I have a bad feeling about that floor

After last week’s mass dragon death in Gianthold Tor, we were back in the Cornfields of Catastrophe Greenhouse of Gore Tidepools of Terror Orchard of the Macabre. These civic leaders really need to work on coming up with better names for their neighborhoods or nobody’s gonna want to move there.

The module failed to impress last time we went and this time was no different. We had our choice of beholders or vampires. Spode really wanted to get his vorpal freak on with vampires because, the problem with beholders is you can’t really cut off their heads! But after dispatching some nameds in the Orchard, it was at Doomsphere’s doors we found ourselves.

I think I remember the instance clearly. We go in, kill trash, fall through a floor, split the party to kill two guys at the same time, fall through a floor, find the boss, fall through a floor several times each time fighting a more difficult version of the boss and waves of trash.

The beholder, Doomsphere, eventually started walloping people with anti-magic rays. We wiped three times. Each wipe meant all but one of us had to release, heal, then fight back to the instance. The second time I didn’t even get a chance to get rezzed before the party wiped again.

No loot to speak of, experience was crappy, no traps, monsters for the entire module are thick with incorporeal spooky types, only got three kills in the entire instance (really??? how is that possible?). I spent most of the night dead. I should have brought a book.

I’ll be glad when we’re done with this module. Ruins of Gianthold and Harbinger of Madness were way more fun.

I dinged a rank, I’m on the last rank before level 16. Ulan dinged sometime during the week, so I’m the last one… I should probably buy some hirelings and farm some xp this week.

Admiral T'pral's crew

I noticed today I’d gotten my monthly allotment of C Store points in Star Trek Online (I get some each month for being a subscriber). There wasn’t anything I particularly wanted to _buy_… I have all the ships I need. Maybe some of the uniform options.

There are _lots_. Most of the time, you’re the only one who sees your bridge officers. How they’re dressed has no effect on the game. But it’s _fun_. I broke down and bought the Bajoran militia uniforms that Odo and Major Kira wore on Star Trek: Deep Space 9.

Then I decided I really needed a changeling on my crew. I brought my Romulan bridge officer kicking and screaming to the tailor, lightened his skin, shaved off a lot of sharp edges, partially melted him, and I had me my changeling.

All the males on my crew got Odo’s uniform. All the females got Kira’s, but in Starfleet section colors. You can see all my bridge officers above. Not all of them are thrilled with their new look. I guess they liked the regulation thigh-high boots of the old uniform.

T'pral's Fleet

Not much of an admiral without a fleet; after collecting all the bridge crew together, I thought I should do the same for her ships. My science admiral has an entirely different fleet, and my Klingon yet another. This is T’pral’s. Mostly escorts. I scaled them to the relative sizes of the ships according to the Memory Alpha wiki. The Akira came out larger than I expected.

So; pictures.

Most MMOs, if they allow it at all, make changing your avatar’s appearance a time consuming and possibly expensive task. In Star Trek Online, a trip to in-game tailors on any space station allow you to change everything from your uniform, to your hairstyle, to the smallest detail of your appearance. You can store up to five appearances at once which you can swap with a keystroke at will.

No other MMO offers that.

In my Vulcan engineer’s long career in Starfleet, the years and the burdens of command have taken her from the fresh enthusiasm of a newly minted ensign to the grizzled veteran of years of campaigns against the Breen, the Borg, the Devidians, the Romulans, the Klingons and all the other myriad enemies of the Federation.

Thanks to the tailor system, not only has her appearance changed — making her more distinguished with age and authority — but all her previous appearances are saved to my local hard drive. I can load them up at any tailor.

If your characters are more than just manikins on which to drape raid gear with increasingly bizarre shoulderpads, you might like what you can do with them in Star Trek Online.

Bonus feature: You can do the same with every member of your bridge crew and away teams as well. Want to make your crew change from the young crew of the original Star Trek series to the aged geriatric crew of Star Trek V?

That can happen.

(By the way, I designed the uniforms T’pral is wearing).

Go ask Alice, when the white dragons fall

None of us was happy about the way we left Gianthold Tor; expert at getting through the dungeon and killing the Gatekeeper, unable to kill the three dragons at the end. We’d all gained a level since we left the Tor, though, and the Harbingers of Madness gear was a literal game changer for most of us.

The rewards for grinding Gianthold Tor for rare dragon scales are not that great, given the effort involved. I estimate it would take killing a dragon thirty times in order to get enough scales to make a piece of armor. We were never going to spend half a year farming this instance.

But the dragons had to die. Last night we returned to Gianthold Tor and we killed the dragons.

The Death of the Black Dragon

All the dragons have a giant protector, and both dragon and giant have to die within seconds of each other. For this, we split the group. Spode tanked the dragon, Ulan the giant, and Gleek and I would switch from one to the other to keep their health balanced as we took them down.

We’d all acquired special cold resist gear when we were here before. We suited up, potioned up and buffed up, went in, and died pretty fast. Came back, changed our positioning a little — dead dragon. Between the four of us, no dragon scales.

Next up: the blue dragon, whose power was lightning. Since this was said to be the easiest of the three dragons, we’d tried this one a few times before. The room gradually becomes more electrified as the fight drags on. If you can’t kill everything in two minutes, the room itself will kill you.

Again, first time failure. Second time we kept the clerics near to the wall, outside the worst of the electricity, and won. One blue dragon scale between the four of us.

Gleek challenged us to kill the black dragon in his room full of acid pools the first time. This trick requires keeping the clerics and everyone else on one of the islands floating in the acid pools. And we did it — first try. Two black dragon scales among the four of us.

Three dragon scales out of twelve chances = 25% chance at a scale. If I’d need 20 black dragon scales for some decent light armor, I could expect to kill the dragon 80 times (on normal mode). I’d get some scales from other people in the group in trade for the ones I wouldn’t need, of course, but that’s still going to be a significant number of kills required.

We’re happy we killed the dragons, but I don’t think any of us see any reason to go back.