The Totally NEW Team Corwin Thread

Xorian Zipher is not an easy quest at level. It's very trap heavy, the chaos blobs disrupt the players all the time and the monsters respawn constantly. To make it worse some monsters stun you with soundburst. The end fight is tough because there are many monsters in addition to the bosses.

You need a lot of dps to pull this off at level. I think this quest is one of the quests where melees do better than casters. Melees can engage the enemy caster monsters and lower the threat. You just focus on the same enemy monster until it's dead and move on to the next.

Jm, Cm, Azraelck and me completed the quest in 30 min with just 1 death, but the main reason for that is that we knew what to expect. Doing the quest for the first time on elite is asking for a wipe.

This quest is not one where you can e. g. fight in the boss room and withdraw to recover. Undead skeletons respawn constantly in the corridors so you just move from bad to worse doing so. Beating this quest is about SPEED. Get the monsters down before respawns become an issue.

So don't worry about not doing so well on the quest. You were doing it at level with 2 hirelings and no melee in the group. It's one of the tougher quests in the game. You can always return to the quest when you're more powerful if you want to farm for the planar gird (greater heroism clickie). Life will be so much easier when you get level 11 and can cast blade barrier. Then you can kite the monsters back and forth through the blade barrier.

You will notice that the biggest difference in performance for a cleric comes with level 11. Then you can pick awesome spells like cometfall and blade barrier. It changes you from a healbot and buffer to someone who can contribute well with damage. Cometfall knock the enemy monsters to the ground so the melees can attack them without being hit. The only downside is that both cometfall and blade barrier are aggro magnets.

I think that if we get 20 tapestries for you then you can go to the Necro 4 area and craft the minos helmet. It will give you 20 hp from toughness and heavy fortification. Not having heavy fortification (immunity to critical hits) will seriously hurt any character.

Just be glad you finally completed. :) It's worse to spend 1+ hours with a game and have to accept a wipe. Then you don't even get XP or end rewards. We've had our share of wipes during the years. Also remember that we struggled on this quest on normal the first time we did this. You tried it first time on elite.
 
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If JM had not run it in pugs recently on some of her toons we would have been in worse shape in our group. It had been so long since we did it I did not remember any of it. NOW I remember why we have not run that in the last 2 years. ;)
 
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I didn't think it was all that bad, but it's definitely not something we should attempt to run, on elite, without knowing what to expect. Our party makeup also factors into this, as one group had very little dps, while the other had the majority of it. Ultimately, we originally TRed assuming a 6 man group, but now we are 8-9, We're lacking critical arcane buffs, CC, a second group's healer, and dps across the board due to splitting up. So we're probably going to have one group or the other have issues in some of the more difficult quests later on.

Planar Girds are not bound (you may even be able to buy them off the AH, for considerable sums of plat), so if we decide to farm those, we can bring the high levels in. Let's see how long those mobs last against a 4k Burst!
 
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We were forced to kite, and that doesn't work on the end fight where you just spawn more and more skellies the more you run around. Two archers (and I'm only counting myself there because that's largely how it went), a druid, and a traditional cleric just didn't have enough umph to stay in the room with the final bosses. For that matter, Reywind and I killed the 3 brothers from up above after Alrik and Corwin did their level best with it, and probably wouldn't have stood a chance down in the room like they were.

Although I was spittin' nails frustrated by the end, I would run it again as long as we had a proper party. The quest itself was fairly interesting. I've got raise dead now, which would have changed the entire dynamic last night.
 
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I'm currently reading through the Release Notes (after a longer walk).

It seems that - after all of these years, as it seems now - they finally at least took a look at the Deepwood Sniper :

The Deepwood Sniper's Sniper Shot now performs a ranged attack with a +4 bonus to-hit, +2 to critical threat range, and +2 to critical threat multiplier. If the character successfully damages its target, the target will become momentarily confused and rendered vulnerable to sneak attacks for four seconds as if affected by the Bluff skill.
The Deepwood Sniper feat no longer claims that Sniper Shot doesn't break stealth.

They even looked at the Bard, too :

Bard Spellsong Vigor and Sustaining Song can now be in effect at the same time.
The other notes regarding enhancements :

Fixed a typo in the Druid's Blood Moon Frenzy.
The Angel of Vengeance's Condemnation ability is no longer dispelled by Bless effects.
The Radiant Servant's Positive Energy Aura and Burst now function regardless of the currently-selected target.
The Paladin Divine Might and Divine Light enhancements are no longer listed under the "Unknown" type.

Silver Flame Favour :

The Blessing of the Silver Flame favor reward now automatically applies when claimed. An item is no longer required to gain the blessing.

Seems as if I had had good luck : I was claiming this only a day or two before the Patch … Now I have this item, and, if I interpret this correctly, future Silver Flame Blessing receivers won't get any item anymore … (?!)

On Hirelings :

Fixed the Stay Frosty Epic Enhancement on Tarlov Snowtrack's hotbar.
DDO Store-purchased Shadowdancer hirelings can now be summoned anywhere in a dungeon.
Fixed a typo in Veil's Action Boost: Damage II benefit.

Veil ? Is this THE Veil from VON ?

And last :

Several outdated loading screen tips have been removed, and new ones have been added for Spell Power and Physical Resistance Rating.
The Campaign System now supports events like Mabar.
 
