Pondering Situations in The Graverobber

One of things I like to wonder about is lore and connections between the enemies we encounter in our various quest during our character’s adventuring careers.  This was a while back, but I took Erdrique through the Graverobber and encountered two rare encounters, Willowthorn Lightfoot and Priest Myssyral.  This made me wonder how these two strange entities and how they are associated with each other.

The main premise of the Graverobber is to stop a deranged halfling named Deathshadow (Moonshadow Lightfoot) from stealing corpes and practicing necromancy.  As we make our way through the quest, you have the opportunity to run into the optional encounters I mentioned above.  However, you will always encounter a little party of troglodytes, even if Priest Myssyral (troglodyte cleric, who apparently is their leader) isn’t present.  So why are the troglodytes present in the Lightfoot Residence (dungeon location in House Jorasco)?

Erdrique encountering Willowthorn Lightfoot in the Graverobber.

First off, I’m thinking that Moonshadow has picked up after where Willowthorn has left off when it comes to practicing necromancy.  I’m guessing that Willowthorn is either Moonshadow’s father or grandfather.  Moonshadow used the limited knowledge he has gained to bring Willowthorn back from the dead in the form of a specter.  I’m thinking that Moonshadow desperately wanted to continue to learn and master his necromantic power and with the help of Willowthorn contacted Priest Myssyral.  Since troglodytes tend to be nightly creatures and have an affinity with staying out of sight and in lurking in places that other people wouldn’t dare enter, they were probably recruited to gather bodies for Moonshadow’s experiments.  I’m sure Moonshadow is either paying the Priest with some type of knowledge or some other rare artifact that the troglodytes find interesting.

Erd battling Priest Myssyral in the Graverobber.

I can’t really think of any other reason why these two entities would be lingering around together in the same quest.  They must be linked in some fashion.  I can easily see Moonshadow manipulating these troglodytes to do his dirty work.  We never do hear of any witnesses seeing the graves being robbed, we just know that bodies are missing.  And I would think that the scent of the graveyard would probably cover up any lingering odors from the troglodytes.

In any case, they do appear to be a team that need to be dealt with.  Good think us adventurers like that type of situation :).  Thanks for reading everybody and happy hunting in House J!!

So What is the Deal With the Mudwallow Ogres?

Awhile back I took a very quick and cursory look at the various clans and tribes of ogres in DDO.  I later then wondered about how close the Runetusk Ogres and Kar-thul ogres were.  However, over this past weekend when I went through the Tharashk Arena (VON 1) with Erdrique (Level 12 Rogue) I realized that there is another clan or tribe of ogres that I neglected to acknowledge, the Mudwallow ogres.  These brute warriors seem to be relegated to the Tharashk Arena.  At least I haven’t noticed them anywhere else.

Erdrique taking on a Mudwallow ogre in the middle of Tharashk Arena.

So actually where do these brute warriors come from?  They appear more like the typical ogres you encounter around Stormreach and its outskirts as opposed to those from Droaam.  This suggests that they are probably some form of a native ogre tribe or clan and they seem intent in only participating in brutal and devastating arena matches.  I wonder how their leader and tribe operates.  They probably have some type of contests to determine which ogres will represent them in this gruesome trade and it is probably an honor to represent the tribe in this fashion.

I wonder how this particular clan is viewed by other ogre clans.  I’m thinking the clan from Grey Moon wouldn’t take to these ogres all that well.  I also wonder how the larger and more well known Runetusk ogres would interact with this clan.  I wouldn’t be surprised if the Runetusk ogres work cooperatively with this bunch, then again they might be a little worried about the power Mudwallow ogres can gain if they decide to turn on them.

Some interesting thoughts.  Maybe we will stumble upon these brutes in some explorer area later to be developed.  Who really knows?  The one thing I do know is that these guys can pack quite a hit.  Thanks for reading everybody!!  Now ponder on the Mudwallow ogre :).

