City of Villains/Heroes Issue 10 – glimpse at the invasion

Not long ago NCSoft and Cryptic Studios announced the upcoming content update for the City of Villains/Heroes game(s) – Issue 10: Invasion. So when it was announced the the European forums that Issue 10 now was on the test servers, I decided to take a peek with one of my partners in super villainy – Ice Fuego.

Ice being a relative newcomer to Grandville, Lord Recluse’s residence area, was in that neighborhood and headed for the Vanguard DPO facility in the southern end of Grandville. The Vanguard super hero group are the ones organising the resistance towards the Rikti invasion and through their facilitiy there is an entrance to the war zone. This is also where you find the contacts that will give missions into the war zone.

The Vanguard facility is a neat set-up, with some shooting grounds, Rikti practice dummies to hit on, resarch and development where they seem to disect a fallen Rikti etc… From there you can port into the War zone entrance.

Spending most of my time on villain side, I have no hero that has been high enough to visit the Rikti Crash Site as it has been before Issue 10, so I cannot make any comparisions unfortunately.

There are constant skirmishes going on in the war zone, gun turrent fighting attacking Rikti and Rikti patrols walking around in the area. Ice also spotted some Crey, Arachnos and Devouring Earth representatives – trying to make some benefit of the situation obviously.

Close to the entrace the mobs are 35ish, increasing further in the zone and with more 50ish around the Rikti Mothership. Most of the roof tops on the houses near the mothership seemed to be filled with Rikti monkeys, who eagerly attacked any superjumping villain trying to get a good viewpoint..:). If the Rikti monkeys did not kill you, then the Rikti gun turrets around the ship probably will..

The Rikti Mothership had its shields up. Apparently villains and heroes can organise raids to destroy pylons which if enough are destroyed the shields and defences go down and the ship can be boarde. The Master of Arms may appear then which probably is a nasty bugger. Even with successful fights, the Rikti will be able to repair the damage and raise the shields again – starting the whole thing over. But it sounds like it could be a fun activity.

Ice started with the 2 first missions into the zone, first was just a “kill 10 rikti”, the second one got more interesting, rescuing Fusionette and Faultline and take down a Rikti raid leader with their help.

Fighting and doing missions will give the usual drops, but can also give a special salage drop – Vanguard Merits. They can be used to craft some vanguard specific costumes and other items using machines in the Vanguard facility. A costume piece semed to require in the range of 50-200 vanguard merits each.

During Ice’s exploration of the war zone, there were announcements coming in about Rikti sighting and attacks in various zones. When it announced that Rikti was sighed in Shardhead Isle, Ice decided to go there. Being an old neighborhood for Ice, there is of course some nostaliga there and the Rikti should not be allowed to mess with that area!

Arriving in Sharkhead, the surroundings seemed normal initially. Traversing the area, a distant sound was heard and heading that way Ice saw a bunch of Rikti ships dropping bombs, with explosions and ground shaking. Curiosity taking the better of Ice, she ventured close only to be swiftly killed by nearby exploding bombs.

Back from a quick hospital visit, Ice ventured closer to the bombing area with a bit more caution. Suddenly she noticed that there was a bomb that had landed but not exploded. Better to disarm/disable that thing. Summoning her sidekick Jack Frost, Ice went to action.

Initially things worked well, but apparently the Rikti took notice of someone messing with their bomb and started to beam down reinforcements who attacked Ice and Jack. Fending of the first couple of wave worked, but more and more came down and eventually Ice and Jack had to make a visit to the hospital again.

There was no level indicator on those attacking Rikti, but the con colour indicated around the same level as Ice, so it is probably adjusted for whoever they are fighting.

I also noticed that there was no xp debt when being killed during the Rikti bombings or out in the war zone. Death in regular missions in the war zone turned out as expected to give regular debt, after empirical studies.

The reinforcements sent to the Rikti from their home world obviosly brought them some new costumes also, and they certainly look flashier than before.

I must say I feel a bit excited about this update. The option for villains to work together with heroes in the war zone and war zone missions should be fun. I have played Cityof Villains for a bit more than a year now (hero side a bit less) and gone through the updates of Issue 7, 8 and 9 – they have all been good updates for me and Issue 10 does not seem to be an exception. It is good to be a super villain (or hero…).