Exploring Eberron: Closing the community gap

In last week's Exploring Eberron, I talked quite a bit about the community divide in Dungeons and Dragons Online and why it exists. Update 7 seems to be ushering in a new era of DDO, one in which the devs turn their attention back to the veteran and high-level players.

I've been around DDO for about a year, and Exploring Eberron is geared toward the less experienced player, so I sincerely understand and appreciate Turbine's effort over the past year or so to provide plenty of content for the "new kids." It's something that made complete sense -- what good are thousands of new customers if you don't have a rich, in-depth game to keep them around?

However, I can understand the frustration of the veteran players who are sort of sitting around saying, "But what about us?" Will the next year solve this? Follow along after the jump while I gaze into my crystal ball.

Well, the crystal ball proved to be fairly useless, so I had to fall back on my perspective as a new-ish player who is staring down the barrel of higher levels. When I talked last week about the divide in the DDO community, I wanted to make it clear that I really understand why it exists. You simply cannot play this game at higher levels until you've laid the foundation for how all of it works.

Gear is important. Builds are important. Understanding you character's role is crucial as you progress, which is why it's a blessing that the XP system is set up to prevent powerleveling. Can you imagine jumping into a high-level raid with a powerleveled teammate who was unprepared in every way imaginable? When you put all of these pieces together, level 20 characters and level 5 characters simply have no way or reason to play together. This community divide exists so strongly because DDO is a completely different game at level 20 than it is at level 5.

All of that is going to begin changing in the next year, though, and I'm excited at the potential for these two halves of the playerbase to begin interacting more. There's a catch, however. Many of the newer casual players are beginning to approach the second half of the game, the part that exists at level 10 and beyond. It's that group that I want to talk to today, because you are going to find yourselves floundering very soon if you haven't taken the time to understand the game and your characters until now.

That's not intended as a "gtfo nub" statement at all, because I learned this the hard way and am studying like crazy now, so I'm right there with you. If you've not buckled down until recently or have merely skimmed the depths of DDO knowledge, it's time to start paying attention. When you pick up a new weapon, outfit, armor piece, anything, just stop and take your time. The game's not going anywhere and you'll be better off.

Read through the stats. What are the item's bonuses? What does it protect against? What sort of damage does it do? Every item has special qualities that may or may not be valuable to you. Even if it's got a red or yellow icon and description (indicating that it is unsuitable or completely unusable for your character), figure out why. Are you too low-level? Is it a restriction that is changeable? It may be something that you can store in your vault until you level, or it may be a bound-on-acquire, profession-restricted item that needs to go straight to the merchant.

One problem with this is storage, because it's easy to accumulate a lot of stuff while you're still learning. I know it can get a little overwhelming, but resist the temptation to throw your hands in the air, stuff everything on a mule, and say "forget it, I'll look at it later." Just look over a piece or two at a time, decide if you want to keep it or not, and don't stress out over it too much. Update 7 is bringing an inventory change that will sort items by type in your inventory, and I anticipate that making it a lot easier.

No matter what the case, look your items over carefully. I've pointed to it before, but the DDO wiki is an invaluable resource in this case. If you see a description that you don't understand, head to the wiki -- which you should bookmark right now -- and look it up. Do the same with any quest that you're interested in trying. Figure out what you're going to be up against, what kind of damage you'll take there, and so on. You don't need to spend an hour learning about the origin and lore of earth elementals while your party waits, but do take five minutes in each of these cases and gain an understanding of how things work.

You'll find that your understanding comes more and more naturally as you do this, making you a much more effective player. Knowing what sort of build to take into a quest, what gear to save and what to merch, and how to best work with your teammates will become second nature the more you do this. Put a little time into it, and you'll find that it pays off over and over.

Of course, you can read the wiki all you want and ponder the meaning of adamantine and true chaos weapons all day, but that's only half of the learning process. The other half is the fun part: get in there and start swinging! Putting what you've learned into practice is how what you've read will really take hold, so once you've gone over quests in the wiki, add some gear that you think will do well, round up a few friends and/or guildmates, and jump in!

You're going to mess up sometimes, but that's OK. It's all part of the learning process. Just keep an eye on what sort of damage you're taking, and when a red-named enemy one-shots you, take the time while you're lying there at -78 HP to figure out what happened and why. Ask your more experienced teammates if they have any suggestions, and see what you can take away from your horrible death to keep it from happening again.

One last word here: If you happen to be one of those more experienced teammates, be patient. Never forget that a bigger community is always better, and that you've got a big advantage here. You've put in the time, and you've got the experience and knowledge to be a real help. Use it to add some valuable members to the level 10+ half of the game, and I promise you'll be glad you did.

The other part of this equation is just as important, maybe even more so: your character's stats and build. Check out Exploring Eberron next week as I take a look at how to make the most of what you've got to work with in higher-level DDO. I'll see you then!

Exploring Eberron is a novice's guide to the world of Dungeons and Dragons Online, found here on Massively every Friday. It's also a series of short summaries of lower-level DDO content, cleverly disguised as a diary of the adventures of OnedAwesome, Massively's DDO guild.