The Caves of Donn

I got another hour or so of TR in last night, and managed to try out another one of their instances. Don't worry, I'll make this one shorter than the last.

The Caves of Donn are located a bit north and west of Memory Tree Hill, which is at the heart of the Concordia Wilderness. I was greeted upon entry with another briefing video which I'll be sure to post here late. It's sitting at home on my hard-drive as I write this. Very cool stuff. Reminds me of the movies during the Book quests in LotRO, a welcome development that both MMOs have wrought on the industry. More story in my MMO = BETTER.

This one was a lot smaller than the Pravus Research Facility. Basically, here's the gist: Reports of distress from the Caves have been coming in from the Foreans. Turns out there are some ruins in the area that the Foreans claim are touched by the Eloh (race of sentient beings whose knowledge and eventual betrayal by the Thrax and their own started this whole mess). There are Eloh artifacts, objects of great power, scattered about the Caves of Donn and comes down to me to get them before the Bane (collective name for the Thrax and all malevolent species that engage in warfare against the AFS) do.

Balls to the wall, a few NPCs and I made my way around the map (at least until the NPC kick the bucket and I'm solo), looking for these artifacts, collecting any Logos I find, and also helping out a group of Foreans who were cornered in one of the caves by the Bane. I escorted them to safety, and then finally my map was lit up with the location of the main artifacts I was looking for.

The Caves had me on a fairly linear path, but it branches and weaves so much that you don't feel like you're being led along. Not until you backtrack when running from a horde of enemies anyway. And run I did. You see the Caves are more on my level than Pravus was. I was 12 and the mobs were all 11 and 12 too. Lots of elites and whatnot to boot. Still, I only died once when I couldn't take out a shield drone fast enough and the Bane hiding under the shields knocked me back and wiped out my health before I could get up.

The second time against this group, I whipped out my EMP rifle, crouched from about 65 meters away and laid into the damned drone. It was down for the count before the group got within reach of me and then it was a simple matter of watching my shields as my shotgun peppered the Bane out of existence. Felt very badass after that. I retrieved all 3 of the Eloh Artifacts, read the records left behind of their betrayal at the hands of their own, and made my way out of the instance.

Another job well done in about an hour's time. Oh yeah, I was solo too. God bless instance-scaling. More please.

Cheers, you lot.

PS- Hit 13 last night too, 2 more levels until this Specialist becomes a Sapper and clones himself off again in case Sapper isn't the way for me. Cloning FTW.