Monday, December 31, 2012

Curiosity killed me thrice

"Ghost of a Chance" was my only unfinished level 5 quest on Three Barrel Cove. I've been unsatisfied with the lack of challenge that Elite quests present to my thrice TRed Dwarf (Ranger / Paladin / Paladin / Paladin). To to ramp it up a bit and celebrate my hardcoreness, I've running with a new self imposed challenge: lazy style.

What is lazy style? It's just like Gungnam style but without dancing or singing or any unessisary effort. Wheras somone doing DDO Gungnam style might ride an imaginary horse in a snowstorm on the steps of the house K to frighten the vendors? DDO Lazy style is going directly to Three Barrel Cove.

No one can tell you what Lazy Style is because defining-terms style is antithetical to lazy style. But here's some examples of how lazy style has influenced my playstyle.

My main is not wearing a belt -- Lazy Style!
No gloves either -- Lazy Style!
I use lockpicks I loot -- Lazy Style!
I only shipbuff when it's faster than walking, and I never go downstairs cuz that's too many loading screens for Lazy Style!
I only buy stuff if I walk past the vendor while traversing the shortest path between quests because that's Lazy Style!

So anyway I happened to be running through marketplace I stopped and bought a few hirelings. To my surprise, one of the level 7 drow wizards had firewall. Hired him (her?), a few healers, and ran to my last level 5 3BC quest: Ghost of a Chance. Mwah ha ha! Firewall is so cool.

But as soon as I entered Ghost of a Chance me and the hireling were in over our heads -- literaly! Swimming in water 30 feet deep with a half dozen pirate archers peppering us with arrows. I swim over to them, hop up on their dock and start blowing them down (that's pirate talk for "trip") but the whole time I'm thinking to myself "UNLEASH THE FIREWALL!"

(There's a display at our local hippy supermarket of Egg Nog and "Unleash the Kraken" rum. The display went up in October, which is 90 days too soon for buying Egg Nog or even whining about buying Egg Nog. So, to distract my early readers from reading the 'Nog cartons, I made a big deal about the octopus "Kraken" eating a pirate ship. Like everything that kids do, they overdid the Unleash the Kracken thing and that's why I was reflexively thinking "Unleash the Firewall!" There's also a song that Elmo sings in my head whenever I see a triangle.)

But no, it turns out that the hireling never unleashes the firewall unless you select a foe and click the firewall button -- too much effort for lazy style. So instead, I just set him (her?) to agressive and let him do his thing. A strategy I immediately named "Unleash the Drow!"

The Drow did a fine job with fireball, and she (he?) seemed to be self-healing somehow. I did not know non-warforged wizard hirelings could self-heal. I also had a mystery, my twinked out Spot gear was detecting two secret doors that I couldn't find with Search. The only other clue was the GM was going crazy talking about how everything smells like oil. I figure we could light this place up if only I had some fire. Unleash the firewall? No, doesn't work unless you select someone. What I really need is a torch or a flaming brand or something. Don't have one though. Beyond not having a torch, I abandoned the search for two reasons, the pirates kept respawning and I wanted to finish the quest before my wife got back.

The last fight was a pirate captain, a few dogs, and a bunch of warforged archers. So I was like "Unleash the Drow! Unleash my Pirate's Cove air elemental!" And then, since all the warforged archers were lined up in a row with me I thought about breaking the lazy style vow and unleashing the firewall.

In a way, using firewall to torch six warforged with a single cast is sorta the lazy way. I mean it takes more work to DPS them, especialy since their arrows never trigger my offensive guards. So I started setting up the firewall. First I ran around to position the hireling so he'd be perpendicular to the targets (See? "Perpendicular" is a word that is antithical to lazy style). And then I started tabbing through the targets since click-selecting them is too hard to do with a friendly air elemental getting up in my face. But, I figured that it was still worthy of the lazy way to unleash a firewall on a bunch of non-casters.

But amazingly, at that exact moment the AI decided at that to cast firewall. It was not paralell to the line of warforged, but it caught two of the six. And then another firewall appeared, and then a third. I was astounded. What could have possibly caused my idiot hireling to unleash a triangle of firewalls?

