Category Archives: Uncategorized

Fun and other Frustrations

by

0

Lets just say last night was a mixed bag for the Gurobo family. The night started off well enough, I got half an hour or so to adjust my gear set up and spell list for lvl 13 and swapped to my Dps alt that I have been leveling in my “spare” time.

Think I need to pause here and talk about the wife for a sec. A few weeks back (think I talked about it) the DG did some epic Devil Assault runs and Tobril and I used our alt accounts to double our pulls. Ever since then Torrance has been working on HER alt account. At first she got a fresh F2P account and was trying to level up a wizard more or lets for nothing. She did use a few guest passes but for the most part that account was living off earned TP, way less then 250 points across her and my account. Then she started to stumble some with the limits of F2P. But before she invested money to go premium I suggested taking a look at a friend’s old account he turned over to me.

This account has 3 slots, a drow ranger, a human fighter and another low level melee, no one above level 16. In fact I powered up the fighter into stoning range and stoned that char to 16. The other thing is that account only has a few hundred hours of playtime in it. So the gear is not great. But very useable even if it is from, as Tobril would say the time when “we would have killed for something like XXX” which is vender trash now….

So rewind back to me switching to my dps melee at level 15 having ran most of the GH walkups into the dirt solo on elite, when the wife says want to finishing running through the GH walkups. A few days back we did the first 4 on my walkup loop.

I of course would love to help; and we where off to XP land. Tobril logs on while we are finishing up the first one, letting him know I will be 10-15 mins before the TR train can resume, the quests go smoothly.

Wrapping up the GH walkups I swap to TR train XP land and do a some XP runs in the Sands. Normally Tobril and I would do a nice outer loop hitting all the walkups+ OOB and then recalling back to town for our 5 or 6 end rewards per loop and I would be a happy camper. But Tobril had soloed the easy tomb walk-ups for the Wiz king so we skipped them in addition the plan this life is to skip everything that can be ran epic to make the 5 epic levels very quick ie no Wizking or OOB…. So we ended up spending a lot of time running in the explorer zone running between the 3 walk–ups that we could both do. Not good for xp per min… But lots of time to hang and BS.

Once Tobril was done for the night, I switched back to Darth Samius for some xp, but Torrance started a hard RitSack. Which would both break my streak and jump my content a lot. So I hit a Elite Madstone with my hire FvS.

As I am doing my own thing I hear the wife getting frustrated. Why are earth ellies messing with me here? I think I am lost. Why do I bother, this quest is taking forever…. Last thing I remember about her game play last night was a HUGE lag spike that more or less froze her client until she just god buttoned the machine and went to bed. It was a every frustrating night for her.

Mean while my hire died in the 3rd sear fight and I lost 5% xp…. What can I say? I was able to complete my quest. If my game locked up like that I might have thrown a mouse into a wall. I would have been so angry.

Anyway, tonight should be better, looks like there is much epic xp to be had as well as the return of the undead hoards. Catch you in game. Oh and before i forget enjoy your Turkey day USA and to the Brits i will see you a few nights this week but i might be 3/4 asleep/stuffed with tasty bird goodness.

<3s

Gear Swap Maddness

by

2

This weekend was a good one, spent lots of time playing with the B (British) team. Did lots of the new quest pack both core DG on Eh and with the B team on EE. What a difference 3 more quality players make. We even pulled some good stuff, Tobril got all the pulls on our Eh runs and the EE orb and a set of armor, Grim I think got a set of the bracers and there was one or two more named loot drops but they don’t come to mind as I can’t be a jealous dick as I pulled a INT upgrade tome to +5…. What you need a +4 tome to make this thing work…. Shit! ☺

Got a lot of xping in as well, logged off after taking lvl 13 due to xp cap. So making progress. Assuming Tobril and I get to play at our normal rate this week until the holiday we should be around level 16-17 by Turkey day.

But that is not what I want to talk about, I want to talk about how my gear changed up over the weekend.

If I remember correct I started off with fire/acid sticks and an electric trinket. For the most part that covered my main spells. I was mostly using Acid blast/web/lighting bolt for damage. Then once I had firewall I would wall and then acid blast. Meaning gear swaps and gear lag….

So cleaned my trinket and made it an acid boosting trinket. Lighting bolt got pulled from the spell list trying to save a casting swap and Acid rain got more play. And life was fine until level 5 spells aka Ball lighting. And lets not to forget Green steel items coming on line shaking things up even more…

Okay… Green Steel on and now lets swap out my life shield 5/magic buckler for new a better lighting sick in my off hand. Incoming damage went up a so I drank a few more pots, but for the most part quest time was lowered. As now I could just acid blast/ball lighting and move past most mobs like a sorc.

