CoH/CoV Beginner's Guide

[Dog Pants]

Starting off in CoH and CoV isn't difficult, but some things aren't immediately apparent, so here's a step-by-step guide for those who are squeezing into their spandex for the first time...

Downloading/Buying the game:
City of Heroes is the main focus for 5punkers playing the set - not all own CoV and so CoV is not played as often. There are advantages to having both though, such as access to our base and extra costume options, and the subscription fee covers both games for the same price. CoH and CoV can all be bought and downloaded from the NCSoft website. This is the recommended method of purchase, as a shop-bought version will be the EU version. 5punkers play on the US server, so make sure you get the US version of the game. When you download it there's the option of EU or US. If you buy the EU version you will not be able to connect to the US servers. The initial download is small, just a splash screen that will then download the game content and patches. This is the same program used to launch the game. While the game is downloading you can activate the game code ready to log on for the first time.

First Login:
After logging in you will be presented with a long list of servers. 5punkers play Heroes on the Guardian Freedom server and Villains on the Champion server. Make sure you select the right one! Incidentally, you will need to select the correct server every time you start the game.

Character Archetypes:
Depending on the configuration of games you have you will either be given the opportunity to create a Hero, a Villain, or either. Both sides have similar character archetypes, but the subtle differences warrant a seperate description. See the more detailed guides for more information on how to play and set up each type.

Heroes-
Blaster - Blasters are the ranged damage of any group. Armed with powerful long-range powers and some minor support powers.
Controller - Controllers use their powers to influence the enemy but debuffing them or affecting them in other ways. Useful team players, with some buff powers too, but difficult to play solo.
Scrapper - Scrappers are the hard-hitting melee types. Arguably the best all-round combatant, with high-damage attacks and defensive secondary skills. Tend to get groups into trouble by aggroing stuff.
Defender - The support members of any group. Defenders can buff and heal others, making them useful team players. They also have limited ranged attacks.
Tanker - Tankers are the tough guys, there to soak up damage for the rest of the team. They also have moderate melee attacks.

Villains-
Brute - Brutes are the brawlers of any group. Tough and hard hitting, but with no ranged attacks.
Stalker - Stalkers are fast, powerful melee hitters. They can't take much damage but they can certainly give it out.
Mastermind - Masterminds have the ability to summon minions to fight for them. Their powers generally boost these servants, although they also have limited ranged attack and group support.
Dominator - Dominators are clever ranged fighters with debuff powers to weaken their enemies and ranged attacks to finish them off. The emphasis is more on the debuffs though, so they make good team players.
Corruptor - Corruptors are the artillery of the villain team. Armed with powerful ranged attacks and defensive buffs they are best used helping the battle from afar.

Creating a Character:
After choosing a type you fancy, you then have to choose your origin, primary skillset, and secondary skillset. CoX is deliberately vague about the exact statistics of all these variables in order to encourage people to be individual. However, some skills are more useful than others and again more detailed advice is given in the guides.
Your origin is the reason for your powers. These are much of a muchness really, more of a storyline element. They do give you a rather useless attack, and will dictate what variety of enemy you fight in the early stages of the game, but don't really have much effect.
Your primary skillset is your main role. This is probably what you'll be putting most of your resources into as it contains the skills that will be most often used.
Your secondary skillset is an additional, complimentary set of skills. These don't really define your role, but will certainly be useful.
Both skillsets allow you to choose one skill at character creation, but don't worry about taking the wrong choice too much for now.

Outfitting Your Character:
Time to wrap that baby in some spandex! Your first choice is to choose whether your character is male, female or gigantic. This is simply their shape and is purely aesthetic. Gigantic characters are male, and are simply bulkier versions of their normal sized counterpart. Also on this screen you can choose the various physical dimensions such as height, bulk, leg length, chest size (yes, we all play with that one on the female characters).
Next is the fun part. There are almost limitless combinations of costume and appearance, and they aren't limited to spandex. Have a play, have fun, try not to look like Wolverine or Superman. It's really down to personal preference and creativity so there's not much can be said here really. There are several ways to change your costume later in the game, so again don't worry too much.

Finalising Your Identity:
The last thing to do before play is to enter your name, description and battlecry. Your name and description are fairly self explanatary, although description is optional. Remember though that names of existing characters, both in game and commercially, cannot be used. Your battlecry is also optional and is simply a phrase that your character will shout whenever you hit F10. Once these are complete (or not) you are ready to play. It is worth playing the tutorial at this point which will explain the basics of the game, so I won't do it here.

