An end to another era

Micki's Delirium

I’ve been doing the Saturday raids since 2012, back then it was mainly posting an lfm and running with a mix of pugs and ppl who joined often enough that I would consider them regulars. Later I started the EEraids user channel on Orien and through it managed to find some players for my guild who also enjoy raiding.

Summer of 2019 Titus said to me, “we should do more raids”, and I said I could add another raid night, which became Wednesday (see my first blog post where we ran raids both Wednesday and Saturday here: Raids week 128). As always I would invite guildies first, then ask in EEraids channel and last but not least post an lfm for any free spots. Quite often we’d fill just with guildies and channel members. At the time, Titus and some other Soko members would join my party – if…

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Would I ever be an MMO guild officer again?

Bio Break

I don’t exactly recall how we got on the topic, but the other night in LOTRO kin chat we got to talking about officer roles. And in that conversation, it came out that a number of us normal kinship members were, at one time, officers in various MMO guilds. So we shared memories of that and also reasons why we weren’t interested in doing that again (at least for the time being).

In my salad days, I had a few stints as a guild officer and one or two leading small guilds. My time as a guildmaster wasn’t that interesting; usually it was just setting up community groups for Massively. But I was pretty heavily invested in being an officer in a couple World of Warcraft guilds as well as at least one LOTRO kinship. In fact, my very first blog was for my WoW guild’s entertainment.

But would I…

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Hardcore Monk V: Victory

The Order of Syncletica

For my goals, at least, I “won” in the Hardcore IV season.

There were several goals a player could aspire to meet. Since I was new to Hardcore play, I chose only two: 1) Reach 1750 favor, and 2) Reach level 20.

I did both, and using the very first Hardcore character I created: Petracletica, the Ninja Spy.

It wasn’t easy, but it was fun. I’d like to say I survived and succeeded by skill alone. But as many of my friends (most also in my Ghallanda guild) would say, luck played a big factor.

As noted in past posts, the greatest challenge in HC IV was surviving the special Monster Champions present there. They were even color-coded for your convenience if you had a good Spot score. Some you knew to be careful not to attack too harshly in melee or get a stacking disease effect that could kill…

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Hardcore Monk Part 1 – Using Everything I Know

The Order of Syncletica

Thanks to the new friends in my guild on Ghallanda and their past gameplay prior to joining me, I decided to try something new.

I’ve joined the Hardcore server for Season IV.

Almost immediately in after character creation, all kinds of anxiety and paranoia crept into my head. Some of it I couldn’t fully understand until one of us had an untimely (and, naturally) permanent death with their bow-wielding Rogue in the Borderlands.

But let me back up to my strategy, such as it is.

Petracletica, the Ninja

I suspect many players put defense as a secondary priority over sheer killing power in normal server play, and that’s understandable.

But from what I can gather in Hardcore mode, that’s not nearly as easy an option. For those unfamiliar with the basics of Hardcore, here’s a two sentence summary: You get one life. Die, by any means, and that character…

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Thinking about the game, playstyles and endgame

Micki's Delirium

Every once in a while I find myself thinking about this game, why I keep playing it, what it has become and what the community has become. I think things are quite different now from what they were back when I started, but some things have remained the same. To me, the reason why I play has always been more about the community than it has been about the game. I also set goals for my toons a long time ago and I’ve more or less been sticking to those goals.

I’ve always loved running raids, and I wanted to try harder difficulties, which became difficult to do with just random pugs. So I created eeraids channel and decided to start doing eeraids regularly. Then Storms created Orien Raiding Discord, Titus helped advertise my raids, and things took off from there. I invited some of the regular raiders to…

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At Last a Kensai, and Five Other Things

The Order of Syncletica

The members of my young guild and I have been playing so often that writing has become rather secondary. I’m very sorry about that; working from home means computer time becomes taxing, even for gaming.

But let me see if I catch everyone up with small summaries of builds I’ve been enjoying and will add to that eternally updating Monk guide in its new version (more info to come).

Zeldacletica: The Abbey Guardian

Originally, because swords are cool, I planned for Zelda to ultimately wield a greatsword, blending Fighter-like melee prowess with centered monastic benefits.

But that development road seemed too darned expensive with action points as well as long delayed. The One with the Blade enhancement in the Kensai tree required 30 AP to unlock to treat a greatsword as a centered focus weapon. So Zelda would’ve had to wait and fight as a rather gimped Monk, fluent in…

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A Monk Barbarian That Rests More Often

The Order of Syncletica

Yes, I know the title is a bit of clickbait for those who know the contradiction.

To be any Monk, you must have a Lawful alignment. This means that, of the many classes in Dungeons & Dragons Online (which bars the player use of Evil alignments right now), a Monk multiclassed with the Barbarian class is impossible.

With the latest DDO update released in preparation of the “Fables of the Feywild” expansion, a new player race appeared. At first news of it, I was rather “meh” about it since my interests were elsewhere in building up a new Monk archer, among other projects.

But then, one of the acolytes in my new mostly-Monk guild, The Syncletican Monastery on Ghallanda, appeared with a Monk of the Shifter race.

At first, I admit that the appearance threw me off. The Shifter has a very primal, animalistic look, not unlike that…

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Why I don’t want to hop into your Discord guild chat

Bio Break

Is it just me, or does every single MMO guild out there have a Discord and put that right out to its members as the first thing they see when they join? I’m not saying that as some old fuddy-duddy who is astounded at technology — I know Discord’s been around for years now and I’ve used it on several occasions — I’m just observing that it seems like this is the de facto standard for guilds these days. You have a guild, you must have a Discord.

Which is fine, but here’s the thing: I don’t usually want to join your Discord channel, and I always feel like there’s some (positive) peer pressure that’s always pushing me in this direction.

So why haven’t I embraced Discord with all the man hugs that I am able to bring to bear? For starters, I intentionally keep my social media interactions to…

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Life Finds A Way

The Order of Syncletica

I’ve planned to do something for what has turned into years now.

I’ve noticed a serious increase in the number of new players on my return. It’s obvious because most aren’t in a guild and so haven’t a guild name in their name. That’s OK: DDO doesn’t require a guild, although you get a lot of benefits (particularly buffs, extra storage options, faster crafting and resurrection options) if you are.

The Great Plague of 2020 has clearly been an influence on DDO gameplay. It was a very nice gesture for Standing Stone Games to make the entire world practically free for a time, and then offered a dirt-cheap offer to continue play with most of the original modules permanently for only a few DDO points and coupon code. Great sports in a time of need, especially since literally escaping to worlds free of COVID-19 was what some people really needed…

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Phoenix Clan has reached 200

Micki's Delirium

At the time of writing this, we’ve lost a bit of renown due to some renown farm alts having been removed from the guild. We should get the level back in the next few days

For a while we were competing with Soko Irrlicht in levels, and were keeping a similar level. Then we lost some members, especially some that had earned a lot of renown for the guild over the years, and we fell behind. I went from turning in my sagas for xp, to almost always turning them in for renown and on July 17, as I was preparing for Epic Reincarnation, I noticed we were getting very near 200. I’ve always loved the “ding” sound from getting another guild level, and I knew that turning in the next saga would get us to 200. So I wrote in guild chat, then turned the saga in.

The notification…

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