"Eladrins with Attitude" My New Nerdcore Band Name Idea

It rarely happens, but some nights Team Spode goes into overtime, and the East Coasters of the bunch really become the stars of the show because you know that Monday morning is going to be a beast for them when they wake up.



Thank you Ophiga and Ulan, thank you!

And why were we up so late actin' a fool? Two reasons:

1- Running with the Devils
2- The Coalescence Chamber

The Running with the Devils instance started out to be a kind of standard rescue mission. There was a guy named Tolarn Rhawn, an Eladrin, that needed Team Spode to play marines and save his skin.


But, as the splash screen totally spoils, when you find him he throws a hissy and attacks you. In fact, you actually run up against two flavors of Eladrin throwing a hissy the entire dungeon: Bralani and Ghaele. Ahh, Eladrin . . . they're the Chaotic Good Celestial beings from a place that probably looks a lot like this . . . only even more Celestial and awesome:


That's the concept art for the Archon Citadel, home to a different kind of good-align Celestial known as an Archon, the Lawful-good celestials. Thanks for that info wiki!

So, really, it is a tragedy that you have to fight off waves of Eladrin; however, that tragedy somehow didn't come through in this adventure until right now, while I'm typing this blog post. Hmmm. I'm not sure what to do with that information.


ANYWAY! If I remember right, Tolarn was totally a Tiefling in disguise. Ahh, Tieflings, they're much much different than the Eladrin. Their fancy evil extraplaner selves inhabit a land that looks much different from the good-aligned planes. Those evil-places look a little more like this:


or maybe this:


The "running with the devils" portion of the quest has to do with you seemingly racing against an alternate party of uber devils that . . . killed us.

But, Spode was handy with a spirit cake in a side room with a shrine and all was dandy again. We enacted our revenge, finished the adventure, and had buckets of time to spare!

When you have buckets of time to spare, what do you do? You move on to the next adventure, right?! Well, let's just say that if the Running with the Devils adventure was marked "Very Long," The Coalescence Chamber should have been marked, "Very very long."

I'm sure people who run these adventures all the time and know the puzzles therein like the back of their hand can smoke this thing in 15 minutes or some such nonsense, but Team Spode was in here 137 minutes as the score card indicates:


Cripes, did we actually have 16 deaths in there? Oh the shame. I remember why it was like that though. I do. It was because we didn't refuel our mana and rest up in between Running with the Devils and the Coalescence Chamber instances.

/facepalm


Hey, Oseerz, does 137 minutes count as hurrying?

Yes, for 137 minutes we ran around trying to be very conservative with our mana. It didn't work out so well, and I eventually blew every mana potion I had in my bags and even bought some more from the DDO store. LOL. you'd think we'd know this by now.

The deal with this instance is that it's a giant series of tunnels that's filled with archers and casters who will archering and castering you to deathering. It's a painful experience that had me doing a lot of this kind of nonsense:


If you can't tell what I'm doing in that picture, it's me casting firewall on some bad guys and hiding behind a door while they burn to death.

Eventually we killed every last "Fiendish" bat, scorpion, gelatinous cube, gnoll, troll, tiefling, and troglodyte in the instance and I got the sweetest message in the world on my screen:


OH LOOK AT THAT! FORK! *wipes hands clean*

I'm still hanging at 18th level though. I'm waiting for Team Spode's east coasters to catch up to my level before progressing on to 19th and 20th. We've got a lot of killing yet to do and although my exp bar now simply shows, "Maximum XP Achieved," I shall gladly chill at this level for my compadres. 18th was really what I was shooting for anyway when I was gaining all that exp in the first place. I really really wanted Fire Savant III.

Next week, even though we are now Shroud raid worthy, we will probably head back to the harbor and have a chat with the new Update 13 NPCs and try our hands wrestling with the Lords of Dust cultists. Until then, I hope you all have a marvelous week.

Happy dueling!

Dio Plays DDO

Dude, Dio . . .



I think I may be the keyboard player for Dio. That cheesey synth-horn riff is something I would play.

Team Spode woke up from its week long slumber and met up in the bar in Meridia. As Ulan wiped the gunk from her eyes and Ophiga put on some drow deodorant, Spode was singing Dio to us.

(whoa Dio and Deodorant . . . after Dio they should have called it Diodorant. Dio was a game changer band like that.)

