Dungeons & Dragons Online

Yaulthoon, in the flesh? In the flesh, indeed. After crawling through the luxurious Harborview Lofts – entirely transformed into upscale accommodations for twisted monsters – we finally met Yaulthoon… in his mind. Nothing seemed quite real. We didn’t get to him right away, though. First, we had front row tickets to a fashion show. Fashion Forward Yaulthoon isn’t your garden variety boss. No. As the architect of the Harbinger of Madness, the creator of the Taken, the gardener of horrors, he’s proud of his works. Proud. “How wonderful it must feel,” he shouted at us. “Knowing that one of your old Stormreach friends might be a small piece of flesh within one of my artworks. I am envious!” ...

Evil is in the eye of the... Ulan was back from Mexico last night. How we missed your blade barriers so very, very much. Those little mechanized sawblades of suffering just tear through groups of mobs. We fed many mobs to the magico-metallic maw last night. We’ve taken a step back from Gianthold to focus on some easier adventures that grant actual xp. Gleek, our manager, thought that the Harbinger of Madness module would be just the thing to celebrate the group being all together again. ...

Lava Caverns: Colossal Crystals With the dragons in Gianthold Tor apparently out of our reach and with Ulan gone for two weeks, the question of “what’s next?” has been hanging in the air in Team Spode HQ. We need a level or two to properly kill the dragons – or a better plan. We have tried all different combinations of resist gear, DPS, tanking and kiting, but we don’t kill fast enough or evenly enough. Anyway. We decided to work on the new House Cannith challenge dungeons for a change. ...

Team Spode vs the Kite Runner We’ve been on the rocks the last couple of weeks, progressionally-speaking. Gianthold Tor has given us an extended learning curve as we learn how to become giant and dragon slayers (which will likely involve specific resist gear for each dragon). When we decided to take a break and finish up the Sands of Menechtarun content, designed for level 12 that we thought would be trivial at our levels (14-16), that also kicked our butt. ...

Tirelessly defending kobolds. Huh? Turbine pushed its “Vault of the Artificers” update live today. As well as enabling the new Artificer class to be unlocked through gameplay, the update brings a new “Challenge” dungeon system. Whether this is similar to World of Warcraft’s upcoming Challenge dungeon system is unknown. DDO’s version is a first person real time strategy system. We’ve seen adventure-themed tower defense games such as “Orcs Must Die”, now we get resource gathering and management in an RPG context. ...

Dragon in the Tor Modern MMOs have trained me to believe that no matter what class I play, I’ll be able to solo anything without trouble. That’s the compact MMO devs make with their players. So my natural tendency is to just pick a target and wade on in. You just can’t do that in DDO. You have to know your place, and my place is in the back. This means that sometimes stuff dies before I can get to it, or I have to take out my bow and snipe stuff from the periphery. I just can’t take aggro. But sometimes my role means I get to take the lead. ...

My bot army We don’t have to play on off days in our DDO static group, but most of us do. Since you have complete control over your leveling, you don’t have to really worry about outleveling everyone… though DDO goes by the D&D rules here, and you can only gain one level at a time. High achievers like Our Gleek become perpetually stuck at the top end of our range, earning no xp until the rest of us laggards catch up. ...

Horn of Agility Once I understood the story behind “The Crucible”, I knew what to do. Immediately upon entering the dungeon, I accused all my group mates of being witches and consorting with the devil. They were taken away, forced to confess, and executed. I alone lived. Nobody will say anything, either, because I might accuse them of being witches at well! I am very good at sniffing out witches… as proven by my success in exposing my group mates. ...

Grand Skellie Poo-bah Last night we were down two people; Ulan had real life relatives over (who could have popped in and played healers because WHY THE HECK NOT?), and Lessah continues to be mysteriously disappeared (we hope everything is okay with her). Since NOTHING can stop Team Spode, we headed straight into the ruins of Gianthold to see what kind of damage a team of three could do. The second dungeon of the night was Madstone Crater, a long, long labyrinth of death winding its way around and through an active volcano. Which technically makes the area a caldera, not a crater. But be that as it may. The basic goal here is to a) not step in deadly lava pits while b) freeing giant yeti-like “seers” from the mental control of c) giant skeletal enchanters. The seers, once freed, will insist on playing Dance Central in front of their XBox giant glowing crystal while the adventurers fight off a never-ending wave of troll and minotaur attackers. ...

Frozen dragon Giants, they are big. They are big and very powerful. They swing I-beams like 10’ rods. They could and do crush the life from insects such as we without thinking about it. They freeze dragons in stone forever. So why is it again they need us to do their dirty work for them? Sunday before last, I was knocked out on my couch after a whale watching trip 30 miles off the coast of Boston and missed the rest of Team Spode’s first encounter with the Ruins of Gianthold. ...