Notable Areas:
Atlas Park - One of the two starting areas. The area around the statue of Atlas is pretty safe, but the further away from it you go the tougher the enemies are likely to be. Note the little floaty robots with flashing police lights:- these are there for your protection and if a bad guy gets too close it will zap them and vapourise them. Useful to know if you're being persued by an angry gang of critters who you can't kill.
Galaxy City - Very much the same as Atlas Park, but without the big statue. Both of these locations are pretty much the same as far as starting characters are concerned.
King's Row - The second area a character is likely to encounter. Things are tougher in King's Row, but your missions will lead you there eventually. Be careful not to get out of your depth with the random beasties.
Cygnus Buildings - These are effectively hospitals that you will respawn in after death. Until level 10 death has no detremental effect, but later it will cause XP debt, explained later.
Trains - Walking all over can be frustrating, but there are train stations in many of the areas. Jumping on one such train will take you to another station in another area of your choice. There are two lines - yellow and green. Yellow lines are relatively safe, while green lines lead to the tougher areas. At low level you won't be encountering the green line.
Pocket D - The Paragon City nightclub, open to both Heroes and Villains. The easiest entrance to find it is in King's Row, but there are also entrances in tougher areas that allow faster travel at higher levels.

Early Enemies:
Hellions - The Hellions are a street gang with demonic ambitions. They're the first opponents you'll probably face and will harrass you on teh streets at every turn - don't worry though, they'll ignore you once you get three levels higher than them. You tend to find them just hanging about, mugging people, or breaking into stuff. They like to wear red.
Skulls - Very similar to the Hellions, but with more of a ghostly flavour. They wear white and have skull masks, but other than that do pretty much the same as the Hellions.
Vahzilok - The Vahzilok look like butchers and are often accompanied by zombie-like creatures. They kidnap people off the streets for their nefarious means and take them off for a grisly end. Vahzilok don't hang around the immediate starting areas, but you'll quickly encounter them in the outskirts of Atlas and Galaxy, and more often in King's Row.
Clockwork - The Clockwork are little (or if you're particularly unlucky, big) robots who will often appear to be trying to assmble something from stolen metal and bits. Some can fly and they have a rather nasty zappy attack. You won't encounter them until you get to King's Row, but at lower level they're a menace.

Enhancements:
Enhancements are worth a special mention. If you've played the tutorial you'll already know what they do, but probably aren't sure exactly how they work. A few enhancements can make a big difference to a skill, so the ones you use a lot will benefit from putting a few slots into them and beefing them up. At higher levels Endurance will start to become an issue whatever archetype you play and so having those extra slots from low levels will let you fight for longer. There's no real limit to the benefits of enhancements - they stack without a limit with only a couple of exceptions. After level 10 specialist enhancements can be used for a better bonus (known as dual origin because they can only be used by characters with one of its two origins), and after level 20 even more specialised (single origin, to be used by only characters of the same origin).

Pool Powers:
After level 6 you will gain access to several 'pool' power sets. These are avalible to all archetypes and are often used to speed up travel - something you'll likely be itching to do by this point. After the pool powers are made available you can pick from any of them at any level when you can take a new power, although you'll need to be level 14 and have one fo the powers in the set already to get the travel powers such as super speed, teleport and flight.

Teams:
As with any MMO, the game is made vastly better by working as a team. The randoms are better here than in a lot of games, and can often be seen broadcasting team requests, or asking you personally if you'd like to join them. Personally I ignore them like I do everyone else though.
Of course playing in a 5punker team is better. Get in contact with an existing player somehow for an invite to the 5punk (Heroes) or 5pandex (villains) SuperGroup. From here you can see who's online and where they are, and chat to them on the SG channel.
Now you're amongst 5punkers a team can be formed. Don't forget TS and alcohol - it's not as much fun otherwise. Obviously everyon'e not going to be the same level, but there are a few ways to even this out. At low level most people will probably have characters of a similar level to team up with, and most won't pass up the chance to wheel out their lesser used alts. At a higher level it's easier to use the Sidekick/Exemplar system. Using this a low level character can be artificially raised to the level below a higher level character by being their sidekick, or a higher level character can be lowered by being a lower level character's exemplar. A sidekick will not gain powers, but they will gain the hit points and attack strength, and an exemplar will only be able to use the powers they had when they were at that level themselves.

SuperGroups:
SuperGroups are effectively a guild or clan. They allow groups to communicate easier and, to a certain extent, pool resources. The 5punk supergroup has a base which can be used to ease travel by using the teleports, store enhancements and inspirations, be used as an alternative revive point, and pose for pictures. There's also an initiation bumming bed. As stated above, you'll need both CoH and CoV for access. Supergroup members can opt to play in supergroup (SG) mode. This earns the SG money (prestige) to spend on the base. Up to level 20 this costs the player nothing, and also gives you the option of altering your costume colours to the snazzy 5punk colours. After level 20 players in SG mode will sacrifice some of the influence, until the hit (I think) 34, when they will earn no influence in SG mode.

