I recently hit the 100 post mark. So I went back through all of my entries and marveled at how the game has changed over the past couple of years. Then I came across an entry where I posted a group for Enter The Kobold on casual and got my first real taste of the upper levels on RaspberryX. This happened just after I killed my last laptop by dropping juice on it and my desktop was refusing to run the game. I had just gotten this laptop and well… It was on my first Cleric life and rereading this just made me giggle…Seriously, we died A LOT. Read on and find out exactly how much that particular group and I died and didn’t give up.

So everything is working amazingly well! DDO runs better than ever, the graphics are insanely awesome…even on a low setting and the people are fricking amazing. I am incredibly stoked to be back and playing and hanging out with familiar and comfortable names.

One of my first nights back, I hit level 16! I wound up heading out into Reavers to run a quest with Sullivans from Sullivans Slayers, but had to leave because of some real life stuff. But he bought me a three hour pass, so when I logged back on, I stayed in Reavers and posted a grouping and started doing explorers and slayers until a ranger called Path (also known as Tohot) joined me. Then slowly our little group filled up with a couple of rangers, a fighter, and a couple of casters.

We decided to do Enter the Kobald.

And it was a fairly easy quest (we were in on casual)… it didn’t even take us overly long to figure out that teleporter area where you move around the room like a knight does on a chess board. But once we got to the end, whoa baby! Was there ever much death and dying.

At first we charged into the boss room, heading straight for the named and I barely squeezed off one heal before I was dead and saw my party wiping out except for one of us. Eventually we all came back to life and then more death and dying was had. Lather, rinse, repeat and die again.

I swear this was the most deaths ever seen on a casual run ever.

We went on like this for I don’t even remember how long until we came upon a strategy that left me opening and closing the valve that made the fire wall thing go away that let you into the boss room and later turned back on to trap you in there. And then everyone else went to kill the end boss and all of his named minions until..YAY! He died!

As short as this entry is…I do believe I am not conveying how much we died. Our deaths numbered in like the 100’s if I do remember correctly. I know I died like a squillion times over because the living spell balls that shot meteor showers kept spawning and killing me and everyone else. Definitely not the sort of balls that I would want to play with…ever.

But it was a weird amount of fun. We didn’t really know what we were doing in the quest so we wound up simply exploring and playing things by ear as we went through it. I think even the boss end fight was fun just because it was challenging…and it was sickly hilarious how many times we died before we got to finish the quest. And I thought it was even funnier how everything was broken in my inventory. Even my back up items, armor, shield  and all of my maces.

Personally, I loved it, and I think others from my group liked it too just because it was fun, we had a great group…and the number of times we died was so outrageous that it was hard to hate.

For the first time in my DDO career I actually saw the Ear Dweller run away. Normally it just insta-dies in whatever spells people have set up she it just turns into a bag. Except last night when farming the Dwelly on Picardia with Nepenthea, I got to see it run. We had done so many runs of the Dreaming Dark Dweller run that I’d lost count and was starting to lose hope. I was  halfheartedly casting Blade Barriers around the chest and waiting to loot before moving on to try again. On the upside I was having fun talking to my farming buddy who was about the best company a gal could have farming a Dwelly. I actually was having fun just chatting and could have done just that, but the bonus was farming for Pica’s ear bug.

And then it happened! I saw the Dweller scurry off the chest and take off running for cover. Dude, can that thing move! I was so excited that I yelled out “Get it! Don’t let it get away!” Except that I forgot to push F to talk and I was basically yelling at myself as I tried to quickly target it and Comet Fall it. Thankfully he died in my Blade Barrier and turned into that beautiful purple bag every Ear Dweller farmer loves to see.

Thusly, Sweller the Ear Dweller joined the ranks among my gear. His brother is on Rasp and who is called Swelly the Ear Dwelly.

(Let’s be honest, I just like running around talking about my “Swelly” and “Sweller”)

Before that though…I also finally got a hold of the Gloves of the Claw scroll from the Red Fens. For the past few weeks I’ve been farming that scroll like mad and haven’t seen it drop…ever. So after Forking teased me for an entire run in epid Into the Deeps about the Claw scroll, I traded him for a Bracers of the Claw scroll and some cookies. You have no idea how stoked I was for that scroll. I almost named it until I remembered I was going to craft with it almost immediately…

Which I did. With the Epic Gloves of the Claw, I can get Ruins intimidate to a 59 (with GH) or a 60 (with shippy) and that makes me a happy Berry. Now I just need shard and scroll of the Gem of Many Facets to have the gear sets and Ruin’s gear will be mostly done for a bit and I can focus on the healers.

But for now…I’m going to log in and Adamantine Ritual the Hell out of my Sweller.

*Inserts jokes about my Sweller getting increased hardness*

P.S I’m sorry! The joke had to be made…it was just sitting there, staring at me and waiting…

I got home from a trip to town to yesterday (I drove 45 minuets for a venti Mocha Cookie Crumble frappacino) and went through my usual routine. I went and snuggled with my dad for a bit, talked to him about my trip and the fact that the gas station attendant had asked me if I was on “E” then went upstairs, grabbed some juice and walked into my room to play DDO. Tohrmente needed, and needs, XP and I was going to get it for her. Unfortunately I ran things out of order when I was running stuff with Tenfour, Loot and Devestating so I’d already almost farmed out the sands flagging quests and was struggling to find things to do.

