Monthly Archives: September 2012

A Weekends Highs and Lows.

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So as some of you know I have having computer issues. I thought it might have been a video card issue but turns out that is works fine. So Friday after work I stuck it back in and fired it up and everything ran just fine. Thanks big guy, I will be sure to tweet/blog this new proof of your grace. Spent most of the night doing challenges farming mats for ring of the stalker and other Challenge gear.

Logged for the night around midnight planning on a full Saturday of grinding and enjoying DDo. However, come first thing in the morning no joy. No power at all, not just the video card not firing up…. Swap into a new power cord and the computer fires up but that was the last of my video card being helpful.

So I decide that it is most likely the power supply. Around 10 I start visiting computer shops around town. The first place I go, my normal first port of call, closed. Shame because that is where I bought Tobril a replacement power supply last time he was in town and his power supply gave out on him. Head to lunch and start making some calls. No one has power supplies but I get lots of try Office Max.

So I give them a try and they just stopped carrying replacement PS in the last 6 months. Grrrrrr.

Fine. My computer while newer then the wife’s is still more then a few years old and is ready for an update. So a little window-shopping on Newegg.com and I find a fair upgrade for a fair price. I could have tried to replace the power supply myself and saved some money but I feared that it was more then just a power supply issue and I knew it was time for a new system so win win right?

Hell might even buy a wife a replacement for her computer in a few months for a Birthday/Christmas gift if I really like this one and let the boy use her old computer as his gaming rig.

As I Hail Marry I tried using the onboard video card and things worked well enough. But DDo hates onboard video so very much. I couldn’t do much then walk with out wanting to puke I did try to be a helper for one quest all weekend with the wife caring the quest died twice I think and had to stop and close my eyes often. So little to no ddo for me.

But I did take the time to get the wife’s laptop running DDo somewhat okay they have similar issues with the graphics but when on the road sometimes all you want to do is backpack/bank work and pike.

I also got a side project up and running. Got the main Tv set up as computer screen so we can stream the google play and amazon streaming to the best screen in the house. If only the computer I used was a little more helpful. My old beast might become the entertainment pc. The onboard graphics should be fine for streaming. But ended up using the wife’s laptop last night.

Other then a board game with the fam and lots of Being Human or Game of Thrones that was my weekend. Should have done some bike riding but with out DDo I find motivation hard to come by; there is a reason it is 5/6ths of my entertainment budget each month. Go ride the bike for 30 mins and then do quests x, y and z.

Well back to work.

<3s

Gear Thoughts, While I Cry over PC Issues

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So last night my monitors wouldn’t fire up and I was hot. Swapping things a round and doing some testing either my slot has gone out or my power supply is on its way out. Have to see about stealing a Vcard from work for the weekend to see if it is the slot that is the issue. If so then it is new computer time again…. Because I have the $$ for a new computer right now, right?

But I was able to fire up things using the onboard video card, which is not super bad. But I think DDO hates onboard video because every step made me want to hurl. But it gave me the night to think about some gear options for my WF Arty.

Step 1, make a temp “epic” xbow. Hitting the AH I bought a cheep level 21 Xbow with the epic die steep. I need something to use until I farm some shards of power right? A quick look at what my now much less crafting levels (did my Arty life remember) can make/what I have left over in the unbound pile….. And a lot of nothing. Nice.

But holy is cheep and so is righteousness, cheep, easy and a step up until I do some farming. Done.
Next goal is to start a list of quick farmable items, aka simple raid items, AH finds, Cannith Challenge loot, quick chest farms and turn in loots.

So lets see the stand outs:

Ring of the Stalker and Ring of Master Artifice here is a link if you don’t know what I am talking about. http://ddowiki.com/page/Vaults_of_the_Artificers_loot I would add Bracers of wind also.

With Mabar on the way I will plan to get a Cloak of Night.

For Booties I think that Epic Golden Greaves or Epic Firestorm’s shouldn’t be too hard to farm up.

Lastly I will look into farming up a War Wizard set, meaning I might need to do some extra farming to make an Ancient Gemstone part of the set.

There is my basic list. I did look at like the Tinker set and it is fine but not really good enough to work it in all the time.

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Two Nights off, Well Sort Of

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I think my emo came across well enough the last few days. And I talked about my plan to not jump on the TR train again right away. Maybe I did not say this but for the last 5-6 lives the time I spend at level 20 on Samius have been less then 5 hours total. So I have a quick turn over time. So I kinda feel like I have just ground of 21.5 million XP with out a real break. Sure I have had lots of fun along the way. But some times you need to sit on your laurels and take a rest.

