My New Martial Arts Hero

Here's a hero I made today with the Martial Arts: Unarmed set. Guess who he looks like.

An Armadillo & A Really Big Sword

I basically spent the weekend trying to level up several different characters. When I played Cupid, I found this area in Canada where I never went before. And I fought this cool bad guy called: The Armadillo!

The Armadillo kind of reminds me of Juggernaut in the X-Men comics. He fights with punches and his big power is when he transforms into a ball and hurls himself at you. Yes - like Sonic the Hedgehog. I think it's cool nonetheless. He is officially my favorite bad guy in the game. Too bad he's really easy to beat.

When playing my Dual Blades character named Technoblade today, I got an interesting upgrade. It's a primary defense upgrade but it also comes with an offensive weapon called a Rune Blade:

Now THAT is a really BIG sword! It's funny because my normal attacks use two samurai swords and then when I want to use my Rune Blade this GIGANTIC blade all of a sudden appears! It looks so badass. Especially with my Santa costume.

Christmas Transmorgrifications

Another item you can get in the winter event is a transmorgrification. It temporarily turns you into different toys depending on which transmorgrification you get.

Army Man

Cheerful Holiday Teddy

There's also a version of the Teddy with a hat.

Harlequin Teddy

Holiday Tin Soldier

When you morph into one of these Christmas toys, your character retains all of the power he or she had before the transformation.

So, when my Dual Blades character changes into an Army Man, he can still use his swords to fight.

That same character can also shoot lasers from his hand.

And whatever travel powers you have, like jet boots, will be used when you are a toy. Fun stuff!

Toys, Toys, and MORE Toys!

I have to admit I have been going crazy on Champions Online lately to get everything associated with this Winter event. One of the hardest parts of the Winter event is getting all of the new action figures:

Patriot Justiciar

Winter Witchcraft

Winter Kinetik

Winter Ironclad

Winter Defender

And if you get all five, you get Winter Foxbat!

To get each of the action figures, you have to open presents around the different zones that either have goodies or worthless stuff. Each action figure has three pieces: the head, the torso and the legs. The drops for the action figures are extremely rare. I was able to get all of them by trading my extra pieces that other people needed. In fact, I got ALL of the pieces of the Ironclad action figure through trading ONLY.

Getting each action figure gives you a Winter event perk. Getting all of the action figures is another perk. Then, killing Black Harlequin's pet Clarence is yet another perk.

The only perk I have yet to get is the one that I have to kill 1,000 toys. Then, when I got the three major perks I'll get a final perk that will allow me more Winter event goodies. Stay tuned!

Winter Event: Attack Of The Misfit Toys!

The new winter event for Champions Online is now... online. It's called Attack Of The Misfit Toys. This looks a whole lot less stressful than the Halloween event. But, I still want to defeat Black Harlequin and Clarence.

For this event, I made my own Santa Claus costume for my dual blades character.

I always did this for my characters in City Of Heroes/Villians. Unfortunately, the costume generator in World Of Warcraft was not good enough to do a Santa costume.

Aside from battling Black Harlequin and Clarence, you can also open presents to get some interesting items.
When you open these presents you could get some goodies or you will have to battle evil toys to get the good stuff.

In some cases, you will have to get a series of items to get a special reward. Now, go on and get your presents! Happy Christmas hunting!

New Sickle Action & Prison Break!

I've been super busy with work so I haven't had time to play lately. But, I logged on today and got a new Dual Blades weapon. It's a couple of sickles with toxic damage. I love the look of them.

Also, a while back I jailed my Nemesis but he broke out today! There was a pretty cool mission to stop all the bad guys from breaking out of prison.

At one point, a whole gang of prisoners rushed me. Thankfully, my Dual Blades character can easily take care of crowds of enemies.

In this mission there are two major bad guys. Green Dragon is a Master Villain and uses the Martial Arts - Unarmed set. For Technoblade, he was easy to dispose.

The second boss is Vengeance and she is a Super Villain. I died once fighting her, mainly because I was also fighting a Nemesis Minion at the same time. Once I killed the Nemesis Minion, I could kill Vegeance pretty easily. Vengeance uses the Telekenesis Power Set and has dual Ego Blades.

Celestial Power Set!

I ended up skipping the missions to get to the Celestial Power Set and waited until November 10 when it was available. So, I made my healer called General Pracititioner and made him look like a doctor. I wish there was a lab coat costume option, though.