I got into game, grouped up with my TR partner this life, Kennedy and we started the nights adventures. We were in the middle of an elite run in Dreams of Insanity when my phone rang a familiar ring and I kind of didn’t want to answer it because I knew who it was and what he wanted. And I knew he’d kick up a fuss when he heard Kennedy yelling at me over the mic for whatever reasons Kennedy yells at me (Most times it’s just for the sake of yelling at me). I also didn’t want to pick up because I was busy killing a beholder. I mean…a girls got to have priorities right?

After the beholder was dead and while I was looting I answered the phone that hadn’t stopped ringing the full minuet it took me to beat the beholder down and the conversation went kind of like this…

Him: Hey shorty. What are you up to?
Me: I’m not short.
Him: You know what I mean.
Me: Still, I’m not short.
Him: Forget that. What are you up to?
Me: Killing shit.
Him: Not that stupid game again.
Me: *hangs up*

Side note: About a year and a half ago Jjudo, Attacus and Bloodhumps had to explain what a “shorty” and a “boo” was because I had no idea what guys were talking about when they called me this. Now that I know what they are, I don’t care. I’m not short and Boo is the name of the girl in Monsters Inc. Jjudo still drops a “Boo” on me now and again and I call him that or “shorty” sometimes because it’s funny…I’m not going to turn down a chance to giggle. But in everyone elses case, I’m not short.

Of course he called back and of course I didn’t pick up because I was killing a scarrow this time and making sure I kept the Align the Heavens buff on Kennedy because he’s the healer this life (next TR, it’s my turn). Again, once I was done killing and was safely looting, I answered the phone…

Him: Why did you hang up?
Me: I’m not short.
Him: Really?
Me: No, but don’t insult my game. I really like it.
Him: Fine. I really miss you, girl. You should come out with me tonight.
Me: No, thank you.
Him: Really?
Me: Really really.
Him: You watch too many movies.

And the conversation went on for a couple of minuets. He wanted to go out to dinner together while he was in town and I wanted to play DDO. There really isn’t a compromise in this situation because he hates video games and doesn’t understand it’s fun to quantify my life with experience points and gear. He doesn’t care that I think the Minos Legens is Minotaur balls that you put on your head and well from there the conversation usually just gets silly. We argue over the fact that he can hear Kennedy every now and again in the background talking to me, then we argue over how I don’t want to go out because I have nothing to wear (despite the fact that I’m my nice jeans and a dressy tube top because it’s laundry day) and then he realizes that I’d rather stay at home and play a game rather than drive into town to see him while he’s around on business.

Then I mentioned the fact that I’d already driven to town once already to get my frappacino…big mistake. I mean, yes, I drove 45 minuets to get Starbucks, but the Mocha Cookie Crumble with chocolate whipped cream is freaking heaven! As much as I love driving, 45 minuets both ways (ok so it’s usually less because I have a need for speed), plus driving around in town costs about $20 in gas per trip! So not only would I have to spend $20 by default in going to town again, but I’d probably have to grab a burger after dinner because he took me some place gross to eat and I refused to touch the snails that he loves or the weird looking…something that’s on my plate.

At this point Kennedy had died right at the end of the quest, so I had to pause the conversation to sass him a little bit because he probably wasn’t watching his HP bar while he was beating down the last named beholder. While we were joking back and forth I continued to argue with the guy on the phone over going out for the night. He asked why, and I listed the monetary ones, said that I didn’t want to have to worry about waking my parents up if I got home too late, said that I wasn’t introducing him to my parents (he’s not my bf, but we might be heading down that road) if he came out here to hang out and finally stated my last and final reason for not wanting to go out…

Me: Tohrmente needs xp.

P.S It wouldn’t have been so bad if he had just accepted my original “No, thank you” to mean “No, thank you” and not that I was playing hard to get. Sadly this guy turns me into an immature fiend because it’s too much fun sassing him.

P.P.S Kennedy and I took level 14 last night a couple ranks early so that we could start doing new quests tonight.

P.P.P.S Post scripts are fun.

Earlier this week I volunteered to lead two raids on my guilds raid night. Our raids start at 8pm est/5pm pacific and well…to begin with I was nearly 15 minuets late to start my own raids. It was my sisters birthday yesterday so I was in town hanging out with her and unfortunately there were cops on the highway on my way home so the 45 minuet drive literally took 45 minuets instead of the 25-30minuet drive that I usually turn it into. So I get home, log on and see only 4 guildies online and wondered if raids were worth posting that night…I decided that if they didn’t want to raid, then I would anyway. I was in a raiding mood.

