Team Spode

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. ...

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. ...

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. ...

Varath the Unloved Team Spode isn’t an adventuring party with a lot of principles, but there’s one principle which we regard as iron-clad. And that is, never leave loot on the table. This simple rule has served us well over the years. Having finished for now with the Sands of Menechtarun (we have a raid to attempt at some point), we took our guild ship to the compound of The Twelve. There were reports of dragons in the area. We thought back to our (short) list of principles, noted that dragons were known for their hoards of treasure, and we volunteered for the job. ...

Behold! So I knew this going in, there’s nobody that hates us Drow more than your average beholder. There could be two paladins bashing away on it, a favored soul doing whatever it is they do, a sorcerer baking it in magical flames, and me plinking away at it from fifty meters away, trying to get a good holy arrow or two in its mad, unblinking eye, when it roars, “I SMELL BLUESKIN!” and zaps me with a death beam, TOTALLY IGNORING all the mayhem at its feet. If it had feet. ...

Don't you love villains who monologue? Still crunch time at work – ugh! Was working at home until 10PM last night. Gaming has taken a severe hit, as has writing, and most of the time when I DO game, it turns out to be something like a Facebook game. Right now I’m hooked on the EQ2-themed Fortune League. Fortune League fills my need for a game I can play with a spreadsheet, as I no longer have an EVE Online sub. There’s probably another article about FL in our future, now that I know more about how the game is played (with a spreadsheet). ...

Yeah, that was the easiest trap to find EVER! We were running past and someone (I want to say Ulan, but it probably wasn’t) suggested taking a screenshot of us. I’m like, great! Look at all these bridges and ladders! Perfect spot! And then they pointed out the giant goat head behind us. First on the menu – getting Ulan, our Friend from the North, into the exclusive ranks of the Order of Cannith. You know, I’d like an order of toast, an order of iced tea, and an Order of Cannith. Anyway, not just anyone can be a member of the Order. There’s a long application that will take a few hours to fill out, and hitting the ‘submit’ button at the end gives you a PAGE NOT FOUND error. Then you’ll have to talk to our HR person about doing a personal interview over Skype. Dress nicely! ...

It was a night of crime and pun-ishment in Dungeons & Dragons Online last night. The crime was courtesy of the bandit crew we ousted from their little underground hole last night. The pun-ishment, alas, we inflicted upon ourselves. It’s just not Team Spode until Spode logs in, so the Spode-less crew milled about, uncertain and with no purpose in life. Ulan, I think, had found a quick quest we could do for House Jorasco while waiting for the rest of the group. New cleric Shananana(sp?) wasn’t online, so, heck, why not? And then Spode logged in and we were good to go. Now, Spode’s also been grinding a quest he found in a tavern in the Marketplace, and we’d been talking about doing that one on elite. So we did them both! ...