It's been a while since my last blog post, for many reasons. Perhaps the first and foremost one is that i've been thoroughly addicted to GW! I've been vanquishing and guardianising lots, as well as ABing. Yesterday, i did perhaps one of the hardest missions in the entire game - Gate of Madness [PS: THERE ARE SPOILERS AHEAD, SO STOP READING IF YOU HAVEN'T DONE THIS MISSION YET!).

This mission was the last one that Martin needed to complete to get Guardian of Elona, and so he and i, along with Mick, attempted this mission with 5 Heroes. Martin (tactics Steady Stance Warrior) took Dunkoro (heal), Tahlkora (prot), and Zhed (fire), Mick (broadhead arrow Ranger) took Zhed as well (fire again), whilst i (Spoil Victor Necro) took Olias (SS necro). My skills were: Awaken the Blood, Spoil Victor (SV), Necrosis (with max LB and Sunspear rank, it did 105 dmg with each casting ), Vampiric Gaze, Life Siphon, Blood Ritual, LB Gaze, and Sunspear Rebirth Signet. 16 blood, 13 SR. We entered the mission, breezed through the 1st part of it, until we got to the Lich's area and the portals that we needed to close. We closed 2 of them fine, but the 3rd portal, something, ummm, happened. We aggroed a little bit too much, and got a Blade of Torment in amonst us. Usually, these are easy to kill. But, via a lack of communication, and probs me and Olias spamming skills on all monsters in sight, this 1 Blade of Torment turned into 5... ahem. So yeah, all of us got wiped except Martin and Tahlkora. He ran back, and luckily the Blades didn't follow. He lured one, and tanked it, whilst sending Tahlkora to Rebirth me. Once i was alive, it was just a matter of a simple SV followed by Necrosis (210 dmg against Torment creatures while they're using Call to the Torment!!) and LB gaze to finish off the Blade. Martin and i killed the next 2 Blades this way as well. Tahlkora managed to res the whole team, and we were all back on our feet, just a little bit worse for wear. We proceeded to disable the last 2 portals easily after this. Now came the hard part... Shiro and the Lich. Luckily, the Lich can be lured by himself, which i did, and we demolished him pretty quickly, though not before he had taken out both Zhed's and Martin as well. So, even more worse for wear, we prepared ourselves for the final push. The two Zhed's were pretty much DP'd out by now, and the rest of us all had some DP. Because we wanted Master's Reward, we had to kill all the margonites at each of the five shrines. We started on closest shrine on our right, the Shrine of Lyssa. This is kind of how it went...

"We all ready? Yep, good, run to the back of the shrine!!" *Run run run, Martin tanks Shiro for a little bit* *Shiro thinks, hmmm... monks and eles are squishier than a Warrior, let's kill them* *Zhed, Zhed, Tahlkora, and Dunkoro all die* *Mick, Olias and i take out the shrine guards, run to the back of the shrine* *Martin goes: oh carp, no healing, and dies* *Shiro thinks 'oh, despite the fact there are more squishies about 3 metres away from me, they are just outside my aggro range, so i'll run back, giving them all a chance to recuperate and take me on again. After all, killing them repeatedly is fun!'* *Shiro runs back* *Mick resses everyone with Resurrection Chant, protecting himself with Whirling Defense* *Zhed's are both on -60DP, so we leave them* We hide at the back of the shrine, and contemplate what to do next.*

So yeah, half the team died on the first shrine, but thanks to the amazing survival abilities of Mick, we survived! We moved onto the next shrine (The Shrine of Grenth - woop, + 1 Necro attributes!), with again Mick and i taking out the guards, whilst Martin tanked. And again, we had a few deaths. Now we had to run across the open ground to the Shrine of Dwayna, opposite. And again, Shiro took half of us out. But we held on, and regrouped, hiding just out of aggro range at the back of the shrine. The Shrine of Balthazar was next, followed by the Shrine of Melandru. Each time, we had at least a couple of deaths. I was on -30odd DP, i think, whilst i think Mick and Martin both used Birthday Cupcakes, Golden Eggs, and Candy Canes to help them. So, we had captured all the shrines, now we had the hard task of killing Shiro...

1st attempt: Martin - dead, Dunkoro - Dead, Me - dead, Olias - Dead, Mick - running around drawing Shiro's aggro, Tahlkora - runs and hides! We did get Shiro to around 5% health though (gotta love SV!). Mick and Tahlkora res us all. 
2nd attempt - Shiro is on half health, and we go in all spells blazing. SV, SS, IP, wild blow, the whole works. And it was beatiful! I saw sooo many 120s (from SV) on the screen, it was phenomenal. Shiro dropped - we had won!!!

At the end of the mission, all 3 of us were exhausted! It was definitely a nerve-wracking experience, and one that none of us will repeat any time soon! But we came through, and Martin got his Guardian of Elona title, so it was well worth it! Only 4 more missions to complete in Elona for me now - Jennur's Horde, Kodonur Crossroads, Moddok Crevice, and Grand Court of Sebelkeh. Any help is greatly appreciated!!  

[SPOILERS END HERE!]

So, apart from GW, what else have i been up to? Well, probably a rather important thing - i got my university degree, and i got a First  So i'm very pleased with that. Now i just need to hear back from PhD funding.

Last night, i went round to a friend's house, and we played on the Wii. Now, i'm definitely not a console game person (i prefer PC games [or should that be, i prefer GW?]), so i was a bit sceptical about it. However, it's great fun  We started off by playing some Tennis. Although you feel exceptionally silly waving your arms about, you do forget about that very quickly, and just enjoy the game. We played a fair few matches, and what can i say? I R WINNER!!!  Hehe, it's true! I beat my friend a fair few times, though the last match we played, it was best out of 5, and i didn't win a single point . We moved on to bowling after that, and it may just have been me, but i found it really easy. I got 3 strikes and 2 spares. Finally, we moved onto Marvel's Ultimate Alliance. Although i had no idea on the controls to start off with (i was button mashing A to attack ), we both eventually got the hang of it. And yeah... we ended up playing it for 7 hours... i ended leaving at 5am in the morning, when it was already light outside . Wolverine is definitely my favourite character, mainly due to the fact that he's practically indestructible! Iron Man was cool with his flying and shooting, as was the Human Torch (Johnny Storm, Fantastic 4). It's a neat game, and definitely better once we had figured out how to do the special moves!

The Wii is obviously a group console - the more players, the better it becomes. My friend has 3 controllers, so we'll be persuading another friend to join us, and Wii into the early hours again!

Rightio, this blog post is uber long, so i'll think i'll stop here for now! One more point i need to add: Hunt the Krellykins is coming soon! I'm still figuring when a good time will be, but it will be soooooooooon!

See you all in game soon,

Krell

PS: I like spoons!!