Field Crafter and You

Well folks, I spent my day off yesterday setting the ground work on Octayne to get the Field Crafter badge... ya know, the one that awards the spiffy portable crafting table? I now have all the badges necessary except the final one, which, given time, is easy enough to get.
What really helped me out on this (not counting all the cash made selling my random Posi-TF rolls) was this guide I tripped over.

Gaining the Field Crafter Badge

So there ya go, just in case anyone else was looking to get into it as well.

P.S. Help yourselves to the surplus IOs in the common bins, for selling or slotting, I don't care which, it's all good.

New SG rules! Please read

From now on all ALT's must be made known to Leaders or here on the Blog. Unknown names wil be kicked immediately. We have a few new members helping themselves to High end IO's. These are to hard to come by already and I won't allow them to be stolen.

Take a few minutes and register your ALT's. Send Tell's to any Hero Elite.

Upgrading the CoH Engine - It;s bound to happen

Just a snip from the forums. The Original poster makes some valid points.

One of the more interesting comments made in another thread is that NCSoft needs to spend time working on updating the COH graphics engine to add features and take advantage of new hardware capabilities.

It occurs that there are several weaknesses in the CoH engine that newer games might use to leapfrog CoH. Some of these have been *ahem* Cryptically hinted at as receiving updates in the future. However, there is lots of room for improvement.

The big, glaring hole that has been 'too difficult' to address for a long, long time and that the devs have been tentatively hinting about might be addressed some time in the near future are the game engine capabilities required for Power Customization. This requires not only significant grunt-work on part of NCSoft staff to re-create power effects from source artwork and the like, but would also require significant code change to the graphics rendering engine and game UI to allow for all the varieties of customization.

For the sake of this post, we'll assume that even if NCSoft is not actively working on this right now, they know about how much time and effort it will take and have it 'scheduled'.

From the CoH Forums

Merit Reward Tweaks On the Way

Okay kiddies, a new patch arrived on the test server last night. And according to the patch notes...

Merit Rewards

• All tasks have had their Merit times and rewards re-evaluated. Most tasks received an increase to merits reward.
  
• Failing a mission that is the final (or only) mission of a story arc, task force, strike force or trial may result in reduced rewards. Failing tasks that have 2 or less missions will award 0 merits. Failing tasks that have 3-4 missions will award 50% merits. Failing a task that has 5 or more missions will result in normal merits.

Now keep in mind these are subject to change, but I figured why not compile the changes in a post as people on the forums test them out.

Hero's

Taskforces

• Taskforce Name: Twilight Son Taskforce (Smoke and Mirrors)
  Contact: Twilight Son
  Merits Awarded: 3 (-1)
  
  
• Taskforce Name: Katie Hannon Task Force
  Contact: Katie Hannon
  Merits Awarded: 9 Merits (+2)
  
  
• Taskforce Name: Imperious Task Forece
  Contact: Imperious
  Merits Awarded: 28 (+3)
  

Trials

Story Arc's

1-15

• Arc name: Officer Wincott vs. The Trolls
  Contact: Officer Wincott
  Merits Awarded: 2 (+0)
  

16-19

20-24

• Arc Name: Hear and Now
  Contact: Long Jack
  Merits Awarded: 10 merits (+5)
  

25-29

30-34

• Arc name: Library of Souls
  Contact: Allison King
  Merits Awarded: 10 (-1)
  
  
• Arc name: Unity Plague
  Contact: Jenny Firkins
  Merits Awarded: 10 merits (-2)
  
  
• Arc name: Hatred's Hungry Heart
  Contact : Kelly Nemmers
  Merits Awarded 5 (+1)
  

35-39

40-45

• Arc name: Division: Line
  Contact: Angus McQueen
  Merits Awarded: 21 (+3)
  

46-50

• Arc name: To Save A Thousand Worlds
  Contact: Unai Kemen
  Merits Awarded: 32 merits (+16)
  
  
• Arc name: Future Threat
  Contact: Daedalus
  Merits Awarded: 7 (+4)
  
  
• Arc name: Stolen Power
  Contact: Daedalus
  Merits Awarded: 2 (-1)
  
