The last couple days have been slow for the TR train. The guild did epics on Tuesday this week after everyone decided that Wednesday would be the best, but not two weeks in a row. Shoot me. Xping on Wednesday is not that great as Fopo has his league bowling on those nights. So I fit in some more epic stuff as able. Last night turned in to a night of ddo where when I logged for the night I wondered where the night went as I felt like I did nothing (one eSnitch and one Abbot run done).

Anyway I did get a little bit of xp in the last few days on Samius and xp capped so I had to level to 10. A level I have been looking forward to since I learned that the Arty Battle Engineer gave -10% ASF. Meaning I can bust out some of my favorite armor from back in the day. Elfcrafted Chain Shirt, it is like baby blue dragon armor (+3 Mithral, Arcane Lore and Minor Spell Penetration VII) and happens to look amazing!

Replace that shitty Minos Legens, and put on a smexxy yellow feathered Captain’s Chapeau on a human with a kick ass long beard and a dragon mark and a rune arm you will have a rough idea of what I look like. I looked so hot I was getting tells about how randy I was making people while just standing on the boat. Okay, those tells were from Tobril. But I know how smexxy I look! Damn Smexxy!

Speaking of Smexxy, I have been really enjoying the Retain Essence perk the arties have.

Retain Essence
Whenever an Artificer uses a rod, staff, or wand, the character has a chance to not expend a charge. The percentage chance is equal to (Artificer Level)/2 + Int Modifier + Enhancement Modifier + Effect Modifier.

I am not sure what that all means, fill in the blank style and find a % per item thing but I can say that I notice my wand charges get saved fairly often. But where I really see charged being retained is on my spell boosting clickies. When I made them I gave them the highest level spells I could and still was able to use them at the time. So they are superior X level 7 or 8. So I am going to say there Effect Modifier is high as I almost always get 4 uses out per clickly and a lot of the time 5 uses in really long quests.

One last thing, I think today starts free Arty weekend. So if you haven’t gotten to play them because you are holding out for them to go on sale or something roll one up and try it. And if you love it then you can you can use code DDOMK10 to get 10% off whatever is in your store cart. And I think we are also in 25% xp week starting today also.

<3

So here we are at 2:30 my time and I still haven’t written any thing for today. I have been playing with work stuff. My work Mac came the other day and I have been trying to use it some just to try and get a feel for things. But that is no excuse. The werds must go on. But I still don’t have much of a topic to focus on.

I could try an talk about the failed eDQ runs last night. But they might come across as whiny. And who wants to hear about how the healers failed to heal a raid, or fail to throw a rez with the queen’s bar all but totally gone? And please don’t get me started on how the raid leaders had real leadership issues. How many people can BYOH in and eDQ? Answer not many. And loosing a Sorc for a fighter because you don’t like how the sorc might play is crappy. Trust me one more caster would have won that second run hands down. That wipe was totally on the leader being an a$$.

Or I could talk a little about how I hit two epic Small Problems and in the second with Oncler he bitched me out for pikeing a fight. I was on Java healing btw. When I said I do that part of the quest all the time and there is not a fight he informed me there was and I told him I ran it the night before and there wasn’t. After about a min of arguing someone said that fight was only on epic and we both felt dumb. No seals for me on either run so my dry streak on seals continues.

I could run down how Phlor did his first night as a WF and a none Pally class. But as he was fresh off the boat (level 7) all we did was run the Ataraxia’s Haven loop and he did fine. Learned that rust monsters are bad which was funny. But nothing really worthy of a whole post.

Here is some good news Seth MacFarlane’s ‘Ted’ Moves Up to June 29. Think it will be a blast if the wife will never go. Tobril might be around for the 4th of July it might be just the movie to get us away from the computers and Ddo.

In other movie news Iron Man 3 started shooting yesterday and just got their budget increased (60 Million), hmm Iron Mans. Speaking of Iron Man and the Avengers (I was too talking about the Avengers) here is a sweet tee I am about to order. http://www.80stees.com/products/Avengers-Shirt.asp

While I am on the movie kick. Please someone tell me who thinks Kristen Stewart is hotter then Charlize Theron so I can kick that person in the nuts. The wife as informed me that I am taking her to see Snow White and the Huntsman, and before it even starts the realism is gone…. And I like brunettes over blondes.

Well I think that is enough rambling to make this count as a post. If you want to hear about something specific tomorrow you better use the comments.

<3

After a quick Elite Pit run and a mad dash Tear run the TR train swapped to epics and raiding. Epice Tuesday is a maybe once again…

Anyway after swapping and forming up we ran a quick eSnitch. Had two scrolls drop, both for Brawn’s Spirts. And One for me. So double win. Still can’t get the axe seal to drop though….

Then a quick eDA, two full tokens are tasty. Someone got a Devil’s Run shard but it wasn’t me. But I did get a ring clickly with 3 uses of Pro Evil level 1. Did I say it has a large Augment slot? No..

After eDA it was time for our “Teach Samius how to Tank again” Class. Aka a Tod run. This time with an Arty and me on Horoth. It went well enough. Damage in felt good, Damage out could have been a little better… I did get stunned a lot more then I would have liked but what can you do if there is not a light monk? Any way the hate is there just need to fine tune a bit more.

Got the AC to 89 with Haste and Bard song. That leaves me with 1 more from dex if I reset my enchantments and take the last tear of the more dex in armor line. +2 when I get my defender set put together, and +3 if I ever get the epic tower shield built. Hope that is still good enough with the new changes on the way.

After Tod, “Teach Samius how to Tank again” Class rolled on to a Hard Vod where we lost our Arty. So I was in power attack/double strike shield mode trying to hold agro with 15-20 points of damage with my hate sword. Did well expect once fairly quickly after a port I got chained and Dots or a rogue with his full hate on got it and I had intim. Speaking of intims, I had to do some running after a port to imtim. Casters didn’t want to bring Sully over or let me bring her to me via my silver bow but it was fun. And when it was all over I got passed an Omniscience, which will let me swap swords and keep my AC the same.

After Vod the guild formed up again for another eSnitch, Still no seal for the axe.

Finally before bed there was time to ransack the first chest in Servants of the Overlord. We even had a few goodies drop. I just really want to try and get that Shield done. To that end I will need to flag a few more guys to hit that chest and maybe even run the first one for seals some….

<3s

So one of my big fears of playing the Arty class is coming true. I am falling for it fairly hard. I am already thinking of doing a major juggle and switching guys in to different kinds of Arties. I was telling a guildie the other day (think it was Phlor) that they are the most complex class I have ever played. It takes so much concentration to make them sing.

The thing is even with all the things I love about them and I truly love to play this life, I feel I am busy doing all the cool thing and not really watching what I am doing. And that is leading to play error deaths. For example think I died 3 times in Tide Turns last night. WFT? Twice while getting the traps and once clearing the last room. Cleared everything but the water Ellies, while Fopo on his Pally life dropped the boss. Went to get them and took 6 shots from Frost Lance. As I had died earlier I lost my ship resistances and had so much else going on I forgot to cast them on myself so my 2 points of cold resistance from the ranger life stopped 12 points of the 204+ points of damage. Just a lot of things to keep track of over a normal caster.

I want to do a little break down, mainly for myself but you might dig it.

Casting: They have some really good spells, unfortunately they cap out at 6th level. Right now at level 9, I have three slots for direct damage spells. Static Shock, Lightning Sphere and Blast Rod. As I said they are very good. I really love Lightning Sphere to the point I even keep a copy of it unmetaed just for breaking things. Did you know its damage works through walls and stuff? So all those low level quests with 4+ breakables behind a gate can be broken with out having to stop to open things. Making racking up a ransack bonus a ton faster, and it is way nicer to make concentration check for a spell if a million little mobs are hitting for 1 or 2 points of damage vs trying to open a door/valve and being stopped every time you take 1+ point of damage. They are also loaded up with indirect damage spells, with the weapon buffs and haste like armor buff. Think I will be swapping to Lighting motes and carrying Haste scrolls however, as Armor of Speed doesn’t counter slow and at these levels the mobs spam me with that spell.

Wands: Boy howdy. Okay this is really the Artificer Knowledge feats in action but I most notice it with wands. Vendor shield, resistance (when I remember to use them), Fox cunning and other stat boosting wands are all golden. I even have been using a web wand to good effect. And I need to remember to nab an ice storm wand or two. I have the feeling that they will rock.

Melee: Okay this is a lot different now that I am level 9 and swapped out my claw set. I still do 20-30 normal numbers in the first melee slot. But I almost always hit even with power attack on thanks to Insightful Strikes but the trail of other numbers is almost sick at this level, right now I have a Icy burst, Lighting burst of Pure good scimitar from level 4 that I am still using because of this trail of numbers. Base + icy+shock+ good+ rune arm + weapon buff. Most swings of 18+ crit for icy and shock burst effects. That is a fairly impressive list of numbers. I have taken to using a race required paralyzing Sword with Icy burst and still the string of numbers is impressive.

Ranged: To be honest I don’t do a ton of ranged combat this live other then the rune arm. But I made a quick shock of pure good heavy repeater just to have around in case. And I have to say once boosted with Insightful Strikes and acid damage and using the auto reload clickly plus a rune arm the ranged damage is very nice. Did the Pit on Elite last night and I was able to stand up top during the end fight and let Fopo run around and get the mobs and it was very nice.

Pets: So the dog has issues. Mostly with weird bugs. Like if I go below decks on my guild ship I have to leave the boat for the dog to reappear, as well as how the dogs can’t use guild slotted items, or when it just decides to lock up and you have to dismiss it and re-summon it to make it do anything again. There are plenty of none bug related issues like how there is only a weapon and armor slot. They are dogs hello! No dog collar. /shakes head. And once you make a module and out grow it you can sell it or break it down for mats because there are no way to recycle that module as a new module. Oh other pets, have you seen the Flame Turret? Would like to see an something like an auto ballista or a catapult for say boss fights at cap but the flame turret is fun at level so far.

Any way thinks I am doing with my arty that is working and not in the coming days.

<3

One of the worries I have/had leveling Samyus (if you don’t remember he is now my AC tank) is having enough Dps/hate to keep agro with out having to spam the Intim button. My first attempt to tank once hitting 20 was a normal tod, where I got to play the Sully tank. And it went very well. Think I did a run down a few days back, even. But there was an arty to make my Sword (eFang) good aligned (Slotting it with good is next on my to do list. I swear) and even though I spammed the intim button I didn’t think holding agro was an issue, but of course that was with arty help. However, on Saturday I got to tank Sully in Tod again. Once again lead by Tobril. But this time he didn’t get an arty, I felt a little hosed….

Lets skip to level two of this run down. We all get started on the boss, the kiter takes off and life it good for 30- 40 secs. When the kiter goes down. Tobril yells for the back up kiter to go and to make with the mass cures until the new kiter gets the shadows off us. Not sure what happened with the healing. There were 3 people with divine symbols and a bard. I know that what your icon is doesn’t mean a lot but come on you can heal some, right?

Anyway, half the part wipes. Let alive is the kiter, Tobril, myself and two of the three healers and I think the bard. Shadows are hitting me for about 103 a tick. At this rate I am dead real soon. But I drink a pot and swing, swing swing, pot and repeat. Meanwhile I am telling the healers to get it together, and through a mass or two. I am down to 110 hp when I finally get a heal and then people start getting raised, and a recovery happened. Think the bard was paying attention and ended up saving us. But were close to taking a ride on the fail train.

Mean while I noticed that I had taken agro of the main boss from Tobril. Kinda surprising as I know he is mostly geared out. But I don’t think he was trying to hold agro over trying to stay alive. My hate on the other hand just happens. My efang is fully powered with the dragon marks and being in stance makes a lot of hate, so other then swapping to a smaller sword (and lowering my AC in the process) there is not a lot I can do to lower my hate. And I really didn’t want to lower my AC just then.

Moving on to part three, I was worried that with out a good I would loose agro against some of the barbs and other fighters in the raid. So I kept power attack on with the bard buffs I want to say my AC was again in the 86 range. So I was good with that. This time I watched a lot closer to when I was getting heals and whatnot. Looking for how well my AC is working and instead of hitting the intimidate button for the extra hate, I let it roll waiting until I needed to intim to regain the agro if I lost it.

On the healing, I never had more then 100 points of damage when a heal was cast. Most of the time I was in the 20-30 points of damage range. Never missed the extra 5 ac from combat expertise. So Ac is working well enough for normals well enough.

As for Hate/Agro I never needed to Intim, even with my yellow numbers. Didn’t need to swap into my Swashbuckler for the extra double strike. Don’t remember seeing a Disintegration proc. So all in all hate was working. And am very pleased with how easy someone can build an Ac tank. Yes I gathered a few epic items, the sword and the Cavalry Plate, nothing super hard to get.

Need to do some testing against Tobril soon and I want to finishing slotting a few little things (Good on the sword at least, would like to slot Dex on my slayer ring).But I don’t want to go nuts before the new pack hits. I think there might be some real winners coming with the level cap raise.

<3

I have had a few questions for how to handle a first trip to Gencon. So here is my advice in a nut shell.

1, Listen to this ep of the CtH, DDO Cocktail Hour Episode 21, Gen Con Indy 2010

End of list.

If you don’t want to listen to a whole show to get the over all scope I will try and knock out a quick list for you.

1, Stay busy. But not super every hour of the day is planed, busy.

2, Try not to do more then 6-8 hours in a row with out a break. If you wouldn’t work for that long with out a break why would you try and game like that?

3, Have snacks handy. Con food is pricy, and the lines are long. Sometimes a quick snack is just the ticket.

4, Same as above for drinks. There are normally water containers for “free” (you all ready paid) ice water. Have a bottle you can fill from time to time.

5, Stop to eat, sleep and SHOWER. You will already be a stinky geek. But try and help yourself out and be less stinky.

6, Have cash/budget. There will be stuff you want to buy. Be careful not to break the bank. Have a budget either in cash (can’t spend what you don’t have) or a mental amount. What ever you have planed add in an extra 20-30 % for didn’t plan to play this items…

7, Dress right. Walking shoes, light dress and have a pack with a hoodie. (some rooms will be cool others will me quite hot.)

Think those are the main things. If you have other thoughts for the con newbs use the comments.

<3

This year Cocktail Hour has an event planed at Gencon. We are even on their web site: SEM1231728

Registration starts Sunday. So sign up fast. I want to see the tickets vanish before my eyes.

So Wednesday night between Epic runs Tobril and I ran a ToD. He on his tank and me on mine. And it was a blast. This is how it went down.

Before we start we had one divine, a bard an an arty for heals. So more then enough if everyone has their B or better game on. But that was not how we started. We started with Lolz.

Part One, Tobril took wings and everyone else was on the Jailer. However he was in a throwing mood and for a while it was get to him or have him port to me and then work my way to the angels and get thrown again. We lost one or two squishy people to getting thrown into spikes. But once the Jailer died the judge went down fairly quick as everyone was full on dps at that point.

Part Two, I am not 100% sure what happened as just as we were wrapping up the Judge my battery back up started going full on nuts beeping and squealing to no end. As the modem as well as the wife’s computer both use it, a swap must be handled carefully. So she shutdown her computer and I logged out of game as soon as possible with out hurting the party and after looting my chests.

As soon as everything is off we swap things and plug things in to different places and get back in game. I get logged in and started running to part two as things started going poorly. People started to die. And then it was me standing outside the door to part two and a room full of shadows and a boss at 8%…. Thats okay. Think we will try again.

This time part one and two go much smoother. No deaths and all fights are a lot more under control.

So I get to play tank for real.

Right before I started to worry a little as I didn’t have another Dex item to swap into when booting up. But I bought some cats grace pots and had the Yugo pots when the AH didn’t have a +6 ring for sell. Thankfully after drinking up, my AC stayed the same.

Tobril took Horoith and I got Sulo. Don’t know how much damage I took from Sulo but it didn’t feel like a lot. I was always full or mostly full in the Hp department. My hate was in good form. Having some of the hardest hitters I know about going full on dps mode vs my AC mode and I was able to keep the agro so that felt good.

Sulo was dead with 30+ sec left on the only haste that was cast. And the Arcane was trying to get a fresh one cast when we defeated Horoth. So there was much Dps.

As for rings I got a Gnawed ring, not the Cinder’s I am hunting; but a fair swap ring until I pick one up. And a good ring for “I NEED MORE AMP” over Ac ring for later.

<3

For the last few weeks Tobril and I have been talking about moving Epic night to another night. For a few reasons, but the mainlyTuesdays never really work all the well for him/the guild.

The night started off well. As soon as I logged on Oncler asks me to join a eDQ. The run goes fairly smooth in my opinion. But as a bard (Butterz is my main Epic person with Samius in TR land) I didn’t drink any pots to heal. I just used what I had when I felt I needed to and meleed most of the time. There were a few shards and whatnot in the box for people but nothing but a much needed token for me.

There was talk of more raids but I need seals and a shard to round out Samyus’ gear in the short term. So we broke off and picked up Phlor and did the normal epic runs for seals and shards.

Snitch and Tide Turns went fairly quickly for three people. Picked up a scroll in each. A Big Top and a Edge. No seals or shards.

After Tobril wanted to Tod. What the hell I said. And swapped to Samyus. Tobril had me tank Sulo. I will tell the Tod story later maybe as a bonus for today, idk… But I had lots of fun and lets leave it at that for now.

I know we switched to our FvSs at that point and did Snitch again. That run was very funny. In the first room right off the bat Tobril got Greater Commanded. While I took a Comet Fall and got knocked down. When I stood up, I triggered a symbol of stunning and rolled a 1. And was stunned to death. With me dead all the mobs turned on Tobril who was still laying down. When he stood up a comet fall finished him off also. Restart, This time with Magic Circle.

Take two goes super smooth, at least until the chest monster. When we both broke our smiting weapons against its head. I had my not as good back up of a holy smiting maul for Shroud portals and ground the last little bit out. And right be for Crateous we killed a rat with an Vest scroll with my name on it. Yep, it was a three scroll night. And they were all good/useable.

