I know that I make fun of my dwarven cleric, Derra, a lot. Sure, she’s stocky, so ugly she scares bugbears away, has kind of a gruff voice, has a husband who voluntarily got himself exiled for life because of littering and creating a public nuisance JUST to get away. It’s okay when I do it. But if someone else wants to have a go about her looks, well….
Nobody does that twice.
Tony made level 5 in the DDO static group Sunday, Tom had made his level a few weeks back, and I was the laggard who still hadn’t finished level 4.
I had big plans for the level. I was going to become a PALADIN! Four levels of cleric would be a perfect foundation for a warrior of Light. With a level or two of paladin, I could wield better weapons and still be effective in battle without having to always be casting mana-draining spells or swinging my whiffle ball-on-a-stick all the time.
I logged in for Wednesday’s Massively.com-sponsored night of dungeon crawling fun, hoping to get into a group and troll through the waterworks some; there’s still instances there I have not yet done on hard or elite. A LOT of people showed up, which was pretty fantastic, and groups filled up quickly and moved en masse to the sewers to stain the murky waters red with kobold blood. There didn’t seem to be any particular need for a Hobbesian cleric, so I looked at my list of pending adventures and picked out a couple in the Marketplace area.
While in the Market, I hired myself a level 4 fighter. Two solo/party quests right next to each other each sent me through a twisty labyrinth of traps ending with an easily defeated boss. It was kind of yawn, and they didn’t level me – but I was close.
Next up on the list was another warehouse quest – break open crates until ten Smuggler’s Diamonds are found. Breaking crates! What fun! And so crates were broken and just as you might expect, though there were hundreds of crates and barrels in there, I was down to two before I finished finding the diamonds. When I found that last diamond, the adventure ended and I got my experience – and my level.
Yeah…. ding.
I went back to the Market to find a paladin trainer to set me right on the path of Light… Wasn’t going to happen. My charisma of 8 (remember: short, brutish, nasty. Derra is the kind of girl you don’t bring home to mother) meant that paladin abilities wouldn’t work for her; and she was neutral good, where paladins must be lawful good. Twice denied! I cried all the way over to the fighter trainer and took a level of that instead. So now Derra is a 4/1 cleric/fighter, and she can wield that axe I’ve been saving for her.
I don’t know yet if I will keep her on this path, but Back In The Day, a fighter/cleric was a potent combination, so who knows?
Was great to finally meet most of the people in the guild! Even though I was soloing, it was wonderful seeing all that green blue text scroll by :)