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.

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Task Forces originally went from Levels 10 to Levels 38. That was because when CoH first came out, only the maps for Levels 1 to 40 were available. Everyone who hit Level 39 suddenly didn't have a lot of things to keep them busy, which was sad.

With the first Issue update, that all changed with the addition of five new zones: Peregrine Island, home of Level 40 to 50 bads where PL'ers go to annoy folks with unwanted begging, and interconnected zones through the Portal Corporation of alternate dimensions known as the Shadow Realms. Firebase Zulu. Cascade Archipelago.The Chantry. The Storm Palace.

The Shadow Realms also opened up four new Task Forces, a series of them related to the new maps and thus one for each zone. Complex, difficult, time consuming... and worst of all none of them grant a badge for your troubles.

Still, someone had to be crazy enough to want to run all four of them. That would be the aptly-named Persistence.

An Ice Tanker associated with Angels of the Night SG, Persistence decided during March 2005 to run all four Shard TFs one after the other. This came just as a colleague of mine, El Fuego Fuerte from Safe Harbor, was looking to run the first Shard before he leveled past 44, the max allowed for the TF. Having just hit 40 myself on Blue Arc Anom at the time, and looking for massive XP the TF was bound to offer, I volunteered to sign on.

Here then is a summary of the big runs through the Shard TFs, the fun, the pain, the agony, the floating chomping eyeballs, the... yeah. Eyeballs. Evil Floating Eyeballs. Sigh. At least you get a badge for 'em. Read on.

First Shard TF - Firebase Zulu - Explorers and Exploiters

Firebase Zulu is the foothold our realm's forces has in the alternate dimensions. As such it's a military base enclosed with a constantly active shield circling it (cool effect). From here you get your starting missions as well as the contact Dr. Quarterfield, your TF source.The teams from TF to TF are different as they occurred different days and weeks, so for this TF we were led by Persistence, teamed with El Fuego Fuerte, Bjarni, Silver Shrike, Mizuji, Devil's Dust, Necromenace, and Blue Arc Anom. And then we started a 9 hour plus Task Force.

I don't know why the game developers do this to their Task Forces. The first overall TF, Positron, is annoyingly long, complex, involves far too much travel time, fails to provide a meaningful AV at the end, and is basically something to avoid at all costs. The same thing happens with the first Shard TF: average playing time is 9 to 11 hours, some teams take 2 days (broken up by a complex method of logging off the game and logging back on the next calendar day); you are forced to travel from Zulu back into Peregrine, and sometimes even into Founders Falls, Talos, Steel, Skyway and elsewhere; and the missions repeat themselves (there are two points where there's four missions in a row of the same map and same mission objective!) to where people get bored awful quick. Whadda ya trying to do, Devs, keep us from running TFs altogether?!

The storyarc of the first Shard is that the Crey Corporation has snuck into the Shadow Realms and have begun messing about with their internal politics via kidnapping, experimentation, and monopolization of their natural resources. Of course, the Rularuu beings of the Shadow Realms don't take kindly to it and fight back. You, various hostages, and the city at large are caught in the middle. So your best response is to fly!

Seriously. The alternate realms are sort of zero-g environs of floating islands in space. There's no roads or bridges connecting the islands. The only physical way to get from one island to another is to use a complex series of geyser jumppoints that whoosh you from point A to point C. But the in-game maps are useless in finding which geyser goes where: this is where a website like Vidiotmaps is a godsend. The alternative route is to hire on to your teams teleporters with Recall Friend or flyers with Recall Friend, either of whom can then teleport over teammates stuck with Speed or Jump travel powers.

Blue Arc Anom found his place on the teams. With Fly and Recall Friend, he offered value to a team for the first time in ages (Blasters start feeling squishy in the precense of Tankers, Scrappers, and Controllers after Level 20. Sad, but true).

