Recovering the Lost Tome in DDO was a failure for soloing Barbarian but still immersive and fun

 

I really love Dungeons and Dragons Online so I spent some time in the Harbor of Eberron trying to level up my Barbarian. Unfortunately my first time attempting the quest I died in the dungeon after accomplishing to solo most of the objectives because the electric traps left me with only 1 hp and my intelligence (to my chagrin) was too low to activate the runes in the map. I mean look at this: you can't see the hp but it was down to 1 for the longest time with most of the tasks! So frustrating! 

But concurrently, I also loved finding out that my character's intelligence was too low to activate the runes in keeping with the 3.5 ruleset the mmo is based on.

I mean how cool is that?? 

That's my character sheet below which shows not only is my INT at 8 but there is a -1 penalty mod. This compares favorably with the pencil and paper version of the game which according to the 3.5 PHB shows a Barbarian's traits, feats and skills.

 After watching this walkthrough I realized what would make me succeed in the quest would be: Probably a hireling that's a rogue to disable the traps, but I am not sure if there are hirelings that are rogues, I have only previously employed clerics to heal me and one would have come in handy prior to attempting the dungeon, but as a n00b I neglected to purchase or to activate one before going in to do the instance. At level 3 would I have enough currency to purchase two hirelings a rogue to deal with  the various traps and a healer? Probably not, I am not even sure you are allowed to activate more than one at a time, but it sure would make soloing this quest easier. It's not a long or tough instance, especially if not done on elite, but it is if you are not sure what you are doing at first.

You can find walkthroughs to most of the Harbor and other quests in the game, but why would you ruin your fun making that a habit? I only looked it up this time for illustrative blog purposes but generally speaking I don't use add ons like "Questie" when I play wow and I don't really cheat and look at guides or maps when I play DDO because I think exploring the dungeons is way more fun and is a lot more immersive, even if you die pulling a n00bish move like the one I described earlier.

Next, I may try out a few other classes in DDO. For a 15 year old mmo, it's a rare gem which differentiates itself from other games of its ilk with it's voiced over instances and RPG mechanics. Check out Axel's DDO channel for the latest news and updates, he is one of the best Youtubers focused on this great mmo.