Rathy

Update.

Quick update.

Group on our 3rd lives. We are doing reaper now (2 skull mostly) as my friends enjoy it. Reaper's are a silly monster as far as I am concerned but I have been giving up on DDO as a reflection of pen&paper D&D for a while now. But we have fun chit-chating together although I am not sure why we can't go play another game with a small group dynamic & have the same fun. Habit keeps me here I suppose for now.

No hardcore server is a big BOOOOOOOO from me. I never touched the silly lantern event(s) nor bothered to try to learn the rules. The new events sound just as stupid and pointless. To me that is, not everyone or even most players of course!! I know others are having lots of fun with them so no worries!

The new 64 bit servers sound fine as far as I can tell. I assume that all the transfers will be a complete mess but that will probably be when I drop VIP status as I'm not going to spend time and money to rebuild guild stuff and characters. I also assume that event will also be the death of our little permadeath guild.

The VIP-only and Everyone-Else gifts are not completely worthless (e,g, a bit of storage space etc.) but man am I starting to hate all the cosmetics. I can't throw them away fast enough!

That's it, hope everyone is having fun whatever they are playing!!!

Updates!

Orien PUGing is on hold. Sadly my time is limited and with no Hardcore season in the foreseeable future, there is no reason for me to learn how to do Reapers or improve my PUGing skills.

New Server: Do not care as it will only VIP and I play with non-VIP players. I see no reason to copy over a character to the new server nor why would I start a new server without my friends being able to play? Good that they are trying to improve the servers overall I suppose.

No more Hardcore. Well boooooo! I tried to listen to some youtube videos about the replacement event but I can't make heads or tails out of whatever the Lantern event is supposed to be. It does not seem like everyone will be operating under the same rules on the same server (people can wear diferent trinkets that do different things I think? Idk, what a confusing mess!) so whatever. Again, it appears to be only for VIPs so i won't care about it whenever it occurs. And it seems no more regular Hardcore ever so I dunno why I am keeping my VIP status.

Main group. My friends and I are level 32 and are now working on Ravenloft. At least this style of DDO play (small grp of friends playing at own pace) is still fun! Mostly for our own interactions than anything the game provides but hey it is something.

Hope everyone is having fun!

Quick update for Orien PUGing: I started the IoD (or Dino Island as it is known to me!) and did two quests. Then I realized that I am supposed to be doing this expansion blind with my static group (at level 32 or cap) since we now all own the pack!

Sigh, so I told them and now will have to keep my mouth shut for the two, well three counting the introduction quest, I have done. Oh well.

For my Dragon lord pugging character, he is off to Ravenloft to see if i can not keep up with random pug groups! Oh and I did not pull any named loot except a very useful Wraithborn Augment which should simplify my incorporeal problems!

Update!

After about a 2 month real life interruption, I've been getting to play again!

Epic static group: We finished epic (at elite level) 3BC and man, the lack of a trapper hurt in the jumpy one!! It was our first time with those traps and we all died at various points. But our rules allow us to raise each other if we can recover the soul stone so our deaths by "misadventure" were recoverable (with lots of yelling and using precious resources and such of course). We have two characters that can raise, my paladin and our bard so as long as one of us was alive it was all good (our 3rd play is a fighter who can't raise of course!).
Oh, and I did get to tell them about the semi-mythical "Jibbers Blade" clicky that raises you from the dead when we fought him. Sadly none of us pulled it from the chest but it does seem like something useful for one of us to have.
Now we are leve 28 and have done Palace of Stone and Fashion Madness. The plan continues to be to get to level cap, 34 now I guess, and reincarnate to level 20.

Orien PUGing: Not much progress. I jumped back on (and was still in my guild, yay!) and joined a PUG for the "Tear of Dakkon" or however it is spelled. It was at skull 1 of course. I am level 9 still and i was useful for lever pulling at least! My basic move was to run to the furthest lever (there are groups of levers to be pulled in rooms filled with mobs but anyone reading this knows this, lol!) which seemed to communicate to everone what I was doing. There was no buffing time at the start so I was not protected as I should have been and eventually died to a Carnage Reaper. No one was looting chests (they just kept moving forward) except me soooo I dropped behind a bit at one point, got seperated, and ran into a mob group with that reaper. I mucked up my axe choice and he got me pretty quickly. But the Star came back and dropped me off at a shine before the final fight! Someone joined at the very end but got in before we completed. So yay for victory!
Then I thanked everyone, dropped group and went off to visit Dino Island! First time there (I did the opening quest on Elite which was fun) and now I am in the villige. I plan to sit at 9th level and do the Dino Island quest for the first time over this coming fall.