The missions basically divided into four story arcs. The first arc were mostly Find and Rescue missions: first fight a set of bad guys to determine a location, then enter a cave and rescue people. The island (open-air) hunting was relatively simple, with a herding Tanker like Per jumping about. The door missions, though, entering a cave full of massive mobs of Rularuu, got tougher than you could possibly imagine. How tough were they? Persistence couldn't herd them, and had great difficulty staying alive verses the Wisps, thin alien beings with Psi attacks. Tankers are vulnerable to Psi attacks (except for Stone Tankers: Persistence is Ice), so she had a VERY rough time of it. And when your Tanker has a rough time of it...well. Another thing, the Stealth powers don't work here (except Phase Shift). Those eyeballs are no lie: they can SEE you no matter what. And Stealth, for some of us, was the only good defense we had (this was Level 40, before Blue Arc had a chance at the Epic pools and their defensive buffs!). Blue died about 3 times at this point of the TF.

The second set of missions were door missions into the normal world, meaning we had to travel to Talos, Founders Falls, IP, Bricks, Steel, Perez, Atlas, Galaxy, KR, Boomtown, Dark Astoria, and Yeehaw Junction. No, there IS a Yeehaw Junction, and we all had to travel there (it's quickest via the Florida Turnpike). This is also the point you get the repetitive missions. You go into four different Crey labs looking for evidence, but really just to Defeat All on each map. You also get a needless option of touching sets of glowy computers on these maps, where four of you have to time it to click at the same moment. They're needless at this point because they don't contribute to your missions getting completed. They're really there to get people used to the fact that later on, simul-clicking these glowys is a primary goal. Honestly though, if you've gotten to Level 40 by now you HAD TO HAVE DONE A SIMUL-CLICK MISSION at some point already! ARGH! The ONLY thing good about these missions was that Persistence could herd and survive Crey. She could also survive the next set of bad guys...

The third set of missions involve a conflict between the Crey and Nemesis. Nemesis, it seems, has a vested interest in these realms as well. So you must first stop negotiations between the two rivals, then survive a set of missions against Nemesis.

The fourth set of missions is where you get those bloody repeating door tilesets (maps) again. Four times, four different locations, but the SAME BLOODY MAP! Even the clicky glowy computers were in the same locations! The only difference was on one map, where we had to destroy a makeshift Rularuu portal device they were using to escape (or invade, I can't remember which) the Crey lab. The only fun thing on these maps were the mission Bosses: they were named Flamond, Humperdink, Fine and Howard. Pause. Okay. The names. Check the... noone gets the names? Sigh. Marx Brothers, Three Stooges, and the cult film Top Secret! Please watch all three before griping about the esoteric nature of naming Bosses.

Once those floor maps are completed (you don't even have to fight, just click the 4 computers at the same moment), there's one last mission in a CoT temple, where the escaped Rularuu are plotting their revenge against the Crey. One last, long desperate fight against the mobs of monsters. And with that, finis.

We took 9.5 hours, with two people (Shrike and Dust) dropping altogether and with El Fuego suffering mapserver errors every two minutes and with various teammates logging off (the smart way, thankfully) for naps, food breaks, etc. And on the bright side, I was finally on a team with El Fuego where he wasn't blocked from returning because he wasn't exemplared! W00T! I've finally leveled up, kids! No, really! Leveled to 42 on this!

Second Shard TF - Cascade Archipelago - Legend of Rudalak

This team lineup started and ended with 6 people (we had two more for the mandatory start count of 8, but they dropped once the TF began: you can do that, it helps start a TF that would otherwise be undermanned). Persistence in the lead. El Fuego Fuerte on drums. Necromenace on lead guitar. Blue Arc Anom on Moog organ. Jxx-Oft on bass. And Night Angel on chorus and tambourine. We went in to face an AV, one of the toughest, a legend. Rudalak. Who, you say, is Rudalak? And why does he get a legend?

Simple, really. Rudalak is a God.

The Shard realms were led by Gods, beings of immense Hit Points and Infinite Endurance. These Gods ruled through their powers: Rudalak with his immense strength, Faathim with his healing and force fields, and Lanaru with his storm summoning. Now THIS is how the Shard TFs should have started: fighting Gods! W00T!

