An infinite number of Evens, an infinite number of Jacks…

There’s this theory that I heard ages ago. Can’t remember the exact wording, but it was something about how if you chained an infinite number of gibbons to an infinite number of typewriters, eventually one of them would churn out “War and Peace.” Or something like that.

Basically, the premise is that if you do something enough, you’ll get amazing results.

Well, I finally – FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY! – have run The Legend of Two-Toed Tobias enough. Because tonight, to my intense delight – not to mention overwhelming surprise…

I FINALLY PULLED A CURSED BLADE OF JACK JIBBERS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I KNOW, RIGHT?!

I almost didn’t even make my nightly Jibbers run. Been sooooo tired from real life, had just run Inferno with Seki and Rayne and Slvr, and I have a borrowed copy of “Harry Potter and the Cursed Child” that’s just BEGGING to be read.

Ah well, it won’t take long, I thought.

So we get to the end, minus Seki who actually DID go to bed like a normal person and plus Citi who’d signed on in the meantime. We kill Jack (or whatever verb is appropriate to describe causing an undead being to no longer… be).

Alphonse, the summoned shadow from my Necklace of Mystic Eidolons, continues eagerly jumping at Jack’s blade dangling tantalizingly in midair like the sword of Damocles (“That ain’t no criiiime…”). I joke that Alphonse is trying to get me the sword. And then I open the chest.

Usually the “good” items are listed right at the top, one or two of them, and then you might get 100 axiomatic bolts, maybe a scroll or two, some gems, a bit of plat, and maybe some renown. So I look at the first two items, don’t see a Jibbers blade, sigh, and link the ring I got instead*. It’s a nice ring – Delightful Something of Something, can’t remember right now. Figured it would be good for my bard.

* – “instead,” of course, in this case turned out to be “in addition to.”

Slvr types, “OMG”

… and then types, “I got skunked on loot,” clearly an attempt to psych me out. (OK, yes, I fell for it momentarily.)

I happen to look at my loot list again.

I gasp.

I gasp again.

I may’ve even hyperventilated a bit.

Really wish I’d been streaming, but I did fire up the stream to try to check out the blade in action… which ended up not quite happening. But you can see my attempt in the video.  LOL

And ignore my partial explanation of Eternal Defender, ’cause I got distracted and never finished it. Also ignore the arrow in the upper left corner of the still image, ’cause it looks like it’s pointing to the diamond instead of the MUCH better item under it. Oops!

A bouquet of Flower Sniffers

At last, Meren has done her eTR/TR combo and gone from being a sucky, sucky, SUCKY rogue to an only semi-sucky Favored Soul.

I was debating using her reincarnation experience as livestream fodder – wasn’t sure how interesting it would be. But I asked the rest of the Flower Sniffers, and they were all, “YEAH! DO EET!”

Actually I was debating streaming at all last night. Suffice to say I really wasn’t sure I was feeling at all livestreamy. But I kinda wanted to get an ETR/TR on video just for myself anyway, so what the heck.

In the end I was glad I did, because my Flower Sniffers really came through for me. Had an awesome time joking around in the chat with them, a couple folks who’ve watched my stream before, and a few new ones. One or more of the Sniffers may have been sans attire… there’d already been a nekkid paladin scaring the NPCs on the fourth lower deck. Fortunately or not, depending on your point of view, that didn’t get on video.

As for Meren, all went well until she got to Cannith Crystal.  The Devourer minions kept smashing the crystal faster than she could smash them, and it took several tries and some help from Slvr’s monk-turned-ranger to get the completion.

We’re still working on getting All the Sniffers flagged for All the Things. The process has included Gianthold, High Road, and Citi‘s first-ever ToD (complete with nekkid altar dance at the end). Meanwhile Shin has been token farming in preparation for a triple reincarnation – TRing a toon on each of his three accounts – while Rayne is leveling up her pally/ranger.

All this flagging and reincarnating and leveling has led to getting held by the Spinner – such an affectionate lass – but more importantly to a lot of Flower Sniffers being online a lot of the time. POIDH? Here ya go!

Streamin’ with Even is live every Sunday night at midnight Eastern time. (NOTE: My promised slot on the official DDOStream has been usurped, so no official streaming for me. Shows will be on my own stream.) I’m usually on Thelanis, usually on Evennote, and usually have room, so feel free to send me a tell if you’d like to join! I’m also definitely open to suggestions on what to run next. You can send ingame mail to Evennote on Thelanis, or email me at evennote (at) gmail dot com. Thanks for reading and/or watching!  🙂

Rogues are red, violence is blue…

… that makes no sense, and the rhyming sucks too.

So yeah. Snappy titles are not my thing tonight. LOL. But you’ll get to read about the story of my sucky rogue, and how I lost a bet for 100K plat.

With Even growing frustrated over her continued lack of a Jibbers blade, and with Meren growing frustrated over being a sucky, sucky, SUCKY rogue, I decided to give Even a bit of a rest and start pushing Meren to 30 so she can do an eTR/TR combo and go back to being an only somewhat sucky Favored Soul.

