While I was ill I worked on my freshly TRed would be tank. So far the only quests I have skipped doing on elite streak have been the Cartamon chain and Freshen the Air. Every thing else has been elited.

The best quest so far xp wise has been Proof in the Poison. A level 4 market place quest. I used to skip it because it was long and way to expensive to bother with doing. Until Crisis talked me into it right after TRing first was added. And he pointed out the optionals make the quest.

(Optional) Kill Gnaghi Ugnot (25% of base XP)
(Optional) Kill Woathe (25% of base XP)
(Optional) Slay 40 members of the Quickfoot gang (30% of base XP)
(Optional) Slay 100 members of the Quickfoot gang (40% of base XP)

Don’t get me wrong it is still a pain as it seems like every other guy is an CC/magic missile wiz/rog Quickfoot Caster spamming Holds, Hypnos and stun effects. Every group of mobs has at least one grease dog and did I forget the Magic Missiles?

So it can be a challenge.

And to top it off you can’t keep a hireling alive. I tried, I really did. But my would be helper got him self killed in the fire traps for no reason at all that I could tell. Just ran out and stood there, burning to death. Hirelings should summon with the same (ship) buffs you have on you at the time of summoning. So I dismissed him right away, cleared another room or two and ran back to the start to re-summon him after 5 mins and did the jump off a stack of creates and call trick. He still ran through the fire but lived this time. Only to die later as he ran into some grease in an acid trap trying to unhold me I think and bit it.

Fine I started with 100 pots and 50 hams I will be fine. And I made it. 20 pots and 19 hams left….

But it was 16k plus xp for the final quest Xp. I am not sure how much in optionals but I would guess at least 10k. I know I ranked more then once while doing the quest. Good times.

❤

My guild, the Defense Guild, has be on the mend member wise for a while now. And we have grown from 3-4 truly active accounts to almost enough to fill a raid. And enough to short man most of them on normal easily enough. But we are short on a few things. Mainly Tanks and Bards. Right now I have the only raid ready Bard in the guild and Tobril has the only raid ready Tank.

As some of you know I have stepped up and capped Samyus (as a Ranger) and TRed him into fighter as my side project for times when Torrance is not in the mood to play. Last life I leveled Samius a lot anyway and ended up capped more then a week before her.

While I was sick I did some stuff with him solo. He his now level 6 with 7 banked. Or is he 7 with 8 banked? I don’t know i was sick, damn it. BTW, Defender stance is really good if you don’t already know. I took a suit of mithral full plate and glued invulnerability on it via the Canith crafting. And took a mithral tower shield and added +6 stunning. And I will say I can wade into a group of mobs and cleave and great cleave and keep myself up with pots. His Ac is not uber right now but at 8 I will keep a set of +5s laying around and try out going into AC mod. If I am 25 right now with out trying I figure that 40 is easily do able at 8.

I am thinking with gear (as full on AC as I can get atm, including a possible 3 piece abishi set, and a planed E Fang with 3 feats (Maybe Sentinel … or maybe stick with my travel marks ) I think a 90+ self buffed is not out of the question.

I don’t have the gear all laid out because until I have it on my guy it is subject to change.

It will be good to have a tank again. I would hate tank on Java in some raids back when he was a Pally. And I had the wiz version a few points short from auto intimidating most of the bosses at the time before he went FvS. I could tank normals as a FvS well enough. But not the biggest guys. And really what the DG needs is a tank for all the raids we want to do often.

Even if I am not the best-est tank ever Horath/Sully tanking and everyone below that should be cake for Samyus and that is what I am looking for at the moment. As for Lob…. Well I don’t know, maybe? Someday. If I ever feel like being a big boy tank. 🙂

❤

For weeks now my video card has been telling me it is going out. It ends up turning itself off to keep from burning out and dieing.

At first I when this would happen I would just open the case cool down the card with a can of compressed air and then leave the case open while I was playing. Then I started leaving the case open all the time. More air movement is good right?

Recently, I moved the case to the side of the desk and put it on a night table stolen from the bed room hoping to stretch out buying a new one a little longer. This seemed to help a lot as I hadn’t had an issue since I moved it until last night. When I went even more ghetto, I pointed a box fan at it while its case was open.

Yep, I became that guy….

But see I was playing with Tobril, doing Catacombs on elite with our freshly TRed alts. And had just finished downloading the newest Comic Book Men from Itunes. So I had things to do on my computer last night. I couldn’t be down for the rest of the night, right?