Now, I’ve never led a serious amounts of raids before. I’m comfortable leading raids like VoD, Reaver’s Fate and Shroud because they more or less need a facilitator to fill the raid and get people to do the basic parts. I’m also ok with leading raids like ToD and HoX because I know the raid and I know the roles needed for the raid. However, before last night I had never led an eChrono, eVoN 6 or eADQ (do you see the connection?). So last night there were a few firsts…

I started my night off posting an epic Chronoscope. I was on my Pally/Monk, RuinberryX with thoughts of tanking. I have a few worries. Namely that this was my first time leading eChrono and while I know how the raid works, I’ve never been the one to form it and make sure everyone was doing their part. So I explained to the group that this was my first time leading eChrono (I like to be honest) and asked for advice if anyone thought I needed it. One guy told me jokingly that admitting infallibility was a mistake and I replied sassily “Humility, I has some.” Tenfour pfft‘d at me because…well, he knows me. My first big oops happened when I realized just as we were walking to the raid that I hadn’t turned in the last time I’d run Ruin in eChrono. Crap. At this point we had 2 Clerics and 1 Favoured Soul in the group. Besides my Ruin, I only have healers at level 20…so RaspberryX got to play melee last night. She has a 34 unbuffed strength and I was reminded of how much damage she spits out. I was also stoked to see how well Rasps flying fists of fury worked combined with Divine Punishment. I felt like beating my chest over how great she was as a melee. In the end, we got a win and the raid went very smoothly and the Devastator went down quickly.

The next raid that went up was ToD. Naturally my guildies were there but after that I took the first people who applied to the LFM and saw that we had a good set up for hard. There really isn’t much to say about this run. It went smoothly as smooth can go and I was lag free the entire time. Seriously, there is nothing more awesome than kiting the Jailor around and being able to run and jump over his head instead of lagging in a circle while you kite him. I was giggling the entire time as I dragged the Jailor through my Blade Barrier. I would turn around and throw a Divine Punishment on him then run at him, smack him once and then jump over his head and kite him back through the Blade Barrier. We completed the run with no tomes (not a surprise) and a decent set of rings.

That was it and I was done. I’d led my raids and nothing horrible happened. I even led a new raid which I can now lead in the future because if I can do it once, I can do it twice.

Except one of my guildies asked if we were doing anything else…and after some talk in guild, I was leading an eVoN 6 (Normal VoN 5)! Now let me tell you, I’m not even sure what you’re supposed to do in VoN 5. Whenever I run it at level I go down the one corridor and kill stuff as they spawn on the puzzle, then I go back and help with switches. After that I pike because I get confused. So me leading this raid was a bit of a joke to me. Plus it was my first time leading eVoN6. I know how the last part goes so mostly I just had to assign bases, pick a strategy and we were off. Except for the fact that a 240hp Ranger tried joining. I don’t myDDO characters before I let them in my group. I work on the idea that if you’ve made it to level 20, you’ll at least meet the minimum requirements to be in most raids. So believe me I felt like a complete douche canoe when I made the quick decision to dismiss him from the party. Quickly I  said something along the lines of “You’re going to think I’m an a@#hole for this, and I’m sorry that I have to do this, but I think you’re hit points are too low to be in this run. I know I sound like a jerkface for saying that and I’m really sorry. Good luck and take care.” Then I booted him from my group. Then other than a snag in killing the pillars, we beat Velah down and thanks to my new lag free state I actually saw her snort fire before she blew flames all over the place. *Excitement*

Three raids. All successful. I was pretty freaking stoked. Yes, I’d led long strings of raids before, but those were nights where I led ToD, VoD, Shroud and Reavers. No big deal. Leading epics is scary because I was convinced I was going to screw up somewhere and it would be all my fault. However, nothing awful happened and when one of my guildies asked if we were doing more, I figured Why not? I took a 5 minuet break and posted an epic Zawabis Revenge at a guildy’s request.

As I was forming the raid I’d realized that forming/facilitating/leading raids is kind of mentally exhausting. Normally on raid nights or nights where I raid a lot, I’m not leading so while the raid forms I can read a book, grab a snack, take a bio break and more or less dick around while I wait for the raids to form. In the past I’ve even gone to put on a face mask while I wait and sometimes I’ve even taken brief naps. I don’t do that while I’m forming raids. Too many people are sending tells, applying and asking questions in party. So I have to pay attention and after nearly 5 hours of raiding…paying attention is tiring. Even more tiring when the party takes forever to fill like this one did.

Eventually the party filled, we got the pre-raid done and then were off to kill the snake-woman-thing. And we failed attempt one. With two healers, it was a little tough and even more tough when we both died because we don’t have the reflex saves to stay standing if we get Comet Falled or torn up in the flying blades. Attempt two had someone switching to their healer and with the third healer, the run went much smoothlier and we got a win. Yay! This was also my first time leading eADQ so I was happy not to have screwed up another run and not wasted peoples time.

In the end I had started posting raids at about 5:15pm my time and the last raid I ran for the night finished at about 10:55pm. At that  point I’d had enough of DDO and logged off for the night to watch Disney movies (The Little Mermaid, Cinderella and Finding Nemo). No uber loot dropped, but I was happy to have a good set of wins behind me. Plus while I was forming raids I had time to do little 5-minuet ab circuit workouts and had actually gotten in a decent core work out. Double win! All in all a good night?

I’d say yes.

