Exciting LDoN experienceFollow

Last night I did a LDoN that, for me at least, was one of the most unique I've ever done. This is out of 40 total, and pretty much all of them, except some 3-person adventures in the 20's, were by-the-book in terms of group makeup. The one last night, levels 45-52, was a Cleric, a Shadowknight, a Monk, a Rogue, a Necromancer, and me, a Beastlord. The SK was the main tank, and I ended up being the main looter. I was also the main slower (that's how I got hired), as well as the crowd control. Being the crowd control was definitely weird, but as long as the melees listened to me I could sic my pet on the add, slow both of them, and then play pet healer until the dps finished off the first mob without a problem. Oh, did I mention that I had KEI and the cleric didn't? (To be fair, I had an old one from an MGB while he tried and tried to get one but couldn't before we left.) Oh yeah, and we're doing a Takish adventure, you know, the infamous ones in North Ro where you always get multi-pulls? And we had a 58 kills adventure...Normal Risk, thankfully.

So it's actually going amazingly well to start. Not too many resists on my slows, the pet off-tanking goes fine. Without a tracker, we still run into 2 named mobs. The first one drops a very, very nice Ranger-only bow, which I can't remember the name of so I can't post a link right now. It had around a 100-pt proc/effect on it. No Rangers in the party, of course, so it's a greed roll. However, the SK speaks up and says that he should have it because his main is a 49 Ranger and he's broke, still using his Trueshot bow. We kind of shoot him down, and he's not too happy, I actually almost thought he was going to mutiny, but he stays on. We keep going, fight the second named mob, which drops an okay belt. My mana is barely going below 80%, even though every other pull is at least a double and my pet heal takes about 12% mana when I don't have KEI. In other words, we're doing a lot better than I expected.

Then, however, the monk gets cast on while FD pulling a room and brings 4 mobs down on us. The cleric was at about 30% mana, and yelled to zone if you could when he went OOM. The rogue and the SK go down, although they take one mob with them. The monk FDs and gets the aggro onto my pet. The monk, cleric, and necro run to the zoneline, but I stay behind and let the pet tank. It's going great, even though I know it's really dangerous, since I'm at about 30% health. But my pet takes one of them down, and I am just barely keeping up on the healing. Then I get hit by a rock trap. I get stunned, and just miss the next heal. I actually make it about 3 rooms from the zone line before I go down.

Back in PoK, I look at the adventure stats. 45 minutes to go, 21 kills to go. We decide to rez afterwards to save mana and recovery time, but it's still a long run from PoK. I take the BB -> NRo adventure camp express, bind in the NRo camp just in case (I gotta remember to re-bind in PoK tonight), and make it back. By the time I loot most of my corpse and re-cast my pet, we have 30 minutes left to get the remaining 21. We press on, only without KEI my slows get resisted a LOT more often, I can't let my pet tank as long, and have to start taking a beating. I'm almost never above 60% health the rest of the adventure. Pretty soon after starting up again, we get a 3-pull which also brings another named along. This named is a freaking frog wielding a freaking mace! Which lifetaps! The monk goes down this time, after the frog Enrages, but the rest of us take it down. That mace was a very nice SK-only Lifetap proccing weapon, which the SK drools over very much and takes with the understanding that he can't roll on the other items. He starts using it right away, I think he had a Zraxthil Forged Mace until then as his 1hb.

The monk gets rezzed (he doesn't really care about the rez effects) and we keep going. It's about as down to the wire as you can get, folks...with 4 minutes left, and 2 to go, with the cleric at 20% mana, we get a double-pull. I think all of us were below 50% health (the necro was twitching like mad of course, had been most of the adventure), I was also really low on mana, and it wasn't looking good. The monk just yells for us to run, but we stand our ground--we're gonna go down fighting! But we make it somehow. My pet gets down to 10% health and I step in to take the hits, getting down to 20% before the first mob finally drops and the others come and help. And we win with 2 minutes to spare. And there was much rejoicing.

We go back to our bodies and rez, and decide we might as well roll on the items while waiting to be able to move faster. The SK wants to roll on the bow even though he has his mace, we tell him that he can either give the mace back so we can all greed roll on it, or take the mace and not roll. He takes the mace. The monk rolls highest, and takes the belt. I roll second highest, but I feel bad taking the bow just for rolling second highest, so I make everyone roll again. The rolls (0-100) are 2, 4, 100, 94. The 100 was mine. I guess I was fated to get the bow! We run back to PoK, I cash the loot (about 75 pp each, decent), the SK asks me in tells to link him the bow at least twice (I offer him the Shissar Bow my Ranger is currently using, but he declines), and all is well with the world.

Anyway, perhaps that's a typical adventure for some of you, but it's probably the first one I've ever done without some kind of lulling or mezzing. Not that I'd necessarily want to repeat it again any time soon.

Edit: here are the drops. I'm still pretty impressed by the mace and the bow, they're among the best I've seen drop so far in LDoNs. I guess they're not totally uncommon, based on the comments under the items, but they were new to us.

Gemmed Jeweled Guard Bow, Takish-Hiz Sandworker Club, Hardened Clay Belt

Game on,

The Oneiromancer

Edited, Tue Jan 27 14:08:09 2004 by Oneiromancer