As a Newb, what funny blunders did you commit?

[GenericHero05]

When I began this amazing game in 2004, I kept hearing from my friends that "you get your travel power at 14."  I never took the time to ask about the trams, I didn't even know they existed.  I ran to every mission, at times trying to take shortcuts through zones that I was woefully inexperienced to go through.  I remember trying to cut through IP from Steel Canyon to Kings Row.  Not a happy ending.  I entered IP and thought "Hey... why don't I just make a quick left and cut through the back of these buildings."  I jumped over the fence and landed right in the middle of a bunch of guys all dressed in three-piece suits.

I woke up in the hospital.

[JaguarX]

first regen scrapper. Forgot to take the heals and no enhancements playing like a tank and wondering why I'm faceplanting against +3s. lmao. Those were the days. Made it all the way up to level 30 like that.

[therain93]

When I finished missions, I ran back to the entrance, not realizing that little "exit" button ever existed on the navigation bar.  Didn't realize it until someone asked why I was taking so long to get out of a mission ( ' :

[The Fifth Horseman]

Kept hunting for Clockwork Paladins in King's Row... by going there every few minutes and looking for them. There was a massive facepalm when I was told there was such a thing as zone event notifications.

[wyldhunt]

Jump Kick

[Lucretia MacEvil]

The classic "train exit is not the same as the entrance" blunder had me confused and very very frustrated for a while (I almost broke my keyboard in rage).

Another one was having a whole bunch of 2-color costumes because I didn't know how to un-link the colors.

Hitting "Passive" instead of "Defensive" on a mastermind before charging into a mob.  Ouch.  (I normally picked defensive to keep my minions from charging into the next mob too soon).

[Ironwolf]

My first character I 6 slotted rest and sprint.

[Mantic]

The first character I rolled up was a fire/fire brute. After a few levels I decided this had to be the worst possible build in the game and outright deleted the character, rolling up a Dark/SR Stalker instead... Nearly two years later that Stalker and an Energy/Energy blaster became my first two level 50s.

Slow learner.

Eventually I did create another fire/fire brute. It turned out not the worst build in the game. That title may be held by SR Stalkers...

Jump Kick

That's not a mistake. Just a stylistic choice. Spider-Stan would not have been the same character without it and he was the most fun and effective scrapper I ever built -- almost always running with jump kick on auto (also took Weapons Mastery just for the web grenades).

[Justice Blues]

When I finished missions, I ran back to the entrance, not realizing that little "exit" button ever existed on the navigation bar.  Didn't realize it until someone asked why I was taking so long to get out of a mission ( ' :

Definitely this. Although that exit on the tram was somewhat confusing at first also.

[Woodsfire]

The classic "train exit is not the same as the entrance" blunder had me confused and very very frustrated for a while (I almost broke my keyboard in rage).

After standing there a while waiting for it to let me back on, I /bugged it.

How embarrassing.
 

[ukaserex]

I got my first character, an elec/elec blaster up to level 26 or 27 before I realized that just because several different enhancement types could fit into a power, it did not mean that I had to use each possible enhancement type in each power.

I would choose to give a slot to a power based on the number of enhancement types I could put into it. Eventually, there was a power that could accept seven different type of enhancements. I was confused for a good while as to how I could get the 7th slot.

Eventually, I ended up deleting that character as it had easily 4 or 5 levels worth of debt. I rerolled the same character name as an ice/ice blaster, based on @olepi's guide.

[Triplash]

The classic "train exit is not the same as the entrance" blunder had me confused and very very frustrated for a while (I almost broke my keyboard in rage).

Another one was having a whole bunch of 2-color costumes because I didn't know how to un-link the colors.

Oh jeez. Yep, I'm guilty of these two.   ...and probably more once I think about it! hehe

[wyldhunt]

That's not a mistake. Just a stylistic choice. Spider-Stan would not have been the same character without it and he was the most fun and effective scrapper I ever built -- almost always running with jump kick on auto (also took Weapons Mastery just for the web grenades).

I never took Jump Kick after that again. Some things are stylistic choices for particular characters, and some are gimping choices for that style. Let me share some context for this being a funny blunder. It was Issue 2, CoH was my first MMO, I started an Inv/Mace Tanker, and took Jump Kick. With weapon redraw, Unyielding Stance, and slow as molasses stunning weapon and jump kick, it was funny, and it was a blunder. I rerolled as an Inv/Ax Tanker (keeping Superjump but ditching Jump Kick), and finally got him to 50 long after CoV came out and an SS/WP Villain Brute finally fit my style enough so that I learned to play well.

