Tag Archives: TR Train

As I Predicted

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Last night went down more or less as predicted. I was slightly off on how much xp I still needed to cap out. End of rank 95 is cap not hitting 95. So I needed a little more xp then that. A few IQ runs with Tobril, a failed solo run (which I will blame on Mabar lag, and not on my own miss play allowing the dungeon to red skull) and a quick pass through the Vale and a few stops in Shaverath.

I had time to work in a few encounters with the ghost dragon, both times my group won. And I got one scale but I kept hearing about people claiming to have gotten a few per run. But after a little bit of farming I don’t think that the hold up will be scales but motes…. I drank a Drought of night (not easy to find btw) and did a little solo farming in the 16-20 zone. Think I got about 1k in that hour. The wife did 2 hours of farming and got a lot more then I did per hour. I will have to do better to night.

I need to come up with a want list and an order of importance queue so I can form a plan for what I “need” to farm and what to buy when I start to run out of time.

So lets look at the important person first Samius:
Wants:
Lvl 24 Robe and maybe cloak.
Have:
Lvl 20 robe, cloak, lvl 8 wraps

Plan…. Maybe level the cloak up from 20 to 24. Looking at my caster past lives I mostly used the Reaver napkin, Mantle or wretched twilight. And with Epic GH on the way I am hoping that the Napkin becomes wearable post 20. The robe I can see being used a lot post 20 if I go PM. Enough that I want one at 20 and the bigger one at 24, so new robe is on the list.

Samyus:
Haves: Nothing
Wants: ??? maybe the cloak. 10/good dr is nice the purple set he is wearing now has 5/- so a boost but I see the Adamantine Cloak of the Bear being better over all so I don’t think I am going to bother.

Java:
Haves: Not real sure.
Wants: As he is about to TR into a druid, I want to be sure he has a nightshield clickly before the event is done. But other then that he is good.

400:
Haves: Docent lvl 20
Wants: Wouldn’t suck to have a lvl 24 robe as he did do the race change thing and no longer has the option to use the docent. But he is ½ locked in to the spidersilk robes for now. But I think I will try and make him a 24 robe.

Darth Samius:
Haves: None
Wants: The FR challenge cloaks are just better for my melees and I am leaning towards making him an epic Roc Cape anyway, so nothing for him.

Samiusjr:
Haves: None
Wants: Again the NightShield clicky wouldn’t suck. And I have ½ a plan to TR him either back in to a monk or more likely in to my bowonk build. If I don’t make him some wraps I will kick myself for not making them. If I do I wont end up playing him. That is how I roll.

I can’t think of anything any of the other “main” alts would want really and they just don’t get the play that the above get or would get.

Samiusbot, some day Arty doesn’t need much more then what he has. Butters, the nature of her build makes her gear light. And any of my divines don’t really need the Mabar gear.

So it looks like 1 or 2 level 24 robes for the PMs, an upgrade on Samius’ cloak and a couple of lvl 8 robes for the clickly. And if I happen to have the time; a set of the wraps 20 or level 24 whatever I can afford..

Have you made a list yet, or are you just farming now and will sort it out later?

❤

The End is in Reach

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Even with the our ups and downs last night which I will get into some, I can say the end for this life is clearly in reach. Last night I logged off about 60k from cap. If all else fails I can solo that with a vale/shaverath explorer run and a few runs of “Raiding the Giant’s Vault”. So I can easily finish up to night right on schedule. If Mabar fires up today or tomorrow, then I can take the next few days farming that and be ready to TR when I get back from a business trip that will keep me out of town most of next week.

So this last pre completionist life is all but done.

Lets jump into last night’s story a little bit. I log in a little later then normal but I took the time to eat so I would need to stop for a dinner break. Tobril normally has plans on Monday nights and I wanted to maximize the xp we could earn in with his normally short playtime. Turns out that he is online and waiting for me; the little turd played hooky from work and didn’t tell me.

We buff up and decide to hit the IQ. On the way it dawns on me that Tobril made a comment about liking to run that first silver flame quest on the path to FR. So I bring it up and we run it real fast.

Then we hit IQ. Let me first say now that Sam has the human thing in the monster manual I can see their hps. And on elite I became degusted with the amount of hps on simple trash mobs. I saw at least 2 with 4k+ hps. Trash wizards had 3kish. It is no wonder how they do 100+ point magic missile attacks they are level 400. Frack me. Sometimes not knowing is a blessing.

