Chapter 6: Mistakes Were Made
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.
Wow, it has been some time since Dorfben graced the world with his presence. Do not fret. I have not quit or given up my wizardly quest. I’m just easily distracted by other games, especially if they’re shiny or were heavily discounted on digital distribution platforms. In any case, the time to continue wizarding has arrived.
I was starting to feel guilty for taking the dock worker’s gift bag and not actually helping him, so I went back to find his buddy. Tambor Smythe wanted me to protect someone’s cargo while he set traps to catch kobolds. I knew this meant I would be doing most of the work. Upon entering the warehouse, I was told to talk to him again, but…must…smash…stuff. There were a great many boxes and jars in there. Emphasis on “were.”
We’re gonna need a bigger wand…
I suppose the box I had to protect had HP or something, but I couldn’t see it. As far as I could tell, I just had to kill kobolds for five minutes. Hypocrisy did most of the work, to be honest. Setting him to aggressive was the best idea I ever had. When all was said and done, there were several traps around the room with kobolds stuck in them. Mercy is the mark of a great dwarf. *killed trapped kobold* Guess I’m just a good dwarf. *killed another kobold* Well, I’m all right.
Smythe then asked me what we should do with the kobolds. Oh…oops. This was a moral choice. I spared them of course, because I’m a chaotic good, er, all right dwarf. Hey, don’t judge me. I named my undead pet “Hypocrisy” for a reason.
After turning in that quest, Cartamon gave me another one. This time I’m supposed to destroy someone’s property. What’s with quest givers and mixed signals? Supposedly this other guy was trafficking in goods that involve blood of the innocents. I’m not entirely sure what that meant, but he was paying me to break stuff, which is awesome. It was at this point I made a mistake. Instead of going with the obvious choice of quest, I checked my quest log and decided to do something else. Why? Who knows.
On the way to a quest entrance, I found a door leading to some place that had to do with airships. I didn’t go in (probably another mistake) but between the crystals and now airships, I’m really beginning to think I found a D&D JRPG. What quest did I pick anyway? A shifty character sold kobolds a fake gem, which they now worship as if it’s a real one, and he doesn’t want them whipped into a frenzy. To resolve this, he wanted me to sneak in, steal it, and get back out. How stealing some sacred object won’t anger them too, I’m not sure. I had a bad feeling about this quest, but I made yet another mistake and went inside anyway.
Once inside, my objectives were to kill fewer than six kobold prophets before stealing the gem, steal the gem, and kill 25 kobolds. Again with the mixed messages. Of course, I had forgotten to tell Hypocrisy to chill out so he already killed two prophets and a few other kobolds in the first area. After that wonderful start, I told him to be passive and tried using line of sight to hide and waiting until they were at their farthest point away from me before moving, but I was still noticed. Each noticer conveniently also happened to be next to an alarm. I thought my best option at that point was to charge through, grab the gem, and then kill everything once I didn’t have to worry about the prophets. That did not go as planned.
DDO (and many MMOs now, sadly, the jerks) have implemented a mechanic where if you are hit from behind, you get snared. This made “running” so slow I get to use quotation marks on the word now. At one point I tried thinning out the crowd of kobolds chasing me, but the targeting mechanics in this game are not good. I would place the reticle over a non-prophet kobold directly in front of me, but my wand shot a prophet in the head and killed it. I tried right-clicking a charity to put it in the target window and then followed the previous steps. Surprise! Killed another prophet anyway. Then the other two killed themselves by following me into a triggered trap. I was called a failure and booted out of the instance. I thought the greatest risk was that I might die from dragging around so many, not that I’d be thwarted by mechanics.
Didn’t take screenshots during that devil of a quest, so here’s an elf being a jerk.
After thinking about it some more, I realized I had no other option but to try those tactics again. I didn’t have the point investments necessary to actually sneak past anything. I didn’t have spells that can help. There is an invisibility spell, but I had no idea if I had access to it at this level and I obviously had not taken it in the first place. Plus, in other D&D games, it was not the visibility, but the noise you make that typically alerted mobs. This time, I avoided that trap, made sure prophets were nowhere near me before I tried killing a few kobolds…and still managed to kill 5/6. I did find the gem this time and spent about a minute trying to pick it up. The reticle had turned to the grabby hand icon, but each time I clicked, I shot a kobold in the face with fire. I eventually had to stand on top of it, go into first person view, and try a few more clicks before it worked.
Once that released me from my obligation not to kill particular kobolds, there was crying, cursing, and blood. Then I attacked the kobolds. I had well over twenty of them around me trying to land attacks. Statistically, they were largely unsuccessful, but by this time they had dropped me to about 11 HP, so I finally had reason to use a health potion. I unchained Hypocrisy while I spun around casting fiery fingers like some sort of sprinkler of flaming death. I claimed my loot, turned in the quest, and logged off. At this point, I don’t even want to know what the correct way to do that quest is. The next time an NPC tries to get me to do a sneaky quest, I’ll sneak fire into their hair. Dorfben doesn’t do subtle.
Feel free to leave comments, questions, compliments, and impossible to grab gems below.
That quest is notoriously tricky. Some tricks to try to make targeting easier:
-Hard targeting with Tab instead of trying to right click on kobolds will reduce time spent and also avoid the collateral that comes with soft targeting.
-Use Q to target inanimate objects (good for finding them too if you don’t know where they are since it works in a radius around you) and then E to interact rather than trying to left click, or if you have the item targeted in your target orb thing you can just click on its picture there to grab it. The game will prioritize left click for combat over item interaction, you can change this in the game options if you wish.
If you’re not a sneaky type the easiest way to do it is just to run through as fast as you can (which does require some knowledge of quest layout) and I usually like to take a moment to thin out their ranks when I get to stand on the ledge at the green crystal levers.
If you start to get overwhelmed you will get a dungeon alert level which is where you noted them slowing you down, so crowd control to incapacitate them or thinning out their ranks (whilst keeping up a good pace) can be another way of doing it. I might suggest even taking some of the festivult cookies out for a spin in there. Like flesh to stone or dancing sphere for example.
Invis is a lvl 2 spell. Scrolls available in marketplace and will definitely help. You’ll need a bunch to recast after you go through doors or switches. You are right about the sound, but if they can’t see you that extra bit of breathing space will be a great help.
Useful tips I’m sure, for a quest I’ll never do again.
I guess I should look up these options for my own edification anyway, but the game really should just read my mind and do what I want it to.
Also, nice to have you back. I enjoy reading these very much. 🙂