Choose my Adventure: Stormcleave Outpost
Join me as I brave my way through lands unknown in an adventure dictated entirely by you, the Massively readers! Vote for everything from game played to character creation to ultimate goal and watch it unfold in a series of journals and galleries here on the site. Then, as our two months is up, we'll do it all over again in a new game!
This week's Choose my Adventure: DDO takes us into Stormcleave Outpost, a long group instance found within the House of Deneith. Once that was finished, we took on the second-choice vote, the Church and the Cult quest, which didn't go quite as smoothly towards the end. Still, we conquered them both and lived to tell our story here!
Next week will be the last time we'll be in DDO with this series, but don't fret! This also means that next week you'll be able to vote on a new game in which my next adventure will begin. Follow along after the jump for our hero's in-character journal, my thoughts on Stormcleave and the poll for next week.
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Yes, she was definitely eying me. But not as I'd hoped.
The tall blonde woman standing at the bar turned out to be Alciana d'Deneith, and her interest in me lied only in my blade and bow. When I approached her, in that charming way that only a Brygo can, she laughed off my advances and told me about her wishes to recruit me for battle.
With my pride in tow, I agreed to aid the woman. She described a nearby fortress that was under constant attack by the Xen'drik giants and their minions. I'm hoping I impressed her a bit with my admissions to making quick work of giants in the past, but she didn't seem swayed.
She escorted us to the wilderness line where the enemy was last spotted, but would go no further. We were surprised at how destroyed the landscape was around us. Trolls, scorpions and minotaurs covered the area like a plague, but we thinned their numbers considerably.
Once we arrived at the outpost, we were introduced to the gate warden, who presented us with our orders: Stop the siege of Stormcleave Outpost. Seemed easy enough. Right?
With a bit more prodding, we were able to get some details from the stern guard. Apparently, we're looking to stop a general by the name of Xanti'lar who is the one responsible for this mess. Not only were we to destroy the invading army, but we were to destroy their siege cannons, recover some stolen supplies from the House d'Deneith stockade and ultimately defeat General Xanti'lar himself.
We began our journey pressing on through the encamped trolls and minotaurs throughout the ruins and charred forest. Upon encountering the General's lietenants, we discovered the secret to much of the army's power: mystical rune pillars that housed those cursed mephits. After our last meeting with those winged demons, we weren't too happy to face them again, but we knew their power must be stopped if the general was to be defeated.
There were six of these rune pillars in all, each with their own set of fiery, winged mephits. Many of the lieutenants that we defeated held these curious little shards in their storage chests. At first, we began collecting these for their potential worth at auction, but soon found that they seemed to hold a special meaning. It wasn't until we entered the General's chambers that we discovered this meaning.
General Xanti'lar was heavily guarded, as expected. His dark lair held his fiercest minions, and at times, we believed ourselves defeated. At one point, we planned to retreat back to shrine, gather our energy and come back full-force, but the General had other plans. The gateway in which we entered was sealed off, so we were forced to press on in our exhausted state.
Once his minions were killed, we faced the giant responsible for all of this mayhem, and we could almost taste our reward. He stood high atop a stone platform, screaming taunts at our weary crew. We had heard many tales of adventurers who had come this far, but none had returned from this point. The theories of the shards were varied, but Stormsnow had a plan.
He ran up to the platform, instructing us to bring the shards into an adjoining room to defeat the creatures that spawned when we entered. While he distracted the General, the rest of us followed his plan, which worked perfectly. It seemed that Stormsnow's idea was exactly right, and the shards were the key to unlocking the monsters that helped to build the power of invinsibility for the General.
We stormed each room, defeating the summoned monster in each, and finally breaking down the defenses of the General. Upon realizing our plan, he quickly begam more aggressive to Stormsnow's distraction techniques, and at one point we almost lost him.
With the final shard in place and the last of the defenses down, we charged the stone platform and delivered the fatal blow that would free House d'Denieth from the tyranny of General Xanti'lar once and for all.
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Another great week in DDO this week as we tackled Stormcleave Outpost with little difficulty and proceeded to take on the Church and the Cult quest as well. That one proved to be a bit more difficult though, as the final Vampire boss kicked our butts all over his chambers. We cheated a tiny bit when Abdielle brought in his slightly higher-level character to finish him off, but we still took care of Count Difficult.
I found Stormcleave to be particularly fun because of the fact that I just enjoy killing giants. They're difficult enough in this game to pose quite a challenge, yet they still make an easy target for my bow.
As I mentioned earlier, next week is our final week with DDO. I want to try something different this time and celebrate the end with a video. We did that early on with our CmA: LotRO group, but I figure a video would make a nice finale for DDO.
Also, the vote for the next CmA game will start in a poll next week and run throughout the holidays, to give us a chance to get as many votes in as we can, and to give ole Shawn a chance to enjoy his winter holidays. Look for the next game to be decided around the first of the new year.
Another change I've decided we'll need to do is spend a bit less time with each game, especially if I hope to cover more games as they're launched. It won't be a drastic cut-back, but we'll shoot for 6 weeks (instead of 8) on the next installment of CmA.
As for this week's poll, we want you to decide how we will spend our last official week together in DDO for our finale video. Do you want us to tackle a few short quests and compile a video of the end bosses? Do you want us to take on another long quest and make the video almost like a walkthrough of sorts? Do you want us to frolic around the Marketplace to the tune of "The Rain, the Park and Other Things"? You decide!
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