As we all (mostly all) know, Codemasters has announced the destruction of the Keeper and Devourer servers and all citizens will be shipped off to new worlds run by Turbine.

Good News! Especially considering that the outcome means that those that migrated to the US after saying that enough was enough, will not be punished, and those that stayed to try and weather it out will be satisfied they are not getting the short end. Turbine will most likely get every Euro as a VIP as that’s what they have in Europe at the moment. When I came across I wasn’t interested in F2P. I subscribed 10mins after trying it out. Character transfer is a happy place but there are some worries that are not being answered.

But is it a double edged sword?

Now I am thoroughly stoked that I am getting my guys back. I have missed them and I have stated here quite often just how much I do.

The problem though isn’t their level. I can easily recreate them, hand them back their personalities and level them to cap in a few weeks. That’s not the bother.

There are those who claim to play DDO for the people. I am one of them but I can be with people for that social aspect anywhere. The type of people I interact with are of utmost importance to me but I can spend time with them and have laughs waiting for a raid group to fill. I can do it on lowbies or in my RP runs.

There is no judge of time well spent from a social point of view except that if you had a good time, it was time well spent. Time well spent 4 years ago attempting some quests for the first time, is not remembered though. Once our time is spent, what are you left with?

I may be considered a bit of a materialist for this, but I judge my time based on my equipment. Loot is something I work for and I have gained 100% fairly by putting the time in.

So while I cannot remember my time spent by the people, I can judge it by items found. When I dropped that chattering ring for the first time I remember it. My first bloodstone, spell storing ring, ToD set, dragon scale and so on and so on.

I put value on my VIP and previous Europe subscriptions based on the items I have to lose there. The characters are awesome but I can remake them easily, I remember all my builds. The items though are not so easily remade.
My intimi took me 9 months of hard labour and disappointed to get kitted up. Same goes for my dwarven ranger with 4 min II’s, my sorc (whom I hate playing), my cleric, my bards, my barbarian, my finesse ranger and my battle cleric.

Each one of those characters is months spent searching for items, some found and some not. To try and recreate that is a mammoth task and I would honestly be so heartbroken I probably wouldn’t even try again. Characters who had the items and could be played with to try out new PrE’s and items, because they had everything else. Time spent is measured by items and to some extent a small part of experience gained.
Without those items, you are at square one instead of being able to move forward.

It’s not just the raid loot, it’s the named items you spent forever grinding for, it’s the options of random loot dropped that allows you to kit out characters better. Having those +6 stat items and those metalline of PG’s, those sp items and boots of feather falling. Those little clickies and a healthy bank account allowing you to outfit new characters with potions. It all counts towards fun factor and I must admit that when I did restart in the US, it was painful. You remember having those items but now you don’t. A few times you wonder if it’s worth it but the friends keep you going. You *sigh* having 10 lvl 4 characters instead of 10 lvl 20’s, you push forward but it is difficult.

Losing the items on characters I spent four years attaining, well it might be a bigger blow than leaving them all behind knowing they at least still existed. I need my items. I need that measurement o time well spent that free TP’s don’t provide. This asusmes of course we get to transfer characters into our existing accounts. If we can’t…well that’s an entirely new kettle of fish and a new outcry of betrayal will begin

Now there are questions;
how will the transfer work?
Can I get those characters onto my existing account?
What happens with items in the shared bank?
Will I even get my items?
Will I get the favour?
Will I be able to play my main which is a FvS unlocked through favour?
Will I get my raid counters?
How will we deal with our name changes as this will happen coming to such a populated server?

We need details, some of which will disappoint but some that will excite. We are waiting for those answers!
Now maybe we are being ungrateful, I don’t believe so, but we had said goodbye to all of this and it was a very probable outcome to have Codemasters shut down. I have gone from despair that I may lose everything worked for, to excitement that I am getting them all back. Yet the questions flow now that we have that one important answer that we have not taken forgranted. We are very happy to be thought of and we are ecstatic to be looked after.

Now comes the fun part of this whole experience.
I play on one server. My family and friends, guild mates and enemies are on this server. Thelanis is my home, I don’t server jump and I’m not interested in ever logging onto other servers. So all transferred characters (if they allow us to put it into our current accounts, which does seem to be the case) will go into my one account as I’m not prepared to maintain the multitudes of accounts I owned before in Europe.

So let’s list my guys out as each one is important. (For interest sake, all my characters have Manetheren as a surname, they are all family)
Also note, I don’t do exploiters or monsters or flavour of the week builds, all builds are my own making so similarities they show to other builds in class makeup is all in your head)

In Europe I have (with their title as I am a rp’er and each one was given a personality);

Account One (Keeper):
Rasczak Roughneck Intimi (human fighteR)
Poink Gully Dwarf Healer (dwarven cleric)
Shaithis Dwarven Battleranger (dwarven ranger)
Zaknafine the Whirling Dervish (drow ranger)
Azazal Sadistic Sorc (drow sorceror)
Caerus Manic Musicman (halfing bard)
Barunthis The Steel Soul (elven FvS)
Clanggedin Clerical God of War (dwarven cleric/ fighter)
Vistani The Hand of the People (human monk)
Devetaki The Face of Ferocious (human ranger/ rogue)
Briareos Bionic Beserker (warforged barbarian)
Korruption the Mediator (warforged wizard)
Griffith (human paladin)
BloodoftheTarrasque House K Account (Human Bard, RP Group Bank Toon)
Tarrasque the Smiter (warforged fighter)
Canker of Wolf (halfling fighter/rogue)

Account Two (Devourer, which is where I went after the servers merge. My characters ended up on Keeper but I have since deleted all of them now. My career started on Boldrei in 2006):
Caerus (human bard)
Clanggedin (dwarven ranger)
Shaithis (human wizard)
Azazel (elven paladin)
Briareos (warforged barbarian)
Rasczak (human ranger/rogue)
Vistani (halfling rogue)

Now on Thelanis we have (no personalities as such, I was not happy when I came over);
Briareoz (warforged fighter/monk)
Devetaki (human favoured soul)
Saerus (human bard)
Griphyth (elven paladin)
Adramalich (drow sorceror)
Gremlyn (halfling rogue)
Clanggeden (dwarven ranger)
Rasczak (human ranger/rogue/fighter)
Kanine (dwarven barbarian)
Vistani (halfing monk)

So the trick now is how do I split it up? Who do I keep and who do I kill?
The other problem is of course, they were born on different servers with the same name. Who is who? Well I remember how I built them and made them to look so not a massive issue for me.
An easy choice is to get rid of all of my Devourer guys. They have not been played since January 2008 and so are all still lvl 12 or so, have the old good loot, and I’ve lost touch with them so they will be a simple matter of going through to see what they have on them then outright delete.

Let’s look at at Thelanis. Out of the 10 I have, 2 can be deleted (Rasczak has been name saving for this very moment), the rest are somewhere in progression and are a bit more complicated to being outright deleted.
On Keeper, 14 of the 16 are important and again are somewhere in levels and items. Clanggedin on Keeper with Barunthis will most likely go. But then I’m stuck with way to many characters to play. They are not outfitted in epic items as there was no epic when I left so all will require work (of the transfers that is).

Let’s just leave it to fate and make it part of the fun, like going through an old chest you packed away and finding things that you didn’t care to much about then, but now it’s christmas. Everything you look at brings back peals of laughter and joy as it invokes memories better left remembered.

Be lucky people, and I’ll see you on the inside…..

So recently I haven’t been on much. The main reason for this is my country is hosting the Fifa Soccer World Cup and so I madly dash around most of the time sorting out tourists and watching my favourite sport.

Now as the rounds have progressed, we have seen the usual ’safe’ play. Teams playing for Draws or getting an unexpected goal due to their lack of attacking.

