What does a demon queen with six arms do to Team Spode?

Allow me to veer a bit here and just ask, Have you ever had a really frustrating day of gaming? That's my day today.

1- My son is replaying Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for probably the fifth time. Somehow this game resurfaces about every six months and every single time he gets lost in its puzzles, which means dad has to play through a good chunk of the game for him to get up to the exciting battles. It's kind of a frustrating experience remembering how to work your way through its puzzles and even worse when you're son has no patience to read quest text.

2- I've been playing Magic The Gathering: Tactics on the side. I finally reached a wall in the game that just seems impassable for me. Chapter 3 is a complete bish. Dying over and over again in that game is making me antsy.

3- and then there's Against the Demon Queen Part 1 . . .

Ok, so here's the story for you all. The mission started innocently enough. We really have no plans for finishing the raid for this unless a miracle happens, but Team Spode was up for part 1, right? right!

So Against the Demon Queen Part 1 starts off with a poem . . . quaint!


The poem here is actually the key to the instance, and it will be different every time you visit the instance. Definitely check out the strategy guide over on DDO Wiki for more information on decoding that.

Basically, you have to know which room to go to in which order or else be transported to a cage holding several nasties that want to kill you.

◦Poisoner: Scorpion
◦Devious: Snake (Troglodytes)
◦Hungry: Wolf (Gnolls)
◦Grasping: Octopus (Mindflayers)
◦Mockery: Monkey (Wildmen)
◦Night: Bat (Mephits)

Our path, based on our poem was: Mindflayers, Wildmen, Troglodytes, Gnolls, Mephits, and Scorpions. That all went off pretty much without a hitch save for a couple nasty traps.

There's some good ones in there . . . like these spinning blade traps underwater.


I think Dungeon Engineer would be an awesome job, don't you? Too bad Dungeon Empires doesn't capture more of the sinister trap building part of being a dungeon engineer . . . I digress.

At the end of each of these alcoves full of nasties, you get to fight a raksasha. Raksasha are fond of spouting poetry themselves. Like: "Starvation is death, yet a ravening wolf is stronger than a pampered hound."



. . . OH OH OH . . . how about this one: "The sword of the Octopus has an iron grasp."


Those Raksasha are friggin' NUTS, man. THEY MUST DIE! And die they did . . . no sweat for Team Spode.

Eventually we got to the Demon Queen herself after solving the riddle and killing a good number of Djinni and aforementioned poetry spouting Raksasha.

She even poses for screenshots!


quaint . . . again.

Of course, the real photo ops happen when she's bearing down on you slashing you to bits with either a freaking nasty blade barrier or her own personal six-armed blade barrier of death.


She's definitely rocking my world right there.

The strategy that we attempted was to kite her through firewalls and bladebarriers of our own. We failed miserably.


We gave it two shots before calling it a night. The first time we got dear Lailat down to 50%. The second time we got her down to around 30%.

. . . Frustrating. Spode was none to happy about our defeat, "I HATE LOSING!" Ahhh, Spode. I'm so with you. We all are.

The group consensus was that we're going to head to Gianthold next week and put this quest on hold until everyone is Level 15. We'll be back, Lailat . . . we'll be back.

-signed, Team Spode

p.s. I did find a tip though thanks to the C.L.A.W. forums! Next time we should try using the spell "Waves of Fatigue" to slow her slither down . . . it'll make for easier kiting.

Happy Dueling!