I have a problem, I have no clue how you build your profession skill up, how you get new recipes and when choosing your powers you have these upgrades but it makes no sense to me like can you only upgrade a certain amount of your powers or what?

This is why I'm now put off from Champions Online but I'm not sure if it's worth the effort to play since most people hate it. =(

Anyway you could be a little more specific? I mean when I played the game it was pretty self explanatory...wasn't hard to understand at all. But i'll try to help if I can.

Originally posted by BrokenApple

Anyway you could be a little more specific? I mean when I played the game it was pretty self explanatory...wasn't hard to understand at all. But i'll try to help if I can.

Well when I try to start a profession I have no idea how you get new recipes, I notice after you've chosen the profession you want you then have to make a chose of what sort of thing you want to do as part of the profession you, take Science for example, you have Mutuations, the other two I can't remember the names of, I mean is there a difference between these sets of things at all?

About the powers thing, when your at your trainer you could upgrade your travel power or other powers but using the Champion Builder program I had downloaded it appears you have a limit of how many power upgrades your allowed to have for your powers, like rank 2, rank 3 and upgrades that gives a new effect for your existing power.

I gotta agree. Figuring out CO is insane. There are like 10 million stats and I have no clue what each stat does or which ones are desirable.

What a confusing game.

Originally posted by Xondar123

I gotta agree. Figuring out CO is insane. There are like 10 million stats and I have no clue what each stat does or which ones are desirable.

What a confusing game.

I agree, it's like Dungeons & Dragons Online, I just could not figure out the stats in that too and the choses of skills is important too. It's not a good idea to not know what your doing else you'll gimp your character. =p

Hopefully these will be of some help to you.

http://biobreak.wordpress.com/2009/08/26/10-things-you-need-to-know-before-starting-champions/

http://www.massively.com/2010/04/15/behind-the-mask-the-best-kind-of-loot/

http://www.massively.com/2010/07/15/behind-the-mask-pushing-buttons-is-fun/

I'm trying to understand what your asking. If you're crafting after you pick the profession in science. To learn anymore recipes you have to click the learn blueprints from the crafting vendor. When you craft at the early stages you can break down one item at a time at the table, but later on you'll want to dump all into the pot so you can get it where it says 4/5 or 5/5 because you get a better chance for rare crafting drops. Anyways after you break down items your skill goes up. As it goes up the more you can train when you go under learn blueprints.

What you might not know is you can store your crafting items in the bank and craft without having to have the items in your inventory. When ever you make an item it will auto withdraw from the bank.

As for ranks on powers, some are good and some do really do much. Main forums will be of more help in what ranks are good for what power. I know if you rank the travel power it does add a visual effect to it.

Those links above helped me greatly, hopefully they will help you. You can always join the massively channel in CO and ask for help if you don't get help in zone chat. Sometimes someone is there in the channel. They've helped me when I had questions.

Originally posted by RudyRaccoon

Originally posted by Xondar123

I gotta agree. Figuring out CO is insane. There are like 10 million stats and I have no clue what each stat does or which ones are desirable.

What a confusing game.

I agree, it's like Dungeons & Dragons Online, I just could not figure out the stats in that too and the choses of skills is important too. It's not a good idea to not know what your doing else you'll gimp your character. =p

In almost every mmorpg I have played there is no easy recipie to build your character, the main difference you get from CO is that you have so many options that basically can be overwhelming. However, as in every game you can go to the forums and read from people that has undertaken the labor of squeezing the information and get advice from them to either min-max or just get a reliable build. Yea, so much freedom could be confusing at first but it'll pay off once you get how it works, which is part of the adventure.

In CoH after ED, the choices for enhacement were pretty much set(taking aside invention's sets) so the only variable is power selection under the archtype, pool and epic powersets.

Rudy, these might be helpful

Guide to Stats

http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=69758

Guide to powersets (with more specific info on Stats)

http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?t=110987

Now with upgrading powers, rank 2, 3 etc. You wont see as much discussion of that. That comes down to basically - Once you have your power combos settled, you know how your powers work well together, which of those do you want more powerful?

You'll actually see a lot of people posting builds without all the ranks listed, since those are just not usually keys to builds. Advantages can be.

You can see in the power window what changes between ranks by clicking the 'advanced' text on the right.

It does seem a lot more complicated than other MMOs cause few people have the exact same builds.

Now as to professions AKA crafting, I'm not sure I understand your question.

OP if you got the champion builder off the official site then, thats way out of date and painfuil to use. It was abandoned by the creator. The CO community has maintained the program, so its useable with updates to powers and advantages. 

Check out this thread http://forums.champions-online.com/showthread.php?p=1674868#post1674868 for the link to the open source champion builder.

With regards the crafting, say you take science. Mutations or Inventions is just a themed thing, the stats of what you can create are the same. Having said that Arms will give better advantages to say strength than Mysticism will.

Again the official forum has plenty of info on crafting including guides. The official wiki is also great.

With regards to what skills and advantages to choose. You will learn as you play, do plenty of reading on the forums if you want to learn fast. Just do a search in the build forum for what you want. It will come to you fairly quickly. Most advantages increase your damage, duration of an effect, things like that. Some advantages will actually add a new function to a skill.

Take for instance Martial Arts. This framework has a heal called Bountiful Chi Resurgence, there is an advantage called Resurgent Reiki. That increases the HOT ticks of BCR when you dodge. So to take advantage of that, you can pick up Masterful dodge skill, which gives you a huge dodge boost for 12 seconds. Now when you have an oh shit moment, hit the two above skills, you get a load of extra dodge, and great healing. There is an advantage on Masterful dodge to give you higher damage too.

What im trying to get across is that the skill sets are made in a way that you can create a synergy between skills, even crossing different frameworks. The game isnt class restricted so its a hell of a lot more complex, but its actually rather clever implementation. Its a lot of  fun, you can respec any time at a cost. But its worth persevering with, you will learn it quickly enough.

The Champion Builder is actually very good for skill and advantage explanations when you get aorund the fiddly as f*** interface.

I hope that example was of some help to you.