What I love about the Celestial Power Set is that it doesn't only make a great healer, but it's also a highly soloable PvE power set. For the most part, all of your healing powers double up as attacks against your enemies. I love it! With this power set, you're dealing dimensional damage. Every time you attack, you float so that's kind of cool. Almost reminds me of a Doctor Strange. The radiant effect around your character is also very nice.

It's not reflected in these pictures but I changed the color of my attacks to green since I am a healer.

My character is only level 7 and I'm already wondering what kind of defensive passive I am going to take. Since my characters already heals, is Regeneration overkill? There's nothing like an auto-heal. Invulnerability is not really an option since it scales with strength initially and that doesn't really help my character. I might try the defensive passive in the Celestial power set called Seraphim, although it appears to only benefit if I am teaming.

I'll keep plugging away with this character and I'll update my progress here as I go along.

Blood Moon Is Here!

The Blood Moon Halloween event is here! The part of it I was looking most forward to was the debut of the Celestial power set. Being a healer AND a ranged attacker is most appealing to me. However, after you download the Blood Moon update you CANNOT make a celestial character right off the bat. There's a mission to do in Millenium City, which I haven't done yet.

But, there is also Halloween-themed public PvP areas. I went to the one in Canada. There you have to become a werewolf and a werewolf hunter and then battle it out.

So far, I've been a wereworlf and you can see I took part in a battle royale with werewolf hunters. Fun stuff, but a little repetitive. Still, I love PvP that's done in the public. I hate going to an arena and fighting inside a ring.

Halloween Costumes In Champions Online

Champions Online has come out with special sets of Halloween costumes and you need Cryptic points to get them. I used all the Cryptic points I earned in the game on the Cyborg Beast costume, which you saw in my last post. But, I wanted the Epic Samurai set and the complete Halloween set as well.

So, I drank the Kool-Aid and actually spent money on getting Cryptic Points. I thought $25 for 2000 Cryptic points wouldn't break my bank.

Here's just some of the costume options I got:

Epic Samurai

A perfect set for Technoblade since he is proficient with the samurai blade and is also of Japanese ancestry. I quickly put together this costume. I'm not set on that white color, but it's a departure from the other look.

Skeleton & Web Set

This costume for Island Warrior has elements of the Skeleton and Web set. I really LOVE this Halloween costume. It really screams Halloween out to you! I also love that noose around his neck.

Cyborg Beast Costume

There are some new costumes that are for sale in the Champions Store (C-Store). If you have accumuluated a lot of Cryptic Points, then you can buy some of them. I got myself the Cyborg Beast Costume set. Looks pretty cool, huh? I really like the robotic wings.

You can also purchase Cryptic points with real cash to get these limited time goodies. There's also a whole bunch of Halloween themed costumes. Once you get one set of costumes, it will be available for all of your characters.

Star Trek Online Is Now In Closed Beta

The new massive multiplayer online game "Star Trek Online" is heading into its Closed Beta session starting today. I'm part of it only because I bought a lifetime membership for "Champions Online."

Don't worry - I won't defect. I love the superhero genre and it will take a LOT to tear me away from Champions.

At the same time, I am really interested in what Star Trek Online has to offer. I don't think there has been a really good Star Trek video game EVER! (Yes, even the arcade game back in the 80s was cheesy.) But, I really like what Cryptic did with "City of Heroes/Villains" and "Champions Online" so I hope they can finally make a game worthy of the Star Trek franchise.

Monster Island!

I haven't been playing Champions in the last week of September and the first week of October because I was in Portland on a vacation. Now, that I'm back I'm ready to go all out on Champions!

My character Technoblade is level 28 and has been doing level 30 missions in Canada. They are getting hard, however, and it was a good time to go to...

MONSTER ISLAND!

After doing a few preliminary missions, you get quickly into the action by putting together a dinosaur robot! I love the gigantic jumper cables you use to revive it!

After you bring the dinobot back alive, he helps you fight a bad guy (pictured, below).

I don't want to give away TOO much but let's just say this won't be the last time you'll see this guy. He's REALLY tough!

Just one note about Monster Island: all of the missions are PUBLIC so you'll probably have some help doing all of these missions.

Then, a gigantic fire monkey begins to help you with your mission. It's straight out of the title page of Champions Online!

And out of nowhere, a REAL dinosaur starts attacking the giant monkey! It's like Godzilla vs. King Kong!

Your final mission is to take a serum that makes you super buff and defeat the final bad guy. It took at least 3 champions to defeat the guy. And, obviously, all of them have to take the serum.

