Life with Lifin Part Deux and STONES

Servers are down for maintenance this morning, so . . . once again . . . time to type up a bit about what's going down with Lifin the cleric, and a few other side notes.

Lifin is now level 11. I was riding kind of a nice wave of experience with Skifty, my artificer lady, and then she pulled ahead big time. I've been taking it all extremely laid back and casual whereas Skifty was living the big exp life. I think the major difference here is that Skifty is VIP and I'm FTP (although I've unlocked pretty much the whole game through the DDO store). I don't worry about things like "breaking a hard mode streak" or anything like that. As long as I'm running with a VIP I have immediate access to Elite instances that shell out a ton of exp. Skifty is also running with the 20% exp pots as well. Me? I'm using the 5% pots you can get for cheap from the Cannith missions.

Skifty is on a quest to run through his second life, then work back up to 8th and use the stone of experience to get his character back up to 16th. Genius plan, right?

Stone of experience you say? Oh yeah, the Stone of Experience is all the rage right now. Actually, it was all the rage like a month ago. ;) The Stone of Experience is a little thing VIPs get to help people boost their exp from level eight to level 16. If you use all three shots of your stone of experience on lowbies, you get a free cool white panther cub. It's beautiful actually. I had a guy named Achaius on Cannith use it on my bard last night.

Remember my bard? No? I don't blame you. I hardly remember him. LOL. Yeah, he had been sitting at seventh forever because I leveled him for one purpose, and that was to get into and hold open the doors to the Shadow Crypt for the static group so we could run it over and over and milk it for exp. Once you get the compass directions down, it goes pretty smoothly. Team Spode milked that. I digress.

So, anyway, yay! I leveled up my bard to eighth last night and started asking for people to hit me with the stone! I found that the most effective method was to start a high level group that just said "I'm looking for someone to hit me with a stone of experience." BAM! Archaius tells me to run over to the Wayward Lobster and ding 16! That's right! I now have a severely under geared 16th level bard sitting on Cannith right now WOOT!

I'd like to do the same thing over on Thelanis with my second level Artificer, but I don't know if I'll make it to eighth with her before the Stone of Experience promotion end date comes up around 20 August. If I was a betting man though, I'd bet DDO would put the stone of experience into the DDO store after all has been said and done. /shrug

Wait . . . wasn't this post about Lifin? YES, IT IS! I have screenshots from my soloing adventures . . . like these:

Lifin vs. The Smolder.

Smolder is a little fire elemental boss out in Searing Heights. A lot of my recent exp hunting has just been soloing around. 750 kills, 9 rares, and however many locations later, Searing Heights provided some fun! I wonder if they'll ever fix the music bug in Searing Heights? Have you ever noticed that? There's a spot over in the Sulatar stronghold where the music starts to get extremely psychotic and looping over itself, then when you exit the instance, it . . . never . . . goes . . . away. You have to log out to clear it.

Here's another great pic, Lifin's Hireling shaves the legs of Dr. Rushmoore's Girlfriend:

Like I've said before, when I'm on my own, I'm pretty much a Cannith mission guy. I've got these down pretty good. Dr. Rushmoore's is probably the most frustrating out of the bunch because it's pretty much a crap shoot whether you'll get all the crests you need on your Pathway to Victory!

I've been doing pretty good on these though! Check out my exp report here for The Dragon's Hoard mission. Three stars!

I've gotten my kills to within 30 of getting four stars here, but I'm convinced it's just too big of an instance to cover all by yourself like that. Instead what I've found is that the best course seems to be getting just enough crystals to get the instanced finished, then killing through the corridors looking for the dragon. Since the foreman dying is actually one of the objectives, there's really no worry about returning to help him and the kobolds out once you have your crystals. In fact, this is the best place to be right here . . . Dying dragon with dead foreman:

Yay for death all around!

Another thing . . . see that treasure bag in the screenshot above. Yeah, there's another glitch in these I've always wondered if they'd fix. The creatures in The Dragon's Hoard drop all kinds of little baggies for you to pick up off the ground, but you never can collect them. Click--nothing. Click--nothing. And sadly, even knowing I can't pick them up . . . I always try. LOL. Why do I do that? Conditioning from the rest of the world I suppose. ;)

So, in general I've been having fun. Hope you all have too.

Happy dueling!

Life with Lifin (episode 1)

Well since the DDO servers are down this morning, why don't I take a minute or 30 to talk about the Life of Lifin, my super dee dooper awesome cleric over on Thelanis?

This is Lifin at his best:

Yes, that is a couple of attackers turned to stone by the extremely awesome level 4 Rockboots from the Cannith Challenges. Lifin is completely geared out with Cannith Challenge loot to be honest. He's getting permanent blur from bracers of the wind, brandishing seeker +1 from a ring, sparkling from some Mournelode Plate, bonking mobs on the head with a Mournelode Mace, and I already told you about the Rock Boots . . .

Sometimes I think the Cannith Challenges were custom made for guys like me who usually only have 15 minutes here and 15 minutes there to steal while still loving DDO and wanting to keep up a little with the gear grind. I'm finding that every time I peek through on to a new tier of Cannith clothing, I'm right there soloing my way to a few new pieces of gear.

