Last Sunday was the 50th wedding anniversary for two of the best people I know, my Grandparents. My Aunt and Mother (?) thought enough to have a bit of a party for them. I think it was funny as I got a card in the mail and I had planed to go, when a few weeks later my mom sends a text message telling us all about it and then telling us she would pick up lunch if we went. Score!

Now spending time with my family is a double edge sword. I love them. Hell they are blood, they could even flock to my house during the end times and I wouldn’t shoot them. If that is not love I don’t know what is. 🙂 I have best mates that I would help hide bodies in the “woods” if something “bad” happened; but will shoot if they show up at my door looking for food if the big shit hits the fan! So my love for my family is not in question.

But I am a kind of the family outcast. Some of that is just distance. They tell me they are only 4 hours away, it takes me more like 5, but damn that is still a 4 hour drive one way! And in part do to I was raised by my father and am something of a nerd. While my brothers where raised by my mother and where/are(?) jocks. So when I do get to see them I often end up butt of some nerd slam, although they like a lot of the same nerdy things I do. And for a long time (and probably still) I am rounder then my brothers, although one of my brothers is catching up with me, and have to eat a lot of comments on the size of my belly.

So anyway I am just hanging out after pictures talking with my son and brother, when we start talking MMos. He is a Wow player, (not something I hold against him 🙂 ) but is and has been playing around with ddo some. And he comments on the blog and the CtH. Hinting/coming right out and telling me that I should try to do some live streaming and what not see if I could parlay some of my personalty and gaming into cash.

And all I can think of is I wish, but I couldn’t play like that, like it was my job. But it sounds great. Okay maybe I could….

What do you all think? Is the blog and CtH and the rare DdoCast enough Samius? Oh did I tell you that I am thinking of signing up for a Live Taping of CTH at Gencon? If not then I am and I have until the 13th do decide for sure and to get us signed up. If your going to Gencon please let me know and if you want to see a live CtH please doubly let me know.

What was I saying… Oh would you watch me play? Would that be fun at all? I know my son loves to watch people play but I think that is mostly the commentary or learning how to do things. And while I am sure there is a few things I could teach you, but I just don’t know…..

Please use the comments on this one.

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I got a case of the Friday afternoons. Meaning I am ready to be someplace else and want to be doing something else; like playing Ddo. But I am here at work, so the best I can do to escape is hit twitter and maybe do some trolling or write a bit of a blog post. So a bit of a tweet and Cauthey wants me to talk about public interactions.

So lets look at what we have according to Cauthey. Random buffing & /trade hawkers & bad /advice & flame wars. Wow that is a lot. Lets see what I can say about them.

Random Buffing: Haste, Jump, GH, Mass healing, etc: they all seem good to me. I know if I am on one of my divines I have a tendency to mass at bars or any time I feel like it. And my people that can drop haste do so a ton while running around town with no rhyme. So I think buffing is cool. I even sing the bard skill song to people while I am hanging out at the vendors.

/trade and /advice used for trade: Now have my private channels in my general tab. And I just leave the trade and advice in that main channel so I kinda watch them. But unless there is a killer deal or someone needing a bit of help like a swap for equal value; I just let it go. Although I will send a tell to any one I see swearing in those public channels and then report them depending on their reply. But private channels or party anything goes.

All in all I think the public interactions are good. You can even show off your smexy pet if your an arty. I like that, a little more personalization. And I love to do the naked dance while standing around.

Alright, there you go 2 mins on public chatter.

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Those of you have have been keeping up already know, I am working on cleaning up and gearing up my Bard Butterzcotch for various end game functions. Mostly with little to no extra effort or grinding. However I would like to have a clear plan.

Now she has already taken on the task of our epic trapper. So far the only busted traps have been before I had any skill boosting gear. Oops. Since grinding out the blank for her Epic Utility Vest she hasn’t had an issue getting any trap.

What is also nice she already had a list of qualty gear ready to go like the Epic Elyd Edge and Light and Darkness and the Mad Lutes!

