The Last Week in DDO

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Apologies for the delay between blogs. Real life is unfortunately being a bit of a pain at the moment and making me do other stuff 😦

However, I have managed to get some quality game time in. Last week our current guild grouping hit level 20 (I was going to say capped but I guess that doesn’t apply anymore!) Which has made me really happy because it means I have a high level dark monk character I can play while I work on my multiple TR’s for my light monk. Although I did start playing around with the idea of TR’ing the dark monk build and including a splash of another class to see if there was a way to incorporate more feats… Damn I should have bought more Hearts while they were on sale!

Anyway, since the 5 of us have hit 20 together we decided to start the Eveningstar quests again. And it was great! It was like playing them as new (apart having a good idea of tactics this time round) and we all really enjoyed them again. Mind you, I do think they are some of the more fun quests in the game anyway 🙂 My dark monk now has his Ancient Gemstone docent and Grave Wrappings. I’m just working on building up commendations. I think the healing amp on the Purple Dragon Knight Gauntlets will come in very handy for him. Also, his current equipment appears to be kind of sucky…

Also, we have dragged our 5th guildie kicking & screaming through the Shroud with us. Ok maybe not so much kicking and screaming, but he did have to get himself flagged. So we are now running 5 man Shrouds every 3 days and the extra DPS is cutting the run time down to about 40-45 minutes.

Most excitingly, yesterday we attempted our first VoD. Only on normal, again only 4 of us, but it went surprisigly smooth. And I got the Enlightened Vestments (bonus – they actually look nice)! It took longer to find the entrance and get that middle button pressed! Which ended up being lit completely by accident when a tiefling ran across it while trying to get to one of us on the far side. I’ve read that a summon monster should work, but we haven’t been able to work out how you get the monster to spawn on the switch – none of us could target the switch. So if any of you guys & gals have a reliable way of hitting it – could you let me know?

Well, I guess that’s my ramblings done with. Hope you’re all having fun and I’m looking forward to todays Update 15 🙂

See you around!

A little bit of everything…. #gangnamstyle

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This is going to be a random blog about all sorts – apologies if it’s boring 🙂

Didn’t get to play much this weekend as we had family visiting but by Sunday afternoon we were free to do what we liked. Jumping on we (that’s me and t’missus) found a couple of our guildies on and decided to attempt another 4 man Shroud but on hard…..hmmm…Harry took out the cleric very quickly on part 4 due to some major lag. We got him down to about 1/4 but couldn’t quite manage it. My partner decided she had had enough and went to watch the olympics. The rest of us jumped in a Shroud pug…and I’d forgotten what they were like. Don’t get me wrong, it was a great group & everything went smoothly. But we spent 10 minutes waiting while they chatted (they obviously knew each other) and waiting for those last few people to turn up.

I was going to turn in for the night when a ‘Caught in the Web’ LFM went up. So we decided to jump into that. They were a great group of guys, loads of fun, but we had problems as we reached the portal keepers and ended up wiping. So, that was kind of disappointing – but we’ll get there eventually.

Yesterday, I came across a Korean music video that I went on to tweet about. It’s the craziest thing I’ve seen, not my type of music at all, but very addictive. Since then, Cordovan has tweeted that it’s doing the rounds at Turbine, MarDeRoam has put it up on the forums and I’ve decided I’m going to subject you all to it too!!

PSY – GANGNAM STYLE

Oh and by the way – that’s me on Twitter. If anybody wants to follow me @grimorde you’re welcome to. But be warned, I do occasionally tweet about non DDO stuff like work!!

See you around!

Catch Up & Thanks

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My monk Hymm (and several of my guildmates) has now hit level 25, although I’m currently sat at 24 until the guild are available to run the Forgotten Realms challenges at level, so we can get the most XP possible towards our epic destinies. He’s moved from Grandmaster of Flowers to Legendary Dreadnought. Not sure where to go next though….

Meanwhile, my artificer, Othala, has reached level 21 and is ploughing his way through his Draconic what-you-call-it destiny 🙂 Actually, while running him through the Demonweb chain of missions he’s picked up some nice armour for my fighter and barbarian characters. Guess I better spend some time with them then 🙂

We ran another Shroud last Friday. Ran a bit smoother than our last run, though we’re still perfecting our prep and separation of the red names in part 2. At least this time they didn’t have to abandon me to the wall in part 3 🙂

This picture is especially for Evennote. We were dancing, but those damn blades kept interrupting us while taking the picture!

OK, maybe Antaka wasn’t actually dancing, but he is nekked!

And I managed to get some time to play with my dark monk builld this weekend. He’s just hit 14 (he’s been a bit neglected recently for Faerun missions) and I’m really liking how he plays. Plus, he looks kinda awesome don’t you think?

Finally, I’d like to thank the person who sent me a tell to say ‘Hi’ while I was running through House K on Friday night, because they’d read my blogs. It made my night! 🙂 Just hope I can try and keep the stuff entertaining for you all!

See you around!

Quick Update

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Just a quick update as I’ve not written anything for a few days.

Three of us have now hit level 25, though we’re still sitting at level 23 as we’re not entirely sure the bugs for taking level 24 have been fixed yet. We’ll see what happens when this weeks (?) patch goes live.

We had another attempt at getting a shard of the envenomed blade for my partners rogue by running Servants of the Overlord on Epic Hard, doing all the optionals. We got a few scrolls, but still no shard. She is now starting to think the shard doesn’t exist….

