Kind of a disappointing night in DCUO, but kind of a good night as well.
Subscribers get a small amount of station cash each month. I decided to spend August’s allotment on one of the new “slim” auras. Now, what I’d really like, is kind of like a boldish colored outline like you see in the Green Lantern cartoons, but when I got was a sort of puffy glow along my limbs. I already had the green aura (thanks, Sting!), so I got the slim white aura and color-swapped my costume palette to be teal-on-white.
Big Barda and I hung out for awhile. Superhero stuff.
But, goal of the night was not to spend an evening in the style tab. It was to defeat Bruno Mannheim and his Steamroller Intergang Crime Syndicate. I queued up and went about my business. After half an hour or so, I finally got into a group — a group that was not going well. The very first step in the mission is to subdue some prisoners and their leader.
We failed in that. People kept leaving the group and being replaced. Finally another group came by doing the same mission, so we piggy-backed on their accomplishments until we were sent into an instance. No more cheating! We were on our own.
And, by that time, we weren’t doing too badly. Three green lanterns, me as controller and the other two as DPS. The last, a sorcery healer. Lanterns do not drain power even in DPS mode, so all I had to do was keep the healer charged up while debuffing and attacking enough to get my “group hug” ready and my own power off the empty side.
We did surprisingly well right up to the final encounter, where you have to kill Bruno Mannheim while keeping egg-shaped Chang Huo off your back, and clicking consoles to keep an Apokalyptian weapon from zapping everyone. Bruno and Chang were defeated — but no, up opens a boom tube and Apokalyptian soldiers pour out. We die quickly.
It took like fifteen minutes of fighting to get to that point, and nobody seemed all that interested in starting over. So the group broke up.
I think this mission is the gating mission for a lot more content. I might try it again tonight, but if this pickup group is any guide, it might not be all that easy to finish. I may end up having to wait until Sunday, after all.
Oh yeah — the good thing — even though we failed on the mission as a whole, we did get through enough to earn some rewards. I got a level 93 bug helmet! Didn’t push me to CR 104 yet, but, it’s looking like this new content should be eventually good for future free upgrades.
