Some times you get home from work, take your pants off and run to your computer to play some Ddo. Along the way you happen to make eye contact with the wife and boom. There goes your plans.

Sure they say all the right things, like “No go ahead and play.” or “I’m good, you can go ahead and play.”

But don’t let yourself be fooled. We know that look means trouble.

If I spent the night working my Sam’s butt off earning xps, I might wake up like old shorty Bobbit. Calling 911 and trying to stop the dogs from enjoying a unpleasant doggy treat that was little Sam.

No, there will be no Ddo in my house on nights when my wife has that special twinkle in her eyes.

Normally that look involves a shitty day at work, that I can do nothing about but I rolled well on my “Read wifes mind check” and learned that little Qwynn took a little nibble of the new couch. The one the wife hunted for weeks. And ended up having to order and waited weeks to get. So there was some unpleasantness there. But that is easily enough to fix, as we did buy the extra special warranty. A phone call should get us on the to be repaired list.

A follow up roll had to deal with the boy and not turning in all of his homework, still. And I am going to leave it at that. Although on last nights House, Chase said his interest in medicine came from being locked in a study with nothing else to do for hours but read his dad’s old medical books, and he is a TV doctor. Hmmmm, interesting thought…..

Back to the wife; She and I spent the night on the couch watching TV mostly via Netflix streaming.

Last week I was hunting for something new to watch while mindlessly grinding xp; and I was clicking around the shows that Netflix has to stream and I remembered that Walt Flanagan from TESD podcast, was talking up Storage Wars. Netflix has it to stream, why not give it a chance?

Because it is super additive, thats why, take it from me if you don’t want to get sucked into a show don’t watch.

So last night I went to watch something else but with in 5 mins of reading between lines like “Why are we watching an Surviverman we have seen 100 times, when there are Storage Wars we haven’t seen?” I ended up took the hint and swapped to Storage Wars instead. And there went the night. At least until House had ¾ recorded.

Storage Wars is one of those shows that should have a warning “Time Machine”. 20 mins turns in to 5 hours so fast it makes your head spin. It has great characters that you hate/love, and you need up yelling at the tv to bid or to stop. It is great.

Anyway no Ddo talk today. Maybe if no one messes up today I can run some raids and earn some xp tonight.

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To say I was on a bit of an xp bender might not be 100% correct. I sat in my game chair long enough I might have grown into it some. There was much grinding. I earned way over 1millon xp this weekend.

So Fo, the wife and I are not slow. We move along the quests at a fair pace. And then on the weekends I solo a lot of content in the AM while they are off line. My whole goal is to keep up rank wise. Torance is on a first life. Fo is on a second life. So I could cap them both with the xp l already have. 🙂

But I had ulterior motive, Tobril started his TR about 2-3 weeks before I did. Fo started about a week ahead too, but I caught him. And I have been pushing to catch up.

Friday night we did. 🙂 Thank you litany. You might not have dropped any named loot, but you are xp per min. And I ❤ you. Why can’t there be more quests like you.

So I gathered up the TR teams and formed them into one team. Saturday morning I sat in the game chair at 8 am and around midnight I crashed for a few hours and was up by and playing by 9. And we pushed some more.

I didn’t cap out yet. But now I have xp for 19, rank 91 I think. Vale mostly emptied. Reavers Refuge (all but SOS) IQ started. Every thing on elite. My elite streak is around 180. I think by the time I do a few raids, finish the IQ it should be TR time.

It was a good time. And Tobril, who has been running a hard streak, got to see what an elite streak can do. He made the comment along the lines of WOW that is what it is like to see a bar move again. 🙂

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Before we get to the meat of the story. It is 11.11.11 aka Veterans’ Day/Remembrance Day for our friends over seas. The freedom we have to play a video game and talk about it like it is important, is insured by the service of out vets. Take a second and think about that and if you can thank a vet.

It also happens to be the last Binary day for a very long time. I don’t think you will see another, unless you got some mad blood sucking skills and can avoid the sun or know a good cyro place and are willing to take a long nap.

Now with that out of the way, Pay to Win?

