This winter, I’ve been obsessed with City of Heroes Homecoming’s supergroup base builds, which as we’ve previously discussed here in Working As Intended are super accessible to brand-new characters – both the building and the touring – thanks to all of the new builder-friendly features added by the player dev team over the last four years.
In my last column, I ran down some of the convenient public utility hubs with portals and essential NPCs on every server, even offering up a handy popmenu for players who want to use those bases themselves. In this edition, I’m throwing utility out the window to give you a look at 10 of my favorite public bases out of the hundreds I’ve toured – the bases with the most awe-inspiring construction whether they’re useful or not – and at the end, I’ll tell you how to visit them in person!
CYBERPUNK-14407 (Everlasting, Designer: @ScarredSilencer)
I think this might be my favorite base I’ve ever toured, so I’m putting it first. The designer has done a spectacular job of fitting together City of Heroes pieces to look straight out of Blade Runner, from the hover taxis to the neon Japanese signage. But it’s the environmental effects – the lighting and fog and floating trash – that really sell it. You’ll want to explore the whole thing, as each little alley has a new surprise (there’s even a nightclub tucked in there). Even knowing I took these pics in CoH, I am shocked it’s CoH. The only giveaway to my eye is the dumpsters.
COSMICCOFFEE-4899 (Excelsior)
I really think this is one of those bases that needs to be seen in person because… it’s a coffee shop. It doesn’t screenshot all that well. But this coffee shop has so many clever details, even in the storage area in the back that only a clever eye would realize is actually functional storage, not just decoration. The best bit is actually the story going on outside the windows; it’s a neat vignette of a monster attack on the streets outside and the people who’ve shown up to gawk. Oh, and did I mention it works great as a hub base too, with all the important equipment and portals tucked into this tiny space where they don’t even stand out? I wish this were my base, seriously.
PERK-8816 (Excelsior, Designer: @Coffee Girl)
This was one of the very first builds I stumbled into when I started playing heavily again at the top of 2024, and I have to say it set my standards extremely high. There are lots of these cityscape-with-shops bases, and of the upscale versions, this is easily my favorite, not so much because it’s useful (I’m not even sure it has teleporters) but because it’s gorgeous. You just can’t take a bad screenshot in this map. Every angle is stunning, and a lot of it is down to really stellar use of color and lighting and lots of verticality. Just when you think you’ve seen it all, you’ll turn another corner and there’s more.
OASIS-3471 (Everlasting, Designer: @cloudlessnight)
Oasis is not just a great base build; it’s one of the major weekly roleplaying hotspots on Everlasting. It’s the place to be on Saturday nights: a massive reef-aquarium-themed night club with a waterfront shopping area and a shark tank bigger than a house. While I was touring this, my husband said it looked like Casa Bonita and wanted to know if he could see Black Bart’s Cave. My husband is a mature adult. But honestly, he’s not wrong; this place is surreal and gorgeous in a decadent Las Vegas way. Did I mention it has a slip-and-slide?
KARMA-508 (Everlasting, Designer: @Dropout)
I’m cheating a bit with this epic build because I first saw it on Dacy’s YouTube channel; she has a handy video of her own tour of the base – including a map. This place is so massive it needs a map. But after you watch, go visit in person anyway. I’m sort of in awe of how it drops you low on the docks and you see this cute little waterfront, and I’m thinking, “Oh it looks like Anvil in Oblivion,” and then you start to pan up and realize the waterfront – cute enough to make it into my list all by itself – is just the tiniest sliver of a whole city clinging to the spires of this island. The effect is awesome, and in fact, the only thing I don’t love about this map is the sky color. These builds are way beyond “supergroup base.”
STARRYCABIN-16941 (Everlasting, Designer: @Battle-Angel)
This house – one of a series of similar cabins in different environmental settings – has to be seen (and heard) in person to be appreciated. I am not even a log cabin kind of person, and yet I want to live here – and not just because of the woodsy sound effects and the firepit and the bubbling jacuzzi tucked away inside. And outside. Yes, two hot tubs. I swear that’s not why I picked it. There isn’t a whole lot in the game that feels quite this outdoorsy (or this night-timey), so it’s a welcome retreat from the brighter cityscapes of Paragon.
