Blackmoor Defenders : Ghallanda

With Greater Reincarnation slated to appear in the Store the first weekend of March, I’ve been going back and forth on whether or not I want to take the plunge with my original character.

Post Script Edit: One other thing I should definitely mention is before you Greater Reincarnate, you need to have access to 32 point builds. If you haven’t unlocked the favor already, there is a sale on 32 point builds going on in the Store this week.

With his one level of multiclassing amid his levels of bard, I can’t decide if I should just upgrade him to 32, or scrub out that level of fighter while I’m at it with the Greater +1. There are some considerations before you just let Kruz burn your body to ash to feed to his tree, so to speak.

Going Greater

The main reason to go “Greater” with a reincarnation is upgrading him from the old 28 point character to a 32 point character. Back when I was a player, this is a day I never imagined would actually come! I always had a note of sadness thinking that my poor faithful little bard, the first character I ever made, would always be sub-par compared to those characters that would come after him. Now it’s like a reunion in a way. I’m not sure that I’ll change much about him… except that one level of fighter that still haunts me.

Scrubbing Out Mistakes

Back when the level cap was only 10, I remember being vexed by that level of fighter I took. I would forever always be out of reach of the final level of bardicness. With the Greater +1 I’ll be able to kill two birds with one stone it seems: upgrading to 32 point build, and removing that level of fighter. I need to be careful though, because the level swap provided by the +1 in theory could be used to multiclass another level of my choosing… but my intent would be to convert the level of fighter into just bard to be straight bard. I was tempted to replace it with a level of Sorc, but I think I’ll dabble with that on an alt some time.

Careful Planning

I’m pretty happy with my bard, but in the event I felt like changing some stuff around while I was at it - besides just getting the extra ability points - it’s a good idea to think ahead. I mean effectively this lets me completely and utterly redo him, and without fear of changing something that was handy at mid level, but grew less so at high level. I can completely spec him around my current game play style. I should probably be careful because since there is always new stuff being introduced, something that seemed “useless” to me at this level may come back around and I might regret getting rid of it… but I guess that’s what re-reincarnating is for heh. At least now I won’t feel “stuck” no matter what happens in the future.

There are many great resources for such purposes, but there’s no better resource than your fellow players. Talk to other players who have characters in the style you’re thinking of is an excellent way to find out if that aspect of a character will be something you’ll like. But there’s nothing that says you can’t just experiment and do something because you “feel” like it. Customizing a character can be challenging but also rewarding, so do what works for you! For me, I continue to banter with the other Bards seeing what they like (and dislike) about the way they play theirs vs the choices they made to end up that way. I’m particularly interested in talking with other Bardic friends who plan on reincarnating to hear what they plan on “fixing” (or “changing”) about themselves.

It’s funny, but a long time ago Reincarnation was foretold by an unusual community prophet. Though it’s not 100% the same, I can’t help but think back to this very interestingly worded suggestion. I’m glad to see we now have something that is a shade of this old idea, to not let an old character go to waste! I’m interested in hearing about how you plan on preparing for your greater reincarnations! Leave a comment below or ping me back by writing in your blog and including a link to this post!

So there are some fixes put in today... ToR active again in Giant Hold, True Res back in game, some other minor things and then they tossed in the 4yr celebration stuff. Basically an Egg Hunt. Map and Video below. I am not too impressed so far.. BUT from Feb 24th - March 8th, the 20% bonus will be back. And you can bet, I'll be doing some serious playing/leveling then!

Read the official release here. Be warned though, it seems that some bugs creeped in. Gianthold Tor is unavailable as well as 'Casual' difficulty setting. Epic Tokens have dissapeared and there are some other issues not quite right. Lastly, the Greater and Lesser Reincarnation stuff is not quite implemented yet either.

Oh boy! This is pretty slick. Many MANY fixes, new quests and Reincarnation. Plus, other goodies.