So in my want to get my belt all crafted up I took my pile of TP and tried to pay to win. I hit the Ddo store and filled up on essences; lessers, greaters, a few crafting xp pots and about 100 +10% boosters. even used Tolero’s 5% off the cart code and bought more then I thought I would need. I spent then equivalent of 30$ in Tp, about 3000 Tp. In my mind if I spend that amount of cash I should win, right? What does a class cost? 1400 Tp. And I see that as a win vs grinding out a ton of favor. 🙂

Well I didn’t get in range of 100. I did gain about 13 levels in an hour. Burned a ton of my non-store reserves. And ended at about level 74. Not close enough to try for the Health +6 shard.

Following the idea that you could keep going. And that 3k TP amounts to about 10 levels it would cost me at least 50$ to get in range to try. With a 6000 tp package.

I don’t know that I would call that P2W, but I can see how others might. If I wanted to I could have broke out the credit card and kept going but why?

I am glad the option is there. If I was in striking distance, it would have been great to get there. And I have been in the spot where I wanted a certain ability. Back when I was making all my alts ghost touch of Everbright weapons I ran out of law essences and got mad that I miss calculated my needs.

Anyway. Just wanted to share that little story. And to say hell if someone wants to pay that price to win, let them. That is just a raise for my home boys at Turbine.

I found a crafter that can make what I want and am paying him essences to hook me up. Now that is pay to win. 🙂

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I have a hole in my gear now. It swas a sneaking little thing. But it is there. Last life I took a break and knocked out 20 shrouds for a Green Steal cleansing stone; allowing Sam to wear his hat, bracers, boots and goggles. Many swappable pairs of goggles, I think. 🙂

So at level 11 my defenses are fairly solid. And the gear looks good. But when level 13 rolls around with its sexy +6 stat items I have an issue. My poor Lion headed belt doesn’t cut from level 13 on. But I don’t have any thing better to equip until level 18.

So my though was how close am I to grafting a +6 con belt? Maybe with a med guild slot so I can add back in the guild Hp I lost by swapping out of my life shield/Invulnerability outfit with a med guild slot.

Well I am about level 60-65 ish in everything. Meaning still way short. I did some power leveling as I have a simi large pile of grafting stuff. But I am still far short…. So time to hit my servers list of high level crafters and see what it will cost.

EDIT:
Oh Snap, 30 seconds of looking around and I see that you can not make +6 stat items unbound…Nuts. Guess I will have to wait and keep leveling my own dumb self!

Right now I am level 16 with xp for 17, but I haven’t finished the level 14s on elite yet. I hope tonight. Thing it Some of the group Fopo namely wants to rock the new Cannith quests as to unlock Arties. So I have the feeling that I will soloing a lot of the content once we do the elite runs. Maybe the weekend will be good for xp. As I think Fo is bowling tonight. Sigh….

So if one of you are a high level grafter on Sarlona let me know. I have the want for a few things and will pay well, Just not in plat. Other wise I am stuck checking on prices via the other known guys. Wish me luck.

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Is it wrong to want to quit my job and start an apuaponic/fish/urban farm? Maybe sprinkle in some bloging with a little podcasting/video making in the mix? My brother seems to think that I could do Live stream gameing for a little cash. I guess people can sub to my stream for a few bucks and then I get half of that sub.

It doesn’t sound bad to me. I think I could be on the way. Minus the quit the job part, anyway.

I got word that our Strawberries plants have shipped. So any day now I might be adding them to the grow beds. The peppers are looking good, the Tomatoes are growing really well. But I think the most surprising plants to me are the cucumbers. In a little more then a week they sprouted and are about an inch tall. I understand they are fast growers; but damn!

I started some watermelon seeds at the same time and they are hardly out of the shell. Not even green yet. Speaking of watermelons, should (if they fruit) I put them in a mold to trick them into growing almost cube shaped? I watched a video on how to do it and I have some ideas to make it easier. In the video, they made a lot of good points about square/cube fitting easier in to our lives as a consumer. It is something to think about.

I also think I need to reorder the shrooms. I think they process is great. But I was checking the time tables thinking I should see something by now. And looked at the bag of animal mix I used as the base. And I noticed that they add Bakeing Soda to the mix to help with animal smell. I am not for sure but I think that bakeing soda is a fungicide. Meaning I might have killed them before they even had a chance. Opps.

Think when I try again, I will just use the old news papers laying around as the base and not use something like the animal bedding. Just to have a better idea of what the hell.

