Winter Event December 14 - January 2

[Creole Ned]

The first official™ blurb about this year's Winter Event (http://www.cityofheroes.com/community/event_winter2006.html) is up. Having sampled it on the test server already, boy howdy there's a lot of loot for a supposedly loot-free game. Most of it is stuff you wear, admittedly, but still.

Also, skiing is stupidly fun, especially with the yodelling in the background. Too bad the expert slope isn't longer.

[Circuit]

I really wish the slopes were bigger, but yeah skiing's fun.

[Creole Ned]

Well, the event ends with tomorrow's maintenance and I think I have killed Snaptooth a jillion times, solo, with PuGs and various combos of the famous Ned/Circuit hero/villain duos. A few observations on the event:

- Cryptic thinks most people are naughty, not nice, based on how often you get a good present. Some people are *very* naughty and spawn Winter Horde that are +7 or so to their level. That only happened to me on test, fortunately.
- I got the holiday jetpack on level 45 and 50 characters. Typical.
- skiing is fun. The game needs more skiing. I don't care how, it just does.
- Johnny helped take out a Winter Lord which was nice, because he was born after the first winter event. No more XP pinatas, though. Someone complained that they got 3 XP for defeating one. Not quite the half-level of winter 2004. :)

The Snaptooth mission was interesting due to its design forcing you to fight at least one boss and an elite boss, plus the Red Caps are one of the nastier groups in the game, especially if you let them dive into the ground and come back meaner.

Escorting Baby New Year: first, this is the ugliest baby in the history of gaming. And he's a smart aleck, too. The worst part, though, is when he decides he can't leap 20 feet into the air anymore and you have to take him the long way around a hill. One day pathing AI in games won't suck.

Snaptooth himself was an interesting fight. Some of my characters had no real trouble, others...not as lucky.

Solo, Blue Barry (12 energy/ice blaster) finished him off without much trouble, as did Offramp (12 necro/dark mastermind). Sam the Red (30 energy/energy stalker) got whacked with the double knife attack for nearly twice his total hitpoints. Ouch. Snappy then hit again for 300+ more points of damage than Sam had hitpoints. Ouch again. Coming back from the hospital, he'd recovered to about 50% health after the second death. Typically, Sam then dispatched him without getting hit again. Greg the Gun got taken down by fistful of arrows, even though the damage was less than his total hitpoints. No debt or mention of defeat in the combat log, either. Bugged but in Greg's favor.

I had no problems with duos or teams, regardless of the make-up. Carl the Bat never even got hit on his runs, if I recall correctly.

All in all, a pretty good event this winter. A nice mix of temp powers (like the pet snowbeast), badges and other doodads to keep one amused and the hero/villain teaming is always interesting.

Hopefully the next time the one mission exit will not be encased in solid rock. :P

[Creole Ned]

And weirdly, they just announced that the winter event will be returning for one week, starting on Monday January 8th.

Perhaps Blue Barry and Captain Too Tan could use the opportunity to smoosh a few snowmen.

[jackrabbit]

there was a warm snap, it would seem. Now it's over and winter is coming back.