Then Saturday night I had a window to fix my SF enchantment error and I took it. Now I am a proper evocation Archmage forcing me to reworking my stuff for more force damage. Out went some APs for hps along with some APs that where making crits happen more often and they went in to force damage. So now my main element types (Force/fire/acid/elec) have 5 or more APs in them meaning I need to fit in 4 element items + Green Steel/Torc + Hp items – my SP helm (with large guild slot).

So this is how I set right now, Force stick, Ele shield (Crafted a new one with a large slot for SP but turns out that you can’t slot SP in a shield as the game things it is a weapon) and a fire/acid trinket/ring I can’t remember what element is in want slot.

But as always the only real truth is “change is constant.” With the level up to 13 last night all my old raid gear comes on line now also. So the first hour of today’s game play will be gear shuffle all over again.
<3s

What is YOUR Favorite “Thing”?

by

3

As most of you know, I have been xping/TRing Samius for a long time. Now that I have gotten my completionest feat I am doing a “final” life to get back into the end game some. Those of you that know that also should know that I have leveled as a few different races but according to DDo I am a dwarf and not a very fat Halfling as I intended.

I noticed right away at level 2 when I went to grab one of the items I picked up a while back for low level guys a (icy burst) holy-pure good falcon race required Halfling level 2. Not a deal breaker as I have my BTA (icy burst) holy great axe also at level 2. But I was a little sad that I wasn’t going to be able to use said item…

A few more levels go by and we are level 8. I got just the toy for a wiz/rog who is really just making himself feel better when “helping” when it comes to melee dps; a level 8 (icy burst) paralyzing long sword, again RR Halfling…. This time the umd needed to use it is closer to my standing umd score (at the time of 16) of 18 so with a heroism buff I could use it… I did run two clickies at the time, so it sat in my pack most of the time. Think I used it once… Damn undead quests once I get my extra cool toy out…

At 9, I was able to take completionest (huge skill boost) plus the seven finger gloves even more to umd and plainer girds on line want to say my umd is around 28 want to say I can boot into the 30s fairly easily. I would have to look to be 100% that is true, but my UMD right now is good enough to allow me to use just about anything I want. For the most part it is all about the gloves.

I remember when I first pulled them. Think I did a segment on DDocast about that day. I won them in a roll and I was so pleased I took my headset off to share the good news with my wife while a dickhead scolded me over voice chat because “HE NEEDED THE LOOT MORE THEN I DID.” I got a few tells from party members asking if I was going to let him talk to me like that? When I finally noticed what was going on and checked in on the raid I was surprised that someone tried to begrudge me of my loot. And then he tried to do so again now that I was around for my lecture. He is still the only person on my guild’s banned list, Doppleblock. Don’t even know if he plays any more but he will never play with me again that is for sure.

So I guess I am saying even though I have “better” loot at higher levels these simple level 9 gloves are my favorite item in the game and a quick count of my past lives I am wearing them when I TR 6 times. 4 or 5 other times I am wearing Vile Blasphemy which is like the 7F gloves cousin.

So now you know my favorite DDO “Thing”, what’s yours?

<3s

DDo is trying to KILL Me.

by

6

I don’t know about you, but for the last 2-3 months I have been getting really strange deaths. There have been a couple of deaths that I lay at Tobril’s feet, but those are okay as I get him from time to time.

So lets roll things back a life, to my pally life. We are level 2 or 3 and we are zerging Information is Key, I don’t have any idea which run we are on but I assume it was one of the elite runs. Tobril is killing the mobs; I jump up on the crate break a box or two, pull the lever and then jump down. The screen freaks out for a second and I take 500points of damage from falling….. WTF?

Fast forward to the other day doing the bloody crypt and I fall through the floor and in to the red nothing that is the out side of the quest. Touched on that in another post but as it more or less auto “released” me from the quest so the team took reentry penalty, I count it as a death.

On Tuesday, Tobril and I were running the Delera’s part 2 and I was trailing behind cleaning up the optionals and I when to hit the chest behind the acid traps. I could see all the little acid sprayer heads and Tobril had been “disarming them” aka setting them off while he loots the chest so I didn’t think anything of it as I ran over to loot my chest. Hit the loot all button and I get that goes in the bag lag, as I want to say I had 10millon gems in that chest, when the trap goes off. I try to move but I couldn’t. Looking at the combat log I took 6 hits most I saved until the end where I rolled a 1. I was at -170 hps with a 30 acid shrine. Post death I was still trying to get everything in the bag, tasty lag deaths. After that Tobril took a moment to get the other trap for sure for me.