Then came round Two and all the minnow teams decided they weren’t playing the same anymore and teams like France, Germany, Spain, USA and England have been made to look like amateurs and not worth their massive salaries.

All I can say is the ‘vets’ of football are disappointing, lacklustre and in definite need of reminding about how to play the sport they chose as their career.

Now on any given day, the options are available for anyone to walk away from a game victorious, no matter what they look like on paper and with no significance to their World Ranking.

But on any given day, why is it that we find so many huge named teams, walking away looking like the elderly playing bowls?

Colour me disappointed in the heart these major league names have displayed. If this is what they have to offer, I am not paying to watch them anymore. I’d rather pay to watch the leagues of countries who have shown heart.

Now I can link this DDO. When you have been playing for to long, you become stagnant. Certain quests you do a certain way and certain actions you always do and you expect everyone else to do the same. And because of this, many a time has passed that a new player comes in and upsets the wagon by doing things completely different. Sometimes successfully and other times not.

So in DDO and in the World Cup, maybe certain standards have been set and players are not willing to admit that there are better things out there? Better options or builds. Party makeups and items.

Now another issue is the referees in the WC and also in DDO (Well it’s GM in DDO).
Games were allowed to be played at one stage, play advantage implemented and diving or piking punished.

Now in this WC and in DDO, inventive play is frowned on, players get yellow and red carded (DA) for no good reasons, play has become stop-start and uninteresting, exploiting weaknesses is punishable and bread and butter moves are reworked and broken. Use Two Weapon Kicking, now it’s ,nononono and you’re a bad player for using your weak foot to kick at goal and you’re causing bad play so we’re nerfing your ability.

Sidestep opponents and take the quick shot at goal to score except now it’s nonono, you can no longer kick while moving since we made the ball lighter and everything you ever knew and played towards is gone.

Confusing? Well it confuses me how set standards of play are changed, for no good reason with weak excuses and no positive outcome.

Change the dice notation because some fans don’t speak the language. Ban vuvuzelas because players can’t concentrate. Nerf player builds because it’s to strong for the opponents and pitch yet punish opponents to make them weaker for less abled players.

Don’t break what isn’t broken, because you’ll create a lacklustre environment for fans around the globe and the game becomes slow and boring.

So a very convulted metaphore comes to it’s end. Let us hope that some big names out there don’t see the same result.

Good Luck South Africa even though it’s looking bleak and good luck to every other team out there who is trying their best to win. To those who are paid to much and don’t care either way where the effort is to much, Go Home! We don’t want to watch you play as much as you would rather not be playing.

Ever have that experience where you join a party because you are just to lazy to make your own, and the people already in the party start talking in a way that makes you extremely nervous?

You know what I mean….talking about weapons to use that you know are not very effective at all, they’ll talk about how to do the quest and you’re thinking to yourself that this person has never been here before. They’ll rush off and demand the rogue unlock a door you know needs a key or go for that decoy trap chest, they’ll web fire ellies and toss up otto’s for undead.You’ll see them whapping oozes with a sword and iron golems with firewalls.

Have you ever tried to speak to these people? These rambunctious excitable sorts that argue with you till you’re looking all smurfy and way to exasperated to think of the ‘fun-factor’?

So this leads me to my poignant musings.
What causes a person, who knows within themselves that they are clueless, that they are new without the improved and they are over their heads, what makes them say ’sod it, I know better’?

Is it Korthos and harbor? Zerging as a new player through kobolds that barely scratch you and now and then make you run away feared? Is it playing in a party where you can be any class or race since you’re all in the same boat at level 1?
Maybe limited character slots and the marketing of “free to play” makes newcomers feel this game is only a year old and that anyone with a new character is lacking in experience?

Is being coddled at the early stages of life in DDO, causing people to have this sense of immortality that makes them charge at a group of ogres un-fortified and then proclaim some abstract reasoning that caused them to suffer the loss of their health bar? Do you chuckle and pick up their soulstone or do you reprimand them of poor performance?

I’ve gone through a few situations where out of a party of six, me and sometimes one other person are left to duo most of the dungeon. The other characters die as quickly as they get raised. You explain the situation and get ignored. It’s as though my last four years of experience are ignored because I chose to make a new character who is not yet level 20 and so it’s assumed I know less about what I’m saying than the person my advice is offered to.

Proclaiming poor attitude on the Vet’s part is a sad way to involve yourself in DDO. Considering that 80% of the people I meet in PUG’s before lvl 8, are relatively new yet ignore everything they are told, it’s not the Vet’s who are being unapproachable to new players. It’s the new players ignoring sound advice yet holding on to falsehoods spewed through general chat.

Not all, but a lot of them…..I have made a comparison.

I have a person who has never played DDO, but has played other combat games and has a firm knowledge of pen and paper and then I have the woman of my dreams who has no experience in either and then I have this person who seems to have taken a shine to me. One of these people who feel my character level is a direct representation of my game experience.

I run with them all. My woman gets direct attention on a minute by minute basis and although the fun can be hard to find and I find myself critiquing her every move sometimes, she is becoming a great player. When I leave her alone to do her own thing she generally comes out shining and playing well. It has potential to cause disputes in our RL because of it but I trust her enough to take her on any run with me and while she may die or do something silly, she’ll never come close to wiping a group or causing a failure. Death in DDO is not the end of the world. We all go through it.

My friend is still relatively new, but due to his firm pnp (pen n’ paper) knowledge he knows how things should work and loves strategy. He handles well, backs off when needed and has become quite solid in any group. He has also become desensitised to PUG’s and chooses to solo most content which I find happens often with a lot of people who choose to fail quests on their own terms and not someone else’s.

The stranger though, he, I have since found, has worked his way onto many a squelch list.

The trick between all of this is actually quite easy to be honest. A bit of common sense really. People don’t listen. They believe they know better and are not willing to try anything unless they see a real threat in not gaining that end chest. This WoW mentality has me perturbed since it causes good players to solo, friends to rage-quit, and new people to not have fun. WoW is not bad, it just doesn’t suit DDO. It suits WoW.

Most decent players or potentially decent players will solo because they prefer to fail on their terms and not some unreasonable stranger’s. Friends will rage-quit because why honestly would I keep playing a game where I go into most parties expecting a horrible time?

New players, well they are the worst off. They have no choice. They don’t have a guild behind them and if they do it’s not a good wholesome one in most cases.

Their experience of the game is shoddy and they become self-taught hermits, often not having the right mentality and/or experience to complete a lot of quests past a level.

You see all quests have a challenge rating slapped onto them. A suggested level that you gain experience from according to your level. Essentially the idea is, if you jump into a level 4 quest at level 4, your character should be able to be useful in there. Not always so as certain abilities make this a terrible misconception. Caster spells being thrown at you, abilities and feats being applied to you, damage done to you…it all effects how easily any given quest can be completed. At low levels your characters are not truely prepared for this. They have not come into their own just yet and so you jump into a quest stating a level range matching yours, and proceed to be tossed out on your ear in a very casual manner. New players don’t like struggling. They prefer getting to know the game. Slow and steady to win the race or rushing in a furious fervour, they do not like being dominated easily where it gives the appearance of them not being capable of completing.

Does this mean level progression is to quick? Maybe…
Level 10 characters who still don’t understand a lot of the basic concepts. They just gained those levels as fast as possible. This can never be helped. There are your powergamers out there but generally these people have scoured the forums looking for ways to squeeze the most out of nothing. They aren’t the problem much.

Problem is your everyday time waster. They found DDO, they enjoy it but they refuse to be told how to play and they refuse to be told that they know nothing. They don’t like being told that the character they made 6 hours ago is going to struggle higher up and they definitely don’t like to be told that their behaviour is inapproriate. Their boss dominates them at work and so giving up the reins to a stranger who claims to know better is a no-fly zone. They are plain just unapproachable and will not work well in a group, but they will form them anyway.