Wrap up in good order and we both get seals, but for the Wand and not the Great axe, aka why I keep running this quest.

So over all it was a super good night. I got to hang with both Tobril and Phlor. Got some good scrolls, and the wife was very happy all night playing the Beta. Btw I don’t know what I can say about things I saw over her shoulder. But I can say she was very pleased with things and what I saw looked very cool.

Maybe I will read the NDA and see what I can say for those of you that can’t check it out yourself.

<3

Phlor has been thinking about branching out of Paladin as his “only” class. It took a lot of convincing but now he is splashing for evasion on some builds and seems to really like it. And now he is thinking about a “healer” class. I have talked him in to doing a test run before he Trs his main. I am afraid that he might hit a tough spot while leveling and bolt. But if it is just a throw away alt then I think that is less likely. And I think that if you don’t see the core ideas behind a class in the first 7 levels then you have deeper problems.

Anyway thinking about my own play experience and thinking back to when I was first leveling the different divine classes (play styles) the one that was the fastest/funnest to level was Javabot as the WF FvS. And while I still have 4 or 5 capped divines, Java gets pulled for many tasks. For example over the last few days my wife as decided to cap out her main so she can TR. It has fallen to Java to help her through the quests she has left to finish this life.

With all that in mind I give you (first 7 levels) my idea of a simple WF FvS. Btw it looks like almost everyone’s first life WF FvS…

Level 7 Warforged Favored Soul – alignment something good at least until standing umb is 20+
Hit Points: 160
Spell Points: 527
BAB: 5\5\10
Fortitude: 10
Reflex: 5
Will: 4

Starting Stats, 32 Points
Strength - 17
Dexterity - 8
Constitution - 18
Intelligence - 1
Wisdom - 6
Charisma - 12

Tomes Used
+2 Tome of everything at level 7

Skills
Concentration full ranks.
And one other I like Intimidate or Use Magic Device. With a Tomes early or with a lesser after eating a +3 tome you could lose a point or 3 from Concentration to get two cross class skills maxed.

Feats
Level 1
Feat: (Diety) Favored by the Lord of Blades
Feat: (Selected) Power Attack

Level 3
Feat: (Selected) Toughness

Level 5
Feat: (Favored Soul Bonus) Energy Resistance: Electricity

Level 6
Feat: (Selected) Maximize Spell

Level 7
Enhancement: Favored Soul Damage Boost I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Damage Boost II
Enhancement: Bladesworn Transformation
Enhancement: Racial Toughness I
Enhancement: Racial Toughness II
Enhancement: Favored Soul Prayer of Life I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Prayer of Incredible Life I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Smiting I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Smiting II
Enhancement: Favored Soul Life Magic I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Life Magic II
Enhancement: Favored Soul Toughness I
Enhancement: Favored Soul Toughness II
Enhancement: Warforged Constitution I
Enhancement: Warforged Healer’s Friend I
Enhancement: Warforged Power Attack I

If you have a Question you want me to answer, you can use the comments, send a PM in game or here, or email me @ samius@ddococktailhour.com

<3

This morning I have a letter sitting in my inbox from Phlor. It reads “I am thinking of Cannith crafting a trinket item for lower levels for my main when I TR next. Any suggestions?”

Oh boy, where to start….

For me the trinket slot is a heavily swap slot. And I have many different trinkets that get various amount of love as I level up. I will rattle of a few important ones at the end but lets look at the crafting a few.

I almost always start with a look at the following page, “Crafting Recipes by Gear” from EllisDee37

Looking at the trinket section of the page there are lots of good things that can go on a trinket. As always the suffix section is about 10x as good as the prefix section but there are some gems in the prefix section anyway.

So lets just throw some things together that I may have in my pack/s.

Nat Armor of battle skill
Nat Armor of dodge +1
Of dodge +2
Potency of Lore
Of True Seeing
Of Absorption Electrical

Just to name a few that I have around. If I were to say make one for a melee focused a simple “of Melee Alacrity” or “Nat Armor of dodge +1” are two of my favorites. Thankfully lots of the same bonuses you can add to a trinket can also go on Goggles and some on Bracers. So if your an AC build dodge +1 can go in one place dodge +2 on the other.

One last think about crafting trinkets, if you can buy the ones from the store. Sure you can use Shroud Shards of power as trinkets but they are BtC and the wipe when you TR. Where the store ones are BtA even after crafting. And they don’t wipe in the TR cache as if you need to leave them in the cache as they can go in the shared bank and can be held by an alt, saving you valuable space.

So lets hit some of the not craft able trinkets I carry around on most lives. There are some that I also carry if I am doing the caster thing. But these are more or less always used.

Bottle of Air
Phiarlan Pendant of Time

Greater Bold Trinket
Greater Stalwart Trinket
Some times I even dig out the other cove trinkets. But the two above I always have at hand….
Dark Blue Ioun Stone (upgraded- lives where I am the trapper)
Pale Lavender Ioun Stone (upgraded)
Voice of the Master
Mummified Bat (there is something to be said about having a unique icon to click for as your free falling)
Bloodrage Symbiont
Pouch of Jerky
Head of Good Fortune
Shard of Xoriat
Shimmering Arrowhead

Friday night I TRed Samius into an arty. With the notion I would just gear up and play with the rune arms and what not, maybe get to level 2 to do so. Then Saturday we capped out Sinfully, Fopo’s alt on the completionest train with me, in Sins of Attrition. Meaning that he could TR also and he did. Full on xp time bitches! Except the wife is wanting to think about coming along now. So I spent some time Sunday rocking her through some xp.

But Fo and I did get about 4-5 hours of TR time with the holiday and whatnots. I know some of you haven’t bought artificer yet. And don’t want to read a ton about them so they keep holding out for a sale or hoping for the favor. And I am sorry but here are my thoughts from lvel 0-5 and odds are good that there will be a day or two of them a week. Sorry.

Okay, lets start off at level 1: No rune arms until level 2. But other then that level 1 is just a stepping stone. Dug out an BtA repeating xbow of Pure Good. Swore a lot about forgetting to buy returning bolts before TRing. Ran to the Cannith crafting machines to make some bolts didn’t see a level assigned to them and played Error, Error, Error making +3 Holy bolts (level more then 1), +1 Holy bolts (again lvl more then 1) +1 acid bolts (lvl 2). grrrrr! So I ran to the gen vendor and bought 300 normal bolts. Still ran out fairly soon and ended up finishing the quest with a normal club I happened to have found and not sold yet. Btw the dog is very cute at level 1. A quick docent of Invulnerability and an acid module and the dog is good for a few levels.

Level 2, rune arms check. Real weapon check (+1 icy burst of pure good longsword BtA with Masters’ Touch) Have to say the little burning hands rune arm is not bad at level 2. From level 2 to 3 was lots of fun. Really like Static Shock. It has a fair range and my Dcs are not bad, max INT a +2 hat and that past live as a Sorc at work.

Level 3, I fell in love with the Lightning Sphere spell. It brakes boxes (thru walls/locked doors btw), it stuns mobs, it is a nice aoe and it has a nice lobing effect. Fopo said it looks like slow pitch/bowling with a dragon’s eye. It is a very smooth spell. Hope it holds up well enough. Swapped to Flicker it was fine enough but in hindsight wished I had remembered the Candlelight.

Level 4 involved a weapon swap to a Icy burst Holy of Pure good Scimitar again thanks to Master’s touch. I also switched my feats some and took the first mark of making. Wanted a way to heal the dog some and this was the best way at the time. Soon I hope to just have room to take a repair spell proper but as I am still healing fine with just pots with out the construct essence feat so I thought I could shift it down some. Oh and Cove trinkets for more Hp or really just more damage…:)

Level 5 is a big one. Gear swap heaven, Full Abishai set is great here.
Profane Natural Armor Bonus +1,
Profane Strength +1,
Profane Constitution +1,
Evocation Caster Level Bonus +1,
Conjuration Caster Level Bonus +1

One of the few classes that can use the full thing over just a 3 piece. Also VoM and Mantle time. It is good to have True seeing available again. As well as my +2 goggles of battle and a better false life belt. Doing this TR thing a few times really helps with what gear goes where thing.

Rune arms: Where to start level 5 gives us Khyber’s Fury which I thought would be the best one available at the level and I have to say I was right so far. It is a beast. The Exploding Fire Shot is super powerful and fitting in fort via the rune arm makes fitting in the 5 piece Abishai set doable.

I also now have room to fit in elemental weapons for myself. I was scrolling it for Fopo and the puppy before but now that I can fit it in for myself it is so sweet. I am sure you all know but my string of numbers is base, icy, holy, pg, rune arm and elemental weapon. If crit add in Icy burst and if that crit is a 20 add the Shocking Blow damage. It is cool to see that much damage fling across the screen at such low levels. If I had some of those light pots and or a weapon with the force damage added that would be 10 rows of damage dice per hit. That is a ton of damage at level 5……

Have to say I am super pleased as to how the Arty is playing at low levels. It is by far one of the most challenging builds I have ever played. Rune arm, spell, spell, melee rune arm all at the same time. I have the felling that it might hold my interest for a long time, which is not want I want in a run to 20 and TR build… But if the wife wants to TR right away I wont have an issue TRing one of my off Casters into an arty to play catch up with her as if she needs any of my help.

Anyway work time.
<3

I am looking at the feat/feat order for my arty life. And I have a problem I have never had before. I have 3 feats that I don’t really have a super duper plan for right now. Don’t get me wrong I can put things in but I am not used to having so many feat slots at helpful levels.

Here just look

1 (human bonus) Augment Summoning - take it early and rock summons as long as possible.
1 (normal) Power attack
3 (normal) Barb past life- more Hp now!
4 (arty bonus) Construct Essence – more healing options
6 (normal) Maximize or Empower – just starting to have some real combat spells other then buffs
8 (arty bonus) Maximize or Empower – take the other spell damage boosting feat.
9 (normal) Quicken – starting to get hit hard enough that I want it around
12(normal) Marks of Making 1
12(arty bonus) Marks of Making 2 – start to grab those bonus crafting levels and free healing
15 (normal) ????
16 (arty bonus) Mark of Making 3 – final Mark time to rock some crafting levels during down time.
18(normal) ???
20 (art bonus) ??? - but does it really mater a lot, I plan to TR again almost right away.

Now there are feats to put in those slots, Cleave, Great Cleave, Imp Sunder, Toughness, Heighten (maybe) past life feats like the Wizard one, Insightful Reflexes and others.

But no more must needs. It is weird. If I splash 2 monk levels for Evasion and feats then there are more options with a gain of +1 feats when ever I need it.

Anyway something to think about. This Arty life will have some fun choices to make at leveling time.

<3

As you know I have been running picture portals a lot the last 3 days or so, last night was no exception. But unlike the last few hundred runs were things went smoothly, last night I died a lot.

I am not real sure what happened. I was having an off night for sure. But at one point I was getting divine punishment x3 dotted. And in undead form that is less then good times. But at least one death was almost out of the blue…. Any way that is not the point.

The point is, I decided I needed to kill faster. Level 21+ necro removal is out, so elemental damage and web/necro SLAs have to do the heavy lifting. But I didn’t have any of my normal spell boosting clickies on Samiusbot. Just shows how old busted and under geared his janky ass is.

So I made him three of my normal clickies thanks to the Cannith crafting. Superior level 6 or better for Lighting, Cold and Neg Energy spells. I would have made him a fire too but I have gotten away from Wall of Fire for Ice storm. I have always like Ice storm better anyway. :p

Now I have a trick that I have followed since before Cannith crafting when it comes to temp boosts like clickies, crafting just makes it a lot easier. I use a skin for a class of boosts across my account/s.

I always use rods(clubs) for arcane boosting effects, weapons for divine.
Lighting boosting clickies use this skin:

Cold boosting clickies use this skin:

Fire boosting clickies use this:

I tried to get pictures for all of them but google only did so much for me.

Anyway I use that one that looks like a pharaoh head for my Neg Engery boosts.

Having those clickies helped a lot on the rest of my runs, I might have to make another Neg Energy one as it saving it for when I needed to clear still left me a clickly short on the last boss.

Anyway food for thought.

<3

Its has been a few days since I have capped my fighter. And other then getting gear out of the bank he had had 0 in game time.

????

I know it sounds funny to me too. I spend all this time and energy to get an AC tank together and he has tanked nothing.

What I have been doing is running challenges. Both epic and non epics for mats for the different mats to make items and earn epic tokens to gear Samyus. And when I run challenges it is on Samiusbot, because he is able to handle these runs alone.

I have been looking at the different rewards and how they are awarded and they are few funny. For example:

Dr. Rushmore’ Mansion:Picture Portals gves 17% of your score.

Scoreing for this challenge is :

Monsters killed - ~1-3 per kill
Gates opened - ~40-100 per gate
Outlaw Bosses killed - ~600-800 per boss

My normal run has a score of about 1400 give or take so I get little more then 200 per run. At 3 runs an hour it is not super fast but good enough.

Anyway I have ground out the 1200+ epic cups and epic scrolls to make Samyus’ ring t3 epic. But now I need Jade Scorps. Which comes from one of that harder challenges for me to do, Lava Caves: Colossal Crystals.

Lava Caves are filled with scorpions, drow and other nasty things. And all hinges on getting one koblod to turn in one crystal. And there for is easy to fail. Even if Fopo and I have a fairly low failure rate it can still happen.

On the plus side it looks like all the kobold rock farming quests it gives 83% of your score which is tied not to mobs you kill but rocks you farm. So a few good runs can make all you need. I just need a better tool for fighting drow and things that hid under ground. My monk maybe?

The other option is the cups trade for scorps at a 2 and a epic fragment for 1 for I could solo my way to the 1200 I need by farming out another 2400 cups and trading them in. But is it easier or faster to run Colossal Crystals?

I don’t know. But I will let you know.

<3

So people want to know how I plan to gear out Samyus, at least in the short term. I am sure the expansion will bring a ton of changes for gear. But for now I will lay out gear as if I had everything I needed today to make everything on my to have list.

Lets do this by importance.

Cavalry Plate t3 slotted with G Nimbleness
Epic Chimera’s Fang slotted with Good (powered by the Sentinel marks)
Off tanking weapon Epic Antique Greataxe slotted with +7
Bracers of Wind (lvl 16 t3) dodge +1 added
Epic Ring of the Stalker t3 (Y, C)
Epic Chimera’s Crown (Y, C) (powered by the Sentinel marks)
Crafted goggles - Blindness Immunity(or water breathing goggles got the shaft for prefixes) of Dodge +2
Epic Templar’s Bulwark to replace my current cannith crafted tower shield

Stalwart Necklace
Cinder’s Band Exp – Str+2
Epic Brawn’s Spirits or intim trinket / heavy swap.
HP gs belt not sure how to build it yet.

3 piece Greater Might of the Abishai set
Epic Charged Gauntlets
Epic Envenomed Cloak
Epic Boots of Corrosion

May need to have the Epic Helm of Frost as a swap item for Horth tanking drinking yogo pot means -1 AC??

Thoughts, questions, comments below plz.

<3

Now that My.ddo is allowing posts again, here is yesterdays post.

So this weekend was fairly full of win. Avengers was great. If you haven’t seen it yet, go now. I will wait….. Also both Samius and Samyus capped out. So lots to talk about lets get started.

So Avengers, after some delays the wife end up in the local theater for Avengers in 3D. I will not go into spoilers but I will say Joss is the man again. And did a great job. And I thought the 3D was the best I have ever seen. I am going to put it in my personal top 5 movies, right under Iron Man.. It is that good, if not better.

Samius is now a 10/9/1 Rogue/Monk/Fighter That last level could have been Anything really. But picking up another feat for the few days it takes for the train to get rolling again is no big deal.

Right now I am still thinking Pure Arty for the next life. But I need to get a class layout from everyone just to be sure. Think both Phlor and Fopo will be tagging along again. Fopo is going to knock out his Pally life I think and Phlor was talking about some kind of not pally divine. A FvS/Clr/Bard would be nice to have.

Thought the wife was going to bring her “main” and return to her clonk love but she rolled up a new clonk and is having fun doing the first life thing right now. Tobril I think is planing to nab some quick xp on his Arty so we/I might have some nice side by side arty talk soonish….

Samyus, I am glad to have gotten this guy capped. Did a lesser on him once I capped. Swapped the travel marks for the sentinel marks along with some for fun leveling feats for things like the two handed fighting chain and whatnots. I am slow now and will miss the travel marks but over all he is a lot tougher now then before.

With a few little gear swaps, Cove armor and my big boy sword his ship and self buffed AC is 81. 82 hasted so Normal AC tanking is ready (once I slot good on my sword). This next week I hope to do a little grinding. I want to try for my Tod ring, make my Slayer ring and hopefully nap the last seals and/or shards for my hat and shield. Once I have those then I need to start hitting epic Chronos for seals and shards…

I will give my projected gear lay out once I am 100% done with what does where. Along with what I think was easy and what was hard to come by. But for the most part, I got Samyus to a really good Ac with only a few hard to get items (one epic item so far that didn’t come from the cove). If I can do it anyone can.

Alright back to work,
<3

Morning, once again we will be talking about building my arty. Today I will ramble on about Stats. But before I do I want to say made 19.4 and change last night. So should cap out sometime Saturday, as long as my trip to the movies tonight for the Avengers don’t make me want to go again and again spending all weekend at the movies.

Lets keep in mind I want to focus in both Melee and Casting for this run. Xbowing is way down the list for me this run. Oh and remember these are for a Human arty with more then 3 past lives and +3 tomes in every stat…. I plan to steal some fast crafting xp along the way and with both the Repair Marks and Bonus crafting levels I think I will be able to go fairly big..

Anyway stats, having never build an arty I have to play from past experiences with different kinds of wizards to help with stats.

Average normal covering most of the bases stats:
14,14,14,18,8,10

Not really ideal here as I am looking to melee it up as well as cast. I can use buffs like Insightful Strikes and Insightful Damage to use my Int as a main stat but as you can’t have both running at once I don’t think so.

