Life is like a box of kobolds

You never know what you’ll get, do you?

I sure didn’t know what I’d get with Even, considering as how I had no idea what I was doing when I rolled her. For the most part she and I have managed to muddle through just fine.

Well… and then came epics.

Epics are starting to make me feel like Even may be Forrest Gimp. I KNOW I’ve gimped her build. It’s just never really been much of an issue before. But in epics, I’m noticing that she seems to be doing much, MUCH less damage than her party members. She’s usually low man on the totem pole in kill counts. Yeah, I know, I don’t normally put much stock in kill counts, but… it’s pretty bad when you get that first kill and feel an overwhelming sense of relief that at least you’ll be on the list, especially considering she’s supposed to be an intimitank.

There could be other explanations, like questing with a TR-heavy party, or with party members who have all their green steel gear. I’m more than a little concerned, though. I feel like she’s not really pulling her weight in epics. Granted, she’s only run five of them so far (Chrono, Big Top, Snitch, Claw of Vulkoor and Last Stand). I’m not about to give up on her. She’s a far cry from the “just stand there and intim the hell out of them so I can cast” pally I rolled up way back in December. And while she’s not an asset in epics, I don’t think she’s a liability, either.

On the plus side, she acquitted herself marvelously in a run of Hound of Xoriat, a near-party wipe that turned into a triumph. We got swarmed by a deluge of reavers and had about three people left alive – Even included.  Melee wasn’t going too well – too much damage from Xy’zzy, not to mention the reavers – so she whipped out her trusty Bow of Sinew and started twanging away. She didn’t get the kill, but scored a couple of nice crits on the mother of all hounds to help bring her down and end on a high note. Everybody got rezzed (in fact, Even rezzed a few of them during the end fight), we all got loot, there was much rejoicing.

Still need to get her flagged for ToD; she needs New Invasion and then she has to farm the stuff to make her boots. She also needs flagged for Abbot and Stealer of Souls, and she’s got to get her butt back into Vale and farm green steel ingredients. Not to mention farming Tor so she can get dragontouched armor, and Sands epics because she still needs the seal and the shard to make her Vambraces of Inner Light epic. Plus she’s got to farm the Attack on Stormreach quests for marks so she can upgrade her Katra’s Wit and Teraza’s Sight. Not to mention that Crystal Cove is coming back on Sept. 19 – hopefully she’ll be upgrading her cavalry plate as well. Last time around I didn’t know anyone who wanted to do the Cove. This time is going to be WAY different.

This screenshot has nothing to do with the above, I just threw it in because it looks good, and because I’ve been having a blast doing the Inspired Quarters quests with my Monty’s guildies. The Path of Inspiration pack has some really fun and creative quests, and if I ever go back to being F2P, I’m definitely going to make sure I get it. Plus you get to meet new friends like the big metal guy above!

Even is also working on favor farming a lot because I want to unlock Favored Soul before I TR her. I’m starting at the bottom of the list and working up. Tangleroot Gorge – soooo tedious! Three Barrel Cove is a bit better, about halfway through that so far.

Oh, and here’s an experiment – introducing the EvenNote Pandorabot. Remember, it’s an experiment. I haven’t messed with a lot of the files yet.

She’ll be finishing 3BC tonight and probably then moving on to Sentinels of Stormreach. Might take a break from favor farming to run an epic or two… I’ll keep plugging away at the epics with her.

After all, gimp is as gimp does.

Oh, the irony…

If you’re one of the two and a half people who read this blog, you probably know that my main toon, Evennote, has probably run the Pit about a bazillion times in hopes of getting Muck’s Doom.

She’s looted it just once – on casual, no less – and I promptly sold it to get the plat to buy my then-boyfriend a Robe of the Magi. It had never appeared for her before and never has since. I’ve run the Pit many times on Jalliria as well, several times on Victaurya and twice so far on Acanthia, and not so much as a whiff of Doom.

Friday night was the first time I ran the Pit off Thelanis, as I hooked up with Z and Shin to take my lvl 5 ranger, Azida, in there.

Lucky for me they were both lvl 9, and that they allowed me to talk them out of going in on hard or elite. Things went quite well considering that Azida is not – YET – a force to be reckoned with, and that Shin was having all kinds of connection problems. As we were standing triumphantly over the Avatar of Juiblex’s smushy remains (well, to be honest, that thing is smushy when it’s alive, too), I remarked jokingly, “Watch Azida pull Muck’s Doom on her first run.”

