Catching some breaks

I never got around to blogging last week! Oh noes! And I nearly didn’t get around to it this week either… but for the best possible reason, because this past (extended) weekend was VACATION!

I spent four-plus days (Wednesday night through Monday morning) in New England. Had a mini Flower Sniffers meetup with Seki and Slvr, went to the New England Aquarium, rode lots of commuter trains, and got to spend Quality Time With A Guy. I even cooked dinner, which turned out – by my standards – surprisingly well (tasted good, no one died). And I leveled up in Pokémon Go, found some really cool stuff during a few thrift shop/flea market runs, and got my nails done by a professional for the first time in my life. So YAY vacation!

DDO, of course, had to pick THAT WEEKEND to offer a renown boost. I really didn’t want to take time away from Fun Vacation Stuff to play a lot of DDO, but I did log in every day for my double daily dice. And I ran Acanthia through the Deneith part of the heroic Pirates saga, ’cause she’d already done the 3BC part. And I turned sagas in. All told, we gained about four levels. If only DDO had put off the bonus ONE MORE WEEK! I’d’ve had a LOT more sagas done; got a number of toons who are only three or four quests short.

So since I neither ran much DDO nor blogged last week, this week’s DDO video is from last week’s epic Storm Horns questing, when we ran A Break in the Ice and Breaking the Ranks. Hence the blog title – plus, you could definitely say that getting to go on vacation qualified as catching some breaks.

Tuna should enjoy Storm Horns, considering it has TWO quests with “break” in their names – she does love breaking stuff. Or as she calls it, “SMASHING ALL DA TINGS!” I’m hoping to run her on the stream this week; she’s about 80K shy of heroic cap, so soon she’ll be able to run with everybody’s epics. Meanwhile, Zak is up to level 5 and completed his first successful four-skull reaper solos tonight. However, three-skull Redfang was just a bit too much for him. Sadly, I’m still a very, very long way from having enough reaper XP on anyone to get the reaper pets. *sadface*

Just because I think they’re kinda cool, I’m throwing in a couple of videos from my trip to the New England Aquarium. Here are some fishies… some probably very bored fishies. I mean, I’D be bored if I did nothing but go in circles all day. But at least they look good doing it.

And… JELLYFISH. OMG. I could’ve watched these little guys for HOURS. Except other people wanted to see them too so eventually I had to get out of the way, but I did buy a really cool hoodie with a glittery jellyfish on it from the gift shop.

Streamin’ with Even is live 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. I’m usually on Thelanis, usually/often/sometimes 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! 🙂

The sagas begin

Well, actually, the sagas are already underway, but when you have the chance to make a play on a Weird Al title, you should take it. Right? Right!

I’m really not fond of Lines of Supply unless I’m on a toon with semi-decent crowd control. That leaves out most of my melees. Luckily for monk Acanthia, who’s been working on her sagas of late, Mock was around Sunday night with a very handy Wail of the Banshee and a righteous wicked dancy ball!

All that lovely CC let us complete all the optionals, despite wave after wave after wave of resolute supply carriers and their rather more aggressive guards – and that was even without the aid of net traps, because by the time we were done convincing the harpies to help us out, there wasn’t time to go visit the trap guy. Hope he didn’t miss us too much!

That had to be one of the best, easiest, most fun completions of that quest I’ve ever gotten. Even the cheetah-speed gnolls didn’t stand a chance.

Our all-optionals run of Tracker’s Trap went just as well, although the loot gods seemed to think Acanthia wanted heavy maces – besides some lootgen ones, she pulled TWO Magistrate’s Scepters. Sadly, neither Mock nor I have any toons who use heavy maces, so the named ones got vendored and the rest went to Even for deconning. My essence stack is back up around 15K… which will last me maybe five minutes the next time there’s a crafting bonus weekend. LOL

And then we called it a night. Normally I’d go for another hour, but I was pretty darn exhausted after a busy weekend. I’m also two days behind my usual blog timeframe – silly real life!