Then on Wednesday, T and I were doing Delera’s 3 just running up a stair case, right before the shrine and boom I took 1000 points of falling damage out of the blue. I still don’t know how it happened. As I was running up a staircase, not jumping or falling off anything, when it happened. It was a total shock.

I couldn’t imagine trying to play as a permadeather right now. Any step could just kill you out of the blue. It would be like win the devils attacked the market place a few years back. Just not play any prema alts…..

Oh well I am still having fun so works for me. You have any strange out of the blue deaths to report from the last few months?

<3s

What I Really Learned at Turbine HQ

by

1

First off I signed a NDA while waiting in the lobby. Can’t really say what it said or if even saying that I signed one is against the rules but I did. So with that I mind I can’t get all spoilery for you all, not that I really saw anything really anyway. What I will do is talk a little about what I picked up on vs what I was expecting.

What I expected was nerd heaven, dice, game books, toys and other “nerdy things” all over. What I got was a lot closer to my own offices with a lot more industrial feel. I know I keep hanging up on this and Glinn/Jerry might laugh at me for hanging on this but they had a drop ceiling and huge areas with no tiles. I should say islands of tiles above desks for lighting.

Also Turbine guys I am telling you right now I will no longer care about your tweets about the office being cold. Heat rises and you have 6ish feet of more ceiling then you should have, it is going to be cold.

Back to the toys real fast, I want to say 1 in 15ish desks had toys or somekind of DnD stuff on it. In my head from tweets from the employee’s I expected that to be a lot higher…

Also they were still cleaning up post Halloween; I was there on Election Day so 6ish days after the fact. I expect their party/hunted house may have been bigger then they let on. There were at least 5 people on clean up at 530-600 pm when I was there.

One of the first things Glinn walked me past was what he called the fish bowl; all I remember seeing was a ton of monitors with line graphs. If I remember correctly he said that they covered different things like server pop and other metrics. He said one really bad day one of data sets lines formed something that looked the batman logo.

I only saw 3 or 4 offices, most people had short walled cubicals when I asked Tolero said they like being able to have a conversation with other people with out getting up, made things “more cozy” (about 80% sure she said “more cozy”). Again very strange… Was she hinting/saying they were like more like a “family” at Turbine???

I am getting long here so I want to end saying I did get to meet a few Devs, as I am not a huge dev forum troll I can’t really say I know any of them with the possible exception of Feather of Sun, who I didn’t kick in the nuts as he was talking up the epic GH loot, which in hindsight I wish I paid closer attention too and Vargoullle. Over all I remember being mostly pleased with the loot, would have been nice to drop some hints on you all but I truly don’t remember. Want to say I had good feelings about the Stormreaver Napkin, for Samius. But most Raid loot is good for someone right?

I had just missed out on meeting Eladrin but that is okay. Have the feeling that he wouldn’t have know who I was anyway. I was kinda surprised that more people there didn’t know me. I have had a lot of emails from the dev team over the years (okay mostly to Lessah and I when we were doing the show on a schedule) and I wanted to put some faces to names. But oh well.

Oh and there were lots of people playing different games as I walked around I did see ddo a few times, but a few I that I had no idea what they were playing. Glinn said it was after hours and the next bus wouldn’t be by for a while so lots of people just hang out until doing what they want until then. Just being able to have DDO installed on my work computer would make my day a total loss. ☺

Well back to work,
<3s

Ps, they really did have huge pretzels hanging from the ceiling in one “wing” of the building. Tolero said when it arrived she thought that they might be getting a pretzel machine, but no joy. She has no glue what it is for. Just another mystery of Turbine.

Bloody Crypt, like a Baby Shadow Crypt

by

1

So last night Tobril and I leveled to 8 and started xping. We finished up Splinter Skull, worked on Gray Moon some and then formed up with another small group for some Bloody runs.

For the most part each run was simi-smooth although with a full group and breaking into 4 teams, each to cover a corner the scaling was a little off. Shooting from no skull to red in seconds and gone again not quite as fast only to return again and again. I had a soul stone moment; when the wife who was my kill the caster person got called to help another melee, on the way from finishing my side I saw I had missed a priest and went to look for him. I had 42 sp left and planed to use it to fuel a death blow so I started the fray with a use of a fireball wand I happened to have. He lived and countered with a hold person, I failed to save as always (how many bard lives to not auto fail will saves?) and the 5 other guys I pissed with that fireball off killed me.

