<Insert title here>

Christmas (and generally any holiday) season gets busy for me. I tend to get more work during this time and try to juggle in as many family events as I can fit in, which doesn't leave a lot of time for play. Not as much as I'd like, anyway. So I haven't done much of note around the Realms...

Happily, however, one of my ordermates reached avatar on his first character. He hasn't gone on too many runs as of yet, and I didn't know if he'd tanked or just hit, so I brought him out to Dragon's Pass for the Dragon Claw of Legend. The DCoL is a good claw (sadly, you can't wield more than one).

For reasons I can't explain, I wasn't able to portal through to DPass...so we walked it. Not a big deal, just odd.

Object 'The Dragon Claw of Legend' is infused with your magic...
It is a level 50 clawing weapon, weight 35.
Locations it can be worn: wield
Special properties: glow magic metal
Alignments allowed: good neutral evil
This weapon has a gold value of 1000000.
Damage is 6 to 48 (average 27).
Affects mana by 120.
Affects hp by 120.
Affects hit roll by 12.
Affects damage roll by 12.
Affects intelligence by 2.
Affects constitution by 2.
Affects luck by 1.

To make the claw, you need to kill each of the seven coloured dragons that live in the southern zone of the pass: gold, silver, topaz, crystal, white, red, blue. Each drops a single hide (used to make various pieces of equipment that vary in terms of their worth/usefulness), and a single claw.

The dragons can be nasty if you're inexperienced, but with a bit of help, they're a piece of cake. I used my mage to immobilize the dragons while my ordermate, Gill, tanked and hit. All in all, it was a smooth run; we stayed an extra pop to kill the crystal dragon a second time as his hides make good bracers. The only hitch was when the silver dragon aggro'd onto me and instantly wiped out my mage...but other than that one time, the dragons went down quick.

You then head over to Dundin McDougal, and with all seven claws in your possession, give him the white claw. He takes the set and then fashions you a good old DCoL.

This was a good experience overall. I tried to give tips and advice to Gill as we went, and I learned a bit myself, what with the dying and all. It makes me wish more runs could be done in this fashion - not necessarily immobing everything that walks, but the kind of...dual-class kill, where each member does a different task. In our case, the ranger was the wall and soaked the damage as well as dealt it, while the mage was the backline support that kept the enemy suppressed. It's a very traditional setup that I think Realms lacked for a long time, when spellcasters (mages/clerics) where pretty much buff and healbots, and you simply needed one tank and then as much DPS as you could pack.  The empowering of spellcasters feels nice!