Abuse in DDO is common and new players don’t appreciate it. I don’t blame them either. Assume there are idiots out there and if you happen to group with one, move on. No matter how much you want that quest completed, it’s not worth the pain you will go through being told how useless you are and how you shouldn’t bother logging in at all. You will get sworn at and you will be called things. Forget about it. Someone who treats you as a human is worth your time. Some insignificant swearing at you does not.

All I can say is, eventually, if they are people of substance, then they will learn their own way. It will take time and we don’t have the patience to wait. We want our own fun now. We don’t want to sit around waiting for someone to grow into the game since this may be the last run we ever see them in. Why spend time on someone who could be gone for good after we leave the party?

All I can say is try and find those moments of peace. If you run a group and it works for you, ask those people if you can add them to your friends list and look for them to run with again. A sense of trust is not a bad thing and it solves the mystery of strangers joining a LFM.

Form your group of friends as you learn together. Nobody likes spoilers when they more interested in experiencing.
You don’t want to be rushed through quests and you definitely don’t want to waste your time. Everything is a learning curve so don’t take one experience and label it the norm. You will find the fun in your own way and during this journey you find like minded people to run with and you will find mentors to help you.

This is a group experience. Doing things alone or ignoring others is not the best way to find your fun or maybe it is. For me personally, I find joy at the campfire talking and joking as we murder the mobs on our way to immortality.

Be lucky people

I shall describe the process based on the most common approach to handling this raid while in a PUG group. There are many ways to set it up and many reasons for doing so but lets go with the most common as this is not essentially a guide to completing the raid. This is to give you an idea on how to regenerate your spell points, (if you are any sort of caster) in this specific raid and I touch on how to do the puzzle room lever when you get fly.

Before you consider hitting some random LFM after reading this know a few things first.
1) This is not a free to play raid. This is part of the gianthold adventure pack.
2) This is a flagged raid. This flagging require 3 things;

a: You have to have completed Crucible, Prison of the Planes and Madstone Crater. (join the three brigades, if you a storyline fanatic like me)

b: Gather 20 of each; dragon, elven and giant relics (There is a person you can trade 3 of one for 1 of another if needed and you can gain relics from gianthold rare chests and/or gianthold quest end chests)

c: Complete gianthold Tor and killed all three optional Dragons.

Gianthold Tor is quite nice in the fact that it drops dragon scales as well as while flagging, you don’t need to kill all the optional dragons on one run. You can kill one or two and then do the left over ones on your next run. You get the quest by giving Crag 20 of each relic and then speaking to Cydonie. It’s always open after that (no quest giver) and there is no reward for completing Tor. Reavers Fate is a once off permanent flag so you don’t need to keep repeating all of this each time you want to run it.

*This can be considered a spoiler as it gives away a lot of the objectives to the Reaver’s Fate.*

So the set up is, as you enter the raid you are standing in a entrance way with a large room in front of you. There is a archway just in front of you which I normally suggest you all stand just past (slightly in the main room) and do your buffing. Reasons for this is that as soon as you activate the Reaver, a forcefield will block the entranceway off. No re-entering and people late will be stuck there and have no chance at the chests.

A good practice is to take off any range weapons and disable autoattack. Accidental activation of the Reaver is common and annoying and easily avoided through sensible behaviour Nothing worse than the guilt of stiffing someone out of raid loot because you weren’t thinking straight.

Buff the party (lightning resistance, sonic resistance is the norm, acid and cold is not required but helpful).

Once ready have a singular designated person run north to activate the Reaver. Have them smack him to keep his aggro (aggro meaning that he concentrates on them since they made him angrier than anyone else). This person (or tank) will pull him to the south west (to the left of where you entered in) and the tank should hit him now and then to keep him focused on the tank. The tank should hit him instead of relying on intimi only as it’s very easy to be knocked away or not in a position to keep him aggroed at all times. Everyone else will go south east and wait for the thumbs up.
Looking up you will see wierd skulls in metal bands. I will explain these later on.

Important Things to Remember;

1) DO NOT go to far away from the walls. The Reaver has an anti-gravity ability that feather fall has no effect on, you will be sent straight into the spikes in the roof, meaning death to most. This effect will get you no matter where you are positioned so stay against a wall so you get thrown into safe spots running around the edge of the room. It will also do damage to you so try float to your healers or try some selfhealing before you get dropped back down.

2) Do not hit or hurt the Reaver unless you are the designated tank. Chasing him around trying to control him will get you killed, mainly because of point #1, as well as the issue of not being able to mass heal everyone.

3) If you cast firewalls or blade barriers etc, do so in the south east away from the Reaver. Air Elementals will spawn and you will be required to kill them. Use ennervates/energy drain and destruction/finger of death/wail of the banshee, on any elementals finding their way to the Reaver’s position. You can try otto’s/mind fog to delay them slightly. Their saving throws on elite are quite high though.

(noone does this on anything less due to the lure of +3 tomes that potentially drop on elite)

4) Do not chase elementals all over the room, if they float north, leave them till they come back. It is amazing how many times I have watched a melee charge after an elemental only to have the Reaver do his anti-gravity, and said melee vanishes and dies.

5) If you die you are out of the raid (unless someone pulls the soul lock lever but it’s never been worth it). There is a soul lock effect on the raid that when you die you get stuck in a small room above the battlefield and you cannot be raised unless the puzzle is solved, or someone pulls the soul lock lever. This means that if you are getting low on hp, back off….but don’t take monsters with you. If you have aggro of anything then rather just die instead of causing potential wipes by rendering the Reaver out of control.

When the raid is complete, a rez shrine will pop up and you will be teleported to it so there is no chance of you being left behind and unable to loot.

6) The Reaver tosses out a whack of nasty spells, disentegrate being among the worst. Don’t have a low hp character tanking him. This is why you try keep him away from all the spells, casters are putting up for air ellies in the south east. He also has an adamantium sword, so stoneskin does nothing to stop his attacks, he bypasses the required damage reduction for stoneskin.

So the main point of why I’m writing.
CHARGE!

When the tank has aggroed the Reaver enough you may now go stand where the tank is and block. You need to have the Reaver facing you to get charge so don’t think you’re smart standing behind him. The tank will be getting hit but it will effect everyone close. Every now and then the Reaver will toss out these lightning looking ‘charges’. If you are standing in front of the Reaver you will get hit by it. The first time gives you a minor charge and the second time will give you a lesser charge. This will appear as a buff counting down among your buffs

(top right of screen).

The third hit will give you what you looking for, Major charge. a new icon will pop up by your buffs and start counting down. This major charge will make you immune to the air ellie knockdown effect, give you a great tumble score (+30ish, no matter what, to tumble) and will give you spell regeneration. Your spell points will start coming back in chunks. The important thing at this point is to move away from the Reaver. If he hits you with a charge again you will lose your major charge and have to start again. Generally the idea is run to the south west, get your major charge, then run back south east.

The symbols in your buff bar will appear as follows…
Minor (1st) looks like a red exclamation mark.
Lesser (2nd) Looks like a Red ‘X’
Major (3rd) will look similar to the false life symbol (red graininess with red cross)

(Thanks to Garth_of_Sarlona for this mention)

The best way to ensure you gain charges is to stand on the tank holding the Reaver’s aggro. Stick to this tank like glue whether the Reaver wanders off to range or stays in close. Healers will generally mass heal on the tank so you’ll be sorted in terms of staying alive. The Reaver will wander off to range the tank or cast spells but when he sends a charge he’ll send it at the person he’s aggroed on. Sticking to the tank will mean you gain it as well and have a better chance than chasing after the Reaver. Remember that if you get caught in the wrong place you will be thrown up unexpectedly into the ceiling and die. Never a good thing

The tank should keep this in mind and keep his movements to a minimum. Let the Reaver wander off and wait for him to come back to you before you swat him a few more times. Don’t chase him!

