I hate to admit it, I had to Google this reference to get it . . .
Utaalk!!! Adarab!!! Otkin!!! is Klaatu Barada Nikto backwards. What the heck is Klaatu Barada Nikto? Well, Wikipedia talks all about it hehe. Yeah, I'm showing my lack of geek . . . let me make up for it with gratuitous YouTube videos!
. . . and made even more edgy by Army of Darkness:
So, as you may have guessed, Team Spode returned to the quest of Acute Delirium last night and attempted HARD MODE!!!!
Yeah, that didn't go so well. We finally realized that we needed to slow down and not get too zealous about following Haxxorrax the Mind Flayer into the laundry room at the back of the not so peaceful pub and hotel located in The Twelve's downtown district after being swarmed by more evil eyes, beholders, Deranged Followers, and Xorian Renders than you could shake an artifact of unimaginable evil power at. (*breath* trying reading that last sentence aloud.)
Seriously, I counted like 30 mobs around us when we wiped that first time in Hard mode.
Our second try at Hard Mode went a little better until we were swarmed again by Frost beholders, Xorian Renders, and Evil Eyes while we attempted to gather beds and bookshelves to make our airship to Xoriat. Nope.
With half the play time gone for the night, it was definitely time to salvage the night on Normal mode and try our luck at getting Spode the Watcher's Blade he so badly desired . . . and didn't get. That's ok though. We still had an absolutely blast killng beholders and bursting giant beholder guts last night. It's definitely one of the more memorable and humorous quests we've done in DDO. :)
I will say that (for me personally) the saving grace of the night was finally tallying up enough adhesive slimes to improve my Infused Chaosrobe by adding Melodic Guard to it. yay!
Team Spode will return again next week with a different adventure to undertake. We're not exactly sure what that will be at this point, and we're certainly up for suggestions. Go ahead and make them!
I didn't mean what I said when I said Team Spode wouldn't be able to play together this week. Let's just say I made good time on the road, and the hotel had a good Internet connection. ;)
Team Spode met back in the Twelve on Sunday to finish off the final two quests of the Reign of Madness Adventure Pack. I like these small adventure packs that are packed full of goodness. Sure you're not getting the real estate value behind an adventure pack like Three-Barrel Cove, but that's just a lot of lawn to mow, right? I definitely don't want to mow an entire island like that when the exp and rewards aren't all that fancy. ;) Reign of Madness on the other hand . . . it's totally urban. Four quests packed in tightly to a neat little package just like the Lord of Eyes, gift wrapped and ready to kill, at the end of his self-named quest.
Oh yeah! He's a sexy one.
First up for the night was the Lord of Stone quest. Just to catch up on the story from last week, basically you've set the Lord of Eyes free upon the world from his prison in Khyber and handed him his massive sceptre of awesomeness in one of your more confused states. Way to go, kids. In order to take the Lord of Eyes down a notch and put him back into his right place, you need the help of someone almost as crazy as the Lord of Eyes, and that would be the Lord of Stone.
The Lord of Stone is in a happy plane of existance known as Khyber. WAIT A SECOND! DIDN'T TEAM SPODE JUST GO INTO KHYBER TO TANGLE WITH LOLTH'S BUDDIES? Yes! Yes we did! That's ok though, Khyber is awesome because therein are the loots and the experience points; therefore, to Khyber we did hie!
Our decent into Kyber and particularly the Lord of Stone's dungeon in Khyber was full of stoney types: Gargoyles, Golems, Giant Stone Guardians, a Medusa who likes to play with stone, a lion guy made out of gems, a couple of molten-stone magma guys, a couple of fire elementals who were melting the magma guys . . . you get the gist.
ALSO, EVIL EYES OF EVILNESS! Yup, the Lord of Eyes had his crop of disembodied eyes hanging out in the dungeon and they were totally spying on us.
Actually, the song that Spode was singing all night was another 80's hit: Lies by the Thompson Twins.
Only he'd switch out the word "lies" with "eyes". Yeah, we're bad like that.
The objective of this dungeon is to basically gather up a bunch of green gems and present them to the Lord of Stone as a gift while hacking and slashing your way through a host of stone baddies.