We also had a good time for a moment when we had just restarted and was clearing the first mobs when I fell threw the floor in to the red goo that holds that dungeon. I took a moment and placed myself on the map at the end of the quest for a funny screen shot and was /stucking when I was sent to my bind location out of the quest… I can understand having some kind of catch all for people falling through the floors, but can’t was use the /stuck command or maybe return people to the quest start? Ran back to the quest, did my corner and helped the not Tobril melee’s to do their corner also…

After wrapping up Bloody, Tobril and I did a little more xp quests where he decided to take his turn as a soul stone and get carried around by me.

Over all it was a fun night, Tobril caught up and pulled ahead a little xp wise so I will solo a bit of a walk down in a quest or two before taking level 9, which should mean that some time tonight you will see a tweet about how I am the first DDocaster to hit Completionest.

As always, xp for everyone but more for me. ☺

<3s

Good to be Home Again.

by

1

Friday after a bout 90 mins of waiting for Tobril to get his gear in order, Tobril and I started xping on our newly level 1 mains again, this time for real. Unlike the last few runs, where capping was the goal, this time we are spreading out hitting the important favor and pushing even more xp later and later to try and save some quests for post 20 epic action.

Have to say things feel more relaxed and settled. We are both back in our “normal” roles. T in his melee role and myself in a caster hybrid role although I am shifting in to less of a melee and more caster a little ahead of my normal wizard path, but I will talk a little more about that later.

Logged last night having played for a little while at level 7 with (I think) plans to take 8. Want to say we have a little room xp wise but since we finished most of the level 5 quests that we want for favor we might as well move up and start the 6s.

Finding my footing again as “the caster” has been fun. At first things started as a melee, first level was a rogue after all. Then as I started adding wizard levels I slowly was able to mix in spells. Acid spray and shocking grasp were my go to spells. At the trainer I said over mic I was thinking about taking Maximize over Empower and Tobril asked why would I not take Max at level 1? When I explained that max can burn the xp a little faster at low levels then I would like, leaving me to have to melee in places when I would rather like to just blast my way through, ie taking longer in some quests. But with a full time melee in the group I don’t have to worry as much about running dry, if I do then he can take on the main dps role and I can help as able. And that happened more then a few times in the early levels.

Around level 4-5 things started shifting again, aka Web and Inivis changed how we did quests. We shifted into more and more of a gather – web – blast or invis as able mindset for questing. 6 and 7 Ice storm scrolls and acid blasts came online, lets just say I used 100 scrolls as if like plat grows on trees and all of a sudden I was in the driver seat full time again. Run, Gather, Run, Web, Icestorm, AcidBlast, Scorch, Repeat. I could see how having an unlocked Purple Ioun Stone would be a huge boost at low levels, right now I am just using a guild slotted wiz 3 cannith crafted ring.

Speaking of gear I am using a three-item Abishai set, gauntlets, bracers and boots. The boots are a real nice right now; corrosion +48 is huge at level 5 if you want to use a big blast spell and web. Might need to see about making some rock boots at the different lvl tears, assuming I stay as acid specked as I am now.

One last thing, I did take the sorc past life to see if it would allow me to AM with it counting as Mental Toughness (it doesn’t which is bull shit) and due to a moment of what I can only call sleepiness I took Enchantment focus and not my intended Evocation focus… So to fix the test error I swapped the sorc past life to mental toughness, meaning I am a Enchantment AM right now. I will try out the dance SLA if it takes us less then 3 days to reach level 10. If not I will be switching to Evocation regardless how much fun a cheep web might seem.

Okay I have gone a lot longer then I meant to and I have more ramblings to knock out later. Unless something strange happens expect more of these thoughts tomorrow.

❤

Sam is Ready to Burn, Again

by

1

Not the first thing I did when I got home. Now that I think about it, it wasn’t even in the top 5 things, but one of the first things I did once I got home was get Samius all ready to TR. Guess I decided I was going to TR him again next. Maybe the desire to finally cross off completionest from my list has gotten to me. But taking a look back at my other posts I think I had decided a long time ago that I was ready to take a break TRing Sam and get into the end game for a while.

So Java’s TR will have to wait. I still have a few levels to get on Darth Samius before I can TR a Non-Samius alt. Sam doesn’t have to follow the rules like everyone else does.

Build… I have talked about that in the past plenty but a lot of that was maybes or I might tries but I think I will do a 18/2 wiz/rog AM build thinking Evocation.