Back to the skulls above your head. These need to be hit by the Reaver’s charge. You don’t need to have him anywhere near them or position him in some special spot. As he lets off charges he will start a random skull spinning. Once all of the skulls are spinning something special happens. The Reaver’s charges will now randomly grant fly.

Important to note that fly makes it almost impossible for him to attack you although he can still disintegrate you out the sky.

A person with fly now has the important job of flying to the centre of the room and up through a spiky hole in the ceiling. There is a passage in the ceiling here where they will then navigate through these spikes west. Travelling east is much nastier and will only unlock the soul lock for dead people. It will not help complete the raid though.

When you have flown to essentially above the edge of the main room (after flying west in the passage in the ceiling), the tunnel will drop below you. You float down and at the bottom will see an opening to the east which you then float through and into a small room. (Keep in mind to avoid all the spikes as you go which is fairly simple once your nervousness is gone ) A forcefield is used as the room’s floor and you can see the puzzle room which you have had no access to. Pull the lever in this room. Once pulled you can give the ‘kill’ command where everyone waiting below will now destroy the Reaver. Once you get this trip down well you will be able to fly and pull the lever and then fly back to the main room with time to spare. For now don’t panic and just watch. When the puzzle is completed the floor (forcefield) will vanish and you can join the party for looting.

DO NOT kill the Reaver before this lever is pulled!

To the west of the main room is a set of stairs going up. There are two forcefields blocking your way here. One forcefield is dropped by killing the Reaver. The other forcefield at the top of the stairs can only be deactivated through this lever in the roof above it. Killing the Reaver before this lever is pulled means you cannot proceed and will have to recall and restart (killing him before the lever is pulled is not a quest failing event so you will not have the option of being kicked out and starting again. You will have to recall/finish out and either wait 5mins for the instance to reset or reform the party)

Once the lever is pulled and the Reaver is dead everyone will move to the puzzle room (up the stairs to the west and drop down). Here you will find the infamous ‘mastermind’ puzzle that you will need to solve to get the correct ‘code’ to disable the device. There are loads of resources on this puzzle. Ask me if you can’t find any. Once puzzle is solved and quest is completed, run back to the main room to get your loot from 3 small chests and one large chest (the large chest is the named loot chest). Remember…certain items in the large chest bind to character. Do not loot something you will not need if it says it will bind. Ettiquette says you should consider offering it up for roll. Looting something to sell for gold is not worth it. you will not get much for it and you could have helped someone out if you aren’t going to use it.

*SPOILER COMPLETE*

Screen Shots will follow when I have a chance…..if there are inconsistancies give me a shout please so I can get them corrected

Look out for some more ponderings and helpless guides from me in the next few months. Things I’ll most likely be talking about are Zergonomics 101 (The guide to safe and sound zerging), Shrimps in Shroud (How to be useful when you are poor and underequipped), Shroud Part 2 - Know your Enemy, Tempest Spine for Dummies, The Pit is your Friend, Named Loot for the Free and Playing, Potions and Me (Never Leave Home Without them), I am Known as Gimp (To Multiclass or Not?), Lights, Camera, Action (Enhancements and You), plus many more.

Be lucky people

So I’ve been running quite a lot now that I’ve given up on Europe. I used to log in there now and then to hug each of my characters individually but it’s a lost cause so I am now a permanent resident of Thelanis.

Because of this I have found myself to be running a lot with hour old players who have no clue what to do.
Normally in this situation I would point them towards the forums, offer advice if it was simple enough to teach them in the session, tell them to ask away in general (pre-advice) and then advice channel or to simply hit me up on the forums with a pm or a tell ingame and I would help them out if I could.

Then on higher up characters you find the new players who have done just that and spoken to people in all of these different places. Therein lies the problem…..all of these places are so convoluted with misinformation that not only can I pretty much guarantee I can find contradicting information, but I can point out plain old rubbish that has no basis whatsoever.

People tend to be a bit idiotic in some cases and will speak their opinions on a matter when their opinions are more fictional than DDO itself and will potentially rob a new player of their time and support since who wants to play in a game when you have no confidence

So the first rule for any new player is….

DON’T Believe everything you read. Whether coming from forums, advice and especially general chat channels, party members you’ve never met before or guildies that show signs of not having a clue. Don’t believe it outright, especially when you’re planning on building your character around it. Noone likes to find out after weeks & months of play that they have been building a lie. Stop it now.
This will also entail that you do not argue with people you have asked for advice from. Very important if you want help for the future, don’t argue either because you misunderstood a mechanic or disagree with the rules. A rule is a mechanic that is set in stone, you cannot change how it functions just by believing it to be different. Making a rule behave differently to how it was intended is considered an exploit and is a one-way ticket to hell where your characters and account will be stripped from you.

So then where do you gain your advice from? Where do you get your information from?

Well for starters you can try websites like http://www.ddowiki.com for basic information. It’s kept very recent and any mistakes will be changed by more knowledgable players. It’s an unofficial site since it is a fansite so you should be wary of it, but it’s maintained by the well informed and should be easy enough to use.

Secondly, don’t be lazy. If you want an answer then you need to look in the right places. Don’t ask a question and accept it at face value. This potentially leads to trouble as you cannot confirm the source and you will continue on believing yourself to be sorted out yet because you miss a lot of the details and have never experienced something before, you will believe it to be working as you had intended. IT may not be the case and as you progress you will find out that the numbers are right according to your choices, but too low or to high for what you had originally wanted.

An example would be something along the lines of, building an unarmed fighting monk. Taking two-handed fighting feats because that is what you were told to do. Thinking it’s working because how else would you know? Then later on jumping into a high level quest and being told by a veteran that it’s actually the two-weapon fighting feats you were looking for. The veteran would be right, the advice you got is wrong and you now sit with a potentially high costing fix up job or rerolling something you have put so much time and effort into.

Well then…the crux of the matter. I’ve just given you a whirlwind piece of advice of don’t believe everything you hear. What the hell do you do then? You have no clue on certain things and you really do need the answers but I’ve just told you that there’s a massive risk in asking it out loud in the most common and logical places. What do you do?

A little background for you to help you understand. One of the reasons dungeons & dragons got so popular was the basics of it. Everything made perfect sense and was set out to be very logical and straight forward once you had the big picture. With the onset of 3rd Edition and the following 3.5 (Edition) ruleset came and even simpler mechanic.

DDO is based on these rules. Everything in the game is named for what it is, and is pretty much described exactly how it works. Use common sense! READ!!

Using my example of the monk, unarmed combat means kicking and punching. Using either two hands, a hand and foot or two feet. In that same vein matching up of two-weapon fighting makes less sense to use than two-handed fighting. It makes it confusing. Unarmed I’m using two hands so two-handed fighting is logical? When it comes to ambiguous terms, read the descriptions!!
Straight away you will notice that two-handed fighting refers to any weapon that requires two hands to use whereas two-weapon fighting is a weapon in each hand. But that way still be slightly unclear because when you equip handwraps, they take both weapon slots up so two-handed fighting can still apply. Enter logic. When you are in a fisticuffs at your local bar, do you attack with both hands inside one glove or do you have two seperate gloves on with one on each hand? For me I have a glove on each hand (not that I practice fisticuffs in bars), or shall we in terms of DDO say, I have a weapon on each hand?

“Aaaaaahhhhh”I hear some saying. Two-weapon fighting becomes our new obvious choice. And the correct choice at that.

Things like strength, skills, feats, weapons and so on. Read the descriptions. They are normally very clear. In unclear moments logic and common sense kick in and make most of the realisation for you.

Questions like: Do vorpals effect beholders?
Vorpal description: On a confirmed critical 20 dice roll, a limb of your opponent is removed, fatally wounding them.

