Open mouth, insert foot

For once I’m glad to be wrong, which is a nice switch for me since I’m wrong a lot but rarely glad about it. Turns out – as so many of you pointed out to me *grin* – that the old medium ingredients bag has been renamed to the SMALL ingredients bag, and the new small/old medium bag still holds 30 items. My dwindling inventory space and I are much relieved.

Too bad they don’t make a bag that could help out poor Victaurya with the Chamber of Insanity. For some reason she has a heck of a time disabling the traps in that quest. It’s not that big a deal as you can just avoid them, but it’s weird that she has the problem in that quest on about three out of four of the traps. She tried to solo it on elite tonight and failed on both of the traps she got to, with BOTH of them blowing up in her face on her second attempts. And then I forgot that the chest in the room behind the secret door is also trapped, so I ignored the “Your keen senses detect danger” message and sent her charging in there… only to watch her squishy little self get instantly killed by the blade trap. That left poor Flower the pocket cleric to deal with the Shade of Agony on her own. I was hoping Flower would win out so she could carry Vic’s soul stone to the shrine, but the Shade got the best of her.

Flower is probably my favorite of all the hirelings I’ve used, but I’m a little miffed at her since Update 9… or maybe it’s just been so long since I had a level seven toon that I forgot her quirks. She can summon a spider to fight for her, which is cool since Vic’s DPS is pretty shoddy, but the problem is that Flower will abandon Vic and run off to heal the darn arachnid. Girl, I’m DYIN’ over here! So what if that thing loses a leg – it’s got seven more! Get your butt back here and HEAL ME, DAMMIT!

OK, vent over. I gave up on Chamber of Insanity for the night and joined a PUG to do Gwylan’s on elite. Mostly a very nice group and I’m hoping to run with some of them again. I got attacked by an elf warrior while I was trying to disable the poison traps in the west complex – in case you’ve never played a rogue, when you’re searching or disabling and something hits you, it stops you and tells you that you were interrupted, and you have to start over. On top of that, since the warrior was now attempting to julienne me, I had to stop and fight him while trying to heal myself because the cleric was on the other side of the room with the rest of the party bashing on trolls. One group member ran into the center during all this, set off the traps and got poisoned, then made a snarky remark about why the trap wasn’t disarmed. Before I could tell him what happened, the party leader spoke right up and said that Vic was doing a great job and that the rogue he’d been with the last time he’d done the quest hadn’t been able to disarm ANY of the traps. I felt proud of Vic – there were a few that took her two tries, but she got them all.

She did miscalculate on the very end optional chest, the one with LOTS of traps guarding it; I goofed and stood her a little too close to search, and she got hit by waves of sonic that crushed her to a powder. No worries though, the party leader took her stone to the shrine, she went back and disarmed the trap, and everybody got the bonus loot.

She had more unexpected mail tonight…

“Victaurya~

Perhaps this weapon will work better in your hands then mine. Good luck to you and may you adventure with good companions that don’t leave you behind.”

I have no idea who this is, but if you’re reading this and it’s you, THANK YOU! For the awesome rapier, of course (which she needs to re-equip, she took it off so she could bind it), but even more than that, for the kind words. If not for that, I’m not sure Vic would have joined the Gwylan’s PUG; I was worried about possibly getting in with zergers. Seeing that made me decide to go for it, and I had a great time.

If only my real life could be fixed so easily… *sigh*

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Tagged and bagged

Why, DDO, why? Are you not making enough money from us already?

In case you hadn’t noticed, shops such as Empty Handed no longer carry medium ingredient bags. Now they only have small ones, but for about the same price as what I got a medium for just a few days ago.

This SUCKS, because with all these new essences of stuff, a small ingredients bag – besides now being the old price of the medium – isn’t going to cut it for a lot of players. I’m glad I had Even send Victaurya the plat to get the medium before Update 9 and the change; Vic needs the medium for all her trap parts, and now that the essences get stored in there too, she could really use a large.

