DDO Videopost: The Free bag guide video

I already added this to the end of the original DDO free bag post, but then I realised that most folks have probably looked at that days ago, so would miss it. It’s just a little video I knocked up to show where to find the various bag NPCs.

I’m a bit out of practise at video-making, and need to make sure I have the mic a little further away from my mouth next time!

You can find a variety of equally dubiously-crafted movies over at my YouTube channel!

DDO : A quick guide to free bags and storage.

Dungeons and Dragons Online likes to bombard you with things that you need to store, while simultaneously keeping your inventory space rather tight. It is not an unusual tactic for F2P games which want to gently persuade you to purchase additional storage and bags, and DDO will be very happy to sell you all manner of extra bank vaults and storage bags through the Turbine Point Store.

However, there is much we can do to delay the moment that we really need to do that, and to minimise what we do need to buy when our free options have been exhausted. (I spend plenty on Turbine points. I just prefer to save them for adventure packs.)

Inventory and Bank Slots

Dealing with inventory tabs and bank vaults first, you begin with three inventory tabs, and one bank vault. We can raise these via favor. If you’re a bit vague on how favor works, I covered it in this post a while back.

75 Coin Lords favor will score you another inventory tab. This is EASY, even if you’re pure F2P, as an awful lot of the early quests fall under their jurisdiction.

150 Coin Lords favor opens up to you the opportunity for a 5th tab, but this time you’ll first need to acquire a collapsed portable hole, either from chest loot, or through the auction house. In my experience, these are not super-rare, and you’ll find one yourself eventually. Once you acquire the hole, you then have to pay Ryo Silverbow 10,000 plat to turn it into your 5th tab. Money well spent.

Picking up the Shan-To-Kor pack ( a must have, in my opinion, if only because it’s really cheap and completing it gives you a discount in the marketplace), will let you hit the Coin Lords favor targets a bit sooner.

House Kundarak runs Stormreach’s banking system (and most of the bank services across Eberron). 75 favor with them will allow you to buy a 2nd bank vault for 2000 plat, and 150 favor will enable a third vault for 8000 plat. Getting this favor is a little trickier than for the Coin Lords, as you don’t really hit d’Kundarak quests until about level 5. There are enough free quests for a pure free player to get both bank tabs, and both inventory tabs, though it’ll take a fair bit of effort.

So that’s it for the free inventory and bank slots. Let’s look at the bags that’ll let us use them efficiently.

Bags

Mari Mosshand is the first NPC players will see upon arrival in Stormreach Harbour from Korthos. Veteran characters, who start at level 4, don’t get these bags as part of their gear package, so will want to pay her a visit too.

She will give:
Small Collectibles Bag (12 slots, bound to character)
Small Gem Bag (6 slots, bound to character).

Also in the harbour, standing at the gateway to the marketplace, is Felix d’Cannith, who will be happy to hand over:
Tiny Ingredient Bag (12 slots, bound to character).

A couple of other NPCs have the same offer, but he’s the one you’re likely to meet first.

So, we’ve gotten our full set of basic starter bags, but they’ll start to overflow almost as soon as you acquire them.

In the Marketplace, there is an exit to an area called “The Twelve”. It offers a variety of high and mid-level quests, but we can pop in there at low levels for a bit of help. Head into the central tower, and speak to Jeanselme Brucetius, and he’ll hand you a small ingredient bag. (30 slots). This is not bound, but is exclusive, so you can only have one of them in your inventory at once. You can keep multiple in your bank or shared bank though, so this does give you storage options. Until recently he handed out a tiny bag, but he seems to have upgraded his wares to one-up the newcomer in the harbour.

That’s all the free bags for now, and somebody starting out is going to find themselves with inventory issues pretty quickly. Help is at hand though, if you can scrape up about 9000 plat, depending on your haggle skill, which is not as daunting as it might feel in your first few levels.

Drudori Alzander, in House Phiarlan’s Erstwhile Emporium, sells:

Medium Collectable Bags (30 slots, Exclusive),
Medium Gem Bags (12 slots, Exclusive)
Small Ingredients Bags (30 slots, Exclusive).

Pretty handy, though I suspect that her ingredient bag is the same one that Jeanselme Brucetius is handing out, so you won’t be able to have both in your inventory at once.

DDO Bags From Drudori Alzander In Erstwhile Emporium 600x360

Osgard's new Artificer brother goes window-shopping for bags. Later, he'll go bag-shopping for windows. and not be able to afford those either.

