Bursting Yaulthoon's Harbinger of Madness Bubble

Last night was a lot of fun. Team Spode was warned about the final boss in the "In the Flesh" quest by Ekeiram, and definitely Yaulthoon is not an easy fight . . . even on normal mode, but Team Spode would not be deterred! Even if we went an hour OT on our regular playing time.

The night started out pretty mellow. We just needed to help Tony finish up the Sinister Storage quest since for some reason he didn't get flagged as completing that quest last week. Basically this quest asks you to defeat waves of "sinister" Xoriat baddies as they flood into a storage room. Unlike the good ol' Protect Baudry's Interests level 2 quest, there's no giant crate of supplies to protect. This is just straight up slaughter as you wipe out all the Thraak Hounds, Mind Flayer Mages, and creepy Taken as you can until Mahlurat (a flesh-render of the nastier variety) shows up.

There was nothing much to report from this quest other than Team Spode was victorious! A couple Staffs of Fleshshaping dropped for us. MAN, so upset the Staff of Fleshshaping has the same look as my Master Transmuter's Staff. Ahhh well. :)

Compared to Spode's new sword, the INSANITY, the looks of my meager weapon is definitely nothing to get excited about. Here's a short exchange from last night where we discuss the size of Spode's sword.



In the Flesh is a great instance and definitely an epic ending to the Harbinger of Madness quest series. How often do you get to be trapped in a mind flayer's mind, being blasted with Psyionics in DDO? I'm not sure, but I think I'll put this experience down as "unique" to the game.

Since I finally figured out that Fraps was the answer to my problem of not being able to record what I'm saying while videoing AND since I'm in kind of a video mood today, I'll just let the combat video speak for itself. (need to turn down the pick up of my headset mic so that I'm not subjecting people to the background sounds of my real life home LOL)



Of course, that victory was after about an hour of trying to figure out exactly how to go about killing this thing. The first time we saw the globes coming at us, I thought, well . . . perhaps you have to hit them back at him baseball style. (scratch)

Not much longer after that we figured out that the bubbles would burst the bubbles holding Yaulthoon's prisoners. The DM's voice helped us realize that made yaulthoon susceptible to damage. Thanks DM!

The real problem was with that horrifically beautiful Mind Thrust ability from the Mind Flayer. Every time we'd get Yaulthoon down to about 15% life left, he'd just rip us apart with these beautiful strands of pink death. On the third attempt we decided to check DDO Wiki and see what we missed. What we had missed were (as I so eloquently state in the above video) "those darn pods around his feet."

That made all the difference.

The other major challenge from In the Flesh came in the form of what is known as a doomsphere. From what the wiki is telling me, there are only three doomsphere mobs in the game. Dead Pykzyl (which surely is a street name of saying Dead Pickle) wiped us a couple times as well . . . we'll be back to destroy you Mr. Dead Pickle! We're saving our revenge for the upcoming weeks.

At the end of the day and largely thanks to the sweet 20% exp bonus going on during the holidays, Ulan dinged 15 and I upped my level to 17. Spode finished two of the three 1500 kill quests in Gianthold, and now is only 3 ranks behind my exp lead in the group. Just between us, I think he's on a mission to pass me by. :D

Of other news, it's good to hear that Lessah is back amongst the community! Cocktail Hour's X-mas special was a good one! Also, can't forget to mention DDOCast's Holiday special as well. I've been downloading back episodes of DDOCast lately and listening to them on my drive to work.

I gotta figure out a segment . . . I just gotta!

Happy Dueling!