I left you all with a great cliff hanger last week, so I think we need to finish this up as we enter THE MAZE OF MADNESS! Dun dun dun! Note to gentle adventurer: bring a rogue. And that’s all you need to know about our Team Spode adventures in THE MAZE OF MADNESS this week. Anti-climactic, I know.
Seriously though, I love that name . . . MAZE OF MADNESS. I love the voice I hear in my head when I type it out . . . THE MAZE OF MADNESS! It’s kind of loud and echo-y like a bad 1930’s movie announcer . . . REFER MADNESS!
Unfortunately the maze here isn’t much of a maddening maze. Maybe it’s just me, but when I think “maze,” I think of those cool corn field mazes that crop up around Halloween time, you know?
Turbine needs mazeplay to help out their minotaurs. Definitely a maze is the proper place for a minotaur (or 50 minotaurs as the case may be) . . . at least according to the Greeks . . . and I definitely think a maze of stone is the proper place to house your minotaurs. A corn maze wouldn’t go over well with a minotaur clan since they could just bash through the corn and make their own pathways like an angsty teen football team. This maze is pretty straight forward though. The only thing that might trip you up in THE MAZE OF MADNESS is a secret door on a natural stone wall that’s a little hard to find.
Ophiga imagines about dungeon building a bit in her post . . . to expand on that thought, this “maze” is really more like a lever factory outlet trip gone wild. I can see the dungeon engineer in my mind hanging out at his favorite lever factory outlet looking at all the latest gadgets for tripping up adventurers. That was one full shopping cart of levers by the time he was finished shopping, let me tell you. Maybe even two carts! ;)
Basically each door you come upon here has two or three levers. You need to pull ‘em to open the door, but one of the levers will most likely stick you in the gut with a trap . . . unless you have a rogue. Thus why to the casual Googler of information about THE MAZE OF MADNESS should know that the best thing to do with this dungeon is bring a rogue. Of course, that pretty much describes all of DDO, but hey, you didn’t search on that, did you, you random Google person you? No. (I feel bad about random Googlers coming here thinking this would be a good source of information. Jus' sayin'.)
I did videotape a good chunk of this dungeon unbeknownst to Team Spode. Conversation is always a bit one-sided on those though as I’m still having trouble recording what I’m saying. I think I’d have to run a separate instance of teamspeak to record my half of the conversation . . . meh . . . I digress. We slaughtered this thing:
Funny enough, we called it last week when we weren’t too far from being done with the dungeon as it turns out, and as it turns out, we should have called it a night during the amazingly huge instance known as Madstone Crater. It says it’s "Very Long." It ain't kidding. We ended up a full 1.5 hours past our usual end time, and Writes-a-Lot Bear, the East Coaster, was a complete studdette for sticking it out the entire time. Sadly, we have to do this one all over again because Ulan wasn’t present with us. Oh well, at least now we’ll know about the untamed fury of those three giant skeleton enchanters down an optional side path. Mana dump to kill them = necessary.
Really, to sum up Madstone Crater would be this: lots of waves of mind-controlled enemies, lots of zoning from one area to the next, lots of hill giant seers to keep safe, and GOOD TIMES YO! BTW, I FREAKING HATE THE OGRE MAGI! THEY MUST ALL DIE! (again, jus' sayin'.)
I also recorded a bunch of this instance. I think I’m going to delete these files though . . . too painful to watch. Here was the salvageable portion (remember my commentary is muted . . . MAN, I need to figure that out):
WOOOOOO!
So perhaps I'll have a more detailed analysis of Madstone Crater next time we venture in there (we have to go again anyway like I said before). I’m pretty sure you’re all done with my chatty nonsense by this point in the blog post. LOL. I'M OUT!
Happy Dueling!
Yay!
ReplyDeleteand yes, figure out that mic recording ;-)