  
• Arc name: Origin of Power
  Contact: Percy Winkley
  Merits Awarded: 3 (+1)
  
  
• Arc name: Hero's Hero
  Contact: Maria Jenkins
  Merits Awarded: 24 Merits (+5)
  
  
• Arc name: Black Shroud Dimension (Badge Mission)
  Contact: Maria Jenkins
  Merits Awarded: 1 Merit (+0)
  

Villains

Strikeforces

• Strikeforce Name: Mender Silos SF
  Contact :Mender Silos
  Merits Awarded: 6 (+1)
  

Trial

• Trial Name: Second Respec Trial
  Contact: Trepsarciel
  Merits Awarded: 15 (+0)
  

Story Arc's

1-15

• Arc name: The Vahzilok Conference
  Contact: Dmitri Krylov
  Merits Awarded: 5 (+1)
  
  
• Arc name: Spy Hunt (aka After The Wall Fell)
  Contact: Dmitri Krylov
  Merits Awarded: 10 (+5)
  

16-19

• Arc name: Choose Your Own Adventure
  Contact : Fortunata Hamilton
  Merits Awarded 1 (-6)
  
  
• Arc name: Master of Destruction
  Contact: Operative Wellman
  Merits Awarded: 5 (+3)
  

20-24

25-29

30-34

• Arc name: Silver Tongued Devil
  Contact: Hardcase
  Merits Awarded: 3 Merits(+0)
  
  
• Arc name: Miss Fortune's Wheel
  Contact: Slot Machine
  Merits Awarded: 2 Merits (+1)
  
  
• Arc name: High Roller's Last Gamble
  Contact: Slot Machine
  Merits Awarded: 4 Merits (+1)
  
  
• Arc name: Psimon Sez
  Contact: Psimon Omega
  Merits Awarded: 5 Merits (-2)
  

35-39

40-45

• Arc name: Breaking Knives
  Contact: Arbiter Daos
  Merits Awarded 4 (-5)
  
  
• Arc name: Absolute Vengeance
  Contact: Arbiter Daos
  Merits Awarded: 2 Merits(-1) (done in 15 minutes)
  
  
• Arc name: Kuhr'Rekt Diplomacy
  Contact: Kuhr'Rekt
  Merits Awarded: 3 (+1)
  

46 to 50

• Arc name: Video Killed the Radio
  Contact : Television
  Merits Awarded 2 (Change is +1)
  
  
• Arc name: Von Grun's Redemption
  Contact: Vernon von Grun
  Merits Awarded 7 (-5)
  
  
• Arc name: Video Games Made Me Do It
  Contact: Television
  Merits Awarded: 1 merit
  
  
• Arc name: Oroborous Initiation
  Contact: The Pilgrim
  Merits Awarded: 3 Merits (+1)
  
  
• Arc name: Escaped
  Contact: Operative Grillo
  Merits Awarded: 2 merits (+1)
  
  
• Arc name: The Code Merlin
  Contact: Tavish Bell
  Merits Awarded: 4 (+2)
  
  
• Arc name: Snake Fist
  Contact : Operative Grillo
  Merits Awarded 6 (+1)
  
  
• Arc name: Light and Darkness
  Contact: Abyss
  Merits Awarded: 2 (+0)
  
  
• Arc name: Vindication
  Contact: Abyss
  Merits Awarded: 3 (+0)
  
  
• Arc name: The Conference of Evil
  Contact: Viridian
  Merits Awarded: 8 Merits (+1)
  

RWZ

• Arc name: Dreams of Peace and Acts of War
  Contact: Serpent Drummer
  Merits Awarded: 10 (+5)
  
  
• Arc name: Welcome to Vanguard
  Contact: Levantera
  Merits Awarded: 5 (+2)
  
  
• Arc name: The Horror or War
  Contact Dark Watcher
  Merits Awarded 8 (+2)

So There ya go... Quite a few interesting bits there, and a majority buff to the numbers really ("To Save a Thousand Worlds" up to 32 Merits!!!)...

Be cool to see how this pans out in the end.