Finishing Up Level 8 Quests, Questing Over June 26 and June 28

Although I was out of town and in Atlanta for a workshop from Sunday, June 21st until Friday, June 26th, I still was able to bet back home in time to knock out a number of quests over the last weekend (however, I did fall behind in the blogging schedule once again…argh…I’ll catch up eventually though 🙂 ).  I didn’t get back from my workshop until pretty late on Friday night, June 26th.  I was able to log in with Erdrique (Level 12 Rogue) and to catch up with some of his maintenance tasks (pulling items out of his mail from sold and returned auctions, crunching items down in the crafting hall, posting new auctions, etc..) and then I took him out into the Red Fen for his first foray into those mystical bogs and interesting explorer zone.  I ran through the zone and picked up all of the explorer points, up to 200 slayers or so, and only three rares but still wound up getting a nice junk of experience out there (close to 15,000 experience I believe).  I then called it a night.

Saturday night was much more interesting :).  I started out in the Red Fens to kill off the lesser slayer potion I had still active and then I was joined by Twotoe.  I took a look at the rest of the level 8 quests I needed to complete and we headed out.  We took on the first two quests of the Vault of Night Series to start out the night, Tharashk Arena and The Prisoner.  We quickly breezed through the Tharashk Arena and made short work of the beholders, minotaurs, and tharaahk hounds in The Prisoner.  Once we cashed in those quests, we headed off to another fun story arc, The Ruins of Threnal.  We straight towards the Western Excavation and completed the first two quests in that part of the arc, In Need of Supplies and The Rescue.  I always find Threnal a fun and interesting run, but also it can be quite annoying with all of the slimes/puddings being mixed in with other more vicious enemies.  In any case, we made through those two quests without any issues as well.  Once we advanced the story arc for Threnal, we then rebuffed on the guild airship and then went to the Necropolis.  At this point, the only level 8 quests I still needed were those from Necro II, the Shadow Series of quests.  After we buffed up on the guild airship, and prior to heading out to the Necropolis, I headed over to House Kundarak and to the Cannith Crafting Hall and built up a +1 Ghost Touch Quarterstaff of Pure Good to deal with the many, many shadows, wraiths, specters, umbral worgs, and umbral gargoyles that proliferate in these quests.

Erdrique starting out Saturday night in the Red Fens.

Erdrique and Twotoe making their way through the Tharashk Arena.

Erdrique and Twotoe dealing with the tharaahk hounds in The Prisoner.

The first of the quests we hit up was Tomb of the Shadow Knight.  All of the Shadow quests have a unique feature to them.  The Shadow Knight is known as the “rogue rich” one because it has a number of traps that can be disarmed for various amounts of optional experience.  This was nice since Erdrique is currently working on his rogue life :).  In any case, we made it through there with little difficulty.  The next one we hit up was Tomb of the Shadow Lord.  Tomb of the Shadow Lord is known for having the party split up to progress through the quest.  However, Two and I had no problems dealing with that aspect and completed the quest without many issues.  The next quest was Tomb of the Shadow Guard which is known for being half underwater with a rather complicated map to navigate through.  Two and I did get turned around once or twice as we were swimming through the collapsed portion of the tomb but overall it wasn’t an issue.  The last quest we took on, was Tomb of the Shadow King.  This annoying quest is known for its respawns and more respawns.  This quest did cause us some issues initially, as we ran into a few instances where we gathered too many monsters to handle, but we did, we just took a beating to do so.  But we finished it and we had them all completed on elite.  That particular run was our closing run for the night.

Erdrique doing his job in the Tomb of the Shadow Knight.

Erdrique looking through the gate at Twotoe in Tomb of the Shadow Lord.

Erdrique and Twotoe killing off a mini-boss in Tomb of the Shadow Guard.

Look at all of the phase spiders in the Tomb of the Shadow King.

