Let’s get bagged

I get lost. A lot.

I once spent something like three or four hours looking for the entrance to Chains of Flame before giving up. Running the VoN 3 pre-quest with Baz the other night, I managed to get turned around during a lag spike and then had no idea where I was. I get lost in public areas. Vey and Abs and Sadie all know that if I’m in their DQ group, they better make sure someone waits at the entrance to Sands to lead me to the quest, because no matter how many times I’ve done it, I still can’t find it the next time.

Heck, I’ve put up LFMs that go something like, “IP, most stuff dead, hopelessly lost.” Once a friend of mine who was already running VoN 5 saw one of those; he dropped group, led me to the end, and then rejoined his VoN party. If the Maps page on DDO wiki had a phone number, I’d have it on speed dial. I can’t find my way out of a paper bag.

My friends are well aware of this – well, run more than a quest or two with me and it’s kinda hard to miss. I should have a macro: “Wait, where did you guys go?”

So I had this idea. Actually it wasn’t my idea; I’m pretty sure it was Keava’s. But it’s so perfect for me I’ve decided to appropriate it…

I want a bag of bread crumbs.

You know, like in “Hansel and Gretel.” The siblings leave a trail of bread crumbs so they can find their way home.

I’m thinking a little bag of crumbs that equips to the trinket spot. There could be different sizes – maybe a hundred or so crumbs for people who basically know their way around and are just checking out a small area, right on up to the Bottomless Bag of Badass Bread for hopeless cases like me. Spice things up by making them available in different colors (Even wants green to match her hair, of course; Dissy’s partial to pink; Chalei has her heart set on ice blue). Put them in the DDO store and watch them fly off the shelves – I’d be happy to drop quite a lot of TP on something like that. *Especially* if it’s BtA instead of BtC, because spending my hard-earned points on stuff I can only use on one toon kinda sucks.

Just make sure the bags aren’t so big I could fall in, because you know… I can’t find my way out of a paper bag.

Instant karma

I love the “pay it forward” concept – someone does something nice for you, and instead of returning the favor to them, you do something nice for someone else who needs it. Even though I recently passed my third anniversary on DDO (and never got around to blogging it), I still remember when I was an incredibly newbish newb and all the people who helped me become – well, a newb who isn’t new any more.

Slvr sent Vic a robe with a fox’s cunning clicky so she wouldn’t have to lug pots around. Vikkus sent her an anarchic rapier after her party abandoned her without loot. Dek (who I don’t think plays any more) gave Even her first heavy fort item and vorpal weapon. Once, back when I was still F2P, Even had run the first part of the Lordsmarch chain with a really good PuG. They were continuing on with the second P2P part of the chain, so I told them I’d have to drop and bade them goodnight. Oneill insisted on sending me a ship invite “for the next time you log in,” and as I was standing at the tavern selling and repairing, he dropped a guest pass on me and told me I was doing the chain with them.

Sooo many people – I’ve lost track of all the stuff Slvr and Baz and Shin and Comic and Vey have given me. Not to mention Keava, and my friends in Emerald Dragons, the very first guild I joined. And Monty’s, and a few folks from Renowned and aLi and… I’m going to stop there so I don’t leave anyone out, because it’s almost 4 am and my memory’s not great at the best of times.

I never asked for anything, and I always ask if I can pay for anything offered to me. I was lucky enough to have found great people who were happy and willing (and sometimes very insistent) to give me things I needed. And no one ever asked for anything in return. I’ve tried to reciprocate as much as possible, but I still feel as though I’ve received far more than I’ve given.

So when I come across a reasonable, considerate person in need of something, I try to help out if I have what they’re looking for. (Note: Standing in the Harbor on your level 20 legend build and asking repeatedly in the trade channel for someone to *give* you a full set of +3 tomes because you’re “new to this server” and don’t have any plat yet is neither reasonable nor considerate. Nor is begging for free hearts of wood in your former guild’s chat channel because you’ve decided you want more monk levels. And yes, both of those are real examples.)