[Cinnder]

CoH was my first MMO, so I didn't know anything about standard abbreviations.  As I was wandering around Atlas in awe, I occasionally saw certain characters with a particular 3-letter designation above their heads, and for some reason decided they were probably devs or mods.  I finally decided to ask one of them to be sure -- keep in mind at this stage the idea of being able to talk to a real person in a game was still blowing my mind -- but despite my apologising for bothering them, they refused to even acknowledge my presence.  After a few attempts to engage the character in conversation, I walked away, utterly deflated.

The 3-letter abbreviation above the character's head?  You guessed it: "AFK".

[Reiraku]

I took temperature protection instead of fire shield on my fire tank. I mean, both resist damage but only one used endurance, so why not?

[Shidan]

I got my first character, an elec/elec blaster up to level 26 or 27 before I realized that just because several different enhancement types could fit into a power, it did not mean that I had to use each possible enhancement type in each power.

I would choose to give a slot to a power based on the number of enhancement types I could put into it. Eventually, there was a power that could accept seven different type of enhancements. I was confused for a good while as to how I could get the 7th slot.

Eventually, I ended up deleting that character as it had easily 4 or 5 levels worth of debt. I rerolled the same character name as an ice/ice blaster, based on @olepi's guide.

Heh, you did better than me I got a character all the way to 28 before realizing I had to actually put enhancements in the slots, I just added slots thinking that increased the strength of my powers.

[TerminalVelocity]

When I finished missions, I ran back to the entrance, not realizing that little "exit" button ever existed on the navigation bar.  Didn't realize it until someone asked why I was taking so long to get out of a mission ( ' :

This.

When I was very new, maybe the first week (though I'd like to think that's a stretch. I don't remember the specifics), if I died in a zone I would wait around for someone to rez me instead of going to the hospital, not realizing that there was no penalty. And I don't mean when I was on a team. Just any time I died outside of an instance. Contrast the later years of my CoH experience, where on a team I would sometimes hosp before people actually got a chance to rez me.

Oh jeez, I'm cringing just thinking this. The very first day I played, I couldn't for the life of me figure out how to quit the game. I was completely oblivious to the menu button, and I actually ctrl+alt+del'd to leave the game.


Looking back, I was a troubled n00b.

[Optimus Dex]

I started playing in September of 2004. One of my many noob mistakes was trying to walk a 4th lvl defender solo around Kings Row - just to explore.  I eventually 6 slotted said defender for damage.

[General Idiot]

Mine was also the event which made me want to actually get the game, while playing a trial. Started in Galaxy, ran out of missions to do there. Next contact I was introduced to was in Kings Row, so since I didn't yet know about the trains off I went to the tunnel at the south end of the zone through to Kings Row. The north end of Kings Row, as we all know, is full of level 9-10 Skulls. I was, I think, level 5. But it wasn't the Skulls that got me, them I managed to go around. And in the process of going around them I ran face-first into a Clockwork Paladin.

I woke up in the hospital a moment later wondering what happened. And then I got invited to a team to kill that same Paladin, which was my first introduction to the amazing and awesome concept that is sidekicking, and to the amazing and awesome group of people that is the CoH community.

[SentaiRed]

Tried to solo Dr. Vahzilok.

[Night-Hawk07]

The classic "train exit is not the same as the entrance" blunder had me confused and very very frustrated for a while (I almost broke my keyboard in rage).

This, though I was still doing that even in the final days...

Other than the tram thing, nothing sticks out in my mind. I'm sure I had moments of scrapperlock, ninja running into a room with 20 mobs standing at the door. I did have one incident with my first Praetorian character where I tried ninja jumping from one building to another; a feat easily accomplished by my main, a well slotted level 40-something (at the time) hero. Not so for this poor, lowly level 6 nooblet. I think I missed my mark by about 150 yards, but thankfully you could only lose all but 1 HP from falling damage.

[General Idiot]

Tried to solo Dr. Vahzilok.

To be fair, past whichever issue it was that made the game scale AVs down to EBs if you were solo, that was perfectly doable with the right build or a pile of inspirations. Or did you try to solo the one in the Positron TF, post revamp?

[SentaiRed]

To be fair, past whichever issue it was that made the game scale AVs down to EBs if you were solo, that was perfectly doable with the right build or a pile of inspirations. Or did you try to solo the one in the Positron TF, post revamp?

True story, but I think I started just after they added Arena so whatever Issue that was. He was definitely an AV at +0 difficulty. It hurt. And yeah, it was the end of the Vahzilok story arc, not the TF.

[healix]

LOL, these all brought back memories for me. CoH was the very first mmo I ever played, and I knew NOTHING. It wasn't until I got my only/first character (Healix) to level 14 that I found out what enhancements/slots were! In those days, trollers were super squishy anyway, so I died a LOT.