So important bits of information there. Confirmed Critical 20 dice roll. You have to roll a 20 on the DICE and not as an attack roll altogether. So feats and weapon bonuses don’t count towards it. The dice only counts if it shows a 20. Confirmed roll? Every critical hit has to have another attack rolled. The second attack has to be successful in order for you to benefit from a critical, a miss on the confirm attack roll means your initial attack only does normal damage.

Ok so in order for the Vorpal to take effect, I have to roll a 20 on the dice, then I have to roll another dice to confirm that that 20 is in fact a critical hit. Got it?

Second important tidbit, a limb of your opponent is removed fatally wounding them……lets just stop at the first two words. A limb? Beholders don’t have limbs therefore, NO, a beholder cannot be effected by a vorpal. In fact by that reckoning, neither can undead or golems since they would not be fatally wounded by the removal of a limb.

Using logic you can figure out a lot of your own questions all on your own just by reading a description.

Now and then though it comes to content questioning. What effects what monster and what is best to use against other monsters. Unfortunately these answers come through long hours of play and experience.

I have found that the proof is in the details. Lets give two examples for one question actually found by myself in general chat that had two conflicting answers.

Question: I have finished the dragonmark quest but I’m not getting a dragonmark as a reward. What am I doing wrong?
Player 1: You need to swap out an existing feat and then take a dragonmark feat.
Player 2: You need to swap something for a dragonmark.
Question: how do I do that?
Player 1: Go to house Jorasco and speak to Fred. He’ll let you swap one for a dragonmark
Player 2: in house p there’s a pink guy you speak to and he’ll give you one.
Player 1: It’s house j not house p
Player 2: it’s house p. I did it yesterday.

So looking at the conversation here who do you trust more? Player 1 or Player 2?
I lean towards Player 1 even if I didn’t know the correct answer myself.
Why? Not only was his answer precise with the right names and directions (and he knew the name of house j), but he was confident with his answer.
Player 2 could not give valid details. Valid details as in he gave an answer but he could not justify it. When called out his reply was proof of him dishing out secondhand information.
Don’t trust people who give you answers but can’t give you reasoning.

Another conversation was how constitution isn’t that important if you have certain classes. Very incorrect. Every class needs a good constitution. But how would you know this? Well a starter would be to surf the forums looking at build threads in particular. A lot of new players, as well as veterans, have stuck their builds up and the information returned is generally from those who know as the twits ingame spreading lies about the game will be to scared to post there since they will be called out immediately by those more knowledgable. If you want to make a rogue then browse the rogue builds and see what suggestions have been made. Trust me when I say that the extra 10-20mins you spend reading those threads will save you months of wasted effort.

This isn’t the definitive method to avoiding bs but it is a start. If people need it, and due to the fact that it’s easy to post to my.ddo through the game, maybe what I can start for everyone is to have you post your questions here. I will then take it upon myself to post it to the free to play forum with an answer and allow everyone to discuss it so that in future not just one person will have the answer.

be lucky people.

Nietzsche Says:

A thinker sees his own actions as experiments. For him, questions are merely attempts to find out something. Success and failure are for him answers above all.

I Say:

“Don’t let common sense stop you”.

What does it mean and how can it relate to DDO?

Well basically I keep this in the back of mind at all times, in Real Life and in game. It’s an awesome motto to live by if you one of those who hates to be told what to do, hates getting the end of a story ruined for you, hates getting told of anything that may effect an opinion before you’ve experienced something enough to form one.

With regards to DDO;
Just because something is a tried and tested method in DDO, doesn’t mean it’s the best method.

What players have to understand is that when a new quest/raid comes out or a new class/enhancement, PrE, item and so on, everyone jumps on the bandwagon and uses these additions to find the most suited way to use it. The most essential part of this discovery is past experience. In order to get the most out of a situation is to compare it to past experiences and find a connection so you can apply your knowledge to the new.

This is almost always a sure winner at being able to get things done.

Now consider this, a few people figure out a strategy. It works and it works often. Now consider that they show this to every group they journey with and those people learn this knowledge. Basically a ripple effect as the strategy gets passed onto everyone who accepts it and uses it.

No one likes failing and so we all grasp at every tidbit of information that gives us some guarantee at success. We don’t want to waste our time as we have now gotten used to the game, we have done our exploring and now we want our stuff. The grind begins with wipes and incompletions no longer being acceptable. Humour is slightly more scarce and our serious game face takes over. All of this change is mostly internal though. We’ll still be smiling and joking but inside we are swearing and throwing a tantrum like a 2 year old who wants a sweetie. We all do it and because it’s inside of us we can appear calm and thoughtful, but everyone who has run enough has had those moments of rage internally where you don’t want to go through it again. It happens. It’s frustrating to fail something that you have completed so many times before. Whether it’s a build or a quest no one likes to waste their time by failing.

Now, remembering that most of the time we are impatient, and because of this human trait we jump at the first opportunity of familiar succes, we as players hardly ever give room for improvement. We are not that prepared to go a bit further in experimentation and we have a slight tolerance for those others that want to.  So it stands to reason that we accept the first proven strategy given to us. It is common knowledge that we don’t want to put time and effort into something that is wrong. We need justification!!! We post our build up for public perusal and if people connect with it they adopt it as their own. I see hundreds of posts of build requests and build examples. But this does not mean that a build that is played often is the best build out there. We scout around after failing raids, for some sort of walk-through or advice on how to complete it easily. We try it and if it works we adopt it as our own. It doesn’t mean that the raid plan we use is correct though.

An example would be how no one would kill Suulu in ToD because it was too much effort. The strategy was adopted by most, kiting him around the room and ignoring the option of an extra chest. It became the commonplace strategy. Now today we have a confirmed +4 tome drop in that optional chest….the ripple effect. An easy encounter could have given us the option of a +4 tome but we ignored it because the set-in-stone strategy dictated we shouldn’t bother.

This doesn’t mean we ignore commonplace information and intentionally go against the grain but it does mean we test our methods and we test them often. If you have a group of friends then experiment.

Take an intimi and a virtuoso and get them to team up. Get that summon in combat first so your rogue gains his sneak attack bonus. Take that pale master and experiment with his summons.
So many raids started off as difficult and have now become so easy to do through repetition it has become boring. When that happens break out the naked runs and the class only runs…experiment, test, question and do it often.
There is only one rule to this mindset though, never break the mould while compromising your fellow player’s experience. You may want to test but they may not. This is a team game first and foremost and the singular is not more important than the whole.

The tried and tested method is not always the best method.

be lucky people

WARNING - A Long-winded Essay on the mating habits of a PUG group

For the Record: When I mention FtP, sort of assume it applies to all FtP/Noobs/Newbs/Newbie players. Unless of course it relates to the ‘free’ aspect of free to play

So with the recent issues on the forum and ingame, PUG groups have been getting them self a bad name and a lot of the Stormreach population blames this on the FtP situation. I agree to a point but then I disagree as well.

So lets look at some background to all of this.

FtP is only to blame because it has allowed a massive influx of new and inexperienced players.
Now with this comes one of the most important parts of an MMORPG. In order for a game to succeed it needs players. A server needs to have people on it or else you may as well be playing some stand alone game all by yourself with AI NPC’s.

Most of the veterans (Vets) in DDO are people who played pen and paper and they have found that DDO while being an awesome game, also allows them to still invest time in their old Dungeons & Dragons (D&D) fetish even though they got older and have responsibilities like work and family.

For vets to have a good time, they need to be able to go through the character progression that D&D is so well known for, they need to be able to get that loot that MMORPGs are so well known for, they need to spend time with the people they have come to call guildies and friends, and for that they need bums in computer seats. FtP has given Vets a massive amount of peons to put in their party so that they can enjoy themselves. In fact because there is such a large headcount, the chances of everyone they enjoy running with, sticking around, is very much increased. A full server is a happy and healthy server which leads to a happy and healthy game. All the new arrivals are forcing Turbine to create new content for them, if Turbine want to make money, they need to give reasons to these FtP players to spend it. New content is one of those reasons and with a quick turnaround on production, Vets are given exactly what they want. New content, and people to play it with.

