Gamer's Ramblings

This is a post to keep track of my Lord of the Rings Online characters.

--

Name: Jacenira
Race: Human
From: Rohan
Class: Champion
Vocation: Explorer
Level: 63
Kinship: Dae Vas (Founder)
Server: Maiar
House: Small Hobbit Hole
Mounts:
- brown horse
- dark goat
Prefered Weapons: sword main, axe offhand

History:
Born in Rohan with a host of fierce brothers and being the only girl Jacenira would have been destined to become a good wife. Alas in her family it was her father that was a peaceful farmer and horse breeder while her mother was a shield maiden of fame and many battles. So she learned to hold her first sword when she was three and was raised to become a warrior just as fierce and strong as her brothers.
She fought orcs as soon as she was able to ride. When she turned 20 she got very bored with the farm though. She wanted to see the world. So her mother send her to the north where she had an old mate who was one of the Dunedain to teach her more combat skills and let her see new things.
So when the Nazgul came to the Shire searching for the ring she was right in the thick of the action and of course she joined the battle against evil.
She is a fierce girl in battle but she very good natured as well and will help anyone in need. Since she has visited Moria she has become fast friends with the dwarfs since they share the same interests: battle and beer.
She can often be seen with a shady character by the name of Azumas who claims to be the rightful heir to the throne of Gondor.

---

Name: Yalenja
Race: Elf
From: Lorien
Class: Minstrel
Vocation: Historian
Level: 35
Kinship: Dae Vas (Officer)
Server: Maiar
House: Small Hobbit Hole
Mounts:
- dark goat
Prefered Weapons: Various musical instruments, sword, shield

















---

Name: Teazle
Race: Elf
From: Mirkwood
Class: Guardian
Vocation: Woodsman
Level: 26
Kinship: Dae Vas (Officer)
Server: Maiar
House: Small Hobbit Hole
Mounts: -
Prefered Weapons: mace, shield

History:
Teazle's real name is Tethalion. Which he hates. He doesn't like elfes much, he thinks they are weak, tree hugging, whiny girls that are too shy to get their hands dirty. The constant singing and dancing and meditating gets on his nerves endlessly and he very much prefers to be away from them.
Therefore he has been traveling the world on his own most of his existence.
Until he met a chatty, cheerful dwarf called Aurinsson. They were both traveling in the cold mountains of Ered Luin. Teazle was looking for Bilwiss to kill and found Aurinsson's little campfire instead where the young dwarf was busy preparing a delicious smelling supper.
To this day Teazle maintains that he just stays with Aurinsson for the gorgeous food if he deigns to answer any questions at all.
He will however rip the head of anyone who dares to harm his strange little archer dwarf friend.

---

Name: Thalwen
Race: Human
From: Gondor
Class: Loremaster
Vocation: Explorer
Level: 29
Kinship: Dae Vas (Officer)
Server: Maiar
House: Small Hobbit Hole
Mounts: -
Prefered Weapons: staff

History:
Thalwen is the daugther of a quite high ranking noble from Dol Amroth. She was educated in all the things a young lady needs to learn: stitching, music, dancing, poetry... Of course poetry meant that she also learned to read.
Sadly everyone failed to notice how much and what she was reading as soon as she was able to. She dug into every book of history or arcane knowledge she could get her hands on, filling her pretty little head with anything she could reach to feed her intellect.
She was supposed to marry a rich, politically useful noble but at some point it became clear that she was way too smart to be a dutiful trophy wife producing lots of kids so the list of potential grooms became shorter and shorter as no one wnated the "difficult girl" anymore.
In the end her father decided to quickly marry her off to a powerful noble that was way too old to get any other pretty wife.
The ran away the night after he told her. Using her wits and awakening arcane powers she made her way through the wilderness as far away as she could get - which turned out to be Bree.

---

Name: Beeryn
Race: Hobbit
From:
Class: Warden
Vocation: Armourer
Level: 18
Kinship: Dae Vas (Officer)
Server: Maiar
House: Small Hobbit Hole
Mounts: -
Prefered Weapons: spear, javelin, shield

---

For the last three days I have been stuck in Middle Earth. I have been playing so much I haven't even gotten around to posting.

So is Siege of Mirkwood a success?