That doesn’t mean that I haven’t been playing. Lets not get crazy. It means that I spent the last few days doing something I haven’t done in a long time. Work on getting someone geared/flagged up. Namely my (sons?) F2P arty.

So far I have gotten him a Lucid Dreams. I feel it is one of the best Rune arms you can get, for sure the best with out raiding.

And not a lot else, but in my defense he didn’t need gear leveling. That is a huge part of what makes the ranged WF Arty so good. Hell, his main Xbow is a heavy repeater I made for him for level 2; Acid burst of nothing. So he needs something more.

He is shroud flagged and I will try and run him through for some shards and then pass him the mats for a pos/pos while I look into a more long-term item. But I spent an hour or so Tuesday looking for a Silver Slinger just because what else was I going to do?

Then last night, I had about 50 mins of play time before they killed the server for the hotfix and I ran a wizking and a chains of pain to work on my DQ flagging. You bet I will be farming this guy a torc while I farm for one on other alts. Might as well get two pulls instead of one, right? I was on my way to OOB when I noticed the world warning and just logged.

So I got some time to play, didn’t really do anything super helpful but at a totally freeing few nights playing. A few more while Tobril gets himself back to 20 and I think I will be ready for the push to completionist.

Hey if you have gear ideas for that arty that might not be too bad to grind for in my spare time let me know. Mean time I will just farm what ever happens to fall into his lap.

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Samius does Television

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Well first off that is not 100% right, I mostly do Netflix but this is the session for the “fall” shows to fire up so lets run down what I have been watching and what I am looking forward to catching.

I have been keeping up with my normal summer shows, Covert Affairs, Suits (this season was super good), Breaking Bad…. But I have some new shows for me in the last few weeks.

Being Human UK – I normally find the UK tv to be more my style (humor/writing wise) and I find it is easier for me to watch as I don’t know the actors very often so I can more easily think of them in their role in the show vs them on other shows or their personal actions out side of the show.

The Avengers: Earths Mightiest Heroes, Yes it is a cartoon. And I say Hell Yeah! It is really good. Started watching it with the boy waiting on planes to and from GenCon and finished it over this last weekend in a Marvel mini marathon in my basement. And I ran to the computer to see how I could get the second session. But it took a year off for rebranding and a little artwork redesign to align with the movie universe a little better.

Sherlock, I did not get enough of this show. Netflix only has the first season which is 3 shows. But I see now that Amazon has the second on demand so hello!

Falling Skies, Just bought the second season on Google play and I am loving it. I was stocking piling the shows (as I like to watch 3-5 shows at once) on my DVR when it died and we had to get a replacement. Grrrr, so 23$ for 10+ hours of show think that is money well spent

The normal Storage War shows, I really like this season of SW: Texas. The cut the sloppy lady (? Do we call bad post ops ladies??) and repaised her with 2 ladies. A so so looking but simi smart girl and a hot very ditsy lady. And Bubba/ Ricky combo never fails to make me smile.

Oh and got handed a copy of the first season of Game of Thrones. I have to say I am fairly pleased. I am like 4 eps in and I have gotten the gist of what is going on and I like seeing lot of (old) faces again. Speaking of seeing faces I had to pull out the IMDB to put roles/names to so many of them. I turns out that they pulled heavily from that British casting pool that I loved because I don’t know them. But now they have a history and it is messing with my mental story. Also the Queen is Sara Connor! And the king is Bill from still standing! Two of my favorite lesser-known actor/actress….

As for other things, Mentalist is about to start up, as well as the normal sitcoms and Syfi has their new eps of there super Mondays and they have been good so far.

I will try that new show Revolution? That show where the power stops and the jump to 5 years later and how people have handled the fall out. This is getting long so let me just list a few shows on my radar. Arrow, Beauty and the Beast (wife), Elementary (House replacement I hope), Mob Doctor (looks like a maybe). And I need to see if there is some way to keep fresh on Doctor Who so I don’t get spoiled too hard by my Brit tweeps.

So that is more or less my Tv list. Am I missing anything? Extra points for shows on Netflix.

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A Short TR Break

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My last few posts may have hinted around the fact that I am tired of TRing. And that is not quite true. I love leveling. It is a great deal of fun zerging quests and feeling the levels roll by. Gain 4-6 levels in a weekend and you might understand what I mean. But I am in a slow down atm and I want to do other things.

So I do what I always do when entering a funk, talked with Tobril. And together we decided to take a few days to do other things maybe a week (I am not 100% sure how long). I have a ton of chores to do to meet some of my personal goals here in real life land like spending more time on the bike as my weight loss as stalled out some for now more exercise is the answer and finishing the Green house and Chicken coop if i want to have those things for the winter.