This is also Lifin at his best:

That's me hanging with the Warforged in Tangleroot. Apparently everyone plays a Warforged but me, and as you know, I have a thing about halflings. One of those is a girl Warforged btw. (shhh, I still haven't figured out how to tell.) Healing these guys is really what I wanted to do with this character, and it's pretty cool when I get the chance to do it.

So my new guild is a completely different scene than my other guild on Cannith. My other guild seems to be a big operation with 70+ levels and a full guild airship decked out to the 9's with all the +2 amenities you can shake a rapier at. These guys got nothing. It is only like five people in the guild after all. I think I'll pass along this link to the guys so they can see we can have a ship for 50,000 plat and move along. (The crew rental cost should be easily explainable . . . it's the amenities that'd be the hard sell. BTW, is the SHIP01 code for free amenities still working? LOL)

OH, you gotta check out this cool picture I snapped last night:

Tower, my fighter hireling is looking awesome there thanks to the pyrotechnics of Skiftnickle the female warforged Artificer standing behind him. I call her Skifty for short. Is it just me or are Artificers about the most awesome class ever in DDO? I think I'm going to have to roll one of those up because watching Skifty destroy Necropolis's Bloody Crypt and House Jorasco's Redwillow's Ruins (save for the nasty trap cave) on elite last night was a thing of beauty. I really was only there for good looks and a couple good heals.

In any case, I shall continue hitting my Cannith missions and working my way to the upper eschelons with my new awesome Cleric, Lifin. I'm sure to make all kinds of mistakes as I'm not really looking at many guides on how to level a cleric. I'm just going with my gut and making decisions that seem to make sense. I may pay for it later, but so far things have been pretty good.

Happy dueling!

Times May Change, but DDO Stays Awesome!

So, you may have noticed I haven't posted in a while. Two months without a post is kind of a big stretch for this blog, right? Right!

Things got a bit crazy in my life (and still are) because I got a job working as a Community Manager for KingsIsle for their new game Pirate101. This made my life a little more difficult the past couple of months. I've moved about 1,000 miles away to a new city and a new state and started a new job all at once. To say this whole experience has thrown a curve ball in my blogging habits would be an understatement.

Also, Diablo 3 happened.

Team Spode has always said that when Diablo 3 was released, we'd drop whatever game we were playing and play Diablo 3 for a season. It was our mantra for I don't know how long. Funny enough, Spode found his computer ill equipped for the graphic requirements of Diablo 3, so he ended up buying a whole new computer for the endeavor. (He mentioned how much better DDO's graphics looked on his new rig btw.)

What I haven't written about the past two months is that Team Spode delved deep into the steampunk zones of Cannith.

Because of this delving, Spode and I took 20th level as Ophiga and Ulan hit 18th level. WOOT!

The instance that gave us the most grief in Cannith was probably Schemes of the Enemy. It was a completely painful experience, full of magefire cannons and electrified walkways leading to the grand daddy of all magefire cannons.

A very weary Team Spode made it all the way to the grand daddy magefire cannon twice. The first time we spent a lot of effort spinning dials below the cannon and trying to deactivate its very ouchy beams of ouchiness. That just didn't work well for us. What we found out worked for us was just hammering on the magefire cannon with its defenses intact until we busted IT UP! It took a while, but was much simpler. SIMPLE, GOOD FOR TEAM SPODE CAVEMEN AND CAVEWOMAN!

Also what happened was the birth of the Menace of the Underdark expansion! I took the journey with Elminster through the Rift and discovered that DDO had become . . . LOTRO!

;) Seriously though, it was very strange to see DDO as a high fantasy game instead of the Steampunk world of Eberron.

. . .

So where does this leave this blog and Team Spode? I'm not sure. Team Spode is now journeying in Diablo 3 and we have a ton of new content in DDO still, but I think it means that you won't see me talking as much about Team Spode on this blog for a while and instead, you'll probably see me talking about my new adventures on Thelanis.

What I found was a couple of the guys that work at KingsIsle play DDO on the Thelanis server! So for the time being, that's where I'm hanging out in DDO these days (other than my occasional stints back on Cannith as I upgrade my level 18 Cannith mission gear to the Epic Cannith mission gear).

I'd like to introduce you all to my cleric, Lifin!

RUN, LIFIN, RUN! Lifin likes the Cannith missions just as much as Gleek did, and yes . . . I still have an obsession with halflings in DDO.

Happy dueling

KLAATU BARADA NIKTO

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!

Happy Dueling

Lordie Lordie!

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

Babs Reigns on our Parade! THE MADNESS!

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

~~~~~~~~~~

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!

I'm outta touch, I'm outta time

Yup, I'm going there . . .



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:




All those pictures and more can be found on the Turbine Community Updates page.

So, with that . . . my friends . . . I promise I'll try to get to Team Spode's adventures this week. Maybe tomorrow!

Happy Dueling!

Dusty Roads for Team Spode in Update 13!

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!

Happy Dueling!

"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!