In fact, I remember Ophiga saying, "so what are we doing tonight?" And after I dropped my "can't resist not saying it" line from animaniacs (what we do every night, Pinky; try to take over the world!), Spode spoke clearly and resolutely, "just follow me." You see, Spode has spent a good amount of time on his off hours just running around the area of the Vale of Twilight. He can't stand seeing his kill count numbers hanging there, haunting him with thier "550 of 700" or what-have-you. No, Spode must hit that 700 number . . . and then the number beyond . . . and then the number beyond. I say it's a good quality.

Spode led us up the mountain peaks to a little place known as the Den of Obscurity aka Rainbow in the Dark (cue Dio from video above).


As we soon discovered, the deal with the Den of Obscurity is that you can't see two feet in front of you unless someone is holding a really nifty archmagi one-hander with a glowing lightsource equipped to it, so you could instead see about ten paces in front of you instead of zero paces in front of you. Everyone agreed that GLEEK would be the best one to hold that staff. OH SURE! Put the Halfling sorcerer up front leading the crew. Yeah, that'll work out great . . .

Actually, it wasn't that bad . . . until.


POKEYS!

The really nasty trick that Turbine played on adventurers in this dungeon was that they couldn't just make a straight path with all that foreboding darkness. NOOOOO, they needed to make you climb and fall and walk pathways with mazelike qualities. The whole purpose was to make you carry that lightsource with you the entire dungeon.

This worked well for Team Spode for the first 3/4ths of the dungeon, and then tragedy struck! We call it the curse of the Super Mario World. There's a spot where you have to jump over a series of pedestals surrounded by said pokeys. Let's just say that there are a couple of people in Team Spode that aren't so good with the curse of the Super Mario World *cough* Spode *cough* Ulan.

Anyway, I was convinced to press forward into a tunnel alone and just kind of scout ahead past this area cursed with Super Mario Rot. What I found ahead was a room with a button on the floor. Being the Halfling that I am, I can't leave any button un-pressed. yeah, a room full of fire elementals did me in. Even worse, I was carrying the light source. Luckily the trapped walls dropped and my ghost form was able to run back close enough to the group to catch a rez from the clerics. A few chain lightnings later, I had my lightsource again and informed Team Spode that they would in fact have to face the curse of Super Mario World.

We all jumped over after a few minutes of painful pokeys in the toes, arms, and eye sockets.

Next, and unfortunately, we experienced a TPK (that's geek-speek for "total party kill" . . . meaning we all wiped and died) shortly after that when some Gnoll casters started kicking the crap out of us. I don't know what happened, really . . . they just caught us off guard and started using a combination of Ice Storm and some wicked knock down that just, sucked. Everyone but Spode released, even knowing that now our lightsource was now dropped on the ground and located beyond a maze of a dungeon and a wall of Super Mario Pokeys.

After a few racks of ribs at the bar in Meridia, we went back to see if we couldn't somehow make it back to Spode and win this dungeon. We were too far invested in the adventure to simply give up at this point.

At first I tried Firewall. This *kind of* worked to see where walls and obstacles were, but not good enough. Then it came to Spode and myself simultaneously like a giant disco ball from space beaming genius into our minds: Otto's Sphere of Dancing!


Yup, I lit that place up like a Brazilian Discotheque.

It took A LOT of mana, but it was effective enough that we were able to even navigate our way through the super mario world spikes and rescue Spode. WE UNLEASHED HOLY HECK UPON THOSE FREAKING GNOLLS. You know there was some retribution to be meted out.

Finally after traversing spike world a fourth or fifth time, we were at the Rainbow puzzle at the end of the dungeon.


And with a quick two-step from Ophiga dancing on the color pads . . .


The puzzle was solved and we were fighting off Turun-Palo, the fire elemental disco master. Turun-Palo is apparently Finnish for The Great Fire of Turku, which also appears to be an old TV show from 1982 and what looks like a Finnish Punk Band Record Label? Holy esoterica, Turbine!


Either way, Dio approves, as does Team Spode! We had a great time salvaging the Rainbow in the Dark adventure since we were so close to defeat. Good times! Here's the exp report:


Happy dueling!

p.s. you all excited about the Druid Class?!?!?

Gnolls and Devils, Gettin' it ON in Vale of Twilight! *whistle*

Team Spode spent our third Sunday hanging out in the Vale of Twilight this week and decided a romp through the Ritual Sacrifice instance sounded just about our speed.

