Demon Queen Dies to Team Spode!

OH, this post comes to you with much higher spirits than last week, but don't take my word for it, here's what Ophiga had to say about our evening.

Last night's adventure for Team Spode was a vengeance mission "Against the Demon Queen" after our wipe last week and for that other time she kicked our butts.

Here's the important screenshot:


THAT'S RIGHT DEMON QUEEN! YOU AIN'T GOT NOTHIN' ON TEAM SPODE BOOM! Is it just me or would "Circle of Eternity" be an awesome wedding rock band name?



And the Djinni out in Zawabi's Refuge was all . . . me tired now!


And Team Spode was all . . . WE AIN'T NOT TIRED!


Yeah, we zoned into the raid for fun just to see what it was all about. We didn't even bother summoning clerics because we knew it would be a slaughter either way. Whew, looks like a tough event with those nasty lawn mower blades that cut you down while archers stick you with arrows from up above.

Anyway, yes, we had fun last night . . . as evidenced by Ulan's pumpkinhead courtesy of Gleek. A night just isn't a night anymore without me throwing one of my grenades at Ulan.


And yes, the best thing about this instance is still the crazy Rakshasas with their crazy poetry-spouting deaths.


Friggin' nuts those Rakshasas are.

The end report of the dungeon looked like this:


So, how did Team Spode beat the Demon Queen? The answer is really simple . . . kiting. Spode is no slouch in the hit point department and he's sporting a pretty respectable Armor Class for a level 16 paladin, and even with dedicated healers, stone skin and what not, that knockdown of hers combined with her nasty six-armed attack was just too devastating for Spode to tank through and the healers to heal through. She's just nasty.

You can tell too by the shape of her final room that you're just meant to kite her down. I mean, there's just barely enough room in a perfect circle to run her around. You just have to keep yourself hasted and go for it.

Team Spode did a great job of laying down firewalls and blade barriers, plunking her with arrows, Slicing her with swords from behind, and just generally keeping Ulan and I alive as we ran around trying to avoid those six arms of death.

Winning this one was awesome. Team Spode needed that win!

Next week? Next week we go back to face that dragon in Gianthold. More vengeance is needed.

Happy Dueling!

It's Frustrating

We totally lost . . . twice in a row . . . and I totally didn't get any pictures and have nothing new to add to the discussion of Gianthold. BLAH!


Gianthold Tor and Against the Demon Queen totally puppet bumped the face of Team Spode lastnight.

BUT!

BUT!

For the three hours that we played together last night, we did better on both events than we had on our previous attempts, so that's something, right? I think so.

I think we were all a little moody last night after our Gianthold defeat (at least I was). We made a mistake and after all of us had been defeated at the hands of Rhindvutha the Black Dragon and Blaze Ar'Rhind (his giant friend), we all released, which basically put us back to square one, which was a little frustrating.


The major problem with all of us releasing at that point is that the dragons are considered optional objectives, and you have already won the instance after you defeat the gatekeeper. Live and learn.

After that we decided to try our hands at the Demon Queen again. Part of me was saying in the back of my mind, "guys, we don't have time to do this tonight," but I decided not to speak up and just press forward . . . In fact I started rushing and just blowing through traps. Whoops! Sorry Team Spode! We did in fact end up a good hour over our game time limit . . . again, with nothing much to show for it (a little loot, but not the win we all wanted).

EXCEPT!

EXCEPT!

We did get further as a group on the Demon Queen than we got before. We successfully kited her dead the first time where before we had died. . . it was just the second time vs. The demon queen in her fiery chamber of death where we didn't do so well.

In the end I think we learned a few valuable lessons that are like our "baby steps" to winning. No worries, we'll get this.

Happy Dueling!

What does a demon queen with six arms do to Team Spode?

Allow me to veer a bit here and just ask, Have you ever had a really frustrating day of gaming? That's my day today.

1- My son is replaying Paper Mario: The Thousand Year Door for probably the fifth time. Somehow this game resurfaces about every six months and every single time he gets lost in its puzzles, which means dad has to play through a good chunk of the game for him to get up to the exciting battles. It's kind of a frustrating experience remembering how to work your way through its puzzles and even worse when you're son has no patience to read quest text.

2- I've been playing Magic The Gathering: Tactics on the side. I finally reached a wall in the game that just seems impassable for me. Chapter 3 is a complete bish. Dying over and over again in that game is making me antsy.

3- and then there's Against the Demon Queen Part 1 . . .