It’s not hard to figure out why the medium bags were removed from the shops and replaced with small ones at the same price. People are going to NEED those mediums now, and aside from hoping to nab one from the AH or luck out and loot one, the only way to get them will be to fork over some real money to Turbine for enough points to get them from the DDO store. Boo.

Things got better for Vic tonight after the party that grabbed their bonus XP for her trap-disabling efforts and then left her high and dry. She spent a lot of time in House J, first with a PUG that was appreciative of her disabling skills (even when at one point we had THREE rogues in the group). After that she hooked up with one old friend and made some new ones in another group. She got to disable lots of traps AND everyone made sure she didn’t get left behind while she was searching and disarming. She levelled up to 8 and can finally use some of the cool stuff that’s been sitting in her inventory with an X on it… which reminds me, I need to put different armor on her, she’s got a really nice set that’s min lvl 8. She also hit 400 total favor, bringing me 25 DDO points closer to one of those ingredient bags.

Even came out to play after that. I was debating whether I was going to quest her or just check mail and the AH before going to bed. Ran into another friend who was looking for something to do and we ran the F2P Medusa Chain quests, although by the end we were tired and kind of silly… let’s just say there were whips and jump spells, along with proof of just how intimidating someone with green pigtails can be.

How to lose a girl in 10 minutes

Sometimes pick-up groups are a great way to get quests done and make new friends.

And then there are the other times.

Victaurya joined a group to do Bounty Hunter today. Nice people overall, but she missed out on a chest during the first run (on normal) because she was disarming a trap while everyone ran ahead, and missed out on SEVERAL chests during the subsequent hard run because everybody just went zinging past her while she was searching and disarming, and she ended up completely on her own.

It wasn’t that the group was mean or anything like that. They just made it pretty clear that all they wanted was the extra bonus (Ingenious Debilitation, or whatever it’s called) for disarming traps and after that, nobody gave a dang if she was there or not.

I tried telling them, when I saw they were looting a chest again nowhere near me, that I’d lost them while disarming. I was told, “lol its ok, keep disarming we need the bonus.” No one offered to help me find the chests – heck, they wouldn’t even wait for me to catch up. One person did say “sorry” when they were finishing out and I said I was going to stay in the dungeon and get the chests I missed.

I join groups to be part of a group. Maybe some people would be fine with just the XP and going back for the loot afterwards, but that’s not much fun to me. I’m thinking maybe I need to get Ironica out and go kill stuff on Korthos.

Hard to resist

No, seriously, it IS hard to resist – when you’re a level seven rogue and you decide it’s about time you ran the Pit. It’s hard to resist all the fire and acid.

But Victaurya, with a LOT of help from a good friend and guildmate, was alive at the end. Neither of us got Muck’s Doom, but oh well – it took Even a LOT of tries to get one, and she still hasn’t gotten another.

My subconscious must have wanted me to torture myself. After Vic’s triumphant foray through the Pit, Even gathered her nerve and some friends and headed off to In the Demon’s Den. One of our party members, who hadn’t had the, ah, “pleasure” of meeting the Marilith and her buddies yet, thought we should go in on hard or even elite. I promised him that if we got through normal with no major problems, I’d be up for another run on hard.

HAHAHAHAHAHA – well, we didn’t do the hard run, not with our death count at 25 by the time it was all over. Luckily we had a SUPER group who talked and laughed and stuck together. It’s amazing we made it through at all; we only had one healer, a Favored Soul, and he did a stupendously great job keeping us going. In fact, the hard run was actually starting to look like a possibility until we decided to shrine before we went after the third ritualist. On our way back through the main room, we got jumped by a bunch of elder fire elementals and what seemed to be a family reunion of Hezrous.

As summoned creatures fighting for you, Hezrous are awesome – but dang, those suckers hit HARD. We wiped, but our FvS revived somehow (can they rez themselves? I should have asked) and somehow managed to stay alive long enough to get ALL of our soul stones and carry them back to the shrine.

