The Totally NEW Team Corwin Thread

Internet issues. Don't keep the light burning, no idea what is wrong. Sending this in the few minutes it will work.

Good luck !

So far internet working, tech coming between 7 and 8 so will be out for an hour give or take when they show up.

We did the first 4 Necro quests, it was an easy and fast run, at least I had lots of fun, even although my character died once. In fact, i think any of our characters died just once. If i remember right, that is.

We took level 7.

Edit : We did Deneith (Denise ?) sewers, too.

Feywild just keeps getting pushed back...

Realized that we haven't run the House K bar quests yet. So next session, we've got those (we'll run all 4 of them now) plus Bloody Crypt. Theeeeeeeen we finally get out to Feywild. My guess is that finishing Necro after the K quests will take the full session. Maybe we get everyone to the castle at least. We'll see.

Small patch : https://www.ddo.com/en/update-4832-release-notes

Patch took me a few minutes.

I am officially on quarantine. My co worker, who was sick all day Monday in my lab, tested positive for the plague that has befallen the world. Not unexpected, as his in laws are equally positive, and sick as dogs.

Let's hope you don't have it too then. Have you been tested?

Not yet. I'm not sick at least, which is a damn sight better than my co worker. He had a fever and body aches when he was in.

I apparently have a magic cat.

I've been rubbing lottery tickets on the head of The Waco Kid because so far, he's gotten me about $700 off of $60 or so.Seems that every time I run a ticket on his head, I win something. So today, while doing inventory maintenance I did my gold roll, rubbed his head, and got a 97. Silver was likewise 89.

Next time we raid, that sucker is sitting in my lap. I'm getting a damn SOS if it kills me.

I found the Friday run very tedious & confusing. At least Blody crypt was a success, which totally positive for me.

I found the embarkment into the Feywild territory very confusing.

As a story player, I found it absolutely disastrous, to *first* begin with the first quest of chain 2, and AFTER that use a quest which was meant to acquire the first ingredient to wake up Lord Arden. This is almost like George Lucas, with his filming of the Star Wars saga begining with Episode 4. And after that even we did the very first quest of chain 1 ! It was to me like going back in time !

Please, I beg you, please do the quests in order next time. I have not so much problems with beginning witch chain 2 than with playing everything in random order.

Background information on the quests :

The bigger picture :

The hags made the Lost Gatekeepers steal items for them.
They were for a patron.
We followed the hags into the feywild, where we meet them, one after the other.
And they still work for that mysterious patron.

Part of that was, to made Lord Arden, one of the Archfey, get into an eternal slumber. Which is even more surprising as Fey just don't sleep (or so the story tells me).

In fact, as it turns out, this eternal slumber is in factz some kind of curse. In the feywild, you need ingredients to undo any curse. One of them is a certain lute.

The very first quest of the whole sage introduces us into the feywild and its habits :

One very strong habit is like "scratch my back and I'll scratch yours". Tit for tat. Or, as the German saying goes : One hand washes the other.

Or, in other words : Favours are more like a currency there. If you do a favour, then the other one owes you one.

So, the very first quest was about doing a favour - so that Lord Arden owes me one.
We did this by cleaning the minors palace of Lord Arden from Revelers.
He promised them that they could use the minor palace for their revels until the revels end.
But the revelers don't itent to stop it.

So, we must make this promise undone.
We cheat them (the revelers) a little bit.
We try to persuade them, that this is NOT the palace they are in !

How do we do that ? By exchanging signs/plaques which do say that this is the palace.
So, we take the sign from the library, to make the revelers believe that this is no more the palace, but a library instead.
But the sphinx librarian wouldn't allow that. So, we must distract him ... at least long enough so that we can get the sign.

The water spings must not be water springs anymore. Therefore, special plants are planted that make the springs look like a swamp. The plants sucked up all water.

The sign saying that this is the palace can only be replaced if the revelers in the main hall are distracted. We do that by giving flash-boom-bang to the reveler with the most "fire lust", so to say.

The end fight is merely there because good old DDO just wouldn't end ANY quest without fighting, the typical Action-RPG style.

If you have time, you should really do both chains in story mode. In my opinion, it's really woth it.

For example, then the quest with the tower won't be so confusing to you, then. Harsly put, I saw that you didn't do it before.

Best advice : Do the chains with a character who has STRON social skills ! Intimidation does not work everywhere. Use a bard or someone with high charisma, and maybe even with "command" items. It's really worth it, from my story play perspective, because you sometimes get an additional chest this way, like in the tower, to beat the guards down but let them live.

Talking is VERY important in the whole chains !
There are also sometimes secret doors.
I don't remember many traps, but rogues come in handy in other places. (One quest has collars to be removed.)

The new items also look good. THe sceptres constantly rotate at the top, for example, and the quarterstaff really looks as if being made of crystal with crystal shards rotating at the top. The armor seems to look good as well, but unfortunately I had only found a headpiece so far.