Read it here: Update 3 Beta. I'll be doing Greater Reincarnation for both Thaco and Sparks... to fix build issues.

Sale on DDO Store items leading up to the release of Update 3. +2 tomes and XP pots... nice.

After spending some time on this, we now have our own Forums. Link on the left nav. Feel free to share this site with your friends as a resouce or place to post things in the forums. At least now, things won't be so one-sided here with me doing all the talking. If you use it great! If not, at least it is there for a resouce to use. :) (oh, and no more annoying Godaddy banner on top!)

I've noticed everyone is leveling up pretty quick now. Between slayer stuff (welcome to the Giant Hold DWA!), rare hunting and some decent lvl 12-16 quests, we are going to have a nice core group to start getting and running RAIDs. I myself got Sparks to 11 last night and am working on 12 now. Thaco is 18 and needs a lot to get to 19. So between the 2, I have the bandwidth now to run with everyone. :)

Be nice for a group of us to be at level 16, to go do Inspired Quarter quests. I've only run a couple with Oicu.

I would like to get a Demon Queen RAID group put together...maybe this weekend folks?

Lastly, I'm looking for a +1 (or better) 'something effect' Heavy Pick of Greater Vermin Bane. Ping me if you find one.

...I'll be so happy when I get the forum loaded here. This is so one-sided.... :( No ETA on the forums. Will do as soon as I can.

Now that I have a lot of stuff to craft with...and am at that time where I should be crafting... I am heading down this path. After talking with Ociu and Mirdak, I think I going to build me a pair of goggles. I'm thinking of building this out. Stuck getting poison prot (as if I needed it...), but I think this is an interesting set. Allows me to drop a Docet and the Helm of Freewill I tote around. The Will Save, well I just need it. Horrid Wilting... I have no idea what that is or will help. :)

Hit this the other day and forgot to go find Nyx. So...after seeing I also got my first tier in House 12 favor (40 pts), I figured I'd go see Nyx. Pretty cool. The Tome is bound to this character, so I banked it for if I ever decide to True Reincarnate Thaco. Anyhow, by the time you read this. I'll be at 1,800+ favor. :)

With help from Vispen, I am finally flagged for Shroud runs now. Now to get the rest of you flagged! Below are the raid quests I believe most of us are flagged for and just need to do the actual raid.

There are of course other areas to do, but those are the immieadiate ones that come to mind. I can't remember if we are flagged for Vault of the Night... I'll have to check that tonight...

We need to work on getting flagged for Black Abbot and the rest of the Orchard stuff AND the Inspired Quarter area. I have 1 quest done in there...and since you need to be level 16... we need to start working in this direction. :)

So... long story short... back in the day, I had a nice collection of DnD domain names. Then life happened and I let several of them slip away. One of them a buddy had registered for me, but I lost contact with him. With that said I finally got back www.thac0.org to fill in again with something. Also, in my bag of tricks, I have www.flumph.com (1 page site).

So why don't I have our guild as a domain name? Well... in previous games, I used Flumph or Thac0 as the guild name.

Now, out of respect for Bronko, I have no plans on renaming our guild name to THACO... that would awful. Besides, it would look weird with my name and all. :)

Also, when I choose the name of our current guild, I had considered using Flumph as our name... but decided to go with what we have today. I did however tag an alt/mule with 'Cult of the Flumph' for grins.

(Neglected to mention earlier... The Reincarnation dude - Kruz - is in House J over where the Coin turn in was. There may be an NPC near Kruz named Sir Poincelot who will give you 500 Turbine Points which only work in the test server. You can buy 32pt build and whatever reincarnation type you want to try out. You have to have unlocked 32pt build on the server so nearly everyone buys it. I did.)

I played on Lamannia last night, met up with the Devs for the Heart and Free TPs to test with (only 500). And ran thru the reincarnation process for both Thaco (15Barb/2Rogue) and Sparks (10 Wiz). I wanted to do both of them because both are currently 28pt builds and both are vastly different... Barb/Rog vrs Wizard.