For a laugh on Sunday, four of us ran VoN5 on Epic Hard. It’s a good job two of us are monks with Abundant Step 🙂 And it was a very welcome 92K xp. However, VoN6 on Epic Hard didn’t go quite so well… lol well it was worth a try.

And I’m still loving the new stuff. I think I might try and spend some time roving around the Underdark this week if I get a chance. Although I seem to have a list of things I need to do (finish Underdark explorations, get the last of Elminsters messages, get a few Epic Cannith challenge items now that my monk has had to re-jig his equipment) and not enough time to do them 😦

I’m also thinking of TR’ing again. I just cannot decide whether to start on my monk (who I want to have 3 x barbarian, 3 x paladin, 3 x fighter) or my Favoured Soul, who I’m just bored with and is intended to be my completionist… arrgh!

Wow, I rambled on more than I intended to then. That’s me done for now. Hope everyone is still enjoying the expansion and the bugs are not bugging you too much 🙂

See you around!

4 Man Shroud

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Last night we decided to attempt the Shroud. With just the four guildies that were still online.

Let me start by saying that I don’t think that we are uber or elite, and EvenNote’s excellent post yesterday really covers why some of us don’t tend to pug or raid a lot. We tend to keep to ourselves, have fun, work out how to run missions, epics etc with what we have.

But, with running the new expansion pack over the last week, we’ve hit level 23 with our main characters and we just thought it would be fun to see how far we could get on a Shroud (normal – obviously!)

So, we stepped in with Hymm (light monk), Antaka (light monk), Willowing (rogue) & Korvisa (ranger). Yep, no cleric. Which is why we didn’t make it past round 4 🙂

After we died part way through round 4, we decided to try again, but with Willowing swapping out for battle cleric Nightley. And Nightley has come across criticism before in the Shroud, someone blaming a party wipe on the fact that there were two battle clerics doing the healing. Pppttff… load of rubbish if you ask me 🙂

Because we got through part 4 with no trouble. It took three rounds of Harry beating, but he went down a lot easier with a cleric healing us instead of having to stop to drink silver flame pots. And round 5 went even easier.

It was a long haul, and I know other people have done it – probably faster or with less people – but it was a big deal for us!

Subbing the Subterrane

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So, I’ve asked my guildies to help me try and get the Tira’s Splendor rune arm from Garamol (who I keep wanting to call Gargamel!) tonight for my artificer. And while we’re down there, we thought we’d take a looksie at the Hound of Xoriat, see if she needs some fresh food putting down……like our limbs!!!

I expect to die horribly 🙂 Will let you know though

*** EDIT *** Well, no rune arm and we died 🙂 But gives us an idea for next time. What really made me laugh, though, was on the last death my Iron Defender pet said ‘OPTIMISM: THE BELIEF THAT EVERYTHING WILL GO AS PLANNED. BORDERING ON INSANITY.’

lmao!

More TR Progress

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We got quite a bit of gaming in this weekend. A few runs of Gianthold Tor, Orchard finished, most of U9 finished and we’re at 18 with an elite streak of 186. Wondering if we can manage to get that to 200…..

However, it wasn’t all TR questing. Myself and another guild mate have signed up for Tobrils Abbot Raid training next Saturday. Being in the UK it’s hard to get into the mid week runs that he’s put together (I just can’t stay up that late on a work night anymore!) so I’m really chuffed he’s put a midday weekend one together. This will be my first Abbot raid and I’m really looking forward to it 🙂 So, Hymm spent a few hours getting the rest of those sigils and getting the pre raid done. It’s the first time I’ve run the pre raid, and I always enjoy running quests I’ve not done before – so good times 🙂

Shroud Flagging

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We (me and my partner) had a good weekend this weekend, considering we only really had Sunday afternoon and evening for playing.

Like no doubt everybody else we’ve been grinding Mabar to get some gear together. I’m quite chuffed that I’ve got the epic handwraps for my monk. But Sunday we decoded we needed to do something more interesting. So, last 3 Vale missions for Shroud flagging were decided upon. Due to the rest of the guild being busy Mabar’ing or away it was just the two of us, and we did OK. Of course, it helps that my partner is currently a cleric and she could heal my butt 🙂

Now I just have to talk her into daring to run a Shroud as a cleric for the first time…

#20 Shroud x 2

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In the last week both of my level 20 characters have completed their 20th Shroud run. And both were interesting in their own way….

With Hymm, my monk, we had a fairly steady run on normal until we hit part 4. Part way through beating Harry down, half the party died. Suddenly. All that were left were myself, another monk, a cleric and a caster. (I think….there may have been another but it’s been a long week!). But, we still managed to take Harry down. It took 3 rounds, but we got there. And a nice +3 strength tome at the end for my monk was well appreciated.

For Fyrne, my Paladin, we were on an elite run. It’s my first elite Shroud, and it was very intense! I haven’t felt that worked up about a mission since I first entered the Shroud. But it was a good group, very few deaths, and a bonus drop of an epic dungeon token from killing the lion in part 5 for several of the group. And I got a +3 charisma tome for when I TR as a bard.

Oh and to round it off, my level 6 had a purple ioun stone dropped in Swiped Signet last night!

So all in all, it’s been a good week for DDO for me 🙂