Re: Tournament: The Randomly Challenged II
Story
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Danny noticed the tall handsome, swathy man next to the huge fire immediately after he entered the camp. Warriv, the man said his name was. Fine name for a fine fellow. Danny figured he could do some male bonding with him, given all the feisty *****es here. Particularly that menacing one shootng dark glares at him from the other side of the campfire. Yeah, danny didn't really want a piece of that! He quickly figured out that the male/female ratio in the camp was waaaaay off, so he decided to seek some peace and quiet in the moor outside.
As it turned out, there were boatloads of creatures and undead aronud who objected to Danny's definition of peace and quiet, so Danny was forced to do a bit of light exercise first. Soon, all sorts of creatures were dead, including a number of creatures that had been dead to begin with, which really confused Danny the simple barbarian, so he let that subject matter rest. in peace.
With three experience shrines in the blood moor, Danny figured he could gain some levels in the cold plains. And he could, but he soon found that his puny little hand axe was a bit outmatched against a trident wielding might enchanted Dark Rogue. Therefore, once he finally managed to kill the *****, he decided to shop for his favorite type of weapon... Blunt and crushing, a perfect match to his personality.
A Vicious sceptre of slaying was found, and equipped, and the rest of the cold plains pretty much ceased to be anything of a problem after that. He found one more XP shrine, which was saved for the cave.
First, someone, namely a feisty blonde woman in the camp, had told him of a cemetary closeby with more of those living dead in there. Sounded like a good place to use that sceptre of slaying, so he went in, and pretty much romped through the entire burial ground, including a poisonarrow toting Bloodraven. In the crypt Bonebreaker was kind enough to drop an ethereal deadly large axe of the leech, which is now the offweapon switch.
That left the cave. Near the entrance Danny found both a hungrydead champion and hero pack, and once he had killed the lot, he was very close to lvl 12. Of course, the next mob he found was Cold crow. So he simply dashed past her and her minions, and continued to lay waste to the other cave denizens. In the second lvl, a stoneskinned archer hero was problematic, but with a bit of running around, Danny managed to split that pack up as well, and soon all were bludgeoned to death. Now he had reached lvl 12, and a gambling spree followed, netting him boots with 13% MF and gloves with 7%. Better then nothing he thought, particularly since no topazz had dropped yet, so he fought Coldcrow and her minions one at a time. Not a very hard fight with a bit of splitting up of the pack, and soon he could admire the crappy drop. After that bit of misery, Danny decided to return to the camp and indulge in some male bonding with that ebony dude at the fire.
Stats and skills
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Not much to say here. My first level was very good, with 4 vitality and 1 dex point, but other then that, most of my stat points have landed in dex, and basically tied in second place are strength and energy, with vit trailing slightly behind.
Skills are terrible. I can proudly say that I managed to land all of my skillpoints so far in 1 tree, namely passives. Given that I am just now lvl 12, you just know I only have masteries with skillpoints. And the ONE mastery that could be useful for a barb with crappy skillpoint deployment, namely throwing mastery for some ranged action, is the ONLY mastery I missed with skill point assignment. Ain't that swell?
The numbers:
Str 46, Dx 39, Vit 34, En 21
Skills:
Sword mastery - 5
Axe mastery - 1
Mace mastery - 2
Spear mastery - 2
Polearm mastery - 2
Equipment: Nothing fancy yet. Shopped a 3os ringmail already, and I am using a rarebuckler corpsefire dropped with some +life and attack takes dam + 15 FBR/ 10 ICoB
The rings both give me goldfind, and my cap some energy (as if I need it with no skills to deploy
) That was just the first rare headgear that dropped.
I found a lot of yellows, but none really useful, allthough I have a rare javelin in my stash with some posion/cold damage on it.
As mentioned, no topazzes yet, allthough I did find a number of rubies/and diamonds and at least one of the other gem types.
Thoughts
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Barbarians possibly have the most difficult journey ahead of all classes, because of the way this tournament assigns skills and the way the skilltrees have been developed. I figured from the getgo I'd have to start assigning skills from the start, hoping to break open the combat tree as soon as possible. I doubt it's going to happen, every 6th lvl the chances are decreasing
See, at lvl 1, there are 6 skills to select from, and at lvl 6, the number of available skills in the passive tree increases to 6. That is a very significant number, as attested by my current skill point assignment
I hope I get a good ruby flow going, and that my dex keeps up, so that I can perhaps become some sort of tank for my lightning merc, if I make it to there...
)