Mostly yes.

There are some things that bug me.

So I'll try to recount some stuff in the jumbled mess that are my thoughts right now.

Skirmishes:
- Great idea. Cool settings - I LOVE Bree in winter with snow!
- Solo works great, not too hard, not too easy.
- Duo is mostly unplayable, when one elite turns into two master elite from solo to duo I can only scratch my head and wonder what is wrong with whoever programmed this. Complete crap in scaling.
- Rewards are okay.
- Customizing your soldier works well.
- Soldier AI is suprsingly good.
- Skirmish bosses look awesome. Two pics below.





Mirkwood itself:
- Urgh
- Why urgh? Because questing there is like stepping into a free for all hazard zone where it's everyone against everyone and your greatest enemy is the player next to you. With up to 30 people waiting for the same boss to spawn it's pure madness. Of course that will have quieted down in a week or two and no one forces me and Mue to play there now but - well we did anyway. Kill stealing and tagging mobs becomes an artform and you REALLY learn to hate the hunters with their traps...
- Atmosphere is very well captured though
- Quest are well done as well.
- Could have used more spiders in my humble opinion.



The free stuff:
- I LOVE my new goat.



Now I have to go and play some more... Jace is 62 and I need to grab her new skill at the trainer.

The folks over at Wizard101 have annouced the realease of new houses.

https://www.wizard101.com/game/community/newsletter/december2009

There will be a house themed for every school of magic and a new Grizzleheim house on top.

They will all be very expensive, 100.000 gold (old biggest houses cost 40.000) or 10.000 crowns (about 20 $). They are double the size of the old biggest house too though.

When I was playing Wizard101 I REALLY wanted a Grizzleheim house but I think they are going a bit overboard with the prizes here. I'm not sure I want to shell out 20 $ for a house... then again... I might, though not for the Grizzleheim one.

The magic school houses both look very cool so I'll be very interested to see what the other schools have.

Who knows - one day I will surely go back and then I can get a house as well maybe.

Maybe there'll be a "bargain house" at some points that makes me come back.

Since the Lord of the Rings servers are down and being updated with Siege of Mirkwood I had to find my gaming fix elsewhere today. I had planned to hang out in Ferelden and get Minas a bit further in the storyline but I ended up logging into City of Heroes to repark my dayjobbers first.

This time it did not get drawn into any Task Force.

Instead I decided to get Mrs. Rottenmeier (my dark/dark defender on Union) a new costume. She had hit level 30 on the Task Force on Saturday so she was entitled to a new costume slot and auras. Of course there were a few missions to do first which actually got her to level 31.

And since I was at it I also did the Midnight Club introduction arc with her so she will be able to do an Imperious TF should I ever get to 35 AND feel like doing one with her.

She is a strict teacher in her everyday guise. When she is not at work she likes to wear more casual stuff.

In reality she actually is a rather old fashioned witch so for her third costume I decided to grant her the appropriate look. I think she turned out quite witchy.

And while I was doing all that I got a sudden tell my an unknown person who turned out to be Valhalla from Runes of Magic. We teamed together there about a year ago and she still remembred my global and even seems to still be reading my little blog here.

She helped me a bit with my costume stuff since she has a few 50th of her own and we chatted quite a while. Seems she is back to CoX fulltime currently.

She has a REALLY awesome base all build herself. She even has a freaking CHRISTMAS TREE!!

And she's just as nice as I remember. Nothing beats old friends suddenly reappearing!

We really have to run a Task Force together one of these days.

I now got her on my global friends so I can catch her if both of us are on.

The last few days I have been doing lots of small stuff in Middle Earth.

Hunting various beasts for furs for my tailor profession. That was quite successful. Working on completing the master. Waiting for Mirkwood now though, since I havethe vague hope that this will lower material costs and maybe even give more crafting xp thereby reducing my workload.

Finished a few quests in Forochel to get some more rep with the Lossoth. I want to get them to ally at least and have made good progress towards that.

Here's Jace fishing in a snowstorm:


Also worked on book 7 in Angmar. I'm up to the next hard instance now with that so as soon as someone is looking for people to do it I can pounce.

Then I headed back to Moria to try and work on my Champion quest there. That ends in an instance there so... not getting anywhere with that anytime soon I guess.