I new you would agree. 🙂

So this morning I am looking at new video cards on newegg. Wow, I don’t have 500$ to drop on a fancy new card. Wish I did but I don’t. I can swing 150. Maybe a hair more but not a lot more.

I am leaning towards the ASUS ENGTX550 (Link). Thoughts? Other cards to consider? I will ordering something in a day or two at most so if you know of something better for a better price please use the comments.

❤

I have talked a lot about watching out for tilt in one’s self and trying to avoid or recover from it, but what do you do when you see someone else spinning out? I am not totally sure. I can tell you making a joke or trying to use the moment as a teaching moment is not the way to go. Let me try to explain.

Over the weekend Tobril was ill. But being a motivated Ddo player he took his handful of meds and did really well. We got a ton done but I watched him tilt both Saturday and Sunday. And was at a loss as to how to help…

The first time was after a failed Reaver raid. I had went up to get the switch and Tobril lead the puzzle solving aided by his trusty solver. Now Tobril has had some issues since they switched the colors to the “color blind” friendly colors. And some times I have issues with the blue and the green if my screen angle if off, so I totally understand. Once he realized he had made a green/blue error, he handed me control of the puzzle but as it was not done in the method I use I didn’t have enough time to get my head around it. And we exploded.

Now here is the point where I realized he was tilting as the rest of the day before I thought was fine, tough in places but fine. In hindsight, I was missing the tell tell signs of a friend tilting and at this point he was full on tilt. I said “You know the brain never fails. If done right.” in hope that he finally might let me show him how to solve with out a solver.

That was totally wrong on my part, you can’t offer up help when someone is tilting like that, it is almost impossible for the offer of help not to be taken as bragging or as an attack. Which was not my intention. But I see that is could have been.

Aside note: I still feel that everyone can solve with out solvers, it is not hard to do or learn. It is not a matter of having fun doing something. It is like having Hps on a tank, sure you can tank with less HP but if your light on Hp there is less of a buffer when handling a fluke.

The next day healz was off DQ timer. As part of my get more then one role prepped for raids and epics I have been working to my 20s. As Healz was on 18 getting him to 20 was not that hard. 🙂 Again Tobril was still ill. I hope he is better today…… Kinda. If he is sick again that means he will be on again tonight and I would rather play ddo with a sick Tobril vs him be filling better and him being out doing something useful with his life. (What can I say? I am a greedy SOB)

Any way we go to DQ. He brings a fighter he has dusted off when I needed some help capping out Samyus (He was super gimpy, Samyus not Tobril) We have myself, Torrance (on Torrance, wow), Tobril and Tim on his monk. Wanting the best odds for something on my 20th chest I went elite over some others protests. I was not on my game. I forgot to get my metas back on after buffing. I need to take some time and do that meta per spell thing but I don’t think I will any time soon. The queen decides to BB as soon as she is active before porting off and a slew of other errors on my part resulting in my many deaths. Even so we almost had her, in thanks to everyone else picking up my slack. If I had my shit together I believe we would have had her. But they could only do so much. Take 2 , I was playing better and we also did hard. (Storm in the chest and no Torc in the list if anyone cares.)

Stiner had logged on to help with the planed hard shroud but Tobril was tilting again and “felt like normal” and this time I kept my mouth shut and let him roll with it. And a normal was had. I took the time to craft and then I braked for dinner. When I returned I check in via some tells and I got the sense that he was feeling better. I don’t think I helped him at all. But what did help? How did he pull himself out?

I think he also took a dinner break. Taking an hour or so away from what ever your tilting on has to help. I am sure getting some food helped and when he returned he had non-questing plans.

But I am still at a loss as to how to help a friend when on the tilt. If you have any advice for helping a friend or yourself let me know in the comment area.

❤

I remember A_D on one of his many SP pots should have a longer timer rants saying something like, SP Pots are game breaking. With the willingness to drink enough pots almost any content can be completed. I have always argued that a if a group is going to fail they will fail no matter the number of pots drank, but a few drank can make the quest smoother or help cover an unexpected error or tip fail to win if it is close.

Well last night I drank and drank and drank, guess what? We won. By the skin of our teeth. Let me tell you about the most costly shroud for me yet. It was also one of the best DDO rushes in a long time.

Shroud goes up, Torrance(her name sake Clr), Tobril, Fopo and myself on my ClR (Healzyounot). Everyone but myself checks out and does their own thing for a bit as we fill. Right away the question of difficultly pops up. Looking at the people so far and remembering the shroud I ran the other day on normal I figure what the hell lets do “hard”. Swap the lfm, ask if anyone feels they need to leave, etc….

