Inspired by Geoffhanna’s If I could have one DDO spell in real life Read his first is is much better then what ever I am about to write.

I think almost every D&D nerd has asked this question at one time or another. And while I tend to agree with Geoffhanna that there are a great number of spells that appeal to me. He hits most of the biggies: Invisibility, Dimension Door, Teleport, Fly (oh to fly /cry), Charm/Dominate; he even covers the helpful divine magics. But a few major spells come to mind that his list is lacking.

Disintegrate, the best removal spell ever. Just think about it; It handles every major problem. Cheating girl friend? Nope. Don’t like the stance you boss is taking on a topic? He might see things you way as his office starts to turn to dust. Yep, Disintegrate is a real contender.

Polymorph any Thing: Similar problem solving spell as disintegrate, but allows a more “humane” way to handle said problems. Need some cash? Bricks are cheap, gold is not. New car? Old is new again. Don’t want to eat your veggies? Broccoli becomes Bacon.

Wall of Force: How many times have you been blocked by a “mysterious” wall of force? Again handles most problems? But requires a little more creativity. How much do you want to work for it.

Create Undead, What their dead? Look if you don’t want a castle made with the bodies the living dead, I don’t think we can be friends any more. 🙂

One of the ones that I would like the most would be Magnificent Mansion. You can create a extradimensional mansion filled and stocked with your hearts desire, yes please. Sure I live in the middle of no place, but walk in to my tree and let me show you around. Here is the pool room. Why yes that wall is a HDTV. And I never have to clean.

But the biggie and most bad ass spell on the list: Shapechange. I want to be a dragon, or an eagle, maybe just be Ryan Reynolds or the new Conan for a few hours, done and done. Want to take a swim, Shark. Or maybe just hang out and do nothing? Sloth time.

But you know what? I think that Magnificent Mansion spell is my winner. Yep. Lets run down Geoffhanna’s examples:

Oh really, Mr. Boss, I am getting only a 1% raise this year? Wait, Why am I working? I have a great house with everything I could want? Maybe boredom if so, 1% is fine.

Sure Officer, here’s my license and registration … Wait, Why am driving? The living room and the dinning room is not so far away I need to drive. Wait! What the hell is a traffic cop doing in my house anyway?

Yes Ms. Bill Collector,… You want my house? Take it. I will move into a box. I don’t care.

No Mr. Imperial Stormtrooper these are not the droids you seek… Humm, okay maybe they are or maybe the ones seek are in the sub sub sub basement. 🙂

Also think of the house parties I could have. You all could come over. We could trash the place. And when we were done, I could just summon up another one. The clear winner.

I had a different intro, but it came across as whiny and not quite what I was going for. So instead let me say I from Thursday night until Sunday about 6pm my time I was on a terror. And my go go batteries are mostly tapped out. Thankfully I was able to log on and do some mindless mob killing / xp farming in the vale and that got me going enough to get some real play in.

I think everyone knows that I dig using the explores for just this kind of thing. And I think most of you know that I am enjoying the ranged options that the bowonk is offering(to the point of ranging only for whole quests). After about 30-40 mins of just chillin killing with my lig2 or the paralyzer of PG, I started to feel human again.

After my time in the explores ranging lately I can see why so many people like them. They are claming.

As I was saying, I was feeling human enough to want to help a Fopo with a quest. I guess the main boss at the end can be quite a pain. But between Fo and I (10KS and Manyshot) the fight only lasted about 50 seconds.

Let me tell you Mummies don’t have an issue with Acid or Lightning but Force of Disruption tears them up. : )

Afterwards is dawned on me that we are level 14 now meaning Attack on Stormreach is up. And I love that chain. And we ran that first one in the chain 2 or 3 times.

So all in all it was a fair night of play before logging to watch Dexter and reading Dresden Files until I fell asleep in bed.

I can’t wait until tonight when I hope to log in an get a full charge on my batteries.

❤

The other day I did a little song and dance to get a meaning full AC on my bowonk. And while not great for the questing I am doing it is worth wild. I think I said a few post back it is about 49 + buffs like shield and pro evil.

One of the things I did to get my AC up was craft a simple outfit. Lifeshield of imp False Life. To free up a ring slot that was equipping a greater False Life ring for a +6 dex ring. Aka +3 Ac for -10 hp.

The minimum level for said item is level 13.