So instead I did some work on my rep with the dwarfs in Moria. Need to get them all the way up to get a book for a legendary skill. Still a lot to do on that.

And last I went to Lorien and gathered some rep there so they would allow me into there tree city. Damn!! It's freaking confusing to get anywhere there. But they are my friends now too. So I bought one of their tailor recipes and OF course it needs crafting mats that only drop in instances.

*sigh*

Why did I even bother?

Anyway - tomorrow the Mirkwood expansion will go live and then me and Mue will give skirmishes a thorough testing.

Patch Notes for the Siege of Mirkwood Expansion are now up:

http://lorebook.lotro.com/wiki/Release_Notes_Volume_2_Siege_of_Mirkwood_Launch_Official

First thought?

They are making instance bosses even harder than they already are??? What's wrong with these people???

O.o

Apart from that it's a mixed bag of goodies. Some good stuff, some bad stuff. It sounds like they are making crafting easier in the lower levels / harder for the more special stuff. Don't see the point there. I still think crafting should NOT require any ingerdience that you must raid for. But apparently devs disagree.

There are a lot of small improvements. I'll give them that.

I hope the skirmish system will be really cool.

Definitely an expansion that I have to see in action to have a clear opinion.

After Mue and I had tried to find someone to do the book 5 instances with for nearly an hour on saturday and didn't succeed I had pretty much given up on it. I've had this lying around and gathering dust for weeks now without anyone ever wanting to do it.

So you can imagine my surprise when today in the early morning someone already had a team of 3 wanting to do it. Of course I joined them immediately and they were even kind enough to port me over to Rivendell all the way from Forochel where I was hunting cats for furs.

A few minutes later we had a full team. We ran the first instance in about 10 minutes, then quickly did the run around stuff and then ran the second instance just as easily. All in all it didn't take more than an hour and was quite fun.

The evil dudes raising an undead dragon:


Nazgul getting a beating:


Like I have said before it IS lots of fun when you can just rip a boss apart like we did with the Nazgul. Which to me makes the question why the Moria instances are so bloody hard even more pressing. Why on earth do devs things something has to be hard to be fun??

Maybe it's a male thing and I - as a girl - can't understand it.

So now my next goal is to complete book 7 (since I already have book 6). A long term goal of course. Something to do in the next few month.

Right now I'm back to Forochel hunting cats. They are all clustered in one place, they drop the furs I need for my master crafting, they also drop reputation items for Forochel AND I still need more for a deed. So they are a perfect hunting target.

And of course Mirkwood will be released this week so I'll soon be checking out skirmishes.

Gaming wise yetserday was a day of ups and downs.

It did however made me realize some things about gaming mechanics and what I like and don't like about games so I want to share my thoughts.

I started out playing Lord of the Rings Online, running around Evendim farming some more furs for crafting. Not exactly exciting but kind of pleasant since there isn't any thinking involved. Just plain old hack hack hack. Sometimes I can stand - or even like - this mind numbing game play, sometimes it will drive me insane. It all depends on what mood I'm in. Luckily I can pick and chose what will suit me fine in my moods.

Then I got a tell by some lower level needing help with some bosses asking if I could help him kill them, profusely appologizing for even asking. Now this is something I don't get in Lord of the Rings Online - helping someone just because you can seems to be something that rarely happens. The guy was totally awed I just agreed to help not asking anything in return.

He ended up trying to recruit me for his kinship since he's been playing the game since launch and wanted me to see all it#s glory including raiding, super gear and all that.

I stuck with my little Dae Vas family of course but it was a sweet offer and a bit letter I mailed me a few furs and some item I will supposedly need for some class quest at some point. Very friendly guy.

So why are people not helpful in LOTRO? Honestly I have no clue. It's not like it's a huge effort to quickly kill some boss.

And here we come to City of Heroes. I am just not used to this lack of helpfulness from City of Heroes. If you ask anyone for help there you will normally get it, unless the person is super busy or about to log off and even then you might get help.

The crowd in both games seems to be rather mature but for some reason there is this huge difference. Anyone got any bright ideas there?

Now after that brief episode me and Mue were chatting in kinship chat - me hunting furs again and getting very bored, him picking flowers in Lorien for reputation and also very bored.

