Depths of Discord: Hilarity ensues

A while back I was finishing up all the level 4 quests for bravery bonus and favor farming. I ran the first two depths quests but not the last two because they're level 5.

Well today I was finishing up the depths quests and I could not find the entrance to Depths of Discord. I found entrances to the other three. The Depths of Despair, Darkness, Doom, but I could only guess that they took out the entrance to Depths of Discord out when they cleaned up house D?

As fate would have it, there was an LFM for the Depths quests. So I joined, thinking that it would save me some time.

Ha!

It was the craziest PUG ever! People running everywhere, going in circles, soloing the Troglodite boss and dying. And the pure rogue needed someone to open a locked door. So I opened doors, healed the incapacitated, and grabbed soulstones. (One soulstone was pretty cool, I dropped it by the altar, it turned into a dwarf that slew the boss, looted the chest and opened the next quest on elite. )

Then I had to go afk for real life stuff. It was the craziest family ever! Toddlers running everywhere, going in circles, Pre-schoolers comforting the baby and crying. And my wife needed me to open a locked picklejar. So I opened jars, changed the stinky, and fed baby girls. (One baby girl was pretty cool, I dropped her by the baby toys, she crawled to a castle her big sister made out of a cardboard box, flattened a wall, grabbed the tea set and opened it up to get at the Holiday themed Oreo cookies hidden within.)

After all that, I returned to DDO and was promptly slain by a bunch of trolls and wolves. Which was a total shock. I haven't had any trouble with the fighting so far. I've been killed by traps and failed to protect fragile NPCs. Casters have been troublesome too, but melee? Really?

So I exited out and found, to my surprise that there IS an entrance to the Depths of Discord -- it's located to the left of the gate as you're heading to the Marketplace. Well, I figured it must have been because of the Dungeon scaling or dungeon alert or something. So I hopped back in without a hireling (to avoid dungeon scaling) and again, I had a savage fight for my life.

Nearly died several times hacking my way through a pack of wolves and minotaurs. Then it was two trolls, I killed one, and almost the second one. But I had to run and heal, slowly with wands and pots.

Running was easy thanks to my Mabar: Cloak of Night. It occasionaly procs improved invisibility which makes sighted enemies wander aimlessly and attack the empty air.

So I healed up while the troll looked for me. By the time he found my hiding spot, I was at full health. But so was he! (trolls regenerate duh!) and so we had to epic battle from scratch. I won, but then I was at the part of the quest I was most aprehensive about: The hallway of earth elementals.

I remember so many deaths in that stupid hall. My characters have almost all been Dwarves, and have benefitted from maxed out Dwarven Spell resistance. But it never seems to work against Earthgrab. Earthgrab isn't as deadly now as back when helpless meant auto-hit and auto-crit, but it's still risky.

Cautiously, I crept down the hallway and fought the first elemental without alarming the rest. I won, barely. There's was no way to fight them simultaniously and survive.

I crept forward again. Suddenly two Elementals arose from the ground, and two more trundled towards me from around the corner. I played at seperating them but to no avail.

Instead, I made a mad dash to the shrine door and turned the valve. As the action was completing the elementals attacked. I avoided damage long enough to open the door and ran inside hoping for the door to close so I could fight the few elementals that followed me inside. The door stayed open. I fought until I was incapped. Then some of them strode out the door while a big one stood guard as my lifeforce ran out.

Died, rezed behind the shrine and had a few moments to heal before that hunk of rock spotted me. After another near-death battle I was victorious and looking at a room of, again, four elementals. Plus a rednamed elemental named "Landslide." Supposedly, the inhabitants of this portion of the depths worship Landslide as a god.

I couldn't make a dent in them, and I couldn't pull them apart, and what little progress I made was undone when they hit the ends of their leashes and honeycomb ported back to the throneroom with full health.

This would have been solo-fail but I had a little something from Pirates Cove -- an elemental gem! I summoned the air elemental and followed it into Landslide's throneroom. Soon everything was dead except for me and 20% of Landslide. I had no air elemental, he had no friends. It was just the two of us.

That was a crazy fight, but I survived and achieved yet another point on my elite Bravery Bonus streak. But honestly I have no idea why this one quest seemed so much more difficult than everything else so far. I wish Elite was always this much of a struggle! :)