I like my main character, Teal Green, just fine. Well, most of the time. She started out as a hard light controller — a deputy of the Green Lantern corp. But I soured on all the constant comboing and didn’t feel I contributed much DPS. With wild abandon, I tried a few different DPS options, finally settling on Munitions when it came out. I later changed over to become an electricity-based healer, and that is where I am today. My DPS is … reasonable. Team Spode (the league I belong to) is usually at the tops of the DPS charts, and I’m usually third or fourth behind Lord Spode’s ice tank and Stingheal’s sorcery healer.
But, as I said, I like her most of the time. Sometimes I just want to try something new. Usually I just wait around until DCUO gives out a new free level boost to the near-end game, but that skips years of fun stuff. (Mind, the House of Legends hasn’t come out yet).
I made a mental list of new things I wanted to try. I knew I wanted to twirl a staff as my fighting style, so that was first. I wanted to make a villain. I wanted to try a new power set — I chose earth, which is a tank power set with decent damage. I wanted to try a new travel power, so I chose acrobatics. There’s a bunch to choose from. Most people choose flight — Teal Green flies. Super speed is another popular one. I’m not sure I have seen anyone choose acrobatics.
I named her… Wyoming Knot. (Why? Why not?)
As a member with a character with near-max combat rating (CR), I had several options available when I went to enter the game. I could start from zero — going through the tutorial and everything. I could boost up to a medium CR for free, or spend Sonybucks to boost to near end-game (which would cost a lot of $$$) or, confusingly, to 25 with appropriate level 25 gear (which would cost some smaller amount of $).
I opted to skip the tutorial, but to otherwise start with nothing.
Some quick definitions
Character level in DCUO is almost meaningless. The maximum level is 30, and it’s been that since launch. After two days of villainy, Wy Knot is at level 24, and will be at 30 soon enough (no hurry).
Feat Points are earned by completing various tasks and are broadly analogous to achievements. Except, there are hundreds of them. You earn a bunch just running through the game, and more when you, for example, finish an instance without dying, or using a consumable, or within a certain amount of time — they are all listed in the Feats screen along with where to get them.
Skill Points are the main determinant of power once the character hits level cap. You gain one skill point for every one hundred feat points. Skill points are spent in weapon combos, travel power upgrades, extra super powers (heat vision? Joker poison? etc). They are most often used, though, to power up your stats. Might for super powers; Precision for weapon attacks; Dominance for taunt ability; Restoration for healing; Vitalization for controlling. As of this writing, I have about 220 skill points. Lord Spode, glorious leader of Team Spode, has 340. Serious players have north of 400. There’s plenty of fun to be had at lower skill points, but raid leagues typically have a hard minimum they will accept.
Combat Rating comes from gear, and is used to gate what content is available to you. The most current “episode” is available to anyone over level 10. Everyone who is at least that level is boosted to the minimum CR for that content. Earlier content is still restricted to the minimums. This restriction will still be in place with House of Legends. Teal Green’s CR is 340, which is the maximum for casual players such as myself. Even hardcore players can’t do much better (I believe the maximum possible at the moment is 348).
As of this writing, Wy Knot has about 26 skill points and, as she is not yet level 30, does not have a defined CR. Since she is past level 10, she can do missions in World of Flashpoint, the latest episode, but no earlier episodes are yet available (they will open up when she hits 30).
What is in an Episode?
Episodes consist of one or more of: solo missions, duos (two player missions), alerts (four player missions), and operations (eight player missions). They usually have “event” versions of all these for the most current episode. These event versions typically have fewer mechanics and are open to anyone, regardless of CR. They usually give bottom tier gear, but full event currencies.
Normal versions are for heroes and villains who meet the minimum CR requirements, and drop decent gear. Elite versions are for endgame-geared characters, and drop the best gear.
Near-raid quality gear is available from the event vendor for the event currency. Older gear can be purchased from vendors in the player hubs (Hall of Doom, Watchtower, House of Legends) for Source Marks, the non-event-tied gear currency. (Another non-event currency, plain old dollars, is used for gear repairs and the auction house).
Wy Knott’s Journey
Wy appeared in a Gotham safehouse — one of the smaller outposts for those who don’t want to travel to the bigger hubs. Various villains filled her journal with quests meant to give her a chance to get used to the game and to start exploring her super powers. Powers are dribbled out slowly as characters level, with the most interesting powers left for last. I noticed, while looking through the powers Wy was getting, that some powers applied the Crushed status to enemies, while other powers did extra damage to Crushed enemies. Aha, a combo 馃檪 I set up the combos I was seeing in my power bar, so I could just use them from left to right as they came out of cooldown and smoke those hapless heroes.
Almost every questline started with defeating certain targets or collecting certain items in Gotham or Metropolis. Typically, there would be additional quest givers on location to get a few more rewards and experience. All the city quest lines ended in a solo instance. Occasionally, the adventure would continue in an alert — a four player instance.
These alerts are not particularly easy, if you’re at the correct level for them. I travelled to defeat the Ultrahumanite at the behest of Gorilla Grod; the Ultrahumanite was getting a little too ambitious. I went to the Moon to retrieve exobytes stolen by the Queen Bee and the Hive for Braniac. To Bludhaven to help Nightwing with a Amanda Waller-triggered attack by Chemo. Up to Oolong Island to have some words with T. O. Morrow and his homicidal androids. Over to Area 51 to deal with more of Brainiac’s harvester robots. (All alerts are the same for heroes and villains, though the quest lines leading to them may give different motivations for being there. Some solo instances do not cross factions.)
I got groups for all these by signing up in the “On Duty” screen and waiting for a group. Most of the time, the other players would be around my level. Sometimes a higher CR person would join in (after which there was little for the rest of us to do, as high CR people can dominate low level content by themselves, easily).
