And now for something totally different.. Battletech: Crescent Hawks’ Inception!

I played this game a lot when I was young.. when looking for information on it on the web it struck me that the info just wasn’t out there. I remember all kinds of crazy things(things you only learn by playing the same game over and over for, say, 2 or 3 years) so I figured I would write some of it down.

Jason is a MechWarrior, in tradition of his family, and is getting a first class education thanks to his father being all buddy buddy with the House Steiner Archon. You can visit her if you want, because she just happens to be at this little backwater training planet. Too bad we’re going to disappoint her by failing missions over and over.

Jason’s only chance to get his skills raised is here at the training center, so we need to maximize that. We’re going to need time and money.. time is a funny thing in the early stages, because it often ‘stops.’ By this I mean that you have a 15 C-Bill allowance that ticks away at certain intervals (not when you are in certain places, contrary to the idiotic shit posted at Gamefaqs.)

You’ll start out with 35 C-Bills, and get 1 allowance tick after that before you do anything. So, run over to Comstar, buy 35 BakPhar, save the game, run against the wall close to Comstar to accelerate time(you can tell how fast time is ticking by the electric fence animation) until you get your allowance tick. When you do, run up into Comstar… your investment will either have ~doubled or ~halved. If it doubled, take it out and be happy, if it halved, load the game and try again. You can do this at pretty much any point in the game.

Lately I prefer to keep my money out of the bank entirely when I’m not actively investing, but you can probably safely store it in DefHes. Do not leave money in BakPhar when you go to do a training mission, you may get an allowance tick before you get back to Comstar.

Gaming the bank may seem cheesy, and it is, but we’re going to need a whole lot of money to buy us all the training and a flak suit and SRM or Inferno before we leave the training center, right? The gear is optional, but you will want the training. Anyway, note that you get a few ticks of allowance after each successful mission. What you do with that is up to you.

Depending which version of the game you have, you may get a quiz before Training missions. On most of the downloads you can get your hands on nowadays, the quiz has been disabled. I once had all of the quiz answers memorized, but no longer.. if you do get the quiz, try answering anything you want, it is likely it’s disabled.

Training mission 1: Mech Handling

I like to fail this one twice, although I’m not sure if you can get any skill yet in the first mission. You have to run to the southeast corner and back. Note that the Locust is faster than the Wasp or Chameleon, but you can successfully complete with all three. In order to fail(and hopefully get some piloting practice), I run around the entire map before going to the corner, which automatically fails you. One more thing: Be sure your DOSBox isn’t running too fast, or it can throw the timing off for these sort of missions! Mine is running at ~1000 cycles which gives me the most authentic sounding PC speaker effects although you may want to jack it up when passing time or running around.

Worth noting early: Skill training is split up by ‘time’ also. You can’t do a bunch of rifle/pistol/etc training back to back, so it is best to start out early. Rifle is the only one you really need, since all the good weapons are Rifle(or at least I think so, Inferno/SRM are shoulder launched) but I like training them all anyway.

After Mission 1: 2 allowance ticks

Training mission 2: Using your mech

This one is critically important to fail many, many times. There is no time limit however, so if you select the Wasp or Chameleon, you will have to successfully complete the mission. The only thing to do is select the Locust, which has no hands.

You need to locate the piece of rubble regardless.

Since you picked a mech with no hands, they will sass you about it, but a look at your character sheet tells you all I need to know about ‘failure.’

Keep failing until you are Good Piloting, which seems to be where progress stops. I ran the mission five more times after getting Good with no further gains.

 

 

After mission: 3 allowance ticks

Training Mission 3: Intro to Gunnery

Before you can do this training mission, you are sent back to the Barracks for a cutscene of sorts.

For this mission, we will be attacking a Locust shell that doesn’t fire back. I believe the mechanism for gaining Gunnery hinges on how many times you fire, so we’ll want a Locust ourselves, and only use its two Machine Guns.

Be careful not to destroy it.. keep in mind that damage marches towards Center Torso, so if you get a Left Arm hit that is Critical! Critical! Critical! that means the Left Arm and Left Torso are gone, and you’re into Internal Structure on the Center Torso. Destroying Center Torso = Destroying the mech, so we’ll just flee at this point.

I am not sure if you can actually raise Gunnery in this mission, as I tried a few times with no luck.. but it’s worth failing at least once to get the shame-message from the trainer.