/WOOT

So over the weekend one of the guys who I graduated with came over to my place to fix my lag issue with DDO. Yes, I contacted him with the specific task of “make this game not laggy.” He gave me this funny look and asked me what “lag” was. Right, I forgot this kid has been making and building his own computers since he was 12…he doesn’t know what lag would look like. So I showed him and that immediately started a flurry of clicking. Click here. Frustrated look there. Exasperated look at me. Click. Click. Click. Sigh. Click. Click. Click.

He tried explaining to me why my computer was lagging. Unfortunately he doesn’t know how to say “This doomahickey needs to be better. You can make this thingamagic perform better by tweaking the whatsamajig.” He tried using small and condescending words as though I would understand if he acted like an butt dumpling and pretended to act like I should know this stuff. Eventually I got bored of his superior act, found a bright Post-It and wrote <N00B<3> on it and stuck it on my forehead. Then I made him one that said </N00B<3> and stuck it on his shirt.

He laughed and snatched the Post-It off my forehead and I knew immediately that I’d made a mistake.

You see in high school this guy was the smelly kid. Or one of several smelly kids. Keep in mind that I graduated in 2005…almost 7 years ago. This guy had a lot of time since then to move beyond being the smelly kid and he didn’t. However, he has gorgeous blue eyes, a strong jaw line and abs old ladies could wash their clothes on back in the day when washboards weren’t vintage and more commonly used as instruments. But he was still the smelly kid…and still is. As much as I want the hotness factor to even out with the gagging stink factor, it doesn’t. So him lifting his arm made me almost gag and I had to excuse myself while he continued to work on my laptop.

Anyway, long story short: Karma slapped me for judging this guy based on his stink because he spent the entire time acting superior to me because he knew computer stuff and kept saying things like “you’re lucky you’re cute”. I don’t know how many times he mentioned his degree and how he’s working towards his Ph.D. Blah blah blah. Oh then he would babble on about how he sure he was that someday I would finish my degree and then told me how useless an Arts degree is useless in the real world. And whatever. I put up with it. A friend of mine says this guy is easily making $100 000 a year off of whatever it is that he does…and I was getting his expertise for free.

And to me, fixing my DDO lag is priceless. I can deal with a few insults because I don’t smell and wasn’t the smelly kid in school. I was the dumb jock. I’ll take dumb over smelly any day of the week, hands down.

So we spend the better part of the afternoon working on my laptop. Doing things to increase it’s performance. Taking it a part to give it a really good cleaning and making sure nothing was broken, fried or lonely. He tried to show me what he was doing and explaining what was wrong with my laptop, but I refused to stay too close to him for long. It seriously felt like his smell was getting into my pores. Though to be honest, an hour of that afternoon was spent with me showing him around DDO because he’s been thinking of playing now that the new expansion pack is coming out (he plays pen and paper with a role playing group and is a R.A Salvatore fan). He thought it was funny that I’d be happy in a Cleric role.

Are you getting that I was a bit of a dick in high school?

Anyway, after spending the day with his stink, his insults and not really knowing what this guy was doing with my laptop, he was done! Everything on my laptop was running smoothly and DDO seemed to be relatively lagless. I was ecstatic! My lag was more or less fixed! YIPPEE FREAKING KAI YAY MOFOS! Seriously, I couldn’t have been more happy. I hugged the dude and danced around the room I was so happy. Then he told me I was lucky that I was cute otherwise he’d charge me for his services.

Whatever. I might be dumb by his standards, but I don’t smell like stale sweat and soggy cheese.

Sadly I didn’t run around for more than a few minuets on the game because when I logged in later…my lag was worse than ever! WTF MATE?!

I was seriously ticked off. I spent all day Monday plotting his doom. Tuesday I called him, but he insulted me some more so I hung up on him and resolved to fix the problem myself even if it meant that I’d have to buy a new laptop that could handle my gaming habits. Then by Wednesday my computer was seriously starting to fail so I called another friend who is one of those guys you phone to help you with your computer issues. Except I called him while he was on the clock and he could pretend I was routed to him by customer service so I could get free fixings of my laptop. And then he spent one hour patched into my computer and looking for issues. He finally figured out the problem and we spend the next four hours on the phone with him walking me through taking my laptop a part and making sure everything was connected properly. He even taught me how to clean the dust from my fans and stuff.

After this arduous undertaking he had me turn my computer back on and he connected himself back to my laptop, ran DDO and ran around on one of my baby alts for half an hour with no lag. Then he turned my settings up and did everything he could think of doing that would lag me out. He Skype called himself, he ran Fallout 3 in the background, started a movie playing in iTunes, downloaded some huge files and turned my DDO settings up even higher and yet…no lag. He even installed this fish tank onto my computer that you can run in the background and stuck 100 fish in the tank before DDO lagged.  I could have cried with joy in that moment.

So now…I’m relatively lag free. I turned my settings back down low and as long as no one else is accessing the internet in my house, I’m lagless. It’s a weird feeling…standing in quests and seeing my heals land as I cast them. I saw Velah snort fire out her nose for the first time today. I didn’t have to avoid Disco Balls like they were a dirty, stinky plague. I was able to run my internet browser as I played! It was Heaven and I definitely over healed a lot because I’m not used to healing lag free and having to make up for spells landing late or not landing at all.

