Champions Online Travel Power Guide

Champions Online does not include mounts like many other MMOs, it does however include a large variety of travel powers, allowing you to get around in a way fitting to your hero. Nearly any concept can have an appropriate travel power, and Cryptic has been adding new skins for travel powers every once in a while, enabling for more specific concepts to have a better matching way to get around.

This article will only be discussing the travel powers themselves and not the Advantages that can be accessed for some of them by spending Advantage Points.

At level 5 you can choose your first travel power, with a second being available at level 35. When it comes to getting around the various zones in CO, having a way to travel through the air is much more convenient than being stuck on the ground. Since you can get 2 travel powers I would recommend at least one that lets you travel through the air, even if it doesn’t fit your character’s concept. It’s not necessary to do so, but it’ll make it easier to travel through certain areas, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the various zones.

With the exception of Teleportation and Tunneling, all travel powers have multiple stages resulting in various speeds. In combat or without charging is the slowest and gradually building up to the 3rd and fastest stage, which can be accessed by fully charging the travel power. Jet Boots are the exception to this as it uses 3 stages but can not be charged.

All travel powers that have a graphical effect to them can be colored to some extent by gold members. Silver members are stuck with the default look.

Flight/Fire Flight/Rainbow Flight – Probably the most iconic super hero way to travel as many classic comic characters can fly and is an easy way of seeing someone who has super human abilities. in CO flight offers great maneuverability and moderate speed. Flight has no real noticeable graphic, but many types of wings will flap or glide while flying.

Fire Flight is the exact same as flight, except your character is on fire.

Rainbow Flight is an exact copy of flight, except your character leaves a rainbow trail while flying and has a multi-color glow at their feet.

Super-speed/Light Speed – Super-speed is the fastest base travel power. It mainly enhances run speed, but provides a bit of extra jump height and makes it harder for enemies to notice you, which is handy as you’ll likely be passing by enemies fairly regularly as you travel. While you have to go around buildings and other obstacles, the speed of it generally makes up for it if you know your way around.

Light Speed is an exact copy of super-speed, except your character leaves a Tron-like light trail behind them.

Teleportation – Teleportation is one of the more unique travel powers and also one of the most active ones. Unlike the other travel powers, teleportation can’t remain active, but rather by activating it you get a short period of time where you get a very maneuverable flight as well as gaining stealth. After teleportation ends you remain stealth a few seconds and slowly fall towards the ground and can choose to reactivate teleportation right away if desired. Traveling long distances requires hitting teleportation each time it fades, so is more involved than other travel powers for traveling. If you enter combat shortly after using teleportation, you get a 10 second cool down before being able to teleport again.

Teleportation is currently bugged and will not always grant slow fall when you exit a teleport. This can cause you to take fall damage if your character hits the ground before teleporting again.

Super-jump/Rocket Jump – Super-jump gives your character the ability to jump really high and fast. Super-jump offers a good in between for characters who don’t want fly but don’t want to be stuck on the ground either. Generally it’s fairly safe as even if you land near a ground of enemies, they’ll rarely get a chance to react before you’re out of distance, but it does occasionally happen that one or more enemies will hit you. You have to hit your jump key in between each jump, so it’s a bit more involved than most other travel powers. It’s also a bit more difficult to use indoors as there isn’t much room to jump in some places and there may be objects such as pipes that you can run into, slowing you down.

Rocket Jump is exactly the same as super-jump, except your character is propelled by rockets on their feet.

Acrobatics – Acrobatics is a run and jump increasing travel power, where both fall in between super-speed and super-jump. At rank 1 it’s probably the most difficult to travel with power as it’s not too fast and you can’t jump high enough to get over medium size obstacles. It also doesn’t grant any stealth like super-speed does, so you’re more likely to take damage while traveling. At higher ranks it works a lot better for traveling, but still remains kind of weak compared to other alternatives. It is one of the best to use in combat for increased maneuverability.

Tunneling – Tunneling causes your character to go underground and move at an increased speed. It can allow you to pass by enemies without them noticing you, but you will continue to take damage from DoTs or attacks that were incoming even after you’re underground. Tunneling can not travel pass obstacles in the ground, no matter how small. This makes it fairly difficult to use and really only worth taking if it fits your character. Despite your character being underground you still have to maneuver around all obstacles, even small ones that can normally be run past or require a tiny hop to get over. It’s not very fast either and takes a few seconds when activating or deactivating the power.

Swinging – Swinging is another fairly active travel power. Once activated, your first jump will send you high into the air and pressing and holding jump after that will cause your character to grapple into the air and swing forward. If held your character will continue to swing back and forth and if jump is released your character will release their grapple and go in whichever direction they were swinging at the time. This allows you to adjust your height and speed depending on when you release. If going for speed it is fairly fast, but does requiring timing your jumps properly. It does not require anything to grapple onto, you automatically grapple even the air and can essentially fly with it. It’s very limited use indoors as you don’t have much room for swinging and can easily run into objects.

Hover Disk/Earth Flight/Rainbow Flight: Cloud – These powers give you a less maneuverable version of flight, but give your character an object to stand on. The object is just for show and serves no special person beyond it’s look.

Hover Disk gives you a sci-fi/tech style disk to stand on. It also has the benefit of being slightly faster than flight and the other two powers, although I believe it is slightly less maneuverable.

Earth Flight gives you a piece of earth to stand on, which varies in appearance some depending on where you use it. If you’re in the air when earth flight activates you get a cloud instead.

Rainbow Flight: Cloud gives you a cloud fairly similar to using Earth Flight in the air, except it’ll always give the cloud and the cloud has a rainbow trail similar to rainbow flight.

Ice Slide – Ice Slide is probably the most advanced travel power to get good use out of. When using it your character stands on a piece of ice and leaves an ice/water type trail behind them. It’s base speed is similar to hover disk, however, it is capable of being the fastest travel power if used properly. Also, unlike other flight powers, ice slide will slowly fall to the ground if you’re not moving up. Traveling up slows your speed a bit, but traveling down increases your speed. With the proper technique you can get great speeds with it.

Jet Boots – Jet Boots are very similar to flight, except instead of being able to charge them to full speed, they always start at their slowest speed. In exchange for that penalty though, jet boots are a decent amount faster than flight. They also offer pretty good maneuverability as well. When using this travel power, your character has a colored flame beneath both feet. This is my favorite travel power overall as it offers good speed and maneuverability and not being able to charge it is a very minor penalty.