More of a battle caster:
16,8,16,18,8,8
These lose Dex and Chr for +1 to hit and HP per level. Not to bad…

Ranged Caster, think Imp Precise Shot ready with a +3 tome or with a +2 and a stat point.
10,15,16,18,8,8
or
14,15,14,18,8,8

As I am not focusing on ranged even though I don’t plan to totally skip it these are not right for what I want to do.

A little more well rounded but not max DC:
14,15,16,16,8,10

These still will allow room for Imp Precise Shot and I can see more of a buffer melee/range build using them but I want to use plenty of combat spells.

So what am I thinking?
16,10,14,18,8,10

I will not be Imp Precise Shot able and I will not have those extra Hp from one more CON. But I will have more Str for Melee and don’t have to rely on Insightful Strikes and Insightful Damage I can carry IS for when I need to go ranged and use that Int Mod if I need it. Doesn’t penalize AC or UMD even if it doesn’t help.

As always thoughts and comments welcome.
<3

Yep part two of my thought process of getting my head around playing an arty. Today’s topic I hope is fairly clear from the title, Run arms.

First of all. If someone out there is good at copying data and entering it in to a spreadsheet let me know because I am not so good at those like of things. And I have gotten into the habit lately of keeping a spreadsheet for rare items, thanks to Tobril and Fopo for more or less handing me a base spreadsheet to use. Okay it is mostly for epic ingredients but almost anything that is harder to come by or becomes BTC once you use it. And rune arms to me would fit.

Anyway, I am trying to get my head around how they work and what rune arms I am willing to “ruin” to get the full arty experience.

What do I mean by Full Arty Experience and Ruining rune arms? Simply rune arms double your trinket slot. If only at crafting level 3.. and that is huge. I have quite a few cannith crafted trinkets. And wearing 2 at once would be huge! Melee or Ranged Alacrity, Attack Bonus, Dodge are just the tip of the iceberg of good stuff. But take the same slot on a trinket. Now you can easily fit in two. I am totally going to be rocking some tweaked out rune arms. As for Ruining them, I am sure there are some that bind on equip and I think that once you craft on them they BTC (they are not cleanable so I need to be sure what I am added is what I want) as I don’t plan to say arty forever any that I make BTC are burned.

So how about we look at some rune arms? I made a vet 2 arty last night just to play with some arms.

For the 5 and lower levels, aka a few hours I have Flame Warden, Thought Spike (BTC), Candlelight and Flicker or all of them. I didn’t get t play with the Thought Spike however. I don’t think I need to spend a lot of time here. I will just use the Thought Spike maybe the Flame Warden if I want a little more damage added to melee attack.

From 5- 7 you know where I can test there are some really good rune arms, I even have most of them (Missing The Devourer’s Hunger).
Chulchannad’s Claw, Khyber’s Fury, Chimera’s Breath, Coronach and The Pea Shooter.

Quick impressions, I like the ones that XXX blast or XXX Lash the best. They seem to be the easiest to hit with both at close range and further out. The Blast one are great closer up. And the Shot ones I like the second to least because of the spread out then come back in to hit the target, although I have the feeling that they will grow on me as they hit 3-more mobs at once. But the XXX bolt ones seem to have the most issues hitting at range and in melee. Slowly backing up with a hard target on the training dummy I started to shoot the ground about 30 feet.. But if I aimed with the mouse look it hit from the end of the ship so if I ever want to snip something the bolt arms are good.

Oh for effects I liked the most that I shot last night: Khyber’s Fury and Flicker

Okay looking at the extra powers the stand outs are The Pea Shooter for Superior Potency III and not a lot else. Kyber’s Fury is cool with the Fort, but I have a cove hat for that. And for some guys I can see Chimera’s Breath for the Proficiency: Bastard Sword and Diehard… I might have some good low level Bastard Swords now that I think about it… Hmmm

For the imbue I like the ones that add light and force. And below level 7 those are Coronach and Thought Spike. I really don’t want to be level 7 and still using a level 1 rune arm… The Electrical II from the Chimera’s Breath should be okay at level.

So for the first 7ish levels for the ones I played with it is Khyber’s Fury, Chimera’s Breath and The Pea Shooter.

But let me tell you something. I think you can lower the level of the rune arm with masterful craftsmanship shard. So if there was a 9 I really loved I could make it use able at 7 and then keep using it until I found a better one. As this is just a tmp life I don’t want to burn any harder to get ones like the ones from the Tor dragons so the next ones with real options are at level 15.

So is there are rune arm that stands out in the level 9 range that wouldn’t suck from level 7 to 15?

Yep the Recoyle. It is a force based Rune arm, so Force II. It has a max charge of 3 which is not bad. The level 13 ones are charge 4. Is has Anathema which reduces spell hate. Let Fopo take the hate this time. And has four crafting levels. On the down side it is a shot weapon of which as above I am not currently a fan as well as having Superior Impulse V. There are two arty spells that do force damage, Elemental Prod at lvl 3 and only damages elementals. And Tactical Detonation lvl 6 which is out side of this rune arm’s range. Oh Prismatic Strike does a little force damage and is level 5 so… win?

Anyway that is my current thoughts on rune arms. I will need to play with them some in real combat. The training dummy only is so so as a weapon test platform.

Tomorrow… Stats?

<3

With my question/s from yesterday answered. Thanks to everyone that had helpful information btw. I think I can start to share my thoughts and fears of playing an arty in no particular order of importance.

I might really like the arty class a lot, and I am worried might want to stay that way for a while.
How do I fit my current gear load out in to an arty build.
The strongest build is an melee/arm/caster build.
Seems strange not using as much ranged on a ranged focused class.
Are the dogs going to be a help or an hindrance?
What rune arms to use as I currently want to return to a Wiz/rog build, any crafting I do will need to be on disposable rune arms….
Lots of feats seven regular + a bonus feat every 4 levels or 5 total bonus feats == 12 feats (+1human??)
Construct Essence feels real good from a super self reliant point of view. But how great is 50% of a reconstruct spell?

So those are the main thoughts floating around in my head right now.

Lets pick one and examine it a wee bit.

Lots of Feats: 12 to 13 feats 5 which have to come off a list. Ones that I can think of off the top of my head are: (again not in an order of importance.. )
Augment Summoning
Construct Essence
Dragonmark of Making 1 (If Human)
Dragonmark of Making 2 (If Human)
Dragonmark of Making 3 (If Human)
Wiz past life
Barb Past life
Rog past life?
Metamagic Feat
Heighten Spell
Maximize Spell
Quicken Spell
Power Attack

Extend seems good but a quick look at the arty spell list and it is not good enough.
Ranged feats? Just because I am not planing to focus on ranged doesn’t mean I never want to range. This monk/rogue life has been harder do to the lack of a good ranged attack.
Do I build for AC? It seems feasible at least while leveling. There are 2-3 “needed” feats if I wanted to do that.

Lets look at one more topic, My banked gear:
I have a lot of goodies that I have from when I was a caster that will help out a lot as an Arty.
CordOp sp bracers/Torc (leveling with a both is amazing)
Stormreaver’s Napkin – a finer leveling tool/slot for int and +1 Dcs I don’t think is out there.
Int,Chr, dex, Str tod rings and some of their set pieces
My GS rapiers will make a comeback Along with most of my GS minus the Kamas and Bow.
My uber quiver will remain uber, will need to grab a stack of returning bolts forget making stacks all day long I could be getting xps.
My amp gear will help off set my healing penalty a lot if I am not taking care of myself.

It might be worth the effort to make a Ring of Master Artifice like level 12t2 super quickly leave it BtA for leveling other permanent Arties/WF blue bar people..

Well that is enough for today. Tomorrow lets look at Rune Arms…..

<3

Samius is almost capped, and Samyus is not so far away that I can’t finish him up with a few raids and a few runs in the IQ and whatnot.

So it is time to start thinking about the next life. Right now I think that is going to be Arty, don’t be surprised if the next few posts have a lot of thoughts and fears I have about the Arty class. But that is not the topic of today’s post.

Today I want to know more about how the bonus crafting levels from Artificer Craft Mastery and the Marks of Making work? This is what the ddowiki has to say

“Your crafting level is first calculated based on what your current experience total would put you at, then the Artificer bonus levels are added. This means you save dramatically on leveling costs and time, particularly at higher crafting levels”

That is totally clear now! No wait I am still lost.

This is what I get, it I am 100 in all schools now when I hit 20 arty levels I wil count as if I am 110 is all schools. If I take all the Marks that is 10 more levels so 120. So my % for success moves up and allows me to make higher level shards, but how is the xp rewarded? Is it with or with out the bonus levels? Will it be worth being human and taking the making marks for the bonus levels xp wise?

Okay maybe my question/s is not that complex. ;P

Even so it is important to me as my Arty life is just a pit stop on my path to completionist but if I can knock another 20-30 ish permanent crafting levels and stock up on some harder to make shards and then TR and retain a sizable amount of gain then a pure human arty might be they way to go. If that doesn’t seem likely then splashing a few “evasion levels” and choosing dwarf or halfling might be an worth wild race if just to get back into my “normal body” and feel more like Samius for a while.

So what do you know about crafting levels post Arty life?

<3

Just stole another idea from RaspberryX! Look the werd vomit from my blog! So hot!

Btw werd or werds is how i spell word or words. Deal with it.

<3

Over the weekend I worked on power leveling Samius up. Getting up early and soloing things, taking shorter breaks to energize up to power through the same content for the 3 or 4 time this life. And I went from 18 to 19.2.

At one point I happened to just finish running though Jeet’s mind, if you can call it a “mind.” And hit the LFM panel, there happened to be a group doing the front half of the IQ on hard, listed as IP-BYOH. So I jumped in and found a fairly pleasant group. The mindless chatter was low and most of the group was a solid.

That said there is a bad egg is every pug, this group was no exception.

This one was a Barb, using that named sword from the Madness chain…. Insanity (+5 Great Sword: Wild Frenzy, Bewildering, Unbalancing, Unwiedly) aka crap. Never spoke and only typed two thing the 2-3 runs I ran with him/her and that was “Hjeals” and “rez”, maybe a thank you. But I don’t remember one of those.

Anyway we did the Shipwrecked Spy and I saw the Barb fall into the pit. He lived through the fall via fair amount of hp. But died right away as he went for the ladder with out healing at all or going into sneak mode.

BTW: If your in a spiked pit, sneaking more often then not will keep you from taking more damage as you make your way out.

The next quest (Dream Conspiracy), I needed ship buffs so I was a min or so late getting started. Once I had saw that people had zerged ahead, no big deal. I step around and start my own buffing and I see a rat run over the bridge towards me and then jump in to the little pit right at the start. Look down and that barb is dieing. It jumps out the pit and runs away from the rat. As it runs past me I punch it once and it stops to fight me. It dies fairly fast, in 4-5 swings.

Mean while that barb finds another rat and its Hps keep falling so I kill that rat too and finish my buffing. It stands there, at 30 hp.

Over mic the leader starts to tell the barb that this is a BYOH group and has been and he needs to drink some pots. When I am done buffing the barb still hasn’t healed any. Felling sorry for my no death bonus I throw it a heal scroll and move on. At some point I think he/she died again. Not sure how as everyone else killed the hell out of that quest until the end fight and I think there was a clr with an aura running the whole time. Not a great Clr as it died twice in another quest later, but an aura was ticking, stand in it with massive HP buffer == win???

So I told all of that to get to here…

Again the leader reminds the group that the group is byoh. Over voice and in text. Lets everyone know if they can’t heal themselves they need to go. And asks everyone if they can handle that. 4 yeps and no reply (aka the Barb). Tries again. Asks another person to try. Tells everyone that if they don’t reply in 10 seconds they will be booted. I counted 30 seconds the hole time standing in the next quest just waiting for the barb to step in. But the leader finally dropped him.

I have to say, that leader tried and tried to get something from that barb.

Over the weekend I joined a few groups that I wanted to drop and run away from and groups that were less then nice. One shroud run I Dced for a min or two in part 2 of a shroud. Got back as they finished part three, so it was a good group speed wise. But they had opened every chest they cold before I could get back.

After dealing with those groups, it was nice to see some one that seemed to care some for others.

<3

While leveling my fighter I have gotten fairly good at giving my hireling orders. Most of the TR lives that I have done on Samius I can easily handle my own healing. But around 11 or so hams and pots can only do so much and only be helped by having someone near by that can throw a heal.

And after watching some other people struggle to run their hires lately, I thought I would throw out a hint or two.

Think like a hireling: You have 3 main mods to switch between. Kill, defend, and pick nose.

The Kill mod I think most people understand. In this mod the hire will attack what ever target it feels like; controlling what it attacks is a matter of working the agro list. That control of its agro list is not real easy to manipulate, but is doable by standing in the right areas and letting it take a swing or two while you control the mob.

Defend is a little less clear. It means protect its “owner/controller” aka you. And they will use any actions at their disposal to try and do so. This does not mean healbot me like most of us really want it to be.

Picknose, is fairly simple too. Don’t do a thing I don’t tell you to. That means is wont heal you, or party members, itself nothing is nothing.

Stay/follow can also be thought of as a “mode” but I think of it more like a teaching a puppy to heel/come. It might stay where you put it but you don’t really know what kind of trouble it is getting into and half the time it will run to you if it wants too. And if your let it come odds are good it will be in your lap all the time.

Now that you can put yourself into the mind of a hireling; how do you make that work for you?

You have to really watch/know 2 things at any given time, “Were is your hireling?” and “What is it doing?” When you can get that spatial awareness you can toggle modes and give direct orders to the hires to make them fairly helpful party members.

Some basic tips and these are for healbots.

If your hire is in the same room as you and there are hostel mobs you need to have all the mob agro for sure. Or your hire should be invised and on nose picker mod. The last thing you need is to have your healbot empty its blue bar on a room full of trash leaving you with no heals at an important time.

Leave them in cleared rooms and fight in door ways or other choke points. Once you have your spacing down you can set them fairly far back. Far away enough that they won’t attack the trash but close enough that they will run to you anyway and heal you even though they were told to heel. This might be always around a corner or down the hall.

Buff them well. Unless it is wearing a suit of armor that gives a permanent resistance assume it needs one, like if your in a dungeon with lots of fireball throwing mobs get it a fire resistance. Same goes for Blur and other key buffs assume it is full of fail. Invis and nose picker mode are your friends.

Go ahead and assign a quick key for a main heal. I use “y” for their first on demand action. And that is often a heal for healers.

The last big tip is when you call them to you they will try to run to you as quickly as possible and then port to you if they can’t get to you soon enough. Hitting the come here key over and over just slows them down as they will try and repath every time you hit that button. If you want them to come to you jump off something. If you are moving over one height to another when you call they port to you right away. I will often climb a few stairs or jump on a barrel or something then jump off just to summon them right away. After a few tries you will have it down.

Take care of them and they will take care of you.

<3

I know what your going to say, “You have been working on this for weeks?” And I am going to say, yep! If you know better then you can post something in the comments but I am kinda an AC noob. I have been playing Ddo for a while now, myaccount.turbine.com says my signup date was March 3, 2006. And other then Samius once having a 65 ac when the cap was level 16 (fairly sure the stars happened to align on that one too) the last few months has made me want to better my AC knowledge. It has taken me this long to get things moving.

So here is my planed AC break down for level 20 and beyond…

The dayi turn 20 I have a few things waiting for Samyus
10 base
+16 AC - Cavalry Plate
+2 Alchemical Dodge - Armor and Shield
+8-10 Max Dex - Greater Nimbleness, 3 from Defender PRE,
+ possible 2-3 more from Ap if I can get my dex mod upto fill it
+8 shield - Epic Swashbuckler (Tier 3)
or
+9 shield - random Epic shield i have laying around Like Ward of Undeath

+4 Insight - Superior Parrying from Epic Chimera’s Fang
+5 Protection - Shield_of_Faith from Least Dragonmark of Sentinel
+5 Nat Armor - Epic Chimera’s Crown
+3 AC Dodge bonus - level 16 Bracers of Wind
+1 AC Dodge bonus - level 16 Bracers of Wind (Cannith crafted)
+2 AC Dodge bonus - Trinket/goggle crafting/ upgraded HoGF
+4 Dodge bonus - Superior Defensive Stance
+1 Dodge feat
+5 Combat expertise

+1 Kobold Shaman
+1 Deneith Defender
+1 Kundarak Battlemaster
+1 Haste

For a total of 79 more or less just by leveling to 20 and making epic items I already have or mostly have. I am missing the shard for the Fang right now but as I am making the guild run eTTT every chance I get it is only a matter of time.

Now assuming I get lucky here and there I hope to have my defender ToD set simi quickly. That is another +2. I am willing to grind out a 3 piece Greater Might of the Abishai set for another +3 Profane boost. Thinking Charged Gauntlets, Envenomed Cloak, Boots of Corrosion. Also the guild is just starting to hit up the new epics and I hope to get the Epic Templar’s Bulwark, an epic tower shield with a +11 shield bonus and a 4 max dex base (so getting it to 8 is fairly simple). All that would make my AC 86 self/ship buffed.

If it turns out I don’t need my blue slots on the armor or shield for Greater Nimbleness then making them +7 is possibly 2 more Ac on top of that or 88.

For raiding I like to think I can count on +2 Recitation. Maybe +4 bard and even +2-4 from a Pally aura. So even rolling back to my right away at level 20 AC (79) with some help I can be buffed to 85 easily. And super geared out and buffed at 95ish…

But is that good enough?

Suulomades from VOD is Attack Bonus: 56/62/71 n/h/e so Hard is fairly simple even right away.

Xy’zzy from Hound, doesn’t have her bonuses listed in the wiki. But I have tanked her before and I say compares to Suulomades.

ToD should be fine right away upto Hard and I think I could tank normals while leveling up :).

eChronoscope has a few (mini) bosses, But the main boss is listed as having a BaB of 100. Which means full dps/hate mode it is.

LoB… the wiki has his BaB at 78/82/91/107 n/h/e/epic so hmmm sometimes? So full dps/hate mode most of the time….

