Sat Nov 24 00:50:00 2012

At 1 o'clock AM, Day of Thunder, 31st of the Month of the Heat
on the Theran calendar Drekvah perished, never to return.

After a day off I feel like I can muster up some ramblings for a goodbye. Drekvah was awesome and one of my best characters yet, if not the best in a lot of ways. I originally rolled up after Zynzyn failed his lich quest. I had the necro itch again that I get every 2 or 3 characters and I had a good understanding of the new vale maze, which by the way, is extremely difficult to figure out the mechanics of at first.
Good job whoever wrote that, hard but not too hard. Anyways, Drekvah sort of slid into a role that was almost pre destined to succeed, sort of like Tavlin. A necromancer was being sought out by the powers above and I knew I could step up to the plate. Hence, Drekvah was born.

Early life was a pain in the ass. I wanted a challenge and interesting RP opportunities so I went drow. I never regretted it. Scion would be the obvious choice for me, I like to be off doing my own thing a lot and the powers were great for keeping assassins and thieves off of my back, and the extra hp made drow bearable. I hung out a little bit in the mid ranks, but I wanted to lich so bad I didn't enjoy it much. I think I liched around 200 hours, and it was like a whole new character from there.

Now I'm not terrible, but I'm not great at PK either. When it comes to killing, I'm middle of the pack at best, and I am a terrible chaser. Surviving though is another story, I know how to keep myself alive. When I first liched, I strayed from pk for the most part. I needed to get heroed, and start figuring out what does what. Everyone and their mom wanted to mow me down, and until I had a good understanding of my strengths and weaknesses and how it played, I played it really safe. Towards the end of my life, I was attacking everything that breathed near me. Took quite a while to get my confidence up, but I finally found my groove in the end there. At a con a death, I wasn't going to get in a fight I didn't have a pretty good chance of winning. There were some close calls, but luck was on my side.

Being on top is fun, but staying on top is painfully boring and a lot of work. I tried to carry at least 5 black rods, 3 auras, a couple despoils and whatever other odds and ends I would have around. I didn't get comfortable fighting without ABS and zombies until the last month or two. It was a lot of running the same route, getting preps, zombies, despoils, gold, raiding for items, repeating. The interaction with all the other people here and there is what kept it interesting and enjoyable for me. Some of you were really bitter, and would send just disappointing or inappropriate tells. I tried to RP with most if not all of my foes at least a couple times, unless they made it clear they wanted no part of it. A few sour grapes aside though, most of you guys were awesome. Being a lich and having people interested in interacting with me, I got to be witness to some really awesome RP and
roles that I was happy to have been a part of.

Phylacteries make the girls go whoo whoo! Seriously though, they were pretty cool. There are a lot of them and they can do a lot of different things, but most of them are not game changing. They don't last long, they're extremely situational, and you have to kill people yourself to get the most bang for your buck out of them. You want an honest vets opinion? Unless you are killing boatloads and boatloads of people and never, ever dying, Liches aren't really much greater than mummies. With my mediocre pk skill, I think a mummy would suit me just fine if I get the urge to play another undead. Phylacteries are not what made Drekvah powerful, or hard to kill. Not even a little bit. I can count maybe 5, 6 pks where they either saved my life, or won me a fight I would have lost. What made Drekvah nasty was a very particular selected suit of armor, and careful zombie selection and gathering. Phylacs were cool but most of the time I didn't have a use for the situation as it came up. Heard a lot of rumors about my phylacs too...that I had over a hundred, or I was sitting on a ton. Sorry guys, but when I age died I think I had 30, and that was the most I ever had. Most of the time I had 5-6 phylacteries on me, no more. I burned them as I got them because they were too fun not too, or I was learning what they did.

As far as my age death. Was it surprising? Absolutely. Shocking. Was I upset? Sure, at first I was upset that the lich project had come to a screaming halt, because I wanted to be foolish and test stuff in a place where the risk is greater than anywhere else in the mud. Am I mad or do I hold ill will? No way man. It's a video game, and one that I enjoy and love. Exploring isn't safe, thats why it is called exploring. I had plans for Drekvah, big plans. I really really wish I could have played them out. But I suppose plans will have to wait till the next. I'm going to take a break from exploring and play a "don't care if I die a million times in a day" pk character. Drekvah being dead sucks, but stresswise its like a backpack of rocks has been taken off.

To the scions....Naris, Zam, Haph, Morg, Iti, Zhen, Falk....I hope I lived up to the hype and you enjoyed it...I sure did. Grateful for all your help, it was awesome.

To my enemies....Thanks for the fights, smiles, laughs, rage fits, insults, and respect. Drekvah was interesting because of the people around him, friend and foe.

Special thanks to Scarab for giving me the shot to lich, and making all the interactions with all the EEC and other quest mobs so enjoyable.

To the imms.....Sigh. I bet some of you are sitting there jaw open, shaking your head, thinking "What a damn fool". Well...exploring finally bit my ass, and I probably will be a little more careful in the future. I guess I do what any good CFer does in my situation, and roll another character and get right back in there, adding to the flavor of the mud. Suppose there is always the next one, right?

Thanks everyone for the experience

Drekvah

Awesome experience! Zameida took it on her to bring you up, and always took full credit in all conversations claiming that it was she that basically made you lich. rofl Ofc that wasn't the way... But still.

You had some really nast creepy RP, and for quite a time Zameida didn't know what to do with you after your newfound power. She almost uninducted you a few times. I wonder how that would've played out...

I can only guess what happened to you... Age-dying a lich that fast got to suck. Semi-bugg or something? Anyway, kickass! Glad to hear that you're heading back already!


GLWYN!

Always shoot first and then call whatever you hit the target.

>I had the necro
>itch again that I get every 2 or 3 characters and I had a good
>understanding of the new vale maze, which by the way, is
>extremely difficult to figure out the mechanics of at first.
>


Thanks. Sometimes when I'm watching people make their way through there, I have second thoughts about what I did.

Sorry to hear about the early age death.

I'll have to get goodbyes and stuff up later when I gather myself. This is super upsetting, I was exploring my happy heart out and ####ing around with powers I didn't understand, and I age killed myself. Heartbreaking. More later.

I woke up to the maran falling and was oh ####ting myself casting
protective stuff like mad, then the little run in in Voralia and
poof you were gone. While Duvam would be glad to know you are gone
as a player I can't help but feel for you. I'd probably cry like
old yeller died and never tell anyone that I did. GLWYN!

Think about the armor that just went into circulation again. Did you really want me holding onto all that for another 800 hours? Armor floating around back in game is fun for everyone!

...but I admit, when I saw this thread my first thought was "Sweet, some pimp gear back in circulation".

GLWYN.

sd

The only interaction you and I had with Drog was PWK and boom goes the dynamite (aka my mind).

GLWYN

Now I have to go grep the logs to see what you did!

k

I have an idea what you did.

I was curious about that but I had tried something on my own and felt the burden. I am not certain if it is intended to be that way or an oversight when they changed how lich's age now.

Either way I was interested in seeing more.

--Haphellna

As in should people who had their own previous exploration characters with experience in this area start over from scratch and not assume stuff they could do previously won't have negative effects now?

At a minimum, you probably should expect something to be different/added/changed every time the area opens.

That being said I don't know that whatever was deadly in this case falls into that category.

Reading this, I can't help but wonder if it wasn't something I encountered with Zynzyn. An item that's more than it appears. I used it many times with no ill effect, but I don't think I used it in the way that might have caused this to happen. Now I'm wondering how close I was to age-killing myself in there!

How does that make sense? I thought it takes them a long time to age die, like cabal leader aging.