Laegonn has some serious headway on his epic Eveningstar sagas. Sere’s got a completed epic Gianthold, and most of my other epic toons have some good progress. I’m really hoping to get the Flower Sniffers to level 150 with the next renown weekend!

Tuna ran Coal Chamber to complete flagging for the Shroud. Solo elite at level 18 – I was really rather proud of her; she’s pretty undergeared (level 7 armor, anyone?) She’s also now banking 19. Gotta get her to 20 so she can run with the epic toons in the guild! I think Keava’s the only one who has a toon around Tuna’s level right now.

AND, last but NOT least… after six years of paying $30 every three months for my VIP, I’ve just ponied up for a one-year subscription! YAY! 😀

My sub ran out on May 3, and I was going to let it slide until I get back from vacation week after next since I most likely won’t be playing DDO while I’m away anyway. But logged in tonight planning on running Coal on Tuna, and… I don’t own Vale. Checked the shared bank to see if I had an XP pot – oh, I can only access the first 25 items (which should be changed; they’re all my items. I should be able to withdraw ANYTHING in there, just not put anything new in). Didn’t have access to Acanthia ’cause I’ve never bought monk; Laegonn or Chalei ’cause I don’t have half-elf; Zak ’cause I don’t have warlock. Yeah, that wasn’t going to work, even if it was only for a week. So now it’ll be a whole year before I have to think about that again!

Streamin’ with Even is live 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. I’m usually on Thelanis, usually/often/sometimes 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! 🙂

Doing our level best

Sunday night, I had three main DDO goals:

Get Laegonn to level 30

Work on making progress with his sagas

Find something to run for the livestream

Keava was able to join us despite the 11-hour time difference, but we were short one Seki, who was feeling considerably under the weather. So we decided we’d go clean out the Eveningstar War Hospital for him, and as long as we were there, we might as well run the whole Druid’s Deep chain – you never know, Wood Woad bark might have medicinal uses. Plus, it fulfilled all three goals.

I was thinking EH, because Laegonn is the toon who proves that not all warlocks are overpowered… or even powered at all. But Keava and Slvr were confident we could handle EE.

“OK,” I replied, “but I’m going to spend the whole quest hiding behind you guys.”

Which I did – and that’s probably why HOLY CRAP LAEGONN DID NOT DIE AT ALL! Somebody get me a calendar and a red pen!

We breezed through the chain pretty easily, actually, and then ran Lines of Supply on EH because we all needed it for sagas. That was a cakewalk as well, right up until we were running back to the start to loot after getting the completion – my nearly-10-year-old computer decided to reboot itself. So I missed out on a couple of chests, but at least I got the completion and XP.

I also got a pretty nice sack of XP, but not QUITE enough to epic cap Laegonn – think he was a bit over 6k short. But that’s what VoN 3 is for. All it took was one optional, and Laegonn was ready to level.

He’ll probably spend the next few weeks doing saga quests and fleshing out the other ED spheres, and then he’s going to TR into a Drow pale master and leave warlocking to Zak.

Even has all her sagas done on true elite, so I’ll probably get her a sovereign renown elixir next time there’s a renown weekend. I have eight medium elixirs in the shared bank, which should come in handy.

Laegonn made some more saga progress tonight, polishing off the High Road chain on EH with a lot of help from Keava. Also thanks to Keava, both Reera and Sere have gotten in some good saga runs. I’m hoping we hit 150 next time there’s a renown weekend!

Streamin’ with Even is live 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. I’m usually on Thelanis, usually/often/sometimes 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! 🙂

Making a splash… screen

 

Geoff Hanna, aka “Gamer Geoff,” recently posted a blog that detailed how to change some of the splash screens you see when you’re zoning from one area to another in DDO.

 

I take a lot of screenshots. I mean, A LOT of screenshots. Thousands of ’em, possibly tens of thousands. And I get tired of looking at the same splash screens all the time. So this idea really appealed to me.

 

Last night I decided it was high time I bit the bullet and tried it out. Picked 11 screenies kindasorta at random, cropped them to 1024×768, saved them in the appropriate directory with the filenames DDO assigned to the default splash screens, and then booted the game.