[Floride]

CoH was my first MMO too. I started around i11. I wasn't leveling up and figured I must have missed some game trigger that would allow me to level up. So with 1 xp left to go, I ran every arc available to find that "trigger" (The Hollows, Steel Canyon, Faultline, etc). After grinding for 2 weeks, I told my friend who got me into CoH that the game was waaay too broken and not worth paying for. When I told him why, he laughed and explained "trial accounts max out at level 14, noob!" (This was true back then). I paid, eventually leveling that toon (and many others) to 50, and didn't stop paying until NC no longer wanted my money.

[pewlagon]

I can sum up my stupidity in two words:

Spawn Camping

[ROBOKiTTY]

On my first character (katana/regen scrappa), I skipped all the clickies and took three travel powers (flight, superjump, superspeed). The fourth pool was stealth. Granted, that was back when phase shift was useful, and IH was a toggle.

[Cinnder]

To be fair, past whichever issue it was that made the game scale AVs down to EBs if you were solo, that was perfectly doable with the right build or a pile of inspirations. Or did you try to solo the one in the Positron TF, post revamp?

It was also possible back when he still spawned as an AV.  Doc Vahz was actually the first AV I ever defeated solo (with my BS/Regen scrapper).  Took forEVER, though.  My hands were cramped claws by the time I beat him.

[LaughingAlex]

When I was a newbie?  I thought healers were needed...oh the horror.  Man was I an idiot back then....

[ROBOKiTTY]

I made a rad character because I heard rad healed.

[DJMoose]

When I was a newbie?  I thought healers were needed...oh the horror.  Man was I an idiot back then....

First mission group I ever got together I did the same thing.  And then I realized we didn't need a healer with a tanker, controller, and defender in the group.  Derp.

[SentaiRed]

It was also possible back when he still spawned as an AV.  Doc Vahz was actually the first AV I ever defeated solo (with my BS/Regen scrapper).  Took forEVER, though.  My hands were cramped claws by the time I beat him.

Hm, interesting. I was a MA/Regen, and he pretty much one-shotted me as an AV. Oh, actually this reminds me of a blunder I made even before attempting to solo Doc Vahz. Skipping Dull Pain. What on EARTH was I thinking, you might ask? Weeeeell:

"+HP? That's silly. MOAR ATTACKS PLZ"

Oh, silly n00b-me.

[Harlequin565]

Enhancements. All my attacks as an En/En blaster were slotted for Acc/Dam/Rech/End/KB. Then someone mentioned you could have more than one damage enhancement.

Wow.

Thinking back it was a bit yo-yo like. Hasten with one recharge in it. Then six. Then three.

-H

[Ellscry]

My very first hero, a Fire/Fire Tank named Celestine Phoenix, started in Galaxy City. A real life friend wanted to play, and sent me a message asking to meet in Atlas Park; so I open my map, see that all I have to do is get across Perez Park, and set out. Ten seconds after enter Perez I ran into a group of Skulz or some such, and die horribly. Go back to Galaxy, level up to get Hover (that's how new I was) and then take to the Skies and hover my ass to Atlas. I never even realized there was a train. I felt so dumb after I found out. 

[Justice Blues]

My very first hero, a Fire/Fire Tank named Celestine Phoenix, started in Galaxy City. A real life friend wanted to play, and sent me a message asking to meet in Atlas Park; so I open my map, see that all I have to do is get across Perez Park, and set out. Ten seconds after enter Perez I ran into a group of Skulz or some such, and die horribly. Go back to Galaxy, level up to get Hover (that's how new I was) and then take to the Skies and hover my ass to Atlas. I never even realized there was a train. I felt so dumb after I found out. 

At least it was just Perez. I tried a shortcut through Skyway once before I started using the trains. I was level 4 or 5. It didn't end well. 

Then there was the time a couple of us were in Perez, in the right level range. One of us had used group invisibility on us, because someone had a level 50 ambush spawn there. It was the first time we saw Rikti, so I went up close to get some screen shots, and selected one of them to get info. But I forgot that I had Brawl on auto-attack. I clicked on him, then BAM! I hit the ground wondering what the heck had happened.

[Floride]

I spent all my influence every time I leveled, just to fill my characters with training inventions, thinking they would make me a total badass 

[TerminalVelocity]

Did anyone else make the treacherous journey across Steel Canyon to get to the tailor?  Or just me? If you stayed in the middle of the road you were safe for the most part.

[JaguarX]

Did anyone else make the treacherous journey across Steel Canyon to get to the tailor?  Or just me? If you stayed in the middle of the road you were safe for the most part.

