Dungeons & Dragons Online

Category: Screen Shots

Upcoming Extended Twitch Stream

By on Dec 21st, 2016

On Christmas Eve Eve (December 23rd 2016) I’m going to do an extended live steam on twitch.tv. I will be starting at around 9am (maybe earlier) and I will go until 3am or 4am on December 24th.  I would do a complete 24 hour stream but it being Christmas Eve when I end I don’t want to end up sleeping through my plans that I have with my family.

I will be attempting to finish my bard character that I started in my last 24 hour stream. I’m currently at level 12 and I think I should be able to hit level 20 by the time the stream ends. I have acquired some more DDO Point (formally Turbine point codes) codes to give away as well. You can find my stream here.

Speaking of formally Turbine point codes, if you haven’t heard DDO is moving away from Turbine and going to an indie company Standing Stone Games. You can read more here.

I think (and am hoping) that is will be good for the players. Without the giant corporation looming over their head I think the team can do things that make sense for the game and less for the pocketbook. That might bring more people to the game which in turn will be good for their pocketbook which honestly is what this is about. I think the fact that WB/Turbine put their pockets first is what was slowing down the game. In the end though this game is a business and if the business isn’t making money it won’t be around too long. But this is only my opinion and the facts could be totally different and I could be completely wrong about Turbine and WB.

Lessons from a 24 hour stream

By on Dec 5th, 2016

screenshot00411I finished my 24 stream last week. I did not get anywhere near my goal of getting to level 20. I only got it to level 12. My guildie Reduxto joined me about half way through which helped me a lot. The main thing I learned is leveling is hard. I think if I would have had a full group the whole time I might have made it to 15 but level 20 was a bit out of reach. Also, gearing quickly was a pain in the butt. At level 12 I’m pretty under geared.

I gave away a bunch of Turbine point codes on the stream using the chat which was a lot of fun.

So for now that character is parked until my next 24 hour live stream. I have it tentatively set for December 23rd. I’m not sure if I can get more codes but I will see if I can.

My goal this time is to make it from my current level 12 up to 20 which I think is more doable. My plan over the next 2 weeks is to craft some items to have ready and to swap out during leveling. Until then I should be streaming on Twitch on a regular basis.  Also another streamer on my server Cordaelia is doing 12 days of DDO and I will probably join her on one or two of those days. It should be loads of fun!

DDO Hiatus for me?

By on May 4th, 2016

ScreenShot00359So, anyone who’s read this website at all knows that in the past year I’ve not been posting much. I’ve tried to post at least once a month so as not to be taken off DDO’s official fansite page and up until last month I have been posting enough. I was looking at the fan page list to see what other people are writing and noticed that this site was unlisted for some reason. I reached to Cordovan on twitter and got no response back. The terms & agreements explicitly say that Turbine has the right to remove a site from the list with no explanation to the fansite administrators. I’m trying to figure out what I did to become unlisted. Maybe I didn’t post within a 30 day time frame. Accept for last month, which was after I found out I was removed, I know that I posted at least once within each month but maybe it was after 30 days. Maybe I posted something that the Turbine fanpage administrator deemed as defamatory. I have before been critical of things in DDO but I would hardly consider them defamatory. In March I posted about how I was going to start streaming on Twitch and that post was featured on the official DDO Chronicle. I don’t get it. Do they want to help promote me or not?

Aside from being taken down from the fansite list I want to write about why I haven’t been posting much. The real reason is; I haven’t been playing much. I’ve been working a lot lately and when I do get a chance to log on to DDO there aren’t many LFMs up(or LFGs? Which one is it?) The ones that are up either already in the quest too long for me to get anything out of it or I join and it doesn’t fill. If I put a “Looking for More/Group” it doesn’t fill either. Sometimes I get a person to join and they immediately jump in the quest and start it. That really annoys me to no end! At least ask. The reason I put up a group is because I want a GROUP! (I guess 2 people could be considered a group but still…) So after a half hour or so I’ll log off and play a different game. Lately my patience for waiting has gotten smaller and smaller. I’ll log on, see that nothing is going on and log off and start playing a different game. It could be just bad timing but I’m not so sure about that. I have a level 144 guild that I’m the leader of but the members are starting to take breaks too. We’re down to 4 active people now, and I’m hardly considered active. I would just recruit more people but I’m pretty stingy when recruiting. I have to get to know someone before I invite them and it’s hard to get to know anyone if I’m not playing much. (I have some gripes about some the “top” player base on my server Argonnessen but I don’t think I wanna get into that. The DDO administrators already don’t like me for some reason I don’t need to burn other bridges too which I might have just done with this sentience)

My wife and I pay for VIP for 3 months at a time and it runs out the beginning of June. She still plays a bunch so I’m sure we’ll renew hers but I’m not so sure about mine. I started being a VIP a few months after DDO became Free to Play. I’ve bought 2 expansions at greater then base level and I’ve bought 2 airships by buying turbine points and astral shards. One of my characters looks strikingly (randomly generated) like the person who taught me how to play Dungeons and Dragons. He passed away right before DDO went Free to Play. He played Final Fantasy Online and I’m sure he would have loved DDO! I genuinely love this game still and have invested too much money and time (and nostalgia)to completely give it up. I’ll keep logging on to see if anything is going on until my VIP runs out. Maybe by then I will re-find the joy in playing and it will give me a reason to renew VIP again.