On Sunday, I logged on with another level 12 character, my sorcerer Cantlin.  I was quickly joined up with Helldemons and we decided to run through two old but fun quests on elite, because I still needed them with Cantlin, Tear of Dhakaan and Gwylan’s Stand.  Those are both level 7 quests making them level 9 on elite.  Even being level 12, upon completion of both of these quests I still wound up getting a large amount of experience for him.  I did run into some problems in Gwylan’s Stand, as a few of the traps cause me some heart burn as well as having some button issues with my hot bars (go figure).  However, we did complete them rather easily.  After we ran through Gwylan’s Stand, Hell logged out for the night but I took Cantlin into Sorrowdusk Isle for another 10 minutes or so to collect some more slayers before heading to bed.

Cantlin and Helldemons making their way through Tear of Dhakaan.

Cantlin cleaning up the night in Sorrowdusk Isle.

So, although I got home late, I still had a strong and productive weekend :).  I hope everybody else did as well.  Thanks for reading everybody and happy hunting!!

Thoughts on the Bounty Hunter

Awhile back, I took Erdrique (Level 12 Rogue, although he was level 10 at the time) through the quest The Bounty Hunter.  This particular quest is level 6 on normal, making it a level 8 on elite.  The quest giver is a NPC named Kirstana of Fairhaven who has been hired to track down a ruthless assassin who has taken refuge in the Knave’s Hallow, which holds a band of thieves.  Kirstana has asked for your help in eliminating the assassin and to bring back his signet as proof of his demise.  The quest is located in the Anvil Fire Inn in House Deneith.  It is one of those quests that the NPC transports you too.

Erdrique making his way through the Bounty Hunter.

The quest itself is relatively straight forward.  As you can imaging, it contains a variety of traps spread throughout the quest, which can be easily navigated around once you encounter them.  The Knave’s Hollow is essentially a multi-tiered cave that contains three levels or so.  You need to make your way through the levels to receive keys that allow you to access the final room with primary fight.  The quest contains some drow, dwarves, elves, halflings, humans, warforged, wolves, and trolls.  However, one of the more questionable thoughts about this particular quest concerns the path behind a locked gate.  The same gate I have pictured above.  Behind this gate, the first thing you encounter is a sneaky black wolf.  So the first question, why is there a random wolf behind this gate seemingly guarding these useless crates.  On top of that, if you maneuver through the crates you come upon an extension within the cave.  What I find interesting, is that this extension contains a band of trolls.

So, what exactly is the wolf and these trolls doing in the Knave’s Hollow?  I’m thinking that the wolf is most likely some type of a pet to the troll shamans.  But what are the trolls doing there to begin with?  I’m guessing that the trolls were actually the original inhabitants of the Knave’s Hollow.  I’m wondering if Blaeric Goodspeed and Ros Clowery made some type of shifty deal with the trolls.  They probably set up some type of a tenuous alliance to work together in some fashion but I’m not entirely sure what that alliance is based on.  Most likely this thieves guild is paying the trolls in some of their stolen loot, most likely loot that is worthless but we’ll see.  In any case, I found this situation a little interesting.

It is these little intricacies within the various quest we complete that keep my mind turning.  In any case, if you get a chance, take a stroll through the Knave’s Hollow.  You might find it interesting.  Thanks for reading everybody and happy hunting in The Bounty Hunter!!

Short Weekend, Quest Runs June 19th to June 21st

Looking back at my quest runs from the weekend before last (because I’m still working on catching back up), I worked on completing some of the more intriguing quests in DDO, at least to me.  I kicked the weekend off by taking one of my lower level characters, Berann (Level 8 Barbarian), through the Tangleroot Gorge landscape.  After collecting some slayer for about 20 minutes, I logged out and didn’t log back into DDO until later that night when I was ready to bring on Erdrique (Level 12 Rogue).  Erdrique was still working on collecting his elite runs on the level 8 quests.  Working on that theme, I noticed that Erdrique needed to run Spies in the House.  So I headed over to House Deneith and wondered how difficult this quest would be for me this time.  I say this because I always seem to have issues with the air jets that propel you up to the next set of platforms throughout the quest.  However, I was pleasantly surprised.  I didn’t run into any real issues this time (the only issues I had with the jets was that I forgot to open the dang door to propel up to the mephits so I kept getting knocked down until I realized that I still had a lever to pull).  All in all, I had a great run through this time with Spies in the House and I hope my luck continues as I take my other characters through the quest.  After I hit up Spies in the House, I then headed over to House Kundarak and worked on some Cannith Crafting levels and then I headed out to Sorrowdusk Isle and completed that explorer area.

