards' mission. Due to the lateness of the hour and lessening of our firepower, we decided to sneak ahead on all non-'Kill-All' missions. That meant using Stealth (which I offered via Group Invisibility powers) and simple scouting through the missions to find the Boss and his surrounding minions. For this door mission, the guy's name was Max. I found Max in the far corner surrounded by lackeys and a handful of Galaxy mezzers. Funk and Bog rushed in tanked to the gills and wiped the floor with 'em. Yay.

The next mission is odd, so make note: The mission says to Stop Production of the new Mekmen, and you do that by defeating the Base Leader and Guards. There's a problem: There is no BOSS Boss, just a named minion Mekman RV629. Take him out and the people in the room surrounding him and that's done. Mission Completed.

And then there were three. Bog disappeared just before the Mission Completed without a word, leading us to believe there was another Mapserver. We were now down to one solid damage dealer, Funk. As an Illusion controller I could bring up Phantom Army to provide firepower, but for all intents and purposes we were now going to have to slog through some long dragout fights. But for Funk, she had to be having fun: She now had two healing teammates to keep her alive 24/7.

The only other non-door mission we get is a "Defeat 40 Council on the streets of Independence Port" request. We're obstensibly beating up the bad guys to get information on the hidden Council Base. Deal is, the Council are right near the hospital and train station in IP, and they are well below the level range of the TF (we're in the 28-29 range, they're in the 23-24 range). So not only is it a quick mop-up operation, we can practically walk up to them and goof off and they wouldn't even lift a finger to stop us. And when we do blast 'em they don't last long or leave any damage. Sure there's no XP for it but after room upon room of upper-level mobs this is a good way to unwind.

After that, our new mission is to 'Shut Down the New Facility'.

What, this new facility? Consider it shut down!

As Funktastik is still working the Striga Isle missions, she had received one of the coolest Temporary Powers you will ever know: the Wolf Whistle. With this, she could summon one at a time her own Pet, a Warwolf. This Wolf works like another Tanker, laying some SERIOUS smackdown on bad guys with Smashing/Lethal damage. He can be healed and buffed like any normal teammate. He's like an Emergency Tanker for short-handed situations. I LOVED MY WOLF PETS. When I had that Whistle, man, it was like having my own Tanker with me. And as an Empathy healer type, I buffed him up and let him run loose. Pity is, you only get 5 whistle blows/5 wolves. And they go before you know. I honestly wept when I lost my temp power.
This Thursday, Wolf Whistle received the game award for Best Temporary Power, over what had to be stiff competition from Wedding Band, Sands of Mu, and Nemesis Staff. Congrats, puppy! Good puppy! Sit!

Oh, and we cleared another map, clicking on the glowy computers to erase 'World of Warcraft' from them once and for all. BWHAHAHAHAHAaaaaaaaa...

From here we had to go specifically to IP to shut down the facility there. This is a ramp at the far corner of the map just before you get to the door. If you can find this on the map I'll give you 50 influence! You hear that! That's good money, yo?

More bright news came with the return of Bogardan, who had Mapservered out and had to reboot his computer by all accounts. With his return we now had enough firepower to make enough damage and clear the map faster.

With renewed vigor we stormed our way through the tunnels, the never-ending tunnels, the tunnels that all start to look the same day after day after day and there's NO ESCAPE FROM THE TUNNELS DON'T YOU KNOW THAT YOU'RE STUCK RUNNING TUNNELS LIKE RATS IN A MAZE THAT NEVER ENDS AND HAS NO CHEESE AND (Funk blows whistle, summons Warwolf to bitch-slap Witty back to reality). Gasp. Gasp. Thanks, puppy. Thank you. Warwolf: "BURP."

There was one more Shut Down the Facility mission, but this came to us with sadness: Bogardan openly noted he could not continue as it was too late at night. He quit for good. So we worked our way to Dark Astoria with heavy hearts and dry towels.

It was a pity Bogardan left at that time, because we had one last assignment: Arrest Vandal. That was it! That's the mission we were looking for! And he's ALL WE NEEDED (well, that and his surrounding minions) to FINISH THE TF!

In invisibility mode, I scouted the map. It was Funk, though, who was able to spot Vandal in an interesting locale, and she proceeded to expertly pull minions away from Vandal so we could deal with them separately.

Once they were out of the way, we now had one target to go:

We did our buffing, with me giving Funk Fortitude and Endurance Recovery before letting her charge in (da mots didn't have Fortitude for some reason). From there, I rose up my Phantom Army just as Funktastik blew her whistle for her Warwolf pet. And then WE CHARGED IN FOR THE BATTLE! GO! GO! GO!
You may notice from this photo a few things: Vandal was getting his butt kicked. You might also notice there's no Warwolf. For all the benefits of having a Tanker-esque Pet, his drawback is that he's not the brightest bulb in the pack. Instead of focusing on his mistress's target, the Wolf charged off to the nearest minion mob and attacked them. Which was the last thing we needed: more aggro.

We had to back away from the room before the stirred-up mobs charged us. Thankfully Vandal was accomodating and went with us into the nearby tunnel, giving us a better spot to finish him off. Low on actual firepower, it took longer than it ought to, but with our heal buffing and Funk's taunting, we kept at it until Vandal was down.

VANDAL WAS DOWNED! WOOT!

After that we simply did mop-up, clearing out the minions in that hanger to get the Mission Completed.

YAY US!

We learned a lot from this TF:

1) Start earlier in the day;
2) Get everyone's Rep set to Heroic before you go;
3) Have a travel power of your own please;
4) Bring your own Funk;
5) A Warwolf can make a lovely pet but he needs a short leash;
6) Keep enough memory in your website to hold all the photos.

And so, with that, we salute you!

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