Something very special happened to me in DDO just after we completed our Friday session.
We stopped a bit early since some had to bail. Then I noticed that an EH VON 5-6 was up again. Instead of just chit-chatting I figured I could have a yet another go for the elusive VON 6 rewards (mainly epic shards). Usually I get nothing, but the XP is very good so I gain 150-200k each run. Very nice if you want to farm epic destinies.
I decided to join the group and got the very last slot in the 12 man raid. A good omen was that one of the other in the raid got a scroll of Sword of Shadows from killing a trash mob. That scroll almost never drops.
The actual raid progressed normally and Velah was killed in the end. The double chest bug is back so we got 4 chest instead of the usual 2 (both the 2 heroic chests and the 2 epic chests).
I got nothing at all as usual so the story could have ended there. I prepared to leave the quest until one in the group said "Look at that shard". The quest had dropped exactly ONE shard and this time the extremely elusive, Shard of Sword of Shadows. Of course, it was the cleric who got it. Just my luck I thought….. Until the cleric said she wanted 5 raid bypass tokens for it. I wrote that I could give her that. I didn't have any bypass tokens, but they can be purchased from the DDO store.
So I opened the store and found the item and bought 5. Then I tried to find the item in my inventory and didn't find anything. So I wondered if the store was bugged and I would miss my esos shard again, after 200 VON 5-6 runs.
I tried again and suddenly I saw 10 bypass tokens in the inventory. So I started a trade with the lucky cleric and showed her the 10 tokens. She wrote I won and she grabbed the tokens. I then checked the epic guild chest and there was the epic shard of sword of shadows waiting for me.
So the Christmas present was within reach until I saw a yellow latency icon showing. We had a lot of lag in our run so I was afraid that lag could eat my reward if I tried to take it. So I patiently had to wait hoping the icon would turn green and not red. The stars shone on me so it turned to green as I hoped and I grabbed the shard.
It ended up in my inventory. I then got another situation when I tried to move the shard to my shared bank and got a yellow latency icon again. This time I knew I could wait even for a red icon since the shard was in my inventory. Only a server crash could mess up my reward. I logged in again and got a green icon and placed the shard on my bank.
I logged in on my level 15 fighter and grabbed the shard. He had the scroll, seal and heroic sword of shadows. So he could now finally craft the epic sword of shadows. A trip to the twelve was next on the agenda. The epic altar for crafting is located next to the entrance to the tower. I placed all 4 pieces in the altar and clicked forge. Then all items disappeared and after some time (much longer than I think is normal) I saw a new item in the inventory. I hovered the mouse over the item and saw it was called "Epic Sword of Shadows". Finally I got the most sought item in the entire game. The only downside is that I couldn't try it out. The minimum level is 20 and my fighter is only level 15. He even has a Devil's ruin red augment crystal so he can get a Harry beater once he gets to 20. Then it will be fun taking on Harry.
So Turbine finally smiled at me yesterday. So I no longer agree that it's impossible to craft epic items. At least I have some proof that it can be done with A LOT of patience. Not many would have grinded the same quest 200 times for an item that drops maybe 0.5% of the time.
During 2013 I have been able to craft maybe 5 or 6 Epic Vault of Night items. These are quite good despite some level 23+ items from Eveningstar or Epic Gianthold being better. If we had made guild runs of these quests we could more easily forward base items, seals, scrolls and shards to the ones needing them. So I guess some of you could have had the chance too.