I am streaming on Twitch!

By on Mar 21st, 2016

ScreenShot00147A member of my guild on the recently came back from an extended break and he said that he started streaming on twitch.tv. Check him out, he’s at twitch.tv/JohnBigboote. Well, monkey see monkey doo. I am now streaming on twitch as well. I received my tax return last month and updated my computer a bit with a new graphics card(mid to high end quality as of 3 years ago which is good enough for DDO) and improved my internet speeds. Check me out at twitch.tv/force081. My work schedule is all over the place so I don’t have any dedicated times to play but I will probably stream when I think I’m going to be doing any thing interesting. Johnbigboote and I are going to be tandem streaming sometimes too. We are going to try to figure out fun things to do like races or soloing a “side” of a quest; things like that. A bit of a warning, we tend to have adult language, tell some crass jokes and listen to heavy metal music so if you’re not into that you might want to check this out. Check us out though, I think it’ll be a lot of fun!

On to DDO stuff. I myself have been taking a small break from DDO until recently so I’ve been missing a lot of the 10 year event. Stupid Steam had a sale last month. But I’m back now. I chose items with my 10th anniversary token thingie for all 14 of my characters. Some characters got something useful but some not so much. I still have a raiders box on a few toons that I don’t play much so the CitW weapons weren’t needed on those. I haven’t gotten to try the party event quest/challenge outside of Party Crashers yet and neither has JohnBigboote. Maybe we’ll stream it. I doubt there is enough time left in the event to get any good gear but it should be fun.

I haven’t tried a Gnome yet but then again I haven’t played a druid yet so I guess you could say that I’m a little behind on trying the updates. The plus to intelligence might come in handy for an int rogue so I might give that a shot on one of my next lives. Last time I played I noticed the little slider bar next to peoples names that adjust their voice volume. THAT IS AWESOME!!!! I’ve been looking for something like that for years. Although it’d be nice if there was a way to lock it. (if there is a way forgive my ignorance) I was trying to heal a party member and in my haste to click his name I turned his volume all the way up! It wasn’t a game breaker but it was a bit annoying. I can imagine doing the same thing and turning the volume all the way down and not noticing and end up missing some pertinent information.

I’m not usually a lag complainer but the lag has gotten pretty bad at certain points. I was doing a VON 5 and I lagged right off into the lava. Luckily I was able to /stuck out of there but if I hadn’t done it quick I would have been stuck there until I released out. You know how fast VON 5 runs can go. Maybe I would have been lucky and someone with dimension door would come grab me but probably not. The Argonnessen server came down earlier for a restart and to do some maintenance so I hope that was an effort to fix it.

Don’t forget to check us out on Twitch: JohnBigboote and Force081!

10th Anniversary and Update 30

By on Feb 28th, 2016

ScreenShot00325DDO is celebrating 10 years! This weekend and tentatively thru the month of March there will be a series of events. Specifically Risia, Festivult, Crystal Cove and Midwinter Festival.

On Monday February 29th the servers will go down for Update 30. The most notable thing coming from the update is GNOMES! When the release notes are…. released, I will link to them here.

A long time ago I noticed the hireling vendor in Gianthold was named Raissa Gnomeslayer. I thought she might have did a great job slaying all the Gnomes in Eberron that there were no more. She is about to get a whole lot more gnomes to kill. It would be funny if she had higher prices for gnomes or won’t talk to them. I’m sure this won’t happen though. Her name could also mean that she is a Gnome and that she slays things. The only reason we can’t tell that she is a gnome is her mask hides her face. In that case DDO has had gnomes the whole time!

On a side note, check out my guildie who streams DDO on occasion  http://www.twitch.tv/johnbigboote.

Most Deaths!

By on Dec 9th, 2015

ScreenShot00179The other day I was wondering what monster has killed me the most. Then I remembered that the Monster Manual reports out how many times you’ve died. So I opened up the manual and looked and I was a bit surprised at what I found out. I thought that the beholder would be number one but it was number 3. Number 2 was Hezrou and number 1 was…Human.

I know that the numbers I found don’t take into account that the volumes were released at different times so the Human is skewed because it was released in the prologue.  It also doesn’t take in to account that some monsters aren’t in the manual so there could be one that has more but is not being tracked but I like to think it’d fairly accurate. I wonder if Turbine keeps track of the ones that aren’t in the manual too.

If you have the manual open it up and take a look. Is yours human or is it something else?

Night Revels!

