When Things Finally Come Together...

Despite the setbacks for our young adventurers the previous evening, Blarrney, Dascool, Factotum, Murders, Robinous and Obsydiian managed to collect themselves together for a small excursion through one of the Gianthold's greatest challenges... the Madstone Crater.

Of course, with any significant challenge, there must be some significant reward. Otherwise, why would anyone rise to face the challenge?

Well, I can certainly tell you that the reward wasn't in the offerings of Blaze ar'Rhind or his minions. Especially on completion of the quest. It seemed that no one was offered anything more than vendor trash. Although, I wouldn't really consider Madstone to be a "loot run" type of quest.

But, there was a greater reward to be had...

Experience.

You see, Robinous has been working, ever so slowly, to rise to the ranks of the elder heros. Unfortunately, he's still at Level 10 at the moment. Though, after a few more adventures such as the Madstone Crater, he'll be Level 13 in no time.

Particularly since he earned nearly twenty *thousand* experience points for his effort last night.

'course, he would've earned nearly twenty-two thousand, had he not released to resurrect himself. But, those are the breaks of the game. There are some times where you have to make a tough call. It's simply unfortunate when you do. I don't know many folks who enjoy the prospect of losing experience when they're working so hard to earn it in the first place.

The group was lucky, though.

The quest had been opened only on Normal, making it a Level 14 quest.

And, none of the group were above Level 13.

Additionally, most of the group were seeing the crater for the first time with the characters they'd brought along. And some even had the trinket, the Voice of the Master, earning them some bonus experience.

I must say, with the release of Module 8, the developers did make a few adjustments to the quest.

All in all, I'd say some very good adjustments.

Despite some of the challenges the group had faced, it seems to me that they had much more fun than in previous excursions through the crater. Mostly, I think, because the quest now requires players to be engaged the entire way through now.

And, that silly giant skeleton at the end is now susceptible to certain arcane spells once again.

I look forward to the group's next adventure out in Gianthold. I hear tell that both the Prison of the Planes and the Crucible are calling Robinous' name...

Keep it fun!

Not Again...

There have been quite a few occasions lately, where players haven't been able to log into DDO. Some of it's been acknowledged by Turbine as being related to the release of Module 8. Many of the other problems have simply been ignored by the customer service department.

Actually, I'm beginning to think it's called the Customer Neglect department.

Here's why:



This is the message I and many other players received when trying to log into the game this evening.

A short visit to the forums showed that *every* single thread in the most recent threads list was related to this issue.

But there wasn't a single response from anyone at Turbine.

I'm guessing that this means Turbine has cancelled my run with the guildies out in Gianthold this evening.

And I was really looking forward to helping Robinous earn a new level or two...

I guess I'll keep trying to log in...

Just a Numbers Game?

Sometimes I sit back and think about some of the things I observe within DDO and wonder if it's all just a numbers game.

After all, computers deal exceptionally well with numbers.

And the core mechanics of D&D is numbers-based.

The mechanics of it, anyway.

But, I don't believe that the numbers are the basis for the game. Only that they're the way in which probabilities of success and failure are determined in any given "random" encounter.

Last night, before Belzur, Puddintan and Robinous had logged in, I'd joined a high-level group with Bashal (running as Confrag), exploring some of the new Syber Atoll content introduced in Module 8. To play things safe... for me, anyway... I decided to bring PEBKAC along. I mean, healing never hurts, right?

But, as I joined the group, I heard the banter of party members comparing weapon statistics, abilities, skills, and anything else they thought might improve their chances to defeat anything we might encounter.

The exchange wasn't based so much on what the weapons were called, where they were acquired, how they helped "save the day" in a given encounter with some notorious opponent, but how the numbers stacked up.

I have to wonder...

For the 1337 (that's "elite" using "leet speak") or über power-gamers, is it really nothing more than a numbers game? Is it nothing more than statistics and probabilities?

What about the...

prepare yourselves; this is huge...

sense of adventure?

I was just playing through Grinwhite's quest, The Swiped Signet. I hadn't run it before, at any level, and was looking to improve Trinarias' favor with the various patrons throughout the city. I opened the quest on Solo. More to take advantage of some experience, and to warm myself up for a more difficult challenge later.

For the most part, as I work my way through a quest, I tend to ignore the roll of the dice, as I prefer to focus on the adventure. I like to immerse myself in the environment that's been created to help visualize things often before seen only in my imagination. And, in the imagination of those like me who like a good mystery or a tall tale.

I was a tad surprised to find that Trin couldn't operate an Intelligence rune that he encountered.