After mission: 1 allowance tick, Jason-Amateur, Unskilled, Adequate, Unskilled, Good, Unskilled, Unskilled

Training Mission 4: These are not the droids you are looking for

This mission is just like the previous, except the droids can sometimes have Infernos or SRMs, which can slightly damage your mech. I failed this one repeatedly and was unable to get any skill points.

After mission: 1 allowance tick, Jason-Amateur, Amateur, Adequate, Unskilled, Good, Unskilled, Unskilled

Training Mission 5: Live combat vs. 1 Locust

In the introduction to this one, it says your combat computer is disabled, so you will have to win this one on your own.. hopefully that means Jason can start gaining Gunnery skill. My first attempt with a Wasp ended in Jason ejecting, due to the safe placement of the Locust’s Medium Laser in Center Torso and the unsafe placement of the Wasp’s weapons in RA/LL.. the outcome was almost predetermined. Well, and of course my having no gunnery skill isn’t helping.

After mission: Rick Atlas wants you to meet him at the lounge, and you get 2 allowance ticks. Jason-Amateur, Amateur, Good, Unskilled, Good, Unskilled, Unskilled

Training Mission 6: Live combat vs 2 Locusts

I was finally able to gain some skill in this one, only it was in Piloting. Gunnery is still Unskilled, which is crazy given the amount I fired. But with Piloting capped out I guess I don’t need to worry about that, at least. Since you usually get booted in the next mission, you need to fail this one enough to get Gunnery to Excellent. Not all that hard to do. You’ll also want to visit the Mechit-Lube and run through an apprenticeship for 500cbills. I hope you’ve been milking the BakPhar investments every chance you get! I probably won’t be able to afford an Inferno before I leave at this rate, but I can always get one later.

After mission: 1 allowance tick, Jason-Excellent, Excellent, Excellent, Excellent, Excellent, Unskilled, Unskilled

Note that when you are spamming Training at the Citadel, you will get an allowance tick after a few training sessions, so be prepared to take advantage of them. I got mine at Adequate/Adequate/Excellent. Doubling your money at this point can make a lot of difference!

I also got an allowance tick after buying an Inferno; I loaded to test and bought a Knife instead but did not get a tick. Make of that what you will.

If you were gaming the system really well, especially in these last few ticks, you’ll be able to afford an Inferno or SRM, along with a Heavy Environment Suit. I wasn’t paying a lot of attention, so I’m ending up with a Flak Suit instead. As long as you can afford the training, though, none of this other stuff matters and can be bought later.

Training Mission 7+8: Sometimes you get screwed, sometimes you don’t

This can sometimes be your final mission, or sometimes you proceed to mission 8. Most of the time, it seems, you’ll get attacked by 4 Jenners here, but sometimes you’ll get 3 Locusts instead.. I’m not exactly sure what the deciding factor is. Despite frequent reloads, I only got the 3 Locusts fight once, and I lost to it, so although I know Mission 8 is always the Jenner mission, I don’t know what allowance you get after Mission 7.

But about that: The most important thing you can do here is to take a Chameleon, and run north/west as soon as you get the Jenner mission. It is incredibly unlikely you can win against them, and even if you took a couple out your Chameleon would get really damaged. You want the Chameleon because it is the only 50-ton Mech you can get, whereas the Wasp and Locust are fairly common. Aside from the invasion, the enemy only uses Wasp, Stinger, and Locust (all 20 ton.)

Starport

You should have an arrow indicator on your minimap, which points towards Starport. This is courtesy of Rick Atlas's device he traded you earlier.

Once you get to town, expect to be attacked quite frequently. You can liquefy infantry pretty easily with an Inferno. Just run away from them and keep shooting, you will outrange most weapons.

One downside is that you won’t have allowance ticks telling you when time has passed… but on the upside, your investments will keep growing(or at least changing) from here on out, without the training missions’ timeline limiting you.

Buy a change of clothes(35), attend a medical seminar(500), and buy a medical kit(75) and you are pretty much all set.

So you meet up with Rex, your dad’s old pal, who was left here on the planet to rescue you. I bet he’s real happy about that. Rex says there are agents hiding amongst the techs and medics, and he wants you to go rescue an agent held in a prison to the Northeast. I say to hell with you, Rex.

I remember some of the agents are much better than others.. and there will be one double agent. I’ve never gotten more than one, and it’s usually the second one that you get. If you rescue the prisoner before getting your double agent, you’ll get his mech (briefly) then he’ll betray you and you’ll be down to 2 pilots again. Also note that the roster only has room for 4 entries. Despite this, you can wiggle around the system and end up with 5 guys and 3 mechs (instead of the story canon 4 and 2.)

