December Run

Pain burned a deep red around the periphery of her vision. Bleeding furrows of torn flesh seeped and gushed blood. The throbbing deep in her chest thrummed with inevitable demise. The Myrmidon raised its heavy claw high for the killing blow as a red ring of magical energy appeared around the Defender. The creature swung down hard on its crippled foe anticipating victory, only the air was touched. The healing magic had closed the wounds and renewed her abilities. A second ring of blue restored the magical store of vigor and the battle was joined again. Surprise at the renewed flurry of blows registered in the beast's brain; though the Burun stands upright like Derethians they lack the subtleties of contemplation. Still this puny sword wielding human before him couldn't hope to survive this struggle. Each clawed strike was met with a slash. Each pummel was met with a thrust. When the Myrmidon appeared to gain the upper hand another halo of magic healed the human defender. Now the pain burned deep upon the Burun. It had no such circle of magic. The length of the battle left it vulnerable and the warrior took full advantage a quick slash tore the remaining life from the Myrmidon's body and sent it to its knees, with a final confused look at its former puny prey turned victor it fell to her feet as if in homage. This brutish beast that had caused the demise of so many of the defenders people would claim no more. In the harsh world of Dereth another small step towards reclaiming the land has transpired.

I was well poised to reach level 31, at the fellowship slaughter location. My secondary goal is to finish un-training the Missile Grandmaster skill. With the skill points from that I will be able to train Paragon in Melee, something that I sorely need to dodge attacks. Overall I'm very happy with my Human Melee Defender skills. Using Inspiration (Vigor heal) and Bring Peace (Health heal) I have been able to battle higher level creatures then my missile life would have allowed. The method is fairly straightforward; I run into the fray and attack with the basic attack, when the creature starts hitting back (and these creatures hit hard) I use Bring Peace followed by a Inspiration staving off that lifestone trip until someone else gets its attention. The only downside to this method is that I can heal for 240 points and I get hit for 300.

I headed to Omnishan and to Unaro's burial mound and talked to the Spirit of Hakemi. The spirit spoke its abhorrence of the Burun and how their filth had despoiled the burial mound of Unaro. I can only assume that Unaro is a Tumerok of some high order. With my quest in hand I set out to kill various Niffis and drain their Ichor. With sword in hand I set out to slay a Opor Niffis, Glissna Niffis and a Listris Niffis as required. As luck would have it I ran into a Listris! My vorpal blade went sniker snack! And I dispatched the foul beast fully expecting to hear the great-unseen voice tell me the quest was advanced. No voice issued forth, "hmmm", I pondered to myself. I checked my quest panel and found I still needed to kill a Listris. So I launched into a Glissna, I was rewarded by the voice but no ichor. Another Listris floated towards me and it also fell to my sword, again no advancement. Well, I guess Unaro's remains will have to stay spoiled until the quest is fixed.

I headed to a nearby vault. I was soon tearing through Scalavi two at a time trying to find the elusive glyph. After about 30 minutes of this I started to suspect that whatever fates guard quests had it in for me tonite.

Its event day! First thing I noticed was the opening movie. It spoke of the three primary races coming together and starting to rebuild the world. It spoke of the drudges and how they noticed our incursion of 'their' land. Further there are keys to treasures and boss monsters begging to be killed to launch further quests! Well, I noted the chat interface was much improved by a larger font and better colors. I haven't touched on the chat windows because I knew a fix was coming. The only downside to the improvements was the fact you couldn't use the settings to put the chat windows back to pre-fix conditions. So if you didn't mind the tiny font or actually preferred it, you could keep things as they used to be

Seeing as how no one is at the battlefield (Shadowstone). I decided to head out for Omnishan to see if they fixed the Unaro's burial ground cleansing quest. It turns out the quest wasn't broken last night, it was working fine, you see I had mistaken the Listris Nefane for the Listris Niffis. I was so busy keying on Listris, I missed that it was a different critter! So I started searching for the elusive Listris Nefane, er, sorry Niffis, I was looking for the Niffis NOT the Nefane! I was told to head to Rakani, this is a huge tree house town sitting on a confusing set of waterfalls and rivers. To the east I spot a huge tree. I mean massively humongo. As I make a run around its trunk I note a shrine high in the tippy, tippy top. I learn this is the Great Deru Tree. I scale the heights, actually starting to get a sensation of acrophobia, and make it to the shrine. There I am informed that this tree has parts all over the place and they are dying without its essence, I am further quested to bring its essence to these parts. Suddenly a conversation I overheard comes back to me. This is the quest that allows you to run faster for 24 hours. Excellent! This quest will aid my finding the Listris... um... Listris Niffis... yeah that's it.

