Where there's smoke, there's death...

[Postumus]

My apologies to that brave group of intrepid souls I lead to their doom the other night on "where there's smoke.."


I threw up a Cerulean Hills slayer PUG and once we cleared it we did captives, then smoke. After running smoke on hard, I got too cocky and suggested we try it on elite. Remember what happened to Gen Custer at Wounded Knee? Now swap the Indians with Orcs and replay the party wipe over and over and over and you have a pretty good approximation of what happened.


We were like Hansel and Gretal, only instead of bread crumbs, we used soul stones to leave a trail behind us.


This was completely my fault, I had just run smoke on elite two hours earlier with a party that had two lvl six WF barbs, but our party of lvl four Pal, Clr, Mon, Mon was just not up to the challenge.


The Cleric rage quit after the first dog, but did that stop us? Heck no! We battled and died and died and died our way to the third dog where we all took turns as ghosts watching the one guy close enough to keep re-rezing like some weird monk cloning mechanism.


Still determined to finish, we all summoned our gold seal hirelings, and set off to die again in less than spectacular fashion and were forced to watch the useless hirelings fraternize with the Orcs.


Amazingly we were all laughing at this point with many LOLs and LMAOs, b/c it was just too pathetic for words. At some point, as we floated around as disembodied ghosts examining each others' soul stones, one of the monks remarked "Hey, isn't this a 7th level quest on elite? We're only fourth!" The second monk chimed in "Actually, I'm still third. LOL!" Good times...


So, the moral of the story is threefold:

1- Hubris = death
2- I really suck as a party leader.
3- The DDO equivalent of the 3 stooges is Two Monks and a Pally.

[ArkoHighStar]

sometimes a party wipe is fun all depends on who you are running with

[Tendare]

Great read.

When your overmatched and doing everything in your power to continue, those are the best quests even if the final result is a fail. Kudos to those in your group that had a sense of humor and stuck it out.

[Maxmillian]

I picture the frog in the mouth of the egret in the florida everglades, but he is far enough out of the egret that he can reach its neck, choking him, thus preventing the bird from swallowing him....

NEVER GIVE UP, and there is no such thing as optional xp.

[Dunfalach]

There is a joy to appreciating the hilarity of finding yourself completely outclassed, and trying anyway. I applaud you and that group for continuing to try

Besides the low levels, the biggest challenge that quest puts out for a group like yours was is the sheer number of ranged attacks you're going to take from every direction while trying to get in melee range, slogging through water and climbing up hills.

[Postumus]

I picture the frog in the mouth of the egret in the florida everglades, but he is far enough out of the egret that he can reach its neck, choking him, thus preventing the bird from swallowing him....

I definitely felt like the frog in that scenario.

[Tiseria]

It's definatly ni e to see you take it all in good humor.. some are wayyyyyyy to into themselves, the game or what ever and totally flip their wigs.

[jozzcooper]

I threw up a Cerulean Hills slayer PUG and once we cleared it we did captives, then smoke. After running smoke on hard, I got too cocky and suggested we try it on elite. Remember what happened to Gen Custer at Wounded Knee? Now swap the Indians with Orcs and replay the party wipe over and over and over and you have a pretty good approximation of what happened.

Sounds as rough as what happened to Spotted Elk at the Little Big Horn.

Seriously, that is one of those 'steep curve between hard and elite' quests. The nice thing is that you can laugh about it, recall and repair, and get right back out there.

[Doxmaster]

Oh man. He should have known better. No one ever uses sleep; it's only super effective vs keeping a job. Video games are required. 'Eliminate fecal waste', eat and breath you just really need.