So in order to recruit these stray agents, you need to go to the Mechit-Lube and ask about Apprenticeship, or go to the Hospital and get a seminar assumedly.

The NPCs

Edward – Edward is the first NPC you will get. Edward is awful. Like all Tech slot NPCs, he starts ‘Good’ in Tech and can further improve to Excellent via apprenticeship. His Body, Dex, and Charisma are awful, he has 3 movement with no armor on, and his only weapon skill is Amateur Rifle. He has Amateur Gunnery, but he’s not a mech pilot, so what does it matter? Note that the stats an NPC of a given name has are affected by their role.. a tech Edward will have Tech while a medic Edward will have Medical.

For the sake of argument, I am going to try to burn through the entire list of NPCs as Techs, for consistency, here is the list:

REX (not variable) – 6 Movement

• Body: High
• Dex: Mid
• Cha: Mid
• Bow & Blade: Amateur
• Pistol: Good
• Rifle: Adequate
• Gunnery: Excellent
• Piloting: Excellent
• Tech: Amateur
• Medical: Unskilled

EDWARD – 3 Movement

• Body: Low
• Dex: Low
• Cha: Mid
• Bow & Blade: Unskilled
• Pistol: Unskilled
• Rifle: Amateur
• Gunnery: Amateur
• Piloting: Unskilled
• Tech: Good
• Medical: Unskilled

RUSS – 3 Movement (was a traitor in my game, but only the first time his name came up)

• Body: Mid
• Dex: Low
• Cha: Mid
• Bow & Blade: Amateur
• Pistol: Amateur
• Rifle: Amateur
• Gunnery: Unskilled
• Piloting: Unskilled
• Tech: Good
• Medical: Unskilled

RICK – 3 Movement

• Body: Mid
• Dex: Low
• Cha: Low
• Bow & Blade: Unskilled
• Pistol: Unskilled
• Rifle: Unskilled
• Gunnery: Amateur
• Piloting: Unskilled
• Tech: Good
• Medical: Unskilled

ZEKE – 6 Movement

• Body: High
• Dex: Mid
• Cha: Low
• Bow & Blade: Unskilled
• Pistol: Amateur
• Rifle: Amateur
• Gunnery: Unskilled
• Piloting: Unskilled
• Tech: Good – Amateur if medic
• Medical: Unskilled – Good if medic

POSSUM – 5 Movement

• Body: Mid
• Dex: Mid
• Cha: Mid
• Bow & Blade: Unskilled
• Pistol: Amateur
• Rifle: Unskilled
• Gunnery: Amateur
• Piloting: Unskilled
• Tech: Good
• Medical: Amateur

MARCO – 7 Movement

• Body: High
• Dex: High
• Cha: Mid
• Bow & Blade: Unskilled
• Pistol: Amateur
• Rifle: Unskilled
• Gunnery: Unskilled
• Piloting: Unskilled
• Tech: Good
• Medical: Unskilled

RUSTY – 5 Movement

• Body: Mid
• Dex: Mid
• Cha: Low
• Bow & Blade: Unskilled
• Pistol: Unskilled
• Rifle: Unskilled
• Gunnery: Unskilled
• Piloting: Unskilled
• Tech: Good
• Medical: Amateur

HUNTER – 7 Movement

• Body: High
• Dex: High
• Cha: High
• Bow & Blade: Unskilled
• Pistol: Amateur
• Rifle: Unskilled
• Gunnery: Amateur
• Piloting: Unskilled
• Tech: Good
• Medical: Unskilled

..and that’s the end. After that, you get Edward again, and so on. I did not get another double agent the second time through the list.

I was going to roll on to Speed Shops next, but that information is already out there.

Now that I think of it… the intro portion is really all of the variance you have in this title. I ran around after selecting my guys (Zeke – Medic, Possum – Third pilot, Marco – Tech) and my next goal is to salvage a Wasp with no Engine or Gyro damage. But really, once you’re out in the world with a Chameleon and Commando and whatever third mech you choose, you’re all set.

There are some world events you can do, so visit all of the towns and enter everything you can. You may have also noticed that you can target the stands when you are fighting in the Starport Arena, so getting a Locust without engine/gyro damage can be a snap if you are a heartless bastard and don’t mind being exiled from Starport for a bit(I’m not sure, but it may be the only Comstar station accessible on the planet, so take some credits out first.)