So moving some bound to account stuff around her is my basic, little to no grinding plan:

Helm: Epic Big Top (Missing a few things but have the shard and blank the rest should be easy)
Goggles: Magewright’s Spectacles (Swap Spot)
Neck: Nyoko’s Necklace
Trinket: Epic Treasure Hunter’s Spyglass (Swap Spot)
Armor: Epic Utility Vest (+2 Good Luck)
Cloak: Magewright’s Cloak (Set Bonus: Spell Focus Mastery +1, Magewright’s Quick Wits)
Bracers: Might become my CordOp(or Air)/Chr Skills slot + Swap for Ventilated Bracers or even Bracers of Wind as she runs the Challenges…
Belt: Epic Belt of the Mroranon (GFL)
Ring 1: Nyoko’s Band (Set Bonus: bonus to hit (+2 exceptional bonus to hit) and damage, 20% less threat) Slotted with +2 Chr or Con
Ring 2: I really don’t have a plan for it atm…
Boots: Cannith Boots of Propulsion (also swap)
Gloves: Tinker’s Gloves (open)

Anyway what am I missing? What would you change?

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Last night I had hopes of massive xp in my sights. But there was a family emergency at my mother-in-laws place involving a dog and a bag of chocolate chips and my wife went to help force some stuff down the dog in hope of making it puke. As it is my wifes first double TR I don’t want to get ahead of her too much in the xp department. So I decided to do something else while she was out.

Before the hold changes my epics where done on Samius or SamiusBot. As my main, Samius got the job of holding and keeping track of everything he has many Large, Huge and Stubidly Large bags (Some from the store) so caring all my epic bits and none epic bits around was simple. And I could just do a quick name search and see what I had and what I didn’t. But now with Butterz making the runs I need a better way.

So I started moving all my non sand epic bits from Samius to Butterz. But having things spread out got me thinking I needed a better way.

And I thought “Well I have the time…” And began to fill out a spread sheet with all my bits and got my stuff listed and labeled. Hell I even added some color encoding to help speed me up when I am missing one part as well as seeing what shards I have at a glance as they are the hard part in my mind to get.

But as I got going, I started to notice I had a lot more things complete then I thought. For example, Von stuff. I have not only the shield ready for Sam’s final life. But I also have the Warding Bracers and the Belt of the Mroranon ready to go. If I can get the base item on the right alt.

Reviewing all this organization, I can also see I am a scroll light on a lot of sand items. Bramble Casters, Chaosblade, Storm, etc. Not to mention most of the House D epics either being done or mostly done. And a surprising amount of Chrono epics missing just one part also.

I will say taking the time to get a little more organized and seeing what I can or almost can make makes me a lot more excited about running the epics then I have ever been before.

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New Year’s Day… now is the accepted time to make your regular annual good resolutions. Next week you can begin paving hell with them as usual. – Mark Twain

Time for everyones favorite time of the year: Resolution time. Aka self denial time/ lie to yourself time.

And while I am sure this year wont be any different I am going to try just the same. This year I am going to try to take some of the loose fitting goals I have been playing with for the last few months and turn them into real resolutions. Some Ddo related others less so. So to the list.

Take more time to play the “end game”. Seeing as the only times over the last year I took to play in the end game was when Samius was big enough to do a few epics and/or a raid or two on the way to the TR tree. So more should be easy. As you know I have been readying my bard for epics and what not. She is all flagged and ready to go. And I am going to use Tuesday nights for a while to do epics and whatnot with her.

Wrap up Samius’s TRing. Okay more like get the completionest feat then finish Sam. I have 4 or 5 lives left until I can take it, at 6- 7 weeks a life I should be well with my scope to be done in a year.

Do some more reading. I am keeping this one kinda vague. I have a lot of different things I want to read. And now that I have my tablet and phone to read with taking 15 to read is a lot easier then ever. And I was tricked into resubing my Marvel sub, what they are comic BOOKS! They count. Yes they do! I along with a more then a few other people were lead to believe that the new Droid reader would allow us to read the sub books, but you still can’t. Need to get with Fopo on the right Flash plug in to get it to work on my tablet’s browser…..

Have a new look by Gencon. I am growing my hair back out, that includes my facial hair aswell. It started off as my normal long time between shaves and pushing my hair cuts back. And then No Save November hit and that was a good reason for work to let it slide a little more. Now it is long enough and I have had it long enough that no one asks any more. But really I want to look more like my drawing that Clank did for me. That is normal right?

As part of this new look I have been watching what I eat trying to getting to a better weight. Cutting out the soda for the last year has really helped. Just not enough. So as of Jan one I am Peleo. Yep I am a cave man. There is only three real issues with going cave man for me. One no Bacon. Okay less bacon is how it is going to work. No corn, pop corn is my main snack, but I think I can replace it with coconut. And lessen the salt. Which why bacon is an issue. But here is the thing. I can’t smell. So I “need” a lot of salt to flavor my food so it has a taste.

