DDOCast Twitches Permadeath
I am excited to announce a new addition to the normal DDOCast Podcast routine! This past week I started playing permadeath and twitching that play live. I hope to provide not only some semi-almost-quality entertainment, but highlight the permadeath community and playstyle, and have some fun experiencing the rigors of having almost nothing to support a character (no really, i had to start on snowy side korthos and with a 28 point build!). To add in the entertainment value I am playing with lessah and the Sublime Permadeath Guild on Thelanis. If you would also like to join in the fun, look into joining that permadeath group!
Still dont find these videos entertaining? well you can always place bets on where I die and suggest my next build or quest (i reserve the right to choose for myself).
Timing for this may or may not be consistent, but i hope to achieve something resembling regular.
You can watch live at http://www.twitch.tv/ddocast
Also: i need 2 things from the community!
1) i need a clever name for the series. Currently the working title is Operation Cannon Fodder. If you suggest a name and I choose it, I’ll return the kindness with a 500 TP code!
2) I like title screens – and pictures of soul stones seem appropriate! So post pictures with prominately featured soul stones here or send them to me by email (ddocast@gmail.com) and if i use your picture, ill send you a 500 TP code (while supplies last – at which time I will give out other prizes). Please include your name (in game or real) and server so i can give you proper credit!
EDIT: I greatly prefer screenshots without UI clutter but this does not necessarily prevent you from winning.
Lore Lounge: Wheloon, Shadowfell, Tressyms and Owlbears
Wheloon
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Sometime after the Spellplague in 1385 DR, the Purple Dragons determined that a large number of Whelunians were secretly Shar-worshipers, and the current king of Cormyr feared Wheloon was a front for Netherese spies. The king decreed that it be transformed into a prison city, all those inside sealed in by brick and magic and prisoners for life. Suspected worshipers of Shar, Shadovar sympathizers and spies, and any others who offended the crown were put over the wall and left to survive on their own. By 1479 DR, Wheloon was a dark prison city, no longer a trade hub, and the streets were controlled by gangs of thugs.
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Reading List:
- Forgotten Realms Campaign Guide – for dms
- Forgotten Realms Player’s Guide – for players
- Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave – hardcover super-adventure for characters from 4th to 8th level. The adventure pits the heroes against the evil agents of Shar and Cyric as they plot to corrupt the worship of Mystra, goddess of magic. The adventure begins in Cormyr, but the characters must also travel to the Plane of Shadow to thwart the villains’ machinations.
Shadowfell
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The Shadowfell, sometimes simply called Shadow, is a parallel plane from which necrotic energies and shadow magic stem. It exists as sort of a counterpart to Feywild in the sense that it is a reflection or “echo” of the Prime Material Plane except that it is a bleak, desolate place full of decay and death.
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The Shadowfell was created in 1385 DR when Shar, having successfully arranged Mystra’s death, bound the energies of the Negative Energy Plane with the Plane of Shadow. Since then, the Shadowfell has existed as a center of Shar’s power as well as a transitory place for dead mortals on their way towards judgment on the Fugue Plane.
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Reading List:
- Manual of the Planes 4th edition
- Keep on the Shadowfell – A D&D adventure for characters of levels 1-3. A ruined keep that was once a bastion of good in the realm. This keep overlooks the Shadow Rift, a dark scar in the world that was once a gateway to the Shadowfell but has been dormant for many years. Now, an evil cleric of Orcus, Demon Lord of the Undead, seeks to re-open the gate.
- The Shadowfell: Gloomwrought and Beyond – boxed set is for Dungeon Masters interested in taking their heroes on excursions to the Shadowfell, as well as Dungeon Masters looking for a sinister setting in which to run thrilling urban adventures.
Tressym
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In the Dungeons & Dragons fantasy role-playing game, the Tressym is a magical beast. They are winged cats, about the size of a housecat, with a pair of feathered, leathery wings extending to a 3 foot wingspan. They have owl-like faces, and a fluffy ball of fur and feathers at the end of their tail.
