Thotham's Journal #14 -- Continuing my Wednesday D&D Game

Every Wednesday I meet up with a group at a local game store and play a couple hours of D&D. I'll be reposting this over on my D&D character blog, but when I do I'll also be adding an AI generated story board that coincides with the text. I made a comic book out of the first three months of play, and I'm considering doing the same with this next three months' worth of play.

Anyway, since I need to put something up for Blaugust, I thought I'd just post my character journal up here as well!

When you play at this game store, it's gonna be a weird mix of pogs, minis, and lego heroes.

~~

Thotham's Journal #14 

The party pushed on into the next room, finding several cultists in the midst of a ritual. They were not pleased with our appearance and battle began immediately!

In the back of the room, the cultist leader was covered in a strong protective barrier. Toward the middle were his two attendants, also covered in a similar but less impressive barrier. In the front were five cultists wearing amulets that seemed to be feeding energy into the attendants.

Inrah was the first to attack, throwing an orb of lightning that lit up the darkened room, ending in a burst of electric death for the cultist it hit. I moved my telekinetic hand holding a torch into the center of the room, took steady aim, and threw a psi-knife into the skull of another cultist, breaking his mind and felling his body. Shadow slipped inside and downed yet another two cultists with a flurry of blows.

Zax strode forward challenging one of the attendants, but much to their surprise, a massive attack that seemed to connect had no effect whatsoever! Yuna, seeing the attendants couldn't be harmed, called down a sacred flame from the heavens and extinguished the foul soul of the final front-line cultist.

When this happened, the barrier protecting the attendants shattered as the amulets worn by the front-line fell to the floor with their now lifeless hosts. The leader in the back, continued muttering more strange, incomprehensible ritualistic language as his eyes glowed brighter. The attendants struck back, injuring Shadow.

We coordinated our attacks on the attendants and struck them down without many problems, except for Shadow managing to get his blade arms stuck in a wall. I've never seen our warforged look so confused!

When the cultists' high priest finished his ritual, his own barrier shattered as he screamed wickedly into our souls. He had been building a powerful soul crushing spell that Inrah and I took the full brunt of. The rest of the group felt it as well but had an easier time shrugging it off. Unfortunately for Inrah, the evil priest also targeted her with black tentacles that erupted from the ground and grappled her, tossing her back and forth, squeezing not only her body, but her mind as well.

To make matters worse, the Priest fragmented into four images that blinked in and out of existence randomly. While Shadow, Zax, and I focused on attacking these images, Yuna had her hands full casting a healing word on Inrah over and over. From my vantage point in the shadows, it was quite the sight! Yuna would heal Inrah. Inrah would be strangled and knocked unconscious by the tentacles. Yuna would again heal Inrah. Inrah would again be knocked unconscious. This happened several times until Zax finally was able to rush over to Inrah, grab her out of death's grip, and drag her to safety.

Eventually we shattered the images and took another agonizing death scream from the priest. (I can still hear his evil piercing my mind.) Cornered and outnumbered with his fragmenting spell broken, we ended his corrupt sermon -- my psi-blades, Shadow's blade arms, and Zax's holy smite. We had overcome the cultists in the sunken cave and found a treasure chest filled with gold for our troubles. 

There's nothing quite like 3,000 gold pieces and some patching up from Yuna to make you feel better . . . at least I hope that's the case for Inrah. She was near death more times in the span of a minute than most should ever experience in a lifetime.

~~ 

Fun fight!  

Happy Dueling!

Making your Pet use an Illusion in EverQuest Legends . . . and stuff

Tipa mentioned in her last blog post that I had turned my Beastlord warder into a Dark Elf through the magic of a Mask of the Deceiver, and so I thought I'd take a second to break down how you actually do that since it's not intuitive.

Get ready, this is crazy.

Step 1: Farm up a mask of the deceiver (or really, any clicky illusion item). It's not a hard farm and it drops pretty easily from the Ghoul Assassin in Lower Guk.

Step 2: Open up your inventory and click on the Storage tab.

Step 3: Click on the Activated Items subtab in your Storage tab.

Step 4: Drop your Mask of the Deceiver into the open area.

Step 5: Go back to your inventory tab and click on your Pet Inventory Tab.

Step 6: Use the drop-down menu there to select the "Guise of the Deceiver" illusion.

Step 7: Resummon your warder/pet. I tried zoning and it didn't work. You have to resummon that dude.

