The Guild of Origin runs a program called Assassin’s Mark which is roughly a mob of the week type program designed to get people out and about, learning lots of stock mobs and filling up the donation room at the same time.<\/p>\n
The participation rate is pretty decent and I myself frequently go run mobs for gear I’ve had for years but never run for (see my previous post about Belkira’s Hunt<\/a>).<\/p>\n This time my adventure took me into Kontaur to find Carnifex Castle and hunt down the priest for some adamantium armor. This item is still a tanking standard due to it’s outrageous amount of AC. A new item with this sort of AC would probably have to be restricted to drow paladins or devout nephandi and even then would only be wearable on Tuesdays with a full moon visible at noon.<\/p>\n One nice thing about this adventure is that there is NO map on Rodpedia for Carnifex Castle, though the entrance is noted on the Kontaur map … and yes, I looked. \u00a0I looked because I was focused on the end goal of grabbing some plates and not enjoying the exploration of the area, not every day is a smell the roses day for me, I admit it … and sometimes, just sometimes, I find something I wasn’t expecting. \u00a0While googling to see if there was a classic map on some forgotten Realms website (and yes, I have found DOZENS of old Realms web sites out there) I tripped over what I believe to be the original author’s inspiration for the area: TSR’s Dungeon’s and Dragons module M3: Twilight Calling<\/a>. \u00a0Rather than take Wikipedia’s word for it, I laid hands on this module and I can say this for sure… if this isn’t the original inspiration for the area, then perhaps a D&D writer stole from Realms! \u00a0Nearly all the elements from the Realms area exist in the module, but the module does contain a fair bit more than I’ve discovered in the Castle … so it’s certainly not a complete module rip off, I am by no means implying that. \u00a0I enjoy etymology<\/a>\u00a0… and this idea of rediscovering inspirations tickles that same fancy.<\/p>\n On my first foray I entered through the front door, warriors, mages and cleric in tow and had a tiny bit of a look around. \u00a0I encountered the guards who have some neat new avatar quality items, the chaplain, the mage and finally the priest. \u00a0For those who don’t know there is a small bonus to going to find an adamatium plate … a staff that casts room fireshield that can be used by a warrior. \u00a0It has a pathetic number of charges, often only 1, but if you are lucky enough to get one that has at least 2 charges on it you can start playing the recharge luck game and try to double up. \u00a0This is something we used to do a fair amount of to create jade cameos with hundreds of charges and so on … but that’s a different topic.<\/p>\n Just a short time fighting in the area taught me a great deal. \u00a0I found at least 1 dt on my way out (without hitting it … yeah, I know, whodathunk it) and an easy trip back to Darkhaven. \u00a0Since there is an abundance of use of the norecall flag in the area I’ll give you a hint, bring pass door and scry \ud83d\ude42<\/p>\n Happy adventuring!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"