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They are highly intelligent and sometimes kept as pets and familiars by good wizards. In the wild, they can befound in warm and temperate land. They are chaotic good in alignment. They speak Common and their own language, tressymspeak, which is based on purrs and growls
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Villagers in Eveningstar feed tressym and try to prevent the worst of their vandalism and aerial catfights. At the same time, they try to prevent any large-scale or magically-assisted trapping and capturing of them. The locals value tressym for their owl-like rodent control in the fields. In the wild, they can be found in warm and temperate lands
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Reading List:
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Blackstaff (novel) by Steven E. Schend – There’s a Tressym called Nameless and is a familiar to a character in the book
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Fantasy/Sci-Fi Trope: Introduce creatures that are just like familiar everyday animals or animal hybrids) that the audience will recognize but in a fantasy (or sci-fi) setting, and give them funny names. Speaking of which….
Owlbears
- An owlbear is depicted as a cross between a bear and an owl, which “hugs” like a bear and attacks with its beak. Gary Gygax created the owlbear, which was inspired by a plastic toy made in Hong Kong along with other monsters such as the rust monster and the bulette. It was first introduced in a 1975 Greyhawk supplement
Temporary DDO Dev Tracker
Without a Dev tracker its a harder to bring you DDO news. Here’s a list of links leading to Dev latest forum posts individually. Some devs don’t have posts linked to their profile; I suspect its because of issues with the new forums.
Crunchy Bits: DDO Doublestrike Mechanics
Doublestrike / Doublestike
Doublestrike gives you a percentage change to take an additional attack with your main hand melee weapon. If you have a 6% double strike then you will get a bonus attack roughly 6 out of 100 attacks. It does not impact ranged attacks, spells, off hand attacks, or attacks using special animations (like cleave, trip etc…) It will affect special attacks using standard animations such as smites or ki strikes.
The number of sources of doublestrike is small compared to many other bonuses you can get, but there are still quite a number of them in the game. Stacking rules for doublestrike have never been entirely verified by devs. It seems that differently typed double strike bonuses will stack and same type bonuses will not. Untyped bonuses only stack if they are from a different source, aka a weapon will stack with a feat will stack with an enhancement, but two feat bonuses without types will not stack. If they do not stack then you should get the largest bonus.
You can see your current double strike bonus by hovering over the BAB icon (its red) in the character sheet Stats page.
Types of Doublestrike in DDO
So lets go over the different sources of double strike and group them by what should not stack and order them from largest to smallest
Mystery Shield Bonus – An untyped 4% for using a shield
Competence Bonuses – Fighter Weapon Alacrity capstone (fighter 20) 10%
Sacred Bonuses – Paladin Zeal spell (level 14 pally) 10% (no scrolls, self only, temporary)
Insight Bonus – Monk Windstance 2.5%/5%/7.5%/10% levels 1/6/12/18 respectively
Morale Bonus
- Shield Mastery / Improved Shield mastery 3%/8% when using a shield
- Timeblade (longsword) 3% / Epic Timeblade 6%
- Hellstroke Great Axe 3% / Epic 6%
- Cutthroat’s Smallblade (shortsword) 3% / 6% with tier 3 upgrades
- Swashbuckler (shield) 3% / 6% with tier 3
- Alchemical Weapon (any) Teir 2 Martial Air 6%
- Antipode, Fist of the Horizon (handwraps) 6%
- Bard Warchanter 2 Inspire Recklessness song 5% (level 12)
- Way of the Sun soul set bonus effect +6% (temporary)
- Epic Spare hand (belt) 3%
Untyped type Class Feats/Enhancements
- Natural Fighting 6% (druid level 9) can be taken up to 3 times for 18% total
- Ranger Tempest 3 (level 18) 5% when wielding two weapons
- Rogue Opportunist feat 3% (level 10)
Alchemical Bonus
- Fabricator’s Bracers with Combat Infusion 5% (temporary)
Untyped epic Destinies (seem to stack with non epic sources)
- Sentinel : Legendary Shield Mastery 6% when using a shield
- Legendary Dreadnaught: Lightning Mace 15% bonus after Vorpal strike for 6 seconds
- Grandmaster of Flowers: Hail of Blows 3%
- Grandmaster of Flowers: running with the Wind 3% (in wind stance)
Profane Bonus
- Shadowdancer: ShadowTraining 4 3% (certain light weapons only, temporary)
So who can have the most double strike?
Druids are king of full time double strike, but shield base builds, monks and two-weapon fighters are in the top ranking for doublestrke efficiency.
