That Damn Role Player

Because of my tendency to avoid random l33t sp33king PUGs and my preference to group with folks that actually try to play their character, I haven’t done many instances until recently. So last night was my first adventure into Shattered Halls.

 The evening started out fairly normal. “So what are we going to do tonight?” “I don’t know. What do you want to do?” “I don’t know. I asked you.” The only downfall of our little band of adventurers. Nobody wants to make a decision.

Finally we decided to ask Hugnir what quests he had in instances. He gets to instance less than I do and its more fun to drag friends into instances and have them wipe spectacularly than it is strangers. Hugnir happened to have two quests in Shattered Halls. Hooray! Lets go!

So Kanammer, our furry but loveable dwarf warrior, Hugnir, our grey-bearded dwarf paladin, Springrose, our cheerful yet oh-so-slinky nelf hunter, and I, the friendly neighborhood squid priestess, set out to find a fifth to venture into Shattered Halls. After quite a bit of searching and a few moments of despair we picked up Springrose’s friend, Sekryt, yet another oh-so-slinky nelf rogue.

 We form up at the entry, introductions are made (IC of course!) and we step into Shattered Halls.

Now it was at this point that we realized not a single one of us had ever been to Shattered Halls before. /gasp! So what did we do? What we always do when faced with a new location that nobody knows anything about; we charged in oblivious to our own impending doom! Let not your sense of adventure be quelled by such trivial matters!

The first couple pulls were a bit rough as we learned how to work together. That is to be expected. Some dwarven cursing echoed through the halls, the priest was left squished on the floor (don’t worry, I’m naturally squishy), and Springrose and Sekryt worked their DPS magic. We made it through the first couple fights, learned a few things, then went on.

Now as this night continued, we realized the groups that started out as 3-5 mobs each, depending on how you pulled them, increased to 5-6 mobs each, no choice. There was much character grumbling. Orcs have NO RIGHT to be that tightly packed together. However at a slow and steady pace our stalwart party made it to a door!

OOooo! Um… its locked. Anyone have a key? Oh! Sekryt can pick it! Is that what we’re supposed to do? /shrug Let’s pick it anyway! I wanna see whats on the other side! And lo and behold, what do we find? Netherkurse!

Here I must admit, the flavor text and voice-overs for this instance are some of the funniest I have yet encountered. While my gentle and beloved Nauloera was horrified at his blatant disregard of their lives as we cut them down one at a time, I was laughing tremendously!

So we whup on Netherkurse and grumble over the druid idol he dropped and move along our merry way. More groups, more *squish* (I must have specced in squish) and the next boss. A two headed ogre! (I should really look names up. I’m terrible at remembering them. But I’m sure all the other folks that have run Shattered Halls over and over and over know his name well.)

Once again, we charge into battle with very little idea as to what we’re doing! And amazingly, we beat him. It was cool. It was fun! But poor Sekryt was getting pretty tired by this point. We talked about calling it a night but were so close to the final boss we decided to press on.

After wading through the assassins (I’m glad they are fairly smooshy kills) we get to the final boss. Kargath! So I pull out the Dungeon Companion II and read a bit about him….. hm…. isn’t this thing supposed to be useful? I do understand keep the group spread out. That much we got. But the rest was gibberish to me. Sorta like talking to a gnome on speed. But not to be deterred we charged in!

After we wiped on him at 50% we decided to give it one more shot before bed. So we get back, buff up, etc etc, then charge in again! 21% this time but we were just too tuckered out to try for a third. And Hugnir busted his mace. Ouch.

So we collected our smushed little corpses, shared around fond farewells and promises to find each other another time, repaired our armor and trundled off to logout land.

Now if you’ve made it this far in this post you’re probably saying, “So what’s her point?”

I do, indeed, have one!

We did this entire run IC. For those not familiar with the acronym, that means In-Character. We took a group of five players that barely knew each other and didn’t know the instance at all, got further than we really should have been able to, and did it all IC.

We came out having learned, accomplished, and even made a new friend! (It was totally great to group with you Sekryt! Lets do it again!) And it was all done IC.

Nobody whined about repair bills, nobody fussed about lewtz, no drama. Just a group of role players gone to an instance to have fun in the way they enjoy. It is possible. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.

Afterthought: For great grouping look for:

 Springrose (Completely awesome and wonderfully nice Nelf huter)

 Hugnir (One of my very best friends and the most incredible healy paladin I’ve ever grouped with)

 Sekryt (A fantastic rogue that knows her stuff and controls her aggro amazingly well!)

 Kanammer (The awesome dwarf warrior that actually remembers to Sunder and use his Shouts (don’t giggle. I’ve grouped with some that don’t!))

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 29th, 2008 at 9:18 am and is filed under Instances.You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.