The Hollows are getting a revamp. Music to ears of many players that would rather do street sweeps in Perez than venture into the Hollows. First put out in Issue Two along with the Shadow Shard, it has offered some of the most frustrating game play. All players are directed to the Hollows. Every. Single. One. Once you hit level 5, your contact sends you off to talk to David Wincott. On the upside, you don’t have to take his missions, but you must talk to him. That bit is probably not going to change. But now you don’t have to run away screaming when he offers you the first street hunt and you realize that the smallest spawn Outcasts and Trolls is around 6-7 and may include a boss or two.

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Melissa Bianco aka War Witch is the level developer for the CoX team. She has done the rework on the Hollows and it promises to be good. The biggest change is the size of the mob spawns, being reduced to the standard city size of 1-3 opponents. Solo characters can now finish the missions without too much dying. Cherry Hill and Four Seasons are the affected by this change and allows a nice steady progression of opponents from level 5 to 10. Red River was mostly deserted, but is now been filled in with city-type spawns. Eastgate Park, Eastgate Heights, and Grendel’s Gulch have been turned into combination city/hazard zones. You might get lucky with a solo spawn, but then again, you might be overrun. The Gulch was the worst zone with overlapping large-sized spawns. From the changes, it should be a little less lethal with the spawns being in the 13-15 range. So, you risk a bit of debt, but the rewards are now worth it.

In addition to the size of the spawns being changed, a few new faces brighten up the local scenery. Skulls, Hellion, The Lost, Vahzilok, Hydra, Coralax, and Legacy Chain have moved in and set up shop. It’s interesting to see two CoV groups being moved over and especially into this zone. Legacy Chain are magical in nature and investigating the Circle of Thorns. As for the Coralox, perhaps they are lost and found Red River to be a nice piece of real estate? The other new faces are just minor players, but nice to see a few new targets to beat up.

Two final notes on the Hollow revamp. Mission doors will now make much more sense. Rather than having to travel all the way across the zone to run Dave Wincott’s mission, it will be in the same neighborhood or close. No more risky travels across the Gulch or setting hover on auto-run and going off to get coffee. Quality of Life upgrade all the way around. A new contact has been added that will give one-shot missions, similar to using the Police Band. If you happen to be between Hollows contact, running a few repeatable missions might just push you over the hump.

Closed Beta for Issue 12 starts this week and it sounds like they are not inviting many outsiders, at least for a few weeks. Will watch my email box and see if one shows up in a couple weeks. If not, I will wait until open and then go nuts.

Article Link: http://www.cityofheroes.com/feature_update_issue_12a.html

Simms can be found playing on Liberty, Infinity, and Triumph. Global Contact is @Simms.