I did so many times and in the beginning not knowing what the colors meant in the beginning, was a little too froggy at times for my own good.

[dwturducken]

I made that run on most of my characters.

I'm another one for whom CoH was my first MMO. I don't remember what word it was that I used, but, in my first pick up team that was all, er, old enough to drink, I used one of the more mild words in chat that triggered the profanity filter, which I didn't know was controlled by an options setting. I thought it was so neat, the next time the team leader was talking to the contact, I decided to test it out, until one of the other team members asked what the **** I was doing.

[goodtime]

Did anyone else make the treacherous journey across Steel Canyon to get to the tailor?  Or just me? If you stayed in the middle of the road you were safe for the most part.

Oh, really early on the middle of the road wasn't safe, but I think they cleaned up the spawn locations so that it would be. 

Back in the olden days with separate metrolink lines and no travel powers until L14, and never having enough INF on your lowbies 'cause trading was a pain. 

[Von Krieger]

Did anyone else make the treacherous journey across Steel Canyon to get to the tailor?  Or just me? If you stayed in the middle of the road you were safe for the most part.

I did, until I learned that the one in IP could be gotten to quickly and easily.

[clancyclown]

I joined COH two weeks after launch, in those days there was a lot of extreme lag and rubber-banding.  I went to Perez Park for the first time and was solo.  It was late, I was very tired.  Soon I was getting the snot beaten out of me. I repeatedly pushed what I thought was the heal inspiration but the screen had frozen.  My thought was that I would heal and run away.  To my horror, the lag spike ended with a repeating image of my toon dying and rezzing over and over again.  I had mistakenly bought and used rez inspirations.

In those days the penalty for dying was pretty harsh.  I was so disgusted with the stupidity and enormous experience debt that I abandoned that toon and made a joke character and Clancy Clown was born.  Eventually I met some great people and stuck with the game long enough to like it.

[srmalloy]

I spent all my influence every time I leveled, just to fill my characters with training inventions, thinking they would make me a total badass 

For a few of my early characters, the group of friends I played with and I obsessed about keeping our enhancements green or blue, to the point where we'd wind up buying a second and third complete set of SOs to combine before we could upgrade to the next tier of SOs, just to keep ourselves tweaked out as far as possible.

My characters' finances did much better once I realized that it was more effective in the long run to only upgrade when I could merge the next higher tier (i.e., waiting until 28 to add 30s, so I could merge them with the 25s I had) or jump to the next enhancement type (i.e., from DOs to SOs at 22), unless I'd gotten mergeable enhancements as drops.

[TerminalVelocity]

Oh, really early on the middle of the road wasn't safe, but I think they cleaned up the spawn locations so that it would be. 

Back in the olden days with separate metrolink lines and no travel powers until L14, and never having enough INF on your lowbies 'cause trading was a pain.

Eh? The middle of the road was safe before the joined metrolink lines and earlier travel powers.

[Angel Phoenix77]

too many to count, but I remember when I caused I caused my 1st team wipe . a also remember when after a mission ended I ran all the way to the mission entry point; until someone about the exit button

[Stormy Weathermaker]

When I first jumped in to the game in April of 2007, someone advised me to have a primary power set to auto, so I did.  Now, keep in mind that at this point, this is the first MMO that I have attempted........ever!   I didn't know any better.  I was blind invited to a team, think there was only 3 or 4 of us.  Anyways, we were doing missions in Faultline (you remember Fusionette right? LOL)  Couldn't figure out why mobs were coming at us and we kept getting team wiped.  After the 5th wipe, someone asked me if I had a power on auto.  Obviously I responded with "yea...why?"  In big capital letters comes across my screen "TURN IT OFF....IT'S KILLING US!!!" 

Yep :-)  Lesson 1: Never set a primary or secondary to auto unless it's healing aura.....

[Mouse-Man]

My very first character somehow ended up in Skyway at level 2. Had no idea that trains existed, so I hot footed it across the freeways trying to get my ass back to Galaxy without getting curb stomped by big freaking robots.

[JKPhage]

I took Hover.

[LaughingAlex]

I remember a guy who teamed with me who exclusively used hover to get everywhere....he certainly didn't get to level 14 anytime soon to get flight..admittedly some friends told me "don't get your travel till later"....ugh I hated that, my later toons always had something far sooner for it.  I suspect I still got my travel long before him though with the fact it took him FOREVER to get to the missions...

[Night-Hawk07]

I was quite proud of myself once I figured out Hover + GvE jet pack = normal flight speed. For 30 seconds, anyway.

And I also made the treacherous journey to SC for the tailor at all of about level 5 or so. I really didn't like my first costume...