Berann is now a spider slayer in Tangleroot Gorge.

Erdrique having some fun tripping up some skeletons in Spies in the House.

Erdrique making his way through Sorrowdusk Isle and looking for trolls to slay.

On Saturday, I logged back on with Erdrique and was joined by Hellbanisher.  We were both working on those level 8 quests and the first quest we decided to tackle was Faithful Departed.  We had an interesting time in there.  If your not familiar with Faithful Departed, it is a quest located in House Phiarlan where you are asked to stop an invading army of drow from destroying what are known as the Venerated.  The Venerated are elven mummies.  If the drow, or your party, kill too many of the Venerated then the quest fails.  One thing I discovered while running this particular quest was that the number of Venerated allowed to be killed has been modified.  When the quest first came out, none of the Venerated were allowed to killed.  Well, this has changed, and I think no more than three Venerated can be killed, which makes the quest considerable easier.  In any case, we were able to make our way through the quest without too many issues.  We then decided to hit up an old favorite, Xorian Cipher.  To get to Xorian Cipher, you have to make your way through the “pre-quest” The Path to Madness, which is loaded with drow and undead.  This theme is then carried over into Xorian Cipher as well as dealing with some tharaak hounds.  We made our way through the quest without many issues and gathered up quite a bit of experience on its completion.  Then to cap off the night, we headed off into the Caverns of Korromar, another old but interesting quest.  After we completed the Caverns of Korromar we both called it a night.

Erdrique making his way to surprise a drow in Faithful Departed.

Erdrique approaching the entrance to the Xorian Cipher after making his way through the Path to Madness.

Erdrique bringing down a comet on the undead in Xorian Cipher.

Erdrique and Hellbanisher making their way through the Caverns of Korromar.

I didn’t get a chance to run anything on Sunday because I was on the road to Atlanta.  I headed to Atlanta for the entire week to attend a workshop for the office, which is why I’m so far behind as well.  So, although it was a nice and short weekend, it was still quite productive.  I hope everybody else had a great weekend!!  Thanks for reading everybody and happy hunting!!

A Quick Look at Taming the Flames

The other day, I took Erdrique (Level 12 Rogue, who was actually 11 at the time) through one of the more dreaded quests at lower levels, Taming the Flames.  Taming the Flames is especially brutal at level on elite with those characters who don’t have evasion, although I’m sure the change with Magical Resistance Rating has made this quest much more bearable to those heavy armor users.  The quest giver, Master Thorpe, is located in Ever Full Flagon in House Kundarak.  When you stumble past Master Thorpe, you overhear him lamenting on what he thinks is the loss of another, Master Fulvio.  Master Thorpe tells you that Master Fulvio has left to investigate a mystical cavern beneath Stormreach.  However, in his haste, Master Fulvio didn’t make all of the appropriate preparations and seemed to have forgotten to take with him a powerful scroll of planar binding to keep the presence of elementals in place.  Master Thorpe then tells you that he received a message from Fulvio and had forwarded to him a scroll of planar binding, however it appears that Fulvio never received it.  Thorpe mentions that he sent the scroll with a very capable adventurer and believes that the scroll has been stolen.  Thorpe then asks you to search for Fulvio.