After all, the quest had been opened on Solo. The easiest setting. A setting low enough that, unbuffed, Trin can normally gain entry to places usually reserved for Wizards with the highest of intelligence.

But, not this time.

Trin's current Intelligence is 21. So, I opened his inventory to see if I might be able to find a potion of Fox's Cunning. After all, it gives a +4 boost to Intelligence.

But, then I stopped.

This is an adventure.

Sometimes there're some things you encounter on an adventure that you simply cannot surmount without the assistance of others. As that's the way it was intended.

As part of the adventure, what might be concealed behind that rune-locked door?

It's a mystery.

One that Trin will have to return to at a later time. Next time, maybe Trin will be more prepared. Or, maybe he'll have some friends along who might be able to lend him a hand.

Maybe it's time to muddy the waters of the pure numbers game that provides the foundation for DDO, and allow the adventure to come to the surface.

Just a thought.

Keep it fun!

Hireling Preview

Last night was Turbine's preview event for the Hirelings on the live servers. Of course, I couldn't let the evening pass without taking a test drive myself, as henchmen have been an integral part of Pencil-and-Paper D&D for as long as I can remember. In fact, henchmen were especially important in other D&D-based computer games, such as Neverwinter Nights, even if they weren't MMOs. So, I think it's a step in the right direction for Turbine to add Hirelings to DDO.

I have to tell you, though, that my experience wasn't a resounding success...

In fact, if I were to base my assessment on first impressions, Turbine would've received an F- for a grade. Fortunately for them, I was willing to give my hireling a second chance.

You see, shortly after hiring himself a Cleric, I took Trinarias into the Sunken Sewer to finally complete the quest on Elite. Mind you, this is a Level 2 quest on Normal, and both Trin and his hireling Cleric were Level 6.

Now, before I get ahead of myself, I did take the time to visit the DDO Compendium to review the personality descriptions for the available hired help. And, I thought I'd made myself a suitable choice in the selection of miss Kendra Estleton. After all, she isn't what I would consider to be a battle-Cleric, but rather one who's more interested in keeping her benefactor alive. So, after speaking with the hireling vendor (aka "pimp"), Trin made his selection and headed off to see how his new employee would work out.

Not thirty seconds after she'd been summoned, Trin found himself picking up her soul stone and heading for the nearest resurrection shrine.

As it turned out, as soon as she'd been summoned, she locked onto a group of three Kobolds and headed after them. In fact, it was all I could do to have Trin join the fracas in hopes of salvaging the situation. Not only had Kendra gotten herself killed, but Trin barely survived the encounter himself.

It seems to me that, when a hireling is first summoned, their stance *ought* to be set to "Be Passive", rather than defaulting to a "Be Active" state that instigates an unexpected encounter.

By the way, Trin never did make it to the resurrection shrine. He was himself killed by a pair of angry glass spiders.

So, the first impression was that it had been a complete waste of the 2,060 gold pieces Trin had paid for Kendra's services.

But, there was still time left on Kendra's contract, and Trin was determined to get his money's worth out of her. So, Trin headed off to House Deneith, and entered the Depths series of quests. As is customary, Trin started with the Depths of Despair, entering through the sewer grate just north of the Hammersmith's Inn.

To avoid any unnecessary death and/or destruction, Trin entered the quest on Normal (a Level 4 quest). And, shortly after entering, Kendra was once again summoned. Of course, it didn't take long for the duo to encounter an Earth Elemental, which caused Kendra to immediately jump into action.

Mind you, she's supposed to be primarily a healer, based on the information in her dossier that the Compendium had presented. But, she was certainly swinging for the fences with her mace when that elemental came bounding down the tunnel at them. Fortunately, her initial encounter in this quest didn't end the same way it had in the Sunken Sewer.

But, I did notice that she didn't spend the time healing herself or Trin that I thought she should. She did, in fact, nearly meet with another horrible end, save for the fact that Trin was also beating on the same elemental with his Thundering Maul of Righteousness. I also noticed that miss Kendra also allowed Trin's health to fall dangerously low before she began to heal him.

What was the point of hiring a Cleric if it wasn't going to heal its employer?

Well, she did a little better as the pair worked their way through the tunnels, searching for the Troglodyte supposedly responsible for the condition of the sewers.

Actually, miss Kendra did surprisingly well when she and Trin encountered the caged Minotaur. Instead of barreling directly toward a bad ending, she held back a bit and let Trin do most of the work, and she kept him on his feet.

That isn't to say that she healed Trin back to full health, but that she didn't let him die. He still had to repair the remaining damage himself.