The backstory here with this instance is that there's this fella named Lahnden Nacien from the Twelve that's glued himself to a seat in Meridian's hottest night club and eatery with a giant glowing chalice over his head. He really wants your attention!

He spins a sad tale of Windlasher Gnolls and devils.

What is it with Gnolls, right? I mean either they're hanging out with the undead in the sands or they're chilling with devils in the Vale of Twilight. Come on gnolls! Isn't it obvious who you need to be making pacts and deals with? JOIN TEAM GOOD! We make pets out of dogs! You can be man's best friend!

Oh inherent evil natures . . . pfffft.

Team Spode was more than willing to go check out what the Windlasher Gnolls were up to way up in the hilltops.


What we found was that they are into sticking you with arrows from up above. The dungeon masters of Turbine know this simple truth, give a gnoll a bow, and he will try to make adventures his pincushion. For Gleek this means that this is nothing a little blur, acrobatics, and firewall can't overcome. It also means I get a lot of extra kills that no one else will. *evil laughter*


OH! You should have seen the jealousy of Spode at my kill count in this instance. It's ok, my Fire Savant nature is going to make me less effective against all these devils we're about to run into soon. *wink* I'll be back to casting otto's in those instances.

So anyway, along the way through the Ritual Sacrifice instance, you discover what's what with these gnolls. Right? The deal is that they've made a deal. A deal of super evilness. A deal with the devils. You also find that the final act to seal the deal is in progress. No, this does not involve a gnoll in lingerie, this involves a fella in a dress named Paetus.


He's an agent of the Twelve, and as Team Spode rolled in, we interrupted his sacrifice and totally saved his life and shut down the evil tiefling who was carrying the evil pact signed between the gnolls and demons.

WOOT!

No more pact of evilness means that our buddy Lahnden Nacien can continue to sit comfortably in the open air bar of Meridia and continue to order plate after plate of hotwings and continue going about his merry Twelve business.


For Team Spode, it's just another successful mission leading to the Subterrane and a pocket full of 15k experience for the night.

SIDE NOTE: Hey, my wife and I have once again crafted another happy dueling podcast that you might be interested in listening to! (Well, the first half at least.) We talk a little DDO, and I even was able to secure a segment from an old DDO podcasting queen, Ms. Lessah herself. Check it out!

Happy dueling!

Why are there so many songs about Crimson foot spiders?

Oh Vale of Twilight! I feel just like Fluttershy Pony for you. Just imagine this was a halfling singing about Vale of Twilight:


One of my favorite moments from the night was Team Spode unleashing their army of Cake Djinnis:


Mmmm, fluttershy halfling likes cake! btw, congrats on the sixth birthday, DDO! And thanks for the free loot!

~~~~~~~~~~

This week we decided to go back in to that same Let Sleeping Dust Lie instance from last week. It was a real nail-biter there at the end when we were down to our last spider:


Two things about that screenshot:

1- one spider left
2- Yes, that is a Kar-thul Harrier shakin' his derrière! WAVE YOUR ARMS IN THE AIR! WAVE YOUR ARMS LIKE YOU JUST DON'T CARE!

We kind of got lost in the tunnels there at the end trying to find all the various journals and keys and whatnot, but at least this week we cleared out those entrance tunnels before reading about how we shouldn't kill the spiders. What did we learn kids? A little lack of knowledge goes a long way! RIGHT!

Thankfully we stopped the rakshasa's plans to use dustamancy to control Eberron and earned 12k exp to boot.


Not bad! Not bad! Here's the score card:


Sorry we let you die, hirelings! Next time have a few more hitpoints.

We also collected our first Greensteel components on Sunday. Locust Husks and Shavarath Stones for all! Oh, Greensteel, you look so difficult to create. Who knows, perhaps Team Spode will finally step foot in a raid at some point, and who knows, perhaps that raid would even be The Shroud. Stranger things have happened! (Team Spode in 20 Shroud raids for an Essence of Cleansing? Um, I think not.)

Anyway, after that we rounded out the night with a few kills out in the wilds. BTW, what's up with the free meat on a stick there in the Vale? Spode stopped at every one of those and sampled the free meat on a stick.


Seriously, it doesn't get any better than free meat on a stick.

WE LOVE YOU VALE OF TWILIGHT!

Happy dueling