The rest is just running around shooting things up while running errands, then a maze. After I had done most of the work here, I found this guide that fills in the gaps and is much more comprehensive, as I only covered things that I find interesting. So my one contribution to the Internet landscape is the list of NPC stats, but hey, that’s something!

Those balance issues

I was quite surprised to see other classes doing very well in Vanguard. Harkening back to release, I figured my clerical powers to use my DoTs, melee, and damage shields to slowly solo stronger (3 dot, or '.3') monsters with relative ease was fairly unique. My mind is still clouded with stories from friends playing broken-at-release classes having many struggles, sometimes even with .2(solo) monsters.

Today, while fighting 34.3 mobs at 34, a level 30 Sorcerer rolled along and started killing those same mobs (+4 level to him!) about twice as fast as I was. I don't know what his gear situation was or how heavily that played in, but I found it quite impressive. I do know that he collected a tombstone as I arrived, so it wasn't as 'safe' as Cleric, but perhaps if he was the same level as the mobs, it would be.

Later on, I spotted a level 30 paladin fighting three .3 mobs at once. I figured he was probably screwed a couple times, but there was a wall separating us so I wasn't able to provide assistance. I was quite impressed with his survival.

It seems maybe I had a mis-perception of the relative power levels in Vanguard. I am interested in the other classes although I have no intention of grouping with them, or making any more alts. If you were looking to try Vanguard, now is the time.. you never know when it will be shut down, and it will never get any more balanced/fixed than it is today.

Solo->Small Group->Group, or How To Make Quest Lines Die

I’ve been noticing as I roll through Telon that many of the quest ‘lines’ I get(even in the level tracks suggested by the honorable Rift Keepers), have followed this pattern of progression wherein you’ll do 1-2 solo quests, struggle to solo a Small Group quest, then be dumped into Group Only mode. Then, you give up and move on.

I can almost see a justification for this.. if I was an adventurer in a strange world like Telon, would I expect to get batches of easily completed jobs to train my skills in one quick pass out of town, then return to get the next pass? No. But by adopting this style of difficulty-centric quest giving, they are giving up a lot of their ability to tell their story.

It seems that, as happened with Everquest 1, Brad & Co forgot that the thing they’re making is a Game and not an Alternate(Really Horrible) Reality Simulator.

On launch month with fully loaded populations, it was hard to get groups for these things. Now? The only thing groups do right now are some ‘key’ quest lines(I’ve seen people doing Trengal Keep) and grinding XP or Tier armor.

Everquest 2 handled some of this by revamping many of their old quests to be soloable. Vanguard appears to have handled it with ‘Screw you’ or ‘you’re an idiot for trying to do those quests anyway, grind mobs, it’s faster.’

Upon finding other players, run the other way

Ah, sweet home Thestra. Now that I am back, let me regale you a tale of why Vanguard will remain dead forever: Players are assholes.

But let us start at the beginning. I showed up at Wardship of the Sleeping Moon to do a couple quests and was trying to figure out where to single pill some 3 dot Troglodytes from the Leth Verael ruins when I receive a tell from Fryloc: ‘Hey come heal for our group.’

I explained to him that I have been away from the game for a long time, but he says ‘you’d be the second healer, it’ll be fine’, so I hop into the riftways and end up at the Seawatch Coast stone, in River Palace chunk, Qalia. As I am rounding the palace, Fryloc starts demanding I ‘come rez’ right away. Well, what the hell do you think I’m doing? It wasn’t immediately apparent how to get around the palace to where they were. One of the party members mused, ‘Rent a griffon?’, one of the things I was apparently supposed to ‘just know’ despite not playing seriously since launch in 2007.

Horses: Apparently only idiots use them.

I worked my way around where the rest of the group seemed to be, but aggroed a 3 dot level 34 cat that was in stealth.. I hadn’t joined up with them yet so I decided I’d just lose the aggro and come back. It put a poison DoT on me through my ward that I didn’t notice, so as I ran away I was bleeding HP pretty badly. This Fryloc guy comes running out and says ‘follow me’, while also picking up a cat on him in the process. I died to the poison DoT, as he did immediately after.. reaction?

Well, they had been dying repeatedly before I arrived, so it was all too much for good Fryloc. He rage quit the group(and as /who yielded, the game) practically as his body hit the ground. Then another person left, then I left. Thanks for making me cross the world, pals!

