Henchmen Preview

Before I delve into this morning's topic, I wanted to jot down a few words regarding our attempt to take down the Titan this past Friday evening...

Unfortunately, the Titan wasn't even aware we'd entered the complex; we stalled on the green-side puzzle early on. I can't blame anyone for this, and I wouldn't even if I could; none of us working the green side were familiar with the puzzle, and we were working from various and sundry solutions. Clearly, when you don't really know what you're trying to accomplish, the chances of failure are much greater. As evidenced by our brief attempt on Friday.

In fact, it took us a while to even decide which part of the group would break to the green side, leaving the remainder to the purple side. Ultimately, someone who knew enough about the raid took charge and sent Stonhands, Leaff, Sleepinbeauty, Spankmo, PuddinTan and Obsydiian down the green side.

We ran into problems early, though, because the nomenclature used for the various doors within the green puzzle varied from one guide to the next. It was often difficult to determine which door anyone was referring to. I think this is what led to the failure of the raid... we were generally following a guide that had casters step into a puzzle room, set the tiles in a specified manner, and then Dimension Door out to re-join the group. However, in the process of trying to determine which rooms were set, we left one of the rooms set improperly, with no way to regain access.

It's certainly something we'll have to work on for the next time around.

In the mean time, I finally managed to convince my wife to allow me to open a second subscription to DDO. With my characters hosting the guild bank, they have very little room in their inventories to run quests. And, so far as I'm concerned, all of my characters are playable characters. So, I really need an available inventory for quests.

Now, the wife wouldn't buy-off on having a second account solely for guild bank purposes. The idea is that, some day, maybe soon, she might actually join me in-game. Of course, a second account would be required for such an occurrance. So, I managed to make my case and now have a second DDO account.

And, it didn't take long for me to create a character that would eventually become one of the bank characters.

General consensus is that, if you want a character that will level-up and/or earn favor quickly, you should create a Cleric. After all, there always seems to be a disproportionate lack of Clerics whenever anyone tries to create a group. With such high demand for healing, it should be easy for my new bank character to open up both of his extra inventory slots and both additional bank slots. After all, bank characters can never have enough space to store things...

Conveniently, my wife's computer sits right next to mine in our home office. So, once I'd created my new bank character, I was able to log into both the bank character and one of my playable characters, to transfer items without having to pay exhorbitant postage fees.

Then I got to thinking...

What if I just ran my new bank character *with* one of my regular characters, to build up the required favor? I mean, Trinarias is still Level 2... And, can fight better than the typical healing Cleric. Not to mention the fact that he can disable traps and open locks most Clerics would be hard-pressed to deal with.

So, I booted up the game on both systems and grouped the two together. The idea was to bring the Cleric into the same quest with Trinarias, let Trin do all the work, and let the Cleric reap the benefit.

But, then I decided that the arrangement could be mutually advantageous.

After all, Trin could benefit from having a healer around.

The difficulty lay in one player trying to control two characters at the same time. It would end up being an exercise somewhat like the ability to move-under-cover we used to practice in the Army, where one soldier would lay down cover-fire while his buddy advanced on the enemy position. Once in place, the two would trade duties, where he'd move and his buddy would lay down the cover-fire.

Except that, in this case, there was no cover fire. It was simply moving one character into position at a time.

And, quite frequently, I found it to be more desireable to leave Trin's "buddy" back in a safe spot while Trinarias moved forward to engage whatever opposition he could find. And, when Trin was done, the Cleric could move forward to join him. And heal him. ;-)

It actually worked surprisingly well.

In a couple of instances, I was able to leave the Cleric *just* within healing range, and I could fight with Trin, and reach over to the other keyboard to cast heals on Trin at the same time.

Talk about multi-tasking!

But, it occurred to me that this might be the basis upon which the forthcoming henchmen in Module 8 might be based. Another character you "control" (only to a certain extent) but which isn't intended to do much "intelligent" work, only a prescribed set of actions, based on certain presuppositions about that henchman's role in the group.

I found myself in a bit of a pickle, though, when I attempted to run the pair through Survive the Low Road...

The duo acutally did very well, methodically making their way through the quest. Right up until they encountered the shaman at the end. Actually, the Cleric was left standing at the top of the pipe the pair had just climbed up out of. It was Trin who snuck up the ramp to use his bow on the shaman. Where things broke down was the point at which Trin brought the shaman back down the ramp toward the pipe.

Even though Trin had established aggro on the shaman, the shaman saw that the Cleric wasn't running, and was squishier than Trin. So, the shaman set to work on the Cleric, quickly incapacitating him. Well, was doing all I could to get Trin to kill the shaman, which meant I was too busy to reach over and cast a heal on the Cleric. By the time the dust settled, the Cleric was incapacitated.

This is the point at which I should mention that Trinarias has absolutely no Heal skill, and he doesn't carry Healer's Kits. He is, after all, a Warforged. But, he is also part Ranger, so it seems now is the time he should start carrying wands. Because it didn't take long after the encounter was over that the Cleric finally failed his saving throw and died.

Without a Shrine in the quest, it was impossible to raise the Cleric without recalling.

Since it was so close to lunch time, I had to recall out and skip the end chest, rather than running all the way back from the tavern to claim it.

Bummer!

But, after lunch, I brought the duo back together for a few more lowbie quests. This time, though, after I'd explained what mischief I was up to, Robinous had logged in with his new lowbie Sorcerer, by the name of Lumma. And, we decided to give Garrison's Missing Pack a whirl.

Honestly, the progress through the quest was more pedantic than when all of the characters are under constant and direct control of their own players, but it turned out that, for the all-level-two characters, having a henchman Cleric in the group turned out to be the saving grace...

Based on what I'd learned about aggro in Survive the Low Road earlier in the day, I was careful to keep the Cleric back, well outside the aggro circle of the various mobs, and then, once the path had been cleared, I brought him forward to dole-out healing and Divine Vitality, a god-send for Lumma!

At the branch in the tunnels, where the group has to clear both the left and right sides, and activate the respective levers, things became a little more interesting. We cleared the left side with very little difficulty, and circled back to clear the right side. In trying to clear the right side, though, we pulled the named witch doctor *while* we were trying to clear everyone else out. In the process, the witch doctor incapacitated both Trin and Lumma. Fortunately, all the other mobs had been dispatched, but it took a fair bit of scrambling to bring the Cleric up from the safety of the rear area in time to prevent any unfortunate deaths.

Ha!

The henchman saved the day!!!

He was able to cast enough heals to prevent Trin and Lumma from joining their forebears.

Now, I do hope that the henchmen Turbine will be introducing in Module 8 will have at least a little better Artificial Intelligence than my improvised henchman, as in, that they will be able to keep up an heal (or whatever else) on their own, rather than requiring specific direction at all points along the way.

However, having played using a very close facsimile to a legitimate henchman, I've come to appreciate the benefits of having such an option, especially for smaller, less well equipped adventure parties.

Of course, in my case, I'd prefer to replace my version of Artificial Intelligence with another player. Now, if only I could convince my wife to take the controls...

Keep it fun!!!