Dungeons and Dragons Online (DDO)

[Haahque]

So due to h-orcs being on sale and my indecisiveness, NewSelvera is no more, instead we have Hikkor, the Skull Warrior.

I'm sort of deciding if I want him to be a cleric or a paladin, but the basic idea is I'm trying to make a psionic warrior.

He's currently a level 4 cleric, he might disappear and become a level 4 paladin at some point. (He's not a primary healer, mostly only self-heals if he needs it).

EDIT: With some looking at enhancement trees, the capstone for war priest doesn't look that great, and I feel like I can get more by splashing a different class and losing the capstone, so I'll probably end up as level 12 cleric, level 8 fighter or paladin and getting more out of those 8 levels then cleric would give me.

EDIT 2: He's now a level 6 cleric

[Haahque]

For those that might even be mildly interested, I wrote a blog on DDO. http://robertmisc.blogspot.ca/

Also, Hikkor's level 9 now. Still full cleric, but considering taking a different class at level 10. Level 9 meant he can start rezzing people, which is pretty good.

[JadedDM]

"This means that characters no longer need...a healer to heal them..."

*looks at cleric with healer build* Uh-oh...

Anyway, now that the holidays are over I can start playing this again with some more regularity.

[Haahque]

Yeah I also have a cleric with a healer build on one of the servers. Sometimes it's sort of hard to find parties >.>

And that was mostly talking about experienced players playing through the harder/hardest content, for a bunch of new players playing through low level content healing is still pretty useful Not everyone has self healing yet.

Glad to hear you'll have more time soon/(now?)

[JadedDM]

Haahqae and I went out into the city today and managed to acquire quite a bit of loot and XP. We...may have also committed some war crimes? Against followers of my own deity? It wasn't clear.

Anyway, I hit level 4.

I also completely forgot to get screenshots.

[TristenC]

Hope the war-crimes and blasphemy were worth the lvl-up
Wouldn't you lose your clerical powers for that? Maybe they were planning a violent religious schism...

[JadedDM]

Actually, it looked more like they were homeless and just trying to eke out a living, and we were sent to kill them for following the wrong god. It just turned out it was my god, as well. ;_;

According to the game, I'm still LG. That's messed up.

[TristenC]

that's some heavy $#!7 right there...

[JadedDM]

Is there a cap on ability scores? My WIS is already 20, and I'm not sure if I should keep trying to pump it up or if there's a point of diminishing returns. I would know the answer if this was 2E, but I don't know enough about 3E to guess.

Anyway, now that work has calmed down my schedule is more open to play. As a rule, I am usually free on the evenings of Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday. I won't always be, and sometimes I may be free on other days, but for now, those days are the safer bet.

[Haahque]

There is no cap on ability scores, however not all bonuses stack with each other.

Hikor's rocking somewhere in the order of 30 strength (started with 18 str, +2 from Half orc = 20 str, +2 from enhancements for cleric, +2 from enhancements for Half-orc, +2 from level-up stats, +2 from guild buffs, +2? from items, might be +3 or +4 here).

The wiki is pretty great at telling you what stacks and what doesn't for a lot of different things, such as stats, to-hit, critical threat range, etc.

Basically, things to look out for are this:
From items, generally the highest bonus you get is used, therefore if you have an item which gives you +2 wis and an item that gives +4 wis, you'll get +4 wis and the +2 will be useless.
For some reason, bull strength, bear's endurance, etc type spells are considered the same bonus as items, so if you have an item with +2 wis and you cast owl's wisdom on yourself, you'll end up with only +4 wis. If you have an item of +6 wis equipped, casting owls wisdom on yourself will have no effect.
Bonuses from tomes stack with pretty much everything (but you can only read a +1 tome once, then you need a +1 to +2 tome to increase the bonus to +2)
Bonuses from Enhancements almost always stack.
Bonuses from the guild airship pretty much stack with everything.
Some items you might notice give an "insight" bonus to a stat or w/e -> these DO stack with bonuses from other items (but not with other insight bonuses to the same thing). So if you have an item which gives +4 wis and an item that gives +2 insight bonus to wis, you'll end up with +6 wis.