Step 8: Hand your warder/pet a really cool looking weapon because AWESOMENESS!

Give 'em a chop ZuuZuu!  (If only I could name my Warder and assign them to be female)

Honestly, I'm kind of disappointed my warder is a dude. Why can't my warder be female? I call shenanigans!

Anyway, I haven't had a ton of time to play EverQuest Legends lately, but I did farm a bit in Guk.  I've bound myself to the spot right outside the Frenzied Ghoul so I can kill him once in easy difficulty, change to a medium difficulty, port to that spot again and kill the (slightly more difficult) Frenzied Ghoul another time. Create my own private instance, park my pet, cast the Invisible to Undead spell and run back to him a THIRD time. That usually gives me three moonstone rings, but gosh dang it's nice to have three shots at the Flowing Black Silk Sash haste belt item in the span of 5 to 10 minutes.

I'm starting to wear out my welcome in Guk I think. I've killed their King several times and even secured his scalp. Side note, it's kind of hilarious you can wear his scalp and improve your faction with the living Guk people, but totally unnecessary since my reputation with the living Gukkians (as the chat window says) couldn't possibly get any better.

Death to the king of cute, undead frog people!

As I run into the instance, it's pretty easy to down the ritualist, the assassin, the shopkeeper, then drop down and kill the Frenzied Ghoul, the Sentinel Ghoul, the Cavelier Ghoul, the King Ghoul, the animated hand, the Executioner, the Sage, and then just call it a successful run. I should try to incorporate a couple of the minotaur bosses into that, but . . . like I said . . . I think I've worn out my welcome and it might be time to try something a little more difficult and rewarding.

You know, I'm actually thinking I may go hang out in Kedge Keep for a while! I love a good underwater maze.  I've got a stack of fish scales and some enduring breath, let's do this!

Happy Dueling!

Will EverQuest Legends Monetization Work?

I've been thinking about the monetization model of EverQuest Legends, and I think I may be starting to see it . . . but I'm not sure I fully understand it yet. I mean, they got my $20 to buy the game (for an indie company that would be enough), which came bundled with a month of subscription time, but what's going to keep me playing? The community? The game itself? Let me just ramble on a bit here . . . feel free to join in comments if you have thoughts.

Soloing red cons for tons of exp is a thing . . .

It's definitely a faster version of the old game that feels so much better than the original experience. (When I say old game, I'm talking early 2000's, not EQ1 circa 2026.) That said, I'm not even the most gamery of the gamers and I'm already level 41 with what . . . 10 days of play time? Part of me thinks that when I hit level 50 (max) and farm the plane of sky a couple times, that I might just feel "done," and that's fine, right? Just getting my $20 price of admission is enough, but what they really should be after with an MMO is that $10 monthly subscription fee. To do that, the post-launch release timeline should be pretty quick.

If you take a look at the roadmap it promises some fun stuff:

Behold the road to Christmas Joy!

I can get behind that. Basically, we get two to four months of this game while they add needed features like player housing and an auction house (no one is selling stuff in the /ooc of east commons tunnel just yet) and a few new things. Would it make me want to resub if my sub has lapsed and either of these features dropped? Hmmm, I'm not sure if that's worth it.

I mean, you can play through the game several times as the same character while leveling different classes, which also means you'll probably be buying extra inventory slots for various gear and playing styles. Maybe, strictly from a microtransaction experience, this is making more sense than I originally thought.

Not much in the shop just yet . . .

In addition, you have the whole "motes" system where you can level your spells and your gear to max them out. Mote hunting could take an enormous amount of time, and if they're smart, they'll sell mote bundles in the shop eventually, but for now . . . mote hunting and AA grinding might just keep it sticky enough to get you hooked -- although slightly boring I suppose? I guess if the company is good, I'd do mote farming.

Why beholdest thou the mote?

For the Fall Update, how much will Nektropos Castle cost for a DLC? Will it cost anything? What would you pay? From what I understand, Nektropos was an EverQuest 2 zone off of Nektulos Forest. I didn't play much EQ2, but my hope would be that it's a pretty exciting place to grind high level stuff (Actually, reading Chasing Dings, it was a early to mid 30's zone in EQ2 -- doesn't mean they have to do that in this game, although an intricate key quest to get in could be fun). Will it use EQ2 graphics? Will it be an homage done in EQ1 old school graphics? SO MANY QUESTIONS!