Yep. You guessed it. Azida got a Muck’s Doom. I wanted to include a screenshot of her wielding it, but… she’s lvl 5, and the Doom is minimum lvl 6, so she can’t equip it yet. But she’s rather cute in her own right, so I threw in a shot of her on the airship.

But hey! I’ve got a Muck’s Doom again and this time I’m keeping it!

Also ironic – Even and Jall, mostly Even, are both starting to think seriously about green steel crafting and getting the ingredients they’ll need. I don’t have any other toons even close to being Vale-ready yet. So guess which toon wins the “What’s in the box” MyDDO lottery? Ironica (even the name fits this one), my lvl 3 favor-farming fighter/barb on Sarlona. Makes me really wish there was some kind of a cross-server shared bank slot, or some way to transfer stuff among your own toons on different servers. Ironica is a “disposable” build not designed to live past lvl 3 or 4… although what the heck, I’ve gimped all my other toons, I’m not giving up on her just because she’s supposed to have an expiration date.

Vanity, thy name is Monk

Isn’t she just the cutest thing ever?

Meet Acanthia, my new monk. She actually started out with black hair, but most of my (non-Even) toons have black or very dark hair so I splurged on an amber hair dye.

I’m seriously freaking LOVING her monkish-ness. And her cuteness – just look at her! She’s adorable! I do have another halfling toon – Liai, my pint-sized barbarian on Ghallanda – but I tried to make her look tough. I wasn’t particularly trying to make Acanthia cute, she just turned out that way (don’t disagree or she’ll kick you where it hurts – just ask the trogs in the Pit!).

Up until now I’d always kind of scoffed a bit at people who were overly concerned – or so I thought – with how their armor looked as opposed to how well it worked. Then along came Acanthia and all the cute robes and outfits. My Sarlona wizzy, Vicriia, also wears robes rather than armor, but I rarely play her (I don’t know anyone on Sarlona and it’s damn hard to solo with a level 1 wizard), plus while she’s attractive enough in her own right, she doesn’t have that cuteness factor, and I’ve never given much thought to what she was wearing, appearance-wise.

Oh, how things have changed. Acanthia is my first toon to start out at level 4, and I really liked the disciple’s robes she got as starter equipment. But starter equipment isn’t useful very long, so I went to the AH to see what I could find for her. Picked out a couple of robes and outfits, started trying them on and BAM! I’ve become a virtual clothes horse! I thought my online fashion sense was limited to Second Life™ – guess not, because even after paring down the stuff she probably will never use, Acanthia still has nine robes and outfits in her inventory plus probably about eight more in the bank that she’s not levelled high enough to use yet. I actually took her to House K and ran around posing her in different places wearing different stuff while I got screenshots.

Any fashionista knows the value of accessorizing. Even recently completed her first epic, Under the Big Top, and everyone in the group passed their Big Top Hats on to her. Since they’re BtA and not BtC, she passed one on to Acanthia, who looks really utterly SUPER cute in it… plus it can cast Otto’s Irresistible Dance once per rest.

Speaking of Even, she’s been quite the busy girl getting flagged for raids, running raids, learning about green steel crafting, pondering her true reincarnation and all that. I’ll post more about her one of these days. Meanwhile last night I couldn’t sleep – again – so I finally dusted off ALL my neglected toons except poor Dissy and ran each of them through at least one quest.

And because I did promise proof, here you go:

Hey hey, I’m a monk-ie!

And people say I monk-ie around and don’t post here… oops.

There are a couple of things I want to blog about, but just a short post for now because it’s almost 6 am here and I haven’t been to bed yet. I decided to roll up a monk because I hadn’t tried playing one yet… SHEER FREAKING AWESOMESAUCE.

Want proof?  *grin*

My level 5 monk just soloed the Pit. Not even a close call. I have the screenshots to prove it, too, just too lazy at this hour to trim them down to a manageable size (I doubt anyone wants to wait for a 1672×995 image to load).

No Muck’s Doom, but that’s OK. She’s a monk. It’s not like she needs to switch to an ooze weapon anyway!