Anyway the IQ goes smoothly until we enter Jeets and start on the front of the mine. I zerg off trying to clear the way and beat Jeets to the dreamy ploots! You know if you loot the treasure before him the end fight has a lot less spawns to deal with right? Anyway I zerg off and bam bam take two 395ish point rocks to the head and die…. WTF? Then things start going down hill. I get rezed but Tobril and Stiner get blown into some spikes. I tell them to go ahead and slow down we are already behind and we need to just not die a ton. Moving along we have another slip up, moving along the little path that is not 100% where the graphic says it is and we start rezing getting ready for the fight, which starts before we are ready. And all hell breaks loose. I am almost down to scrolling and wanding people. And things are a mess. But we push on.

Then on the way to the spa shrine I end up in the spa fight proper. So we end up doing that fight next. Which goes well for being buff less and low on stuffs. Moving on we do the back door to the bar and then the bar. We don’t stand in the best spot until late in the fight and we end up taking turns restoring massive amounts of Chr damage over and over again. But finally we win out.

Oddly enough, the final fight goes the smoothest not taking very long at all.

The boat quest also runs fairly smoothly.

We try to do Mindsunder twice before deciding to just skip it we just kept over pulling in places. 5-10 guys are fine. 11+ when ½ of them are casters/neg levelers is my tipping point.

That is when Tobril and I get our heads back in the game and clean up our play. Moving along the back end of the IQ we make good time and that is when I notice that I am way over my set playtime for the night and log to hang with the wife some before bed.

Over all we got a lot of xp in a fairly short time frame. Assuming Tobril kept on after I left he should be in range of finishing up as well. Soon I will need to make some choices as to what I need to work on next. Samius could go and sit on his laurels for a while assuming his Spell Pen is good enough to not need to waist feats on them. Or I could take and TR Java into my druid, a role that I think he will be perfect to fill. This is Tobril’s last TR for while I think. Although he has plans to TR one other guy to change race now that WF suck real bad.

Any way I need to get some work done. Have a great day.

❤

My Name is Samius and I am the 31%

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It was a long but good weekend. You can see part of the fun threw Grim’s eyes on her DDoblog. But that only part of this lasts weekend’s story. It was XP time baby!

I was going to roll things back along the week but I am having issues remembering everything. So lets just say Litany was amazing as always. And she left me wanting more. And a bit of aside, I need to start calling my wife Litany so if I cry out in my sleep she will think I am dreaming about her. Man, Litany is the xp.

Saturday was Remmie’s (the boy’s) 13th birthday. Now he is a man if only he would act like one instead of running around and hugging his parents. On another aside I need to pick up a stun gun to keep him in check…. He will be as tall if not taller then me soon and as a father I need to be ready to fight dirty if necessary to maintain power.

So the wife and I had a bit of a short day to hang out with the Brits. But later that night Xp happened. Can’t say what we did or how much it was such a whirlwind. Also we had a few of the boy’s friends over and lets just say that party went late into the night while the wife and I hid in the game room and played. But Tobril and I had leveled to 18 at the end of the night.

Most of Sunday went as planed.

Raided with the Brits even if that meant doing a few more jobs at once then I was used to doing. Ie tanking both Horroth and Sully in ToD. Over all I think loot wises we had a good weekend. Tobril got at least 3 scrolls, Grim’s lady friend (Trapping- which I feel is strange nick name. I never saw her on a rogue, no were any of her alts name even close to Trapping and I think her TeamSpeak name was something like Willowing?? Will need to find a good nickname for her soon.) Got the Von Shield and my wife kicked her the shard for it. I got a the Demon’s Consort Bracers shard for myself in DQ and on the first 6 man flagging I got a Xuum shard which after asking if anyone had a need for it. Tobril said he had been looking for it as he has everything ready to go to make one for his CLr. And the wife said she would like it but had nothing for it. Like a fool I passed it to Tobril. Who can put the think to use any time and I should have passed it to the wife to sit in her bank forever to collect dust. To make it up to her on the second 6man flag we did I passed her my epic fragments. I only had to sleep with one eye open for a little while last night.

Once the Brits where done for the night, we had a fast lunch break and got back to the xps. Thought we would be able to wrap up the xp for this life last night. But as we only really had like 3 hours that was really ambitious. We did a lot of Enter the Kobolds and Monastery runs. And I logged at rank 93 and tobril about 30k behind still at 92. He is still mad that he let his xp pot run out during Kobold’s New Ring Leader and swears that is why I am still ahead. I think there is some of that in it, but I think it had more to do with me running in game 10s and him only using 20s, but I have more first time quests where I don’t loose my ship buffs. I am really good at Litany for example. ☺ So most of the time I am not that much behind despite the pot difference so when I do drink a 20 on high xp/min quests I make some gains.

