How was your last moment in DDO before the update began?

[AyumiAmakusa]

This post is about my experience in doing a mid-level quest where everyone didn't know what the quest was about at all. The quest in question was the Haywire Foundry. We were flagging for VoN and this was our last quest (The other three was pretty smooth because I knew the way).

We went in and decided to do it slow. Went pretty smooth. The cool thing was the whole party didn't dare to take a step ahead of the rogue because we kept having the feeling that 'It's gotta be trapped'. The intense feeling I got from being so careful in a quest was exhilarating. It really felt like I was in the quest in the game and that death meant death. There was a part in the east wing where the floor gave out. Luckily only the rogue fell down and she fell near the pipes so it was okay. We were all like, OMG are you okay?? And she was like, yeah I had featherfall on, I do NOT need heart attacks like that!! LOL. We spent quite a while running about the East Wing trying to figure out how to turn off the flame traps but eventually cleared that part too.

No major deaths so far. Then the message 'The DDO Update will commence shortly. Please log out in a safe place' came up.

We were all like 'Oh noes, we haven't finished the west wing yet!!' Things start to speed up but everyone was still wary of going ahead of the rogue. The way to the west wing was trapped so the eager barbarian died once. But we got through that carefully and it took about 5 minutes. We reach the puzzle room with the 6 wheels and runes and were like 'Shoot, how do we solve this??'

With time so limited, we were running out of options. What do we do? We started brainstorming and the rogue gets an idea. 10 minutes later, we were fighting off slimes and got the key from the chest. Running out of even more time, we open the way to the next room and blast the 3 metal guardians out of sheer desperation (About 8 minutes before server is down for update). The barbarian reads the 'Talking Head' and it says that the lever is a self-destruct lever. He pulls it and the entire place goes into self-destruct mode.

The whole party starts to panic. The two barbarians are running about the place screaming, the wizard was in a corner presumably weeping, the ranger was flinging about his two weapons attacking the 'Talking Head' and I was just watching it all unsure of what to do next. The rogue, (The extremely smart and calm rogue) saw the wall at the side slide away and was like, 'Guys, this way!!'

The DM announces, '5 minutes until self-destruct'!! And there was 7 minutes until server down!! People start jumping about pipes, running from the mithril defenders, avoiding traps and the ones that were left behind kept screaming, 'GO!! GO!! SAVE YOURSELF!!' I managed to get to a door that was locked but couldn't get through. The rest of my party (save for the ranger) died of causes I still don't know because I was stuck on the other side of the door. We kept screaming to the ranger 'Talk to Haywire!!! HURRY'

The DM announces, '10 seconds to self-destruct'. He manages to do it and I die as the whole place self-destructs. That 'Quest Completed' was the most wonderful thing I ever saw at that moment. I try to rezz out and come back in for the chest but couldn't reach there because the gate was locked. Only the ranger and the rogue (who used a rezz cake) got the chest items.

We rezzed out and the game announces '30 seconds to server shutdown. Please log out safely' and we manage to swap last minute goodbyes and add each other to our friend lists. I said goodbye one last time before clicking the Quit button.

So here are my questions. What were you doing before the update? And do any of you have any 'first-time' experiences of quests you would like to share?

[Mecholi22]

+1 that was a very interesting party.. I havent seen one of those seen my first week of playing ddo.

[AyumiAmakusa]

Thanks. This is the first party I actually enjoyed playing with and had THIS much fun since I started playing DDO. Luckily, they're a more or less static group (the wiz wasn't) and they need a healer (which is me) so we're making up plans to meet up more often. But the update cut that short so I'm hoping that we meet up soon or if you guys see this post, feel free to reply!! It's Orien btw.

[Kepli_Moonshadow]

+1 for sure, great story. I dropped a party due to idiocy. 5 man crew doing Bounty hunter, 1 kept killing himself (I SWEAR he was /death-ing @ the res shrine over and over) 2 kept arguing LOUDLY over 4th ed. PnP, so it left a monk and myself to actually try to do the work....meh- not so much.

[Dwarfo]

Well, it was last night, but my last quests before the update, so here i go:

Hound of Xoriat:
It was a PUG, looked like some experianced players. The way to the raid went smooth - 0 deaths. The beginning of the hound went good, but after all the little doggies were on momma, it went crazy. All of a sudden 2 of the little dogs uncharmed and were killed by one of the party members, saying OOPS, sry sry sry, so me and the other healer had to heal the **** of of the last little dog.

