Hey everyone,

Looks like Lessah made public the news on Twitter last night that I have been trying to hold back. A few months ago she had a “major crisis” and while dealing with it one of the things she couldn’t do was play. They say 30 days is all it takes to form a new habit or change an old one.

She went cold turkey to handle her emergency and broke her ddo addiction.

She called and we talked it out a few weeks ago. We planed a good by show but couldn’t connect on a time to tape. Days turned to weeks and now it has been a with out a show.

I am still game to do a show, but I have a hard time picturing Cocktail with anyone besides Lessah. I always said she was the backbone of the show. With out her I just don’t think CtH with Samius and X would be the same.

Also I have my own personal stuff going on. And God willing I might not be able to do the show for contractual reasons. I do still play however, and be putting out a new Circle Jerk in the next few weeks. In fact I might do a spin off with the guys and steal my own title and do a hybrid of game and not game topics…. Who knows???

If someone out there loves the theme of CtH and wants to pick up the mantle or try out a guest host seat email me and we can talk about it. But unless Lessah suddenly returns or someone talks me into something; I think Ddo Cocktail Hour might be on indefinite hiatus.

I can still be reached in all the normal ways, Twitter, G+, PM, and as long as the shows email is available I will check mine. I will answer any questions I can and I will keep posting on my.ddo. I am sorry we couldn’t get that good by show out for you all. I wouldn’t unsub any Rss feeds or itune subs just yet. I am still hoping for some kind of good by.

Any way see you tomorrow.

❤
Samius

I have jumbled my TR plan; doing the sorc life and now the barb life. However I think the changes to the barb past life feat: Berserker’s Fury made going barb the right call. I always find room for toughness. Toughness with a few “perks” why not. And the bonus 10 hps, yes please.

If I got to play more then a few mins over the last few days; I might be tearing up the levels. But as it is my xp bar hasn’t jumped like I would like this week. I did level up to 10 last night. Mainly for the change of pace of quests. But that was about the extent of my game time; stupid kid’s homework that needed my help to get done.

But around ten I start thinking about the next life. And if I am not super thrilled with the current life maybe before 10…..

Lets just say I have been thinking about my order for a while now.

And I know the next two lives will be monk and fighter. Just trying what order they need to be in for the maximum win.

Monk is damage, and a clickly that grants temporary evasion? Damage is good.

Fighter is to hit and stun/trip dcs.

I have been using trip a lot more this life leveling up then almost any other life. In part from the old tanking CtH where Lessah praised it, but mostly do to the fact that my barb life currently doesn’t have much in the way of CC. I know I will be taking a fighter level or 2 once I hit 12 barb; I want the second tear of the PRE before adding other levels. Those fighter level/s are for CC. Stun for sure. If imp trip didn’t have a dumb prereq I might take it…. But I can see only needing the one extra feat for leveling; so I might only need one fighter level then who cares at 20?

So what is needed sooner? Damage or dcs? Odds are good that my fighter levels will be heavy monk splashes. Using wraps and mauls (I have lots of mauls 😉 )

The monk life will be the bowonk with a little different stats for 36 points vs 34. The Bowonk can use the to hit and the DC boost. But the fighter can use the damage….

Well I guess it will come to what I feel like at the time????

❤

In real life I am fairly scatter brained. I always have four or twenty ideas rattling around in my head. It is a perk when it comes to my daily life allowing me to multi task well. But it also means that while your talking with my I might hear and understand you, even partake in the conversation. But I might “really” be focused over here on this other thought. Don’t worry I will replay the conversation in my head and catch up. If out of the blue I start to question the conversation we are having as if I joined in the middle it might be because I did.

In Ddo I am super focus guy. This is what I am doing; help or get out of the way.

I bring this up because I still haven’t done the new raids or all of the new quests for that matter. Why? I was focused on capping Java with the goal of starting/playing my current TR for Samius.

I skipped a lot of the cove stuff. Why? Xp for Sam is a lot more on task then a few greens for some so so items and hats for other guys.

My main chat channel on the other hand, seems to run LoB or MA constantly. For a long time it was Epics and/or raids that I could use for xp or gathering items for gear on Java or Samius. But I haven’t seen them do much of anything other than those two raids. I don’t might being on the second wave of content. Let others go in and “learn the best way” and I can follow them and point out things that I think might be better. But soon enough people will be rocking their new super cool items and I will using Shroud stuff….

Oh well.

Sam is 9, and getting real close being forced to level. Think I might go head and level tonight just to move on to level 8 quests. My elite streak is in the 80s. It could be better; but there are quests that I just don’t do. Normally I race to 12 for gear. But this life I wanted to really try out the bravery bonus. I don’t think I am leveling faster. But I do get a much bigger thrill knocking out an first time completion on elite of say the pit for 30k then before. And I have to say the favor rewards don’t suck either.