Suddenly my lazy apathy for him (her?) vanished. I wanted that triangle of firewalls to burn all the warforged! By then she (he?) had wandered onto the wrong end of the pirate captain's sword and died a hero's death. (Heroine's death?)

*ding*

The firewalls were still burning though so it wasn't a total loss. Usualy they go away when the caster dies, but she (he?) must have died in a swarm of awesome by learning to cast and then forgetting to cancel on death. ...and then the pirate captain cast a firewall on me and it all made sense.

Those firewalls I was celebrating were actualy the captain's firewalls. So then I had a huge battle, the kind where I rely on my Mabar Cloak of Night cloak to turn me invisible long enough to drink pots to be in fighting condition. I ran out of pots but I won anyway. Slew the captain and his robo-army. Looted his treasure and then my wife arrived.

I went afk and gave her a foot rub till she passed out. Then I returned to DDO. Luckily, the respawning pirates did not respawn in this room so I was safe for now. But the halls were full of them.

The map said there was a shrine back the way I came, and I didn't know how much longer this quest would be. The quest log said something about freeing a prisoner and you know how difficult that can be in a game caled DUNGEONS and dragons.

So I went back, heard about the blatantly obvious oil clues, found a lever to open the secret door to the secret passage and got my hireling back. He (she?) fought a bunch of spiders with me and then we unlocked the second inaccessable secret area. I took a long secret swim, and emerged in a hidden troll lair, no, even better! A Skrag! It's like a troll, but BLUE!

I unleashed the air elemental but the hireling was stuck in the water. Or something. I selected the Skrag and unleashed the firewall, but no dice. I fell to the ground incapacitated and then the Hireling showed up. She (he?) killed the skrag with a fireball and then, due to AI problems, could not drag my stone to the shrine. I released, but not before I looked around the lair. A collectable. A trunk. And, what's this?! A flaming brand? My mind raced. What could I do with a flaming brand?

Ignite whatever was making the oily smell!

So I ran as fast as I could back to the quest but I was too slow. I redid the quest and with the help of my new Dwarf-lady cleric hireling, I slew the Skrag, took his collectable and most of all, the coveted flaming brand. Worst weapon ever. It only does one point of fire damage, and the combination of fire and smoke makes it more difficult to see anything: -5 Spot. But who cares? It's gonna ignite whatever the DM was hinting at.

I waved the flaming brand around the whole dungeon but to no avail.

So I fought my way back through the respawning pirates and ended up at the prisoner that needed rescuing. He's locked into the DDO version of SAW. "Don't do anything or I'll die!" he says. "Don't do nothing or I'll be trapped like this for ever!" he says. "Or, kill the pirate captain in the next room and take his key." he says, forgetting to mention the captain is a wizard that likes to unleash the firewall.

Well I beat him once, so I can beat him again right? Wrong. Lazy style means never having to run to house K to buy healing potions. And without enough self-heals, my go invisible plan is dead in the water. Just like me, except in a firewall under a pile of Warforged.

I was just about to quit and lose all my progress again, but lucky for me, an underleveled person joined the group and entered the dungeon. I can't find anything out about him because he doesn't show up in /who and he's listed as anonymous. He enters the dungeon, dies and drops group without a word. But by then I'm back in, lazy style. I still don't have any pots, but at least I don't have to redo the quest.

The final fight is reset. The captain is waiting by his treasure chest, the warforged archers are in their places, and the dogs are alive and waiting for me. This time, I know that I'm out of healing pots, so I plan accordingly. I leap up to the archers and fight them while the air elemental goes crazy on the melee and the captain. The Dwarf-lady cleric is staying out of trouble, and occasionaly casting a searing light spell. The spider she summoned? I dont' know, dying in a fire most likely.

Without the archers, the cleric has a chance to heal me. With heals, I have a chance to survive the firewalls. I rush the captain and lay into him, soon he's dead and the rest of his robot army too. For the second time that night I looted his chest and took his key. Then, my hireling and I walked unopposed to the prisoner's cell. Freed him, and won.

I left the dungon. The flaming brand dropped from my inventory and remained.

1 comment:

  1. I can honestly say, this read is the best thing to read PRIOR to ushering in the new year.
    Hopefully. Forum excerpts will get better, but, in my 7 years of DDO history I know that this, is wishful thinking...

    ReplyDelete