Champions Online: State of the Game Letter

As open beta draws closer (Aug 17th, 2009), thought this would be of interest! INNNNTARESTING read.

State of the Game: August 6th, 2009

Posted by Chronomancer

Greetings, heroes!

I’ve been traveling all around this crazy continent telling people about the game. So much so, that I completely forgot that I was going to be in Los Angeles yesterday showing the game to the Associated Press and Game Trailers and wouldn’t be at Cryptic HQ to put out this week’s State of the Game. The good news is more and more people are hearing about the game at the same time we’ve been getting more beta testers in to play it!

Nemesis Clues

Heroes should start seeing clues at level 20 in the next week that lead them to creating their Nemesis at level 25. There’s something dastardly happening in the background…

Planning Your Pre-Order Rewards

Many of our retail partners are offering Cryptic Points as part of their pre-order incentive programs. These points can be used to make micro-transaction purchases from our store, thus allowing our players to choose their own pre-order rewards! We wanted to give you a sneak peek into some of the things you’ll be able to get when the game launches:

Special Edition Action Figures

• Defender
• Ironclad
• Witchcraft
• Kinetic
• Dr. Destroyer

Special Edition Toys

• Army Man
• Clown
• Pirate
• Robot
• Army Helicopter
• Civilian Helicopter
• Submarine

Crafting Specializations

Heroes enter into the research and development in one of the three crafting schools by talking to a trainer. After this, they also now choose which of three specializations within that field they want to pursue. There are different items available to craft within each specialization, and even some of the items that are similar across specialization may have different visual effects that players can choose to display.

A hero can change specializations at any time. To change specializations within a school, simply talks to the trainer and choose to switch to the new specialization. Be forewarned that there is a cost, however. All accumulated skill points will be lost when switching to a different school OR a different specialization within the same school. The skill point cap will also be set back to 100 in both cases. And don’t worry, blueprints are not be lost as a result of changing schools or specializations. They can, however, become temporarily unusable if your skill points are too low. Also, you can only buy blueprints that are in your field of specialization.

You can manufacture any item that is in the same school, even if it is a different specialization, as long as you have the blueprint and you match or exceed that blueprint's minimum required school skill points. This means that you never lose the knowledge required to craft an item, but if you want to hold more than a single specialization, you will need to rebuild your overall ability to create items within that school. Dedicated crafters can learn all three specializations within a school and then be able to craft everything within that field of research and development.

UNITY Missions

For players planning their Omega careers, here’s a quick rundown on the UNITY mission flow:

1. At level 40 heroes complete the perk Worshipped.
2. They then receive an e-mail from Dr. White inviting them to visit UNITY HQ.
3. This e-mail has an item attached which grants a mission with a waypoint to the UNITY door and has a UNITY key card.
4. Inside the UNITY instance, the hero talks to Dr. White to complete the mission. Dr. White offers membership in UNITY.
5. Accepting the offer enables use of the consoles and teleport pad in UNITY HQ.
6. Each day the hero can get use the UNITY console to gain a mission that sends them to 5 different global Hot Spots. Taking this main daily mission enables the hero to take the 5 missions that correspond to those Hot Spots.
7. If the hero completes all 5 Hot Spot missions, this completes the main daily mission and makes that hero eligible for the day's Special Assignment. Heroes must return to the UNITY HQ to turn in the hotspot list mission and get the Special Assignment.
8. Each hot spot mission gives 1 UNITY Merit as a reward. Each Special Assignment missions give 3 UNITY merits as a reward. Each mission also has a rare chance to grant additional UNITY merits, so a hero should average around 8-10 merits a day if they do all available missions.
9. Merits can be used to purchase rewards from Mentiac, the UNITY quartermaster.
10. There is a chance that Hot Spots and Special Assignments may have a Qliphothic tear. Players can gather Qliphothic energy from these tears to use in special UNITY crafting recipes.