These other low level characters, though, demonstrated the health of the game. Assuming most people who have other characters and can boost past the old content would do so, these could only have been new players just trying out the game for the first time.
Completing quest lines and alerts the first time gives a LOT of experience, and usually a letter and some gear from a famous villain (or hero) to encourage you to continue on.
Level 10 = Welcome to Current Content
When Wy hit level 10, she was told to get to Flashpoint Gotham, the hub for the latest episode. There’s a portal there in the player hub, but the map screen has a button to get there directly. That dropped me right into Penguin’s nightclub, where the Penguin, the Flash, Flashpoint Batman, Flashpoint Cyborg and Mayor Gordon all wanted to give me things to do. Other NPCs offered the weekly quests for the world bosses (as of this writing; Kill Doomsday; Defeat Paradox Princes; and Kill Warring Amazons and Atlanteans).
Wy Knott’s CR had been boosted to CR 322, though her level was still what it was; there were no extra abilities or better gear.
Gear does drop in the event instances, and better gear can be bought from the event vendors, but it is scaled to be only slightly better than your current gear. There is no boosting to high CR. But it’s also not super hard. Since your CR is always improving, almost everything that drops, no matter the rarity, is probably going to be a greater or lesser upgrade.
Stingheal recently returned to the game after being away for a few years. He caught up to the rest of us in just a week or two (I believe he did buy the boost to a recent episode).
What’s a typical DCUO session like?
Usually, I just log in for dailies. Stabilizer Duo and Vault are quick and give some useful stuff (both of these are going away). Then off to the current episode hub to pick up the dailies. I usually listen to chat to see if anyone is doing one of the world events, as there are typically feats for completing them some number of times (and completing feats is, ultimately, how characters get strong). I often tag along with someone else doing the quests, as there is no kill stealing in DCUO. Everyone who touches a mob gets full credit, so having help is never a bad thing. If you’re in a group, everyone in the group gets credit, even if they did nothing, as long as they are close enough. DCUO is very permissive about getting experience and rewards.
If there’s a solo mission, I’ll do that. If there’s a duo, I may do that. I find them a little annoying, as you never know who you’re getting as a partner. The current duo ends facing against Heatwave and a mind-controlled Plastic Man. About half the time, my partner gets too close to Heatwave and is broiled to death, leaving me to finish the boss fight alone. This happened the one time I took Wy into the duo. I think she was level 11 or 12 at the time with no CR, just boosted to the minimum viable level, and I was able to solo the end of the duo because I knew it so well.
Other times, I’ll get partnered with someone who does 150-200% my damage, and we fly through. But that doesn’t happen often enough…
This is incredibly useful information. Thank you. I’ve been playing DCUO since beta but even though I sometimes stop and read the wiki for clarification there are vast tracts of the game I simply don’t understand, even at the very lowest levels.
For example, I gave up even trying to understand how the currencies work many years ago. I spent so long just trying to find vendors in the cavernous mazes of the main hubs that even if I found them I would be too exhausted to make sense of what they were selling. I have always had similar issues with the progression system. I didn’t know until I read this post that there even were “Feat Points”. I can’t recall ever seeing them although it’s entirely possible I’ve been getting and spending them without knowing what they are. I can never keep straight what the various missions mean (solo and duo are clear but the others I muddle up all the time) and I have never really been clear on what the difference is between regular and Episode content. This post makesd more sense of al of that than anything else I’ve read.
Ever since lairs were introduced to DCUO I have really just treated it as a platform for housing rather than a game, let alone a super-hero game. I’ve only ever leveled one character to thirty. She dinged a few weeks after the game launched, but she’s on a different account. I have a couple of free, boosted characters that I never play but the one I do is still in the 20s, several years after I created her. There doesn’t seem to be a /played function so I’m not sure how many hours I’ve put into her but it has to be more than enough to have leveled her, had she actually be doing things that give xp.
I’m waiting now for House of Legends, when I plan on starting a brand-new character, possibly a villain. These posts (this and the previous one) will be invaluable then.
I’m glad these are helpful 馃檪 I have one more post in this series, and it’s about the hidden form of progression — the progression that ensures you and I will never be at the bleeding edge of content.
I fired this up on the Switch after your earlier comments on Twitter. Although I was sad to see the tutorial still plowing through the same area, the presentation was different than the last time I went through so I was pleased about that.
Using a controller set is kind of weird to me, but I think this game plays well on a console. As I usually play in hand-held mode the UI is a bit small and a bit fuzzy, but it’s doable enough, so I’m enjoying it.
I love playing DCUO with a controller, though I play it on Steam. I downloaded it on the PS5 the other night. Since I didn’t have a level 30 character there, I had to go through the tutorial. It’s a little dull, but it does set up who the initial villain is — Brainiac — and why regular people now have super powers — Lex Luthor comes from the future to use Brainiac’s exobytes to make a super army to fight Brainiac. And also why heroes and villains are collaborating. It does its job.
I didn’t much like the DCUO experience on the Switch. I checked it out during the previous episode. I was a bit surprised to see so many players playing it, though, since the Switch doesn’t support cross play.
I have it installed on my switch right now. The basic thing that keeps me from gping all in on it is that I like COH better, and I can play that completely for free. I like that in COH if you play a fire blaster or something, that is the core identifty of your power set. In DCUO I feel like I am basically a user of some weapon or fighting style first, and that my superpowers are kind of tacked on to that.
However, if I could just get over the fact that it doesn’t work like COH and take the game on it’s own terms. I am sure there would be a game in there I really like. Great info in these posts regardless.