DDO (D&D Online)

While I primarily do theMMO of the Month Clubthing DDO is my guilty pleasure so I'm often playing that as well. Bounce between the two throughout my work day.

I have aRerolledguild on theSarlonaserver if anyone wants to join me. Just look for Zehnpai in game or post here and I'll shoot you a guild invite by mail.

Anyways.

New module coming out next month supposedly.

Producer's Letter

Temple of Elemental Evil slated for April release. New module also going to come with a new level cap and possibly a new class though I think they're pushing that back for now.

The party interaction, character customization, story telling and dungeon crawling is still the best in the business even after 9 years and you can easily sink 100+ hours into the game without paying a dime and enjoy every last second of it. Having Gary Gygax narrate a dungeon for you just makes me nipples hard. I love a lot of the strategies involved and really having to weigh the benefits/options to character builds. The traps in this game can be downright nasty and -will- destroy you if you're not prepared. There's a dungeon where the floor breaks away, the ramp back up is covered in oil that is hard to climb up and at the bottom of the ramp is a spike trap that will kill you. And this is a mid-level dungeon. They just get meaner from there.

The game is -much- more solo friendly now with the new enhancement trees (think talents from every other game) and offer significant player power. You can hit level 20 now even with a shitty build and then 'reroll' a new character with better stats and start from level 1. Once you're happy with the build you make then you can start advancing into the epic levels (21+) with a much more solid character.

The graphics are pretty horribly dated as it is a 9 year old game and character creation can be a bit daunting. Plus with how drastically the game has changed from year to year finding a build posted online that is 3 months old might already be out of date and/or require stuff that costs money to access.

It's my go to when I don't know what else to play because I know I'm going to get a good solid 10+ hours out of it at the very least and occasionally it hooks me again for a lot longer.

It's 99% PvE. The PvP scene is like 8 guys who get together and do PvP once a week or something.

I'm not going to lie, the game is feeling its age. You can easily let yourself get overwhelmed with too much info if you try to absorb it all at once. I've been playing for 8 years and I still don't fully understand crafting. Honestly my advice to anybody looking to give the game a try is to just load it up and do whatever. You will screw up your first 5 or 6 characters even following a guide perfectly.

That being said it is relatively easy to just roll up a paladin or barbarian, put all your points into +more damage and start swinging and if I'm on I'm more then happy to roll a new character and just help anybody with the starting stuff while they get their bearings. You can get hirelings that are basically capable of soloing every quest for the first 8 levels as well while you run around looting things.

I just restarted on Sarlona because that seems to have the highest active amount of players now so I'm only level 8 or so on a first life. Always seems to be a group in my level range going but it's usually someone on their 4th or 5th life so they rarely want someone to group with who doesn't have full twink gear. Right now I'm playing a pale trapper so I don't really need help for 99% of the content but this game is much more fun with even just one other person to dink around with.

I agree that the UI is usually what ends up turning me off. Once I hit about 8 hotbars full of stuff I need "Just in case" for that one dungeon is when I sigh and log off for a few months and then start over.

Duoing is pretty strong. There are a lot of pairs that can go extremely well together and quite a few quests have 'split' tasks so you can often finish a quest 2~3 times faster that way. Only suggestion I would make is if you're going to have the luxury of duoing one should definitely pick a build that is capable of taking care of traps.

Harfle_sl said:

Ddo again zehn you me censure sucktek?

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What about Darph?!

bixxby_sl said:

Do you still have to have 48 hot bars? That was the only real big 'fuck this' about DDO. Didn't like having to carry / use all kinds of crazy shit

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Only if you decide you want to go the UMD route and be able to use every wand in existence. If you want to be a tryhard end game epic raider you might have. Personally I said fuck that, am ignoring UMD and anything I get locked out of because I don't want 20+ hotbars I just don't do.