I’m sure I won’t be the first or last DDO blogger to cover Ravenloft. I may even do some more on the new expansion pack, as we only had a chance to run 3 of the available 12 quests when we stepped in for the first time last night. Note for anyone who has not looked at the new quests there may be some minor spoilers.

OK, so, disclaimers! We ran the quests at Heroic Elite (level 12) and we are currently level 14. We’ve not read anything about the new quests/areas and didn’t try the Lammania preview.

Into the Mists

You access the new content from House Jorasco, just before you reach Fred, or from Eveningstar (I don’t know where – haven’t been that side yet with this life). This is a fairly short quest that gives you some information about Strahd and shows off the new look for the area and some new beasties (Rach got very excited about the prospect of new things for the Monster Manual 😀 ). Here is where you see the first scarecrows (which look just a bit too much like clowns for my liking….)

Barovia Wilderness Area

Once we finished the quest we were deposited in the new wilderness area. From what we managed to cover last night it looks huge! We came across Tobar the Smith close to the entrance who offered us a choice of Sentient weapons. Two surprises with this

• I wasn’t expecting to be just given one – I thought it would be the usual trying to get that certain weapon type through quests and chests. So woohoo!
• The weapons were all minimum level 29. {cries}

I was sure I’d seen someone mention that heroic versions were available. And today I’ve seen the hotfix release notes that suggest there is an issue with the weapon handout. Not sure what that means about how I get a heroic version… ‘shrug’ guess I’ll find out later!

Shortly after this we came across a village that contained the second quest…

Death House

I feel the guys at Standing Stone Games have put a lot of effort into the atmosphere for these quests. Here, you are asked to investigate a house that has not been occupied for over a century where two children were seen entering, after stating there is a monster in the basement. As you wander around what seems to be a deserted house you hear a small child’s voice (a young girl) talking about the monster. And there are some quite disturbing notes littered around the place…..

Fresh-Baked Dreams

This was the last quest we had chance to run. And this was when I realised Standing Stones were going all in on the creep factor, reinforcing the story from Death House.

In this quest you are asked to go looking for two children who their uncle has ‘lost’.

I don’t want to spoil it – but you do find them.

Sort of…

Summary

I really liked the new area and the quests we had a chance to run were fun (and dark). I like that we have some new monsters and I’m looking forward to running the rest of the quests. I was pleasantly surprised that when they said 12 quests – they didn’t mean 6 at heroic and 6 at epic/legendary.

General

On a more general note, we haven’t played much over the last month due to renovations to the house causing us to have to pack up the computers to get them out of the way. But we are back, working our way through our first Racial Reincarnation life. I’ve really enjoyed playing a pure monk again, but after playing so many other builds I can feel areas where we are lacking in abilities. I say we, I mean me. Rach is playing a pure rogue and doing her usual great job of saving me from traps, finding all the sneaky stuff and assassinating the bad guys 🙂

I think Racial Life 2 will be a Dragonborn Monkcher 😀

Have fun, see you around!