I was on Ivy tonight and saw an LFM up for eNorm Cabal. Now, that’s out of Ivy’s range, as she only just turned 17. But the LFM description said something like, “No BB, just need relics.” I have a pretty healthy stash of relics sitting in a green bag in my shared bank, and this guy was clearly trying to *earn* his relics by running quests rather than begging for them. So I sent him a tell to see how many he needed, and he told me he’d managed to farm almost enough, just needed four more restored giant relics to finish his robes. So I dug them out, mailed them off to him, and told him to enjoy his new robes.

It felt good, and from the sincere “thank you” he sent me, I’d bet that he’s the kind of player who’ll pay it forward. And then it felt REALLY good, because I did my nightly AH check for mana pots – those things are beyond outrageous lately. I refuse to pay more than 12K for a major pot. I used to be able to pick up at least a few a week at that price, and now the ordinary mnemonics, not even greaters, commonly go for 15K. (And I bet most of those are put on the AH by people who put up LFMS for “healers only.”) Anyway, I do my search, and there’s a set of five major pots with a 25K buyout. 5K per major pot? YES, please! With the timing, it kind of felt like that was my reward for giving away the relics.

Meanwhile our little guild hit 55 last night when Acanthia turned in a saga. Our new ship was already bought, so she headed right for the airship showroom to upgrade.

On our old Windspyre ship, we tried putting the mailbox on the top deck, but it never showed up even though the hookpoint clearly said there was time left on it. So we put it on a hookpoint on the bottom of the lowest level, in the front of the ship. But it didn’t seem to like that location, because we usually found it on the floor above near the tavern. It seemed to like hanging out on the ramps, but sometimes it hid behind Sully the bartender, or buried itself partway in the floor, or hung out in some mysterious ether where we could target it but not see it, or it would just disappear completely.

The disappearing was annoying, especially since it seemed to happen more often when I had something to mail or had mail to read. But the wandering – we liked that. It was like having our own little quest on the ship – “Find the mailbox!” No XP or loot, but definitely fun. So I had just a bit of mixed feelings in upgrading the ship… but lo and behold, the mailbox still wanders, *and* so far it hasn’t disappeared yet!

The tomato theorem

A few weeks back, Slvr shared something he’d seen on Facebook. It’s a cute little thing that explains Dungeons & Dragons stats in terms of… tomatoes. Yeah. Tomatoes. So next time you’re leveling up and trying to figure out how to distribute those build points, maybe this will help…

STRENGTH is being able to crush a tomato.

DEXTERITY is being able to dodge a tomato.

CONSTITUTION is being able to eat a rotten tomato.

INTELLIGENCE is knowing that a tomato is a fruit.

WISDOM is knowing not to put a tomato in a fruit salad.

CHARISMA is being able to sell a tomato-based fruit salad.

And just a semi-short update… managed to get all but three of my Thelanis toons to level 20 in time to get their free Epic Hearts of Wood. Even did an epic reincarnation immediately followed by a heroic reincarnation and is now enjoying life as a lvl 9-banking 10-almost 11 monk/rogue. (I don’t know which is weirder – seeing her unarmed in a cloth outfit, or seeing her actually doing damage to stuff.)

Our little Thelanis guild is up to seven members, and we were actually all on at the same time the other night! We’ve also changed our guild name, and we’re within a saga or two of reaching level 55 and getting our spiffy new Stormglory airship. (I blurred everybody’s name except mine, just ’cause.)

I have a cool little feature for OurDDO in the works, courtesy of the amazing Grimorde, who’s doing all the coding. I just need to figure out which files to put in which directories. It’s SO close to working right now! Well, actually it IS working, there’s just a cosmetic display issue I need to figure out before it goes live; I probably have a script in the wrong directory or something like that.

 

Thank you to everyone who’s asked about my father. Overall he’s doing fairly well, although he did have a bout of pneumonia over the holidays. He even just started going back to work, which I strongly suspect is his way of getting away from my mother… but don’t tell her I said that.

 

And finally, I have another filk in the works – I’m working on a DDO version of “What Does the Fox Say,” hopefully with an MP3 to go with it because, um, there’s some audio that should really, really go with it. That’s all I’m sayin’.  😉