Ok, so here's the story for you all. The mission started innocently enough. We really have no plans for finishing the raid for this unless a miracle happens, but Team Spode was up for part 1, right? right!

So Against the Demon Queen Part 1 starts off with a poem . . . quaint!


The poem here is actually the key to the instance, and it will be different every time you visit the instance. Definitely check out the strategy guide over on DDO Wiki for more information on decoding that.

Basically, you have to know which room to go to in which order or else be transported to a cage holding several nasties that want to kill you.

◦Poisoner: Scorpion
◦Devious: Snake (Troglodytes)
◦Hungry: Wolf (Gnolls)
◦Grasping: Octopus (Mindflayers)
◦Mockery: Monkey (Wildmen)
◦Night: Bat (Mephits)

Our path, based on our poem was: Mindflayers, Wildmen, Troglodytes, Gnolls, Mephits, and Scorpions. That all went off pretty much without a hitch save for a couple nasty traps.

There's some good ones in there . . . like these spinning blade traps underwater.


I think Dungeon Engineer would be an awesome job, don't you? Too bad Dungeon Empires doesn't capture more of the sinister trap building part of being a dungeon engineer . . . I digress.

At the end of each of these alcoves full of nasties, you get to fight a raksasha. Raksasha are fond of spouting poetry themselves. Like: "Starvation is death, yet a ravening wolf is stronger than a pampered hound."



. . . OH OH OH . . . how about this one: "The sword of the Octopus has an iron grasp."


Those Raksasha are friggin' NUTS, man. THEY MUST DIE! And die they did . . . no sweat for Team Spode.

Eventually we got to the Demon Queen herself after solving the riddle and killing a good number of Djinni and aforementioned poetry spouting Raksasha.

She even poses for screenshots!


quaint . . . again.

Of course, the real photo ops happen when she's bearing down on you slashing you to bits with either a freaking nasty blade barrier or her own personal six-armed blade barrier of death.


She's definitely rocking my world right there.

The strategy that we attempted was to kite her through firewalls and bladebarriers of our own. We failed miserably.


We gave it two shots before calling it a night. The first time we got dear Lailat down to 50%. The second time we got her down to around 30%.

. . . Frustrating. Spode was none to happy about our defeat, "I HATE LOSING!" Ahhh, Spode. I'm so with you. We all are.

The group consensus was that we're going to head to Gianthold next week and put this quest on hold until everyone is Level 15. We'll be back, Lailat . . . we'll be back.

-signed, Team Spode

p.s. I did find a tip though thanks to the C.L.A.W. forums! Next time we should try using the spell "Waves of Fatigue" to slow her slither down . . . it'll make for easier kiting.

Happy Dueling!

The Waiting Game in Demon Sands

What does Team Spode do while waiting for Spode to make a jump?

1- Dance, chill, and blow kisses to the camera.


Ophiga was adamant that for some reason I never get great pictures of her character. Well, she's right. Here's the backside of her dancing, while I blow you all a kiss and Lessah chills. When a man feather falls to the bottom of the canyon, it's gonna be a while until he gets back up. SPODE, Y U NO JUMP FAR?!

2- Inspect the hireling


Dheran Giles is quite the looker, yes? Sure his wikipedia page is full of interesting facts about him, like that he has Cleric Prayer of Life III, but does it tell you that he had ceviche the night before? I think not.

3- Shield inspection.


Yeah, that's totally what's happening here. There's no ceviche check going on for Ulan, honest! Nothing fishy at all about this screenshot. Look! Lessah's shield is so shiny! MUST SCREENSHOT!

Eventually after a couple tries, we got Spode with us and to our destination, which again was the Offering of Blood instance. Things did in fact go MUCH more smoothly with the full group there and with Lessah showing us a couple tricks like lifting a bridge up after you cross it to stop the incessant spawns from behind you. It was a simple 20 minutes or so to the boss.


We cleaned that up nicely and *mostly* called it a night. Spode and I had already spent some time helping Tipa out (link to Tipa's blog!) when she got stuck in a solo run of the Tomb of the Witch King. I agree btw . . . chuck the DM out the virtual window and sacrifice a deer.



(breaking out the classics on y'all TODAY!)

The end of the story is that Lessah logged off to finish packing her kids' school lunches (peanut butter or ceviche one wonders?) while the rest of us lingered longer and rode the good vibe train to a victory in the Chamber of Korush.

That was 18 minutes of pure casket-breaking, tomb-raiding awesome as you can see from the experience report here. I was obviously trying too hard . . . ol' Gleek ate a death from his hyperactivity.