I run over to the stone of change add +1 AC ritual to it and enjoy the night. I log on the next day and I am wearing a funky outfit. Checking my sheet I am standing in the buff. Equip another robe I have handy and remove it and back to the standard undies.

Strange but the point is my outfit got recalculated to be a level 15 item with the +1 stone of change ritual on it. Grr.

So I sprung for some house C marks from the store and lowered my item back to level 13. But come on.

This is not the first time a Cannith crafting bug hit me. I made a force burst of lesser vamp great sword with a med guild slot and added the + to hit gem. Took it up to level 9 where it was a level 5 item. Growl.

Anyway it was on my mind. And I needed a topic to post.

You get hit with any fun times crafting bugs?

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I am seeing a ton of builds doing the Helf ranger/monk thing for 10KStars and Ninja Spy. And now after playing my own build to level 13 I have some thoughts.

It is the most fun melee build I have played. Before this I would have said my bard/fighter build or a WF FvS. It combines all the things I like in a melee; healing (self and others) and good damage numbers. While at the same time giving it a great deal of options for style of play and/or personal customization. Ranged is a good option for damage with a few banked Ki and a Manyshot of timer ready to go or 30sec left on cool down. And if you have a good healer in the party many of the Helf Dill options are super good as well as having viable options for stances to use. Like I said good and full of options.

With that said the bowonk is a 3 class build. So taking any of those 3 classes to the needed levels as to count as the “life” for the purpose of having done the class for past life feats, is easy. Add a few more levels of the wanted class and lose some monk levels. It is not a hard sacrifice for such a flexible frame.

But if I want to say use this frame for say a Pally or Rog life. It becomes a little less clear how to use it. So this is my basic 12 level package. With the idea that I have a few lives already done. But they ate not 100% needed but they add options.

1, Rang(1) Feat (Point Blank Shot)
2, Monk (1) (MF – Power Attack)
3, Rang(2) Two Weapon Fighting, Feat (Barb past life)
4, Monk (2) (MF – Stunning Fist)
5, Rang(3) jidz+earth d6->d8
6, Rang(4) Feat (Monk past life)d8->d10
7, Rang(5)
8, Rang(6)Manyshot, Improved Two Weapon Fighting
9, Monk (3)Feat(Sorc past life)
10, Monk (4) Unarmed Strike d10->2d6
11, Monk (5)
12, Monk (6) Feat (Weapon Focus: Ranged) AA- force and acid arrows…
*All past life feats can be replaced with non past life feats other then the monk one: but I happen to think the past life feats are better.

This path is laid out as it is for two main reasons. Get the most out of the ranger levels while keeping the pain of playing with a bunch of deep monk splashes down. And Bring AA and GTWF up as quickly as possible.

Also this layout happens to get your 12 base in 12 levels. Believe me I have seen many builds that defer getting to their point until very late in life. I once watched my friend Dana at level 18 or 19 until his build even started to click. Some builds do fine but really don’t get going until cap and epic gear. We don’t have to worry about that here.

The other thing I think is nice is if you want to take your first level in your “main” class for say skills or bonus feats this layout shifts up fairly nicely. There aren’t any prerequisites for anything. I can easily see going Rog first level for skills on a rog live or Fgr or Pally for full Intim or to take a combat feat like stunning blow or toughness.

Anyway I need to get to work,
❤

Last night, I did some crafting and playing around with trying to get a bit of an AC and ended up with a 49 for questing. An extra point here or there; including a 55% shot to use a 5 min shield wand, with only a trinket swap.

With my new AC I headed in to the desert sands with the guys.

A quick run for seals and we are back in the WizKing. It went fairly smooth. The wife and I took a tower, and Tobril and Fopo took a tower and then we meet up and did the 3rd tower. Nice and easy.

Then it was proposed that we head to elite OoB (Offering of Blood). It went fairly smooth. There was some confusion with what doors we were running past and what ones we were hitting. Okay that was 90% me running past side doors. 🙂

But to deal with a lot of the agro I ended up going ranged and kept moving. Kitting at times until everyone was ready to go. Manyshot and saved Ki to fire 10KS made many bad men go away.

So when we decided to hit up Chains of Pain. I decided to have some fun and stay ranged. Tobril lead the quest but I took care of guys on ledges and used my paralyzing bow to add a little CC to our run. The end fight, which can be a pain, went super smooth. 10KS the named knoll and manyshot + a lighting strike or two helped with Rashad.