Now though Vets are complaining about the lack of support and how the standards have dropped and how easy win buttons are being made so Turbine can make money. Well I don’t know about anyone else out there but I don’t see much of a choice for Turbine. A bit of a reality check coming up. FtP means massive amounts of players that don’t pay for the game and have nothing to lose. Due to this, Ftp players will log on and play for a bit and then not log on at all for a while. This means any training you give to them will have to be repeated on an ongoing basis as you meet new people.
Because of the lack of effort required to play DDO as FtP, they have nothing to lose. So if they wipe a party or run off and die, don’t compensate clerical resources, don’t carry their own cures and various potions, don’t listen or just generally pike, blaming FtP is not the cure. This is not the mindset of every FtP player.

The majority of players I have come across are either very young and so act accordingly, or they are genuinely interested towards enjoying the game to it’s fullest. Lets be honest here, FtP does NOT cater for the young. Most of them will be gone before level 16 due to DDO being aimed at an adult market and them getting bored.
Most of the pikers only hold on because FtP gives them a free ride and they cannot afford to pay for any other game. that will be solved sooner or later as more Free to Play games will become available.

To the Vets;

The biggest problem I have found is the Vets. They treat FtP in such a way that they don’t feel welcome.
Unwelcome people become hermits and stick to themselves. Hermits can’t always finish quests because it requires certain skills. The unskilled leave the game. Turbine sees this and creates an option for the Hermits to stay.
Vets see this and instead of asking themselves how to solve the vicious circle, they point fingers at Turbine about how Turbine doesn’t love them anymore. Turbine made free to play because they love the game and they love the Vets. Everything they do hints at this but the ungrateful will never see eye to eye on that because selfishness demands undivided attention and Turbine cannot afford to do that. Vets believe they are superior and deserve special attention because of their loyalty, not true either. A paying customer is equal in all ways. In MMORPGs a playing customer is king.

Now I’m not saying you’re bad people. I’m one of you. I am a vet. I have been one for a while so I can speak from experience because I have caught myself committing these acts. Hands up all of those who have thought to them self, “just get me through this quest with these bunch of noobs so I can leave and go play with real players”.
How about, “Gawd this is going to be painful. These guys have no clue”? How about the most common one? “I want this quest over and done with so I’m just going to rush it?” Yes you have done it hundreds of times before and are there for a very specific reason, but the new players in the group saying it’s their first time, give them the option of experiencing it for the first time while doing your rushing. I myself, got really irritated at a person who left group because we weren’t giving them a step-by-step guide on how to do the quest. But I realised that it was both our fault. Me for not paying attention and trying to give a basic explanation of what to do or how to do it. But mainly them for demanding me to make their time enjoyable. I am not responsible for you having a good time. All I am responsible for is ensuring that my actions and words don’t stop someone else from creating their own good time.

See what I mean? I got brought up with a saying, treat a man like a thief and he will become a thief.
Treat FtP like a plague and it will become one. Mark my words.

We need to change our own mindset first before we can point fingers because of teething issues. Stop treating FtP badly, stop giving up on people and players. You will be pleasantly surprised when those same players respond well.

Imagine how it must feel for them to join a group and constantly get told how rubbish they are? Imagine how many bad experiences they have had in Korthos. We point and joke at some of the things that happen, hear the stories, disable general chat in certain areas and secretly wish for a mass squelch option. But sincerely, picture how it feels for them. They have no clue what they are doing. The game looks great and they do the first few quests. They know of advice channel so use it when they need to level up or do no damage to skeletons. They jump into a group to do Misery’s Peak and get slaughtered. They get told how crap they are by other new players. They get insulted because they didn’t do what the other person wanted. They get told their character will be useless at endgame.
Then they get into our group and we ignore them and leave them to die.
These people are begging to be treated as an equal party member even if less experienced than you. Give them the benefit of the doubt and give them some respect. Politely give them advice and see how they react. They want to play the game for the exact reasons that most of us are still here 4 years later.

To FtP/Noobs/Newbs/Newbie players;

Patience wears thin after you have to explain a quest for the thousandth time. Vets will zerg a little, they won’t give much explanation and they expect certain things. They expect a new player to know things like “Don’t run off”, “Don’t touch”, “Use your own healing” etc etc but they never tell you  why.

Sure for most of us it stands to reason. Don’t do something first if you don’t know, follow the group, listen to the leader. But it doesn’t come as naturally to new players as it does to us. I had people shouting at the group because things weren’t going to plan, telling them why it was going that way brought on a surprised “oh”. Some of them genuinely haven’t thought about it.

As vets our job is not to teach the quest to new players, they can teach themselves. Our job is to teach them how to play. Reacting negatively towards them is not going to solve anything. It’s going to leave you unhappy with your game time. Teach them how to approach a situation and how to respond. Teach them team ettiquette and how if they do their job everyone else can do their own and the quest gets finished at minimum cost.

So FtP players need to listen first and not act first. The game is exciting, voice means we get the firsthand experience of what each player behind a character is going through. If you get sworn at or told you bad, ignore it. You’re still learning and in this game that we love, frustration happens quickly because we remember all the other times we were in a quest and how well it went. We remember and know what to do and what not to do.
Listen, observe and enjoy. And most importantly, it is not the job of the vet to educate you, to babysit you or to make sure you enjoy yourself. You can cut that rubbish our right now. All of those are YOUR responsibility. If someone isn’t explaining something fully then ask me here or on the forums or make your own thread. We can give you the means to educate yourself. It is not up to the Vets to hold your hand. What the vets will do though is give you help if ASKED…demanding gets you ignored. If you want some advice then ask. We do not bite and we have heard the most ridiculous things in our time so don’t be shy. Especially for me. Send me tells if you want and I’ll sort you out. If you in a fast group then just try keep up. If you join a group tell them it is your first time. Sending a tell to the leader isn’t enough. In party, drop in a party chat “Hi guys. This is my first time here so let me know the do’s and don’ts”. If you get treated badly after that then don’t blame all the vets and all the guilds, one person is not the majority. One idiot is not an example of the population. Stick with the group, if you get lost say so, and above all else, do not EVER go somewhere you have not been yet on your map. If mobs are killing you then run back the way you came. Do not activate every mob on the map and then claim you said it’s your first time so you not to blame. Vets are not there to tell you every little detail and mob/trap/key/door position there is on the map. Play smart! Play with the team! Expect to make mistakes and take accountability for them. Don’t blame them on inexperience or naivete. Apologise and try rectify them.

Take any build advice and equipment advice with a pinch of salt. There are a lot of people who believe that 3 months of playing gives them the experience and knowledge they need to be libraries. It is most of the time false information. The people who can give you the answers you need are most likely not in the areas you are asking. Check out the DDO Wiki and other places. Listen to the DDOCast by Mockduck and co, these guys know what they are doing and while there is no right or wrong, there is working and not working.

I come from a musical background and there is a philosophy we use when writing. There are no right or wrong Notes, just better choices. So while you can do whatever you want to a character, there are better ways to be effective for what you want to do.

FOOD FOR THOUGHT:

Guys, we have to always remember….our enjoyment of the game is derived from our experience within it.
We can not hope to know what real life and past group issues have effected PUG party members.
They could have just been sworn at for the entire of waterworks by some idiot so they may not react positively when you give them advice. Think about things. If we instill a sense of teamwork and enjoyment into our group, then their reaction will match it and our enjoyment will grow wipe or no wipe. Laugh off stupid mistakes the first time. Extend a warm hand of advice when something gets done that is less than favourable.