Thanks for putting up with me Team Spode!

We still haven't figured out exactly what we're going to be doing next week. We've debated The Twelve, Gianthold, and a couple other things. At this point we have two level 14 characters, two level 13 characters, and one level 12 character about to hit 13. We'd love to fight against some dragons, but we don't want to be killed by them . . . we want to *kill* them. Perhaps we should wait a level or two before hitting The Twelve.

Thanks for your input in advance!

Happy Dueling!

Like Lambs to the Slaughter: An Offering of Blood

Before I begin, I just want to thank everyone who drops by my blog to check on Team Spode. Feel free to leave a comment . . . even if it’s unrelated or just to say hello. I’d like to know who’s out there reading and any ideas or suggestions you might have. Although I can’t promise a daily blog about DDO, it’s starting to definitely look like a weekly or twice-weekly ritual. I play far too many other games to devote all my attention here, BUT . . . if I had some encouragement and some strange questions, well then that might give me enough volts to shock me into posting more about DDO. I hear cattleprods work wonders.


This week Team Spode was Lessah-less. It was strangely silent in voice chat because of this. There was no familiar hum of the banter between Lessah and Spode, instead there was just Spode, ranting on into the night about whatever his mind wandered to. There was an attempt at a pun or two and a fried dwarf joke, but for some reason they didn’t flow on Sunday like they usually do. I’ve been cutting back on the caffeine, so I’m going to play the moody card for myself and say that’s what was up with me.

Truth be known, it was kind of a painful night that could have used a shot of caffeine. I was leading the group, but didn’t really know where I was going half the time, so I was alt+tabbing out to a map.

LET ME TELL YOU, Ophiga was just up and ready to sit out and wait for us to finish our run through the Maraud the Mines instance after dying a couple times. No one likes feeling they’re off their game and/or lost, and I should have been better at communicating what was going on and where we were headed. Luckily we pulled it all together and got Ophiga back into the instance and scored a win. (OH, and btw, Team Spode members . . . if you still have gems or ore from that instance, you can turn it in to Behn in the main area of Zawabi's Refuge for a regular gem.)

After Maraud the Mines, I got the group sufficiently lost in the desert trying to lead everyone over to the Offering of Blood entrance without alt+tabbing to the wiki map. We did end up learning our way to the entrance very well by the end of the night after having TWO complete wipes. How about that?! We haven’t had ONE complete wipe in a long time, let alone two. Egads. I would say that those two wipes came with some good learning though. By the end we were finally playing together like Team Spode should . . . it just took us a while to get our groove and understand 1- the way Offering of Blood ebbs and flows with its waves of never ending drow and scorpions, 2- the Super Mario bridge jump past the electrically guarded ramp, and 3- the uniqueness of the mega end boss and his cronies therein.


Yes, oh yes, we were quite familiar with the run to the little crack in the spiral entrance of the Offering of Blood by the end. Painful.

We shall be doing the Offering of Blood all over again this week for Lessah, and I’m sure—ABSOLUTELY SURE—it will all go much more smoothly. No longer shall we be like lambs to the slaughter giving up our own offerings of blood—We’ll be kicking scorpion tail and owning that dungeon in perfect motion. *wink*

Thanks for putting up with me, Team Spode. I had a great time despite the challenges!

BTW, can I just comment on the general hotness of Ulan lately?


Not bad looking for a Canadian-bred stud in female's raiment. *whistle*

Happy Dueling!

Team Spode in: Dwarf, it's what's for dinner!

The static group was refreshed and totally ready to rock on Sunday. We had our fun last week with The Pit and now it was time to set our sights back to The Demon Sands and more specifically The Burning City.


The quest starts innocently enough: Dude named Jaefan Druz in Zwabi's Refuge handed us the quest, which talks about these crazy firebrand gnolls who have a pretty good gig going on. It's an evil gig, but you can't beat Djinni-charmed slaves that serve two purposes: work them to death or use them as food!

We all checked our alignment, and yep, that was pretty much something we should be concerned about . . . except maybe Spode, but as we know, his alignment is usually directed toward loot or exp. He's a paladin of a different drum. When faced with helping save a dwarf slave above a boiling pot of stew in The Burning City, well, exp was calling and he just let him fry. ;) Afterwards Lessah continued to give Spode the biggest earful for the remainder of the dungeon. HAHA! Spode kept insisting that he did nothing wrong, just responded to the quest text, but that was no bargaining point for the silver-tongued lashing from Lessah.