Needle in Feystack is the most difficult quest. You just can't solve that by speedrunning. You must be very aware of what's going on there. And of the quest environment, too.

The Fey chain sequence is very confusing. I haven't figured it out after several tries. It's not like in Sharn when you open up the next quest from a common entrance.

In Fey you have to walk quite far into the wilderness to get to the quests. So all groups I've played with usually run to the quests in sequence of appearance when you follow a path in the wilderness. Most groups usually go clockwise.

Personally I haven't spotted any links story wise between the quests in Fey. So I treat them as the quests in the Vale. You have 5 flagging quests for the Shroud and you pick the route you want to get them all done.

To make matters worse in Fey you have 3 quests where the quest givers are in the wilderness next to the entrance.

If there IS a chain 1 + 2 and sequence in each chain in Fey then please tell me about the suggested sequence. I haven't seen it anywhere.

I believe SSG have messed up a bit regarding how quests are treated in Fey. I much rather prefer the way they did for Sharn 1 + 2 where you had one common entrance for each chain and you easily knew which one was the next to do. The Fey quests feel more like the Cogs and there people have a path they follow to reduce the travel time.

If you don't pick up all the quests up front, the chain-givers will walk you thru in order, one at a time, telling you which quest is next. That part is easy.

Most of the group don't pay much attention to the story arc- while we will follow a storyline within a given quest (most of us really like the Red Rain quest in Sharn, for example), we tend to blow past connections quest-to-quest. That's why we don't really feel cheated from running out of order. That said, I sensed your frustration so we'll run the second chain in order even if it leads to additional "running around".

Getting a little harder to split the group in a manner that pleases everyone. I've got people that run fast and people that run slow. Trap monkeys need split unless a quest/chain doesn't require any rogue skills (rare). I've got people that run XP/min and people that want to do every optional. I don't like to keep the same parties every week and I don't think the group really wants that anyway. Nobody's "doing it wrong", the game is flexible enough to support many approaches. Still, kinda running out of solutions to the equation, folks.

Well, I hate running fast and zerging and I enjoy doing the optionals. I have no idea about most of the storylines since nearly everyone just races through since you all know them so well. I usually have no idea what is actually happening; I just run behind everyone and kill everything that's still moving when I get there. I too sometimes get frustrated like Alrik when I'd like to simply stop and smell the flowers!!
With a lot of the old quests, it's not an issue, but Sharn and Fey and Barovia are prime examples of series I'd have preferred to take much more slowly because I'm sure I've missed a great deal that the devs have included as we usually rush through them to get a completion. Sometimes I like to appreciate the journey, especially since I current only play once a week!! Just my thoughts anyway.

Peter Stauffenberg said:

The Fey chain sequence is very confusing. I haven't figured it out after several tries. It's not like in Sharn when you open up the next quest from a common entrance.

In Fey you have to walk quite far into the wilderness to get to the quests. So all groups I've played with usually run to the quests in sequence of appearance when you follow a path in the wilderness. Most groups usually go clockwise.

Personally I haven't spotted any links story wise between the quests in Fey. So I treat them as the quests in the Vale. You have 5 flagging quests for the Shroud and you pick the route you want to get them all done.

To make matters worse in Fey you have 3 quests where the quest givers are in the wilderness next to the entrance.

If there IS a chain 1 + 2 and sequence in each chain in Fey then please tell me about the suggested sequence. I haven't seen it anywhere.

I believe SSG have messed up a bit regarding how quests are treated in Fey. I much rather prefer the way they did for Sharn 1 + 2 where you had one common entrance for each chain and you easily knew which one was the next to do. The Fey quests feel more like the Cogs and there people have a path they follow to reduce the travel time.

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I did the whoile chain. I understood it. If you wish, I can explain it to you. It is really no problem for me. Just ask.

Most of the time you do favours to get favours from them you had doone it for instead.

Corwin said:

Well, I hate running fast and zerging and I enjoy doing the optionals. I have no idea about most of the storylines since nearly everyone just races through since you all know them so well. I usually have no idea what is actually happening; I just run behind everyone and kill everything that's still moving when I get there. I too sometimes get frustrated like Alrik when I'd like to simply stop and smell the flowers!!
With a lot of the old quests, it's not an issue, but Sharn and Fey and Barovia are prime examples of series I'd have preferred to take much more slowly because I'm sure I've missed a great deal that the devs have included as we usually rush through them to get a completion. Sometimes I like to appreciate the journey, especially since I current only play once a week!! Just my thoughts anyway.

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This is why I believe it is a good idea to split up into groups of me plus Corwin and those who are rather quick. I can explain everything by typing, but I REALLY need to get over my procrastination to get that newish headgear into the PC slots ! Because then, I can talk, too. I just hate hearing my own voice so much that I have procrastinated for so long.

I think I even understood Sharn & Barovia. Especially Barovia, because I did the whole chain alone with my Paladin.

