Dungeons and Dragons Online's Update 10 is bringing crazy back
If you're a VIP player of Dungeons and Dragons Online, today is an exciting day for you: It's the date of the arrival of Update 10: Reign of Madness. This update is all new content with a bit of a blast from the past thrown in, and the DDO development team was kind enough to invite us along on a tour of some of the mind-bending new quests.
Reign of Madness arrives today for VIP players and Wednesday for the rest of the playerbase, so what better to keep you occupied while you wait than a little tour? Follow along after the jump for a sneak peek at DDO's Update 10!
DDO Update 10 is primarily a new adventure pack, one with a very familiar look. Remember Update 3 way back at the beginning of 2010? That update made some big changes and added several quests, including Delirium. Delirium was a tour of the Sleeping Spell Inn, home to Beholders with quick wit and terrible tempers.
The suspicious booze, strange puzzles, and magic mirrors had our characters questioning their sanity by the time they stumbled out at the end. If you loved it -- or if you've at least had a chance to recover from your last encounter -- you'll be happy to hear that Update 10 sends you back to the Sleeping Spell Inn.
In a true case of "some people never learn," the wizard who unlocked the portal to Xoriat way back when has managed to get in over his head again, so off we go to save his tail (and Eberron) once more. The quest is called Acute Delirium -- consider it a bigger and crazier dose of the previous quest.
We began our tour, heading into the Sleeping Spell Inn, where I had a brief, shuddering flashback as we passed the bar where we had a drinking contest with the Beholders in Delirium. The goal here is to find out what caused the portals to the Plane of Madness to open and to prevent it from happening again.
Of course it's a little more complicated than a quick Google search -- the inn isn't going to give up its secrets that easily, and everything around you is a little more than it seems. I found this out the hard way, thoroughly embarrassing myself in the process. My tour guides and I cleared the library of enemies, and I saw a sparkling treasure chest. Score! I raced toward it, right past a scepter that was probably important by virtue of its ability to stand vertical on its own and give off its own light.
I didn't even see it. There was treasure to be had! As it turned out, the scepter was our key to closing the portals and the chest was not a treasure chest. On the contrary, it was a gaping maw in disguise, and it promptly ate the scepter and scuttled away. I sat there stunned for a moment, and one of the developers said (as kindly as he could under the circumstances) that we kind of needed that, so we were going to have to give chase.
This kind of thing is evidently typical as you (well, your character) descend further into the madness of the Sleeping Spell Inn. This is an adventure that you'll want to take your time with. There's plenty of fighting, but there's also a hefty dose of strategy and puzzling. Reign of Madness is all about mind games, and the challenges given reflect that.
There's a nice thread of humor throughout as well, and I enjoyed the absurdity of things like the chest eating the scepter, and a later puzzle of sorts when we found the open portal and needed to figure out how to enter it. It was high in the air, so how about an airship? There wasn't one readily available inside the inn, so in a twist that had me laughing, we ran all over the inn convincing the furniture to lend a hand. Beds and bookcases danced and spun their way merrily through the inn, down the stairs, and into the vicinity of the portal, where they continued their dance while waiting for their companions.
Once we had enough, they formed an airship with a surface of horizontal bookcases and fantastically patterned bedspreads. I don't know any other MMO that lets you go all sorcerer's-apprentice to fashion what you need. The rest of this adventure continues the theme of fighting combined with strategy and puzzle-solving (there's even a tile puzzle that encompasses the floor, wall, and ceiling), and the other adventures follow suit.
The icing on this mind-bending cake comes in the form of a variety pack of Beholders. We don't want to give too much away, but the everyday garden-variety Beholders that you're used to have some new friends.
Be careful, and enjoy Update 10!
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