As it turns out, Spode isn't the only one who has trouble with saving Gasper Goldpike. It appears a failed bluff check could be the culprit . . . there you go, Spode . . . when you go before the judgement seat and you're judged as a paladin and Lessah is there trying to remind everyone of the fried dwarf incident, just say it was a failed bluff check. You're welcome! (If we had saved the dwarf, there could have been a treasure room in it for all of us.)

Anyway, when it comes to the Burning City, everything about it is long. The run there is long (and somewhat confusing). The instance is long. The distance between you and the archers on the ledges above is long, but it was usually nothing my firewall couldn't take care of.

Just remember that you need to get all the way down to this point of the map . . .


. . .To eventually make it up to to the instance door.

Once inside, Sands greets you with many locked doors that you'll have to unlock on your long trek above a nasty lake of lava. If you do happen to fall into the lava, there's a small chance you may make it out by heading for the portal shown in the bottom left screenshot. GL!


Overall we had a great time working our way through The Burning City on Sunday. It was pretty profitable with all the chests in there to loot, and we did in fact free all the slaves to win the quest, plus a good number of optional slaves as well.

We got a good handful of bonuses, so I'd say overall it was a successful dungeon crawl last Sunday--not for the dwarf though. ;)


Oh yeah, and Ulan died once. Poor Ulan . . . always taking one for the team.

Happy dueling!

Demon Sands:Lessons Learned

Lessah declared this week that she and I had officially bonded. It all happened in a one-two punch of an event. The right-fist of bonding happened after kiting three clay golems around some firewalls in a room that closes off once you enter, and the left-fist of bonding happened after a resulting death from pulling a trapped lever while Ophiga was hanging out downstairs with Spode in the "I can't make this jump" club. BOOM BOOM! (Without a rogue, we were just kind of blind to the traps.)


Needless to say, it was kind of a rough night again in the Tomb of the Wizard King (Just like three weeks ago), but it can never be too rough of a night when you have your buddies nearby and someone is singing a goofy song or telling a bad pun. Right, crew? Let's not forget that!


(Yeah, no one told that joke . . . but they should have!)

Here's a review of my lessons learned from the week:

1- Lessah doesn't like when people refer to their character as their "toon." It's a pretty standard slang word in the game world that was hip enough 10 years ago in Everquest, but apparently to Lessah it is demeaning to the time and effort you put into building a character to simply call that mass of pixels your "toon." Of course, I took every opportunity from that point forward to say things like, "mmm, girl! Who drew your toon? *whistle*" You know . . . smarmy stuff like that. It's all in good fun. ;)

2- I am a typical Halfling when it comes to breakables. I have to just TOUCH EVERYTHING. So curious! I don't know how many times I heard, "Would you stop touching those?!?!?!" when I'd bust open a sarcophagus. I can't help it. I even got blamed for a number of them that just opened by themselves! That's alright . . . if they hadn't busted open with angry mummies, I would have touched them all the same.

3- Ophiga needs featherfall . . . badly. I wouldn't be surprised if Spode and I each dumped a pair of featherfall boots in the mail to her by the end of the week. We needed that familiar yelp of "TRAP! TRAP! TRAP!" when there was something evil afoot (or underfoot as the case may be). So if we could have just made her little drow feetsies float across the busted-out trapped floor, why, then we would have been just fine! Check your mail, Ophiga!

4- Spode . . . I don't know . . . I don't think I learned anything new about Spode. I had a lot of re-affirmations about my dear friend--like he doesn't "do" super Mario jumps--but, no, I didn't learn anything new about Spode by any means. Oh wait, he did mention something about not being as spry as he was before the four-year-old started wearing him out. We traded information on grey hairs on our head caused by our children. Yeah, getting old sucks.

5- Ulan. Again, I don't think I learned anything new about Ulan. Yes, I had to hunt him down on Facebook. Yes, the monsters still like to devour him for healing us. Yes, he saved my hide with many heals. Yes, he couldn't find his spirit cake in his overflowing bags. That's my Ulan! I was just happy to drag around his stone for a while. We should have all taken Ulan's advice though when we noticed the NPC cleric had fallen through a floor and died. "Shouldn't we go save the NPC?" Ulan asks with all the wisdom a Favored Soul can muster. "NAH! We'll get to him eventually!" we cheered happily! Ahhh, the lessons learned. I'm still boggling over why we couldn't even dismiss that dead cleric from the party . . . oh well!