Note to Self: I need to remember to confirm that the Sorc past life feat will work to meet the prereqs for Archmage.

If you remember from a few posts back I was thinking about going Dwarf for their sweet beards and I had two possible stat lists I think I will do the one with the higher Chr of the two.

Rough Gear thoughts: My 7 finger gloves are ready to rock, so a I am good to strap the armor back on. Hell I might get a little PRR even. I have been siting on a set of blue dragon scales. Also I checked last night and I have 2 full tome page sets now so a skiver might happen at 14 as well.

Well I assume I will have something to feel content with on Monday, A phone call with Tobril earlier today pointed to a TR happening tonight. Wish me fast xps.

<3s

Ready to Be Home

by

1

While i had lots of fun these last few days and i learned a lot so good stuff for work, i am just ready to be home. I miss my fam and dog, and i am just ready to fall away from the trends i am already seeing post election day and get back into game.

I haven’t made a lot of decisions on what is next for me in game. But i can say i have narrowed it down to Java TRing in to a druid, or taking Sam thru a his first life with the completionest feat avable.

Seems silly not to get Samius to a place where i can take some personal time and just do end game stuff. Glinn kept asking me questions about how i felt about the “end game” and i didn’t have an answer better then ” I don’t know”… So taking that time might be a good idea..

Am i done TRing Sam? This whole TRing path for me started as a way to better my spell pen and free up some feats.But i only have only gained one more spell pen from when i started. maybe one more FvS life is in order? Or maybe i have spent so long TRing i don’t know how to do anything else?

sigh….

well i have all day today to sit and wait on my way home, maybe i will arive home in more ways then just one…

❤

Jerry Spawned

by

1

Today i have a little more time to post i think so i am going to try and talk about something Jerry brought up a few days plus back. If you take out my (your) personal likes/dislikes what builds would really make the most of completionest, from the point of view of past lives and the completionest feat.

I dont think that is what he knew he was asking, but that is how i took his comment.

Just today i am just going to look at classes and not really mixes too much.

Artificer, I think this one class might be the single best class for a completionest. There really use every stat to some degree, the only real completionest perk that i can think of that an Arty doesn’t really use would be the spell pen. They might not need the bonus to combat DCs but everyone CAN try and trip sometimes.

Barb, This is a case of making the key needs of the barb sing just a little more. Bigger Str, more HP, bonuses to combat DCs if they go that way. But they leave a lot on the table. Although the completion feat could make using silver flame pots easier….

Bard, would be in my top 3 or 4 classes to take real advantge of the completionest feat. The less focus that you have the greater effect of running threw the lives.

Clr, would be my second best class for post completionest. The boosts really make a huge difference for those that want to stradle both caster and melee roles. And the best class after arty that can do this is Clr.

Druid, I think everyone needs to take the time to level a few druids. Or at least try playing with a “melee” and a “caster” verson. I think that a hybrid build is very do-able and the free perks from having a ton of lifes really help. Remember i played Samius’ Druid life as a hybrid model and i am super impressed, to the point that real soon Java is TRing into one.

FvS, One could make a hybrid model, but really the class doesn’t NEED a lot of help.

Fighter, see barb.

Monk, would be on the short list for post completionest love, again due to the long list of good that the free feats allow. But again there are a lot of the past life feats that are pointless. But the monk is one of the classes that really put the completionest stat bonuses to work in ways other then a skill point or a +1 str +1 con.

Pally, See monk but even more so. The extra stats are huge. Same with the skill bonus. Unlike the major melee classes they can put some of the caster past life feats to work. Not all but more then any “core” melee classs so far.

Ranger, see Pally and monk and put ranger in the middle of the two. Less then pally but more then the monk. The stat boost is not as helpful but alot of the past life free feats are helpful.

Rogue, This one is hard. At cap i think it is right with the other melees (again yes rogue is a melee class) but while leveling they make the completionest feat is very strong helping to get to watermarks sooner.

Sorc, See FvS but less people have melee as a sub focus so all the melee related perks are more of a waist then for fvs. But it can help with DCs and we all know that arcaine builds are all about the big DCs.

Wizard, see all of the above. Unless you have a melee sub focus lots of work is going unloved, but even more so then sorcs, beacuse DC often wins over everything. The difference between 50 and 51 on wail/finger DCs can be huge.

So now that i have all that i will say, if you have a guy that is close to completionest but not a final build at least when looking at playing a single class think about making the best multitool you can.

❤