But earning big xp during with a big bonus is real nice. Now if we can cap by Tuesday that should give me a little Mabar time before my trip next weekend.

<3s

In which Sam becomes the Helper

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Last night @tobril and I took level six/seven and returned to the xp hunt. Zerging around Proof is in the Poison and some of the level 5 quests today’s blog post popped into my head.

For the next few levels my job is to lead Tobril through the quest like a puppy and be the bait for the mobs until he can run up and fireball them all to death. Mainly due to the fact that he has less then half of my hp but 100% the blasting power I have right now. 2.5[1d6] to the face per swing baby! Not sure what that means ???? but I know that it is less then 8-9d6 + metas + other boosts…

But leading Tobril around a quest can be a challenge by itself, so I don’t feel too bad.

But in just a few hours we all but locked up level 8, think I am 7 or 8 k short. Tobril is a little further behind. He let a pot slip in New Ringleader and I got way ahead and I am riding out the last few mins of that pot tonight. Then plan to not drink another xp pot until Shadow crypt. ☺

Okay will look at a bonus post later as this was a short one, but if not see you tomorrow. And if you are a voter watch the debate tonight and wish it was a 3way debate. ☹

<3s

What a Difference a Helper can Make

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So @tobril finally got all his work and other RL issues under control at least for now. Meaning TR time is upon us. Just in time for my other guy to hit his stride….woot??

Fresh off the tree and simi geared, I nabbed the two good wraps at level 0, Devition and Fernian from one of my bank alts, SamStorage I think. Hope you all saw what I did there.

Side bar, I also have SamStoragetwo and TestArty bet you couldn’t guess what they were meant to do?

Anyway Tobril and I in 5ish hours did what it took me about 8hours to do alone, get to level 6. Stk part 3 was down to 2 mins so that was a big help. But mainly it was just having another person that was in a zerg heavy mood. And we flew. For those on Sarlona lvling alts and what to power along some content join channel /defense and say something. We are using that channel to let people know what is going on and we will take people from there to level along with.

We talked a little (tobril and I) last night about how our two builds complement each other weak times. Example right now with my monk base and melee focus I carry a lot of the quests as tobril is mostly a burning hands build so lots of the quest killing falls to me zerging ahead and holding them off while he burns them and I punch the masses. My base speed allows me to run ahead get agro and pulling levers super easily. But later while I wait for my touch of death to come online he will be landing in Firewall/spam fireball land and he will carry most of the quests. And we will be trading back once we get to fire immune/high dex save land.

I missed having someone to pick up the slack some levels.

Something I don’t miss is not having someone to see weird bugs and fluke deaths. Like last night we were on our last walk down on Information is key I jumped up on the crates to pull that “hidden” level right at the start of the quest when I tried to jump down I had a weird lagy thing where I just thought it was a normal lag spike when I just died. Some how I took 80something points of failing damage getting down from that crate. So for a while again “death to boxes” is my motto as once again they prove they are the most dangerous of all monsters. Some cannot be damaged ever and they kill whenever they wish.

<3s

40K Xp Until Tree Time

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Most lives as I round things out I start to get excited to TR and get the ball rolling again. This life… Not so much. I am not sure if I am in a funk after watching my son face plant and then slide 4-6 feet across the pavement on our morning bike ride to set the tone for the weekend or if I was in caffeine withdraw. But I only gained like 3 ranks all weekend. With long breaks spent watching TV or not really doing anything at all…

But this is a new week so lets talk about the good game stuff that happened.

Healed a shroud as a level 18 druid. First of all we did get a clr to “solo” heal us, like I was just standing around eating worms. And second of all Mass regen/vigor stack for a fair amount of healing. Enough that after round 4 the clr who was solo healing the group still had more then half his Sp left. The actual feel at least for me was a lot like playing Java in shroud, Go in with the melees. Auto attack and watch timers. Mass regen/Cold Dot/ Mass Vigor/Call Lighting as able. I jumped out of the blades once I was out of Sp not trusting anyone to heal me. Hit my bauble and massed and spell dps but Harry ported with out a visible sliver of health left. Maybe if I had stayed in or the casters dumped their sp a little harder we would have had a 1 rounder. As it was he didn’t last long enough, once he returned, to get healed from his helpers.