Now for epic trash… There is not a lot of information here on their BaB but I am going to guess that an 85 Ac should be fairly solid against most etrash..

Clearly there is lots of wiggle room in AC if your a defender fighter but even a little work can make you a normal tank..

<3

Do I tweeted that I found an acceptable alcoholic drink and stay trueish to my peleo- diet and I got a few replies wanting both some rough details on what I mean by caveman diet and an update as to how living peleo as been for me. And while I am doing some gear progections for my fighter post level 20 and again with some gear grinding a simple/quick post is in order.

What is peleo?

The idea in a nut shell is we have been around as humans for a long time. And have adapted to our diet over that time. And when we eat things that we don’t have a long history of eating our bodies don’t do such a good job of handling those foods.

So if we look at our fossil records we have a clear history of about 12 thousand years. Those bones give a fairly clear picture of hunting (fishing) and gathering for about the first 10ish thousand years. Our for fathers were leaner, faster, heather then we are today.

Then about 2-3 thousand years ago we started to learn that we could take the seeds of grasses and other thinks that normally would be food for our food and posses it and eat it. And while we started to get sick more often we didn’t go as hungry as often….

Again you can see clear signs of illness when villages learn to farm.

What that means in my diet?

I have cut out as many foods and food stuffs that don’t have a track record of being around for 5-12 thousand years or their modern equivalent. And I follow a rough idea of what we think cave mens diet was, about 40% fruits/veggies/other and about 60% meats. And I try to keep the processed food out. And no grains or legumes.

So a typical Monday -Friday lunch for me is a meat (ie steak) and a side of veggies, like today a few turkey dogs and asparagus.

The big question, does it work?

Well I am not a weight guy. I wouldn’t own a scale if it wasn’t for my wife. I use meaning full things to try a judge my over all heath. So some meaning full results. I had to buy new pants for example. Even wearing shorts under my old pants I and a belt they where too big. I have more energy and find myself doing things like yard work of projects I put into the someday pile into the now pile. Lately I want to buy a petal bike and start riding to and from work. Oh and I had to add about 5 new holes to the belt I bought six months ago.

But for you weight people my office did a 2 month weight loss program where they payed people per pound lost. And in 2 months I dropped 30ish pounds. That was in the second and third month on the diet.

But the main thing is I have really bad migraines, and in the last 2 months or so I have only needed to take my meds twice. Where last year it was everyday some days twice a day.

Why am I so happy about finding something to drink?

Well there is no alcohol in the caveman world and I like to have a drink now and then to relax. Any one that has heard a Ddo Cocktail Hour show can attest, I like to kick back from time to time. So what is this magic drink? Agave Tequila.

I will be happy to answer any questions I can on going Peleo left in the comments.

<3

Last night I talked Tobril in to running my fighter through elite Sins. It has great xp, very solid loot, lots of chests if you have the time to look for them. But mostly it is a really good place to test my current AC against very high to hit mobs in a quest that are mostly melee attacks. Sure we are not talking epic Lob to hit or anything. But for lvl 18 with no major grinding life it not bad.

So a little update by taking level 18 and third tear of the defender PRE; my AC self buffed is 76. 77 if something does hit and procs my air guard. No gear updates yet. But I will be hunting for my Tod set Asap!

So how did I do?

Not too bad. I was not 95% miss tank guy but I would say in the 60-70% range which is not bad for a 18 in a level 21 quest. I did find that a displacement was very helpful. This run was the first time I felt that I wanted one. Think that says something about were I felt my AC was and is now….

On the plus side (I think) I was the only one that didn’t have an soul stone show up at some point. Although it was real close at one point and Fopo ended up saving me. My barkskin ran out and I lost 5 Ac and my damage intake tripled and I went to neg 9. Fo was able to throw me a cure off a wand and I was able to pot up until he got a heal scroll off in my direction.

I have room now to better things a point or four before getting into epic items. But right now I am just waiting for 20 to hit so I can start a major gear up with epics and some big raiding.

<3

Not too long ago, I talked about weapons in your golf bag. And the idea of keeping things simple and as light as possible. You don’t “need” banes for every monster type. Where a good general purpose weapon will do nicely.

That said I have a quest or two that I do believe in having gear that I pull out of the bank when I run it. And the top of that short list is Running with the Devils. Yes I am talking about my Glowball killers.

I bring it up for a few reasons. One: because both Trs I am leveling did their Elite Runs over the weekend. Every run had some issues but weapons where not an issue for my boys, even if I had to craft one up for Samyus. Two because I think I have been making my weapons wrong…

Just a quick run down of the different elite devil runs.

The first run was Samyus, Tobril’s (2nd life) wizard, Fopo on his lighting spec Sorc (3x tr), Wife’s Barb (2nd life) And trash hires for heals and rez. This run was the second hardest of the runs I did. Full group but not everyone was gear out for the guest we did it but there were a few deaths…. The comment was made “See why you have such a hard on for this quest!” directed at me.

Second run we had a few swaps and Tobril had to run. So it was Samius, Fopo (same alt as first run), Wife (her first life Air sorc) Phlor (one of his many Pallys) And hirelings. I knew this run would be a challenge but I honestly thought Samius would carry the day. If the balls took electric damage it would have been a cake walk but as they don’t loosing a stunning dpser was hard. Ending up calling it as the second huge room of balls were just too much.

Third run, as I had a bad taste in my mouth from the failure of the previous night. I got up early and soloed it on Samius. This was by far the easiest of the runs. If the longest. I spent 20 mins slowly beating down the 4 air elementals. I tumble weed in Kansas doesn’t get blown around as much as I did… Went afk with one of the final bosses left to kill, and let the wife come in and finish it.

Lets talk about gear for this quest. One there are 2 items that I know of to help with the massive light damage you will be taking. Shroud of the Abbott and the Epic cloak from the Carnival quests. I say help not stop, not on elite anyway as 20 or 30 off of 100 is still a ton of damage but if your a TR on a elite streak believe me get a shroud of the Abbott it helps a ton. Or two if your able to get a gold seal hireling to suspend your streak and run normal/hard. Gold seals can now be used 2 levels lower then normal hirelings.

Weapons: Cannith crafting is gold here. This is what I made Samyus: +3 Unholy Cold Iron Falchion of Greater Chaotic Outsider Bane. It might be a little over the top but I wanted those balls dead. Samyus I think has a +5 Unholy Cold Iron/maul of Chaotic Outsider Bane. Yes I have two weapons for this quest. One for monk core builds and one for everyone else.

But here is the deal, these are not what I should be using. Neither of these weapons add to my stun Dcs. And they should. So I had to go back and forth from my stunners and dps. Where if I had +x unholy of Stunning +6 (+6 is the best I can craft I think) I would have not had swap issues. Anyway something to think about.

<3

Cauthey won my little mini contest from my post My best mate is a $%^&

Email me @ samius@ddococktailhour and i will shoot you our code.

I was playing my fighter again last night for all of one quest before running the easy epics (I need bits for items when my fighter is capped) But when that quest is elite litany with Phlor tagging along you can really see the difference between an Ac tank and a dps melee.

To be fair I don’t know how many if any ship buffs Phlor had as he was in the zone from logging off once we finished his sigil and didn’t want to take the time to run to the boat and back again.. I was able to get them all so there might have been a difference there, the travel marks mean I am not far from anything really.

So we are off. The first room is fine. But by the second fight I see huge a difference in our life bars. I am about 450 of 580 and Phlor is at 140 of 450 (numbers are not exact, but close). Running across the spining traps I lag/miss jump and take a hit for 140 ish. So I am near half hp. Phlor uses that blue bar to good effect and heals up, while I clear the weeps and the quell. Eat a ham. Clear to the mini boss. I am at 450ish again so is Phlor.

Knock out the trash mobs, starting with the caster and focus on the Blackbone. I don’t take a lot of damage but some as I swap out of my +4 incite weapon. But I am taking a lot of stat damage and I have to drink restore pots but I can’t seem to keep up on pots alone. Phlor helps out as he is able but when I have taken enough con damage I fall to less then 100 hp I start moving and drinking. Phlor good touches me (I think his last one) and heals the damage but it take 9 or so restore pots to fix all my Hp. Once my Hp is back I turn to face the Bbone we don’t have any issues dropping him before any more big stat damage comes in. Ham and a few restore pots and move on.

The spawn pit is different. I have to tell Phlor it is okay to hide to heal up twice. But I don’t think he does and he drinks pots and keeps going. I intimate as often as it is off timer and keep as much agro as I can. There was a hot streak where my ghost touch disrupter one shotted everything for about two mins.

That trapped fall got Phlor as he turned right when he should have gone left or something like that he said. I jump out in to the trap just as I get a huge lag spike. And just was hanging out just inside the first trap. Turns out I got hit twice for 140 or so before getting freed leaving me with more then 300 hp. And as I didn’t get hit again completing was easy enough.

There is some talk on some of the different my.ddo blogs on how casters are stronger then melee and you all know me I love my casters but this guy is a handful of changes away from my ideal character. If he was and Helf vs human he could have taken one of the dilettante lines to self heal a little faster. Pots, hams and vamp weapons only do so much. Heal, Rez, Restore scrolls would make life a lot easier. Other wise this guy is golden. And was not too bad to gear out while leveling. Now to gear him at end game for the epics/elite raids I have in mind for him…….

<3

Let me say Tobril is my best mate. He was my best man. When I have issues I talk them out with him. I started playing Ddo because he played and as he moved 7 hours away it was one of the only ways to hang out together. So in a way you can thank him for CtH, this blog everything that I have done for the Ddo community.

All that said he can be a jerk. So can I so it is not a big deal.

Last night, once I figured that the wife was not going to log on. I set the TR train up for some xp I knew she didn’t really want to bother with. And that was smooth and as fast as you can expect. With the xp pots running, xp tomes, and bravery bonus I made a 1k a min in most runs. Man some quests are just bad xp.

Anyway after that I talked the group into helping Phlor get the last bits for his sigil frame. He needed 1,2,4, and some randoms. So of to Vol. Tobril and Fopo on their casters ran off and did the quest while Phlor and I got the traps “for the xp” not to stay out of their red skulling path…. everyone passed their pieces and all we needed was the piece from Fleshmakers and Ghosts.

Right here Fopo decided his lag was killing his good time and logged for the night.

So we had to melees and our wizard. Off to Fleshmakers. We are zerging along everything is going well until that named golem with the apprentices.

Last time we were here I cleared the apprentices and had the golem to about a 1/3 left when out of no where Tobril disintegrates him. Not this time. I run past everything invisible. Start the fight, kill 2 of the 4 apprentices stone one and stun the other and get started on the golem. Phlor shows up and kills an apprentice. And I almost have the named dead.. BAM! That little SoB did it again. 2 for 2 time this life. We laughed and had a good time.

That is why he is my best mate. He totally remembered that he snipped me last time and he waited this time to snipe me again. What a wanker!

I am so going to snip the hell out of him next time I level up a caster and he is on a melee….:)

Side Note* I have one PAX code to give away atm. If you want it, Rank this post AND leave a comment that includes a short story about your best mate. I will roll for a winner on Monday.

<3

Before last night I hadn’t earned any xp on Samius is 4 or 5 days. I try not to out pace the alt the wife is playing and generally keep the Tr Train together.

So last night when the wife was able to play again (guess there was nothing wrong with her pc… or so the shop claims.) Fopo’s family has left town, and Tobril has a quite few hours before the on call phone starts ringing again. I thought alright Xp time. And at this level 16-17 that means litany, litany, litany , litany, litany, litany, litany, litany, litany, litany, litany. Did I say litany?

With the four of us the quest went smoothly (elite btw). The Vol optional had an issue on the the other hand. Someone or a couple of someones was running way ahead pulling a large number of mobs, running past the necessary keys keeping the alert fairly high. But not at and unmanageable level, just melees in the back and zerging casters in the front. Until the wife asks for a sonic in chat. After a min or two I ask if she has gotten her buff. She answers negative, and I pull out a wand. Just then Fopo back petals into the room with myself and the wife, swears about hating undead and dies right in front of me. I take it he was scrolling the mobs and not himself when he died.

So he looses agro and the 10 or so mobs he had on him shift targets plus the 5 or so we already had. And I get hit by a sound burst. Something I have noticed while playing Samius; he will roll more 1s against a sound burst then any thing else ever. This time was no exception. Stunned.

Now I have been playing Samyus, his AC is about 72 or about 7 more then normally buffed Samius. I can swap weapons and change stances and get to 69 but that is not my normal setup.

Ten seconds of being stunned and I was smoked. If I didn’t know any better I would have sworn that Torrance diploed the trash on to me.

A quick rez, and rebuff and we were off again but there was a hick up. Go to smash the green crystals and Tobril has zoning in issues. We break stuff anyway and he Dcs.

He comes back and we start a hard run. Again he has zoning in issues and we complete the run and the optional before he gets back.

And the wife is done after those two quests… Big xp?

Fine I will save the rest of litany until tomorrow. And we Fopo and I (Tobril is still DCed) do Missing. Tobril gets in before we complete because we planed to run the chain. But after Missing Fopo is done…Big xp?

No big deal, Tobril and I will keep the train rolling. And step in to the warehouse quest and he repeats his stuck in loading screen/Dc issues. And I give up, frustrated.

Thanks for reading, hope your game is smoother then mine was last night.

<3

Last night it was just Fopo and I from the TR train. Think Phlor was on but not replying in chat… Once I got on Fopo had already decided to Solo OOB on his off train alt. So looking around I decided to try to solo elite Litany (with a healbot).

If you have never ran Litany, let me tell you it is a great little quest. Lots of easy to kill but big damage dealing mobs, with lots of variety. Lots of tweak skills traps to dodge. But they don’t take tons of skills to be honest. And then a classic dnd riddle instead of a final fight. But then after the quest is done there is more…. Just a great quest. If your skipping it for some reason, don’t.

Anyway; I pop in on my fighter. And summon my nanny bot. For three reasons, one it had 5 mins left on it, two because there is a mini fight were the “boss” had an aura that does stat damage and I figured it would be easier to have the healer use the heal spell then to try to drink lesser restore pots. Not that I couldn’t have… And three longer then 5 min deathwards….

The run goes smooth until my hireling gets quelled, and dies fighting an gargoyle. I dismiss and keep moving. I complete with no issues after that.

Then I think… Well I can try for a boss. If nothing else I can net a fast 3-4k extra xp and then jump out if it is too hard. Well moving along and my clickly death ward runs out real close to a shrine. As soon as it is gone I take a zillon negs and fail a slay living. Grrrr. But the shrine……. Having some cakes from the egg hut I self rez and get to the shrine. But the bats in the room spawn and the alert goes orange and I get stunned and beaten to death. Rez off the shrine and worry about my AC and HP first things. Cleave the bats down but I start having issues with the vamp divine in the room. So I step out to heal up and the trash out side the room notices me and joins the fun…

I spend 5 mins running around a pillar in the room with the shrine. Potting up and then working on a vamp or two then moving when I see a vamp casting. It was rough but after a few neg levels come and go I clean the room. And shrine.

Hurrying along I net my bonus xp finally. Only taking 5 or 6 mins longer then I planed. Not to mention all the pots and the rez cake.

Get to the end fight clear the trash and I start working on the high priest. But I can’t keep up with his regen and drink pots. Out comes a store hireling, and she helps. But as soon as I summon her the high priest starts to spam greater command. Switching to my spell absorption item I get a till time to try and weed him down while keeping repawning trash down. But it runs out and I am on the ground again….

To the store again, this time for an arcane to help with his regen. Get everything rolling and almost at the same time I get commanded, the divine gets held and the arcane gets tripped by a dog or something. The hirelings die. Looking at the priest’s health shows him full.

Finally it hits me, I am in over my head and port to the market.

Had I left at the first death I would have saved a ton of time and resources. I could have ran Litany on hard and normal and then ran the optional bosses on normal or even casual. Not like there is loot in the optional bosses’ chests anyway.

Often I will push through or try to push through regardless of the cost because of personal satisfaction. Hey I like saying things like my TR train did elite Tor all dragons at level. Or my fighter soloed X on elite. But sometimes you have to know when to throw in the towel and cut your losses.

<3

So this weekend was very strange. I took off work a half hour early to watch the new American Pie movie. And I totally loved it. Think I have said it before but I am a fan of these kind of movies. If you liked the first two or all the rest like myself then you will like this last one.

Friday night after the movie, there were not a lot of peeps online so the wife and I ended up questing alone on our off train alts. My fighter Samyus (lvl16) and her Sorc (lvl17), looking at the possible quest list we decided to do Missing. That might not have been the best call but I figured it would be do able. 77 mins and 2 cakes later we won. On the plus side I think I have it down in side and out now. And that was more or less Friday night.

Saturday, I knew bad weather was going to be heading our way in the afternoon so we spent the morning with a run to the store and doing some yard work, moving plants getting some projects tied down and whatnot. But when the storm didn’t hit on time, we ran to the hardware store to buy some piping. I have and idea to turn and old trampoline in to a green house. So while we were out is when the storm rolled in, and I forgot my pipes. We needed up buying stuff for other projects but not the items for what I am working on.

That night was hard, Torrance wanted to stream netflix and I wanted to Ddo some, normally that is not an issue but lately we have been having issues. And checking my email/twitter is hitting ddo real hard. Streaming Netflix becomes a 30 secs of normal play and 20+ secs of total lag out over and over again for who ever is playing Ddo. Think at least some of our internet issues comes from a loose hanging phone cord wiping around in the wind. And the last two days were super windy.

But even so Fopo and I were able to team up and do Inferno with our off train alts. Have I said that Ac is cool lately?

Btw, more then 100 tornadoes touched down in Kansas Saturday night. I said F it and went to bed simi early.

Sunday we go out and clean things back up. No damage to speak of for my house. I haven’t hear from my renters yet and they had a tornado just a mile or so away touch down. But my sister in law didn’t have any damage and she is just down the street from my rental. So I am thinking we are all good here.

Go to log on after lunch and the wife’s computer doesn’t work. Do a little trial and error and it is not anything I can fix. But I lost most of Sunday to that.