Death and Debt:
Up to level 10 death isn't such a disadvantage - you simply wake up again in the nearest Cygnus building. After that however you will accumulate XP debt. While in debt you will earn XP as normal, but half of any earned will go towards paying off the debt. This effectively means you earn half XP for a time, slowing your progress.

Changing Your Character:
At various points there are options to change your character. There are a few tailors scattered around Paragon City that will make changes to your costume for a price, but at higher levels you will be able to create new alternative costumes - up to four - that can be switched at will. Also at later points a character will get Respecs. A respec is the opportunity to completely rebuild the character, re-picking powers and slots. Use respecs wisely, as there are only a few opportunities.

Badgers
Badgers can be acquired for various things, and the name of them can be used to put a little name under your own. There's little real point to them other than a bit of something to do, but it's an unwritten 5punky quest to get as many badgers as possible. Well I suppose it's not unwritten any more. Anyway, badgers come in several categories such as exploration, achievement, supergroup, gladiator. There's hundreds of the things, so explaining all of them would be pointless and most have a little thing saying 'unknown' that you can click on to see roughly what you need to do. I'm not sure myself what some categories need, but I know that achievement badgers are often such things as 'kill a Winter Lord', 'kill 100 Hellions', or 'take 100,000 damage points'. Exploration badgers are generally the easiest to get - you find these by walking over a little plaque in the floor and are rewarded by a badge and a little bit of story about the location.

[spoodie]

I've seen people playing this quite a bit lately and considering giving it a try again, should I, do you think you'll play it much longer?

[Dog Pants]

Berk, Roman and Sheriff have been playing for ages, and the more 5punkers who do play the more likely we are to go on for longer. It's kind of like CoD - nothing really new or that exciting, but combined with 5punkers on TS it's hilarious.

[MIkkyo]

Berk, Roman and Sheriff have been playing for ages, and the more 5punkers who do play the more likely we are to go on for longer. It's kind of like CoD - nothing really new or that exciting, but combined with 5punkers on TS it's hilarious.

Drunk 5punkers+TS+Ability to teleport team mates over edges of buildings = hummus

[Joose]

something worth noting in the price section: If you buy the two versions (heroes and villains), you only have to pay one subscription fee.

[Dog Pants]

Ah cheers! I thought I'd put that in, but as it turns out I'd only put it on the wiki page.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

all looks good so far.


s'probably worth remembering that most of us are happy to set up new chars (or have ones at the right levels) to help new people get started and leveled

[Dog Pants]

Ah yes, I meant to put in a bit about teams and sidekicking/exemplaring and that reminded me. Good point though.

[Dog Pants]

Aaaand that's the first draft done. Please keep the suggestions coming, and I'll work on an archetype guide.

[Roman Totale]

Aaaand that's the first draft done. Please keep the suggestions coming, and I'll work on an archetype guide.

Badgers! Needs more badgers!

[Dog Pants]

Aha! Good call Batman.

[Wiggy]

Awesome. Incidentally, how much per month is the subscription?

[Dr. kitteny berk]

$15 i think

[Sheriff Fatman]

Badgers
There's little real point to them ...

Heresy! They are the single most important thing ever.

[tandino]

I played CoV for a while over the summer and really didn't get into it as none of you were around on my EU server and I couldn't be arsed teaming up as I knew fuck all. Now, however, I'm downloading the (2gb) COH US client (at roughly 19k/s).

Presuming this is ever downloaded fully, I'm with you all in the very near future. I'm pretty sure my second chance will pay off if I'm with the 5punkers. If not, it's only 15 squid! Also I bought the GvE Upgrade too, didn't even know it existed!

Anyway, I'm talcing up my latex as we speak...

[Dog Pants]

Woo! The more people play the more fun it is.

I was trying to work out why CoH and COD are so much fun, given that the actual games aren't really all that special. I decided that the thing they had in common was that they're so easy to play that we can concentrate on arseing about and exploiting silly things in the games.

[Roman Totale]

The more people play the more fun it is.

That's what she said!

/hilarity from t'other night

[Joose]

/hilarity from t'other night

That's what she said!

[Duke of Ted]

currently downloading the big faaabulous US version
no work tomorrow night so i can join you's for some drunken baddie punching

is there an archetype that you lot have too many of? I dont want to create a blaster or scrapper and find out that every one else is one. Is there a certain archetype you're in need of? I was quite a nifty healer back in the day.

[Dr. kitteny berk]

as far as i know we have plenty of everything.

take whatever you prefer really