Why I like DDO + Reward Item Questions

[Qaliya]

Warning: Contains spoilers for the "Attack on Stormreach" chain, especially "Siegebreakers".

I solo 95% of the time and did so for all the quests in this pack. Came time to do the finale so I headed in.

Loved the humor in the early part of it... the "latrine" that generates "Eww what's the smell" effects and so forth, and the sick mind of the dev who put a shrine right in there so you have to sit in the cesspool to regenerate. Yuck.

Then the chef with the frying pan.. hilarious stuff.

So I'm going along with my cleric hireling and we come to the big barrel of explosives. Having just done a prior quest that involved blowing stuff up, I took the same approach... stood well back and let fire with a ranged attack.

KABOOM. We both get hit for 700 hp of damage. LOL.

I start over the next day, this time I know better to jump down before the chain reaction blows up the barrel. Fight my way through until near the end, and there's this puzzle with pressure plates. I try to disable it, can't, cheat by looking at the wiki where they suggest using the same pattern you'd use to draw a star. That doesn't work, but I just hit a bunch of plates and it opens up.

Then I fall down to the boss. There's another star puzzle, but I figure maybe it just weakens her and I can power through it. Blow up her minions, start wailing on her.. and she goes translucent. Great, I have to figure this out again.

I try the star-drawing pattern but it doesn't work. Maybe because some of the plates had been triggered prior? So I'm trying random plates, monsters keep spawning and I pause and fight them. My cleric is using up (wasting) SPs healing me when I'm down 50 HP.

Solve the puzzle, she comes back.. and we have to repeat three times. Hireling is running out of SP.. I still have some because I've been trying to conserve them. Hireling dies. I start using radiant bursts and try to disarm the traps between monster spawns. The last one is really hard and I now spamming heal scrolls to stay alive.

My ship buffs are gone and I can't afford the SP to rebuff myself.

Finally, she's attackable again and down to 20%... she is not that hard to hit so I figure it's over. Nope! She disappears and I have to do the puzzle again only... ***? Guys riding rust monsters? Great. I have Muckbane but it's not up to the task of fighting these guys. After trying that a bit I start laying down blade barriers and kiting the monsters around.

Meanwhile I still have this puzzle to deal with. And I can't disarm the traps because the monsters are coming too fast. I rez my hireling just so I can tell him to hit me with DVs while I'm running in circles trying to stay alive. I give up even trying to attack, keeping the heal scrolls in my hand. The monsters are coming fast and furious, including more rust monsters. My armor is getting pinged for damage constantly.

Eventually I realize I have to get back to attacking. I say "heck with it" and equip a greataxe knowing it will get wrecked but maybe I can get the rust monsters off my back.. but I cannot hit them that well without any buffs at all. I lay down a BB every time I get enough SP from my hireling... while still running around hitting pressure plates.

Finally, I get lucky and the right plate gets hit by me or someone else and the quest is over. Finish off the last rust monster and get my (crappy, as usual) reward from the chest.

Anyway.. that was a heck of a lot of fun. I might not have enjoyed it so much if I had died at the end (and I figured I probably would), but this is the sort of experience where I think DDO excels. Regardless of issues with respect to QA and details about VIP and artificers, the game is really good for this type of thing.

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Okay, now the questions. The end-of-chain reward list contains mostly junk but also two named items: Hooked Blade and a runearm called Trial By Fire. I didn't even realize what the latter was until I hovered over it.

The Hooked Blade is a khopesh and I don't have proficiency, but I might be able to use it on another life or character. Also, I do use the Bloody Cleaver and so I guess could upgrade that.. though I'm starting to get too high level for the cleaver, and the upgrade isn't really that inspiring (an extra +1 enhancement and 1-6 damage on a crit).

The runearm of course I have no use for until and unless I make an artificer. Which I will, but not for a while.

Questions:

1. Are either of these items sufficiently rare in their appearance in the rewards list that I should definitely take them now, even if they won't be of immediate use? I am NOT the type of person to farm a quest chain, which is why I am wondering.

2. To upgrade the cleaver, I need something called the "Mark of Bal Molesh". Can this be obtained in any way other than farming the chain? Because if not, forget it. I do see something in the wiki about making them from astral diamonds but I don't understand how.

3. Do you have to repeat Siegebreakers to get to the cauldron where items are made?

4. Are runearms of any use to anyone but an artificer? They don't even seem to have UMD values.

Thanks for reading all that.

[voodoogroves]

1. Hooked blade only drops in end list. I suspect the rune arm as well; rune arm is BTA, hooked blade and others have some bind-on-equip functions, so could be sell-able. Note you can also upgrade the other way and make a Bloody Hooked Blade, which is a pretty nifty piece of twink.

2. Marks can drop in any chest. You can also get marks from the Altar/Cauldron for astral diamonds.

3. There's one in the corner of Lordsmarch Plaza

4. Don't think so; as I said I think it is BTA.

[Thebeest]

runearms can only be used by artificers and only can be found as chain end rewards, so i would take that.

in that particular chain there are many named items and in the end reward list there is usualy several to choose from(i have found the khopesh to be fairly common choice) plus there is sometimes the marks to choose also. i take the marks when they show as they are the hardest to come by imo

there is a cauldron in the plaza ( it is where the entrance to siegebreaker was ) you can look through the recipes there.

[Aelonwy]

1. Rarity on the end reward list is kind of a luck of the draw thing.... and the runearm is so totally new to the list I couldn't really say. My hubby and I have alot of alts and running the chain on each one has resulted in 2 hooked blades each. I may have had others show up but I wanted new things on the list.

2. Hubby's had the marks drop in the chests in the quest series, I've only ever gotten them from the end reward list. So farm away. As to the astral diamonds... I'm going to guess you put the requisite amount of AD's into the Cauldron of Sora Katra and choose the Mark you want.

3. The cauldron is located in the Lord's March Plaza outside of the quests. It should on the opposite corner from the entrance to Undermine.

4. AFAIK you can only get rune arm proficiency as an Artificier.

[Cauthey]

*snip*
Great, I have to figure this out again.
*snip*

Wonderful account! This account very similarly matches my first time running through this quest. Even parallel's where you blew yourself up (I did, too. Had no idea those big ones litereally clear the entire gdam room!). And at the end-end, where the rustie riders are still coming - I had no idea I had to work that star one more time. I cleared the room, FINALLY (going all out Greataxe after emptying SPs on my Pale Master Metalbone), and was all ***, why isn't it over? That's when I realized that I had to do that cursed star puzzle one last time.

Hehehe! Great read! +1 to you, sir!

[Qaliya]

Thanks for the kind words and info. Still a bit torn on what to take.. need to think it over.

[TheDearLeader]

Off your topic, but since you seem to have gotten confused by the puzzle...

Just run around it in a circle. If no pressure plates have been activated, running in a circle and hitting every pressure plate also un-lights all lights, and solves the puzzle.

Also, probably would have been easier with living players - people who will go to where the spawn portal is, and hold mobs there so they don't run all over your puzzle. Or a caster/bard who can CC them with Dancing Balls or Fascinate or what have you.

I also did it once with my Rogue, instead utilizing sneak mode a great deal. By having the appropriate Hide and Move Silently scores, you can avoid being seen by many of the spawned mobs in there, especially those rusties at the end. Example.