The Elusive Cult of Six

Trinarias has managed to climb fairly steadily up the ranks to Level 7, and is now within reach of Level 8. In the process, Krinjen/Krynjen (Belzur), Lumma/Bastim (Robinous), Plagiarist (Tanision), Sephrena (Bashal), Soulencer/Sillencia and Talgarth (Bingster) have been doing their parts to level up as well.

As you can see, though, there's quite a cast of characters involved.

So many characters, in fact, that it's been interesting trying to get a group together to attempt an actual run on the Cult itself. It seems that every time we've put a group together so far, at least one member has needed to first complete the Greymoon series that precedes it.

Now if it's been a while for you, you might have forgotten that there're four quests in the Greymoon chain. Granted, they aren't particularly difficult, so long as you run them on Normal, and have a reasonably diverse group of characters somewhere fairly close to the level of the quest. But, at the same time, the four of them strung together can take a fair chunk of time to complete.

I think, in all, I've run Trinarias through all four of the Greymoon quests at least five times.

Which is interesting, I think, when you consider that Trin had *just* turned 7 when he started the series for the first time. And that, following our latest completion of the series the other night, Trin is now less than eight thousand XP from earning Level 8.

And he hasn't run Stormcleave or The Pit yet.

Nearly all of his experience through Level 7 has been earned in the four Greymoon quests.

Nearly.

We did run a few House Phiarlan quests here and there, working on favor for those who need their House P buffs or are interested in earning their Pendant of Time. But, the vast majority of Trin's XP has come from Greymoon.

I *think*... I'm not entirely sure, but I *think* everyone now has at least one character ready for a run on the Cult.

Until now.

We've been having a few issues with regard to our Clerics lately.

Particularly since none of the Player Characters are actually Clerics. The closest any of us come to playing Clerics are those with Ranger levels, or those with Bard levels.

And, even then, they aren't really much of a substitute for a true Cleric, as Bards aren't nearly as powerful as their divine counterparts, and those of us with Ranger levels are largely restricted to using wands.

Which has meant that, on those occasions where we decided we'd be better off with a Cleric in the group, we've resorted to purchasing the services of hireling Clerics.

As strange as it may sound, I think the hireling Clerics are even more retarded than any of my own.

At least, that's the way it seems.

According to the way Turbine has implemented them, hirelings have three modes of "artificial intelligence": Active, Passive, and Defensive. It would seem, however, that amongst the Cleric's I've hired, they instead have three modes of artificial stupidity.

Of course, it *could* have something to do with the fact that *I* am the one who hired them, but still...

When a group approaches choke point, and the Rogue does indeed find and reveal a trap, why do the hireling Clerics insist on fighting enemy monsters *within* the trap? Particularly when the rest of the party has purposely setup a defense outside of the trap, and is attempting to use the trap to their own advantage against the enemy monsters?

I'll give you that the art of programming for artificial intelligence is imperfect, but I've written a great many programs that implement a certain degree of artificial intelligence for CAD applications. Yes, the programming becomes quite lengthy, but it is possible to write the program to recognize certain conditions and respond appropriately. Instead, I seem to have been offered hirelings that I literally have to tell when to breathe, lest they suffocate themselves.

And, with that in mind, I think I've come to a point where I'm going to have to ask everyone to re-run the Greymoon quests one more time...

I think it's time to bring my own Cleric to the party.

Which is why I took a little time to bring EmmDee up to speed. He's now Level 7; in-line with most everyone else in our little group, so I think we'll have to make several goes of the Cult series, too. At least once with Trinarias, and at least once more with EmmDee.

That is...

If we can get everyone through Greymoon...

;) :P

Keep it fun, everyone!