I take it back there is a fourth issue with the new diet. It involves lot of sea food and game animals. All of which I love to eat. But my wife doesn’t. And the smell bothers her a lot. So making her unhappy so I can eat is an issue.

So do you have a list? Or do you have any tips eating cave man style? Use the comments.

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Werds guys and gals. Yes I spell it werds. Deal.

Any how, Werds. Hope your off to a good start to the year and I doubly hope you earned lots of xp and phat lootz from the bonus days. Think they end today as the Ice games return…. Speaking of I got some goodies to get icy bursted up. Mainly a bound to account lvl 2 +1 holy great axe, aka my new baby leveling toy.

In that last week or so I capped Samius, and TRed him again. Up to level 6 as of last night, with most of level 7 banked. Capped Samius Jr, after being declined from a hard hound run. ;( Guess his my.ddo looked bad as I sat in the queue for 5-7 mins before a decline. But I watched the lfm sit for another 10 mins waiting for divines and or bards. Tobril got in on his FvS and asked me to switch (3 divines and a bard all off timmer) , but I don’t take kindly to being declined with out a tell. Although I do like being declined vs waiting in the queue forever so I wont hold it against the raid leader. But I am not switching around to help him on that run. Unless a guildie would say call in a favor…

Any how back to the last week or so, flagged and booted Butterz and Jr for Tod. And got her ready for all the epics I think. Now that I think about it however; she might need to do the Sentential chain for those quick epics….Will have to check sometime.

Any how, I wanted to do the Carnival chain for 2 reasons. One: to ready them for epic runs. And two: get the base item for the Epic Batman Vest for her. Umm Epic Utility Vest? With it and other miscellaneous items she has collected over the years, she is a really good epic trapper for a 16/2/2 warchanter.

I told all that to tell this part of the story.

I ended up having to run the chain twice as I didn’t get the Utility Vest the first time around. But looking over the list I noticed a fairly solid BtA weapon in the list. I don’t remember the exact details but it was +1 something of righteousness level 0. But it was a less then helpful weapon type to me so I passed taking the rune arm I think.

Rerunning the chain my armor was in the list but so was a +1 icy heavy repeater of pure good, also level 0 BtA. So I don’t know about you but I am going to spam this end chain looking for the other base items as now that I have an Epic runner I like I am going to try to do some more Carnival epics. But with the ice games running a even better twink item wouldn’t suck. If an elemental touch (weapon) is good for elite level 1s. And an elemental touch/ icy – icy burst is super. How amazing would a elemental of PG with Icy burst be?

Feel free to complain about power creep but at those levels more damage is just fun times. It is not like the content is super hard…

All I am saying is read your lists very closely. There are some good things dropping. Don’t believe me? Take a close look at Samius’s My.ddo details. And Pm me with how uber some of his gear is. 🙂 And i am jealous of some of the wife’s TR gear!

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As I hinted yesterday, I want to share some of my thoughts on monks. Up until Samius leveled through his Bowonk live the deepest monk I had was Samius jr with 12 or 13 monk levels. And as I said yesterday he was very old school. He kept getting back burnered in favor of Samius and Java. Hell even some of my support builds got more lovens.

So what saved monks for me, beyond a 3 level splash for fist of light?

Dark Path, aka Touch of Death and Ninja Spy 1 for Shadow fade. Ninja Spy 2 and its Water Walking power is not bad but as it only works some of the time. And then only some places have water where water walking would be helpful. Having it work on the Lava in most quests is a boon and when it works in Abbot raid is wonderful. Just the kind of thing to make it worth having.

Monks also have some of the best laired synergies.

Let me look at my favorite leveling setup. Earth Stance + Jidz + Stonedust Handwraps(not at 20 monk) + ninja fade. I think I have talked about this before. So I am not going to go in to it again. But trust me -2 dex and -10% movement is nothing for this setup.

Also my monk has Imp Sunder. Tobril was loving on it so hard while leveling up I thought that I would give it a shot. A debuff that a melee can use often that helps ToD and Stuns land? And its effect is only slightly worse if the mob saves? Done! I have been seeing chaining Tods doing 1000+ from good timing and/or double strikes with all the failed saves. On Samius most of my ToDs get saved against for half, which is still good just not great; and I am going to say having Imp Sunder is all the difference.

There will be more monk talk in the coming days, but not right away. I want to talk with you all about a “final” gear layout. I have an epic Jidz and a pair of ToD boots ready for him. And he already has big + stunning 10 wraps as well as holy of stunning 10 wraps. And if I can find some silver wraps I might make some +5 of Vamp Not lesser Vamp but Vamp wraps. But that leaves epic slotting, and lots of other slots.