Of the three, I’d saying grabbing the Medium collectables bag, when you have the cash to spare, will do wonders for your sanity and bag space. Gem bags aren’t so vital, as you don’t really need to store them for any length of time. Nice to have, of course, when you can afford it.

There are 3 bags which drop as chest loot. I should say that these are far from common, but they are unbound, so can be found on the auction house, for annoyingly high prices. They’re not exclusive either, so they work perfectly as a central store in your shared bank if you have one.

Large Collectibles Bag, 80 slots
Large Gem Bag, 30 slots
Large Ingredients Bag, 80 slots

Be careful with the auction house, as a variety of jokers like to put the Phiarlan purchased ones up for sale at boosted prices, catching out folks who don’t know they can just go to the source. For the large bags, prices will vary according to your server and the moment, but you’re likely looking at several hundred thousand platinum pieces. They’re not something a new player is going to be able to pick up any time soon, but you *might* get lucky and loot one.

The large bags can also be gained by trading in 150 Planar Shards from the Subterrane. That’s a level 16 wilderness zone, mind you, and requires purchase of the Vault of Twilight adventure pack.

The large ingredient bag is also the reward for 100 favor with The Twelve, but given that their lowest level adventure is level 15, and only one of those is free, that’s not immediately helpful. Your bags are bursting with potions, wands, ingredients, and  gear that you want to save “just in case”. What is the frugal adventurer to do?

Desperate Measures

Finally, there is one other option for storage, though it is rather more fiddley and metagamey. We are allowed to have multiple accounts, and it is also perfectly allowable for us to use them simultaneously. So it is that I have a second account where my good friends Potiony Pete, and Klaustein Cakewatcher look after my potion and winter festival cake supplies.

The winter festival cakes are a sore point with me. I feel that Christmas events ought to be on the generous side, and indeed, the event IS generous, in giving you multiple inventory tabs worth of different cakes and biscuits. But the cookie jar, that can be used to store them, has to be bought with Turbine Points. That offends my Christmas spirit slightly, so I feel no guilt at all in letting Klaustein Cakewatcher take up the strain.

 

There we go. I hope that was useful to someone. If you have any questions, or anything else you’d like me to go over, drop me a comment!

 

Update: I thought I’d make a little video to accompany this post. Lo, here it be:


 

In which I check in with the Ark!

So, in the last couple of months since I last posted, what have I been up to?

I’ve played through both Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2 on Insanity difficulty. I’d been nagged to try them by pretty much every gamer friend who ever heard I’d not played them, and I’m glad I finally buckled. I’ll definitely be grabbing Mass Effect 3 when it materialises.

I have a terrible habit of insisting I play any game on the hardest possible difficulty level. It’s a tendency that bleeds over into my MMO behaviour, as Maltheas and my stable of odd DDO characters amply demonstrate. Getting through the Mass Effect saga on insanity (which involved a little shenanigans in order to get ME1 to let me even play at that difficulty on my first playthrough) has reaffirmed to myself my gamer credentials. Whether I’d still be as good at a game that does not let you pause to have a little think is another matter entirely!

From hardcore to the supposedly casual, I spent a few weeks playing Wizard 101. I found the pet breeding system somewhat fascinating, but it involves quite incredible amounts of grinding, while the rather random results can leave you with very little to show for it. Gardening too was quite fun, but you have to log in far too often to keep your plants alive. Not, to be honest, the sort of obsessive behaviour I would want to encourage in children.

I’ve been playing DDO for the last few days. I still had a bunch of Turbine points left over from the 6000 European players got when we merged Codemaster accounts into our Turbine ones. So I picked up the Artificer class. Wow, that’s a powerful class, though that might be more to do with their ability to use repeating crossbows , which any other class could do quite easily with the expenditure of a feat, than the rest of the class features. Repeating crossbows are the machine guns of the DDO world, putting out incredible amounts of ranged damage. I might be inspired to do a proper post on the Artificer, as it’s really rather fun.

Toying with making some DDO videos. Especially now that, after applying a year or so ago, Youtube has finally added me to their partner scheme, and Brell knows I could use the money. Will have to see how my energy and enthusiasm keeps up, as I’ve been having a very strange time of it recently, health-wise, with parts of me attaining never-before seen might, and other parts choosing my moment of triumph to quite literally self-destruct.

Not sure what sort of DDO videos might be most of interest, so if you have any ideas I’d love to hear them.