The quest entrance to taming the flames is located in House Kundarak and is actually not very far away from the quest Caverns of Korromar.  It is actually located just inside the great fissure in the House Kundarak ward and you need to either climb down a ladder or feather fall to get to the quest entrance.  Taming the Flames is a level 7 quest on normal, making it a level 9 on elite.  As you can imagine by the title, and the name of the location the quest is located in, The Scorched Caverns, a majority of the enemies you will have to deal with include fire based monsters.  In particular, you will need to wind your way around multiple fire elementals.  The fire elementals are what makes this quest pretty tough.  There appears to be two “types” of fire elementals, those are are free ranging and those that seem to be tethered to specific lava pools, and they all seem to respawn.  Those tethered to lava pools will get healed by occasion fire blasts making them particularly annoying.  One of the optional objectives for this quest is to kill 50 fire elementals if that tells you how many of these things there are.  Other enemies you encounter in this quest include earth elementals, mephits (fire, air), hellhounds, and Calefax (a human summoner).

Erdrique fighting the numerous elementals in Taming the Flames.

As you make your way through the quest, you will find Master Fulvio and learn that Calefax has imprisoned him and has summoned quite an army of elementals and mephits.  As you make your way through the various levels of the Scorched Caverns, you will come across a series of traps as well as some rather interesting questing scenarios.  One of which requires you to obtain a key that is guarded by flaming geysers and fire elementals.  The shear number of elementals and lava pits is what makes this quest challenging.  I don’t think you will encounter as many fireballs being hurled at you in any other quest.

Once you make your way through the caverns and take on and defeat Calefax, who is relatively easy compared to his elemental army surrounding him, you need to pick up the planar scroll and bring it back to Master Fulvio.  So you need to remember to not recall once you defeat Calefax.

Overall, the quest is quite challenging at level.  I typically don’t run this particular quest until I’m about level 10 or 11.  This particular time, I had no issues with Erdrique being a rogue and having evasion.  I will have to see how well some of my other characters do going through this quest, at least those with heavy armor.  However, if you want a challenge at level, take on Taming the Flames 🙂 at level.

Thanks for reading everybody and happy hunting in DDO!!

Taking Advantage of the Crafting Experience

Last weekend, the DDO Bonus days was for 30% Cannith Crafting experience.  Now I don’t hammer out Cannith Crafting Shards all the time, instead I tend to work on crafting shards and raising my crafting levels in spurts, particularly whenever I notice that a lot of folks just don’t happen to be on during the weekend.  However, I also like to take advantage of small boosts such as what was happening last week.  So, off to the Cannith Crafting halls I went :).

Erdrique visiting the crafting halls to crank out some shard and work on raising some crafting levels.

I already mentioned in a previous blog post how useful I have found Cannith Crafting but one thing I think that will make it that much more useful will be when I can start crafting the “flexible” shards.  Erdrique’s crafting levels were in the mid-90s to high 80s in each of the crafting schools.  So I decided to take some time last weekend and to create some shards and raise some crafting levels.

Whenever I’m questing across my various characters, I tend to dump any ingredients they obtain into the shared deposit box, which has become a really nice feature for me.  This allowed me to pull large ingredients whenever I needed them without having to relog multiple characters.  In the end, I was able to move all of my crafting levels to above 100 in each school.  Now I just need to hit that next milestone, 125 :).

Erdrique is now at least level 100 in each crafting school :).

So I’ll be waiting for the next crafting experience weekend and in the meantime I will continue to breakdown items and gather those ingredients :).  Thanks for reading everybody and happy crafting!!

Working on Catching back Up, Quest Runs June 15th to June18th

Well, there is another better in the world than following behind…yeah right.  For some reason, this year I have been having a problem in keeping with staying on track when it comes to my blogging :(.  Much of this just has to do with changes and my crazy work schedule this year.  In any case, I want to try to catch back up as I haven’t put up a blog since Saturday, June 20.  So, to being to catch back up, I realized I didn’t review my quest runs from the week of June 15th.  To kick off that week, I took a character from my premium account, Containment (Level 6 Cleric) and took him out into the Tangleroot Gorge explorer area.  Containment still has a little ways to go in that area but is steadily progressing through it.  Keeping up with that theme, I took Hamllin (Level 16 Fighter) into the bogs of the Red Fens and am currently steadily working his 5,000 slayer mark.  That will still be a little while in the making.  Later that Monday night, I was scheduled to play Erdrique (Level 12 Rogue) so I took him out into Sorrowdusk Isle and worked on the next two parts of the Cult of the Six story arc by completing The Temple Outpost: Captives of the Cult and The Temple Outpost: The Libram of the Six.  Neither quest caused me any issues, which was good because my attention was divided between DDO and our weekly Monday night digital PNP session.