It's also worth noting exactly what the stats give you. Strength for Hikor gives him +hit chance and +damage and +carry capacity. Adding more is always useful (assuming I can't get something better by NOT adding more), since having more damage pretty much never drops off. However if I had the choice between getting +6 strength or +6 damage, then the damage would probably be better, since 6 strength gives +3 to hit (my to hit is probably high enough already), +3 damage (less then +6) and a ton of carrying capacity (which doesn't matter since I'm never getting encumbered at 30 str).

[Haahque]

Now that Jaded can be on more often, perhaps it's a good time to start thinking of a guild name again. If we create the guild and get Hikor/Haahqae into it, I might be able to farm the guild up a few levels on Hikor and maybe we could unlock an airship!

I've really not had much experience with new guilds, so we'll all be new to this, but I do know that right now I'm giving a fair amount of renown to other guilds that could be going to Jaded's guild. And while I do love to horde my platinum, perhaps I could be persuaded to part with a little of it, as it's easier to get platinum on higher level characters, and Hikor's something like level 10 now.

So... how does "World of D&D" sound for a guild name? "Game Planet"? "Followers of the all mightly Haahqae"? I think I like the third one

[spyguy1503]

I just downloaded this game and will play whenever. Any tips for starting?

[Haahque]

Well I got lots of tips! Really, too many to remember/organize/write them all here in one post.

So how about I do this:
Here's the DDO wiki, it's very informative and useful:
http://ddowiki.com/page/Home

Also here's a guide from the wiki:
http://ddowiki.com/page/Newbie_guide

In terms of my own stuff:

Finish the Korthos area and make sure to pick up these items (from quest rewards):
Feather Falling Cloak -> You'll want to keep this at least until you get an item that gives permanent feather falling, and even once you have that you might like this more since it's a "clickie", meaning you can switch to it, cast feather falling, then switch back to whatever is your combat cloak resulting in having featherfalling without having to use sub optimal gear.
A set of items (pair of items that give a synergy bonus) that works for your build/class -> These are simply very good items for low levels (2-5ish) if you get the set bonus.

Once you leave Korthos, go around and pick up the three free bags, these will help you keep a bunch of small items from cluttering up your inventory.
(If you're on when I am, I can lead you to the correct NPC's for these if you get lost)
- Small Collectables bag from Baudry. He's near the docks in the harbor.
- Small Gem bag from Fitzpat. He's north of Baudry, near(ish) to the entrance of the inn.
- Tiny Ingredients bag from an NPC in the harbor near the entrance to the market. However you can get a better bag for free if you find your way to the tower of the 12 and talk to one of the NPC's just in the door. (Small Ingredients bag).

You can buy upgrades to the collectibles/gem bag at the Erstwhile Emporium in House Phiarlan, which is often a good way to spend money, once you have about 8000 platinum to spare.
You can also buy quivers at The Hammer and Chain in the harbor. This functions as a bag for ammo (arrows and quarrels), which do sell for a decent amount of money, but you'll actually have to manually take the ammo out if you want to sell it.

Speaking of which, if you happen to want to use a weapon type which isn't given as an early quest reward, you can probably pick it up at the Hammer and Chain, it sells almost every type of weapon in the game. However there's also a vendor in House Phiarlan which sells almost every type of weapon and sells them of +1 quality.

I would also recommend joining pretty much any guild that offers, as guilds have a lot of benefits and no drawbacks, but if we're going to start up our own guild, then maybe we might wait for Jaded to create it. Or just join a guild that's OK with you leaving whenever you want.

It's also worth noting that if you're planning on spending money on the game; DO NOT BUY DROW! Drow are relatively easy to unlock on each server for free.

[JadedDM]

Oh, yeah, I think I only need 50 more TP to start the guild. It shouldn't take me too long to grind out the rest, hopefully.

[JadedDM]

Some concept art of the upcoming gnomes.