Whew, that is it from me. Hope everyone is having fun in the new Expansion!!

Update!

Epic STatic group: We are off in the Underdark today--which I have never ever done! We survived our initial quest of getting swallowed and traveling through the inside of the giant purple worm which was fun. We don't even know where the quest entrances are (at first, we have found them now)!

Orien PUGing: Well, my leveling is much faster than I am used to and pug groups do split up to make quests faster. All at Skull 1 at min of course! As a first life, I am banging up to double-cap to fast as the earned XP is alot. I'm currently 9th lvl almost double capped with almost no favor-- no extra bank slot, no House P buffs, etc. I did join a guild sort-of by accident (I was asking for buff invite and got a guild instead). It is a level 200 (Wildcats I think it is called...basically I am a kitty-cat!) so I have every possible guild buff.
It is quite fun to PUG and I have even been useful! No really, for example I joined a Pit group and soloed the Bilge Pump section (at the Star's request) like I knew what I was doing!! Ha ha, i just happened to be there (I joined late and the group was scattered and I dont know the quest well at all so was bumbling about), and it turned out to be one of the easy bits! No puzzles or tricky bits, just kill and pull a lever! And I did White Plume Mt (twice as it bugged the first time even though gave us end chest) and did the slipe-slide bit without falling! An experienced Soc with me though so the fights safe. And now I have two named war hammers! I should learn dual-weapon style, lol. I have done the first two Sarrowdusk solo (at R1 and I lived!) and enough coin lords to get my backpacks. I started to get my Voice but I don't think I need the XP boost right now.
I'll think I iwll screen shot some character info and post a picture here next time I play. Should be 10th level then!

Expansion thoughts: I'll buy at least the basic package so I can play the content whenever I want to but not sure about the higher cost packages. But that +3 racial tomb point for all characters is very tempting though! I like to role-play some of my characters and it helps if I can enhance any racial stuff they get but spending points in racial trees is, well, sometimes not practical to do. Although I couldn't use it for my actual main character (without guild discussion) because of our peramdeath rules....but for my endless alts? We shall see!

Hope everyone is having fun!

Update!

One Pale Lavender Ioun Stone has been successfully upgraded at the Dream Forge!

The chain was not tough but we just did it on Elite (as level 20s). We have only run it once in our static group but I had several piles of ingredients from various HC runs so was able to upgrade!

We (the static group) will go onto level 32 from here. No great plan besides earn whatever things we need to get our hearts. We are looking forward to doing Dino Island blind at level 32!

One of the random sights from a market shopping trip. I normally take pics as one does. A moment in time when a winged bear danced:
Ha ha, I probably am to enamored with such moments.

Anyhoo.

I did pick up my VIP rewards. My freaking-blipping-blop was the VIP vender hard to find!!! But I did and claimed my whopping 5 inventory slots.

Otherwise, I'm helping one friend level a Soc character up and having grand fun running one ancient alt after another as his toon levels up. While fun, this made me realize how empty my threat of un-subbing my VIP after 3rd heroic life (for elite opens) actually is. Many harumphs uttered when i realized that!!!
See, I play way too many alt's over many servers to really give up my subscription and lose the ability to open elites! So I will remain VIP I am sure. Harumph indeed. Oh well, such is gaming.

Another example of alt playing is that recently I have jumped in on Orien with a pug character (1st life 28pt) and the elite open option is very nice. I got to help a free player zip some harbor quests without having to do the N/H/E route and so was useful! Although all the pugs I have joined in are 1 to 3 skulls and I am only sort of useful in those. I wanted to try out the new fighter tactical dragon lord option/class/whatever and I'm not going to be able to play one in my static group for awhile.

That's all for now! May your chests be filled with your heart's desires!

Updates!

It's been a while but I tend to mainly read/post when there is an HC season running and HC9 is long dead! But we hit our group goals so that was grand and now we wait for a year or so until the next one. I don't really mind the wait but I hope season 10 is something scary deadly. Ah well, we shall see!