Well the quest is to just run to three shrines and essence them. I'm not actually carrying anything that says essence; it's more like I'm imbued with this essence. The run is a little dangerous but not overly so. I hit the portal loop and locate a shrine on the map and run to it. Some Shreth's and Spawns posed little problem as I found the Shrine of the Root and imbued it, somehow. A portal recall and some dodge running later I found the Shrine of the Limb. Along the way I saw and killed the Listris Niffis and looted its Icor. I still needed the Opor Niffis Icor. I thought I had that earlier. I probably forgot to loot it. Well I had to go around the portal loop again but soon I imbued the final Shrine of the Leaf and was ready to head back to the Great Deru Tree Shrine for my speedy reward! So I make it back, head up the tree, I get my XP and a seed looking Deruwood talisman. When I look it over it says nothing about running faster. It says it will speed up my vigor recovery. Well that's a good thing. I can loose my Opal boots and get something with a higher armor level. My armor is currently hanging around 85.

So now I head North and find the Opor Niffis and the Icor. I take the nearest portal back to the Burial ground. I turn in the Icor's and I'm told I need to get a final Icor from an Opor Nefane. You know, if this wasn't for good ol' Unaro... So I back to town and head back to a place that I recall has Ophor Nefanes. It takes a bit of killing to find Icor. So now I'm back and ready to hand in the Icor to the Spirit of Hakemi when something occurs to me. The reward for this in XP is 50k, which happens to be very close to the price of un-training one of my now usless skills. I have about 1000xp left to un-train missile mastery. So I head into the wilds to rack up another 1000xp. For someone used to hunting the battlefield in Linvak solo hunting around Unaro's burial pile is less then stellar XP. However with some perseverance I overcome and headed back to the Spirit of Hakemi. The effect was actually very cool this spirit mound is a glowing mist with balls of mist orbiting around it. The entire pile is a sickly greenish blackish mess and the glow follows suit. When I turned in the Icor it went through a purge of some sort and became a pleasant light green tinged with a golden light. So I was well pleased.

I learned that I the Broken Totem quest is the one that makes you speedy. I headed to Ikeras to do the Totem quest. Sitting on a stump near the water is The Totem of Vakentu. (Its looks like a knight from a chessboard). Without incident I made it to the Darkenfowl Pens and proceeded to the depths. There was a group in front of me I simply ran most of the way jumping over the already killed bodies or dragging some of the fireball throwing Mimbus. They have a dancing attack mode that I find really entertaining. I spotted the group that cleared the path on a level or two below me. So I continued downward. I reached a stairway and past that a room that was filled with the monsters. At the end of the room was a pit. I took the hits and ran for it jumping down three times before the game stopped rubber banding me back up. I figured this must be the place and I just missed the other group leaving. All that was in this pit was a portal back up top. I surmise I must have missed the group taking a portal out and that the emerald was someplace above me.

Well I started down again, this time with no one clearing the path. With my sword and shield (Oh btw I got my Armor level up to 91 now) I was able to take down the various Mimbus that bared my way. When I got down to the stairway again I backtracked to where I thought that group was. Sure enough after slaying two Kachem Mimbus the Emerald was lying discarded upon the ground. I noticed that my speed was down to a crawl. It was a byproduct of this gem. No way I could fight now. I figured I would just portal recall back to the ring. Nope, I was in the dungeon lobby again. This was a tie able portal. With my Lifestone in Linvak and no way to hobble all the way back to a portal out, I figured out a plan; I LS recalled to Linvak and asked for any portal to Omnishan. The questing fates that so mocked me yesterday graciously allowed my luck to shine through. Someone had a portal to Zu, one portal away from my destination. I turned in the Emerald and received my reward. Which was a fairly respectable running speed.

Next on my list of things to do is the Naderu vault. I hit Mayoi and I hear a group was forming for the Tou tou vault. Not being one to pass up an opportunity I ask when they are going and what creature drops the glyph. The Kiree Buruns hang out in single spawns around the vault area. The glyph drop rate is slow I went through about 20 Kiree before I found my glyph. The party leader arrived soon and we went inside. This vault is a jumping vault. There are suspended platforms that you need to carefully traverse before you get to the walkway. Missing a jump means death. And taking the "outer tower" portal just puts you back at the start. We got the key went in and killed the boss without much trouble. The experience points put me to level 32.