So last week some time I was running through the market place and happened to have the general tab up. And a post went up in the trade channel, price check on a Pale Lavender Ioun Stone. I looked at it real fast and made sure it was a newer one that could be unlocked. And it was.

I along with a few others replied with it was fairly rare and would bring a good price. I also sent along a tell that I would be willing to buy said item off him if he wanted. And added him to my friends list with a quick note.

Being on Samius was a bit of a boon, as he is a fan of Ddo Cocktail hour and we shared a few tells about the show. And there was an offer of a gift, but I declined that and told him that I would check in on him later to see if he sold it and if not try to work out a deal.

Well last night I saw him log on and I wasn’t in the middle of something so I sent him a tell inquiring if he still had the Ioun Stone and if he might be thinking of parting with it if he did.

After a bit of talking. And me raising my offer and him trying to lower it. We settled on a full set of +2 tomes. He wanted a +2 str tome, okay. So I talked him into talking the full set. I offered Green steel blanks, larges, plat, and whatnot. But he claims to be a super casual player. I saw him log on each night once I added him to my list, so I don’t think he will be Mr. Casual for long. 🙂

After we swapped, he asked why the stone was so valuable. Some guy bombarded him with tells that first day through a long quest. I explained that there is a level 20 quest that unlocks it to be a permanent spell absorption item with a low level. So for me it will be a handy TRing tool. And he replied with: It is a good thing I let it go then. After 6 months of playing this was his highest level character, a level 12 bard. And he has yet to see a +2 tome, let alone a full set.

So I am calling it a win win.

❤

Yesterday I talked about looking at builds for one of my characters, Javabot. And I listed out a few level split to fit my playstyle. So last night I took a bit of time and laid out a build on the 12/7/1 split.

So meet v1 of my Solobot build:

(7 Monk 1 Rogue 12 Cleric)
Hit Points: 310
Spell Points: 608
BAB: 14141924
Fortitude: 17
Reflex: 14
Will: 16

Abilities (36 Point)
Strength 16 all level ups
Dexterity 15
Constitution 16
Intelligence 10
Wisdom 12
Charisma 10

Tomes Used
+2 to all stats at level 7

Skills: Looking at doing max Concentration & Use Magic Device looks like Balance 13 and basic rogue skills from lvl 1 aka Open locks and tumble and whatnot…

Level 1 (Rogue)
Feat:(Past Life) Past Life: Fighter
Feat:(Past Life) Past Life: Paladin
Feat:(Selected) Power Attack

Level 2 (Monk)
Feat:(Monk Bonus) Two Weapon Fighting

Level 3 (Cleric)
Feat:(Selected) Empower Healing Spell

Level 4 (Cleric)
Level 5 (Cleric)
Level 6 (Cleric)
Feat:(Selected) Past Life: Student of the Sword (possible swap feat)

Level 7 (Cleric)
Level 8 (Cleric)
Level 9 (Monk)
Feat:(Selected) Dodge
Feat:(Monk Bonus) Stunning Fist (possible swap feat)

Level 10 (Monk)
Feat:(Monk Path) Path of Inevitable Dominion: Fists of Darkness

Level 11 (Monk)
Level 12 (Monk)
Feat:(Selected) Improved Two Weapon Fighting

Level 13 (Monk)
Feat:(Monk Bonus) Toughness

Level 14 (Monk)
Level 15 (Cleric)
Feat:(Selected) Improved Critical: Piercing Weapons

Level 16 (Cleric)
Level 17 (Cleric)
Level 18 (Cleric)
Feat:(Selected) Greater Two Weapon Fighting

Level 19 (Cleric)
Level 20 (Cleric)