The Wiki is a good resource as well, but it has one fault : It just doesn't give the bigger picture over chains. Except MOTU, maybe.

In the end, the Lost Gatekeepers were tricked by the hags into stealing sacret items - these items were actually being used for a ritual by the hags when they were disturbed by us in the Hut's quest "Housekeeping". In the end, the hags were defeated and fled into the Feywild.

The Sharn's bigger picture is even more bigger - and I hadn't realized that until I had (more accidentally) read a forums entry !


The Sharn's story is like this :

Vaunt had a manufactury. It somehow blew up (this is the only part I really don't know about). It seems that he was kind of cursed, and now the Forgewraiths follow him EVERYWHERE. You can see that in the very last quest of the chain.

As you can read by reading the signs/plagues in A Sharn Welcome, he is obsessed with protecting himself from the Forgewraiths.
He collected various protective monoments from various cultures - all sacred items, of course. But they didn't protect him from the curse.

At last, he heard from ONE item that might help - AND he paid the criminal Boromar Clan for stealing it : THE STORMREACH BEACON !

Yes, it is that big ray emitter from the hands of the Emperor statue in the Harbour of Stormreach !
It once protected the Giants from a curse as well - a curse directed from the Dragons of Argonessen against them !
As was explained within the chain "Disciples Of Rage". Sometimes, it is good to read dialogs through.
In which we were witnesses of the stealing itself in the first place ! It took place at the end of the first quest of that chain.

So, Disciples Of Rage is - so to say - the prelude to Shrn. And in the Sharn chains, we try to get it back from Vaunt. Who is almost always a step ahead of us.

And in the last quest of both Sharn chains, we get the Beacon back - and the Forgewraiths finnaly reach Vaunt during his speech in that strange theatre - and he vanishes.

Lost At Sea is the link between Disciples Of Rage and Sharn.

The Soul Splitter is a side-chain parallel to the Sharn chains. In the end, we learn about the fate of Issabet Tremont, whom we had met during Lost At Sea first, and had met us during A Sharn welcome - and was later killed.

dteowner said:

If you don't pick up all the quests up front, the chain-givers will walk you thru in order, one at a time, telling you which quest is next. That part is easy.

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If the quest entrances had been in the Fey castle then it would have been easy like with the Sharn quests. However, if you have to double recall back to the castle every time you have finished a quest you will get a lot of walking back and forth in the wilderness. That is something most PUG groups don't want to do.

However, in a guild run, especially the very first run, we can decide to progress the way we want. You hold the books and decide the rules.

Peter Stauffenberg said:

However, if you have to double recall back to the castle every time you have finished a quest you will get a lot of walking back and forth in the wilderness. That is something most PUG groups don't want to do.

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But we have that in lot of adventure packs !
Sands, Red Fens, Barovia, MOTU, Snowpeaks ... just to name a few.
Sharn is imho an outlier in that, as it comes very close to the wishes of those who want it fast.

Alrik Fassbauer said:

But we have that in lot of adventure packs !
Sands, Red Fens, Barovia, MOTU, Snowpeaks … just to name a few.
Sharn is imho an outlier in that, as it comes very close to the wishes of those who want it fast.

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Actually, the first three you list are bad examples. You can run any of the quests in any order without ever returning to "camp" if you wish. Desert and Red Fens flag quests lead to the ending quest/raid, but can be run in any order meaning you could run the entire chain without ever returning to camp if you didn't need a sell-repair stop in the middle. Borovia has teleporters that jump you from the tavern to the quest and back again so you don't do any running in the outdoor area unless you choose to.

It's rare that people run MOTU specifically because it's such a nuisance to get to the quests. Our group hasn't gone past the first chain in years and the only reason the broader community will mess with it these days is that those quests are part of 2 sagas with good payoffs.

Stormhorns can also be run from a hub, but Turbine decided to make shards teleporting people to the quests. So it's not used much.

However, the soul stone taxi is used often there. One player with access to the 3 teleporters picks up soul stones of the others and revive them before entering the quests.

Most quests in the game are made to be so independent that you can run them in any other. Usually the main restriction is that the last quest in each chain where you have to have done the others first. In addition you need to have done all to activate the raid.

dteowner said:

It's rare that people run MOTU specifically because it's such a nuisance to get to the quests. Our group hasn't gone past the first chain in years and the only reason the broader community will mess with it these days is that those quests are part of 2 sagas with good payoffs.

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I don't know what to think of MOTU, to be honest. I didn't go through the whole chain yet, but that's mostly because I don't have many characters in that level range. Even for my fresh level 20 Aasimar Scourge, the very first quest in that chain was unbelievably difficult for me. That was was mostly due to me not knowing the quest mechanics.

If it had been in the lower levels, I'd do it much more often. Almost all of my characters are below level 15 (only 5 are level 15 and up).

But I agree : Most quests of older packs can be played in any order.