Month: December 2016

Oh, that’s just cold!

Even Now

I’m talking about the weather, of course! Here in north central Pennsylvania, the weather is very cold indeed, and full of nasty things like snow, ice, and people who don’t know how to drive in either one.

Cold and snow make me think of Storm Horns. I wasn’t sure how many Flower Sniffers would make it online for Sunday night’s stream, and I’d done an EE raid train (MoD, DoJ, Shroud, HoX) the night before, and I wanted to keep things under two hours because I had to get up early, so I opted for EH What Goes Up.

Slvr showed up with his warlock, and we had a really rather easy jaunt, even the part with the horrible pink blinding Lagmo Bismol. In hindsight, we probably could/should have done EE, and likely would have been able to get the completion within my two-hour timeframe.

But having nearly an hour…

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Games that remind me of Christmas #4

mrluvvaluvva

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It’s better late than never!

The Christmas season has officially begun at Luvva Towers (and with only a week left to the big day – Cheers Luvva; or should I say Scrooge?!) and what better way to forward to the big day than by looking into the Christmas’ that have passed?

I will have content, pretty much every day this week for you in an effort to make up for a last quarter with less than 1/3 of our usual output! I know it won’t make up for that, but it will; hopefully begin to atone for it!

Our first post celebrating the most Jesus-y of days is of course a continuation of a series we started last year; talking about games that remind us of Christmas, even though they may have nothing to do with Christmas in content.

To refresh your memories; my first game was ‘Ridge Racer’ (you…

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Mirelyn’s Skyrealm – Isometric Skyrealm Map

Dyson's Dodecahedron

This week is a series of five posts about Mirelyn’s Skyrealm – a map I drew at the beginning of December as part of a cartographic challenge. The challenge was to draw a map of a “floating island” and the map that will unfold over this week was the result. I don’t normally give a lot of work-in-progress material for my pieces, so I’ll discuss what I did as I went along for this one. 

Mirelyn’s Skyrealm is also known as the Highplains Community, although that name has mostly been dropped in the last few years. Consisting of three small skyrealms with remarkably flat upper surfaces, the original Highplains settlers linked the three together with bridges to keep them from drifting apart.

The main island was built up by the financiers of the community with a fortress, tower, landing zone and connecting passages between them. These semi-retired adventurers also brought their…

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Finding your D&D playstyle

The Long Shot

With over 40 years of history behind it, Dungeons & Dragons has changed and evolved as much as anything else in that time. Under the umbrella of five distinct editions of the rules, plus the original basic (or BECMI) set, the Rules Cyclopedia, the current basic rules (that are totally free online) and a literal universe of settings ranging from Greyhawk to the Forgotten Realms, Dark Sun to Dragonlance, Ravenloft, Spelljammer that takes adventurers into outer space, and countless others, there are limitless possibilities to explore.

becmi_dnd_boxes2 Classic BECMI D&D: Basic, Expert, Companion, Master and Immortals rulesets

Just as varied as the rulesets and settings are different styles of play. From kick-in-the-door dungeon delving to intricate plots woven into a socio-political stage, players have been finding their niche at the gaming table for decades.

Whether you’re a first-timer or a seasoned vet, finding the style of play that works for…

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Redoing Maidae’s enhancements

Micki's Delirium

Maidae is a wisdom based monkcher this life, and I’ve been redoing and redoing her enhancements, trying to figure out the best way to do them. During LE/EE raids this week, I realised I had completely forgotten about the +20% doubleshot that I would have needed to have. Since Maidae’s an elf (morninglord), I had the choice of elf AA capstone, or Deepwood Stalker tier 5 enhancement. I spent a good long time last night looking at how many aps the different things would cost me. I needed 8 points in Henshin Mystic for  Contemplation. To get elf AA capstone I needed 15 points in Morninglord tree + 41 points in AA. I also wanted to take wisdom x 4, which would cost 22 ap at the least, and 2-4 points in Warpriest for Divine Might… I realised there just wasn’t enough points for everything I wanted, if I decided to…

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Mirelyn’s Skyrealm – The Beginning

Dyson's Dodecahedron

This week is a series of five posts about Mirelyn’s Skyrealm – a map I drew at the beginning of December as part of a cartographic challenge. The challenge was to draw a map of a “floating island” and the map that will unfold over this week was the result. I don’t normally give a lot of work-in-progress material for my pieces, so I’ll discuss what I did as I went along for this one. 

After Miska’s Mapvember challenge, I found that I had really enjoyed the push to draw something every single day – and the added challenge / booster of a theme for each map that I drew. So I picked up another challenge.

The challenge was to draw a “floating island” or “flying island” – it immediately brought to mind the map I had drawn of Lino’s Islands in the Sky after reading the Skyrealms of Jorune…

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LE/EE raids week 9

Micki's Delirium

I epic reincarnated Thaz a week ago, and I didn’t have enough time to get her back to 30 before LE/EE raids this week. So, I decided to run Maidae instead. I logged on half an hour early to redo her enhancements, posted for the raid at 4 minutes to 9pm (3pm EST).. and then waited about an hour before I had a full party. During p1 I realised that 1. we didn’t have enough dps for LE and 2. I messed up my enhancements since I forgot to take Contemplation for ki regen.. which meant that I could only use 10k stars once. Half way through part 1 we started struggling real bad, so I called a restart. I needed to fix my enhancements.

Putting the post back up, and losing some people who didn’t have time for a retry, I switched the lfm to hard instead. We ended up…

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TR Weekend

grimordes blog

As you’ll know if you read Samius’ blog, 3 of my guild and 3 of his guild TR’d last weekend. We’d all purchased Otto Boxes while they were on sale in the Turbine store and were waiting for confirmation of when the next XP bonus weekend would be. I wasn’t expecting it to be the following weekend.. oh well – all plans put on hold 😀

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Getting ready and getting done

Tactalicious & Craftalicious

I’m ready for DDO and patch 21. This is the first time that I did visit Lam and get my play spoiled. I don’t think that will change what I finally think about everything or my opinion I have through reading others – but it helps me not to spoil the first look. Plus I never played the original Haunted halls so maybe I’m about to have a nice aha feeling. My understanding (haunted might be a dead giveaway) that I’m about to run into lots of undead, but that it’s a very layered experience with a few different ‘endings’ or rather options.

My hope is of course that I don’t burn too much time – am all for extended experiences but I prefer to break them up in the public space rather than burning potions and the like for over an hour – trust me, it’s not the unwillingness…

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The Blessings of Healing Amp

The Order of Syncletica

After reconfiguring Syncletica’s enhancements to take Human Improved and Monk Improved Recovery III, while in GM Wind Stance, Syn pulls an average 75 HP from Healing Ki, an easy increase from 40-60 before the changes. In Fire Stance this spikes to 80-90. I don’t think I’m even wearing any Potency items as I normally do when I watched these numbers, so I’ll go back to test later to see if they influence things, as well as with Ardor potions.

But it’s when Clerics heal me that tickled me very pleasantly lately. In a recent successful elite run in Running with the Devils, a Cleric heal smacked me with a 200+ burst. I’m not sure if Cleric’s empower is stacking with my amplifications, but there it is.

The adjustments were a Good Thing that should be noticeable in later Shroud runs and raids. Muchos gratias to the many on the boards…

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