By on Oct 30th, 2015

ScreenShot00154MABAR IS BACK!! Well, kinda. Fighting things in Delera’s Graveyard to get materials is back. The rest of the event is just a tad bit different. Instead of a raid there are now 4 quick challenge type quests for four different materials to collect. Bring different combinations of these materials to the trader in House Jorasco for items. Some of the old Mabar items are back as well as a bunch of new things as well.

To enter the quests you need to collect keys from killing things in Delera’s, or buying them from the DDO Store. You can also collect Pieces of Darkest Chocolate, which are a base ingredient for most trades. Both the keys and chocolates are unbound (accept the DDO Store ones) and can be traded or auctioned. All the items collected, excluding items purchased on the DDO Store, will expire at the end of 2015. Turbine Community Manager Cordovan was quoted in the forms saying this about item expiration.

“There are several reasons why we are trying out this method for event ingredients;one is to encourage people interested in getting items from the event to return to the graveyard in future years rather than stockpile ingredients in large enough amounts that future returns of the event amount to a trip to the Trader.

Another is to address the unfortunate issue of event ingredient duplication, should that be inadvertently possible in the future. This is one of the reasons why we were unable to re-use the Mabar ingredients in any fashion.

A third is to encourage people to buy items and consumables when they get enough ingredients to do so. We did want to make sure people with limited time could still participate and get something from the event, which is why the ingredient cost for the consumables and limited-duration items is quite low.”

All of the new items look pretty cool. Most of the effects the items have are nifty but maybe not worth slotting. I’ll probably end up getting one of each item I think looks cool enough and use a Mirror of Glamering to create a cosmetic.

Mabar proper may be officially gone but it’s left it’s ghost behind. I was in a raid group farming keys and many of the party members lagged out and disconnected including me. It took me multiple tries to reconnect. Night Revels Keys that I purchased, using a code, on the DDO Store a few minutes before I disconnected disappeared from my inventory. My worry was that I wouldn’t be able to use the code again but it looks like the servers never registered that I purchased it and I could enter the code again to redeem the items. The ironic part is then when Mabar was around I never experienced this crippling lag and disconnections.

For the most part I think the new event is fun. The first time bonuses for the quests are insanely high for it’s difficulty and time it takes to complete. I think everyone should give it a try.

Extended Downtime

By on Aug 20th, 2015

ScreenShot00015The servers went down today, August 20th, 2015 for a hotfix and when they came back up players noticed that their tomes were no longer applying to their characters. A short time later the servers went down again to fix this issue. Cordovan explains what happened here. Any progress that was made during the brief period the game was back up will be lost due to the developers having to roll back the data to before the update. The servers are expected to be back up sometime in the afternoon of August 20th.

On a lighter note it was pointed out to me that the rogue trainer in the Marketplace seems to be practicing her craft. She can be seen picking the pocket of the tourist listening to the bard play music. Could be that the bard trainer could be in on it too. Seems like something a spoony bard would do. Check out the screen shot above.

Update 27

By on Jul 27th, 2015

4e03a34a-f186-468a-9a0c-8a7f2614c663Update 27 drops today, July 27, 2015. You can find the release notes here.

The experience changes that I mentioned in my last post are part of the new update as well a whole bunch of new things.

Of special note is that there are new items with the Monster Hunter (previously known as the Champion Hunter). He is now offering +1 and +2 tomes for various offence and defensive stats that, like all tomes, persist on reincarnation. It’s not much but every little bit counts.

I’m looking forward to going to Shavarath again. The new quests are level 13 for heroic and level 30 for Epic. I hope they raise the level cap to 30 soon. I have a feeling these new quests are going to be tough!

Upcoming Experience Changes

By on Jul 10th, 2015

ScreenShot00893

Even the flesh renders and hobgoblins are excited.

Some upcoming changes in the way experience is calculated were announced by developer Severlin. I am pretty excited by these changes. All of them have been a long time coming and they all seem reasonable.

He didn’t say when these changes will take place (for all I know they’re live right now but I haven’t logged on to check yet) but here is the gist of it.

  1. The Flawless bonus to experience now only counts your character’s deaths instead of the entire party. – I like this; We will see a lot less “Don’t Die” LFMs which might encourage newer players to join groups.
  2. Henchman deaths no longer reduce the flawless XP penalty – This is a nice plus because as it stands right now hirelings are more useless then they’ve ever been and that’s putting it nicely. (Funny side note about hirelings. When I first started playing I didn’t notice that there was a 10% bonus on XP for no one dying. I only noticed the 5% bonus for hirelings dying so I intentionally killed them before finishing the quest. I felt as stupid as a hireling when I figured out my error)
  3. There is now an NPC in the Hall of Heroes that will suppress your Bravery Streak and associated bonuses. – This will be useful if you want to do a raid but are not quite ready for elite at level.
  4. They’re looking into doing “Bonus Days” that will allow you to get more XP for having more people in your group. – It’s a nice boost that will make Vault of the Night even more lucrative.