Now my static group is back on the home world and playing our main characters. We are in the upper teens and slowly pushing towards our 3rd heroic reincarnations. No deaths although a few close calls so far. We do miss having a trapper. Getting to the 3rd life will be nice since then my friends (who are not VIP) will be able to open on elite. Really, that is the main reason I keep my VIP is to be able to open for everyone. I am not sure I will keep it once no one needs that any more. I guess I will look over the new VIP rewards list too see what I think.

Anyway, my main game goal is to upgrade my pale lavender ion stone! I pulled one on a HC season (from a Harbor quest!) and I think I have all the correct bits and bobs to upgrade it, so we just have to remember to do the right quests in the inspirational section of the harbor I think. That will be a great trinket for my main character!

That is it for now! Hope everyone is happy and having fun!!

HC9 update. Our 3-person Static group crossed 1250 favor!!!
So Fancy Hats, tasty medals, and pictures of it all were worn, eaten, and taken--which I'll spare you!

This accomplishment is a big win for our HC group since we are a fine definition of slow-pokey play!
With an all-breakables-shall-die, get-all-collectables, and such, play-style combined with our incomplete game knowledge; well hey
earning anything in this group is grand fun for us! Perhaps in some objective sort of way, getting the hat is not quite as impressive as say doing a HC elite Ascension Chamber raid with two people but such things did not put a damper on our celebrations!

Anyway, we are at level 13 with less than half the required XP to get to level 20 (our other goal). Will we make it? We shall see!

My Pug character is level 19 with a single life left. He is at 4900+ fav and probably has finally fallen off the favor board by now. Hmmm, I'll have to look but I think the highest favor I have earned in any HC was 5600+.

Hopefully I take gear pics so I can see his final stuff. I don't plan to play any after I hit level 20. I simply don't know the quests at this point.

I plan to plink away to cross 5000 for the book etc. for wherever I send him. Unless I die of course!
Basically, I'm running solo the various remaining 15-19 levels here and there to learn them a bit. Like I did the Riddle (level 19) on Hard to learn the paths. The few times I have done it (HC only), we always DD at 'fast' speed so I never knew the actual way but now I do!

Sadly my actual gaming time outside my static grps is a bit limited but HC9 runs until Feb 7 but I do think I'll hit the modest goals.

Luck to anyone who wants it!!!

HC9 Update. Gear at 16th level.

Just a snapshot:

I'm 18th level now. I just needed to equip a ghost touch item to do The cursed Crypt. Haha, I am such a very good player!

I now just need one 14th level to advance but I died (again!) last weekend in a mirror trap in the Mines of Teth! Booooo! But honestly, my lack of game knowledge is what normally gets me killed at higher heroic! I mean the higher level traps tend to be my doom on HC seasons since I am an over-eager melee. But it ended well as the party raised me and we finished. Now the game gets risky again with no extra lives!

I've had plenty of adventures on the way to my doom, of course! Like when I was the only survivor out of an almost party wipe in the Capstone in the Madness chain (the one with the big mindflayer at the end)! I even got to see someone pull a Cursed card cleanser!!! That made the player happier about his character's HC death in Madness (he had extra lives still).

So anyway, I'm down to my last life. I dunno what I what to do really. Do I just take level 20 (I'm capped XP-wise) and get a fancy cloak? Do I run to at least 5K favor (I'm at 4,800+)? Who knows!

My static groups continue every onward! No deaths yet and I feel confident we will make 1250 fav no sweat (we broke 1K so far) and maybe rush to level 20. We shall see!

We did the new 4th level one on elite (blind for them, I ran once solo on my pug guy) and I took lots of pics!

Still having fun on HC! Hope all are enjoying the new year!!

HC9 Update. I'm stuck at level 16 with only the Cursed Crypt to do! And I can't get it done. You can't kill more than 4 Flame Folks and that is where I am really failing. And of course, it's a flagged quest so I suppose it is not that odd I can't seem to find a group.

So I try solo time! Just on Normal so I can finish my necklace (which I have never actually done)! Yesterday, I gave up after a very painful hour where I learned that no-one fails their flesh to stone cookies, my hire is a cheerful murderess, and that sunflasks do very little against these vampires.

I give up and got to run the very fun Kobold in a Cube (creeping doom) quest! And some other ones, like the Cogs (of course I got lost in the one with the tubes). The PUG was fun and the run was fun. Even the short lava waterfall ride was fun as I don't get to see that often (like once or twice) but I'll spare you the pictures!