So like I said it was an off weekend. Maybe if I am lucky when she takes her computer in it will be a quick fix and then we can get her going again. And then if I can get the phone company over to look at our system and get things fixed back up because two weeks ago we could both play, stream a show/movie and do some web surfing with no issues, that is what I am paying for that is want I expect.

Anyway back to Ddo talk tomorrow.

<3

I don’t know about you but I live a strange place in between I need the right tool for the job and the want of a good multi tool. I bring this up because some resent email chains between some of my guildies. They totally believe in having the right tool for the job at all times.

I totally understand where they are coming from but I remember learning my lesson. Back in one PnP campaign I had a sword caddy hireling that more or less just stayed behind me and handed me the right sword for what ever mob I was facing off against. I remember one fight where I think the DM totally set me up. I would often send out a sword at a time to be “upgraded”. Say my +1 undead bane sword would go out and I would get it back +1 acid of undead bane. And so on. I don’t remember the details, but I had just sent out my sword to fight a given monster. Say my flaming sword to get Flaming Burst-ed for a troll. When I realized what had happened it was a good laugh for the whole group. And a running joke during that campaign.

So I just want to quickly skim the contents of my typical golf bag.

Boss beater/s – silver(cold iron)/good aligned/if lucky baned
Portal beater – this doubles as my construct killer
Undead weapon
Trash weapon
Defensive weapon – like a bodyfeeder or vamp or both…(When possible I combine this into my normal Trash weapon)
Multi tool melee – in most of my cases it is some kind of Ghost touched Flame touched maul of everbright.
Multi Tool ranged - Depends on the build a lot.
Glow ball killer – this is my only real unitasker. (and only for one quest )

Do I keep a few other weapons handy depending on the build? Yes but not many. My fighter had a vorpal sword before I got him to his slayer ring. And I am sure I still have banishers on some some guys… But for the most part if they don’t fit in that list then I don’t have it.

<3

Dumb is too strong… how about bull headed?

So last night I had a clear plan. Get the needed goblets to finish my bracers send things to Samyus upgrade them, switch to Samius and see about earning a few crafting levels and try and make a +2 dodge shard to go onto said bracers. Finish the last little bit of xp needed to level Samyus to 16. Win/Profit…

Getting the goblets takes two runs. Think I am finally getting the hang of it. I still don’t know why I was having so much troubles getting all the key bits before on some of the first runs, but I get right around 200 cups a run at level 19. I don’t know if it is the level difference from 19 to 20 or some scaling but it seems that on 19 alone there is about half the trash spawns. Which is both good and bad.

Move on to passing everything over to Samyus and making the final tear. No problem there. Jump out to GH and get the last 10 explorers and out to the Orchard for 5 or 6 explorers there and level up to 16. Plus one more AC.

Swap to Samius, turns out my Elemental crafting was 78. So I only need 12 – 13 levels to grind out for a 50% shot at making my Dodge +2 shard. After 30 mins of making shards and breaking them down for bits I end up with my shot. Bam first try: Consumed: 21 Greater Air Essences, 224 Lesser Air Essences. Created: Shard of Dodge +2!

Switch to Samyus run to the bank and alter. Add the shard, Fail…. Max level achieved??? Try again. Same error. Run to the decon alter, clear the item run back. Same error. Then I look. Bracers of Wind have +3 crafting. Dodge +2 is a level 4 shard. Frack!

Okay jump back to Samius, make a +1 dodge shard and back again. That was my back up plan after all. Add it to the bracers with no issues. Try to equip, can’t? They are now level 20. Doh!

I knew that adding powers to the Cannith items raises or lowers the level. Yes you can lower the level with a Masterful Craftsmanship shard if you want to and don’t add anything else….

So I end up clearing the item again so I can use them now. Buy a new store trinket add the +2 dodge. So ended up with +2 more Ac about 2 hours of time wasted trying to add +2 dodge to the bracers and waist I don’t even know what a dodge +1 shard costs. But right now Samyus has a 70/71 self buffed Ac. Using items/feats that are not that hard to come by. Okay the crafting stuff can take awhile but other then that nothing is super duper hard to do.

Ran a Pop with Phlor afterward to flag him for Tor. I have ben having issues with the router lately. Fairly sure it is going out again. Someone needs to call AT&T and get a new one sent. But it plays Ddo fine as long as one person is playing or just is playing. But the wife is watching Battle Star Galactica while I am trying to do all this. So there is a lot of 5 seconds of play 5 secs of freeze. So it was frustrating but I could be totally lagged out with mobs all over me but I was almost untouchable. That is a good feeling. Now I just need to do the same at cap in Elite/Epic raids???

<3

We caught started late on out Tuesday epics last night. Mainly because I wanted to get some more challenges out of the way for Samyus’ Bracers of Wind. I think Monday I talked a little about his current AC of 71 with Phlor’s Pally Aura hitting for 2 or so. And did a rough over view of how his Ac is fairly good for his level. Well today I want to go over my rough plan for the next few levels. And maybe even touch on cap some.

Dodge bonus is the biggest X factor in Ac today. There are only a handful of ways to get more dodge bonus and most of them take up a slot all on there own. But with some planing and a lot of work anyone can work them in now thanks to the New crafting system and challenge turn-ins.

Right away at 16 Samyus can swap to the Bracers of Wind for a gain of one. And I will have to see but I hope to boost my elemental crafting into range of the +2 dodge shard. Think right now I am 90ish/80ish/70sih in the different schools. Arcane/Divine/Elemental… Which is good enough to make the +1 dodge shards but to far way from the +2 to try right now. Think you have to be with in 10 to try to make a shard. Want to day the +2 dodge shard is level 99… So I might have to live with putting the +1 on the bracers for now. Which will be find in the short term as my trinket slot is +3 nat armor/+1 dodge which as long as I am using the ranger past life feat the +3 nat armor is wasted. So it will open my trinket up to full time Bloodstone?

But that leaves me the goal of earning 400 more Jeweled Goblets in any case to go to tear 3. Speaking of challenge crafting; I think a will also need to make an epic Slayer Ring. Fully upgraded it keeps man-slayer. Removes the need for a Bloodstone or a Ghost touch weapon. And has two epic slots, colorless and a yellow. It is a crazy good ring.

I plan to use the eChimera’s Crown and Fang at cap. I need to decide if I want to go all out at cap and swap to the Sentinel marks at cap for the full bonus on the Fang or keep the travel marks (which I <3). I will already have one feat swap to remove the ranger past life feat. But with 4 planed Epic slots on “permanent” items there is a lot of wiggle room for stat items.

Anyway I need to really start looking at his final gear layout. And when I have a simi solid list you will get it and you all can comb over it with a fine tooth comb.

As always comments in the Comment box. And if you want more on my take on Ac and melee’s use that little ranking system.

<3

Well?Today’s title wasn’t just a title. It was a real question…. I will explain. Then use the comments and answer for me, okay.

Last night was a cry babyfest. Okay that was a little harsh, but not far from the mark. It started off with me tearing myself self up some because I failed a Dr. Rushmore (moving targets) run. Second one in a row, btw. Do to just not getting the right key things. I think it was mainly bad character choice, now that I am calm. I took Java. Who can not open locks. So there is two places I normally go for keys that I couldn’t. Then with 2 mins on the clock I am told about a boss in a room behind me. But it is one of those have to kill the elementals to get the boss. I tried to power through and just focus on the boss. But at about 3/4 life the guy would run away and he would be at full again by the time I got to him. At 60 secs I start to kill elementals and head in at 20 secs on the clock. But I am just not fast enough.

Start my foul mood.

The TR train forms up, kinda surprisingly for a Monday. Fopo and Tobril both took the day off I guess… Looks like Tor time. I like Tor, a lot. Fast Xp. Good loot. Good challenge. Turns out Samyus needs crucible. Off we go for the 3 time on elite in so many days. Good thing I like this guest too. Nice and easy. Floor needs Madstone. I ask a few times to be sure that was all he is missing. But once we knock it out and pass around relics turns out he needs PoP too. But he doesn’t want to hold the train up anylonger and leaves group.

Tor, we move through the main quest quickly. There are a few accidental restarts of the end fight. But no big deal, until my rent a FvS dies with out me noticing I go for a heal and opps.. drink, drink drink. But it is not enough against those casters. And I croak leaving Tobril to handle our side alone. Which he does handily.

There is some decision about going for the Dragons on elite. I know Fopo, Torrance and I have had some fails and some wins going for the dragons on elite. We might not have had a win since I was a caster but that doesn’t feel right to me. Always feels like the last run was the one we won.

We struggle at dropping both the giant and the dragon at the same time. I think there was some miss management of some dot spells. And cometfall is a real trouble spell, wish it seemed that good when my divines use it. I call retreat and shrine up, as to not have to go to the pots to try a third attempt of killing them at the same time. 3 Dim doors fly open, I look around both bosses are heading my way and don’t see anyone else in the zone and take my DD. Turns out Torrance was just out of my sight. She falls and releases. So I decide not to try and do the dragons again on elite but go back after everyone gets to rebuff on hard. But we have a rage quit. Followed up with my own version of a “rage” quit.

Now for the bitching, I mean handling of others frustrations. Other then chewing my own ass for that fail to start the night. I have people complaining about other people via tells, via guild chat, over voice. People complain about having to redo content for others. People don’t like the settings I set the quest on or the optionals I want to do or not do. And so on.

Is everyone complaining to me or about me? No.
Does it feel like it? Fuck yes.
Are everyone’s complaints valid? Sure.

But if you don’t want to lead the group shut up. I <3 everyone in my train/guild. I handle everyone’s little issues and I make the unpleasant calls that keeps everyone moving and more or less happy. But there will be nights were I am annoyed and my tolerance for whining will be lowered. And those nights I will happily strangle everyone in their sleep. I will be unhappy about it the next day but come on people your my other family.

So if you have any helpful advice please let me know. Because about 1 night a TR life something like this happens and I just want to strangle everyone and end up logging after 3 quests.

I leveled Samyus up to 15 over the weekend and I have to say how impresses with the ease a fighter can get a meaningful Ac if they bother. Last night I spiked to a 71 standing next to Phlor, while he was playing one of his 18hundred pallys.

So lets do a simple break down of the current setup.

+5 mith fulplate
+5 mith tower shield
+5 dex mod using +6 dex boost and one dex is currently wasted
+5 natural from Bark skin. In my case past life ranger… for now.
+5 Combat Expertise
+3 Dodge 1 from Cannith crafting, 2 from Thaarak Bracelet
+3 Stance
+4 incite from an old GS rapier (there are some perks to having an old gimp to TR into something good)
+5 deflection

Wow, so hard…

Next level is a huge step up and will include the first item for this guy I will “grind” to get, Bracers of wind level 16 tear3 (ideally with +2 dodge added via Cannith). I am 3 or 4 good runs away from having everything I need. Tried real hard to take a couple of the Defense guys in to some of the challenges and some of them just went pear shaped. Might have to have Fopo help me out soonish.

On a side note I have been rocking that same suit of +5 mith full plat for a long time. It has a skin I really like and whatever I try to replace it with is a point or two of an AC loss. But I have been thinking I have a lot of black scales. Like almost 40, just on Samius alone. What? Mired in Koblods was fun on every class with a good Dot or three. And is very fun to “tank” with your sorc throwing heal scrolls at you. :p

A while back I was going to make a suit of black scale for Butterz because it looked Tux like and with the top hat very pimpish. At least in my mind. But I never made her a suit because I went E Utility Vest in stead.

But on Samyus the black scale might be a minor enough of a hit that I can afford to take it. And it would give a super helpful heal clickly. I don’t take a lot (if any) real damage from melee attacks. But I do get blasted to hell from spells like freezing/lighting ball and laser rays. So when big damage comes in from casters a few pots/hams doesn’t always cut it. That heal clicky might be a plat saver. Something to think about until my Calvary plate comes on line at 20.

As all ways, Thoughts/Questions in the comments.

<3

So much to do this weekend. Xp bonus weekend and the Traveler is back so I need to go ahead and turn things in this time around. I have large piles of the different turn in stuff on all my different alts. Wish we could move that stuff to other Alts so I can just make all the runs on one guy, say my bard so I can quickly sell the trash. Regardless I will have to try making some runs and making up some TR losses to my plat pile.

I also haven’t done the taxes yet. I should say I haven’t stood around and watched the wife do the taxes yet. I have just enough dyslexia to scramble numbers real bad. And scrambled numbers is bad for taxes.

It was a nice last weekend and we ended up doing some planting, this weekend is looking like more of the same. I am worried that all this sunshine might convince the wife that we need to do some more planting. I have a chicken coop, compost bin and solar dehydrator to make yet to.

Plus I need to move/setup the aquaponics outside. I really want to see it do well this summer. Running it in the basement I think was just too cold. But I have a line on a few larger tanks so I can do a main tank with fish and a buffer tank to clean the city water easier in larger amounts so I can more easily do water changes if needed. But I will need to build a frame for that….

Lastly I am a huge fan of the coming of age movies. And my favorite movie series that embodies angst has a new release this weekend. American Pie. And there is no easier way to get me to pony up for a movie then put Alyson Hannigan in it.

Add all those things up, plus the holiday and this weekend will be a long one. Hope I can rise again in three days and be useful at work.

<3 and Enjoy the weekend.

Last night while the TR train was forming up, Fopo and I ran the GH walk ups again on Elite. This time I was on my fighter. Things were super smooth until Trial by Fire where the mobs switched to trolls and old spiders. Not that the spiders where a problem. But if you didn’t already know trolls tend to hit often and do so fairly hard. Even with a 60 ac I was taking ample damage 30-40 point chunks.

It didn’t take me long to swap to my Hooked Blade with bodyfeeder. But bodyfeeder even on a extended crit Khopesh was not enough. I was slamming pots and eating tasty ham hard core trying to keep up with the damage. It worked out, but it cost me about 50 pots and 6 or 7 hams that run.

So I started thinking…. I could craft a bodyfeeder Vamp weapon. Which is want I really wanted the Hooked Blade to be anyway. But that combo is only available as a Falchion. At least via the Sora Katra crafting. Which by the way, if your playing a 2handed melee you better have a Vampiric Cleaver in your pack! Yes Phlor I am talking to you, at least some. But not as much as say that barb over there, as you have pally healing.

To the Cannith planer!

It says Bodyfeeding is a level 3 shard. At least that is what the planer that I have here at work says. Lesser Vamp is 3. Full on Vamp is 6. So I can make a level 11 base item or level 17… If only a d4 wasn’t so much better then a d1.

Add in the Masterful Craftsmanship shard and I can lower them down 2 levels but still level 15 is no help at the moment as Samyus is level 13.. So lesser vamp is the play. Think I will need to go Flame Touched Iron to handle DR/good and if I do add a the Masterful Craftsmanship shard I will have a little wiggle room to add an +2 to hit.
3 bodyfeeder
3 lesser vamp
2 +2 ench
=
8*2 -1 -2 = level 13

Not too bad.

I will have to see how much longer I will be in GH. And where I will be level wise when I next feel in over my head. Might have to knock out another 10 divine crafting levels and make that raw level 15 verson. D4 is sooooooo much better then a d1.

<3

This turn on the wheel, Samius is knocking out his rogue life. Manly because I have been impressed with some well and not so well built rogues in epics lately.

I am 9/6 monk/rogue atm and for some reason last night I began to notice the sneak attack damage. Okay I know the reason. Moving out of the sands (away from all the undead) and into Giant Hold and stunning/sneak attack able mods is the reason. But why I didn’t pick it up while doing the Attack on Stormreach stuff? I just don’t know. But now that I see it I like it.

My first number is 40-50 range. Stunned 60-70 but add in the sneak attack dice from a stunned mob and it is almost half again as much damage +30-40 to my normal damage plus a point here and a few points there.

I have never been that impressed with the rogue past level 2. Not having agro (aka control) of the mob for the best dps is a strange idea to me. But I can totally see adding huge amounts of extra damage to a stunned mob. And I am build for stunning atm.

Seeing how this is playing I want to try my hand at a epic ready rogue, I already have everything for 3 epic Midnights. Wonder if there is a way to stay centered as a monk and use them….

<3

Last night I was in one of my moods and logged on later then normal, on to my fighter. Mainly as the wife was playing her first life Sorc and well I just wanted to play my fighter.

Log in to game. Say my hellos, and look at the LFM panel for a group. I said I was in a mood. Turns out Onecler has an LFM up for Von 3 – elite. Just what I am looking for. At least 1 competent player other then myself doing a big xp quest on a setting that will not bork my streak. Win.

I buff and run that first quest per Von3 quest. See that it is active and on hard. But as I am 12 it wont hit my streak so no big deal. Jump in and the quest is red alerted….. great! Invis and run to the end as fast as I can. I see only one or two mobs along the way. But at the end it looks like an Incredible Hulk mosh pit. In the middle is a lone FvS keeping his red bar up directly via his blue bar. Just as I get in to helping range he falls to incap and then dies. I pick up his stone and get him in range of the shrine and turn to face the horde.

Mean while there is a little kid in group that hasn’t shut up. I don’t think he took a breath the whole time he we in group. I am trying to coordinate with the FvS and whatnot but on my throat mic I can be hard to hear. And before long he recalls out and I am left alone.

So I do what any Defense Guild person should do: Clear the whole mess. Thankfully all I need to handle this pile of green angry turds is at hand. A few healing pots, defender stance, a death ward clickly and my body feeder hook blade/ring of vorpalness.

Block Block Block Cleave Great Cleave Block Block Pot Block Cleave Great Cleave. For a few mins. Some times heads would roll. Some times they are just slowed real bad but I was gaining enough from the body feeding to slow the hurt but not stop it.

Right before I got the alert to drop to orange I was at 30 or so hp. I had to do some jump pot jump drink dance and block/eat a tasty ham. But I lived. And once the alert dropped to yellow it was all over for them.