Then Elite DQ 6man, At this point the TR group dropped to 3. We each picked up a hireling. To help with the healing. The side rooms went quickly. The queen fights were different. I was the kiter. Tobril used touched of death and Imp Sunder as much as possible. Fo’s Barb helped as he could but I think he was on yelling at the hireling to heal everyone duty. 5 or 6 deaths and one long fight later we sent her packing. The end fight was also more of the same. But with a little more room it was about 5x quicker and about 100 times easier. No deaths.

All in all I am really enjoying the change of pace ranged combat is giving me.

I kinda talked about 10K Stars yesterday. But I got some more time to play with it last night. I currently get 4 arrows in 3 shots. Sometimes 5 in 3, or even once and a while 6, in 3. But the 4 in 3 is about average with a 25 wisdom. For 20 Ki and locking out Manyshot it is good enough. It beats normal ranged, but falls short of Manyshot by a large margin. But anything better then normal is good right?

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Lets just call it a rough night and we can all just move along. Kay?

Last night I racked up, 3 or 4 deaths in short order. It started with Red Fins quests on elite which was fine. Although I took a stun to the face after messing up pulling the daddy scorp before the lava. And bit it hard. But I was not the only death in claw so it was okay.

Then we moved on to that level 10 desert walk up with a seal for Wisking, And it went well enough. Got the seal and was leaving when a member got taken out by the red skull alert we were rocken.

So I thought I would pop over to the other walk up and complete the set real fast. I made the run finished the quest and took a stun and died. Again?

Fine. Release and rebuff.

As I am talking to the wife there is some talk of leveling. I guess I confused Tobril on the amount of xp I could bank before capping out the level. So we went ahead and leveled to 13.

I end up did taking that 6th monk level I talked about yesterday. And for the record, 10Kstars is not Manyshot. Or at least it isn’t with a 21 wisdom. I have seen some guess work on how it might work and from what I have seen a 21 to 30 is about the same odds of extra arrows/stars. I am going to think of it as baby Manyshot. It lasts a little longer, and has half the cool down but it is a lot less then Manyshot, better then normal ranged however.

So we get started in wis king. As I have already ran the other seal quest; I zerg it and get the seal real fast. While they get started clearing.

The first tower goes well. We get back down and the spinning blade trap pops up trapping me. I look around and Fo is not around. So jump over them. Or not. I hit the top of the room and fall like a brick into a spinning blade. Before I hit the ground I am dead. Looking at the log I failed a save on a 15+17 (I had my death block on not my evasion gear) and again on a 1. Together it was well over 600 points of damage. I have a lot of hit points but that many.

The wife and Tobril took of to do the quest, while Fo and I took the longest possible way to get around. If there was a hole, I fell into it. And if there was a slay living cast, it killed Fo. It was quite the ordeal. And I was full on tilt. I am kinda surprised that I didn’t just get pissed off and quit for the night, but I swapped on to one of my capped FvS and bought 40$ worth of wood, and then logged.

Not my best night. Let me tell you.

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Hope you all had a nice long weekend, I took Wednesday at lunch until this morning off and it was super. Tobril made the drive down and we had our normal Turkey day fest surrounded with much xp farming. Saturday afternoon, when he had to go the TR group was level 12, most of us had xp for 13 and are holding back leveling until we are forced to level. I also fired up my sons premium account and piked his level 8 pally to level 13ish.

But I want to share the run down of how the bowonk has been doing.

My 36 point version following the plan as close as possible. I had to move the barb past live feat to level 3 because I am dumb; I didn’t remember that I had to wait until then for past life feats… But other then that it works.

1-8:
These early levels were a little different, at 8 I was 6ranger, 1monk, 1 fighter. I tried to play monkish, while leveling up, but I think I would have had more fun playing rangerish. Using wraps in wind stance with the two weapon feats from ranger are not bad dps. But will always put you behind your fellow group members that have more monk levels and in my case have the monk past life feats.

That said I was never far behind in the kill count, and most of the time after the fighter level I was ahead even. Fighter Haste boost for the win. By the way, if you don’t know you can use a race boost and a class boost at the same time. So Fighter haste + human damage equals good times. Also human to hit or damage + manyshot also equals good times.

At 8 elven archer comes on line and makes life more fun. Force arrows + silver longbow = good times.