What else, made a huge dent in the guild renown needed for our next guild level. Thing that with some help we will hit level 74 fairly quickly, which will be nice for store xp shrines +5%.

I was able to cap out my F2P arty on my son’s account. So now I can bring along a helper while soloing epics for seals/loots/stuffs. So that will be nice. Also it maybe handly to have an arty for the guild when running stuff together, I might be capping out my bard/rog on that account for the same reasoning.

The AH was a helper this weekend, I picked up a pair of silver wraps for 250k plat a fair price and then looking for some cheap dr breakers for my dog, thought I might bring him out for Harry beat downs, I found a pair of crafted holy evil out sider bane wraps that also were silver for 150k. Think they were so low because once crafted on the silver was hidden from the name so over looked over and over again making the seller priced them to sell. And I happened to stumble into them. I can easily see someone’s pet getting a set of devil dr breakers now.

Well that is enough BS, time to get some work done.

❤

The Probable Return of the Bowonk

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After a fairly good night for the lack of motivation I had at the time, It is that time again to start looking at the next life. And what is next/left. Up side my last life is Pally. Down side is now I have to play a pally.

A few posts back I had egg on my face when I went on how a druid/pally build would work, contently over looked a vital thing: Alignment restrictions. Ie both Pally and Druids have some. So I need to keep that in mind again. So no MonkBarb the Exploiter, Pally/Bard – Gospel Rocker builds, etc..

So first thought to come to mind is Bowonk shell 1.0, aka 6monk/6ranger/8 pally on a helf and to be fair that is most likely the way I will be going. But there are lots of other options.

My bowonk 2.0 frame would be good 9/1/10 monk/arty/pally lost some ranged options for(lets not lie) ToD. No room for bow strength or IPS or many shot. But still mostly soloed to 20 in fair time.

I think a 7/6/7 monk/arty/paly would be okay but as I am not 100% sure how the tie would work out for the past life I might have to use a heart to insure that this life counts as a pally life and I don’t want to deal with that.

I could do some kind of 9/10/x caster/pally/??. Just to keep playing with spells and whatnot but unlike 9 monk 9 caster has issues caring a build to cap.

So right now the most logical build to rock pally and get it out of the way is a bowonk heavy stunning/melee with range backup. So version 1 or 2 with a different leveling order to take a few pally levels early to enjoy the saves ands lay on hands. Might see if I can tweet out a different build to make leveling feel right if so I will let you all know.

<3s

Topic Three, Holy Tree Hugger Batman

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Today is one of those days where I have a lot of thoughts rolling around in my head and I am not real sure what to settle on and turn into a full on post. So I am going to try and do a few smaller posts. I also have a few (not sure how many but more then 2) winter wolf codes to give away. If you want a code leave a comment on the topic and let me know you want a code.

Topic Three, Holy Tree Hugger Batman

I have had the sudden realization that if the xp keeps moving at the same pace or even picks up with Tobril and the wife (almost ready to tag along), I will need a new build real soon. But with my new found love of the druid, I don’t think am done playing what might become one of my favorite classes just yet. And I have be wondering if 9 levels of druid is as good as 9 levels of monk to carry a build through a life……

Nine levels of druid gives us winter wolf form and 2 level 5 spells, so Cold Breath and WoF. Some fairly good Healing at the lower levels Vigor proper and lesser mass if you want to mass heal some… Fom and Sleet storm. And two of my most used Spells Ice Storm and Call Lighting. Oh and lets you take a real sleeper enchantment “Reaving Roar“. Trust me kids you will be hearing about this one again from the “build masters” later.

Wait there is a free AoE that happens when you kill a guy and it is sonic damage? Hmmmmm.

So what can we do with the other 11 levels of which at least 10 should be pally just to make life easy?

Well an Arty level gives some SP, rouge skills and a lot of Xbos feats. I don’t have any xbows on Samius. So a rouge level would be better over all. Maybe take that rouge level at 10 and dump all the points in to umd… something to think about…. That is when all the Chr skill items are about to kick in.

While we are looking at 1 level splashes we should look at Wiz and Fighter for the feat. Which may or may not be needed on whether or not you want to take a pally PRE. The only one I think would be worth it by the time you get it would be Knight of killing out siders, and doesn’t have an feat prereqs. So I don’t think I/we need to splash for feats.

Will pally levels be a help to the druid?

Your not going to get a ton of SP or any access to any really uber spells for that matter. Sure smites and lay on hands might help with the now huge pressure on your kind of small Sp pool, but I don’t think they will be enough help.