Meanwhile the guys already in Von3 were wrapping up. ;( but they repeated right after on Elite again. Sans noise machine. It was a super smooth run. That FvS kept making me his Champion but I don;t think I took more then 10 hits the whole run. But once I said my AC was in the low 60s and they are missing me he started blessing someone else and everyone was happy.

It was a rough start, and I was angry for the miss start but that blew off once I won.

<3

The other night one of the people I raid with was talking about how he was working on his Completionst Alt. But he was unsure as to how to level as a Pally. I find this topic intriguing as I am working on Samyus and I have found him to be fairly easy to level so far.

Other then a hand full of runs Samyus has been leveled solo. I used him to catch Tobril up with the group around level 6-7, some Shadow crypt runs, a last stand with Fopo and then a elite run through the eyes of stone chain for Tobril. The rest has been solo, elite streak btw.

Any way lets jump in to gear; +6 Con/Str/Dex items Cannith crafted btw, +5 mithral full plate and tower shield, hold over GS rapier (Ex3 damage, damage, AC) and a GS light pick (Ax3 ..ie haste clicky), Ring of Bad Ass aka Slayer, a Bloody Hooked Blade from the Cauldron of Sora Katra and a trinket he “stole” from Samius Nat Armor +3/Dog +1. There are some other bits and pieces of gear but nothing earth shattering.

He is a Human (travel marks) Fighter Stalwart Defender 2. Defender stance is like cheating btw. You get a ton of damage/Hp/Ac/Hate for -10% speed, yes please.

In combat I have two “modes” Ac which is GS rapier and the Ac trinket, At 12 that is about 57 AC. Not horrible… But thinking about it I need to find a +5 prot item… And I have body feeding “mode” where mainly all I do is swap weapons in to the Bloody Hooked Blade. Normally this means a boss fight or when I feel like I am being hit a little more then I would like.

How this ends up playing is really great. Gather a few guys cleave/great cleave cut off heads or earth grab something, stun one trip another and repeat. If I am taking damage swap to the hook blade and go go body feeder action. Incoming melee damage is rarely more then 15 points at a time so the only worry is from magic spells. Which Ship buffs and pro pots handle nicely for everything else there are Night Shield scrolls (75% via umd) and an upgraded Pale Lavender Ioun Stone. He is still a fighter so a he can use the magical help.

Guess I just want people to know that everyone can be somewhat self sufficient. And that it is not even that costly. I know a year ago if some asked me how to level a melee just to TR I would have said splash 2 to 3 monk or rogue levels. Now? Go defender if you can it is like cheating.

<3

Last night it was just Tobril and I. Phlor was on but he was raiding his little heart out, Fopo was bowling and the wife was “not napping” no matter what it looked like. So in other words no huge xp jumps for the TR train.

But on the plus side, Tobril and I did get an EDA (Epic Devils Assault). He got on his namesake main and I switched to Butterz. After a while of asking around Tobril lets me know we don’t have a CC guy….

Butterz’s Dcs are way low and her Sp bar is just a little bluer then a level 20 fighter. But I do have Samiusbot. He is a first life robot now PM (did the Ench specialized AM before the hold nerf). No green steel, no torc, I don’t even think he has a normal SP item. He does have a 42 int, and some good pieces of loot here and there but he has never been the “big guy” on my to work on list. He gets pulled out to do some epics where I can burn my Sp on wails and Fingers and whatnot. You know scroll farming runs.

Looking at my spell list I do have dancing ball preped, all right! I do need to do some swapping for mind fog but in hindsight I pulled mind fog because it didn’t work on epic mobs. Wonder if I was blowing a lot of extra SP on a spell that wasn’t working…. Hope the group thought I was casting solid fog now.

Any way I was rusty as all get out. In fact I kept calling Samiusbot “old rusty balls”. As I didn’t know what spells I had or where they were at on the bars. But to my surprise I didn’t have any issues dancing or wailing really. In fact we only had one issue, and that was during the last wave. After resting I turned off some metas to buff. Yes I know there are quick settings I can use but I haven’t played with them yet so I use the toggle on toggle offs that sit on my bar. But I guess I forgot to turn quicken back on or it did that look done so I move but it really wasn’t done so it didn’t take. I don’t know for sure what happened. But I thought I had my quicken running.

All I know is the clr dropped, party confusion spiked! I took a ton of damage from some casters out side of the disco ball’s range. I cast a neg burst to heal and it didn’t work so I hit the recon spell thinking that I must not have gone into form but that didn’t work either. And before I could recover I took a fire ball to the back hard and died.

I thought there was some confusion before. At some point it was Tobril and one other guy. I got a rez. Healed toggled on quicken and got CC back up. Didn’t think I could cast that fast as a wiz. The bard started CC ing also at the portals, some times he/she got some things. Everyone helped and we all recovered nicely.

Guess I am saying if I am saying anything is with some team work and a little prep work, even first life gimps can get things done.

<3

Last night Fopo and I on our off Train TR Alts decided to get a little xp. Looking at the list we both needed Last Stand.

I popped over to the Clr vending machine and got a fresh level 11 guy so I wouldn’t have to try and use tasty hams to stay healed up as well as throw the occasional heal or mass on the drow.

Things went sure well until the third round when the clr decided to stand on top of the guy that can’t die or else we fail. Hence forth I will call him Bob, the guy that can’t die not the clr. Clr took about 3 lighting bolts with out time to help himself out and died. I jumped over intimidated the group and pulled them away from Bob and drank pots and whatnot. I was left with 30 ish Hp and no pots when Fopo to regained control. Bob was at a sliver, and as I was trying to make my way to the shrine with my clr (never used it before so did KNOW where it was) the final boss spawned and while Fopo was able to keep the final boss off Bob. All the little zombies didn’t have any issues one shotting Bob. Fail

We try again, this time with Fopo in charge of the clr. About the same results except out of pots I died during the third round, after the clr and right before Bob. Fail.

Starting to get a little pissed at this point, but we mixed it up a hair. And I took on more of a true tanking role during the attack waves. Any time I was off intimidate timer I jumped over to Bob and got back on timer and pulled of any mobs around. Fopo was better able to control the clr and watch out for Bob while clearing trash that way. And I was able to negate most of the damage coming in via spamming ele pro pots, night shield scrolls, and using cleave and great cleave with my vamp sword while surrounded to more or less heal myself.

I hadn’t felt so good not killing mobs in a long time.

<3

I feel compelled to talk about a little movie news. There is a new Ninja Turtles movie on the way. Hurray! I love the turtles. I grew up with the cartoons and the movies. And I liked them all. They did go down in quality until The newest movie “TNMT” but I still loved all the turtle movies. Yes even Turles in Time.

Now there are a few controversial stories floating around with the new movie starting with the title change, Ninja Turtles. Right now we are loosing the Teenage Mutant parts of the title.

I don’t mind loosing the Teenage part of the title. At least two cartoons runs and four movies I am good with them growing up a little. And to be honest I think of them more as Mutant Turtles or Ninja Turtles.

My issues with some of the news stories is that Bay might be making them Aliens. Come on. I know that “rebooting” the title is all the rage right now. But do we really need a reboot on the Turtles? And why does “rebooting” have to start with the origin story? Lets say a reboot always has to include the origin story why do people feel like they have to play with it? Isn’t there a point where you play with the origin to the point where your no longer talking about the same character?

Lets play with some famous Origin stories and you tell me if they are the same character.

The Wayne’s don’t get shot and killed. Do we still have Batman? What if they drove home that night and got in a car crash due to daddy Wayne having one two many cocktails while they were out? Would batman be all about stopping drinking and driving?

Uncle Ben doesn’t die? Tony Stark sends an employee over seas to do the work and looses an employee in an attack. Super man lands in Communist Russia and is raised by the state?

Origin stories matter. Now if Bay wants to make a movie about fighting toads from outer space I would be all over it. He can even use the Battle Toads platform and I will be all over it. But you have to stay true to the core source material.

If you look at the comic book movies that didn’t do well they are the ones that broke away from the source material. Ie the first Hulk and the first Punisher movies come to mind. The second FF movie and while Spider man 3 did okay it moved away from the source a lot and did way less then the first two. And while it was not a Comic movie per say, but the Last air bender movie was based on the best cartoon in the last 10 years. But got away from the source and sucked hard core.

Anyway lets hope Internet out cry is enough to keep Bay true to the Turtles.

<3

I guess I have not been totally clear. In part because of the resent changes to xp and possible bonuses to xp. And because my old clear head phones died. And now I have to use my throat mic. Which I like, btw, but can be unclear. As my new “diet” works out I hope to get a little better fit and clean up the audio enough to be clearer with out having to repeat everything 2 or more times.

So in a nut shell this is how I plan to level. I will open up the quest log. Find all the quests possible at my level -2, and then decide if those quests are worth doing. Things like Titan pre quests and last X number of mins are a normally a no. Chains that have pain in the ass bits, but over all are good xp wise or loot wise make the list. And if the wife or another group member wants to do something then it makes the list.

No repeats, unless the quest is great xp per min, super fun or has killer loots. Like say Shadow Cypt, Litany of the Dead or Enter the Kobold.

I also like to have a clear area to hit. Say the walk ups in the sands. Like last night. I was not feeling super chatty, in fact I was tired as balls. Just wanting to hang out. Do a little work on my Fighter but mostly hang out. But the team came together so I swapped to Samius. Tobril said he was on his way to do Maraud the Mines up so we all tagged along.

Oh here is a side point. Unless Soloing or working with someone that is able/wanting to do the invis thing I tend to clear to the end. If the team is strong like say my TR team, I like to spread out and nab all the xp possible in the shortest amount of time. Like in Tear, we broke into 3 teams. A, worked on the main quest, B went to do the optional that they could, C did the same as B. Which netted us all more xp. Areas of Assault on Splinterskull are the exception not the rule.

We (those that joined Tobril) started to split up. There were 3 teams again. I went one way to clean up optional, Tobril went for the end, everyone else other optionals. In just a few mins Tobril finished the quest. Wam. Bam. Think we netted a few 100s in optionals before the quest finished. No real point in clearing after that…

So we moved on to Purge the Fallen Shrine. Also a fast run but behind us. Then Raid the Vulkoorim, and then An Offering of Blood.

I don’t want to think about the time wasted on the order we did those quests in. Maybe if I wasn’t feeling so lazy I would have got my guys moving in an time effective way. Such as:

Purge the Fallen Shrine
(Maybe the The Chamber of Kourush, and The Chamber of Rahmat if we didn’t all solo them for ease)
Maraud the Mines
An Offering of Blood
Raid the Vulkoorim

That would have been a big circle, with no huge areas of back tracking. Thankfully to everyone we made good time in the quests so time lost out side the quests were not horrible. But we finished Offering of Blood with 30 secs left on my XP shrine…

<3 me long time.

As some of you know I did some work on my gear before TRing this last time. Mainly to take advantage of Ring of the Stalker and boost my AC up a hair more.

I have to say it is working out well. My Amp at level 12/13 is good enough that jerky ticks for 4, the jungle cloak for 10, and lesser Vamp for 2. BTW how I am getting lesser vamp into my weapon set atm is thanks to a Vampiric Fury Shortsword. Not something I use all the time, but I do use it often enough to be happy that it has a slot in my inventory.

Having the different kamas for head cutting time is real good. I mean come on who doesn’t want a weapon set like this at level 12: +5 vorp holy, good burst, greater disrupt and +5 vorp acid, acid burst, earth grap?

So over all I am super pleased with the set up. At 12/13 I have a 60ish AC. More if I can remember to use a shield scroll the damage is not much worse then wraps a d8 vs 2d6 But my normal wraps at this level are vamp stone dusts so having the other effects like Holy and Acid bursts makes up for a little smaller base damage.

I found a trick if you want to use your fists there for keeping your Tod and Stunning Fist open and yet add that Vorpal effect from the ring. Dual wield something, have your ring on use a scroll (ie scroll and kama) and notice that once you have a scroll in hand your fisting again. Notice that heads fall off as you can’t get swapped back to the other weapon set do to lag. Sure you loose having weapon effects in your hand at least until ToD rings but having your stunning and Touch back might be good enough? And you get to keep that off hand weapon equipped also. So in my case Amp or Ac as needed.

Talk about a bad paper cut. Now I just need a way to staple guys to the ground…..

<3

For the last few week I have had an idea bouncing around. And I hate to pick on Phlor, but as he is the inspiration for these thoughts, well screw him, he is going to get a little good heart-ed fun poked his way.

When last I was able to really play the TR train was around level 11. There is the core Fo, Tor, and myself. And the extras Tobril and Phlor. Phlor is leveling up some alts while he wraps up some raid completions and gets someone up to bring along when people want to raid or epic.

The thing is Phlor feels squishy. And he kinda right to feel that, as he is a first life (I have to assume 32 point) Paly with limited gear and twinking gear. Add in some issues with being rusty from lack of play, and trying to play other games on the side as well.

That said the man has a fair pool of people to help with that as well as a lot of his gear that is twinkable is quite good. And with a little work I don’t think he will have any issue with play rust.

But some how I keep catching him in the back of the party with his shield out and a thrower in his hand. WTF? Your a melee class, with melee gear the Wizard casts web and gets in there melee you had damn well be in there too.

So I have been thinking about a Halfling Thrower Build. Here is the rough rough rough idea.

Monk 12/fighter X/ Pally/Rog/Ranger 0-2

Goals: 10kS, GTWF aka Fists/bad touch (may involve earth stance + jidx), Imp Precise Shot, Weapon Specialization, and if needed go extreme aka Kensei 1 (Star)

The nice thing about this build is with a lesser (or a few feat changes) it can be swapped in to a good end game build. No matter how uber you make throwing star damage it is just not going to be good end game damage compared to a good set of wraps and ToD. But it would be a “fun” build.

I tell Phlor if he wants to play a back of the group dps/variable build to roll up one of my Bowonks. Even first life they are solid. But the idea of making a star throwing build amuses me.

More on this build as it develops.

<3

Today I am trying to do a post from the cell phone. Have to say it is not as easy as I would like. But lets hope I can find the gold for you.

In pnp I am a dice nut. I carry two bags of dice. Mine and group dice. And the two piles shall not cross. Ever!

Sure a dice might get promoted into my personal use bag or down graded into the other bag.

I know dice have power. Having my dice makes my play bolder and often allows the boldness to carry my play to higher levels.

What does that have to do with DDO?

All my dice are set to pink. The manlinest of all the colors. Why? Superstition. I feel that I roll better while my pink dice.

Sure I know on my head that there is not really a difference in the numbers given by the roller based on dice color. But in my heart there totally is. And for me pink is the best.

What color is your dice? And if you could would you have different colors for different rolls? I would find a good umd dice if I could.

Well not too bad doing it on the phone. Editing is a pain so no edits for you.

<3

or

So yersterday i ran down just a few of the many hurdles to over come when trying to play from the road. Today i want to share a story that will hopefully make you want to try and play some even if your on the road.

So i got on around 6-630 here. My wife was letting a show tape so she was able to also get on and play some, and as it was Tuesday night so Tobril was able to group with us. Adding alittle normalicy to ones life, while away from home is a good thing. But the real meat comes from what our group was able to go and do.
Samyus, my Ac tank in progress (who mostly soloed to level 10, sans healerbot btw) was elected to be “fixed up” aka made playable from the road. That means moving bars around. Takeing some off the screen. Even loosing quick access to some hot keys.

Once your muscle memory is tuned to go to a given place and do an action. Say Intim (number 7 for me), which on my normal key board is right above the “w” key just on the second row of number keys; reaching across the board to hit the 7 above the “y” key is not normal. Loseing my two side mouse buttons for target next hostal/object took a while to adapt to. In truth, I still can’t use the “tab” key to target anything.

Anyway, we all teamed up and did Shadow cypt like 9 times on elite. I ended up with about 160K xp for the night. Would have the same thing happened if i was at home? Sure but all that xp would be on Samius. Not Samyus. And Samius with the aid of my son’s account can solo said content a few times with out bothering any guildies (not that i will have to, but he could). Samyus could also but it would be a much more intense strugle, as he is not as good at killing ghosts while staying healed up.

Samyus was able to gain a whole level plus a rank or two in just a few hours. Keeping pace with the wife’s first life sorc and not far behind Tobril’s second life wizard. Leaving him able to be used to play catch up for others when Samius power levels up a few levels. I hope to do crush some XP this weekend.

All i have to say is playing from the road is extreamly challenging, but can be super rewarding if you can over come hurdles to play.

<3

I don’t have my normal text editor so i am guessing this will be a short one, but i wanted to try and post even while away from home. As some of you know i am in Denver, CO for Drupal Con. Wish i could say i have learned a lot and that i had the come to Jesus moment with Drupal but i haven’t. Not yet at least.

But this is a DDo blog so let me say traveling and playing can suck if you are not used to playing on a laptop. And i am not. At home i have two screens the smallest is 22″. So going to a 17″ laptop screen is fairly hard. To make everything fit i have to move things alot. I normally play with 10-13 bars on the screen. With my dice and health in places that i can see them as well as what is going on. That is just where my eyes look for them. Well they are gone. So watching my health is an issue.

I also have a gaming key board one with a special section of the board with the wasd keys where they make sense as arrow keys and surrounded by the number keys and other common quick keys. Trying to play with a “normal” laptop key board is a challenge now that i am used to my other key board.

But at least i am able to log on and do some playing, i am a huge DDo addict. I play at least 30 mins a day. Most days an hour or two is normal. So not having to go cold turkey is hard.

Any way i was able to help the wife do Von 1 elite with my fighter. I am afraid that Samius has too many buttons to hit to be helpful while i am gone. So the much easier fighter is the current call.

As for epic night?? I don’t think i would be super helpful. But i am willing to try some

Wish me luck, both in game and here at the con. Oh and traveling home wouldn’t be a bad time for some good vibrations.

<3

I will be traveling on Monday and I can’t promise a post so I am posting one for Monday today.

Nyxianne had a good my.ddo post today Link. And I am going to address the some of these issues from my point of view. It gives me a post and room for a longer comment.

Note: Any use of the word you s below are not meant at you personalty but people in my group.