So taking some time off of the xp grind might be just the thing to fire me back up for the next few bursts. Also it happens that I flew past the zerging Tobril due to a trip he had to take last week so giving him some time to get back to 20 wouldn’t suck for him and will let me farm up some loot goodies.

Let me see, I also have a list of things in game I want to try and get from the last few updates and this week is as good of time as any to farm things up.

My big question now is: Do I use Samius/druid to do this farming, Unlocking a primal ED or do I save my ED unlock for a later life and get into the divine ED via the Pally life or wait and pick a ED based around my final life?

Sure I can get anywhere sooner or later. But why work harder then I have too?

Oh this is a good sign that the topics might shift back to gear and loot for the next few posts. If you have questions or topics you want me to cover around end game/loot stuff now would be a good time to bring it up.

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Feedbacks

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Hey guys if you’re going to vote negatively could you please use the comments or send a fast PM and let me know why you’re doing so. Same for positive voting really: but I assume that positive votes with out comments mean you got a little enjoyment from the read.

Every note helps me out. Even if you say because you’re spelling is horrible or I think you’re an ass so I am voting you down. Neg votes on their own are not as helpful as a few quick werds.

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40K Xp Until Tree Time

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Most lives as I round things out I start to get excited to TR and get the ball rolling again. This life… Not so much. I am not sure if I am in a funk after watching my son face plant and then slide 4-6 feet across the pavement on our morning bike ride to set the tone for the weekend or if I was in caffeine withdraw. But I only gained like 3 ranks all weekend. With long breaks spent watching TV or not really doing anything at all…

But this is a new week so lets talk about the good game stuff that happened.

Healed a shroud as a level 18 druid. First of all we did get a clr to “solo” heal us, like I was just standing around eating worms. And second of all Mass regen/vigor stack for a fair amount of healing. Enough that after round 4 the clr who was solo healing the group still had more then half his Sp left. The actual feel at least for me was a lot like playing Java in shroud, Go in with the melees. Auto attack and watch timers. Mass regen/Cold Dot/ Mass Vigor/Call Lighting as able. I jumped out of the blades once I was out of Sp not trusting anyone to heal me. Hit my bauble and massed and spell dps but Harry ported with out a visible sliver of health left. Maybe if I had stayed in or the casters dumped their sp a little harder we would have had a 1 rounder. As it was he didn’t last long enough, once he returned, to get healed from his helpers.

What else, made a huge dent in the guild renown needed for our next guild level. Thing that with some help we will hit level 74 fairly quickly, which will be nice for store xp shrines +5%.

I was able to cap out my F2P arty on my son’s account. So now I can bring along a helper while soloing epics for seals/loots/stuffs. So that will be nice. Also it maybe handly to have an arty for the guild when running stuff together, I might be capping out my bard/rog on that account for the same reasoning.

The AH was a helper this weekend, I picked up a pair of silver wraps for 250k plat a fair price and then looking for some cheap dr breakers for my dog, thought I might bring him out for Harry beat downs, I found a pair of crafted holy evil out sider bane wraps that also were silver for 150k. Think they were so low because once crafted on the silver was hidden from the name so over looked over and over again making the seller priced them to sell. And I happened to stumble into them. I can easily see someone’s pet getting a set of devil dr breakers now.

Well that is enough BS, time to get some work done.

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The Probable Return of the Bowonk

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After a fairly good night for the lack of motivation I had at the time, It is that time again to start looking at the next life. And what is next/left. Up side my last life is Pally. Down side is now I have to play a pally.

A few posts back I had egg on my face when I went on how a druid/pally build would work, contently over looked a vital thing: Alignment restrictions. Ie both Pally and Druids have some. So I need to keep that in mind again. So no MonkBarb the Exploiter, Pally/Bard – Gospel Rocker builds, etc..

So first thought to come to mind is Bowonk shell 1.0, aka 6monk/6ranger/8 pally on a helf and to be fair that is most likely the way I will be going. But there are lots of other options.

My bowonk 2.0 frame would be good 9/1/10 monk/arty/pally lost some ranged options for(lets not lie) ToD. No room for bow strength or IPS or many shot. But still mostly soloed to 20 in fair time.

I think a 7/6/7 monk/arty/paly would be okay but as I am not 100% sure how the tie would work out for the past life I might have to use a heart to insure that this life counts as a pally life and I don’t want to deal with that.

I could do some kind of 9/10/x caster/pally/??. Just to keep playing with spells and whatnot but unlike 9 monk 9 caster has issues caring a build to cap.