[Optimus Dex]

I remember getting hover and navigating the Hollows for the first time and thinking wow I'm going to get to live.

[MindBlender]

Low level and OVER using Absorb Pain til I died.   

[Justice Blues]

Low level and OVER using Absorb Pain til I died.   

That was actually fun to do in Atlas under the statue when there were a bunch of new players around. They didn't know what happened, but you were lying there dead. 

[goodtime]

That was actually fun to do in Atlas under the statue when there were a bunch of new players around. They didn't know what happened, but you were lying there dead. 

I have a screenshot somewhere of a character named The Suicidal One lying in the lower level near all the contacts in Atlas Park City Hall.  I laughed.

[goodtime]

This, probably too many times to remember.   At least it was the olden days of May, 2005.

[saipaman]

It isn't really funny, kind of sad really, but I didn't realize there was a mission exit button until my first character was around level 10.

[HarvesterOfEyes]

Before there was such a thing as ICON, I made a character without unclicking the "link colors" button, so his hair was the same blue as his costume.

Before there were respecs, I took Teleportation as my travel power.

[MWRuger]

My first day: I got lost in Atlas Park. I kept trying to complete my mission but getting killed and lost and didn't realize I needed to train so when I finally figured it out I went all the way to 4th level.

Other mistake; selling luck charms to vendors instead of the market.

Best.Day. Ever!!!!

[MaidMercury]

I joined COH two weeks after launch, in those days there was a lot of extreme lag and rubber-banding.

I HATED rubber banding...uggg, having to run all over again to a destination.....I never noticed it watching over players, though.

I did remember having to wait on an occaisional player to arrive after opening a door to a mission....we'd tap our toes.
I can't imagine people played thru a modem.

[Ohioknight]

How did everybody else on the mission get out already... I'm still running back to the mission entrance!  What? you're at the next mission, I still have 3 floors to go before I get out!

[Tahquitz]

I hated City of Heroes for the first 8 hours... went from Level 1-13 on using only two attack powers with no idea how to add the ones I picked.  At level 1, I drug my powers from Tray 1 to Tray 3 while triple stacked and then collapsed it.  I changed to Tray 3 and used it that way, wondering where my new powers appeared.

Fortunately my roommate was a 5 year vet.  He fixed it before I threw a tantrum when he got back from work.

[Floride]

Jumping off of buildings for a few hours trying to get the next "recieved damage" badge.

[thunderforce]

I got my first character, an elec/elec blaster up to level 26 or 27 before I realized that just because several different enhancement types could fit into a power, it did not mean that I had to use each possible enhancement type in each power.

I score that one; ended up slotting Brawl because I already had one of each possible enhancement type in each set power. Oops.

Eventually, I ended up deleting that character as it had easily 4 or 5 levels worth of debt.

There was never, as far as I can tell, a point where this was possible. In issue 6 the cap changed from 10 deaths-worth of debt to 5 (but in-mission debt was halved in issue 5, so the issue 6 cap is 10 in-mission deaths) with some tinkering later, but it's never been possible to get a whole level in the hole, let alone multiple levels. Perhaps that's another one for this list: thinking a character has an amount of debt that makes it unfeasible to go on.

I also score "not knowing about the exit button", and my new contribution is "Went to Hollows, accepted blind invite without prompt for team teleports on." Fortunately, I got a relatively mild version of that prank where you got dropped on Wincott's head rather than in a mass of Trolls.

[General Idiot]

Could be worse, you could've fallen prey to people who used to TP unsuspecting folks in Peregrine Island into the guard towers near Portal Corps. Originally they were fully enclosed so while you could be TPed in there you couldn't get out unless you had a TP of your own or a friend willing to TP you out. The devs eventually put a hole in the side of them for that exact reason.

Also I'll admit, every time someone went afk in a mission I'd see if they had TP prompt enabled by attempting to TP them into a mob. Which was maybe quite mean of me, but I tended to only play with pretty easy going people who just laughed at stuff like that.

[thunderforce]

Could be worse, you could've fallen prey to people who used to TP unsuspecting folks in Peregrine Island into the guard towers near Portal Corps. Originally they were fully enclosed so while you could be TPed in there you couldn't get out unless you had a TP of your own or a friend willing to TP you out. The devs eventually put a hole in the side of them for that exact reason.

Didn't Pocket D have such an enclosed space when first released, as well?

Trouble is, sometimes TP prompt would earn you a faceplant. I would turn it off when teamed with people I trusted.

[srmalloy]

There was never, as far as I can tell, a point where this was possible. In issue 6 the cap changed from 10 deaths-worth of debt to 5 (but in-mission debt was halved in issue 5, so the issue 6 cap is 10 in-mission deaths) with some tinkering later, but it's never been possible to get a whole level in the hole, let alone multiple levels. Perhaps that's another one for this list: thinking a character has an amount of debt that makes it unfeasible to go on.

