Arcane Adventures with Dorfben Fizzlebeard: Chapter 4

Chapter 4: More like Mindfailer, am I right?

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.

 

Dirty old Lars told me to meet his golem man at the base of the mountain.  I of course ignored him and finished up all the other quests first.  I know a final quest when I see one.  However, as you’ll note at the end of last chapter, I had done everything else already and thus, it was time to end my journey on Korthos Island.  Well, I did have rares to find and about 600 more enemies to kill, but DDO is lucky I killed the ones that got in my way.  Six hundred more is a lot to ask and I require at least a nice dinner before making that level of commitment.

I made my way to my dwarf friend in the wilderness and found golem man watching from over by the path.  He told me Lars is already waiting for me and I should go meet him.  Lars is patient if nothing else.  I’ve been goofing off for a while by this point.  I went in and found Lars and the three tutorial dudes, including the cheeky bugger who stole my stuff.  Lars laid out the plan: those three are bait and I do all the hard work.  I wonder what level of wizard I have to reach before I can do nothing and tell everyone else what to do.

I’m not sure why we were trying to save the dragon that supposedly ate me ship (matey), stranded me here, and caused so much mayhem.  I could just melt his face off.  It’s an ice dragon and I have a fire spell.  Maybe it just does neutral damage?  Either way, that’s not the plan.  I have to go destroy a magic something or another so a mindflayer can no longer control the dragon.  Oh, we hoped the dragon was not a pacifist and would kill the mindflayer when it got its free will back.  Why didn’t we just send in Lars?  Mindflayer can’t flay what Lars doesn’t have, right?  The noob three are going to draw attention away from me while I “sneak” in.  Yeah right.

How it really happened: I saw these guys run from the dragon in a couple places while I charred every cultist, re-charred every zombie, and melted every ice spider in the place.  They had the dragon’s attention while I single-handedly dismantled the cult.  Yet, the mindflayer didn’t notice me.  I thought these guys could read minds.  I would figure that having dozens fewer minds around to read and flay would send up a red flag.  I solved the most difficult “puzzle” ever while I was here too: step on plates, door opens.  They were magic plates, for whatever that’s worth.

Along the way, I fought something called an ice “flenser.”  I didn’t know this was a word, but apparently it means someone who strips the blubber off a whale.  Does this guy strip ice off?  Does he use ice to strip blubber?  Was he just made of ice?  Too bad he fought a dwarf and reanimated skeleton.  Neither of us was a whale or made of ice so he was really out of his depth.  Not to mention, I had fiery fingers.  All bases were covered.  Shortly thereafter I walked into a room with the mindflayer, the dragon, and a green crystal.  Wait, Lars wants me to break a crystal?  He got really mad last time I did that.  Well, conflicting signals is kind of his thing I guess.

That reminds me, what happened to my bait?  They were running from the dragon and now the dragon is just here, listening to squidhead.  I hoped the little thief got eaten.  The DM wouldn’t let me break the crystal at first, but acquiesced eventually.  The freed dragon killed the mindflayer and to my profound disappointment, the halfling thief showed up to lead me out.  In the obvious final room of this quest stood the bait and Lars.  Hold on a minute.  How did Lars get here?  If he had a portal here the whole time and made me run through all that mess just for kicks, I swear on my beard, I will go back and pee in his swimming pool.

Anyway, I got a portal to the outside and could finally leave the island.  I did just that and ended up in another harbor.  On one hand, of course I did.  That’s where ships go, after all.  On the other hand, not again, please.  At least I made it here conscious and with clothing not stolen, I guess.  In unrelated news, this whole time I saw this icon on my character portrait, but never bothered looking into what it was.  I thought at first it was just an indication that it was me, in case I got confused.  It was a daily dice roll though.  I like free stuff so I gave it a shot and rolled a 99.  I didn’t know there was a d100.

This may be a little too behind the scenes, but I’ve left Dorfben here for quite some time while I wrote these articles.  I logged in several times to do the daily rolls, but didn’t get anywhere near a 99 again.  On the plus side though, he got enough free XP to reach level 3 and you know what that means: new spells!  I have access to level 2 spells now.  I heard Grease is a great spell, especially when you are grouping with others, but that’s a level 1 spell and I didn’t want to waste my spell choices on that right now.  When I looked at the level 2 spell selection, a chorus opened up from the heavens as I came across the spell I wished I had from the very start.  That spell, ladies and gentlemen, was Knock.  I can unlock doors now to get to those pesky chests!  My other choice was Resist Energy.  It was not nearly as exciting a choice as Knock.

One last thing I did was learn a spell from a scroll.  I acquired a Feather Fall scroll somewhere along the way and noted that I had an ability to learn spells in this way.  See, I can put two and two together.  I had to buy an expensive item to do it, but I need to experience every aspect of wizardness that I can, so it was worth the price.  Now to find a Grease scroll.

 

Join me next time as I muck about in the harbor and see what that brings.  Feel free to leave comments, questions, compliments, and spell scrolls below.