Oh, and I’ve pre-ordered the EQ2 expansion, Age of Discovery. I’ve not been playing EQ2 much, and didn’t even get the steam up to do the new Nights of the Dead quest with Maltheas. Largely I’m still rather annoyed about the whole stat/item revamp shenanigans, which has made everything feel a bit blander than it used to. But there’s a lot of cool new features in Age of Discovery, and I’m not going to deny myself the chance to pootle about with them!

An Embarrassment of Riches.

MMO players have an embarrassment of riches this week. Of course Rift will be opening up early access on the 24th, but the latest EQ2 expansion, “Destiny of Velious”, launches today, with an 8 day extravaganza of events.

On top of that, DDO will be having it’s 5 year anniversary, with an all-new piratey event recycled from the original tutorial island. I’ll try to catch some of that, though I hope it’s more enjoyable than the Halloween event, which I pretty much hated, and I have heard it is similar to.

With all that going on, where do I find myself?

Everquest Tundra Jack And Iceberg 600x356

Zoltoon, meeting up with some old friends in Everfrost.

Aye indeed, I’m still playing Everquest on the Fippy Darkpaw progression server, and have decided, now that the free period is over, that I’ll subscribe for a month. I’m a little surprised myself, though not because I didn’t think it was a good game. I just thought that I’d be unable to look past the graphics and would be a little bored with retreading ground I had very thoroughly explored a long time ago, but after a couple of hours I really didn’t notice the graphics any more any more, and I’m getting real pleasure from visiting the people and places I remember. I’m not the only MMO blogger that has felt this, and Stargrace is covering her adventures in old Norrath quite thoroughly.

As you know, I’m not much of one for raiding, and I never really had the patience for lengthy camps either, so I don’t really recognise the caricature of EQ that is often presented. I always found plenty to do, and kept myself well equipped enough for my purposes without engaging in activities I didn’t find fun.

I have picked up Scars of Velious, even though I doubt there’ll be much in it that’ll make very much difference to Maltheas’ life in the mid-level. At his current rate, he’ll be ready for Velious adventuring quests some time in 2017. He should get to experience the crafting content rather sooner, and of course he’ll probably go exploring the new lands anyway. At the least I’ll need to take a few pictures to show you. I think I’ll try to do a daily post from EQ2 while the special event days are going on. Day 1 is going to involve Othmir, which always make me happy!

I haven’t picked Rift up yet, and I’m still a bit conflicted on it. To tell the truth, I’ve found a lot of the coverage toe-curlingly embarrassing. Often it is kind of like reading someone’s secret love poetry to the girl of their dreams. Also, like true love, people haven’t been reacting well to any criticism of the object of their affection, which sucks out a lot of the pleasure of writing about it. Still, it’s a new MMO, and I’d probably do well to be in at the start of it. On the other hand, I’m not made of money. Once they add the Paypal option I’ll probably grab it as I have some advertising money sitting in there that I can’t use to buy something useful like food without fiddling about with transferring it.

Right. I *think* the EQ2 servers are down for the big Velious update, so I think it’s time to try to get Zoltoon sorted with the Stein of Moggok! I don’t know where I’m going to find the time to do everything I want to this week, but I’ll give it my best shot.

DDO: Update 8 Test Patch Notes – The Siege of Stormreach

Keeping up the rapid updating that we’ve seen since Dungeons went Free To Play, Update 8 has just hit the Lamannia test server. Lets take a looksee!

New Adventure Pack: Siege of Stormreach

The continuing saga of the siege on Lordsmarch Palace in Stormreach continues as the plot expands to include the powerful green Hag, a primary leader from Droaam, the kingdom of monsters. Four adventures launching from the Lordsmarch plaza will send players to over, under and around Stormreach eventually leading to an ancient giants ruin where monstrous deeds are underway.

  • Defend against waves of attackers to help protect a city ward!
  • Go on a covert mission to stop a Droaam navy blockade!
  • Beat back a surprise attack beneath the city!
  • Infiltrate abandoned Giant ruins to confront the powerful and deadly leader of the Droaam invasion

This level 13 adventure pack includes 4 hand crafted adventures! Available to VIPs for preview on Lamannia! Visit the Lords March Plaza to begin your adventures!