And for all of you out there that accuse FtP of being a bunch of Pikers…consider this. Remember all those times you ran a quest with new people, and all you did was Zerg through it without a word because you didn’t trust them to be able to handle it or expected them to wreck it? You know what I mean, kind of do everything first before they do it wrong. Consider that very carefully when they get to the high level content and end up sitting back and making you do everything…..they are not true pikers, we have taught them how to pike through our own veteran actions.

Be lucky people…

And so for the first time, this fledgling refugee has experienced a real update along with all the fun.

It starts with the server’s drives whizzing as everyone logs in and starts downloading. Now though it’s more than a few hundred, we talking thousands. When you have the update going as soon as it’s up and log in only to find you’re in marketplace instance 3 you have to feel a bit of glee at how healthy the servers are.

Next comes the rush for the new stuff. Depending on personality you find people rushing all over the place looking for the new quests or looking for the ice skating rink. People at the trainers resetting their enhancements for the new additions. Guys running for those old quests they could never complete as a Duo or the DDO Store taking massive sales of sp pots as guilds prepared themselves for an Epic VoN.

And then the bug reports become overloaded.

I have gone through every update there has been in the past. The only difference being that in Europe we get the patched update. This was the first time I sat through world announcements and bug speculations. Potential exploit conversations and then the general bitching and moaning about how everything is wrecked.
In a bad way I suppose, I giggled at announcements made. I feel for the poor person who became a victim to these bugs and now sit with a potentially broken character but I have noticed as well that Devs will always try their best to right wrongs.

And then come the insane issues. TR’d characters losing their wings? Honestly not a priority at the top of my list. Crying because they’re temporarily missing? I get I see a different side to the game to others, and I expect certain things that are different and so maybe that is important. Not for me though. Named item drops and ingredient drops being seriously diminished worries me. It’s been confirmed to be broken but I have not been through this before so how long is the wait? A hot fix scheduled for today seems promising but if the forums are anything to go by it might just be to give TR’s their wings back.

Gianthold Tor is closed, disturbing as I have an up and coming FvS I want flagged for my cloak and gloves. Should get fixed relatively quickly right? How long was Shroud shut?

On the lighter side, it must have been an awesome update since shroud did break a little with ingredient drops being rare now :p Oh and the shock of Harry spinning around and tossing a delayed fireball in the melee’s faces and then gunning for the casters and healers in part 4…..was some of the most entertaining wipes I have ever seen.

But since I can’t talk about the bugs to much I will choose to talk about the 4 new quests.

My short opinion is that they are a great addition. They are not the same old run and they are entertaining when done at the correct level as well as being challenging.
Acid Wit can be tedious if the party is overpowered and In the Demon’s Den can be nasty on higher difficulties, but A Marilith is a  nasty boss so it fits right in. The point though is that under equipped parties can still complete these quests at a low resource cost. With decent teamwork they’ll be just fine and that is an awesome balance to maintain. Difficulty still there but not at quest design, and not at a free to play person’s pocket. So a great job there Dev’s.

But now onto the quest that is becoming one of my favourites. To the point where I ran it once on every character because I just absolutely adore it.

DELIRIUM: *Potential Spoiler Alert*

Wow, just wow. I soloed it on my caster and was laughing so much at the ideas that I wiped when reavers respawned back at the entrance room. I then got a few friends to run around with me and laughed at their reactions. I did it 6 times and wet myself almost every one.

PS: How do you get the downstairs cobwebbed chest open (the one behind secret door) and how do you open the servant’s quarters? Can’t unlock it with spell or rogue :/

But this quest just is really well done. It includes beating up annoying servants to make them listen to reason, drinking beholders under the table (dc 35 on hard for the record :p), killing a naughty key, having puzzles you are solving attack you and being attacked by hams and clams posing as undead. This whole quest has taken the idea of the Realm of Madness (Xoriat), and transferred it into this awesome quest. Hound didn’t get this right at all…..

*POTENTIAL SPOILER OVER*

Love it Dev’s…..this quest gets 2 thumbs up….

As for the bugs…..people ask for content made quickly so they don’t get bored, they ask for updates to be delayed so that things don’t break, they ask for beautification because things are drab and their top-of-the-range graphics card aren’t burning, they ask for fun to be had and stuff to do at level 20. Lots of bugs yes but not game breaking end of the world ones. Just some glitches that will be rectified and seemingly quite quickly to.

Turbine are doing their part I feel. they are doing it really well atm. They are fixing a whole bunch of problems with FtP while still providing for vets. People can complain all the time as it makes no difference to me. Turbine will still get my money because there is a concerted effort to try please everyone and while each update will upset someone, there cannot be many who will be upset at every update. The bugs are minor, some consider them serious because they are directly effected but Turbine has proven themselves in the past and they make right what is broken.

Each update I consider a gift. Not in a way that I got given something for nothing because of a special occasion. As in I have no idea what I am getting and I open it in excitement. Experiencing it fully from the eyes of a first timer in something. Complain about FtP getting some quests but the way I see it is that they are here to stay and they are a big part of helping to make this game survive. DDO Store sales are big and Turbine is making their money off them. VIP’s need to back off from their indignant standpoint, FtP has as much right to new content for them as us. Making them some new high level quests is a good move, especially considering that there is no named items in them and VIP’s get to enjoy them as well. The VIP adventure packs are still being made so I honestly don’t see how people can scowl and bitch about there being no point to being a VIP. I subscribe and I like the fact I have no quest restrictions or any other restriction. I can log in and do anything I want. I can afford to pay it so I do. If you feel VIP’s are badly treated then go FtP and see how much fun it is.

I’m waiting to see if this Update is a success though before giving it a complete seal of approval. Pale Masters are a bit meh for high levels but awesome at mid-levels. The monk enhancements don’t effect my monkey boy splashes much so no biggie there. I’m still happy and satisfied though. Even in Europe after playing so long, the long wait for the game to go FtP was the most killer but I still found my enjoyment among friends. I’ve done quests a hundred times and will do them again even more. It’s part of the game and you either accept it or quit after 2 capped characters. I accept it and still find my fun in the game easily.

Compared to the psychos who play Call of Duty, DotA (WarcraftIII), WoW etc….DDO is a much better way to spend my time repeating. The quests are fun still to this day.

Watch this space to see how the meter goes, do I remain optimistic after all this time or do I one day go pessimistic and bitter? Right now I only foresee enjoyment of a game I love kicking ass in

Be lucky people

From the first 5 mins of logging into Thelanis for the first time, I was invited to join an awesome guild, Erebus.
They are a group of topnotch players from the European servers who had left before I did. When my original guild, Cult of the Fallen, from Keeper in Europe, originally decided to close up shop and jump the pond to USA there had been this unspoken rule that we would restart on USA as a guild again but it wasn’t to be so.

I must admit in this regard that I posted various forum threads talking about the Cult restarting as I am always going to be an officer in my heart, but politics says I did the wrong thing. Having had all of that sorted out I continued with Erebus but there was a problem. Now it has nothing to do with personality or politics. Erebus is an outstanding guild and I am proud to have an association with them but I have never felt like I earned my place. There is no reason to demand respect for my skills as a player (good or bad) as I got invited by way of association and not because it was me.

I like to know that the people I am guilded with respect my position in the guild and not the fact I was given a handout for whatever reason.I want to know I’ve earned my spot by my build and/or play style and personality. I want to know that the friends I am with have me in their groups because I deserve to be there. It’s just a game but my real life philosophies carry through everything I do and I have an issue with never knowing if people want me there based on my skill or if they are only putting up with me.