We get a few more people and off we go. Right away Tor and Tobril smell a problem. There are a lot of 4-5 timers here. And a few worried about doing it on hard. Fuck. I went over this on voice and then changed the lfm. Read the Lfm people.

But we move along smoothly enough. Until part four. Somewhere in the first round Tor takes a double fireball/meteorstorm to the face and is out. And I am the sole healer (drink, drink). When the blades get in the group falls back and fails to reform on me. “I am not playing wack a mole” I yell over mic. “Get in here!” And then there were 5. Think there was Tobril, 2 barbs, a caster and me. Fopo may or maynot also have been alive here too.

Over looking the cat calls as to this being a fail, or a wipe we finish in about 3 rounds. About 13 pots used. I have never drank pots like that before and I don’t plan to again. But I am glad I had them to drink.

Rez who we could and move on.

Part 5 was going well again until the barb I was targeting moved back to wait on a heal and all the others that really needed that heal died. We would rez, and people would run back in with death penalties and then die again. There was a 12/6/2 clr build that had an aura but as he got rezed he would get in before healing up and die. I told him to wait until I could fix him up and then get back in but it was clear that it was about to become Defense Guild does the Shroud. People died and got to the point where is was just Tobril,Tor and I. We rez the whole raid group again but it doesn’t take long before it is just the three of us again. Then Tor gets hit hard and dies. A few times. I have been drinking now any time I can’t cast aka the last 15 mins. And I take a big hit and go down. My DI saves me but the follow up finishes me off. Tor drops and it is Tobril alone with Harry at 5% . Tobril Starts really moving and clickles Tor and I to life. Off mic Tor and I make a plan, I will heal Tobril and Dot Harry, she will pick the one of the barbs and dot. But in the end it was the three DG members again standing. I went from 99 majors to 67.

But we won. Tor drank 11ish. People sent some pots and she said she was only one or two down at that point. She got 2 scales I got 3 power cells and an arrow head.

Anyway I hadn’t had that rush in a while and it felt good. Even now as I think about it I smile. In a few days when we are off timer think I am going to try and have a few more DG members around just to make life a little easier.

As the raid leader it was my call and my responsibility to get us through. And thanks to people that wouldn’t give up we got through. All I can say is I am glad I got those store pots back when they were on double sale.

❤

Yesterday I laid out my wishy washy back and forth on what this life should count as. I have had many people inform me that I need to “do fighter” and mover on. And I want to thank you for the advice but I think you all are wrong.

Using my bowonk shell I go to the bow to make the room dead about 30% of the time in general questing. And I would say 80% of the time against final bosses once manyshot is available. At least for the first 20 secs. 🙂

+2 resists from ranger past life and +2 from monkey path equals a happy Samius. Sure with ship buffs they are mostly unnecessary but that time when you take 0 even though your friends are taking some roll over damage you will smile a little. You can lie to yourself but you can’t fool me.

Lastly, two more points of AC if I can work in the feat brings me to mid 60s at 12 and 70s at 14. I am assuming I can go more with my default DT rope (Amp, Amp, Rad guard) over my Jidz. Not to really mention I can do something else with my tinket slot. Maybe I can go back to my attack/dodge one?

I might go back on this and end up fighter, but really the main perk of fighter is I don’t need to burn any extra feats for maxim effect, but that is because the fighter active feat is shitty. My to hit is good enough that I can’t remember the last time I turned off power attack to have to hit. And that extra +1 to trip and stuns, I might not trip as well as I would like but I stun with the best of them. If I was going to stick a round at cap for a while and needed that stun DC higher for epics I would totally take fighter. But thinking about how the train rolls, I will be level 1 again the day TRing is back turned on or real shortly there after once the others coming along are ready to go.

So there it is all that and back to the class I wanted to do this life. Maybe I should have done that 11/9 ranger/monk. Oh well live and learn. :3

❤

Last night on Samius, I capped out first quest. But as the rest of the train is still a ways away from hitting that goal, I swapped to Samyus for the rest of the xp last night. Not that there was a ton left. After all it was a Epic Tuesday turned to xp runs for lack of guildies. But we can epic other nights once everyone is capped as long as TRing is turned off.

Back to the point…

I am still wavering as to what this life should count as on Samius. As 6/6/6 monk/ranger/fighter and already having the monk past life I have 2 real options. I have listed the passive and active feats before. But as they are easy filler here they come again. As always thanks to the Ddowiki.

Passive Past Life: Fighter – You were a Fighter in a past life. You occasionally find yourself filled with the urge to bark orders to your fellows in combat. Each time you acquire this feat you gain +1 to attack rolls and +1 to the DC’s of your tactical feats.