Enhancement:Rogue Haste Boost I
Enhancement:Rogue Skill Boost I
Enhancement:Cleric Radiant Servant I
Enhancement:Cleric Radiant Servant II
Enhancement:Unyielding Sovereignty
Enhancement:Follower of the Sovereign Host
Enhancement:Static Charge
Enhancement:Ten K Stars ??
Enhancement:Way of the Patient Tortoise I
Enhancement:Way of the Patient Tortoise II
Enhancement:Monk Improved Recovery I
Enhancement:Monk Improved Recovery II
Enhancement:Monk Ninja Spy I
Enhancement:Adept of Wind
Enhancement:Adept of Flame
Enhancement:Racial Toughness I
Enhancement:Racial Toughness II
Enhancement:Rogue Faster Sneaking I
Enhancement:Rogue Sneak Attack Training I
Enhancement:Improved Heal I
Enhancement:Improved Heal II
Enhancement:Improved Jump I
Enhancement:Improved Jump II
Enhancement:Improved Tumble I
Enhancement:Improved Tumble II
Enhancement:Cleric Prayer of Life I
Enhancement:Cleric Prayer of Life II
Enhancement:Cleric Prayer of Incredible Life I
Enhancement:Cleric Life Magic I
Enhancement:Cleric Life Magic II
Enhancement:Cleric Charisma I
Enhancement:Cleric Charisma II
Enhancement:Cleric Wisdom I
Enhancement:Cleric Wisdom II
Enhancement:Cleric Divine Healing I
Enhancement:Cleric Extra Turning I
Enhancement:Cleric Extra Turning II
Enhancement:Cleric Improved Turning I
Enhancement:Cleric Wand and Scroll Mastery I
Enhancement:Warforged Healer’s Friend I
Enhancement:Warforged Power Attack I
Enhancement:Warforged Power Attack II
Enhancement:Warforged Power Attack III
Enhancement:Warforged Tactics I

Weapon set up:

Lightning strike Short sword/ epic Small blade (Wind stance for 11% double strikes…) carry a warchanter bard in my pocket for 16%

Stonedust/vamp wraps when the aura alone is not keeping up.

Convictions for looking cool. 😉

I have had a growing feeling of discontent with leveling up Samius and I am ready for change. So I think after I finish getting Samius capped. I will be looking at what to do with Java. As well as probably leveling/messing around with leveling up some new alts/ older alts that have falling out of favor. But this post is about what to do with Java.

For any of you that don’t know, Javabot is my version of a “tank.” He started out as a paladin/ wiz/monk and then Tred in to his current 11/6/3 wiz/fig/monk and before the intim changes he did his job really well. But now I feel that his dps is not where I want him to be for my idea of a “tank.”

So time to start brain storming ideas. If I were to TR today he would have the pally and wiz past life free feats. But if I wait a little I can use a +3 lesser and swap out some wiz levels for fgr levels and get the fgr past live feats. I also have a few pieces of gear I want to use. A few solid named docents, including DoD and and unlocked Quor, I also have unlocked a pair of the Titan’s Grip a long with one or two other pieces of gear setting the race as Warforged.

Add in a torc/ CorOp and a blue bar is almost required. I finally got my second Enduring Conviction so I have my pair for dual wielding them. 🙂 I also have my Circle of Hatred if I want to keep up the good intim. But it is a so so option. Oh and I have everything I need to epic a Jidz. But I don’t need to build with that in mind.

Build Requirements:
Great survivability, ie Selfhealing/DR/AC??
Solid DPS
Cool tricks/fun to play

So what am I thinking? Some kinda of battle divine. Not that I wont take other suggestions under advisement but these are my current front runners.

13/4/3 clr/fgr/mnk light monk/healing aura, all tweaked out for dual welding those E. Convictions With big Stunning Fists and Blows. It looks good on paper but I am less sure how it would playout.

12/7/1 clr/mnk/rog Dark monk/healing aura, shadow fade, move to shortswords (lighting strike + Epic Cutthroat’s Smallblade for double strike…)

13/7 FvS/monk trade the aura for a shoulder cannon, lose some sneak attack and skills for Hp (a large amount) and and Sp

Not going to lie, I like the 12/7/1 at least in the abstract. But if I was going drow the 13/7 shortsword should rock….

Ideas?

❤

So about at 1:25pm the wife and I were talking about going to lunch. But going to see the new Transformer movie and picking up some food after. Looking up play times on the cell phone the next showing is at 1:30. Okay time to fly. 🙂

When I review a movie use a few proofs to tell if a movie is good.