Containment coming across some hobgoblins in Tangleroot Gorge.

Hamllin taking note of the rainbow in the Red Fens.

Erdrique making his way through Sorrowdusk Isle.

Erdrique spinning through the trolls in the Temple Outpost: Captives of the Cult.

On Tuesday, my slayer run involved taking Charlock (Level 14 Fighter) into the bogs of the Red Fens.  Charlock is much further behind than Hamllin in his slayers but then again I play Hamllin much more often than I do Charlock.  Later that afternoon, after I got home from work, I took Erdrique into a fun quest, Haunted Library.  The Haunted Library is a level 8 quest in House Jorasco that can get quite nasty if you aren’t careful.  However, I took Erdrique through the quest without any issues.  Later that afternoon, I took Lorrikk (Level 12 Monk) into Sorrowdusk Isle and similar to Erdrique, I took Lorrikk through the next quest in the Cult of the Six story arc for him, The Temple Outpost: Captives of Cult.  However, I spent a good amount of time collecting slayers and rares out in Sorrowdusk Isle.  I then called it a night.

Charlock making his way through the Red Fens.

Erdrique exploring the Haunted Library.

Lorrikk doing some hunting in Sorrowdusk Isle.

Lorrikk having some fun with a champion pudding in the Temple Outpost.

Wednesday I started off the day with Lorrikk and took him back out into the wilds of Sorrowdusk Isle.  Every once in awhile, my slayer schedule will match up with my nightly quest schedule, in terms of the characters I plan on run, and these past few weeks this has been quite evident with me playing a particular character during the night and then the next day playing the same character for a morning slayer run.  Later that afternoon, I took Hamllin into the Red Fens and gathered some more slayers.  That was the end of the questing for Wednesday.

Lorrikk hunting down the evil ogres in Sorrowdusk Isle.

Hamllin surprising a mire rat in the Red Fens.

Thursday was quite an active day.  I kicked the day off by taking Crawlller (Level 6 Ranger), another character from my premium account, into Tangleroot Gorge.  Unfortunately I missed my afternoon run, but later that night I took Garrrin (Level 22 Barbarian/Fury of the Wild) into Haywire’s Foundry on Epic Hard.  I gathered some help from Hellsbain and Friedrice and we moved our way through the quest with some interesting situations but overall we didn’t have too much of a problem.  After we completed Haywire’s Foundry on Epic Hard, Friedrice only needed a little more experience to hit his next level so we headed off over The Last Stand and completed that quest on Epic Hard.  We were expecting a little difficulty keeping Viercha alive but we really didn’t run into any issues.

Crawlller swinging away in Tangleroot Gorge before he gets shut out for the update :).

Garrrin and this gang dealing with annoying firewalls in Haywire’s Foundry.

Preparing to protect Viercha in the Last Stand.

So overall, it was a nice and productive week overall.  I hope everybody else had a great week as well!!  Thanks for reading everybody and happy hunting!!

Don’t Forget About Wilderness Areas When Looking for Experience

The current state of DDO has plenty of ways for our characters to gain experience and to level up.  The primary method for gaining experience is by completing quests, of course, but we can also gain additional experience by turning in saga awards, using experience potions, using a guild experience shrine or amenity, from daily and weekly dice rolls, hitting monster manual deeds, and bravery streaks.  When the game first came out, all of these sources of gaining experience or boosting your experience award when you completed a quest wasn’t available.  The times have definitely changed, that is for sure 🙂 !!