I have to say that my introduction to Monster Island was EPIC. For me, doing the quests on Monster Island is a little easier than the undead ones in Canada at this level. Can't wait to check out more of this island!

Shot Through The Heart!

You've seen my main character Technoblade who has a Dual Blades power set. Well, I noticed how many different weapons the archery power set can craft so I decided to make an archer named Cupid.


As a ranged power set, I'm REALLY loving archery. My super stats are based on Dexterity and Ego so I can get great critical strikes. I also build up Constitution so I don't die too fast. And, as usual I take Regeneration or else I'd die quickly.


Unlike Dual Blades, which does quick damage, Archery does CHUNKS of damage in one shot. Sometimes I can one-shot the bad guys. One thing that also help is Mini Mines from the Munitions power set. I shoot my AoE sonic arrow, which stuns them, then I run over and launch Mini Mines which basically blows them up. I've gotten to level 27 with this technique and it doesn't look like I'm going to stop doing that in the near future.

This is my Nemesis: Psyche. In Greek mythology, Cupid was man, Psyche was a woman and they were lovers. In Champions Online, Cupid is a woman, Psyche is a man and they are enemies. I tried to make him look like a Greek god. His power, of course, is telepathy. His minions are animals who use Psi Blades.

In my next post, I'll show you some bows I either received as rewards or crafted on my own.

Vote For New Areas!

Cryptic has post a new poll about what new areas in Champions Online do you want? Well, I haven't even explored all the areas in the game now, but it's nice to see that they are already planning new areas.

You can vote here.

The choices are:

• Modern Urban (super-crime in modern-day cities)
• Dark Urban (gritty street crime in run-down cities)
• Exotic Wilderness (mountain-top monasteries, hidden valleys)
• Mysterious Locations (Bermuda Triangle, Stonehenge)
• Other Dimensions (the Astral Plane, Faerie, the Netherworld)
• Alternate Earth (alternate reality, alternate history)
• Outer Space (Moon, Mars, Alien Worlds)
• Historical Time Travel (ancient Egypt, Dark Ages)
• Future Time Travel (high-tech future, post-apocalypse)

I chose Alternate Earth as I think that would be the most interesting. Historical also would be nice.

The choice that is leading right now is Outer Space. I would have chosen that if I already didn't have my fill of the Gadroon.

I definitely don't want a new area that mirrors a place in World Of Warcraft. I already played that game.

Meet... Technophobia!

Okay, so I finally got pictures of my main character's nemesis, Technophobia. He and his minions dress up like cowboys and their power is super strength.

Technophobia wants society to revert back to a simpler time, like the Old West when his ancestors first came to America. He is so anti-technology he doesn't even use a gun. He created a serum that gives himself and his minions superhuman strength.


Technoblade is not so one-sided when it comes to technology. His super soldier suit is what gives him his power and the technology keeps him alive. However, he is very skilled in the swordfighting and uses mostly his blades to do battle against Technophobia.

I think the Nemesis customization is one of the best features of Champions Online. It's cool to have an overarching story of one particular bad guy that you have to fight often. Gives the whole experience more of a comic book feel. Champions Online is definitely the best comic book-themed game I have ever played. City Of Heroes/Villains felt like an MMO with heroes/villains in it but didn't have a comic feel.

Nemesis + More Weapons

On Sunday, I reached level 25 for the first time with Technoblade! And I created my first nemesis. His name is Technophobia and he and his minions have super strength. I was so enthralled about my first nemesis mission I forgot to take pictures! Oh well, next time... My nemesis basically looks like a cowboy.

Anyway, I did take pictures of some new weapons:

I used these toxic blades for quite some time. I love the look of them and the toxic damage is very good.

I was able to make this pair of level 26 frost blades. Same blades as the toxic blades, but does frost damage instead.

This is my current favorite: electrified pick axes. They look like they hurt! Has an interesting sound to them too.

Crafting Fun Part 2: Single Blade

I noticed that the Single Blade power set has just as many weapon drops and mission rewards as Dual Blades. So, I had to make a Single Blade character.

I made a samurai called Saburo with the color scheme of Hakaida. He's only level 13 but he already has a couple of really cool swords. This first one-handed sword imbued with blue electricity. I love the shape of the blade and the hilt.

This second one is an electro blade but this time with a fiery yellow color. The hilt is very Highlander-like. Nice classic blade that's a refreshing change from the normal samurai swords.

I hope to see an ax in the future. Or maybe even a mace or a club.

Next up: Munitions Weapons