When you finally get to the Lord of Stone, he kind of giggles over your gift because, well, he can make anything out of stone and giving 20 gems to him is about the funniest thing he's ever seen.
He instead wants to test your internal metal and see if you can smash up a bunch of his animated rocks for sheer entertainment sake. Firewall, Blade Barrier, Otto's sphere, and Spode and Ophiga's blades did the trick for every wave of nasty he could throw at us . . . even this guy.
By the end of it all, the Lord of Stone was pleased enough he said he'd help us by sending a bunch of his rock buddies as an army to help you out because, heck, if he's stuck in Khyber, ain't no way no HOW he's going to let the Lord of Eyes escape. Misery loves company, and Team Spode loves exp:
Next up was the MAJOR FINAL BATTLE OF THE ADVENTURE PACK! DUN DUN DUN! The Lord of Eyes be upon us!
We were a little unsure of what we were going to be up against (we went in blind -- get it, went in blind to an instance called the Lord of Eyes???? *clears throat* sorry, bad joke), and knowing that the end boss of the Harbinger of Madness was a complete nightmare, we were a little extra precautious. Yeah, that was unnecessary. Although we did come super close to a TPK vs. a group of elementals when we pulled them all at once.
Let me back up a bit here. The way this instance works is that The Lord of Eyes has made his home down in the locked up depths of the Tower of the Twelve. Usually this place is off limits to common halflings like me, but given your awesome feats with the Lord of Stone, the Twelve hesitantly agreed to let you go into their nastier parts to poke around and hopefully poke out the eyes of Belashyrra (aka the Lord of Eyes). To do this, you have to bust through a wall separating you from Belashyrra. Busting through the wall involves powering up a giant Magefire cannon with five of the bound souls of each of four different and conveniently located elementals (fire, earth, water, and air).
We quickly found out the hard way that pulling one elemental at a time instead of three was best. *gulp* Let's not talk particulars.
Unfortunately for Spode, this instance required quite a bit of Super Mario skills as you had to jump around on portals constructed to levitate you great distances. If you had forgotten to put on your feather fall item *cough* spode *cough*, then you'd stand a great chance of plummeting to the bottom of the tower and have to bound your way back up to the top again. All the while facing against beholders and evil eyes.
From what I'm reading on the wiki, it appears that the Lord of Eyes gets harder and harder as you fight him because he spawns more and more evil eyes to assist him. I wouldn't know. I just mana dumped the damage spells as fast and furious as I could and held on to Ulan's healing skills for dear life. Thankfully he died quickly and we went on with the small matter of claiming our rewards.
Ophiga wasn't too impressed with the offering that were laid out before her, and I wasn't really either. I did get a cool Fleshshaper's Brigandine out of the adventure, but I really don't feel like dealing with the spell fizzles associated with a 10% fizzle rate from wearing it. Not my cup of tea. Out of the whole adventure line, my real desires are for Belashyrra's Scepter (didn't drop for us) and the two trinkets from the Sane Asylum's loot table. OH YEAH, and I'm interested in finishing up the Melodic Guard augment for my Infused Chaos Robe too. I still need about 30 adhesive slimes, SIGH! If only there was a way I could trade some of these other items in at the Alter of Insanity for more adhesive slimes. *rings the idea bell of Turbine*
I'm unsure what next week will bring, but I'm sure Team Spode will be there bringing its "A" game! Or "B" game . . . "C" would be fine too.
SEE YOU THEN!
Happy dueling
In this newest shocking bit of news on The Stormreach Sentinel we uncover that Babs is a card carrying LARPer!!!! GASP!!!!!!
Yup, last week Team Spode rained on the parade of the Reign of Madness and we brought Babs along for the ride. (Yes, she's a bard.)
So here's the deal, Team Spode has been busy lately. None of us seems to have time for anything, and I'm personally consumed with . . . well . . . what I'm consumed with lately, and I've been a bit neglectful with this fine blog. I appreciate your patience my friends. Babs appreciates your patience as well. (Btw, did you know that Babs requires rose petals in her toilet backstage? true story.)