Actually the mission comes with three primary villains: the Rularuu (eyeballs) and the Nemesis (eyesores) and the Circle of Thorns (AIYIE!). The Nemesis have a prominent force presence in the second of the Shard maps, Cascade Archipelago You can tell you're in the Cascade when you see the bloodfalls...no, not waterfalls. Bloodfalls. Repeat after me: ick. Anyway, your first mission is to hunt Nemesis on an open map (quick to do). From there you run a set of door missions involving Nemesis bases and rescuing of captives. The captives are 'natives,' that is NPCs who are human but come from this alien realm (in fact, WE'RE the aliens here...it's not ironic, merely a matter of specism). After a few door missions, you get a Circle of Thorns mission requiring you rescue a native named Old Fred, who reveals many clues. Unfortunately, they're all related to Agatha Christie novels, and you've read those so no surprises there. You need to get more info from the Cot, so you raid one of their temples to get a glowy book (WittyLibrarian will LOVE this TF).

Actually by this point, Blue Arc Anom logged off. There was a RL mission to undergo: the Parents were visiting for an early dinner. He missed a few door missions along this route, but he was able to get back in time to get involved with more cave missions in Cascade. The ones involving the Seals.

Rudalak, dangerous with his power, had been sealed by great forces eons ago. His worshippers among the Rularuu sought to release him. The danger was, Nemesis was eager for a powerful ally and sought an alliance with Rudalak's followers. So the Nemesis and Rularuu attempted to secure and then break the Seals locking Rudalak in his prison of darkness. And YOU, well actually Persistence, had to stop them.

The seals can be found on the first three missions involving your quest, along with a sizable number of guards and snipers and robots and other means of accruing debt. But the joy is, you get to find these big glowy orbs of circling runes! And you get to translate them using your older brother's knowledge of Quenya. Yes, Quenya. Eric can even write the Elvish script for it! Eric knows about 5 languages: English, German, Esperanto, Nordic Runes and Quenya. Just don't ask him for Klingon. He's not a geek, after all!

The fourth mission involving the seal has a slight glitch: the Happy Fun Ball is gone. You are too late to prevent the Seals from being broken, and must hurry now to stop the Nemesis from completing their transaction. You must first defeat 100 Nemesis troops on the islands of Cascade... You may think that's a large number, but the game aids you in providing more than 1000 Nemesis to choose from, right on the very island you're at. With a herding Tanker, this shouldn't be a problem.

Once the 100th Nemesis is defeated, you win A BRAND NEW CAR! No, you get a clue pointing you to the last Nemesis base you haven't visited, the one housing General Fort, your primary Nemesis Boss. This is another high tech base raid, a prolonged effort but one that our brave Tanker Per could waltz through without a hitch. Getting Fort was easy. Getting the Fourth Happy Fun Ball was easy.

The next mission was the hardest MOFO we ever faced. The one with Rudalak.

The door mission started difficult: it was pitch black. Total darkness. As part of Rudalak's punishment, the Great Forces never paid an electric bill. It made our lives miserable because we couldn't see anything, not even the mobs of Rularuu waiting for us every 100 yards or so. The map, however, was relatively simple: the whole floorplan was a downward spiral, right to the door leading to Rudalak. We found the door. I was the fool brave enough to open it.

Just past the doorway, in a narrow opening, you can see about half a click in a small mob of Rularuu Wisps (easy to spot, they glow too much). Behind the mob of Wisps is a tall figure. The only way you can see him is the red-flame aura about him. And he's standing 3 times taller than any Wisp. Rudalak.

We took a quick vote to see if we ought to run and make exaggerated claims that we survived the TF later on. Persistence filibustered until we tabled the vote, so it became a moot point. We considered first pulling some of the mob using a sniper shot, so I volunteered for it. I died about 12 seconds later, because the mob stirred up Rudalak. He floated straight for the doorway and did a stomping motion that wiped out three players. The Wisps didn't help either, they were Holding and Psi attacking everything to give Rudalak more victims.

