First Delos Newbie Storage Dash
Don’t Die Alone held our first inaugural Newbie Storage Dash this weekend, in aid of The Laze’s 35k fishing chest challenge storage needs. A handful of brave adventurers gathered at the Windward South Gate to start the race.
The route was broken into three stages, passing through all settlements, apart from Brimstone Sands. We decided to get some Fast Travel Shrines along the way, to aid with respawn distances, which turned out to be quite useful in the later stages.
- Stage 1 – Windsward-First Light-Cutlass Keys-Monarch’s Bluff-Everfall
- Stage 2 – Everfall-Brightwood-Weaver’s Fen-Reekwater-Restless Shore-Mourningdale
- Stage 3 – Mourningdale-Last Stand-Valor Hold-Eastburn-Mountainrise-Mountainhome-Cleave’s Point-Ebonscale Reach
A total prize pool of 15,000 gold was donated from the company treasury, with 5k to be awarded to the winner of each stage. The final stage winner was also running for a Fishing Trophy and a custom-dyed Loot Goblin luck suit. (sadly the dye does not hold once you trade the item, so we has to make do with giving away the dyes to DIY).
The first stage was fairly straightforward, with only a few dangerous enemies in Cutlass Keys. Carter Black started in Monarch’s Bluff, so met us on the road. Dieseldog didn’t have a second character, so he shepherded us with his main, helping run interference with the more dangerous beasts.
CVTurnerz won the first stage, being the first to arrive at Everfall Town Hall.
Our intrepid adventurers stopped for a short break in Everfall before continuing on. T0rana joined us with his alt on the road to Brightwood and BarzakhianBunni jumped in from Weaver’s Fen, which is where all the fun began.
Running through the swamps of Weaver’s was the first main challenge and many a competitor fell to ghosts and alligators before reaching Marshwalker’s Respite. Players split into different groups and tried various routes and strategies.
CVTurnerz was once again the first to arrive in Mourningdale, followed by Slightly Wet. Lord Narok, Lady Landi, Carter Black and BarzakhianBunni all completed this round, with Carter taking a break while the rest continued on to the final, and most challenging, stage.
Surprisingly, our newbie characters got through many of these high level areas quite easily. But this soon came to an end. “Going from Gatherer’s Road and then back up to Mountainrise, that was hard”, champion CVTurner recalls. “I probably died 6 to 8 times in there and it’s quite a hefty run.”
The Angry Earth archers were instant death and would spot our young characters from a long way off. Governor Narokstar swapped to his main character to help clear the way, but it still took many, many tries to get through, with BarzakhianBunni, Lady Landi and Slightly Wet continuing for some time after CVTurnerz made it. With Narok’s help, Slightly Wet and Landi got to Mountainrise at last.
While CVTurnerz was heading down for the final leg through Ebonscale Reach, Lady Landi and Slightly Wet dashed across to Mountainhome, which was not as difficult, but Slightly Wet fell to an archer just before the road up to the outpost and had to run again.
CVTurnerz was the only one who completed the entire course, arriving in Ebonscale Reach capital just over 3 hours after the run began. I had a chance to catch up with him for a chat about his experience.
So tell me about the character you ran the race with.
CVTurner: Well, this is CVTurnerz, it is a character that I created for an alt on different server, that got merged into Delos. But I ended up letting my 9-year-old play it for a bit. So, yeah, it’s had about an hour of play time and that’s about it.
Landi: Nice, so what level was the character when you started?
CVTurner: I think when we first started the run it was level 8.
Landi: Okay, and then when you finished, obviously I can see level 17, so that is just about 10 levels for doing nothing but running.
CVTurner: Yeah, so 9 and 1/4 levels, pretty much. I was pretty much smack on level 8. Yeah, because I was level 6 when I logged on. But to get my weapons up I had to kill a few things, so I got a little bit of experience from that.
It sounds like you might have had a strategy going into the race?
CVTurner: I may have purposely transferred myself a bow and levelled that to level 4 so I got the dodge haste in preparation, so I could be a little bit quicker than everyone. And I got the Great Sword to Level 3, so I had Relentless Freedom so I could dart across creeks.
Landi: Ohh very clever. You were ahead of the pack right from the beginning, so you obviously had some pretty good strategies. Yeah, so they’re your secrets – the Bow and the Great Sword.
CVTurner: Yep, so I would sort of run up, Relentless Rush, weapon swap, dodge roll and get 2 seconds of haste.
Landi: Yeah, I see that that’s pretty fast.
What did you find was the hardest part of the run?
CVTurner: Um, definitely Edengrove. I think I think getting Mountainrise is the hardest one of all. I think if I was to do it again. I might leave that one to last and try from Mountainhome and go east across from that. I’d probably go Valour Hold, go left across to Eastbourne, across to Cleave’s Point, then up to Mountainhome. Try to get across to Mountainrise, then port back to Cleave’s Point and shoot straight down to Ebonscale Reach would be my choice next time.
Landi: Well, I think we might run it again because some of us have more characters and there’s obviously people who missed out.
Were there any memorable experiences along the way?
CVTurner: Memorable experiences. I would probably say the second leg when it started getting a bit more involved. The mobs were all like skulls and actually hitting people. Probably Weavers Fen was pretty memorable. A lot of people struggled through there. One of the more interesting parts because we had a lot of company members, which made it a lot more fun.
Landi: Yeah, it would definitely be fun to run with more people.
CVTurner: With eight or nine of us running it definitely made it a lot more fun and interesting to see different people’s tactics of how to get through areas.
Were you surprised at being able to complete the course with a brand new character?
CVTurner: Yeah definitely yeah. I thought I would have a pretty good chance getting most of them. I thought I would struggle a lot more in the neutral territories, but I was surprised at how easy they were to get to.
Landi: Thank you for taking the time to talk to me and congratulations on winning every stage. And, thank you for donating away your prizes, even though you didn’t have to.
You can catch CVTurner on Twitch most nights, tune in for a unique perspective on weapon builds, making gold and building aptitude levels!