Of course, hindsight’s 20/20, so we were thinking while we were healing. And what we were thinking was that what we SHOULD have done was kill the third ritualist, then DDoor back to the start and use the first shrine, then pull the Marilith back to the shrine area so we could rez ourselves as needed. It didn’t stop us from dying a few more times, but we kept at her until she finally went down like a cheap prom da – uh, never mind.

I’m afraid to even think what that quest is going to be like on elite. I don’t even want to go near it on hard – heck, I don’t want to go near it on normal or even casual most of the time. But someday I WILL watch the Marilith die on elite.

I was debating signing off after that so I could try to find out what’s so great about this thing called “sleep,” but another friend sent me a tell to see what I was up to. He was looking to play some of his lower toons, so I got Vic back out and we ran Proof Is in the Poison. I don’t know why I was feeling masochistic enough to want to run all these quests with acid and fire and poison, but the quest, as the first two did, went pretty well. Vic surprised me a bit with her kill count, being the squishy little rogue that she is and especially considering that I kept forgetting she’s not Even and tried to tank with her.

That wasn’t Vic’s only pleasant surprise tonight. During our Pit run, I noticed her mail icon was on. That got me wondering who the heck was sending her mail – until the last few days I haven’t played her that much, she doesn’t auction anything, and she hadn’t passed any favor benchmarks. Turned out to be someone she grouped with the other night (on an alt, which REALLY had me puzzled at first since I didn’t recognize the name). He sent her some really nice armor, a belt, some bolts and a whole bunch of thieves’ tools. I’ll have to find out what stuff he’s looking for on his toons and see what I can do!

Being a wiz isn’t a whiz

I felt like doing something different today, so I headed over to Sarlona and created my first-ever wizard toon.

It’s been less than half an hour and I’m in Heyton’s Rest waiting by the shrine because I still have another eight minutes until I can use it again. Yep, that’s right, my very first real quest and I’m already a clock-watching shriner.

I knew that Vicriia, my new wizzy (she’s a Drow elf, so I used an online Drow name generator), wasn’t going to have the DPS of Even or of my “disposable” fighter/barb, Ironica. But I didn’t expect her to be quite THIS squishy on beginning quests. She’s already burned all the way through her mana (180 SP to start) once, her Charm Person spell hasn’t worked on ANYTHING yet, and she’s out of the starter Cure Light pots she picked up.

But she’s fun. Casting damage spells is pretty new to me; Even doesn’t really have any. Jall the cleric has a few, but usually saves her mana for healing. Discordette, my poor neglected bard, probably has some bard songs or something, but I haven’t played her in ages, and of course Victaurya and Ironica don’t have spells, period.

So it was kind of cool to FINALLY get a chance to cast Magic Missile at something, and to use an Eternal Wand of Finger of Fire.

I went with one of the default paths; I’m not nearly competent enough to try a custom build on my first wizard. I’m sure there will be times I’ll regret that, but that’s OK. Most people, if they looked at how I’ve built Even, would probably say I’ve made some major screw-ups (and I’m sure I have), but I’m used to her and she works for me.

Same with Ironica – I used a “disposable” build a very knowledgeable friend gave me to make her. The build isn’t designed to live past level four or so, but I’m going to keep going with her once I get there (and after playing a super-squishy wizard, I’m looking forward to taking Ironica out again and pummeling lots of stuff). I’ve never once re-rolled a toon. There have been times when I considered it, especially with Discordette, but yesterday I was reading an excellent blog post by Mizzaroo that was partly about how boring it would be if we all created the same toons. And she’s right.

So I might let some of my toons sit for a while depending on what I’m in the mood for, but I WILL go back to them. The mistakes I’ve made have been great in terms of learning about the game.

Victaurya’s done well with her extra playing time; got her levelled up to 7 last night playing with a SUPER group on Gwylan’s. She ran the House D Depths chain on elite with another group after that; the XP was nice, although the runs were pretty fast for my taste (TWO MINUTES?! Seriously?). But they were nice and it was a group zerg kind of thing, not one person ditching the group to run ahead.