 

WOW. SERIOUSLY. JUST WOW.

 

It was incredibly cool to zone from one airship deck to the other and see my OWN picture of our OWN airship while I was zoning.

 

If you try this, you won’t get your own screens on every zone; some zones and quests have specific splash screens that – as far as I know – can’t be changed. But if you’re zoning into a place that uses a generic screen (having a Kraken with a top deck, four lower  decks, and a cargo hold, this happens to me a lot), you’re going to see your own screens for those. And it’s pretty darn awesome.

 

I thought I’d share the first set of screenies I used as splash screens. Since I have so VERY many screen shots, I’ll probably rotate them every so often, just because I can. Feel free to click any or all of them to download for yourself!  🙂

 

  

  

  

  

  

Back where she belongs

I loved – seriously, loved – Even’s first life as a paladin.

Damage mitigation, self-healing, aggro getting and keeping… tanking was boatloads of fun. She was pretty good at it, IMHO, and she got plenty of requests for her tanking services.

There was just the little matter of her little DPS. In parties, it never mattered. As long as stuff was trying to kill Even and leaving everybody else alone, it was all good. But soloing could get tedious because it took her longer than most people to kill stuff. And I’m the kind of player who likes to kill everything rather than rushing through, which made questing solo on Even even longer.

It still wasn’t that big a deal until she started running into stuff that could self-heal – namely Nythirios, the boss at the end of the second phase of Tower of Despair. Solo-wise, it took her a couple of tries to figure out how to damage him faster than the shadows healed him, and even when she did, it wasn’t *much* faster.

I wasn’t looking to turn her into a lean, mean, DPS machine. I just wanted her damage output to be a little better. Ergo, she just spent 28 levels as a monk/rogue/fighter. And it was fun. Her DPS got pretty crazy, her trap skills up to EH were adequate (EE traps mostly just laughed at her attempts to find them, though), and her self-healing was usually adequate.

Still, she’s a paladin at heart. And as much as I enjoyed her monk life, I really missed the Even who I knew I could take into any quest, any difficulty, and be standing at the end.

So when I found out that paladins were getting some love in Update 23, I rejoiced. A lot. The day of the update, I took her out for one last monk spin, through the epic Orchard wilderness. And then she headed for Reincarnation Grove.

My plan was to do an epic TR immediately followed by a heroic TR into a Purple Dragon Knight, and then use a +1 lesser heart of wood to swap out the first fighter level and go pure paladin. It almost went off without a hitch.

The eTR went just as planned (I went martial for her PL). The heroic TR also went swimmingly. But it was late (or early, depending on your point of view), I was tired, and I just wanted to get the reincarnating over with and get some sleep. So after the heroic TR, rather than leveling her up to 15, I figured I’d just do the LR right away since I’d be leveling back up from that anyway.

So I opened up the lesser reincarnate dialog, dragged the heart into the box, and got a message that I couldn’t reincarnate because I was banking levels.

Oops, didn’t see that coming. Well, no biggie, I thought; I’ll just go to the paladin trainer and level up as fast as I can, then do the LR. So out of Reincarnation Grove, back through the Hall of Heroes to Eveningstar. Found the pally trainer and leveled up to 15 faster than I would have thought possible, simply by clicking the first available feats/enhancements/skill points/stat increases rather than picking and choosing – after all, it was all going to get wiped out when she LRed. Right?

Back to Reincarnation Grove, open the LR dialogue, and… wait, what? My lesser heart’s gone! Checked inventory, bank, mail, and buyback; even checked to see if it was still in the dialogue box. Nuttin’.

Filled out a bug report and a support ticket, the latter of which told me to contact ingame support. So I sent in an ingame ticket, and then realized that it would be hours before anybody was even in ingame support to look at it. Lucky for me I remembered @DDOUnlimited on Twitter. When I logged in the next day, everything was straightened out.