Spode had spied a quest over in the Twelve and told us to follow him there. We obliged and discovered that his exciting quest line was none other than the Reign of Madness quest line that we all had wanted to do anyway. Reign of Madness is a four-part quest series that is the higher level Part 2 of the Harbinger of Madness quest chain that Team Spode dearly loved. It's kind of a no-brainer that we wanted to run this adventure pack, and it didn't disappoint! Loot a plenty and bizarre occurrences abounded in the two quests we completed a couple Sundays ago. Here's how it rolled out for us:
First up for the night was Acute Delirium. Spode had ventured into the instance by himself solo earlier in the week and got smoked by a number of baddies. After a bit of a hiccup with Ophiga purchasing the adventure pack we were underway and chasing down the evil Haxxorrax the Mind Flayer while Evil eyes and deranged followers tried to stop us. Our goal was to snatch up Belashyrra's Sceptre and . . . well . . . stop the madness! Unfortunately part of Bab's luggage escaped and swallowed the sceptre, and we had to deal with that.
Chester the mimic was awesome, btw. Babs has the coolest talking luggage.
What happened next was something definitely straight out of Disney's Sorcerer's Apprentice because the mimic used said scepter as it was about to die and opened up a portal to the plane to Xoriat. Then a huge beholder from Xoriat floated down and decided to swallow the scepter, "Yum!" as it said. To make matters crazier, the only way to chase the beholder into Xoriat was to construct a yacht made out of magically animated bookshelves and beds. I'm not making this stuff up. well, our boat of beds wasn't nearly as cool as Lessah and Clankenbeard's guild ship boat, but it worked out ok.
After sailing out into the wild red yonder of Xoriat, we soon discovered the natives were restless. By natives, I'm talking about eight elder beholders. As I understand it, you get a cool bonus chest when you kill all eight beholders without them ever setting a tentacle on the ship, but Team Spode wasn't that quick on the draw unfortunately. They still all died, just not outside of the ship, and we successfully saved Babs and her roses.
Too bad we had to jump inside the giant beholder's mouth and spoil Babs' mood.
After a quick trip into the beholder, retrieving the sceptre, and forcing "Quixxellops" to "quickly throw us ups," we were out and back down to good ol' Eberron where the Lord of Eyes himself greeted us with a conundrum where we either give him back his sceptre or he leaves open portals to Xoriat and Khyber. I wasn't really in the giving mood, but since all the other options really just led us to giving him the sceptre . . . PFFFT . . . FINE! YOU CAN HAVE YOUR STINKY SCEPTRE!
Gleek likes toys.
Speaking of toys, we received both of the rare named drops while we were running this adventure. Both the Lenses of Opportunity and the Watcher's Blade dropped for us. Spode and Ulan were happy. ;) I feel bad about Babs though . . . I think she's still in Xoriat somewhere. O.O
Apparently you can solve a puzzle to free Fred, but we opted for killing a couple of Beholders instead. It was a little confusing, but we stumbled through it. From what I'm reading now on DDO Wiki you can kill a beholder, do the puzzle, and kill the other beholder later so you get more chests? Something like that. You can read it for yourself! yay!
In the end, you have to face off with an Ice Beholder named Nurse Ratchet who has a nasty raid-like mechanic where the beholder teleports to a random party member and then pulses with energy that WILL KILL YOU! Nurse Ratchet made Team Spode look like Steaks.
Imagine that, an ice beholder cooking us into steaks? FREEZER BURNED STEAKS! So mean.
So, it took a bit of regrouping and re-entering, but soon we had recovered from that nasty surprise, finished off the icy nurse beholder, and completed our quest.
Sadly neither of the mega-awesome mega-amazing trinkets dropped for us. I would gladly wear either: Shard of Xoriat or Sustaining Symbiont. Melikes! MEWANTS!
I know I'll be running these quests a few times more since I'm after the melodic guard augment for my Infused Chaosrobe.
I can't wait for Team Spode's next adventures through the Reign of Madness, but sadly it's going to be another couple of weeks until our static group runs as a team again. Keep us marked in your RSS feeds kids!
You know when I break out the Hall and Oates I've hit the bottom of the desperate YouTube video stockpile. It's just one of those days where I've run out of time to post about Team Spode's adventures. I've got a metric ton of things going on right now.