For the Winter Update, how much will Kunark cost for a DLC?  Will it make me want to relevel to 50 in the Kunark zones or will they bump levels to 60? Am I going to want to spend some time against the Wall of Bone and hunting against the wall in the Dreadlands? (I do miss those days with old online friends.)

Hottest High Elf Cleric circa 2002 award goes to . . .

It's all just really interesting to me. Is it the plan to keep you buying a new DLC every 3 months while hoping you keep subbed after you've crashed through content? 

As a side note I really hope they incorporate easy open raiding like Guild Wars 2! That's a very un-EQ thing, but also that's the best way to respect my time in an MMO and still give me the raiding experience. If I ever have to live by a DKP system again, I'M OUT!

Happy Dueling

The Righteous Wrath of Pathfinder!

Before I jumped headfirst into EverQuest Legends, I had casually waded into an older game (crazy that a game made 5 years ago is "older") based on the Pathfinder game system.  Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous!  It was on sale on Steam for $4.99 a month ago, and I had overheard a group of friends were delving into it.

"Group?" You say, "But I thought that was a single player only game!" You are correct, but they were going to play it together through the power of a Multiplayer Mod available through Nexusmods. Honestly, I thought maybe Dylan (yes, the famous Dylan) and I could play it together.  As it turns out, he was busy at the moment and had no time to spare for my silly games, so I just gave it a quick solo run.

I ended up completing what I believe was Act I? I couldn't help myself comparing this game to Baldur's Gate 3 (or even Divinity Original Sin II), and honestly, how I felt like, "Why am I just not playing Baldur's Gate 3?" I guess the answer is, well, I've played Baldur's Gate 3 through four times already (387 hours played), but IT'S JUST THAT GOOD! I'm totally ready to play again (Happy third birthday BG3!)

What's different here is that it's the Pathfinder system (pretty wild and complex on its own), there's an auto-fight feature so you don't HAVE to always play turn-based combat, there are infinitely less branching pathways that affect gameplay, and . . . no epic, wildly inappropriate cut-scenes (like a bugbear playing quarterback and tight end with an ogre). Speaking of that, did you hear that Larian managed to get their stream banned on YouTube and TikTok?

There was a pretty cool cut scene at the beginning of the game. Dragon v Locust Demon!

The openness of the multiclass system has always been pretty great in Pathfinder. You want to build a hand-to-hand specialist that has a pet and buff spells? They got you fam. Of course, you can do the same thing in D&D, it's just a bit more difficult? Weird? More restricted so you don't make a dumb character?

Portrait doesn't match the race which doesn't match the actual character . . . but it's all good.

I did have fun with what I played, and I did like the auto-attack mode for trash fights. The ability to toggle back and forth between auto-attack and turn based worked really well for when the fight was hairy or the stakes were high. I imagine the goal might be to build strong enough characters to just auto-attack all the time, but really that means building pretty basic characters that focus only on attack and not all the myriads of other things you can do with a character that has a lot of spells and skills.

I'm a mythic hero now!

The final fight of Act 1 was pretty epic to be honest, you had waves of enemies coming in from four or five different points in the map, and after 12 rounds or so, the back gate crashes open with a minotaur. I finished that fight and completed the achievement for not letting the town burn, HURRAH!

I've finished a whopping 4 of 153 achievements . . .

I may come back to the game at some point to play a bit more, but for some reason finishing Act 1 felt like I got my $5 worth.  If I was more invested in leveling my weird character, I'd do it, but I'm not sure I like how he's turned out.

What I did find interesting is that . . . well, I wonder if the bargain basement sale came about because of the recent money troubles of Paizo, the parent company? If you didn't hear, Diamond Comics went bankrupt, causing $10 million worth of Pathfinder books to be held up in a warehouse. That coupled with a $2 million loss in 2025 resulted in them letting a dozen or so people go. Anyway, it's hard to see a good D&D competitor struggle.

*raises glass to Pathfinder* stay strong, friends!

Happy Dueling!

Gukking Around in EverQuest Legends

Guess I better get a post out before the day is up!  BLAUGUST! SHEESH! SO DEMANDING!

Today was a pretty chill day. I spent the majority of it playing around in . . . you guessed it . . . Everquest Legends. I ended up reaching level 39 and called it quits for the day. 