I ended the day getting to EveningStar with a lovely group! They had trappers and buffers and everything like a real party! No trap jumping for us!

Today I tried the Cursed crypt again. And failed again! Repeatedly. Although I can make it to the upper floor now. It's trappy! After awhile, I gave up again. Sigh, I might have to put up a PUG and lead a party to their doom. If they assume I know it of course which is reasonable if I'm the star.

After I gave up again, not many people were online, but a person was starting the Evening Star Prison chain and that wilderness I get lost in (to no one's surprise) so why not? I manage to make it to the first one just as he finishes and we do the rest of the chain with others joining in.

It is a very zergy party each quest with everyone spread out, with lots of yellow, orange,red alerts. And I don't know the quest entrances' locations, so much stress in-between quests. I never make it to one before they finish (in the high road) so more embarrassment for me in a pug even with people typing in names and such. Not until some said the click the cow cart did i find it. I am horrid at this game but what else is new? But we end the day with the sad death of the Star (the original guy) who died in End of the Road to a withering spell on the way to the boss. He was a very good player but I think the zerg overwhelmed him in the end (and the failed save too of course!).


But we rallied (Yay for the Druid!) and finished and then group falls apart and no storm horns for me! Still it was a lot more fun than that stupid Cursed Crypt!

I end up with a little over 4500 favor and so am (briefly) on the Leader Board!!! Hahahha! I think I am the only16th level up there at this time too! You bet I took a pic!

https://imgur.com/a/cIO0WkG

Anyway, I took pics of all my equipped gear at this point (it is still a hodgepodge mess) and will post it later for my amusement.

With luck I will stumble into a Crypt group this weekend sometime and can actually level. Or Star myself and lead others to their deaths. We shall see!

Hope all is happy with everyone else who is playing the game (oh heck, even if you are not!)!

HC9 update: I finished the Red Dragon raid and took level 15!


Of course, of course, I borked my Sat attempt! I mean, we finished the pre-raid and I was taking pictures as one does and then I was alone.

So I recalled.

And thus got locked out of the raid! Sigh. Another embarrassing moment by me in a pug! I'm such a tourist. But someone did take the time to kindly tell me that I was still flagged at least! So groan, I hung around on Sunday running a few quests and finally got into a raid group! Finally, medals for all!

Anyway, Happy New Year Everyone!!!

HC9 update: I'm level 14 now with all my 10s done except for the raids. I pulled the teleport clicky in that awkward set of quests (The floating Monkey Islands which is NOT their real name)), but I don't need it as I am a human with a teleport mark! So there is one very happy dwarf fighter out there after his 99 roll on the 1d100 roll wins the day!!!

I did forgot about the other raid, Titan one, at 10th level. I tried to join one but don't know who gives or where it is, so lol, no they started quick so I dropped. But I bet there is a Dragon Raid this weekend! Then i can take 15.

I upgraded my armor (briefly to Vambraces of Light from Wiz King) but now to the very nice Bravrian Lord Plate Mail!! I tried the last chain (the first two) on Reaper Skull1 cause they said the chances of pulling named are higher than on elite but I got nothing. Even with three re-rolls on the end chest! Groan, but I have a reaper point now with 1K xp, wheeee (dont tell my guild!). But when I re-ran that chain on elite (to finish the chain with a group) someone pulled it and passed! Success and cookies (I mean medals) all around!!

Also, our little guild is up to level 30 (I dumped the GH and RL sagas into it and that helped!).

Off to my static groups! Have a Happy New Year Everyone!

A bad pic of a dead 1000 Tooth! (from a very slow static group)

HC9 Character snapshot! At Level 13 with 3006 favor and 1.2 million XP.

Notes:
1. Pics taken with DS guild buffs (Yay for DS ship buff invites!) but I am in a small guild ( "the knights who say NI!") who hopefully won't kick me out over my holiday inactivity! I do hope to pop in, with fingers-crossed, for a Von 3 and 4, but no luck so far. I only jump on for a few mins or so to check during the height of the holidays so who knows! Also my guild is not one of the big guilds but it is much more active than the other sleepy guilds I get invited to! I did hide my name in pics in case they would not want to be associated with me etc. etc.
2. I bought the swiftness augment from the store. I used rems for the +5 diamond and pulled the few others I have! No wait, I bought the FF one too.
3.The pics themselves are a visual mess, sorry. I will figure out a better way! But at least I have this snapshot.
4. Any feedback would be great from the presentation to the content! But no worries if no time or desire, hahaha, I can relate!