Why isn’t there an IQ requirement to play this game?

Did you ever get in with a good pickup group, run a few quests, have one person drop, and end up with a total MORON in their place?

That happened to Victaurya tonight. She ran some House K quests with a real nice bunch. One of our group logged after three quests to play one of her higher toons and was replaced by… ugh. Words fail me.

It wasn’t just that he was another rogue, although having two wasn’t necessary. It was his ATTITUDE. It wouldn’t have mattered if he’d been a cleric or a barb or a wizzy. He started lecturing the group from the moment he joined – well, not QUITE from the moment he joined, first he had to figure out how to find the quest entrance and kept arguing with us all that we weren’t in the right place.

And the guy NEVER. SHUT. UP. He could have given my mother a run for her money, and believe me, that’s saying something. He made a big deal out of informing us all that if we got any throwing weapons from chests, he wanted them. One guy looted some shurikens and Moronface went off on him – “WHY did you take those? YOU can’t use those!” Blah, blah, blah… the guy said he took them for one of his other characters. “WHAT other character? Your ranger? Rangers don’t use shurikens!” And so on.

I got killed twice, both one-shots, the poor cleric never even had a shot to heal me. Unfortunately for me, both times were in an area with two chests and some collectables. After I got rezzed the first time and while the rest of the party was shrining, I tried to run back to grab the chests. Unfortunately there were a couple of mobs that had been missed and I got killed again. I asked if someone would take a minute to run back with me so I could get the chests, but no takers – my loss, since the quest had a point of no return.

I definitely will NEVER join any party if I see that guy in it. I’m sure he’s got other toons, but if I’m in a group and I hear his nasally, whiny, incessant voice, I’m outta there.

Rogue: It’s NOT a cosmetic

Watch general chat long enough and you’re likely to see someone say their party is looking for a “rouge,” at which point several people will probably waste no time in making fun of them for wanting to add blusher to their party.

Real-life me occasionally adds a bit of rouge to her face. Virtual me started out on DDO with a rogue named Victaurya (my cat’s name is Victoria, but that spelling was taken). I got her through most of Korthos and a few harbor quests before I created Even to be the muscle for my then-boyfriend, the man who introduced me to DDO and a very able, though squishy, wizard. Even kind of took over and Victaurya got less and less playing time.

But what I really wish Even had, more than cool attack spells or awesome buffs, are the abilities a rogue gets like disarming traps and picking locks. Since Even solos a lot, she’s taken her fair share of trap damage and missed out on cool loot. Sure, she’d love to have Firewall and Dimension Door so that she’d have a shot at soloing Sinvala from Mired in Kobolds, but that’s just one quest. Rogue skills would come in handy LOTS of times.

Now that Even is kind of stuck until THAT DARNED INFERNAL CREDIT CARD FINALLY GETS HERE (YES, dammit, I’m impatient!) so she can upgrade to P2P, I’ve started thinking about getting some of my other toons out and giving them a go. I logged Victaurya in yesterday to check mail and decided, just for the heck of it, to take a look at the Groupings tab. There was a group about to do Rest for the Restless, and they were looking for a rogue. Yay! Off I went to House P.

Like Even, Victaurya has done a fair amount of soloing and not much grouping, especially with strangers. On any toon, I’m always a little leery of joining a PUG – what if I bomb? What if some zerger ruins the quest?

No worries this time. The group was AWESOME, and since there are big ol’ nasty cold traps and locked chests, I got to be useful. I stuck with the group for three runs of Rest for the Restless (normal/hard/elite) and then ran Redwillow’s with them before stupid real life intruded. They made me feel really appreciated, too, telling me “good job” every time I disabled a trap or opened a locked chest. I didn’t expect that; I was just doing what I was there for. It wasn’t like I was killing a lot of mobs or healing people, but it was still a great feeling – especially since she levelled.