Even more interesting than giant stacks of beds and bookcases forming an airship to the Plane of Madness is all the buzz surrounding Turbine at PAX East. Check out some of these pictures coming out of PAX:
This Sunday it was all about the Lords of Dust. In fact we ventured a dusty road into the exotic depths of Khyber to take care of these Dusty Lords of Dust.
Dusty Rhodes knows all about the Lords of Dust
Yes, you might say we wrestled with the dusty roads of Khyber, indeed!
*tips hat to the ladies*
OH MY WORD LOOK AT HER EARS! Those things could poke your eyes out! (Borrowed that joke from Spode when he was giggling over Ophiga's ears btw)
Anyway, the three quests that came along with Update 13? Those were good for just under 30k experience for a couple hours of work. After the "very long" instances of the Vale of Twilight, a few "long" instances (to the tune of around 30 minutes each) was definitely a welcome sight, especially to exp hungry Ophiga and Ulan. Both rolled their level to 17.
So, the whole thing starts out as a plea from a guy in the harbor named Dectaran. He points out to you that Inquisitor Gnomon, one of his good Silver Flame buddies, has ventured into a Lords of Dust cultist base of operations with only a weak initiate at his side. It's like Dectaran was saying, "Yo, Gnomon is a moron, he bought a level three cleric hireling contract for this wicked bad level 16 dungeon . . . um . . . hope he's not permadeath! LOLZ!"
As it turns out, Gnomon is a moron, but for different reasons . . . Raksasha-like Reasons!
Oh that old problem from 10,000,000 years ago in Eberron seems to (again) finally come to a head and burst open like a pimple in the sweaty sun. See, for millions of years Eberron was actually run by demons in the Age of the Demons, but the dragons and a crazy band of couatl decided that it was time to kick the demons out so we all could experience a much cooler time in Eberron history, the Age of Dragons. Ever since then, the Raksasha and their buddies made an evil gang known as the Lords of Dust. Their cause? Duh! To end the Age of Dragons and bring back the good times of the Age of Demons! Who wouldn't want the fun times of Drow and Demons-a-plenty!?
Crazily enough, Team Spode and the Lords of Dust seem to share something in common. We too believe all dragons must die. Meh, not so much for any grand cause like the Age of Demons, but more for the loots. Unfortunately for the Lords of Dust, we like the flavor of their loots as well. Check out what we got from these adventures! Cruel Nobility and Templar's Justice.
Those will do.
The Church of the Silver Flame was completely wigged out by Gnomon. You never really know which one of your supporters is an evil shapeshifter, right? And after all those good times hanging in the parish. Who would have thought?
So the new pimple in the Harbor turns out to be a road to Khyber.
What's Khyber you ask? Well, Khyber is a big massive underground realm used as a prison for these Lords of Dust types. Rumor has it that Khyber is actually the remains of Khyber the dragon, who was one of the freakishly gigantic progenitor dragons of the past that created Ebberon. Fitting, eh? Trapping the Lords of Dust in the guts of a dead dragon? That's a good way to rub salt in the wounds. :)
You know who isn't happy about that situation in life? This evil gigantic spider lady:
Oh, that's not Lolth . . . even though you may be thinking that upon first glimpse. Nah, this is one of her underlings and an actual Lord of Dust named "The Spinner of Shadows." From what I understand, The Spinner of Shadows had to go to a lot of legal work to change her name to "the Spinner of Shadows" from Susan Smith.
Susan was extremely pissed off at Team Spode and chased us all around Khyber's guts until she finally had enough and Lolth peeked her head in to see what was going on.
Ahh crap, well at least the Silver Flame was able to put a transporter beam lock on us and beam us out of there, right? Right! And Team Spode didn't even have one TPK for the night. We pretty much kicked spider butt and finished the night on time. That definitely made the East coasters happy. You know what else made us happy? This awesome cut scene after finishing all three quests!
WHAT THE HECK IS THAT YAY!
Thanks for these great adventures Turbine! If this is the speed of the adventures to come with Menace of the Underdark, then YES PLEASE!