Have a Happy Hardcore!

Stats pic and then the gear pic!

HC9 Update! Monday morning I broke 3K favor (at 3006) and earned 1.2 million XP for the freebie 2nd life! Thank you monster manuals!
And yes, sadly I am still level 13 although at least I did get the Neco 2 Capstone done! Just need Von 3 and 4.....

That's it! I post a Horse Pic but everyone has already seen vastly better pics than anything I can take! Have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year! The rest below is just rambling, happy, babble!

Honestly, Monday when I logged on, I planned to just to go solo doing normals and hards until level 20. I only needed 165 favor to get to 3K after all! You know, a practical game-theory-proper path.

But I peeked at the LFM panel and there someone was wanting to go to the resort Island (Ataraxia easy-peasy), then after that Raven Loft 2 chain for loots (I got nothing from that whole chain, grump grump), then I just missed a Von group but I found a Nec 2 group (I have DD, I'm helping! And I learn a tiny bit more of the maze!), then something I forget, and then I jumped into a Desert group!

Fittingly I got lost on the way to the 2nd quest ent (I lag spiked on a jump and ended at the bottom of a caynon alone). The mystery abbreviation "oob" was my only clue from the party chat (maybe calling me a "noob" and just mispelling hahaha!), so I flailed about a bit, then gave up and dropped party. But I should note when I told group I get lost easly so have to follow in the wilderness to find quest doors, the star did give the best direction advice ever that for the first quest and I now know how to get to that one easy as pie! 'Just Keep left' hahahahaha! Brilliant! No one ever ever told me that.

Anyway, after that normal-for-me, generally disastrous, PUG interaction, I soloed the 10th level quest in the desert (on hard wheeee, yes I was a chicken as I was just 6 fav away!), claimed my horse (no more feather grinding for me), and pop back to the Portable Hole for medals, commedations, and drinks! Well, in real life I had hot coco and toast with a tasty gob of sweet orange marmalade but that's basically the same!

So I've hit my HC9 goals and plan to be just playing in my two sleepy static groups. One which is now on a break until Dec 30! But no worries we have started Saltmarsh and are having a blast. It is the little things in these group that I adore, like when we pulled the tower shield in the wilderness and our sword/board fighter was estatic (he has never seen the loot b4 and it is a pretty cool looking shield too)! Everyone is still broke in those groups, etc. etc.

With my Pugging Level 13 character I am not sure what I will do. I will do Von 3 and 4 eventually just for honors sake and I want to do the Dragon raid again. Then I dunno. Maybe I'll roll up some new guys and send them into the low level suicide reaper runs!!! Ha ha, i have lots of cool low level gear so maybe it would be fun for a few deaths!

I would like to send my higher level through some of the fun quests like the Kobold in the Cube one in the Vale, I mentioned the Big Beholder one , there is one where at the end you have to jump off a falling mountain I have only done once, etc. etc. But I am not sure I will have the time. My gear is has some pretty big weaknesses (level 7 fens gear, level 9 armor, decent weapons though and some good items like trinket) that I need to fix if I wanted to be survivable (and useful to a group). Maybe I will post my current gear vs my upgraded gear whenever I do it, that might be fun.

Hope everyone playing on HC is enjoying themselves however they play!

HC9 update.: I started at 13th level Sunday needing three 9th quests: Von 3, 4 and the Necro II Capstone. Surely a bunch of LFMs for those quests, right?

Probably there were but nooooooo, I decide to go do everything BUT those three quests so I am still level 13 but now with 2800+ favor. I did GH, the first chain of RL, Dragons, Grim, Illusionist, etc. etc. etc.

It was grand fun as I got to run some I never get to do except on HC like Invaders!

In that one at least, I managed to get at least 1 clean stun on a Beholder and maybe another (but another melee was there so maybe he stunned at same time and it was his so I dunno). I went sword and board as I just rushed beholders and grabbed agro. We lived and I got another cool axe out of it!

I screen-shotted some action and such but I don't know if they want their names public (and associated with me even if just a pug!) so I hid the names.
Here is the XP table

Edit: Oh the time was like 6 mins to do.