I never imagined being so happy over something as a computer that is running great and a game running like it should. The last time I was lag free like this was when I started playing the game…back in November 2009.

And you know what? I’m damn lucky that I’m cute. Yups. It got me my laptop fixed and gave me some lag free fun in DDO.

/cheer

The other week I popped into an epic Chronoscope group on my Cleric, Picardia. Lately I’ve found it’s easier to heal groups with her than running on my Pally or healing with RaspberryX. Her heals hit hard enough that I only need to use one Cure Mass Light instead of One Cure Mass Light and some touch ups with Rasp. Extended Holy Aura means that I’m usually the one sneaking in to keep Holy Aura on the tank and sometimes Recitation. Plus running the Cleric has just been hella much more fun than any other class right now. It has me seriously debating turning Rasp back into a Cleric. A Battle Cleric. The Battle Cleric to end all Battle Cleric’s.

Except I’m kidding myself because I hate grinding gear, I suck a soloing and I play for fun so that takes me out of the running when placed next to people who play more seriously than I do, are ok with grinding craptons of gear and understand game mechanics better than me.

But I’m digressing. I got into this group and immediately started noticing the hit point bars of the melee’s. Running with my guilds means that I’ve been spoiled and can usually expect 500+ from any of the muscle and usually the casters. Seeing a Fighter that was talking about being able to self buff to over 500 hit points kind of freaked me out. I hate to sound elitist, but there are certain things that I’ve come to expect from various classes and when I don’t see them I tend to get a little twitchy until I remind myself that I still build gimp characters and need to fully gear my Cleric so I shouldn’t be judging anyone…

So we head into the first part, the stadium, and things go smoothly. We all got into the bank with out incident and things were going smoothly. Maybe I was freaking out for nothing? Then killing Blood Plate takes a little longer than usual. He died without too much of an incident and there really wasn’t anything to note about the fight. At this point I was confident in the group, but there was still just something different about this run than all the other runs that I had been on.

My Cleric senses were tingling and I didn’t know why.

Maybe it was gas or I was turned on by the prospect of getting some phat lootz. I don’t know.

We went into the second part and used the method where we pull the orthon up to the very top platform and fight him there. This is bad news bears for me because all the disco balls that usually go up means that I’m going to lag…and boy did I ever lag. Also the down side to this method is that you have to be more or less standing out of the main bosses sight for it to work and the casters have to establish aggro before the melee’s can go to work or else he ports away. It’s annoying and takes a little longer than the other methods and I personally find it annoying. I prefer to fight on the platform below the first one where I can stand on my perch and heal everyone down below.

All whining aside, I got rubber banded into a wall. It was like standing inside of a giant vagina, or that’s how I described it in that moment. My screen was this pinky/salmon colour and I could tell that I was spinning around because the pink moved like I was going in a circle, but I couldn’t do anything. I also knew that I was in a wall because no one could see where I went. They were all calling for me and I was stuck in a wall.

Relogging fixed that (though most times relogging will boot you out of the quest) and we went on to the final fight.

There were three healers. We all had our heal order and I was second in line and was told to spot heal as needed. That was fine. I love healing second because it means that I can stand there and spam Divine Punishment and Harm on the Devastator…and that’s fun. Except in this case I started noticing that Devastator’s red bar was going down slower than I was used to and the ball of muscled people standing and fighting on it’s butt were taking more damage than I was used to. So I stood still and spot healed. Trash popped up and eventually they killed the trash. Then they all went back to killing the Devastator and I wondered why he wasn’t dead yet.

Usually the Devastator is dead by the time I get down to about 50% mana…this time he was down to about 50% health and I started to conserve my spell points. At this point the first healer ran out of spell points and took a D-door to top up while I took over healing the tank. By the time the first healer returned I was down to 200 odd spell points so I had him take over while I used the last of my mana to spam Divine Punishment and then D-doored out. Shortly after I got back from topping up my spell points, the third healer had to D-door to top up.

And the fight went on.

And on.

And on.

And on.

At this point I was conserving as much as I could, using Heal scrolls and Cure Mass Mod scrolls where I could and only using my spell points if it was totally necessary. All the casters and healers had gone back to top up their spell points and we were all running low on our spell points. I’d used up my Vile Blasphemy clicky and gotten the 200-odd sp’s back from that and I felt like screaming. Seriously, would this fight ever end.

I started singing the Never Ending Song to myself. I read a few pages in my book while I cycled through my scrolls. My hair started to go grey and I started to get wrinkles. Yes that’s an over exaggeration but, frick! This fight just wasn’t ending. Ever. Never ever. I had to stop checking the Devastator’s hp bar because I was going crazy at how slow it was going down.

And then…I started to run out of spell points. The Devastator was at about 10% health and I thought PRAISE THE DDO GODS! IT’S ALMOST OVER! HALLELUJAH! This is where I started to tense up. My shoulder muscles tightened and bunched up. My heart rate sped up a little bit. My back muscles were tense and yes a game was causing me to have a physiological response! Heck even my butt was tense with anticipation and trepidation. We were so close and yet, so far!