So we decided to do something foolish and poke our heads in one of the instances in Moria. We checked around the net which had the easiest mobe / bosses and then tried. We got beaten up pretty good. No chance in hell we could even scratch them.

So why are these mobs and bosses so hard? To present a challence to the super geared elite raiders.

So what do we little plain geared newbies do?

Join an experienced group to help us out? Grand idea but there is a tiny problem: any groups asking for extra people also almost always add "with experience please". Which of course we don't have.

So let's examine why we would want to do these instances anyway:

1) To pick up super gear, so we can do even harder instances - nope, honestly I like my gear just fine, it deals with all "normal" game content well enough. WHY do I have to get better gear to experience the rest of the game? To create a time sink to keep me busy. Lame. Not going to do it.

2) To pick up stuff that I will need to advance my crafting. This one really annoys me. Crafting should NOT require you to raid. It is a time sink anyway and the stuff you can craft will not be as good as the raiding rewards so it makes the crafting redundant anyway. But there you have it, no high level crafting unless you go raiding.

3) To experience the story. Yes, I would very much like that. The story and scenery is what makes LOTRO special. But the way it is handled here means that half of the story is closed off to me. Tough luck. Either be a hardcore raider or skip half the story.

In the end Mue and I decided to level up to 65 with Mirkwood expansion and then look in again. Maybe with a higher level someone will agree to take us along. But of course everyone will then be doing the Mirkwood instances so I kind of doubt anyone will still even be DOING the Moria ones so we will again be stuck with just the two of us.

We then tried to get a group to do one of the early instances in the Misty Mountains. No one was doing it or willing to lend a hand even though it would have taken maybe 20 minutes. No rewards - no help.

All in all it was rather frustrating and kind of sad and we both felt annoyed.

So we logged off for dinner.

After dinner I really, really needed to feel like a hero in a game for a change instead of a level 60 newb.

So I logged into City of Heroes to find some team and bash something.

It took me 3 minutes to find a team preparing for a task force, I was welcomed with open arms be complete strangers, we blasted through the task force with lots of banter and chatting. It was easy. It was loud and colorful and plain simply fun.

It was instant gratification.

Lessons learned:

1) Quest / Missions don't have to be super hard to be fun. In fact being able to rip a boss apart can be just as much fun. It makes you feel really good.

2) Finding a team in City of Heroes is so much easier because no matter what level you are, what mission you are on, what gear you have - you will always get a reward so there is always a reason to jump in and help and you will always be helpful. The playing field is just much more level. Much less elitists.

3) The combat and chat system in City of Heroes is much friendlier for constant banter and talking and with the breaks between missions you have some breathing space. In Lord of the Rings Online chat is mostly quiet because you have a hard time keeping track of all the combat log info AND the chat and you have to be much more attentive in combat.

4) City of Heroes looks dated. It just does. But maybe that can be forgiven considering the PLUS points.

5) I NEED more content for City of Heroes. The content just bores me to tears. The TF I did I have already done 20 times. I know every line of dialogue. I know every boss, every glowie, every everything by heart. I still love the game but it needs to deliver something new or I will fall asleep while playing.

6) Lord of the Rings Online is a nice game for some things (normal PvE, scenery, lower level crafting, story) but in other areas it sucks unless oyu have this huge kinship backing you up. Which in itself is something I don't like. I rather have a small circle of great friends than a huge group of raiders who are all more super then the next.

Last words:
I'm so looking forward to Star Wars: The Old Republic. There I will most likely have a large enough circle of friends to even experience raiding should there be any.

Oh my god... this is surreal.

And very, very good:

It is done! Until Mirkwood comes out in the next few weeks Jacenira has reached max level in Lord of the Rings Online.

Which makes this my third online game after City of Heroes and Wizard101 to get a character at max level in. Not too bad.

I did however not win the race. When I logged in this morning Azumas was at 60 already. Which is really the fault of Lorien. It is so solo friendly it's a bit ridiculous. You have to complete all this really harsh small group quests against tons of orcs for them to even let you in and as soon as you are in all you get to do is pick flowers, light lanterns, sings to the trees, meditate... you get the idea.

At least that meant I got to 60 fairly quickly and quite easily as well.