We regrouped at a distance, with the survivors teleporting the dead to a safe location for resurrecting and awakening. From there we reconsidered our actions. A better sniper was found who was able to draw the Wisps off and not the easily angered god. Once done, we entered Stealth mode and snuck into Rudalak's chamber. We poised ourselves, and recognized that people with Hover powers ought to stay off the ground: Rudalak's Stomp Attack was a one-shot lethal blow. Only Persistence, as a Tanker with Hit Points to the extreme, could survive such a shot. Once planned out, Persistence charged in.

This photoshot is from Persistence's perspective: she had taken screenshots as well, and with many thanks she had passed them on to me for this TF diary. As you can see, Rudalak is one TALL sunnybeech. He's also difficult to bring down. We poured everything we had on our attacks, and even then we had to pull back with casualties and start over. Half of us were nearly out of Inspiration boosts. We charged in a third time while Rudalak was close to 3/4 strength again, but this time we maintained a better distance, and paced ourselves, and kept Persistence healthy enough to keep drawing aggro and staying alive to kill him.

With his death, you get something special in a darkened room: a lightbulb!

And thus was the desert crossed. With Rudalak's death, we were now all god-killers and would be persecuted by the Far Right for our Secular Humanist ways. But it was worth the XP, dammit!

This TF went quicker, about 5 hours opposed to 9-10 hours of the earlier TF. The objective was more discernible, and the TF overall focused on key goals and a strong narrative. Persistence was hungry for more, so much more so that the next TF, well... Read on...

Third Shard TF - The Chantry - Saga of Faathim

I missed Persistence's run on the Chantry TF for two simple reasons: 1) Persistence didn't want to wait another Saturday to run it, she wanted to go the next day on Sunday; 2) I have to work on Sundays at the library. I was able to join in on Shard 4, but missing the third TF made me just slightly depressed.

Weeks afterward, as Blue Arc reached Level 49, another call went out for people to run this TF. I answered. So the deal here is, this isn't a Persistence-led TF. I was also en route to LEVEL 50 for the length of this TF, which was a personal quest that wasn't even obtainable during Shard TFs One Two and Four. So the narrative flow is a bit different for this one. There's also more photos of it because I wanted to document getting 50. The last difference to note is the composition of the team. The leader this time was Valkyrie II. We were joined by Gulver, Moon Bear, Ria, Starglow, Dinah Might, and Lothiriel.

There is a simple beauty to the Chantry TF. Almost all of the mission assignments are open air: only 3 or 4 missions are indoors, where the room to flee is restricted and the villains clearly above your levels. Open Air missions, however, you can choose same-level or even lower level bad guys to improve your odds of survival.

There was just one problem with the open air missions. The Chantry map was double the size of every other map you'll ever see. Think Independence Port is too big? Chantry will break your hearts. Traveling from one floating island to another took a lot of time, and in some cases got you too far from your more durable teammates. Also, unless you've already scouted ahead, there's a Fog of War over the map where you can't see anything until you've visited there. So finding some of these islands without a discernible marker got to be a nuisance. A few people opened up the Vidiotmaps site during this round of the TF just to work navigation properly.

After defeating a certain set of mobs on the islands (known as Bastions), you would be asked to view Monuments: Monument of Pain, Monument of Denial, Monument of Tennis Elbow, Monument of... Yeah, you get the picture. The Monuments were sometimes shaped like Happy Fun Balls, other times small tablets similar to the iconic imagery of the Commandments. Either way, the real work is getting those Rularuu killed.

Part of the problem is that these missions get ambushes. A lot of open air street-hunt missions have ambushes tied to them, and this TF was no exception. The problem was, the ambushes would be waiting at the Bastion island you were traveling to, so whoever got there first got the brunt of the ambush.

So why did I keep going to those places first? Oh. Right. I had to Recall people across the mapgrid to get them there. Painful, but necessary. It wasn't doing my quest to 50 any favors though, that debt was keeping me from leveling faster. But the TF was more important, and I had a job to do: get the Tankers to where they needed to go. :grin:

After three monuments the team gets a chance to speak to Faathim. He's situated in his fortress smack in the middle of the Chantry. Said fortress is under constant attack from Rularuu forces intent on shattering his defenses and forcing him to submit to their evil. Silly Rularuu. Faathim has an open door policy, just go to the small wormhole vortex to either side of the the dome. I'm sure he'd love guests, his hall is so empty, it's sad really...

