We’ve all done it, clicked on an NPC walking down the street just to see what they’ll say. Sometimes it is a completely random phrase, but not always. In fact, there are some NPCs on the streets who are quite helpful! Here’s a breakdown of what City of Heroes NPCs Can Tell You About Your Character.
How Do You Know Which NPCs to Talk to?
There are a lot of NPCs in City of Heroes, so how do you know which ones to talk to? First, you need to go specifically for the NPCs who are walking down the street. The ones that are called Civilian NPCs. They’ll never give you a mission and they’re never just standing around. They’re the ones walking down the street that will push you into traffic while you’re chatting with a friend. They’re in all of the main zones of the game, including the Rogue Isles and Goldside.
What an NPC will say is based on their name. Not their whole name, just the letter it starts with. Not every letter will give you custom information. In fact, there’s only a small handful that will. Here is a list of them all.
E – Current Time on the Server. This will vary depending on the server’s location.
F – Current Time in Paragon City
G – How Many Heroes are in the Zone
H – NPC will say “Isn’t (heroname) just the best?” The hero named will be anyone in the zone.
M – The total number of hours you’ve played that character. This includes all that time you spent chatting up catgirls in Pocket D.
N – How many times you have gone on patrol on that character.
O – How long you have been on patrol today. This number resets every time you come out of a mission so take some time and do some street sweeping!
There are also a couple that were discontinued at some point in time before shutdown. J would tell you how many times you’ve used a power that day while K would tell you how much damage you’ve done with a power. I’m not entirely sure why these were removed from the game but I think they would be fun to have back if that’s something that is possible!
If you click on anyone with a name that doesn’t start with one of the letters above you will still get some very interesting text that tends to be lore based. It will be things like people commenting on the color of the water in Crey’s Folly or a strange sighting around the city.
All too often we just look at these NPCs as pushy irritations, but these are the citizens of our fair city, the people we hero for. So next time you log in go around and talk to the citizens you meet. You never know what they might say.