Also if you are thinking about growing your own shroms thinkgeek.com is selling an “At Home Mushroom Growing Kit” to grow Pearl Oyster Mushrooms for 20$. I plan to order one or two come payday. http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/eb80/ Once you add in the spore and the grow medium and the container your at about 20$ anyway. So it is a fair price.

Well that is the not ddo related post for the week. As always questions and comments below.

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Dictionary.com defines Base as: the fundamental principle, groundwork, foundation.

I have used or planed to use the base of 6ranger 3monk Horc for a lot of my TR lives. The FvS, and Clr lives have done so, already. I planed to use it for the Rog and Pally lives sure. Monk and Ranger also use this base and expand on it some. Fighter might not have any ranger levels but I can see a build where it uses this base as well. I haven’t really looked at the Arty much but I can’t see how the 6/3 frame work would do it wrong.

But here is the deal, I am thinking that I might change my base some; to 6/6 ranger/monk. Going Helf with CLR Dilettante takes a lot of pressure off maintaining a high umd. And allows the full AA Pre with some work.

The changes to Ten Thousand Stars(10kS) and the monk stances are simi huge. I don’t want to under sale the changes to Unbalancing Strike as I think it might be the sleeper change of the mod. Adding another way that monks can auto add sneak attack damage is huge.

But I will say 10kS and changes to mountain stance are my main reason to swap. At level 12 you have a build with evasion, Manyshot and 10kS. With the past live Monk feat and one of the items that move your die up a step unharmed damage would be d8 → d10 → 2d6. So not horrible. Ranged might be super, we will have to wait and see exactly how 10kS works. But if the cool down stays the same as it is in now one could 10kS, Manyshot, wait 10 secs and 10kS again. And repeat in 30 sec or so. That is really good ranged.

The 10% physical damage resistance from stance I am a little worried about. At 50+damage a hit it is great. So that means I am back to using the Bloodrage trinket for littler hits. But it should work with Other DR for more gain, so win?

My worry is that by doing this 6/6 split I only have the last 8 levels to play the TR class. And while that works for the past live requirement will it work for my personal “played every class”? I am not sure yet. I have to see how this upcoming Bowonk life feels.

My hunch is I am going to love it even if I am a goofy looking Helf for the next 5 lives. Thank goodness for show goggles. Maybe I can find a style I like.

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Other then a surprise visit from one of my brothers, a (major stocking) trip to the store, and At&t having a 4 hour INTERNET outage for my house… I would say I did fairly well sticking to the plan.

Lets review the plan for the weekend. Lordsmarch Plaza quests on Elite to open them up for solo play, GH walk ups and Pre Raids. So how did I do? All done except Crucible. So not bad.

Friday, got the band together and rocked the Lordsmarch quests. Heard a few comments about not wanting to keep the elite streak running, as the quests are “hard.” But we kept on.

At one point, my wife broke off to level with or with out us. Fo and I pressed on, and Tor rejoined us before we completed the quest. Preventing her streak break. 🙂

There were many, many deaths that night. But it was some of the most fun I have had in a long time. There was lots of accidental humor. Random deaths, killed counts approaching double digits in the first 10 mins of a quest, yelling at hirelings to stop fighting and do some healing. Good times. 🙂

Saturday morning I got up early and make the HHN rounds, really working the xp. As Tor is a first life, Fo is on his second, leaving me with a big hole to fill to keep up level wise. But I really love the Lordsmarch quests. They were/are much needed area of quests. I would like to see something like them in 11 range.

After a few hours of alone time, Everyone logged on and I cracked the whip; off to Gh walk up land. We knocked them all out in good order. Breaking for lunch and that shopping trip. No sooner then I got home, I get a call from my brother. He is 2 hours out and wants to hang before he goes to see a fight. So interruptions all day but we got them done.

Sunday, up early again; for more solo hards. Get everything but Cry done before it is time to meet for breakfast. Go and get back just in time to catch Fo for Pop. Just get started and boom goes the INTERNET. 😥

So I pop in a movie, checking every so often. When it does finally get back we knock out 2 elite Pops. And elite Madstone. Not sure what my healer was upto but I died 6 times in that first little optional. I was drinking pots and using the vamp sword. And still was croaking right and left. The rest of the run was fairly smooth. Their was some issues with people getting thrown off cliffs in a few places. But nothing too bad.