This is how I play. If you want something you take care of it your own self or you will ask. Not type h in the chat for a haste, manors cost nothing and only take a sec. I will not use my Sp on people that don’t ask. If you don’t have a mic you can type Gh, rage, etc… plz in the party chat but I am not a mind reader.

If you take off then you have everything you need. I haste on me when I need it. You can watch your buff bar well enough to type “h” two seconds after is wears out, you can damn well find me a few secs before hand. Your welcome to say something like on my way back for a haste or whatnot before it expires and I will wait for you. Communication is a good thing, try it.

Now why is that when all through the lower levels you got buffs with no issues or questions?

I expect them to know what buffs they need once they start to get a few levels on them. Starting as low as level 4 now people can have permanent blur from an item. Do you? I don’t know. If you don’t ask for one I assume yes. If not then we are both asses, me for assuming you do and you for not asking me for that buff. Same for any possible Ship buffs (although I can see those if I examined you).

Also I can’t speak for others but a large amount of my time is played with a small group of people. We all know how each other play and what areas we cover each other. Being a smaller group also makes us not want to be a drag on each other. So often we cover our own buffs and heals so no one else needs to. It can be tough on the odd man out that is not used to how we play. I am thinking about Phlor and how he is handling adapting as to how we play with his long ddo break taking him out of practice.

Speaking of being out of practice; right now Tobril has to be feeling the pain of the TR train doing our own thing. He wants to be that haste-buff-CC caster this life, but we are off as soon as we zone in to a quest. Last night he and I joked about how he was going to haste me even if he had to start drinking pots to cast it on me.

On the flip side there are a few buffs that get thrown with no issues, Okay Mass DW/Pro/SR and …. Oh as I said above hastes on me. That is about it. Other wise chime up.

Now if you ask, not demand. I have no issues buffing you. But you should always work on becoming more self reliant.

<3

I have never really enjoyed melee before. Sure I have liked how some builds do /handle in melee or the rare moment when it all clicks and I find the love. But as the main focus of my build not so much. Which is a strange to write/read as Java has been my (hate) tank many times….. Back during my barb life I did find myself liking how things where playing out but that ended at level 13 or so. That might have been a different story if I had a different base on my Lig2 say a falchon vs maul. But you know I built that maul for when I was a wizard and while I might not see the huge numbers that a X3 crit weapon can bring my maul is super consistent and that is important to me.

Anyway, as it was Thursday aka Fopo’s night in the bowling alley/ teaching raid night, I worked on my pure fighter Samyus. Now he is meant to be a pure AC tank. Epic plate, big LoB tower shield a few stacking dodge bonuses a few epic items here and there and whatnot and I see a nice high Ac tank.

But last night he was level 7. Was because I leveled to 8 as I logged for the night. You can check him out http://my.ddo.com/character/sarlona/samyus/ if I have it set up right. You can see he is not decked out in any thing super uber special. Other then my +6 con ring, which is good but not really super uber special at this level. I once had a pair of RR dex boots level 6. So even before the eyes chain bo bo at level 6 +6 stat items were out there. Then they where super uber special! Most of Samyus’ main gear is crafted. A set of full plate crafted to have invulnerability, a +6 stunning tower shield normally he uses a crafted holy lesser vamp battle axe with a med guild slot sloting a few more points of damage.

But last night I felt tanky. And I was getting into it.

I first started noticing it in the very first quest. Phlor joined me in a zerg Lair of Summing. I knew he was behind me some place but I didn’t really know where. But before I knew it I was at the end fight and yellow or orange skulled. No big. Get in stance and knock the alert down with a few cleaves and great cleaves along with some pot drinking.

*Note Phlor bud if you are reading this please load up on pots. If you need the plat for a stack let me know and I will hit my bard and get you a stack on the cheap.

Anyway once the room was cleared I noticed Phlor standing in a corner with his throwing weapon in his hand… Lol, your a nut bud. And I say this for everyone if your not “helping” you need to let the party know your piking or at least hanging back as to try and not make things worse.

A few more runs and we are Bloody Crypt flagged. Rebuff and start Bloody, Tobril on his TRed caster goes east, I take west. Phlor is to help Tobril. After a few moments we are red skulled and I am totally surrounded. It was great!.

Don’t get me wrong, being skulled is shitty, but being able to just stand there and take what every the uber pissed mobs were dishing out was a good feeling. On Samius, I try to kill fast enough to keep the alert down. Or at least have thing under control at all times so going red is not a worry.

Any way that run was fairly smooth. I finished up my side not much after Tobril aka webs and acid ball/wall of fire guy. Not bad for a melee with a holy weapon…

I caught the window and soloed the quest as everyone else did their teaching raid. And while I never got skulled again I adjusted my play style some to try and keep that feeling. It was a little slower. Having to do every myself and it was not 1k a min alone. But it was super fun and better then 500 a min.

<3

Harassment is according to my dictionary.com is the act or an instance of harassing, or disturbing, pestering, or troubling repeatedly; persecution.

That is a kinda of random way for me to open a bonus post, right?

A few days ago (okay yesterday, This week is moving too damn slowly) in the post “What is the Deal?” I said I was about to report this guy for harassment. And my bud, Cauthey, just replied with a “Were his tells really that harassing?” And I would say yep, according to the definition as I read it.

Now I didn’t give a number of tells this guy sent me or a time span after I declined to trade for his reds. Because I stopped counting after 10 or so tells over 7-8 mins aka “ troubling repeatedly”. Where his tells mean? Not really. A little judgmental but that is fine. Whatever.

Is there a breaking point when polite tells becomes the definition of harassment? Yes and it is different from person to person. I like to think I have a bit of a thicker skin or I have to give some slack because I am that “Samius guy from those pod casts.”

Yes I do get tells about the show, and I love them. Just not every 5 mins from the same guy for a week. But if you want to send a “hey” tell every day as I log on it is cool. Just not every 5 mins, okay?

I am also lucky to have a sounding board normally right here, the wife. And when she says I would have had her report that guy and squelch him if those tells were to her, I know that I am in the wrong and a report is valid.

Now on the other hand I didn’t send my hey back the %&*@ off tell until I was already bothered and annoyed. But once I let him know he was bothering me he stopped. Which is the right thing. If he would have kept it up he would have gotten reported. I am glad I didn’t report him. But he was harassing me and if I did report him I would be okay with it. From the shear number of unwanted tells in that amount of time.

All I want from the seller when I offer a trade is a yes, no or a counter offer. I don’t need a lecture on what the seller thinks is the current market price and how I am a bad man trying to take food from his 14 kids and fat wife.

<3

I really want to talk about Ddo and try to make a clear point maybe as a teaching moment. But as the only thing I can think of that has happened lately that would work would be Reaver puzzle training and I really don’t want to get in to that.

So instead my top five pieces (that is not super sexiest or anything) of celebrity eye candy.

5- Gwyneth Paltrow as Pepper Potts (Iron Man) Can’t say I have really liked her in much else and Lisa Edelstein - Cuddy from House could take this slot. But I have always had a thing for Pepper.

4- Sophia Bush as Brooke Davis (One Tree Hill) Don’t get me wrong. This show is full of eye candy. There is someone for everyone to enjoy. But the Brooke Davis character is something special. And I like Brunettes and Red heads the best, sue me.

3 - Eliza Dushku as Missy (Bring It On) I have seen Eliza in many things. And I have always thought she was amassing. But I really <3 Bring It On ( “Just what I need” is one of my ring tones.) and it has to be because of Missy.

2 - Jolene Blalock as T’Pol (Star Trek: Enterprise ) This pointy eared girl is a one hit wonder to me. I have seen her in other things. But she has never done quite as well as she did in Enterprise. Maybe it is because she was a brunette?? IDK. And to top it off, the wife and I are re-watching the series and she made a comment about how hot she was. Hot enough to turn straight married women???? Maybe.

1 - Alyson Hannigan (Everything she has ever done) I don’t know if I have said this before, but Alyson may have been my first crush. I had to be 9 or 10 when I first watched “My Stepmother is an Alien” I have crushed on her ever since.

Bonus Creepy Old guy pick - Michelle Trachtenberg - Jenny (EuroTrip) EuroTrip has to be my second or third favorte movie of all time. It or America Pie, what can I say I <3 me some raunchy teen comedies. Michelle was great in this movie. And I have to say when I watch it I say to myself “WOW!” then I remember that she was Buffy’s kid sister Dawn and I feel old and creepy.

I enjoy doing these lists. If you have one you want me to do use the comments. And if it happens to be a DDo list the better.
<3

I have a few topics today I want to talk about, But I am not sure if they are deep enough to expand into a full on post. So I will do my scatter shot topic post again today….

If you saw some thing like this in the trade channel what would you do?
Trading 3 red scales (linked) need 5 L scales, 3 L Stones and 2 L Arrowheads. Send tell.

Me? I sent a tell with an offer. I have 1 scale, lots of everything else. I said I could do 1 scale and everything else he needed.

He comes back with that is not good enough. No big deal, I am good with him having a price in mind but I just didn’t have any more scales. So I wished him luck and I was over it.

He however begins to send me tells as reds are worth 800K and scales are worth 200K and stone are 150k. So I was trying to low ball him. And so on and so on.

Until I finally had to stop doing what I was doing, leaving the wife to clean up the quest we were in btw to send him a follow up tell that more or less was: Hey, I think your a lot high on your prices. There is nothing wrong with that, but I said you were to high for me and I wished you luck. Drop it before you get reported. Thankfully that seamed to work.

I watched him spam the trade channel for the next 3 days. Maybe my offer wasn’t as low as he thought.

Is Baby Galactus eating our sun? http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=Ev8JGqDO8nk I watched it and a few other videos that popped up while checking it out. My gut says this is it how the end will come. Black balls all over our sun.

With the epic scrolls not dropping in anything but the new content we (Defense Guild that wanted to Epic) spent Epic Tuesday in the Challenges. In about an hour to hour and a half, we had gathered enough ingredients I could get 5-6 tokens. Not bad for a non spaming EDA night.

Comic Book Men and Full Metal Jousting, I am really enjoying these shows a lot. FmJ is cram-packed with lots of action. And it feels more real and less scripted then most realty shows, mostly due to brilliant editing. I am drawn to CBM because I am a fan of Tell’m Steve Dave, one of the many great podcasts on Smodcast.com. But I really like the look and feel of the stash. And seeing some of the things coming in I can see my living room getting a bit of a make over in that nerd comic book sheik.

Okay that is enough for one post.
<3

Last night when I got home Torrance was logged in and playing. I think to myself “Alright a good night for xp.” And start changing into my after hours, “I don’t need no stinking pants”, lets get comfortable shorts and Iron Man tee! In the 90 seconds it took for me to change and walk back in to the computer/main living room. She had logged. Turned off the lights. Crawled under a blanket and said she wanted to watch a show….

So I fire up Nexflix on my right screen, while starting DDO on my left. I solo a few quests with my fighter as we watch the first ep of enterprise where Brent Spiner guest stared. Side note: Enterprise is my favorite Star Trek. It had everything in my opinion. And it is cold in space! A lot.

Anyway, I will admit I assumed that she would watch a show and get fired up for xp.

So once Fopo logged on, I swapped to Samius and we started looking for xp. But not too much xp. I don’t want to pull to far ahead of her after all. So looking at the 5-6s as we are level 7, want to keep that elite streak running, and end up in three barrel cove.

Mean while that first episode ended, and I started the next one. 10 mins into it I hear Torr begin to snore. Nice. I knew she was still not 100% back from being sick last week but I didn’t think she was “fall asleep at six sick” as I had to go to bed with out her the last few nights as her internal clock doesn’t adjust to the time change well and she was not ‘ready’ for bed at bed time.

Anyway Fo and I end up doing all of 3BC minus the fire caves and I have to say while the quests are fun to do the xp is just not there even with the streak and the tome.

Now when I am in that “Just enjoy the game” mood I can take 500 a min xp and be happy. As most of the joy comes from playing the game not seeing the xp bar jump up. When I want to see the bar move, watch out. But we zerged last night, sure I was half watching a show but we hauled ass doing the quests. Ghost of a Chance is the only one close to 1k a min. The rest even at full zerg are in the 300-400 a min range. And that is just sad.

I hope xp in some of these often skipped places will be looked at soon. I know 3BC has a lot of issues. No named loot, poor xp, no fast travel options like in tangle root. But the area also has so much going for it. Good story lines as well as different and fun quests. Lets hope that some dev will feel like doing a touch up soon.

<3

We all have our own leveling style. This weekend I saw some totally valid styles clash. A lot.

Torrance and Fopo are a clean the dungeon out people. They enjoy playing even if it takes a little longer and the bonus xp for the time is worth it to them.

Tobril on the other hand is xp per min guy. He would rather invis to the end an nab the largest amount of xp he can for the least amount of effort. Even if it means that he has to run the quest again to get the same xp as the first team.

I am a lot more flexible. I can do the Xp per min thing (and I do it often) but I also like clearing out a quest and swimming in the huge payoffs that having all the bonuses brings. To me it is a quest by quest and mod factor thing. I also can be in the mood to just grind explorers/slayers.

So this weekend (maybe Friday? ) we had everyone on line and ready to go. We had a few clashes of play styles while we did Splinter Skull stuff in Tangelroot. The first was Tobril invised and took off and the rest of us started chopping our way through. In a later run I had gotten 2 of the 4 traps before the quest completed. And after that, I called out that I was hitting the traps, Fopo called out that he was shrining, Torrance also said she was shrining also but she didn’t have her head set on. And Tobril took off and opened up that slightly harder fight then he could handle alone. But he didn’t realized that he was alone until about the middle of the fight.

But I have to say that it was good times. Adjusting your play style to group with your friends is just part of the deal.

Some XP highlights for the weekend: 25 mins for Proof in the Poison for 20kish, 15 mins for 14K in A Small problem, 15 mins for 25k in Bloody Crypt. 30 mins for 35k in STK.

Streak + the big first time bonus + a tome of learning + xp pot (optional) + optional inquest bonuses = big numbers and good times.

<3

While I was ill I worked on my freshly TRed would be tank. So far the only quests I have skipped doing on elite streak have been the Cartamon chain and Freshen the Air. Every thing else has been elited.

The best quest so far xp wise has been Proof in the Poison. A level 4 market place quest. I used to skip it because it was long and way to expensive to bother with doing. Until Crisis talked me into it right after TRing first was added. And he pointed out the optionals make the quest.

(Optional) Kill Gnaghi Ugnot (25% of base XP)
(Optional) Kill Woathe (25% of base XP)
(Optional) Slay 40 members of the Quickfoot gang (30% of base XP)
(Optional) Slay 100 members of the Quickfoot gang (40% of base XP)

Don’t get me wrong it is still a pain as it seems like every other guy is an CC/magic missile wiz/rog Quickfoot Caster spamming Holds, Hypnos and stun effects. Every group of mobs has at least one grease dog and did I forget the Magic Missiles?

So it can be a challenge.

And to top it off you can’t keep a hireling alive. I tried, I really did. But my would be helper got him self killed in the fire traps for no reason at all that I could tell. Just ran out and stood there, burning to death. Hirelings should summon with the same (ship) buffs you have on you at the time of summoning. So I dismissed him right away, cleared another room or two and ran back to the start to re-summon him after 5 mins and did the jump off a stack of creates and call trick. He still ran through the fire but lived this time. Only to die later as he ran into some grease in an acid trap trying to unhold me I think and bit it.

Fine I started with 100 pots and 50 hams I will be fine. And I made it. 20 pots and 19 hams left….

But it was 16k plus xp for the final quest Xp. I am not sure how much in optionals but I would guess at least 10k. I know I ranked more then once while doing the quest. Good times.

<3

My guild, the Defense Guild, has be on the mend member wise for a while now. And we have grown from 3-4 truly active accounts to almost enough to fill a raid. And enough to short man most of them on normal easily enough. But we are short on a few things. Mainly Tanks and Bards. Right now I have the only raid ready Bard in the guild and Tobril has the only raid ready Tank.

As some of you know I have stepped up and capped Samyus (as a Ranger) and TRed him into fighter as my side project for times when Torrance is not in the mood to play. Last life I leveled Samius a lot anyway and ended up capped more then a week before her.

While I was sick I did some stuff with him solo. He his now level 6 with 7 banked. Or is he 7 with 8 banked? I don’t know i was sick, damn it. BTW, Defender stance is really good if you don’t already know. I took a suit of mithral full plate and glued invulnerability on it via the Canith crafting. And took a mithral tower shield and added +6 stunning. And I will say I can wade into a group of mobs and cleave and great cleave and keep myself up with pots. His Ac is not uber right now but at 8 I will keep a set of +5s laying around and try out going into AC mod. If I am 25 right now with out trying I figure that 40 is easily do able at 8.

I am thinking with gear (as full on AC as I can get atm, including a possible 3 piece abishi set, and a planed E Fang with 3 feats (Maybe Sentinel … or maybe stick with my travel marks ) I think a 90+ self buffed is not out of the question.

I don’t have the gear all laid out because until I have it on my guy it is subject to change.

It will be good to have a tank again. I would hate tank on Java in some raids back when he was a Pally. And I had the wiz version a few points short from auto intimidating most of the bosses at the time before he went FvS. I could tank normals as a FvS well enough. But not the biggest guys. And really what the DG needs is a tank for all the raids we want to do often.

Even if I am not the best-est tank ever Horath/Sully tanking and everyone below that should be cake for Samyus and that is what I am looking for at the moment. As for Lob…. Well I don’t know, maybe? Someday. If I ever feel like being a big boy tank.

<3

For weeks now my video card has been telling me it is going out. It ends up turning itself off to keep from burning out and dieing.

At first I when this would happen I would just open the case cool down the card with a can of compressed air and then leave the case open while I was playing. Then I started leaving the case open all the time. More air movement is good right?

Recently, I moved the case to the side of the desk and put it on a night table stolen from the bed room hoping to stretch out buying a new one a little longer. This seemed to help a lot as I hadn’t had an issue since I moved it until last night. When I went even more ghetto, I pointed a box fan at it while its case was open.

