I'm with the firing squad.

Well twice in a row I've been invited to fill the last spot in a an all ranged Pug. We wade into combat and I hear the clinking of crossbows, the whistling of arrows, the spurting of the flame turret, the purple mountain majesty of the force bolts and then, if I'm lucky, I'm zerging fast enough to dive into our firewall and kill-steal one of the walking wounded.

First up we did Gwylan's Stand. I was useful there because I had 50 HP more than the traps could do so I was able to sabotage some hard to reach crates. But then on Stormcleave outpost I was almost entirely useless against the mobs. Sure, I hammered a few wolves to death but for the most part the mobs ignored me except for when my intimidate worked.

Oh, and there was one spot where only the Arcane Archer Ranger and I were able to survive the traps. We were standing on a ramp and got hit with several blinding sleets. I chugged haste pots and tried to chase down the jerk that cast it, but I couldn't make any headway on a slope. Meanwhile the archer was just calmly plinking away with his bow. Gah!

So anyway, it looks like this is how it's gonna be for the next couple of levels. If anyone needs me, I'll be with the firing squad.

TR: first non-Epic! carnival

So, now that I've TRed, I get to see what the Carnival looks like to everyone else. It's fun but I miss the Epic! way of doing Big Top (Haste! Jump! Invisibility! GO!)

[Note: the rest of my post was lost in the internet so I'm rewriting it from memory here]

I planned to run Carnival for the bravery bonus, but I leveled up so quickly, and found groups for house P so slowly, that I missed that opportunity. Instead I've been wondering, should I run it now for favor (and free Turbine Points rewards) or should I just run it on Epic! difficulty?

And then, I saw an adorable  request for a PUG: I haz gest pass! hrry plz! So then of course I had to go and help them each get an Antique Great Axe. It was great fun, although they would have given up if not for my horse-whisperer style encouragement. "No thanks, I've already got one! <swish swish>" and "It's virtualy guarenteed to drop every 20th run." 

The quests in the Phiarlan Carnival are nearly identical. They have very different scenery but all four of them are heavily scripted, with lots of diologue and fancy-pants roleplaying stuff. I'm a fan of real life roleplaying, but I come to DDO for the great looking dungeons and the combat. I was dissapointed that none of the quests had an honest to goodness dungeon to fight in.

But even so, I had fun and enjoyed the jokes and won a suit of the ugliest plate mail ever. And the noobs? They got their axes before their guest passes wore out. :)

Hireling navagates The Pit to save pugger.

So, I was finishing the Main Control Room (the lowest room in The Pit) and noticed that the rest of the group was "helping" by getting ripped apart in combat. Then they started dying. I didn't want to spend time looking for them since I knew that they weren't dying anywhere important and they weren't able to communicate their location to me. So on a whim, I told my Hireling to take care of it. To my surprise he sprinted out of the Main Control room and up the spiraling ramp. A miniute or so later he had navagated from the very lowest room to the highest, found the dead pugger and raised him!

Later on, the puggers returned the favor by having their caster raise dead on me, while I was feather falling from the optional chests in room 3. (I died wearing featherfall boots so my ghost couldn't make it all the way down to the ground!) But with some good clicksmanship the pugger got his hireling to raise me and we won....,

..but no muck doom!

TR1: Return to The Pit!

The Pit is the BEST DUNGEON EVER!

I loved The Pit when I first encountered it because it was one of the few dungeons where I got completely lost -- not just in the Zork I sense of nondiscript "twisty passages all alike" but in the sense that I was navagating a topography that I could not visualize.

But all good things came to an end, and I figured out a series of tricks that would allow me to navagate what I could not conceptualize. Feather Fall SW. Fall down one ramp when you see this land mark. So I put away the Pit and vowed not to return until a distant future when my memory had attrophied or until I was leveling a TR in need of awesome XP.

So last night, after months of anticipation, I returned to The Pit.

My TR needed XP but I was still fairly sure that I knew my way around the Pit. And I did know it. But more surprisingly, the whole thing seemed to make sense. I almost think I could draw a 3d map of the place now from memory. Almost.

Also, last time I ran the Pit I had alot of lag from (what turned out to be a) defective video card. But now with my new video card everything on DDO is smooth and lag free. On the downside that means all the jumps I fail are my own fault. And compared to my Ranger life, my Full Plate wearing  Paladin had alot of failed jumps. ;)

I'm sad that my mind has penetrated the mysteries of The Pit -- but it remains the best dungeon ever!

And no, no Muck's Dooms were had, and the pug killed Jubuilex while I was in the furnace room fixing the light we missed. :)

Fact: My fun is not a lie!

So the forums say my fun is a lie. The forums say that I should be upset and rage quitting and looking foreward to playing a bunch of D&D knockoffs that are limping across the finish line for Christmas.

That's what the forum whiners say. But I say my DDO fun is real! I look forward to playing more and there are no virtual tears in my virtual dwarven beard.

