I TOLD him not to laugh

Me: OK, don’t laugh, I know she’s not going to make it but… Imma gonna try to solo Rainbow on Dissy.

Slvr: g’luck!

Me: Thanks for not laughing.  😀

Slvr: I laughed in party chat accidentally.

As part of my master plan – which I’m not going to bore you with – I’ve been working on leveling up Victaurya, Chartreusia, and poor, lame, gimpy Discordette, the bard no one wants. Lots of people don’t realize how awesome bards can be. I can’t say too much there, since I’m sometimes one of those people. But Slvr – Slvr should know better, considering his main is a bard.

On the other hand, who would’ve expected Dissy to be able to solo Rainbow in the Dark? It’s a level 16 quest (OK, OK, 15 because she did it on casual and ComicRelief, you can just SHUP! Keep reading!), and she’s level 13. It’s pitch black so you need some method of lighting your way – the preferred solution is the Radiant Arc, a scepter that lights up everything around you, except it’s min level 14 so Dissy couldn’t even equip it. She’s got 241 hit points with ship buffs and her DPS is practically nonexistent – spellsingers aren’t built for dealing damage.

I decided to even the odds a bit and grabbed a Gold Seal hireling from the bank where he’s been wasting away for weeks – Rage, the lvl 14 barbarian. Dissy also took Tanya, the lvl 12 FvS hire, mostly because Tanya has blade barrier. For light, I was VERY glad I never got around to swapping out Summon Monster IV for something else now that I have SM V, because IV lets you call up a lantern archon. It’s not as good as the Radiant Arc – doesn’t give as much light and tends to hang back behind you a ways, plus it’s easily crushed by earth eles. But you have to have SOME light in there (although her bearded devil from SM V would have been SO much more help against the mobs… *sigh*).

Things went downhill right from the start, when Rage lost his weapons fighting the first rust monster that came along. Tanya kept throwing fire and holy smite at mobs, burning through her mana at an alarming rate. Spellsong Vigor helped, but wasn’t a very fast way of doing things. The casters just loved hitting us with negative levels. Tanya doesn’t have Restoration and I never thought to pick up a stack of scrolls, so a few times I had to sit around and wait for the negs to wear off (the most Dissy ever had was 9).

Every new little section cleared on the map was a victory – “Yay, past the fire eles!” (because of COURSE one of the hires stepped on the rune and spawned them). “Yay, got the crest!” “Yay, got the key!” “Yay, got through the nasty jumping part!” – until suddenly there she was in the puzzle room. After orthons, golems, rock scorpions, bearded devils, all manner of gnolls, beholders and of course those pesky gelatinous cubes (which Dissy hates because they’re immune to suggestion and they don’t dance), the only thing standing between my gimpy little bard and completion was one mean fire ele. She made Rage rage and took Tanya out of “don’t do anything, you mana-blowing idiot” mode, buffed the party up as best she could, forgot to summon her bearded devil instead of the archon, had Tanya throw up a blade barrier and charged in. With the quest on the line and a nearly full mana bar since she hadn’t been called on to do anything, Tanya decided to switch to her bow rather than hit the ele with holy smite and all that (seriously, Tanya? You nuke one lone gnoll and then switch to arrows for a boss?). Raging Rage was punching away valiantly with his bare hands, the archon was hovering in a corner shooting the occasional bolt of something, and Dissy was frantically tossing out heals in between trying to blast the ele with her Cacophonic Verge.

It wasn’t pretty, not at all, but – well, I’ll let the picture speak for itself. It’s resized to fit, but you can see larger versions here and here.

The reason Dissy made it out alive wasn’t because she’s an über build (oh trust me, she is SO not an über build), or because she has twinked-out gear – just check out her MyDDO page. She succeeded not because I’m an awesome player – I’m definitely not. Nor am I a genius, but this was an example of why it’s so important to play smart. I knew the quest and I knew my toon, and because of that I knew what to do to give her the best chance at success even when things went wrong.

I know there are people out there who’ll read this and still decline players because they don’t have “enough” hit points or the “right” gear. Too bad there’s no way to check MyDDO for someone’s “game smarts” stat.

*grin*  Maybe I’ll try her in Coal Chamber next…