But then we ran the Archons' chain and I DIED!!! To the whirling Blades in the 2nd one in the chain! Because I'm an idiot and was bouning around trying to be useful as a melee instead of ranging. Oh well....I forget quest details and get excited. So I used my free life and now am down to 1! Unless i earn another one at level 16 I think. Kind of silly to be running so under level! I could have soloed Von 3 and 4 (not Necro 2 haha no), just take forever, but no, I run off to have fun instead.

We finished the Archon chain with me rather subdued and then we did one of the Coin Lord Plaze chains. The blowup the boats chain. But I got confused because I had not done the 1st part of that chain so the NPC interactions where all wonky*. Add to that the quest enters are in odd places and so I started to get my horrid flashbacks to season 1 where I did not know where anything past level 12 was located! Endless trying to find parties and joining groups and then mostly having to simply drop 'casue no idea where they were. Of course there were plenty of great people & pugs, enough to keep me alive at least way back then!

Anyway, I was sort-of stressed and pretty confused as to why the quest giving NPCs wouldn't work right*. So I decided take a break & to just pike the boats quest.
The party didn't say anything as I jus sat on the raft so i guess they did nto mind. But I got back into the swing of things a bit (and then into trouble in another one, got lost, and DD out of trouble) and was sort-of useful again.

After i (hahaha, well the group) finished that chain, I stopped having made absoultly zero progress on my nines.

Well, I hope to at least live long enough to do the quest again where you build a flying ship out of furniture and get swollowed by a giant Beholder!

Stay safe everyone! Or at least safer than me!!

*They are working fine. The error was located with the user!

HC9: Finally finished my sixes! I got 2200+ favors before I leveled.
Because I'd log on and, no, not any of the few odd I need but hey, Slavers chain (I got the cool trinket!)!
Or Threnal such an odd chain why not get that done (I was wearing a level 3 cloak sooooo yay! Worldmantel shaper one for now!)?
Or White Plume Mt (I got Echo sword!).
Or gack, get the Necro 2 chain done. Etc.

I did pick off one or two at a time but since I am not in a static group my lazer-like focus on a goal is not there on just the six level quests.

I mean, I do get distracted easily and that will be the death of me I am sure. For example, in Tugly Woods (which i normally get left behind somewhere jumping between rings), I got so excited when I saw the Cow,,,
...that I rushed over like a tourist and stepped all over the puzzle. And did not notice I did that! Borked the puzzle and we had to recall/reset. But at least I did get the cool pic and Star did not yell at me for borking quest. Although in the re-rerun (now with full party), Star did warn party of puzzle b4 we entered!

It should be noted that I am quite observant! The problem is that the cues I am attending to are not always what the others in the group find currently important. Like not noticing that the person sending me a few tells in the middle of running slavers (I think that was it) was, ahem, running with me in the same party. I mean, what are the chances of that?

Anyway. So while finishing 6s I did all the 7's and a lot of the 8's, 9's, 10's, maybe an 11th. Except the (new to me) 7th lvl IoD chain. So now I had a problem.

I could reincarnate and goto 12th with that IoD favor loss, because I am still (barely) holding only 2 extra levels. But I'm very close to getting enough XP (I blame unavoidable Monster Manual XP awards) to hold THREE levels. And I do not have all my 8s done! Oh no! Potential Favor Loss!!!!

Then I remembered I only needed 3K to get the Horse (and never have to grind feathers again!).

So I skipped IoD and leveled to 12! Drinks were all on me in the Portable Hole and I now have to do the major 12th level gear re-shuffle!

The static groups are now working on their 3rds!
Sun Flasks work great against Oozes!

Stay Alive! Or at least don't die more than twice.

Still alive on HC9! Finally finished my 5s and now am 10th level with about 1650 fav. Been running a bit under-level so have some fav's.

I did the new 4th level but only on Hard. I solo'ed it as my LFM did not fill after a whole 3 mins. I can get a bit impatient which is death on HC9!

Lots of lag on Tues.

Not sure how the Von Raid will go since my second Elite Chronscope was a disaster (from my viewpoint).

A summary below the spoiler if interested!