I knew NOTHING about character builds when I made Victaurya (honestly I still don’t know that much), but she seems to be turning out all right. One thing that surprised me in a good way – WOW, can she save. It had been ages since I’d run Rest for the Restless with Even, and I didn’t know that the trap control boxes had to be disabled before the lever was thrown. So there I was at the top of the ladder, getting blasted from three directions by cold jets… and above Victaurya’s head, all I could see was, “Save… save… save… save.” And that was without any resists. Even could kick Vic’s butt with both hands tied behind her back, but Vic wins when it comes to avoiding trap damage.

So tonight I got Vic back out for some more fun. I decided to run her through the “Depths Of” series in House D. I loved those when I did them with Even; I remember I did them solo first, normal and hard, and then waited impatiently for my then-boyfriend to log on so we could do them on elite.

I had at least as much fun tonight doing them with Vic. There’s a great mix and variety of mobs, lots of collectables (she looted FIVE Deadly Feverblanches from the series), a fair number of traps and some locks to pick. I wasn’t quite brave enough to try it on hard with her soloing… but I dunno. Maybe tomorrow. She didn’t have any serious problems at all; I think she might be able to solo hard.

I wanted to get Vic her first ranking bubble at level 6, so she also ran Kobold Assault and the Baudry Cartamon quests on hard. The Baudry series was no problem, in fact the whole thing was kind of boring. Kobold Assault – now THAT was another story. Her pocket cleric ran out of spell points before the halfway point, and it took a LOT of finagling to get him enough time to use the rest shrine without being interrupted by kobolds beating on him. She finally managed it by targeting the shrine, parking his butt behind it and telling him not to move, then intimidating the kobolds away so they wouldn’t interrupt him and having him use the shrine while she gulped down a LOT of Cure Light pots.

I was really glad that a few weeks back, when I realized Even had a full stack of Cure Lights that she would probably NEVER use, I mailed the stack to Victaurya. She started the night with that stack and maybe a dozen or so that she already had. Now she’s down to about 60, but she finished Kobold Assault solo on hard – not bad for a squishy little rogue in light armor with 61 HP.

It wasn’t all good – she also joined a PUG to do Purge the Heretics. The party leader reminded people SEVERAL times to stay together, but to no avail; several of them went in before Vic even got there, and she managed to get inside barely in time for the quest’s finish. Seriously, people. If you’re looking for more, then STAY with them when you get them. Why would you want to join a party when you’re just going to run through it by yourself? Not to mention all the mobs left hanging around; Vic ran into a whole gang of them and got killed while she was trying to find the end chest. The party leader was nice enough to take her stone to the shrine and then lead her to the chest, helping her battle the leftover mobs along the way.

I’m in a writing mood, but I think that’s enough for one night.

The good ol’ days

Recently I was in a really fun pickup group when the conversation turned to how we all got into playing DDO. That led to some great reminiscing for me.

This dates me, but I had the D&D board game in college. I didn’t get to play a lot what with carrying 18-21 credit hours a semester plus a work-study job and a part-time job at a taco joint, but I spent a goodly portion of my free time doodling mazes on paper and planning out characters. I used to read the books, too – anybody remember those? I wish I still had the game and/or the books now.

Aside from my paper foray into the realms of AD&D, I started out mostly as more of an arcade gamer. I was SO addicted to Pac-Man! My parents thought I was nuts. I thought they were hopelessly uncool for not realizing how awesome my maze-running patterns were.

Now this REALLY dates me… the first adventure game I ever played was called Zork. It was all text, no graphics. You’d get something like:

You are in a room with one window. There is a table in the middle of the room. A desk is against the east wall.

And you’d type something like:

Look at the table

It might tell you there was a key on the table, and then you’d look at the key or pick it up. It was tedious and incredibly time-consuming but surprisingly addictive, although I never did finish it mostly because I lacked the patience… not to mention that I was running it on a Commodore 64. If today’s processing speeds were compared to strapping yourself onto a rocket, the C64 was more like buckling yourself onto one of those coin-operated merry-go-round horses you see at strip malls… and forgetting to put the quarter in.