After healing the little dog for 2 minutes, i'm at 70 mana and the other healer is probly at 70-100, and 3 melees are down when the DM says - Now is the time to strike!

it was a near fail, but it had me on my heels
hope to group with all those people again.

The Shroud:
Once again, a PUG. I personally thought it was gonna fail until we basically ran through part 1, had NO deaths in part 2, and only 1 in part 3. Part 4 started to get ugly.

As Harry was at about a 10% health, he somehow killed all of the DPSers at the exact same time, my screen filled up with: oh %$^&, wipe, and other stuff. The other healer took up a blade and ran in with the rogue, my job was the healing, and somehow, the rogue and FVS beat harry down. Immediately they recieved applause, and that was epic dudes!!

Part 5 went very smooth, as i recall there were no deaths.

all in all, i had alot of fun in the last few moments before update 5.

[English_Warrior]

Yes...what a great story...Haywires Foundry is a great quest for heroic expolits.

My very first run was quite similar...bunch of noobs inching through a brand new quest (for us).... I remember the comedy when the lead toon fell through the floor only to land (purely by luck) onto the pipe....I remember the eureka moment when we figured out the puzzle room....I remember the rollercoaster ride as we charged for the finish line...people dying one by one...feeling like we were about to fail...when suddenly victory is snatched from the jaws of defeat as the last man standing staggers into the room with haywire... bloodied but victorious.

Wish my last pre-update 5 moments were more interesting...but I just did some pvp (unsucessfully) with my guild mates.

[pSINNa]

My nephew was admitted to my guild tonight (he's in his teens) and after some discussion over the toons he has built so far and the TR plans he has put together for his capped WF sorc, i found that he had missed some key area's in the game (not flagged for DQ?!! whaat~!).

So i said 'we've got just over 1/2 hour till shutdown, i'll show you my little desert run i do a couple times a day on different toons, it's quick and productive, lets do it!.

So i'm on my monk2/fvs, he's on his 20WF sorc, and we GT out to zawabi's, and hit the sand.

Bang goes the mephit chest, thirsty one, the general, d-door to the start, charge to the greaves rare, shrine, d-door to the start, charge to OOB.

Less then 10 minutes down, no worries, heaps of time for an OOB spectral run (and incidental DQ flag for said relation).

We drop down, BB with FW, kite, boss kill, run, run, run!.

I'm explaining the run as i BB, destruct and implode my way along in classic zerg style, reaching the first major boss when realizing, his blue dot is still back in the bowl of blood room!.

Oh struth, he's dc-ing!. So i charge ahead, pop the aspect, run through and clear all the side rooms up to the last bridge before the end fight. The red 'server shutdown imminent' warnings are coming in at an alarming rate by now, i'm praying he's back before i completely finish and am 'forced :P' to run back and pop those chests and gtfo.

The character red/blue bar regains it colour, the curses start '*&&^&*(( connexon!' says young paduwan, I feel a flush of releif, wing my way back and hit him with a quick heal, we charge ahead and loot our chests (and no, zero gloves again, of course, lol, but you never know !).

We charge ahead, give the bowl to Calyx, complete and GT to end reward pickup, hit the tav, and with a quick pep talk on loot runs in amrath,etc ahead of him, we finish, log, and i get back to the forums for the next 6 hours (hopefully).

Just another day in the life

Coit out~

[AyumiAmakusa]

Yes, I really feel that quests are best done when you know nothing about it. The constant fear of traps, the brainstorming you do for a puzzle, the rush of a timer. All these things kept us on our toes, which is what I feel is lacking in a lot of PUGS you see nowadays...

[learst]

Awesome story. I really wish my PUGs could have been like this.

[sirgog]

My last moments?

Finish one of the Dreaming Dark prequests at the speed of zerg on normal with a guildie.

Loot, recall, swear out loud "ah ****, it's Khyber server lag time, thought I had 40 more min till server goes down, but really, I'm just going to alt-F4".

[JohnWarlock]

Last quest of the night.

So this group, last night of people I know, decides to run a mindsunder.

While some people where praying at the altar so the Dragon above would magically turn their shards into functional discs for the end of the mind sunder campaign. We had a rogue-wizard who spent two years learning the intricacies of being a rogue but had then turn to more arcane aspects of life for the last 18 years according to him, go into a drow murder rage and charge forward. Throwing spells left right and center.