At the point the leader of the raid said that he’d pay back any pots that we drank. I kept thinking that normally I wouldn’t have to drink any pots. That one full mana bar from all the healers and casters should have been enough…but then I checked my snarky attitude and reminded myself that not everyone is as well geared and well built as the people I normally roll with. This is why I’m in a pick up group…to get gear that would help the characters in this group.

BUT OH MY FREAKING GOSH! WOULD THIS FIGHT NEVER END?!

I drank a pot. People died. I started to spam my every Mass Cure that I had on the group to make sure they lived. I drank another pot and threw a Harm out at the Devastator followed with a Divine Punishment. There was a sliver of health left that I could see. I threw every light spell I had to get that last hit point gone. Serious! I even threw out a Searing Light spell for good measure while I waited on my Divine Punishment cool down to go away. I was chewing on my lower lip and waiting…

Waiting…

Waiting…

For that freaking Devastator to finally die!

We did it. It took forever and I swear that it was never going to end, but we did it. Yay! I noticed that I was holding my breath and I cursed a lot because that took longer than it should have and was a a little more tense that I would have liked, but it was done and I was happy for it.

Then no good shards dropped and the end was rather anti-climactic. But it, whatever, at least the fight ended and I wasn’t stuck in this weird time-space/Twilight zone of a never ending fight like I had started to fear.

So last night I decided to post a ToD for funsies. As my group started to form, myself and everyone else started noticing that our group was looking like a group that could do elite. However, I didn’t say anything because I’m not brave enough for ToD and was going to suggest a hard run. Then others in the group started talking about doing Elite, so I went with it and filled the last spots of the raid with doing elite in mind.

Trouble started right away in part one…

Krimsonrane, our tank, got rubber banded into a wall and experience with being trapped in a wall has taught a few of us that /stuck will port you out of the quest and sometimes relogging will even port you out. Thankfully at this point we were fighting in the cubby hole that the dogs come out of to avoid getting blown all over the place and Krim was able to die and go to the VIP room.

Unfortunately, lots of other people died as well. We managed to kill the Judge before we were down to our two Wizards, myself, two Favoured Souls and a Barbarian. I can’t remember who else was up, but that was the gist of it when the Judge died. Which meant that we had to take the Jailor down with this group. On elite. The Barbarian was the War Forged XKennedyx who doesn’t have the best heal amp so scroll healing him was fun to say the least.

Kennedy wound up beating down the Jailor with one of the Favoured Souls, Spaceplague while the other FvS and I healed. For me I would scroll as much as I could and then pop a Mass Cure Light on the two melee’s and top Kennedy off with a Heal every now and again. It was a long assed process and we probably would have been better off recalling but at this point I had chugged a few pots so I was invested in wanting to win a run. At one point I tried sneaking up close to Kennedy to see if I could get my Cleric’s aura to land on him, but got blown and almost sent into the traps…where on elite means I get an insta-death even if I made my saves. Thankfully I put the Cleric capstone, Divine Intervention on Kennedy because he flatlined at one point, but popped right back up for us to heal him back to full.

When all was said and done we won part one and Kennedy yelled over mic “Raspberry you, a#%hole! You’re lucky you didn’t let me die or I would have killed you after beating him down that far.” For the record: I was on Picardia, my Cleric and heal bot. Also for the record: the last people standing did a great job working together and taking down the Jailor short handed. We all drank a few pots, but it got done. Not only that but the guys in the VIP room kept me amused with their constant chatter. I love when I’m in talkative groups.

Part two went smoothly. It was like an extended hard part two fight…except we had the two Necro Wizards duo tanking. Wizkalifa and Rajaatt did a great job with the Shadows and I barely had to Harm them through out the whole process though I continually did…just in case.

Part three was…ugly. We went in on elite with a light path Monk who was new to the raid, but he did well keeping us grasped for the most part. I still don’t have any spell absorption items (which I’ve been farming), so I got stunned once. Krimsonrane was an excellent tank as well as Kvroq (sp?). Unfortunately we had the healer who was healing Kv disconnect during the last fight and we had a few deaths we didn’t need. With Horoth back to full health, we pulled off of Suulo, had a Wizard kite him around and got everyone back on Horoth. Everything was going smoothly after that, the disconnected FvS came back and then…The Wizard got chained and with Suulo running onto the group everyone scattered.

STILL!

Even after that we recovered and were able to pile back onto Horoth until…I honestly don’t know what happened because it all happened so quickly. I wound up dead, others wound up dead and everyone else started to D-Door out. There was no way we were going to finish this. I don’t know how many pots the other healers had chugged, but at that point I had down 10 Greaters and 10 majors healing, raising and rebuffing people and healing some more.

It was unfortunate that we didn’t get the win, because we were actually a really great group for a bunch of random people that applied to an LFM, but for me it was still fun. It was a challenge that I’d accepted and failed at, but it gave me a better idea of what I need to get by as a Cleric. Mostly though, it was just a lot of fun with a good group of guys that I will definitely be running with again in the future.

