Just a couple things for forwarning. This accomplishment was done alone, but I had someone from my guild play witness (and also to get several cheap laughs at my expense). He broke a barrel (and possibly stole my wallet), but that is all he contributed to the quest. Also, this was not done as an accomplishment of difficulty as the goal, but to just try something new and different.

So last night this all started with me yammering off the phrase "I've done Monastery of the Scorpion so many times I could probably do it blind". Not much was going on and then the idea crept into my head. "Now what would it be like to do some of these quests I know so well while blind?"

To start this off I made sure I had a Blindness Ward item and set off to Chains of Flame to get Erath's Curse of Blindness. For those who do not know/remember what Erath's Curse of Blindness does, it is a curse that will bestow a no-save permanent blindness effect every 6 seconds. The curse remains when running through town and after shrining, so even if blindness is cured you can be reblinded shortly after. A Blindness Ward item is handy as it negates yourself from being blinded while it is worn, allowing you sight to escape with Erath's Curse of Blindness and get to your destination. Also, when the curse reapplies the blindness every six seconds you get about 1/4 a second of dim sight, so wearing the Blindness Ward item keeps you properly in the dark while you have Erath's Curse of Blindness.

With the curse in tow I set off to Irestone Inlet on Elite. I figured being a relatively flat area it would be a good spot to play around blind, even if I was a level 16 character. Besides, turning Yaaryar's schooner into a floating bomb is always worth it.

After doing Irestone Inlet on Elite from start to finish, blinded, I have this to say. Sight is highly underrated! Killing hobgobs, even if they did pose a fairly small challenge to me, was very interesting as the only mechanisms I could use to tell where they were included noises (hobgob grunts, spell casts, arrows being fired), the mouse-look target in the center of the screen going red if a monster was in front of it, and the string of red numbers when I did damage. The only other things I could see were yellow names of NPCs (such as Mad Anne and the 8 people to save), and a sun glare lens flare if I looked up (ummm... yep... lens flares are visible when blind).



So after stumbling along, having issues looting chests, getting stuck on barrels, struggling to collect the powder kegs, being completely disoriented and slowed to an amazing crawl in solid fogs from Skartounge, cursing the partial uselessness of the Irestone Inlet map, and actually coming close to dying at the hands of Yaaryar and his crew, I made it through this challenge of completing Irestone Inlet blinded.



I also did Bring me the Head of Ghola-Fan in the same night, blind, but I failed to get a screenshot of the completion. Ogres are surprisingly easier to locate and fight when blind (but I kept getting stuck on random wooden posts in there).

After doing these quests in the dark I have found thanks for both the gifts of sight (after having been deprived of it) and sound (which I don't believe I realized how good the sound cues are in DDO, they helped a lot when blind). Thanks for taking a look.