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!

Mentos, the Fleshmaker part duex!

Well, we did it again. Last week I was lamenting the lameness of the evening hitting The Fleshmaker’s Laboratory and the Desecrated Temple of Vol. Mostly the lameness stemmed from it seeming “too easy.” So, we hiked up our knickers (Well Spode hiked up his knickers at least) and went back in on HARD MODE this week to see if Team Spode could keep the same awesomeness about us, earn a little extra faction, and see if any good loots would drop.

The main difference between the two weeks was (as to be expected) the traps were more difficult . . . and that’s about it. I did like the challenge level though, but since Spode and I had both dinged 18, well, we might have skewed that in our favor to the tune of about -25% exp (sorry Ulan and Ophiga!)

Here's how the score card looked for Temple of Vol on Sunday:


And here's how the score card looked for Fleshmaker's on Sunday:


We got a few tapestries for the evening and a couple more sigil frame pieces, but nothing else much of value dropped for us. I did get a Locus of Vol +5 wisdom item with a “taint of evil,” but looking on the wiki tells me it’s pretty much junk loot. I had passed it on to Ulan just in case it might turn into something good. Meh. The night came at the tune of around 20,000 exp when all was said and done. Not bad. I would love to gift wrap about 50,000 exp for Ophiga and just hand it to her for valentine’s day.

We may still have a couple more game nights of the Orchard of the Macabre in store depending on if we really want to try to flag for the Abbot pre-raid or not. I don’t think any of us actually are going to be doing the raid, but flagging for pre-raids is kind of how we’ve been rolling on all of the previous expansions. Collecting the sigil pieces is kind of a pain though. We’ll see though and I don’t think Team Spode is in any hurry.

Um, I *may* be just a tad anxious because I see myself so close experience-wise to 20th level, but that’s just me.

Side note: If you're not familiar with our Happy Dueling Hour monthly podcast, please go take a listen! Although the majority of the time we talk about Wizard101, I do mention my recent adventures in DDO along with the other games we play (it's mainly just for fun and to be goofy): If you've got an hour to kill with nothing better to listen to, go check it out! :)

Happy dueling!