Of Orcs and Hobgoblins--The Original Trifecta of Powa in Gianthold

“Hey, it’s just like old times,” cheered Spode as we raced across the metallic purple vastness of Gianthold’s landscape. It all kind of dawned on us that the only available static group members last night were Spode, Ulan, and myself.


It's the original tri-fecta of powa!

Lessah was dealing with a death in the family (condolences again!) and Ophiga was asleep on the couch due to an exhausting day of whale watching.


Well, we had a whale-of-a-good-time ourselves in Gianthold, but our group mates were truly missed. Spode pegged it though with the feeling of old times. The only thing that was really missing was Spode’s old sputter in his voice from Teamspeak lag mixing with his dialup connection and Guildwars (and Spode’s old boss “Mark” from the first year of our Guildwars adventures). If you haven’t read the beginning of our article, you’ll possibly not know that we’ve been together for years playing these games. I never really wrote about our adventures back then except for little congratulatory e-mails back and forth between us as we conquered challenges each week.


I can hear you asking, "What's that a picture of, Gleek?" Why that was the final screenshot I ever took of our group in Guildwars. Big, nasty, and dead giant Dune-esque worm in the background there. That fight took us nearly a month to conquer. We threw ourselves against that challenge over and over and over until we got it right. It was truly a trial in patience. Finally we got our strat down and won. We’re good for that. For the most part, Spode, Ulan, and myself are extremely patient gamers who don’t mind dying 100 times as long as we win in the end. Easy wins are awesome too, mind you, but I’d call us “weathered” or “resilient.” Kind of like a few old leather shoes that the dog finally gave up on . . . only with fresh and shiny faces. *shine* :p (Oo! Lailat! We'll be back!)

Anyway, last night’s exploration in Gianthold was our first “toe dip” into all that Gianthold has to offer. Kill counts were coming quickly to us and we didn’t have much trouble making it to the orc camp for our first instance.

Orcs? In a place called Gianthold? Where’s the giants, Team Spode? Yeah, here’s the thing about Gianthold. It may be owned and operated by giants, but all the littler races want to stake a bit of real estate of their own here since, you know, it’s good to be buddies with giants ever since the giants’ own empire was crushed.

There were a few giants to be killed out in the open last night, and we did in fact do our best to accommodate. I also did a little standing on the heads of giants as well. PHOTO MAGIC!


The commercial for Gianthold kind of lays it all out as to why a DDO player would want to hunt here. Lava flows, Dragon scales . . .


Wait wait wait . . . there was a blue dragon there in that commercial! HEY! We want to kill THAT for sure. :)

Unfortunately there weren’t any dragons to be killed last night. It was all about orcs . . . orcs and hobgoblins. Both were paying for us to off the other so we obliged both.

The orcs came to us in an instance known as “Feast or Famine.” Orcs apparently like to be compartmentalized in little caves behind locked doors or doors with giant levers. They also like to trap said doors with swords that swirl around them mechanically and poke you in the leg or maybe in the brain. Either way, they’re verrrry poke-y door traps with much poke-itude. They’re so poke-y that the NPCs won’t move past them unless you click the HURRY UP AND MOVE IT button (note to reader . . . help me tie in a pokemon joke here would ya?).

We ended up finishing this instance in no time flat, but had a weird feeling that we hadn’t quite seen everything. Our instincts were right come to find out. In reading on the wiki, you have to wait 30 minutes in the instance until an Orc hunting party comes along in a back hallway. If you win against these fellas, you will THEN get to enter the strange hole in the wall that you can’t move through. We were wondering why you couldn’t get back in there.

The orcs had their traditional worgs with them as well. It was nice to see a worg again . . . long time since the good ol’ romps through Three Barrel Cove.

Here's how it played out in the end:


The second instance we hit was just a hop, skip, and a jump or two to the side of the Orc encampment as we made our way through the hobgoblin instance known as “A Cabal for One.” Early on in this instance you run into a Hobgoblin named Gardak Bruntsmash who professes himself to be a traitor to the hobgoblins of sorts. You’re presented with two options from Gardak: 1- spare him and let him disable a good chunk of the traps in the instance for you or 2- kill him.


Well, since we were without a rogue, disabling all the traps sounded pretty darn good to me, and we went that route. For a moment we were all stuck next to Gardak as we tried to follow him through his secret passageway. I almost had to use my /stuck command, but luckily we all popped out and Gardak flew into his secret compartment and closed the door so we couldn’t follow. OHHHHH. We weren’t *supposed* to go in there. Got it.

Gardak somewhat lived up to his promises, but unfortunately Gardak didn’t disable the one trap that Spode died in. From further reading on the wiki, people will often choose to kill Gardak so they can get a lot of extra bonus exp from disabling the multitudes of traps in the instance; furthermore, this instance features the hardest trap to disable in the game. It’s a super-trap with blades criss-crossing and slicing and dicing around a very alluring chest . . . so alluring that Spode wondered if he could just take the trap damage while looting it. Um, no.

At the end of the instance we were rewarded with a bonus chest because we chose to have Gardak betray us. I’m ok with betrayal from a hobgoblin as long as it means extra loot. Right? Totally!

Here's how we were looking at the end of that one:


It was good to kill a few hobgoblins again . . . long time since the good ol’ romps through Cerulian Hills or Tangleroot Gorge or what have you. Much like the orcs had their worgs, the hobgoblins were palling around with their Glacial Wolves.

At the end of the night, we were a couple Ancient Elven relics richer and had some good times. Can’t ask for much more than that.

Happy Dueling!