Dungeons and Dragons Online - Fair Codexia Dead - DDO NEWs Thread!

[Multi-headed Cow]

Managed to spend a few hours grinding good boy points to pick up the 3 expansions and started a wizard for reals and haven't flown into an autistic rage unlike LotRO, so that's a good sign. Free to play is still riding the short bus in a lot of respects but it doesn't feel QUITE as egregious as LotRO. Little hard to pinpoint exactly why since they cheap out in similar ways, but I think it's because DDO feels (At least to someone that once played a character to 7th level years ago and is starting from scratch now) faster and more action oriented. Loot comes to you faster, character builds can be much more creative, combat's fast, etc. Which still doesn't really make sense why DDO isn't offending me yet but LotRO does, but eh.

Was torn between going for barbarian and chopping people up, two-handed paladin and smiting people, or wizard and then I learned wizard has the pale master tree where you can become a lich and get a skeleton fighter companion and that locked me firmly into camp wizard. Especially if I mostly play solo with hirelings and just want to do normal/hard/elite, my own dude with skelly fighter and hireling sounds like a reasonable team. Also heard that you can apply metamagic feats to spell like abilities for free so that ghoul touch or whatever the fuck it is can get pumped way up which sounds cool. Little tempted to take the improved summons feat since that should pump my skeleton and hireling too.

Rambling with no real point to this post other than the general sense of "Been fucking with DDO because of the code and it's still kinda appealing". Still a really fucking weird MMO that feels like it should've just been a multiplayer action RPG rather than MMO but it's good for what it is.

 

[Reinhardt]

Stars aligned and there was somehow ~5 people in codexia logged within month so i used full renown bonus to gain 2 guild levels this life. Next ship is beyond our reach but still nice to see guild grow. Thanks for your contribution, even if it's just logging once in a while.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Was torn between going for barbarian and chopping people up, two-handed paladin and smiting people, or wizard and then I learned wizard has the pale master tree where you can become a lich and get a skeleton fighter companion and that locked me firmly into camp wizard.

You're off my Christmas list forever.

 

[infidel]

So, here's a horizontal corridor... Here's a sloped corridor... I'll just take this stone bricks texture and slope it, right?

I always hate it when they do that shit in games . And they do it very often, it seems.

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

I always hate it when they do that shit in games . And they do it very often, it seems.

Shit, I'm really unobservant. Never noticed until you pointed it out.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

You're off my Christmas list forever.

Sorry bro, but someone's got to ensure the barbarians have a reason to hate wizards. It's just not right otherwise.

Did the keep on the borderlands which was pretty fun. Simple, but fun. Worst part is how it ends on a wet fart, you get the page and slap the cult and then.... It's over. Did quite like having a pun-loving medusa running around on a rampage with me.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

You're off my Christmas list forever.

Sorry bro, but someone's got to ensure the barbarians have a reason to hate wizards. It's just not right otherwise.

Did the keep on the borderlands which was pretty fun. Simple, but fun. Worst part is how it ends on a wet fart, you get the page and slap the cult and then.... It's over. Did quite like having a pun-loving medusa running around on a rampage with me.

It's an adaptation of a very early module by Gygax, they weren't particularly story heavy.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

It's an adaptation of a very early module by Gygax, they weren't particularly story heavy.

Never played it in tabletop, and I think the only Gygax modules I ever fucked around with on tabletop were against the giants and tomb of horrors since by and large when I played tabletop we just winged shit. Just felt like there should've been a little more to the ending. Even another one of those... Uh... Watchers or keepers or whatever the fuck they're called that sent me there in the first place to find the magical page, which I would assume is entirely unrelated to the original module and was just the excuse for plane-hopping into that module. But another one of those guys saying "GOOD JOB GETTING THAT PAGE BRO, I'M SURE OTHER HEROES WILL FINISH SAVING THE KEEP" or something. Maybe I'll get that after I use the portal to get back to Eberron or whatever. Probably gonna hang out in the keep a while longer, either run all the dungeons again on hard/elite this time or just explore the wilderness a bit more for shits and giggles.

 

[ERYFKRAD]

Sorry bro, but someone's got to ensure the barbarians have a reason to hate wizards.

They're wizards, what other reason does one need?

