The Depths of Darkhollow expansion opened for Combine early Monday
morning. This is one of the expansions I skipped the first time around,
but now I've purchased the Anniversary edition, so when they open on
Combine, I can go in and play.
Shrouds are one of the things my son has been very excited about. Our
vague understanding of them was that we can take an alternate form and
class and more importantly, level, and yet still be generating
experience and gathering loot and so on for our mains. Since my current
main is level 70, and his is 36, this will mean we can group together
without me having to run an alt, something I'm generally loathe to do.
Besides which, the lad has a horrid case of Alt-itis, he loves to play
new characters and new classes, and very very fondly remembers the brief
time when you could play monsters in old EQ.
So, I went up to a shroud person in POK and checked it out. Here's the
drill, there are numerous categories, and in each category, several
possible forms. To start, only the first form in each category is
available. I selected a level 5 skeleton wizard. Transforming took a
few seconds, and all my gear and buffs and pet were gone, I was a little
skellie with a rusty dagger and a backpack of food and drink. I
scampered off to Shar Val and killed a few chitterlings before my
guildmates caught up with me. Ran back to the shroud person, said
remove, and popped back to my body. I'd looted nothing, so nothing else
happened. Interestingly, all my buffs were still up, as was my pet and
his buffs.
On this initial foray, I noticed that although I got exp messages, I had
no exp bar, and seemingly no way to monitor any progress I might be
making.
Later, I selected a goblin rogue, again 5th level. I went to Qeynos and
worked my way gradually, killing Djerr Darkpaw, zoning to QH and cutting
a swath thru the blue and yellow mobs, took out all the gnolls near BB,
then zoned in, crossed over the top level, got into trouble fighting a
gnoll and had to leg it for Everfrost. There, I slowly chewed thru
every bear cub, spider, and wolf all the way to the POK book, then made
my way back over to the other shroud person, who was equally willing to
remove my shroud.
At this point, I had a bunch of hides (more fun, if slower, way to farm
hides for tailoring or selling). The Shroud Bank opened up, and I was
warned the contents would disappear if I didn't remove them in 48 hours.
I went over to my bank, where I was able to reopen the shroud bank and
withdraw all the items, destroying some and putting the rest into my
shared bank. Later testing showed that I could have used the shroud
bank at the shroud person, but wouldn't have had access to my real bank
slots, so this was less of a pain given that I was moving them to an alt.
I went over and tried to shroud up again with one item still in my
shroud bank, it turns out this isn't allowed, the bank must be empty to
shroud. Got it out, destroyed it, and was allowed to see the selection
again. Now I could see my progress, on the selection screen at
goblinoid forms I had unlocked 23% of the next form, Orc Brute. Later
running around briefly with a friend, he noted with one kill that he'd
made 2%... is there some way to monitor progress while in shroud form?
At any rate, I took up my 5 goblin rogue form again, and got some buffs
from a friend who happened to be standing there. Then I deliberately
logged out and went out and ran some errands. When I logged back in, I
was still in goblin form, still buffed up. I went over to Kurns, which
turned out not to go so well, all the mobs were red and there were
people hunting them, so it was hard to find the lower level ones. Due
to the buffing, I was able to take out several.
By now I had learned more about shrouding. The special abilities of
each shroud are accessed via the alt abilities window (is there a hotkey
for this?). You create hotkeys for them and drag them to your hotkey
bar. The 5 goblin rogue has only three, throw stone, something called
Lession, which is a DOT and Spirit Sending... which is great, it takes
you back to the shroud giver in POK, saving a run home. So thats what I
did.
When I deshrouded, I was pleased to see that yes, my pet was still there
and my buffs were unfaded, including a shot of one minute Selos that
despite about 5 hours passage of time, some logged in on that character
and some not, hadn't worn off. Excellent news for young pet casters who
can now get some really good gear on their pets and yet be able (with
some effort) to log out and keep that gear.
I wasn't so pleased to note that my foray into Kurns had earned me only
10% more progress on unlocking the Orc Brute form in roughly the same
time span as my unbuffed romp from Qeynos to Everfrost.
In both instances, I saw absolutely no movement on my level 70 AA bar
set on full. I'd been told that quite the reverse would be the case,
that killing blues while level 5 would be just like killing blues while
level 70, insofar as the exp was concerned. Really not the case.
Later that evening, I found another misunderstanding: I had been playing
level 5 characters because I thought that was all that was available to
me. Turns out no, I could get any available type at any level divisible
by 5, from 5 to my current level of 70. The unlocking applies only to
getting the higher forms in each type. I did not test, but my
understanding is that you can only shroud up to your character level so
for example if I were 69, I could only get up to 65, and my son who is
36 can only get up to 35.
This won't work as well as I had hoped, since it will mean I will end up
shrouding down to 35, and apparantly won't be getting noticable exp in
70 AA while doing so. One option would be instead to push the level
limit, he's 36 so can group up to 54, I could get a 50 shroud. Level
him up one more and I could get a 55 shroud. Perhaps killing in 50 or
55 will generate measurable 70 AA exp, and at the same time quickly PL
his character up to closer to my level.
One thing I've been told is that the level 5 shrouds are popular because
at level 5 you don't lose exp if you die, and yet still make good
progress, maybe even the fastest progress, towards unlocking other
forms. I can confirm that I died in level 5, showed up at the shroud
person in POK, and my main didn't lose any exp.
Many questions still to be answered, and ideas percolating as to how to
best make use of this new resource... but thats for another post
Berg, 5 goblin Rogue, Combine