Faathim provides some helpful clues, and suggests you beat up 50 more Rularuu to make him feel better. After that you've got a new set of missions, a new arc within the TF: someone (usually just one will do) has to go back to Firebase Zulu and speak to Boyd. Just one needs to go, a flyer, the fastest you got. The quickest way back to Zulu, just for your notes, is to jump off a bastion and fall. The fall jumps you to the failsafe (no death and no debt), which is usually the point of entry that takes you back to the previous map. The deal is, AFTER you get back to Boyd there's a lot more traveling to do.

Boyd send your contact on more Monument missions, but the monuments are situated in Zulu, not Chantry. While teammates can head to Zulu and help with the monument hunt, it's quicker for everyone involved to just let the contact person solo this part of the TF. It goes relatively quick, and once Boyd has his photos of the monuments you're back to fighting bad guys in the Chantry. The TF goes back to the earlier missions of fighting mobs and then finding the appropriate Monument Of Something. Stuck in the middle of those is your first door mission, a Defeat All Interlopers. You fight the good fight against the Circle of Thorns, and then do one more road trip to kill 50 Rularuu and find the Monument of Repetitive Stress Injuries. With that, you're almost 2/3 of the way through.

You also get to save innocent natives from harm (odd count, there's 3 natives and then a Save the last native! Why not just 4 natives then?), then Regret everything on the Bastion of Regret (regrettably the last monument you will regret visiting...Ouch, stop hitting me Dinah!). The team then has to visit Faathim one more time, who's still waiting at his place for the keggers to show up for the party. Sigh. Poor guy. But Faathim's concerned about what the CoT are plotting, and so he wants you to find out their plans. You find that out rescuing more native hostages from a CoT secret ops base. What you find out, however, is that the Circle Leaders are the ones you need to defeat. And those losers, like all battlefield generals, are back safely at home base in Founders Falls/Talos/Dark Astoria/Skyway/Yeehaw Juncion. Damn travel!

Once in the CoT Temple, we discovered horrific evidence of a crime. Unfortunately, they were all those Halliburton memos Cheney hid regarding Iraq, and with the GOP in full control of all three branches of government those turkeys were never going to see the light of day. So we settled on beating up the Circle Leaders until one of them blabbed: They were going to crash Faathim's party! NO!!!

We hurried back to the Chantry as quick as possible (which still took a half-hour to travel: damn game devs...). We entered the fortress and found our way to the portal leading into Faathim's hall. Here at this point I made a slight mistake: I didn't take a photograph of the Ice prison in which the CoT had trapped Faathim. Suffice to say there's a big chunk of ice in the middle of the room surrounded by kegger-abusing Circle of Thorns mages, and you've got a lot of work to keep the party going.

Amazingly there wasn't a lot of CoT targets: the mobs were rather small, although overloaded with mages. I'd have thought there would have been more Behemoths to make it scarier-looking. The biggest trick to this mission is how you release Faathim from the ice prison. You have to be careful not to damage him in the process of shattering the ice. There's also the issue of him being listed as an AV, even though he's really a GOOD GUY (the only good AV you'll meet), so you have to worry about any pets you might release during the fight. Getting him free of the ice turned out to be easy: I took care of it with my blasts while the others worked on the CoT. Once the ice is down to 1/3 strength, LOOK OUT! Faathim breaks free and flies off to the roof of the hall. From there the game is a simple mop-up campaign.

One of the perks of freeing Faathim from his prison is that he starts buffing all the good guys. Check this photo. He's using a Heal Aura while the team finishes off the last CoT mage. In hindsight, having the pets out might not have been a problem, as Faathim's AV status means he could survive a stray shot or two, and that his healing and bubbling abilities would have kept him safe anyway.

And with that...WE WIN! Take a bow, everyone!

And here is a more formal shot of us posing with our good buddy god Faathim. Remember to visit often, guys!