And, perhaps that was part of the problem... Trinarias is a Warforged; Clerics generally prefer to heal fleshies, as their healing isn't as effective on the forgies. Maybe Trin should've hired a Wizard instead.

But Kendra did finally do her part to keep Trin going, and they finished the quest with time to spare. So, Trin escorted her back to the rest shrine and directed her to use it, to replenish her mana, before they entered the second quest in the chain, the Depths of Darkness.

Now, because the Depths series allows adventurers to enter the next quest in the chain without returning to a public space in between, Kendra followed Trin right on in to the next quest without having to be re-summoned. A nice touch, I think, as it allows the hireling to maintain the same "posture" in the transition from one quest to the next. And, by "posture", I mean whether the player has chosen to set the hireling to being active or passive.

Both Trin and Kendra did very well in the Depths of Darkness, too. Though, I'm glad Trin didn't have to pay Kendra's repair bills. It seems that miss Kendra didn't care that she was bludgeoning the slimes and oozes with her primary mace. In fact, she didn't seem to have a Muckbane club, as she never switched to another weapon the entire time.

The final encounter was interesting, though, as Kendra demonstrated an amazing amount of initiative, as witnessed by this screenshot...



While Trin was fighting several Hobgoblins on the floor, he was being ranged by a Hobgoblin Cleric from the mezzanine above. Kendra decided it would be in the best interests of Trin's health if she took care of the problem herself. And, took care of the problem she did. As you can see, she even decided to climb the ladder to reach the problem Cleric on her own. There was no direction to do so on my part; it was clearly a matter of her own initiative.

I was curious, though... the time on Kendra's contract had long since expired, but she remained with Trin throughout the quest. I decided that I had to see whether she would remain with Trin into the next quest in the chain despite the fact that her obligation had ended. So, I had Trin step through the next manhole, into the Depths of Discord. And, sure enough, Kendra came right along with him.

I thought that was very interesting. Technically, this was a new quest, and her contract had expired some twenty minutes prior. So, I had no expectation that she would continue through, but instead that I'd have to take Trin back to the pimp for another hour's time. But, she surprised me, and continued beyond her obligation.

Unfortunately, I had to log to make dinner for the wife, so I had to let Kendra return to her pimp, but it had been an interesting experience to that point.

After dinner, I joined Sephrena (Bashal), Plagiarist (Tanision) and Bastim (Robinous) for a little turn through Splinterskull Fortress. Of course, I had to bring a hireling, as the preview event was still going on. I decided, this time, to bring a tank along instead. After a brief chat with the hireling pimp, I decided to add Kastinalia Windblossom to our group.

All-in-all, I think Kastinalia was a better value than Kendra was. But, I think that was the result of a completely different set of expectations. After all, you expect a Fighter to jump into the fight and swing away. You don't expect them to stand back and heal everyone. And, in accordance with such expectations, it wasn't entirely surprising that Kastinalia bought the farm when she took off and engaged three Hobgoblins at the same time, while the rest of us were all engaged on a single Hobgoblin Cleric. Especially with the quest set on Elite.

I did find, through trial-and-error, and with quite a bit of help from the others, that the first shrine in the Splinterskull Fortress is unusable by the hirelings. It must be some kind of pathing issue, as the room in which the shrine is situated is rather cramped. Although you could issue the instruction to the hireling to use the rest shrine, and they would acknowledge your orders, they simply could not comply. We did discover that they could use the more spacious second shrine without problems, so it seems there's something that requires a bug report for the developers to work on.

Eventually, the fatigue of a long work day was too much for Sephrena to continue with us, so she (he) logged out for the evening, leaving just Plagiarist, Bastim and myself. This was the perfect opportunity for us to fill the three remaining slots in the party with hirelings.

Since Kastinalia's contract had expired, I decided to try one of the battle-Clerics, Plagiarist hired himself a Fighter, and Bastim hired himself a Sorcerer. Here's the group we ended up with...

















As you may or may not be able to see, Trin had hired Arias Oreth, Plagiarist had hired Ormol Soggybottom, and Bastim had hired Azala Fireshaper.

I think that, considering that half our party wasn't able to use any form of human intelligence to guide their actions, we did pretty well. We made it through the first five chapters of the Splinterskull chain, and had quested well beyond the duration of all three hireling's contracts, and could have continued had the human players not needed some rest.

In fact, at one point, Plagiarist had used his Bardic abilities to charm a number of the Hobgoblins, too. It seemed to be a contest as to how many NPCs our party could control. But it was all very amusing, too.