 

[infidel]

... was just the excuse for plane-hopping into that module. But another one of those guys saying "GOOD JOB GETTING THAT PAGE BRO, I'M SURE OTHER HEROES WILL FINISH SAVING THE KEEP" or something.

Get used to that plot hook, just saying

... just explore the wilderness a bit more for shits and giggles.

Grab the horse while you're at it, it's rather useful for the rest of the game.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

... just explore the wilderness a bit more for shits and giggles.

Grab the horse while you're at it, it's rather useful for the rest of the game.

Unfortunately I got two feathers in an hour or so of fucking around, seems like they only drop from loot chests from rare encounters and even then not all the time, and trying to find rare encounters looks like there's a degree of ass pain. I'd think bumping up the difficulty might make rare encounters more common (Not sure it works that way, feels like it might judging from some quests I've done) but I can't figure out how to do that for wilderness areas. Says "BEAT THE QUEST TO GET HIGHER DIFFICULTIES" but there isn't exactly a quest associated with it, unless it means cap out the slay/explore/rare encounters things. Which... I guess I could try. I'd be slowly picking up feathers as I try to map everything and find all the rare encounters anyway.

Could see a horse being nice, travel isn't as bad in DDO as in other MMOs but even with expeditious retreat running all the time it'd be nice if I could hoof it faster. Also got myself knock so I can sometimes open locked doors and chests, and got that improved summons feat which was probably a waste given my skeleton and merc didn't seem noticeably better after it but eh. Having a bunch of minions is cool. Need to find someone that sells eyelashes so I can cast summon monster as well. Coolest piece of gear thus far: found a cape with permanent feather fall on it so I'm floating around everywhere.

 

[someone else]

Now you guys are tempting me to switch from LOTRO. That game is huge!
How much $$$ am I expected to spend to get all expansions and decent Quality Of Life?

 

[infidel]

Unfortunately I got two feathers in an hour or so of fucking around, seems like they only drop from loot chests from rare encounters and even then not all the time, and trying to find rare encounters looks like there's a degree of ass pain. I'd think bumping up the difficulty might make rare encounters more common

You can't change the difficulty of wilderness areas, so the proper way is farming rares. There's the map with the shortest route available:
https://ddowiki.com/page/Borderlands_Farming_Route
It'll take around 30-40 minutes I think to farm enough, and it's once per forever if all your characters are on the same server so I'd do it (I'm too lazy on the current bard lol). DDOOR means use dimensional door spell if you have it, if not, just use a somewhat different route.

Coolest piece of gear thus far: found a cape with permanent feather fall on it so I'm floating around everywhere.

Feather fall is one of the base necessities in this game, with the sheer amount of traps that break floors and stuff like that. Be on the look for deathblock item (you will need it to survive beholders later on) and an underwater action item for these sudden optional long swims that happen sometimes. And you will need resistances soon, starting from the fire.

How much $$$ am I expected to spend to get all expansions and decent Quality Of Life?

If you've grabbed the free quests coupon (available until the end of 2021), there's not that much stuff left. There are 3 expansions available each for 99 points, (~1$ or easily farmable) too - Menace of the Underdark, The Shadowfell Conspiracy, Mists of Ravenloft. Those are each a good chunk of content. Ravenloft is imho the best there is in the game, buy these ASAP even if you don't intend to play this year. There are 3 more expansions - Sharn, Feywild and now Saltmarsh, each costing something like 25 or 40$ which is too expensive for me. You can just be patient and wait until they get cheap (I don't own them but Sharn was open last year so I've played it).

Now as for moneys... As someone who spent a little bit of money on the game I'd recommend at the very least buying VIP subscription (15$/month that get decreased significantly if you buy more upfront to the minimum of 8.25$/month if you pay for a year) and maybe a +50% xp learning tome if you can afford it (15$ once per character!). VIP gives you a lot of small things like +10% xp, shared storage, monster manual, etc but more importantly, access to all difficulties from the get go. F2P players have to play them incrementally starting with normal which is boring AF. The remaining QoL I did is buy a couple of bags from the store (6$ each per character!) to have some room for collectables, there's just a constant barrage of garbage of these into your inventory. The rest is either for later on or just unnecessary.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

You can't change the difficulty of wilderness areas, so the proper way is farming rares. There's the map with the shortest route available:
https://ddowiki.com/page/Borderlands_Farming_Route
It'll take around 30-40 minutes I think to farm enough, and it's once per forever if all your characters are on the same server so I'd do it (I'm too lazy on the current bard lol). DDOOR means use dimensional door spell if you have it, if not, just use a somewhat different route.

