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Seeking excitement and adventure, the thirty and forty-somethings in
our guild decided that this Thursday's guildraid location would be in the
Tower of Frozen
Shadows. Just getting there is a bit of an adventure. The unwary traveller, porting
in at the Dragon Ring in Iceclad
Ocean can find herself the target of
a snow dervish's
wrath. Ranging up to level 34, these monsters are to be avoided. Invisibility or
Camouflage is a must (and there will be more need for that later). Now skirt the icy
edge of the island, hop across the chain of small islands and head out for the tall,
black tower.
Don't stop! The tower is guarded by more monsters and if your invisibility drops, they'll start on the attack. The entrance to the Tower baffles newcomers: you have to click on the mirrored doorway to zone in. Just inside is a safe spot for your party to gather. In the case of Ancarett and Slugaduk, we were met by Hykros the Shadow Knight and Haunters the cleric: our guildleaders. Haunters gave Ancarett her new and wondrous breastplate, an emerald dragonscale tunic. Wow! With this equipped, Haunters proposed to run us up to the fifth floor where we'd be hunting. Just getting there is a challenge. The Tower of Frozen Shadows relies on a key system to pass from floor to floor. At least one member in your party has to have the key and, when your party reaches the access to the next floor, they must take the key, hold it on their cursor and click the door or mirror. The keys for each floor are difficult to obtain: you have to kill a high level, randomly spawned monster on each floor to obtain the no-drop key for the next. Since our guildmembers have been regular visitors to the Tower since its discovery, we were well-set to move out. Before we left the foyer, we cast Invis to Undead, to safely pass by the monsters on the first few levels. The second floor is a ghostly library where you can find some wonderful caster items dropping off the undead scholars. On the third floor we had to drop Invis to Undead in favour of plain Invisibility: here the worry was in the wandering live mobs. Slugaduk had the misfortune to loose his Invisibility as we ran through and quickly died. I made the fatal mistake of trying to cast a heal, thinking we had reached the safe spot, only to hear Haunters' warning against that too late. We both were relieved that a high level cleric remained to resurrect us, otherwise the return trip would have taken hours. Once on the fifth floor, things got worse. Haunters pulled a golem usher to keep us busy while Hykros zoned out through the convenient exit to retrieve more guildmembers. Unfortunately, an enraged relative spawned immediately after. At level 45, it was a challenge we couldn't meet. Slugaduk died and only a casting of divine barrier saved me long enough to click on the exit and make my escape with Haunters on my heels. We had to make our way back through all the levels of the tower again, but we had most of our party this time. We lost two more party members to failing Invis on the third floor but finally we all were together and resurrected, ready to take on the fifth floor of the Tower and take Slugaduk's revenge on that enraged relative, who quickly fell. Now the fun began: here's a fantastically themed part of the zone. Just down a hallway lined with alcoves (where lurk level 33-35 golem ushers, was a great hall filled with celebrants. We were on a mission to crash the wedding of Daman and Nosja. Obviously the festivities had been on hold a long while: both bride and groom had gone quite to seed. The priest was a shady looking shadowbeast. With Hykros helping to pull the first few from the full room, we soon settled into a steady rhythm of destruction. In addition to cleric and warrior, our party included the wizard, Calliden, and two druids, Hunnen and Garrwin. I had enough mana to use my impressive cleric anti-undead spells while druids snared and dotted and the wizard nuked. Slugaduk stood firm and smashed the opposition. Once the main wedding party had been dispatched, we turned to clearing the hall of entertainers: some undead dancers and musicians were no real challenge. Occasionally I'd have to throw in a heal as we cycled through four repopulations of the full wedding party and accompanying golem ushers. These translucent monsters deal some impressive damage, but nothing compared to our team. Things became a bit worrisome when three ushers joined the attack on Slugaduk, but we held them off. After three hours, we had a substantial pile of miscellaneous loot: dozens of crystallized shadow weapons, small pieces and bricks of velium, crystallized shadows, many gnomeskin sleeves, a variety of level 39 spells including the cleric undead damage over time, Turning of the Unnatural. We also collected several Laced Veils and many signet rings which seem to be used for a quest. None of the rare and desirable wedding rings, however. But a quick succession of enraged relatives yielded up several more copies of the key to the sixth floor (as well as lovely Velium Spiked Helms), so we made our way to floor six. We didn't spend long in the stark hallways of the next floor of the Tower, but we handily dispatched several shadowbeasts before calling it quits. If you make it this far, be sure to have evacers or gate ready. There's no other way out of the tower past the fifth floor's handy exit besides killing the next boss mob and the next (the nastiest in the Tower) before you can make your way out. We had both wizard and druid, so we hopped a ride back to South Ro with Hunnen before camping for the night. The haul in cash and goods was pleasant: well over 200 platinum between the two of us, not including the nice upgrades I'd received in my armour that night. Maybe next time we tour the Tower, we'll get a pair of wedding rings. In any case, I'm sure we'll enjoy crashing that wedding one more time! |