Here's a giant dragon ，Happy Halloween
Welcome to October. It's time for ghouls, ghosts, things that go bump in the night, and shambling undead. Halloween events are a grand tradition in nearly every MMO, and Dungeons and Dragons Online has something special this year. The developers have really scaled things up for this holiday, but how well will it work?

Fernando Paiz and the team teased us with hints of the event last month at PAX, showing off a creepy red sky in Delera's Graveyard. Unfortunately for this curious DDO fan, the tour stopped there, leaving me to wait and wonder.

Yesterday my wondering was over, because we spent some time during my tour of Update 7 to explore the event. If you were in the area Thursday and noticed a sudden spawn of pumpkins, undead, and collectors in the graveyard, that was courtesy of Fernando. He was kind enough to turn the event on briefly and give me a little tour of what the holiday will have to offer.

Follow along after the cut for my thoughts on the good, the bad, and the creepy of the upcoming DDO Halloween event. Don't forget to check the link at the very end to see what OnedAwesome, Massively's DDO guild, is up to next week too!
 dungeons-and-dragons-online, event, events, exploring-eberron, f2p, featured, free-to-play
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Stromvauld's Mine and your character's alignment
Last week I talked a bit about Beholders and why they hurt so much, and I promised a look at an offshoot of that conversation this week: alignment. If you weren't a PnP player before Dungeons and Dragons Online, alignment is probably something you didn't pay much attention to on your first character. The system of alignment has its roots in Dungeons and Dragons and can seem a little complicated at first, but it's not too difficult once you have the basics.

Follow along after the jump to see what the big deal is and to see what Massively's DDO guild has been doing lately!

Alignment

Your character's alignment, at its core, is about what her outlook on life is and why it's that way. Wikipedia, while a dodgy resource at best in many cases, really shines here. There are six possible alignments in DDO, and the PnP Wikipedia article does a great job of providing a background and explanation of each one separately. (It also carries descriptions of the evil alignments, but you can't play those in DDO.)

The background stories of each alignment are a read that I find valuable for all non-PnP players, because they give a clear understanding and foundation of the differences. That helps make things much less confusing going forward.

Once you've got those basics down, let's look at how it affects you in the game. First and foremost, this will affect your ability to wield certain weapons. Many weapon enhancements carry alignments just like characters do, and if they conflict you can't wield that weapon. It's a good idea to learn which enhancements match your alignment and keep an eye out for those.

For example, a weapon with a "true law" enhancement will be in conflict with the alignment of a chaotic neutral character. In fact, true law weapons can only be wielded by lawfully aligned characters. You'll be much more effective when you get a feel for which weapons will work best for you and your alignment -- you'll want to refer to this chart often at first -- and accumulate a few.

This conflict of alignment can work to your advantage in battle as well. Remember last week when I mentioned how to damage Beholders? Every enemy also has an alignment. Beholders are an example of lawful evil aligned monsters, and they'll take much more damage from things like pure good and true chaos weapons. The "good" and "chaotic" parts of those alignments are in conflict with lawful evil, so they hurt more.

With time and experience, as with anything, you'll pretty much have the alignments of your enemies committed to memory. Until then, I recommend doing a quick bit of DDO wiki research on the enemies you expect to face before you take on a quest in the game. The wiki is well-laid-out, and it will just take a minute or two to see what you're up against. Once you know, find the weapon with an alignment that will hurt it the most, and you'll be pleasantly surprised at how much your numbers go up. Of course, this goes both ways -- if you're chaotic good aligned, that lawful evil Beholder is going to hit you pretty hard as well, so be ready for that.

These are only the basics of the system, but hopefully they lay the foundation for an understanding of how it all works. Finding that balance of a weapon that fits your alignment, finding an alignment that works for you in the first place, and taking those things into battle are largely a matter of personal preference, and that part is entirely up to you. You'll find that this foundation will make that decision much easier, so check out the resources here and have fun