So... unlike City of Heroes playtime doesn't stop there. I still have a ton of things to do with Jacenira. Get her crafting up to max. Complete some deeds. Get enough reputation with some faction to be able to buy stuff I want.

I really like that about this game.

After hitting 60 Jacenira first went home to her little house in the Shire to unload a ton of loot for the twinks. Then she went to Estendil for an extended crafting session.

And now she is in Evendim, happily slashing her way through tons of wargs and bears to collect furs to complete her Artisan crafting level.

And here's a screen of the east gate of Moria cause I think it looks really cool:

After trudging around in the endless caves and gloom of Moria (as grand as that may be) today me and Mue at long last saw the sky again.

We left Moria through the east gate and had a first view of Lorien. And damn it's so PRETTY!!



Mue had already started questing there so we had a few things twice for me to catch up with him but all in all I must say questing was extremely pleasant out there. No falling into bottomless holes, no getting lost, not so long ways to run from A to B. And with the two of us teamed up all quests were easily doable.

The Galadrim are very snotty though. I prefer the grumpy dwarfes by far. At least they have beer...

Though Azumas thinks that Jace has a serious alcohol problem and keeps her away from all the good stuff... Isn't a hard working Rohan girl allowed a beer or five now and then? Okay... maybe I ran right into some mobs a few times while drunk... but not often...

Which brings me to the awesome effect of being drunk in game. I just love the grafics effect for that. Everything looks like under water and the camera drifts a bit. Very cool.

Anyway, the race to 60 is still on. When I logged out tonight I was halfway to 59 and Mue was still 57 but I expect him to have caught up to me by tomorrow. And since servers will be down all morning tomorrow which will steal my prime gaming time I guess I will lose the race. Oh well, he'll just have to help me with the rest then. At least we will definitely both make it before Mirkwood comes out.

The cat is out of the bag. Yesterday I got the new edition of PC Games, my trusted gaming magazin and they have the news sooner than anyone else this time.

Lol. Even internet sites link to their article.

http://www.mmorpg.com/gamelist.cfm/game/367/view/forums/thread/260320/page/1

So what do we get?

The Jedi Consular and the Sith Inqusitor. Both casting classes for the second line of combat. (Interesting to note here is that they put emphasis on the fact that these are the eight classes the game starts with. Very much sounds like there are more to come after launch.)

For a short description of these two classes think Joda for Jedi Consular and Palpatine for Sith Inqusitor.

Sounds good to me.

I think it's a good idea to give a choice of different force users right from the start as many will want to play one and it will help diversify.

Hubby has been complaining all along that the Sith Warrior was too melee heavy so as soon as he got the news he made up his mind to go for Sith Inquisitor now.

Which kind of puts me on the fence. I was going to go Bounty Hunter (which I really like the concept of) but now I got just as well pick Sith Warrior since auchdarkway will definitely play a Bounty Hunter. Hmm... in the end I'll have one of each again I bet.

Anyway, the game still is a must have for me. I so hope they don't spoil it with something stupid.

I don't play this game due to it being so heavy on PvP but watching this trailer about what updates they have in store I almost wish I did.

This weekend I turned my back on Ferelden for a bit and returned to Middle Earth.

Why?

Uh... I have to admit it was abit of missing and a bit of pride. Mue has nearly caught up to me with his burglar Azumas and... well... can't have him reach level 60 before me, can I? So the race is on, so to speak.

A very companionable race, as we teamed up and did a lot of quests in Moria together. We jumped into bottomless pits and died, got swarmed by hordes of bilwiss and crawler thingies, got lost, killed lots of stuff. A usual day in Moria really.

I also made my way through and out the east end to see if I could maybe already start the Lorien quests. All the baddies on that side are 59 so I decided to get at least to 58 before tackling that.

But Jace is now level 55 already.

The Mirkwood expansion will be coming out soon so I really do wanna get to 60 before that. Not sure if I will be able to resist the pull of Dragon Age but we'll see.

Here's two pretty Moria sights:

The first "new" download content for Dragon Age has been announced ("new" because the game already has some, depending on which version you bought, Stone Prisoner and WardenPeak).