Graphic adventure games opened up a whole new world for me, even though I mostly didn’t have the patience to finish them (well, having skillz would have helped, too). Then I picked up Bard’s Tale III based on a friend’s recommendation and BAM! I was hooked. I played that game for HOURS. It was the first computer game I ever played that let me customize my character, and the night I finally finished it still stands out in my mind. I’d love to find a version of BT3 that would run on Vista.

That led me to games like Doom 3D and Duke Nukem. One of those – I think it was Doom – had a great patch you could download that turned some of the mobs into replicas of Barney the purple dinosaur, and they even sang the Barney theme song (“I love you, you love meeee…”). It took me ages and more than a few hints, but I managed to finish both of them.

Another classic was Leisure Suit Larry. Completely scandalous back then, mild by today’s standards, totally hilarious. Larry was a polyester-clad, disco-dancing, perpetually horny guy and if I remember right, the object was to get him into bed with the woman of his dreams. EVERY detail counted. Early in the game, one of the goals was for Larry to bed a lady of the evening. He had to take a cab there. If you forgot to tip the cab driver, he killed you. Once you got him set to do the deed, if he forgot his prophylactic, he contracted venereal disease and died. If you forgot to have him take the prophylactic off when he was done, he got arrested for indecent exposure when you left. One reason I never got all the way to the end of Larry was because there were so many riotous bits I kept going back and replaying just because they were so funny. Even the little details could get you laughing – the law firm he used was called Dewey, Cheatham and Howe (say it out loud).

It was great to get in with a group who remembered a lot of the same games I did. I’m still feeling really, REALLY down, but looking back at some of those old memories was fun.

Just rambling

I’m feeling kind of down, so I might as well post, right?

Victaurya, my poor underplayed rogue, has been so short on inventory space that I decided it was high time she got a fifth inventory slot. I got her out this afternoon and realized she still needed a bit more Coin Lords favor to get there, plus there were a couple of Korthos quests she didn’t have on elite yet. I trotted her off to House K to pick up a couple of pocket clerics and turned her loose on the dungeons.

She’s my original toon (Even came along a bit later) and although I’m pretty sick of Korthos by now, I’d forgotten that Victaurya is actually pretty fun to play. She whizzed through the four Korthos quests she still needed on elite and two Harbor quests on one hireling, then did a few more quests until she passed the 150-favor mark with the Coin Lords. For a toon with only 50-55 HP depending on what she has equipped, she can kick some arse when she wants to.

I signed Even on after that because Victaurya didn’t have enough plat for a collapsed portable hole. The prices on the AH are beyond ridiculous (says the person who shelled out more than 110K for a scroll last night…), but thanks to the trade channel I got the hole from a guildmate for a much more reasonable price.

Unfortunately then the night went downhill. Long story, a few weeks ago I made a mistake that hurt someone very dear to me who now wants nothing to do with me, and I can’t seem to find any way to make it up. I was going to do some Medusa chain farming with Even but got depressed and weepy and ended up just logging off for the night.

In the swim of things

Even spent another night enjoying – well, MOSTLY enjoying – Gianthold. Tonight two of my former Emerald Dragons guildies and I attempted The Crucible. WOW. This is NOT a quest I’m ever gonna try to solo.

We went in on normal and did fairly well until the long underwater part. That NEARLY wiped us; at one point we were all dead except two hirelings. As luck would have it, another friend of mine was looking for something to do and happened to send me a tell just at that moment asking if we had room in the party. We managed to be mostly resurrected and healed up by the time he got there, and the rest of the quest progressed – well, swimmingly, although after going through all that for just ONE of the three horns, the end fight was definitely anticlimactic (I think it was over within 15 seconds, if that).

Having a swim skill of 6 is a real hindrance in that quest, although once we’d gotten the Horn of Endurance, we realized that only one person really needed to make the swim. Still, despite the deaths, it was fun, and I found out that while I can’t rez or heal underwater, hirelings can, and I can use my Unyielding Sovereignty as well.

