MOAR! on DDO

Ever done a quest in WoW then been stuck on completion because you'd like both rewards? Maybe you're a Warrior or a Pally and while you would love that awesome 2H Sword, the 1H sword would be equally delicious for Tanking. Decisions, decisions. You just can't have your cake and eat it, too. At least not in WoW.

DDO is very much an Instance-based game. After leaving Korthos Village you enter the Isle of Korthos proper, and while there are Mobs to kill and quests to complete the meat of the game is in the Instances, but in order to enter an Instance you need to talk to the quest giver and get the quest. Yes, DDO lets you repeat quests which is how you can obtain both the 2H sword and the 1H sword, or in my Cleric's case a thumping great 2H Axe (What? I'm a Dwarf Cleric. We love Axes :D) and the 1H Mace which goes very well with the Shield I picked up...somewhere.

The Quest reward items are not overly powerful but they're certainly worth getting, and as you're probably going to be running each Instance multiple times you're not forced to choose between two equally appealing items; you can have them both. And whether or not you complete the Instance on Solo-difficulty, or Elite, is irrelevant. If you complete the quest you get the reward.

The difference in doing an Instance/Dungeon (I guess it should be a Dungeon. After all, the game is called Dungeons & Dragons) on Solo, Normal, Hard, or Elite, is reflected in the Chest items, with higher difficulty level Chests producing better than average gear, thus while you can solo every Instance on Solo or Normal difficulty, if you want decent quality gear you'll need to run a Dungeon on Hard and/or Elite.

At level 1 my Cleric was soloing Heyton's Rest on Hard, but now he's level 2 with better gear, and so I took the plunge, entered Heyton's Rest on Elite, and completed it! I'd also been doing The Storeroom on Hard so after my success with Elite Heyton's Rest I decided to attempt The Storeroom on Elite as well.

The Storeroom is a very short Dungeon. You enter the first room, kill a couple of spiders and a rat or two, enter a short passage (kill more Rats, or Spiders, or both) then hit a second room and demolish all the boxes & barrels until you find a Silver Key, at which point you get ambushed by a Sahuagin who was also looking for the same key. On Hard, I could take this guy (he's a named Mob which I think makes him the equivalent of a WoW Elite), but on the Elite level this guy packed a punch and then some. I'd been giving as good as I got and we were both at about half health but I'd also been sucking down my Starter Health Pots and getting off a Cure Light Wounds spell every now and then, so I was really getting the short end of the stick. It didn't help that with one hit he was negating my attempts to heal myself. +10 Health. Whack! -10 Health. Crap!

I realized death was inevitable and accepted my fate. I didn't stop fighting but I did stop Healing. My Health dropped to 0, I dropped to the floor, the Release button appeared (or the DDO equivalent) and the Sahuagin trotted off back down the corridor. Mousing over him I was surprised to see he wasn't resetting like Mobs do in WoW. I'd got him down to half his original HP and that's where his health stayed, even though I was dead...or was I?

I lay there, not clicking Release, as my own HP ticked down to -1, then -2, then -3.

Why? Because I'd been doing my homework.

When a character goes down in DDO he's not dead, not straight away. Oh sure, the Release button pops up, but you're not dead, not yet. You're mortally wounding and bleeding out, but you're not dead yet. If you're HP hits -10 then yeah, you're dead, but -3? Not dead yet.

Now the bottom right corner of your screen is where all the important stuff happens. That's where the dice rolls appear. I watched as a d100 result popped up. It was high. Really high. Like 99 or 100. But under the number appeared the word Failed! and my HP ticked down to -4. More high numbers, more Failed!, and my HP ticked down to -5 and then...Success! I rolled low. Low? Low. Apparently lower is better. Like doing the limbo.

I'd been mortally wounded and bleeding to death but my Dwarven stubbornness (& high constitution) had prevailed, I'd made the Saving Throw, and the bleeding had stopped. The words "Unconscious Regeneration" appeared, and my HP went from -5 to -4, then -3, then -2, -1, 0, and when it ticked back up to +1 my avatar leaped to his feet, accompanied (in my mind) by Peter Cushing announcing, "It's alive!"

Fortunately the Sahuagin was halfway down the corridor and facing the other way, because while he may have been at half health I was literally at death's door.

I bravely and valiantly ran from the room, put as much distance between us as I could, then Healed myself back up to full health. Then I bravely unlocked the door to the final room, completed the puzzle, looted the scroll that I'd come here to get, and valiantly completed the Quest and The Storeroom on Elite level.

The reason for doing these Dungeons on Elite level is to earn Favor (i.e. Reputation points) with the locals. You can get Favor from doing the Dungeons on Normal, but you get more from doing them on Hard, and the maximum amount of Favor from doing them on Elite. When you've accrued a certain amount of Favor you also get Turbine Points to spend in the on-line Store, so it's not quite common to see people LFGing for Elite Dungeon Runs. Unfortunately you cannot just go straight to Elite, you've got to do the Dungeon on Hard first, and you can't attempt it on Hard until you've completed it on Normal. In WoW I rarely ran Instances except with Guildies because I didn't like PUGs, so in most cases I'd solo-quest/grind my way to Cap. But in DDO Instances or Dungeons are the game, so that soloist mentality won't fly if I want to maximize my Favor, which I do. As much as the Achiver in me is enjoying Soloing the Dungeons on Hard and Elite, I'll be breaking out of my Soloist shell and actively seeking PUGs.

This is truly an interesting game.