Another human wizard, who had spent even more time studying the arcane, almost 20 years. Tried to follow by trying to down the last few remaining adversaries with his spells. There was a timid elven kukri duel wielding huntress that ran like the wind with the second wizard, fellow adventurers that have known each other for months, and she whirled and swung; slashing and stabbing every foe.

Lastly but not least a fighter, who has trained in all types of weapons but she prefers the exotic khopesh as her weapon of choice. This stalwart band of adventurers set forth without a healer to conquer and obtain the treasures from the Mind Sunder.

Steadily progressing at an increased paced, set by the murderous drow wizard, with no regard for his life. The arrows that struck his leather blue armor, where ignored and the wounds healed as he used heal scrolls and evaded both spells and arrows and even blows directed at him; allowing for his party members to assail from behind their enemies, unexpectedly as the other caster held them, or blasted them with his magic, or as the ranger launched herself stabbing and weakening her foes, so the mighty fighter could cleave them without difficulty bringing down her blade of death.

On this adventurers rushed, facing enemies both human and in-human, atrocities from other planes, psionic creatures controlling the minds of fellow humans; creature dedicated to push their dominion over us, yet steadily falling dead before these adventurers.

(With announcement after announcement of the server coming down)

The group charges forward, the blood thirsty mage calling down falls of fire, and clouds of acid and poison over his enemies, single handedly dodging and attacking them, while his fellow adventurers sneak throughout the fight and head over to the mind sunder to destroy it, with spare few minutes remaining breaking the ominous device. It had been exactly twelve minutes of blood, death and destruction, but it was worthwhile to save stormreach, even if our nightmares will have new denizens after tonight.

While taking treasure and using the promised crystal discs to reveal another trove of treasure, with special rewards amongst it's cache of goodies.

Sadly even though the quest was successful and we managed to exit this vehement place of darkness, we still haven't been able to report our success to our patron, hopefully after a long rest of 6 hours we shall report our success and our findings.

[Thrudh]

This post is about my experience in doing a mid-level quest where everyone didn't know what the quest was about at all. The quest in question was the Haywire Foundry. We were flagging for VoN and this was our last quest (The other three was pretty smooth because I knew the way).

We went in and decided to do it slow. Went pretty smooth. The cool thing was the whole party didn't dare to take a step ahead of the rogue because we kept having the feeling that 'It's gotta be trapped'. The intense feeling I got from being so careful in a quest was exhilarating. It really felt like I was in the quest in the game and that death meant death. There was a part in the east wing where the floor gave out. Luckily only the rogue fell down and she fell near the pipes so it was okay. We were all like, OMG are you okay?? And she was like, yeah I had featherfall on, I do NOT need heart attacks like that!! LOL. We spent quite a while running about the East Wing trying to figure out how to turn off the flame traps but eventually cleared that part too.

No major deaths so far. Then the message 'The DDO Update will commence shortly. Please log out in a safe place' came up.

We were all like 'Oh noes, we haven't finished the west wing yet!!' Things start to speed up but everyone was still wary of going ahead of the rogue. The way to the west wing was trapped so the eager barbarian died once. But we got through that carefully and it took about 5 minutes. We reach the puzzle room with the 6 wheels and runes and were like 'Shoot, how do we solve this??'

With time so limited, we were running out of options. What do we do? We started brainstorming and the rogue gets an idea. 10 minutes later, we were fighting off slimes and got the key from the chest. Running out of even more time, we open the way to the next room and blast the 3 metal guardians out of sheer desperation (About 8 minutes before server is down for update). The barbarian reads the 'Talking Head' and it says that the lever is a self-destruct lever. He pulls it and the entire place goes into self-destruct mode.

The whole party starts to panic. The two barbarians are running about the place screaming, the wizard was in a corner presumably weeping, the ranger was flinging about his two weapons attacking the 'Talking Head' and I was just watching it all unsure of what to do next. The rogue, (The extremely smart and calm rogue) saw the wall at the side slide away and was like, 'Guys, this way!!'