It was never possible to get more than five bars of debt, which -- by the debt payoff mechanic -- would never keep you in the hole for more than half a level of advancement (assuming that you didn't collect additional debt along the way). Additionally, I seem to recall -- but I'm not sure, so I'm not claiming this as fact -- that, back when you didn't get XP while exemplared down (and needed a specific teammate to be exemplared to), the XP you weren't getting would be applied against your debt, so that if you were in a hurry to burn your debt off, you could exemplar onto a team and turn all your theoretical XP toward reducing your debt.

[thunderforce]

Additionally, I seem to recall -- but I'm not sure, so I'm not claiming this as fact -- that, back when you didn't get XP while exemplared down (and needed a specific teammate to be exemplared to), the XP you weren't getting would be applied against your debt, so that if you were in a hurry to burn your debt off, you could exemplar onto a team and turn all your theoretical XP toward reducing your debt.

Correct, or the same effect was seen in no-XP mode once that was added. However, it's worth noting it didn't really achieve anything; your net total XP ended up the same either way. There's just a slight chance if you use this technique that you'll be able to get a bit of extra debt on a defeat which would otherwise have gone over the debt cap, which is counterproductive.

Also, Patrol XP changed matters a bit; since you can accumulate a level's Patrol XP, you can effectively get a level's worth of debt-equivalent before you get into actual debt. Patrol XP functionally tripled the debt cap for some use cases - it just didn't look like debt.

[Kyriani]

This may not qualify as a "newb blunder" but my first character that got to high levels didn't have a travel power till after they raised the level cap beyond 40 he he.

She's an ill/rad controller and sprint + superior invisibility was her "travel power" lol. It was definitely an interesting way to level. I just had too many powers I absolutely felt I needed to fit a travel power in. Of course much later down the road we got things like temp powers and what not which made such situations far easier to deal with.

[Tahliah]

Let's see, I tried to kill a giant octopus by myself, I got teleport thinking I could click a spot on the map and port there (not just the zone map, either *blush*), I took several different travel powers on the same toon (and no fitness pool at all), I six slotted fly, I thought you had to leave missions to go train new powers the very second you dinged, I didn't realize you could move the map and kept it in the center of my screen while trying to run around essentially blind, I didn't understand how chat worked so all my messages were essentially spam . . . sadly, the list goes on and on.  COH was the first real MMO I played (I had played Diablo way back in the day), and there was a great deal to learn (and unlearn--I was afraid to go to the hospital because I thought someone could come by and take all my gear and inspirations). 

[gstauf]

First character, Rad defender.  Duoing with someone else, picked too hard a fight in Kings Row, so we were running away.  But the mobs kept following us, and following us, for some reason, normally they would leave you alone after a bit, why the heck did these mobs hate us so much?   Good thing I had Radiation Infection running on them, to reduce the damage they were doing to us. . .

[Spellcaster Hana]

One of my toons, a kinetic melee scrapper. I don't usually use a melee character (I'm a ranged type person) but I was on a team and since I have a lot of Knockback powers, I just went ahead, knocking everything out of the way. The leader was a tank and he kept telling to stop using KB. I didn't know what KB was back then until he caps locked "STOP USING KNOCKBACK!!!". I'm like: "...oh...oops! sowwy, my bad...". Good thing he didn't kick me out of the group... 

[Justice Blues]

First character, Rad defender.  Duoing with someone else, picked too hard a fight in Kings Row, so we were running away.  But the mobs kept following us, and following us, for some reason, normally they would leave you alone after a bit, why the heck did these mobs hate us so much?   Good thing I had Radiation Infection running on them, to reduce the damage they were doing to us. . .

The best part of that happening was the other mobs that would get aggroed as you ran by them. "The crowd chasing us is getting bigger! Run faster!"

[Tahliah]

One of my toons, a kinetic melee scrapper. I don't usually use a melee character (I'm a ranged type person) but I was on a team and since I have a lot of Knockback powers, I just went ahead, knocking everything out of the way. The leader was a tank and he kept telling to stop using KB. I didn't know what KB was back then until he caps locked "STOP USING KNOCKBACK!!!". I'm like: "...oh...oops! sowwy, my bad...". Good thing he didn't kick me out of the group... 

