My first time: Tomb of the crimson heart

Yeah yeah, I was gonna do the whole chain last night but I got a late start. Makes for a short post anyway.

I put the wife and kids to bed and hopped onto DDO later than I intended. I've completed these quests before (Necro 1) but I did it as part of an overleveled favor farming PUG. I was basically running as fast as I could to avoid getting left behind. I don't remember the geography or the story or anything.

No one joined my PUG. I blame it on the lateness of the hour, the alure of festivult, and the proliferation of Otto's irresistable boxes. And it probably doesn't help that despite the fun of Necro 1, it has a rep for stingyness of loot and xp per second. And anyway, the people who are attenuated to that are farming EPIC XP.

But thats ok. Honestly I kinda like soloing now that I'm on my 3rd TR. The stats and gear make it a snap to do traps and self heal. My DPS is slow, as always, but that's a trade off I've made every time.

This quest is mostly against wights. They have good HP and low DPS (just like me!) so the resulting conflicts are slow battles of attrition. Me and the hireling got in over our heads once, theres some optionals with a mob of human cultists and they've got Magic Users that work in tandem. The soundblast stunning was a bit much for the hireling, but nothing that a rez shrine couldn't fix up.

No, the real problem I had last night was my ancient foe...

...Hubris.

See, there's a half dozen identical hallways in this quest. All of them are suspiciously long and empty and yeah they all have blade traps that line the walls. Anyway, my problem was I was running around with my big red band leader hat of spot and my GM voice of even more spot and I had plenty of advance warning on all the traps. Whenever I saw the trap-sense warning I stopped swapped hats and trinkets a few times and disarmed everything. No problems, I even disarmed a trap on a natural 1.

So anyway, I got a trap-sense warning and spotted the trap from maximum range. The little white ray transmitted through a wall to find the thing. And then the wife and baby started to wake up. I rushed in there opened the trap and then checked to see if there was any way to complete the quest immediately.

The log said I only needed to find one more rune so I started running franticaly. I found the last of those trapped halls. I started to swap into my trapfinding gear but then, to save time I double checked with my spot gear. Nothing. Totaly safe.

So I ran through the hallway. Halfway there I got a trap-sense warning, and also got chopped by a big blade trap. Now for the Hubris part: instead of jumping to avoid damage while casting lay on hands and running to safety. I stood there like an evil mastermind thinking "Inconcievable!" And then the blades hit me again and I thought "I do not think that word means what you think it means." And then I made the wrong decision, I leapt and jumped forward into the next trap.

My hireling ran in too, and her spider summons ran in also. The nearest shrine was way too far, so I recalled ran back in, resummoned a hireling, resummoned a spider and went back to the hall. Sure enough there was a trap box in the exact spot where I reflexively started to look for a trap box. I also saw a new bug, the spider that followed the hireling and I to our doom? It was still in the trapped hallway just hanging out.

I brought the new spider summon in to say "hi" but they didn't interact or anything.

I found the missing rune and opened the final chamber. I got there and was impressed. Whereas the rest of the tomb was a maze of twisty passages, all alike this final throne room was really cool. High ceiling and the floor sloped up to the throne at a very steep angle. Not at all practical, unless the purpose of the throne room is to intimidate.

I dispatched the guards, ascended the ramp, approached the throne and battled yet another pair of human Magic Users. The same kind of group that had given my hirelings such problems. They also had the Mummy King that ruled this wicked throne room.

Since he was so good at interior decoration I assumed he was mostly harmless and focused on the casters. But no sooner had they fallen my wife and baby arose from their slumber. I aimed my character at the entrance of the throneroom and hit "autorun."

Ten miniutes later, I returned. I was running stupidly into the entryway doorframe, but the mummy was back on his throne. I approached the throne again and we battled. He hits pretty harder than I gave him credit for.

That was all I had time to do, but tonight is DDO-nite for real! I'm gonna finish up my level 5 bravery bonus quests (Tomb of the XYZ heart, and Delera's tomb part 1) and then level up!