9-10:

Level 9 starts the monky goodness. Evasion is a huge boon; 9 also gives to feats for Stunning Fist & Zen Archery. 10 gives extra movement speed to help with running around in earth stance all the time, as well as slow fall so you can look bad ass when jumping off tall things raining death on the bad men.

Back to running around in earth stance all the time, not only does this give extra Hp and pre damage DR that works with your normal DR. Earth stance sets us up to use normal Stonedust wraps + jidz for a damage die step boost and stone skin guard which is a boon even if your using your Bloodrage Symbiont.

11 brings the old shroud gear on line, including something I don’t get to talk up a lot my 3X neg goggles. They are hp, immunities, immunities + slay living guard. Phlor had a pair on his Pally that were all immunities and I didn’t see the love. But when I went to make the my last shroud hp item. (I like to spread out my HP items so I can swap out any one part of them and not loose 45 hp. Takes some work to and at least 40 shrouds but I think it is worth it.) I decided it would be good to have all those immunities for my low level TR lives. And the Slay living guard is so so. Well this life it has saved me at least 3 times. Once I has fighting an orange named drinking pots trying to get him before he got me. I was sundered and took a huge hit, 60-70 points and he got skulled. I was at 5 hp. That same quest I think I skulled a few more mobs and Tobril joked that we should just let my guards eat things.

Okay last 2 thoughts:
One I have the fighter level planed for next level mainly to get Greater Two Weapon Fighting. But I didn’t take into account the changes to Ten Thousand Stars making it Manyshot timer number 2, and how cool Shadow Fade will be. So there might be a flip flop to really love on the ranged action.

And Two: Hp I hadn’t realized how good the Hp was going to be. The barb past life feat is huge. 10 for free plus that extra 20 all at once vs 23 at cap with toughness. The fighter level also opens up that first tear of the enchantment line a few good items ie a GFL hat (thanks to cove crafting) and a level 9 +6 con belt with a med guild slot (thanks to Cannith crafting) put me ahead on the HP curve for a long time with me at level 12 running around with about 400 hp.

Final thought:

So far this is the melee for me, more so then my WF FvS or my Barb life. Highly survivable (So far I have died a total 3maybe4 times, twice from traps before evasion and once from a hundred plus crit thanks to an Imp Sunder I have had some close calls however), having good dps (think I will have a jump at 13 or 14 and again at 16), good ranged options, great self healing/Amp, good hate gen (earth stance+items) and the potential to swap in to fairly high AC mod (not super AC mind you but I could move some stats at cap and go super AC….).

Okay I hope that makes up for the long brake with no posts.

❤

And that was the hireling Cleric.

Last night the TR group sitting pretty at level 6, decided to hit the level 4s on elite. I suggested starting with one of my favorites Prof is in the Poison.

The wife and Fopo pick up cleric hirelings. Tobril and I go with lots of pots and wands claiming the other will heal us, all awhile assuming that the other person will just let us die. 🙂

We make quick time in the first room, with Fo stopping to get the traps. The wife moving in to room two.

I get across the fire bridge and into the room, just in time to see the Tor’s Clr take a battering of magic missiles. Cry about needing healz, and take a lighting bolt to the face. D E E D, Dead! (I ❤ you “The Gamers”)

About half a second later I see in the general tab Fopo’s Clr shouting something about wanting healed and DING! Let two mins of Fopo yelling at his hireling begin. Lolz, That man lives to yell at hirelings. And when they stand in traps and die it is like his verson of a bitching Mona Lisa.

Fairly quickly, we get to the shrine, everyone gets raised and shrined up. And we get to the room with acid floor and things to jump on with the level that lower a door but shoots grates up all over making a little jumping maze. Well Tobril jumps out to get the level. And he must have stepped in to the acid and took a hair of damage getting started when Fopo’s Clr shot in to the room trying to heal Tobril. Lets just say he didn’t make it. 🙂

Once Fo’s hireling started to go down Tor’s hire shot into the room, I think as a show of hireling loyalty, and died. Lets just say they got dismissed about then. 🙂

Later in a elite Irestone Inlet Fo, basically alone, went to handle the end fight as the rest of us ran to Yaaryar’s spawn point. On the way Fo started where are the heals at his hireling but a second or two later Fo and his Clr Dinged out.

I don’t know. We use the hirelings a lot. I normally let mine camp out away from the fight and go to it or call it when I need healed. I am looking forward to the day casting hires try to stay out of the melee. And/Or the day when casting hires get quicken.