Feather fall is one of the base necessities in this game, with the sheer amount of traps that break floors and stuff like that. Be on the look for deathblock item (you will need it to survive beholders later on) and an underwater action item for these sudden optional long swims that happen sometimes. And you will need resistances soon, starting from the fire.

Ohhhhh. For some reason I thought the difficulty options were grayed out if they were unavailable, and colored but locked meant they exist but I just couldn't get them. That's good to know. And I probably will stick mainly to one server just for the hell of it so if that gives horses to all characters on that server then yeah, guess I should do that.

Good point on the feather fall, already got dumped down a garbage chute in a kobold cave (Been maxing spot and search so I detected a trap and I found the trap panel when I searched, but since it didn't highlight the floor I cleverly jumped over the threshold and landed smack dab on the trapdoor) so if they do that a lot then that'll be nice. Looking deathblock up I should be partially covered already by going pale master with lich form which gives me immunity to death shit, but implosion still fucks undead it says. Which... Actually I haven't tried swimming as a lich, theoretically I shouldn't need to breathe if I'm classed as undead but since it's weird fake-undead I'm not sure if that part will work. Resists I'll keep an eye on though. Been hanging on to rings with elemental protections and shit even though they're cluttering up my inventory a little, I guess as a wizard I can also cover my ass with spells once I get access to them.

One random thought about DDO though, I quite like a lot of the mechanical fiddliness to it. Even thinking about "Well if I'm classified as undead I probably don't need to breathe", true or not, is more enjoyable than considerations for basically every other MMO and even quite a few singleplayer games. DDO's weird mix of fast action/fast leveling/surprising depth is appealing. Does suffer a little from long-running MMO depth though as I try to figure out what a billion different currencies are used for and shit, but by and large glad they did the freebie code since I've been enjoying it. Like I'm still not entirely sure about epic destinies even though it sounds like they're going to be the focus of the next major patch, and I thought that they were from leveling 20-30 but bits and pieces I've read makes it sound like you can have access to them earlier but it's like an account unlock you get in the underdark expansion or something. Mostly just ignoring them on the basis that I'm playing super casually anyway.

Oh, was looking over pale master a little more and you DO get access to waterbreathing while in undead form but it doesn't come when you first pick a shroud. First pick of undead augmentation adds that with other stuff. Apparently all that happened fairly recently with a 2019 patch. Admittedly you get a waterbreathing ring after the very beginning tutorial dungeon but it's still cool to have that baked in to my subclass instead.

Much later edit: Found a belt with deathblock so if it's a pain to find I've got an item for it, even though it's shit (+1 str) other than that. What I found regarding waterbreathing and undead form must've been out of date too since I tested that and even without the augmented perk I've got waterbreathing with that enabled. Just wish the companion AI was a little better since I invariably get smacked as they wobble around before locking on to enemies. Got the negative energy ray from the pale master tree so I'm going to drop magic missile and pick up mage armor for a bit more defense, just have to protect my ass and let my minions mop up trash and I can fling spells at elites/bosses/whatevers.

 

[Zurat-Yarkuch]

(Been maxing spot and search so I detected a trap and I found the trap panel when I searched, but since it didn't highlight the floor I cleverly jumped over the threshold and landed smack dab on the trapdoor)

In order to detect higher level traps and disable them you need at least one level of rogue or artificer to get the trapfinding feat. A popular combination is 18Wiz/2Rog since not only will you be able to put points into search, spot, and disable device but also get evasion. With the insightful reflexs you can use your intelligence modifier for reflex saving throws instead of dexterity.

Disabling traps grants a bonus to experience, as high as +30% in some quests.

 

[someone else]

R

(Been maxing spot and search so I detected a trap and I found the trap panel when I searched, but since it didn't highlight the floor I cleverly jumped over the threshold and landed smack dab on the trapdoor)

In order to detect higher level traps and disable them you need at least one level of rogue or artificer to get the trapfinding feat. A popular combination is 18Wiz/2Rog since not only will you be able to put points into search, spot, and disable device but also get evasion. With the insightful reflexs you can use your intelligence modifier for reflex saving throws instead of dexterity.