Passive Past Life: Ranger – You were a ranger in a past life. You occasionally find small animals in your backpack. Each time you acquire this feat you gain +2 damage with ranged weapons and +2 to elemental resistances.

Active Past Life: Student of the Sword(Fighter) – You recall more about your past life as a fighter. You have +2 to your Intimidate skill, +1 to the Maximum Dexterity Bonus of armor and shields, and can remember your martial prowess three times per rest, increasing your base attack bonus to your level and granting +4 to hit.

Active Past Life: Warrior of the Wild (Ranger) – You recall more about your past life as a ranger. You have +2 to your Spot skill and can produce a Barkskin effect three times per rest. (Activate this ranger ability to toughen the skin of an ally, giving a +2 natural armor bonus to AC with an additional +1 bonus for every 3 caster levels above 3rd, to a maximum of +5 at caster level 12th.)

Now both passive feats are good and helpful for my bowonk shell lives. But I am thinking that I will try a 11/9 rog/monk next life as I think I want to roll up something like that for all the time. So for the next life the fighter passive feat is slightly better.

The active feats are a different story. Student of the Sword is fine but I could carry a clickly of divine power if I need to make my bab better. I haven’t bothered to carry a clikly in a long time….But Warrior of the Wild on the other hand maybe super helpful assuming I can find room for it. If you have been reading for a while you know that I have been going AC while leveling up as long as possible for ease of leveling. And 60s maybe 70s is very do able with the bowonk shell. Although finding room for another past life feat will be tough….

I plan to take my levels soon so hit me with your thoughts..

❤

Last night there was much debate, both with the wife and with Fopo about what and when to pre order our Underdark Expansion. To skip to the end some the wife and I both ordered last night. But their was more debate that I want to cover.

To do the super Tp pack or Not, That was our question. Last month when the super sale happened we both found room in the budget to pick up points. And we feel good about that. Or I did (not so sure about her) until last night. Wow…. Kinda wish I had waited now. But even so I thought we should try to find room for the bonus Tp deal. My thought was that 11k Tp + what we have would be more then enough Tp to switch to Premium and remove a monthly (really every 3 month) bill.

Here is the clincher. The point my wife made that I had no logic to counter. She said “I don’t think I want to loose my VIP status, do you?”

Hmmm, No.

I like being VIP. I know that the the perks of being a VIP seam to be dwindling. But to me it is being the better consumer. Right now I feel by my remaining VIP I am saying this game is good enough and I enjoy it enough that I will “buy” it every month. My view of Premium players are this game is good enough I will buy this and that and at any time I don’t want to support the game with my check book I wont. Both are totally valid methods of paying. But VIP right now it the way for me.

I know I will I regret not getting this pack bundle I use my Tp on a whim, and it is a killer deal. Maybe I will see if there is a hack around after I get payed and see what I can do.

Lets shift topics some:

Why did I pre order last night? Tomes of learning. Cute little pets. And I was going to do it sooner or later might as well be sooner.

So who gets the big tome of learning? A question we all talked about last night. I picked Samius for two reasons. One I was piking some Dreaming Dark runs last night while I bought and set up the pre orders. I didn’t want to slow the people down that were moving my counter up. And I hear that there is an tome of learning upgrade that we can use to boost the other guys tomes. Samius only has 4 or 5 more lives he has to do. Java is currently on life 3 or 4. He can use the help as I assume I will take him completionist at some point.

Pets, I like them. I named the little wolf after my puppy Qywnn. Bought her the dance trick and a top hat and sparkle collar. And I am very happy. Now when I do my naked dancing waiting for the group/raid to fill I have someone to dance with. We noticed some status lag dealing with the pets last night. Tobril never saw her in her little top hat. I have to assume that as the pets are ran client side that the main server packet is fairly simple as to the status of the pet. I guess it is passing a Who and some Whats (wearing, doing if an action). We found if you did a gear swap it normally fixed the whats but not always. Also I couldn’t get the tricks to work from the quick bar. But Fopo had no issues. Hope to get that working tonight.

Meeting time. See you tomorrow.
❤

Saturday night, a call goes out for a hard Tod via the ByoH channel. Almost instantly the wife perks up and want’s t to go. She just booted up her Bowonk, and wants to try some other parts of the raid. She has a few ToDs under her belt as a healer. But that is about it.

We end up restarting as one of the healers ends up dieing in part one before we really get set up. Recall/DD. The last few people huddle together hoping that someone else will take the agro and they can get out. As I understand it there was one person kitting around the bosses saw Torrance recalling ran them over to her and then ported out. I only caught part of that as I was recalling out my self at the time and went to loading screen as the person kiting first heading towards her.