The DM announces, '5 minutes until self-destruct'!! And there was 7 minutes until server down!! People start jumping about pipes, running from the mithril defenders, avoiding traps and the ones that were left behind kept screaming, 'GO!! GO!! SAVE YOURSELF!!' I managed to get to a door that was locked but couldn't get through. The rest of my party (save for the ranger) died of causes I still don't know because I was stuck on the other side of the door. We kept screaming to the ranger 'Talk to Haywire!!! HURRY'

The DM announces, '10 seconds to self-destruct'. He manages to do it and I die as the whole place self-destructs. That 'Quest Completed' was the most wonderful thing I ever saw at that moment. I try to rezz out and come back in for the chest but couldn't reach there because the gate was locked. Only the ranger and the rogue (who used a rezz cake) got the chest items.

We rezzed out and the game announces '30 seconds to server shutdown. Please log out safely' and we manage to swap last minute goodbyes and add each other to our friend lists. I said goodbye one last time before clicking the Quit button.

So here are my questions. What were you doing before the update? And do any of you have any 'first-time' experiences of quests you would like to share?

This game really does have awesome quests, and there is nothing like doing a quest for the first time without some vet zerging through everything...

I highly recommend, if you can, finding a group of friends who are also new to this game, and going into each quest for the first time with each other...

This game is really really fun when you go in with no idea what's around the next corner.

+1 rep for reminding me how fun this game is...

[maha0201]

I was on AH an hour before update, since they dont know to put gtm -5 in update/maintanance text, and I put 1,5 kpp on boss beater and log off, and went on coffe. By the time i got home server was down (it was 12:01 GMT +1) wee so now when i log on ill have much money in my mail or a boss beater

last update i wan on Tempest spine pug - we had enough time 2 mins till log out tank went in, me after that and i was solvin 20 seconds (mine record), and since they dont allow that you do the puzzle and carry runes i just did puzzle...
The drama guy that had runes dodnt put them in till it was 30 secs to log out - we got dc and sorjek was at 5% weeeeeeeeeeeeee - no exp no chests - 30 min waste XD

[Chris79]

My last 30 minutes before U5. I saw a PUG grp for korthos quests, level 2s and a 6, thought 'why not?' so msged the leader, informing them that if my level 18 cleric joined, no xp, theyer said no probs.

It was fun running with ppl new to the game, it wasn't that long ago I was in their shoes....the reaction of the rogue when I summoned my hezrou (WHAT THE HECK IS THAT?!??), wondering why I could stand there as mobs died around me with weird rumbling noises (implosion ftw!) and when I buffed a mass prot, aid and FoM ('woah, so many buffs!').... it was fun, reminded me of how cool it was when I was a newbie and discovered things like that for the first time...

It was a fun experience. I handed out some plat at the end cos I was feeling all god-like from all the comments, lol.

Anyhoo I recommend anyone of the higher levels, pop over to korthos sometime, reminds you of why you enjoyed the game in the first place.

Hug a newb

That is all.

[AyumiAmakusa]

I hope everyone gets to experience what I felt today at least once in their DDO life. It's a feeling you will never forget. If you play DND, you'll know what this feeling is.

[JollySwagMan]

I had my first PD death within a party - Come Out and Slay on Elite. We had scraped and scrapped our way through to the end, and cleared out the rooftops with all of our ranged weapons. Down below were two arcane casters, a divine caster and the enforcer...first one of our party members got too close to a ladder and got blitzed by spells, unable to climb up before he died. I panicked and had rushed forward to try getting line of sight on him and drew aggro from the casters, but managed to tumble backwards avoiding the spells. Then, without communicating my plan, I crept forward to see exactly where the casters were - thought I'd be able to pop off a scroll of Soundburst to conserve my mana, then duck back to safety.

Instead, *I* got hit with soundburst, as well as burning blood and scorching ray, dying within two seconds. And I still had 80 mana left With the Favoured soul down, as well as my Clonk, this left a Monk, Paladin and Cleric (sans mana) left.

The leader made a heroic effort to incapacitate the casters as they had all turned one way, and he managed to sap one, but then he got hit with burning blood and soundburst, and everybody down there noticed him.

Now, come update 5 I may consider rolling a pure Cleric...

[palewook]

i had items in the auction house..

[Jemaniya]

I hadn't paid my internet bill. I had no last moments!!! When I finally got over to pay it and log in I got the mega update from... omgsh, I'm still updating.

But on a brighter note my character in Sims won a luv jacuzzi and... "Whoo-hoo!"