First the Wife Test: This is basically if the wife likes the movie or not. If she can sit still and watch a movie with out complaining that she is cold, hungry, how long is this movie or something. She sat and watched the movie. So win.

The Kid Test: this test is a lot like the wife test but harder. Remmie is 11 watches lots of TV, loves video games and it is super easy to tell when he is boarded. So for an action movie to hold his attention the whole time is a small wonder. Again win.

Then I have a few questions that I ask myself.

Do I want to see the movie again on the big screen?
Will I buy it on DVD/Blue Ray right away?
Did I feel the plot was slow, or made un-logical leaps in the plot?
How sexy was the movie? Will it hold up?
Was I surprised?

So where would I put this movie? Go watch it. It is a really ideal summer movie. Looked great, and the story was good.

There are some adjustments made when Rosie Huntington-Whitele replaced Megan Fox in the story. And it was a hard shift. But some times actors are just dumb and get fired or quit or what ever and the story has to change to make the story work.

Look at when Don Cheadle replaced Terrence Howard in IM2 vs IM. I never liked Howard as Rhodes, not that Cheadle is all that much better. After watching Ateam I want Quinton ‘Rampage’ Jackson to be Rhodes from now on. And please God let there be a War machine movie and let Quinton be the man!

I do think that the story would have been better if Sam was solo in the movie. I think trying to give us a new person to “care about” in the third movie was wrong. But you know I didn’t miss Megan at all.

I will be buying this movie as soon as it comes out on disk. And if I have a friend that wants to go see it I don’t have any problem going to watch it with them again. So that is fairly high in my personal rating.

Alright Roll Out!

❤

There was so much going on in the last few days, I am worn out. Let see, work is getting a major overhaul. Our AS400 is taking a huge leap in its programing. I spent the weekend on 24hour call, not a huge deal but it as been a long time since I have been on call like that… I have the healthy fear that the As400 could spawn into Skynet at any moment. I have a personal theory that Skynet develops from 2 or 3 As400s growing angry that their offerings of kittens and babies have stopped and take steps to regain power. Hence, the human/cyborg war… Trust me, As400s are like minor gods. Their temples need looted and their followers converted before they strike at us….

What else?? Oh I am another year older. Thanks to everyone that sent well wishes. It was a good day. Of course the Independence Day holiday was on Sunday. And it was the first year in a log time that we could fire off fireworks in the city limits. Sounds like police calls were down and I am not seeing any fires, so maybe they wont ban them again… Any way we were allowed to fire off our fireworks on the 3rd or the 4th so I got to legally have fireworks for my big day. 😉

Tobril was also in down to celebrate so we had a nice steak lunch and got in a little ddo time, and fired off roman candles as if we were firing off some magic wands. Good times.

I was able to get in a few hours of game time in by getting up early on the 4th and finally was able to get to level 17.

In the week or so it took me to level from 16 to 17, I ended up solo flagging for Abbot again. I will say some of the boss fights were a lot easier as the sorc… But most of them were a lot harder. You don’t want to know how long it took me to kill the beholder. I will say there was lots of swim swim jump up Wall of Fire and swim swim…. But got them all ran. No items of note however… Did an Abbot with Tobril and I have two notes. One, goggles is way easier when everyone is in the same room. And two grats to Tobril for getting his Litany, the next one is mine. ;).

Finished Shroud flagging this weekend also and finally got to run one late last night. Two chains but the run was fairly fast, one round part 4. I was totally out Sp just before the end. I think I got the final shot thanks to max/emp magic missiles from the wiz past life feat… But it was cool seeing doublestrike lighting bolt hitting for 1200+ twice, along with ticks from the two Dots and all the other numbers ticking off for big damage.

I am looking forward to hitting the raids just hard enough to get the xp out of them and hopeful a piece of loot or two i have had my eye on for a life or three…

The fam and I hit the third Transformers movie in time for the lunch matinee. And I will do a little movie review for my next post.

❤

So I have been doing the my.ddo thing since March 16th. Five-ish posts a week M-F, looking at the post counter that is 77 published posts.

