Chapter 1: Wizard SMASH!
Intro: I don’t know much about DDO, but have general D&D knowledge. Despite that, I have never played a caster before. Join me as I explore both DDO and the arcane while telling bad jokes.
The little icon above my HP bar told me to prepare spells. I know what this is. Sorcerers can cast any spells they know at any time, but learn fewer spells overall. Wizards can learn all/most spells, but must prepare a select few beforehand. I chose Mage Armor, Summon Monster 1, and Magic Missile. These seemed like they’d be the most useful.
These boxes have horrible AC, by the way.
The halfling rogue nearby, who probably stole my clothes right off me, extorted help from me. He said a dragon ate my ship or something. That would have been cool to see. Did I miss that somewhere? At least the little bugger gave me a weapon as a bribe. I picked an axe out of habit, but then decided to swap for the stick instead, given weapon proficiencies and all. My first quest now was to talk to a cleric. Starting off easy. The big dude nearby told me to follow him, but I went off and smashed boxes, crates, and jars instead. My money senses were tingling, what can I say?
Oh fizzle!
Inside a cave was the cleric and she’s apparently the one in charge. She wanted me to kill fish people, but first, time to cast spells! I forgot I had Extend Spell and cast Mage Armor and Summon Monster 1 without it. SM1 doesn’t have a timer anywhere so it probably isn’t affected. Maybe I should read more tooltips. After that, I jumped up some steps, fell down the other side, and see that my newly summoned Celestial Dog is on the other side of the gate. Swell. First day on the job and I’m already failing at wizarding.
I trudged forth through the cave and found a fish guy by a switch. I took aim and got ready to magic missile away when my dog ran past me and attacked. I have no clue how he got through that gate, but that is definitely a useful skill to have. Some magic missiles to the face later, there’s one dead fish dude, and I opened the gate for the NPCs. I got more tutorial stuff, killed more fish guys with magic missiles, and reached a rest area. Magic Missile was really underwhelming at this point. I was able to thwack the fish guys to death more quickly. I switched it out for Burning Hands, figuring that it can’t be any worse.
Snazzle fo shizzle, mah Fizzle. Sorry, won’t do that again.
After I reached the final room where I could start lighting things on fire, I discovered Burning Hands is indeed much better. It does more damage and hits more targets. Maybe it’s just because they’re fish. I don’t know. I got something to wear (finally) from the chest and cleric lady gave me my choice of rewards. I chose the fire wand. Spell points are a limited resource and it’d probably do me some good to have a backup plan. With 8 STR, it’s not like I’d be hitting much or very hard in melee. At long last, Dorfben Fizzlebeard stands among civilization.
I had earned an action point, whatever that was, and I was informed I should find my class trainer. This must be a DDO thing. I found the guy and asked to spend the AP and was shown four talent trees. On top of all the spells, skills, and feats I never used before, now I have talent trees to investigate. I read everything, which may or may not have been a mistake, and came to the following conclusions:
1. The dwarf tree would add considerably to my survivability.
2. The archmage tree is boring stat increases
3. The eldritch knight tree is pretty much what I don’t want and doesn’t have much for a pure caster.
That left me with pale master. It gives me more toys to play with, like different forms and a pet, so that’s what I’ll go with.
My primary quest was telling me to talk to a woman nearby, but I didn’t do that. I’m the type of player who explores every side quest and back alley before proceeding down the critical path. I found some typical tutorial quests like find the resurrection guy and the merchant. There were however two extra quests: guard a crystal and find a scroll. The door to the crystal was closer, so it was first.
For variety’s sake, I chose to summon a spider this time instead of the dog. I remembered to Extend Mage Armor, not that it mattered with how short these things were. The spider died after a few waves of cultists so I concluded it is no bueno. I summoned the trusty dog again and he (or she) survived the entire rest of the fight. Many burned cultists later, I won. Hold your applause. Something seems to be missing, but I can’t quit figure out what…
Anyway, I chose the bracers of 5/slash, bludgeon damage reduction as my reward because I saw the zombie form would give me 5/piece, bludgeon. DR tends not to stack if it’s the same type, to my recollection, so I picked the complementary one. Plus, it looks like the fish guys poke me with spears. Maybe I should check the combat log…oh, they slash me. Oops.
Good thing I have 18 INT.
The remaining quest was to find a scroll about dragons. OH! I remember what was missing: smashing things! There was nothing to smash in the last quest. No catharsis! In this new house I could burn rats and spiders while I smashed crates and jars to find items, which included a key I needed. After finding the key, I got ambushed by some fish guy, but he died of mysterious and fiery causes. This wizard thing isn’t all that hard so far. I found a chest he was guarding and in it was 43 gold. Is that right? All these crates and things hold mostly tens of copper, sometimes tens of silver if I’m lucky. Stuff in my inventory sells for far less. Then I find 43 gold in a chest. Weird. The key opens the door to a puzzle with the scroll as the prize.
Finally, the only thing left to do was to talk to this woman in the graveyard. She wanted me to go into the crypt nearby, as one might expect from a woman hanging out in a graveyard. Time to undead in this D&D game: 20 minutes.
Next time: do as I say, not as I do. Feel free to leave comments, questions, compliments, or birthday wishes below.
I think there’s a lesson in here somewhere about the squishiness of spiders… Great read! 🙂
Great!