I think you all know that I have been working on the TR thing with Samius for a while now. And for the last few lives I have had Fopo as my leveling partner. And it works out well for us. This life he opted to use his stone and take a few weeks off to explore the new stuff. I can’t do the same with my stone as I used mine to rush through a TR on one of my Wizards. But before I go down how I am unhappy with how my new wiz is working out; let me just say it leaves me leveling Samius alone.

All has been going well enough solo. Levels 1-11 have been fairly quick even though I have been taking time to run the new stuff also on my “tank.” Which might be tomorrow’s topic… However, getting to level 12 has been a task, mainly because I insist on keeping up my elite streak as well as doing things that are not so easy to solo. And that has made my week-weekend very hard.

I ran a Shadow Crypt flagging quest solo each night I played ddo over the week, surprisingly the swim and forced to split up quests were the easiest to do this life. Sometimes I really miss firewall.

With a happy skip in my step I went to solo the crypt on Thursday. Every thing is going super smooth. I get all the gears even. The path to the flag is not super easy but I find it soon enough and clear my way to the final fight. Where I get my head handed to me. I get the boss to around 20% and he ports out and makes his copies. I have learned however how to tell the copies from the original. The copies have about a 1/3 of the HP of the boss so die a lot faster. As they all spam dispels and hold spells you want them dead as fast as possible. So once you turn back to the boss he ports out and starts the loop again. That first time I DDed back twice using the trinket up to shrine and try again before I realized I had been in that quest for more then 2 hours. Most of that time was in that end fight. Finally I just put my head down and let the vamps have me just to be out of the quest.

Friday was a lot like Thursday, but I only had the 8 gears to open the way to mister vamp dick and his path to him was a lot easier. But the end was very close to the same.

Saturday morning thought I would be able to pull off a win first thing, I didn’t.

Frustrated, I stole my son’s account for a few hours buying him Vet2 and making a new wizard. I have done this quest with hirelings before so having myself at the keys should work even if I am level 7, right?

Fumblebot, simi geared up was ready to go for it. I am not sure how much plat I dumped into him but a lot and he still only had 3 or 4 slots used, but good enough for a burn them in a wall of fire quest. And he ripped that quest a new one. All gears only took a few mins. Had a few close calls when I realized that I didn’t take the enchantment that took his WF ASF to 0% and failed a roll to repair myself. But I had wands and pots ready and was able to recover well enough. I ran out of juice burning the lords, but thanks to the recharge to 12 sp thing I was able to backpedal and ray things down. After all that I fully expected Mister Vamp Dick to roll over to Walls and Scorching rays but he didn’t and I spent a long time trying to end that fight just off the shrines. Until I fumbled hard and got swarmed to death. Samius tried to go in and save him. But the kids laptop is just not able to handle a build as complex as Samius with how the bars are laid out let alone everything else.

So we pop out and try again. This time with a stack of store bought greater pots. Did you know that normal majors are level 9? I didn’t. So take 2 with the wiz. Things are going well again, I have all the keys again and a simple path so no issues. Get to that end fight and I just didn’t have the spell dps. I DDed and bought a shrine and redid my spells boosting the number of damage spells, as I had used all of them already. But still DPS fail. Degusted I log and play with the dog out side, a little later I log back on and play in the realms to help a guildie for his first time.

Sunday, I happen to see a group for Church and the Cult or some level 9 on elite shit. I resolved to not fail Shadow crypt again solo I thought maybe if this group is not shitty I could use them to do it. As they were not horrible players, that is what I did. I ¾ soloed zerged that quest and then when the pugs do that “What are we going to do now?” thing I talked them in to doing the Shadow. Only one guy ½ knew the quest, never tried with out a path solver so had no idea how to run it himself and I ended up leading the group but we got all the gears we needed in 9 rooms I think and DDed and took east three times and boom! 54k xps in 15mins. Would have been a great run if wasn’t for all the fails before it.

So there you have it. An example of how when all else failed I pugged. See I can play with others. Well use others. ☺

❤