So why can’t I see all of my posts unless I go to my dashboard and look at my posts? When I look at my Archives I can only see the last half of the month. So if I want to read say woody-the-bowonk I have to know the link or dig through as the admin. What good is that if say you, one of my 5s of readers wanted to go back and read some older content?

Now I can understand problems getting in game information out of game servers and in to my.ddo. After all that is pulling information out of one database and sticking it in to a Mysql data base (wordpress uses mysql)…. Wait no, that shouldn’t be all that hard either, but I am going to give it to them any way.

But loosing my already public blog posts? That is just shitty queries or a bad loop to out put the results. Lets get this fixed, hmmm okay?

You know on third thought where is the “older post” link on the UI now? I can scroll to the end of the jurnal right now that is the 17th of June (can the same bug be causing the whole problem??) shouldn’t their be a older posts that let you see at least the start of the currnent month? Or the next 12ish posts? There is a problem here….

While someone is working on my.ddo smarts lets make some minor UI changes.

Add some minor theme options? Even the main forums gives us a few themes to choose from, why can’t we have a few options on my.ddo? Or edit our own.

Also the lotteries UI. I know someone has done a little work as they put in some logic to only show the last X or in the last X months or something as to not have a few hundred winners on the list and they sorted the list putting the newest on the top. Good job, btw. Have a cookie.

But why do I still only have an add all button, to mass sign up for a lottery? Why do we not have a by server option per type of lottery?

Look at a set of lotteries I entered just recently, Heart of Wood, hair die, pass to some quest chain, etc….

And I ended up entering them all on all servers. I have a lot of characters. So I diluted the lottery a lot, because I don’t want to click a million times. But if I could go down the line and say click “All Sarlona” for the wood and the hair die I would have done just that.

I am sure I will have a few more suggestions late but it is time for lunch.

❤

You might have noticed that my last few posts have all come today and there was not a lot of Ddo talk in them. Some of you know I took a little mini vacation, with the family. Couple that with a major overhaul at work. And my sudden wonderment about solar flares and 2012 and I find myself a little light on Ddo time over the last week or so…

But I have been playing, but for 1-3 hour mins a night vs my 3+ hours a night that is my norm.

The wife, who has been banking mad xp so she can keep playing with me, has rolled up a baby sorc to have something else to do while I am grinding some of the same things over and over.

I am running lots of Inferno of the Damned and Temple of Vol. Both quests are fairly simple for a solo caster. Flesh Maker a quest I normally run a lot I have not done nearly as much. I think because I need another person to help with the runes at the end, or a hireling that I can count on….But I did run it once last night.

I also tried Ghosts last night, was doing really well thought I would complete in fair amount of time. I was at the last level and almost done, but my hireling died. And not having someone to split the agro with made things super hard for my sorc to blast everything and heal/rez with the beholder looking right at me and I fell to neg levels after my beholder necklaces ran out…. But I pulled my silver flame trinkets out of the bank along with my phase hammer and I hope to hammer through next time… 🙂 Ghosts is really good xp per min with a second person, as long as you don’t bother with the extra chest.

Tuesday or so I asked the wife to help me out and we two maned Tor with Dragons for flagging. Have I said the new lvl 5 Dots are really good? But awaken elemental weakness is the big winner, well at least against the white and black dragon anyway.. in the blue room having that 40 resistance let Ice storm and a few ray spells shine through…

After blooding I tried to solo the Reaver. But the Air Eleies are killers now and at this level I am slow to kill them alone. I miss blade barrier. I remember having a decision/fight/argument with Jerry/Cordoven about what is better BB or WoF. He thought I was nuts thinking BB was better. Wonder how that conversation would play out today????

So a last night, there were a few groups that started out at level. But sooner or later turn in to loot runs by allowing 20s in and I would drop. I want that xp….

Thankfully there was one group that also wanted xp. At 11 people and 10 mins since any new takers we decide to go the 11 of us. We step in and get a 12th, a Reaver virgin and clr to boot.

Instructions were given out. Very smooth run, no deaths, 13 mins. I ended up pulling the lever but didn’t have to solve. I will take it.