Oh, and the quest for Level 50 I had at this point? Well. I was 4 or 5 ticks off the last bar needed. I was THATCLOSE to getting to Level 50 and achieving the high point of the CoH game (until they get more levels added, rumor has it Level 75 is part of Issue 5). From here, after Gulver dropped out due to TF fatigue, the rest of us went off on a Hami raid (that, is another story altogther). It was there, upon the defeat of the Hamidon, actually on the shooting of a Hami Bud after the AV had been crushed, that I achieved Level 50. Still, this team did a lot for me getting there. AWWWWWWwww! :grin:

Fourth Shard TF - The Storm Palace - Saga of Lanaru

Having freed Faathim (well actually, the earlier TF freed him, I had to do it later), he sought our aid in defeating his fellow God Lanaru before his storm chaos destroyed all realms.

This sent us to the last of the realms, the Storm Palace. Dark purple skies are the first sign you're in dangerous territory. The second sign is the Level 53 (???) Storm Elementals floating just above you. Yup. This entire map is full of Levels 50 and up bad guys, a new set of bad guys called Elementals, storm-based monsters you don't see anywhere else. At this point in time, Blue Arc was Level 45, barely able to enter the zone, and so one thing I learned quickly was to stay in stealth mode with the Personal Force Field from the Force Epic pool to keep me alive.

Persistence was leading this, the following Saturday and Sunday of Shards Two and Three. Back again was El Fuego Fuerte. Along for the TF this time was an old ally of mine, F T Shadow, to whom I kept apologizing about the sorry Hydra raid I had led about 6 levels ago. NightAngel, Nurse Mini, PunchGirl, and Larithia (a good-sized contingent from the Angels of the Night sg) rounded out the team.

The TF is straight-forward: work your way to the Storm Palace to defeat the Mad God. The steps themselves are the tricky parts: the missions included Archvillains from the Praetorians and Circle of Thorns! For some reason, I forgot to include a screenshot of Persistence drooling over the promise of Tanking against AVs...

The fourth Task Force, by the by, is where I went totally insane. At one point, when Persistence asked us if we were ready, my mind fled all reason and I answered 'Warg.' I had thought I was making up a silly nonsensical word, but I found out later it's what the evil wolves were called in the Lord of the Rings epic. Still, that one answer brought a fit of giggles among the teammates, and before we knew it... WARG was the answer to everything. I even kept getting WARG-ed for days after this TF, even on my other alts (I tried, in vain, to keep the WARG-ing to Blue Arc Anom).

The missions start off with a set of door missions to Defeat All Rularuu in the caves. While Persistence still had the difficulties of running against Psi attack creatures, it seemed easier this time due to the good count of Defenders we had on team keeping her buffed just enough to stand against any Holds or Stuns. The biggest problem we had on these missions was the aggressive nature of the minions: we had scouting parties charging down various tunnels catching us at the worst moments, very much ambushes in-map.

It's the second set of missions that Persistence HAD to have enjoyed: the AV confrontations. Starting with Malaise (allied with Nemesis forces), we entered a set of troll caves with Happy Fun Balls all over the place. The HFBs were simul-clicks, by the way, so it helped a bit to clear the map out first since not all of us had stealth (and because Nemesis snipers could SEE stealth players too). That led to the next AV, Mother Mayhem, who was slightly tougher to fight as her mobs had a better mix of Bosses (Fake Nems, Warhulks, and Karl Rove). After her, the next two door missions were Defeat-Alls, with a Nemesis AV (complete with ? mark) on the last one there. That last door mission introduces Ritki into the mix... and they become the targets on the next door mission. On that door mission we ran into the Knives of Artemis, hired mercs for the Malta, which signalled Malta as the next set of bad guys on the following door mish. We traveled a bit more this time (back to Paragon), actually a LOT more, with Storm Palace the extreme end of all maps. The good news was the following mission set was between Founder, Talos, Skyway and Atlas. We fought on the hills and beaches, we fought...ahh, it's still WWII week on the History Channel, okay? We fought bads, ran missions to Azuria, fought Circle of Thorns, ran to Azuria again, and then got a Board Train mission to Activate the Key (4 Keys in truth). We also had to Defeat Baphomet.