It's called "Return to Ostegar"

Looky here for more info:

http://dragonage.bioware.com/addon/

It lets the player return to the blood drenched battlefield to look for the fallen and a survivor and fight the darkspawn hordes that now hold the field.

Considering the price it won't be too huge I guess but the setting sounds intriguing so I will almost certainly get it.

So Minas has been wanting his cute elf assassin ever since I started playing him.

Today I finally got the cutscene with Loghain sending Zevran off to kill the Grey Wardens.

I imagine Minas sitting somewhere in the Deep Roads at a little camp fire with his crystal ball (He's a mage right? So why shouldn't he have a crystal ball!) watching HIS assassin finally being send off and happily snickering to himself. He is a bit evil after all.

And look what he and his merry crew found on the road just a little later:


Needless to say Leliana has left the building... erh... team.

I didn't have any special gifts for Zevran yet so Minas has to charm him with talk alone and that wasn't as easy as one might think. After all he wants absolute devotion - not just some quick romp.

But we are getting there.

I also went to Denerim to talk to isabella at the Pearl to pick up the duellist specialization for Zevran and she insisted on spending a steamy threesome with Minas and Zev. What self respecting mage could refuse such an offer?

Next I headed to Redcliff to deal with the zombie's and the arl's annoying wife.

This time I didn't have any pesky Alistair or Leliana along so there was no need to spare anyone. We let Isolde sacrife herself. Yay! for that stupid bitch dying. I REALLY don't like her.

When we got back to camp Alistair jumped into Minas face with all sorts of accusations about how he hadn't tried hard enough to save the arl's family. They had shouting match at the camp fire with the rest of the gang watching from a safe distance. Alistair now is a -25 approval... I really have no clue how I can love him to pieces with Sonaris and despise him with Minas. But apparently I can.

In other news: I've caved in and bought the Warden's Peak DLC. I just LOVE this game and want more of it.

After what felt like a few zillion darkspawn and trudging through a few thousand miles of underground tunnels of the Deep Roads, today Minas finally got to the Anvil of the Void.

Is it me or is the whole dwarfen zone the biggest / most time consuming? I came there last with Sonaris, she was level 15 when she started out and I think 18 when she finished.

Now with Minas I went there first right after Ostegar and picking up Shale and he is already level 13 now with the whole rest of the game still ahead of him. And I haven't even finished all the side quests down there.

But apart from taking really long and featuring a HEAP of bosses is definitely also holds some extremely cool sights.

I absolutely love the whole Brood Mother plot. It's so creepy with the chant and all. Great atmosphere there. Strangely Minas had a lot less trouble in that final fight with her than Sonaris at her higher level. Shale is just a really good tank and dog a very sturdy fellow. Didn't die once.

At the anvil I again decided to destroy it. Honestly, Branka is just disturbing. She makes my skin crawl. And of course Shale is very dear to my heart so I'd do a lot to please her. I'm at over 80 approval with her now.

One of the funniest moments was to listen to her and Leliana discuss shoes. Hilarious.

Here's some pretty pics of the anvil zone:

Some trap:


The actual anvil:


The real fun however was returning to Ozamar to pick my king.

Minas had sided with Harrowmont and done all his quests. So when Minas walked into the assembly Behlen launched into a "Woah, don't listen to the Warden!!" speech.

Minas however had in the meantime decided that Harrowmont would make too weak aking to control all the backstabbing dwarfen little beasties. So when he was asked who would be king he named Behlen.

Who started to object, then realized what Minas had just said and was dumbstruck for a moment. Really funny.

I felt a little sorry for Harrowmont, who was arrested and executed straight away even though he yielded to his new king. But I did want a strong king and I got one. Seriously, those dwarfs got the king they deserve.

Next I will head back to the surface to see if I can at long last pick up a certain cute elf assassin and do some shopping and then it's back to the Deep Roads to finish the last quests down there.

After yesterdays luxuriously long play session today was dreadfully short.

Since I knew I'd not be able to do much I decided to test another origin since those don't take too long.

Like I had planned I tried the dwarfen noble this time.

I made a male one for the sole reason that I like the beards. His name is Sora and I decided to give him an unusual job - rogue with archer skills.

Since I really love the look of Ozamar I don't have to say much about the starting area - it's very cool to start in that zone.