Summary: I was cocky. Very cocky for me. Gabbing in party chat before we started. Sigh. Well it was a good wakeup call for me!
So we started short 1 man. Then we lost one one the way to the bank (lag prevented a rescue attempt by very brave Paladins). We pressed on. Decided to do optional after 1st boss (which itself was not a bad lag fight), and lag hit hard. I was off with another melee type as a pair hunting optional mobs & we doing ok until lag froze me up. Then we got swarmed with multiple. I started to panic. I manged to lag way back to alley and locked up. My voice/ears not working. Party text chat is not so great. Mostly "come to alley, are you coming in, I'm dying to lag, wonder if we will live," that sort of thing. Probably voice was a lot of cursing. Some brave paladins trying to pull it together, the Star doing his best, buffers still casting. Then someone DC'ed. My panic really takes off, I don't actually raid at all so I dunno what to do in this case, and then more and more mobs appeared. Sooooooo I fled. I teleported out (ok I bashed my teleport key like a crazy chicken until it worked).

https://imgur.com/a/X0wd6KC

Not my proudest moment.

I apologized in party chat, dropped group, and had a drink in the portable Hole (i.e. I logged off).

I do not know if the raid succeed or not.

At least, I got a cool axe out of it.

Edit: I fixed my ears! Yay! And some stuff I learned from this:
1. Tell Star if I do not hear party chat.
2. Teleport is a handy thing. There is a cookie with teleport on it too for this season if you are not a Human with dragon mark, caster, etc.
3. Turn off my bloody feet. People sometime follow me like I know what I am doing.
4. Recalling my experience, it seems like I played a warrior whose morale was breaking over time. Once things really started lagging and going pear-shaped, me only have party text probably increased my panic. Like me imagining party voice chat was chaos-cursing while it could have mostly been calm communications & specific actions to take, but panicked me imagined everyone else panicing. Add in a Disconnect and boom, my barb/fighter breaks and runs! Maybe if I been playing paladin I would have spent my extra life there for honor sake, I dunno.
5. I still don't really know what to do in cases of very bad lag.

Having fun in HC9! I'm in two flower-sniffing static groups (will we make it to 20th level or even 1750 fav? Who knows!) but also playing a PUGing character (a melee fighter barb combo).

I've earned my second life and am almost done with the 4th levels. I thought I had done everything but I missed a Harbor quest so I boooooo, I need to review my done quests before i level! But I do have a new one to do at 4th, the Catastrophic one! That will be done blind by me (although I bet the pug members have done it already) so hope no instant death stuff at this low a level.

I have only witnessed one party death so far (in saltmarsh, a party member died to the "nibbling fish" in the big croc quest. He took it well though.

Biggest surprise for me was seeing the Big Snowmen running around in public areas!! Ha ha! That was fun. A pic of one in Hall of Heroes.

Not the best image but hey it works! It took me a while to figure what was going on, lol.

Good luck all who are playing HC this time around!

Quick update for the Crafting alts. We finished the three House Cannith quests and made it to 50 favor!! Yay!
A pic of our Arty jumping traps in Power Play:

We had ground out 19 favor in some of the challenges and it turns out that we only needed to do the quests on Hard to earn exactly 50 favor! Double Yay!
That was nice since we are Permadeath and going in at level 18 to I guess level 21 quests. We don't know them so we staggered about, did a lot of the optionals (the arty got a very nice set of boots too!), and were pretty sure that Elite would have wiped the group!

But we lived and now have access to endless crafting Marks! And 10% crafting pots! Very exciting I know!

Hope everyone that has a feast day this week enjoys their stuffed birds and what not!! ?

Questing update! Posting this a bit late but we did finish Giant Hold on our crafting alts!
Last up was Tor and even with a few Thrall Champs (we did everything on elite), it was much easier than the Crucible!

A shot of our Fighter charging a Thrall Champ...

...and the Giant's buddies rush in and you can see the Thrall just starting to fall from the fighter's trip!

But really Tor was no problem for us at Elite so I helped in the Boss fight.

We killed the dragons (see pic of me doing my thing, the mandatory post-dragon fight gold pile dance, while my friends, err, took 'care of the important stuff: The treasure!'), although I have never done anything with the few scales I have.


So we are done with GH!

Ha ha, they should offer additional tiers of Saga rewards for running everything on Reaper.
Soooooo I calculate 3,628,800 more reward tiers (plus the existing 3 of course!) are needed.

The plan is to go do the 19th level Cannth house quests to get to 50 House C favor. But maybe a few XP-earning quests before? I am not sure honestly.
Although with the Christmas Hard Core re-run starting soon so who knows how far we make it before then?
Anyway, have fun eveyone!