Last night my level 20 Cleric, Picardia got into an eChrono run. There was another Cleric in the group and the rest was the usual mismash of characters that you take into raids. I wasn’t paying attention when the party was forming and when I saw us with a full party and only two healers I though…”Well crap!” You see, I’m one of the most effected by lag people that I know. My guild knows it, The High Council knows it and anyone who has run with me more than a few times knows it: I lag out a lot. In fact, when we used to run the Hound of Xoriat and A Vision of Destruction raids, I would have to run ahead of everyone, die and someone would have to carry my soul stone until I stopped lagging…or until we got to the raid. I mean even a few of them knew that if I stopped moving and stopped talking that, “Hello, I’m going to disconnect now” and then they would all wait for me.

I’ve fixed most of those issues by playing on the lowest settings possible in the game and tweaking my computer to handle to game better, but I still lag out like a mofo and when that happens, usually someone dies because I was healing them. Sadly my usual lag combined with Orien’s horrendous server lag, means that I freeze up in game at the worst of times…like when someone says “Picardia heal the tank” and suddenly I can’t move and everyone is like “WTF MATE?!” and I’m like “—” because I’m so lagged that I can’t type or talk. Then they’re like “RWAR YOU’RE AN AWFUL HEALER! WE HATE YOU” unless they’re my guildies or from THC then they know better and have sufficient healers to survive laggy good times.  Which is why whenever I raid I try to make sure there are three healers even though two good healers could get the job done.

But I have some tricks up my sleeve for playing through the lag. Like if I’m in a party with an over zealous crowd controller, I stay the heck away from their squillion disco balls that they put up when two would have sufficed. Sadly more than one disco is required in part two of the Chronoscrope so I have to stay as far away from them as possible. Especially when we do the method where we chase the dude all over the place. It’s either that or I cast Break Enchantment all over the place while I chase the party…but the last time I did that the Wizard got really angry that his disco’s kept disappearing.

I was all like “Dude, it’s called “EXTEND”. Hello!”

Anyway, because disco balls are required I stay up top as long as I possibly can. And I dot the hell out of the red named orthon. Picardia does a great amount of damage with her Divine Punishment and I never turn down an opportunity to use it. So in between tossing Mass Heals and Cures on the party, I spammed the heck out of DP on the boss. Which is great because fully stacked I can get that spell to tick off 300-800 points of damage…or at least that’s great while the party is on him and beating the crap out of him and I have no chance to pull aggro.

Sadly I saw him port and just as he ported to the top of one of those sewer thingys that everyone has to jump to get to, I saw three 900+ ticks of damage float off his head. I knew then that I was going to die because my aura lagged. People think I keep my aura up because it helps to heal those standing around me. They’d be wrong. I keep my aura up so I can see when I’m about to lag out. You see, my healing aura is always the first thing to lag out in my laggy world and when I see my aura stop working I know that I’m about to be unable to move. In this case when my aura stopped, I knew that I was going to die.

Why? Because the worst lag that I can get is when monsters port to me. The bearded devils are the worst because multiples of them usually port to me at once. One of them is bad, two will cause me to freeze up, stick my arms out to the side and either disconnect or die. Sadly this is what happened. The boss ported to me along with three devils. I froze and immediately stopped doing anything because the lag goes away quicker when I don’t do anything. It took like 5 seconds for the lag to clear and by that time I was half dead so when I tried to run and heal…*SPLAT*

My heals lagged and I got to die just as the party ran up the stairs to kill the orthon.

Then I started to giggle to myself thinking that was the worst possible way any character could handle aggro. Normally I’m fine when stuff attacks me because I heal through it, but this time it was all just “FREEZE AND SPLAT*.

These are the top 300 words on myDDO blog

One of the things that I truly love about DDO is how the game keeps on evolving. Not only that but how the people evolve too. Sure, I miss being a complete and total noob in the game because everything was new, exciting and oh-so-amazing, but at the same time I really enjoy where the game has gone for me in the last few years. Raids are run differently, I stopped refusing to make a Green Steel item, I started running VoN even though I’m not a fan of it or it’s flagging quests and I really enjoy playing a melee.

Though some things have stayed the same: I adore my healers and have the most fun playing one of my healers. I still threaten not to heal Gawd, but after three years of the same threat, I’ve yet to let him purposefully die. I still suck at and dislike soloing anything. I still refuse to put armor on Raspberry even though everyone else gets clothes of some sort. Oh, and I am forever still a freak for Kobold Assault…despite the fact that I have a little Blue Kobold Shaman as a companion who I’ve named “Doodle”.

Actually I just love kobold’s. Does anyone else get super excited when the Crystal Cove comes back and you can hang with kobold’s all day long? I don’t own any of the challenge packs, so this is really my only time to chill with the awesome little creatures where I don’t have to kill them and they are beyond AWESOME. Seriously y’all, is it just me or is it not cool that we get to run around and interact with kobolds?

I heard one of them scream last night “KOBOLD DANCER! KOBOLD TALK TO FOREMAN ABOUT POSTURE!”