“Can any one heal me? Anyone? Anyone? Where is the Healer any way? Oh shit it is me… Ding!” – Every hiring divine caster ever.

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This time of the year my family asks for a wish list from everyoneI don’t think I am hard to shop for, but for some reason they seem to think so. My interests are fairly well known, I think. Um Ddo, Prepping, Dice and um… toys. 🙂

So I thought one I could share my list with you all, and then maybe you all can help me out other ideas and or maybe share some of your own list. I try to give a good range of items price wise, so no one has to break the budget for me. So lets get started.

• Ddo points, is this a no brainier or what?
• Amazon gift cards. I read a lot, and now that my phone has a the kindle reader software I go through the books like mad.
• Netflix I love Netflix. And free months are great months. I use the streaming all the time.
• Iron Man anything. And now that Marvel has a Droid app Marvel gift cards might be cool.
• Tea, I am a huge tea drinker. As I think I told you all I have been more or less pop free for almost a year now. I am kinda a tea snob now. Other then some funds from my tea web site I need an adjustable temp electric kettle that can sit on my desk at work.
• Prep gear. This is my new thing. I can use things from travel med kits to cases of Yoder’s Canned Bacon. Hmmm Bacon. Including stuff like a solar charger for my cell phone, a 400 Watt Power Dome Mini Generator from ThinkGeek to a Berkey water filter from directive21.com. You can never been to ready for tough times.
  And of course items for all my little survival/urban farm projects. Building mats for my chicken coop that I will have next spring, unless I end up moving in the next few weeks.
• But if some one really wanted to get me something from the very top of the old list, the ASUS Eee Pad Transformer is high on the list. I wouldn’t turn down an Ipad either. But this has some of the best reviews I have seen including a personal review from Fopo.

Alright there is my list with some clear wants. What did I miss? Add something I should on my list in comments and same as yesterday I will give one poster 500 TP.

❤ and good luck

The TR group wrapped up our xp grinding. I had a final streak of 186 ish elites. I don’t remember the number exactly, but with the final 100k xp ready I decided to do a Vod and try my luck, but the loot gods weren’t pleased with me. And I got skunked. A newer guildie however got the gloves. And a new person to the raid, who did not want to follow instructions got the goggles. So there were big winners, just not me. 😦

Anyway wrapped up our hunt for xp. And did a few epics just to get the feel of the builds we had made for leveling at epic. The 12/6/2 barb/fighter/rog I had wasn’t bad. Not great. But with the right gear and a little more work fine tuning the build with its PREs it could be real nice.

Before logging for the night we all got our Trs going. I rolled up my Bowonk build, you can find the original build for a clr I have sitting around unloved HERE. And the update I am using HERE.

I learned that I had already made an error. The Barb past life feat can’t be taken until level 3. Guess none of them can be. So much for a straight swap for Toughness on my builds. But it is great come level 3. Right now at level 5, 4 ranger and a monk level I am rocking 150 ish hp, un-raged. Not bad.

That said I did take my first death last night. We were running STK on elite. And we got to the acid traps. The wife and Tobril ran, jumped luck sacked evaded any real damage.

I on the other hand stopped and waited for Fopo to disarm the traps. He thankfully decided to take some rog levels on his barb for traps. But after a few tries, and walking up all the buffs we had available I tried the stop go method. Hit number 2 and 3 for well over 70 points a pop. Went incap for about 3 seconds but a follow up jet finished me.

Tobril, the helper he is, grabbed my stone and ran me past 2 chests and a collectible point. 😥 In all fairness before running past the fire traps he did ask if I wanted to go back. And I said no to keep the xp/per min up. But I am sure now that there were 2 ion stones in those chests with my name on them.

All in all we are making good time. We all all around 5, some a hair behind that, but most around there. We have got a good epic streak going. And a lot more balanced group then normal for us TRing. 2 bowonks, Fo on his Barb/Rog, and Tobril on a new build. I don’t know if he has named it but I am going to call it the Holy Brawler until he posts it with a proper write up. I will say it is doing very nicely so far. I think if his does everything he saids it can do at cap, and it is half as good in the end game as it is doing now, he might have a winning build on his hands. I will let you know when/if he posts the write up.

One last thing. I have 500 Tp for someone that ranks this post and leaves a comment today. I will roll off from possible winners and send out a TP code tomorrow.

❤