As an Adventure Pack this is going to be bought with Turbine Points, unlike the three level 12 ones released as free content last month that lead into them. I enjoyed those (and the loot was pretty great too!), so I’m looking forward to continuing the defense against the Droaam horde. I hope there’s not too many Medusa in it though. I’m still stiff after the last one! Green Hags are pretty unpleasant though. At least it’s just the one hag, as when combined in a covey with an Annis Hag and a Night Hag, their power can be truly off the scale. I imagine this one will give us a run for our money though!

Continue reading DDO: Update 8 Test Patch Notes – The Siege of Stormreach

Ark’s Free-To-Play Acclimatisation Guide for European DDO Players

This is about a week and a half too late, but still.

Dungeons and Dragons Online in Europe never went F2P. When the Codemasters-run servers finally went dark in August, a process began to transfer the players there to Turbine’s DDO server, Ghallanda. After two months trapped alongside General Zod in the Phantom Zone, last week European adventurers finally began to emerge blinkingly into a world at once familiar, but mysteriously altered. A Stormreach where the Silver Flame, once so welcoming, would slam the doors of the Catacombs in the faces of those who had repeatedly saved it from the antics of Archbishop Dryden.

Had everybody been replaced with Pod People? Sadly not, though that would make a pretty great adventure. It was F2P. This article will attempt to help new arrivals to make sense of the new laws of nature with which they must contend.

DDO Armonica The Warforged Welcome Wagon 550x403

Armonica the Warforged and his Welcome Wagon

Everybody who has gone through the convoluted process of getting a transferral code from Codemasters, and using it with Turbine to set their characters on their journey will have received 5250 Turbine Points.

Folks who have received this will fall into one of three categories.

1. People who were current subscribers to Codemasters DDO.

2. People who were past subscribers to Codemasters DDO, but who stopped playing at some point. The move to the US F2P servers has reignited their interest for whatever reason.

3. People who were past subscribers to Codemasters DDO, but who have already moved to the US servers, perhaps when F2P first launched.

The third group, amongst whom I numbered, need little advice from the likes of me, and we can simply rejoice in our windfall of points. The first two groups, however, may be looking at the new system, and feeling a little lost or confused. I’m going to do my best to help!

First of all, lets take a look at the different sorts of DDO account. The rule of three applies once more!

1. VIPs, otherwise known as Subscribers. Similar to how things worked in Europe, with some exceptions. They have access to all adventure packs, and all classes and races apart from Drow and Favoured Souls, which you can either buy, or earn with favour.

2. Free to play. These are people who have never spent any money on DDO. In spite of having been given a bunch of points and subscribing in Europe, all new European arrivals start in this category.

3. Premium. Standing between the darkness and the light, these are people who have either let their subscription lapse, or ever bought points.

This table breaks things down:

VIP

Premium Free
Monthly Fee Yes No No
Turbine Points

500/month
Store Purchase
Favor Reward
Store Purchase
Favor Reward
Store Purchase
Favor Reward
Classes & Races Basic & Premium Free
Favor Unlocked per Server
Buyable for All Servers

Basic Free
Favor Unlocked per Server
Buyable for All Servers
Basic Free
Favor Unlocked per Server
Buyable for All Servers
Geography All Included Free Stormreach & Vicinity

Stormreach & Vicinity
Adventure Packs All Included Free Some Free
Can Purchase Others
Some Free
Can Purchase Others

Base Character Slots 10 4 2
Shared Bank Slot Included Free

Can Purchase Can Purchase
Login Queue Priority High Standard
Chat Unlimited Unlimited Limited
Auctions Unlimited

Unlimited Limited
Mail Unlimited Unlimited Limited

Gold Storage Unlimited Unlimited Limited Based on Level
Until Level 12
Buyback History

40 Items 10 Items 10 Items
Auto Log Off Time 60 minutes 20 minutes

10 minutes
Leveling Unrestricted Unrestricted Unrestricted
Customer Service Full
Self-Service Online

Full For 45 Days
Self-Service Online
Self-Service Online
Compendium Read
Create/Edit
Read
Create/Edit

Read
Official Forums Read
Post
Read
Post
Read
Limited Posting

Beta Priority High Normal Normal

If you were happy to subscribe in Europe, you may want to consider continuing to do that again here. That will give you access to all adventure packs, and many other perks.

One major flaw in how we have been transferred is that you will have lost anything you unlocked via favour, so you will not currently have access to Drow, Favoured Souls, 32-point builds, or Veteran characters. You can unlock them going forward, of course, but it’ll have to be with a character reaching the particular favour level for the first time. Even subscribers won’t have access to these.

