Come on in, the water’s fine. My dirty little secret is that I’ve always wanted to try Permadeath. Staring down the barrel of an Elite Bravery Bonus, tackling quests at or above level, with only found gear, gumption, and your group always seemed like it would be a blast…and it is!
Earlier last week I saw a thread on the forums that was promoting a new Permadeath guild on Wayfinder, but this one had a twist. Each PD guild/playstyle has its own variations on the theme, and this one at its core is roll build. No matter how much I love theorycrafting and building characters, the promise of not having to think too much about the process, leaving it up to fate, sounded divine. To be able to simply roll and go was so tempting that I headed over to Wayfinder and did just that.
The good news is that you don’t have to multi-class (and being my first character in this style), I opted to go pure. Not the most risky path, but I promise my next one will be a 3-class build. After my rolls, I ended up with a Male, Dwarven Cleric, Lawful Good…incredibly straightforward, and fortunate. Not having played too many Clerics (and none in groups), I did some quick research and decided on a Healing/Casting split, so points went into WIS (max), CON (this is PD), and CHA (figured I’d try some Turn Undead), while rounding out INT and STR…DEX was dumped. I picked a signature look and Thanatopsis woke-up on the shores of Korthos.
Being that I had never created a character on Wayfinder, I forgot just how many goodies new characters get from the expansion packs. After adding all my companions to the stable, choosing which ones got which color collars, tiny top hats, and such, I swigged a Sovereign XP potion (another freebie) and ate a Learning Tome (freebie). Oh, and there was a the gold/silver dice rolls as well. I even rolled a 98 on the silver (+1 Open Lock Tome…meh). After finally getting Jeets to shut-up, I set out to break all the things. A few minutes later I was in Korthos Village and level 2…it was tidy lasses and pints up the wazoo! A quick row over to the Harbor to send a message for a guild invite (why can’t we have a mailbox on Korthos), and I was ready for some nail biting PD action.
The next morning I got up early (official play times are 8:30-10:30am, EST, Saturday and Sunday), made some coffee and steeled myself for running on the edge of life and death…at least for a few hours. After logging-in I was stoked to see so many folks on, and a very active guild chat. There was already one full group running, so I hooked-up with another guildie (Rogue) and we duoed Storehouse and Heyton’s. Each one went swimmingly, taking it a tad slower, but still moving through at a good clip. The highlight for Thanatopsis was Turning the two skeletons just inside the door to the final room in Heyton’s, blocking the boss Sahuagin Necromancer from reaching us, while my partner picked her off with a bow.
With new members logging-on and others dying and re-rolling, there was soon enough for another full group. We ran those first three quests (Cannith Crystal included) with everyone, so that we could move onto Collaborator together, and then out to Korthos Island. At this point, Thanatopsis was level 3 and we were moving pretty fast. A few members dropped and few more were added, and we ran Stopping the Sahuagin, Redemption, Necromancer’s Doom, and Sacrifices. Thanatopsis bit the dust twice (both thanks to Mimic Slobber), but thankfully the guild’s core rules state that you don’t have to delete your character unless there is a full party wipe or no shrines available. Luckily he was able to take a backpack ride to the nearest shrine both times, thanks to the best advice of, “Maybe we should open the shrine doors first…”
After completing all of the flagging quests on the island, most folks decided to call it and logged-off. I stayed on with another guildie to run Sacrifices a few more times for a couple of Anger’s Step clickies. I too, was getting ready to log-off when I figured I’d join the other (higher level) group, since there was one spot left. All of them were at least level 5, so I was a couple of levels behind at level 3, but figured I could throw some heals and clean-up some trash with my fully Maximized/Empowered Nimbus SLA. They were in the middle of running Cloven-jaw Scourge Blockade, so I made haste over to the Harbor and into the Marketplace, chatted briefly with Wayfinder Dael, and entered the Steam Tunnels. By the time I hooked-up with my new group, they were just about to drop down through the giant mushrooms, to the final battle.
On completion, I had enough XP to level to 4, so I recalled out and headed over to Cleric trainer extraordinaire, Davin Weld. After leveling and spending some AP’s, I ran back through the Steam Tunnels to meet-up with my group, who were just beginning the next quest in the chain. So there Thanatopsis was, level 4 and running a level 6 (on Elite) dungeon in a Permadeath guild…good times. I was pretty proud of being able to keep-up with most of the healing, since I’ve never played a healer in a group setting. I was also able to reliably land Soundbursts for some CC stuns. The only hairy situation occurred when the group was shrining before the last battle, and the Druids’ wolves ran ahead and started to attack the Hobgoblins around the corner from the shrine. Since I was going to wait to shrine until we cleared our way to the final room, I was waiting outside when one of the Hobgoblins aggro’d on me for some reason. Soon, the whole lot of them were on me, and the group was still shrining safely behind the door. Luckily I was able to stay alive through some frantic healing and jumping around until the group came back out, and I was able to run into the shrine room. We finished easily, and after almost 4 hours of playing, most of us logged-off for the day.
That was a whole lot of fun, and good times were had by all, it seemed. I wasn’t able to play on Sunday, due to a belated Birthday Brunch with the family, but I will probably log-on and head back to Korthos to run Misery’s Peak sometime this week. I am already looking forward to what PD adventures this weekend will bring. As we are encouraged to have a few characters at different levels, I will roll another (multi-class as promised) level 1 character, along with a Veteran Status level 7, and an Iconic.
Cheers!
