… and the rogue says, “OW! I hit my head! All the doors here are made for dwarves!”
Indeed, the architecture in Update 36, aka Duel in the Underdark, definitely looks as though it were designed for dwarves, by dwarves, one especially low portcullis in particular.
Vic, being elven and somewhat taller than the average dorf, had to mind her head a few times… and being somewhat squishier than Even, should have minded her red bar a bit better as well. Two days earlier, Even and the Flower Sniffers had had a relatively smooth, painless trip through the four U36 flagging quests on LE. Our gimpier toons, though, had a few struggles on LH.
Melee DPS and/or crowd control and/or better hjealing than Garret and Erytheia might have helped. Two arcane archers and a ranged trapmonkey don’t give you a lot of variety when it comes to dealing damage.
But the Flower Sniffers have never been overly concerned with how much time they spend as soulstones. Mostly we just wanted to have fun with the new quests and maybe pick up some cool new loot.
Yay for us, we did both! I’m really enjoying the new quests. Great storyline, nice variety of mobs (it’s not just dwarves and Drow), and some really cool touches. One of my favorite little extras is the appearance of the undead in your focus orb. Some of them have mushrooms sprouting from their skulls; others appear to have weapons buried in their backs (presumably how they died?).
Vic was wielding the Legendary Heavy Boltslinger Even pulled in Friday’s run. She also, much to her delight, ended up with the Mantle of the Dwarven Commander (which dropped for Slvr, but he passed it to her). And I think we’ve all now pulled at least one Stonework Beam – hope they’re still dropping that thickly when Seki starts playing more regularly in a few weeks, because that’d be great for him! Too bad they’re BtA or I’d just send him mine; I don’t have anyone who uses q-staves. You’d think with 19 toons there’d be ONE who’d want it!
There are a couple of things that could stand tweaking or more. The DM chatter in Tethyamar is a little excessive. It’s “brethren,” not “bretheren.” And there’s that one optional where the door sometimes doesn’t open after you complete it, leaving you trapped unless you have DDoor (or do what we did and complete it after you’ve finished the rest of the quest).
Oh, and there’s a totally idiotic gate/lever combo. The lever to open the gate is… BEHIND the gate. You can get to the lever with a little hand-eye coordination by jumping around the gate (as Vic does in the video), or with Cannith boots from the opposite side. But you needn’t bother, because even if you go through all that, the gate opens to – wait for it – a blank wall.
I’m definitely looking forward to seeing how my other toons fare in U36. We’ll be running the capstone for the stream this Sunday. I may have spots open, so if you want in, be flagged and on Thelanis!
Streamin’ with Even is live on Thelanis every Sunday night at 11 pm Eastern time on the official DDOstream! The show is also hosted on my own Twitch channel, but if you’re watching live and want to chat, DDOStream is the place to be. Videos are archived on my YouTube channel and/or on DDOStream’s YouTube. Feel free to send me a tell if you’d like to join! Thanks for reading and/or watching! 🙂
Even Now 
Dona felt right at home in those mines!
There are a couple of other typos I’ve caught, but overall I’m very pleased with these quests. They’re all quite distinctive, some of them look appropriately abandoned, and they’re GORGEOUS. OMG. I want those crystal chandeliers on the guildship. I would pay TP to get them… and then more TP to change their colors. And that pedestal with the glowy orb, too, but those can stay the original color.
Also, apparently you can open that door to the priestess chamber without aggroing everything in the guard chamber… you just need to do it from the side so you’re out of the line of sight of the drow… and once you’re in the hallway, you’re pretty much safe from the guards in the room (unless one of the drow runs into the room). And you don’t even have to sneak through the room! You can just saunter across making faces at their backs! So VERY cool that they designed it for a sneaky-deaky character – you probably just need to worry about the two phase spiders in the hallway and the ones right in front of the second door to the Priestess (not the one off the guard room, the next one leading to that cool tunnel.) And of course the priestess herself and everything in the cave. But yeah. A good sneak will get you almost to the end without a whole lot of killing, which makes me want to roll up a good sneak LOL
(Also, the capstone can be red-doored, so flagging actually isn’t required!)
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Oooh, Vic is pretty good at sneaky-deaky, and Sere may be even better. This update actually has me looking forward to the end of summer when I’ll have more time for DDO and the rest of the Flower Sniffers will be around more too. I’m guessing this is definitely what we’re running for guild night this week. 😀
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Reblogged this on DDOCentral.
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