Oh, I was watching TV with the Uber Wife, but I also had the game loaded up on a laptop and just sat there camping the Ancient Crocodile in Upper Guk for the Gatorscale Leggings and Gatorscale sleeves. It's an incredibly easy camp and so I was able to get both items up to +4 just sitting there, popping back and forth between difficulties, hitting Origin, hitting Gate, wash rinse repeat . . . of course there was another guy doing the same thing, so it wasn't perfect.

Got me them GATORSKINS!

Back in lower guk I spent a good amount of time hunting the Ritualist, the assassin, and the supplier. It made a nice circuit in my solo instance that I could easily run over and over. I ran it so much I filled all my slots with weight reduction bags from the supplier and I have a new fun clicky mask that can turn me into a dark elf from the assassin.

Stingite Smurfstak!

I explored a bit more and did another circuit farming the Executioner, the Sage, and the Savant. The Executioner drops an axe that has a haste effect!  I'm hoping to get another drop or two of that so I can see if I can pull the augment off of that and put it on another weapon. *scratches chin*

After that, I decided to give Solusek Ro B a shot. It's one of those classic old dungeons. Unfortunately, I don't think it's been redone with more bosses or anything like that, although there is a pretty great spot where I spent some time hunting all the Kobold Royalty. Honestly, it was a little more annoying than I had hoped. The sonic bats there chain stun and have a bunch of health. There were a few times where Feign Death came in REAL handy.

Don't mind me . . . just taking a nap!

The amazing thing is the fact that after just a week of playing, I'm level 39. Do you know how long that took me in old regular EverQuest?! It felt like a year. Things were so much slower in original EverQuest.  At this rate, I'll be max level by next week, hanging out in the Plane of Sky or Plane of Hate! 

Happy Dueling!

Out with Najena, In with the Guks -- Everquest Legends

I logged on this morning to find that the servers were down for EverQuest Legends, so I decided to join the Discord server and see what's up. OH man, that was a weird flame fest. A comment from Brasse was taken out of context (typical for CMs). It certainly got that Discord chat jumping. It felt like all the general chat channels from every unavailable server suddenly exploded on Discord. 

*shivers* PTSD from being a CM

I muted that server quickly and got on with some real-life stuff for a bit. Later I checked back and, sure enough, the servers were back online and ready for my mass destruction of Najena. I started a nice little circuit defeating the Widowmistress (is it just me or would Webmistress have had a bit more comedic flair). 

Kick to the back!

She doesn't drop any gear I'd be interested in currently, but I collected her caster gear just on the off chance that someday I respec with some Magician or Wizard. Eventually I went back to the prison area and had my revenge for the other day, and much to my surprise, I found a throwing weapon I was interested in! 

I honestly was hoping to find a throwing axe, but I'll take a throwing knife. 

All of that led to me defeating Rathyl (and his second incarnation) and collecting the key to Najena's room . . . the final boss I'd need to defeat to say I was officially done with Najena. I mean, I could grind here a bit defeating Ekeros to buff up that throwing knife a bit or farm Najena to buff up the Clawed Knuckle Ring, but that all feels secondary to quick leveling to be honest.

Najena isn't easy at level 29, that's for sure.  Her room has a total of six enemies, well, two mages, herself, and three pets. Separating them and not getting rooted in place is actually pretty tricky.  I died a few times, which made me say ENOUGH, and restart the solo instance with the non-respawning mobs option. I figure if I'm going to die, then I could at least take out one of the mages and make it easier on myself the next time around . . . and that's exactly what happened.

At the end of it all, I had dinged 30 and decided it was time to head to the guks. This was such a confusing area for me when I was playing original EverQuest. At the time I was a cleric glued to my spell book and there was hardly any chance to get to know this place well. My friends were leveling like crazy here, but by the time I made it to that level, they were done with guk and on to better conning pastures. (I think I'm still burnt about being behind the leveling curve.) So, once again, I'm getting my feet wet in an old area that a lot of people already know like the back of their hand.

Trying to make me croak!

Of important note!  I recently picked up two game-changing AA abilities. One is Quick Buff. The other is the Unholy Steed for the Shadow Knight. If you don't know what Quick Buff is, basically you load up your spell bar with buffs, click Quick Buff, and it auto-casts every buff you have simultaneously on you and your pet (and every group member if you're in a group). Such a time saver.  Luckily I also investing AAs in increasing the size of my spell bar. Between Cleric, Beastlord, and Shadowknight, I have a TON of buffs I can cast.