So right now the most logical build to rock pally and get it out of the way is a bowonk heavy stunning/melee with range backup. So version 1 or 2 with a different leveling order to take a few pally levels early to enjoy the saves ands lay on hands. Might see if I can tweet out a different build to make leveling feel right if so I will let you all know.

<3s

Wildly Unmotivated

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My give a shit and do things fuel tanks are running low today. But I have to try and keep things rolling for you all content is king, right? So here is my update, which may or may not have a point or be good. You have been warned.

When my tank is running low I have a few things I do to pass the time in hopes I become inspired in my life and make headway on things.

Time wasters:

Catch up on any My.ddo blog posts I might have missed.
Skim the different DDo Forums even if I can’t be bothered to post. Although I will say the vault can be funny at times if not helpful
Read my own older posts.
Read EVERY twitter post on my timeline,
Double-check all the non-ddo blogs that I follow for updates
Political/Celebrity news. Yes I know that Kristen Stewart is wearing Robert Patinson’s shirts (even though Kristen Stewart is not hot, and I am not sure who Robert Patinson is)
Reread anything that has any interest for me at any time in the last few weeks.
Look for foodstuffs on Amazon. (Yes a lot of my food is ordered from Amazon)
Check all my different mails, I could have missed something.
Look at the old Cths and or DDocasts and try to find something to play to fire me up
Poop, always a classic pick me up and drop off the things weighing you down.
Window shop on ThinkGeek.com
Shoot my ballista at Fort Ironman made out of d6s I have on my desk.
And repeat above until I can go home and play ddo where unless some out side force gets me moving I run explorers until I want to /death /sleep for the night

Other then drinking and porn what tips do you have to get motivated? Willing to entertain almost any thought on how to get fired up.

I have work to do after all, Xp don’t earn its self yet.

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Earthquake is the Greatest Spell, EVER!

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Yep, I said it and I will stand by it. Earthquake is the best spell ever. Here is why:

IT TRIPS GLOWBALLS!

If I was a photo master like Geoff Hanna I would make some kind of poster with a bunch of glowballs laying on the ground with some witty text. But I am not, so use your imagination.

Last night my Tr group just finished up Dust (aka the save the spiders quest) and earthquake was a super star there. Yes it trips the hell out of spider. When the conversation turns in to “What is next?” talk. With 30sh mins left on ship buffs we all agree Running with the Devils should be next. And we don’t need to bother to rebuff because on Elite we will all die at least once. Damn, 200-point light rays.

The first room is often a real bear, sometimes setting the tone for the run. We decide that I will be the bait and Tobril and the wife will pull and kill guys off me. On a why not, try an earthquake while the guards wake up to kill us. Odds are good that they will be immune, might as well get a test out of the way.

Boom! 3 of the four trip before even transforming into their other forms. I yell come in earthquake works. And I trip the 4th guy with takedown. Doesn’t take a long and we hardly got a scratch. Quick look in the mirror, yep still smexxy and we are off.

We slow pull as able the guys wondering around the ground floor. And for the most part Tobril was able to ray them to come over and I could trip them with takedown and we would eat the bad men. We did get a group of 4-6 at one point but a quickened earthquake made them fall down and die to a furry of cold breaths and fireballs.

Making our way to the levers went smooth, also do to earthquake, stealth mode + quickened earthquake on glowball casters made things fairly fast if expensive in the SP department. I turned over my stack of SP pots to Tobril letting him be a blaster so we could move quickly.

Low on mana myself at the shrine things turned grim. The glowball I was targeting ran past me as I cast and the spell failed. The three of us split up each one taking a glowball. Tobril had the named genie as well and was the first to fall. At the point my slower cool down on my spells couldn’t keep up with the extra agro that I had picked up from him. And I fell not long after the wife lasted a little longer but by then Tobril and I had hit the shrine and were trying to recover when I chain lighting took Tobril out again, but right after the glowballs got in the earthquake effect and we ate them. And the genie died to a now fired up Tobril. (that is funny because he is a fire sorc) Post shrining we moved on and had no issues with the rest of the quest, trash died in earthquakes to fireballs and cold spells.

Even the big mean glowball died in quick order with Tobril blasting and the wife and I doting/healing Tobril. And we won, in about 36 mins, 21 pots later……We could have gone a little slower and saved pots but they are cheaper then the 30% pots we all had running.

Other things that trip in earthquake that might be note worthy, Lions and other dogs, Rust monsters, invisible stalkers (I think), I said spiders above (?) but not earth and air elies. Aka things with legs that are super hard to trip otherwise.

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