Thanks to the great customer service, Even’s now a level 15 Purple Dragon Knight pure paladin… and she feels nearly indestructible to me. I haven’t even geared her up yet; she’s wearing her greensteel con-op goggles, a heroic elite Jeweled Cloak, and her Voice, but everything else she’s got on right now is the default PDK gear.

I decided to take her for a spin through Vale just to see what the new and hopefully improved Even would be like… and WOW, am I happy! Her DPS is quite respectable; she was one- and two-shotting a lot of stuff. I wanted to try out her new shield attacks, but it was hard because she was killing stuff faster than I could click her hotbar.

Vey and Mas were doing heroic High Road and Storm Horns after that. I was a little nervous – after all, Even’s several levels under those – but figured what the heck, it was worth a try. And she came through just fine. Mobs died quickly, and Even wasn’t taking much damage at all. I deliberately let her get separated from Vey and Mas several times to make sure it wasn’t their DPS that was doing the trick (because both of them have some pretty serious damage output), and she still did fine. My favorite moment was when she leaped alone into a pack of six griffins, killed them all in rather rapid fashion, and emerged without even needing to throw a Cure Serious on herself.

She’s since done a wilderness fest – Sands, Gianthold, and Orchard – to get her maps cleared. Then tonight she and Vey duo’d the Attack on Stormreach chain on elite where, if I hadn’t managed to blunder her right into a bunch of mines in Undermine, she’d still not have a death for this life yet. (Sorry Even, my bad – I feel like I let her down!)

Even’s banking 16 but I’m going to keep her there for a while, I think; I want to milk as much XP as possible from the lower quests before leveling up. It’s hard, though – I can’t wait to get her back into epic levels and serious raiding again! She feels so solid to me right now, I’d almost like to try running a couple of the easier epics – BoB, Snitch – on her, just to see what would happen… if only she could get into them at level 15!

Drinking and dancing

Many, if not most, DDO players don’t have much good to say about the quality of Turbine’s customer service, especially when it comes to getting a help ticket response from a GM. A while back, I posted about an awesome GM experience I had. Last night I encountered a GM who gave me laughs to rival that first one.

First, a little background… Dissy made her first trip to Storm Horns last night; I was looking for about 180K XP to get her leveled up to 25 so she could wear her blue dragonscale armor (she ended up leveling in eChrono with Ninja and Abs, and the armor looks GREAT with her hair, shield and Elyd Edge). She was singing her way through the snowy mountaintops when she got a tell from a friend who shall remain nameless, who was slightly – OK, more than slightly – inebriated. And I’m SO going to embarrass him here before I get to the GM part, just because I can. LOL

So, Nameless started yelling at me for not joining his guild, because he kept trying to talk to me in guild chat. Then he wanted me to send him a party invite so he wouldn’t have to type (which kinda made me sad, because his drunken typos were cracking me up). I sent him an invite, but it didn’t work – all I got back from him was a tell that said something like, “tlepaxorang.” (He later told me that was supposed to be, “Stop teleporting!”) Turned out that he was getting the “can’t add to the party when any member is teleporting” message. Neither of us was teleporting, though, and I noticed he was on a lvl 17 toon. Dissy, being lvl 24, was in epic Storm Horns, so I thought maybe he couldn’t join because he was under level.

He was sober enough to switch to an epic-level toon… and same result. I told him I’d try putting up an LFM, and got something like, “I’m not joining your party unless you put, ‘[toon name] only, everybody else f*** off’ in the LFM.” (My spelling is MUCH better than his was. :D) We argued about this for a bit, and I finally went with, “[toon name] only. He says everybody else should eff off. Sorry. :(”

And it STILL didn’t work. So I took the LFM down as fast as I could, recalled out, and THEN I was finally able to add him. He ran in circles around me on the bridge in Eveningstar until he got dizzy, ran off the edge and forgot how to get back up. But we finally made it into Storm Horns and teleported back up to the snowy area.