If you don’t want to subscribe then I would strongly suggest getting yourself up to Premium level. You can do this by buying the smallest point pack, $6.50 for 420 points, or you could consider just subscribing for a single month if you prefer. Either will get you to Premium, which will make the Auction House and mail properly usable, and bring you up to 4 character slots.

So, what should you spend your points on?

Unless you subscribe you’re very likely to not have anywhere near enough character slots right now, meaning you can’t get at all your existing characters. You can buy more with points. 595 points will get you an additional character slot on each server.

Even once you have enough character slots for your entire menagerie, you will only be able to play those who belong to races and classes that you have access to.

DDO Purchasable Classes
Favoured Soul:895
Monk: 995

DDO Purchasable Races
Drow: 995
Warforged: 795
Half-Orc: 1295
Half-Elf: 1195
Half-Orc/Half-Elf bundle: 1995
Half-Orc/Half-Elf/32 point builds : 2995

One other perk that I consider a must-have is the shared bank. Not only does it make transferring potions and the like between your characters much simpler, many items bind to account rather than to character, and the shared bank is the only way to transfer them between your characters. The mail system won’t work for them. The 20 slot shared bank costs 1495 points. Subscribers get it automatically.

On To The Adventure!

Right, you should now have access to all your characters. I hope you have some points left.

One of the most jarring things about becoming a Premium or F2P player is that an awful lot of the adventures that you will be used to having around will no longer be available to you. Don’t worry, there is actually a fairly generous selection of adventures which are totally free, and you can see a list of those here.

Even so, you are going to find launch-day staples such as Shan-To-Kor and the Catacombs are going to rudely refuse you access until you buy them. I consider the two I just mentioned to be must-haves, and they’re pretty cheap at 250 points each, but which adventure packs you want to prioritise will depend on your level and personal tastes.

The prices I’ve given above are the unmodified prices. However, there are almost always special deals going on with 20% discounts on a selection of adventures, and sometimes more on special occasions. In the shop you can access via the Turbine button in-game, you’ll see a “Today’s Deals” tab. I would suggest only buying the adventure packs that you absolutely need right now, and keep your eyes open on the deals for anything you think you’ll want in the future.

Biding your time has another benefit. As you play you will be acquiring additional Turbine points. Over time you’ll likely gain enough points for another adventure pack or two. I explained exactly how this works in my guide on how to play DDO for free. If you don’t want to, you need never spend another coin to play, and still have a great time.

Finally, I’d just like to welcome you all. I think F2P has, surprisingly, been very good for DDO. New content is coming out at least twice as fast as it used to. They even just added three new completely free adventures. I hope you have as much fun here as I do!

If you have any questions or aspects of the change you’d like me to add to this, please let me know in the comment section!

DDO European transfers have begun!

It has been rather a wait, as I noted in a previous post, but for the last week, anyone who ever had a Codemasters DDO account has been able to log into that account system to get a Transition Key. The full FAQ for the transfer process is here.

DDO European Transfer Window 550x347

A little while ago, around 8 pm GMT, the transfer utility went live at http://transfer.ddo.com/. We can now enter our Transition Key and apply for our characters to be transferred to Ghallanda, a US DDO server. Unfortunately, for many users, including myself, it is coming up with a Soap Exception when we try to use it, and changing browser is not helping. It may just be a result of a great rush of people overwhelming the site. I’ll update this post when we know more!

Update, 10:07 pm GMT: This is just in from Tolero on the forum:

We’re still investigating what is causing the “Soap Error ()” message. Will bring more info as soon as it is available, the tech team is on the case!

Update: 10:34 pm GMT:

Turbine Maintenance Screen 550x416

It appears that we have broken Turbine.

Update, Midnight GMT: The server has come back up, but is still giving the SOAP error. It’s a shame that the transition tool was launched so late in the European day. I suspect most folks have given up for the day and gone to bed. Having waited for two months to get access to their characters again, this is really the last thing anybody wanted.

Update, 5 pm GMT, 2nd of November: The transfer tool is still down, and frustration is growing. I don’t really understand how this can happen. Europeans have had their characters trapped in the Phantom zone since August 19th. There has been ample time to make sure that the tool worked properly.

Update, 6:47 pm GMT: Success! The transfer tool has finally let me through. It’ll take a while for the characters to start turning up, but you get the 5250 Turbine points immediately. Spend them wisely.

DDO European Transfer Success

Victory is ours!!!