I’ve never been an XP-per-minute type of player – I mean, c’mon, my guild is called the Flower Sniffers. Most of the time this suits me just fine. But when your level 25 rogue is at the end of her roguish rope and threatening to blow a gasket if you don’t TR her back to Favored Soul, like, yesterday, you start thinking a lot more about getting lots of XPs in littles of times.

The Sniffers stepped up to the plate in grand style. Devil Assault, Wiz King, VoN 3, Offering of Blood, plus some surprisingly fun runs through Spies in the House, and suddenly Meren had gone from 25 to well into 29 in far less time than I’d have thought possible. You can see Citi, Vey, and I doing some XP runs in the above video.

She was still close to a million XP away when I logged her in tonight. I found a couple of major slayer pots languishing in her TR cache, chugged a superior XP elixir as well, and took her on a spin through Storm Horns S/R/E because 1) good XP, and 2) it’s my favorite area in the game. She had just quaffed her second slayer pot when Vey logged in and asked me if I wanted to do VoN 3.

Me: “I just drank a major slayer pot and I don’t want to lose it.”

Vey: “They pause when you’re in a quest.”

Me: “No, they keep ticking down when you’re in any dungeon area.”

Vey: “No they don’t.”

Me: “Yes they do.”

This continued for a bit. And when I say “a bit,” I mean probably at least five minutes. Until finally…

Me: “I’ll bet you 10K plat they keep ticking in any dungeon.”

Vey: “Make it 100K plat and you’re on.”

I wasn’t close enough to any of the quests to check it out myself, so Vey drank a slayer pot and stepped into… some Gianthold quest, I think. And told me that his pot did indeed go on pause.

I didn’t believe him. But by that time I wasn’t TOO awfully far from Breaking the Ranks, so I headed there and stepped in… and sure enough, my slayer pot paused.

Not sure when that got changed. I’m pretty darn sure it didn’t USED to be that way. But I like the change! So I didn’t really mind coughing up 100K plat (yes, I paid up).

But back to getting those XPs… her jaunt through Storm Horns made some serious headway in Meren’s quest to 30. Didn’t hurt that she hit a number of Monster Manual marks, too. Vey and I followed that with VoN 3, a couple runs through Memoirs of an Illusory Larcener, Tobias (no, she didn’t get a Jibbers blade either, dammit), OoB, Wiz King… think there was something else in there as well. That left her with just over 8K to go, which evaporated after a quick zerg through BoB.

Finally! She’s 30, she’s got her divine sphere maxed so she can get the EPL feat she wants, I got a close-up screenie of her face so I can recreate her as closely as possible to how she looks now… just need to sort out her inventory and empty her TR cache. She might be back to Favored Soul as soon as tomorrow – wish her luck!

And you might have noticed the blog looks a bit different. Decided to spruce things up a bit – it felt a little left out after the makeover OurDDO got recently!

Streamin’ with Even is live every Sunday night at 11 pm  MIDNIGHT Eastern time. (NOTE: Start time may end up being 11 pm or midnight. Stream may or may not be on my own Twitch channel; it was supposed to move to the official DDO stream, but – well, long story. We’ll see…) I’m usually on Thelanis, usually on Evennote, and usually have room, so feel free to send me a tell if you’d like to join! I’m also definitely open to suggestions on what to run next. You can send ingame mail to Evennote on Thelanis, or email me at evennote (at) gmail dot com. Thanks for reading and/or watching!  🙂

From flagging to firsties

 

Our efforts to get all the Flower Sniffers flagged for all the things continued with this past weekend’s livestream, when Citi, Rayne, and Even (who was already flagged, but likes the area) headed out to Thunderholme to get flagged for Fire on Thunder Peak and Temple of the Deathwyrm.

Naturally, I got lost and ended up leading them to Sarva first when we’d intended to start with Dagan. Along the way, there was much laughter, a  sprinkling of DPS, and far more bad 80’s songs than one usually finds during late-night groups. And we ran, we ran so far away, we just ran, we ran all night and day-ay-ay… couldn’t get away from the Song That Never Ends, yes it went on and on my friends, one night we started singing it even knowing what it was…

You get the idea.  LOL

Also this past weekend, I was Patrick‘s guest on DDOCast #439, New Player Tips, along with the lovely BonnieBew and Propane. There was some really excellent advice for new-ish players handed out – it’s well worth a listen!

And it got me to thinking. As excellent as the advice was, a lot of it would have been completely over my head when I first started. So I started pondering the idea of doing a second livestream each week, with accompanying blog, aimed at the really, truly new and inexperienced player. Talked it over with Keava, who was totally supportive, and then, purely by coincidence, Citi made a great post about rolling up your first character.