Now, Nameless knows I get lost easily. I’ve followed him around Storm Horns before, and he zips from explorer point to explorer point with unerring accuracy… or at least, he does when he’s sober. I knew he was REALLY drunk last night when he said, “Where are we going?” I said, “I need all the explorers from 22 on up except for 43 and 44.” He replied, “No. I mean, where are those?” I said, “East.” And he said, “Which way is east?” Trust me – when Nameless is asking ME for directions, something’s definitely wrong.

We got as far as the entrance to Breaking the Ranks – which wasn’t very far, as we’d TPed to the northwest marker when we went in – when Nameless suddenly said, “It’s time.” I was wondering, time for what? And then he said, “seeppy tiem.” And he stopped right there at the Netherese Central Camp, and that was the last he talked, typed or moved for the rest of the night.

About that time, Ninja sent me a tell asking if she could join the party. So I tried to add her and the “can’t add party members while teleporting” bug kicked in again. (May or may not be relevant – when Nameless went beddy-bye, Dissy summoned the owlbear, who never appeared on the party list). Dissy was still about 40K short of level 25, so Ninja told me to come run eChrono with her.

So I typed in party chat – just in case Nameless was conscious at all – that I was dropping to run eChrono, recalled out, and… couldn’t drop. SAME “teleporting” bug. I logged Dissy out, logged Char in, and then rebooted DDO and brought Dissy back in – same damn thing. And I couldn’t dismiss Nameless, because now HE had the star AND he was still in the dungeon.

I figured it was high time to fill out a support ticket. What follows is a great convo I had with the GM who responded. Per Turbine policy, I won’t name him (or her, for all I know). I doubt s/he will read this… but Mr./Ms. GM, THANK YOU! I was laughing so hard I could barely type back to you by the end.   🙂

GM: Greetings Discordette! I am a Game Master for online support and will be with you momentarily. You can reply to my messages by typing /r and entering your message.

GM: Are you still stuck in the party?

Me: Yep! It’s ironic, earlier I couldn’t ADD people to my party.

Me: (Error) You can’t create, destroy, or modify a party while any members are teleporting.

Me: That’s what I’m getting when I try to drop.

GM: Alright I need you to try to invite *PlaceholderToon to the party.

A wizard suddenly appears on the ship in front of me… and waves to me. And no, “PlaceholderToon” is definitely not his real name.

Me: I can’t, because my friend’s got the star – and he’s passed out drunk. LOL

GM: Any way you can wake him up? I can only fix this if I can get invited to the party.

I type in party chat; I yell, “[Nameless], wake up!” on voice. No response.

Me: Well, I’m talking to him on voice, but I’m not getting anything back.

Me: Nada. I just yelled, “[Nameless], wake up!” over voice, and nothing.

GM: I’m really sorry, we’re gonna have to wait for him to wake up, or get disconnected.

Either the GM manages to disconnect Nameless, or, with perfect timing, he DCs due to inactivity. I quickly send a party invite to the placeholder toon standing in front of me. For a minute or two, nothing happens.

Me: OK, sent the invite… don’t tell me, let me guess, you got the teleporting message. LOL

I send another party invite. This one goes through.

GM: OK make me the leader.

I’ve already dismissed Nameless, which gave me the star back. Just for the heck of it, I buff up the GM’s placeholder wizard with the full works… and he starts dancing. I successfully – though to be honest with a bit of regret, ’cause I’m having fun – drop party.

GM: There you go.

Me: Oops, hit Leave too fast – but it worked. And your wizard has some buffs. LOL

GM: That works too, as long as you are out of the party.

GM: Is there anything else I can help you with?

Me: That may be the most bizarre bug I’ve ever encountered. LOL

Me: Nope, that’ll do it. Thank you! 😀

GM: It is pretty rare but it happens once in a while.

GM: You’re welcome, have a great day!

Me: You too! That wizzy’s all buffed, take him out and kill stuff. 😉

GM: Unfortunately this one is going away after this. He was made just to fix this problem.

GM: But I’m sure he will be happy with those buffs on whatever plane of existence he ends up on!