Yep, I became that guy….

But see I was playing with Tobril, doing Catacombs on elite with our freshly TRed alts. And had just finished downloading the newest Comic Book Men from Itunes. So I had things to do on my computer last night. I couldn’t be down for the rest of the night, right?

I new you would agree.

So this morning I am looking at new video cards on newegg. Wow, I don’t have 500$ to drop on a fancy new card. Wish I did but I don’t. I can swing 150. Maybe a hair more but not a lot more.

I am leaning towards the ASUS ENGTX550 (Link). Thoughts? Other cards to consider? I will ordering something in a day or two at most so if you know of something better for a better price please use the comments.

<3

I have talked a lot about watching out for tilt in one’s self and trying to avoid or recover from it, but what do you do when you see someone else spinning out? I am not totally sure. I can tell you making a joke or trying to use the moment as a teaching moment is not the way to go. Let me try to explain.

Over the weekend Tobril was ill. But being a motivated Ddo player he took his handful of meds and did really well. We got a ton done but I watched him tilt both Saturday and Sunday. And was at a loss as to how to help…

The first time was after a failed Reaver raid. I had went up to get the switch and Tobril lead the puzzle solving aided by his trusty solver. Now Tobril has had some issues since they switched the colors to the “color blind” friendly colors. And some times I have issues with the blue and the green if my screen angle if off, so I totally understand. Once he realized he had made a green/blue error, he handed me control of the puzzle but as it was not done in the method I use I didn’t have enough time to get my head around it. And we exploded.

Now here is the point where I realized he was tilting as the rest of the day before I thought was fine, tough in places but fine. In hindsight, I was missing the tell tell signs of a friend tilting and at this point he was full on tilt. I said “You know the brain never fails. If done right.” in hope that he finally might let me show him how to solve with out a solver.

That was totally wrong on my part, you can’t offer up help when someone is tilting like that, it is almost impossible for the offer of help not to be taken as bragging or as an attack. Which was not my intention. But I see that is could have been.

Aside note: I still feel that everyone can solve with out solvers, it is not hard to do or learn. It is not a matter of having fun doing something. It is like having Hps on a tank, sure you can tank with less HP but if your light on Hp there is less of a buffer when handling a fluke.

The next day healz was off DQ timer. As part of my get more then one role prepped for raids and epics I have been working to my 20s. As Healz was on 18 getting him to 20 was not that hard. Again Tobril was still ill. I hope he is better today…… Kinda. If he is sick again that means he will be on again tonight and I would rather play ddo with a sick Tobril vs him be filling better and him being out doing something useful with his life. (What can I say? I am a greedy SOB)

Any way we go to DQ. He brings a fighter he has dusted off when I needed some help capping out Samyus (He was super gimpy, Samyus not Tobril) We have myself, Torrance (on Torrance, wow), Tobril and Tim on his monk. Wanting the best odds for something on my 20th chest I went elite over some others protests. I was not on my game. I forgot to get my metas back on after buffing. I need to take some time and do that meta per spell thing but I don’t think I will any time soon. The queen decides to BB as soon as she is active before porting off and a slew of other errors on my part resulting in my many deaths. Even so we almost had her, in thanks to everyone else picking up my slack. If I had my shit together I believe we would have had her. But they could only do so much. Take 2 , I was playing better and we also did hard. (Storm in the chest and no Torc in the list if anyone cares.)

Stiner had logged on to help with the planed hard shroud but Tobril was tilting again and “felt like normal” and this time I kept my mouth shut and let him roll with it. And a normal was had. I took the time to craft and then I braked for dinner. When I returned I check in via some tells and I got the sense that he was feeling better. I don’t think I helped him at all. But what did help? How did he pull himself out?

I think he also took a dinner break. Taking an hour or so away from what ever your tilting on has to help. I am sure getting some food helped and when he returned he had non-questing plans.

But I am still at a loss as to how to help a friend when on the tilt. If you have any advice for helping a friend or yourself let me know in the comment area.

<3

I remember A_D on one of his many SP pots should have a longer timer rants saying something like, SP Pots are game breaking. With the willingness to drink enough pots almost any content can be completed. I have always argued that a if a group is going to fail they will fail no matter the number of pots drank, but a few drank can make the quest smoother or help cover an unexpected error or tip fail to win if it is close.

Well last night I drank and drank and drank, guess what? We won. By the skin of our teeth. Let me tell you about the most costly shroud for me yet. It was also one of the best DDO rushes in a long time.

Shroud goes up, Torrance(her name sake Clr), Tobril, Fopo and myself on my ClR (Healzyounot). Everyone but myself checks out and does their own thing for a bit as we fill. Right away the question of difficultly pops up. Looking at the people so far and remembering the shroud I ran the other day on normal I figure what the hell lets do “hard”. Swap the lfm, ask if anyone feels they need to leave, etc….

We get a few more people and off we go. Right away Tor and Tobril smell a problem. There are a lot of 4-5 timers here. And a few worried about doing it on hard. Fuck. I went over this on voice and then changed the lfm. Read the Lfm people.

But we move along smoothly enough. Until part four. Somewhere in the first round Tor takes a double fireball/meteorstorm to the face and is out. And I am the sole healer (drink, drink). When the blades get in the group falls back and fails to reform on me. “I am not playing wack a mole” I yell over mic. “Get in here!” And then there were 5. Think there was Tobril, 2 barbs, a caster and me. Fopo may or maynot also have been alive here too.

Over looking the cat calls as to this being a fail, or a wipe we finish in about 3 rounds. About 13 pots used. I have never drank pots like that before and I don’t plan to again. But I am glad I had them to drink.

Rez who we could and move on.

Part 5 was going well again until the barb I was targeting moved back to wait on a heal and all the others that really needed that heal died. We would rez, and people would run back in with death penalties and then die again. There was a 12/6/2 clr build that had an aura but as he got rezed he would get in before healing up and die. I told him to wait until I could fix him up and then get back in but it was clear that it was about to become Defense Guild does the Shroud. People died and got to the point where is was just Tobril,Tor and I. We rez the whole raid group again but it doesn’t take long before it is just the three of us again. Then Tor gets hit hard and dies. A few times. I have been drinking now any time I can’t cast aka the last 15 mins. And I take a big hit and go down. My DI saves me but the follow up finishes me off. Tor drops and it is Tobril alone with Harry at 5% . Tobril Starts really moving and clickles Tor and I to life. Off mic Tor and I make a plan, I will heal Tobril and Dot Harry, she will pick the one of the barbs and dot. But in the end it was the three DG members again standing. I went from 99 majors to 67.

But we won. Tor drank 11ish. People sent some pots and she said she was only one or two down at that point. She got 2 scales I got 3 power cells and an arrow head.

Anyway I hadn’t had that rush in a while and it felt good. Even now as I think about it I smile. In a few days when we are off timer think I am going to try and have a few more DG members around just to make life a little easier.

As the raid leader it was my call and my responsibility to get us through. And thanks to people that wouldn’t give up we got through. All I can say is I am glad I got those store pots back when they were on double sale.

<3

Yesterday I laid out my wishy washy back and forth on what this life should count as. I have had many people inform me that I need to “do fighter” and mover on. And I want to thank you for the advice but I think you all are wrong.

Using my bowonk shell I go to the bow to make the room dead about 30% of the time in general questing. And I would say 80% of the time against final bosses once manyshot is available. At least for the first 20 secs.

+2 resists from ranger past life and +2 from monkey path equals a happy Samius. Sure with ship buffs they are mostly unnecessary but that time when you take 0 even though your friends are taking some roll over damage you will smile a little. You can lie to yourself but you can’t fool me.

Lastly, two more points of AC if I can work in the feat brings me to mid 60s at 12 and 70s at 14. I am assuming I can go more with my default DT rope (Amp, Amp, Rad guard) over my Jidz. Not to really mention I can do something else with my tinket slot. Maybe I can go back to my attack/dodge one?

I might go back on this and end up fighter, but really the main perk of fighter is I don’t need to burn any extra feats for maxim effect, but that is because the fighter active feat is shitty. My to hit is good enough that I can’t remember the last time I turned off power attack to have to hit. And that extra +1 to trip and stuns, I might not trip as well as I would like but I stun with the best of them. If I was going to stick a round at cap for a while and needed that stun DC higher for epics I would totally take fighter. But thinking about how the train rolls, I will be level 1 again the day TRing is back turned on or real shortly there after once the others coming along are ready to go.

So there it is all that and back to the class I wanted to do this life. Maybe I should have done that 11/9 ranger/monk. Oh well live and learn. :3

<3

Last night on Samius, I capped out first quest. But as the rest of the train is still a ways away from hitting that goal, I swapped to Samyus for the rest of the xp last night. Not that there was a ton left. After all it was a Epic Tuesday turned to xp runs for lack of guildies. But we can epic other nights once everyone is capped as long as TRing is turned off.

Back to the point…

I am still wavering as to what this life should count as on Samius. As 6/6/6 monk/ranger/fighter and already having the monk past life I have 2 real options. I have listed the passive and active feats before. But as they are easy filler here they come again. As always thanks to the Ddowiki.

Passive Past Life: Fighter - You were a Fighter in a past life. You occasionally find yourself filled with the urge to bark orders to your fellows in combat. Each time you acquire this feat you gain +1 to attack rolls and +1 to the DC’s of your tactical feats.

Passive Past Life: Ranger - You were a ranger in a past life. You occasionally find small animals in your backpack. Each time you acquire this feat you gain +2 damage with ranged weapons and +2 to elemental resistances.

Active Past Life: Student of the Sword(Fighter) - You recall more about your past life as a fighter. You have +2 to your Intimidate skill, +1 to the Maximum Dexterity Bonus of armor and shields, and can remember your martial prowess three times per rest, increasing your base attack bonus to your level and granting +4 to hit.

Active Past Life: Warrior of the Wild (Ranger) - You recall more about your past life as a ranger. You have +2 to your Spot skill and can produce a Barkskin effect three times per rest. (Activate this ranger ability to toughen the skin of an ally, giving a +2 natural armor bonus to AC with an additional +1 bonus for every 3 caster levels above 3rd, to a maximum of +5 at caster level 12th.)

Now both passive feats are good and helpful for my bowonk shell lives. But I am thinking that I will try a 11/9 rog/monk next life as I think I want to roll up something like that for all the time. So for the next life the fighter passive feat is slightly better.

The active feats are a different story. Student of the Sword is fine but I could carry a clickly of divine power if I need to make my bab better. I haven’t bothered to carry a clikly in a long time….But Warrior of the Wild on the other hand maybe super helpful assuming I can find room for it. If you have been reading for a while you know that I have been going AC while leveling up as long as possible for ease of leveling. And 60s maybe 70s is very do able with the bowonk shell. Although finding room for another past life feat will be tough….

I plan to take my levels soon so hit me with your thoughts..

<3

Last night there was much debate, both with the wife and with Fopo about what and when to pre order our Underdark Expansion. To skip to the end some the wife and I both ordered last night. But their was more debate that I want to cover.

To do the super Tp pack or Not, That was our question. Last month when the super sale happened we both found room in the budget to pick up points. And we feel good about that. Or I did (not so sure about her) until last night. Wow…. Kinda wish I had waited now. But even so I thought we should try to find room for the bonus Tp deal. My thought was that 11k Tp + what we have would be more then enough Tp to switch to Premium and remove a monthly (really every 3 month) bill.

Here is the clincher. The point my wife made that I had no logic to counter. She said “I don’t think I want to loose my VIP status, do you?”

Hmmm, No.

I like being VIP. I know that the the perks of being a VIP seam to be dwindling. But to me it is being the better consumer. Right now I feel by my remaining VIP I am saying this game is good enough and I enjoy it enough that I will “buy” it every month. My view of Premium players are this game is good enough I will buy this and that and at any time I don’t want to support the game with my check book I wont. Both are totally valid methods of paying. But VIP right now it the way for me.

I know I will I regret not getting this pack bundle I use my Tp on a whim, and it is a killer deal. Maybe I will see if there is a hack around after I get payed and see what I can do.

Lets shift topics some:

Why did I pre order last night? Tomes of learning. Cute little pets. And I was going to do it sooner or later might as well be sooner.

So who gets the big tome of learning? A question we all talked about last night. I picked Samius for two reasons. One I was piking some Dreaming Dark runs last night while I bought and set up the pre orders. I didn’t want to slow the people down that were moving my counter up. And I hear that there is an tome of learning upgrade that we can use to boost the other guys tomes. Samius only has 4 or 5 more lives he has to do. Java is currently on life 3 or 4. He can use the help as I assume I will take him completionist at some point.

Pets, I like them. I named the little wolf after my puppy Qywnn. Bought her the dance trick and a top hat and sparkle collar. And I am very happy. Now when I do my naked dancing waiting for the group/raid to fill I have someone to dance with. We noticed some status lag dealing with the pets last night. Tobril never saw her in her little top hat. I have to assume that as the pets are ran client side that the main server packet is fairly simple as to the status of the pet. I guess it is passing a Who and some Whats (wearing, doing if an action). We found if you did a gear swap it normally fixed the whats but not always. Also I couldn’t get the tricks to work from the quick bar. But Fopo had no issues. Hope to get that working tonight.

Meeting time. See you tomorrow.
<3

Saturday night, a call goes out for a hard Tod via the ByoH channel. Almost instantly the wife perks up and want’s t to go. She just booted up her Bowonk, and wants to try some other parts of the raid. She has a few ToDs under her belt as a healer. But that is about it.

We end up restarting as one of the healers ends up dieing in part one before we really get set up. Recall/DD. The last few people huddle together hoping that someone else will take the agro and they can get out. As I understand it there was one person kitting around the bosses saw Torrance recalling ran them over to her and then ported out. I only caught part of that as I was recalling out my self at the time and went to loading screen as the person kiting first heading towards her.

Have I told you all that she takes character death personalty? She does. And it makes her a better player. She is often the last one to die in a wipe. And often turns the fight around and prevents a wipe from happening. Phlor has a similar power. But his is more of the run away early and often variety. Better part of valor?

Anyway we wait for the 3 or 4 people that died to rebuff and get moving again. And part one goes smooth this time. Part two our kiter goes down at the very end. Oncler jumps out and intimidates and lives long enough for the group to finish up. The wife pulls the necklace for one of my rings and woot! Set bonus damage time. Aka good times.

Part three is where I ended up loosing it. We start, Sully shows up and knowing that the party takes sully off and kills her the wife goes in some. About that time the Sully “tank” starts crying foul. Because he can’t take Sully off her in the first 30 secs. Right away she discovers her error and turttles up waiting for the “tank” to do his job. Mean while he berates her and tells the healers to stop healing her. And she dies. And via text stands up for herself. Both Tobril and I do a little voice work. I want to point out that the “tank” lost agro many times. Where my poor monk ending up with the agro a few times. And we ended up with a few deaths before Sully went down.

Mean while some chatter went on, with Tobril defending Torrance as she followed instructions as she was given and they needed to shut up. I had lost it and had to be quite or vomit angry Samius over mic. Until we switched to Horroth when the chatter picked up again and I did go off a little. I don’t remember what I said but it was loud and full of words I try not to say. It shut everyone up until we finished the raid. For a group that wouldn’t shut up to go to pin drop quite I must have really unleashed. And I have the feeling that I made an angry impression as I don’t think any of those people ever heard me raise my voice before let alone thought I had such vile in me.

Watching my temper is something I have to do all the time. I can be quick to anger and once started it boils and boils. There were seven or eight people that didn’t deserve to hear my rant but they had to and to those people I am sorry. But I was not going let the blame fall on the wrong person for the cluster F%$& that was that last round. And I have a long memory when it comes to people that have pissed me off.

Well lets see if we can all get along from now on or if I am about to become one of those prima donnas that can’t play with some people. I hope we can all get along. I really do. But even as I write this I am becoming so angry that I just better stop before I rage on for you all.

<3

I have talked about tilt before. But if tilt is a new term for you I think of it as how bad play/mood encourages more bad play making the mood worse causing more bad play and onwards in a death spiral. Aka suckville. Last Wednesday, was one of those nights where I wish I was looking for tilt.

Looking back I have to say it started before I sat down at the computer. I was already not feeling well, and had a long day at work. But that is why I love Ddo, relaxation is only a few clicks away. Turns out the wife had hurt herself and was talking the night off to recover. So no major xp gains planed on the Trs.

No big, Fo and I wanted to try some challenges at the higher levels, mainly for xp. Looking over my list of ingredients, I need talismans to make a ring of the slayer at level 12. Might as well kill two birds with one stone. We end up doing really well netting 3 or 4 hundred ingredients, but it turns out we were in the wrong challenge. Grrr. We team up with Tobril, who wants to get some ingredients for items as well and we try the right challenge for the right ingredient. We do what I think was great. Until the power leveling hits for the ingredients, like 50. when 2 or 3 hundred would be about right.

We try moving on to some of the other quests on epic just to get a handle on their xp. Takes a little bit to get the wheels moving communication wise. Fo and I have been doing the challenges enough we have a pattern and a short hand that we use to keep things working smooth. Trying to add in a few more people can be frustrating for everyone. Take that and add Tobril being the only one that was handling more then 1 mob alone. Having to move in teams like wolves to protect and clear for our little miners. And team member a sees trouble on the left and member b sees trouble on the left and end up in trouble.

But I do think other then Devil Assault the epic challenges might be the quickest way to make tokens.

Then we move to ToD flagging. While Tobril was around to strap us to his back. Did I forget to say this was on elite. With out a divine? I died like 4 times. Three mobs were too much for me to handle alone. One on one I was fine. But with Tobril clearing the way and us pikers either working on side tunnels for chests or standing just far away that 4 or 5 mobs would port over at a time to kill us while Tobril handled the rest. It was tough. And when I said “Just leave me down.” I knew I was tilting hard. My play was sloppy and I was done. We wrapped that run up and I was out for the night.

Had I caught one of the earlier signs maybe I could have done something to make the night better for me. Instead I logged 3/4 angry at myself and read comics until bed.

I had to have been super good company that night.

Lates,
<3