Have I told you all that she takes character death personalty? She does. And it makes her a better player. She is often the last one to die in a wipe. And often turns the fight around and prevents a wipe from happening. Phlor has a similar power. But his is more of the run away early and often variety. Better part of valor?

Anyway we wait for the 3 or 4 people that died to rebuff and get moving again. And part one goes smooth this time. Part two our kiter goes down at the very end. Oncler jumps out and intimidates and lives long enough for the group to finish up. The wife pulls the necklace for one of my rings and woot! Set bonus damage time. Aka good times.

Part three is where I ended up loosing it. We start, Sully shows up and knowing that the party takes sully off and kills her the wife goes in some. About that time the Sully “tank” starts crying foul. Because he can’t take Sully off her in the first 30 secs. Right away she discovers her error and turttles up waiting for the “tank” to do his job. Mean while he berates her and tells the healers to stop healing her. And she dies. And via text stands up for herself. Both Tobril and I do a little voice work. I want to point out that the “tank” lost agro many times. Where my poor monk ending up with the agro a few times. And we ended up with a few deaths before Sully went down.

Mean while some chatter went on, with Tobril defending Torrance as she followed instructions as she was given and they needed to shut up. I had lost it and had to be quite or vomit angry Samius over mic. Until we switched to Horroth when the chatter picked up again and I did go off a little. I don’t remember what I said but it was loud and full of words I try not to say. It shut everyone up until we finished the raid. For a group that wouldn’t shut up to go to pin drop quite I must have really unleashed. And I have the feeling that I made an angry impression as I don’t think any of those people ever heard me raise my voice before let alone thought I had such vile in me.

Watching my temper is something I have to do all the time. I can be quick to anger and once started it boils and boils. There were seven or eight people that didn’t deserve to hear my rant but they had to and to those people I am sorry. But I was not going let the blame fall on the wrong person for the cluster F%$& that was that last round. And I have a long memory when it comes to people that have pissed me off.

Well lets see if we can all get along from now on or if I am about to become one of those prima donnas that can’t play with some people. I hope we can all get along. I really do. But even as I write this I am becoming so angry that I just better stop before I rage on for you all.

❤

I have talked about tilt before. But if tilt is a new term for you I think of it as how bad play/mood encourages more bad play making the mood worse causing more bad play and onwards in a death spiral. Aka suckville. Last Wednesday, was one of those nights where I wish I was looking for tilt.

Looking back I have to say it started before I sat down at the computer. I was already not feeling well, and had a long day at work. But that is why I love Ddo, relaxation is only a few clicks away. Turns out the wife had hurt herself and was talking the night off to recover. So no major xp gains planed on the Trs.

No big, Fo and I wanted to try some challenges at the higher levels, mainly for xp. Looking over my list of ingredients, I need talismans to make a ring of the slayer at level 12. Might as well kill two birds with one stone. We end up doing really well netting 3 or 4 hundred ingredients, but it turns out we were in the wrong challenge. Grrr. We team up with Tobril, who wants to get some ingredients for items as well and we try the right challenge for the right ingredient. We do what I think was great. Until the power leveling hits for the ingredients, like 50. when 2 or 3 hundred would be about right.

We try moving on to some of the other quests on epic just to get a handle on their xp. Takes a little bit to get the wheels moving communication wise. Fo and I have been doing the challenges enough we have a pattern and a short hand that we use to keep things working smooth. Trying to add in a few more people can be frustrating for everyone. Take that and add Tobril being the only one that was handling more then 1 mob alone. Having to move in teams like wolves to protect and clear for our little miners. And team member a sees trouble on the left and member b sees trouble on the left and end up in trouble.

But I do think other then Devil Assault the epic challenges might be the quickest way to make tokens.

Then we move to ToD flagging. While Tobril was around to strap us to his back. Did I forget to say this was on elite. With out a divine? I died like 4 times. Three mobs were too much for me to handle alone. One on one I was fine. But with Tobril clearing the way and us pikers either working on side tunnels for chests or standing just far away that 4 or 5 mobs would port over at a time to kill us while Tobril handled the rest. It was tough. And when I said “Just leave me down.” I knew I was tilting hard. My play was sloppy and I was done. We wrapped that run up and I was out for the night.

Had I caught one of the earlier signs maybe I could have done something to make the night better for me. Instead I logged 3/4 angry at myself and read comics until bed.

I had to have been super good company that night. 🙂

Lates,
❤