Another point on personality is while personalities are different, I’m a more laid back player. I joke and mess around but when it counts I’m knuckled down and doing the job I’m there to do.
On that same point I get accused of being useless a lot because on side quests or quests that aren’t important really (this excludes raids or quick runs), I test my characters. I see how far they can go and what they can do. I see how long they can last in situations and what they are immune to and what they are vulnerable to. Yes you can read about it on the web but it doesn’t have the same effect as knowing that I can last so many hits by certain mobs and certain mobs can’t touch me or can obliterate me easily. This leads me to die a lot which leads to instant ragging (which I’m fine with ;)) but people who don’t know me will assume things of me and treat me accordingly. My old guildies got this and while I get told I’m a gimp I know where it comes from. In a guild where I haven’t earned a spot I don’t know. I hate not knowing.

So while I have a lot of respect for them and they have helped me out a lot, I have found myself PUGging more than anything. I’m ok with PUG’s but I prefer knowing the people around me and what we capable of. I like to know what speed we can handle doing a quest on. I like knowing that my teasing is not taken seriously as it isn’t intended that way.

Now nothing has happened that has told me these things have been happening but like I said, I don’t know and that I don’t like.

Another problem was we all came here under the idea that the Cult would be reborn on Thelanis but this is not the case. It is my fault as much as everyone else for assuming this as we should have seen that there is good chance it wouldn’t be the case, and it so happens that it isn’t the case. So I have decided to leave and find a new home.

I don’t know how the decision will be taken but hopefully those that count understand why. A new start is going to be a new start. A new home for my guys and a new bunch of people I can prove my place to.
I’ve been told I’m rubbish before but I’ve been told I’m awesome. Not to sound like I’m blowing my own horn, I’m just saying that people have mixed feelings on a subject at any given time and I’d like to know I’m with people that have a modicum of appreciation for me and my style. So I now go on the search for a new guild hoping I find a place to match my old home.

Erebus is a guild who’s quality will be hard to match and the cult will always be my first love so my standards are set really high. I hope my new home will be able to keep pace.

I made a list of guilds I have enjoyed playing with and make my applications to one at a time. If it doesn’t work out then I will try another one. I’m not spamming applications as I want to have a sincere bond with the guild. I don’t care how long it takes as I know that I’ll find the place that suits me.

Be lucky people.

So I’ve finally got a guy flagged for pretty much everything except Abbott (got the inferno piece missing and a random piece but I’m on it). He’s now level 19 and can handle in most situations if someone is healing him :D.
Therein lies the problem…I was making a list of what sort of equipment I want on him to be satisfied that he is prepared to be able to jump into Epic Situations or just to be enjoyed to the fullest. The item grind is a nasty one that very few people enjoy. Unfortunately with endgame as it is I am looking at almost every slot on him being filled with named items; crafted, raid or chest dropped and that is a grind of longterm proportion.

Here is the example list I made for him so you can put it in perspective. Bare in mind that currently he sports minos, verik’s necklace and 2 shroud runs worth of ingredients and you will see how far off he is.

Head: Minos (Heavy Fort, 20Hp’s)
Neck: Veriks (+6 Con, +2 Action Boost)
Goggles: Tharnes Goggles (TS, Spot +15, Sneak Att +5)
Trinket: Head of Good Fortune / Bloodstone
Weapon 1: Min 2 Kopesh
Weapon 2: Min 2 Kopesh (+4 Insight Ac)
Cloak: +5 Prot
Belt: Greater False Life
Armour: DT Docent (+5 Res, +6 Wis,Guard)
Wrist: Chaosguarde (+2 Dodge)
Gloves: Spectral Gloves (+5 Dex, +2 Att, Ghost Touch)
Boots: Striding, ff etc
Ring 1: Verik’s (+6 Str, Exceptional Con +1, *+2 Exceptional Str)
Ring 2: Wis +6 / Chattering

Now looking at this list I start to feel the wobble of having left behind most of these items on Keeper.
See I’m not daunted by the task that much. My main, an intimitank named Rasczak, was completely decked out with 4 item sets depending on situation (excluding min 2 peshes which was all I had left to do on him and had crafted items), perfect dt armour for what I had envisioned on him, all the raid loot for a fighter in case something got changed or nerfed etc etc. This took about 6 months of hard running and excludes all the shroud ingredients gathered over two years.
I may not be prepared to go through an intimitank grind again but the point is I can deal with the grind.
My main problem is the situation that has arisen of PUG. To get all those items I am looking at 20-60 runs each for the various raids and right now I struggle to complete in a Shroud PUG, Hound, VoD etc etc.

The level of play has dropped as we knew it would but it has now dropped to a point where throwing resources at it won’t have a different effect. Groups wipe because people are too inexperienced, to full of themselves to realise they are wrong, and too underequipped. I’ve had 11 people in a group look at me as I join and ask if I know the quest and can guide them, and this is standing in front of shroud. I’ve had people saying the most inane things and coming up with the utmost drivel when it comes to advice. I’ve seen self proclaimed healers watch a party wipe and maintain a full blue bar. I’ve seen melees draw the aggro of the entire quest and shout at the healer for not keeping them alive. True my squelch list grows and yes a load of us have tried to rectify the situation by being informative on how things work and what the best solutions are. Hey it’s not everyone, I’ve done the smoothest runs in the shortest time that will make your head spin but the main issue is that there are more inexperienced people out there today spewing misinformation around and all the veterans have secluded themselves in their guilds and chat channels as the world goes to hell. General chat is off as a default and by level 6, advice channel and trade channel are excluded as well. People are lying to each other out there and people believe it and grow to level 16 and higher believing it and they hit your group and it’s a wipe. I used to click on a PUG in Europe and know that if we wiped it was because something went horribly wrong, we would regroup and do it the second time, and it was rare that we wiped! Alcohol I think had to do with a lot of them

Noone is teaching much anymore due to people not listening and my favourite issue that makes me giggle everytime before turning off a channel…this wonderful statement here, “I know what I’m talking about! I’ve been playing since Beta!”

Lets put this in perspective for you muppets out there that think this game is recently off the shelf.
Beta was last year yes BUT…..You are not a veteran of this game! You are what real veterans like me call “newbies”.

See when I say I’m from Beta then I’m talking about Beta that was in 2005 / 2006 (refresh my memory as it was a long time ago). Yes that puts me in the 5 to 4 year DDO Veteran category. See you guys from last year weren’t from Beta. You were on the Beta server…the place they test new updates. Beta is from before DDO, in any form, was publically released and no you were not there! No you do not know what you talking about and Diplomacy on a chest, Fortification saves you from spells, Evasion is gained as a fighter level up feat, Armour bonus, deflection bonuses, shield bonus and a whole whack of other stacking even if they are the same (shield bonus stacking with shield bonus I mean)…..all of that is utter rubbish and a falicy! Listen to me well…you are being misinformed and you may want to double-check any information given to you through a chat channel or in your guild. People are believing lies and passing them on. And due to this happening people are making nasty mistakes that leads to 12 people being very unhappy because a group can’t complete a quest that was bread and butter speed runs 6 months ago.

Look for the signs!
If someone says they know a quest and then die saying they forgot something was there…stop following them and choose a new leader! Don’t abandon the quest because you think it looks to hard, that makes you a coward. You abandon a quest because the group has no idea what they doing and is wasting your time, not because a party has a near wipe.
If someone joins your group under the illusion of “knowing it” and then asks where the entrance is….pretty big alarm bells should be going off!
If someone says something that goes against the description on an item….they are not telling the truth. Go to the auction house, search for an item with that description and read it’s actual use…then ask questions based on your new knowledge!
If someone tells you some “secret” that noone else knows yet…they are delusional. Every spell, feat and ability is known in this game by most veterans. Go to DDO Wiki or the Compendium and look for it. There is a massive chance that a person is making up dreams in their head and is believing every word.

A Fool talks of what they do not know and believes their own words!

Happy Hunting people and remember, If you doing any Reavers Refuge quests then look up Briareoz on Thelanis