As for the Unholy Steed. Well, it's a mount. Thanks, I love it!

I just need a sidecar for my warder now . . .

Happy Dueling!

"Storyworths" -- I don't want your photograph!

I don't know if you're familiar with Storyworth, but it's a site dedicated to capturing your loved one's memories and keeping them in a book. A year ago, my wife "gave" me a year subscription to the site (part-time job) for my birthday and said "DO IT!" I'm like, but what about my stack of journals and blogs? 

Some of those journal entries are adorably written in crayon

Her response was, "There's no way I'm reading your stack of journals! That is crazy, and I can barely read your handwriting!" Ok ok, I get it . . . I've been wasting my time my whole life cataloging my boring adventures of Tuesday in an unreadable font known as "My Handwriting Scribble LT."   

Basically how Storyworth works is that your significant other buys a subscription as a gift to their loved one. Then, along with the help of Storyworth's suggestions and interest prompting, your significant other develops a long list of questions for you to answer. Finally, every week for a year you're sent a question prompt to answer: 52 Questions in total.

A sampling of my Storyworth Questions . . .

So far I've managed to answer 44 of the 52 questions, which is pretty good, but I have a slew I just don't know if I'll ever get to. I have three months to wrap it up before my access goes away and the printed book that comes along with the subscription is sent to my family.

The Stage Four cancer diagnosis really kind of scared everyone. We didn't know (and really, still don't know) how long I'll have beyond what the doctors tell us is the average life expectancy, which is really just the average from decades of dart throws at the wheel of life for everyone who has ever had NSCLC Lung Cancer.

. . . and so I'm happy to answer the questions.  Today I answered this one: 

~~

What photograph do you most regret not taking when you had the opportunity?

I know this is going to sound strange because it just happened and it's not some super old, cherished memory or something, but the photograph I most regret not taking happened during this last 4th of July. For the past couple of years, we've been going to a local 4th of July parade that's pretty legendary. It's a "candy parade." They have to have police go up and down the sides of the parade just to make sure kids aren't running out and grabbing a stray piece beyond the edge of the bicycle lane.

I've been going to this parade mostly because my youngest plays the mellophone in the marching band, but for the past two years, it's also coincided with either my father-in-law or mother-in-law visiting. My thing is finding little stray pieces of candy no one has grabbed yet and giving them to my elderly guest.

Anyway, this last 4th of July there was this panicked mother that kept screaming at her kid to GET BACK OVER HERE! She had to be in her 20's and dressed in these really nice white cowgirl boots with white fringe. She had gotten all gussied up for the day and was obviously not paying very good attention to her kid. This kid must have been 3 or 4 years old, not very old at all. He was either a fantastic escape artist or she was incredibly distracted.

This is where the photograph comes into play. At one point this scene unfolds right in front of me where she's yelling at her kid and he's unable to vocalize anything. She then realizes that he's stuffed about three or four pieces of yellow taffy into his mouth and can't swallow it.  It's just a giant wad stuck in his mouth. At that moment, crouched down near her kid, in these fancy white boots and expensive, gussied-up, country girl outfit . . . hair perfectly done . . . that she commands her child to spit out the taffy wad in his mouth into her hand.

That's the picture, and I missed it. This goofy kid unleashed the most amazing spit-filled, giant yellow glob of taffy into his mom's hand. He's got this dumb smile on his face that's also mixed with a bit of relief and sugar sadness. She's sitting there with a disgusted look on her face mixed with the emotions of what do I do with this, meanwhile she's spent an hour or more getting ready and looked pristine aside from her hand filled with yellow goop and spit. It captured a feeling that's something akin to everything that a candy parade with a young unprepared, yet fully prepared, mom should be -- a juxtaposition of kid-gross and glam-mom, white boots and yellow taffy . . . where my mother-in-law and I were pretty much the only audience members amongst a sea of legs in shorts that were all instead watching a local parade.

This kid kept running away from his mom the whole parade and she kept yelling after him during the whole event. I had my phone camera prepped in case something amazing like that happened again, but it never did. I would have loved to have that as a picture, but perhaps the picture of it in my mind is better than it would have turned out.

~~

I've been doing the best I can to capture the essence of "me" for this book. Hopefully it'll be much more accessible for my family than my handwritten journals.

Happy Dueling!