I am still not sure if keeping my streak running at elite is best or taking it down to hard. In my gut I have the feeling that hards until I want the elite first time bonus is the way to go but I am not sure. I don’t like the extra time that doing E,E,E H is takes so I end up going E, H repeat hards as needed, then move on. I could use a number guy to do the math for me but I have the feeling that the time gained would make up any xp lost.

I am getting detracted by a few other thing; better run.

❤

I got word today that a good friend if mine has left Ddo. Maybe forever. Maybe not. I am not sure yet. But I do know that the two people that colored my play style and helped make me who I am in Ddo are both gone. Thanks and ❤ Precious and Crisis.

I am in shock I guess. When I meet them I would have thought that they would be rocking quests with me on the day the servers went down forever.

Crisis left a little after Turbine made the F2P move. He tried to last, but the glancing blow changes got to him. Add in a guildie laughing when he needed some support was the last straw. With out Ddo Crisis got in shape and was able to quit smoking. Last I talked to him, his life was good.

Precious, I am not sure the reason for his leaving but at least all he did was gift Tobril and I ownership of his F2P accounts. Meaning that he didn’t burn his bridges and salt the earth. But I don’t take advantage of my own F2P accounts like I should. How much lov can i give someone’s account?

Keeping up with these two is what gave me motivation to be better then I was. If you go back and play any Ddocast or CtH where I was on, at some point I will start on about being self reliant and effective. These traits came from playing with these two guys.

Anyway I just want to wish these guys all the best. They were good players and truly excellent friends. And if you guys are reading this, samiusgurobo on twitter and/or samius@ ddococktailhour.com.

Guess that goes for any of you that are in need of a Samius.

❤

I am at work post lunch and while I am getting things done my “give a crap” tank is sitting on empty.

How many of you know what I am talking about? That reserve of energy that you use to go the extra mile, be cheery and less of an ass. Yep I am kinda an ass when I am out of care today.

I am not sure why. Today is not any worse (or better) then any other day. But for some reason I just don’t want to. This is a dangerous place to be.

Not only do I end up approving projects I would normally hold back on until I can really explore the request. But in the game world I often find myself killing the training dummy all night. Because “nothing sounds fun”

Not sure how to refill the tank…. Ideas?

❤

Last night I promised the wife that I would help with some cove running.. I am mostly done with the cove but I have been running the same character over and over lately. Where she has been capping alts.

So once we had a mostly guild run going I swapped in to a caster and was given the task of scouting and burning. Running to the first group I walled and turtled up. And noticed I was taking a lot of damage. Look for a repair spell and ding. That was in the first 2 mins of the run.

Once raised I took a little few seconds to look over my setup. Fire wall is 3 repair 9 as it should be but my buffs and whatnot were in the old/old place. Then I remembered the last time I really played this guy was the first time cove was with us.

He went from 18 to cap running the cove and not a lot else… I even lucked sacked in to my torc while waiting for the cove to reopen last year. Since then, I think I might have done a DQ…maybe?

Lesson for the day, get a standard layout going for your alts. And/Or take the time once and a while to play some of your less loved alts.

I will say it was very embarrassing to have so many issues on one of my wiz/rogs. I used to be good at casting things…..

❤

Last night my shroom spores arrived. When I opened the package I was greeted with two little syringes full of what looked like water. That is not what I expected…. Then I looked a little closer and one said something like for microscope use only the other did not. WTF?

Looking around there was a little note saying, Sorry we had to do a swap but they will totally work. And our web site says we can do this. Let us know if there is a problem.

Well bloody hell….

Taking a closer look you can see super then cuts of mushrooms almost totally transparent. So I jumped on line and took a look at their site again and they also sell grow bags that are made to grow via injections.

After buying all the stuff I bought last night for the mushrooms to do it on the cheep I realized buying their grow bags for 30$ would have been cheaper in the short term.

So lets do the shopping list: (2 of everything more or less)

Totes, the ones I found were 11$. They didn’t have a good selection. Or I should say the only ones I found before checking out. As soon as I had payed and was walking out the wife walking next to me says “Would these have worked? They are 6$.”

/facepalm

Post Christmas this year when they are 3$ a tote I am buying a ton of them!

Speaking of the totes I drilled 5-8 small holes in each wall of the tote for some breathing room. Part of the shock price was picking up a new drill as my old one bit the dust a year ago….

Walking around the to pick up some Kleenex. I saw a smaller throw away baking pan. Like for a chicken vs a large turkey, think the idea is to make BBQ in the oven. They were about 2$. Think they will be great. I can put them into the oven for however long at a good hot temperature to sanitize them and the growing medium I got the other day.

The grow medium I am going to try is a small animal litter made from old news paper. It cost about 11$.