During the reincarnation process, everything went smooth. These are the things I noticed and thought I should mention.

Now that I've been thru this once for each of them... I will be ready (with my notes in hand) to respec them when Update 3 goes live (everyone is guessing Feb 2010).

I'd suggest if you are interested, download the Lamannia client, then copy your characters (only can do 5 total) to the server, and then try it out for yourself! It is good practice if you are planing to do this. Especially since there is a 1 week cool down before you can do it again.

I'm playing around on Lamannia to get a feel for some of the changes. Here are some screenshots. +Madfloyd was on Saturday to pass out hearts for those of use who caught the Forum post. He will be back on Sunday to pass out more. Click to view the full size image. Greater Reincarnation

There are also 'Signs' around town which are kinda cool, but cluttering up the area in my opinion. Night looks cool. I'll post more as I find things worth mentioning.

With that said, my little project of getting maps up for us is going to take a back burner. It looks like he has a better host now and obviously a back-up of the site. I added the link back to the left nav. :)

Oh boy! This is pretty slick. Many MANY fixes, new quests and Reincarnation. Plus, other goodies. Read it here: Update 3 Beta. Parts I find especially interesting and will be happy to have are:

The list of stuff is quite long. There are lots of neat things coming...these above ones I've been waiting for.

For the only person I've known since I started playing DDO in 2006... Cerveza.... knows the importance of our logo. Long live the Flumph! One of these days, I'll share the story...or maybe he'd like to. :) And, for those who don't know what a Flumph is I have this handy...from our past... History of the Flumph

Yes, I'll be getting rid of the annoying host banner at the top. Just need a bit of resources to set that up for a while. I'm undecided if I want to put the time into a forum. I rather spend my time on the DDO forum or ingame chatting.

I haven't been happy with the look of the website. Mainly cuz I just wanted to throw content up so that I can find it easily. Now that we have some, I'd like it to look a bit more organized and cleaner. Hence, this new look. :)

If you need slayer stuff, rares and explorers ... I can help run thru those areas. I have characters spread out enough to help low, mid and higher. Just let me know.

I am finally flagged for Demon Queen and am also RAID ready for Tor, Rever's Refuge, and Twilight Forge. Working on Shroud (Vale) and the Black Abbot (Necroplis). So... I'll be in those areas for slayer and quests. Ping me ingame if you want to come along or feel like lending a helping hand.

So I've been in the Desert for a long time...and holding back on leveling. Well, I had to level up cuz I was missing out of 1st time XP for all of the new quests at higher levels. I ended up finishing off most of my slayers as seen below. I still need to run quests in the Desert to run the Demon Queen raid. But, needed to advance up so that I won't keep missing out on other things. :) 80k in xp in about 3 hours of work.

I have yet to do any crafting...but am starting to build up items needed for it. Oicu (thanks btw!) pointed this application out to me last night. It is a really cool Crafting application that has a lot of info in it. I added it to the top nav or you may download it here: Crafting Application (). Just unzip and run it.

I found a copy of the Restless Isle Map...so I added it to the Maps page. There are now 22 high detail maps there!

I REALLY want to go out to the Restless Isles and get the Teleport Mask and the Resurrection Ring (only useable by Good aligned characters).

You need to have Hidden in Plain Sight quest done. I can run anyone thru it if you need this quest.

Not quite as exciting as a new map being posted.... I also finally did my "About Me" page.

I saw some screenshots of people bragging about their 'uber' loot they got from some raid and long story short... noticed that their screens looked different than mine. Yes, I had 'screen envy'. :) Anyhow, after some digging, I found that there are mods out there to update your DDO UI. So, I grabbed what I could and stored them here so I (we) could find them easily. Linky on the upper nav or go look here at the DDO UI Skins page.

Update: I added a TON of Maps... and stuck them here for quick reference. Yes, I'll be adding more as I find them, or as you folks point out ones we may need to me.