All and all not horrible use of the weekend. Got some stuff done in and out of game. Got in plenty of family time. And still managed to stay on track. Go team.

What am I doing tonight?

The same thing I do every night; try to take over the world! I mean Crucible and Tor runs. 🙂

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As of right now Sam is level 14 with xp almost forcing leveling to 15. I believe that by the weekend, baring a any more major migraines I will cross in to cake land for a while. My goal is to push my team beyond their comfort level mainly to get the elites out of the way so I can solo normal/hards when they are not around.

So tonight, Eyes of stone, and the rest of the Lordsmarch Plaza quests. The first two have been ran into the ground this life. Eyes and all the rest will not be any exception.

But I don’t want to end there I want to burn through GH walk ups and I hope the Pre Raids. I might be looking for a really super evasion guy to help with the swim in Crucible. I can make it almost with out getting hit. Almost. And on elite I feel that there is not a lot of room for error.

I think once I get these quests ran on elite; milking their xp will have 0 issues. I normally run these quest solo into the dust, NnnnnnHE. EhhhhhhhH shouldn’t be that much of a change.

With that done I might get to skip right to flagging for Abbot and then Vale. Capping out could be easy street….

A want to cap out because I was reading the Lam notes yesterday and got all excited about the monk changes. I was wobbling back and forth on what would be next because I am born with this barb life. It can hit harder then my FvS, and I can see how a pure 20 or a 18/2 could be fun some times. But it is just not my style.

So something a little more my style an updated Bowonk for MY Samius’ next life:

Level 20 Lawful Good (Could be some other Monk Alignment) Half-Elf Male
(2 Fighter 12 Monk 6 Ranger)

(36 Point)
Strength 16 20 (most level ups)
Dexterity 16 20(one level up)
Constitution 14 17
Intelligence 10 10
Wisdom 14 14
Charisma 10? 10

Tomes Used
+2 Tome of Dexterity used at level 7
+2 Tome of Constitution used at level 7

Skills (Level 1) (Level 20)
Balance 5 16
Concentration 6 28
Hide 7 24
Jump 7 14
Move Silently 7 24
UMD 1 10

Level 1 (Ranger)
Feat: (Favored Enemy) Favored Enemy: Undead (Change later to Evil Outsider)
Feat: (Half-Elf Dilettante) Half-Elf Dilettante: Cleric
Feat: (Past Life) Past Life: Wiz, Wiz, Wiz, FvS, Clr, Bard, Barb, Sorc
Feat: (Selected) Point Blank Shot

Level 2 (Monk)
Feat: (Monk Bonus) Power Attack

Level 3 (Ranger)
Feat: (Selected) Berserker’s Fury

Level 4 (Ranger)

Level 5 (Ranger)

Level 6 (Ranger)
Feat: (Favored Enemy) Favored Enemy: Giant (Change later to Constructs)
Feat: (Selected) Past Life: Arcane Prodigy

Level 7 (Ranger)

Level 8 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Weapon Focus: Ranged Weapons
(Start AA Archer)

Level 9 (Monk)
Feat: (Selected) Stunning Fist
Feat: (Monk Bonus) Zen Archery

Level 10 (Monk)
Feat: (Monk Path) Path of Inevitable Dominion: Fists of Darkness (Will go Light until 6 monk levels.)

Level 11 (Monk)

Level 12 (Monk)
Feat: (Selected) Precise Shot

Level 13 (Monk)
Feat: (Monk Bonus) Dodge
(Ninja Spy 1)

Level 14 (Fighter)
Feat: (Fighter Bonus) Greater Two Weapon Fighting

Level 15 (Monk)
Feat: (Selected) Improved Precise Shot

Level 16 (Monk)

Level 17 (Monk)

Level 18 (Monk)
Feat: (Selected) Improved Critical: (might change??)