I think the folks at Turbine have found a way to really improve the way players interact with the game. Surely it's still a social platform. But, for those who can't find a full group for what they want to run, or for those who simply want a little insurance while they attempt to solo their favorite quests, hirelings seem to be a nice complement to the game's other features.

And, if this works out as well as it promises to, Turbine may be well on their way to adding persistent familiars to the game, too.

For those who missed last night's preview event, rest assured that Turbine has already offered a second event for tomorrow (Friday) night.

This should be fun!

Is the Blog Dead?

I think a lot of folks have been wondering whether I've finally given up on my blog.

Well... no. Not really.

The problem has been that I've had to focus more of my energy on finding a new job. Which also means that I've spend much less time playing.

In fact, I haven't even had any entries related to the release of Module 8, even though I've actually managed to find the time to log in with my new character slot and kick the tires on Turbine's "New Player Experience," also known as the NPE.

Although I like what Turbine has done with the NPE, and the way in which it works, I feel a certain sense of loss when it comes to what they've done to "remodel" the Harbor.

Sure, the Harbor looks more lively now than it once did. Especially with all the new boats docked at the various piers. But, they closed the old Aspirants Corner, and all of the streets down to the original Wavecrest Tavern. In addition, several of the quests have been removed from the game. Notably one of my favorites, Sewer Rescue. And I can't imagine why.

Granted, Kobolds really aren't as much a factor in the Eberron realm as maybe they appeared to be within DDO. But, given the production schedule Turbine must have had to launch the game, I can understand why Kobolds were used so prolifically while the developers tried to figure out how to implement Sahuagin. Especially since they play such an important role in the story of Eberron, for those adventurers crossing the Thunder Sea from Sharn to Stormreach. Anyone who's vessel has to traverse the region known as Shargon's Teeth had better have a Sahuagin escort. Otherwise, they probably wouldn't reach their destination.

Still, Kobolds became a part of the fabric of Stormreach because of the work Turbine did. And, it seems rather callous to simply remove the majority of quests that once included them. I think I'd've preferred the addition of quests that include the Sahuagin, rather than replacing existing ones. After all, Kobolds in other realms are often likened to sewer rats in the larger cities, precisely because of the way they can proliferate in the buried infrastructures.

Of course, Hirelings haven't been implemented yet. Turbine is hosting its Hireling preview event tomorrow. They had decided not to release Hirelings at the same time, as they didn't want to try to figure out whether the game was crashing due to the Hirelings, or because of some other technology they had implemented with Module 8. It think it was a sound development decision, as the game was actually pretty stable following the release.

Sure, there were a few teething problems, but Turbine has managed to work most of those out by now. Which is why I think the game will be going down today for an update which will make Hirelings possible for the event tomorrow.

Now, if you haven't been in-game for a while, don't think that Module 8 was only about the New Player Experience. The folks at Turbine also added four new adventure areas, each supposedly with a new quest in it, tied to the previous content for the Gianthold and the story of the Reaver's Fate. I've visited the area only briefly with Trinarius on the first evening following the release of the new module. I took Trin out to one of the new frozen adventure-scapes with Demab (Bashal). It didn't take long for the two of us to find ourselves in the middle of a party wipe.

I think it had something to do with the fact that we'd encountered a party of Ice Giants and, in the process of trying to explore the areas beyond their camp, Trin had placed a few Maximized Walls of Fire. Understandably, the Giants weren't happy about the excessive heat and banded together to remove the Dwarf and his companion from their frozen tundra. It was a spectacular battle, though. Demab even managed to survive the initial encounter, being only incapacitated by the Giants, but the second encounter with them was far more decisive in it's outcome.

So, we returned to the cavern in which the quest had begun, and decided to save any further adventures for another time.

Since that time, I had tried to host another Titan raid for the allied guilds, but turnout was mediocre at best, and we decided to go run the Vale of Twilight instead; PEBKAC is currently working on preparing himself for The Shroud, along with Belzur, PuddinTan and Bashal. We're trying to include as many others as we can, but filling a group for Vale quests is rather difficult at the moment, when most folks are out playing on Korthos island, or out exploring the new high-level adventure areas.

I'm not sure whether four explorers are sufficient to tackle the challenges of quest such as Rainbow in the Dark and the Coalescence Chamber. I suppose we'll just have to find out.

Oh, and as far as the blog being dead... why have I finally posted a new entry?

Well, I finally had my first interview in seven weeks of searching, and things are looking up. Cross your fingers and hope for the best.

In the mean time...

Keep it fun!