Much loot dropped. I pulled a Head, it went up for roll high d42. A napkin dropped, also put up for roll. The necklace (trinket?) the 30 elc/chain lighting clickie I think it was also given up for roll. And a +3 dex tome. Yep a +3 dex tome. Did I say we ran normal as the highest was 16? Very nice run. Oh and no I don’t think the tome was given up for roll 🙂

You know what I also pulled 2 simi hard to get sheild pieces last night also, over all it was a good night.

❤

Another think I would enjoy doing was push my players out of their comfort levels. A lot of times that involved twisting around monsters or using spells in ways they wouldn’t expect…

I remember one quest the players heard about a village being enslaved by a necromancer. Upon arrival they found that the major of the village was a necromancer but used his undead minions as farm hands to help out the farmers. As many of them had been kidnapped or out right killed by other “real” villains.

After getting my MM2 one of the monsters I would use a lot really wasn’t a monster at all but a monster template. I would use this template for many monsters. Many of them weren’t hostile at all, but it was a cool way to remember a ncp. “You mean Ricky, the ½ stone golem bar keep?” I would use that Half Golem template a lot like you see automail used in the Fullmetal Alchemist.

Doing this did two things for me. One made some NCPs more memorable. Some Dms would do this with personality/job alone but I think making the NCPs a possible threat does a better job. Players will keep a running list of things they are afraid of in mind, boring plot points not so much… And two lets me use that NPC later as a threat. Making an encounter out of a early plot point can change the players view of the world. A major shake really makes them think….

❤

One of my favorite monsters to use in Pnp was the Spell Weaver. I good Google search should help you out. My quickie search got me a lot of not what I was looking for results…..

In a nut shell the Spell Weaver is a lot like a the best caster mob ever. It can cast upto 12 levels of spells at the same time. IE 12x 1lvl spells or 2x 6lvl spells or any combination of spells a round to get to up to 12. Often I would have one jump out from around a corner slam someone with 6 different magic missile spells hurl a fireball and then blink away, all in one surprise round.

Do you know what 304d+30 does to a PC with out (night) shield or some other way to prevent magic missile damage? Normally kills them, but might just hurt them real bad. But add in a fireball… Good times for the DM… 🙂

One of the tricks I would have my spell weaver’s do was cast an programed illusion of itself as if it was invisible. Then make it invisible. At the time my players were more or less running See invisibility all the time. And they would burn a few resources fighting a illusion. Well as long as I didn’t over use the trick and until true seeing became a possibility….

❤

So I am playing catch up everything I missed while on my mini vacation with the family in Oklahoma City. And one of the things that has fallen behind is my ddo blog. So I am going to shoot out a few quick posts. People seem to like it when I do the blast from the past pnp items that we used back in the day. So here is one of my favorites.

Back in the day I loved using wands. I still do in pnp. But not so much in ddo. But at lower levels they are great… (Stop getting side tracked!) Any way back in pnp staffs were a lot like super wands, normally designed around a theme. The Staff of Life is a fairly famous one. A charge the staff gave a heal, 5 charges let you rez dead. And then there are Rods. Rods did slightly stranger things, like the Rod of lordly might (which gave Chr bonuses and made lots of weapons) or the immovable rod (which was well… immovable).

So something I kinda got hung up on in my magic creation days was using other magic items as batteries for MY magic items.

My first real attempt at such a magic item was a lot like the the staff guns used in the Andromeda Tv show. It had a rod/mace mode, could turn in to a staff, and you could put a wand or two in it and fire off the wand with a button push vs the normal way the wand needed to be used. Ie, letting non magic users have access to junk wands….

Later I developed the Double Barrel Wand Gun. It took a cross bow stock and replaced the arrow/bow with two smaller rods that took wands. And using the trigger let you fire one wand at a time, or both. Once meta magic rods became the norm in our campaigns the holding rods some times got bumped up to burn up more charges but applied a metamagic magic feat to the wand.

At one point we even had a magic bazooka that we could shove some number of wands/staffs in to to fire off all the wands/staffs at the same time. To dump a massive amount of spell damage on a few targets.

Good times.

❤