A Mild-Mannered Reporter: Spiders on the wall (VEAT levels 1-20)

I've been talking about it more often than not these days whenever I mention City of Heroes, but in case it wasn't transparently obvious: I like spiders. Not actual spiders, mind you -- those generally merit a kill-on-sight order from me -- but the epic archetypes that villains get? Boy, I can't get enough of those. They're like sliced awesome, complete with sweet armor for the soldier side of things and buttcapes for the widow ladies. (And creepily form-fitting armor for the male widows... y'know, let's just pretend that we didn't go down that road.)

What's struck me as odd, however, is that there's relatively little written up about partaking in the sheer joy of being a faceless cog in Arachnos who decided to strike out and hit the big time. With more players than ever able to access the archetypes, and more players still when Going Rogue goes live, now seems as good a time as any to take a hard look at our eight-legged friends and jackbooted oppressors. Today, we're going to go over the basics of starting a new Soldier or Widow, including powersets and the early missions.

The beauty of diverse powers
Up until level 24, the powersets for both epics are fairly straightforward insofar as they don't have the later branching features (which we'll be taking a look at later). However, they're still odd bastards of powersets, featuring a mix of powers and abilities that's a tad intimidating early on. Soldiers get access to strong ranged and melee abilities, along with a decent hold and some group buffs. Widows don't get the hold, but they do get some nicer melee tricks and a taunt ability in their basic set.

Worth special note is the sheer strength of Tacitcal Training: Maneuvers, which both epics should pick up as soon as they are capable of doing so. The strength of this power should not be underestimated as a group buff. Defense is insanely powerful, as a great deal of math has shown, and slapping a nice big buff on the team just by being there makes you that much more awesome. Since the defense granted specifically includes Ranged, Melee, and AoE -- that is, the three types that pretty much every single attack carries -- you'll get by quite well for yourself.

As for specific powers, it's really up to you whether you want to split your time between ranged and melee or focus on one or the other. You have the powers to do any of the above. Venom Grenade and Web Grenade are both useful for Soldiers, and they combine like peanut butter and chocolate. Widows can also make themselves into decent tanks with Confront, Spin, and the several +Defense powers available to them. Don't stress too heavily on your power choice, though -- it's only temporary. When you get to branch into the niftier higher-level sets, you get a free respec.

It's also worth noting right here that you're fairly limited in costume choices to keep things locked into the archetype. You'll be getting a new costume before too long -- earlier than normal, even -- but you are stuck with the Arachnos uniform early on.

You can, in fact, be a contender
Arachnos is perhaps the only organization with cohesion that's so bad, even other villains spend time beating up their members. So it should come as no surprise that your first contact, in lieu of the tutorial, sends you off to hack the Arachnos computer containing the list of the Destined Ones. (That list, you'll recall, is the same one that makes most player villains important.) After breaking in and performing a simple click-the-glowie romp through your would-be companions, you should be level two. You'll also be given the usual choice of your first two contacts, Kalinda or Burke.

Oddly, Kalinda does not seem surprised in any way that one of the minions is on the list. You'd think she would mention it. Perhaps she knows better?

Before you finish your time in Mercy Island, though, you do get one more mission specific to your archetype: you need to go hunt down Private Jenkins. You see, while you were hacking in and entering your name as a Destined One, he was off freeing the actual Destined Ones from the Zig. So he has the original list, and the last thing you want is for anyone to realize you're not on it, right? It's an assassination mission, but most of your enemies will be Snakes rather than Arachnos. Once that's clear, you get your next contact, Brick Johnson.

Starscream Syndrome

Betrayal, of course, comes from the most obvious of places. You've now run two missions in which you've been stabbing Arachnos in the back, so you probably see what's coming, right? If you were hoping that you and Brick Johnson would be best buddies, there might be a hiccup in that plan.

It starts off simply enough, with a simple mission to go rifle through some crates and snag whatever's in them. A simple job for extra cash, right? There are a fair number of Rogue Island Police in the building, but they're not the real threat -- after you click on the second crate and find nothing, you get ambushed by an Arachnos strike team. They take a couple seconds to reach you, but when you've located the second crate it's a good idea to rest up if you're hurt at all. Once they've been beaten down, the mission is complete (no need to take out additional policemen, unless you really want to).

Needless to say, you would like to iron out some issues with Brick, preferably via hitting him in the face with something made of iron. Upon seeing you again, Brick bravely acts like a man and tells you everything, explaining Lieutenant Fossil suspects what you've done. He offers you a way to get back at him, however, by going to the Facemaker over in Cap au Diable and dressing up as a hero... then pounding the good lieutenant into the dust.

This part is fairly straightforward assassination again, but with the bonus of unlocking an extra costume slot early on. This does mean, however, that the Halloween event is of limited use to you -- the extra costume slot is taken up by your archetype-specific costume. Also worth noting, however, is that you might want to let Fossil smash your face in at first, as his speech when he wins is pretty amusing. Isn't a little humor worth some debt?

Accidentally awesome
Your next contact is Fortunata Hamilton, standing right off the dock in Cap au Diable, whose job in life is to convince you of what you already know: that you are awesome. Oh, sure, you were awesome enough to pretend to be a Destined One, but you might be even more awesome than that.

Her first mission sends you into Paragon City (what appears to be King's Row, as a point of fact) to extract a nascent candidate for Fortunata training. This is, yes, another outdoor mission without a clear layout or any real picture of where you're supposed to go, so you have to wander about stomping Longbow and SWAT agents until you finally find her. Once you do, however, she offers some cryptic words hinting that you might be more special than you know. Of course, she's then taken away by Ghost Widow for her training.

So, naturally, you break into the training facility to force her to explain everything to you in words not exceeding one syllable. It's another escort mission, which is followed up by a declaration that you're going to need to sneak in and get the Eye of Chronos for Hamilton in the hopes that you might find out for sure. It's another straightforward mission, and it ends the early part of the chain for the epic archetypes.

That's the simple part of being an Arachnos Soldier, bringing you straight up to Level 20 and within spitting distance of the branching powersets. Next week is our question-and-answer week, but after that we'll be resuming our walkthrough and play guide for the spiders. Until then, feel free to mail me any comments, suggestions, or loose Starscream toys at Eliot at Massively dot com. (I am not sure how you would send me a toy through email.) And if you have more questions for the next column, it's a fine time to send those, too.