Okay peace and lets start the last year of good times off right. See you in 2012.

❤

One, welcome back all. I took some time off for the holidays and that included no blog posts also. If you missed me, good. I try to give you all good content for free. And I can take a few days if I want to . 🙂

Now for the rest.

If has been one heck of a week/weekend/week. Tobril came for a visit. Aka free Room and board with a Internet assess far away from his family he can make excuses for him not to eat every meal and hang out them. Basicly a place he can just play as much Ddo as he can fit in but still make those “family” visits when he needs to. And we hang out some.

So as we do when he is around we hit Ddo hard. Starting at noonish Thursday and Friday we played until I had to go to bed, I still had to go to work for a half day on Friday. Some were along the way, he and I capped. The wife and Fopo didn’t have the extra game time we had. So they are still a little behind.

So I took the time to put a +5 heart into my bard. I went with a 16/2/2 bard/fgr/rog Warchanter. With the +3 tomes back and the uber Christmas deal on points I went ahead and put a +3 int and Con tome in to her. A Chr tome would have been for not as she has a +2 and even stats. I couldn’t see spending the points besides the hole point is to have someone for those end game raids, right? Sooner or later a +4 should happen. 🙂

I also set her up to go spell singer with a enchantment reset encase people really would rather have one of them.

But I didn’t want to waist the bonus XP. So I decided to catch up my Monk. Samius jr. He was already level 15, and is a first lifer. So I figured that I could power level him and catch up with Fo and Torance. Allowing me to help them out.

Now Samius JR was my first take on monks. He was pre Shintao/ Ninga spy. Pre Jidz, Pre most things that I take for granted now as good monk stuff. Being so I was very down on end life Monks. Level 20 was good, but not good enough. And 17, 18 and 19 were just bad. So I had planed on a nice 16/2/x build. monk/rog/x. At the time Dex (light) monks were the way to go. Trying for AC via high dex and wis and good amp making fist of light really work for you.

But now we have Shintao/ Ninga Spy. And I love me some Touch of Death + Shadow fade. So I ate a super +2 tome. Sitting in my bank for a long time waiting for some build that could use the boost to all stats. And hit him with a +3 heart. Now he is pure. I still don’t think I quite have the build I am looking for in a level 20 monk. I will have to see how things are at cap. But I can say I really like him. He is like a weaker Samius. Some of that is gear. Some is first life 32 points issues as every stat is important. Some is how I really like the Helf as a race, thanks to the ease of fitting in good selfhealing and extra amp, even if they are fugly.

I am hoping that at cap I can gear him up with some of the epic gear I have laying about and that I will really like having him around.

I will be expanding on Monks and me tomorrow.

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I follow Coldin Torrence (@ColdinT) on twitter. He is a fellow Ddo player and ocasionaly asks a good question or makes a statement that gets me rolling. Most of the time I put him in the kid pile and hope the world doesn’t wake him up too hard. But early this morning, or at least I am showing it as 3am my time. He tweets the following:

“Question for my DDO players. If Turbine got rid of ship buffs, but made quests easier in return, would you be okay with that?”

I like to reply to these kind of questions here where I have a little more room and comments can be left for everyone to see.

First of all there are people out there that think that Ddo is too hard and some that think it is too easy. Me I fall in the just right group as I think the majority of players do. If you fall into one of the extreme groups you can do things to help you.

If things are too easy there are play options that you can use to make it harder. Permadeath comes to mind first, but you could also only do hard or harder content only. Try to keep your quest level 1 or 2 levels above you, etc.

To hard? You can do normal or casual questing, Get in a good static group to learn the game/content better. Or play content a level or two under level.

Now there is also a group of people that feel that ship buffs are a crutch. To those people I say “Stop using them” If you don’t like it you can choose not to use them.

Limiting everyone’s options because you/ or a group of people think something is too good is BS. There are people that think casters are to good. I think that monk/rangers are super good right now. So lets start cutting out what someone thinks is too good until everything is the same for everything and everyone. Welcome to the Socialism and Dragons online.

Wait no. Dragons are uber we can’t have that. We would have to even out the mobs too, you know because we are all the same so the mobs should be too. A few changes and we are Socialism and Kobolds online. Were no one can be better then anyone else and all you do is sit and watch your alt roll thru the quest. You can’t even push buttons. Because you might push buttons better then someone else.