Disabling traps grants a bonus to experience, as high as +30% in some quests.

Start with rogue or wiz?

 

[rusty_shackleford]

alchemist best class

 

[Reinhardt]

R

(Been maxing spot and search so I detected a trap and I found the trap panel when I searched, but since it didn't highlight the floor I cleverly jumped over the threshold and landed smack dab on the trapdoor)

In order to detect higher level traps and disable them you need at least one level of rogue or artificer to get the trapfinding feat. A popular combination is 18Wiz/2Rog since not only will you be able to put points into search, spot, and disable device but also get evasion. With the insightful reflexs you can use your intelligence modifier for reflex saving throws instead of dexterity.

Disabling traps grants a bonus to experience, as high as +30% in some quests.

Start with rogue or wiz?

Rogue, for skillpoints.

 

[infidel]

For some reason I thought the difficulty options were grayed out if they were unavailable, and colored but locked meant they exist but I just couldn't get them.

UI has never been their strongest suit :D Like, for example, you can buy good gear on vendors near the marketplace entrance but it's just a pile of player-sold shit that you have to look through with no filters, search or anything.

Resists I'll keep an eye on though. Been hanging on to rings with elemental protections and shit even though they're cluttering up my inventory a little, I guess as a wizard I can also cover my ass with spells once I get access to them.

Just keep in mind the tiny word that says which particular group that bonus belongs to because they don't stack. The first one you have access to is "enhancement" bonus (later on there's also "insightful" and maybe a couple of other that are rare). If you have a ring with "+10 enhancement fire resistance" and an armor with "+13 enhancement fire resistance" and a spell that gives "+20 enhancement fire resistance", it'll be the highest - +20 from spell. The rest is useless and can be discarded unless there's something else you need from them. The alternative is buying stacks of +20 res potions for that crucial moment and hoping you can drink them in time. Armors with good resists are probably too cumbersome (though my rogue still has some in his inventory, hehehe), nowadays I rely on rings + pots + Rein gives me good wands for those very tight moments that +20 is not enough.

DDO's weird mix of fast action/fast leveling/surprising depth is appealing.

I've been thinking about this for some time - all the old MMOs that have managed to survive each has their unique qualities deserving to be played. And judging by the steady trickle of patches and content, a lot of them are pretty healthy, low-pop but still. You don't need a lot of people to produce some content when all the systems, editors, etc are done. For example, DDO only lists three programmers on every expansion. That's a very small number and while they are struggling in the much-needed refactoring area, it's enough to keep the game afloat. Moreover, if you think about it, a lot of the ones that went down, did this due to bad business decisions. They've sold out to big publishers either from the get-go or later on and these big publishers, they just hate it when this old "not meeting expectations" shit is around. I'm still salty about the Wildstar death by NCSoft (and a lot of bad decisions by the dev team but who cares, everybody does stupid mistakes).

Somewhat recently I've finally took it upon myself to play Uncharted Waters Online (2005) after looking at it for years and even trying it out in 2012 maybe. The game is small but active, new content, loads of old, the UI is like stuck in 2002 (yeah, it's not up to WoW's standards), but overall it feels pretty healthy. And this game doesn't even have a thread here, it's that niche. I was there for the story but they have this thing they've lifted from the singleplayer game - to progress the story you must usually spend 30 days sailing. Which is exactly 30 minutes of real time! So you can't just play the story, you have to do it with 30 minute breaks :D Hopefully, I'll be back to do it at some point because Youtube has zero story letsplay videos, there's literally no other way to experience it. Oh yeah, another thing that's insane nowadays is that you can't give them money until you get to level 10 in all of the three leveling paths - adventure, maritime and trade.

Like I'm still not entirely sure about epic destinies even though it sounds like they're going to be the focus of the next major patch, and I thought that they were from leveling 20-30 but bits and pieces I've read makes it sound like you can have access to them earlier

Yeah, epics are a separate perks tree from 20-30 and I haven't bothered with it yet. 1-20 is called "heroic", btw. You can decide about epics when you get to 20.

Found a belt with deathblock so if it's a pain to find I've got an item for it, even though it's shit (+1 str) other than that.

