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
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Next up for the night was a trip through The Sane Asylum. To sum up this instance quickly . . . you get to save Fred! Yes, THEE FRED! You know, Fred the Mindflayer from House Jorasco? Not, this Fred.
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!
Until next time . . .
Happy Dueling!
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