Shield based
- +18 if you take three levels of natural fighting: 18%
- If you use a shield you can get +8 from shield mastery (another two feats) and the +4 base shield bonus giving you 30%
- Legendary shield mastery stacks for another 6% taking you to 36%
- +3 Twist Hail of Blows for
- 39%
Monk Multiclass
- +18 for natural fighting
- +5 for second tier wind stance
- +3 from Hail of blows, and +3 from Running with the Wind
- +6 from an item for
- 35%
Each could squeeze in temporary bonuses from Shadowndancer and Combat infusion for a short term max of 47% though it would be quite unreliable to get it and only last seconds.
After the druids you would have shield using fighters and paladins, then non druid wind monks.
Anything you can do that bumps attack speed will also enhance double strike. Monk unarmed and Druid wolf forms both have faster than usual attack animations, Rogues and Fighters can get combat speed boost enhancements (also available in the dreadnaught line).
Ultimate double strike build? Probably a half orc Druid with a splash of rogue and or fighter wielding a shield in wolf form.
Thanks to the DDOWiki and SteeleTrueHeart for their hard work in collecting and testing information about Doublestrike!
Festivult Cookies & Cakes for Dec 2012

Cookies and Cakes are back for 2012 Festivult! Here are the list of cookies and cakes for this year’s Festivult in December 2012. I’ve included the whole list, including the three new cookies and the four updated ones. My favorite is still the Taken Cookie, followed by the Kobold Cookie. What are your favorites? Enjoy!
Icon | Name | Spell |
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New Cookies | ||
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Spinner of Shadows Cookie | Enveloping Swarm |
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Lolth, The Spider Queen Cookie | Lolth’s Blessing: +2 Profane attack and damage, +3 Profane PRR, +5 Profane Unviersal Spell Power. You can buy this cookie with winter motes at the alter. |
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Spiderweb Cookie | Spiderskin |
Updated Cookies & Cakes | ||
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Lamannia, the Twilight Forest Jelly Cake | Vigor |
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Shavarath, The Battleground Jelly Cake | Enchant Armor |
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Queen Lailat, the Marilith Cookie | Blade Barrier |
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Suulomades Cookie | Shocking Weapons |
Festivult Cookies | ||
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Arraetrikos Cookie | Meteor Swarm |
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Beholder Cookie | Disintegrate |
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Black Abbot Cookie | Stoneskin |
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Black Abishai Cookie | Remove Fear |
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Blue Abishai Cookie | Blur |
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Green Abishai Cookie | Neutralize Poison |
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Hezrou Cookie | Infernal Power |
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Red Abishai Cookie | Protection from Energy: Fire |
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Succubus Cookie | Mass Charm Monster |
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Velah, the Red Dragon Cookie | Cometfall |
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Warforged Titan Cookie | Titan’s Grip |
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White Abishai Cookie | Fire Shield (cold version) |
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Xyzzy Cookie | Bee Breath |
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Stormreaver Cookie | Call Lightning Storm |
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Kobold Cookie | Wondrous Power: kobold jumping powers & a purple crystal. Used in Collection Challenges. |
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Lord of Blade Cookie | Wondrous Power: Adventure Area Slayer Boost 10% for 30 min |
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Medusa Cookie | Flesh to Stone |
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Taken Cookie | Wondrous Power: it will make you look “Absolutely Fabulous” |
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Toven d’Cannith Cookie | Radiant Forcefield |
Festivult Cakes | ||
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Daanvi, the Perfect Order Jelly Cake | Defender of Law |
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Dal Quor, the Region of Dreams Jelly Cake | Wondrous Power: Diseased, but gain some spell points afterwards |
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Dolurrh, the Realm of the Dead Jelly Cake | Death Ward |
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Fernia, the Sea of Fire Jelly Cake | Fire Shield (fire version) |
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Irian, the Eternal Day Jelly Cake | Sunburst |
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Kythri, the Churning Chaos Jelly Cake | Hound of Chaos |
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Mabar, The Endless night Jelly Cake | Wail of the Banshee |
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Risia, the Plane of Ice Jelly Cake | Ice Storm |
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Syrania, the Azure Sky Jelly Cake | Jump with Feather Fall |
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Thelanis, the Faerie Court Jelly Cake | Prismatic Spray |
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Xoriat, the Realm of Madness Jelly Cake | Otto’s Sphere of Dancing |
Skein of Shadows Cover Reveal!