No thanks.

But Sam it is just a game. You are taking things a little far.

Am I?

People left the game because some mobs had an AC they couldn’t handle. So things get changed say if you miss by little then you still get some damage, glancing blows.

No! Fack you, NO! If you miss, then by God you miss. You don’t see a NFL game assign points for getting close to the end zone. You don’t win the lottery for having 4 out 5 numbers. You don’t do damage if you miss the mob. No!

What Coldin is asking is: If take away the option for your guild to work hard and level up and then pay for buffs, but the quests are 30% easier for everyone would that be cool? Its more fair for the ones that don’t have buffs or the people that don’t want to work for the rewards.

You have to draw the line hard and fast when it comes to limiting someone else’s options. You start saying sure, sure that doesn’t effect me that is fine. You can take the +2 buff shrines form those high level guilds. My guild is level 30, what do I care. Then it is the Amp chick. Cool I am not an amp build. And then they want to take something you do like and care about and there is now one to say no with you.

Sorry bud, your question is full of fail.

Agree or disagree, use the comments.

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Last night content with some simple xp grinding after taping a new CtH. I was all ready to run IQ elites down to normals. Until I was ready for bed. After the drinks I had, to tape a good Christmas show, I was already tired. But bonus xp.

So our group gets together, makes the wife (with her fresh buffs) wait while we all rebuff. Much to her distress which tickled me slightly; as she is always telling me off for not waiting for her to get her buffs. But when the shoe was on the other foot I needed to hurry up for her. 🙂

So as we are about to start Eye of the Titan Tobril or Fopo start talking about their plans to do some raids. And how some other guildies were throwing/in the middle of a hound. Which started a wonderful lets shroud commentary from the wife. But after some calm and totally logical logic from my well and buzzed self we did Eye. And the next two IQ quests while we waited for the others.

I would have racked out but everyone was ready to shroud now and I thought, I don’t need that extra 20 mins of sleep. Parts 1 through 3 were good. If you have never been in a shroud group with Tobril and I in the same party you are either missing a real treat or you will want to /squelch use both.

We tear along until part 4, and we lose the Arty due to the new heat seeker blades. But we move in fine. If we could have stayed in through the blades it would have be about ¾ of a round. Harry was way below half when I did a back flip over the blades and emptied a many shot for no real damage (a little force and elec) in to him. I forgot to refill my quiver when I upgraded it to the new super version. Keep that in mind if you go to upgrade your quiver. You will loose your arrows. So I didn’t have any silver arrows, and due to an error on my part my lig2 is not good. In hind sight I should have gotten my Bow of Sinew silvered….. Damn. Slow drunk brain.

So anyway round 1, the wife goes “Where is the healing?” About the time I notice I was at like 30 hp and then caught the fill up. But she doesn’t about that time it was time to pull out and I notice she was at one hp. I try to use my clr past life feat on her. But it was empty as I didn’t shrine yet. Swap to my heal scrolls and fire one off but I am madstoned. She took care of herself with her own heal scroll. In the next round Fopo goes down, along with a 3rd person, I drop to -7 but get a heal before Harry could finish me. And he goes down in quick order.

Rez up and move on.

Part 5 I take the fire and get it pointed away from the group as they start killing off mini bosses. Another monk comes over and works on killing the Fire as I start buffing. Having missed the masses and what not. We went into the Harry fight almost right away. Think with the healers being slightly questionable I would have waited until I heard they were ready but I am game.

We loose 2 or 3 people almost right way. The people healing just weren’t ready. I have my Past life Clr clikies to thank for keeping me up. Took the clr past life at 18, I am getting about 80 per hit with my amp. Can go fire + jidz for around 110. Cure pots are about 50.

We loose a few more, but Tobril, a random and I are keeping Harry in place. But I forgot to swap my boots and become angry and pots for 50 and random heals were not cutting it. With the healing only so so at best I dropped with Harry at a sliver. Giving him a hole to run out of, and both Clrs died in short order, as he beelined to them. Tobril shout that he was staying in to finish it I yelled back there are no heals left alive. The wife fired off a manyshot; I think finishing Harry off.

It was good times. I started yelling out time remaining on my 20% xp pot as I was still a soul stone. 40 secs. 30. 20. the wife said F it and hit it for me. Thanks babe. That was the only pot I have ever know to work the xp to the wire. For me the last 5-10 mins are normally wasted.

That final fight took a hair longer then needed with people dieing and/or handling their own heals. But good times.

❤