I will say that--generally speaking--the COH community was pretty good about things like this (not kicking people for still learning).  Yes, I've seen people kicked from teams for things like this, but it didn't happen that often over the years.  That wasn't the same for trials, but then again, that was end game content so some degree of knowledge of the game was expected (rightly so), but it always made me uncomfortable when trial leaders would be totally rude and horrible to someone who was running a trial for the first time and didn't know X yet.  I usually ended up sending tells to the poor soul being castigated for not being as adapt at running whatever trial as someone who'd run it a hundred times.  It got kind of sad, though, toward the end, with people announcing up front that they'd never run X trial before and asking if they could still join.  Anyway, I ramble off point since my point was that most people I ran into in COH were very nice and helpful when people didn't know what to do or not do.

But I did a similar thing when I first branched out from my "regular" power sets: I was trying a dark/dark . . . troll, I want to say, right after controllers could use dark.  Anyway, it was in some tf, and I didn't realize that my shadow fall made it impossible for the hostage to follow.  Now I feel like a complete idiot, of course, but at the time, I simply didn't know.  I'd run that tf a zillion times with all kinds of toons, but I guess if I'd ever run it with someone running /dark, I never noticed them turn off shadow fall.  Or realized why they'd done it.  Anyway, it was horribly embarrassing because I wasn't still (technically) a noob, but I sure was acting like one on a new powerset! 

[dwturducken]

...
Anyway, it was in some tf, and I didn't realize that my shadow fall made it impossible for the hostage to follow.
...

Ya know, this was something I kept doing almost right up to the end. Some things are just easier to miss than others, for some.

[Floride]

Ya know, this was something I kept doing almost right up to the end. Some things are just easier to miss than others, for some.

I was notorious for:
"wwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwwww on my way!"

 

[dwturducken]

OK, how's this. I just made the connection between Doc Samson and Doc Delilah. Just now. While getting dinner ready. *facepalm*

[Floride]

OK, how's this. I just made the connection between Doc Samson and Doc Delilah. Just now. While getting dinner ready. *facepalm*

Newb! 

[dwturducken]

I know! 

[Jordan_Lee]

OMG, this makes me smile thinking about it.

I was a stupid noob. I used training enhancements until my 30s. I didn't know you could delete enhancements from your trays until level 20s or 30s, so I pretty much used no enhancements because they were all red. And this was when SO enhancement drops weren't common.

I took Flurry from the speed set (enough said)

Though, I was an MA/Regen scrapper, so my attacks were quick to make up for not hitting half the time, my energy refilled nice on it's own so I could attack a lot.

Oh, and as a scrapper I took Hover and Fly. Going forward taking Air Superiority was a common thing for me to do if I wanted a flight character.

And I actually spent money at Icon to change up my costume at level 20. lol I ended the game with over 70 costume tokens, at least...seems silly to spend money on costume...

I miss my heroes

[microc]

learning curve with my bubble shielded mm with robots...turned on the power on at the wrong time the whole team and bad guys get squished and killed and i standing there alone.

[Luna Eclypse]

My very first character, an Assault Rifle/Devices Blaster (between Issue's 2 and 3)... I had no idea you could slot more than one of the same kind of enhancement on a power.  I was around level 24 and couldn't understand why so many other people were doing more damage than I was. Also, I took Taser when it was still the original melee-range hand taser.

[Sajaana]

As a noob, I tried to follow another player through a door, thinking that there must be something good in there!

But the game said "you are not allowed" or something like that...so I kept on wondering, "what do I need to do to get through that door?"  It then dawned upon me that this was part of the mission-selection process.

[Ohioknight]

I started up during the 2006 Halloween event and thought it was rather strange that it was always nighttime in Paragon City

[r00tb0ySlim]

I was a stupid noob. I used training enhancements until my 30s. I didn't know you could delete enhancements from your trays until level 20s or 30s, so I pretty much used no enhancements because they were all red. And this was when SO enhancement drops weren't common.

This.  I did the same thing; however, prior to learning how to screw up slotting I didn't now how to level up and went thru a load of levels before asking someone for help    Fun times!!!

[johnrobey]

Happily, my friend who introduced me to CoH was a veteran player and I soon met other veteran players, so this helped me avoid numerous noob errors, but certainly not all.  My main character at the time was a dark defender whose background was that of a vampire sorcerer.  After doing a bunch of missions, my avatar was hanging out at Wentworths for a really long time (probably I had just learned about IO set recipes or something).  Anyhow, he'd dropped Shadowfall, was there a really long time and suddenly bursts into flame!  I later figured out he was simply the recipient of some thermal buffing but at the time I thought maybe he'd been shopping too long and that was why he'd burst into flame!  So promptly logged out!  Imagine my relief when I logged back in and my character was still there, unharmed, no longer ablaze.   