Level 19 (Monk)

Level 20 (Monk)
Enhancement: Fighter Haste Boost I
Enhancement: Human Adaptability Constitution I
Enhancement: Human Improved Recovery I
Enhancement: Human Improved Recovery II
Enhancement: Static Charge
Enhancement: Way of the Patient Tortoise I
Enhancement: Way of the Patient Tortoise II
Enhancement: Touch of Death
Enhancement: Fists of Iron
Enhancement: Porous Soul
Enhancement: All-Consuming Flame
Enhancement: Monk Improved Recovery I
Enhancement: Monk Improved Recovery II
Enhancement: Monk Improved Recovery III
Enhancement: Monk Ninja Spy I
Enhancement: Monk Ninja Spy II
Enhancement: Winter’s Touch
Enhancement: Adept of Wind
Enhancement:Ten Thousand Stars
Enhancement: Adept of Rock
Enhancement: Master of Stone
Enhancement: Racial Toughness I
Enhancement: Racial Toughness II
Enhancement: Racial Toughness III
Enhancement: Fighter Toughness I
Enhancement: Elven Arcane Archer I
Enhancement: Elven Arcane Archer: Conjure +2 Arrows
Enhancement: Elven Arcane Archer: Conjure +3 Arrows
Enhancement: Elven Arcane Archer: Conjure +4 Arrows
Enhancement: Elven Arcane Archer: Conjure +5 Arrows
Enhancement: Elven Arcane Archer: Imbue Acid Arrows
Enhancement: Elven Arcane Archer: Imbue Explosive Arrows
Enhancement: Elven Arcane Archer: Imbue Force Arrows
Enhancement: Elven Arcane Archer: Imbue Force Burst Arrows
Enhancement: Elven Arcane Archer: Imbue Slaying Arrows
Enhancement: Elven Arcane Archer: Imbue Terror Arrows
Enhancement: Improved Jump I
Enhancement: Improved Jump II
Enhancement: Improved Tumble I
Enhancement: Improved Tumble II
Enhancement: Improved Cleric Dilettante I
Enhancement: Improved Cleric Dilettante II
Enhancement: Improved Cleric Dilettante III

The main changes from the original layout are updated feats allowing for past life feats to be used. And a small reworking of enhancements to allow for Ten Thousand Stars, aka Multishot timer number 2, and the Cleric Dilettante line. Umd is still wanted for Arcane scrolls but the magic 39 is not needed.

Questions? Comments?

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One of the down sides of my guild leveling alts or running through Trs is it is hard to get a group of us together to hang out. People want to stay on track, or side trips don’t appeal to masses. But last night was a bit of a change of pace; we got together for a few Vale runs.

I got on a little late last night, and when I did Tobril was playing in the Orchard as he has 3 or 4 levels on Samius atm we haven’t gotten the chance to group lately. So joined him for a few kills.

As we were wrapping up more and more guild members got logged on. And the notion of keeping the group together for awhile via explorer zones were thrown out. And we headed to the vale.

Over all it was fast and smooth. People took the route they liked best and we ended up splitting up and making good time. Add in an slayer boost pot from the store to my already ticking xp boosts and in 40ish mins I had almost 50k between slayers and explorers.

After that we broke apart for questing. But it was good times. Maybe next time we can run the Reaver explorer zones, and maybe Shavraith. We may have to stay in a group for that as we have 13 -18s in our little group atm.

Good times anyway.

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I want to keep rolling on my look at past life feats with the some of the less then great ones.

Let me start with one that I don’t think I would ever take: Arcane Prodigy

You recall more about your past life as a sorcerer. Your maximum spell points are increased by 10 at first level, and 5 spell points for each additional level and can produce random elemental damage spells ten times per rest. (Activate this sorcerer ability to blast a target with a ray of combined elements, doing 1d12 damage of a random elemental type plus an additional 1d12 per three caster levels on impact. A successful Reflex save reduce the damage by half.)

At least the main benefit grows with your levels. Making it better then Student of the Sword or Acolyte of Divine Secrets.

But we have counts as X feat for unlocking enchantment lines and PREs with Berserker’s Fury (Toughness). Why does this not count as Mental Toughness? Silly for it not too, in my opinion?

I would like to see every pay for past life feat count towards something for unlocking enchantment lines and PREs with the idea that if you TR back into the same class it will always be worth it to take the past life feat. It may or may not help for other classes, but that is not a worry I have at the moment.

It is hard to say what I think they should be as some classes only have one PRE or have PREs that are not complete.

I just want to get people thinking that a quick pass on the Past Life feats are needed. Or maybe a shout across the room, okay that one was for the dev readers. Oh hey dev readers get a good buzz about yours truly floating around the office for me would you? Thx.

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