If anyone from Turbine happens to read this post – THIS is exactly what you want your GMs to do. He (or she) was polite and friendly. When it looked like he might not be able to fix the problem, he told me why and apologized. Even if I were STILL stuck in party, I would have come away feeling like at least someone tried to help me. The dancing wizard taking his buffs to his new plane of existence was just the icing on the cake. Bravo, Mr. or Ms. GM. You made my night! 🙂

Nameless – YOU know who you are. No one else needs to. I’m not going to call you out publicly, because I understand what a rough night it was for you and why you were drinking. I hope you’re not upset that I posted this; I did it because I’ve been going through quite a rough patch myself and you were completely cracking me up last night. Thank you for the laughs. 🙂

tl;dr – My friend got drunk and was funny. Then I couldn’t drop party, filled out a ticket and got a GM who was just as funny. It made for an awesome night.

Grabbing life by the Storm Horns

Given past history, I was a bit worried about the imminent release of U19, aka the Shadowfell Conspiracy. I mean, c’mon, there are still plenty of unresolved bugs – sorry, “unintended features” – from LAST year’s expansion, Menace of the Underdark.

Well, color me impressed. Even if U19 added nothing but the Storm Horns wilderness, I’d be pretty darn happy. Turbine, when you get it right, you REALLY get it right. The Storm Horns are GORGEOUS all by themselves, with amazing new mobs… satyrs! Harpies! Owlbears! Pseudodragons! GRIFFONS! Oh, oh, OH, the griffons! Please, please, please release griffon companions, because I don’t think I can live without one much longer (she sez, studiously NOT looking at the 42 – yes, really, 42 – companions she already has on Thelanis).

The rare encounters in Storm Horns show ample evidence that there was actual thought put into them, and probably even by someone who plays the game. While the “wounded soldier” in the above pic was out of Acanthia’s reach (and doesn’t seem to do much no matter which option you choose when he’s at ground level), there’s an ice dragon way, way high in the mountains, and a red dragon who seems to be the twin of Micahrastir (that mean guy who likes to blow you off his perch in Underdark, and blow the bridge away so you can’t get back to him). There’s a rare owlbear, a rare wood woad and a rare giant. There’s a poacher who lets you bargain for loot – one to three chests depending on how many gamey venisons and fox tails you have. There’s a tame owlbear who’ll follow you around and fight for you if you give him some venison and pet him.

And there’s my personal favorite, the one where the satyr elder wants you to dance with him. I’ve had a couple different outcomes to this one; sometimes I’ve ended up having to fight him, sometimes not. He usually ends up asking if he can cast something on me and assuring me “it won’t hurt a bit;” most of the time it’s been Otto’s, but once he buffed me with Good Hope.

Likewise, the quests show some creativity. The first one I ran was “The Tracker’s Trap,” with Baz; it was so much fun I ran it again the next night with Annie. The end fight is cool, not just a straight boss beat-down; I won’t give too much detail so as not to spoil it for anyone who hasn’t run it yet, but I’ll just say that Acanthia spent a lot of time unintentionally flying through the air.   *snicker*

Um… and I’d want to bring my FOE back from the dead, why, exactly?

Yes, there are bugs. It’s new content; some glitches are to be expected. But – at least to me – they don’t seem NEARLY as prevalent as when MotU was released (or, for that matter, even as prevalent in the new content as they are in MotU stuff still). Acanthia was rather startled to find that Rise of the Phoenix can apparently now raise one’s enemy, although despite the description, it does NOT work on one’s friends. She hasn’t had the opportunity to see if it works on herself yet, but that would be pretty cool… although I think she liked it better when she could use it as much as she needed to raise her partymates and/or hirelings rather than just once per rest.

I’ve heard people complaining about light monks getting nerfed in the update. My experience has been just the opposite. Acanthia gained a few HP, and the devotion aspect to healing ki means her light-light-light finishing move can actually do some real good, especially to anyone with a decent amount of heal amp (she hits herself for 120-150 HP). I also like that, instead of having individual moves for remove blindness, remove curse, remove disease and lesser restoration, now I can change her stance to automatically apply the desired effect with her healing ki finisher. This is a HUGE boon in CitW. Get a couple of light monks up there mashing on Lolth, and the melees can save their curse pots. Her DPS is at least as good as ever; it actually seems a bit better, but not sure if that’s U19 or that she finally pulled Antipode the night before the update.

