My plan, such as it was, involved coming home and stuffing my face and hopping into City of Villains (sometimes you feel like a nut, sometimes you don’t) to run some missions with my new Corruptor, Ragnaroq. I did, indeed, run enough ‘paper missions to open up the Steel Canyon mayhem mission (hello, “summon teammates” temporary power) and somewhere along the way I received a costume piece recipe.

For the uninitiated, let me explain. (I’m resisting the urge to go all Inigo Montoya on y’all right now. Who loves ya?)

City of Heroes and City of Villains could be thought of as “World of Warcraft but with superheroes.” It’s true after a fashion, but fashion is exactly what the City Of franchise has going for it over almost all other competing online worlds. One of its biggest draws is the ability to customize the look of your hero or villain. You can spend an hour just puttering around in the costume shop, and that’s before you start getting any of the “bonus” items!

Earlier this year, the game’s creators introduced the “invention” system, a sort of crude and silly economy designed to give those with too much money something to spend it on. The idea is that as you go around performing your acts of derring-do (or dastardliness) you’re picking up bits of “salvage” and, occasionally, a “recipe” which allows you to combine specific bits of salvage into new power enhancements, new temporary powers and… new costume pieces. You use the salvage and recipes that you want, and sell the ones you don’t at whatever rate the market will bear.

So. To make a long story somewhat shorter, my icy and dark little villain has dark and icy little wings on her back But that’s not where I wasted most of my in-game time tonight. Oh, no. Adding a single costume piece to an existing look doesn’t take very much time at all. No, my big mistake was in deciding to tidy up the base. (more…)