Have you heard about the Hollows?

The Hollows had undergone a revamp around the time I started playing City of Heroes, and once I got to level 5 or so every NPC I talked to was telling me I should go and check it out.

Of course at the time I wasn't aware that the Hollows was a side zone, forming an alternate levelling path for levels 5-15 from the standard route of Atlas Park/Galaxy City to Kings Row to Steel Canyon/Skyway City. Thats okay, because I like the Hollows, and it offered better content than any of those other zones did at that time, though a couple of the others did have new content added later on.

(And Galaxy City got smashed to bits by meteor strikes, which is one of the more drastic ways to remodel a starter area. Fallen Earth literally nuking one of its starter towns is still hard to beat.)

The Hollows is a hazard zone like Perez Park and Boomtown, though unlike those it does have a story arc, or rather a linked series of story arcs. It still has the large mob spawns though, and I've had a few moments when en route to a mission I've jumped over a wall and straight into the half dozen or more gang members that were standing on the other side. That's when it's time to eat all my inspirations and hope for the best. Sometimes it's worked out... and sometimes it hasn't.

Of all the missions in the Hollows the most famous has to be Frostfire. This is a classic of the early game, a mission that can be solo'd but is advisable to do with a group. Over the years I've tackled it both ways and it's always been a good time. On this run, being on a strong soloing archetype, I ran it solo, at +0/x2 difficulty, which I've been on since level 5.

Frostfire himself is an Elite Boss – I think he's the first EB encountered in the game – and he's tough. He also spawned with a regular boss, a lieutenant and a couple of minions around him, and that was before he summoned his pets. It can get crowded, and while I went through the rest of the mission without too much trouble I had to take multiple runs at this final fight. In hindsight I should have expected that, but somehow it always slips my mind how challenging CoH can be until I'm being repeatedly CC'd only hours into the game. I expect that from the Circle of Thorns, but I'd forgotten that Frostfire does it as well.

Broadsword/Fiery Aura also isn't an ideal powerset for this fight. I'll get some mez protection eventually, but not yet, and Broadsword is all about hard hitting but slow attacks, which meant that when the ice attacks started piling on recharge debuffs it wasn't long before every attack I had was staying on cooldown way longer than I'd have liked.

Still, it's a good mission, and while I was there I also took the time to play in the slippy slidey ice rooms, which is another good reason to take on Frostfire.

Wheeeee!