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Hey I wanted to thank you guys for letting me quest with you and I apologize in advance if I was not up to par with the rest of you. I am very used to soloing with a Hireling for most quests so my spell list is based off that rather then helping a group. It was the first time I heard voices of other people while playing the game...will take time to get used to that. Again thanks for the fun and now I know what some of you sound like. I only wish I would've started sooner!

Thanks,
Sherwin
 
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Glad you could join in. Hopefully you will decide to be a Friday regular. Not sure you would have wanted to hear what Dte was saying in the Xorian Zipher quest they ran after you had to leave. It was bloody for them. As to game play, no worries. We did sort of kidnap you. lol Hopefully we didn't scare you off. (I warned you we were all crazy, loud fools.) ;)
 
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Sherwin, with the exception of Alrik, we have played for nearly 3 years now. Most of the content we're running, we've seen over and over through 3 other 'groups'. This is our 4th group. So don't feel not up to par; it's just experience and accumulated/crafted gear at work. And we still fall flat quite often.


As a Sorc, you're going to be stuck on spell selection anyway, you simply will not have the space for everything you could need or want. That's what Wizards are for. So don't worry about that either. There's only 5 important buffs an arcane needs to bring, and of those, none of them are specifically required from a Wizard or Sorc, many can be found on items, or other classes. I would suggest carrying Displacement and Stoneskin for yourself, as those give a lot of durability to a Sorcerer. I keep those up constantly on mine, and have soloed much of the Epic Hard stuff. 50% miss chance and DR10 work wonders.
 
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I think there was (or still is ? I don't remember anymore) a Stoneskin wand in the
Guild Chest …

Next week I won't be able to play much, due to several things going on in private life (one of them is the board games / role playing / comic fair I'll be going to on Thursday or on Friday with me requiring a day or so to recuperate from all of this goodie overload ;) , and additionally my pen & paper RPG session on Sunday).
 
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As an aside, any Stoneskin, Cure Critical, Blur and Resist Energy(level 10/11) wands I will grab, as I use them quite a bit on my characters. I tend to build self-sufficient characters as much as possible. And this means use of quite a bit of stuff that you normally wouldn't expect a class or two to find use of.
 
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Sounds reasonable. I often carry stuff, too.
And that's why my inventory is always full :D : I want to cover as many possibilities as possible … ;)

Besides, is our plan so to get at least 1 of each of us flagged for the Raid of VON next Friday ?
 
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Alrik: I just put a +2 wisdom tome in the guild chest. Please take it and use it on your cleric. It gives you +2 permanent wisdom. That means more mana and +1 DC on your spells.
 
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I think there's only 3 of us needing VoN4 (Az, Alrik, and me). We might be able to pick that up during the week. I've never actually run that raid and it's extremely unlikely I'll do it with my Friday toon, so I guess I don't really care whether I pick it up or not, aside from falling a little further behind on XP.

I think we're in good shape to stick with "the plan"--
1A) Shadow Crypt
1B) Keeper's Sanctuary
1C) VoN4?
2) Red Fens outdoors
3) Red Fens 3 flagging quests
4) Red Fens final quest

I figure we've got a fair shot of getting into #3 next week, particularly if VoN4 gets pulled out of the queue.
 
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Red Fens final quest ? well, I propose to do that on the Friday after Friday, so to say. Because it is VERY long !

I remember doing it with you some time ago ...

By the way, my current plan is to go to that board games etc. fair on Friday. Which means that I'll be too exhausted to join the session for long. Trust me, I know my body ...

@Peter : Thank you very much ! :)
 
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Not really long, per say, just very, very slow. VERY slow.

One thing is if Sherwin is with us, then he'll need the full VoN chain. Which will probably split the group in terms of xp, as VoN3 can still give a good 20k+ on a second/third run. So I propose that Dte and Alrik try to catch me sometime during the week, and we can 3-man it. I have a few elite openers for just the occasion. Same thing for Shadow Crypt, if anyone still needed that. JM can join in as well, as she's needing to catch up some.

This way, Friday we'll be on the same page, and not trying to split off into multiple areas just to catch up, and not rerunning stuff that, frankly, isn't as fun as it was back three years ago.

If Sherwin wants to hit VoN and NecroII, I have Ijii at 8, and Dte and JM both have additional alts as well. So we can get him a guest pass then on an off-session night.
 
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I didn't know anyone had run Shadow Crypt. That's been planned for "in the future" for several weeks now. Was there some free-lancing? That might explain how I ended up 3 ranks behind last Friday.

I'm taking Friday off, along with the following Monday, so I might have some time to play catch-up if nothing breaks loose during this week. The weekend itself is most likely shot as the Wild Dogs have marching band Saturday and the cheerleader competes Sunday.
 
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K (I've decided to call Cm in-game just K, since most of her char's names begin with that letter ;) ), Sherwin and me had a good time playing with our level 8 toons - wiped on Taming The Flames on elite difficulty, almost did so on The Bounty unter (only the joining Sherwin saved us !) and we did Stromvauld's Mine twice.

Was a good time despite the difficulties (and the incredibly slow-brained Rogue hireling calld Shadow).
We split our tasks so that he spottet the trap boxes and I disarmed them.
 
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