Chapter 2: And I shall call him Hypocrisy
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.
Last time, this lady asked me to check out strange goings on in a family crypt, so naturally, I obliged. I found a secret passage early on because I’m just that good. My loot skills however seemed to be stuck in old Tapkoh mode. I kept finding chain and plate armor, which is what I usually want, but this time I can’t wear it. On a positive note, I found more stuff to smash: sarcophagi and ornate urns. What? They’re dead. They won’t know. A wizard has to eat. Wait, that’s not what I meant. Nevermind.
He has a door spell. I want a door spell.
Off to find some unnecessarily complicated key then. I found a fish guy who was summoning undead, because what else would you summon while in a crypt? Just once I’d like to find someone summoning bright pink and fuzzy animals in a crypt, for variety’s sake. I thought I knew where this was going: I kill the summoner and he drops the item I need, but then I killed the summoner and he didn’t drop the item I needed.
What’s that, dungeon master? I have to break the altar? You’re giving me MORE things to smash? A late birthday present! I <3 you too, DM. Rinse and repeat a few more times and quest completed. Not only that, but I apparently became so famous that the bartender wanted to talk to me, hopefully about free ale. Things are looking up, but first, there is something else to attend to…
Hypocrisy is well armed.
I bought the skeleton pet in the talent tree. I just ransacked a crypt, killed a bunch of necromancers, and then started running around town with a summoned skeleton of my own. Nobody seemed to notice. Maybe they fear the awesome power I wield. If that’s the case, I better be on the lookout for some upstart trying to rout me. Anyway, the celestial dog was doing fairly well, so I figured I’d try out this one. It does cost 10 HP to summon, which leads one to believe it will be better, since it’s more expensive. That’s why I only wear solid gold undergarments.
The bartender wanted me to corner and kill a devourer cult spy. So, not free ale. I wonder what this devourer is and what exactly they are devouring. Maybe it’s ale. Why else would the barkeep care? This was a great time to test out my new compadre in any case. Of course the quest didn’t go as planned. The spy ran off and I had to fend off waves of fish. The good news was that my skeleton was destroying the fish and taking no damage while doing so. I think I made a wise decision. His AI was horrible and he liked to stand around for no reason, at which point I had to order him to come help me, but pet AI being horrible isn’t exactly unique or new. I killed the fish people, chased the spy into the basement, and killed him too. Souls fuel the necromancy, right?
This must have been a turning point because I was getting quests that sent me out into the island wilderness, rather than just around town. I went back to my trainer first and bought the dwarf talent that grants +10 HP. It can’t hurt, especially when I have to spend 10 to summon Hypocrisy. Well, I guess the latter does hurt, which is why I bought the extra HP.
No, Hypocrisy, you can’t help. You have no brains.
Stepping out into the island presented me with a new UI element: achievements, it appears. This is pretty basic stuff: kill X enemies, kill Y rares, and find Z locations. I was barely out into the island before yet another quest presented itself though. Some dude on a rock told me to make my way down to a drain so I could keep something bad from waking up. Maybe it was last night’s chicken. You know necromancers, they’ll raise anything. I may not have been paying attention to the details. It was a fairly straight forward dungeon except for the ice spider at the end. I can’t say I saw that coming. Ice elemental, frost giant, frost dragon, sure. Ice spider? Not so much. I solved another re-routing puzzle, except this time in 3D. The leftovers stayed asleep and DING! Level 2.
More important, however, was my quest reward: a hat. You see, dear reader, I have a thing for headgear. I love having my characters in silly hats, helmets, or eyewear. In other games, my characters have worn fezzes (because they’re cool), pink fedoras, duck masks, and golden top hats. I was elated to see that DDO is starting off on the right foot.
I have a pagoda roof on my head.
Anyhow, just one quest into the wilds and I had to return to town to level up. I boost the same skills I mentioned back in the character creation bit and I selected Chill Touch and Charm Person as my new spells. The hypocrisy tree says that every point invested increases my effectiveness with negative energy and Chill Touch says it does negative energy damage. LeVar Burton’s teachings have served me well. The other spell I figured might be good crowd control at some point. Or for getting free ale. I doubt it works on fish people on the other hand, so I put Chill Touch in my newly acquired prepared spells slot instead.
Next time, I venture out into the wilds again to save good folk from fish people and other necromancers. Feel free to leave comments, questions, compliments, and footprints below.
It took me two tries to get through that bit of Korthos Island, but one of the things I learned was that fish people don’t like fire. Go figure, right? Yay for hats! Or clothes of any kind… considering the whole waking up in rags thing. 🙂 Two thumbs up for this series!
Those crazy “Fish People”. I’m loving this series!