I suppose them repeatedly dying before I arrived should have been a sign. Maybe I was a bit too anxious to accept a too-good-to-be-true offer of ‘it’s no big deal, just show up’ when even things like ‘just show up’ are steeped in years of undocumented knowledge and expectations of an inbred populace.

I died one more time to cats trying to get my corpse back, but was able to get both corpses before Recalling. I could have pretty easily made it back to the stone and gated back to Wardship of the Sleeping Moon, which I’ll need to do anyway, but nothing says ‘to hell with this’ like Recall.

I noted that Fryloc’s tombstone didn’t seem to be there which means, with how fast he logged out, he must have eaten the XP loss by summoning. Hell yes.

Ah, archaeology.

It happens whenever you come back to something you abandoned.. Who knows how I ended up with these quests? Did I ever have a chance at completing them even then? I think it’s time to abandon them. My new role in Telon pretty much precludes doing Group quests, although maybe I could solo some of the older ones at this point. I’ve got a really lower level solo quest too, maybe it was broken at the time?

[35sG] Lover’s Quarrel

[32G] Recover the Stolen Supplies

[27G] Mostly Dead But Not All Dead

[26G] Meteoric Studies

[25sG] Spider Samples

[23G] The Crux of Castle Landsview

[18] Glimpse of the Past

While figuring this out, I was very excited to spot another player.

I upgraded some gear with cheap drops off the AH. For some reason it feels like it’s going to be all downhill from here though.. when I last played I knew a crafter who made me stuff, now I’m floating in a fairly shallow economy where the server-wide channels barely produce any scroll.

 

My silly built-in game character blog is here.

 

It turns out I’ve got some /claims coming to me. One of them(sadly 1 per account and not one per char) gives me a giant bag with a movement speed buff on it. Vanguard doesn’t seem to have horrible inventory problems like LOTRO, though.

It turns out there are some pretty creepyscary monsters out there, such as this one. Kind of your standard issue undead wolf I suppose, but it was pretty strong and had a good debuff.

One funny side effect of playing now, roughly a month after the final Vanguard server merge, is that you can get ‘new’ discoveries. This will likely happen a lot as I am clueless and keep wandering around doing content that is outside of the ‘optimal leveling track.’

Stuck!

Well no, I’m not really stuck.. and this screenshot is from my old collection. I have been noticing, however, that my cleric seems to be a bit further behind the curve than you might expect, when compared to release.

I know that Cleric was ‘overpowered’ at release, however some part of me wished that before Vanguard died it would have seen the light and improved classes to be powerful and fun in their own ways.

This seems not to have happened.

We’ve seen in some other games, where instead of nerfing down the strong classes, they bring everyone else up. In WoW this took years of smash-and-grab as the power scales tilted around all crazy like, and they were finally able to get it together after Burning Crusade, when all of the classes were finally available to both sides.



No such luck for Vanguard.

Lesser Giantville (co-starring Halgarad’s Pants)

Well the clerical business was fine and such, but Goodman Dachish wanted to try something new and exciting.



We started a couple of Lesser Giants in their default homeland.  I expected myriad shortcomings, since as we all know, ‘Shoulda gone to Isle of Dawn’ is a likely mantra for new characters these days.



Corpses littered the landscape in pretty short order.. and I noticed the disconcerting trend wherein newbie quests gave only 10% xp. Having recently played Vom, I should have expected the crushing xp curve, but I didn’t expect it so soon.



Successfully we plumbed the depths of the spirit realm, or some facsimile. The spawn rate was pretty much instant, which was silly because I’m sure we were the only people in the zone. Our indomitable Escaped Wolf Pooches joined us after a previous quest.. in other games they would despawn after we completed, but not Vanguard: Saga of Heroes!



Simultaneous levelling for amusing side projects is always something. Later on we locked in a Brotherhood so we could keep at it.



We are hideous.



It seems like an awful lot of effort to build things like this in a cave, but I guess if I was a gnoll with a lot of time on my hands, who knows.



Our adventure is concluded for the day. I learned that a) Vanguard Druid might not be so bad, b) Isle of Dawn quest concentration, rewards, and theme beat the hell out of original content(which is well on its way to dressing me in a multicolor clown suit with no stats to speak of on it,) and c) The game is still crushing progression-wise despite years of development and a gradual, impending doom of depopulation rising over it. That was before it died, of course.. I’m under no delusions about this thing ever seeing an hour of Dev time again.