Skein of Shadows by Marsheila Rockwell
Continuing the story that began in The Shard Axe, Sabira finds herself drawn into an expedition into the Underdark, where she discovers drow intrigue and dire secrets.
Item Code: 49791000
Release Date: July 3, 2012
Format: eBook
AMAZON | BARNS & NOBLE | WIZARDS
Happy GM’s Day! And Remember Gary Gygax Day
Yes, all you gamer geeks out there. March 4th is worldwide GM Day, a day where we recognize the hard work and dedication of our GMs. Our game masters who spend hours planning the dungeons our adventurers crawl through. Those brave souls that let us use those uber-kewl new feats we found in some little-known supplement. Those dedicated individuals who, even though we have destroyed their detailed storylines over and over, continue to try and bring us a story anyway.
In 2008 of the same day, “The Orginal DM” Gary Gygax passed away. In the 1960s, he created an organization of wargaming clubs and founded the Gen Con gaming convention. In 1971, he helped develop Chainmail, a miniatures wargame based onmedieval warfare. He co-founded the company Tactical Studies Rules (TSR, Inc.) with childhood friend Don Kaye in 1973. The following year, he and Dave Arneson created Dungeons & Dragons, which expanded on his work on Chainmail and included elements of the fantasy stories he loved as a child.
GM’s Day is the brainchild of the folks at Enworld.org, once of the most popular gaming forums on the net. What started as a little net appreciation for GMs turned into an annual event. It’s an excuse to buy your GM a bribe so he or she won’t smite your character outright. Pamper your GM with a gift of games, beer, snacks, and/or hug!
Oh-nos! Anne failed her STR Check!
I failed my Strength Check this week and took 1d10 damage from an evil moving box this week. My cleric told me to rest as much as I can while my back heals. This means no pushing, pulling, lifting, driving, typing nor mousing (too much) until the swelling goes down. Sadly this means no DDO nor DDOcast for me this week. We have a lot of things lined up, but we’ll just have to save them for the following week, and present them to you live on Sat, Feb 11th.
Thanks to everyone who’ve already wished me well! And thanks to everyone for understanding, we’ll be back soon enough with your favorite DDO news! How could we not with U13 just around the corner this Feb 22nd!
In the mean time, enjoy this little cartoon by our friend Stan! over at http://www.10x10toon.com
Sincerely,
Anne
Annual X-mas Wizards of the Coast Layoffs

Rich Baker @ Wizards Community BlogToday, Wizards of the Coast eliminated my position. I have unfortunately been let go, after more than 20 years of employment with TSR/WotC.
Rich was at the forefront of Wizards of the Coast’s range of Forgotten Realms and core Third Edition D&D accessory books, and author of several novels set in and below Faerûn. He also answered questions about the Forgotten Realms at the Wizards website’s forums – see the below external links. He also headed design on the 4th edition D&D iteration of the Dark Sun Campaign Setting, along with numerous other credits for that edition of the game.
Also rumored to be let go was Steve Winter who joined TSR in 1981 as Games Editor.
Right on schedule WotC:
- Dec 2000 WotC Layoffs @ TheForce.NET
- Mar 2001 WotC Layoffs @ Salon – WotC Center in Seattle Closed
- Sept 2002 WotC Layoffs @ RPG.NET
- Jan 2003 WotC Layoffs @ The Seattle Times
- Dec 2005 WotC Layoffs @ Steve Jackson Games Forums
- Dec 2008 WotC Layoffs @ GameGrene.com
- Dec 2009 WotC Layoffs @ ENWorld
- May 2010 WotC Layoffs @ ENWorld
- July 2011 WotC Layoffs @ ICV2 (Also on ENWorld)
You can follow the Dec 2011 Layoff discussion at ENWorld’s Forum.
Nearly an annual trend ever since Hasbro acquired Wizards of the Coast in 1999 and it looks like there are not many of the old D&D guard on the permanent payroll.
Festivult Cookies & Cakes for Dec 2011

Hey DDO Fans and DDOcast Listeners,
Here are the list of cookies and cakes for this year’s Festivult in December 2011. I’ve included the whole list, including the five new ones and the updated ones (only two really). Enjoy!