Any item will do, just keep it close for that time when you need it (beholders start to happen around level 10, I think). There's also death ward spell which does the same thing but can be dispelled. Arguably the worst part of DDO is random loot so it's always gonna be a pain to find something concrete that you want. You can periodically check these "player loot" shops (contents are cleared every 24h iirc) or auction. Named items are even more of a pita. Most of them are shit and the others can usually only be obtained from specific chests in specific adventures.

 

[Reinhardt]

There's also death ward spell which does the same thing but can be dispelled.

Not "same" - death ward is much better, if no dispel in play. It protects agains energy drain too, not just instant death. That's why in your "favorite" quest with beholder you need both. Drow casters spam negative levels so even if death ward will be dispelled later by beholders it's very valuable in 90% of dungeon.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

or just play as a warforged

it's a shame they didn't consider warforged with reaper content, so they become a lot shittier when they have to rely on other people for healz

it's nice to play an MMO where races are actually different

 

[Reinhardt]

Finished last epic destiny, right in time before they fuck them forever. Exalted angel. Worst destiny for me so far, even worse than sorceror and wizzord destinies - at least there i could pick +int from trees for smol damage bonus. In angel they offer wis or cha...

Guess i will get fashion cloak to celebrate it after patch after all.

 

[rusty_shackleford]

Finished last epic destiny, right in time before they fuck them forever. Exalted angel. Worst destiny for me so far, even worse than sorceror and wizzord destinies - at least there i could pick +int from trees for smol damage bonus. In angel they offer wis or cha...

Guess i will get fashion cloak to celebrate it after patch after all.

easiest way to level ED is to just leech off of other people

 

[Reinhardt]

I just turned eveningstar sagas then ran legendary ravenloft wilderness and burned some keys in halloween. +20% bonus exp weekend really helped.

 

[Multi-headed Cow]

In order to detect higher level traps and disable them you need at least one level of rogue or artificer to get the trapfinding feat. A popular combination is 18Wiz/2Rog since not only will you be able to put points into search, spot, and disable device but also get evasion. With the insightful reflexs you can use your intelligence modifier for reflex saving throws instead of dexterity.

Disabling traps grants a bonus to experience, as high as +30% in some quests.

Didn't know there was such a large XP bump for disabling traps, kind of surprising since optional objectives in quests typically give you less than that. I'll probably go full wiz on this character though since I tend to prefer single-class characters in general anyway, plus my general game plan with this character is soloing and casually fucking around (Hence taking pale master and augmented summons and putting a lot of my enhancements into the skeleton minion) so I'm not too worried about the character ending up bad for end game stuff since I'll either never do it, or if I get that far and I'm still wanting to play DDO I'll make a gud gittin' character since at that point I'll have a better idea of the specifics of DDO.

UI has never been their strongest suit :D Like, for example, you can buy good gear on vendors near the marketplace entrance but it's just a pile of player-sold shit that you have to look through with no filters, search or anything.

Yeah, even inventory management's kind of a pain. I'm glad I picked up a gem bag and a collectible bag since those help alleviate inventory issues a little but even then it just turns into a mess of icons.

The bonuses of the same type not stacking I figured since that's how it works in D&D, but since DDO has dramatically more bonuses/higher bonuses than D&D it's a little harder to keep track of. Another case where they could improve it in the UI to give you a little alert/icon/something on equipped items saying there's a conflict with bonuses. While that's kind of a pain it's also kinda cool though since you pay more attention to your gear rather than just flat-out going I SEES INT I WEARS ITEM so it's a double edged sword. I think I like DDO's system more but like you mentioned if the UI was better it'd help.

I also think I might be immune to negative levels when I'm in undead form but not 100% positive about that, either. I do have magic resistance due to lich which I think might be around 30 if I'm around level 10 which may help too, starts at 15 but at that point I should have the improved form (I think) which bumps it higher. Will say the "Summon monster" monsters seem pretty bad with augmented summons. Skeleton and hireling kick massive amounts of ass and the only thing stopping them from easily sweeping all dungeons for me is their dumb AI, but the summon monster critters are kinda trash. Augmented summon may still be worth it since I'm getting a fuckton of raw stats across 3 bodies with it but I'll hope the summons get juicier later.