We had a lot of fun and next week promises even more fun! I do believe Chains of Flame was mentioned? (Quite a complex walkthrough there, wiki!) Sounds like fun! See you there!

Happy Dueling!

Team Spode vs. Cliff Jumping!

Without Ophiga with us last week we decided to just run around the desert collecting explorer points and killing named if they were up. Although we had really bad luck with finding any named up, Spode was having even worse luck with the required cliff jumping that takes place between ledges.


Go team Spode!

Other than that, the night was pretty uneventful. There was some difficulty killing a lich named out in the sandy parts of the desert for some reason. Lessah's mouse decided to freeze up on her at one point too. (You know when you mention someone's mouse freezing up that it's a slow news week.)

Next week we should be back into the groove and hitting a couple more instances in Sands. Good times!

Happy Dueling!

Menechtarun Sand in our Shoes :)

Before you even start reading this post, you need to make sure you've read Ophiga's epic piece of writing about the week before last's adventures. :) Since she was laying down the blog posts, I took the opportunity to remix a voice recording from that week as well. DJ Gleek Wondertwin presents the epic remix: Mantle of the Worldshaper is MINE! Enjoy that free mp3 kids. ;) (Thanks Spode, Lessah, and Ophiga for being willing victims of my voice sampling)

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I like taking trips to the beach. Pina Coladas and getting caught in the rain and what not--sand in your toes. It's really a good life. On the other hand, trips to the desert aren't that great. Sure, you can recreate that whole desert scene from The Doors movie with your buddies and the Djinni, but what we learned last Sunday night with the static group is that deserts are hot, dry, and FULL OF FLASHY MUMMIES!


Armed with our brand newly purchased expansion packs for the Demon Sands of Menechtarun, we decided to take the long way in through the Desert Caravan instance entrance in House P.

We didn't have too many problems here as the Scorrow, Scorpions, Drow, and the cast of Lion King seemed to just throw themselves into our Blade barriers and firewalls. The group did a good job of fending off the waves of attackers and bosses on our way to the city oasis in the desert. The three chests at the end of the instance were a nice and unexpected bonus.


Unexpected? Yes, we were going in blind to this whole Menechtarun experience because our new guide, Lessah The Gamechanger, was sadly absent. This absentee-ism was both a blessing and a curse because it is nice sometimes to throw caution to the wind, but what if the wind was backdraft from Spode's codpiece? Not so fun then, is it?

(Seriously, for more codpiece and beholder jokes, you really should go read Ophiga's DDO post from last week . . . it's brilliant)

I mean . . . look at this mess of an instance we wandered into . . .


What you don't see in that map are the stacked levels and pathways through ramps leading up (and collapsable floors leading down) the ziggurat. It took us a bit to figure out where we were going and what we were doing.

The Tomb of the Wizard King or "The Chamber of Raiyum" is a level 12, VERY LONG (they ain't kiddin') instance nestled in a sandy pocket of the demon sands. You can read more about it here on the wiki. Yeah, it would have been helpful to have read that beforehand. I didn't even know you could skip these Djinni fights if you had the right item.


Ahh well, we got loot. ;-) We even got the three chests at the end.


It was painful getting that loot, well, more so for Ulan with his *cough* nine deaths was it? If you don't die with Team Spode, then you're just not trying hard enough. ;) I think by the end of the night it was around 2am for the east coasters. Luckily 4th of July was Monday, so we all had the day off . . . OH WAIT, Ulan is Canadian. *pats Ulan on the back* That's rough buddy. Thanks for keeping us all healthy.

By the end of the night we all took a level and called it good. Spode and I are sitting at level 13, and Ulan, Ophiga, and Lessah should now all be at level 12 (Level 12, right Lessah? Right?)

Anyway, next week will most likely bring more Menechtarun Desert adventures for Team Spode . . . except for Ophiga, who informed us she won't be able to make it this time around. I don't know, maybe we'll just all stand around and posture in the Marketplace instead.

Posturing? Oh yeah, we can totally do that now that we've been featured in Beckett's Massive Online Gamer magazine. ;) Check it out! TEAM SPODE VS. THE KOBOLDS!


Yup, that's Team Spode in Issue 32 (Sep/Oct 2011) on Pages 72-74 in an article written by yours truly! I wrote that many months ago truth be known . . . it was before Lessah Game Changer was in the group. That's OK, I managed to talk to the editor and sneak in a link to DDOCocktailHour on Page 74 for Lessah's sake.

Thanks for reading, listening, and experiencing all that is Team Spode!

Happy Dueling!