The plan is to divide the bedding, soak it with boiling water after I have sanitized the grow pans then put the pans into the oven at super low/off to get some of the water out as well as having a super clean area to work.

Once the beds are back to room temp I will injection the spores and enclose them in a tote. Stick the tote in dark, warm but not hot area and forget for a few weeks. I am hoping that after a few weeks about 6, I will be able to get my first bloom.

So for about 37$ + drill (I am going to lump the drill in here because I could have waited for another project to get a new drill) I am read to go. Tonight get everything going. Wish me luck!

❤

I am not real sure what to talk about today. This weekend was about half spent on trying to power level up Samius to 7 to catch up with Fopo. And I made it. I wanted to hit level 10 -11 so I would be with in striking distance of Tobril. But I didn’t get that far.

I have kept my streak running on elite. And I will tell you seeing some of the xp numbers in some of these quests make me sick.

12k for Proof is in the Poison, 11k for Ire Stone, 2k for Guard Duty? How shitty is the xp in 3 barrel cove? Very Shitty.

I think I will be banking xp starting now. I can hardly get all the quests done at level+2 before having to level up. Once the number of quests per level goes down, I can see a real problem of having to go back to do quests again on say hard, normal. But taking an xp hit on those repeats for being over level.

Not sure how to fix things. Maybe I try to do elites at level +1. Then at least I can do hard and normal with out penalties.

Also got up with the wife’s Arty. It is handy buffer to have around. Even at the low levels. And extra d6 can be the difference between one or two shotting a mob. And she seams to like it a lot.

Cove, wow. Does it feel borked to you? The kobolds don’t path well. Often stopping and turning around for no reason. Sometimes so badly you have to pull up torches to get them to move forward. And the maps seem to be harder to mine. The number of crystals feels about half there.

At least I can make some hats, fill up on my summon clickies and I don’t have to worry about building items. With any upgrade binding the item to character, they feel like a waste. Why would I burn a trinket for any of those items? I know someday I will want one of these cove items on some one, but as I don’t already have a plan. I’m not going to bother.

Well that is my weekend in a nut shell. Maybe tomorrow we can talk about how the shroom farming went as I should get the spores tonight.

❤

Last night I got to level Samius up some. After getting my anger set and my level 2 sword out of the bank I started leveling.

I went back to Korthos and started with the protect the cyrstal quest on elite. I want to try to keep an elite streak going as long as possible/practical. And I often have issues with this quest. One baddie gets by you and that rock is gone. But not this life.

Moved right along. Clearing out Korthos an elite. Once and done. I was level 2 almost right away. Which is nice. I find Korthos to be not very much xp for the time spent and sometimes I even have my son do the early quests so I don’t have to spend the time.

In the harbor I was worried that I might need to find a group. But thankfuly that fear was ungrounded. Information is key I all ways was able to run at first or second even on a melee wizard. It can be a skills test if you are under built. But if your right on it is not an issue.

Durk’s and B. Path was a lot harder with the lighting bolts flying, took 51 from one bolt and almost croaked. But as I have around 80 HP I was able to down a pot and run a round a corner and choke down a tasty ham. 🙂 Like there is a un-tasty part of a pig…

But hitting the boat/20 res shrines made my life a lot easier.

I did elite, normal, hard and done each quest until New ring leader. NRL is one of my favorite quests in the game. I like the option of bypassing parts of the quest if I am willing to give up some xp. I ended up running a few elites then a hard then normal. On normal I played a little looser with the Hps and went into the final fight with about 50 hps raged up. Bam! Bam! Also known as double crit and I was incapped. With about 20 secs left in my rage. Dang….

I ran the normal, and handing the game over to my son to run the hill’s explorer for me. I was a few thousand xp shy of 4 when I turned over the keys.

All in all I think the bravery bonus is a great thing for low level questing. It is a lot different for higher endgame level questing/raids. But very doable if your willing to put the groups together and lead them.

Any way I think at this rate I will be 10 ish by Monday. Think I will aim for 13 and be happy with what ever I end up getting.

Also I haven’t gotten any builds yet so, if you have one send it to me soon if you want me to try it. If not I might end up a 18/2 bard/fighter… That is too close to a “real” build for my liking.

❤

Just saw an ad via Ddocast’s Twitter feed about +3 tomes for sale in the ddo store.

Go a head see red. I will wait…..

I noticed last night that I would get some benefit from a +3 Str tome…. Will I run out and buy one right away? Ummmmm

Maybe. Guess like all things, it will come down to cost. If the price is right why not?

I know lots of players are worried about power creep. And Turbine going back on their word. I don’t think they have yet. But they are walking a fine line, that could go bad at anytime…

But I know people will complain on the forums. And I will be good and not say anything, good or bad on the subject. At not anything you didn’t read or see here.

❤