[Catstiel]

My favorite area was always Kings Row because i used to love saving the people being sacrificed by the Circle of Thorns. However...in my early days i thought that because i was of Magic Origin that they would be my personal nemesis throughout the game. So many bug reports/petitions because i was fighting skulls/hellions. Around level 8-ish they finally explained things, boy did i feel stupid.

[antarcticaa]

I started on day one, i1.  It was so new that on my ice/ice blaster, Antarcticaa, you could see her nips in her white costume.  They fixed that soon, lol but my hubby didn't mind when he'd look over my shoulder and ask me what I was doing.  Then running around in PP, lost and scared, trailing thugs I had inadvertently aggro'd and screaming for help, not realizing I had a power toggled that caused the aggro.  I hated PP till we got maps from Titan helping us.   

[healix]

"you could see her nips in her white costume.  They fixed that soon"

I remember that so well....the lady 'gumdrops' were very pronounced and showed through a lot of tops. They were changed so the rating could remain for teens and above. (A site named Coldspot's had a mod you could download that gave them back, but only you could see them. It was an overlay like the Vidiotmaps.) These are pics I saved from my earliest times of playing.

[yoreverend]

Well, one of my earliest toons was a Mind/Storm controller (yeah, mistake enough, right?), and I remember being like level 4, jumping up the side of a building in KR, and gleefully blowing a ring of CoTs off the rooftop to heroically save the sacrificial victim with the Gust power or whatever it was...

... and then finding out that the fall down fifteen floors to the street below DIDN'T KILL THEM and having them all run up the fire escape after me.

[Floride]

Well, one of my earliest toons was a Mind/Storm controller (yeah, mistake enough, right?), and I remember being like level 4, jumping up the side of a building in KR, and gleefully blowing a ring of CoTs off the rooftop to heroically save the sacrificial victim with the Gust power or whatever it was...

... and then finding out that the fall down fifteen floors to the street below DIDN'T KILL THEM and having them all run up the fire escape after me.

LOL! I remember wasting some clockworks in atlas, feeling all proud, then arrogantly "taking a knee" (resting) over their broken bodies. And surreptitiously getting one-shotted by a returning "runner".

[Castegyre]

The first time I went in a mission with multiple floors I petitioned because I thought it was broken. Turned out I just needed to use the elevator to get to the next floor. >.>

[Randomvector]

In KR: What is this funny little tree? <stands looking at it reading its description> Devouring Earth who are they? <turns around> OH GOD! <annihilated by returning DE ambush spawn 20 levels higher than me>

[AnjoVII]

In memory of Angebastian (Super strength/Regeneration MeleeDamage/Brute) City Of Heroes I am ex hero player from Freedom server and now I lost my friends and my COH is been shut down.

[Second Chances]

When I started, my first character was an invuln tank, and based on the description text, I decided to pass on Unyielding. >_>  Fortunately, I teamed with someone who clued me in on what I was missing.

But, actually, I stopped playing that character entirely at around 20, anyway, since by then I had fallen in with some other newbs, and we ended up forming the most ridiculously broken team structure. They were pretty much all blasters (aside from one that had rolled a stormy... he didn't play as often as the rest, but you can imagine how handy he was when he did), and I rolled an emp def. Even better, they treated being defeated like a thing that should never happen to them. So, every battle ended up consisting of a minigame where my eyes were always fixed on the team list and I was just hitting keys to change team targets and to fire off this heal or that. To get an idea of how stupid it was, I found out afterward that I had been the number two healer on the server that month (I had played the character with them for about three weeks of that month, as we went from level 1 to up into the 30s, before I burned out so bad that I couldn't play him anymore). The person who pointed it out (I hadn't known about the info terminals) knew a 50 who had been intentionally going for the number one distinction, and who had been frustrated since they spent most of the month neck and neck with me. :/

Anyway, after that I rolled a scrapper, and started playing CoH for realz. It was so awesome to go through the same content I had before, but to actually -see- it this time. ^_^7

[corvus1970]

You know how the "R" key was the default for running? Well, I was running with a PUG, doing a Frostfire mish, and as we waited for our end to return in a hallway leading to one of the rooms filled with baddies, I started chatting. Well, I hit the R key while clicked off the chat bar, and my character happily jogged into the room of death, and was promptly defeated.

"What did you do that for?" asked one of the PUG members.
"Nailed by the auto-run key." I replied.
"Ahhh, sorry man. We'll be in there in a minute!" he said.

After that, I started setting my auto-run to be the "+" on my number-pad

[Megajoule]

When I started, I didn't realize you could combine enhancements from the tray - I thought that both of them had to already be slotted in the power.
My slotting in those early levels was really weird.

(and then I got to DOs, and Terra Volta came out, and it all became moot.)