White, Black, and Blue in Gianthold Tor

A few weeks ago I was drafting up the schedule for the static group. At this level and with no real knowledge of exactly how long the various zones in the game take and with no knowledge of what instances we will fail along the way and have to try all over again, it's a bit of a difficult construction. One thing Spode had mentioned to me was that he wanted to exact revenge on the dragons in the Tor since, you know, we failed those a number of times at the "appropriate level."

I tried to stress with the other members of Team Spode that the Tor used to be end game content. We're talking Module 4 of DDO released back in 2007 when the level cap was raised to 14th. End game in any MMO is grindy. Companies need a reason to keep you playing through their content, right? The Tor is no exception. 20 dragon scales to make some armor! That sounds EXACTLY like the MMO grind of 2007. You know, kind of like grinding Ragnaros hoping for an Eye of Sulfuras . . .

Grinding Gianthold Tor is exactly the kind of thing we don't really want to get involved with when there are six more levels and tons of new content in DDO to explore still. However, Team Spode has a thing about dragons. They must all die at our hands, and so penciling in a trip back to the Tor when we're all level 15+ and after we've had a couple romps in Harbinger of Madness for gear was a no brainer.

Personally, all these years later, I wish there was a separate instance for each dragon instead of one "giant" instance just to get to the dragons. I also wish the requirements for 20 black dragon scales was lowered or done away with completely. It's old content that's now just a road bump. The whole thing should be separated out and changed . . . RETHOUGHT! Get with the times! It's 2012 y'all!

Of course, doing all that would probably require pulling people away from the real task at hand, which is developing the new Menance of the Underdark expansion. Um, yeah, on second thought, just leave Gianthold Tor the way it is . . . BRING ON THE NEW STUFF! I want to see Lolth!

Anyway, Tipa has a great write up on our experience last night with the dragons. You should read that. :) She sums it all up nicely.

Me? I just have three pretty pictures for you to indicate that we came, we saw, and we descaled the dragons.




It was really nice to finally put them all to bed with Team Spode. We were communicating well, we were tanking and off-tanking nicely, and aside from a few forgetful moments of what needed to happen while we were fighting these things . . . WE ROCKED. (Speaking of rocks, my rock boots went well with the slippery surfaces of the White dragon lair . . . I had no problem at all moving around in there *hugs rock boots*)

end of story.

So, now we shall return to Necro IV next week to continue slaying all those nasty undead and evil outsiders, but now we'll do it knowing there's three less dragons haunting us in DDO.

Well done Team Spode!

Happy dueling

Harbinger of Madness vs. Diablo II

You have a lot of madness in DDO. Madness seems to be a Turbine developers favorite psychosis. The Path to Madness. The Maze of Madness. Madstone Crater. And now The Harbinger of Madness, which is really just a setup for the Reign of Madness, right? There's so much madness that it's enough to drive someone to the Chamber of Insanity!

I don’t blame Turbine for all this madness though, I blame . . . Madness!


Insider's perspective: when Madness sings "Our House," they're talking about the House of Xoriat they're trying to establish in Stormreach.

So, I can tell you right now, that Team Spode LOVES Harbinger of Madness. I made the comment over e-mail today that I think Harbinger of Madness is less about the exp (which is “ok” not “killer” though), and more about the loot. We had three unique drops on Normal mode from random chests that were some of the best pieces we’ve seen yet in our little ragtag band of mid-high levelers.

Spode got a nice sword named Insanity (who doesn't want to fight madness with insanity?), and we saw some other loot that made us wonder what else we could find, DDO wiki has some promising items listed.

What else was nice is that the difficulty wasn’t too bad! At least on normal mode. There were a few mishaps here and there, but nothing horrifically ugly that we didn’t overcome. If hard mode brings better loot (as one would suspect), sign us up tenfold. The quest chain in total seems like it would take around 3 hours to complete. We only had two, so we left the last instance for next time we meet.

(The general consensus was that we weren’t planning on meeting Christmas day, so we’ll probably be meeting up on the evening of the 26th. And if that doesn’t work, we just may take a couple weeks off until the holidays are over.)

Ophiga had a great summation of our experience in Harbinger of Madness, and to be honest, I don’t have a whole lot more to add. I would like to say that this quest series so far has been creepy awesome! Two thumbs up! Children missing from a school? Cocoons harvesting flesh golems? Beholders? Mind flayers? Undead? Strange Camera seizures as you pass through particularly haunted rooms? Yup, Harbinger of Madness has exactly what I like!

I love quest series like this that evoke a certain mood and succeed while giving you challenging game play that isn’t too punishing and then finishing it all off with rewarding loot. That’s an art, and I feel the developers at Turbine did a great job right here. In a way, Team Spode has been playing through a lot of aging content where GOOD loot has been hard to come by in areas that were tuned to drop loot in a different age of DDO. Most of the gear we are wearing hasn’t come from the chests we’ve looted, but from sales at the auction house.

And that’s why Team Spode loves (Or at least why I love) Harbinger of Madness so far. It’s awesomeness is perfect for our little group. Please give us more of this. Yes, PLEASE. Failing missions in Cannith sucks. Failing Blue Dragon fights sucks. Complicated crafting recipes that require extensive farming sucks. Harbinger of Madness ROCKS. YES, PLEASE! I completed the dungeon, now give me the awesome loot. DONE. I don’t have to craft loot. I don’t have to cleanse loot. I don’t have to improve loot with a raid. I don’t have to do anything but profit. It’s like freaking Diablo II. YAY! The only thing that would make this better is if awesome loot and health potions just squished out of monster’s bodies when they died.

So from the bottom of my heart, thank you Turbine for the Harbinger of Madness. If this is what’s on the menu of the future, sign me up for seconds and thirds.

Happy Dueling

Ophiga's Perspective

Just a quick note here because Ophiga has written an excellent post on her blog that fills in some of the blanks and adds a new perspective to our adventure on Sunday.

Click me!

She's awesome btw (Despite all that talk about flinging halflings ;)).

Happy dueling!

We actually fought a dragon in Dungeons and Dragons Online?

Team Spode's adventures this week have been aptly summed up by Ophiga over on her blog, West Karana. Please point your browser that way and check it out!

I snapped a few screenshots in addition to the great ones that Ophiga took of us killed Sinvala this week.





Thanks so much to Ekeiram for helping point us in the right direction! Your tip on where to find this nasty thing was definitely appreciated.

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!

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!