Something else I just found out is that an ingredient bag will hold a rogue’s trap parts. My poor level 5 rogue is seriously short on space, so I sent some of Even’s platinum to her so she could go to Empty Handed and pick up a bag. I may do some favor questing with her over the next few days; she’s just a bit shy of getting enough Coin Lords favor to get a fifth inventory slot once I get her a collapsed portable hole.

Even won the auction she was waiting on! Her new Scroll of the Vambraces of Inner Light took a serious chunk out of her available plat, but those things are hard to find. Now she needs the seal and the shard – well, and seven more ranks to get to level 20 – to upgrade her vambraces to epic.

You make me feel like dancing

Someday I need to invest in machinima software so I can get decent video clips from DDO.

Some good friends and former guild mates treated me to another Gianthold pass tonight, and another friend, a wizard, joined us for a few quests. I’ve never played a wizard but I’ve been thinking of making a disposable one to mess around with and learn the character because those spells are seriously cool. Up until tonight, the spells I most wished I had were things like firewall, blade barrier, sleet storm, finger of death – you know, the rawkin’ damage-type spells.

And then I got to see troupes of trolls merrily pirouetting in Otto’s Irresistible Dance.

Honestly, they looked like they were having so much fun, I felt bad about killing them… well, until the enchantment wore off and they started whaling on me.

Giants look pretty cool dancing too. So do the gnoll things (I forget exactly what they were called). And minotaurs! I got so sick of minotaurs from farming Frame Work, ANYTHING that makes them look silly is just fine with me. Seriously. Best. Spell. EVER.

Unfortunately my keyboard has been acting up lately and right now it won’t even let me get a screenshot from DDO, let alone video. Which sucks, because I’d love to include at least some still images with my posts. I could use PrtScn and paste the image into Photoshop and save it, but maybe another time – I’m wavering between wanting to go to bed (it’s about 3 am here) and trying to stay awake to see if I win an auction that I really, REALLY want. Besides, that method is way too time-consuming when you’re in a quest.

Please don’t feed the bears

I’m still surprised by how many people in this game seem to have no shame in asking total strangers for free stuff. I’ve even taken abuse from a few of them when I refused to give them what they were asking for. Come on, you go running up to someone you’ve never spoken to before, send them a tell saying, “hey can i have 10k plat,” and then call them names when they say no?

On the other hand, I’ve been lucky enough to have some truly generous people help me out (WITHOUT my asking them). I was in a group the other night and we were talking about gear and upgrading, and I mentioned that as soon as I’m P2P (still waiting for my darn credit card to arrive in the mail!), I’ll be farming Attack on Stormreach for the marks I need to upgrade my Blade of Fury to a Vampiric Blade of Fury. I signed on the next night and traded some plat for a Gianthold pass (after hearing about people selling passes for 100K or more, I was lucky to get a VERY nice person who charged me MUCH less, and who’s turned out to be a great questmate as well) to hang out with some of my old Emerald Dragons guildmates. We got done and were at the general vendor to sell and repair, and one of my questmates from the night before came over and handed me a Vampiric Fury Blade and refused to take anything for it.

Because of that, I was really torn just a few minutes later when a total stranger sent me a tell and asked for 3K plat to repair his items. Even’s been there, not having enough money to repair, and when that happened I went and farmed low-level quests and vendored stuff until I got her built back up. It wasn’t quick and it wasn’t fun, but at least I wasn’t going around begging.

So when the guy first asked, I politely told him no and suggested he earn it. Then I started thinking of my new Vampiric Fury Blade, and of getting an incredible bargain on the Gianthold pass, and felt like it wasn’t right of me to say no when people had been so generous to me. I gave him his 3K, but also told him that when he could afford it, to please pay it forward and help out someone else who needed it.

I’d still rather not help out anyone who goes around begging, but DDO is a better place when EVERYBODY can get what they need to enjoy it.