Over all I think if I will keep playing with this build because who doesn’t want to play a tree hugging holy batman? I just think it will have to go less Spell focused and more melee focused. And until the shape change melee stuff is all cleaned up I don’t see a great melee only druid in the cards just yet.

❤

Is it Okay to have a Mistress?

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I think everyone knows I love my wife more then words, even though she hits me. Send help. ☺ But have you seen the Xp in Shadow Crypt? Totally massive! I just want to motor boat her massive xp! At level 11 I just want to crawl up in side her and try to make sweet babies of with this quest.

Last night due to staying late at work on a project and then a stop at the store to pick up food stuffs and then eating said food stuffs left me with about 2 hours of game time with my not so secrete love.

I even went ahead and bought my lovely quest some XP pots from the store. First time run on Elite with my streak fully loaded gave me 43k+ optionals in xp for about 18 mins of work. Total satisfaction……

Thanks to some thinking ahead I was able to pull my alt account threw a few elites before I errored and didn’t catch the window.

I might have openly wept. I had plans to bring that alt account threw a few times and only once I had had my way with eShadow would I allow the alt account to wonder over to and pick up the quest so we could double team her on Hard walking down the good times to casual.

Thanks to rolling around with pure wonderment/joy I have when finishing with eShadow I let Fumblebot run out the door closely followed by Samius and I to late I caught my frack up. So Fumblebot got on chapter and started opening. Once burned; I made sure to have Fumble recall out before starting the end fight which still netted him 5-6k a run for standing at the door and throwing a few walls of fire.

The last run it was getting close to bed time and I was in a rush to get to bed before the wife and dogs take over the bed completely. I started to rush. Not stopping to gather any extra gears. I am sorry I missed the signs Shadow. As I ran for the final hallway I noticed that I could have gotten a 3rd of every color. But I was on a mission. The door to the final path was in yellow water aka west I swim threw and start auto running while swaping to Fumble and get him recalling and out of no wear Samius comes running into the starting room. I ran out the east room.

So stupid.

I start making the run again from the start, this time I noticed I ran pass 3 out of the 4 rooms that I hadn’t looted yet and had I looted the last room I ran through on my last trip to yellow water I would have a set of 3rd gears…..
Even with my mistakes I was able to make 6-7 runs in two hours. And the final run netted me the last xp I needed to take level 12 when I am ready. But I am not done running with Shadow. She and I have to make a dent into level 12 before I try my hand at killing maruts and beholders in von3 and robots in von4.

I am sure my wife thinks there is another woman on the nights I run Shadow Crypt but really there is just a special quest in the hole I call my heart.

❤

Back from Vacation

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Yep I am back from vacation, from work not ddo. Although as part of my morning ritual at work is knocking out my ddo post for the day, I guess there was a little break from here as well. But I am back and ¾ a sleep, so lets go?

There are so many things to talk about, Ac, tanking, EDs a host of gear swaps but lets start with the most important, Samius.

Cleverly I TRed Samius right before the update, very helpful indeed. As I don’t need any of the new FR (Fracking Realms) on him right? Well at least not while leveling up along the TR train. I have been leveling Samius mostly solo and he is now level 10 almost 11. A few more levels and I can team up with Fopo to finish out this fighter life.

So the first level arty splash is working out super well. Full UMD and the enchant weapon buff is real nice as most of my early weapons are crafted and have no plus to help with the min level. Having master’s touch for when I go ranged bow, because I don’t have a ton of good Xbows at my fingertips, has also been real nice. Next level I get to start taking my fighter levels (yes I am now 9/1 monk/arty) and masters touch wont be needed any more, so a new first level spell will be needed…

Most quests have not been much harder solo then with two. Although I had to restart the pit on elite due to not having a death ward or a death block item on and failing on a slay living spell while doing an optional. Thankfully Fopo was in-group for voice so it was easy to blame him for distracting me…☺

I have been having issues with the Necro 2 chain, I need to make a ghost touch vamp wrap I guess… I would use the bracers for ghost touch and keep my current wraps in use, but I am getting over welmed and burning 5 times the needed resources and taking 10 times the time to complete those quests then it should. It is all because of incorporeal BS. Why doesn’t my ninja spy 1 incorporeal clickly help with that some?

Also I miss being able to go big ac at this level I should be mostly untouchable at this level. But going dodge because of the water stance bug is fairly helpful but I still feel a huge weakness that I normally don’t at this level.

My goal for the week is to hit 12 by Friday. I might not make it due to the extra time I am putting into Samyus, but that is a topic for another post.

❤