Probably should figure out what else I need to do to get on the official stream list first – already had to bump my start time an hour later to accomodate another stream that IS on the list and wants to bump its time forward an hour, which would lead to an overlap with the start time I’ve been using for the past few months – but what the heck, I’m gonna be streaming whether I’m on the list or not.

So, plan is, pick a night – probably somewhere between Monday and Thursday – and a time – probably midnight – roll up a brand-spankin’-new 28-point free-to-play (something). Probably a rogue, ’cause Citi’s making a paladin, and despite his assurances that his paladin will be fully capable of finding traps via face, it’d be nice to be able to disarm them. No twink  gear, no loans from other toons – 100% newbie compatible. Start with the character creation screen and go from there. Should be fun!

In other news, you might have noticed that OurDDO has been UPDATED! Tried to streamline it a bit, and the blogroll should be pretty current. Removed a couple of blogs that no longer exist or violated the rules. AFAIK, other than blogs in violation, it now has every DDO blog in existence.

Streamin’ with Even is live every Sunday night at 11 pm  MIDNIGHT Eastern time. I’m usually on Thelanis, usually on Evennote, and usually have room, so feel free to send me a tell if you’d like to join! I’m also definitely open to suggestions on what to run next. You can send ingame mail to Evennote on Thelanis, or email me at evennote (at) gmail dot com. Thanks for reading and/or watching!  🙂

To twinfinity… and beyond!

 

Talk about déjà vu!

Got my first glimpse of Keava’s new Shadar-Kai Taurriel tonight, and she looked… strangely familiar. I knew I’d seen that rogue before, but where?

Right on my login screen, that’s where. The hair color is different, and Taurriel’s eyes are darker, but otherwise she’s the spitting image of my own Seregeth.

This could come in handy when questing. One sneaky rogue sidles up and gets the enemy’s attention. The mobs whirl around to attack – and see what they think is that same sneaky rogue waaaaay on the other side of the dungeon. While they’re scratching their heads and going, “Wait, what?” the twin rogues whip out their trusty daggers and start assassinating. I like it!

 

 

Just some random thoughts tonight, because I had a most awesome weekend-into-Monday and I’m exhausted. Slvr discovered that if you climb the bell tower in Three-Barrel Cove when the rare encounter airship Ill Fate is up, you can get a great look at it from above. You can also land on it, which I didn’t get a chance to do because Slvr blew it up too fast. Sure beats trying to fire a ballista when a horde of angry pirates are swinging their whirly chains at you!

 

 

Had a strange, slightly cool, and slightly creepy thing happen in a guild run of heroic Shroud Friday night. Everything had been perfectly normal – well, as normal as things can be when the Flower Sniffers of Destiny get together – until Phase 5. My gimpy li’l rogue Meren had grabbed Adur-Nac and was pulling him away so that he could be killed when she noticed that something weird was going on with his name.

He had the correct floaty text in Phase 2, but he kept his “death_adurnac” moniker throughout Phase 5, or at least until we killed him. No one noticed if his “ghost” form also had the glitch. I’ve never seen that in Shroud before, and as many times as I’ve run Shroud, that’s saying something. So it was kinda neat… even though seeing “death” in front of Adur-Nac’s name didn’t settle gimpy Meren’s nerves any.

 

 

Yes, it’s a picture of a dretch. Because I can. Grabbed it from a splash screen because I was too tired lazy to dig through all my screenies looking for a good dretch shot. Dretches rock, and we need more of them. And we especially need dretch cosmetic pets. I have it on pretty good authority that this won’t happen for a long time if ever, but I’ll never give up hope. C’mere, little dretch! Glarb! Eat my sorrow and drink my pain! NUM!

Citi wrote about dretches in a blog post a while back, suggesting that they need a little theme music when they fall under the spell of Otto’s Irresistible Dance. The cool thing about the DDO blogging community is that, with a few exceptions (as anyone who’s read some of the comment sections on my blog knows, heh heh), we enjoy helping each other out. The lovely grimorde obliged Citi with a video giving dretches their right to party. It’s 18 seconds you’ll thank me for, I promise!

The Flower Sniffers are getting down to the serious business of trying to get everybody flagged for everything. Keava made us a cool spreadsheet in Google Docs (we tried using forum posts first, but the alt-itis some of us – yes, ME – suffer from kinda made that too clunky) so that we can all put in our characters and what they’ve run. Slvr added a few quest arcs… now all I need is the ambition to go through all of my toons and see who’s flagged for what.

And at some point, we really need to have a nekkid guild fun run/raid night with EVERYBODY. Because Acanthia’s bank is starting to fill up with Potions of Wonder. The pic is from a couple of weeks ago; she now has close to 1,500 wonder pots. The plan is to get the entire guild on, take our clothes off, head into a raid, pass a stack of pots to everybody, and start chugging. That’ll definitely be one for the livestream!

Speaking of the stream, I’m moving to midnight (Eastern) Sundays from 11 pm so as not to conflict with any other streams.

Last, but certainly not least – today will mark the 200th issue to the DDO Chronicle! May you have many, many more!