Containment hunting in the Tangleroot Gorge Wilderness Area.

But this is a good thing because a main focus for many players in DDO is run through the various forms reincarnations, whether it be a true heroic, iconic, or epic reincarnations, which requires DDO players to gain as much experience as possible to hit level 20 or level 28 so that we can start the process over again to gain more powerful abilities through past life feats.  However, as this has become more and more prominent, many players have developed their own method to re-level their characters in the most efficient manner possible, running the highest experience quest per minute, to move through lives as quickly as possible to get that next life completed and move to the next one.  In many cases, “paths” such as these will by pass a number of interesting quests, that don’t give out as much experience, but are still fun and intriguing to run.  I don’t typically follow a pattern of running the highest experience quest per minute, instead I tend to just open up the quest Compendium and tend to hit the next lowest level quest along the line, typically bypassing raids.  In many cases, it seems that players tend to skip a valuable source of experience when they develop their circuit of experience runs.  This source of experience is from the various Wilderness Areas.

The various Wilderness Areas span from level 1 (Korthos Island) to level 29 (Epic Orchard of the Macabre and The Ruins of Thunderholme).  Many people feel that these areas don’t tend to have a good “experience per minute” yield but I tend to disagree with that.  In many instances these areas can be large sources of experience.  Wilderness zones tend to have three ways to gain experience: locating explorer points or finding hidden messages, killing rare encounters, and reaching slayer marks (there are some Wilderness zones that don’t stick to all of these, like Waterworks which doesn’t have explorer points but that is the exception as opposed to the norm).  So, if you establish an efficient path that allows you to pick up the explorer points, come across as many rare encounters as possible, and collecting slayers along the way you can net a pretty impressive amount of experience in a relatively short time frame, especially during your first time or two in the explorer area.

One of the things I tend to do with my with characters, whether or not they are going through the reincarnation train, is to move them through the Wilderness zones at level.  Sometimes I’m not very good at it, but I like to keep my characters within in a level or two of Wilderness zones they are working on.  I have found that some of the more productive Wilderness zones at level include Searing Heights, Sorrowdusk Isle, Ataraxia’s Haven, Sands of Menechtarun, Ruins of Gianthold, Orchard of Macabre, Wheloon Prison, and the Vale of Twilight.  Usually by the time I’m entering Gianthold, my characters are close to level 20.  I really haven’t had a chance to check out the Eveningstar Wilderness areas (Kingforest, Thunderholme, High Road, The Underdark, Sschindylryn, Demonweb, and Storm Horns) all that much but I know you can get quite a bit of experience out of these, I just haven’t set up an efficient route in these areas yet.

Lorrikk making his way through the Sorrowdusk Wilderness area.

In any case, I just wanted to remind folks to not forget about these fun areas when you are working on leveling your characters.  Another thing to keep in mind as well is that a number of these areas also have monsters that are tallied up in the monster manual volumes allowing you to earn even more experience and to obtain other rewards as well.  I find it very interesting to see the large number of monster manual deeds I obtain without really focusing on them as I make my way through these areas.

Thanks for reading everybody and happy hunting in the large number of Wilderness zones in DDO :)!!

A Unique Sight Only to the Red Fens?

The Red Fens explorer area contains a number of fun and unique sights.  Within the Red Fens you can find the large mushroom forest (I think the only other place I have seen mushrooms even close to that size was in Shan-to-Kor, I think), the ancient Zigguarat, and the large red tree with canopy roots above the ancient altar.  However, the Red Fens seem to also have another unique feature to them: rainbows.

Hamllin taking notice of the rainbow in the Red Fens.

I haven’t noticed this natural phenomenon in any other location in either the Eberron or Forgotten Realms settings.  Now I admit that I haven’t been into the Stormhorns yet so it is possible that rainbows might occur out there.  But I haven’t seen any other place that will produce a rainbow.  Just another thing to add to the mystique of the Red Fens.

Thanks for reading everybody and happy hunting!!