MY DDO FUN IS REAL! :)

TR1: Return to house K

I haven't played f2p house K quests in over a year. My main was level 20 and farming high end content. My alts were favor dashing in the harbor and market place. But now my TR Dwarf Paladin is level 7 and ready to return to House Kundarak.

What a difference a TR makes!

Last time I was here the traps were deadly "These tarps hit for ONEHUNDRED DAMAGE on elite!!!! Truely, these traps must be of Dwarven manufacture!" But this life they're only deadly if I get hit twice in a row.

Last time I had no elemental resistances of my own, but now I've got 30/30/30/30 thanks to the Defenders Guild Airship.

Last time I was always afraid of running into yet another skeleton because my weapons were so cruddy: a flame touched light hammer of bone breaking (i.e. a Dex debuff that skeletons are immune to) and a sonic longsword. Now I've got TWO silver warhammers of Holy undead bane and I wish that DDO had MORE undead. :D

But it's not all good. Last life I had maxed out my jump skill so I could leap out of danger. But this life I've got no jump at all, and heavy plate, and a blend of charisma and strength so when I'm flanked, I gotta cut my way out.

So anyway the story of my hubris and comeuppance:
I was on easystreet. I jumpped throught the traps and clobbered everything with my warhammers, which work great on undead and good on anything evil. When my kids woke up, I turned off the computer and switched to my wife's netbook so I could play while I supervised the eating of the baby-safe muffins in the playroom.

Anyway, I was bored out of my skull waiting for the Artificer. She'd fail to disarm the trap, die, res out, and die on the next trap. But was that slow enough? Nooo! Then she stopped to chastise us for trying such an insanely difficult quest. "You're insane! You'll never reach the end!" She screached into the mic while we were, in fact, standing at the end waiting for her to catch up.

So I decided to have a little fun. Feigning ignorance, I asked "What's so hard about this quest? The traps only hit for a hundred damage." That set her off for realz but the babies were making a mess with the baby-muffins so I went afk.

When I returned to a TPK in process. The artificer was unconcious so I sent her my Unyielding Soverignty. After all, the only thing funnier than a 50 HP tough guy is 3000 HP of hjeals. But by mistake I hit myself with the healing and the artificer died, ruining the joke.

Despite my hubris I recognized that this many Drow on an epic quest well above my level was gonna be dangerous. So I backed away, cast a cure on the Monk just before he died and summoned my elemental. But something strange happened.

A webpaged popped up and minimized DDO. It proclamed "Did you know that Hewlet Packard invented the Cloud? Now you can enjoy Hewlet Packard's latest invention for free if you pay now!" I swapped back to DDO and noted with dismay that everyone had died except for me. So I clicked on my Cannith Crystal Summon again and watched the casting animation. I tried to jump away, but my newly TRed Paladin can't jump like he could when he was a Ranger. So I was stuck face to groin with a mob of angry drow cultists. I tried to heal myself but I couldn't. That's when I figured it out. My wife's laptop has a special shift key for F-Keys . While I was trying to send out heals, I was actualy turning down the audio and requesting to learn more about HP cloud.

Awash in knowledge I died.

But it was not all in vain, the artificer had a laugh at our fail, and I hope you, kind reader, have a hoot too.

Addicted to late night crafting. TR level 7.

Got to level 7 on my TR and stayed up all night crafting stuff. First I "ate" my entire library of level 2 tomes that I saved up from my last life. That upgraded my DEX to 19 so I was eligable to take Improved Two Weapon Fighting (TWF) instead of the lame feat I took at level 6. So I had Fred eat that part of my brain and I'm ambidexterous! Except that I don't have any good TWF weapons apart from my GreenSteel. So I made a pair of  Holy Silver Warhammers of Undead Bane. That took quite a few trips to the auction house because I ran out of good essences, didn't have two Soulstone: Undead and bought two Soulstone: lesser undead instead.

Well at that point it was waaay past my bedtime, but I was having so much fun, I figured I may as well upgrade the +1 Full plate I've been trudging around in since Korthos. So, I got some mithral Full Plate from the AH and whaddaya know? It's GREEN WITH GOLD SNAKE TRIM! Which nicely matches a Crown I've got in my TR bank account. So I grab the crown from the bank and notice that I'm high enough level to wear the Golden Cartouche I've been lugging around for a whole lifetime (my previous life did not know UMD). But that means I don't need the Runic Gloves from Korthos and now (ahem) my hands are free!

So when the dust settled I had:

• Eaten four +2 tomes (Dex, Int, Wis, Cha) 


• Crafted two  Holy Silver Warhammers of Undead Bane


• Crafted a +4 Mithral Full Plate Armor


• Crafted +4 Strength gloves.


• Crafted a +4 Wisdom crown. (Now I can cast without Wiz pots!)


• Spent 100k platnum and stayed up too late