I should have gotten pictures of this, but we were a little too busy on this map. Baphomet is a major AV for the Circle of Thorns. So Major Big he deserves his own Badge titled Demon Slayer. Getting the keys are easy on this map, and finding Bap is easy too: HE'S THE BIG FLAMING DEMON IN THE MIDDLE OF THE MAP! We threw out Holds, Buffs, everything we had. Persistence yawned at one point and then three blows later finished the big guy off. W00T!

If this seems pretty quick, it does fly by compared to the other TFs. The big mission we had now was getting BACK to the Storm Palace to do a Scouting mission: three scouting points in the Storm map unlocks the Palace itself. Our fastest flyer made it back (Oh, Faathim! I forgot which one it was. Larithia?) and did the scouting while half of us were still hopping through Chantry. With the Palace opened, we now had only one mission left: KILL SKULS! WARG!

Entering is similar to Faathim's fortress, although a lot tougher as the higher-ranked mobs circling the dome's pathways are more aggressive. The Elementals also have a charged attack that seems to be AoE, so some damage was inevitable getting there. I stealthed in, got to the vortex doorway, and TP'ed over people safely. From there, we charged in.

The room is Faathim's, but darker. Lanaru doesn't pay his light bill either. We found two groups circling the Purple God: an outer circle of Elementals which were easy to clear, and an inner circle of Rularuu that seemed to stand a LITTLE too close to the God for comfort. Amazingly, we were able to sniper parts of the Rularuu mobs away from Lanaru without him noticing (yup, he's mad!). We cleared out the minions in no time. We were left then with a tall, imposing Purple Being of Infinite Endurance and Max HP.

Persistence, with a "WARG!" fresh on her lips, charged in. For an Ice Tanker, she sure leaves a lot of drool in her wake. Don't that stuff freeze or somethink? Anyway, buffed to the nines, our Ice Tanker faced her third God in as many weeks, and her 40th AV in as many days. Do you guys on Tanker Tuesdays hear that? Do you? Yup. Expect Ring and fellow 50 Tankers to be doing this TF REAL WARGING SOON!

The rest of us did what we could with our Blasts, Holds, and Buffs. This shot here (along with the shot of Lanaru's wrist strike and the salute below) is thanks to Persistence, who was able to retain her stance while adjusting her camera angle back far enough to include us hovering Blasters and Defenders. Lanaru threw out a lot of Storm Summoning attacks, but those of us vulnerable to them stayed back while those who were designed against Knockbacks and Stuns (cough, Per, cough) stayed inside the storm attacks. It took a good long time (and hundreds of El Fuego's fire monkeys: with each storm blast those poor things were knocked back rather harsh), but we finally got the god down to ZERO HP. And with that, we got another light show.

And with that, MISSION COMPLETE! The FINAL TF of all TFs! (Well, for them. I had to wait for the Third TF. Yeah, things are a bit out of order with me. It happens.) We saluted, said WARG, and then hurried back out and avoided the high level Rularuu and Elementals on our way back to the Real World (Talos).

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Lessons Learned:

1) Get a flyer with Recall Friend. Get a lot of them. Make printouts of Vidiotmaps just in case.
2) Get a Tanker with defenses against Psi attacks. Then get more Tankers to enjoy themselves thoroughly through all 4 TFs.
3) AVs are cheap and plentiful on the last TF. Keep your team at 8 members.
4) Ambushes are cheap and plentiful on all the TFs. Keep your shields up.
5) Take photos. Noone will believe you otherwise when you tell them you've killed gods.

This ought to be my last TF Diary ever. I'm sorry, folks, but my mem space is long gone. I thank you all for reading through these, I thank a lot of you who have joined in on them, but honestly, there's not much else to say on these TFs. Done 'em. Even the one that ain't there no more (Calvin Scott TF is now gone gone gone). UPDATE: I have, noticeably, done a few more TF diaries, especially as the Game Devs add 'em to the new maps. ;-)

Enjoy the game! See you in Champion server!

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