City of Heroes News & Events & Guides

The first thing you probably want to do is level up. Each opponent you fight earns you experience points (how much is determined by what level they are relative to you). After a certain amount (which increases each level), a musical fanfare plays, a light show emits from your character, and 'Level Up' appears in big letters across the screen. At this point, you fight at the next level up, but to get all the benefits of the level, you have to go to one of the superhero trainers scattered about the City (one per zone). Different levels will give you different things, like selecting a new power.

Another thing you can get with a level is more enhancement slots for your CoH Influence. Each power has an enhancement slot where you can put particular types of, you guessed it, enhancements. With enhancements, you can improve certain aspects of your power: combat powers can have increased damage or accuracy, healing powers can have increased healing, almost any power can have increased recovery rate (the time it takes for you to be able to use a power again), etc. You can even put the same kind of enhancement in two slots to make it twice as effective. So, even if two players have picked the exact same powers, they may have enhanced them completely differently, thus furthering the already great variety of this game.

While you can probably play the game just going around and stopping drug deals, robberies, or rituals in progress, you can also go see contacts to get missions. Certain contacts are interested in certain villain groups, so they are likely to give you missions related to those groups. This allows for story arcs to come into play (remember what the 'City of Heroes influence' means?), and can allow you to appreciate the impressive depth of this game. Also, missions are with a fair chunk of experience points. In addition, your contacts will reward you by allowing to buy enhancements, giving you their 'cell phone number' (so you don't have to run all the way back to them when you've finished a mission), or even introduce you to other contacts.