The story is... uh... okay. I thought the plot of Behlen was very obvious, especially after reading Trian's journal in his rooms. It's a pity there is no way to backstab Behlen in turn and maybe then get kicked out for that but I guess he is needed too much later on. It must be interesting to return to Oazamar as a dwarf noble though.

What I enjoyed A LOT is the interaction with the lower caste dwarfs. Their groveling is just too cute. It gives you a very easy opening to get a "feel" for your character.

I REALLY loved Gorim as a second and I think it would be great if you were able to pick him up again later on. Sadly you can't as far as I know. They just make such a nice pair.

The funniest thing about him was, that he didn't manage to find any boots he was able to wear after getting kicked out into the deep roads. So he is a very poor shoeless noble right now.

Anyway, Sora is now parked in Ostegar awaiting deletion or further play time.

Next up I will keep playing Minas. I SOOO want Zevran for him. They should make a great pairing.

Today I treated myself to the rush of completing the rest of Dragon Age in one go. (thanks to all the sick people that basically gave me a day off work...)

I started out with visiting arl Eamon after having gathered all my allies.

Damn... I hate that self centered, I-know-best bastard! I really wonder why I ever bothered saving him.

"Alister will be king! Shut up, girl, I know best! Do this! Do that! Blah blah blah!"

Did the stupid git really think I was going through all that trouble for the good of Fereldan??! Bah! If it was about Fereldan... the darkspawn could have it with a kiss and a bag of gold on top! Elf murdering bastards all of them!

No, I do all this stuff just for my sweet darling Alistair! Wouldn't wanna upset him for anything. So... NO! I'm not giving him up! EVER!

At that point I was still clueless on how to achieve this but my decision was firm.

So we all traveled to Denerim to take care of traitorous Loghain.

Of course there was still a lot to take care of in Denerim before the actual showdown.

Like taking care of traitors in my own team:



Stupid, stupid little elf whore... I would have let you live. I would even have let you walk away when all was said and done. But you had to try again... *sigh*

I also got to save queen Anora. And on that quest was treated to the first dungeon in a computer game that actually really felt like a dungeon with terribly mutilated prisoners, torture victims, torturers and all. Very well done.

The queen of course turned out to be a backstabbing bitch but I forgave her. As soon as I safely got her back to arl Eamon's estate I went behind the arl's back and made deals with her that SHE would remain queen. One Alistair saved from the throne.

Next up I finally got a chance to visit home. Of course things were NOT well. That traitorous dog Loghain had seriously made a deal with some Tewinter slave trader and started selling off my people as slaves.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!

Sonaris went on a killing rampage. Normally she lets people get away when they surrender or is willing to talk. This time she slaughtered everything in her path. Wynn and Leliana approved... Strange girls.

Still I didn't manage to save them all. Some - including the sweet elder - had already been shipped acorss the sea to be sold as slaves. Damn... That was just terrible. Really, really bad. I was sitting there thinking NOOOOOO! Let me follow them!! Sod that bloody archdemon, I must save my people!! Sadly no such option. At least Sonaris dad and cousins are safe.

When I left the alienage, all sonaris wanted was a hug from Alistair.

Being the dumb darling he is he just went on about how grateful he was he didn't have to be king... *sigh*

So they all went to the grand confrontation with Loghain.

Lots of talk later it came down to a duell between Sonaris and Loghain. He yielded. She could have shown mercy. Alistair didn't approve of that. Neither did Sonaris. The distgusting human had sold her people into slavery!!

She chopped his head off.

But she still had an archdemon to slay.

Which turned out a little harder than anticipated due to some complications. Morigan was quite helpful with that problem.

So after slaying what felt like every single darkspawn that had by then invaded Denerim Sonaris faced the archdemon and executed him:



People were quite impressed by the following explosion:



So now Sonaris the the Hero of Fereldan, she got to keep Alistair who is not king, they are still both Grey Wardens and very much in love.



Happy End?

Yes.

And no. I love the narrator's line saying that this is not the last that is to be heard of Sonaris!!

-

Conclusion:

Dragon Age is the most brilliant computer RPG I have played in a a long, LONG time.

Thank you, Bioware. You made me laugh and even cry a little.

Looking forward to my next playthrough with Minas, to expansions and of course to the next part!