HIDEAWAY-13103 (Everlasting, Designer: @hobo master)
This base was tailor-made to appeal to me because I love old brick lofts, and it’s grimy and stuffed full of character and clever details that make this low-key apartment believable as a villain’s lair. Among the more amusing bits: You can slip through the ventilation shaft to get to secret rooms! It’s not pretty, mind you, but that’s the point. This one made my list purely for environmental storytelling from the villain angle. Oh, and bonus points for the gorgeous view out the windows!
BEACHHOUSE-16509 (Everlasting, Designer: @ScarredSilencer)
True story, the first time I visited this build, I flew through the living room only to suddenly realize I was intruding on two characters having a very spicy moment in open chat. I immediately ported out, not sure whether I was embarrassed or amused. Both! Needless to say, when I went back – and it was empty but for me! – I understood what had made the base such a great spot for a lil interlude: It’s set up like the perfect midcentury beach house, complete with mod windows and an outdoor hot tub. To be honest, this looks like a house in The Sims. I doubt Cryptic and Paragon ever dreamed that bases would one day look like this.
STATION-18074 (Excelsior, Designer: @Garbage Wizard)
I sang the praises of The Station in my roundup of cool portal bases, and it is a great portal base, as the ports are cleverly embedded into the subway cars, with all the other hub amenities tucked in around kiosks and seating. The real genius of this base, though, is that you start by descending into the subway area; the elevation, plus the ceiling architecture, really sells the feel of a dingy subway station. Extra bonus points for exceptionally clever ways of adding unique text to everything. It must have taken forever.
FREAKTOWN-10241 (Everlasting, Designer: @Owl)
Freaktown is technically a nightclub, but you don’t start there: You start in an office where something has very clearly escaped and gone on a rampage. Past the office, both the courtyard area and the nightclub are Freakshow-themed (and I love Freakshow!), but this is so well done, down to the scrapyard letters and repurposed junk – super distressed and post-apocalyptic, like something easily dropped into the Rogue Isles. Every time I come here, I catch sight of something new.
You don’t have to settle for my screenshots here; there are multiple options for visiting all of these bases in person, assuming you are willing to roll a level one character on Excelsior or Everlasting. The simplest way is to just stand by a Base Portal anywhere in-game and type /enterbasefrompasscode X where X is the passcode for each of these bases (like KARMA-508 is the whole passcode). You can also click on a Base Portal and manually type in the passcode in the prompt.
Alternatively, you can download and use my popmenu for all 10 of these bases. As I explained in the macros and popmenu guide, you’ll drop the .mnu file into Homecoming\data\texts\English\menus, then fire up the game and type into chat /macroimage BA_Super_Patriot BaseTour popmenu BreeBaseTour to create the macro you can use. Just remember, you’ll need to be on Excelsior to visit Excelsior bases and on Everlasting to visit Everlasting bases. You also don’t need to zone out of one base to hit the menu to hop to another one, just so long as it’s on the same server. And if you ever get lost inside a base or want to leap back to the beginning, you can always just type /stuck.
So there you have it: 10 of my favorite bases out of the several hundred I’ve visited, plus an easy way for you to tour all of them. Of course, I have dozens more I want to talk about, so if people enjoy this, I’ll do another round!
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Working As Intended: 10 more City of Heroes Homecoming base builds you need to see
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Working As Intended: City of Heroes macros and popmenus for noobs
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Into the Super-Verse: Gearing up as a newcomer to City of Heroes Homecoming
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The MMORPG genre might be “working as intended,” but it can be so much more. Join Massively Overpowered Editor-in-Chief Bree Royce in her Working As Intended column for editorials about and meanderings through MMO design, ancient history, and wishful thinking. Armchair not included.
