This week’s Dungeons and Dragons Online adventure was The Prisoner, in which I saved one elf from another elf’s incompetence and validated my suspicions that this race is too dumb to live.
In this case, Mistress Orphne — or, as I called her, Little Orphne Annie — has had her mind hijacked by some of her countrymen. So it’s into the mind of an elf I go to free her, because that’s the sort of pop psychology I subscribe to!
So what will we find in the mind of an elf? Probably a pillow fort made of haughty arrogance.
Orphne’s mind is pretty messed up, although mostly in a way that feels like the developers wanted some freedom to get wacky with level design. Lots of stuff floating in midair unsupported, ladders that go on for three minutes at a stretch, and plenty of beholders popping in for pep talks. They went down so fast that they barely had time to get out their taunts.
I had to find four items within Orphne’s mind to shake her out of this stupor, and pretty much all of them were high up various platforms. While I had feather fall to assist me in a quick way back to the start, at once point I got hung up on the terrain and ended up suspended in midair with no way to get down. I used the /stuck command (after a stern warning from the system not to abuse it) and went on my merry way.
Ladder Diary, Minute 524. Still climbing. Have splinters in all fingers and toes. Cursing the birth day of each and every developer in this place. Why don’t I have rocket boots?
Probably the most interesting section, at least to me, was a maze stuffed with minotaurs and traps. Neither were particularly dangerous, and at one point a minotaur stumbled right into a trap and got skewered right before my eyes. I extended grace and pity by laughing mercilessly and saying, “You idiot cow.”
After a fight with a giant — wasn’t quite sure WHY there was a giant in her mind, but no matter — I fought shadow Link here and won the day. Of course, I tinkered around with her brain to make her think that she was a ferret for the rest of her life, but that’s standard operating procedure in an elf memory rescue.
Bio Break 
The Vault of Night is a pretty good quest series and I think people still run this raid. First time through Prisoner with my guild I got turned to stone by a beholder and had to just stand there for most of it. We ran it through recently on our new characters but got blown up in Haywire Foundry. Have to try it again some time but it is pretty crazy at the end, pull the switch on the bomb and just run for your life, but you get to the top and the bridge is up.
Reblogged this on DDOCentral.
There are two more quests in the Vault of Night chain after The Prisoner (VON 3 and VON 4) and then the two part raid, VON 5 and VON 6. Velah the Red Dragon from ddocentral.com makes her appearance in the VON raid. http://ddowiki.com/page/Vault_of_Night
I remember when this first came out and we were running it for the first time. no-one in the group could run the wind bridge without falling off. Everyone had there ALT-F4 key ready….I am sure it ended the quest if you fell….It seems so much easier now..was it nerfed to become player friendly?
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