As I’ve only really been running Acanthia this week (with a bit of playing time for Even, Jall and Meren), it’s too soon for me to tell for sure how the update will affect everyone, but overall I’m pretty darn happy. Even picked up about 30 HP along with raising her AC, PRR and intim. Jall – who I was already pleased with – added some HP as well, and her aura now hits herself for about 15 points more than it did before. When I logged Vic in Monday night, she’d somehow gained 70 HP, which makes my squishy, gimpy, 28-point first-life trapmonkey quite happy. She did lose a few points of rogue skills across the board  (don’t think it’ll make THAT much difference, as she was at 75-80 on most of them pre-update), and I only managed to fit in one tier of Faster Sneaking, but… Vic with almost 700 HP? HECK yeah, I’ll take that.

Dissy lost one song – not a big deal, as she went from 42 to 41 – and maybe a few spell points, also not a big deal as she’s a spellsinger. She likes having Sustaining Song now, and like Jall, saw a nice increase in her positive spellpower; I think she’s a truly legitimate backup healer and could probably handle main healer duties in a well-built group.

Char seems to be about the same, HP- and SP-wise. While as an AA she’s primarily ranged, she DOES switch to dual scimis for melee, and I’m curious to see what effect the update has on her melee DPS, given the total lack of attention to TWF and THF builds. Meren also picked up HP and positive spellpower; I certainly never expected to have her over 700 HP at level 22. She got herself flagged for CitW entirely solo; I really need to have more faith in her. I did the flagging quests mostly on norm, but after her performance I think she could have easily handled hard.

I wish I’d done a lot more in Wheloon before I’d ever gone into Storm Horns, because… Wheloon just can’t measure up. Oh, the quests are fun, and the wilderness is mostly good – it just doesn’t compare even remotely to Storm Horns. Shade beholders and undead purple worms are cool, and Shadar-Kai – while scary with those chains whipping around (hey Turbine, any chance Sere, my new Shadar-Kai rogue, could get a set of those?), are pretty darn awesome.

But if there were just one thing I could change about Wheloon – THE DAMN PINK FOG MUST GO. LYK RITE NAO. Seriously. You can’t see anything, it’s freaking LAGGY as all hell, and…  prison dungeons should NEVER BE PINK. What, did the Netherese lock up Strawberry Shortcake for tax evasion? No? Then NO MOAR PINK. And no more fog; the lag is UNREAL. Maybe something like the Xoriat madness in Delirium, but in a suitably sinister color. And for the love of Khyber, make that damn priestess spawn already so I can get Journal No. 8 and clear my map.

And, long overdue… as promised to Empress Mizzaroo herself, here’s a shot of her on her elven arti (far right), Comic (left) and Yttsie (center) chillin’ in Smugglers’ Rest with Wee Yip Yip (far left, just in case you were thinking Comic was a kobold). While real life sadly intervened and prevented us from being able to do a Cove run together, we still had lots of fun rampaging through the wilderness killing stuff, even though Yttsie was 4-5 levels behind them (and was the only one who did not die, LOL – just hadda throw that in!).

So, this is the first I’ve blogged in a while. Real life has been a doozy for the past few months, and seems likely to continue being a doozy for the foreseeable future. It’s cut into my playing time a bit, and into my blogging time a LOT. But, at Shin’s urging, I’ve designated Wednesday as Neverwinter Online Night. Sadly, NWO does not offer a monk class, but the NWO version of Acanthia – a TWF trickster rogue – is still a lot of fun. She’s nearly level 11 already, and one of these days I may even get used to having to use mouselook and pressing V instead of F to talk.

 

(And no, I don’t know what’s up with her abnormally long hands – maybe it’s a rogue thing.)