In all honesty, I nearly died when I heard the new kobold quote. Ecstasy can’t even begin to describe how awesome I thought these newly promoted dancer kobolds were. I mean yeah, I let a few die because I was super lagged out and trying to kill pirates, but I think they’d forgive me since only a few died while I saved the rest of them from a horrible piratey death.

Though I also happen to think pirates are cool if they’re not the raping/pillaging sort of pirate. Just the treasure/looting kind of pirate.

The other day I decided to start leveling a character on Wayfinder. I decided to play a pure Cleric…not the greatest idea in hindsight because soloing with a Cleric sucks, but whatever. I’ve made my choice and I’m sticking to it. She’s a mix between Rasp’s first life and my current Cleric, Picarida. Thank the Heavens for Veteran Status! I jumped straight up to level four and have been stuck there ever since.

Yes, I’ve gotten xp, but it’s not as easy as it could be.

And I’m loving it. No ship, no Elite streak and no gear, pots, cookies or anything waiting for me in my shared bank. I’m back to being as broke as a joke and it’s actually a lot of fun. I like starting from scratch and building up what I have and leveling is it’s own challenge. For example, I spent almost half an hour in Freshen the Air trying to get through that stinking quest with a group. We wiped, resurrected out, ran back in, died, went back in, got a Wizzie in the group, recalled, went back in and finally won after a few more deaths.

I was really confused at first, “We’re taking the re-entry penalty instead of just restarting?”

They were confused too, “Why would we restart? We’re half way done!” “It doesn’t matter, the loot is great in here.”

Ok. I went a long with it, got my collectables, picked up my loot and even picked up a ton of coinage and pots that came out of the breakables. I mean, I’m broke so I have to pay for my repairs somehow so I’m back to picking all the coins, pots and anything that I can make a dime off of.

After we finished that quest I took a break, came back and joined another group. We decided to run Kobolds New Ringleader and they had no idea what I meant when I asked “Are we going the long way or the short way?” Though I got my answer a few seconds after asking that when the Paladin in the group beelined for the big box and broke it and the little box next to it that let you short cut through the quest. Ok, we were going the long way. I started wandering around killing kobolds and breaking boxes. As I broke boxes I picked up whatever was inside of them and sometimes I healed the people in the group as they needed it.

Then the Paladin started to get angry.

I was taking everything from the boxes that his character NEEDED. His character NEEDED the pots that dropped to help him level. It wasn’t fair that I was looting everything that fell out of the boxes and I should leave everything on the floor in case someone NEEDED anything that fell out of the boxes. I wasn’t being helpful to the party so I should get last dibs on the loot that dropped from breakables. I rolled my eyes at this. My breakables count was 20+ higher than anyone else in the quest and my kill count was even the highest in the group. I wasn’t slacking in the least and whatever, it was coins, arrows and pots that were dropping.

At this point the party was following me as I led them through the quest. I’d open and door and everyone would charge in and kill everything that I’d Sound Blasted and stunned as a result. It was also at this point the Paladin was literally walking behind me as I broke everything in each room and trying to pick up what dropped out before I got it. Everyone else was scattered breaking other breakables and getting whatever was inside.

The blow up happened over a Shield of Faith potion and 43 silver.

I broke two boxes and the above items fell out. I happen to have mastered using “Q” and “E” to pick stuff up so I got to these things first just like I’d gotten to everything else first that led up to this moment. When the Pally saw that he again didn’t get the breakables junk loot, he lost it. He started yelling at me over his mic about how I was just a useless class that no party needed because I didn’t do good damage. One of my favorite quotes was “I NEED THAT SHIELD OF FAITH POTION TO SURVIVE BOSS FIGHTS!” Another quote from him was, “I TAKE MORE DAMAGE THAN YOU! I NEED COINS TO REPAIR MY STUFF!”

Keep in mind that I literally have 100 plat in my inventory.

Also keep in mind that I was irritated about him bashing my class. I happen to love being a Cleric.

I’m also a stickler for manners. If he had nicely asked me not to pick up pots or whatever, I probably would have left the breakables loot on the floor. In fact once I saw the rest of my party racing to get to breakables and their droppings I had stopped picking stuff up to let my party get to it first. I picked up whatever they missed. It was only because of this guy that I started looting everything that I came across.

We finally got to the end fight and the guy was still whining about the Shield of Faith Potion and 43 silver. I hadn’t picked up a whole lot since that because my party was quicker than I was at getting to the breakables at this point. That is to say: While I cleared a room and killed everything, they got all the breakables. We killed the last kobold and the Paladin had 30 hit points left. He told me to give him a couple of cures before the last boss came out.

Ugh no.

The last boss popped out, one hit killed the Pally, one shotted the Wizard, killed the Rogue and the Fighter and Sorc only lived because they weren’t standing at the door as the big troll thing came out. The Fighter actually grabbed stones and ran out of the room while the Sorc and I ran around shooting whatever spells we had at the last monster. Everyone came back to life just as we killed the boss…and died because the kobolds smacked us down.

It was at this point the Paladin informed me that “I was black listed from running with his guild ever.” The reason? I took all of the good loot and didn’t try to share it.

I can’t wait for this guy to get to the higher levels when the real loot drama begins…